Survey of Local Democratic Cleavages

As the authors of Crashing the Gate, a netroots essential, have written, liberals need to stop infighting to have a chance of moving forward on the national political stage. On a local level, in a situation dominated by Democrats, it's not so bad: you've got a big Democratic pie, and you're fighting to distribute it. But on a bigger scale, these street-level divisions are crucially important to resolve.

Three traditionally liberal groups that University of Chicago students are familiar with include students (duh), Blacks, and labor unions. Unfortunately, these groups don't always get along perfectly in Chicago.

You may have seen copies of the free weekly Black newspaper N'Digo (note: a saucy soul soundtrack awaits anyone who actually clicks this link) lying around the waiting rooms of various Hyde Park businesses. I picked up the latest issue yesterday at Lung Wah on 53rd, and there was an interesting editorial on a division between Blacks and labor.

The editorial's author, N'Digo publisher Hermene D. Hartman, describes the efforts of unions to target Aldermen they consider to be anti-union. So far it sounds like a reasonable thing for a union to do. Since unions are such an important way to organize liberal votes around the country, I actually wish they would do more of it.

But the problem for Hartman is that (a) many of the targeted Aldermen are highly regarded leaders in the Black community and (b) many of the unions haven't done a good job of accepting Black members into their ranks. It's quite a shame, since unions and Blacks could gain quite a bit from cooperating--in particular, getting more Black laborers organized would be a proverbial win-win situation.

Students have fewer common interests with unions and Blacks. Moreover, sometimes students have trouble getting involved in local issues. We're not from here, we're only here for a couple years, etc. But the University and the community are stuck with each other, and the administration is the permanent face of students to the community. This hasn't always worked out well.

The University has a bad history of trampling neighborhood interests in the name of redevelopment, which still creates resentment. Hyde Park has been "successfully" gentrified over the past 40 years, but the Woodlawn neighborhood (south of the Midway) has not been interfered with to the same degree. But as the University expands operations there with the construction of a big new dorm, old tensions come bubbling back to the surface.

On a more positive note, recent activism by the SOUL group to encourage the University to negotiate a better contract with about 600 of its unionized employees was a welcome example of cross-group cooperation. It's probably also a good example of really the best action students can take: pressuring the University, as our representative, to deal respectfully and fairly with local groups.

Democratic Messaging Follies

About a month ago, the Democratic National Committee mailed me a survey. It's called the 2007 Democratic Strategy Survey (see pictures below), and it appears to be an attempt to learn what rank and file donors want from the party. But sometimes these voter surveys come across as a little clunky or ideological. One wonders if the purpose is to reinforce the Democratic message in the minds of the donors. To paraphrase Lisa Simpson, what's the deal with these surveys?


The first thing I notice about this survey is the instruction section. It says that my answers will be kept confidential, which is something any IRB will like because it protects privacy. However, an IRB would like it more if you also keep people's answers separate from any identifying information beyond a case ID. The instructions are therefore the first indication that this survey might be about finding out what is important to the donors who give the most.

But right near the top of the survey are a couple questions about withdrawing troops from Iraq. Maybe it is about planting the Democratic message.

Skipping down to question #5, the survey asks us donors whether we "support raising the minimum wage from its current level of $5.15 per hour". The response choices are essentially yes and no, but the survey provides a whole bunch of superfluous rationale, too. Instead of just being "yes", the affirmative option reads "Yes, the minimum wage should be increased to help workers make ends meet." The negative option reads "No, raising the minimum wage will hurt small businesses and cost jobs."

Does it seem like question #5 is designed to measure opinion, or is it intended to implant talking points? It doesn't do either well, so it's hard to tell.

Assuming for the moment that the point is to measure opinion, then adding the detailed rationale is not a good idea. It confuses the data. What if I oppose raising the minimum wage, but not because it will hurt small businesses and cost jobs? Or what if I support the minimum wage increase, but only because I think it will reduce government expenditure on food stamps? What answer do I choose? The DNC would end up with a pretty skewed version of what respondents think no matter what someone who doesn't fit the question chooses to do.

