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Yet More Articles We Never Finished Reading: Supreme Obliviousness

As the Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein puts it, “Paul has turned the health-care fight from kind of a conservative dream that’s untied to reality into a very serious threat to undo the president’s signature accomplishment.” This alone would be a landmark achievement—and, for most lawyers, would have required their complete attention. But health care is just one of seven cases that Clement will be arguing in front of the Supreme Court this term, a caseload previously unheard of for a private attorney. In fact, since leaving the position of solicitor general under Bush, he has become, in the Obama age, a sort of anti–solicitor general—the go-to lawyer for some of the Republican Party’s most significant, and polarizing, legal causes....

At the age of 45, Clement, who has thinning brown hair and the faintest trace of a midwestern accent left over from his Wisconsin childhood, is already in the upper echelon of the Supreme Court bar. It’s an elite group of lawyers who, much like the justices they routinely argue cases before, conceive of themselves as being Olympian in their detachment from politics. Almost all of them graduated from Harvard or Yale or Stanford law school; clerked for a Supreme Court justice; or worked in the solicitor general’s office. (In Clement’s case, he did all three.) Now, in their private practices, they pride themselves on handling only serious cases brought by serious people in a serious manner; even if their client doesn’t prevail—or, worse, turns out to be on the wrong side of history—that stigma doesn’t fall on the lawyer. John W. Davis, who argued the losing side in Brown v. Board of Education, is still held up as an exemplary Supreme Court advocate.

Nevertheless, despite these lawyers’ contention that they aren’t political animals, they are, of course—and their extrajudicial activities often reflect as much. Ted Olson, the man Clement has supplanted as the top conservative Supreme Court lawyer, was an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton, served on the board of directors of The American Spectator, and helped found the Federalist Society. His legal cases were always assumed to reflect his ideological convictions. (Even now that he is seeking to overturn Prop 8, Olson’s personal support for gay marriage is a major story line in the legal fight.) The unusual thing about Clement is that, while he’s undoubtedly a conservative and a Republican, he has managed to avoid this fate. His persona is rarely conflated with the case he’s arguing.

                Jason Zengerle, "The Paul Clement Court", also in New York's current issue.

Clement's political persona is "rarely conflated with the case he's arguing"... except, of course, that he's arguing the opposing side of Obamacare, the repeal of DOMA, arguing against race-based redistricting in Texas and defending South Carolina's attempt to impose voter ID. Clement is defending such a laundry list of right wing cases that Zengerle can barely keep a prose-bound straight face as he attempts to sell the notion that Clement represents a non-partisan ideal in Supreme Court advocacy. It's not the examination of Clement I object to, or the attempt to do a "let's see it from his side" presentation of Clement's views (that, at least, is moderately interesting). But seriously - the man is the former Solicitor General for George W Bush, currently serving as the go-to Supreme Court lawyer for Republican state Attorneys General. If that alone isn't a clear indication of the man's politics... then what, exactly, do political labels mean? It's not as if Clement can be mistaken as a Democrat, or that we can even find a liberal who'd take the depth and breadth of conservative causes on Clement's plate (and the example that proves that observation is Ted Olsen, the most noteworthy example in recent years of a lawyer crossing his usual political expectations to argue in favor of gay marriage rights). It would just be more honest, and more accurate to paint Clement as the kind of Republican that's all too hard to find these days: pleasant, respectful, willing to respect the rule of law, whatever the outcome, after making a well thought, full throated argument for his side. That's admirable enough, without pretending he's somehow nonpartisan.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

Rush Limbaugh beat me to it.

There I was, trying to explain to my Mom last weekend about the sense that the "insured contraception mandate" discussion was not, as Republicans claimed, about religion, but indeed about contraception, I also said, as a follow-on, that I thought the subtext of the "debate" - and the reason Republicans got some traction on it - was because the real issue was sex, and Americans are uncomfortable with talking about that.

And then Rush Limbaugh took the subtext and made it text.

If there's something heartening about the latest Rush furor, I think it may be that feminism finally had a clear example of "slut shaming" that made an often abstract discussion very literal. Slut Shaming is trying to marginalize voices, especially women's voices, in political discussions by calling people things like sluts and whores, implications that are negative, sexual, and promiscuous. Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, was offering a reasonable, thoughtful take one the issues of contraceptive cost and availability, and there was Rush, to call her a slut and a whore.

Unfortunately, I suspect that raising awareness about Slut Shaming is about as good as it gets; what's really problematic here is that conservatives will continue to get truck out of the contraceptive debate because liberals, even as they defended and praised Sandra Fluke, tended to run away from the uncomfortable aspect of the contraception debate that is  the reality of our American cuture: that is, that we are nation at once obsessed about sex and deeply conflicted about the issues around it. And the idea of people having sex, especially a great deal of it, tends to raise flags about morality that cloud reasonable policy discussions.

