Alan Shrugged: Greenspan, Ayn Rand and Their God That Failed-, by David Corn, Mother JOnes (October 25, 2008)

"In a congressional hearing room on Thursday, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential civil servants of the past century, saw his stock plummet—and his entire career lose its moorings. More important, the ideological battle over economic theory and the role of government in markets—a fight that has played out in the current presidential campaign—took a historic turn.

With members of the House oversight and government reform committee blasting Greenspan for his past decisions that helped pave the way for the current financial crisis, he acknowledged that his libertarian view of markets and the financial world had not worked out so well. "You know," he told the legislators, "that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." While Greenspan did defend his various decisions, he admitted that his faith in the ability of free and loosely-regulated markets to produce the best outcomes had been shaken: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

In other words, whoops—there goes decades of Ayn Rand down the drain.

Democrats on the committee made Greenspan eat ideological crow. And after the hearing, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California released letters Greenspan had written to legislators in 2002 and 2003 that now cast the former chief banker as out of touch with financial reality.

...."

Greenspan: "Shocked Disbelief", by Robert Borosage, The Campaign for America's Future (October 24, 2008)

"  It marks the end of an era. Alan Greenspan, the maestro, defender of the market fundamentalist faith, champion of deregulation, celebrator of exotic banking inventions, admitted Thursday in a hearing before Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee and Oversight and Government Reform that he got it wrong.

    "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he said.

    As to the fantasy that banks could regulate themselves, that markets self-correct, that modern risk management enforced prudence: "The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year."

    Greenspan spurned the Republican acolytes trying desperately to defend the faith and blame the crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act and the powerful lobby of poor people who forced powerless banks to do reckless things. Greenspan dismissed that goofiness in response to a question from one of its right-wing purveyors, Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., noting that subprime loans grew to a crisis only as the unregulated shadow financial system securitized mortgages, marketed them across the world, and pressured brokers to lower standards to generate a larger supply to meet the demand. Private greed, not public good, caused this catastrophe:

"The evidence now suggests, but only in retrospect, that this market evolved in a manner which if there were no securitization, it would have been a much smaller problem and, indeed, very unlikely to have taken on the dimensions that it did. It wasn't until the securitization became a significant factor, which doesn't occur until 2005, that you got this huge increase in demand for subprime loans, because remember that without securitization, there would not have been a single subprime mortgage held outside of the United States, that it's the opening up of this market which created a huge demand from abroad for subprime mortgages as embodied in mortgage-backed securities.

    But having admitted the failure of his faith, Greenspan could not abandon it. Credit default swaps had to be "restrained," he admitted. Those who create mortgages should be mandated to retain a piece of them to insure responsible lending. Otherwise, the old faith still applied. No new regulations were needed, because the markets "for the indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime."

    Now hung over from their bender, the banks could be depended upon to remain sober "for the indefinite future." Or until taxpayers' money relieves their headaches, and they are free to party once more."

Prominent Republicans Cross the Aisle to Endorse Obama, by Ewan MacAskill, Guardian/UK (October 24, 2008)

"   Washington - Joel Haugen, a Republican fighting a tough congressional race against the Democrats in Oregon, has fallen out with his party. The reason: his surprise endorsement of Barack Obama for the presidency.

    "I believe in putting nation before party and my first priority is following my conscience with regard to what is best for America," Haugen said in a statement issued by his office today. "I have a huge amount of respect for John McCain, but I believe that he has more of a cold war mentality."

    Haugen is just one of many Republican politicians, dubbed "Obamicans", who have defected to Obama. The latest high-profile desertions include Scott McClellan, George Bush's former press secretary, who endorses Obama in a taped CNN programme to be broadcast this weekend, and William Weld, the Republican governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997.

...."

The Great Unmasking, by Linda Burnham, commondreams.org (October 22, 2008)

"Capitalism in crisis is a sight to behold. Most of the time the system seems to hum along quite nicely. Oh, maybe a passel of people loses their jobs when some big-headed suit at the top decides to up and move on to a cheaper labor market. And maybe a city or two, or even a whole region, goes bankrupt and destitute, shops boarded up, ghosts in the street. Maybe a generation of young people ends up poorly educated because nobody could figure out how to turn a decent profit schooling ten-year-olds, so it slid down to the bottom of the priority list. Maybe there's an aberration here or there, like the positive incentive to filling up prisons. But overall, the thing has the reputation of the proverbial well-oiled machine, humming along and delivering the greatest good to the greatest number. And besides, it's the only machine in town.