Since gathering information doesn't appear to be the real purpose, let's assumed the survey is designed to expose me to the Democratic platform. To do so, it should expose me to a false choice. That is, both options should be in line with the Democratic agenda. By choosing between degrees of liberal, instead of between liberal and conservative, the reader is anchored to a leftward conception of what the available options even are.

But that's not what the survey does. The "yes" option, is appropriately in line with the Democratic agenda, based on its emotional appeal to nurturing the less fortunate. But the "no" option reflects the traditional Republican rationale that distributing money more fairly throughout a community will hurt jobs.

As a side note, the supposed harm of minimum wage hikes has been pretty much objectively disproven, as even many small business owners will tell you.

If Democrats were trying to convince me about their talking points, they wouldn't actually give me the choice between their version and the opposing version. The "yes" option as written would be fine, but the negative option should be something like this: "No, there are more pressing and efficient ways to promote economic justice." If I disagree with the minimum wage raise, there's no reason to remind me why I feel that way.

The rest of the survey proceeds pretty much along the same lines. Question #9, for example, asks whether I support tax cuts for working families. It happens that I don't, but not just because of their suggested rationale: "additional tax cuts at this time will only worsen the federal deficit."

The reason I don't support more tax cuts is that I support a civic culture where everyone contributes their fair share to the common good (government). Constantly talking about tax cuts makes people feel like they're entitled to always pay less and less. Remember that under a classically liberal form of government such as ours, the government is the people. Constantly putting the government on sale encourages the conception that you need to go bargain hunting like you would at Wal*Mart.

In the end, I can't tell what the DNC is really trying to get out of this survey. The DNC survey distribution list comes from previous donations, the DCCC's list, and so forth. They know the people they send the survey to are not Republicans. If they were really trying to gather information, they wouldn't bother trying to find out whether I like Republican talking points. (They should know damn well that I don't. ) They would also provide a more methodologically sound opinion instrument. Likewise, if they want to keep Democratic messages in my head, they shouldn't be exposing me to reasonable-sounding iterations of Republican rationale.

The DNC should be able to use surveys like this both to read Democratic opinion and solidify messaging. We're not talking about some mom 'n' pop charity that gets the receptionist to design the survey because they operate on such a small scale. In improving this survey, you wouldn't want to make the questions too stilted or too dry. People won't fill it out if they think the survey is pure manipulation, but draining too much slant from the questions will eliminate the messaging benefit. By way of closing this entry, let me suggest a few relevant changes to #14.

• Old question: "What is your opinion about our environmental laws in America?"
• New question: "What is your opinion about laws protecting America's environment?"
• Old choice 1: "We need stronger environmental laws to protect our air and water, clean up toxic waste, safeguard wildlife and habitat, and combat global warming."
• New choice 1: "Current environmental laws do not go far enough protecting our world, our neighborhoods, and our families from polluters."
• Old choice 2: "Our environmental policies are about right; no new laws are needed." (This choice can stay as is.)
• Old choice 3: "Our environmental laws burden businesses and hurt our economy."
• New choice 3: "We have too many laws protecting our environment."
  

Enlightenment Watch

I've blogged previously about Bush's contempt for the enlightenment and about his dream of becoming a Sun King. A couple things came up last week that demand an update to this line of criticism. But first, a trip down memory lane.

My opponent thinks the government -- the surplus is the government's money. That's not what I think. I think it's the hard-working people of America's money and I want to share some of that money with you so you have more money to build and save and dream for your families. It's a difference of opinion.

This quote is from George W. Bush in the October 10, 2000 presidential debate. Everyone knows that because of Bush and his insatiable desire for cutting taxes and increasing spending, we have a crushing deficit far larger than anything we could have imagined in 2000. I would contend that having a solvent government would have helped the American people more than shifting the tax burden off the absurdly wealthy and onto the middle class.

But what he describes in this passage is goes beyond the woulda-shoulda-couldas of policy. It is less a a difference of opinion than a difference in the fundamental philosophy of what government is. Al Gore, apparently, supported a classical liberal view, the view that this country was founded on, the view that came out of the Enlightenment itself. George W. Bush supported, and supports to this day, a regressive view that would take us back before the Enlightenment.

You see, in a liberal democracy, the people are the government. There is no opposition between paying down the debt and rewarding the people for their hard work and prudence. The people of the United States are in debt up to their eyeballs, both personally and socially.

