Hope Lives

So different from the GOPer madness, President Obama offers passion along with sanity, moral leadership along with intelligence and knowledge, real leadership with inspiration.  And despite all the noise, people are responding.

I've just received the Obama campaign fundraising numbers for the last quarter: 606,027 people donated to the Obama campaign -- even more than gave in the record-breaking previous quarter.  The combined total of the Obama campaign and the DNC is more than $70 million.

98% of these donations were $250 or less, with an average of $56.  The number of donations was 766,000--more than twice the number as 2008 at this point in the campaign.  The total number of people who have donated to this campaign is nearly 1 million.

Couple this with the yesterday's NBC poll that showed that President Obama has a higher level of support for reelection among Democrats than Bill Clinton did in his best month before his reelection.  And that he's leading each of his possible GOPer opponents.

Bachman in Overdrive: More of the Same?

Michelle Bachman as interpreted by Bad Lip Readers, asking the musical question: is this any more surreal than what she said during the debate Tuesday night?  Funnier, yes.  But more surreal?

At the Circus

In this circus, it's all elephants.  Or put it this way: with the elephants, it's all circus.

Who is leading the GOPer polls? 2 out of 3 GOPers agree, it's Herman Cain, whose qualification for the presidency is that he successfully sells pizzas  This is what America needs--to run government and the free world like a pizza business.  But a fundamentalist Christian one--"I'll have a large cheese and sausage to go, no Mormons, Medicare or Social Security, and hold the immigrants.  Deliver it to heaven because until the Rapture, I'm homeless."

Newt Romney is the odds on favorite, but as Chris Matthews suggested, he's like the movie you go to see when the movie you want to see is sold out.  Cowboy Rick is a debate disaster, but he has a lot of campaign cash and better candidates than him have survived being called lackluster in early debates.  But he so plumb ignorant (the American Revolution was fought in the 1500s, according to him last night) that not even Texas white Tevangelicals may be able to save him.  The so-called debate meanwhile was a parade of trunk-to-tail pandering (Repeal Everything!) and lying, with not a single realistic proposal for anything.      

And how about Mitt Gingrich? "He came off as a petulent, pompous, pseudo-intellectual prick. He is simply not that bright, and as out of his depth as his insecure pronouncements of self-described world-historical profundity suggest. He belongs on Dancing With The Stars, not a Republican debate."

And in other circus news:

"President Obama called investment banker Ron Milner to the podium and then, without provocation or warning, delivered what witnesses describe as a "haymaker" punch to Mr. Milner's jaw. "That's for ruining the economy, asshole," Mr. Obama remarked, then spit at Mr. Milner's feet and walked away.

Early polls indicate the President's punch is receiving widespread voter approval, with 44% of respondents telling survey-takers "It's about damn time one of those rich pricks got their teeth knocked in" and another 32% saying they wished Obama had kicked Mr. Milner in addition to punching him."

Texas restaurants complain they could be driven out of business by the ban on last meals for condemned prisoners.  Governor Cowboy Rick was asleep at the presidential candidates debate and unavailable for comment.

Possibly Not the Real One

Elizabeth Warren announces--a fantasy recreation.

GOP Filibusters American Jobs

On Tuesday evening the United States Senate voted to begin debate on the American Jobs Act.  But every GOP Senator voted against it, and invoked cloture.  Translation: they filibustered it.  It can't be brought to the floor or debated, so it can't be passed by the majority that voted to consider it.

When it comes to the American Jobs Act and the method of financing it that involves millionaires and billionaires paying a tax rate closer to what they paid in the 90s, majorities don't matter.  According to recent polls, a majority of Americans favor the American Jobs Act.  Large majorities (from 68% to 80% or more, depending on the poll and what questions are asked) support paying for it from fairer taxation on the very wealthy, and on closing favoritism to particular corporations.

The American Jobs Act includes tax cuts for the middle class and small business, and extended benefits for the unemployed.  It includes funds to rehire teachers, police and fire personnel.  It includes funding for repairing America's dangerous and inadequate infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, railways, water and sewer systems, electricity grids, broadband-- as well as schools in dire need of repair, all of which are supported by a majority of economists and corporations.  Here's what Joe Nocera wrote about the findings of a report commissioned by the New American Foundation:

"How can we break this cycle? Like most mainstream economists, Alpert, Hockett and Roubini roll their eyes at the calls for immediate government deficit reduction, which led to the creation of the supercommittee. Reducing government spending in the short term will only make things worse.

Instead, they believe that this is perhaps the best time in recent history for the government to take on a sustained infrastructure program, lasting from five to seven years, to create jobs and demand. “Labor costs will never be lower,” says Hockett. “Equipment costs will never be lower. The cost of capital will never be lower. Why wait?” Their plan calls for $1.2 trillion in spending — not all by the government, but all overseen by government — that would add 5.2 million jobs each year of the program. Alpert says that current ideas, like tax cuts, meant to stimulate the economy indirectly, just won’t work for a problem as big the one we are facing. Indeed, so far, they haven’t."

The report itself adds this: "Beyond this, it is important to note that infrastructure investment has a healthy multiplier effect throughout the economy. The CBO estimates that every dollar of infrastructure spending generates on average a$1.6 increase in GDP. Some critical transportation and energy projects have even larger multiplier effects."

They note the cost to the U.S. economy of inadequate infrastructure: "The Department of Transportation, for example,reports that freight bottlenecks cost the American economy $200 billion a year—the equivalent of more than 1 percent of GDP. And the Federal Aviation Administration estimates that air traffic delays cost the economy $32.9 billion a year. Perhaps even more worrying, there is growing evidence that uncertainties about the future reliability of our energy, water and transportation systems are creating obstacles to investment in some parts of the country and thus impeding new business investment."

