Death and Taxes or, The Evolution of Show Trials

It is interesting to witness the evolution of show trials - back in the Stalinist days, Soviet officials were compelled to admit to various counterrevolutionary deviations. And then they were exiled to rot in the frozen waste or simply executed. If we are to judge from the recent experience of Ai Weiwei the Chinese seem to have refined the process in a contemporary way: no executions, just forced detention, a "confession," enforced silence, and then . . . a visit from the Tax Collectors. Of course, there is still the persecution of Liu Xiaobo and many other critics. So, perhaps the regime has not gotten more refined after all.

History and Gay Marriage

"The President has long believed that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights and legal protections as straight couples. That's why he has called for repeal of the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" and determined that his Administration would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts. The states should determine for themselves how best to uphold the rights of their own citizens. The process in New York worked just as it should."

After hearing that the bill passed, Mary Rodriguez, in white, cheered at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, where the gay-rights movement began more than 40 years ago. Photograph © Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times.

The opening passage I've lifted above is from a statement the White House released in response to the vote last night in Albany (the capitol of New York State) to legalize same-sex marriage. If this is Obama's position - and apparently it is - I wonder if he recalls the phrase "Jim Crow," which was the system by which States in the American South institutionalized the bigotry of the white population toward African-Americans for decades and decades. Among the problems with Obama's unwillingness to look to history for lessons that might guide us moving forward is that he ends up looking like a fool. In the current debate this means that state after state can enshrine religious bigotry in law by withholding equal protection of the laws from gay citizens. After all, New York is one of just six states (plus DC, of course) that have legalized same-sex marriage. And, according this report in to The New York Times: "Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage." Does Obama think "the process" worked just as it should in all those jurisdictions too? And, as The Times also reports, let's be perfectly clear too - the NY legislation was carefully drafted to insure that private and religious organizations can continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian citizens. This accommodation enshrines bigotry.

Having said all that, I am ambivalent about the entire preoccupation with marriage. Legislation allowing gay men and lesbians to marry is important insofar as it allows them certain legal rights and privileges that might otherwise be withheld from them. On the other hand it also clearly is an example of the normalization of gay liberation - homosexuals now are free to be just like heterosexuals. The aims of gay and lesbian politics turn out to be not so "queer" after all. (I myself would prefer that legal status and political-economic benefits be more clearly disentangled from one's marital status altogether.) And when I saw the photo above, taken at celebrations around the Stonewall Inn last night, I wonder at the irony of that political transformation.*
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P.S.: This conclusion may seem odd or unsubstantiated. And I hardly am an expert on the topic. So, what follows is a passage from this recent interview with my colleague Douglas Crimp who is extremely articulate about such matters and from whom I have learned a tremendous amount.

"I think . . . that something of an enormous shift happened in the wake (sic) of AIDS toward a conservative gay culture where issues like fighting for equal rights to marriage and to fight in the military took precedence over what I think of as a truly queer culture, which is a culture that wants to change how we think about forms of human relations in a much more general sense. I still feel very much what I learned from early second wave feminism, which was the critique of marriage as an institution and how marriage actually served governance as a way of managing the complexity of relations that are possible among people.

One of the greatest gains of the gay liberation movement and the general liberation movements around sexuality and gender was the possibility of rethinking all kinds of questions of affective relationships so that among gay men for example, if you stop thinking about finding Mr. Right, finding a lover or finding a marriage partner, and rather think about possibly sexualizing friendship, maintaining friendly relations with people whom you have had a romantic relationship or having fuck buddies, then a whole proliferation of ways of connecting with others opens up."

Mistaken Identity

Op-Ed Columnist

Who Is James Johnson?

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 16, 2011

I noticed this headline on this column on the Op-Ed page at The New York Times today and I wondered "Who's asking?" Then I realized that it was another person Brooks is interested in. And then I realized is that what Brooks is really interested in is obfuscation. He wants to shift primary blame for the ongoing financial catastrophe onto the government. No way the private sector could bear any responsibility. He notes in passing toward the end of his indictment of Fannie Mae, that: "The Wall Street-Industry-Regulator-Lobbyist tangle is even more deeply enmeshed." Just so. But where, then, is the outrage at the speculators on Wall Street and the ways they bought influence and regulatory 'reform?' Brooks doesn't evince any whatsoever. Yet he is simply repeating a recurrent theme in the right-wing narrative of the political-economic collapse. The primary problem, unfortunately, is not that the government aimed to help get people into sound housing. The problem is that politicians - at the behest of the financial industry and its cronies - eliminated restraint on the speculation in securities. Brooks knows better. He only need to read another of his colleagues at The Times (or other commentators) to see that the case for blaming the government or the working class is perhaps less persuasive than he lets on.

