Obama on Labor Day

Today Barack Obama made good use of his labor day appearance in Milwaukee to rally the Democrats, who have been hungry for a sign of fighting spirit from the President. The infrastructure spending he announced is a step in the direction of creating jobs, although it is not the sort of massive new stimulus some had hoped for. The most powerful part of the speech came in its critique of Republican obstructionism, and the Bush legacy of aggressive upward redistribution of wealth combined with weakening of social services. Here's the Milwaukee speech's conclusion:

But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we've done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it's better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on! Remember when our campaign slogan was "Yes We Can?" These guys are running on "No, We Can't," and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?

To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive?

When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said "no" to that, too. In fact, the Republican who's already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as "government jobs" that weren't worth saving. Not worth saving? These are the people who teach our kids. Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own. I don't know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.

We made sure that bill wouldn't add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments - even when they don't pay taxes here. How do you like that - middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America's biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn't fair - but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again.

Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn't find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company - you're on your own.

Well, that philosophy didn't work out so well for working folks. It didn't work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

I'm not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I'm bringing it up because I don't want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we've learned from our mistakes. We'll do things differently this time. But that's not what they're doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they'd follow "the exact same agenda" as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

So basically, they're betting that between now and November, you'll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you'll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you'll just believe that they've changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they're asking you for the keys back.

Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don't know how to drive! At a time when we're just getting out of the ditch, they'd pop it in reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that ditch.

Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that's the choice America faces this fall. Do we go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today.

Let me just close by saying this. I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried, and there's still a lot of hurt out here. I hear about it when I spend time in towns like this; I read about it in your letters at night. And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism and fear; doubt and division - to set our sights lower and settle for something less.

But that is not who we are. That is not the country I know. We do not give up. We do not quit. We are a people that faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats; and lit the way for the rest of the world. Whenever times have seemed at their worst, Americans have been at their best. Because it is in those times when we roll up our sleeves and remember that we will rise or fall together - as one nation, and one people. That's the spirit that started the labor movement. The idea that alone, we are weak. Divided, we fall. But united, we are strong. That's why we call them unions. That's why we call this the United States of America.

Milwaukee, that's the case I am going to make across the country this fall - yours. And I am asking for your help. If you are willing to join me, and Tom Barrett, and Gwen Moore, and Russ Feingold, we can strengthen our middle class and make our economy work for working Americans again. We can restore the American Dream and deliver it safely to our children. That's how we built the last American century. That's how we'll build the next. We don't believe in the words "No, we can't." We are Americans, and in times of great challenge, we push forward with an unyielding faith that we can. Yes, we can. Thank you, God Bless You and the work you do, and God Bless the United States of America.

Working together

Thomas Friedman frequently says things I don't agree with. But there's a recent plea he made that struck a chord:

The president needs to take America’s labor, business and Congressional leadership up to Camp David and not come back without a grand bargain for taxes, trade promotion, energy, stimulus and budget cutting that offers the market some certainty that we are moving together — not just on a bailout but on an economic rebirth for the 21st century. “Fat chance,” you say. Well then, I say get ready for a long phase of stubborn unemployment and anemic growth.

Our nation's unemployment crisis will not be fixed by Wall Street alone. It won't be fixed by Congress alone. It won't be fixed by unions alone. Right now Wall Street and corporate interests dominate economic policy-making completely. But the President does have the power to put other interests together with the big-money players and pressure them to find a "grand bargain." Obama would surely risk losing face if such a summit was tried and accomplished nothing. But I think many voters would give him credit for the attempt.

Friedman is mostly interested in doing something good for "the market." But, even though his suggestion isn't really motivated by any real concern for the 98% of us without major stakes in 'the market,' doing as he proposes might just help all of us. A leader who brings people together despite enormous mistrust and bitterness shows superb leadership indeed.

A long awaited statement of principle

WASHINGTON (AP)

- After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

It was quite a relief to hear the President reaffirm our basic rights to religious freedom in the U.S. It was too bad he left Mayor Bloomberg and others twisting in the wind for so long. The other day I was reflecting on just how remarkable it is to enjoy true religious freedom. This freedom is inherently controversial. We need to protect people's right to build synagogues, churches, mosques, and Buddhist temples. Equally important, we need to prevent Christians, Buddhists, or anyone else from forcing public school teachers or nurses to promote their doctrines. The U.S. will lose very much if popular sentiment against any religious group (or against atheists for that matter) is allowed to sway public officials to abandon their duty to uphold the separation of church and state. Here in Rhode Island this principle has been upheld from the days of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Rhode Islanders are rightly proud of their diverse and tolerant heritage. Of course, even Rhode Island has bigots, but I'm grateful to live in a place that celebrates its ethnic and religious diversity.

Playing the race card

A new paranoid fantasy has begun to emerge among American racists. This new fear is a natural outgrowth of earlier fears, but it represents an interesting leap into a new paradigm.