They note that time is money: "Deteriorating infrastructure is subject to “costacceleration” where repair or replacement costs grow with time. A project that costs $5 or 6 million to repair now may cost upwards of $30 million to repair merely two years from now. Since most of these projects will need to be undertaken at some point, the question is literally not whether but when."

These arguments on the basis of need and of opportunity (unemployed workers, underutilized machinery etc.) are compelling.  But so is the broader economic argument.  Right now U.S. corporations are sitting on trillions in cash which they won't invest in America, because of low demand, which is due to unemployment, low wages, economic uncertainties, and fallout from mortgage and other debts.  Only more demand for products and services in the U.S. will pry that cash from their cold hands--demand that has to match the growing demand in other countries, where labor and other costs are cheaper.  A big infrastructure program not only makes the U.S. more competitive in the future, but it puts money in the pocket of millions of workers and large and small business. When they spend that money, it breaks the cycle of low demand, low investment.

There are no fact-based counterarguments except in details.  The only reason to oppose programs like this, and like the American Jobs Act programs, is a desire for failure.  This includes politicians and their corporate backers who want the U.S. economy to fail to hurt their political opponents, most of all President Barack Obama.  It includes banks and very big companies and the rich people who run them, who don't really care if the U.S. economy does fail, because they'll be okay, they'll just do business elsewhere (they think.)   And it includes Tevangelists who don't care if the economy fails because why should they, their righteousness is much more important, and besides the sooner the apocalypse the sooner their Rapture.

Given a political system which is unresponsive to reason and to the majority, the current activities of The 99% are entirely reasonable.  There are those who believe this economic crisis is not temporary but the harbinger of a permanent decline, affected as it is by changes wrought by the Climate Crisis (higher food prices for example) and other global trends.  In the long run the world economy is in for wrenching change, but those changes will be easier to deal with if the solutions proposed by President Obama and/or these economists would go into effect.  A more efficient and longer lasting infrastructure alone is an investment in any future. 

It Did Happen Here

Today I heard several people on TV--reporters and officials--refer to the alleged plot to explode a bomb in Washington that would kill the Saudi ambassador as "unprecedented."

Well, not exactly.  It may be unprecedented because this is an ambassador, but a bomb did kill a prominent foreign statesman in Washington, as well as an American as collateral damage.  The current plot involves an American citizen.  This earlier plot may well have involved the American CIA.

It was a car bomb in 1976 that killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffit. Orlando Letelier had been an official in the Salvador Allende government in Chile, an elected government with broad public support but an openly socialist democratic agenda. Entrenched political and corporate interests didn't like it much, and the Cold War heat was on such suspiciously non-capitalistic regimes. Allende was assassinated during a military coup in 1973, that brought the now notorious dictator and ruthless murderer, General Augusto Pinochet to power.Over the next decade Pinochet and his secret police turned “disappeared” into a verb. Thousands of Chileans over the next several decades were disappeared by his secret police.

One of the first was Orlando Letelier, who in 1976 was traveling the world for the Institute for Policy Studies, and organizing boycotts and other opposition to the Chilean dictatorship. On an autumn evening in 1976, a bomb planted in his car exploded on a Washington street, not far from the White House. He was dead before he reached the hospital. A young American woman, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, his assistant, was also killed. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, was injured.

It later became clear that the Chilean coup and the murder of Allende were at least facilitated by the U.S. government, specifically the CIA. The role of Henry Kissinger was allegedly large.

It wasn’t until 2000 or so that the CIA’s involvement in Letelier’s assassination was partially acknowledged. The CIA, directed by George H.W. Bush in 1976, at the very least covered up their knowledge that the Chilean secret police did the hit. They may have been much more involved than that. Eventually a senior member of Pinochet's secret police was convicted of the assassination in a U.S. federal court.  According to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, "The assassins had been admitted to the country on false passports with the knowledge of the CIA."



Ronni

  At the time I was the editor of a weekly alternative newspaper called Washington Newsworks, and I’m proud to say that our coverage of the Letelier assassination was more extensive that week, and holds up better now, than anyone else’s in town, including the Washington Post.

The real credit goes to Jeff Stein, who did the reporting and wrote the stories.  (This is the same Jeff Stein who until earlier this year wrote "Spy Talk" for the Washington Post.)   Just about all I did was recognize the importance of it, and I made the decision to put it on the cover and give it full play inside. In particular, Jeff’s reporting and our coverage did not buy the official line in the immediate aftermath, that the bomb was planted by leftists. It was G.H.W. Bush himself who convinced the establishment media that Chile’s Secret Police wasn’t involved. That’s why not many people know about this bit of infamous history. Letelier and Moffitt both deserved better then, and they deserve better now.

They'd Like to Give Iran a Koch

Iran features prominently in two news stories today.  The first--the one that is getting the headlines and big play--is the plot that the U.S. foiled to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, which was financed and apparently directed from inside the government (or at least the military) of Iran.

The second is the Bloomberg report that says that among the foreign countries that the Koch Brothers bribed to get business was Iran.  This is yet another hair-raising profile of the Kochheads and their international as well as national criminal conspiracy, out to not only buy the U.S. but to buy the world, a Koch at a time.
   

Occupy America

The Occupy Wall Street etc. demonstrations continue to get a lot of attention, notably from the police.  There's an overnight story about police violence in Boston.  Police in Seattle gave costly tickets to motorists who were beeping their horns in support of demonstrators there.  So far all the violence has come from the police, perhaps aided by admitted Rabid Right infiltrators.

There are also the familiar right wing charges--GOPer leaders, Rove, Gland Beck who warns demonstrators are out to kill him--and one of my old favorites, charges that the demonstrators are puppets of the Communist Party, made on Fox News.  But demonstrators have been giving as well as they get from Fox, including greeting Heraldo with chants of Fox Lies!  