Fun fact: repealing the estate tax entirely would cost the people of the United States over $8 billion over the next ten years from the Walton family (owners of Wal*Mart) alone.

Anyway, on to the two updates: outsourcing tax rules and signing statements.

#1: a continued emphasis on destroying the rational-bureaucratic norms that are a central feature of all modern societies. This time it's back to the IRS, which apparently is pushing to allow private tax attorneys and accountants to just rewrite tax rules as they see fit.

In the Conservative mind, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Who better to write tax rules than the people who deal with them every day? So much the better that these people are willing to do it for free! There's probably no catch, and if there were, it probably wouldn't be based on rigging the tax rules to favor their clients.

In the liberal, Enlightenment view, by contrast, the people regulate themselves through the intermediary of a meritocratic bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is employed using money collected from the people and directed by politicians elected by the people. This system is good because everyone involved is accountable to everyone else. Doing it their way, the doers are accountable only to their captain of industry clients.

#2: the issue of signing statements is finally upon us in a much more tangible way. To provide a brief refresher, signing statements are the mechanism Bush has been using to assert an unjustifiably extravagant amount of Constitutional authority. The hubbub over signing statements is about a year old, but heretofore it has been largely hypothetically. Last week, the FBI put a much more real face on the situation.

It all begins with the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act in the fall of 2005. One of the measures included was an unreasonable ability for the FBI to infringe on privacy with virtually no supervision. Some people complained about this at the time, but of course that would have meant the terrorists win. To the surprise of approximately no one, the FBI promptly turned around and abused their awesome, completely unchecked power by breaking even the modest oversight requirements in the law.

The connection here is that the signing statement Bush issued with the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act is the very one that drew attention to the controversy over signing statements to begin with. And that signing statement spelled out very clearly that Bush intended to ignore the portions of the law that the FBI has now, indeed, ignored.

This could force a real showdown over the Constitution, which one has to believe was the intention of the Administration all along. After all, if Bush wanted to just get away with one, why would he announce he was going to break the law? Democrats in Congress, and self-respecting pundits, are already making noise about getting Alberto Gonzales to resign. Between this scandal and the politically motivated firing of otherwise competent US Attorneys, it is starting to look like Gonzales may not be able to make it too much longer, which can only be good for the country: it's time we stopped assaulting the Enlightenment.

Full Frontal

So I recently read an article on the illustrious Slate.com concerning a new technology called Back Scanning.

Basically its like that thing from Total Recall (bellow), a machine which can be used to identify weapons (or in this case drugs or even less dense objects) concealed on people's bodies.


Unlike Total Recall, you get a peak at a person's form rather then their skeleton. This basically presents a fundamental privacy issue as guards at the airport will potentially be checking out your goods as you get on a plane. The Slate article suggests that this isn't so bad, as long as this process is totally divorced from the individual.

Basically, somewhere, someone will see you naked. But they'll never know it was you. As you can see from these images from the TSA, each person (be they white, black, arab or asian) is pretty much reduced to a sort of zombie like blur. So as long as that blur is never put next to the person it belongs to, we should all be ok and can avoid the awkward screening and pat down system we have now.

One concern immediately raised on the Slate's Fray by a user named Fozzy is basically that these will become the new metal detectors, and the frequency of their use will decrease any kind of privacy standard like the kind mentioned at airports .

I'd say Fozzy's concern is very valid and really underscores the most depressing aspect of this war on terror: when are we safe. Technology like Back Scanners will let us peak deeper and deeper into people's lives to make sure their not going to blow us up. We're consistently asked to bear all in the name of our country.


















The thing that I find most disturbing about Back Scanning is how quickly I agree with it and would condone it. Because it beats pat downs and racial profiling, right? Because it keeps us safe, right? In the coming century, we as individual's will become easier and and easier to scrutinize. Trust will become less of a word and a code and more of a fact, verifiable by scans and probes which let us see when its safe.

"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." said Benjamin Franklin. I think this quote is especially pertinent given our current mindset about security after 9/11. I'm not saying that we can't be free and safe. But one has to ask themselves where that line lies and if we trust ourselves to stay to the right side.

