The History of U.S. – Latin American Relations: An Overview
Nicholas F. Dupree

The history of U.S.-Latin American relations is a long and bloody one checkered by imperialist aggression and exploitation. The United States had a head start building its democratic institutions because it spawned from Britain, a constitutional monarchy whose fledgling parliamentary democracy was far ahead of most of the world at the time, and the U.S. built on that with a constitution and a government based on a revolutionary ideology. American revolutionaries, like the French revolutionaries that followed, were driven to spread their pro-freedom, anti-monarchist ideology, but unlike France’s First Republic, America’s first republic was not only more moderate, it could quickly stabilize amid its isolation and relative lack of competitors for the continent. Surprisingly rapidly, the United States was moving aggressively west and south to spread their revolutionary state and colonize land held by loosely organized indigenous tribes and a Spanish Empire spread thin and in relative decline.

Early on, America’s founding generation had their eyes (and territorial ambitions) pointed South. Presidents Jefferson and John Adams saw Cuba and Puerto Rico as “natural appendages” of North America that should break away from Spanish influence and join the United States. John Quincy Adams thought Cuba an “apple” fallen from the North American tree and that it should end its “unnatural connection” with Spain and rejoin its source, America. (Smith, 2007, p. 25) Thomas Jefferson had an impressive collection of Iberian writers in his library at Monticello, and actively promoted learning of the Spanish language.

“Spanish,” he wrote in a note accompanying a Spanish-language dictionary that he gifted to Peter Carr in 1787; “Bestow great attention on this, & endeavor to acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections with Spain & Spanish America will render that language a valuable acquisition. The antient [sic] history of a great part of America, too, is written in that language” (Works V: 322).1

But alongside the founding generation’s interest in Latin America, loomed skepticism. The prevailing views of the time included deep doubts about the ability of newly independent Latino populations to adopt republican values and effectively govern themselves, given racial and cultural differences and the dark legacy of oppression and violence from Spanish colonization. “I fear the degrading ignorance into which their priests and kings have sunk them, has disqualified them from the maintenance or even knowledge of their rights, and that much blood may be shed for little improvement in their condition. Should their new rulers honestly lay their shoulders to remove the great obstacles of ignorance, and press the remedies of education and information, they will still be in jeopardy until another generation comes into place, and what may happen in the interval cannot be predicted, nor shall you or I live to see it,” Thomas Jefferson wrote (Smith, p. 46) in an 1811 letter to Dupont de Nemours.2

John Quincy Adams echoed Jefferson’s views (p. 46), and as the United States became a power on the world stage competing for land and resources, it sought to seize them without seizing the diverse populations that lived there. “By the late 1830s, the idea of manifest destiny signified a racist nationalism that preferred to incorporate into the Union ‘unsettled’ and ‘empty’ lands—such as those taken from Native American peoples and, soon thereafter, Mexico.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57) After the “Mexican Cession” of 1848, in which Mexico “ceded” 55% of its territory to the United States, the limits of Manifest Destiny were undecided, and the question of further annexation was fiercely debated among the varying factions in Congress, especially in the Senate. Seizing “Mexico proper,” including the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula, and Cuba, were both the subject of heated debates, but ultimately they were just too different for Congress and the public to support annexing. Cuba was too black (Smith, p. 26) and Mexico was too Indian: as the New York World wrote, “Mexicans are Indian, aboriginal Indian, and they must share in the destiny of the Indian.” (p. 49) Neither Mexico nor Cuba were incorporated into the United States, despite an unprecedented surge in U.S. imperialism in the 1890s and early 20th century that brought U.S. borders to their greatest territorial extent after Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and more were brought under U.S. control. American militarism and expansion were led by William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt at the helm of a newly modernized and powerful army and navy, and like-minded Republicans like Albert Beveridge and Orville H. Platt at the helm in the Congress. These American imperialists believed, in the words of Senator Beveridge, that “God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation. No. …He has made us adept at government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.” (p. 51) This view would have driven even more aggressive expansion had their not been deep anxieties among the people and their Congress over “inferior peoples” becoming U.S. citizens. “Racism cut at least three ways. It inspired and justified American territorial expansion, but it also limited its reach due precisely to the indisposition of many Americans to incorporate into the Union “inferior peoples” as equals and citizens. It also underlay the slave/free divide in American domestic politics.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57)

Once the United States had emerged as a 20th century world power after McKinley and Roosevelt’s wars of expansion, it was ready to put the Monroe Doctrine’s shaky record keeping European powers out of the Hemisphere throughout the 19th century behind it and enforce a U.S. sphere of influence in the Americas in earnest. The U.S. positioned itself to defend its gains in the new global race for land, resources, arms, military bases, trading-posts and colonies, called the “Great Game” in Britain, and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was designed do just that: no opportunistic Europeans would bring their game into the U.S.’ backyard. Roosevelt’s Corollary insisted that the United States could intervene in any Latin American republic where instability reigned; the U.S. would send troops anywhere in the Americas where European powers could possibly see an opening due to unpaid debt or revolutionary turmoil. And send troops they did: TR sent troops to seize the “Isthmian Canal” in Panama and took over the customs collections of the Dominican Republic until debt to the U.S. and other great powers (Netherlands and France) were paid in full. (Smith, pp. 56-57) A similar scheme of occupation and repayment was imposed in Haiti with much less success. (p. 60) The customs repayment scheme actually led to war in Nicaragua, where the Americans’ fears of the “Bolshevist” revolutionary government of Mexico establishing its own “sphere of influence” and “primacy” over Central America (p. 67) collided with the Nicaraguan people’s anger and aspirations to be free from the yoke of crushing debt, and a guerrilla insurgency erupted (p. 59). President Coolidge only withdrew the Marines from Nicaragua in 1924 after imposing a fraudulent election that ousted disobedient liberals in favor of pliant “conservatives” led by Adolfo Diaz, who would focus on debt repayment. The Marines came back five months later amid rumblings of possible rebellion against Diaz and further unrest. U.S. efforts to “break kneecaps” in Central American and Caribbean states for payment due didn’t end until the Great Depression and looming threat of World War II necessitated it.

The last Marines withdrew from Nicaragua in 1933, and the Marines’ nineteen-year occupation of Haiti ended in 1934. The Great Depression made such foreign entanglements financially untenable, and Americans looked to the prospects of increased inter-hemispheric trade to aid recovery (p. 74) Soon, the U.S. would concern itself with an even more dire task, countering Axis attempts for world domination; with German and Italian fascists competing to influence fledgling republics in Latin America, Washington could ill-afford its previous “Big Stick” foreign policy. Brazilian trade with Germany was at an all time high, and the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) “formed in 1932 as a deliberate imitation of the Fascist parties of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Salazar in Portugal,” (Leonard, 2007, p. 145) had taken over Brazil’s government, given themselves unlimited “emergency powers,” and decreed the Estado Novo, “the new state,” along the lines of Portugal’s integralist Estado Novo. Brazil was obviously part of Hitler’s empire-building strategy; in Congress, a young Fiorello LaGuardia ranted against Brazilian collaboration with Nazi Germany (Smith, p. 76). Chile remained neutral at this time, having strong ties with the German military and an active German-Chilean minority, and still embittered over the Americans’ siding against them in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific and the U.S. adoption of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which had hurt Chile economically. (Leonard, p. 162-165) And Argentina, despite being a “closet ally” who supplied the Allies with crucial food during the war, (p. 184) was bogged down in a power struggle with its Nazi-sympathizing military, who were devoted to ultra-conservative, virulently anti-Semitic Argentine Catholicism (p. 188). Ultimately, Argentina didn’t end diplomatic ties with Germany until January 1944 (pp. 162-163).

But Mexico, so important to U.S. national security for its bountiful oil reserves and immediate proximity along the U.S. border with the American Southwest, was Washington’s most pressing concern in the lead-up to World War II. The Cårdenas administration (1934-1940) was just stabilizing and consolidating control over a Mexican polity that for decades had been in revolutionary flux (p. 17). Mexicans were beginning to interpret the European battle between the communists and fascists, especially the Spanish Civil War, through their unique revolutionary lens, and whether Mexico would side with the United States was unclear during Lázaro Cárdenas’ rule as he remained neutral. “Capitalists, businessmen, Catholics, and middle-class Mexicans who opposed many of the reforms implemented by the revolutionary government sided with the Spanish Falange” (p. 18) i.e., the fascist movement, and Nazi propagandist Arthur Dietrich and his team of agents in Mexico successfully manipulated editorials and coverage of Europe by paying hefty subsidies to Mexican newspapers, including the widely-read dailies Excelsior and El Universal (pp. 18-19).

The situation became even more worrisome for the Allies when the major oil companies boycotted Mexican oil following Lázaro Cárdenas’ nationalization of the oil industry and expropriation of all corporate oil properties in 1938, (p. 19) which severed Mexico’s access to its traditional markets and led Mexico to sell its oil to Germany and Italy (Smith, p. 79). In Mexico and throughout Latin America, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” was necessary at such a delicate time, and in the case of the Mexicans, ultimately led to the Douglas-Weichers Agreement in June 1941 that secured Mexican oil only for the United States, (Leonard, p. 21) and the Global Settlement in November 1941, a rare example of the U.S. putting national security concerns over fairness for American oil companies (p. 22-23).

But such “Good Neighbor” agreements and “soft power” influence were self-interested in the end, accomplishing the abrupt end of German Fifth Column activities in Mexico, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, all nine Central American and Caribbean republics declared war on the Axis nearly in unison in a show of seldom-seen Hemispheric solidarity (Smith, p. 86). Unfortunately for Latin America, the United States’ inter-American strategy would drastically shift as soon as their interests did.

The post-war world, with Russia and the United States locked in a Cold War that threatened to involve, if not destroy, every state on the planet, was not kind to the republics of the Americas. Washington soon divided Latin America simplistically along “with us or against us” red lines, and fear of communist infiltration, both real and used as a political football, was rampant. During the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election, Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower accused the incumbent Democratic party of pushing Latin Americans into the arms of wily Communist agents waiting to exploit local misery and capitalize on any opening to communize the Americas (Smith, p. 127). From that point on, the “Big Stick” foreign policy came back to Latin America in various forms and guises until the ’90s, with the U.S. consistently backing the same type of elite-led fascist regimes they were trying to undercut during WWII.

Up to the time of Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal that embarrassed the United States on the world stage, U.S. foreign policy supporting fascist local elites as long as they were suitably pliant and reliably anti-communist was commonplace. One would hope that the current non-interventionist tack toward Latin America under the Obama administration is due to assessment of tough historic lessons learned and not mere economic constraints. Future repeats of the George W. Bush approach to the Americas, with “second acts” for several notorious Iran-Contra figures (see Observers Warn of U.S. Manipulation in Nicaragua) and the CIA’s Venezuelan Coup Attempt of 2002, is certainly cause for concern. The future of U.S.-Latin American relations I’d like to see, is one where Simon Bolivar’s famous statement “the United States seems destined by Providence to bring misery to the Americas in the name of liberty”4 seems something solely relevant for historical background, instead of something that’s directly related to current events and threatens to crop up again in U.S. Foreign policy at any moment.

Works Cited

Leonard, T. M., Bratzel, J. F., Rankin, M., Smith, J. & Scheinin, D. (2007). Latin america during world war ii. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Loveman, B. (2010). No higher law: american foreign policy and the western hemisphere since 1776. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: The University of North Carolina Press.

Smith, P. H. (2007). Talons of the eagle: dynamics of u.s. – latin american relations (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

Footnotes:

1: Bauer, Ralph. (2009). Thomas Jefferson, the hispanic enlightenment, and the birth of hemispheric american studies Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, 32(1), Retrieved from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-11917558/Thomas-Jefferson-the-Hispanic-enlightenment.html

2: Ibid.

3: Garcia-Navarro, L. (2006, November 2). Observers warn of u.s. manipulation in nicaragua. NPR, Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6423982

4: LaRosa, M., & Mora, F. O. (2009). Neighborly adversaries: readings in u.s.-latin american relations [2nd Edition]. (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

Dr. El-Kikhia tells Jon Stewart that he had to leave Libya in 1980 after yet another crackdown on Benghazi. He says he was trying to drive to work one day when the police choked off traffic, directing the traffic flow so that all incoming cars had to go past a series of hanging corpses–a message to the people of Benghazi about what will happen to dissidents.

The interview doesn’t have time for details, but one should note that Benghazi and its province Cyrenaica have long hated its rival in the west, Tripoli. I know at one point, Benghazi forced Qaddafi’s troops out and have built a 4-star hotel where the barracks was.

It’s true. I am a policy wonk. I am endlessly interested in it. I read about it, think about it, talk about it and … write about it. (As in, what I’m doing right now.) And I do all of this because I think it’s immensely important. Crucially important. Vitally important.

Public policy is how the government – whether local, state, provincial, federal, or any other level – takes action on a particular issue. It covers a whole huge range of potential state actions – allocating and spending money, setting and enforcing professional guidelines and standards, creating agencies and staff, structuring tax incentives, even defining what constitutes criminal behavior. That’s an extremely big category that clearly has an enormous and unparalleled effect on the world.

Excerpted from I Love Policy | FWD (Feminists With Disabilities) by Abby Jean (not me)

I am captivated by political decision making, how it works and the impact it has on our lives. True, I am super nerdly; I can’t read something or watch a movie without ideas about the history of policy and the effects it has had firing around in my brain. That means the new HBO series Boardwalk Empire is like catnip for me. It brings the history of the ’20s and its politics to life in lush, vivid photography and provides fascinating context and insights into Prohibition, the mafia, suffragettes, corrupt politicians and politics of the era, fashion, the flapper girls, and the feminism of the era. The intense dissimilarities and the intense similarities the ’20s have with life today also really draw you in. Recently *yet another* economic study confirmed that the 2000s have the most unequal division of wealth in U.S. history, excepting the 20s. Unprecedented corruption is similar, struggles over prohibition similar too. What isn’t similar is the feeling of free-wheeling American personal freedom, including the “feminine liberation” of the time that went the way of the stock market after the Great Depression, and the economic boom that brought incredible opportunities–people are super nostalgic for those dissimilarities.  I heart the show; it’s triggered a major ’20s obsession for me.

I especially liked last week’s episode, it took us inside the back room and explicitly explored policy and the politics of divvying up new state-level funding for highways; we got an anatomy of the back room deal.   Notorious Jersey City machine boss Frank Hague was pitted against the show’s principal protagonist (and anti-hero) “Nucky” Thompson, the machine boss of Atlantic City, and Republican Senator Walter Edge trying to arbitrate between them.  Hague wants all the road appropriations to go to Jersey City, and Nucky wants everything to go to Atlantic City, where he says he has new hotels (at this point in the timeline, the Ritz-Carlton Atlantic City had recently opened) but tourists can’t get to them because the current roads to South Jersey are so muddy and inadequate.  Both men are corrupt bosses used to getting everything they want (and expect to skim off a nice slice of any new funding for themselves) and compromise is difficult to impossible.  Nucky pretty much created Edge’s political career, serving as his campaign manager and using his money and connections to win him the gubernatorial race (then he moved from the governor’s mansion to the U.S. Senate) so Nucky expects him to go to bat for Atlantic City, but Hague tipped the Democratic vote for Edge, crucial to win anything; Edge has presidential ambitions and can’t afford to alienate either of them, so he plays the diplomat.   The fact that Nucky, Hague and Senator Edge were all REAL POLITICIANS and that the dynamics at play are real (Nucky really was Edge’s campaign manager, etc.) makes it all the more riveting.

Here’s a clip from that scene.

Fair Use law lets me use this copyrighted material because its 1) a really brief clip and 2) used for the purpose of critique (i.e. it’s legal for the same reason Roger Ebert or Jon Stewart showing a clip in order to comment on it is legal).  See Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.

80 Second Clip from HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”: Back room Dealing

Coarse language warning: Nucky drops many F-bombs on Frank Hague in this clip, he thinks Hague just wants “a payoff” and is really frustrated and angry.

