Love and contradictions

I want to state up front that some of my favorite movies have been superhero and spy films and that I love cop shows. These shows tend to have a conservative, pro-government outlook, even the best of them, but I go and revel in the spectacle.

That does not mean I can't also be critical of their political subtexts and wish that our film culture could be more progressive, less about defense of the status quo or a pro-military ethos.

I guess I am part of the problem, but I can't help but like Bond films and Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. 

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#OWS: Democrats or democracy

This is an interesting piece from In These Times that rips the mask off the false pragmatism that the Democratic Party has demanded from its minions since the election of Barack Obama, but that has heightened in its hypocrisy as the Occupy Wall Street movement turns its attention to the broken party.

In it, Joe Macaré outlines four basic fallacies on which the prime criticism of the movement hinges -- that taking a moral stand, as the Occupy protesters have done, is morally indefensible; that pragmatism requires protesters to trade principle for the potential of some paltry favor from those in power; that history shows that progressive protest creates backlash (when it actually shows that protest creates a moral momentum for change); and assumption that the Occupiers are looking to be an extension of the Democratic Party.

None of these assumptions are accurate, as Macaré makes clear, which is why they are fallacies.

The Occupiers are small "d" democrats who have as their chief goal breaking the grip of money on the political system and re-empowering the so-called 99 percent, to give us control over a government that now views corporate America as its sole master.

This goal may require the election of some progressive Democrats, but it may also require the defeat of corporate Democrats and the formation of a new progressive party outside the Democrats, which is something the Occupy movement understands.

This is about democracy not the Democrats or the liberal establishment.

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Egypt, the second act

The Egyptian military's decision back in February to side with protesters and smooth the way for Hosni Mubarak's exit was a cause for celebration at the time.

But as Egypt makes it's way from dictatorship to something news, the military has become an impediment, holding power and demanding a central role in creating a new constitution.

For democracy advocates, this leaves Egypt at a crossroads, with the army representing stability and democracy advocates offering the unknown.

The end result is far from certain. Stability, as observers of Russia post-Communism well know, is an attractive option in troubled times. If Egypt is to continue on the road to democracy, it will need commitment from advocates and arms-length support and no interference.

It is tempting to try to turn events to advantage, but doing so nearly always backfires and blowback ensues.

The time is now for marriage equality

My latest Patch columnhttp://southbrunswick.patch.com/articles/marriage-equality-the-time-is-now is on what I hope is a renewed push for marriage equality in New Jersey.

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Money is bad politics

U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews decision to refund about $9,000 to his campaign account to cover money he spent on a family trip to Ireland highlights everything that is wrong with our campaign system. While the congressman insists he has done nothing wrong, the behavior certainly is unseemly and it raises questions about why we allow our elected officials to maintain accounts like these.

Here is the Ledger's description of what happened:

In June, U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.) and his family visited Edinburgh for a wedding — part of a larger European vacation. There, Andrews, his wife and two teenage daughters stayed at the Balmoral Hotel in the center of town, which bills itself as a "luxury hotel in the true sense of the word." The price was indeed five-star: Two rooms for three nights cost $7,725.

Nor did they go to Scotland empty-handed. The family bought a $463 china set from Bloomingdale’s as a gift to the newlyweds.

In all, Andrews and his family spent more than $9,000 on the Edinburgh leg of the trip. Rather, his congressional campaign did.

The hotel, wedding gift, and several hundred more dollars for ground transportation, meals and petty cash came not from the family’s pockets, but from Andrews’ campaign fund, according to a Star-Ledger review of his campaign-finance-reports.

Andrews said the expense was legitimate because the wedding was for a donor
and volunteer adviser, allowing him to consider it a political event. Citing privacy concerns, he declined to identify the adviser, who he said helps his campaign with opposition research.

"We have legal advice, and before we make any expenditure like that we listen to legal advice," said Andrews, pointing out that the rest of the European vacation, including airfare, was paid for with family funds. "We’re convinced this is an appropriate expenditure to thank and support someone who has given us a lot of time and effort."

Interesting explanation on Andrews' part, but how many of us can claim access to this kind of political slush fund?