Which is to say... it's fine if you want contraception, ladies... just don't be all sexed up about it.

By All Means, Let's Make The Election About Domesticated Fags And Loose Living Tramps (Thanks, Newt!)

I have to admit I pretty much figured this year's Presidential election was foreordained as a Romney vs. Obama slugfest over the economy, with a predictable, if dismal, win for President Obama. And that's probably what we're still going to get. But how we get there, apparently, still matters.

If Romney has failed to exactly inspire the Republican base, the last couple of weeks haven't been entirely about him. What's changed, I thnk, is that Rconservatives have decided that they can't win on economic issues... and so they unpacked their favorite old trunk, the thing we often call "social issues."

Maybe it's age, maybe it's the sense that I've heard this song before, but my patience for euphemisms is pretty much gone. And so, I am tired of hearing about "social issues" when what people mean is "let's say awful things about blacks, gays and other minorities and see if Americans will give in to their worst instincts."

"Social Issues" is supposed to be about abortion, gay marriage, "family values" and the like, but really, it's about dressing up age-old prejudices and judgements about others without saying the ugly words. What's wrong with gay marriage? Something about men, women, tradition and procreation... since marriage equality opponents insist, all the time, that they don't hate gays. And what's behind the spate of new restrictive abortion laws and the brouhaha over Catholic charities and insurance coverage for contraception? Concern for life and religious freedom, not hatred of women or opposition to contraception, since that's what they keep telling us.

If there's a reason American conservatism has utterly failed to broaden its appeal, certainly in the past thirty years, it has a lot to do with just how negatve and unappealing their pitch has been. There's been virtually nothing positive that conservatives have had to offer, nothing but anti-this and opposition to that. Immigration, in fact, is a perfectly sensible issue that really does need reform, but it's become a "social issue" about the Mexican border and a specific group of undocumented immigrants because... well, "anti-Hispanic" isn't attractive, either. 

It's not surprising, really, that conservatives have drifted back into this corner; an actual election about economic injustice and issues like health care would have been an interesting discussion, especially if the right had something to offer groups of people - especially in the working class - who have really been shafted, left and right, over time. But of course, Republicans have nothing to offer on jobs, housing, financial reform, or health care. All they have is an intense dislike for President Obama and anything he's done on those issues. 

I'm not sure Mitt Romney really does have anything to offer, but to his credit, he's studiously avoided reverting to the social issues morass unless heavily pushed; it's not really the Mormon way (Orrin Hatch is a good example of this), and it's not Romney's style to appeal to people's worse instincts. So perhaps it's understandable that the "not-Romneys" of the primary season have found themselves forced to resort to the basest appeals to the base.

Of all of them, though, I suspect the real turning point  was South Carolina and Newt Gingrich's win; Gingrich really had nothing to offer except boilerplate rhetoric built on right wing talk radio bromides, the familiar litany of how things are terrible and liberals are to blame for it.  It's Gingrich who, rather skillfully, re-introduced the sham issue of insurance coverage for contraception. And Gingrich offered the kind of rhetorical cover that conservatives need to revert to "social issues" as their driving force - we're not clased-minded bigots... we're decent people looking out for America, and the Constitution.

Of course, Gingrich himself is a twice divorced Catholic convert who would, literally, say just about anything to win an election, and the dissonance between who he is and what he says just got more pronounced as his prominence grew. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, doesn't have quite that problem. Unlike almost any of the other conservatives who got big and flamed out, Santorum doesn't have to go to some of the ugliest places to sell his fealty to "social issues"; he's already been there (remember "man on dog"?). And so Santorum pitches himself as the populist voice of the unheard working (white) man (and we do mean men), and all of the "social" issues are covered as well.

I don't know if Santorum can actually ride this wave all the way to the Republican nopmination; it would be frankly hilarious if he pulls it off, but we (and he) can't possibly be that lucky. It's telling, though, that Romney and his team are, yet again, flummoxed by Santorum's success. He's the one thing they don't quite have an argument against: a true believer who thinks moderation is for wimps.

Either way, an election that revolves around the angry right renewing its worst calls against gays, pushing familiar virgin/whore/mommy lines about women's roles in society, selling familiar prejudices about blacks and hispanics... is an election held on familiar ground that they really can't win. There's too many of us, too few of them, and too many like me who are tired of listening to carefully chosen words meant to mask really hateful ideas and prejudices. None of it makes President Obama a better President, but it certainly makes clear the starkness of the choice. Which is a much easier election than the one about those pesky problems with jobs and housing and health care and such. 