So,  after watching this scene, my policy mind started buzzing.  The corrupt incentives of the 1920s were perhaps different than the corrupt incentives of today. Both Nucky and Hague are motivated by corruption, but that corruption is motivating them to fight really hard for highways going to their respective counties (unquestionably a benefit for the economy and the average voter).  In cases like this, is corruption helping the public?

These are the questions I wrote this post to ask: Did the certainty that they would get a hefty slice of any new project make them fight harder than politicians today to get projects for the public good?

Should we incorporate such incentives into the current system, like bonus pay or free stuff or public accolades if a politician helps the general population?   Because right now, we have a system of open, legal bribery; ALL the incentives and thus, inevitably, ALL the policymaking energy is lined up against efforts to help normal constituents, and lined up for the special interests that give money to elect candidates. I always refer to this as giving “campaign bribetributions.” It’s essentially bribery, it totally skews the system so that the corrupt incentives make the government serve powerful private interests first and the public good only accidentally, but it remains completely legal.

At least in this scene, the corrupt incentives make public officials do something for the public good. I am desperate to address the crisis of campaign bribetributions making government only serve moneyed interests (not democracy but bribeocracy). If the powerful will never let us remove campaign bribetributions from our system, how do we realign the corruption to serve the people NOT just narrow interests with fat stacks of $$$$???

Nick

It's all about the Benjamins.

House Republican Leader John Boehner and posse, behind a podium with a shiny "Pledge to America" sign, introduce their new Pledge to America (photo credit: Drew Angerer/The New York Times)

but despite unprecedented law enforcement overreach in recent years, COMPLETELY IGNORES civil liberties (Bill of Rights, Amendments 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc)!! The text explicitly mentions the Tenth Amendment, and of course they’re all about THE RIGHT TO OWN A GUN (even automatics, heavy weapons, bazookas, RPGs, etc) but evidently the rest of the Bill of Rights simply doesn’t exist!

Does no Republican behind this pledge think of civil liberties as part of the Constitution?

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (in California) just ruled that police placing tracking devices on cars in private driveways is totally legal because “there’s no expectation of privacy in driveways.” Unless you’re rich and can lock your vehicle in a garage or behind a fence with private security guards, that is.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

Excerpted from: The Government’s New Right To Track Your Every Move With GPS – TIME

Neither Team Donkey nor Team Elephant have expressed the slightest concern. Not a word.

This editorial cartoon by Adam Zyglis depicts President Obama as Uncle Sam in one of those WWII-era Army recruitment posters, but with the banner "I HEAR YOU," and the words "Expanded Surveillance" printed on his big ears.

Not a word either concerning the new FBI/Obama Administration proposal to make every data method tappable and un-encryptable!!!

To counter such problems, officials are coalescing around several of the proposal’s likely requirements:

• Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.
• Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.
• Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

…

“It would be an enormous change for newly covered companies,” he said. “Implementation would be a huge technology and security headache, and the investigative burden and costs will shift to providers.”

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.

“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

Susan Landau, a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise costly impediments to innovation by small startups.

“Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the product out faster,” she said.

Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s, encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their products in the global market.

But law enforcement officials rejected such arguments. They said including an interception capability from the start was less likely to inadvertently create security holes than retrofitting it after receiving a wiretap order.

They also noted that critics predicted that the 1994 law would impede cellphone innovation, but that technology continued to improve. And their envisioned decryption mandate is modest, they contended, because service providers — not the government — would hold the key.

“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”

Excerpted from: U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet – NYTimes.com

In a normative political system, we would have an opposition party to oppose these kinds of outrageous excesses; part of any political system is supposed to be the people raising cain when there are rights violations, but neither party gives us an outlet for that. Right now, the Republican party is supposed to be the opposition party; that’s why I brought up the “Pledge to America.” But they don’t oppose unlimited surveillance and limited civil liberties, in fact, they’re like “bahbah-bahbahBAAHH, I’m lovin’ it!!” Even though they’re calling for a return to the Constitution, they’re acting like the Bill of Rights doesn’t include civil liberties of any sort (other than gun rights).

In the Republican party’s defense, we expect Republicans to be the authoritarian police state party, they are supposed to have that Big Brother ideology. And, in opposition, the Democratic party is supposed to be chock-full of “card-carrying members of the ACLU” who stand up for civil liberties and defend all forms of art (even pornography) and freedom of speech and privacy in the Bill of Rights, etc. The problem is how the Democrats have completely caved and sold out on their traditional positions. Why? Just so they’re not labeled “unserious” and barred from the good parties in a post-9/11 neoliberal authoritarian climate? How did we, the American people, divinely-appointed guardians of human freedom around the world, allow it to go so far?

Right now, there is NO opposition party against America sliding into an Orwellian police state. If we’re to keep the U.S. a Republic in any sense, that has to change!

An image with Benjamin Franklin and his famous quote "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Nick

This isn’t “The Great Recession,” it’s “The Great Change.” The recession–that is just a symptom of these enormous tectonic shifts going on (societally, technologically, economically, politically) and our inability to keep up has caused disruptions and economic downturn. That economic downturn is not the disorder, it’s just a symptom of the rapid changes spinning around us and our inability to cope. The change has come and will keep coming. Obama promised political change to help us adapt to all the other changes, but failed because of immediate backlash. Now, the backlash (led by the Tea Party) is bringing political change, and we’re headed for an upheaval that will radically shift ideas about the publicly-funded services and supports that keep people with disabilities alive and participating.

The Tea Party agenda is incredibly important for people with disabilities to learn about and understand because those ideas are here and will soon be back in the halls of power, BIG TIME.
Understand; the Tea Party movement is just the newest part of a self-described revolutionary movement that began in the ’60s with Ronald Reagan and first gained broad federal legislative power with the “Republican Revolution” brought by the 1994 midterm elections. The Republican Revolution brought us Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, the leaders of the Revolution, and dozens and dozens of loyal soldiers under them. Those foot soldiers, Senators and Congressmen first empowered by the ’94 revolution, the “Revolutionary guard” if you will, make up the bulk of the Congressional GOP today. And they’re worried now because the Tea Party is leading a second revolution, and they want their seats. Rick Lazio is a good example. Lazio was yet another foot soldier for the Republican Revolution and its policy platform, the Contract with America (which demanded lower taxes, eliminating welfare, tougher anti-crime laws and a balanced budget amendment making deficits unconstitutional). That was no longer right-wing enough for conservative voters; Lazio got crushed by Tea Partier Carl Paladino in the GOP gubernatorial primary. You have to hate much more to be a real conservative. This is like one of Robespierre’s purges of earlier revolutionaries; it’s not enough to support the revolution and oppose the enemy, you have to show a frenzied enthusiasm for every facet of the revolution and consistently revile the enemy publicly, or face the guillotine. Paladino painted Lazio as a “liberal Republican” throughout the primary, an INSANE claim, and won because a huge plurality of Republicans actually believes this. Rick Lazio must feel like his head’s rolling down the palace rug right now, poor bastard. Republican Revolution of ’94 wasn’t enough; now, foaming ultra-conservatives demand Republican Revolution II!

Republican Revolution II has already started; they even use the language of revolution, openly. Example: from Carl Paladino’s victory speech: “The ruling class knows — they’ve seen it now — there’s a people’s revolution.”

Watch CBS News Videos Online
This video is a great primer on the Tea Party and what they’re all about.

This survey of the Tea Party shows that Tea Partiers are 89% white. Taken from the above CBS News video.

This survey of the Tea Party reveals that 58% of Tea Partiers keep guns in the home, and 63% (an overwhelming majority) get their political news from FOX News Channel. Taken from the above CBS News video.

Even if the GOP doesn’t take over the Senate and the House, the populist groundswell it has generated (and incumbents’ fear of losing their jobs) will severely limit what Congress can do.

What ideas are the Tea Party/Republican Revolution II based on?

Reaction. The primary idea/emotion of this movement is that Obama’s presidency and the Democratic Congress are threatening their way of life and they have to “take our country back.” Conservapedia, which often seems like a Colbert-penned parody but actually is a serious project founded by Andrew Schlafly (youngest son of early segregationist and anti-feminist leader Phyllis Schlafly), has a good article on the Tea Party movement and its founding motives, all of which are a reaction to Democrats and their policies. It really is akin to Italy’s Blackshirts; it’s an authoritarian mass movement (and is being studied as such by authoritarian psychology scholars). It fits the authoritarian blueprint to a tee, right down to the outcry of an oppressed “majority” against what they see as “radicals,” scapegoating (and fear-baiting) of minorities, fear of redistribution of wealth to the “lesser,” and rallying cries to return to a heralded, idealized past. They believe that if only Republicans (especially Tea Party-endorsed Republicans) controlled the government, the rapid changes affecting their lives and the economic anxieties and fear of losing privileges they cause would be reduced. Fear and rage animate this movement.

92% of Tea Partiers think Obama is turning America into a socialist state, according to this recent poll. Image taken from the above CBS News video.

Commentators online, including Michelle Malkin and Christopher Hitchens, have turned this AP Photo into the "Islamic Rage Boy" political meme that still floats around the blogosphere today.

It’s almost analogous to the infamous “Islamic Rage Boy” from Kashmir, in furious reaction to the Indian government that the protestors feel will eradicate their way of life. The Tea Party also sets up a battle for their way of life, absolute good vs. absolute, unadulterated evil, with no shades of gray in between.

The followers are reacting to economic anxieties, but the leaders are of an Ayn Randist-bent. If you’ve been an internet activist for over a decade, you could find them saying the same things they are now (staunch anti-federalism, strict constructionist view of the Constitution that damns all federal social programs as unconstitutional, blaming FDR and the New Deal for federal overreach and all subsequent economic problems, near-deification of Ronald Reagan, fundamentalist belief in Voodoo Economics to the point that they know that tax cuts can create enough new revenue to fund anything, white supremacy, extreme persecution complex, paranoid conspiracy theories about an all-controlling liberal elite) back in the Clinton and Bush years on web forums like FreeRepublic.com. Those wingnut views are now heard much more often as we allow the fringe to creep into the mainstream, but the hard-right ideas are not new. Online communities like FreeRepublic and their ilk would disgust most people in the first 20 minutes browsing threads; these are hard-right echo-chambers that have an incredibly radicalizing affect on their followers, environments where reviling “the other” is essential for being in the “in-crowd” and cross-pollination with known far-right extremist groups is vibrant and unconcealed. These guys have a hardcore agenda, and always sought to build a grassroots movement to primary out GOP incumbents and push the party to the fringe, but were never able to until the recession and widespread economic fear gave them a vehicle.

A neon green paper sign at the Tax Day Tea Party in Boston reads

What does the Tea Party mean for people with disabilities?

The Tea Party leaders’ Rand philosophy label us who use social services “robbers,” “leeches” and “parasites” because we suck up the wealth rightfully earned by the labors of others. Judging by this video of hate activists yelling abuse like “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong part of town! Nothing for free here, you have to work for everything you get!” at a disabled man at a Tea Party rally, and throwing money at him in revulsion, this movement embraces Social Darwinism, and they really do intend hatred for us people with disabilities and cutting off our services. Though I too would like an end to UNNECESSARY government interventions (especially in the area of civil liberties, which conservatives seem to have abandoned en masse) what counts as necessary government intervention is where Rand-bots and I differ, because they see nearly every intervention as unwarranted tyrannical intrusion into private matters. For them, even saving people from dying of decubitus ulcers from lack of personal care is unwanted government overreach.

There are opponents of this extreme agenda within the conservative leadership, for example, the New York Conservative Party said: “If Carl Paladino wins this thing, it will cause severe damage — it could be for decades — to the Republican Party of New York State.” Many (correctly) predict an internal struggle over policy once the GOP wins Congress. If Tea Party candidates run the table, expect radical change in the services provided to us people with disabilities. More likely, incoming freshmen Congressmen will be unable to oust Leader John Boehner (R – Oompa Loompa) and compromises on policy goals are expected.

How should we adapt to survive drastic changes in social spending?

I call on disability community leaders to seek a meeting with future Speaker Boehner, as well as likely GOP budget planners Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy (who, during their book tour rolling out the 2010 Roadmap for America’s Future legislation, have been asking voters and fellow Congressmen for an adult conversation about how best to handle the coming scaledown in social services) and meet with them to discuss PRESERVING the most cost-effective services for people with disabilities: home and community based services (HCBS). If we people with disabilities have the needed home and community based services, we stay in our homes with our loved ones, producing value in our communities, paying sales taxes, property taxes, etc. But if those services are yanked out from under us, we end up in insanely expensive nursing facilities, or worse, dead. Conservatives are usually penny smart and pound foolish on this issue, slashing “optional” HCBS funding while leaving nursing home costs to continually balloon. That “institutional bias” has to change, or the affect on people with disabilities will be just devastating as political winds keep changing and funding streams dry up. The budget arithmetic just doesn’t work, so benefits have to scale down; stop thinking this won’t change, it IS changing!

Unless the disability community wakes up to the realities that Medicaid and Medicare will soon be drastically changing and we get IN FRONT OF the issue and begin educating and negotiating hard for our top 5 most essential services to preserve, our quality of life will go down the drain. Those of us in New York will be living with services like they have under Alabama Medicaid, and Alabamians with disabilities will fall to the level of Dominican Republic or Colombia or India. We have to prevent that. It’s time for hardcore SURVIVAL POLITICS!!

In Alabama, Medicaid policies really took a vicious turn after the first Republican Revolution took over Congress after the ’94 elections. Ideas about social services changed drastically overnight. In ’96-’97 I was fighting Alabama’s stated plan to end home nursing completely and ship every last one of us to institutions out-of-state. I won, but not before several people I knew died. After George W. Bush took over the presidency in 2001, Alabama Medicaid, began saying openly that they can’t afford home care and that it should be the responsibility of families and communities, not the state. Spending on home care dropped dramatically, to unprecedented lows. I had to lobby the state legislature, and eventually sue, to keep my care from being dropped when I turned 21. I won, and saved my younger brother, but my friend Chris died because no caregiver was at home to hear his disconnect alarm. Now with unprecedented yawning budget gaps, home and community based services are scant to non-existent in the red states. I escaped to New York just in the nick of time.

Please realize that the change is here already in most of the country, even California now–thanks to the Governator and a weak legislature. Too many in the NY disability community are happy, comfortable and complacent; ya’ll don’t see the tectonic shifts coming. It’s coming because of the growing consensus that we no longer want to pay for/can’t afford Medicaid and Medicare as it is now, the growing consensus for insane, rugged individualism. People with disabilities, WAKE UP! The time for soul-searching and tough negotiating with conservatives is NOW.

Listen to Paul Ryan talking about his “Roadmap.” Understand that soon we’ll have no choice but deep sacrifices and tough compromises, so the best approach is to negotiate hard for our biggest priorities, and start NOW!

Nick

I talked about this in my last blog post; I don’t support and never post such crass material, but I think if I’m going to discuss these emails, in order to be fair I have to give you a chance to see them and judge for yourself. Again, WARNING WARNING WARNING: contains hardcore pornographic images (including one with bestiality), vile racism and the N-word. Not for those under 18, not for the faint hearted or weak stomached, and definitely NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

Also, I think if I’m going to criticize these emails as I did in my last blog post, in order to be fair I have to post the Paladino camp’s explanations in their own defense.

When one recipient complained about the “Obama inauguration” email, calling Paladino a racist, Paladino responded by apologizing “if that is offensive.” He added: “I’m not a racist and have never related Obama’s color to my political distaste for him….I’m not sensitive to ethnic humor.”

Other emails from Paladino are here. All the emails were either originally sent, or forwarded, by Paladino, WNYmedia confirms. The emails went to a long list of Paladino associates, in local and state government, politics, and business.

In a statement to TPMmuckraker, Caputo, the campaign manager, said:
“Carl Paladino has forwarded close friends hundreds of email messages he received. Many of these emails he received were off color, some were politically incorrect, few represented his own opinion, and almost none of them were worth remembering.
“We’re not surprised the political establishment feels threatened by Carl’s drive the take Albany back for taxpayers. Our campaign won’t be wading through the details of what is just another liberal Democrat blog smear. It figures that members of the Party who brought us record taxes, record spending and record debt would want to change the topic from reform to having sex with horses and S&M parlors.”