Nobody really knows where this is all going yet, except the demonstrations themselves will get bigger for awhile--probably at least until a massive one in Washington.  Andrew Sullivan is monitoring the deep thoughts on the subject, of which I frankly have none.  But you combine this with the GOPer refusal to deal with the American Jobs Act in Congress and its bizarre roster of presidential candidates, and what's happening in the states (as in the post below)--there's unknowable potential.

This movement so far seems stuck with the name "Occupy..." which is an action or a tactic, not an organizational name. But it's got interesting resonances.  Historically of course, to the occupying of buildings etc. in various 60s protests (which came out of earlier sit-ins and strikes) but also to the word itself--an occupation being another name for a job, for what you do, which gives people so much of their identity in this time and place.  So a lot of people don't have occupations, and fear they won't have one in the near future.  This is what occupies them now, and that's always the plutocratic fear, that unemployment leaves people unoccupied, with the time, energy and motivation to occupy themselves by making trouble for the plutocracy. 

There's the 99%, which is a more potent label.  More than enough, you'd think, to occupy America.     

Vote Anyway

The GOPer crusade against the "wrong people" voting (i.e. minorities, anybody who might be a Democrat) in the states is getting more media attention, thanks to specific stories like this one about a 96 year old woman denied the right to vote because she didn't have her marriage license, required for a voter ID somehow.

But it turns out that the U.S. Justice Department is pretty limited in what it can do, at least before the 2012 elections.  What state courts can do depends on state constitutions.  But that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless.  Some of these preposterous laws can be overturned by voter referendum, and that's in the works in some states.  But the real work is going to be for groups and individuals to defeat the intent of these laws by organizing to fight through their onerous provisions and register people anyway, and eventually to do what has to be done to register and to vote anyway.

That might be a good slogan for buttons etc.: VOTE ANYWAY!  If they're going back to Jim Crow kinds of anti-voting laws, then people are going to have to do what people did in those days--insist on their rights, follow the damn law but make sure you vote.  That's the only way they don't win.  If heroic measures are necessary, then be heroic.

Early awareness is important and fortunately it's beginning, not only in the national political media but in the affected states.  The League of Women Voters in Florida should reconsider its decision to give up trying to register voters because of that state's elaborate new requirements.  And if they are stopped, then it's time to take it to court.  REGISTER ANYWAY! 

There's no point in wasting time and energy arguing with these cynical power grabbers (except in court)--they are so transparent.  These are the people who justify these laws because of voter fraud that does not exist, with the same pious face that they use to deny the facts of the Climate Crisis.  There's no reasoning with them.  There's just defeating them, and their attempts to discourage and intimidate. 

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torments"

Goethe

Not Always A Science

I know nothing about, and want to say nothing about, the Swedish poet who stole the Nobel for Lit from Margaret Atwood.  Okay, he didn't steal it. I note the physicists who won for realizing that the universe is expanding faster.  This 1998 discovery has been joined by others in a fascinating new picture of the vastness of space--an even stranger universe.

But what I want to highlight from Nobel week is the chemistry prize, for Dan Shechtman, an Israeli scientist who discovered new crystalline structure that other scientists thought was impossible.  He was laughed at, fired from the U.S. Bureau of Standards, ostracized.  The evidence mounted, so now quasicrystals not only exist but are manufactured, and as the Nobel committee said, it "eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter."

I highlight this because those of us who are trying to fight off the horrifying resurgence of Dark Ages ignorance are tempted to go to the other extreme and deify science. Sure, we're facing the contempt for science by a frighteningly powerful minority, the refusal to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for the Climate Crisis that may doom civilization completely.  But when battle lines are drawn, us or them, either/or rigidity can lead to equal and opposite errors, like turning science into a religion.

Science and scientists are demonstrably fallible. Even eminent scientists can be prideful and political, just like other academics and politicians.  For instance, this little drama of a new discovery or theory being ridiculed before being lauded is not just a familiar storyline.  It is evidence of human flaws that get repeated in patterns, and can result in great suffering, in wasted years and ruined lives for individuals, and all kinds of bad consequences for others.  Among other things, it discourages new discoveries and creativity in general.

Some scientists know this. Renowned physicist Max Planck admitted that new ideas seldom win over adherents of old ones -- usually a generation must pass while the new idea's "opponents gradually die out ..." English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane pointedly offered "four stages of acceptance" of a scientific idea: 1) this is worthless nonsense, 2) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, 3) this is true, but quite unimportant, 4) I always said so.

Science should be approached with human humility.  A lesson in that for some religions I could mention.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
-- Steve Jobs, Commencement address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005.

Instant Koalition

In some ways it's coming together very fast into an Instant Koalition.  In other ways, it's been a long time coming.  Just as these protests are being organized in very new ways with new technologies, while they also seem in some ways very familiar.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading incredibly fast across the country.  In New York, they are getting larger, and not only because of the instant participation of labor unions--which is remarkable in itself.  It took awhile for Labor to align itself with the Civil Rights movement, although it was there in force in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  It never did join the antiwar movement--it was more often on the other side with the "hardhats."  But Labor has changed a great deal since the 1970s.  There are a lot of members employed by government at some level.  Industrial unions have become advocates for green technologies and green jobs, as well as smarter workplaces--along with greater worker participation in decision-making.  But the antipathy to today's equivalents of the industrial barons is deep in their DNA.

Now quickly joining this Instant Koalition along with the Van Jones group are the heirs to the Civil Rights movement, about to March on Washington for Jobs and Justice on October 15.  Through his TV show, the Rev. Al Sharpton is making common cause with Occupy Wall Street.

And now through Bill McKibben and a coalition of groups, the environmental activists have joined up--they were marching with Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday: For too long, Wall Street has been occupying the offices of our government, and the cloakrooms of our legislatures,” wrote Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, in an email urging supporters to join the march, “They’ve been a constant presence, rewarded not with pepper spray in the face but with yet more loopholes and tax breaks and subsidies and contracts. You could even say Wall Street’s been occupying our atmosphere, since any attempt to do anything about climate change always run afoul of the biggest corporations on the planet. So it’s a damned good thing the tables have turned.”

