The Myth of Congressional Gridlock

On the major issues of our time, Democrats and Republicans march in lockstep.

I joked with friends recently that, with the government currently shutdown, we should kidnap all the members of Congress, tie them up and lock them in a storage unit somewhere, and replace them all with Greens. Well, I was mostly joking...

The government shutdown, which has left 800,000 "non-essential" government employees furloughed, and others forced to continue working without pay, offers another opportunity to dispel some popular myths about so-called congressional gridlock.

Conventional wisdom (i.e. "objective" corporate news-reporting) defines 21st century politics by a Congress in perpetual "gridlock" wherein "neither party" can agree on anything. Both the Republicans and Democrats, we are constantly told, have become so polarized that the U.S. government is locked in constant stalemate on pressing issues from immigration, and the economy to gun control and health care. "Both parties" the elite corporate talking-heads assure us, have been hijacked by the more "extremist" elements of the far right and far left.

This is actually true for one party: The Republicans.

Indeed, I think it is fair to say we have never witnessed a more radical incarnation of the GOP--a party that, it is worth recalling, began as a third-party. Today's Republicans are so bat-shit crazy it is easy to see how so-called "centrists" like Maine's Susan Collins and recently retired Olympia Snowe look moderate in comparison.

And make no doubt about it: Blame for the government shutdown lies solely with them. Regardless of what we may personally think about it, "Obamacare" is, for better or worse, the law of the land. It has been upheld by the Supreme Court. House Republicans need to accept this fact and quit wasting legislative time passing pointless measures to repeal it.

Yet, claims of a comparable extremist shift in the Democratic Party are ludicrously empty. While the Republicans embrace their more radical members, effectively allowing them to become the face of the party, the Democrats do just the opposite--they suppress  and undermine them. (Cases in point: Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold and Jesse Jackson.)

This is why, strategically speaking, I do not believe it is possible for progressives to "take back" the Democratic Party, their primary focus for the last decade. True progressive members like Feingold and Kucinich have been trying to "take back" their party for years now, and the fact that both have been booted out of office speaks to how effective their efforts have been.

At the end of the day, both parties agree on far more than they disagree. When it comes to broad, overarching issues of war and peace, the primacy of the free-market, Wall Street bailouts, the surveillance state, tax-cuts for the wealthy and overall servitude to corporate power, the Democrats and Republicans march in unyielding lockstep.

Or, as Noam Chomsky explains, "In the U.S. there is basically one party--the Business Party. It has two factions called Democrats and Republicans which are somewhat different, but carry out variations on the same policies."

As the Socialist Worker notes in a recent editorial ("Washington's Warring Brothers," 10/01/2013), the media coverage of the shutdown, "obscures how far to the right both [parties] have traveled together over the years."

The editors write:

They agree on imposing sweeping cuts in most government programs, though not the Pentagon; they differ on how deep the cuts should be. They agree on a health care system where the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex calls the shots; they differ about parts of a law designed to preserve the industry's profits and power. They agree on a system where Corporate America piles up record profits by driving down the living standards of working-class people; they disagree only on the details of how that system should operate.

The problem is not that Congress is "broken." The federal government works just fine. It is just not working for you and me. It is working for Wall Street, the one percent and the military-industrial complex.

There is, perhaps, no better example of the two parties' homogeneity than the health care "reform" law--The Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare"--at the center of the shutdown. Whether the ACA--which amounts to little more than an unnecessary bailout for the corporate health insurance industry--is "better than nothing," or a "step in the right direction" is beside the point. Claiming the ACA is "better than nothing," is a bit like arguing the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is "better than" NAFTA. Either way, rapacious multinational corporations benefit at the expense of working-class people.

The ACA, and more specifically, the concept of the individual mandate, was born in the chambers of that bastion of conservative lobbying, The Heritage Foundation in the late 1980s. The first politician to successfully implement the law at the state level was then Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2006. In fact, during Bill Clinton's attempts at health care reform in the 1990s, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich touted the individual mandate plan as the Republican alternative.

Call it what you will--"Obamacare," "Romneycare," "socialism"--but the law, with its Friedmanesque emphasis on "consumer choice," was originally cooked up by free-market conservatives.

In other words, if Republicans truly hate Obamacare as much as they claim to, they only have themselves to blame for it. Indeed, there was something almost absurdly Orwellian about watching Romney campaign against Obama last year by attacking his signature health reform success.

The law forces Americans to buy the private health insurance companies' defective coverage. It does little to control premium and co-pay costs. And, due to the ever increasing cost of private insurance, it will leave out some 3,000 low-income Americans who simply cannot afford to buy in. Those Americans will face penalty of a hefty government fine--essentially criminalizing them for being poor.

Additionally, a number of states led by Republican governors (including Maine) have opted out of the ACA's Medicaid expansion provision, which, in Maine alone, would have benefited 37,000 uninsured residents. Originally a mandatory component of the law, the Supreme Court ruled last year the Medicaid expansion could only be considered constitutional if presented as an optional feature.