The S&M parlor is a reference to one of Paladino’s rivals for the GOP nomination, Steve Levy, who, it was reported today, once lived with an ex-con who had pleaded guilty in a mortgage fraud scheme involving an S&M club.

Excepted from Tea Party NY Gov Candidate’s E-Mails Exposed: Racism, Porn, Bestiality | TPMMuckraker

So, Paladino’s campaign manager, Michael Caputo, brushed off concerns over the emails as “just another liberal Democrat blog smear.” Ok…

Carl Paladino himself explained it this way:

“My humor is irrelevant to my temperament. If you go and Google me, you’re going to see what Carl Paladino is about. And sure, I’m not perfect. And sure, I’m not human,” he said, before correcting himself. “I’m human, forgive me – hahaha. I’m human. I’ve had my careless moments. I didn’t think twice about sending to my firends a bunch of obscene emails.

“But, I apologized. I apologized to the people that were offended. People that I meat since that thing first became public, they’re interested in the high crimes and misdemeanors of Albany, They could give a hell about Carl Paladino and his emails.”

Excepted from The Bumpy, Impolite and Offensive Campaign of Carl Paladino – WNYC

Carl Paladino, looking slightly mafia-ish

Here is another way he explained the forwarded emails, when grilled by Anderson Cooper.

What is it with older people (often holding older–’50s–political views and prejudices) and email? especially email forwards. The statistics show a divergence in behavior between age groups here (only 11% of young people still send email daily, our communication is mostly through texting, twittering, and social networking) whereas older people’s email use has stayed relatively steady. I’ve never really understood the appeal of forwarding on chain mail, comments and jokes to everyone in your address book, but LOTS of people of Paladino’s age and mindset do this, including some of my own relatives (and I think everyone has at least one friend or relative forwarding them junk). I find it sad that forwarding other people’s words often replaces communication from the heart, real words of love or insight or encouragement (which you get more of on social networking sites; maybe that’s why they’ve grown so fast?)

Anyhow, even Republicans are lining up against Paladino. “He is dangerous, at the least, he is mean spirited and he tries to divide people,” New York’s last GOP Senator, Alphonse D’Amato, told WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell. Along with former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and former State Comptroller Carl McCall, D’Amato also signed his name to an open letter declaring Paladino unfit for office:

The victory of Carl Paladino in the Republican Primary was a disappointing day for all New Yorkers. This state has a long history of electing highly qualified, forward-looking statewide candidates — both Democrats and Republicans. Yesterday, however, anger overcame reason and enabled a fringe element to choose the Republican nominee. The end result was the selection of Mr. Paladino, a divisive figure simply not fit to lead this great state.

Excerpted from Alphonse D’Amato on Carl Paladino: ‘Dangerous’, ‘Mean-Spirited’ And Unfit For Office

I’m sympathetic to the argument that citizens have much more important things to worry about than obscene emails, I really am, but this has caught my attention because of Paladino positioning himself as the “conservative principles and traditional values” candidate, opposing abortion in all cases, opposing gay rights in all cases, essentially, judging other people morally. And even after his hypocrisy has been exposed (his spreading images of “Miss France 2009″ porn and the infamous horse sex, and his multiple extramarital affairs and child by a mistress) he is still carrying the banner of “egomaniacal belief in one’s own rightness and purity” (which David Brooks listed as one of the Tea Party’s “worst excesses”).

I understand the overwhelming urge to throw Andrew Cuomo (another inside player, leading a status quo, frequently corrupt Democratic establishment) under the bus and vote for the “outsider” promising to “clean up Albany,” but…really Christians, you’re going to elect this adulterer who forwards around hardcore pornography? Downstaters, will you really vote in a Buffalo businessman (fun fact: the demonym is Buffalonian) who’s said he “hates” Manhattan and Brooklyn because of “the traffic” and will surely skew everything toward upstate interests? It’s clear that Paladino doesn’t understand Downstate issues, which is just inconceivable for a governor of a state whose population lives 68.42% Downstate! People with disabilities, will you vote for a candidate who promises to cut Medicaid by 30%, something that could put you in a nursing home, or out on the street, or worse.

Seriously Values Voters, you’re gonna go to the polls in droves and vote for the bestiality guy??? Seriously?? And still quote Leviticus’ prohibition on homosexuality at us? What about Leviticus chapter 18, verse 23 “And thou shalt not lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith; neither shall any woman stand before a beast, to lie down thereto; it is perversion.” What about that one?

Nick

Photo of Republican Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino at a podium

Paladino is known for his ”controversial” bigoted comments and extremist stances on the issues.

Here’s a snippet of what CBS News’ Political Hotsheet had to say about Paladino’s primary victory:

Paladino’s victory over Rick Lazio doesn’t much change Republican prospects in the gubernatorial race, with Democrat Andrew Cuomo expected to cruise to an easy win. But it could prove a drag on Republicans in downballot races in the state and also embarrass the GOP establishment.

In April, Paladino acknowledged forwarding emails including images of bestiality and derogatory characterizations of President Obama, including one offering a video clip of African tribesmen dancing that characterized the video as “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal.”

The Tea-Party backed candidate reportedly sent an e-mail depicting a horse having sex with a woman and another that included a pornographic video and the headline “Miss France 2008 F[***]ing.” He also reportedly sent out an e-mail depicting President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as a pimp and prostitute and one showing an airplane landing near black men with the caption “Holy Sh*t. run ni**ers, run!”

Paladino also made headlines for saying last month, as the Associated Press reported, that “he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in ‘personal hygiene.’” The program, he said, would be voluntary.

He waded into the debate over the proposed Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, going even further than many other Republicans by suggesting he would invoke eminent domain laws to block what he calls a symbol of “conquest.” He believes global warming is a “farce.” He has what one New York tabloid called a “10-year-old love child.” If the state budget is late, he promises to shut down the government. He defended a friend who called New York Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, an Orthodox Jew, “an Antichrist or a Hitler.”

In endorsing Lazio before the vote, the New York Times said that by nominating him the GOP “could avoid the national embarrassment of a Paladino candidacy.”

The state GOP tried to keep Paladino off the state ballot, but he got enough signatures to force his way on; he was then able to capitalize on voter anger against the Albany establishment to overtake Lazio, a mainstream figure who had been widely-expected to easily win the nomination (and then lose to Cuomo). Paladino’s victory looks like more bad news for a weakening Republican party in New York – and good news for Democrats who now have a potent symbol to feed their preferred narrative that Republicans are too far out of the mainstream for most Americans.
Excerpt from Carl Paladino’s Controversial Statements Could Embarrass Republicans – Political Hotsheet | CBS News

These email forwards are real; thanks to WNYmedia, a muckraking upstate blog, you can see all of the emails here, if you can stomach hardcore pornography (including one with bestiality), vile racism and the N-word.

These profane emails have garnered LOTS OF attention; you don’t want the governor of New York, who would be responsible for one of the most diverse, dynamic immigrant populations in the world, to be neck-deep in casual racism like this! Even Murdoch’s right-leaning NY Post came out against Paladino after WNYmedia exposed the emails, and Paladino’s extramarital affairs and 10 year-old love child surfaced (while Paladino attacked Governor Paterson‘s affairs as part of “Albany’s corruption”). Given conservatives’ penchant to angrily legislate publicly against the very behavior they continually engage in privately, you can expect Paladino to crackdown on pornography and other things if elected governor.

Unfortunately, the scandalous headlines have obscured even scarier facts about Paladino: his plans for New York. He wants the state budget slashed by 20% overall, even if he has to shut down the government to do it, he wants to axe the New York Power Authority, which would presumably transfer the NYPA‘s 4.2 million kilowatts of clean hydroelectricity to profit-hungry businesses, and he wants to put poor people into “voluntary” labor camps in converted prisons. Most disturbing is his proposed $20 billion cut to New York Medicaid, which would shrink state Medicaid/DOH by 30%, and would be inconceivably devastating for those of us with severe disabilities who rely on in-home care to stay alive and in the home.

Via the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:

Aside from consolidating government, Paladino said he would drive down Medicaid costs by $20 billion, which would reduce expenses for counties. The entire cost of the program is $52 billion, of which half is paid by the federal government and the rest divided between the state and the counties. Paladino said he would “slash” Medicaid and social welfare benefits, and require applicants to produce identification and be fingerprinted and drug-tested.

If we have the needed services and supports, we stay in our homes with our loved ones, producing value in our communities, paying sales taxes, property taxes, etc. But if those services are yanked out from under us, we end up in insanely expensive nursing facilities, or worse, dead. Conservatives are typically penny smart and pound foolish on this issue, and merely two years ago it was unimaginable that the hard-right agenda would have this level of prominence and influence.

Republican Revolution (1994), which Rick Lazio was a foot soldier for in Congress, and wanted budget cuts, elimination of welfare, law and order and anti-union laws, is no longer conservative enough for Republican voters. You have to hate much more to be a real conservative. This is like one of Robespierre’s purges of earlier revolutionaries; it’s not enough to support the revolution and oppose the enemy, you have to show a frenzied enthusiasm for every facet of the revolution and consistently revile the enemy publicly, or face the guillotine. Paladino painted Lazio as a “liberal Republican” throughout the primary, an INSANE claim, and won because a huge plurality actually believes this. Rick Lazio must feel like his head’s rolling down the palace rug right now, poor bastard. Republican Revolution of ’94 wasn’t enough; now, foaming ultra-conservatives demand Republican Revolution II!

It seems the entire country has lurched to the right; America is being driven insane by economic anxieties and the drastic changes in so many things (the economy, technology, politics and society). All the changes have triggered a huge reactionary push-back, but, even more, a tectonic shift that makes the nuttiest elements in politics more powerful than even four years ago under the Bush Administration. For such an extremist candidate to win the GOP nod, even in New York, with its proud tradition of moderate/liberal Republican governors and senators, for the right-wing nuts to conquer the home of the old Rockefeller Republicans, you know that politics has shifted DRAMATICALLY.

The right-wing nuts are more powerful now than four years ago, even though with Obama (hope and change!) the exact inverse was supposed to be the case. Support for the First Amendment is shockingly low, and support for discrimination is shockingly high–just look at the support for a nationwide ban on mosques, espoused by former Speaker Gingrich. Why has politics slid so easily to the far-right?? WHY IS THIS? what happened?!

My theory for what happened is basically: it’s Democrats’ fault! Even amidst soaring, Bobby Kennedy-esque optimistic rhetoric, Democrats delivered the same crappy, tepid leadership and status quo, making lies out of “yes we can.”
Obama isn’t up for election on November 2nd, and that makes it BAD for Democrats’ chances, because none of the people running have Obama’s rhetorical gifts, and most of what’s left for voters is the Democrats with long records being corrupt and craven and ineffectual and impotent, the Democrats suck at campaigning and suck even more at governing, Like Charlie Rangel, along with the rest of the leadership (Pelosi, Reid, etc.) who are deeply corrupt. They gave up 3/4 of progressive aims on the health care bill, in exchange for campaign bribetributions. We ended up with a love letter to the health insurance industry, one of the most evil industries in the world (I believe that one day there will be a memorial for all the victims of this industry). The vast majority of the health care bill’s crazy $1 TTTTTTrillion price tag is subsidies to the health insurance industry, a sector that is already bloated, inefficient, and unethical. When you subsidize something, you’ll inevitably get more of it; in this case we’re subsidizing EVIL. If there were any justice, the health insurance cartels would be broken up via antitrust actions (like what happened to Ma Bell), rather than maintaining stable monopolies in each state. But wait, the health insurance industry is specifically exempted from antitrust law, and the Democrats chose to leave it that way!
Those who were suspicious of the health reform effort had their suspicions confirmed, and then some; the health reform bill truly does increase the power of health insurance companies over our lives. Democrats could have done health care reform the right way, guided by their better angels, and be heralded as heroes in this election; instead, they used Massachusetts’ fascist RomneyCare as their model and refused to adopt and build on proposals from a more classical liberal view, like Sen. Ron Wyden’s plan. Democrats were on their worst possible behavior, showing the whole world how craven and corrupt they can be. That means Democrats’ credibility is shot. Thus we have no real counter to the unAmerican monsters dominating the Right (when internment camps for Muslims and nationwide bans on mosque construction become mainstream in your party because no one will “refudiate” such extremism, you are officially monstrous). The Democratic party doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to fight back; hell, they cowered instead of force a vote on health care for 9/11 rescue workers!

We liberals now have no choice but to abandon the binary, up/down, Democrat/Republican, black/white, thinking that leads us to act as if we only elect more Democrats, everything would be peachy. We know that a progressive agenda is desperately needed in this country, but go wrong in assuming that the Democratic party will always pursue those goals. We need to primary the hell out of a lot of seats until we can purge the corruption and get some actually good candidates elected.

Meanwhile, we’re boned. We’re going to see a repeat of what happened to the Democrats in the ’94 elections, that ushered in the “Republican Revolution” (Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom DeLay & company). At that time, the Democrats had caved to their corporate masters as well, and liberal voters were dispirited, while conservative voters were in a frenzy. The same thing is coming to you live on Nov. 2nd. But, of course, Republican Revolution II: Electric Bugaloo is looking much scarier–they’ve gone all Jacobin; it’s dogmatic purity or the electoral guillotine.

some of the players in Republican Revolution II: Congressman John Boehner, media wanker Tucker Carlson, and dark queen Sarah Palin

Once Republican Revolution II starts, John Boehner will likely win Speaker of the House

Republican congressmen are already openly tweeting about what they want to do, an extended government shutdown (like Gingrich did). With the economy already tanking, a disruption in government services could trigger a disaster. But I’m even more concerned about fundamental shifts in American values, social services, and escalating confrontation with the Islamic world.

I don’t feel like I am living in “the age of Obama,” already I feel like I am living in the age of Glenn Beck.

Computer rendering of One World Trade Center

My 9/11 anniversary post is focusing on the new WTC towers in the works now. Click here for new photos of the construction.

We want that first tower up ASAP! (first dubbed the “Freedom Tower,” then changed back to the original “One World Trade Center” name, for what I think were specific marketing reasons).
It would be a wonderful thing aesthetically, economically, and amazing for morale here in Lower Manhattan and the U.S. in general. It’ll be a great day when we can finally say “enemies knocked it down and we rebuilt it right back even better!”

The important WTC reconstruction is controlled by The Port Authority and lease-holder Silverstein Properties, Inc.. The numerous delays in the reconstruction have been caused by, fundamentally, the conflict between the market and government (Silverstein Properties, Inc., vs. the Port Authority). Silverstein doesn’t want to build any towers unless there’s market demand sufficient to make each one profitable (i.e. corporate anchor tenants who promise to occupy a good part of the building) whereas the Port Authority, a government agency immune from market pressures but under enormous political pressure to get towers built ASAP, just wants the WTC reconstruction completed for the public good, but sucks at getting things done because it’s an unwieldy bureaucracy run by committee. The process has been complicated by the acrimony between the parties; instead of just restating that he doesn’t have the necessary market demand, Mr. Silverstein has often sniped at the Port Authority (a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy trying to turn around an ocean liner and build skyscrapers makes a VERY easy target) and the Port Authority has often attacked Silverstein’s endless delays, even suing him for not beginning construction on every tower as he’d promised. The many snags in planning and financing the new towers (5/6 of them yet to be completed) have made the two sides look like petty, squabbling children, and the mayor and governor occasionally step in to make them play nice “or I’ll stop this car! I swear it! don’t you make me stop this car!”

This year, an “agreement” was reached that ceded complete control over One World Trade Center (“Freedom Tower”) construction and Tower Five construction to the Port Authority, in exchange for total control for Silverstein over the remaining 3 towers. The Port Authority now has One World Trade Center built to about a third of its expected height, with construction crews working 7 days a week. Silverstein Properties, Inc. began building 150 Greenwich Street (Tower Four) in earnest after the deal, and it’s rising quickly, similar to the new 7 World Trade Center that Silverstein completed in ’06, the first (and, so far, only) one rebuilt.