Baghdad Blues... And The Hell of Good Intentions

Since it appears that today is officially The End of The Iraq War, I suppose I could finally do a post on the thing, since I never have, actually, written about it.

I never quite had the same strong feelings as others about the Iraq War; I suspect that my ambivalence, and that of many others, probably plays more of a role in why we went there, and stayed there, than I would probably like. 

It's too soon, really, to fully take apart the decisions to go into Iraq - both in 1992 and again in 2002 - and see how they've touched so much of our nation, our culture and our politics. That's a story we'll be unraveling for years to come, and I suspect what we eventually learn won't be as simple, or easy as one side or another would like it to be. 

As a nation we are, of course, responsible for helping to put Saddam Hussein into power, and for choosing, for a long time, to look the other way about his exercise of power and control. Whether that put us in a uniquely responsible position to have to deal with him when he invaded Kuwait is open to debate. It's less debatable that our decision to invade Iraq after 9/11 was pretty much entirely unjustifiable, a stain we will bear for years to come.

Still, my own ambivalence, such as it was, came from an awareness that someone, at some point, had to figure out how to intervene and remove Hussein; if nothing else, the subsequent events we've seen in the past year, in Tunisia and Egypt and Syria and Libya (and Yemen and Bahrain and Jordan...), are all indications that there probably is no good way, and no easy to define right way, to remove a despot. I'm not saying we did the right thing, invading a sovereign nation to remove its dictator... but in the list of things that shouldn't have happened in Iraq, getting Hussein out of power is not really on it.

The Iraq War was, to my mind, a reminder that American greatness is overstated and poorly understood, by us and by others. As Americans we overvalue the sense of our own good intentions, and try to ignore the nasty brutishness that is part of our true strength - which, on the one hand, enables the warmongers among us, but also warps the opposite pull to reject conflict and seek peace. We are not, necessarily, a pacifist nation. We are the worst of playground bullies, telling people, as we smash things, that its for their own good... and then saying we're really sorry about what got broke. We value freedom and the free exchange of ideas... until people are free to criticize us and offer ideas about how we might be bad actors. We do not have the money, or the soldiers, to be the world's policeman or its peacekeeper... but we're imatient to have others come around to our point of view, and the world does look to us, even while disliking our exercise of power. All of this, really, is what helped get us into Iraq, and made it hard to get out.

So much of the Iraqi conflict, too, had to be bound up in our own complex history, the life we've had as a nation since Vietnam. Did Iraq show that we'd "learned something" out of Vietnam? Probably yes and no: certainly we are not, as a nation, as naive as we were in the early sixties about the costs of war. We have no draft, there was less patience with President Bush, less patience to "wait and see." Yet clearly, some of the lessons we learned were the wrong ones: Having "clear goals" didn't make them right ones, we still seem to have an upper limit of around 3,500 casualties where war simply becomes too much for us, and we still, in some ways, seem tremendously naive when it comes to others seeing us for our good intentions and high ideals. And it's not as simple as what they don't see... it's also about not wanting to admit to what we don't have. Or what we do.

I am not so deeply cynical as to say that the Iraq War was solely about oil; there's a reductiveness to statements like that which tend to reflect back on the people who make the claim. If war is a human tragedy, then the reasons we choose to attack others, to shoot and kill, have a human dimension. This was never just about oil. It was about other things - fear, and prejudices and yes, a sense of justice, however misplaced - and all of them, really, were tragic. And poor reasons to spend 20 years at war with one small nation. I am cynical enough, though, to know that whatever we think we've learned as a result of Iraq, we're all too likely to keep on being the nation that stomps around and breaks things, for the very best of reasons. And really, what other kind of reasons are there?

Honestly, I never believed Barack Obama when he said we would leave Iraq. I figured it would be like Germany, always a base, just in case. I don't think Americans know how to end things - not big things, not small things. Our wars are endless. Our divorces are messy. We talk about "closure" so much because we have no idea what it means. Move on? How?

Of course, we aren't really leaving Iraq - there is that "embassy" we built, a palace all its own, just another way for us to exert power and control and keep, you know, an eye on things. From playground bully to stalker boyfriend... we are the nation that cares, a little too much, and in all the wrong ways. And as long as the Iraqis remain grateful... everything will be just fine. And if the rest of the world will just behave... we'll stay over here in our comfy chair, the bat comfortably at rest at our side. You know how we just hate to have to use the bat. Doesn't that show how we have so many good intentions.