The New York Times, in a recent editorial ("A Population Betrayed," 10/03/2013), lambasted the 26 Republican state governors, calling their decision to forgo Medicaid expansion "outrageous." The editors further criticize, "These 26 states would rather turn down incredibly generous federal funds that would finance 100 percent of the expansion costs for three years and at least 90 percent thereafter than offer a helping hand to their most vulnerable residents."

Paul LePage should consider himself fortunate the Maine constitution offers no provision for recalling state officials. Just saying...

I know, I know--This law was the "best the Democrats could do." Single-payer health care simply is not "politically feasible." We should just shut up and be thankful for what we have.

Bollocks.

The Democrats passed the ACA with solid majorities in both the Senate and the House. Throughout the health care debate (such as it was, with single-payer activists getting arrested and all), they controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House. They were actually on the right path with their original plan for a public-option--already a compromise from single-payer, but still a closer step in that direction than the ACA is. But, in typical fashion, the Dems promptly compromised away the compromise. The bill they ended up passing was not Plan B, but Plan C. If holding an honest, up-or-down vote on single-payer when your party holds a Congressional majority and the presidency is "impossible," it is only because the Democrats have no desire to ever hold such a vote.

In the end, like the Republicans, they prefer to maintain a for-profit, corporate health system that incentives death and disease. Can't afford health insurance? Then you'd best heed Florida Rep. Alan Grayson's sardonic advice: Die quickly.

So ignore the media's "blame-game." Both parties are beholden to corporate paymasters first and foremost. Any crumbs of reform they happen to toss our way are incidental and, ultimately, too little to make a serious difference.

The Great American Stickup

Five Years Later, Wall Street is Still Winning

Five years after Wall Street crashed the global economy and caused the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the "Too Big To Fail" financial behemoths are riding high on a wave of unprecedented recovery while the rest of us are worse off than ever.

For all the initial shock and outrage at Wall Street's destructive excess, five years later, Congress has enacted few meaningful, enforceable financial reforms, Wall Street CEOs are once again raking in record salaries, and not one banker has gone to prison. The cover of a recent issue of Time magazine seems to sum things up best: "How Wall Street Won."

Has nothing changed?

As Ralph Nader points out in a recent editorial for The Huffington Post ("Five Years Later: Wall Street is Still At It," 09/20/2013), "One would hope that, five years later, our country would be on the road to economic recovery."

"Yet many of the worst excesses of Wall Street remain," he writes. "...Wall Street and the big banks are even bigger, richer, and more powerful than they were in 2008 when U.S. taxpayers bailed them out of their self-inflicted crisis."

Nader was one of a handful of economic critics who warned, early on, that Wall Street's reckless behavior and arrogant risks could well lead to another recession. But he and his colleagues were promptly ignored or ridiculed by the corporate media. (Nader's latest book, a compilation of recent essays and Op-Eds is sardonically titled, Told You So.)

Five years later, nearly all of the "Too Big To Fail" banks that caused the Great Recession (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to name a few), are again thriving, while minimum-wage workers have not had a raise in three decades.

Real wages, adjusted for inflation, have remained stagnant from their 1972 peak. This, despite the fact American workers are working harder than ever. Major employers like Walmart cynically exploit what remains of our beleaguered social safety net by paying their employees dirt-cheap wages and actively encouraging them to apply for government assistance. Indeed, what does it say about U.S. business culture when the average Walmart employee cannot afford to shop at Walmart? As a result of these businesses' stinginess (Walmart being just one example), taxpayers end up footing the bill to help provide for low-wage workers.

This is not free-market capitalism. It is corporate welfare.

I have made this point numerous times on this blog, but I will state it again as it does not seem to be sinking in:

Corporations--not the bedraggled, greasy-looking panhandler begging for money on the street corner--are society's real Welfare Queens. We, as taxpayers, are essentially paying their employees for them--and they do not even work for us! Why welfare-loathing, libertarian conservatives refuse to support a living wage for all is perhaps one of the most paradoxical inconsistencies of modern politics. I ask in all seriousness then, when will these lazy corporations and their mega-millionaire CEOs start pulling their own weight and stop freeloading off the rest of us productive Americans?

Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate remains stuck at an anemic 7.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' August jobs report. And that is just the "official" rate. The actual unemployment rate (what the few economists who bother to report on it refer to as "U-6"), according to Forbes' Dan Diamond, is closer to 15 percent. This statistic includes the dozens of frustrated women and men who have given up looking for work entirely. As Diamond notes, this real unemployment rate has doubled from 2007- 2009.

To wit: Most of my friends my age are either desperately searching for work, or underemployed at low-wage jobs that do not utilize their college education. According to a story earlier this summer in The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram ("Special Report: Maine's Top Jobs," June, 2013), the jobs with the highest expected growth in the foreseeable future are exclusively in health care or retail.

In the wake of the Great Recession, working-class Americans feel the "American Dream" is increasingly out of reach. It is time to wake up to the truth, America: Unregulated, free-market capitalism has failed the majority of us. It's time to reboot the system and install a new operating system.

Indeed, this was the sentiment in the wake of the Great Depression. After the economy tanked and hundreds of Americans lost their life savings, the general consensus was that capitalism had failed. Many left-leaning citizens began to talk openly and candidly about the need for social-democratic reforms, if not outright socialism. Novels like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath painfully and vividly portrayed the human costs of capitalism's insatiable thirst for ever greater profits.