The construction on the other towers isn’t visible above ground level yet. According to Mr. Silverstein himself, Tower Two may not be in the cards in the foreseeable future; the new agreement calls for important underground parts to be finished, leveled off at street level and just left that way until Silverstein decides “market conditions” justify building Tower Two. Given the fact that owners of existing office buildings can’t sell their office space at current prices (almost 15% class-A commercial office space vacancy in Downtown Manhattan) and would rather suffer abnormally high vacancy rates than bring their rent prices down to sane, reasonable levels, the future looks bleak for the beautiful Tower Two design. Real estate moguls are already panicking that just the space added by One World Trade Center/Freedom Tower, expected completed in Q2 2013 and open for business in Q4 2013, will push the downtown vacancy rate for class-A office space to 20.6% (hat tip, New York Observer). That’s just Tower One, the impact of Tower Two is inconceivable for downtown money lords, who want prices to “recover” to the ridiculous heights seen during the last bubble. In short, the “invisible hand of the market” gives the finger to building Tower Two because of the manipulation of the INVISIBLE FIST; it doesn’t want any more vacant office space that could put downward pressure on rents and result in fairer prices. They want to keep supply low so rip-off prices can continue. I think that SUCKS. The Tower Two design is such a stunning, gorgeous centerpiece to the whole WTC block, an essential counter to the Statue of Liberty-inspired “Freedom Tower,” that I can’t imagine the WTC without it! See models and CGI renderings of it here. We need Tower Two!

From WTC.com:

The WTC site just doesn’t make sense without Tower Two. We need Tower Two! If people don’t want commercial office space, they could convert it to recreation space (a movie theater!) and/or a performing arts center and/or a hotel, or even apartments! it doesn’t have to be 100% office space! Lower Manhattan has great needs for more facilities and services; Tower Two should not be scrapped!

Speak out, comment below! Should the “invisible fist” decide? Or should government override “market conditions” and build the entire WTC site, all 5 planned new towers, as (awesomely) designed by Daniel Libeskind and David Childs?
Please comment!

Nick

PS
Here are some great links if you want to learn about the new WTC towers planned for construction.

WTC.com

LowerManhattan.info: World Trade Center Construction Updates

LowerManhattan.info: WTC Site East Side (Towers Two, Three and Four) Development Plan Finalized

Silverstein Properties’ project executive for Tower 4, Scott Thompson, explains the construction process

NY Times: World Trade Center Complex Rising Rapidly

NY1 Exclusive: Developer Says WTC Project To Be Complete In Five, Six Years (Includes Video)

WTC Silverstein Deal Finalized, Finally | The New York Observer

Knowledge of the neighborhood, and of the culture and dynamics of New York City itself, is badly missing from this “debate.” Most of the opposition never frequents these parts of Lower Manhattan; they come from other places, often hundreds of miles away or farther, to protest.

I know that New Yorkers do view the 16 acre (65,000 m2) superblock where the World Trade Center buildings stood as hallowed ground. New Yorkers have been very offended by the petty squabbles between The Port Authority, WTC lease-holder Larry Silverstein and various insurers that delayed any work on rebuilding until April 27, 2006. The planned permanent memorial and visitor center isn’t completed despite promises it would be. The September 11 Families’ Association has often decried the crass commercial activity surrounding the site, with illegal vendors yelling to sell tourists tacky Chinese-made 9/11 memorabilia like Twin Towers snowglobes and bad commemorative booklets with inaccurate Engrish text and pirated photographs, for absurdly high prices. See Hawking History and Cutting Corners for details about the situation.
The fact that the site has shameless vendors hawking tasteless souvenirs but not the promised memorial is a festering wound for a lot of New Yorkers. THAT offends us living in Lower Manhattan, not an Islamic YMCA that might be built two full blocks north (conservatives respond: you’re not offended by this in your neighborhood! we’ll be offended x1000 FOR YOU!)
Insensitive out-of-towners asking everybody on the bus “how do I get to Ground Zero?!” like it’s just another tourist attraction and go to buy those tacky knickknacks is pretty offensive though, and many of us connect those clueless tourists with the clueless out-of-towners (who often take after the willful ignorance satirized here in The Onion) pouring into the city to protest in a neighborhood they’ve never frequented and don’t remotely understand. A recent Marist poll confirms what I’m saying, only 31% of Manhattan residents say the Cordoba House offends them, whereas opposition goes up the further away from the area they poll (53% against if you count all five boroughs, 68% if you ask people in all 50 states). Misunderstanding the situation and hating this is “roughly proportional to distance” from it (from a great Hendrik Hertzberg op-ed).

Yes, the actual World Trade Center site (can we stop calling it Ground Zero, a misused term from douchebag news anchors, please???) is hallowed ground, but the surrounding area? Those surrounding blocks are no different than the rest of this Lower Manhattan neighborhood. It’s a place constantly changing, lots of run down buildings waiting for redevelopment beside gleaming corporate towers, Wall Street titans, tons of office space, churches, mosques, old stores, tacky souvenirs, “adult entertainment,” and more, as market forces (self-interest, competition and supply and demand: AKA the invisible hand of the market) continually puts businesses and other facilities in the city, and because it’s NYC, everything is right next to everything (placed to serve the concentrated demand in such a tight, concentrated space of real estate). That’s right, the blocks surrounding the WTC have STRIP CLUBS, Burger Kings, everything–NOT “hallowed ground.”

What is already here

This is closer to the World Trade Center site than the Park51 project

Very much non-hallowed ground, an Off-Track Betting joint also on Park Place, even closer to the World Trade Center site than the Park51 project

I heard a host on NPR asking an outspoken opponent of Park51 what about the (actually a mosque) mosques also near the WTC, and he said “well, that preexisted 9/11 so they’re grandfathered in” but there should be no FURTHER mosques constructed in the area. When told that the Park51 project is modeled after the 92nd St Y, and is, by no definition (in Islam nor in the dictionary) “a mosque,” this guy brushed it off, disbelieving. What would he have said if told of the strippers, gambling and other low-brow establishments even closer to the WTC site? “How dare you say strip clubs aren’t sacred ground!!!”?? It’s like the opponents of this REALLY BELIEVE that this project (construction not slated to begin until 2015 or later) will be some huge domed mosque with minarets towering over “Ground Zero” and the muezzin’s call to prayer echoing off rubble and skeleton fragments as Taliban wield rifle butts to corral women in burqas. Nothing but fiction!!! It seems NOTHING can penetrate this fictitious narrative that the Right clings to, NOTHING. The machine (political/media machines) must have an enemy. The beast must be fed red meat to survive. The age-old bread and circus to distract the masses. The machine is all that matters–founding principles, the Constitution, even the physical safety of a religious minority BE DAMNED!

And it’s primarily fueled by lies and distortions ginned up by the shameless, ratings whores in cable news.

Is this crap driven by the media? Yes, yes! A thousand times yes!

Violence is escalating now. A Bangladeshi cab driver was asked if he was Muslim and then brutally stabbed in midtown. Five teens were arrested in Waterport, upstate NY for firing at a mosque and disrupting a religious service. This has grown and grown beyond just a media distraction to threaten the peace and stability of our country, as well as our Constitutional principles and national soul.

Is religious freedom and the right of private property trumped by angry mobs ginned up by hate and fear? Are we at war with Islam itself and reject anything related to Islam on U.S. soil? (anti-Islam forces are battling Muslims trying to build on their own private property in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, California…and arsonists attacked the construction in Tennessee.) Are we already at war with 1.5 BILLION believers? if so, time for a draft. What are we at war with? How can we win over Iraq and Afghanistan, which hinges on “hearts and minds,” if we paint all Muslims as terrorists hell-bent on destruction? IT’S DECISION TIME!

Amid all this turmoil, the mainstream media wall-to-wall hate speech, countrymen set against each other, friends de-friending each other on facebook, what should those of us who want a teaching moment about religious liberty, private property and anti-violence DO?

I made the video blog below, my response to the right-wing talking heads on your TVs and internets about this project, really a Y to be built in a disused Burlington Coat Factory IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD! SuperAleja edited in captions for the Nick impaired.

My main points: the Burlington Coat Factory isn’t hallowed ground. Park51 is not a mosque and it is not at “Ground Zero,” and Islam is not evil.

Warning: the clips of right-wing talking heads spewing hate speech I use may be offensive and difficult to watch. Dick Morris paints all Muslims as radical enemies and says “all the other (mosques)” are “command centers for terrorism,” Newt Gingrich calls the people behind the Park51 project “radical Islamists” and compares the building to “a Nazi sign in front of the Holocaust museum” and self-described Christian conservatives are shown burning the Koran. I cringe seeing these clips, but we must recognize the bigotry in this country in order to squelch it and lower the heat of this issue.

Transcript of the video blog:

Hello, this is Nick Dupree for nickscrusade.org. And because I live only 4 or 5 blocks from this proposed Islamic community Center that has consumed all of American politics, I thought I should comment.

[O'Reilly clip]

All the arguments against this thing rely on the idea that Islam is somehow related to 9/11. And it would be like putting a statue of Hitler next to a Holocaust memorial; it would be like building a Robert Oppenheim school of nuclear science at Hiroshima. All these arguments are pure crap. Islam has nothing to do with 9/11, any more than Christianity has to do with the KKK. By the same logic, we couldn’t build a church near Atlanta’s Millennium Park because of the Christian extremists who bombed it. Or they say, it’s “hallowed ground”.

Oh no, you must not build on this hallowed ground! Okay, come on. It’s two blocks, two full city blocks, away from the World Trade Center. City blocks in New York City are huge, and there’s an entire culture in each city block different from the other ones. The city blocks around the World Trade Center already have everything–there’s already mosques, there are churches, there are strip clubs, there’s adult bookstores, there’s everything already in the surrounding blocks. And the place that they want to put this thing, is in a disused Burlington Coat Factory, for pete’s sake.

[Burlington Coat Factory commercial]
[NYC landmark commission unanimously ruling that there's no reason to make the old Burlington Coat Factory an untouchable city landmark]

Come on! Stop telling me that the Burlington freaking Coat Factory is hallowed ground! It’s not on the site of the World Trade Center, and, it’s not a mosque, it’s an old Burlington Coat Factory. It’s going to be a community center like a YMCA, you know, with a gym, and a swimming pool, a culinary school, a food court, classrooms….. only a tiny part of it is going to be for prayer. And what’s so wrong about prayer? Don’t we have freedom of prayer, freedom of religion, and our very Constitution?

It’s not a mosque, there’s no minarets towering over the city. There’s no muezzin calling for prayer. It’s a crap argument. It shouldn’t even be a story, it’s a YMCA, for all intents and purposes. And they have the freedom to build what they want on their own property. It’s property rights, and a municipal land-use issue. It should be decided by those in the neighborhood, like myself.
Not the worst bigots in the country from a crazy church that wants to burn the Koran. [local Jacksonville news clip about this church's "Burn A Koran" day]
Pat Robertson [clip of Robertson talking about "Cordoba mosque" (sic) on the 700 Club]
Dick Morris, [clip of O'Reilly interviewing Morris]
Newt Gingrich, [clip of Gingrich spewing hate speech on the Fox News morning show]
should these bigots decide what goes in my neighborhood, or should I decide it? Really it’s a no-brainer. Angry bigots, thousands of miles away, should not be deciding this. I, and the rest of the neighborhood, should decide it. There’s nothing dangerous, there’s nothing sinister, about the people that are behind this project, who are moderates. And they’re being painted, along with the entire religion of Islam, as evil. If we’re going to paint an entire religion of a billion and a half people with the same brush, then why would they make peace with us, why would anything change? So, the hate that we’re hearing all over the media… friends de-friending each other on Facebook over this, it really needs to stop. It’s a YMCA. Please, let the neighborhood decide this.

Please spread this blog post and video. Truth, justice and the American way will only exist to the extent we make it exist.

Nick

PS
This is the 1337th post on nickscrusade.org. 1337!!!

I wish Congress would have put protecting the most disabled Americans ahead of uninsured able-bodied people, but they didn’t. For Congress, people like me are invisible.

The states slashing Medicaid the deepest (the Southern states) are the ones that will see the most new Medicaid eligibles thanks to “Health Care Reform.”

PERFECT
FISCAL
STORM

That means life for people with disabilities in the South is about to get even worse. Good thing I fled Alabama.

Medicaid, especially in the South, is increasingly in tatters. State Medicaid programs were slashed to the bone in the 90s thanks to “the Republican Revolution” and now there’s no fat left to trim, so they’re taking chainsaws to muscle and bone.

In the Wall Street Journal, it discusses a woman who’s had to sit in her own waste all day thanks to state budget cuts. I suppose the state hoped her bed sores and inevitable sepsis take her quickly, otherwise Medicaid will be on the hook for expensive hospital stays that would dwarf the cost of just leaving her f#$%ing home care uncut in the first place. I’ve seen this happen over and over again to people I fight for. It’s left me scarred to depths few of you could ever understand.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal piece, by Clare Ansberry.

FLORENCE, S.C—Tandem forces of shrinking state budgets and rising health-care costs have collided and struck a small brick ranch house in this rural town, home to Barbara Hickey.

Born with cerebral palsy, Ms. Hickey, now 67 years old, is confined to a motorized wheelchair. She lives alone and relies on certified nurse’s assistants to get her in and out of bed, bathed, clothed and fed.

In December, she received a letter from the South Carolina Department of Special Needs and Disabilities, saying her weekly 50 hours of personal-care help was being cut to 28 hours. That meant Ms. Hickey would get help for two hours in the morning and two hours at night. If she needed to use the bathroom in between, she would sit in a soiled diaper.

After several days of reduced care, the local office of the South Carolina Legal Services appealed the cuts on behalf of Ms. Hickey. Her hours have been restored pending the appeal.

Home health care—funded largely by Medicaid—generally costs less money than institutionalizing developmentally disabled people like Ms. Hickey. But the political reality is that it’s easier to cut back home services than to close a 24-hour facility, which can leave people with nowhere to go. Thus, some of the biggest cuts around the country are happening in the basic services that help the disabled cope at home.

South Carolina says it has little choice but to cut funding for Medicaid. It faced a $563 million deficit for the current fiscal year, and like other states must have a balanced budget. Medicaid, the joint federal-state health-insurance program for the poor and disabled, already consumes about 20% of its $5 billion budget and is one of its fastest growing costs.

The health-care program is on course to consume 40% of the budget of South Carolina in five years, and leaves little for anything else, says Gov. Mark Sanford. “It could force legislators to either cut further into bone in the areas of education, law enforcement and economic development, or raise taxes. Neither option is palatable.”

The state already is making painful cuts elsewhere. The state’s Department of Juvenile Justice has closed five group homes and cut 25 after-school programs. There are 1,000 fewer public-education teachers this school year than last.

Across the country, budget-strapped states are focusing on Medicaid. Created in 1965, it is now a $379 billion program, including state and federal funds. State spending grew an average 7.9% in fiscal 2009 as the economic crisis hit and more people signed up for Medicaid.

It was the highest growth rate since the last downturn six years ago. Spending is expected to keep growing at that pace for the next decade because of rising costs and growing enrollment.

But states don’t have much flexibility when it comes to what they can and can’t cut inside Medicaid. Although it is a state-managed system, the federal government pays a percentage of each state’s total costs and makes many of the Medicaid rules. Under federal Medicaid law, states must offer inpatient and outpatient hospital care, X-rays and lab services. They also have to cover nursing-home services and meet certain standards, such as staffing ratios.

There are further constraints this year. States can’t reduce Medicaid eligibility this year because of a condition attached to federal stimulus money, and under health-care reform, they can’t eliminate existing programs.

States also run up against other laws when they make deep cuts. Lawsuits have been filed in South Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, Mississippi and New York, claiming Medicaid cuts make it impossible for those with disabilities to live at home and that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
(I know the lawyers behind this class action. I say RIGHT ON!!!!)

Logically, states would cut the most expensive, least efficient services and keep the most cost-effective. But because of mandates and the need to save money quickly, that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

For example, home care—because relatives often provide some of the care—is generally cheaper than housing people with developmental disabilities in institutional facilities. In 1993, the average Medicaid cost for each person with disabilities was $48,500. At the end of 2008, the latest figures available, it cost an average $55,000. Adjusted for inflation, that actually represents a 23% decrease, largely as a result of more services being shifted away from costly institutions to the home, says Charlie Lakin, director of a University of Minnesota program that tracks services for the developmentally disabled.