"Shared Sacrifice" Indeed

If this graphic doesn't speak for itself, you can find some elaboration on the comparison here. (N.B.: Even if, implausibly, each of the millionaire households has four or even five members, the number of poor women and children participating in WIC dwarfs the number of rich folks getting tax breaks.) - Thanks again MSH!

MEMO TO THE BOYS IN THE NY CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION

STOP! PLEASE!

I do not give a hoot about your cyber-escapades or your real life drama. But I am likely part of a small minority. And the majority includes not just normal media, but attack poochies like Andrew Breitbart.

Political Street Art - Murals and More from Tunisia & Libya

Tunisia, 2011 - www.zoo-project.com. Photograph © Elissa Jobson.

At The Guardian today are two slide shows - here and here - of political street art from central theaters of the "Arab Spring."

Talking School Reform With The Mayor

I have posted here pretty regularly on a range of issues having to do with secondary and higher education in the United States. This past week I read a truly impressive book by Diane Ravitch entitled The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010). The book is impressive for a number of reasons. Not the least of those reasons is that in it Ravitch rightly indicates what evidence exists regarding both school choice and high stakes testing does not support those trendy reforms. At best, the evidence for specific proposals within those broad rubrics is mixed; more often it is not even mixed. Simply reviewing that evidence would not in itself be remarkable but for the fact that for many years Ravitch herself advocated the choice and testing policies she is now calling into question. In a sense then she has changed her mind and she is saying that frankly and in public. How refreshing and how rare to hear an intellectual do that?

The second reason the book is impressive is that Ravitch consistently stresses the implications of particular reforms proposed for public education for democratic politics. This is clearest in her discussion of the inflated claims made for "mayoral control" schemes and in her (to my mind) withering criticism of the well-endowed foundations that are wielding so much power in debates about education. But the theme appears throughout the book in an understated manner. It is all the more powerful for that tone.

Finally, the book is impressive for the variety of positions Ravitch affirms. She speaks out for teachers and their unions and she speaks out for community schools. She speaks out for the importance of a solid curriculum in schools - even as she acknowledges that devising one is difficult. She speaks out generally for constructive interventions when they are called for and repudiates "punitive" strategies. More generally, she speaks out for the importance of public education in a democracy. So, while I do not always agree with her particular recommendations - I think, for instance, that she is a bit to sanguine about the virtues of community and I have experienced first-hand the downside of Catholic School systems - I found the reasoned, non-dogmatic way she advances her views remarkable given the vituperative, high decibel way too many discussions of education reform take place. This approach come through too in her contributions to the joint blog Ravitch keeps with another writer on matters of education whom I very much admire - Deborah Meier.

It turns out, of course, that speaking frankly about the shortcomings of policies backed by the wealthy and powerful often will make those supporters cranky. So, predictably enough, Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of NYC, backer of mayoral control and various punitive and ineffectual education reform strategies) apparently has taken exception to Ravitch's book. The folks at Salon.com report that a prominent writer at one of Bloomberg's publications has produced an intemperate attack on Ravitch. It surely rings hollow to read at the end of the piece that the opinions the author expresses are "his own." He might as well have been taking dictation from the Mayor. In that sense the reporter at Salon.com is being way to charitable in saying there is only the appearance of impropriety here.
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P.S.: You can find the proximate cause of Bloomberg's pique here in Ravitch's recent Op-Ed at The New York Times.

Deficit Discourse (3) ~ The Oligarchy Comes Into View

Yesterday I posted a graphic from The New York Times showing that regardless of party affiliation the public thinks job creation and economic recovery are considerably more important than deficit reduction. It turns out that the public is pretty smart. They know where the shoe pinches.

But suppose one were really, really wound up about deficits? In the past I have posted graphics [1] [2] showing the sources of our current deficit woes - primarily military adventures abroad and the Bush tax cuts bequeathed to us by Republicans and more or less enthusiastically embraced by the Obama administration. (Let's be fair, it was less enthusiasm than political incompetence on the part of Democrats that insured the tax cuts would be renewed last winter.Lesson? If you have a majority use it to advance important policy goals because you may well lose it and then you are screwed.) In any case, the underlying problem has not altered on bit as the graphic I've lifted here makes clear. As this graphic indicates (the grey portion at bottom) the non-war, non-oligarchic (tax cut) portions of the pubic debt account for a declining portion of the deficit going forward.

So, why has the Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats allowed the Red-state types set the economic agenda? The mandate of the 2010 elections hardly is as crystalline as the deficit hawks claim. End the wars rescind the tax cuts and we need not be cutting programs that impact only poor, working class and middle class Americans. But that is bound to infuriate our oligarchs. And there is the nub of the problem: the Democrats are not interested in doing that.

