Paul Krugman | Respectable Radicalism
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "I think I understand how being an official, surrounded by men (and some but not many women) who seem knowledgeable in the ways of the world, can create a conviction that you and your colleagues know more than is in the textbooks."
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Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "I think I understand how being an official, surrounded by men (and some but not many women) who seem knowledgeable in the ways of the world, can create a conviction that you and your colleagues know more than is in the textbooks."
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Paul Street | Hillary's Happy Holidays
Paul Street, teleSUR
Street writes: "Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring campaigner. She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath carefully constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She's still the same old 'new Democrat.'"
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Paul Street, teleSUR
Street writes: "Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring campaigner. She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath carefully constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She's still the same old 'new Democrat.'"
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The main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton is a listless bunch of fellow contenders.
t’s been a happy holiday season for the American Empire’s next commander-in-chief Hillary Clinton. Her gifts have been remarkable. I am not referring to any special talent for inspiring voters and articulating a vision for democratic change. Mrs. Clinton is still a wooden and uninspiring campaigner. She remains an abject, Wall Street-sponsored corporatist beneath carefully constructed fake-progressive rhetoric. She’s still the same old “new Democrat” – a dismal, dollar-drenched servant to concentrated wealth and power – beneath deceptive, populist-mimicking oratory and branding.
She remains a hawkish and imperial militarist – the same politician who embraced George W. Bush’s monumentally criminal invasion of Iraq. The Clinton campaign makes no apologies for her eager advance (both as a U.S. Senator and as Barack Obama’s aggressively militarist Secretary of State) of policies that have destroyed Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, creating the context for the rise of the Islamic State. Or for her leadership role in the dangerous provocation of Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere. It’s not for nothing that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has described her as a foreign policy “neocon.”
It’s fitting that Mrs. Clinton’s main campaign logo features an arrow pointing to the right. The direction suggests the neoliberal and imperial essence of her career and agenda, well to the starboard side of U.S. public opinion.
No, the main thing Santa Claus brought Hillary Clinton this holiday season is an unthreatening bunch of fellow contenders in the quadrennial two-party-big media-big money presidential electoral extravaganza that passes for meaningful democratic politics in the United States. Who is going to block the Clintons’ return to the White House? Certainly not Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or any other among the xenophobic candidates of the ever more apocalyptically right wing, white-nationalist Republican Party.
The Republicans’ leading candidate, the bombastic real estate mogul and media buffoon Donald Trump, has the highest unfavorable rating among all presidential aspirants. His campaign seems consciously designed to push Blacks, Muslims, Latinos and women into the Democratic Party. Ted Cruz, Trump’s closest rival, is an open ideological apparatchik certain to alienate most voters outside the Tea Party FOX News (TPFN) cohort.
Hillary had to worry about a Republican opponent with the capacity to reach beyond the hard core Koch brother-fueled TPFN Republican base. But the GOP contenders with potential to do that – Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, or even John Kasich – have proven to be duds.
Beside their fatal liabilities in a general election, Trump and Cruz help hide Hillary’s own reckless and mass-murderous record. When compared with the leading Republican candidates’ inflammatory rhetoric, the language and manner of the empire’s next new clothes (Hillary) looks calm and careful. Who would you trust with the nuclear button? Who (to use Hillary’s campaign metaphor in 2008) do you want “getting that call at 3 in the morning”? Certainly NOT cartoon characters like The Donald, Ted Cruz or the ludicrous right-wing brain surgeon Ben Carson.
The Democratic candidate field is not much stronger. There are no young and telegenic rock-stars like Obama and pre-scandal John Edwards for the Clintons to contend with this time. The primary challenge the Clintons feared, with reason, was the liberal U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, but it turned out that “no meant no” when she declined fervent progressive entreaties to enlist.
Martin O’Malley has tried to build a brand as a younger and more liberal alternative, but’s it’s not taking (appropriately enough given his record of advancing racially disparate mass arrest and incarceration during his years as Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland). The listless Jim Webb and affable Lincoln Chaffee have already dropped out. Good old Uncle Joe Biden (who has the virtue of being less aggressively imperialist than Hillary) didn’t have the heart for another presidential run.
Yes, there’s the grim septuagenarian and nominal democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. It’s encouraging to see a candidate willing to identify himself with socialism (if that’s what he really wants to call his barely social-democratic New Deal liberalism) and “class analysis” attract large crowds and set new records for small campaign finance donations. The Sanders phenomenon speaks both to the distance of Cold War neo-McCarthyism and to the terrible, regressive consequences of U.S. neoliberal capitalism, creator of a New Gilded Age place where (as Sanders points out) the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
True, Bernie is leading in New Hampshire and close in Iowa, causing irritation in the Clinton camp. Still, even if he were to win one or both of those states, it’s very difficult to seriously imagine a path to a Sanders nomination. Hillary’s financial and organizational advantages are steep. So is her advantage with the corporate media, which gives her one free pass after another while insipidly (if predictably) under-covering Sanders’ big rallies and over-covering The Donald’s every idiotic comment and gesture. Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama.
