Vision Matters

On Monday I wrote about language and yesterday I mentioned Ireland. Today I combine the two. I read somewhere recently that in ancient Ireland it was a greater crime to kill a poet than a king. I can’t find a citation and, although it seems apocryphal, I suspect it’s true, because in ancient Ireland poets had equal status with bishops and kings. At any rate, it helps explain the history of a people who have been far better served by their poets than their rulers and have, as a consequence, developed a rich culture and a strong identity that have enabled them to survive centuries of oppression. Perhaps it’s just his Irish-sounding surname, but I believe that Barack Obama’s appeal in 2008 was to the poetry in us. In his rhetoric, in his persona and in a biography that brought together so many disparate strands of America’s heritage, he appealed across conventional political lines in a way that contrasted with the deeply unpoetic presidency of George Bush. It is ironic that the result has been polarization to the point of gridlock and a Republican opponent for 2012 who is nothing if not prosaic.

Not everyone is enamored of the idea of poet as president. In fact, this election is increasingly focused on management styles and problem-solving techniques. But right now, I think what we need above all is a new vision of ourselves as a people . . . such as Havel gave the Czechs, Churchill gave the British, and Lincoln once gave us.

Democracy

Not long before the first democratic election in Egypt’s long history, an observer said, “I hope they will select correctly.” But isn’t that, by definition, what the democratic process is meant to determine?

Much of America’s foreign policy since World War II has consisted of public demands for free elections and quiet support for autocratic allies. No wonder we view the uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere with both excitement and trepidation. What we advocate is happening, and we have no control over it.

Who could have imagined:

• In Belfast, Queen Elizabeth, dressed all in apple green, shaking hands with Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s current deputy first minister and former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, which assassinated the queen’s cousin, ignited a series of lethal bombings across Britain, and plotted the murder of the royal family.

• In Cairo, Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been banned since 1948, being sworn in as Egypt’s president.

• In Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi released from two decades of house arrest and promptly elected to Burma’s Parliament.

Indeed, the one country where cynicism about the electoral process seems to have taken firmest root is this one. Barely half of America’s eligible voters participate in presidential years, a third in off years. The amount of money unleashed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision undermines our confidence in the fairness of our own elections.

Instead of patronizingly judging the outcomes of elections on the other side of the world, we should focus on fixing what is happening here.

The Other Decision

I am the recipient of the Joint Services Commendation Medal, which was awarded to me near the end of my military career 40 years ago. It is not a grand medal in the hierarchy of such things, but it is not the least distinguished either. I don’t remember the word “valor” in the citation, but I do recall, perhaps, an “above and beyond.” I mention this because last Thursday, in a decision that got buried under the reaction to its health care ruling, the Supreme Court overturned the federal “Stolen Valor Act,” which had made it a crime to falsely claim you had won a military medal. I never have heard of anyone claiming to have won the JCSM, to be sure; the Supreme Court’s decision concerned a man named Xavier Alvarez, who presented himself as a Medal of Honor winner at a meeting of California’s Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board. He also said he had played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and had been married to a Mexican starlet.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that Mr. Alvarez’ claims were contemptible but not unconstitutional. Justices Clarence Scalito dissented, saying that lying was not protected by the First Amendment. Clearly they haven’t been paying attention to the current political scene, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com has a position on its “Truth-O-Meter” called “Pants on Fire.”

Perjury is a crime. Libel is a crime. Slander is a crime. But braggadocio, however contemptible? Congress has more important matters to address.

Stumble of the Week

African Americans must be bewildered by the current political dance to woo “the Hispanic vote.” Mitt Romney, in particular, has been tiptoeing through the landmines of his party’s need to court Latinos and his hard-edged primary appeal to its right wing, which wants no mercy on the undocumented. Blacks aren’t getting half the attention, even though they were brought here legally, the slave trade being big business in those days. Packed like sardines in the hulls of ships, many did not survive the harsh journey.