The Mitt-aphors, And Why They Matter

Back in 2003, when I was an early energetic supporter of Howard Dean (I know! And here I am, now accused of backing the 1%!), I had a hard time explaining to other liberals just what was so bad about John Kerry. We all did. It was hard to explain why what seemed good, maybe even great on paper - the Vietnam soldier who wound up opposing the war, the liberal good deed doer turned Senator from Massachusetts - in person looked just so, so terrible. And yet there he was... the inevitable nominee. Everyone just knew it.

That's what I think of, just now, when I listen to Republicans complain about Mitt Romney.

Like Kerry to conservatives, when Liberals don't like Mitt Romney, it's because, well, he's a Republican. You don't need to say much more than that (though we all do), because really liberal people don't vte for Republicans, or if we do (and actually, I never have), it's for Republicans who aren't actually Republican (like the time I wanted to vote for John Anderson, back when I was 14).

When Republicans talk about not liking Mitt Romney, or not wanting him as their nominee - again - it's complicated. On paper he's great - the experienced business leader who got elected Governor in a "liberal" state, the seasoned campaigner who's really serious, and full of the ideas that conservatives seem to like, these days. And yet... they just don't feel good about him, and their not sure he can win it.

Everyone, it seems, has a metaphor to describe the Republican voters and their semi-disdain for Romney - it's like the difference between the girl you date and the one you marry; or it's like the car that you know is solid and reliable, but doesn't excite you. It's like, you know, they know they'll probably make him the nominee... but it's ike they don't really want to do it.

It's like... the way we were about John Kerry.

The question isn't whether or how MItt Romney can beat the metaphor, or whether, at this point, he'll lose to Newt Gingrich(!); the thing about the metaphor is that it matters. It matters because it's true, and it matters because, like Kerry, the Republicans are probably right to be worried. They can, and probably will, nominate MItt Romney. And he'll probably lose.

The Defiant One

Last week - on my storm break - I had planned to write about Herman Cain and his various harassment allegations... but I got busy and the story kept moving. And still, what I want to write now is essentially what I wanted to write then.

Cain's response to the allegations is about Textbook 101 in How Not To Run A Campaign, but that's not of deep interest to me - to take Cain's missteps seriously is to take Cain seriously, and long before we evaluate sexual harassment charges... Herman Cain is never going to be President.

Still, the unfolding "scandal" and Cain's fumbling response says more - and more good, I think - about the state of workplace harassment allegations than many want to admit. It's easy to look at the various negative aspects - the rabid defenders of Cain, mainly on talk radio, the ugliness from his campaign operatives - and see a lot of bad news on taking harassment seriously. But from the opposite angle - where these charges are being examined and reexamined and discussed - it's worth noting some of the good that's coming out of this.

First, sexual harassment is being taken seriously, and seriously, on the right. Conservatives, male and female have noted that if these allegations have merit (I think that's a more productive description than "true" which isn't nearly as concrete as it would seem), Cain is unfit for the Presidency. That's some remarkable progress, even in recent memory. Moreover, the women making these allegations - whether Karen Kraushaar's reluctant move into the public eye, or Sharon Bialek's deliberate steps - are being given room to make their cases and be heard.

Second, there's more agreement on what constitutes "harassment" than I would ever have expected: Bialek's story of a hand up her skirt and leering "you want a job, right?" proposition didn't get a lot of people trying to explain it away with discussions of her looks, or her outfit, or "she must have misunderstood." Yes, people have noted that her charges are "he said, she said" and hard to confirm... but even then, there's two choices: either he's right that it never happened... or she's right and it did... and that means it was harassment. Similarly, Kraushaar's been clear that "you come up to my chin" is both neither harassment, nor what happened. This too, is some fairly significant progress.

It's in this context of harassment being taken fully and seriously that Cain's missteps have been so pronounced. Even Cain - reflecting his "DC outsider" status as a business world leader - has had to admit that sexual harassment is real and serious and disqualifying. His "I haven't never touched nobody" defense is too absolute and too quick to make this story go away. At the same time, Cain's been surprisingly muddled about offering the kind of simple evidence that would ostensibly prove his point - why not go back and at least review records from the National Restaurant Association before making pronouncements that can easily be disproved (like who've you met, or what setllements were paid). That's not the sign of business competence which Cain's been selling as his main positive attribute.

Cain's press conference was a similar nonstarter, full of abstract denials, a lack of specifically discussing his dealings with specific women, and a lot of third person references to "Herman Cain's decency." Cain's assessments of his own decency is neither the issue nor the point. Nor was trotting out a power lawyer like Lin Wood, who neither came off as objective nor reasonable, to simultaneously intone that sexual harassment is serious while positioning all of Cain's accusers as liars and deabeats. But then, Cain's campaign seems, even for them, remarkably ill-equipped to handle these events profesisonally or competently.