And that's the problem. There are thousands of politicians with the same kind of cash accounts, full of money given them by the rich and powerful as an incentive to do the bidding of the rich and powerful. It becomes pretty easy to comingle the money -- campaign and personal activities becomes conflated and we end up with Camden County politicians taking trips to Ireland and calling them campaign-related.

That this kind of thing is legal is damning in and of itself.

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When a story is not a story

A story in today's New York Times is likely to raise eyebrows.

According to the paper,

The American Bar Association has secretly declared a significant number of President Obama’s potential judicial nominees “not qualified,” slowing White House efforts to fill vacant judgeships — and nearly all of the prospects given poor ratings were women or members of an ethnic minority group, according to interviews.

The rate, according to the story, is three times the previous two presidencies, which makes it seem as though we are looking at a run of unqualified judicial candidates being nominated.

A closer look, however, makes it clear that there is a lot more smoke than fire to this story:

the association’s judicial vetting committee has opposed 14 of the roughly 185 potential nominees the administration asked it to evaluate, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

That's 7.5 percent who were opposed by the ABA -- or, to put it another way, 92.5 percent approved.

The administration points to a shift in philosophy -- the push to appoint more judges with varied backgrounds, including those who have not worked as courtroom lawyers. This could be at odds with the ABA's apparent preference for courtroom litigators and explain the higher number of rejections.

In any case, it seems like a non-issue, though I have a sneaky feeling that we'll be hearing from conservatives on this one claiming that Obama is damaging the federal bench with unqualified judges. These, of course, will be the same conservatives who applauded when George W. Bush opted to stop sending nominees to the ABA for review because he felt the organization was ideologically biased.

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Even the crazy and unqualified sometimes have a good idea

Rick Perry will not be president. That much is certain. And Rick Perry's ideas -- the flat tax, elimination of government agencies, bellicose foreign policy, etc. -- deserve to die with his candidacy.

Except for one: The proposal he announced today to impose term limits on federal judges. Since the appointment of the 43-year-old Clarence Thomas by President George H.W. Bush to what is likely to be a 35- 40-year reign on the Supreme Court, it has been clear to me that lifetime appointments come with the potential for disaster.

Perry is proposing an 18-year term, which seems too short to me, but why not limit terms on the federal bench to 25 years, which would guarantee some turnover and give presidents of both parties a chance to influence the work of the bench and could help ensure that changing mores are reflected by the men and women who sit.

It's jut a thought, but just because Perry is, well, batty doesn't mean we can't at least discuss some of what he offers.

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Quote of the day: #OWS edition

From Guy Horton's blog on Huffington Post today, in the aftermath of the New York crackdown on Occupy Wall Street:

So is this the death of Occupy? My suspicion is that this is, in fact, just the beginning. What form will it take next? It may not have Zuccotti Park anymore, but it increasingly has the intellectual and emotional landscape of the American psyche.

They can shut down the protests and end the physical occupation, but the fight to reclaim American democracy from the elite is just beginning.

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Capital makes a clean sweep

Make no mistake, the nationwide purge of protesters from public parks is not about the comportment of the protesters, no matter how much the powers in cities like Oakland and New York want to paint it that way.

The sweeps are about capital and protecting the 1 percent in the cities, the people who pay the campaign bills for elected officials and, therefore, demand allegiance.

To understand how this works, one just needs to listen to the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg:

“New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

New York also is the financial capital of the world and the place where the first police-triggered violence took place. It is a city in which the mayor has shown nothing but hostility toward the protesters from the inception of the occupy movement. In his mind, the bankers had nothing to do with the financial crisis and unrelenting economic meltdown that has left one in six Americans un- or under-employed.

The anger that has triggered these protests is real. Shutting them down will not make it go away. Asking the protesters to turn to the ballot box or petition Congress is, as the protesters know, a waste of time and ignores the history of social movements, which almost always begin with an aggrieved group taking to the streets and creating a moral imperative for change. That's what the protests are about and it is why protectors of the 1 percent like Mayor Bloomberg have little sympathy.

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Phillies and Papelbon: Big money, big mistake

Jonathan Papelbon is the game's second-best closer. But he's not worth $50 million over four years.