Faith-Based Policies

I'm no lawyer, but generally I approve of having some sort of standard of evidence. Which is why it's so funny to see the oil industry shills with their backs up against the wall.

Fact: global warming is happening right now, and humans are responsible for it. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report spells it out as starkly as such a document can. In an ironic bit of metaphor, global warming is an effect that will only snowball - the more heat gets trapped, the more the forces that trap heat speed up. There's really no denying that this is a huge problem that only we are responsible for. There's also no denying that we will have to wait until 2009, when a less evil president assumes office, in order to get started on implementing the policies we so desperately and urgently need.

As if this weren't enough reason to for the oil industry to worry, peak oil is also starting to rear its ugly head. Production at some of the largest, most productive oil fields in the world (including the crown jewel fields of Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Alaska) has started to decline despite increased drilling. We may soon see an irreversible worldwide decline in production.

So what is the oil industry response? Via their front group, the American Petroleum Institute, it appears to be make-believe. As observed in this diary on DailyKos, the industry shills are telling us that proven reserves aren't what matter - we should be looking at un-proven reserves. In other words, let's make our policy based on faith. In oil companies. Yep, that's probably superior to evidence.

It's truly astonishing that they have now taken up methods that not even Police Detective Riley would use. Per Jack Handey:

Police Detective Riley was a no-nonsense kind of guy. Before, he really loved nonsense, and would use it a lot in his murder investigations. But he found that most people didn't appreciate it, especially the family of the victim.

Now, granted that whoever was speaking for the API was probably a PR guy, which would make him the spinmeister for a spin group. Hardly someone you should trust. But clearly the American Petroleum Industry trusts this guy, so somebody is actually embracing nonsense as a methodology for science and policy.

Fortunately, supporting this kind of statement actually does seem to finally be eroding the credibility of the oil industry. And with Obama and McCain jointly sponsoring global warming legislation, it looks like 2009 may be the beginning of the end for the oil industry. I therefore issue the API, the industry at large, Bush, and that whole gang this challenge, by way of Homer Simpson:

You couldn't fool your own mother on the foolingest day of your life with an electrified fooling machine!

Leadership Vacuum

In the previous post, my colleague Benediktion writes about the difference between moral high ground and action in the context of divesting from Darfur and stopping the Iraq occupation. Although I disagree with several of the things he says, I'm glad he brought it up. These are vitally important issues, and the context in which we deal with them lends itself well to Sartre's analysis of man: his identity is constructed by his actions, not his words.

Last November, Americans came out and took action en masse, giving form to their dissatisfaction by kicking the Republicans out of power in Congress. But outside of elections, the people in a representative democracy retain their ability to speak while delegating their ability to act. So, despite the fact that there are various issues on which the people demand action, the beltway politicos are content to make sure their demands stay mere words.

First case in point: Iraq. Three quarters of respondents to the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll thought things were going badly or very badly in Iraq. Iraq was clearly a major factor in the 2006 elections. Yet so far, the Democratic majority has responded by letting Bush's escalation go forward, not supporting measures with teeth to bring an end to the occupation, and letting Joe Lieberman give the weekly radio address. The Administration promised the escalation would be different because this time we were seriously going to hold the Iraqis to some benchmarks. Now that benchmarks have already been missed, no one is pressing the administration on it.

Second case in point: health care. A stunning poll was released last week that was basically ignored by most media. It turns out Americans support single payer health care. Big time. Health care is the most important issue for a majority (not just a plurality) of the respondents, 64% think the government should guarantee coverage, and 60% we would be willing to pay more in taxes so that everyone could have guaranteed coverage. A popular mandate for the best solution to the preeminent domestic policy problem of our day would seemingly translate to major action by the government, right? So why haven't the Democrats jumped at this opportunity to help people and make themselves look good?

As Michael Tomasky notes,

What we don't know about the Democrats at this point is whether the party has an interest in summoning Americans to think about the world from a broader perspective than how a given issue affects them directly.

Because that's what health care and Iraq are about. Sure some people are directly affected by the health care crisis or Iraq, but most people aren't. Or at least they don't feel like it. But people recognize that these are the important issues in America today. People want them solved. Visionaries are those who solve big issues, not those who solve easy ones.

