For Teachers Unions, Focus Should Be Beating Brady

The taxpayers of Illinois are broke because of WHO we tax and HOW we tax, but not how much we tax. Illinois has one of the most regressive tax systems in the entire country. Overall, we tax the poorest 20% more than THREE times the wealthiest 1% (source: http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf). That is INSANE. And the only candidate who wants to change this disaster AT ALL is Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate. The Democrats and Republicans are offering no solutions to this whatsoever, just temporary bandage "fixes" that do nothing to get at the root cause of the problem.



Whitney's full economic platform: http://whitneyforgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2010.Economy.state_.2.0wpd.pdf
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

My Observations on the Media: Bias and Selection

This evening, while I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, one of my favorite political TV programs, I suddenly came to a rather simple but nonetheless intriguing conclusion. I decided to follow up on my intrigue by fleshing out my thoughts in writing.

I have long maintained that no corporate media source has an actual ideological bias or perspective. They simply have an allegiance to some particular political party (i.e., in the United States, the Democratic Party or the Republican Party), some corporate interest, some particular powerful figure(s), or some combination of those. In other words, for example, the so-called "neoconservatism" of Fox News is a means to a particular end, and not an end in itself; and the same goes for MSNBC and its supposed "progressivism."

But as someone with a strong distaste of the two-party system, my realization tonight had to do with the difference between what might be called the faux progressivism of corporate MSNBC and what I would term a genuinely independent and uncompromised leftist perspective found in independent media such as Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

It is obvious where the differences lie between the structures of these programs. From the official Democracy Now! website:

Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. We do not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding. This allows us to maintain our independence.

Meanwhile, programs such as The Rachel Maddow Show broadcast on corporate MSNBC obviously get their funding from advertising revenue, so whichever giant corporation is sponsoring MSNBC's programming generally is paying the bills that keep progressives such as Rachel Maddow on national cable television (and don't get me wrong; I do genuinely believe Dr. Maddow is a progressive and deeply admire her and her work).

But aside from those structural and organizational differences between the two programs, I believe it is important to examine the real substantive distinctions that arise between the actual methods by which the programs are produced.

I think the contrast is simply this: the corporate media, no matter how "liberal" or "conservative" it supposedly is, merely takes sides in a pre-selected debate. The overall framing of political issues is the same, whether you are watching, for example, the Fox News Channel or MSNBC, and whether you're reading the New York Times or the New York Post. Moreover, the selection of the political issues to be covered in the first place is essentially identical. Thus, the only difference between what many people consider to be polar opposites is just that - taking opposite sides in every debate, in pure binary fashion. Anyone who dares to question this portrayal of the political landscape is relegated to being what the media (objectively, of course) reports as being "radical" or "looney" or "out there" or "dangerous" or "extremist." Etc.

On the other hand, the process used by the independent media, such as in the case of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, is not to simply choose sides in a predetermined debate, but instead to reframe the entire political spectrum and select the issues the staff feels are important in the first place. By merely selecting different issues to report on, rather than taking sides on issues handed down to you via a corporate hierarchy, a much more genuine shift in perspective and ideology can be communicated without having to adhere strictly to any talking points or paying undue respect to baseless assumptions and untouchable subjects. When ideology is produced this way, it can be done without telling someone what to think and without putting a lot of effort into making up arguments to always justify your side. Instead, objective truths can simply be reported and the intellectual work can be left up to the viewer to infer the implications (it's LITERALLY an honest rendition of "we report, you decide" that isn't so laughable!).

It doesn't take much while watching a segment of The Rachel Maddow Show or Countdown with Keith Olbermann to point out instances of the host doing all sorts of rhetorical and mental gymnastics just to demonstrate for the viewer why the host's side is right and the other side is wrong. Contrarily, Amy Goodman almost completely leaves her opinion (as well as her emotions) out of the program, and all of the ideological perspective that can be gleaned from Democracy Now! is simply by virtue of the fact that they report on things no one else is reporting on (which is, of course, no mistake). It leaves the viewer with a much more accurate depiction of reality, as well as a sense of being truly informed rather than brainwashed (regardless of whether the viewer is brainwashed in a "good" or "bad" way).