But many in-home services, though critical to those receiving them, are optional. Furthermore, there aren’t many minimum standards set for in-home services, so it’s easier to cut them without violating funding requirements. There are fewer immediate consequences for the state when it cuts those services because families won’t generally abandon disabled relatives and leave states on the hook for housing.

Cutting home care could ultimately prove penny-wise and pound-foolish, however. It could push more people into institutions or large group homes because that is where services are guaranteed, even though institutional care is more expensive.

…

The department’s fiscal problems have been exacerbated by past spending decisions. A special state audit released in December 2008 showed that the department hadn’t provided many new services for which it had received funding and, as a result, it couldn’t recoup millions in federal matching Medicaid dollars. For example, the state spent less than $700,000 of $10 million allocated to serve autistic children, which resulted in the loss of $13.6 million in federal matching money. The state said it couldn’t ramp up the program fast enough because it couldn’t find qualified service providers. After the audit, the executive director of the department and four of the department’s seven commissioners resigned. The department has since implemented most of the recommendations made by the Legislative Audit Council.
(This same thing nearly happened with the NHTD –Nursing Home Transition & Diversion– waiver here in New York: the bureaucracy imposed on providers was SO ridiculous than very few participated, and the rules were so cumbersome for patients that, in the program’s first two years, only one patient downstate–me–transitioned home from a facility!)

Recent state cuts have targeted developmentally disabled people living at home. In December, families were told that some of their in-home support was being cut by as much as half.

Brian Phillips, a 37-year-old with cerebral palsy, was told that he was losing half of his personal-care hours. He can work a TV with a remote control but can’t dress or feed himself, or get in and out of his bed or wheelchair.

He lives alone with his father, James, 70. The elder Mr. Phillips, who has had open heart surgery and whose heart functions at only 26% of its capacity, cannot lift Brian on his own. He appealed the cuts and the hours were restored pending his appeal.

“These are cuts no one wants to make. They are very difficult for agencies to implement and they are very upsetting and very, very difficult for our families,” says Lois Park Mole, spokesperson for the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs.

People will generally do what they must to keep their disabled family member at home regardless of the cuts. At some point, however, even the most dedicated may not be able to continue, especially as their own health deteriorates.

…

In Aiken County, Board of Disabilities Executive Director Ralph Courtney says waiting lists for services are growing. There are more than 5,000 on waiting lists for various services, from residential programs to in-home programs.

“We want to give families hope to keep their family unit together, but in reality there is very little we can put in place to assist them,” says Mr. Courtney.

In-home support is cheaper, he says, than the alternative: group homes and larger residential programs that need to be maintained and staffed 24 hours a day. “But you can’t put people out on the street,” he says. “You can cut in-home support.”

Even though Ms. Hickey lives alone and needs help with nearly every aspect of daily living, it cost less to have her live in a house with 50 hours of personal care help than in a nursing home. Institutional care in South Carolina costs about $100,000 per person a year, compared to $39,000 for home and community services, according to the University of Minnesota research.

Read the entire article here: Disabled Face Hard Choices as States Slash Medicaid

How does littering the entire country with families destroyed by Medicaid cuts, jive with HEALTH CARE REFORM?

Honestly, I have gotten so many hate messages over the years, I’m now convinced that the Americans will continue to react with cold indifference, or, worse, celebration–”good riddance! No one is gonna force me to pay for you useless leeches!”–as Medicaid policy continues to cull out people with disabilities like me, UNABATED.

And you wonder why I’m so angry that I’d consider reconstructing the U.S. entirely? It’s because my every day experience involves the above Kafkaesque Medicaid policies harming me or the people I care about!

Nick

They aren’t going well. I followed the health care reform debate with a magnifying glass throughout, and came away deeply disgusted in both the final product and the process that made that sausage.

We desperately needed SERIOUS reform to the United States’ health care non-”system”; we’re in the richest country on Earth, but among OECD nations, our health care is at the back of the pack. No country with our level of wealth has our level of dysfunction in basic health care.

Instead of “the change we need,” what we got when Congress was done kowtowing to big insurance donors and passed the damn thing, was incremental change to half the health care industry (the private insurance market) while leaving the half the government actually runs, Medicaid and Medicare, nearly untouched. The goal of the Obama reforms is to give more Americans access to the health insurance market, more people buying insurance, with subsidies to help the poor afford private insurance. The health insurance industry stands to rake in BILLIONS! I was devastated with disappointment.

Meanwhile, the frenzy on the right wing about this bill (which was nearly a straight copy and paste of the 1993 Republican health care bill (full text of that bill, see for yourself) taking us to “socialism” are patently absurd! I’m like “really? The first thing communists do when they take over a country is enact tepid, insurer-friendly reforms that set up a free market exchange so more people can buy insurance plans? Seriously?” A volcano of right-wing rage exploded, including dozens of death threats and some vandalism across the country. How can anyone take the Tea Partiers and Glenn Beck seriously that health care reform is anything but weak-kneed incrementalism?

The Tea Party is more disconnected from reality than any political movement I’ve ever seen, and yet, they seem to be the only major grassroots force out there and their impact is unavoidable. They’re protesting more private insurance as socialism, railing against the lowest income taxes since the 1920s as communist tyranny (simultaneously, the largely graying group opposes changes in entitlements–”get the government out of my Medicare”) and now that they’re doing the one thing that Republican politicians really care about, picking off incumbents, you’re going to see the GOP tilt even more toward the radical fringe (a terrifying prospect).

Real sign, real Tea Partiers. Medicare is a government-run program.

Since the Tea Party guys’ claims have little relationship to reality, and none of them took to the streets when George W. Bush took us from record surpluses to record deficits, centralized power and forever gutted the Bill of Rights in the name of the War on Terra, the Tea Party has to be about something else. You never see the huge, angry backlash and anti-government “patriots” in funny hats and militia terrorists like McVeigh come out of the woodwork when THEIR party is in power! I’m guessing the root of the dispute here is the right-wing’s belief that government shouldn’t have the right to interfere in the market AT ALL, and add in some good ol’ American racial panic when the multicultural Democratic party took over from the virtually whites-only Republicans. Expect another McVeigh-style attack before Obama leaves office (there have already been several shooting rampages, including one targeting religious liberals at a Unitarian church, one targeting policemen for “gonna take our guns,” and one by a long-time rightist fringer targeting Jews at the National Holocaust Museum in DC).

All that furor against the health care reform bill, while, of course, from the disability rights perspective, Obama’s reforms don’t go nearly far enough, because they only make meaningful changes in private insurance, not Medicaid and Medicare, which most of us with disabilities rely on for our care.

Medicaid and Medicare are BADLY broken and rapidly going bankrupt, but aside from expanding eligibility so that more people will be crowding already scant Medicaid resources, nearly NO changes are being made there. The home care reforms I’ve devoted a decade to are not in the bill; America’s long-term care programs remain frozen in 1965, with government continually making expensive, antiquated segregation in nursing homes THE ONLY OPTION for the disabled, including children and young adults. The horribly dysfunctional patchwork of Medicaid waivers that I rail against? Despite years of demands for change from many quarters, including the National Governors Association, those injustices will remain firmly intact, untouched by “comprehensive health care reform.” People like me will continue struggling to wring bad care from what’s left of Medicare and Medicaid; our lot will not improve at all after “Health Care Reform” takes effect. I am fighting this battle every day, and the problems with hospitals closing due to inadequate payments from Medicaid, not being able to find doctors who still take Medicaid patients, and more, just continue to escalate for me.
Meanwhile, the insular Washington leadership is curiously detached and unaware of what’s happening to their own Medicaid and Medicare programs right under their noses. President Obama made me sick when, during the health care reform “summit,” Congressman Peter Roskam (R – Illinois’ 6th district) asked him, “how can we expand Medicaid when in some counties, NO doctors that take Medicaid are left standing?” and the gist of Obama’s response was “my word, what is this that you speak of my good fellow? if this is so, we can look at raising reimbursement rates!” Everyone knows that they’ll never hike Medicaid funding, and that’s why so many in Congress sought special provisions in the bill (e.g. “The Cornhusker Kickback”) for the feds to cover their states’ new unfunded mandates to expand eligibility to millions of additional people. These expansions are not going to go well, particularly in poorer states, especially since the “kickbacks” to soften the fiscal blow were all removed from the bill with reconciliation.

The failure to even attempt changing the glaring problems with Medicaid and Medicare has left me more jaded and frustrated than ever, to the point [b]I can no longer call myself a Democrat[/b]. Especially since I know that Congress exhausted itself scraping through this tinkering with private insurance, and most likely won’t have the political will or sense of urgency to revisit health care issues for another 10, 20 years. I hate being stuck with our dysfunctional Medicaid system but that’s what people with disabilities are, stuck.

While some pundits hailed the passage of health care as a colossal foreign policy victory, proving America can tackle huge issues, marking our “comeback” as problem-solver on the world stage, I see the opposite. I see a government that lacks the dynamic, bold decision-making capability that these ultra-competitive times demand, a Congress that always cops out or kicks the can down the road in the face of huge problems. I see an America so paralyzed by corruption and red tape that we’ll never catch up with competitors (people in India have already stuck a fork in the U.S., considering the Chinese their only real rival for economic dominance at this point).
Referring to China, I’ve often heard President Obama use the rallying cry, “why can’t we be the world leader in technology again?! Why can’t we have the fastest trains in the world?” Well Mr. President, I would answer him, we will never build trains and train tracks faster than China, because we have so much “environmental impact study” and “archeological impact study” red tape, followed by years of hearing lawsuits from anyone who doesn’t like the project, that it takes an average of 10 years to get any major transportation project off the ground, much less completed. China, meanwhile, simply makes a decision on future train projects, then enforces it by any means necessary. How can we compete with that given our bureaucracy?

While those panicked about executive power right now can take a sigh of relief, because presently it seems Obama can’t even take a $#!T without 60 votes from the Senate, I worry that, before long, fierce foreign competition, falling standards of living, plus a completely paralyzed Congress will lead the American people to demand a dictatorship. Another sudden economic crash, or, G-d forbid, successful terrorist attacks (by Islamist nutbags or another McVeigh) and I fear that the Republic will gasp its last gasp.

The only real solutions are solutions as big as the problems, pushed through by reform groups that aren’t just as dysfunctional as the institutions they’re fighting.

Big Solution #1: Ban campaign contributions (bribing) to public officials, as this has limited access to the halls of power ONLY to moneyed interests, as well as fostering a culture where those who spend more time working for the people than working on fundraising are immediately replaced by candidates with backing from deep-pockets, leaving only self-interested scoundrels remaining. Free speech must be immutable, overturn all McCain-Feingold restrictions on when and where and how candidates can advertise and get their message out, independent expenditures by corporations, unions, advocacy groups and private citizens are unfettered, you can say whatever you want, whenever you want with your free speech, because that’s what the 1st Amendment guarantees–you’re just not allowed to bribe public officials with campaign contributions and rig the system. Campaigns will be publicly financed like in Canada, the UK, and most of Europe. Speech is speech. MONEY IS NOT SPEECH!

Big Solution #2: Breaking the Duopoly is crucial, but WILL NOT happen without a change in the Constitution to allow Proportional Representation via STV (“Instant Runoff Voting,” AKA Single Transferable Vote, as is done in Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland) to bring more parties into Congress. Allowing more parties will enable more principled views to be expressed (because, for example, if you want less intrusive government and less taxation, you won’t have to vote Republican for the tax cuts and get warrantless surveillance, anti-gay crap and anti-immigration laws too as part of the package, instead, you can vote for a party that closely matches your views). More parties also mean regional parties representing genuine regional people’s interests get into the mix. And parties would have to work together to coalesce into viable majority coalitions, and would have to curb the extremist nonsense to keep their coalitions together. Overall, Proportional Representation allows for a much, much healthier democracy, whereas currently we have the opposite of healthy democracy, the Duopoly nearly always wins 100% control of the House and Senate with the support of as little as 20-25% of eligible voters, at the cost of all other parties and their viewpoints.

Big Solution #3: This is my most radical view, but failing Solution #2, maybe we could be far more functional as a people and be much better represented, plus have no more imperialist ventures sapping our wealth, if we were to make a new version of the old Articles of Confederation for the new Information Age that separates the country into 6 or so federated regional powers (see: superstates) to avert any FURTHER deadlock, dysfunction, or civil war (each new state under parts of the current Constitution they elect to have, but empowered to each craft very different rules, based on their shared culture, for how society should work). I’m talking about ending the United States as we know it, replacing it with a federation of nearly autonomous federated republics named “the United Federation of America” (UFA! UFA! UFA!) Each federated republic would choose their own military spending and so on. Think of The Federation (United Federation of Planets) in Star Trek! That’s the type of idea I’m batting around here.

Click to enlarge the map!! In this vision of the future, South Carolina even secedes from the Southern Republic, because, hey, they've wanted to secede since birth.

I’m going even farther than “states’ rights.” I’m altering how the country operates–root and stem overhaul–by almost completely eliminating federal centralization as we know it. Why go this far? Because the paralysis of government has become so bad over the past 30 years that we have to consider crazy, radical ideas we would have shunned in disgust before.
Southern culture should never block Northeasterners’ ambitions for reform in New York where I live now, and visa versa. I moved to NY in large part to escape Alabama’s far-right public policy that was blocking my advancement, but while it’s better here, those policies (tax cuts causing huge deficits, social service cuts, the corporatist approach that keeps the institutional bias in Medicaid alive) FOLLOWED ME to New York because they’re federal policies too. And I believe the policies that affect me would be very different if only a Northeastern bloc could decide their own policies, vs. a national consensus accommodating Southern, Western, everyone’s views being forced on the Northeastern states. National compromises should no more be forced on the Northeastern states than on the Southern states (with some exceptions: states can’t disregard the certain parts of the current Constitution, like reinstating slavery or segregation).

This won’t happen any time soon (there is no public support for it) but maybe we’d all be better off if it did…

I just know that the only real solutions here are solutions as big as the problems. Without trying at least one of these big solutions, get ready to shout “HAIL CAESAR” and go full Banana Republic, while China becomes undisputed world hegemon.

Nick

In Scrooge McDuck’s first **named** appearance in a cartoon (his first actual appearance was in Spirit of ’43) he teaches Huey, Dewey and Louie about the economy, from the origins of the types of the currency to taxes to inflation, budgeting and investing.

It’s good stuff. Great primer on finance for all ages.

Available in HD.

(I notice in 1967, Scrooge’s budgeting pie didn’t include health care… hmmmm.)

Nick

I couldn’t think of a better candidate for Surgeon General than Dr. Benjamin, and I was surprised and pleased that someone from my old hometown that I am familiar with hit the big-time!

President Obama announces Regina Benjamin as his nominee for Surgeon General

Dr. Benjamin works in a clinic in Bayou La Batre just south of Mobile, Alabama (where I’m from). As far as I know, she’s the first Surgeon General to come directly from the trenches caring for the poor, not a hot-shot surgeon who never sees the outside of a hospital, a public health administrator, or a leading health care CEO well-known among country club political donors. ALL Surgeons General should be from the hands-on world, with experience with the hard realities of getting appropriate health care for America’s poor majority.