Admittedly, trying to make all of this seem to rosy would be a mistake - both Kraushaar and Bialek face some pretty ugly moments, there's a clear collection of unreconstructed men on the right who will never entirely get the issues around sexual harassment (not to mention Cain's "sexual harassment doesn't just happen to women" going on to insist that women harassmen too. Apparently man-on-man harassment is just too much to discuss). The news about our culture, as this story unfolds, isn't especially better than its ever been. There's been some change... but we still need much more.

I don't know what Cain did or did not do, and mostly, as I said, I don't especially care in the context of Cain's misbegotten run for the Presidency. It wouldn't surprise me to eventually confirm that much of what the women allege is true; it wouldn't necessarily surprise me to find out Bialek's story can't entirely be trusted, either.  At best it's worth noting what progress that has been made, I think, while noting that Cain's defiant denials do him no favors. That, and keep waiting for Cain to give in, and give up.

Finally, one other point in passing: I suspect that Cain's case got harder, not easier, with the revelations out of Penn State. The revulsion we're experiencing around Jerry Sandusky's conduct will make it much harder, I suspect, for anyone to simply wave away sexually inappropriate behavior, and in Cain's case, not help him when he tries to denigrate or marginalize his accusers. It would be different, perhaps, if the Penn State story didn't revolve around sports and hadn't captivated a lot more straight men than might otherwise take notice. But for now, I don't think anyone wants to be part of a news story where "sexual acting out" is part of the storyline. And Cain's defiant stance only makes chasing him and the story that much more likely.

CLASS-Less

With everyone focused so heavily on Occupations of one sort ot another (We're invading Africa! Again!), perhaps now is not the time to remind everyone about the other thing that the Obama Administration still struggles with - health reform.

Kathleen Sibelius made it official today, but this was in the wind for some time: the Administration has abandoned CLASS, the part of health care reform that was meant to provide some form of long term care insurance for seniors. Some of the ACA's most ardent defenders have had to do some backpedaling over this, because the long term care piece was both a signature achievement (it was one of Ted Kennedy's must-haves), and a fallback position when people complained that the ACA was mostly some moderate insurance reforms. "But we've also dealt with long term care!" was a big defense.

In reality CLASS was doomed because it made little or no sense. Indeed, as some especially disgusted partisans note, the real use of CLASS in the bill was to mask the fact that claims the bill was "revenue neutral" were never all that true. CLASS wasn't scheduled to kick in until 2016, but collections of fees and premiums were set to begin next year. By raising CLASS revenues well in advance of the program actually going live, the overall cost of ACA could book the revenue, without discussing the costs. And, the longer term reality was that, after CLASS kicked in, costs for the program were likely to soar.

That's because long term care - like rehabilitation for physical injuries, mental healthcare and other less time defined conditions - is actually very expensive to provide. One reason Medicaid is in such a disastrous state (among many) is because much of the program's funds are used to pay for nursing home care for the indigent elderly, complicated by the fact that nursing home costs will make most elderly people indigent long before they die. CLASS was always unrealistic - filled with rosy scenarios about how much the long term care would cost (even the $50 a day per person estimate on payouts was pretty ludicrous), and even under the rosiest scenarios, the program would cost far more than it could ever take in. Like... well, Medicaid.

Conservatives, of course, always opposed CLASS, much like the rest of the bill, because the math was so obvious and because it looked, more or less, like another entitlement that couldn't be appropriately funded from the get-go. This, of course, is indicative of the problem with health reform on the right: not that they don't make reasonable points about the cost of reform... but they've got essentially no solution but "suffer" when it comes to the actual problem. Opposing CLASS because of the expense missed the obvious - a program as badly conceived as CLASS was never going to happen.

All of which is to say that the Administration today was forced, yet again to admit the obvious: that, in fact, one of the key elements of their health care reform plan, cynically derided as expensive and unworkable was... you guessed it, expensive and unworkable. But then, as we all know, a bunch of the ACA's key assumptions - from the expansion of Medicaid without paying for it, to the cutting of Medicare without wanting to cut anything - are ludicrous, expensive, unrealistic, and unlikely to happen.

And I suppose one could, yet again, express exasperation with this Administration; point to the lousy process of creating a deeply flawed, unworkable health reform plan; complain bitterly about how Washington works; maybe handwrite a sign and take it to a local protest.... but for me, all I can do is shake my head. Two years of pointing out that this stuff won't work... and guess what, it doesn't work. Nothing but class... all the way.