After the abolition of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan was formed as a group prepared to use violence against blacks who presumed to challenge the supremacy of whites in any way. While the popularity of the Klan has gone up and down since that time, the group still represents the most extreme end of white racist thought. Most white racists publicly profess distaste for the crude violence of lynchings and beatings. Instead they call on the power of the state and the courts to maintain the supremacy of whites. In this they were pretty successful, until official segregation and disenfranchisement began to be challenged through legislation and the courts in the 1960s.

And so racists moved into a defensive posture, resisting all of the many changes that came in the following decades. Affirmative action was an extremely bitter pill to swallow. How can universities and other institutions be forced to try and undo the natural order of things? In point of fact, despite the fears of the racists, the situation of blacks in this country showed only modest improvements. Blacks today still endure disproportionately high levels of unsafe housing, substandard medical care, poverty, and unemployment.

The election of Barack Obama (with millions of white votes) came as a shock to American racists. They had become used to seeing blacks in prominent roles in T.V. and real life, yet they knew that whites were still basically in charge. Racists might grumble about seeing so few white faces on a professional football or basketball team, but at least most of the owners and coaches were white.

Now the most powerful person in the U.S., the president, is not white. While racists, of course, had never worried that all of our earlier presidents might have favored whites, now they fear Obama might favor blacks. The shift in thinking is that racists no longer fear only that they’ll be forced to make more room at their table. Now they suspect that their table has been sold out from under them. Will whites now have to conform to black expectations to get ahead? Is everything topsy-turvy?

Reality won’t get in the way of telling the story of this supposed “reverse racism.” A decision by the Bush administration’s Justice Department, in their final days, to not pursue criminal charges against the New Black Panthers is blamed on Obama. A maliciously edited, phony videotape is uncritically accepted by Fox News and used to destroy a black official in the Agriculture Department. Even efforts to encourage high voter turnout in urban districts is portrayed as some kind of reverse racist trick. The attempts of white Republicans to suppress turnout in these same districts is, of course, applauded as “fighting voter fraud.”

The sad truth is that nothing Obama or his supporters actually do will make a difference. I don’t live inside the Beltway, but from what I can see the power establishment in D.C., hasn’t changed all that much. White males still dominate, with women and minorities slowly making small inroads into the entrenched power structure. The racists fear a revolution, the reality is painfully slow evolution.

Appeals to racist sentiment, both crude and subtle, will be a part of U.S. electoral politics this cycle. Getting into an endless pattern of accusation from the left and denials from the right won’t be very constructive. Merely calling someone a racist in sweeping terms invites a misleading response full of irrelevancies. Carefully exposing the specific lies, distortions, or stereotypes, on which a particular racist claim or appeal is based, leaves the perpetrator nowhere to run.

Remaking History

Jerry Adler of Newsweek reports on a fascinating story from Iowa. It seems the Republicans in that fair state have called in their newly adopted platform for something pretty radical. As some of us may remember, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1865 to complete the work begun by President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The language of the amendment is simple:

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

What is far less well known is that there was a much earlier amendment proposed by Senator Philip Reed of Maryland, one that appeared on its way to eventual adoption by the end of 1812. For whatever reason it was never finally adopted and accepted as constitutional law. This amendment, had it been adopted, would have become the 13th. It had nothing to do with slavery, but was rather concerned with the acceptance of titles of nobility and pensions from foreign monarchs. Reed wanted to strengthen the existing constitutional ban, that prohibited U.S. officeholders from receiving such goods, by extending it to all U.S. citizens and imposing the loss of citizenship as the penalty for violating the ban. The precise language of Reed's amendment follows:

If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.

What does all this have to do with Iowa Republicans in 2010? Well, they have adopted as part of their platform a call for “the reintroduction and ratification of the original 13th Amendment, not the 13th amendment in today’s Constitution.” Let's give these folks the benefit of the doubt and not interpret this this as calling for the reversal of slavery's abolition. We might be over generous in so doing, but this blog is all about giving everyone a fair shake. But why call for bringing back this early 19th century amendment? Iowa Republicans are happy to explain that they could use it to strip President Barack Obama of his office and citizenship since he received the Nobel Prize. They don't seem to mind that it would also damage Jimmy Carter. Or that Ronald Reagan, who received honors from Elizabeth II of England, would be a posthumous violator of "the original 13th."

Of course, this is all absurd. Categorizing the Nobel Prize Committee as a foreign power is only one aspect of the craziness. Yet it actually makes sense from the distorted perspective of the radical right. Obama-haters have already made up their minds that Obama seeks to destroy all that they value. They are not content to accept the results of a national election. If they can't easily find something in Obama's conduct to warrant throwing him out of office, then they will search for anything else they can use to make him illegitimate. The brouhaha over alleged irregularities in his birth certificate was another manifestation of the same desperate desire to destroy credibility.

We can't convert these rabid Republicans to a more reasonable point of view. Yet we need to take seriously their fanatical opposition. Only by motivating Democrats and progressives to work with heightened zeal can we construct a better vision for America that appeals to voters. We should never seek to appease those who will stop at nothing to destroy us. Instead we need to patiently counter outrage with good sense and positive deeds.