No one knows these tough realities better than Regina Benjamin, who is one of the only doctors in the small shrimping town of Bayou la Batre along the Gulf of Mexico, where old French Catholic and old Anglo Catholic families have fished and shrimped for centuries, and South Vietnamese (Catholic) shrimpers fled as war refugees after the Vietnam war ended. Bayou la Batre attracted many Vietnamese families because it’s one of the only rural shoreside shrimping villages in America similar to theirs back home, where they can live in a similar environment and work with fishing nets in the ways their families have for millennia, no need to re-train for a new job. The Vietnamese shrimpers and fishermen have increasingly edged the old shrimping families out of the business with their willingness to live on their boats all season, and a seemingly infinite capacity for thrift, bartering fish for gasoline to run their boats and other clever ways of lowering costs. I once knew an ex-army medic and LPN who’s a direct descendant of Joesph Bosarge, the French-born guy who founded Bayou la Batre with a land grant from Spain in 1786, and he told me a lot about the area. I’ve visited Bayou la Batre a few times. I’ve also talked to several Vietnamese kids about it (some of them I went to high school with; despite being poor they were always #1 in the year-end academic rankings, way ahead of me, though I was high up there). My point is, I know exactly where Regina Benjamin is coming from, and it ain’t the same board rooms and government offices where they found most of the previous Surgeons General. She runs a free clinic, and treats poor whites, poor blacks and poor Asians (often by having one of the English-speaking schoolkids translateinterpret her medical instructions into Vietnamese). Like an early 20th century country doctor, Dr. Benjamin does house calls, and accepts whatever patients can pay, even if they can’t, or even if all they can do is barter her part of their catch. This is a doctor who has risen to the top not through the usual cutthroat tactics, not through being the best at what everyone else is doing, but by charting a different path, advocating for and caring for the most needy, showing us what the focus of the medical world should be, public service.

I first became familiar with Regina Benjamin when I was fighting my famous two-year campaign to get Alabama Medicaid to stop stripping home care coverage for people like me just because we turn 21 (full story here). Local WPMI TV news interviewed her about my fight (as she then was director-designate of the Alabama State Medical Association) and she made supportive comments and said of course Alabama Medicaid should cover those who really need it, and that they’re obviously overlooking some gaps.

Regina Benjamin advocating for Nick's Crusade, August 2001

I don’t know of any other doctor who would stick her neck out for justice for kids she’s never met. Dr. Benjamin is a special person, exactly the kind of person who should be put in a powerful position to affect change. This nomination is one thing President Obama is doing RIGHT.

Bayou la Batre is one of the few remaining Catholic fishing communities that still does the annual Blessing of the Fleet in hopes of a bountiful catch that year. Dr. Benjamin is Catholic also, and likely has strong moral convictions that have led her to devote her career to the poor. Her clinic, along with all of Bayou la Batre and much of Mobile (including our backyard), was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. She rebuilt the clinic, only for it to burn to the ground the night before its grand reopening. Then she rebuilt again. Like a heroine in a Biblical fable or something, each crushing tragedy made her stronger, gained her more support and attention, only pushed her higher. She was awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by Pope Benedict XVI for exceptional service to the people of her diocese.

Incredibly, now Dr. Benjamin has the far-right fringe calling her “baby killer” because she’s never taken a hard-line against abortion (which is understandable from a doctor in an impoverished community that sees too many rapes and pregnancies endangering the mother). Even dumber, people are attacking her for her weight! These critics have probably never been to the Deep South; she is svelte by Alabama standards! And they’re also clueless about the expectations black men have for the women in their community re: size (maybe I should do a post about the differences in cultural expectations).

Anyhow, the haters need to get a grip. This nomination is going to sail through faster than a shrimp boat in a hurricane!

Regina Benjamin is probably Obama’s best nomination yet.

Nick

The Pharaoh is now drafting his plan to reform America’s insane health care system, but has said that long-term care, which Medicaid is the number one provider of, will not be reformed in this package. How can they reform health care without addressing long-term care, one of the biggest expenses straining state budgets and bankrupting American families? It is bizarre that legislators and voters could ever see this as a separate issue, when it is one of the worst examples of how badly the system is broken. Institutions cost the most of any long-term care option, but are enshrined in law as mandatory, while home care services, the least expensive option, are slashed to the bone by states because they are “optional.” States are still forcing people with disabilities into institutions, the most costly option, because of the antiquated and discriminatory institutional bias in federal Medicaid law that both parties continue to choose to ignore.

The Democrats created the institutional bias when they drafted Medicaid law 44 years ago. Now, amidst their push to overhaul the system, they are ignoring calls from activists to rectify this injustice. On Tuesday, ADAPT activists, after months of letters and phone calls did not produce results, visited 25 Democratic offices around the country to demand that meetings be scheduled to hear their concerns, and that the Democrats apologize for 44 years of unjust policies that have stolen billions from taxpayers and stolen millions of productive lives from their communities. Here is a video clip of activists visiting Senator Baucus’ office in Missoula, MT and stating their case. Other activists were camped out at the DNC headquarters in Washington DC, keeping vigil until their demands are finally heard. 44 years is enough of this injustice; it’s time to change.

IT’S TIME.

We all owe ADAPT our support. They are putting themselves on the line, facing arrest, threats, getting carried out of the DNC by police, their accessible portable toilet was confiscated, but they’re still speaking up when no one else will, for those in nursing homes that are not being heard. Pharaoh, LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Go Down Moses – Louis Armstrong

Nick

Just as in Kyrgyzstan’s revolution, in Iran, mostly young people, tired of decades of authoritarian rule, took to the streets en masse to overturn a fraudulent election that had ratified the rule of a dictator. In Kyrgyzstan, the protests were so loud, the people so united, that old Soviet boss Askar Akayev saw his power base erode to the point that continuing in office was too risky and untenable; protesters seized the presidential offices, and he ended up escaping to Russia. In Iran, this didn’t happen; the regime didn’t budge. Why? Because the entrenched support base loyal to the regime, especially the Sepah (Revolutionary Guards) and the Basij, wouldn’t allow it.

A photo of Basij volunteers drilling in their drill uniforms. (Credit: Vahid Salemi / AP)

Who are the Basijis? The best way for an American to understand them is as a combination of the Boy Scouts, the revolutionary Minutemen, the Taliban and the legend of the Persian Hashshashins (Assassins) who would take themselves out with their foes. The Basijis are a volunteer militia operated as an auxiliary of the Sepah, and take orders directly from Sepah commanders and the Supreme Leader, not the president. The Basijis are mostly religious youth, and they are charged with protecting the regime, along with Shia Islam and its people’s “virtues.” To show their Islamic virtue they may work in mosques, help elderly people cross the street, give gasoline to people stranded in their cars on the side of the road, or, on the other side of the coin, intimidate and assault Iranians dressed in “immoral” attire, and haul suspected dissidents into the nearest police station. The Basij responds to threats to the regime within and without; they played a key role in the Iran-Iraq war, with mass “human wave” martyr attacks by teenage Basijis to clear minefields and terrify Saddam’s troops, and they have often crushed Iranians citizens’ demonstrations, most notably during the uprising that followed the June 12 rigged election of this year, and the student protests of July ’99.

The founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Basij (pronounced BAH-siege) when he became leader of the new Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. It was a shrewd move. Khomeini knew that he would always have a lot of enthusiastic extreme-fundamentalist young men on his hands, and it’s smarter to protect your Right flank, honor them and harness their energy to protect the regime, than it is to let them fester ignored until they become something that could overthrow him. In Persian, the Basij (literally, “Mobilization”) are also called Basij-e Mostaz’afin, “Mobilization of the Oppressed,” and there is a clear “class warfare” element to them. The Basijis are mostly poor, young, and fundamentalist, and they are often pitted against the mostly secular, modernizing upper class. President Ahmadinejad was a Basij, with the Basij culture and chip on the shoulder, and he framed the rich elite as decadent, corrupt, and “oppressing” the hard-working, pious, rural poor.

Ahmadinejad and fellow Basij veterans, in ceremonial uniform

For Iran’s rulers, this has them sitting pretty: in addition to having the judiciary, military and local officials firmly behind them, they can rally a religious proletariat to the defense of Islamic government whenever needed, with angry young Basijis as the head of the spear. Despite dissent from other Ayatollahs (Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, Ayatollah Mohajerani, Ayatollah Rafsanjani), the government’s lessened legitimacy and growing feeling in Iran’s cities that the current regime’s enforcers (Sepah, Basij, local police) are no better than the Shah’s brutal secret police (the SAVAK) that they united against in 1979, this regime is deeply entrenched, and the Persian people* will likely be watched over by Ayatollah Khomeini’s evil glare everywhere for years to come.

For more information on the Basij:
The New Yorker: Jon Lee Anderson: Understanding The Basij

Basij Violence In The News:
LA Times: Tehran’s streets erupt after a key cleric speaks

From The Miami Herald, a cartoon showing "New Boss, Same As The Old Boss," the Islamic Republic attacking their own people just as the Shah did

Contrasting brave Iranians willing to protest despite very real risk to life and limb with couch potato Americans doing little for their freedom, I feel like I’m in a nation of proles. Like Iranians, we Americans used to be a proud and revolutionary people. I hope that isn’t completely dead.

Nick

*For the uninitiated, Iranians are sometimes still referred to as “Persians,” and their country was called “Persia” by outsiders from the 5th century BC up until 1935, when Reza Shah Pahlavi issued a decree requesting everyone use Iran, meaning “the land of Aryans,” which Iranians had been calling their country since about 1000 BC. For more information, see Iran Naming Convention. Iranians are an Aryan/Indo-European people, and in physical appearance, look little different from the related Caucasians in the nearby Caucasus region. They are white people. Too many Americans lump Iraq and Iran together and say “bomb all them A-rabs,” which couldn’t be more wrong. Iranians are not Arabs, have a proud history and culture totally distinct from Arabs, speak a language (with grammar similar to many contemporary European languages) unintelligible to those who only understand Arabic, and Iranians’ bitter rivalry and wars with the proto-Arab and Arab peoples of the Fertile Crescent span back to the first written records of the region recorded by Sumerians. Saddam Hussein was infamous for his hate of Persians.

“you keep on tellin’ me
‘baby I love ya,’
but MARRIAGE
just ain’t your game

You tell me I can have anything I want
but whhhyy can’t I have your name?

LYIN’
BACKSLIDIN’

callin’ each other brother
with your hand in his pocket
hypocrisy! yeah“

–Millie Jackson, singing her song “Hypocrisy” on Soul Train to promote her “It Hurts So Good” album, 1973.

Gov. Mark Sanford admitted last week that he "created a fiction" about where he was. He was actually in Argentina committing adultery

Cartoon by Rex Babin, Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2009

This is the same Mark Sanford that, when asked about philandering Republican Congressman Bob Livingston (who resigned when his extramarital affair was exposed right before officially taking over for philandering Republican Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House), said “I’m sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out the president lied under oath, [Livingston's] situation was not under oath. But the bottom line is, he still lied. He lied under a different oath and that is the oath to his wife. So it has got to be taken very seriously.” (video proof)

Mark Sanford built his career on his moral rigidity and finger-pointing at those who weren’t as “upright” as him. Anyone who stepped outside the box became fodder for Sanford’s sanctimonious grandstanding. Especially gays. Sanford is one of the gay-hatingest politicians in America. One of his primary campaign platforms was how urgent it is to “defend marriage” against the gay threat. Were you “defending marriage” when you repeatedly begged your wife for permission to cheat, governor? (she refused to condone such behavior). Why is it that the “red states” most eager to “defend marriage” make up eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates? (according to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract)

Cartoon by Dwane Powell, Raleigh News and Observer

Democrats cheat just as much as Republicans, but they don’t campaign for office with Bible-beating messages attacking those less righteous than them. That Bible they are waving actually contains many more condemnations of adultery than condemnations of homosexuality, which, if you listen to some conservatives, sounds like the ONLY thing the Bible talks about. The sages understood how destructive adultery is to families and communities. Unfortunately, politicians don’t.

These are men who love themselves deeply, need to be recognized and relish approval. These are men who adore getting praise and who often are surrounded by swarms of sycophants. These are men who, in some cases, need to exercise power and sometimes can become drunk from it. These are men who think the rules don’t apply to them and who think they’re untouchable.

Source: AP: Analysis: Why do politicians cheat?

There’s a culture of infidelity in every state capitol. I saw it in the Senate offices in Montgomery, AL; with the way Senators’ secretaries look at their Senators and how they interact like spouses, you’d have to be really oblivious to not notice what’s going on. State legislatures take some of the most arrogant and entitled men in a state, and, for half a year, assemble them in the capital city, far away from their wives. With scumbags like politicians, some infidelity is inevitable in that situation.

Next time a politician is presenting himself as moral arbiter, remember all of this.

Nick

Related Bloggery

Field Negro: The “hiking” excuse.

My history professor friend Bridgett and I discussed this on her blog post about Kramer, “Same-sex sexuality in 17th century British North America,” and she explains that real historians can’t “out” people from the past as gay without definitive, absolute proof, or they’ll be filleted by critics, discredited and risk their careers.   Not a problem for Kramer, as he has no historian cred to risk.

To me, his biggest fallacy is that simply because no wives were available for many Jamestown colonists, they would “turn to each other.” It’s not something you can CHOOSE like that, and he of all people should know that. I could no more choose attraction to males amid a girl-shortage than Kramer could choose attraction to women.

Does anyone really believe that whenever there’s a scarcity of women in a society, large amounts of men will “turn to each other?” This made me turn my thoughts to China. Recently, a gay family member told me because of the lack of females in China and the fact that, mathematically, tens of millions of men will never be able to find women to marry (true) that millions will turn to gay sex. I don’t think that’s what will happen — it’s not A CHOICE!

Numerous articles about the gender imbalance in China (caused by abortions of potential girls and infanticide after birth) have been written. I recommend:

• New York Times: Chinese Bias for Baby Boys Creates a Gap of 32 Million

• NBC: China Begins to Face Sex-Ratio Imbalance

• Washington Post: ‘Bare Branches’ and Danger in Asia

In this Washington Post op-ed, Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, the authors of “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population,” wrote:

The old saying goes, “When you pick up one end of a stick, you also pick up the other.” When a society prefers sons to daughters to the extent found in parts of contemporary Asia, it not only will have fewer daughters, but it also will create a subclass of young men who are apt to have difficulty finding wives and beginning their own families. Because son preference has been a significant phenomenon in Asia for centuries, the Chinese actually have a term for such young men. They are called guang gun-er or “bare branches,” because they are branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit. The girls who should have grown up to be their wives were disposed of instead.

We have already seen in China the resurrection of evils such as the kidnapping and selling of women to provide brides for those who can pay the fee. Scarcity of women leads to a situation in which men with advantages — money, skills, education — will marry, but men without such advantages — poor, unskilled, illiterate — will not. A permanent subclass of bare branches from the lowest socioeconomic classes is created. In China and India, for example, by the year 2020 bare branches will make up 12 to 15 percent of the young adult male population.

Should the leaders of these nations be worried? The answer is yes. Throughout history, bare branches in East and South Asia have played a role in aggravating societal instability, violent crime and gang formation.

Though the existence of sizable numbers of bare branches is not a necessary condition for instability — the sex ratios of Rwanda in 1994 were normal, for example — it plays a significant role in the amplification of levels of instability and threat.

Consider the fact that in the mid-1800s, a predominantly bare-branch rebel group in the north of China called the Nien, in combination with rebel groups farther south, openly attacked imperial troops and forts, taking control of territory inhabited by 6 million Chinese citizens before it was quashed by the government years later.

More recently, Indian scholars have noted a very strong relationship between sex ratios and violent crime rates in Indian states, which persists even after controlling for a variety of other possible variables. And worldwide, more violent crime is committed by unmarried young adult men than by married young adult men.

According to sociologists, young adult men with no stake in society — of the lowest socioeconomic classes and with little chance of forming families of their own — are much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression with other bare branches.

Historically, governments facing a growing population of bare branches find themselves caught in a dilemma. They must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men but at the same time may find the cost of doing so is heavy. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.

At some point, governments consider how they can export their problem, either by encouraging emigration of young adult men or harnessing their energies in martial adventures abroad. There are very few good options for governments that find that their greatest threat emanates not from an external source but from an internal one.

Years ago I saw Hudson and Den Boer’s book discussed on CNN, and in that segment, they argued that the explosive growth of Islamic conquests…

This map shows the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate. In dark red, is territory conquered by Mohammed himself (from 622-632 he consolidated all of the Arabian Peninsula), in pink are the territories conquered in 632-661 by the "Patriarchal Caliphate" (all of the Levant, Egypt, present-day Libya, Iraq, Iran and present-day Georgia in the South Caucasus) and, in beige, the lands taken during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750; much of Central Asia, including Samerkand, present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all of the Maqreb of West Africa and Spain).