Yet one thing has not changed: through the smokescreen of morality, the issue is economics. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said it clearly: “I believe America is in a global battle for capital. If you are a worker who has been here for any length of time, we have to have a path, not to citizenship, but a secure knowledge that they will be able to work.”

It’s not citizenship we care about; it’s cheap labor.

I lived in an area where thousands of Latinos have come in search of work for years. Their stories are harrowing, as they were victimized at every turn, from the “coyotes” who brought them across the border to the employers who ill-used them to their neighbors who resented them.

Yes, their arrival brought increases in crime (they were usually the victims) and poverty. But the diversity they brought to a narrow community, their work ethic, the color of their culture and the steadfastness of their courage have made the area a better place for all who live there.

American Dream

Harold Simmons leaves a bad taste in your mouth. One of America’s richest men, Simmons was born in poverty in rural Texas and has subsequently amassed billions through an arcane holding company that shields him from responsibility for the trail of toxic sites he has strewn across America. One of those sites is an abandoned NL Industries property on New Jersey’s Raritan River. Simmons bought the former National Lead in 1986, acquiring both the company’s assets and its considerable liabilities. It would appear that if you exploit the assets and stonewall the liabilities, you can make a lot of money out of toxic metals.

Last evening I gave a program in environmental justice for the New Jersey Council of the Humanities, which opened with the documentary, “Rescuing the River: The Raritan.” New Jersey is trying to clean up the Raritan, whose waters historically sustained some of the nation’s largest industries. Parts of the river now sustain nothing at all, primarily because of the toxic wastes those industries have left behind. It is a crime repeated along countless rivers across America. The Raritan’s biggest culprit is NL industries.

Perhaps coincidentally, Simmons is a huge philanthropist in Dallas and the largest individual contributor to SuperPACs in the country. As of March, he had give $18 million. Although Rick Perry was his first choice, he has subsequently contributed to every Republican candidate.

But there's hope: Simmons’ foundation, which is run by his daughters, supports immigration rights, campaign and prison reform, gun control and reproductive rights.

Is More Better?

After determining that China has been “dumping” its heavily subsidized solar panels on the U.S. market, the Commerce Department recently imposed duties of 31 percent on imported Chinese panels. This set off the predictable debate about free trade and protectionism, trade wars and global capitalism, the economics of alternative energy and Chinese currency manipulations.

It’s way too complicated for me, but a debate on NPR yesterday pitted US panel manufacturers against panel distributors and an environmentalist from the Rocky Mountain Institute. The manufacturers pushed for the tariff because of what they claim is China’s drive to create an international monopoly. By unfairly subsidizing its manufacturers, they argued, China has undermined the U.S. domestic industry – and ensured the transfer of thousands of jobs overseas.

The others raised concerns about the impact of substantially higher panel prices on the still-fledgling efforts to shift America from fossil fuels to alternative energy, and they forecast continue dependence on “foreign oil” and increased contributions to global warming.

Despite the variety of their views, they were united on the need to produce more of what all accepted as an unmitigated good: sustainable energy. In the last depression Americans were promised a chicken in every pot; in this one it is a solar panel on every roof.

But one reason we are in this mess is because of our insistence that more is better, that we can have our cake and eat it too. In a finite world, maybe we can’t – and maybe it’s time to talk, not just about alternative sources of energy, but about alternative ways to live.

Joe, Bob and Me

“We have all these huge issues, and we’re bogged down in whether Joe can marry Bob.” Gay marriage has gone from an abomination to a diversion.

The charge is not new. Democrats have long accused Republicans of exploiting “social issues” to play to their evangelical base – and so giving the party’s real powers the cover to dismantle the welfare state. Indeed, I have done that myself. Republicans, by contrast, now assail Democrats for playing the gay card to deflect attention from the economy.

But gay marriage is not a tangential matter. It is a defining issue of today’s politics. It is part of the ongoing struggle for America’s soul.