Visionaries are what we need, and it is easier to be a visionary from the White House (or at least a presidential campaign) than it is from the halls of compromise (read: Congress). Fortunately, Democrats currently have a bumper crop of great presidential candidates, at least so goes the conventional wisdom. Edwards, Clinton, and Obama are considered to be form an unusually strong field for Democrats.

Unfortunately, all these great candidates are taking equally cowardly approaches to substance. Obama, especially, has "decided to run--à la Gary Hart in 1984--on the notion of new ideas without actually offering any." Establishment Democrats clearly need more encouragement to start acting on the values they sometimes seem to have. We spent a really long time (from 1994 to present) in this defensive crouch, so I guess it's too much to expect one little election to immediately break the bad habits. But it's frustrating - our people are finally in office, so why aren't they doing the things we want? For now, all we can do is keep the pressure up on our representatives. Hopefully sooner or later one of these great candidates will emerge to make Democrats do what they must know they need to do.

Moral Superiority

A few weeks ago we all heard how the University’s Board decided not to divest from Darfur. Though certainly not happy with that decision, I was neither surprised nor particularly saddened. I wasn’t surprised because, hey, this is the UofC board of stodgy unconnected intellectuals, and nobody was really expecting anything less of them.

I wasn’t particularly saddened, however, because looking at it rationally, divestment does very little. Yes, it “sends a message,” and it could be argued that it grants “us,” whatever we are as a collective, the moral high ground. But in reality, we’re talking about divesting less than one million dollars from multibillion dollar, multinational or state-owned firms. They wouldn’t notice.

Though I respect what STAND has done and continues to do on campus, the fact of the matter is that their actions would do almost nothing to end the actual genocide, whether or not they actually achieved their policy goals. The only thing that divestment would actually accomplish is making some people feel good about themselves, and give them the ability to say, “I told you so.”

I’m quite sure that the family of one of the hundreds of thousands dead in Darfur is not completely comforted by the fact that some first-world people are very sorry for what’s happening to them and their people. In fact, I’d wager that they’d prefer some action to lessen the genocide over the united first world saying that we’re really sorry and do not at all support what is happening.

While having the moral high ground may help some of us watching the horror feel better about ourselves, it’s doing nothing for the actual victims. I think that a grief-stricken mother would prefer her son back than to have some more people express their apologies and do no more, no matter whether that mother is from Darfur, or is from the United States with her son in a flag-draped coffin flying back from Baghdad on an Army cargo plane.

The sad fact about the genocide in Darfur is that there’s very little that an individual, or even a group of students or activists, can do about it. The same cannot be said about ending the war in Iraq. Whether through direct action or through the Congress, the people of the United States have the ability to bring an end to the Iraqi War, and every day we chose not to, we become culpable for more and more deaths.

Look back for a second to the 1972 presidential election. Richard Nixon wins on a promise to end the Vietnam war, a platform he’s forced to adopt because of George McGovern’s promise of immediate withdrawal. The same George McGovern that beat Muskie, Humphrey, and Wallace in the primaries on the strength of one of the first real grassroots campaigns, on the backs of people who were willing to work to bring their friends, lovers, brothers, and sons back from a lost cause in the jungles of Vietnam.

We have the same power in 2008 as the students, the progressives, the caring of this nation had in 72. We can force this war to end, whether or not we win the presidency (which we will, but that’s for another column).
But even if the war ends in two years, that’s two years of dead friends, of dead sons and daughters, which is two years too many. Congress has been talking about a nonbinding resolution expressing their displeasure over the war. It passed the House, and failed a procedural vote in the Senate, with 53 supporting (not the 60 needed to force a vote), so a majority of both houses supported this resolution.

Of course, the resolution was nonbinding, and our dear President could, and all but said he would, completely ignore the will of Congress and the directive of the American people, and not only continue the war but send more soldiers into the mouth of Hell, leaving us to watch in dismay as yet another hero fell.

In that sense, the resolution and divestment are exactly the same thing. The people of America, the people of the world, have stood up, made their disapproval heard, and watched in dismay as the horrors continued. The tragedy has lead us to conclude what must be a central ideal of this new progressive movement, the one that can actually hold power in this country: Moral superiority is no longer enough.