…in the 7th and 8th centuries wasn’t just “to spread the faith by the sword,” but, because the prevalence of polygamy on the Arabian Peninsula made it impossible for large numbers of angry young fundamentalist males with swords to ever find wives. Large groups of them invaded Egypt, Persia, etc., where the population of widowed women had just grown considerably from the war. Hudson and Den Boer suggested a similar phenomenon may happen in China.

We are already seeing the consequences of gender imbalance in China that Hudson and Den Boer’s research predicts: increased sex trafficking, prostitution becoming more widespread and more lucrative. Will we see China invading neighboring countries as well?

What do you think? Please comment below.

Nick

Director of HIV/AIDS Policy and a senior disability advisor on the Domestic Policy Council, Jeff Crowley, speaks at a Candidates' Form at the George Mason Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics

Jeff Crowley from the president’s Domestic Policy Council met with the board of the NDRN (National Disability Rights Network, formerly NAPAS¹) this week and a summary of how Crowley conveyed the administration’s views on the Community Choice Act was leaked to several listserves online. The disability community deserves to know what the thinking inside their government really is, so I am publicizing this text:

Jeff Crowley from President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council came to our NDRN Board meeting this week. I am certain many people on this list know him but this is the first time I’ve seen him. Here is a summary of what he said and how he said it.

He certainly confirmed that it is the administration’s intent to offer the initial health care proposal without including long term care.

He went on the express his regret at the outcome of the ADAPT action two weeks ago. He described himself as having “worked with ADAPT in the past” and certainly assumed no sense of apology or responsibility for the arrests or the dismissive comments of his colleague, just “live with it.”

In a very guarded and cautious way he expressed the desire to deal with long term care in the second session of this Congress. He described CCA as ‘one way to deal with it.’ But he also said there were other ways. As I said I never saw him before and maybe he’s always this taciturn. But his comments about CCA were lukewarm at best.

Several times he cautioned against ‘high expectations’ and was >generally very flat and careful in his delivery.

Others have more experience and insight in this but my impression was that if we are to succeed with CCA the thrust is going to come from Congress and that the administration is being very cautious.

For what it’s worth …

1. The National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS). .I won the “2003 Advocacy Award” from NAPAS and traveled to Washington, DC to receive the award and deliver an acceptance speech.

But overall she’s a moderate “pragmatist,” in the Obama mold.

Sonia Sotomayor LOLz

The Far-Right Crazy Land Place: As I reported yesterday, Glenn Beck suggested that empathy is bad and can lead to Naziism, so Obama’s “empathetic” judicial nominees should be rejected.  Sean Hannity called  her a “radical.” Rush Limbaugh compared her to David Duke.   Some are concerned how “platos de arroz, gandoles y perni,” her Puerto Rican foods, will affect her judging, and Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic allowed an anonymous source to attack Sotomayor as “not that smart” (because, obviously, doofuses can graduate summa cum laude from Princeton).

The corpse-esque visage of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell takes the podium (alongside Sen. Ensign and Sen. Cornyn) to demand that Supreme Court appointees only show empathy for state authorities and multinational corporations

With the public opinion of Sotomayor high (polls show 45% of likely voters saying the Senate should confirm her, and only 29% who say they should not) this process will be more about trying the Republicans than her. How badly will they shoot themselves in the foot?

Bush holding his phone upside-down, and the caption "You're Doing It Wrong"

Glenn Beck is stupid.

Several weeks ago, I slapped down an idiotic routine from Beck, and now, he’s at it again.

This time, he’s making outrageous comments and going completely off the rails about new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The rallying cry of the Republicans against Obama’s nominations has been “EMPATHY IS BAD!!!”   This from the same group that spent the last three decades beating us over the head with their holy book that commands love and empathy.  They don’t want empathetic judges! They want automatons that will apply the LETTER OF THE LAW without “gay” things like “feelings” or “considering the situation.” And if you break away from this particular party line, you’re THE ENEMY, on par with Hitler.

Beck cites Hitler example to state that “empathy leads you to very bad decisions”

Right, Glenn, when I think of empathy, the first person that comes to mind is HITLER.

Glenn suggests that Hitler’s extermination program to cull people with disabilities (he calls it out by name, Action T-4) was borne of empathy, and thus no judge with empathy should be on the bench.

Hitler’s euthanasia program had nothing to do with “mercy” or “ending suffering,” and everything to do with their sicko “racial hygiene” policies to achieve a “pure” master race.  The notion that the Nazis were “empathetic”–does he think there’s something warm and fuzzy about old Adolf?–puts Mr. Beck decidedly aboard the Crazy Train.

Beck has focused his show lately on beating the drum against empathy.  In a very unfortunate move, he mocked people wanting diversity in our system, joking, “we need a blind, deaf, handicapped Asian woman!” for the Supreme Court (source). He just has to continue his tradition of mocking disability.

And he really misunderstood the Hebrew Bible.  He tried to make a point, and really failed. Dude, you’re doing it wrong.

YES, King Shlomo was empathetic! Because he knew that by pretending to expose the baby to danger, the real mother would reveal herself, and the dispute would be settled. Come on. Someone who recovered from alcoholism through Mormonism should know a lot more about the Bible than that.

PaulCanning forwards an urgent request from IRAQI LGBT:

IRAQI LGBT started to establish a network of safe houses inside Iraq in March 2006.

As of today, we have only one safe house, we had to consider closing down three of them in the last couple of months, because we are unable to keep paying the rent and other expenses.

The members of our group inside Iraq urgently need funds to open at least five safe houses. These funds will allow us to keep the five safe houses running, and provide safety, shelter, food and many other needs for our LGBT friends inside Iraq. Any funds we receive that go beyond what we need for these five safe houses could be used to open more safe houses in the near future. We desperately need to add more because we have so many urgent cases in other cities. We receive requests for shelter every day, but we are not able to help yet.

Source: http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/2009/05/support-safe-houses-project-for-lgbt.html

In recent months, Iraq’s mullahs have directed a vicious purge of gay Iraqis. Evidently, the Sadrist movement (who have plenty of supporters within the current regime) and the Iraqi government reached an agreement, and if gays aren’t simply shot by militiamen, they are jailed, executed, or tortured to death by the authorities. Many have died via extrajudicial execution, while others were officially imprisoned and executed by hanging. Still others (about 200 in Baghdad) are on death row awaiting hanging.

Activists will protest for the human rights of LGBT Iraqis Sunday outside President Obama’s home in Chicago, and implore him to act.

This year in Chicago, the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) is organizing the city’s IDAHO event as a protest against the Obama administration’s continuing silence about rampant anti-gay violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The protest will take place at 2 PM, Sunday, May 17th outside of the Obamas’ Chicago residence at the corner of Hyde Park Boulevard (5100 S.) and Greenwood (1100 E.).

Over the past month, several news outlets have reported an escalating, officially sanctioned campaign to torture and execute gays in Iraq, promoted both by Shi’ite clerics and by the Shi’ite-dominated government which is closely allied with the United States.

As the New York Times reported April 7, “In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge [Baghdad] Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word ‘pervert’ in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.” And as the Huffington Post reported May 3rd, “According to Iraqis and human rights workers interviewed for this post, some sort of understanding was reached between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army to ‘cleanse’ Iraq of homosexuals.”

Tortures committed reportedly include gluing the anuses of gay men shut, and then force-feeding them diarrhea-inducing medications which cause agonizing pain followed by death.

Back in 2005, the country’s leading Shi’ite cleric said that gays and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed” and that “the people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” After some protests this language was removed from the cleric’s website, and the anti-gay campaign appeared to subside.

However, over the past month, the campaign in Iraq to murder gays has ramped up again as “Sadr City’s Muslim clerics have reportedly urged the faithful to destroy homosexuality in Iraqi society and police have undertaken an effort to arrest and jail gay men,” said United Press International.

Source: LGBT asylum news: Chicago protest about anti-gay pogram in Iraq

Nick’s Crusade, strongly believing that disability rights activists shouldn’t be stuck in their traditional “silos,” but should be supporting the inalienable human rights of all people, endorses this protest Sunday. Obama should take heed, and, if he can’t pull strings in Baghdad, at the very least he could grant asylum in the U.S. to those who are now hiding in fear.

I don’t have any money (I know; I’m a charitable case myself) but if I did, helping LGBT Iraqis who’re running for their lives is a very worthy cause.    For more information, see the IRAQI LGBT blog.

Regardless of your opinions on the gay issue, if you have friends and family that are gay (I do) and wouldn’t want them killed, you should pay attention to the persecution of gays around the world, and raise awareness.

Nick

It’s a work in progress, so please comment and suggest changes or additions.

Nick’s Crusade Statement of Inalienable Rights

Marion Barry, who won a City Council seat after he lost the the Mayor’s office amid a drug scandal, was the only councilman to cast a “no” vote.

He warned of an African-American uprising.

“All hell is going to break lose,” Barry said while speaking to reporters. “We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.”

Source

I’m totally cool with free speech opposing these policies (“I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”) and peaceful protests should always be protected.  But threatening insurrection really goes beyond acceptable, and begins to cross over into dark and violent territory.

This made me realize something. This is the same violent homophobia we’ve seen from African countries and some Afro-Caribbean nations like Jamaica.  For people of African descent of such disparate locations, backgrounds and situations to respond so similarly to gays, this stuff must be embedded deeply in Africans’ cultural DNA, their collective memory.

Did you know that 38 African countries (a supermajority) have laws banning homosexuality?  Four of those (Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia, all Islamic states) impose the death penalty on anyone found to be gay, while the rest sentence gays to pay fines, go to prison or labor camps, sometimes for over a decade.¹

West Africa

When the Episcopal Church USA ordained an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire, it effectively shattered the Anglican Communion, with most African churches breaking away, and some dioceses in the US joining the African provinces.²    The Anglican Church of Nigeria, the worldwide Communion’s second-most populous province, issued a particularly pointed statement in 2006, affirming their “commitment to the total rejection of the evil of homosexuality which is a perversion of human dignity and encourages the [Nigerian] National Assembly to ratify the Bill prohibiting the legality of homosexuality.”

Early this month in Senegal, Muslims exhumed the body of a man rumored to be gay from an Islamic cemetery.  His family reburied him, only to find his corpse again dug up and dumped in front of their home the next day.  His family has now interred him in a hidden grave.

Jamaica, mostly populated by ex-slaves (forcibly brought over from Senegal and Nigeria, by the way) is widely seen by human rights activists as the most homophobic place on Earth.  Their current ruling party rose to power in 2001 with a campaign theme song about murdering gay men, after beginning a rumor that the incumbent Prime Minister was gay.   Popular music in Jamaica is obsessed with anti-gay lyrics

Per Jamaican law, convicted homosexuals face up to 10 years in prison.  But the police also love extrajudicial punishment of gays, and often beat them in public, in concert with vigilantes or on their own.  Angry neighborhood mobs routinely assault and/or chase gays out of town, forcing them to abandon their homes and belongings.

One man described how six men from a “garrison community” (poor, inner-city communities controlled by either of Jamaica’s two main political parties) blocked a road to beat a local gay man:
“The crowd stood around watching, chanting “battyman, battyman, battyman” before gathering around him as he lay on the sidewalk. The crowd beat, punched and kicked him. They threw water from the gutter and garbage on him, all the while shouting “battyman, battyman.” Then they dragged him down the road for half a kilometre. They shouted “battyman fi’ dead.” As I stood across the street I realised there was nothing I could do to help him. Some mothers were actually in tears at what they were witnessing but there was nothing that they could do either. . The crowd was saying “Give him to us! Let us kill him! He’s a battyman!”

The story is typical. Once a person’s sexuality becomes known to family or community, they are at risk. Amnesty International has interviewed many people who have been forced to leave their areas after being publicly vilified, threatened or attacked on suspicion of being gay. They face homelessness, isolation or worse.

Source: Amnesty International media release: Battybwoys affi dead (“Faggots have to die”): Action against Homophobia in Jamaica, 17 May 04

Amnesty also gave an example of a recent incident reported in a national newspaper, where a father encouraged a mob to beat up his son, who he suspected was gay, while he looked on smiling.³

What’s up with all the anti-gay hate from people of African ancestry?   Obviously there are plenty of Africans friendly to gays (I get that no ethnicity is monolithic), but I can’t ignore the prevalence of a virulent, violent homophobia among African-descended communities that exceeds anything I’ve seen elsewhere.  You just don’t see this level of violence and hate against gays this often in Europe or East Asia.

Why is this the case?   What’s the origin of these attitudes?  These feelings have to come from somewhere.

Is it due to the influence of Islamic norms on West Africa for over a millennium?

Is it part of pre-Biblical African culture?

What is it?  (please chime in in the comment section if you have a theory)

My take:

One of the aides here from Jamaica recently told me, “men not supposed to cry.”

My theory is that, perhaps, when places experience severe poverty and day-to-day material insecurity, it shifts the culture to demand more manliness, more images of self-reliance and security.  There is no room for men who don’t project that image, who look or act outside the most uber-masculine traits.

It’s like what Judith Warner wrote when discussing homophobia in America’s schools:

It’s weird, isn’t it, that in an age in which the definition of acceptable girlhood has expanded, so that desirable femininity now encompasses school success and athleticism, the bounds of boyhood have remained so tightly constrained? And so staunchly defended: Boys avail themselves most frequently of epithets like “fag” to “police” one another’s behavior and bring it back to being sufficiently masculine when someone steps out of line, Barbara J. Risman, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found while conducting extensive interviews in a southeastern urban middle school in 2003 and 2004. “Boys were showing each other they were tough. They were afraid to do anything that might be called girlie,” she told me this week. “It was just like what I would have found if I had done this research 50 years ago. They were frozen in time.”

Pascoe spent 18 months embedded in a Northern California working-class high school, in a community where factory jobs had gone south after the signing of Nafta, and where men who’d once enjoyed solid union salaries were now cobbling together lesser-paid employment at big-box stores. “These kids experience a loss of masculine privilege on a day-to-day level,” she said. “While they didn’t necessarily ever experience the concrete privilege their fathers and grandfathers experienced, they have the sense that to be a man means something and is incredibly important. These boys don’t know how to be that something. Their pathway to masculinity is unclear. To not be a man is to not be fully human and that’s terrifying.”

Source: “Dude, You’ve Got Problems” at Judith Warner’s NYTimes.com blog

These phenomena are in overdrive in societies that have experienced extremely impoverished, subsistence lifestyles since time immemorial.  The undercurrent in society becomes that “if men aren’t men (in a certain way), we’ll lose everything.”  Hopelessness and lack of opportunity for advancement just magnifies this.   And then when  you add the layer that, in the culture, men can’t gain honor and esteem from battle anymore, and few from riches, so the way they get honor and esteem increasingly focuses on how many women they can get; and that means even less room for gays.

That’s my theory anyway.  What’s yours?

It’d be great if everyone in the world could heed these true words from Barack Obama, given at Martin Luther King’s church in Atlanta for MLK Day ’08: “if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them….Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.   I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans. I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

Barack Obama speaking at MLK's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, for MLK Day '08

Nick

Footnotes

1. Source: Wikipedia: LGBT Rights in Africa
2. Source: Wikipedia; Anglican Realignment
3. Source: Wikipedia: LGBT Rights in Jamaica:: Violence Against Homosexuals



Transcription (as captioned in the video):

Hello, this is Nick Dupree for the for the Nick’s Crusade blog. This is my fourth video blog, and today is the 252nd day that I’ve been in an institution because I can’t get access to community services. And it seems that the Obama administration is not going to help us fix this problem — the problem of the institutional bias, where if you need services, they’re not readily available in the community so, so many people end up in expensive institutions, and it’s a lot worse for them, lowers their quality of life, and ends up costing exponentially more. I know in Alabama, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to keep someone in an institution, and it cost $70,000 to give them 24/7 home care. It’s a very stupid financial decision that the government keeps making, and despite all the activism and the years of court decisions that are on our side, we’re still not getting change we can believe in, as Obama says.