The result of this is a system where the individual host or face of any given media program, or any individual journalist, is largely irrelevant. In the end, it doesn't matter much that Rachel Maddow is a brilliant progressive who understands politics and public policy extremely well; she doesn't write the scripts and there are some areas where she and her staff know they can't go if they want to keep their jobs. Even if you deny any possible larger interpretations of the media, just the simple fact that MSNBC must drive up profits at all costs and keep viewership levels high is partially responsible for this. The reporting still has to follow the money. Even knowing just that alone, how could one ever expect a truly objective corporate media?

My Problem with the Two-Party System

One of the most consistently annoying things about American politics is the lack of real choice in mainstream political parties and candidates. This is, of course, made even more frustrating by the equal lack of diversity in mainstream media coverage of these political parties and candidates. Essentially when people complain that an American news outlet is "biased," the problem is not that the news outlet is biased in a particular ideological sense, but rather that it is biased toward a particular political party and its candidates. For example, Fox News isn't really conservative; it's Republican. The neo-conservatism of Fox News is simply a means to an end, the end being the election of Republicans (or certain subsets of Republicans) to political office. The same goes for MSNBC, which many like to call the "liberal" alternative to Fox News. MSNBC's so-called "liberal" bias is also nothing more than a means to an end, in this case with the ultimate goal of making Democrats look good and Republicans look bad. Meanwhile, networks such as CNN and others attempt to fool people into thinking that they are unbiased simply because they are not clearly always backing Democrats or always backing Republicans. Instead, they alternate between Democratic Party supporters and Republican Party supporters, and dumb their hosts down so much that there isn't any substance to be biased in the first place. These hosts generally ask a set of incredibly stupid, dull, and narrow-minded questions that are intended to generate the largest amount possible of well-prepared party-line statements from the usual pair of a party-line Democrat and a party-line Republican. The quick succession of these party-line statements from what are generally considered a "Republican strategist" and a "Democratic strategist" is intended to give the impression of a debate. Yet anything that is not well within the mainstream of Republican and Democratic politics is completely ignored, even when highly relevant. This is easy and convenient for the mainstream corporate media because it presents an easy to follow narrative of "right vs. left" or "good vs. evil." No room is left for nuance or alternative ideas and perspectives. There has to be a good guy and a bad guy in every debate, and those roles are filled differently depending on which channel you're watching. Anything that challenges this simple, dramatized, dumbed down portrayal of politics is considered to be too complicated, unworthy of coverage, or not serious enough.

I won't go into the corporate hijacking of the media, extreme consolidation of big media conglomerates, and other reasons behind the poor quality of mainstream media. Those are all equally important problems, but I won't address them here.

I digress. All of this is to say that one of the most frustrating things about the tyrannical two-party system in America is its conscious painting of everyone outside of the two-party system as a radical, an idealist, or someone who just doesn't have their head on straight. I'm not talking about so-called "independents" who are so devoid of any real opinions or substance that they simply alternate between voting for Republicans and Democrats based on their current mood or something equally as superficial. These are the bipolar folks who the talking heads and political pundits on TV spend most of their time guessing about. These "independents" swing elections and like to feel as if they are unpredictable. In some senses they are; but you've always got a 50/50 chance at guessing correctly what they'll do next. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but I wouldn't call that too unpredictable or independent.

This country has been tricked into thinking that Republicans and Democrats are actually very different, and that there aren't any major ideas or issues those two parties don't address. So-called "liberals" are well conditioned and programmed to dismiss those who refuse to accept the failures and massive compromises of the Democratic Party. They adapt their views and opinions to fit within the Democratic Party, rather than the other way around because it is much more difficult to make an impact on the Democratic Party. For example, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos is quite guilty of this. He has often made light of those to the left of him, or anyone who supports progressive causes without compromising their ideals. Moulitsas harshly criticized Rep. Dennis Kucinich during the health reform debate for displaying just a small amount of independent thought. Moulitsas clearly believed it was more important to hand the Democratic Party a political victory than to actually help Americans who needed real reform. Then in a recent Daily Kos poll regarding Illinois politics, the sleazy and disgraced "independent" gubernatorial candidate Scott Lee Cohen (who initially ran as a Democrat for lieutenant governor) was included as an option but Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney was not. Scott Lee Cohen has not even chosen a running mate yet, and it is questionable at best whether he will even be on the ballot. Rich Whitney, on the other hand, will be on the ballot due to the Green Party's "established" status as a political party in Illinois (even with all the unfair obstacles the two major parties purposely erected in order to avoid just that). Whitney received about 10.5% of the vote in the 2006 Illinois gubernatorial election, far more of a political feat than Scott Lee Cohen, an extremely wealthy pawnbroker, has to his name. Yet the Daily Kos refuses to acknowledge this and instead has decided to play it safe by conducting their polls in such a selectively biased manner.

