Less Than Total Victory

On March 31, Robert Reich had a good- but for him, disappointing- take on the controversy in which

Last Wednesday morning, Laura Ingraham, Fox News’s queen of snark, tweeted that David Hogg – a 17-year-old who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and has been among the eloquent advocates for gun control – “whines about” being rejected by four universities he applied to. She linked to an article from the Daily Wire calling him a “gun rights provocateur.”

Shortly after Ingraham’s attack on Hogg, he called for Ingraham’s advertisers to boycott the show. Within days, a slew of them did just that.

As advertisers peeled off, Ingraham tried to take back her comment, saying the “spirit of Holy Week” motivated her to apologize for “any upset or hurt” she might have caused Hogg “or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”

Hogg rejected the apology. “She only apologized after we went after advertisers,” he told The New York Times. He then tweeted to Ingraham that he’d accept her apology “if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.”

If truth be told, Hogg, while pursuing a righteous cause, at least confirmed Ingraham's charge that the young man is a whiner. She did not "mudsling at children"- she threw mud at an individual (an eloquent, mature individual) who chose to engage vigorously in the political arena.  Still, as Reich would undoubtedly agree, any day without Laura Ingraham is a day with sunshine. He recognizes

 ....corporations have to keep their consumers content all the time.

Selling satisfactory products and services is necessary but often not sufficient. Customers also want to feel good about the brands they’re buying. At the least, they don’t want to associate themselves with mean-spirited vitriol. 

Liberty Mutual, the giant insurer, called Ingraham’s comments “inconsistent with our values as a company, especially when it comes to treating others with dignity and respect.” Nutrish, a pet food brand, said Ingraham’s comments “are not consistent with how we feel people should be treated.” TripAdvisor explained that Ingraham’s comments “cross the line of decency.” 

Such explanations sound as if these companies chose to drop Ingraham’s show in order to be socially responsible. In truth, they’re just being smart at doing what they’re set up to do – make money. When it comes to consumer products, cruelty doesn’t sell.

Reich realizes "companies aren't being socially responsible" when they "have quickly ended commercial relationships with famous people acccused of sexual harassment and abuse," but instead "don't want to sully their brands." He argues, convincingly, that

Companies are spending huge amounts seeking to connect their goods to consumers’ values. They know more about those values than anyone. Which suggests that Americans may have had enough cruelty – coming from Laura Ingraham, from Fox News, from Donald Trump, from the Harvey Weinsteins of the land, from whomever. 

Many companies, especially Liberty Mutual- which does not market to the Trumpian demographic- will exhibit a social conscience. However, others may discover that their consumers' values don't align with those of Liberty Mutual, Robert Reich, David Hogg, or myself, but instead those espoused by Donald Trump. These individuals do not define cruelty as antagonism toward minorities, gays, or even young liberals. 









The left may observe that it is being hoisted by its own petard if= more likely, when- conservatives decide to play by the same rules. Admittedly, abstaining from consumer boycotts like the one initiated by Hogg are unlikely to deter the right from using the same tactics it disgracefully and successfully applied against the Dixie Chicks. Still, the left should be (as is Reich) restrained in its glee.

We cannot be anywhere near certain, for instance, that after a brief absence, Ingraham's advertisers don't return. Further, there should also be a more abstract, global, and potentially more dangerous concern about going down this road. This boycott and others are begun by persons conscientously dedicated to an ideological viewpoint. However, ultimately, the sanctions are implemented by corporations, which means that corporations are playing the major role in determining what voices are silenced.

Today it is Laura Ingraham's on the right. Tomorrow it may be someone on the left, more tolerant and compassionate, even less vitriolic.  Arguably, that is the free market of ideas, and a  net gain. However, voluntarily turning more power or influence over to major corporations comes with a whole lot of dangers, now unforeseen but potentially perilous.




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Break Out The Champagne



He's kidding, isn't he?

USA Today's DeWayne Wickham remarks

But these people and the others who filled the small ballroom in New York City's Flatiron district this night were there as much to celebrate the resurrection of liberalism as to toast Jealous. The youngest person ever to lead the NAACP, this nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, Jealous was touted for his support of same-sex marriage,opposition to the death penalty and work to defeat voter suppression legislation.

As the recipient of the 2012 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, he was -- or this group, at least -- the most obvious manifestation of a liberal resurgence. While recent polls show that conservatives significantly outnumber liberals, liberal ideals and causes have not had a better year since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law.

Proof of this can be found in the approval last month of same-sex marriage laws in Maryland, Maine and Washington, the first states to legalize gay unions by popular vote. And it was evident in the success Democrats had at the polls this year. Liberals revel in the re-election victory President Obama, a moderate Democrat, achieved over Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate whose campaign was a genuflection to the demands of this nation's most misguided conservatives.