This is a particularly natural move for McKibben after his blistering New York Times oped claiming corporate influence and cronyism between an oil lobbyist and the State Department to get the tar sands oil pipeline approved. 

The Instant Koalition includes such natural allies and also some strange bedfellows, as well as the just strange, but that's all part of the energy at this stage.  This is still building. Like previous movements, it can claim roots and common cause to very American ideals and American history, as in this brilliant piece in Think Progress which shows these protests are much more in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party than the TPers ever were.

But unlike previous movements, it can claim to be representing the direct and obvious interests and (in the main) the views of the majority--of the 99%.  There's plenty of time for it to fracture and falter and make fatal blunders, or to be infiltrated and subverted--all the kinds of things that have happened to movements in the past.  But a movement for the 99% has potential that can't be measured or predicted.

And so far it is getting some of the same reaction against it, that keeps it in the news and probably helps to build it: the ongoing police violence in New York, for example, which continued Wednesday.  That news is still coming through so there's no point in linking to anything now, it will likely change hour by hour. (But the Fox station news crew that reportedly got pepper sprayed by police is again a predictable development, just not so soon.)

 There's also the scorn from established (or Corporate) media, like CNN and (of course) the Wall Street Journal.  That alternately discourages but mostly energizes participants.  But only energy comes from predictable scorn from the likes of Herman Cain.  With descriptions that will remind demo vets of back in the day,  Ezra Klein wonders what it will become.  So do we all.

Money Doesn't Talk, Part 2: The Pope of North Carolina

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --Justice Louis Brandeis

"While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."--Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissenting opinion to Citizens United

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."--Bob Dylan

 Kudos to Rachel and her gang for talking about this New Yorker article by Jane Mayer that documents in chilling detail how one Rabid Right Richy took over the state government of North Carolina in 2010, and is busy making it very difficult for people to vote who are in categories that normally vote Democratic, and therefore trying to make it impossible for President Obama to win the state again in 2012.  It's happening elsewhere as well, but here we have a compelling narrative of exactly how.

The specific story is about how Art Pope spent a lot of money, sometimes openly as contributions to candidates but more often secretly through various dummy groups, to buy the state legislature.   He succeeded. 

Art Pope is the Koch Brothers writ small, including those deadly ironies.  Like the Kochheads who make their money by destroying the climate conditions for human civilization and life as we know it on planet Earth,  Art Pope makes his bucks with discount stores that in various ways exploit the lower middle class he is out to further betray.

The contextual story is the instant exploitation of a Supreme Court decision to subvert democracy in multiple ways, and to institute corruption that leads only to virtual totalitarian rule.   Mayer quotes Bob Phillips, head of North Carolina Common Cause:

Phillips argues that the Court’s decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has been a “game changer,” especially in the realm of state politics. In swing states like North Carolina—which the Democrats consider so important that they have scheduled their 2012 National Convention there—an individual donor, particularly one with access to corporate funds, can play a significant, and sometimes decisive, role. “We didn’t have that before 2010,” Phillips says. “Citizens United opened up the door. Now a candidate can literally be outspent by independent groups. We saw it in North Carolina, and a lot of the money was traced back to Art Pope.”

The article describes how much of the money was spent--on  tabloid TV lurid lies and other sensationalistic misrepresentations of candidates Pope opposed.  He and his minions didn't just oppose them, they assassinated them politically and in personal character.  Here's more of the supposed Christian approach to politics.  In this, the Pope of North Carolina is also not unique.  This unholy alliance of major money and the dominationist Rabid Right and their cynical strategies and self-righteous unethical tactics is becoming characteristic.  It is being used not just in high profile national or state or congressional races, but in every possible state legislature election, at least in particular states for the moment.  Millions of dollars spent for state legislatures.  Nobody should be blindsided by this in 2012.  It's here now. 

Money Doesn't Talk, Part 1

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --Justice Louis Brandeis

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."--Bob Dylan

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz probably made history when he went down to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration to speak in support.  In addition to documented police brutality, New York is making it as hard as possible for demonstrators to exercise their First Amendment rights, for example by banning any electric amplification, including bullhorns.  The demonstrators' solution is a chorus of people who repeat the words of the speaker.  They try to do it in unison, but at times it gets harmonic, and is all the more effective for being beautiful.

Stiglitz published this article in Vanity Fair a few months ago about an economy and a politics that is " Of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%"-- the richest 1/100th part of the American population.  He describes what is happening, how and why it is happening, in a succinct if all too familiar recitation of suffering and middle class collapse.  But here's an intriguing bit of historical context in human terms:

"None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes."

This suggests that the destruction of the American middle class, explainable in terms of American-based corporations and uber-rich Americans who exploit near-slave labor in other countries rather than pay American workers or taxes, is by now feeding on itself.  The question is whether a tipping point has been reached.  History suggests it often is, Stiglitz concludes:

"The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

The question is whether the United States is going to let this happen.  That history is being written right now.

Incidentally (maybe), I was struck by Wall Street demonstrators like those pictured above. With money stuffed in their mouths, they seemed to be intending to portray the rich as zombies or vampires of greed. The rich as blood-sucking vampires makes particular sense.  But it reminded me of a theory proposed for why zombies are so popular with the young at the moment: recall Michael Moore quoted in a previous post about these demonstrations, saying that the young are reclaiming their futures, because their futures have been stolen.  People without a future are symbolically the living dead.  

Marching Shoes, Part 2

The Occupy Wall Street protests over the weekend are opening some media eyes.  Michael Sherer at TIME evaluates the potential for a "Tea Party for the Left."  E.J. Dionne does the same in the Washington Post, although he broadens it out to the Washington conference: "This week, progressives will highlight a new effort to pursue the road not taken at a conference convened by the Campaign for America’s Future that opens Monday. It is a cooperative venture with a large number of other organizations, notably the American Dream Movement led by Van Jones..."
Dionne notes this: "A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the Tea Party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesn’t stand a chance unless there is a fair fight between the right and the left."