Sanders seems to understand the harsh reality. He is willing to create some embarrassing moments for Hillary – on her revolting (and revealing) 2003 Iraq War vote and the outsized campaign contributions she has received from Wall Street executives. But the fact that he is not seriously trying to win the Democratic nomination is clear from his refusal to substantively and directly attack the longstanding neoliberal corporatism of his “good friend” Mrs. Clinton and from his willingness to assist her efforts to squelch public critique of her outrageous use of a private email server in her duties as Secretary State.
Meanwhile, Sanders’ underlying commitment to the U.S. imperial project and military Keynesian tends to render mute his call for progressive, social-democratic, and Scandinavia-inspired change. The costs, public-private investment pattern, and largely media-manufactured culture of America’s giant military empire and permanent war of/on terror cancel out social-democratic welfare-state Keynesianism in the “homeland.”
In the second Democratic presidential debate, Sanders admitted early on what “this [his] campaign is [really] about”: increasing voter excitement and turnout for the Democratic Party. Translation: Bernie is running to help the militant corporatist Hillary Clinton and the rotten, Wall Street-captive and imperial Democratic Party practice what the formerly left Christopher Hitchens caustically but all-too accurately called (in his 2000 book on the Clintons) “the essence of American politics….the manipulation of populism by elitism.” His role (unwitting or not) is to help Hillary’s eventual nomination look less like the advance finance-capitalized coronation that it is and to help create an, turnout-boosting illusory sense of meaningful popular debate within the Democratic Party. He’s a useful (not-so left) wing man for the Clinton machine, which is why the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have been pleased with his campaign.
Meanwhile, the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have helped the corporate media replace anger over economic inequality (Sanders’ main issue) with fear of terrorism – a topic that favors Mrs. Clinton over Bernie – as U.S. voters’ top concern. More holiday cheer for Hillary!
The struggle for justice and a good society requires a powerful popular sociopolitical movement beneath and beyond the periodic, money-drenched, and highly time-staggered, major party candidate-centered elections that outrageously pass for democratic “politics” – the only “politics that matters” – in the U.S. Some of my fellow leftists think the Sanders phenomenon can assist that movement-building. I hope they are right.
In Chicago, Distrust Toward Mayor Has Turned 'Personal'
William Wan and Mark Guarino, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "More than a month has passed since a judge forced Emanuel (D) and other city officials to release a graphic video of a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times. But public anger over the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in October 2014 has not dissipated. Instead, it has grown bitter and more personal."
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William Wan and Mark Guarino, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "More than a month has passed since a judge forced Emanuel (D) and other city officials to release a graphic video of a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times. But public anger over the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in October 2014 has not dissipated. Instead, it has grown bitter and more personal."
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Demonstrators protest outside Emanuel's home in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago.
(photo: Joshua Lott/WP)
ayor Rahm Emanuel cut short a family vacation this past week and returned to a city in crisis: On the North Side, more than a dozen people stood outside his house, hurling insults. On the West Side, a close aide was punched and kicked while attending a prayer vigil for a police shooting victim. And all week long, there were protesters, haunting one of Emanuel’s biggest political donors, haranguing his police force, beating a papier-mâché likeness of his face at City Hall.
More than a month has passed since a judge forced Emanuel (D) and other city officials to release a graphic video of a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.But public anger over the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in October 2014 has not dissipated. Instead, it has grown bitter and more personal.
“Oh, it’s personal, all right. We’re making it personal,” yelled Ja’Mal Green, 20, a former Emanuel supporter who spent hours in bone-cold weather on the sidewalk outside the mayor’s spacious Ravenswood home, mocking him and urging him to resign.
The protests reflect frustration with chronic problems Emanuel inherited in Chicago, a city long plagued by police brutality, failing schools, rampant gang violence and dire finances. But as Emanuel enters his second term, critics say he has deepened distrust in City Hall through a string of scandals affecting his administration, a lack of transparency and his abrasive personal style.
More anger may be on the way.
Leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, a longtime political foe, are threatening a “protracted strike” this year, the union’s second since Emanuel took office in 2011. And a massive tax and fee increase that Emanuel ushered through the City Council this past fall is about to take effect, including the largest property tax increase in modern Chicago history.