Why? Two reasons: The Phillies have other, more pressing needs, and spending big money on closers just doesn't wash historically. The Mets learned this with Francisco Rodriguez and Billy Wagner, both of whom pitched well, but not well enough to earn $40-$45 million over four years and not well enough for the Mets to succeed. The Reds have Francisco Cordero, whom they paid $46 million over four, and they've lost more games than they won since he joined the team; the one winning season, 2010, saw the Reds get swept in the first round by the Phillies without Cordero even getting into a game.

And then there is the lesson of this year's Cardinals, who cobbled together a bullpen during a miraculous end of the season and then rode the unheralded arms to a title, something they did in 2006, as well.

The lesson, to me, is not to overestimate your need for a closer and then overpay. It just doesn't seem worth the risk.

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A conversaion with the OWS movement

I met some of the protesters marching from New York to D.C. today.

Read it here.

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Rioting in defense of a football coach? You've got to be kidding me

The scenes were awful and the anger was not just misplaced, but completely incomprehensible. And while it's quiet in Happy Valley today, what happened on Wednesday cannot be wiped away.

Joe Paterno, in his 46th year coaching the Penn State Nittany Lions, was ousted yesterday as the school attempted to disentangle itself from a scandal so ugly it has tarnished both the coach's legacy and damaged the school's reputation.

Former  assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexual assault of eight boys over a 15-year period. Paterno was alerted to the alleged abuse at least nine years ago. He then alerted the athletic director and school vice president, but no one contacted police and the abuse apparently continued.

Paterno promised to resign at season's end but the school's board of trustees, rightly, opted to make an immediate break and fired Paterno.

The response on campus -- a riot.

As word of the firings spread, thousands of students flocked to the administration building, shouting, "We want Joe back!" and "One more game!" They then headed downtown to Beaver Avenue, where about 100 police wearing helmets and carrying pepper spray were on standby. Witnesses said some rocks and bottles were thrown, a lamppost was toppled and a news van was knocked over, its windows kicked out. ablaze

This needs to be put in perspective: The ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests have been peaceful, aside from attacks by overzealous police, though the issues they are focused on -- economic inequality, a bought political system, unending war -- are far more important than saving a coach tarnished by his own silence.

I spent two years at Penn State as a student and understand the absolute mania for Penn State football. But loyalty should only extend to the gridiron and should not be used to excuse Paterno's good-soldier routine or trigger a riot.

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After Princeton, don't expect merger mania

My column today -- well, yesterday -- on Princeton Patch.

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Deconstructing Clinton envy

There remains in the media a love for the Clinton years that should be belied by the facts. Yes, the economy was doing far better then than it is now, but much of its greatness was based on the acceleration of a shift to a financial services economy that was impossible to sustain.

Clinton's policies -- deregulation of the financial industry, including the demolition of the commercial/investment bank wall -- created a financial free-for-all that sent Wall Street on a gambling spree that first blew up the tech bubble and, when it finally popped, turned to the housing market, which went crazy and then collapsed.

The destruction of the American economy, which had been years in the making, was a bipartisan effort. But this history, as Dean Baker pointed out yesterday in a post on Clinton's new book, seems to have been forgotten. Here is Baker's take:

Clinton promoted both the growth of the stock bubble and the over-valuation of the dollar. The latter came about when his administration organized the "saving" of East Asia following its financial crisis in 1997. The harsh terms of the bailout required the countries of the region to run huge trade surpluses in order to meet their payments. This meant raising the value of the dollar against their own currencies.


Other developing countries wanted to avoid ever being in this situation so they too began to accumulate reserves at a huge pace after 1997 by keeping down the value of their own currencies against the dollar. This led to the huge run-up in the dollar and therefore the large trade deficit that we saw in the last decade and continue to see today.

The demand gap created by the trade deficit was filled by the housing bubble in the last decade. With the bubble now burst it can only be filled by government budget deficits until the dollar falls enough to bring trade closer to balance. Given the enormous disaster that resulted from his economic mismanagement (which could have been reversed had anyone in the Bush administration been awake), it is highly ironic that President Clinton would write a book offering economic advice to the nation.

Ironic, perhaps, but typical. War hawks, so wrong about Iraq, remain the dominant voices in the foreign policy debate, so why should we expect the mainstream media to listen to critics of the capitalist system or banish the men (and yes, it was primarily men) who tanked the economy.

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