As a country we are at our best when we expand the rights of people. Those efforts have never come without fierce opposition – from the mid-19^th century when a tiny group of abolitionists were dismissed as fanatics to the mockery of suffragettes to the murder of civil rights activists. And marriage has long been a focal point. When I was a child, it was a mortal sin for a Catholic to enter a Protestant church, let alone get married in one, and it was not until 1967 that a unanimous Supreme Court declared Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional.

When I ran for Congress in 1996, my position on gay marriage was “evolving.” I knew the right answer. I was just too chicken to give it. It’s a lot easier to stand up now, but it is not too late.

Whipping up the Base

Who says the two parties are polarized? After writing the script for Obamacare when he was governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney is now taking credit for the auto industry bailout. This surprised me, as a couple of days ago a friend of mine – a thoughtful and entrepreneurial businessman – said, “Mitt will have a lot of explaining to do about his position on the bailout.”

Here’s his latest explanation: "I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. . . . So, I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back."

If the outcome had been different, Plan B was ready: "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday,” he wrote in 2008, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

Guess which of those statements he made to workers at an Ohio auto-parts manufacturing plant.

No wonder his former Republican opponents are burying their endorsements at the end of speeches and the bottom of emails.

Near the conclusion of his self-important exit announcement, Newt Gingrich said, “I’m asked sometimes, is Mitt Romney conservative enough? Compared to Barack Obama? This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical, leftist president in history.”

And on Monday, Rick Santorum’s website posted his endorsement email without fanfare, in the middle of the night, and in the fourth-to-last paragraph.

Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day, and the world hardly noticed. In these times when economics trumps the environment at every turn, we need not just to celebrate the earth but to rescue its future from those who seek only to exploit it.

Although Earth Day seemed to come out of nowhere 42 years ago, it was very much a part of the ferment of the 1960s – an era that shook American society to its roots – and its organizers drew on the non-violent tactics of other protest movements. Yet elected officials, who believed their role was to galvanize public opinion around critical issues, played a leading role from the outset. The most important of these was Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, who had the idea of a national day of environmental “teach-ins.” Convinced that it must be a bipartisan effort, Nelson asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to be co-chair. (McCloskey was the kind of Republican who hardly exists any more. In fact, he became a Democrat in 2007.)

On the first Earth Day, 20 million people gathered at teach-ins and celebrations across the country. The combination of grass-roots demonstrations and bipartisan political leadership led almost immediately to real change: the Clean Air Act was significantly broadened in 1970; the Clean Water Act became law in 1972; and the Endangered Species Act was passed a year later.

Every one of those laws, enacted with broad bipartisan support, has made a real difference, and every one of them is under siege in the current Congress.

Meet Your Lobbyist

The newest lobbyist on Capitol Hill is 55-year-old John Bowles, who registered last week on behalf of the American Nazi Party. The Nazis have never had a lobbyist before, and Bowles told ABC News he was going to “try out for the first time and see if it flies.”

And what will the Nazis lobby for? On his registration form Bowles cited “political rights and ballot access laws.” But not to worry, he told ABC, “I’m not going to go in and shove a swastika in their face.”

This is not Bowles’ first experience with national politics. In 2008 he ran for president as “The White People’s Candidate,” proclaiming that “White Americans need to start voting as a bloc . . . if they are to have an effective voice in government or America will turn into a third world country.”

Capitol Hill seems a good place to start, as white people have established something of a beachhead there – holding 96 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 83 percent of the House. As a bloc, these guys could really do something.

Laying aside such complicated constitutional issues as racial purity, tribal homelands and the Aryan Republic of Idaho, they could focus on more immediate matters they have in common. A universal health-care system, for example, modeled on the one they all enjoy at public expense. Or getting serious about the national debt, which they all insist they want to do.

Bowles has his work cut out for him, though, because thousands of other lobbyists are already working the halls to make sure these things don’t happen.