But then it breaks down. Spectacularly.

And it turns out that this highest possible form of human development has more than a few foundational flaws, the relevant one at the moment being that it is subject, inevitably and constitutionally, to periodic, devastating crisis.

At such moments the verities of capital are called into question, and not by the closet Marxists and nostalgic revolutionaries. No, the capitalists themselves, in deed if not in word, are heaving great chunks of their ideology overboard. Invisible hand of the market? Heave ho. Limited government intervention in business? Heave ho. Self-correcting system? Heave ho. Whatever it takes to re-stabilize the system, let's do it. Principles be damned.

The pragmatic and temporary abandonment of core ideological beliefs is a great unmasking. And behind the mask -- fear, befuddlement, bravado.

The lords of finance live in a universe in which they are rewarded for being both insatiable and delusional. With maximizing profits as their single imperative they toil daily at the task of turning every human relationship and every form of matter -- animal, vegetable or mineral -- into a monetized asset. The only limits on how many ways that monetized asset can be reconfigured and repackaged; the only limits on how many times it can be resold; the only limits on how many ways profit can be wrung out of it are the limits of the imagination. We're human; our imagination is without limits. We've figured out how to buy, sell and lease the air space above buildings and the wind blowing across the plains. And here you thought "inherit the wind" was just a metaphor. But at least the air is a substance you can feel and hear and, on a crisp fall day, smell. Our boys are way beyond that, having long since abandoned the molecular to trade in the entirely immaterial.

So those are the rules they've been playing by. Did the current crop of players make up those rules? No, they are the rules of the reproduction of capital and the current players just happen to be in the game at a time when, abetted by the information superhighway and in the context of globalization, they've triggered a crisis that may yet turn out to be steeper, wider and deeper than any in recent history. As anybody standing on the corner could tell you, don't hate the player, hate the game.

And the rest of us? What are we to them? We are the human embodiment of the capacity to carry and pay off debt. That's it, that's all. We are our credit scores. We might as well have them flashing on an LED display implanted in our foreheads.

We've been suckered, cajoled, manipulated and coerced into joining them in their world of delusion, ensnared as bit players in the grievous overproduction of imaginary wealth. And while the realm of the fictitious expanded infinitely, the realm of our real lives contracted and shrank. Our wages flatlined or fell; we lived in fear of acquiring an uninsured health problem; our mortgages turned into a leaden ball and chain. The loans and debts multiplied and the interest rates kept rising. One administration after the other enabled a regime of trickle up profits and trickle down pain.

So while they're frantically hustling to salvage the system, let's stop for a moment to consider where we stand.

We collectively face three major, inter-related crises: the global crisis of capitalism; the crisis of planetary sustainability; and the crisis of war, militarism and empire.

The crisis of capitalism will be temporarily resolved. On our backs, to be sure, and it will undoubtedly take a while, but the markets will stabilize, borrowing and lending will resume, and profit-taking will be back on track. The mask, now in the repair shop for a custom remodel job, will be back in place, firmly affixed to once again show the face of capital triumphant. And capital triumphant will have firmly in hand the one chunk of ideology that was never tossed -- there is no alternative, or TINA.

Which brings me to the fourth crisis, hardly acknowledged and barely discussed, at least here in the U.S.: the crisis of the political impotence of the left.

We stand at the brink of multiple disasters in the howling absence of an alternative vision for sustainable, people-centered human development, or an alternative platform for deep reform, or an organized base capable of challenging and shifting power.

And so this moment -- the great unmasking -- should serve as an urgent reminder that we have a multi-generational project at hand. That is, to construct a viable politic and effective organizational forms capable of acting on the belief that it is possible to build a society that lifts up that which is generous and creative and humane while curbing the greedy, the short-sighted and the predatory. There must be an alternative.

Otherwise we, and generations to come, will remain at the mercy of the players and their game."