I've pretty much said all of this on my previous post, but two more things: first, I just heard someone on TV from the Occupy Wall Street demos who used the word "revolutionaries" which I haven't heard in more than 30 years in this kind of context.  These are not single-issue protests, but a coalition of outrage. Michael Moore said, "They're here to reclaim their future.  Their future has been stolen." 

 Also, candidate Obama's hope clearly was that his election campaign was building a mass movement that would hold together after his election, and help propel change.  You can argue why that mostly didn't happen---that the Obama White House had more than enough to fill its day with governing, that nobody knows how this could work since it has never happened, etc.  Now even though the President himself called for the marching shoes, he's going to have to deal with the excesses--including the excessive expectations--of a movement outside his or anyone's control.     

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of duty...to live through it as bravely and as generously as possible."

Peter Matthiessen
THE SNOW LEOPARD

Marching Shoes

Update: More than 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge during Wall Street demonstrations. Here's a report from Saturday's demonstrations before this happened.  And a report from after.

"Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes!" as President Obama exhorted several audiences--and not just the Congressional Black Caucus.  It seems that a lot of people are doing just that, and not just in support of the American Jobs Act or the Obama 2012 campaign.

There were relatively small demonstrations around Wall Street that encountered police brutality and have since grown and spread to other cities.  These protests against Wall Street greed and tax policies that favor the superrich at the expense of the middle class (among other issues) are about to get bigger when several big labor unions join them in the coming week.  Michael Moore was part of the protests this week, and together with Lawrence O'Donnell, articulated a lot of what it's about.

Along the same lines, there's a new Rebuild the Dream organization/movement, involving Van Jones, the editor of The Nation magazine and others.  Their goal is to build the progressive analog to the Tea Party, and they're centered around a Contract for the American Dream, which calls for investing in American infrastructure and education, returning to fairer tax rates, end the wars and invest at home, etc.  They will be organizing--and presumably marching--in Washington next week as well.

The 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King spoke was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Jobs and freedom will again be the goals with another March on October 15, involving Rev. Al Sharpton and others, as the dedication of the King memorial postponed by hurricane Irene is scheduled to happen.

Direct action is returning to the environmental movement as well, this time focused on influencing President Obama's decision on whether to permit the tar sands pipeline from Canada to be built on U.S. soil.  Apart from environmental damage and dangers from the pipeline itself, the main objection is to the massive industry about to be created to extract oil from tar sands, which James Hansen, the foremost Climate Crisis expert says will add so much fossil fuel pollution to the atmosphere that the entire future is endangered.

 Exxon has the megabucks to saturate the airwaves (including MSNBC, and all their online clips) with genial lies (like the lie that Climate Crisis pollution is the same with this process as other fossil fuels, while the EPA estimates  "that GHG emissions from Canadian oil sands crude would be approximately 82% greater than the average crude refining the US, on a well-to-time basis.")  Protests are beginning to make the other side visible, though not so far in a big media way --despite the fact that they included civil disobedience leading to the arrest of enviro author Bill McKibben and others from outside the White House.  The next round (at the State Department) resumes this week, with organizing for a larger protest at the White House on November 6.

To all of which I say, it's about time.  A Democratic President needs such visible activity and evidence, even if it advocates beyond what that President is prepared to do.  The March on Washington worked for JFK--he invited its leaders to the White House--and it showed visible support for the Civil Rights legislation he was able then to introduce soon afterwards, which after his assassination became the law of the land.

They're Taking Away My Freedom

They're taking away my freedom.  I'm no longer free to enter a bar in Ohio without fear of being shot by someone carrying a now legally concealed weapon, perhaps because this person doesn't like my political opinions, or my posture, or because his or her animus is aimed at somebody else in the bar but the bullets miss or pass through others (or walls) before hitting me.  This is thanks to the Republican governor and legislature of Ohio.

I am not free to even eat in a restaurant, with or without my grand-niece, in certain states and municipalities without the same fear.

I'm no longer free to enjoy nature in a national park without the possibility of being shot by a legally carried weapon.  This is thanks to the U.S. Congress and President Obama.

In various states and municipalities, I am no longer free to participate in a political event, or a sporting event, or any public event at all, without fear of being shot by someone with a legally carried and/or concealed weapon.

In some states--and if a number of current bills become law in many others-- I would no longer be free to register and vote without undergoing a variety of unrelated and even onerous complications.  And possibly I would not be able to vote at all.  In Florida, I would not be free to participate in registering new voters.

There are laws on the books or bills in legislatures that would take away my freedom--and even more so, a woman's freedom-- to obtain medical care, counselling and reproductive health information.  Or to legally use the most frequently used methods of birth control.  A woman would be forced to bear the child of her rapist, which entails so many other legal and moral quandaries that she (or her spouse) wouldn't have the freedom to do much else but work to pay lawyers.  These are all laws or proposals by GOPer Rabid Right zealots who fill state legislatures and state houses across the country.

Now they're talking about taking away my freedom to believe anything but their brand of Christianity.  They're adamant about taking away rights to people whose sexual orientation they don't like.

My freedoms are being taken away most obviously by those who claim to be against having freedoms taken away.  This country is becoming less free every day, not to mention cynically manipulated and manifestly insane.

Dreaming Up the Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Quotations are odd things these days.  They are everywhere on the Internet, hardly ever sourced, and often wrong.  The most famous quotation from the novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis ("When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross”) is not in It Can't Happen Here.  (Although it might be in one of the stage play versions.  I'm involved in a 75th anniversary reading of it next month--more on that anon--so I'll check it out.) 