Two Suspensions

There were two suspensions yesterday in two of America’s favorite pastimes: baseball and politics. The Miami Marlins suspended manager Ozzie Guillen for five games for praising Fidel Castro. The Venezuelan-born Guillen infuriated the Cuban-American community that his team had spent hundreds of millions trying to woo with a new $634-million stadium (built of course with taxpayers’ money), new uniforms and the most famous Latino manager in baseball.

Then Guillen said he “loves” Fidel Castro, continuing, "I respect Fidel Castro. . . .A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that (expletive) is still there." That didn’t sit well with the fan base, and ownership forced Guillen to publicly repudiate his comments, which he called “the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life so far.” His abject apology may not save his job.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, who has made comments far more egregious than those of Ozzie Guillen, “suspended” his presidential campaign. And while, mercifully, he will not be a candidate for president in 2012, he actually enhanced his standing in the party and his prospects for the future. Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment are grateful he is out of their way; his ultra-right-wing base is delighted to see him elevated to the status of national spokesperson; and he has been spared the need to submit his ideas to a national plebiscite.

So, a man involved in a boys’ game may lose his career for an offhand remark (which Joshua Keating pointed out was “as undeniably true as [it] was undeniably insensitive to Castro’s victims”), while a man seeking the presidency is being praised for the courage of his candor.

A Thought on Taxes

I watched yesterday one of those short “debates” on CNN in which a Democrat and a Republican stand around a table and respond to questions by reciting their party’s talking points. On the “Buffett Rule” – which sets a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for Americans whose incomes exceed $1 million – the Republican talked about the “job creators” who would be discouraged from the heroic role they play, while the Democrat talked about the national need for “fairness.” The journalist talked about polls that show 64 percent of Americans favor the Buffett Rule, named for Warren Buffett who noted that he pays taxes at lower rate than his secretary. The journalist also pointed out that the public is all for slashing spending . . . until people start to talk specifically about what programs to cut. Obviously we need to get real about this issue – about exactly where the cuts will be, about precisely what jobs, other than domestic servants, are created by the personal incomes of the very rich, etc.

Lost in yesterday’s discussion was why we pay taxes at all. A tax has become simply a burden, and therefore the lighter the burden the better. What happened to the notion that a tax is an investment in the country and in ourselves – one whose value we can measure by the return that investment brings? Yes, there is enormous waste that needs to be addressed. But there is so much that needs to be built and that we as a society should be building together.

Mitts Off

I write this morning about the power of negative thinking and positive cash flow. In the four-and-a-half years that Mitt Romney has been running for president, I have yet to hear him present a positive idea. Instead, his operating style is to tell us why his opponent is so dreadful and assure us that he represents the opposite.

Because Newt Gingrich is the consummate insider, Mitt Romney is the unsullied outsider. Rick Santorum was Mr. Earmark; Romney stands for rectitude. Obama wants to impose “government-centered society;” Romney will offer a non-government-centered society. Once he has defined his opponent, his SuperPAC rolls out the heavy artillery and scorches the earth.

It seems to be working, as Romney is now perceived as the inevitable nominee. Yet the reluctance remains, even in his own party. To date, Romney has won over 50% of the vote in only four states – and he is running against one man (Santorum) who lost his senate seat by 700,000 votes and another (Gingrich) whose party forced him to resign as Speaker of the House.

To present a negative image of others is not enough. At some point a candidate must fill his own empty vessel with substance and augment his attack ads with ideas. After having spent millions of dollars to demonize whomever gets in his way, Romney has given us almost no idea of what he believes in or how he would decide anything should he get the office he so desperately wants.

Spaghetti Bolognese

After a two-day hiatus, we return to Woody Brock and American Gridlock. It is a fitting time to look at his discussion of the second great issue whose resolution has been lost in the politics of nastiness: entitlements, and in particular, health care, which is currently under discussion before the Anointed Nine. The issue of health care is enormously complicated –Brock calls it the “Spaghetti Bolognese of public policy problems – and his chapter addressing it is one of the book’s best. He is critical of “Obamacare,” but for reasons that have received little public notice – unless we address the supply side of healthcare, particularly by creating conditions that will produce more practitioners, America will end up both broke and rationing services. The logic that takes him there involves a fascinating discussion about the much-misunderstood law of supply and demand, but the essence of his argument is that the need to (1) provide access for 50 million currently uninsured Americans and to (2) control costs as a percentage of GDP are on a collision course unless the supply curve expands faster than the demand curve.