Evidence of the banner year for liberals also can be seen in the gains Democrats made in the U.S. Senate, which pushed their majority to 55 seats (including two Independents who are expected to join their caucus). These victories came in a year in which political pundits widely believed Republicans would seize control of the Senate. Among the right-wing Republican Senate candidates who went down to defeat were Tea Party favorites Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana. Both suffered fatal self-inflicted political wounds...

Liberals also chalked up victories in Washington and Colorado when voters in three states that considered measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana gave their approval. Only in Oregon was this proposition defeated.

One can only hope that the legalization of marijuana, to be regulated, for personal use by adults in two of three states- each a relatively liberal state culturally- will lessen the power of the pharmaceutical and/or alcohol lobbies.  (It also should enable a greater effort by law enforcement to crack down on much more dangerous drugs.)  And legalization of same-sex marriage may lessen the institutional power of.... whom?  Perhaps of people who oppose same-sex marriage.  Or someone.

Wickham's glee may be lost on progressives in the Midwest.    Yesterday in Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation prohibiting union membership (or payment of dues) as a condition for employment in both the public and private sectors.   When a referendum proposing to codify the right to organize was defeated 58-42 last month, Republicans in the state legislature were emboldened.   Arguing "this isn’t Wisconsin. It’s worse. It’s Michigan and it’s the UWA," Rich Yeselson explains

The loss provided what is called in an organizing drive a convenient “headcount” for corporations and their conservative Republican allies. The headcount said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters. The unions could, and are, making some noise, but they wouldn’t create sufficient civil strife to defeat a right-to-work flip. The unions could be rolled, the more quickly the better, even during a lame-duck session. The savvy president of the UAW, Bob King, one of the most progressive union leaders in the country, promises not to give up and threatens recall elections. But state right-to-work laws have only been repealed once, in Indiana in 1965. Indiana reinstated right-to-work laws earlier this year.

Slate's Matt Yglesias writes

It's only going to have a modest impact in the short-term, but far and away the biggest economic news of the week from a long-term perspective has got to be Michigan's rather sudden transformation into a right-to-work state. This is noteworthy in part because, as Alec Macgillis writes, Snyder had positioned himself as more moderate than Scott Walker and other GOP governors from the class of 2010. But the legislation he's just passed is really more far reaching than the legislation Walker signed in Wisconsin or anything that's been discussed in Ohio.

In political terms this really does seem like the tipping point. For a long time the United States has existed as a "house divided" in this regard. Democrats in states like Virginia and Nevada didn't seriously try to repeal right-to-work laws, while Republicans in the northeast and midwest didn't try to implement them. But if right-to-work can pass in Michigan, then why shouldn't Republicans press for it in Wisconsin or Ohio or Pennsylvania?

Yglesias is guilty only of understatement.  Michigan's overnight- literally, overnight- transformation from a state with one of the highest (such as it is) unionization rates in the nation to a right-to-work state is not the biggest economic news of the week.  This assault on middle-class rights is easily the biggest news of the week in the domestic sphere, economic or otherwise.

The editorial staff of the Detroit Free Press is disappointed that Rick Snyder (whose election it endorsed), who previously had opposed right-to-work legislation, has undergone a sudden conversion.   It believes

The answer may lie in another Koch-funded group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes a radical right-wing agenda in states across the country, supplying "model legislation" to sympathetic lawmakers.

The organization boasts more than 2,000 legislative members. It also has corporate members, who weigh in on the model legislation before it's approved by the group's public-sector committee, the group's national chairman said in an interview he gave after dozens of pieces of ALEC-written model legislation were leaked last year in a joint project by The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy.

Michigan's proposed right-to-work bills mirror the ALEC language practically word-for-word.

It's unclear how many Michigan lawmakers are members of ALEC; the group doesn't make its membership rolls public. But at least one of the lawmakers who introduced Michigan's right-to-work legislation has been associated with ALEC.

Certainly, there are a large number of Michigan legislators who are beholden to Americans for Prosperity, or the Koch brothers. Word is the groups threatened Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville's leadership post, and promised him a primary challenge in 2014, if he refused to move right-to-work forward.

While ALEC, which already dominates several Repub-controlled state legislatures (and at least one GOP governor), grows in influence, DeWayne Wickham is joyful that in a few states, individuals now may smoke marijuana and gays now may enshrine their relationship as marriage. How comforting.

To be fair, the veteran columnist also is very pleased- as he should be- that Democrats picked up seats in the U.S. Senate.   And he is elated that Barack Obama was re-elected.

Wickham and others still under the spell of Mr. Obama ought to remember that after the election of the first black President in 2008, The End of Conservatism As We Know It was declared.   And they should take heed of the reasoning of Yeselson, who recognizes "This isn't Wisconsin.  It's worse.  It's Michigan..."  As with the implementation of right-to-work laws, raising the Medicare eligibility age is (as described by Joe Conason) "a direct assault on the standard of living of working-class Americans."  The power elite thrives.