Then there's the Tea Party movement, which largely exists within the context of the Republican Party, rather than acting as a real threat to it. The corporate media assists with this by speaking pejoratively of the Tea Party as if they should just "grow up" already and join the Republican Party. I despise the Tea Party and think it is a backwards, reactionary, racist movement - but I deeply admire the aspects of it that truly challenge the status quo, and dare to protest both Republicans and Democrats based on principle. I'm not saying that their motivations are correct or that they have any of their facts straight; I'm just saying it's admirable when people stand by their convictions and refuse to fall back in line as they are told to. It's my opinion that all protest is good protest. Authority should never be trusted on its word.

The result of all this is a very close-minded electorate and an extreme oversimplification of political issues and public policy. Those who would be considered centrist or moderate almost anywhere else in the world are considered radicals here in America. On any given political issue, a wealth of ideas and perspectives are completely left out of the mainstream discussion. Why is that? I really don't believe it is a cultural issue as much as it is a consequence of our particular political system. I don't believe there is anything inherent in the American people that makes us more likely to accept the illusion of choice, other than the fact that it's what we've always had. We're used to it.

Think about it. If all of us tried thinking outside of the box for once, we might get somewhere, collectively.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it."
— Karl Marx

BEFORE YOU PROTEST TAXES

Before you protest taxes, try these for starters: two pointless and deficit-exploding wars, the PATRIOT ACT, state secrets, government-sanctioned torture, warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations, massive cuts in education spending across the country, private military contractors who profit off of war (thus giving them an incentive to prolong it indefinitely), corporations buying elections and corporate ownership of our government, the failure to regulate Wall Street and the banks that helped destroy our economy, corporations outsourcing and shipping American jobs overseas while receiving tax breaks, the millions of Americans who STILL will have no access to health care or will go bankrupt in the process of being forced to buy it, the immoral and failed war on drugs, insane copyright and patent laws, the secretive ACTA negotiations, Draconian immigration policies, etc.

What the conservative movement is getting right

I'm not saying that the "Tea Party" movement is the right way to do it, or that any of their claims are valid, but certainly the left appeared disconnected from reality when they made light of what happened with the recent elections in New York's 23rd district and counted it as good for leftists. Sure, it was a minor victory for the Democratic Party that was notable for its nearly unprecedented nature (the congressional seat was held more recently by the Whig Party than a Democrat). And it was fun watching Rachel Maddow report on Dede Scozzafava's last name becoming a verb. Yet the events of the last few years, with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, for all of their symbolic significance, have produced little in the way of tangible, substantial results. Looking at what has happened with the debate over health insurance reform, for example, leads one to question whether what is good for the Democratic Party is indeed good for the left at all.

The health insurance reform debate has proven that progressives are a nearly powerless minority in Congress, regardless of the fact that Democrats hold a strong majority. This proof can be found easily in the latest version of the "reform" bill currently being peddled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Far from what any true progressive desires, this bill is more than a simple compromise. Compared to what could have been, it's a true disaster. The number of compromises conceded to the right wing surely outnumber the aspects of the bill that actually please the left. The public option has been deformed so much that it fails to even serve its original purpose of providing competition for the private sector. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projects that indeed, premiums for the public option will be even higher than premiums for private plans. This is of course because as a major concession to conservative Democrats (no, they're not moderate), premiums for the public option will be negotiated with providers rather than tied to Medicare rates + 5%. In addition to this, the CBO estimates that at most the public option could potentially cover six million people (a mere fraction of the uninsured, the rest of which would be forced to buy insurance from the private sector, but more on that later). Even more troubling is that those same conservative Democrats will likely vote no when the final bill comes up for passage anyway, so why include language to appease them while ignoring the wishes of those who actually plan to vote yes? The individual mandate to buy health insurance is a terrible idea when the rest of the "reform" isn't enough to actually bring down health insurance premiums in the first place. It's essentially a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. Then there is the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies, which the Senate bill also fails to eliminate. Remember all the hubbub over that just a few weeks back? Well, the Senate already "forgot." Or maybe the insurance industry just got a tighter grip around the necks of Democrats in the Senate. The infamous Stupak amendment that plagues the House's version of "reform," seriously restricting abortion rights, shouldn't go unmentioned either, but it has received more than enough coverage throughout the media. In exchange for all of the compromises and concessions to the right wing, progressives get absolutely nothing. Thus, it is misleading to say that this is all just a matter of typical political compromise, as anything less than a single payer system is a massive compromise in the first place. The great compromise was silently made the minute President Obama started talking about a public option, rather than single payer, on the campaign trail and then later from the White House. This was Obama's greatest misstep regarding the issue of health care, the biggest policy initiative of his presidency's first year.