Yet they may not have a choice. Because it also is becoming clear that job creation, even as an explicit policy, is not a sufficient remedy for our political economic problems. As Dani Rodrik has pointed out here and Mark Thoma amplifies his point here, a good portion of the problem is distributive. And in order to remedy that pattern it is necessary to step on some oligarchic toes.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

This graphic (click for a legible version) is telling. I accompanies this frank Op-Ed from The New York Times. If the Democrats really wanted to relegate the Republicans to more or less total irrelevance they would ignore the right wing deficit hawks and take steps to mitigate economic hardship for the bulk of the population. That, after all, seems to be a universally popular policy stance. Forget doing something because it is the right thing to do. Craft a politically popular policy and sell it. Apparently, the Democrats cannot even pursue their own political interests.

Debating Obama & His Policies

There has, over the past few weeks, been a set of fairly vituperative encounters among black intellectuals and politicians regarding the Obama administration. Not long ago there was the on-air dust up between Cornel West and Al Sharpton with the latter defending the Obama administration in the face of the former's frank criticisms. That prompted a visit to Princeton (West's place of employment) by interim head of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile aimed at sorting out the issues.

Apparently the professor and the politico have agreed to disagree. West just has published this interview in which he remains resolutely critical of Obama and his policies. He characterizes the president as providing "a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council]." That interview, in turn, has prompted this rejoinder in The Nation, with Melissa Harris-Perry coming to Obama's defense.

Much of this dispute is conducted in personalized, indeed psychologized terms. That is more or less wholly unhelpful. And all of the participants have substantial egos. That does not help either. But both of those things are, in my estimation, totally beside the point. It seems to me that on matters of substance West's criticisms of Obama's politics and policies are more or less right on point. Moreover, I think it is healthy to have critical debate in a party seemingly intent on running to the middle on virtually every issue. Because in that direction there is no help for those, regardless of color, who constitute the middle and working classes or the poor in the United States. And while Dr. West speaks in a colorful way that is not to everyone's liking, he regularly speaks up for those from whom the Democrats are turning away.

Anish Kapoor, Leviathan & Ai Weiwei

I know British sculptor Anish Kapoor exclusively because pictures of his work grace the covers of some recent CDs by the talented and intriguing pianist Vijay Iyer. Here are a couple of examples:


And here is an enthusiasm I posted a while back indicating why I think Iyer is an intriguing fellow. This is a guy I'd like to talk art and politics with some day. All that, however, is something of a diversion from the more pressing matter at hand.

Recently Kapoor has been in the news for having installed a massive sculpture at the Grand Palais (Paris). He calls the piece "Leviathan" which is appropriate in multiple ways; first because, like fantastic monsters of the deep, it swallows up visitors, but also, in a Hobbesian vein, because Kapoor has dedicated the sculpture to Ai Weiwei, the artist/provocateur who has been detained incommunicado by Chinese authorities for a month. Earlier posts on Ai, his arrest, and some of the response to his predicament are here. Like Kapoor, who urges habeas corpus on the Chinese authorities, The Guardian rightly asks: Where is Ai Weiwei?
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P.S.1: I find it ironic that right-wing outlets, normally viscerally averse to the intermingling of art and politics, apparently find it wholly laudable in this instance. Need a good example? Read this missive from The Wall Street Journal.

P.S.2: This is a post that the blogger folks disappeared and that I have tried to reconstruct. It may differ from the the initial version in marginal ways.

Shifts in Union Political Tactics?

Susan has brought a couple of heartening news items to my attention. The first, from Salon, is this interview with AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, whom I admire very much. Trumka, who supported Obama's election courageously,is now highly critical of the administration for its failure to support a working class oriented economic agenda. He promises a campaign push for state and local candidates. The second is this news report from The New York Times indicating that the International Association of Firefighters plans to re-orient their campaign spending away from Federal races too.

I actually think that the unions ought to give money only to Congressional representatives and Senators who support the progressive caucus. Susan thinks they ought to find a bunch of safe Democratic districts and mount primary challenges to incumbent Democrats. The aim would be to run union members for those seats. I think both tactics are worth pursuing in addition to running hard against right-wing governors.

Who Is Afraid of Ai Weiwei?

I posted last month when the Chinese government arrested artist and political critic Ai Weiwei. You can find in depth coverage of the situation surrounding Ai Weiwei - including reports on the detention of his associates and other critics of the government - here at The Guardian. You might also check out this trailer for a forthcoming Frontline documentary on Ai Weiwei.

It seems appropriate today to raise questions concerning Ai Weiwei's whereabouts. Why? Because today a set of his sculptures will "open" in Central Park. You can find a story here about Ai, his art, and his politics; npr broadcast it yesterday, using the New York City "opening" as a pretext. Rather than lift a picture of Ai or of his works, I thought it more appropriate to pilfer this image. What you have is a photograph of a projection that, according to news reports, an artist operating under the pseudonym Cpak Ming surreptitiously made late last week onto the exterior of the Barracks of the People's Liberation Army in the center of Hong Kong.* The projection depicts Ai and asks rhetorically "Who Is Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Asked and answered?
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* The same image reportedly (look here too) also is being stenciled elsewhere in Hong Kong.