The Personal Financial Crisis Is Political... Sort Of

I don't put a lot of myself in this blog.

I like to write, I like to share my opinions... but I don't like a lot of personal detail. Who I am, What I do, Where I live, the bagel I ate this morning... not really what I want to write about. I like being online as anonymously as possible. Part of the reason I chose this route is tied up in everything I learned about how to write: no personal pronouns, every experience but my own... I will likely make a lousy memoirist.

So as much I like to share my opinions, I don't like them to be driven by personal animus. I write about politics, and my opinions on the issues of the day... but I try not to get too personal about it. The issues I write about may touch me personally (it's less than you might think), but to write about them, for me, is to figure out what makes them about more than me. The things I've written have led to a lot of interesting conversations, a lot of assumptions about my politics, my beliefs, what drives my thinking. Some of it's accurate, and some of it isn't. I don't much worry about it; I certainly don't take a lot of the responses personally. I am not what I write, and on most things, I tend to keep my own, separate, counsel.

Try this - I'm the kind of Democrat who, faced with a choice not liberal enough for me, goes with "Mr. Rent Is Too Damn High." Go figure. And try to square that with friends who think I'm probably subscribing to National Review.

One thing I have not written about - and no, I don't plan to start now - is how this economic and financial crisis we have at the national level has affected me and my family. I suppose it's easy enough to infer - I work in a coffee shop, after all - but daily documentation of my various financial challenges isn't my scene. The story of this financial crisis - what it's wrought, how bad it's gotten - is, to me, a story larger than any one of us.

That said, I think there's been a real failure by the media to really give the depths of people's financial woes much in the way of documentation and shape. Lots of people are out of work, lots of people face foreclosure, mounting bills, loans coming due... yet these stories reach us through an enormous filter. Part of it, of course, is about a general media failure when it comes to reporting on poverty issues. But part of it, I think, is generally about what many people would rather not know - if it's that bad, if people are suffering that terribly... well, that would be awful, and awfully painful to bear. Yet it's embarrassing, one of the real shames of our nation, and not a new one: how do we go on, when so much suffering happens around us?

There are times when the lack of coverage of poverty and poverty issues makes me furious. Right now, I'm not so much furious about it as dismayed. Not having a lot of good documentation of poverty issues, at a time when poverty is exploding, makes writing about it hard. And beyond that, I suspect a lot of people have been falling into poverty with no real compass about how to live through it. Part of what good poverty reporting would do would be to provide light for people just discovering its realities as they join its ranks.

In some sense, I think, I've discounted part of what's likely very cathartic about Occupy Wall Street - the sense that these protests give the people participating a chance to share an experience. A chance to shout out, yes, it's that bad. There's real suffering out here. Why can't people see it?

And, in part, the reason I discount these protests is that the claims of "raising awareness" are the ones that really strike me as old. This is not a new crisis we are living through. Mortgage foreclosures bloomed into a major problem almost 4 years ago. The crises in banking and markets that followed as the mortgages collapsed are also a story several years old. The sense that "we don't know how this was allowed to happen" are long gone - there's nearly a wall full of books to explain just how much was known, just how little was done, and just how bad things remain.

But I think this year, for a number of reasons, has put some reality around the abstract sense that these hard times are not temporary. And though many of us - certainly me, people I know, people who've immersed themselves in the details of the financial crisis - knew this would last; others, I think, are just figuring some of this out. And realizing, slowly, that these hard times will not be contained to some group of "other." This crisis has touched so many of us... and more, I think, before all is said and done.

When I wrote my previous post on Occupy Wall Street, I was concerned most about the lack of a sense of defined purpose; I remain frustrated, especially, by the seeming all-over-the-place aspects of what Occupy Wall Street is meant to accomplish, the lack of a clearly explained, well defined set of goals to result. As I said, I don't think it's wildly unreasonable, or unrealistic, to suggest that protest needs a purpose. And I think, still, it's terrible to cast the "financial crisis" as a confusing black box - when the problems are definable, explicable, and actual ways to address the excesses exist.

But my own visceral reaction - of how this protest fits into my own personal experiences of life in the meltdown - does remind me that the personal is political, and perhaps the lens of how this protest is being viewed is skewed for some. The real touchstone of this protest, I'm starting to suspect, is the discovery that others are sharing a similar experience, that, yes, is being cast a shared sense of anger... but beyond that, I think, is something more basic: these are hard times... and people are having a hard time.