All of this is to say that maybe the conservatives are onto something by being independent enough to at least disown the Republican Party when they see fit. They haven't been afraid to do so since being reduced to a minority in Congress and kicked out of the White House. Perhaps that's just it and it's really just a condition of being in the minority, but something tells me it's deeper than that. If the left had an equivalent of the "Tea Party" movement currently, I seriously doubt that what Congress is touting as health insurance "reform" would fly. Democratic politicians would get the message that their constituents are simply unhappy with a lukewarm variation of the status quo, practically molded after the wishes of health insurance industry lobbyists. The corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement is nothing if it's not full of dangerous and destructive ideas that should be rejected by any forward-thinking person. But it also carries a valuable lesson to learn for progressives. Sometimes the largest obstacle to democracy and progress is not the Republican Party, but the two-party system in general.

Of Tea Parties, Then and Now

There is something about the so-called "Tea Party" anti-tax movement of late that truly irks me. I think I have narrowed it down to historical inaccuracy. If you look at the Tea Party faction of American society today, what you see is a hodge podge of angry citizens yelling and hollering incoherently about how much they hate President Obama, Democrats, liberals, and government in general. They claim to be mad about "the direction our country is going in" (which is obviously socialism), but they don't seem to pick out a particular policy they disagree with, or give any justification as to why they are upset with it. They are just pissed off, and they don't want to take it anymore (even though progressives "took it" for the better part of the last 30 years and Democrats have only been in full control of government for less than a year with barely anything to show for it).

When the Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, the colonists were protesting the policies of a foreign government, not just government or taxes in general. The one glaring similarity between the modern Tea Party movement and original colonial protesters, however, is that in both cases they were acting largely against their own best interest. Specifically, allowing the East India Company to export tea directly to the colonies would have had the effect of cheaper tea for the colonists. This would have been good for most colonists, but particularly bad for the wealthier Northern merchants, who were basically the ruling elite class of the time (in the North). These Northern merchants also happened to be the driving force behind the Boston Tea Party.

Then and now, what we see is a ruling class of wealthy elites trying to start a revolution but also making damned sure that it doesn't get too revolutionary. Alternatively phrased, they didn't want the revolution to become a threat to their own power in society: no social change, no liberation for the urban lower classes - simply independence. The British government was only their enemy because they saw it as an obstacle to their own interests. In today's case, the wealthy elites aren't even the ones you see on TV for the most part. They are the ones behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Conservative corporate-funded groups like FreedomWorks as well as multi-millionaire Glenn Beck have brought out the Fox News crowd in hordes to protest, well, something.

Thom Hartmann offers a radically different perspective on the Boston Tea Party, and though it seems contradictory to some of what I have read, it certainly seems plausible. He contends that these Northern merchants were actually the equivalent of the mom-and-pop small business owners of today, protesting against the Wal-Mart of their era, the East India Company. While this contradicts what I have just written, it actually helps to serve the argument that these colonists were not simply opposed to government and taxes. They were opposed specifically to economic regulation by their mother country that was crafted with only Great Britain's interests in mind, heavily unbalanced against the colonist's burgeoning economy. Indeed, at this point, the American economy had outgrown its mother, and at some point it had to detach. It was the natural progression of things.

Would the Tea Party crowd please stop with the more-patriotic-than-thou attitude now?

President Obama talking like a true liberal (for once)

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves. - President Barack Obama

I thought this guy would never say anything worth quoting again. I was wrong. If this is his first time as president talking like a progressive and not a centrist, let's hope he can walk the walk for once too.