But I love quotations--the ones that are like poems, or very good jokes, or that sum something up with terse eloquence.  Especially a new insight, or expressed so eloquently that it becomes new.  They nourish.

For some years now I've been seeing a quotation floating around--it's from a letter that Martha Graham wrote to Agnes De Mille, the two legendary American dance pioneers of the 20th century.  But I didn't see it first as a quotation, not exactly.  I was reading Agnes De Mille's autobiography one night in bed in my first Pittsburgh apartment (on the South Side).  It was a used paperback I found on a bookstore crawl.  I remember I felt cold and the print was fading as I started falling asleep, but I was coming to the end of a chapter, and indeed to the end of the first volume in this two-volume paperback.  And that's where I saw it.  It exploded me wide awake with a rush I still remember.

I soon copied it out and quoted it, eventually in my newspaper column in the In Pittsburgh weekly.  I even had it up on the wall, at home at first and then in my office at the editorial firm where I worked for a couple of years.  I didn't start seeing it quoted until long after that, though I doubt that I was the source of it.  But you never know--quotes went viral long before the Internet. Anyway, here it is:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.  There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

The Choice

President Obama quoted from a fundraiser on Sunday:

"Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what's happened to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You've got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. It's true. You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they're gay.

"That's not reflective of who we are. This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election."

One place this was quoted was in the War Room column in Salon, which has an interesting--and not unfamiliar--take on current politics and their effect on 2012 electoral politics.

The Fox thing is a bit interesting, though.  Roger Ailes joined the chorus begging Christ Christie to run against the anti-Christ,  but a panel of Foxists pooh poohed the possibility.  This may be a case when money goes begging for something to buy--i.e. big money GOPers who don't dig Newt Romney and see a great chance for an electable GOPer, but can't buy one because Christ Christie isn't into being crucified first.

 The thing is, Romney is only moderate by comparison.  He's still a Rabid Right thug--he just doesn't seem very sincere about it.  But even though Cowboy Rick is fading, and Foxists seem to have abandoned him, the South may rise again.  I don't know if Melissa is right about white progressives (and I'm not saying she's wrong), but there's no doubt that it's true of white Rabid Right GOPers.  They don't want to just win an election against the black President.  They want to conquer him with one of their own.  Even the Floridians who turned against Cowboy Rick make that point--they evidently did so because he's too liberal on brown immigrants. They are Christians who just ain't into forgiveness, at any level.  That they expressed their racism by picking a black GOPer to support--the anti-Obama?--just makes it all the weirder.

Several of the white progressive shows did run soundbites of President Obama at the Congressional Black Caucus Dinner, especially one sentence very near the end  in which he exhorted them to "take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes."  Lawrence O'Donnell in particular made fun of this.  As often happens with these things, it built on itself, and to their credit, a few reporters said it was unfair to extract this one sentence as evidence of weird or diminished rhetoric (though they did have the quixotic participation of Maxine Waters, who sounded like she wasn't there or wasn't listening), and indeed, having listened to the whole speech and especially the last five minutes, it's clear how unfair it was. He had acknowledged the continuing problems, but talked of substantial accomplishments in addressing them over the past two years.  His repeated refrain of "press on" was a riff on something he had just quoted. (I wouldn't be surprised if the "take off your bedroom slippers" turns out to be a quote, or a riff on one.)  And before he counselled the audience to stop complaining and get to work, he said " I don't have time to feel sorry for myself" or complain.  He said again what neither black nor white fans want to hear, that change is often slow, is often one step forward and two back, and two steps forward and one back. He reminded the audience that though he talked of hope and change, he never said change would be fast.  "I never promised easy."    

By the way, if you missed Lawrence O'Donnell's Last Word about the police riot against protestors on Wall Street--and his assertion that police violence occurs against citizens every day, and is never punished--then here's your second chance. (Although you may have to listen to some nice liar for Exxon first.)  It's pretty amazing, unless I was just having a 60s flashback... And here we are again, back at race.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.”

Henry Miller

Briefly

Cowboy Rick's poor showing in the Florida straw poll may be the first signal that he's going back to Texas.  But like everything else GOPer, that little event is bogus.  It shows the control of the Rabid Right big mouths, on line and on air.  But what could cost Cowboy Rick with the so-called what's-left-of- GOPer establishment (meaning big money not necessarily from the Kochheads) is the Justice Department stepping up and accusing Texas of deliberately designing their redistricting to disenfranchise minorities.  As Josh Marshall was right to emphasize, the key charge is "with the intention of."  Very serious legally, and toxic for the electioneers among the GOPer elite, who insist that their racism be all effect and dog whistle, with the occasional out there racist remark that gets an immediate "apology" (wink wink).  Overt and illegal racism doesn't sit well with independents apparently.  

And now for something completely different: if smart phones are so smart, why don't they come when you call them? 

War for the Future

Solyndra: it sounds like the name of a new supermodel, or perhaps a new drug you see commercials for on TV that spend half their time telling you about the strokes, liver failure and suicidal depressions you might get if you take it.  But Solyndra is a company that makes solar panels, that has gone bankrupt despite a half million from the federal government, support that began in the Bush administration but was touted by the Obama White House in their green jobs initiatives.  And so it's the toast of Fox News, and has led to congressional hearings and apparent perp walks for executives who invoked the fifth amendment.

Joe Nocera in the New York Times calls it a phony scandal.  He asserts that despite the bad images, neither of the executives has done "anything remotely illegal."  Nor had the company.  Their business failure, he asserts, has everything to do with the drop in prices of solar panels (which they built), largely because China is in this business in a big way.  With not enough big customers and no new investors, the business failed:

"Harrison and Stover are on the hot seat. Anything they say in their defense — even an off-hand remark — can and will be used against them. Their lawyers would be fools if they didn’t insist that their clients take the Fifth Amendment.
Do the Republicans know this? Of course. Do they care? Of course not. For an hour and a half on Friday morning, they peppered the two men with questions about this “taxpayer ripoff,” as Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, described it, knowing full well that Harrison and Stover would invoke their constitutional right to remain silent. Joe McCarthy would have been proud. The purpose of the hearing — indeed, the point of manufacturing a Solyndra investigation in the first place — is to embarrass the president."