A Victory for the Rule of Law, by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post (June 13, 2008)

Poll shows wide dislike of wealth gap, by John Thornhill, Financial Times (May 18, 2008)

Shifting Ideas, Shifting Narrative: Is the Tide Turning Against the Right Wing Attack on Government?, by Donald Cohen, commondreams.org (March 2, 2008)

Finally, after 30 years of the right-wing assault on government and public purpose, the outlines of a real debate on the role of government is emerging in this year’s Presidential campaign.Candidate John McCain, despite occasional past breaks from conservative orthodoxy, remains predictably and defiantly stuck in failed free market, anti-government, supply side dogma.

Both Obama and Clinton, though, are speaking openly for the first time in many years about the need for public - that is, government - solutions to address the needs of the American people and the failures of the market to do so. That’s what could make the current election, in historical terms, transformational. This year’s campaign issues - health care, global warming, a declining middle class - are windows into a larger debate about the proper role of government in promoting shared prosperity - or responsible capitalism.

The debate about government’s role in the economy goes back to the Founding Fathers. Since then, there have been key moments when popular movements embraced the notion that government should protect Americans from the swings of the business cycle and from the greed of big business. FDR’s New Deal was, in many ways, a backlash against President Herbert Hoover’s conservative ideological belief that market forces would eventually solve the nation’s economic woes. The New Deal philosophy dominated American culture through the early 1970s. The 1960’s brought us Medicare, Medicaid and civil rights laws. The 70s brought us landmark laws to protect consumers, workers (OSHA), and the environment (Clean Air Act).

But after Barry Goldwater’s landslide defeat in 1964, the right-wing regrouped and systematically built the infrastructure to push back on popular support for government programs and regulations. Buoyed by ideological guru, economist Milton Friedman’s intellectual assault on government management of the economy, the right challenged the very idea that government should be the nation’s umpire, setting the ground rules for business to act responsibly and as the nation’s investor in the common good and provider of social insurance. Along with corporate-sponsored foundations and think tanks, American corporations shed their earlier commitment to the post-war social contract and launched an all-sided effort to limit government regulation, lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy, weaken unions and dismantle public social insurance and safety net programs.

The right-wing then used their dominance over campaign contributions and conservative media institutions elected a generation of anti-government elected officials. With legislative power put them in position to seal the deal: ensuring public sector failure by defunding (’starving the beast’) public services and institutions, deregulating and privatizing essential roles of government and putting agents of industry in control of regulatory agencies. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Unfortunately, their success in shifting the political idea environment helped to silence a generation of progressive leaders, thinkers and organizers too afraid to articulate a clear vision of public purpose and the common good or talk about the new third rails of government, taxes and regulation of the free market.

The broad trajectory and success of the assault are illustrated most clearly by the bookends of two now-famous presidential quotes. As the assault on government was taking shape, Reagan launched the opening public salvo declaring the scariest words in the English language to be, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

At the other end, Bill Clinton’s declaration that the “era of big government is over” was the surrender speech of a lost war. The conservative narrative had won - throughout America, government solutions were off limits, badly needed revenues for education, health and infrastructure were out of reach and regulatory effectiveness weakened.

President Clinton did believe in public service and government as instrument of good. He expanded EITC, created AmeriCorps and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and increased taxes on the wealthy. But his fealty to unregulated free trade and deregulation of financial markets marked a genuine ideological embrace of free market dominance and denial of government’s essential countervailing role in the economy.

The 2008 presidential race is clear evidence that the cone of silence is lifting and the narrative shifting. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking openly about the need for more active government.

In a recent NY Times interview Sen. Clinton spoke openly about the need for active government role in the economy to balance the excesses of the market. “If you go back and look at our history, we were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market” Clinton said. “And we have systematically diminished the role and responsibility of our government, and we have watched our market become imbalanced.”

She proclaimed: “I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and market.”

Clinton’s remarks signal a return to the ideas of the great economic minds of the 20th century - the British economist John Maynard Keynes and his disciple, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith - whose thinking shaped the New Deal and Great Society policy agenda. They recognized the need for countervailing power in market based economies. Now 30 some odd years after the right-wingers declared war on these ideas, the mainstream of the Democratic Party is speaking again of the limits of markets left alone.

Barack Obama too has articulated an agenda that make clear that the philosophical framework and place he comes from is all about the common good and reinvigorating a sense of national purpose. His calls for regulating the subprime industry, fair trade deals and investments in social and physical infrastructure represent a clear understanding of government’s role vis a vis the market.