Although Emanuel built a reputation in Washington as a crisis manager and consummate fixer for two presidents, critics and friends alike say it remains unclear how, or whether, he will be able to fix this crisis.
“His entire legacy is resting now on making real reform happen,” said David Axelrod, a friend and brother-in-arms from the Obama White House.
Long list of grievances
On the streets of Chicago, the list of grievances is long — especially in the city’s black wards, where Emanuel won strong initial support from voters because of his service as chief of staff to the nation’s first African American president, and he managed to hold on to a majority there when he won reelection last year. But over the years, community activists say that Emanuel has done much to abuse their support.
They point to his feud with the teachers union and say he has plowed cash into big, splashy projects downtown at the expense of desperate needs in their neighborhoods. He handpicked a public schools chief executive who pleaded guilty in October to a federal corruption charge in a scheme to receive a fortune in kickbacks.
Perhaps most infuriating, though, was his shuttering of 50 public schools in 2013 — the largest one-time school closures in U.S. history — almost all of them in black and Latino neighborhoods. The move sparked widespread anger and in part fueled the political campaign of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a comparatively unknown Cook County commissioner who failed to unseat Emanuel, but only after forcing him in February into a runoff.
“Rahm came around asking for votes, then turned around and quickly forgot all about those same people,” said Zerlina Smith, 38, who said her daughter had to walk through gang territory to catch a bus to school after her old elementary closed.
Smith said she now drives her daughter to school every morning. But she fears further disruption later this year, when the new elementary school is set to be merged with a high school to save money.
Emanuel and his supporters say the mayor has taken significant political risks to salvage the city financially and rebuild its economy. But they say he is battling “multigenerational problems” of racial disparity, poverty and violence.
“From Day One, the mayor has taken on deep-rooted challenges that had built up in Chicago over past decades to stabilize pensions and finances, create economic opportunity throughout the city, improve educational opportunities for our children, and reform the police culture,” Emanuel’s spokesman Adam Collins said in an email. “He has been unafraid to make tough decisions when the result would be a stronger city.”
The shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17, occurred Oct. 20, 2014, just before Emanuel announced he was running for a second term. Police said they were responding to reports of a man with a knife. Police then said that McDonald refused to drop the four-inch blade and that Officer Jason Van Dyke emptied his 16-round handgun into McDonald because he felt that the teenager posed an imminent threat.
When journalists demanded to see the dashboard-camera video of the incident, officials in Emanuel’s administration refused to release it for more than a year until a judge ordered them to comply.
The video — released Nov. 24, a day before the judge’s deadline — shows Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times even as McDonald is walking away. Heightening suspicions, prosecutors waited until hours before the video’s release to charge Van Dyke with first-degree murder.
The streets of Chicago erupted in protests, which continued last weekend after police fatally shot an emotionally disturbed college student and his neighbor, a 55-year-old woman.
Uncharacteristically clumsy
Emanuel has worked to contain the crisis, but his response has seemed uncharacteristically clumsy for a man known in Washington for keen political calculation. Meanwhile, that same reputation for tactics has fueled skepticism about the sincerity of his response.
For example, Emanuel at first portrayed McDonald’s shooting as the isolated act of one rogue cop. But in the face of protests, he reversed course, calling for “complete and total reform” of the Chicago police.
Emanuel expressed confidence in Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy — until firing him under pressure Dec. 1. And Emanuel opposed a Justice Department investigation of the police department — until Hillary Clinton and other prominent national Democrats joined the call.
Last month, in an unexpectedly emotional speech to the City Council, Emanuel apologized for the McDonald shooting. But he has insisted that he was simply following procedure in withholding the video, and he denied allegations that he delayed it to avoid angering voters ahead of the election.
On Thursday, New Year’s Eve, Emanuel’s office released 3,000 emails related to the case that had been long been requested by news organizations. They show that the mayor’s aides knew early on that the shooting could lead to problems but revealed no specific evidence of a coverup.
“The videotape was handled in precisely the same way such tapes and evidence have been historically,” the mayor wrote in a Dec. 4 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune with the headline “I own the problem of police brutality, and I’ll fix it.” He wrote, “No one could have predicted that it would take more than a year to finish the probe.”
But many remain unconvinced.
“Everything he’s doing now, everything he’s saying now: Would he be doing it if a judge didn’t force him to release that video? If it weren’t for the people in the streets?” said Tio Hardiman, an anti-violence activist from Chicago.
The protests have included longtime critics, disillusioned former supporters and a large number of newly rising youth activists.
One of the most vocal has been Green, the 20-year-old who until recently served as an anti-
violence volunteer for Emanuel and City Hall in the public schools.
violence volunteer for Emanuel and City Hall in the public schools.