It's all about anti-Obama politics, and it's all economically self-destructive:  "Over all, the American solar industry is a big success story; it now employs more people than either steel or coal, and it’s a net exporter.  But solar panel manufacturing — a potential source of middle-class jobs, and an important reason the White House was so high on Solyndra, which made its panels in Fremont, Calif. — is another story. Not so long ago, China made 6 percent of the world’s solar panels. Now it makes 54 percent, and leads the world in solar panel manufacturing. Needless to say, the U.S. share of the market has shrunk. The only way America can manufacture competitive solar panels is to come up with innovative technologies that the Chinese can’t replicate. Like, for instance, Solyndra’s."

So did the Obama administration do something wrong in backing this company?  Nocera says no:
" But if we could just stop playing gotcha for a second, we might realize that federal loan programs — especially loans for innovative energy technologies — virtually require the government to take risks the private sector won’t take. Indeed, risk-taking is what these programs are all about. Sometimes, the risks pay off. Other times, they don’t. It’s not a taxpayer ripoff if you don’t bat 1.000; on the contrary, a zero failure rate likely means that the program is too risk-averse." 

He asks whether the risk was worth taking in the case of Solyndra, and he concludes that it was, because of the industry's potential, economically for America, and ecologically for the planet's future.

GOPer zealots don't seem to care about America winning its future, if there's a chance Obama might get some of the credit.  They want to cut green jobs support.  But as Nocera points out:  the real winner isn’t the American taxpayer or even the House Republicans. It’s the Chinese solar industry."

Meanwhile, besides providing a complete timeline and description of the Solyandra situation,  Climate Progress highlights conclusions of a Brookings Report that the rest of the media is busy getting wrong, concerning the larger impact of green jobs.  For example: there are currently 2.7 million green jobs in the U.S. and the number is growing.  It is a growing sector of the American economy that cuts across all industries and occupations, and encompasses jobs requiring different skills--they aren't all college degree jobs.  And while particular segments that have green jobs have been hurt by the Great Recession,  the overall Green Economy grew during it. 

Which I guess is another reason GOPers hate it so much.  They're only for the "Job Creators" in fossil fuel industries, like the Koch Brothers---whose net worth went up by 40% in the past year to a combined $50 billion (more than the GNP of a number of entire countries, as Rachel Maddow pointed out),  while their companies have shed tens of thousands of American jobs.  With "job creators" like them, this country's economy is doomed.  Unless you count the highly paid p.r. firms and lobbyists they finance, and all their political influence peddling to make sure they make more billions for the rest of their brief lives, regardless of the consequences for the American middle class of now, and the future--no, let's say it right--The Future, because their financing of Climate Crisis disinformation is potentially that consequential.  The Future, by the way, that those solar panels may help save.

It's all part of the GOP class war.  And it's also a war for the future.

Last Week: A Warrior for the Middle Class

Standing next to a bridge badly in need of repair that spans the states represented by the House and Senate GOPer leaders, President Obama on Thursday said this: "I`m a warrior for the middle class. I`m happy to fight for the middle class. I`m happy to fight for working people."

It's a change in tone, of strategy, of tactics.  It is at last a bold rejoinder to the charge that apparently has baffled Dems for years, that they (and not the GOPers who actually are fighting and--so far-- winning it) are engaged in class warfare.  But I've been arguing that, if you were paying attention, it's not that big a change, and that there's understandable reason for tactical changes that have do to with governing, not electoral politics.

You've read this reasoning here before, but it was stated earlier this week in this way:

Today`s "New York Times" quotes White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer saying, "It is fair to say we`ve entered a new phase. The popular narrative is that we sought compromise in a quixotic quest for independent votes. We sought out compromise because a failure to get funding of the government last spring and then an extension of the debt ceiling would have been very bad for the economy and for the country. We were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. That phase is over.

This of course doesn't stop commentators of any persuasion, some of whom may legitimately feel that there's another story, but all of whom make their considerable livings promoting themselves and their views.  It's amazing how many progressive commentators are taking credit for President Obama's recent policies and speeches.  In substance however, there's nothing new--everything he is advocating now he has advocated before.  His strategies and tactical objectives have been questioned all along, and are questioned by some even now.  But there were good reasons for those choices, even if they turned out to not always yield optimal results. Of course, it is always possible to argue that if he had pursued a different strategy using different tactics, he would have been more successful.  There's no way to prove that but there's also no way to prove it isn't true--and there in a nutshell you have the secret of successful punditry.

Time will tell more about the relative success of Obama's strategies and his accomplishments.  Much of the health care law hasn't kicked in yet.  It's very difficult to make an obvious case that had it not been for his stimulus package, things would be much worse--but those who know those numbers are quite sure it is so.  The stimulus benefited state and local governments above all, but mostly by keeping them from collapsing, from firing a lot of police, teachers, etc., but they didn't have to, so while the status quo was a victory, it's not an obvious one.

Even the deal that the White House got under the duress of the debt ceiling hostage crisis may turn out to have turned the tide of GOPer power.  Last week the GOPer House tried to force cuts in a green jobs program--for hybrid cars--to balance FEMA funding for emergencies, as part of the overall federal government appropriation.  When they couldn't get any Democrats to support it, it was defeated because the more Rabid Right members also voted against it--because it didn't cut enough.  Then they passed another such bill, which won't pass the Senate intact.  All the while claiming they wouldn't force a government shutdown--a very marked change in tone.  It could be because such a shutdown would violate that earlier agreement and set all kinds of things in motion.