Eliminating the healthiest cohort from Medicare, thus increasing its premiums and eventually undermining public support for the program, is not being sought by a GOP president.  This isn't a Republican President.  It's worse.  It's a president with a "D" after his name.  It's terrible policy, it's terrible politics, and yet more evidence that the glee over the re-election of Barack Obama must be the beginning, and not the end.


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Senator Deregulator

As if the current "economic meltdown" weren't (alliteration alert) distressing, depressing, or debilitating enough, it is discouraging that the man who threatens to be the next President of the United States appears not to have learned anything from it.

In an interview on September 21 with John Harwood on CNBC, John McCain was asked about the impact of the current financial crisis upon his plans to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy:

HARWOOD: Would you concede, then, that you could not achieve your goal of balancing the budget in your first term with this huge bailout added?
MCCAIN: I believe we can still balance the budget.

Never mind that the cuts would cost the Treasury more than two million dollars over the next decade; bestow 58% of its benefits to the top 1% of taxpayers; and continue the shift of the tax burden from investment income onto earned income; lead to increased sheltering of income.

On the "Sixty Minutes" episode aired on Sunday, 9/21/08, interviewer Scott Pelley and John McCain discussed the deregulation impulse which has led to the virtual collapse of the American banking system:

Pelley: In 1999 you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?
McCain: No, I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

And on MSNBC on September 22, McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds got into this exchange with the network's David Shuster (transcript from crooksandliars.com) about former Texas Senator Phil Gramm:

BOUNDS: …Let’s talk about tissues. Let’s talk about honesty and which candidate is going to shoot straight with the American voters. And when Barack Obama says that John McCain has chosen Phil Gramm to be Secretary of Treasury when this election isn’t even over, and he is not advising this campaign, he is lying. And when you talk about it with me over national air, I don’t understand why we’re doing it.
SHUSTER: You can make it clear right now. Can you assure that John McCain will not pick Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary if John McCain wins the election?
BOUNDS: He is not even an adviser on this campaign, David. I don’t know where the sorts of rumor mills come from.
SHUSTER: Why don’t you put them down…
BOUNDS: But I think they come from the Obama campaign, straight to you, straight to us on air.
SHUSTER: Well, Tucker, you can make your point better just to say Phil Gramm-John McCain has told me Phil Gramm will not be Treasury Secretary under any circumstance in the McCain administration.BOUNDS: It is an absurd thing to say. It would be as if I was to say Franklin Raines would head up the Housing and Urban Development wing for Barack Obama.
SHUSTER: Right, but the difference, Tucker, the Obama campaign said that will never happen and I have yet to hear you say -
BOUNDS: If I were to make that allegation, you’d call it a lie. You’d call it a lie and I’m not making it , but Barack Obama is.
SHUSTER: Tucker, Tucker. The difference is the Obama campaign will tell us flat out he will not be part of the Obama administration. I still haven’t heard you say Phil Gramm will not be part of a McCain administration.
BOUNDS: It is inherently true. He stepped down from this campaign. He is not advising the campaign. I mean, these are the sorts of absurdities that we’re talking about and it is all because Barack Obama gets away with saying things are not true and then people believe them to be some way based in fact. It is absurd.
SHUSTER: All right. Tucker, spokesperson for the McCain campaign. Pleasure as always.

Shuster gave Bounds at least four opportunities to say that the U.S. Senate's leading advocate of deregulation in the 1990's will not be part of a McCain administration, presumably Treasury Secretary, and Bounds chose not to address the issue, suggesting that Gramm isn't going away.

Intermittently, John McCain has played the populist card, railing against Chris Cox one day, corporate greed the next. However, his record belies such rhetoric, which would be welcome if it were thoughtful, focused, or sincere. Unfortunately, it's just the flavor of the moment for a candidate who has never found an issue (except, arguably, the surge) he can't be on both sides of.

Corporate America and Red China: Perfect Together

Sean Hannity is fond of referring to Michelle Obama as someone who "hates America." I wonder what he would say about two "American " companies and their approach to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Dave Zirin, a regular contributor to The Nation magazine and author of the forthcoming book "A People's History of Sports in the United States," explained on 8/8/08 to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!:

Pepsi has adopted a new red can with the slogan “Go Red, Go Pepsi.” I mean, it’s a slogan that would have gotten you a visit from COINTELPRO a generation ago, and now it’s being used to sell Pepsi products over there in China. I mean, absolutely outrageous.
Nike—this is another brilliant so-called US-based corporation—is airing commercials in China where Chinese track superstar, Liu Xiang, is beating Western athletes in the race, and it says, “Go Beijing! Go Liu Xiang!"

Will Sean find his voice and criticize these anti-American mega-companies? Will any GOP politician who has been critical of the comments made by Mrs. Obama? Or is criticism of corporations off-limits in the Republican world, where the rich and powerful are sacrosanct?