Trump: The Caricature

Donald Trump during a speech in Las Vegas on April 28, 2011.
Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images.

Have you seen a picture lately of Donald Trump with his mouth closed? This photo is from The New York Times today. It seems that his snarling visage is festooned everywhere. All for nothing.
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P.S.: One thing I've not seen any comment on is Obama's characterization of this episode. He said he hopes to put the birth certificate issue to rest because it simply meant being "distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.” That final phrase seem to fit Trump to a T.

Jumping Through Hoops to Satisfy Paranoid Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists

Are you satisfied? Please note: what has been "proven" here is that those who've been fixated on this nonsense are morons. This whole episode is a prime piece of evidence for establishing competency tests for citizenship.*
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* For another such episode look here. Lunacy is bi-partisan.

A Real Plan for Deficit Reduction

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has a budget proposal out that is worth considering. It should embarrass the Obama administration and any supporter of the administration still harbouring the illusion that the president is all about hope and change. Krugman gives it a thumbs up, the folks at The Economist give it a thumbs up too, ditto The Guardian . . . and, of course, I have to say that my own Congressional Representative is a CPC member . . . Louise Slaughter does Western NY proud!
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P.S.: It turns out that the CPC plan works mostly by identifying and addressing the actual sources of our deficit - namely run away defense spending (on Republican sponsored wars in Iraq & Afghanistan) and the Bush administration tax cuts. Unsurprisingly, I find that gratifying (look here and here).

Government 101

France, bureaucracy, Picardie, 2006. Pascale Hoornaert (b. 1952) works
for eight hours a week as town clerk in Ancienville (population 78), Aisne
department, Pidardie region. She holds the same position in two other
villages nearby, working a total of 31 hours per week. Monthly salary:
1,025 euro (US$ 1,348). Photograph © Jan Banning.

Lee, New Hampshire (population 4,145) Board of Selectmen, January 27, 2003
(L to R) Dwight Barney (Chairman), Joseph Ford, Richard Wellington.
Photograph © Paul Shambroom.

At The Guardian today there is this short notice of quite interesting work by Dutch photographer Jan Banning that consists of portraits of bureaucrats at work in eight different countries ("Bolivia, China, France, India, Liberia, Russia, the United States, and Yemen"). Banning suggests his "photography has a conceptual, typological approach reminding of August Sander’s ‘Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts’ (‘People of the Twentieth Century’)." Put aside that by declaring the work "conceptual" he risks setting off yet another round of whining by Guardian photography critic Sean O'Hagan.* What strikes me about these portraits is less the comparison to Sander, than the series called "Meetings" that American photographer Paul Shambroom did several years ago. Shambroom toured the U.S. photographing local government 'in action.'

In Banning's images it is interesting to note the context; nearly all of the officials work under the watchful eye of the heroic or the powerful (Gandhi, Mao, Putin ...), often surrounded by the trappings of legitimacy. It is interesting to contrast these banal scenarios with the many images of disgruntled citizens manning the barricades or with photos of famous elected officials. Politics only appears glamorous.
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* For my previous (mostly) dissents from O'Hagan's various complaints look here.

Defending Bob Dylan

Here are columns by Jon Wiener (The Nation) and Sean Wilentz (New Y0rker) defending Bob Dylan's recent concerts in China from lame whining by various liberal media elites. Enough said.

The Truth From Washington

"The ground shifted and spending reductions Democrats recently described as 'extreme' and 'draconian,' they are now calling 'historic' and 'common sense.' The debate has turned from how much to grow government to how much to reduce it."~ Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).


"There are a number of us in the caucus now pushing back very hard on our leadership. ... Who knows where they'll end up, but maybe we can take enough D's with us to make them uncomfortable and to make them stick with making the president act like a Democrat." ~ Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon).

I rarely agree with McConnell about much. But he is dead on here. The Democrats have been politically inept again. They have let the Republicans set the agenda - pure and simple. Meanwhile, Defazio's problem - as a member of the "progressive caucus" in the House - is that Obama is acting like a Democrat.

Picturing Dictators

Laurent Gbagbo and his wife in Abidjan after his arrest on Monday.

Photo Credit: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

This is the image that accompanies reports in The New York Times regarding recent events in the political crisis in Cote d’Ivoire. Gbagbo is the former dictator who has refused to relinquish power in the wake of elections last fall. Here is a man who wielded dictatorial powers but appears now, having been captured by opposition forces, rather pathetic. Perhaps he can rely on his friends among prominent American conservatives and evangelicals for solace. And, of course, it remains to be seen whether the opposition - headed by Allassane Ouattra - will be an improvement.