Senators Clinton and Obama are not alone. The American public never fully bought into the right-wing agenda, but, thanks to the excesses of the Bush years, Americans have been even more supportive of the need for government. One Republican pollster spoke recently of the difficulties for GOP presidential candidates in the midst of “a sea change in public attitudes towards government and what government should do for people.” From the height of the Gingrich revolution in 1995 to today, attitudes flipped from a majority favoring limited government involvement to a majority favoring more government involvement in solving problems and meeting the needs of the people. A recent Pew Center poll found that Americans see a wider divide between the rich and everybody else and want government to help.

One indicator of shifting tides of American ideas is a walk through the popular book titles of the day. The 80’s and early 90’s saw re-releases of anti-government classics by Frederick Hayak and Milton Friedman. Today, there’s a new crop of intellectually rigorous books by Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Naomi Klein, Jonathon Chait, Robert Reich and others that are boldly exposing the ‘con job’ that was supply side economics, the recklessness of unregulated capitalism, and the limits of the market in addressing the basic needs of the American people. And they are articulating an economic philosophy of the public good and shared prosperity, managed responsible capitalism. These are sophisticated and smart voices speaking about government’s essential role in more than the hushed whispers of the 1980’s and 1990’s anti-government political environment.

A growing number of editorial writers have recently awoken from the nightmare of right-wing dogma. They, too, regularly comment on the need for strengthened and uncorrupted public institutions to address today’s failures of unfettered markets and weakened regulatory apparatus to protect our food supply, the safety of consumer goods and a declining middle class. As do enlightened business leaders like Warren Buffet and George Soros speaking out for higher taxes to fund large scale public investment.

The current shift in public opinion and public conversation didn’t come out of nowhere. Candidates are breaking from the conservative story line because of the political space opened up by movements and actions at the grassroots and in the workplaces. Activists for labor, housing, environmental, school, and other policies have won many victories, particularly at the local level, during the past two decades. These local successes didn’t add up to a strong, coherent movement for change that could shape the national agenda around the role of government. But it appears that these ideas have now “trickled up,” as more and more Americans experience the consequences of unregulated capitalism - for example, losing their jobs, their homes, their health insurance and facing the unprecedented challenges of global warming

Real momentum is building in a constellation of new organizations and new coalitions in regions across the country. They are beginning to shape and push for a new social contract anchored by active government acting on behalf of the public good. And a newly energized, and growing, labor movement has made clear the need for labor market bargaining power to close the economic gap and rebuild the middle class.

Despite the effectiveness of the right wing message machine, it turns out the truth survives in even the most hostile environments - the truth that the conservative mission to dismantle government and relieve big business of all responsibility for the damage and unmet needs they leave behind is actually harming people, leaving us less secure, less healthy and less certain about the survival of the planet.

The spate of disasters in 2007 alone has opened the door for new conversations and the beginning of a real tide pushing back on the phony argument and rapacious self-interest of the free marketeers. These are just some of the now widely accepted views of the impacts of right wing assault:

....."

Big Business Is Even More Unpopular Than You Think, by Robert Weissman, commondreams.org (January 16, 2008)

""The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard.

A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be “generally honest and trustworthy:” tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets.[1]

These are remarkable numbers. It is very hard to get this degree of agreement about anything. By way of comparison, 79 percent of adults believe the earth revolves around the sun; 18 percent say it is the other way around.[2]

The Harris results are not an aberration. The results have not varied considerably over the past five years — although overall trust levels have actually declined from the already very low threshold in 2003.

The Harris results are also in line with an array of polling data showing deep concern about concentrated corporate power.

An amazing 84 percent told Harris in a poll earlier in 2007 that big companies have too much power in Washington. By contrast, only 47 percent said that labor unions have too much power in Washington (as against 42 percent who said labor has too little power), and 18 percent who said nonprofit organizations have too much power in Washington.[3]

These results have proven durable. At least 80 percent of the public has ranked big companies as having too much power in Washington since 1994. In 2000, Business Week and Harris asked a broader question: Has business gained too much power over too many aspects of American life? Seventy-four percent agreed.[4]

The November 2007 poll also asked about support for measures to control corporations. These results are eye-opening as well, though perhaps not in the expected way.