It’s even more disturbing, because during the campaign, Obama promised us that he would support the Community Choice Act, which would let people have a choice to live in the community, versus being forced to go into a nursing home, as that’s all the government will pay for.

He promised he’d support the Community Choice Act during the campaign, but yesterday we discovered that the Community Choice Act has been removed from the White House website. The White House website had the Community Choice Act featured on their Disability web page, and now it’s gone. They erased us. They erased what we really needed, and that’s despicable. And now, they’re going forward with health reform initiatives, without addressing long-term care. They’re going to reform health care without addressing one of the largest expenses of health care, which is long-term care. They say “we don’t have time”. With this kind of expense, how can we afford to wait? How can we afford, morally, to segregate part of our population, and keep them trapped in nursing homes with no choice? It’s not moral.

I advise you to go to the website of the President’s health reform initiative, HealthReform.gov. There’s no mention of long-term care, not a word whatsoever. There’s no mention of nursing homes, there’s no mention of home care, and there’s definitely no mention of the Community Choice Act. Go to HealthReform.gov and see for yourself. We’re not included, and our segregation is continuing unabated. Nobody notices us. That’s something that really has to change.

There’s a dark part of America’s past (and present) that few are aware of: government taking children from their families and placing them in institutions.

It usually goes like this: doctors and social workers identify a disabled child, and advise the parents to send the child to an institution to get “the best of care,” from “the experts” and “be with kids like them.” Sometimes they’d recommend parents “move on with your lives.” In some cases, most of them decades ago, children were made wards of the state and whisked away from their families, for “their own good.” We’re talking about young kids here, 5-10 years old, many of which had mild disabilities, perhaps CP, MR or autism, not needing intensive supports at all.

That’s where the ablism comes in. Just because these children are different, or need some help, they’re assumed to need locking up in institutions. The doctors and social workers aren’t aware that “the experts” they’re letting raise these kids are the nurses and aides most likely to resent disability and the needs it involves (more work for them) and most likely to brutally restrict and control kids (to avert any possibility of trouble or more work for them). That means the kids will be horribly stunted: boys will never able to touch a girl’s hair, girls never able to “play doctor” with the boy across the street, and no one able to sneak an extra cookie (each meal is strictly controlled). And if they find a way to do these anyway, their reaching of these developmental milestones will be demonized; they’ll learn to hate their humanity, hate the needs and trouble their disabilities cause the staff.  They grow up in what’s essentially a special type of prison, where the natural experimentation crucial for human growth is banned. Not only are they segregated physically, they’re segregated from normal human contact, from basic experiences, from growth, from life.  While I wasn’t raised in an institution, I was exposed to this mentality, plenty. Special ed aides would grab my manual wheelchair and pull against me spinning the wheels, to prevent me from straying from them (and interacting with other children) during recess, to ensure my “safety.”

••••

Each afternoon, at the city rehab hospital I live in, a yellow school bus pulls up out front. The bus is dropping off the institutionalized children who live here. You can’t help but wonder, “what will these children grow up to become?”  In my experience, from meeting those who moved to the community after the local institution (or “developmental center”) closed following the landmark 30-year-long Wyatt v. Stickney desegregation lawsuit, is that you can take the person out of the institution, but you can’t take the institution out of the person; their mind will, to an extent, forever be institutionalized.  They will never question authority figures, or take actions without the consent of an authority figure.  Some who got out are leading successful lives, with jobs and many things they could’ve never had in an institution (a great argument why more deinstitutionalization needs to happen NOW) but decades of success were robbed from them.  Their development was stunted, their independence has been stripped, and their mild mental differences became serious impairments, now requiring aides (they should maybe rename “developmental centers” “regression centers.”) It’s how they were trained, to be dependent.

America has set up this enormous infrastructure of segregation for people with disabilities, and it’s wrong. Why do we do this? It’s rooted in outdated, ablist ideas.  Institutionalization began in earnest in the 19th century, and picked up and expanded widely with the technology of the 20th century.  It was based on the false notions of that era, like the need to isolate the disabled in institutions far from the community in order to keep contagions at bay, put the vulnerable under care of “experts,” and the theory that “they’ll be happier around their own kind.”  The deeply-ingrained concept that “you’re different, therefore you should be segregated” is the pinnacle of bigoted ablist thinking, and it’s the underpinning of all this stuff.  And even with all these theories disproven, too many old institutions remain, sustained by inertia, special interest groups, and the lack of community-based alternatives.

It’s hard for me to blame the parents for consenting to send their kids to this fate when there are few, if any, community-based options to turn to. With little support, and confusion about what to do, it’s not surprising widespread institutionalization has happened. The state forces parents into a grim Faustian Bargain of necessity, something way too close to The Kinder Transport for America, forced to choose between sending children away, or leave them to some uncertain, horrible fate trying to raise them with no supports, no safety net.

Some families are now trying to find children lost to the gulags decades ago.

People magazine: Kevin Hopkins holds a photo of his lost sister

From People magazine:

(Newstands only; article not available on the magazine’s website.)

Families across the country are searching for loved ones with disabilities who were sent away to institutions years ago, often without warning or explanation.

Kevin Hopkins, 53, of Springfield, Virginia, is seeking his stepsister Janet, who was sent to an institution 42 years ago. “She was my best friend,” he said. “I just wish I could know where she was and see her again.”

Shawna Gagnon, 49, of Montgomery, Alabama said her sister Zena (Xena) was taken to a California hospital 43 years ago “where people hollered and were tied to the beds.”

Filmmaker Jeff Daly, creator of the documentary “Where’s Molly?”, has been working to find family links for the estimated 250,000 Americans who live in group homes or state institutions with no family contacts. He and the nonprofit ArcLink have built a relative search database that has already fostered more than 100 reunions.

Source: PatriciaEBauer.com: The Endlless Search

More institutions are closing under mounting allegations of human rights violations, but we need the community resources to make these outdated ablist models obsolete forever.  It’s obvious that the best environment for children is a natural family setting, but too many families are STILL forced to choose institutions, especially in the South (like my old home state of Alabama) where there are few community-based options to turn to.  The best thing for the child, would be to fund attendants from the community to assist the family in caring for the child in the home.  But home and community-based services (HCBS) are purely optional for state Medicaid agencies, not a mandated service under Medicaid law.  Meanwhile, it’s mandatory to fund the huge institutions that cost much more (often double or triple the expense) and (almost inevitably) neglect, set back and stifle human growth and potential.  The harsh inhumanity involved, demands change.  We are complicit in our government’s policies, and must demand better.  It’s time for the Community Choice Act, which would make providing home care mandatory for Medicaid too, and give people a real choice.  LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!

"LET MY PEOPLE GO!!" on silk, from jewishbazaar.com

A CCA Banner, from Mark Boatman's Blog

An ADAPT activist holds an "Our Homes NOT Nursing Homes" sign, at the "DUH City" Action, September 2008

Nick

The answer is this: I don’t know how to consistently write things that AREN’T about injustice. I’m driven to right the wrongs around the world, like the fire drives a locomotive. I’m, at my core, an activist for social justice; and I run a blog about fighting injustice. Injustice is depressing.

And I don’t think we should look away from injustice. It’s wrong to turn your back on others’ pain.

Obama was right when he said:

Obama warned against what he called the dangers of silence, saying that every day, somewhere in the world people must resist the urge to turn away from scenes of horror, hate, injustice and intolerance.

All people, he said, must “fight the impulse to turn the channel” from distressing TV images of suffering, the sort of inhumanity known not only in the time of Nazi Germany, but more recently in Northern Ireland, Rwanda and Darfur.

Obama declared that people cannot wrap themselves “in the false comfort that others’ sufferings are not our own.” The president also called for people to “make a habit of empathy, to recognize ourselves in each other.”

Source: AP: Obama: World’s people must resist hatred, racism

“But Nick, my life is happy. Why bring myself down with all the pain and injustice in the world?”

The fallacy behind this is the assumption that you’re somehow separate from the young refugee in Sri Lanka or the Janjaweed rapists in Darfur or the unethical investment bankers on Wall Street or the hungry children of unemployed single mothers in Ohio. We are connected to everyone, we share common ancestors, one people, united, part of one universal force.

Those protesting injustice GET IT.

We are ONE. As John Donne put it:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation 17, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

"it tolls for thee...."

Nick

from the NY Daily News: graffiti on the walls boarding up St. John's Hospital

New York City’s hospitals, already strained and overcrowded, are experiencing a spree of closings, felled by the economic crisis. St. John’s Queens Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital have gone bankrupt and boarded up the entrances.  This leaves Queens-dwellers with few options, and those few options in an awful overcrowding situation.

“It’s a real failure of government to set priorities and manage them properly,” Gioia said. “They throw up their hands when the money runs out and say, ‘What can we do?’ That’s not good enough.”

Mayor Bloomberg called the closures “sad” and said the city has to do more with less in these tough economic times.

“Having said that, there is no reason for us to … walk away from our basic functions of government,” he said, adding that the Fire Department will dispatch more ambulances in Queens and for other hospitals to fill the void.

Carlos Quiles, a nurse who lost his job at St. John’s, said the next best option for care in Queens is Elmhurst Hospital Center, which is already filled to capacity.

“I can’t understand the wisdom behind closing the hospitals,” he said. “The politicians clearly have no understanding of the ramifications.”

Source: NY Daily News: Councilman Eric Gioia rips hospital closings in Queens

That nurse is right, the politicians don’t get it. They’re not envisioning the overcrowding and wait times this will cause. I’ve never heard of a hospital here that isn’t packed, we’re already seeing ER wait times in excess of 8 hours in some of the city-run hospitals, and you suddenly remove nearly a thousand beds from the equation?? That’s really not gonna be pretty.

In Manhattan, Cabrini Medical Center had to close. There’s been lots of talk about that here in the hospital I live in, because we’ve taken in some of Cabrini’s refugee respiratory therapists. The gossip now is about which hospital is next in line at the guillotine (some say Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn won’t make it) and whether any of the doctors and nurses in my home hospital will be safe. “I don’t know if we’re safe,” my doctor said, sighing.

Nick

Cartoon by John Darkow, The Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri

Americans are fed up with banks double dipping off them, pulling down billions in bailouts from taxpayers, while also squeezing us with increased fees and interest.

The backlash is now being expressed in Congress:

BAILED OUT BANKS

U.S. banks that issue credit cards have received more than $120 billion in taxpayer funds since October, money the government has asked them to use to expand lending.

But with U.S. credit card defaults at record highs, lenders are trying to protect themselves by tightening credit limits and closing accounts, actions that have infuriated lawmakers and consumers, and even triggered an inquiry by the New York state attorney general.

U.S. lawmakers also angry that the same banks, such as Bank of America, Citi and Chase, with big credit card operations, charge excessive interest rates and fees while getting bailouts from taxpayers who use the cards.

Source: Reuters: U.S. lawmakers consider credit card reform proposals.

How far should Congress go?

Nick

I don’t consider most of the right-wing criticism of Obama to be very valid, but I do have my list of beefs with Obama, like the lame inaction over Darfur, ignoring the previous administration’s illegal acts, denying due process to prisoners, and more.  I’m also deeply skeptical of Obama’s Afghanistan plan (as I discussed here).

But something else disturbs me that is rarely mentioned: the problem of too many cooks.  Obama is adding a “czar” for every occasion, and new offices for many of the czars.  It’s making an already overly complex and large bureaucracy even moreso, and leaving the system even more byzantine for successor governments.

byzantine

adjective

…

3.
highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious; “the Byzantine tax structure”; “Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship”; “convoluted legal language”; “convoluted reasoning”; “the plot was too involved”; “a knotty problem”; “got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering”; “Oh, what a tangled web we weave”- Sir Walter Scott; “tortuous legal procedures”; “tortuous negotiations lasting for months”

From: byzantine – dictionary.com.

Ridiculous bureaucracy, of which I am an (all too familiar) opponent, is dubbed “byzantine” because of what happened to the Byzantine Empire, with its enormous and complicated legal codes only understood by a cadre of royal bureaucrats.  When the law is only understood by the few, that breeds corruption.  When government is too huge and complex to be easily accessed by the public, it, paradoxically, reduces government’s functioning and power.  The Byzantine Empire, actually a great milestone in cultural and administrative achievement, collapsed when it became too weakened by its own complexity and corruption to resist invaders (though there’s a lot more to it).

I don’t want the U.S. government to be “byzantine.”  Clinton tried fixing some of this with his “Reinventing Government” initiative (he usually gets no cred for this). They really did reduce some government forms from 30+ pages to 1 page, disbanded Reagan’s personal furniture maker and bought from Office Depot instead, and “cut the fat” from a lot of departments. They didn’t make much headway on consolidating and downsizing agencies like they wanted to, because of fierce resistance from bureaucrats prepared to defend their jobs Thermopylae-style, and they were occupied by other things (subpoenas for the White House xmas card list, etc.)  I would like to see “Reinventing Government” on steroids…radically streamlining federal agencies and attacking waste.  I want Obama to use an iron fist to override administrators defending their sacred bureaucratic turf, and radically consolidate our insanely duplicative, bloated bureaucracy. Dept. of Treasury and Dept. of Commerce should be one agency, for example. The Dept. of Homeland Security (Bush’s massive expansion of government) should be abolished and whatever is actually useful within it would be consolidated into the FBI and other existing agencies.

But streamlining is not the direction Obama’s going in.  Instead, we’ve got the newly created Office of Health Reform headed by Health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, Urban affairs czar Adolfo Carrion Jr., Economics czar Paul A. Volcker, Regulatory czar Cass R. Sunstein, Climate Change czar Carol Browner, Border czar Alan Bersin, and more.  And, of course, a government performance czar (Jeffrey Zients) to help manage all the czar (“czar of czars!”)

Aside from the fact that a parade of “czars” in the White House may make the vehemently anti-monarchist Founding Fathers rise from their graves in a rage, triggering the much anticipated zombie apocalypse, there are serious concerns that “czars” greatly reduce transparency and consolidate power in the White House.

Zombie Jefferson will be the first to go on a rampage, devouring the brains of the innocent

Cabinet officers are subject to Senate confirmation and oversight; czars are not.  Czars are hired directly by the president (“serve at the pleasure of the president,” always an odd, dirty-sounding phrase) and can refuse to provide documents or public testimony based on “executive privilege.”  Senator Robert Byrd raised his objections in a letter to Obama.  Czars “inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability,” Byrd said.  “The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances.”

My biggest concern is what this monster turns into 10-20 years down the line.

Known for their intellect and experience, these appointees could become rivals or advocates of competing ideas that could hinder White House operations if not skillfully coordinated.

Administration officials will have to “watch and see when it starts to become dysfunctional,” said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar who has held several top government jobs going back to 1959. “It’s a very high risk because you’re adding without subtracting.”

When naming Volcker to his team, Obama could have scrapped either Romer’s or Summers’ agency, and divided the advisory duties between two groups, Hess said. “Instead, he adds a third.”

Paul Light, a specialist on government organization at New York University, said, “They’re kind of addicted to czars right now. I think they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

Obama obviously disagrees. He has signaled plans to name Bronx politician Adolfo Carrion Jr. to a new White House post coordinating urban housing and education policies. And he has named Nancy Killefer to the new job of “chief performance officer,” which oversees many agencies.

He is hardly the first president to have a close aide coordinating several agencies. For years, a White House-based national security adviser has tried to put together information from the military, State Department and intelligence agencies.

But Obama’s creation of new policy czars and special envoys is pushing White House centralization to new levels.

Some government veterans say the strategy can help a president shape policy with minimum interference from Cabinet agencies. Under the right circumstances, a White House czar “can cut through some of the interagency disagreements that slow down and clog the policymaking process,” said Bill Galston, a University of Maryland professor and former Clinton White House aide.

But the system can be cumbersome, rife with jealousies and hampered by conflicting efforts and messages, Galston said. To make it work, he said, Obama “will have to be a way-above-average president,” which he has the “intellect and temperament” to be.

Source: AP: Obama’s White House: Big posts, overlapping tasks

Obama likely has above-average skills.  But what about his successors?  What will America become?

Nick