The problem, I think, with making Occupy Wall Street a moment to connect over shared difficulties is multifaceted. For one thing, I think the overall message is downbeat. There's a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that I think many don't have the luxury to indulge in, or share. Another aspect is that, as I've said, the protests offer no real sense of solutions, either to individual challenges (practical issues about bill paying, putting food on a table, and such), or our national problems that linger (foreclosure, bank regulation, our broken poltical processes).

But the aspect that perhaps exasperates me - as I pondered this all this afternoon - is this sense of people protesting poverty problems as if they were somehow new, and new because, well, now people whose lives were previously comfortable have realized the challenges when those comforts erode. I understand well the sense of newfound fear, the sense of regret, the anger, the profound confusion of a life that's sailing into uncharted waters. But as my life circumstances have changed, and I've met more people whose lives never had some of the privileges mine did (and in a number of significant aspects, still does), part of what I've learned is... I didn't invent living in hard times. I'm just a late arrival.

The personal is, yes, political. My politics have always been defined by my experiences, the things I've known, the the things that have happened. Hard times have, no doubt, altered those politics. I'm less patient with debating abstractions. I'm less interested in batting about ideas just for the sake of batting them around. My demands and expectations are about action, doing, making. Do something. Take action. Make change.

As I said in that discussion thread... I hope I turn out to be wrong, that Occupy Wall Street somehow shows itself as a potent force, a change making event, something that moves us forward in these very hard times. I don't think that's what will happen, and in part - from a distance, outside of my own experience - the reason I doubt this protest is because so much of what drives it is so personal, so deeply felt. I'm not trying to figure out financial reform because it will help me personally, because I feel sad or angry about my personal hard times. I'll be okay, thanks, at least for now. What I need, what I have to demand... is that there's help for many. Practical help for basic survival, and national help to break the hold of corporate financial interests.

We all need help, and giving in to fear, frustration, and yes, sadness, won't solve much. And I say that, most of all, from personal experience.

It's Not The Occupation Of Wall Street, It's The Time Spent Occupying

"Occupy Wall Street?" Seriously?

I've honestly been struck near speechless by the daffiness of the "Occupy Wall Street" protest. I can only imagine how inane it looks on Facebook; on Twitter, I get minute by minute tweet updates, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing at all.

But hey... don't blame Twitter.

There's a reason to be worried about "Occupy Wall Street", though the idea that it will have any kind of impact on government policy, financial regulation or banking reform is beyond absurd. If there's a reason to worry - and G-d knows, I hope at least police officials are worried - it's the question everyone should be asking about the occupiers... why are so many people so able to spend pretty much all day every day hanging out in a park in lower Manhattan?

Our political life in this country is in such a brain dead state that yes, it's easy to misconstrue Occupying Wall Street as doing something brave, bold, and confrontational. In fact, it's mostly tae, unfocused, and incoherent. If you don't like the way things are going in this country, if you hate what rich bankers are doing to the financial system... hey, let's stand around for a while!

Mellissa McEwan wrote Friday:

I really don't understand the concern trolling from other progressives about how Occupy Wall Street needs to have a "cohesive message" or a "set of demands" or a "list of proposed solutions" or wevthefuck. There's a lot to be said for a good, old-fashioned awareness-raising event, and, with 90% (ninety percent!) of USians saying the economy stinks, this protest ain't happening in a void of evident motivation. Making some goddamn noise is as good a place to start as any, and better than most options we've got anymore.

...which is, for my money, about as good a sum-up of lefty uselessness as we've got, just now. Occupy Wall Street doesn't "raise awareness" - plenty of people are goddamn well aware that the economy stinks, that financial companies are profiting on people's misery, and serious reforms are needed. "Making noise" is an ineffective approach to activism, and activists - surely someone as knowledgeable, focused and capable of self expression as Melissa - should know well enough that anger requires action, and action requires a sense of purpose. Occupy Wall Street lacks all of this.

Here's a shortlist of ideas you could propose, just off the top of my head:

1. We could centralize lefty anger around an alternative candidate for President
2. We could agitate for the return of Glass-Steagall
3. We could hold Democrats in the House and Senate accountable for their failure to promote an ambitious reform agenda, and replace a generation of aging leaders who have become to tied to the inner workings of Dc and party politics, and lost their connections to the real concerns of real people.
4. We could have significant tax reform, ending the Bush tax cuts across the board, and closing the major loophole that allows Hedge Funds managers to book their salaries as profits on investing, for starters
5. We could back "too big to fail" legislation that would require the breakup of large, poorly performing entities like Citigroup and Bank of America, returning banking to a more locally based enterprise.