Harris asked which industries “should be more regulated by government — for example for health, safety or environmental reasons — than they are now?” Only oil companies (53 percent), pharmaceutical companies (53 percent) and health insurance companies (52 percent) crossed the 50 percent threshold. Even the tobacco industry managed to escape in the survey with only 41 percent favoring greater regulation. These data trend significantly negative — against greater regulation — over the last five years.

Does this show that while people distrust Big Business, they equally distrust the government to constrain corporate power?

No.

The U.S. skepticism to regulation is only skin deep. When polls present specific regulatory proposals for consideration, U.S. public support is typically strong and often overwhelming — even when arguments against government action are presented.

......"

Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control", der Spiegel Interview with Gabriel Kolko (October 15, 2007)

"In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being "out of control."

....."

State Dem Group Played Hardball to Kill GOP Election System Plan, by Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle (October 7, 2007)

" They called themselves "The Lincoln Brigade."

    Even as Democrats feared having to spend as much as $40 million for a bruising, bloody fight expected to drag on for months, this makeshift group of California Democratic operatives needed just weeks to pummel a Republican-funded push for a ballot measure that threatened to change the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

    The ruthlessly effective battle plan of the California Democrats' group raises the specter that, as the 2008 election looms, Republicans may have to confront a far more aggressive Democratic ground game that has revived the old "Clinton war room" philosophy.

    "We need to fight back and not be reluctant - that if they come after you with a knife, to pull out a gun," said California Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former spokesman for President Bill Clinton's White House and Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

    The group took aim at the Presidential Election Reform Act, a proposed California ballot measure that would change the way the state apportions its Electoral College votes and likely benefit the Republican nominee.

    After two terms of Republican control of the White House - and angered by what they perceived as a history of electoral "dirty tricks" by GOP strategists such as President Bush's key adviser Karl Rove - the Democrats' response in California could serve as an indication of what lies ahead in the 2008 battle for the White House.

    "We ran it like a military operation," says Margie Sullivan, a former chief of staff to three Clinton Cabinet secretaries who was closely involved in the effort. "You had this SWAT team of talented, hyper-engaged people. ... It was: boom, boom, boom."

    Lehane and Sullivan are some of the lead players in the group, which includes many former insiders from the Clinton administration. They named their group after the brigade of American volunteers who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Survey: Conservatives' Anger With GOP May Be Devastating, by Jim Kouri, Conservative Voice (October 3, 2007)

"Washington, DC - A poll of 1,015 conservative activists and donors shows that 77 percent are either seriously disappointed with Republican Congressional leaders or want them replaced.

...."

Iraq Shootout Firm Loses Licence, BBC News (September 17, 2007)

"    The Iraqi interior ministry said the contractor, based in North Carolina, was now banned from operating in Iraq.

    The Blackwater workers, who were contracted by the US state department, apparently opened fire after coming under attack in Baghdad on Sunday.

    Thousands of private security guards are employed in lawless Iraq.

    They are often heavily armed, but critics say some are not properly trained and are not accountable except to their employers.

    The interior ministry's director of operations, Maj Gen Abdul Karim Khalaf, said authorities would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force.

    "We have opened a criminal investigation against the group who committed the crime," he told the AFP news agency.

    All Blackwater personnel have been told to leave Iraq immediately, with the exception of the men involved in the incident on Sunday.

    They will have to remain in the country and stand trial, the ministry said.

Poll: Young Voters Disenchanted With Republican Party, by Carla Marinucci, San Franciso Chronicle (August 27, 2007)

"Two larger-than-life politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan, charged into the California governor's office with the help of young voters, many of whom were drawn to the Republican Party by a message of sunny optimism.

    But what those two very different Republican politicians did to attract millions of young adults looks to be a feat the Grand Old Party may not repeat anytime soon - either in California or on the national level in the 2008 presidential election.

    A Democracy Corps poll from the Washington firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner suggests voters ages 18 to 29 have undergone a striking political evolution in recent years.

    Young Americans have become so profoundly alienated from Republican ideals on issues including the war in Iraq, global warming, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration that their defections suggest a political setback that could haunt Republicans "for many generations to come," the poll said.

    The startling collapse of GOP support among young voters is reflected in the poll's findings that show two-thirds of young voters surveyed believe Democrats do a better job than Republicans of representing their views - even on issues Republicans once owned, such as terrorism and taxes.