Moral superiority is divesting from Darfur, is a nonbinding resolution. Moral superiority is setting things up se we can se “We told you so.” And moral superiority does nothing at all to save somebody’s son or daughter’s life. While it is certainly a tragedy that we cannot do more in Darfur (even the UN is powerless because of Sudan’s government), we can do more to end the war in Iraq. We, through Congress, hold the pursestrings. We control the billions of dollars that this war needs to continue.

Call your Congressman, call your Senator. Get the word out that cutting the purse does nothing to harm the troops, to endanger our friends, lovers, sons and daughters, beyond force the executive to bring them home. We can win this battle and end this war, before 2008. We cannot, and we must not, remain content with this war being a “Republican” problem, with us saying “We told you so.” Because even if it’s good for us politically, even if it gets us the Presidency, it costs us in lives, a trade-off that no progressive can make.

Moral superiority is not enough anymore, friends. We must act, we must see results. Central to the progressive movement is the belief that we can improve people’s lives. I put forth that there’s no better way to do this than by saving them.

May the God of your choice bless you,
Benediktion

Con Union Se Vive Mejor and Homeland Security

The title of this post is Spanish. Roughly translated, it can mean everyone's life is better with unions.

And it's true: unions are great. They have some problems, of course, but they are essentially the only organized force opposing unbridled corporatism. They help their members by ensuring safe working conditions, living wages, and health insurance. They also help everyone else by pushing workplace safety legislation; union activism is responsible for the 40 hour work week and the weekend. Unions have an added appeal for Democrats, because they are a great way to organize supporters. Republicans use churches in roughly the same way, but unions lately have declined while churches have not.

That's why in 2002, when the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was being debated, Democrats tried to make sure DHS employees could unionize. This was more than just a partisan self-interest thing - it would have improved safety. Take the example of baggage screeners at airports. A union could make sure they are treated well and paid well, thereby minimizing turnover and dissatisfaction. It could make sure working conditions are productive by negotiating how much overtime screeners work, thus preserving their alertness.

Unfortunately, Democrats seemed to be caught completely off guard when Republicans claimed that the terrorists would win if we limited the flexibility of the new Department in managing its personnel. So, after Bush initially opposed the very plan of creating a DHS, Republicans successfully used the issue to depict Democrats as weak on national security. This was a major cause of the Republican routs in the 2002 midterms.

But recently there has been talk of another shot at unionizing the DHS, and I heartily commend Democrats for taking the issue up again. Republicans appear to be ready to play the same card, as Bush is expected to veto any legislation that includes anything pro-union. If Democrats go through with it, this will force Bush to be the one who obstructs a vital security bill for partisan reasons.

Democrats need to force Bush to get out his veto pen on this issue. But Democrats also have to be sure they help the media and the public make the connection between the danger to our shared security and Bush's intransigence. If they bring the legislation up, they must have that plan in place.

Incidentally, the proposal is not even particularly strong. To wit, it will empower a union to negotiate workplace conditions but not salaries. I don't really see why they should bother in such a watered-down way, since Bush & Co. hate unions more than anything. They are so reactionary in their opposition to any form of unionism that the measure won't get past his desk no matter what it looks like.

Better to just propose that the TSA union be fully empowered. In for a dime, in for a dollar, as they say. It could be argued that since the pro-union project here is doomed from the start, the whole project is just about leverage. And you get more leverage out of saying that the President blew it when you tried to meet him halfway than when you presented him with a partisan plan.

If this is indeed the rationale, then it is a prime example of the misguided thinking that helped mire the Democrats in futility for so long. This thinking is largely a product of the wing of the party that fetishizes centrism, thereby ignoring the basic principles of negotiating. Every carpet seller in the bazaar knows that you offer higher than you will settle for so that you can let the other guy talk you down. You end up with what you really wanted, and the other guy gets to think he got a bargain.

Granted, it gets a little tricky when applying this to Bush, since he is so obviously irrational. But in theory, if you went to him with a proposal for full unionization, even though you would be willing to settle for a union that can only negotiate workplace conditions, he could talk you down to that level. You could have your union, and he could tell his corporate overlords that he had really gotten a good deal out of you. Democrats would be well advised to get into the habit of playing smarter in this way. In the meantime, it's a step forward that they are proactively pushing this again.