I resent the suggestion that just because one is on the left and finds a pointless exercise like Occupy Wall Street to be absurdly off point, that one somehow does not care passionately about financial reform. We need reform desperately. And its a disservice to the issues we have and the reforms we desperately need to throw up a black box around the seriousness of these issues and say, hey, it's fine if you just run around and scream aimlessly. No, it's not.

Still, the point of concern is that all these people milling about is, in its way, significant. The ability of Occupy Wall Street to generate a crowd of people, milling about, angry and bored, is the start of a recipe for a kind of social unrest that could be terribly destructive on societal order. That's obviously fine by a lot of proto-anarchists who think that "tear it all down" is a starting point for our discussions of how to make change; but I've said before, and I'll say again, Americans are deeply insulated from the unrest much of the rest of the world is experiencing, and the potential for violent uprisings and conflict is a kind of arson to our social fabric that more people should take more seriously in all its negative prospects. The potential for Occupy Wall Street to get out of hand, for things to heat up and spill over is very real; and that, really is the underlying problem of inequality, unemployment, and economic hardship that's become the reality in so much of America today. It's why thinking, well spoken activists really ought to be ashamed of not doing more to fight for serious solutions, and seriously holding people we trust more to account. The "Occupation of Wall Street" will, most likely, fizzle, if we're lucky; but if it does, that's really only a temporary reprieve... and I don't think anyone's got a good answer, still, about how to affect the kind of change that would give the Occupiers something to do instead, long term.

A Tax On Millionaires Is Really Both Kind Of Silly And Stupid

I'm not going to drag this one out, because it doesn't need an essay: with September's arrival, we've gotten a series of proposals from the President on "job creation" and "deficit reduction."  They're terrible, and really, more of the same; which, you'd think they'd have figured out by now, are too obviously designed to bait Republicans, and to go nowhere fast.

Of all the proposals, though, the one that stands out to me as doubling down on silliness and incoherence is the now poorly named "Buffett Tax" proposal for millionaires.

The name, ostansibly, comes from the fact that Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed for the New York Times saying people like him (which, really, we can count on slightly more than two hands) should pay more in taxes, and that he should pay more in taxes than, say, his secretary. All I can say is... there's a fun office to work in. But never mind.

Calling the tax the "Buffett Tax" just underlines the silliness - you could, just as easily have called it the "Koch Brothers Tax" if you wanted to make a pointed commentary on people with filthy loot that should be subject to more taxes, and heck, I bet that polls better, too. But here's a quick explanation of why the tax is so silly: most millionaires (and billionaires) do not have salaries over $1 million. The problem with taxing really high levels of "income" is just that - the definition of income. Most wealth is inhereited (hence, the reason to revisit an estate tax), and most highly paid executives don't make $1 million or more in salary. Executive pay "packages" are combinations of salary, benefits and things like stock transfers that aren't taxed as income. 

I used to be an executive assistant, and one of the eye-opening things I learned there was about "deferred compensation", which is, in essence, the stretching of salary payments into escrow accounts available to executives in the furture. It amounts, basically, to a tax deferment, because the compensation isn't income until the person receives it.

Stuff like deferred compensation, too, is why this tax idea is just kind of dumb. I don't like being cynical - or worse, a cynical realist - but I've been around enough to know that the truism about rich people having the time and resources to avoid taxes is largely accurate. Raise taxes on very high incomes... and you're merely shifting money away from things defined as "income." One basic problem with taxing very wealthy hedge fund managers, for insatnce, is a hole in the tax code that's allowing them to claim profits from their funds as something other than income. Congressional will to close that obvious loophole, which affects a really small number of really wealthy people, has lagged. Why? Oh, come on.

And not to glom onto right wing assailment of Warren Buffett, but look, the man brought it on himself: for one thing, it's perfectly true that Warren Buffett could send the government more money in tax revenues anytime he wants. No one's stopping him. Second, Buffett's claims that he pays so little in taxes begs the question... just what do his tax forms look like? Don't raise questions you don't really want to answer later. And just as pointedly, if Warren Buffett is using a bunch of loopholes to redefine his own income as not income... then taxing his "income" at a higher rate isn't really the issue.

It's the loopholes.

I've said before, and I'll keep saying it until good sense takes over and liberals stop playing dopey games on taxes: the problem with tax revenue that we're having is a direct of the Bush tax cuts. Not because they lowered rates for the top brackets, but because they artificially lowered rates for all of us. All the Bush tax cuts should be ended. Everyone's taxes should go up. After that, we can revisit notions of how to better address tax issues on the welathiest among us... which probably means tax reforms to close loopholes, not false fixes not raising rates on income that basically create the incentive to hide it.

And finally, one other controversial sentiment: there's nothing wrong with being rich. And rich liberals know it, too.