    And among GOP presidential candidates, only former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani registers with more positive views than negative with young voters, the poll shows.

    The anti-GOP shift for this generation - which is expected to reach 50 million voters, or 17 percent of the electorate, in 2008 - represents a marked contrast from their predecessors, the Gen Xers born in the mid-'60s to mid-'70s whose demographic represented the strongest Republican voters in the nation, pollster Anna Greenberg said.

"Last week, John Edwards fired a broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, "corporate Democrats," the likes of which hasn't been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.

    Edwards is en fuego right now, and if he keeps up the heat, his candidacy will either be widely embraced by the emerging progressive movement or utterly annihilated by an entrenched establishment that fears few things more than a telegenic populist with enough money to mount a credible campaign.

    "It's time to end the game," Edwards told a crowd in Hanover, New Hampshire. "It's time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over." He exhorted Washington law-makers to "look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no."

Real change starts with being honest - the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They'll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are - not for the country, but for themselves.

 

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.

    It's a structural argument, and Edwards didn't pull punches in calling out his fellow Democrats, saying: "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other." The rhetoric was a clear signal that Edwards is going to beat the drums of reform as a contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the primaries

Edwards isn't the only candidate in the race making such bold statements, of course. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has long spoken of economic issues in the kinds of terms Edwards used last week. But John Edwards was the vice presidential nominee on a presidential ticket that won 59 million votes and he's raised $23 million in the current cycle (20 times what Kucinich has raised), and that means that corporate media is forced to cover him. So far, they've mocked him, written stories about his haircuts, pushed shadowy innuendo about his personal business dealings and suggested his focus on poverty is disingenuous or hypocritical, but they simply can't write him off as a member of the fringe. Unlike Kucinich, they can't ignore him.

    John Edwards is becoming a very different kind of candidate, and his growing message of empowerment and attack on the corporate class may prove to be the most interesting story of campaign 2008."

Time for a Democracy Movement, by Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post (July 31, 2007)

"America is looking less and less like America. And more and more Americans are worried about it.

What country is this? The president is claiming the right to keep his aides from testifying for Congress about the U.S. attorneys scandal; hundreds of men — according to a Seton Hall study, many of them innocent — are in legal limbo in Guantanamo Bay; U.S. agents are kidnapping people off the streets in Italy and Macedonia and `rendering’ them to be tortured; the president and his lawyers claim the executive has the right to call anyone — U.S. citizen or not — an `enemy combatant’ — and the person who should decide what that means is the President himself; civil rights organizations say peaceful citizens’ groups are being infiltrated and put under surveillance; and a new bill just made it easier, as Senator Patrick Leahy warned, for the president — any president of whatever party — to declare martial law.

Americans across the political spectrum are increasingly uneasy. We have always had a sense of our own invincibility in relation to our democracy: the system, many of us believe, simply rights itself. But we have to face the fact that when checks and balances are being systematically dismantled — when the Constitution is under such sustained assault — our assumption that democracy will protect us without our active intervention is dangerously naive.

The time has come for a grassroots democracy movement in America. I am relieved to be able to say that today the American Freedom Campaign (AFC) — a new organization prepared to engage hundreds of thousands of American citizens in restoring democracy and the rule of law — is ready for action.

....

There is no time to waste. We have to get it — in a hurry — that the assaults we are witnessing are unprecedented and demand unprecedented responses from us. There have been times of state repression in our nation before now; as others such as Joe Conason, author of It Can’t Happen Here, and Bruce Fein, a founder of the American Freedom Agenda, have pointed out, `the pendulum’ has swung to extremes before now: President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in some areas during the civil war — but it was restored after the war came to an end. 120,000 Japanese American citizens were interned in detention camps (the fear was that they would engage in `espionage’ and `sabotage’) during World War Two — and when that hysteria subsided, the camps were closed and these innocent Americans released. Both writers note that previous eras of repression had endpoints: the wars ended, the threat subsided — but the War on Terror is defined as open-ended in time and in space: there will never be a day of victory, and the whole world is a battlefield. So we can’t count on the pendulum to swing back as it always has — that is, not without a citizen uprising in defense of liberty.