Universal health care is a public good, one in which the government must be involved, and so the focus on the “individual mandate,” which has become the centerpiece of the debate, seems nonsensical to me. We already have universal coverage, unless we are prepared to let the uninsured lie in the streets untended. This debate ought to be about making sure that does not happen.

Obamacare

In the almost two years I have been enrolled in Medicare, I have found it to be by far the best medical insurance plan I have ever had. I once said that to my doctor, who replied, “You know, many of us agree.” In fact, in our long – and so far successful – partnership to keep me alive, we went through a mini-crisis several years ago when he stopped accepting Aetna, which was the “gold plan” I was on at the time. He said he was fed up with the onerous paperwork the company demanded, its niggling oversight of his patient care, and what amounted to interference in his medical practice. Ultimately he had to return to the fold because a small group practice is no match for a huge corporate insurer. And as anyone who has to deal with Verizon can attest, just because you are not the government doesn’t mean you can’t be intractably bureaucratic and provide awful service. Moreover, at least for me, Medicare isn't cheap. I pay reasonable but not insignificant monthly premiums for the parts of the system that are not free.

Despite the constant allusions to the horrors of socialized medicine with its death panels asd rationed care, the United States currently spends more on health care than any other country, and the health of its people is no better as a result. The current law under scrutiny by the Supreme Court Nine is the first national effort to seek fair and full access to health care. It’s not perfect, but it’s a long overdue first step.

The White Ladies

Since when is a joke like the one Robert De Niro told at an Obama fundraiser (“Now do you really think our country is ready for a white First Lady?") the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown law student, who had testified on health insurance and contraception, a slut? Since Newt Gingrich said so: "If people on the left want to talk about radio talk show hosts, then everybody in the country ought to hold the president accountable when somebody at his event says something as utterly, totally unacceptable as Robert De Niro said last night.”

And how did the White House react? The Democrats are the midwives of political correctness; the White House agreed with Gingrich.

If we can’t make distinctions between silly jokes and offensive attacks, we will become a society without a sense of humor, a nation without nuance – which is two ways of saying the same thing.

Actually, leaving the ladies aside for the moment, I don’t think our country is ready for a white president . . . at least not:

• One who whittles his core principles to fit his current audiences.

• One who has affairs when his wives are sick and then says it’s OK because he has made peace with God? We all know it’s OK with Newt. Only Newt knows it’s also OK with God.

• One whose policies will drive men to prostitution and women to back-alley abortions. Rick Santorum can pontificate about his religion all he wants, but even his fellow Catholics aren’t buying it.

The sanctimony is pretty galling.

Rick Perry may be gone, but God, it seems, has settled into other candidates’ heads.

Light Fare

With all that is happening in the world, it seems almost frivolous to discuss the Republican primary (yes, it is still going on . . . Illinois today), but the ultimate winner could end up president of the United States, so it is a contest with a significant trophy. Ironically, Sunday was not a good day for Rick Santorum.The candidate, who has developed a Romney-like penchant for inept phrasing (“I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be. Doesn’t matter to me.”), may also have his own Jeremiah Wright problem. At a morning service at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, Rev. Dennis Terry blessed Santorum . . . and repeated the “I don’t care” mantra. “I don’t care what the liberals say, I don’t care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation. . . . If you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things, I have one thing to say — get out!”

Later in the day Romney trounced Santorum in the primary in Puerto Rico (or Rich Port), partly perhaps because the latter announced that the “Spanish speaking country” must adopt English before it can be considered for statehood. (I have been unable to confirm rumors that he has called on California to rename its major cities Saint Francis and The Angels.)