Summoned to City Hall
The day before the McDonald video was released, Green said he and other community activists were summoned to a meeting at City Hall, where Emanuel asked for their help keeping the city calm. But the next day, Green said, when he saw the video, he felt angry and betrayed.
“What the mayor doesn’t understand is that the trust is gone,” Green said. “He can do whatever he wants to do, but it’s not coming back. That’s why he’s got to go.”
Friends believe that Emanuel will weather and survive the maelstrom and that he would never voluntarily resign.
“No one leads through a crisis better than Rahm,” said Sarah Feinberg, one of Emanuel’s closest former aides in Congress and the White House. “He understands that these moments, tough as they are, are the ones that ultimately lead to transformative change.”
There is no legal mechanism to force his resignation. A bill to enable a mayoral recall election has been introduced in the state legislature but is given little chance of passage. And while many in Chicago’s political establishment have been critical of Emanuel, few have joined calls for his resignation.
“If Rahm were to resign, Chicago would only move from one chaos to another chaos,” Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), an influential member of Chicago’s black community, wrote in a recent letter to the Chicago Sun-Times. “We have at this time a critical point to bargain for real change.”
Near-daily protests
The more practical question, local leaders say, is how Emanuel will govern in the face of near-daily protests. At the policy level, he has promised reforms in the Chicago police, starting with a plan unveiled Wednesday to reduce police shootings by equipping every officer responding to calls with a less-lethal Taser.
And in recent weeks, Emanuel has reached out to black leaders. Two prominent ministers, the Revs. Marshall Hatch and Ira Acree, said they were called to a private Dec. 8 meeting in which Emanuel seemed to be trying to assess their level of support.
“We told him how diminished his own credibility was,” Acree recalled. “We said if you really want to build trust, you have to go beyond your scurrilous minions in Washington and listen to people who have different views.”
They took the opportunity to press him for an independent civilian board to review police shootings as well as public hearings into the handling of the McDonald video.
The mayor responded, they said, by abruptly calling the meeting to a close.
“The mayor has a reputation for getting people to do things even if they don’t want to do it. But at this point, he’s going to need people to follow not out of fear or power but out of a sense they’ve been convinced,” said Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “People want to love their city. But they also love and want justice.”
Mexico Mayor Slain a Day After Taking Office
Maria Verza, Associated Press
Verza writes: "Gunmen opened fire on Mayor Gisela Mota at her house in the city of Temixco, said the government of Morelos state, where Temixco is located. Two presumed assailants were killed and three others detained following a pursuit."
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Maria Verza, Associated Press
Verza writes: "Gunmen opened fire on Mayor Gisela Mota at her house in the city of Temixco, said the government of Morelos state, where Temixco is located. Two presumed assailants were killed and three others detained following a pursuit."
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What the TSA's New Body-Scanner Rules Mean for You
Christopher Elliott, The Washington Post
Elliott writes: "The Transportation Security Administration's new rules for screening passengers with its controversial full-body scanners - which were quietly changed just before the busy holiday travel season - represent a significant policy reversal that could affect your next flight."
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Christopher Elliott, The Washington Post
Elliott writes: "The Transportation Security Administration's new rules for screening passengers with its controversial full-body scanners - which were quietly changed just before the busy holiday travel season - represent a significant policy reversal that could affect your next flight."
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Saudi-Led Coalition Ending Yemen Ceasefire, State News Agency Says
Omar Fahmy and Noah Browning, Reuters
Excerpt: "A Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing the Houthi movement in Yemen for nine months announced on Saturday the end of a ceasefire that began on Dec. 15, the Saudi state news agency SPA said, in a setback to attempts to end the conflict."
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Omar Fahmy and Noah Browning, Reuters
Excerpt: "A Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing the Houthi movement in Yemen for nine months announced on Saturday the end of a ceasefire that began on Dec. 15, the Saudi state news agency SPA said, in a setback to attempts to end the conflict."
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Don't Eat That Shrimp
Roberto A. Ferdman, The Washington Post
Ferdman writes: "Major markets around the world aren't doing a good job of keeping shrimp peeled by modern-day slaves out of their food system. The AP investigation, which has led to the freeing of thousands of indentured fishermen, dozens of arrests and millions of dollars in seizures, found that the United States has been particularly poor in this regard."
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Roberto A. Ferdman, The Washington Post
Ferdman writes: "Major markets around the world aren't doing a good job of keeping shrimp peeled by modern-day slaves out of their food system. The AP investigation, which has led to the freeing of thousands of indentured fishermen, dozens of arrests and millions of dollars in seizures, found that the United States has been particularly poor in this regard."
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