Other times and places are worth thinking about when we witness these events. History, which Americans never take to naturally, has a great deal to warn us about right now. The historical record — and the contemporary record — is incontrovertible on the fact — a fact that flies in the face of the `democracy myth’ we cherish, that we are somehow exempt from these pressures — that while it is difficult to build and sustain a democracy, closing one down is actually quite easy. There is practically a blueprint for it, which would-be dictators and autocrats around the world have followed. All leaders who seek to close down an open society — or push back a democracy movement — do the same key things. Among other steps, they invoke an internal and external threat (it can certainly be real); create a surveillance apparatus aimed at ordinary citizens; establish military tribunals; infiltrate citizens’ groups; make it easier to detain citizens; target key individuals with job loss or other penalties if they speak out; reframe criticism as `treason’ or `espionage’; and pass laws that make it easier to circumvent or override a Constitution because of the threat that has been invoked or in the name of `restoring public order.’ It is also clear from the record that the Founders were right to tell us to be vigilant in defense of liberty — because democracy can become weakened and a point can be reached at which democracy cannot simply heal itself.

That is why everyone who is concerned about the abuses of power we are witnessing under the current administration should sign on to the American Freedom Campaign. As noted above, the AFC is backed by a dynamic coalition of some of the key organizations devoted to restoring the Constitution and defending freedom.

...."

Ted Stevens - and Senate GOP - In Trouble, by John Nichols, The Nation (July 31, 2007)

"Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is in big trouble.

And when Stevens is in trouble, so are Senate Republicans.

In a high-profile raid on the senator’s home, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service agents raided the home of 83-year-old senatorial schemer Monday, as part of an investigation into his relationship with an oil field services contractor jailed in a public corruption investigation.

Bill Allen, the contractor who is suspected of providing expensive favors such as a massive home renovation to Stevens, has already pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators.

Allen’s VECO Corp., an oil field services and engineering company, has reaped tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts during the years when Stevens chaired the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and a fellow Alaska Republican, Congressman Don Young, chaired the Resources Committee and then the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House.

Young is reportedly the subject of a federal investigation relating to Allen’s campaign fund-raising on behalf of Alaska Republicans.

....

he problem for Senate Republicans in 2008 is that, because they won so many seats in the GOP-friendly post 9-11 election of 2002, they now must defend far more vulnerable seats than the Democrats in 2008.

The last thing the Senate GOP leadership needed was trouble in Alaska, a Republican-leaning state that has elected Democrats to statewide office in recent years and that maintains an edgy maverick streak. But with the Stevens investigation expanding, they’ve got that trouble.

At a time when many of Alaska’s prominent Republicans have been linked to scandals, there are a number of “clean” and popular Democrats waiting to move up. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, the son of popular former Democratic Congressman Nick Begich, heads the list. But it also includes Democratic legislators Eric Croft, an able reformer who garnered a good deal of attention when he sought the governorship a few years back, and Ethan Berkowitz, who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2006. State Senators Hollis French and Johnny Ellis are also on the list of Democratic prospects.

And then there is former Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who served in Alaska’s top job from 1995 to 2003. Knowles narrowly lost bids for the Senate in 2004 and for another term as governor in 2006, but he retains a following statewide and he has great name recognition and an image as something rare in Alaska: an ethical statewide official.

...."

Anxious Republicans fear another beating, by Jim Snyder, The Hill (July 27, 2007)

"Nine months after Republicans were routed in the midterm elections, campaign observers, K Street lobbyists and political experts say there is little evidence the party can rebound in 2008.

The same bad news — the president’s low approval ratings, opposition to the war in Iraq, and the lingering taint of congressional scandal, from the Jack Abramoff investigation to Sen. David Vitter’s (La.) involvement with the alleged “D.C. Madam” — leave observers skeptical that the GOP can dent Democratic majorities, let alone reclaim power in the next election.

...."

Disfavor for Bush Hits Rare Heights-In Modern Era, Only Nixon and Truman Scored Worse, Just Barely, by Peter Baker, Washington Post (July 25, 2007)

"President (sic) Bush is a competitive guy. But this is one contest he would rather lose. With 18 months left in office, he is in the running for most unpopular president in the history of modern polling.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News survey shows that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance, matching his all-time low.

In polls conducted by The Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only twice has a president exceeded that level of public animosity -- Harry S. Truman, who hit 67 percent during the Korean War, and Richard M. Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before resigning.

....."