Actually, this is more than a joke. The public hostility toward immigrants, particularly those from Latin America, disfigure the history of a nation whose west was settled by indigenous peoples and then – 500 years ago – by Spaniards and retains a rich heritage from both.

Polls for Everyone

Several polls were published this week to determine who will be elected president eight months from now. They cleared up a lot of confusion. “The Republican party has a big problem. Huge!” writes The New York Times’ liberal columnist Charles Blow in “Obama-mentum.” Blow dissects a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, which begins, “Mitt Romney has retaken a significant lead nationally in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, even as he has fallen further behind Barack Obama in a general election matchup.”

“For the Republicans,” writes Blow, “there is no way to put a positive spin on these trends.”

Well, maybe for that poll.

In “The Vulnerable President,” the Times’ conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, cites other polls – Times/CBS (“President Obama is heading into the general election season on treacherous political ground”) and ABC/Washington Post (“Four bucks a gallon gas is taking its toll”) to dissect the president’s ratings drop: “Obama’s political position is tenuous enough that it doesn’t take all that much bad news – particularly on the economy — for his approval ratings to go negative.”

So take heart, there is a poll to suit everybody’s tastes . . . . and many more on the way.

Are the polls worthless? I think they tell us that a lot of people are unsettled about the future, and they are hoping someone will speak honestly to their concerns – and their hopes – instead of robotically reciting talking points. I believe that is what made Obama a special candidate in 2008. And I think it is heartening news that people want to look through a candidate's carefully manicured image to the person himself.

Tell it to a Plant

The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is."

Rick Santorum, Biloxi, Mississippi, March 13, 2012

Of all the tripe to which we have been subjected in the never-ending Republican primary, this is the most ignorant. Partly because it was uttered with such willful hubris – and pride, if I remember my confirmation classes, is not just one of the seven deadly sins, it is the first of them. Moreover, the statement makes no sense, and it wouldn’t even if Santorum actually talks to plants. Plants, of course, depend on carbon dioxide, and we humans increasingly depend on plants to remove the escalating levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

For contrary to the pontifications of Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, et. al., the question of global climate change – and the role of humans in accelerating it – are no longer matters of serious scientific debate. I am not a scientist, but I have spent a lot of time with them, and I recently talked to one who studies carbon movement and climate change. Not only is the evidence “irrefutable,” he said, but as researchers refine the models, the message gets more dire. The good news, however, is that, if we get serious about addressing the issue, we can prevent the worst excesses of global warming.

If Santorum is going to dismiss something this important as “a hoax,” he should at least tell us why “liberal America” is perpetrating it – something more informative than “in Washington, blocking the American dream has become political sport.”

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon on such a beautiful day, so I am heading outside to enjoy the weather.

Growth?

Third in a (sort of) series     In a world in which one in seven people is undernourished, it seems unconscionable to talk about policies that slow economic growth. In a world in which we use the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide our resources and absorb our waste, it seems unconscionable not to.

This, I think, is the great – and often unspoken – divide in progressive politics today. The United States has long equated the nation’s well-being with its median standard of living, and we use economic growth to measure human progress. For the last 70 or 80 years, the Gross Domestic Product has been the measuring stick of America’s prosperity . . . and even of its people’s personal happiness.

That whole notion is under attack – from Joseph Stiglitz’s Mismeasuring Our Lives to Woody Tasch’s Slow Money to Bill McKibben’s Eaarth. And yet, when a hard choice must be made, we continue to treat environmental issues as a luxury to be addressed after we have solved the more immediate economic problems.

Everyone’s mantra in this election is “jobs.” And while Republicans attack environmentalists as job killers, Democrats bring them to the table to discuss “green jobs” and to figure out how to build future growth on alternative energy and better management of ecosystem services.

That’s all fine. But the deeper question is whether the model of economic growth, in whatever form, is viable any more. That question – as we are already beginning to see in issues such as the Keystone pipeline and “fracking” – threatens to divide the current Democratic coalition.