House GOPers crow about President Obama's declining favorables, but theirs are in the tank--less than half of the President's.  They're on the defensive, despite the media's fixation on the President's numbers.

As for 2012, Cowboy Rick has had two universally panned debate performances in a row, while the debates have exposed the true nature of the Rabid Right, with audience cheers for the high number of executions in Texas and the death of someone because he didn't have health care, and for booing a soldier serving in Iraq because he admitted he is gay.

At the moment the same punditry that was anointing Cowboy Rick as the certain nominee is claiming that he is done.  But the next round of polls will tell that tale.  If Cowboy Rick hasn't slipped substantially, they may well be stuck with him.

Emerson for the Day

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,---
Nothing refuse.

Emerson
with flowers for Sam, R.I.P.

Here It Is

President Obama this morning:

"It comes down to this: We have to prioritize. Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount -- by $4 trillion. So what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

This is not class warfare. It’s math. The money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we’re not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit and we are trying to reach that same target of $4 trillion, then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. We’ve got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. We’ve got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling.

That’s unacceptable to me. That’s unacceptable to the American people. And it will not happen on my watch. I will not support -- I will not support -- any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable."

Ezra Klein comments:

The White House's strategy here isn't to appear so reasonable that Republicans can't help but cut a deal. They feel they tried that during the debt-ceiling debate, and it failed. The White House's strategy here is to produce a popular plan that strikes directly at Republican vulnerabilities on taxes and Medicare. If that scares the GOP and makes them more interested in coming to an agreement in the supercommittee process, then great. If not, it gives the White House a message to base its reelection campaign off of."

And here's Andrew Sullivan's take, with the numbers made easy.

Here It Comes

GOPers are probably now beginning to realize how much they really pissed off the President when they held the population of the United States and the world economy hostage over raising the debt ceiling.  Now that this immense danger has passed and there are none quite like it left, President Obama has put forth his own agenda aggressively and effectively, and is taking it to them.

First he proposed a brilliantly conceived jobs bill, and introduced its provisions with a brilliant speech watched by more than 31 million people.  "Pass this bill" was the refrain of the speech, and has been the refrain of his speeches around the country--shortly to be repeated in front of the broken bridge that spans John Banal's district with Senate minor McConjob's state.  At a time when all of 6% tell pollsters that Congress should be re-elected.

Only then did the President drop the other shoe: he proposed to pay for the job bill by restoring taxes on the very wealthy and closing tax loopholes that favored fossil fuel companies and corporate jetters.  Two quite popular ideas with the electorate. 

And then he doubled down on that.  Last week it became known that today (Monday) he would propose a tax on billionaires and millionaires according to "the Buffet Rule" as proposed by billionaire Warren (rather than thousandaire Jimmy)--that his tax rate should be the same as his middle class employees.   Again, this idea is favored by 81% of Americans polled.  It got Paul Ryan to confirm his typecasting:   "It adds further instability to our system, more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. "Class warfare may make for good politics but it makes for rotten economics."  Yes, another case of that sophisticated GOPer technique from the poster boy for the corporate rich's class war against everyone else, "That's what you are, what am I?"  And it is the very best economics to return money to the economy that's sitting in some billionaires vault.

If that wasn't enough, there is this stunner in this morning's New York Times story, reporting on what President Obama will propose today to the congressional debt commission.  He proposes a large cut in the deficit and debt, but this graph is the attention-getter:

"In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy."

The Times' immediate if duh conclusion:

"That veto threat will put the president on a direct collision course with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, who said last week that he would not support any legislation that included revenue increases in the form of higher taxes."

There are going to be those who say that President Obama learned his lesson during the debt ceiling crisis, that conciliation is futile, etc., as if he's a six year old just learning about the playground.  President Obama sacrificed some dignity in order to prevent grievous harm to millions of people, which would have resulted from failure to raise the debt ceiling.  Now the GOPers have less to threaten the country with--or the President.

This fight is not without its risks and its consequences.  But President Obama is taking positions that are both popular and clearly useful and crucial.  He gave them the chance to do their political dances but come around to be partners in governing.  They aren't interested.  Now he's gathering political strength with the American people so that they might prevail upon GOPer politicians to do the right thing.  If they don't, the reckoning will come.

A Doonesbury series involving the new Joel McGinnis book on Sarah Palin is being censored--that is, several newspapers are refusing to run them.  So in the interests of anti-censorship and free expression, I take the opportunity of running a Doonesbury cartoon without worrying too much about getting sued.  Click on the image to make it big enough to read.

I Have a Nightmare

The new memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington has experienced a number of problems and setbacks.  Some say it is at best an undistinguished likeness, while other castigate the somewhat fake quote that is set there in stone.  There was controversy about how it was built and who built it, with allegations of near slave labor.  And of course, its dedication on the anniversary of Dr. King's March on Washington speech was cancelled due to Hurricane Irene.

But the biggest injury to Dr. King's legacy is happening in state after after across America, where the very voting rights he championed on that hot August 1963 afternoon are being wiped away for many African Americans and for others.

GOPer sponsored changes in state laws to make it harder for minorities to vote have been chronicled by Rachel Maddow for months, and more recently the subject of an excellent Rolling Stone article, and a speech by Bill Clinton quoted in that article:.    "One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time," Bill Clinton told a group of student activists in July. "Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate" – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today."

Almost as disturbing as this blatant injustice is the relative quiet that has greeted it.  There have been some legal challenges, specifically by the Justice Department, but there need to be more, and they need to be a front-burner issue.  I had expected the ACLU to make it a priority, but I see no evidence of that.  There are a lot of important issues to address, but there are also priorities.  This is a real threat to the progress of democracy.  And if successful, along with other machinations and chicanery, could disenfranchise those with the greatest stake in the future.  It is racist in effect and in intent.  It must be stopped.  So forget the monuments, and remember what the struggle was for.  Because it's not over.