Yet, save for a tongue-in-cheek Newsweek cover story, the 2008 financial collapse has not brought about a similar rethinking of capitalism. The only time the "S-word" was uttered by elite, cable television news hosts was to ludicrously claim then-candidate Barack Obama was running on a "socialist" agenda. (If only!) As it turned out, this smear campaign failed miserably and Americans overwhelmingly elected Obama president twice. Once in office this "socialist" president proceeded to stack his cabinet with wealthy bankers, businessmen, and other corporate servants, including the union-busting Rahm Emanuel. Some socialist.

But all is not lost. There was one good thing to come out of the recession. No, not Dodd-Frank--Occupy Wall Street. Despite its obvious structural flaws and its failure to engage the political system, Occupy's contributions should not be undermined. We can credit the Occupy movement with reigniting the debate on class-struggle. Two years after its launch, we still routinely use terms like "99 percent," and "one percent" to talk about wealth inequality. The future, I believe, lies in some fusion between Occupy Wall Street and the Green Party.

Until such a political-protest hybrid emerges, we will have to do our best to scrape by however we can. After all, it's Wall Street's world. We just live in it.

The Warmonger Song-And-Dance Routine

Or, Meditations on a Military Empire

I do not believe the claims Syria possesses chemical weapons for a minute. Anyone who does clearly learned nothing from this nation's last major military conflict.

And so here we go again with Washington's favorite warmonger song-and-dance routine. Another Middle Eastern country has weapons of mass destruction--err...excuse me, "chemical weapons" and so, in the United States' self-appointed role as Supreme Law Enforcer of the Globe, we must forcibly disarm them. Damn any innocent civilians killed in the process.

Didn't President Obama get the memo? Conventional war sold as propaganda to a skeptical public is so 2003. These days, we just assassinate the evil-doers (and their children) via unmanned predator drones with no public debate whatsoever. Can't we just send a drone after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and be done with it?

Of all the ink spilled in the decade since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sent the country to war in Iraq based on lies and fabricated intelligence, I still think Michael Moore's succinct assessment best cuts to the heart of why their deception was so successful:

"I blame the New York Times more for the Iraq war than Bush," he wrote in a 2010 article for The Daily Beast ("Liberals Sold the Iraq War," 09/15/2010).

He writes,

I expected Bush and Cheney to try and get away with what they did. But the Times--and the rest of the press--was supposed to STOP  them by doing their job: Be a relentless watchdog of government and business--and then inform the public so we can take action. (Bold and italics his.)

Moore's understanding of the role of a free, independent press is much the same as I learned studying journalism in college. Alas, like so many academic theories those concerning the Fourth Estate remain thoroughly detached from reality.

The fact is we do not have a free or independent press in this country. And when your broadcast news network is owned by the world's third-largest weapons manufacturer (NBC-General Electric in this case), that network has an inherent interest in promoting the war and the views of Establishment warmongers.

Since the launch of the Iraq war, many media outlets and op-ed writers who were so gung-ho for the invasion have engaged in (or, at least, offered the pretense of engaging in) various degrees of self-reflection concerning their collective failure in their watchdog role. Yet, once again, we have those same outlets and reporters swallowing the Obama administration's fuzzy rationales for striking Syria.

To that end, NYT columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof assails critics of a military intervention ("The Right Questions on Syria," 09/05/2013):

"...[W]hat do you propose other than that we wag our fingers as a government uses chemical weapons on its own people? So far, we've tried peaceful acquiescence, and it hasn't worked very well."

We have...? Oh, so Israel's week-long bombing of Syria earlier this year was an instance of "peaceful acquiescence." Here I misunderstood it to be an act of, you know...war.

Kristof, like so many proponents of a Syrian strike, grossly oversimplifies the debate as consisting of two polar extremes: Using military force to "punish" Assad, or doing absolutely nothing. He writes, "...how is being 'pro-peace' in this case much different in effect from being 'pro-Assad' and resigning oneself to the continued slaughter of civilians?" Such an attitude further perpetuates the American logic that the only truly effective means of pursuing peace throughout the globe (often from dictators the U.S. put in power in the first place) is through military force.

Kristof, in a stunning bit of self-serving historical revisionism, casts himself as a critic of the


Nicholas D. Kristof

Iraq war. "A decade ago, I was aghast that so many liberals were backing the Iraq war," he writes.

That's funny, because during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, Kristof wrote this:

"President Bush has convinced me there is no philosophical reason we should not overthrow the Iraqi government, given that Iraqis themselves would be better off, along with the rest of the world" ("Wimps on Iraq," 08/27/2002).

Two years later, Kristof, in typical NY Times' double-speak, chastised Moore's documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11 for "calling Bush a liar," while conceding, in the same column, "Of course, Mr. Bush did stretch the truth." Then again, Kristof was likely following The Times' cardinal rule, as explained by reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, "You can't just say the president is lying."

Contrary to conventional thinking, liberals are just as hawkish as Republicans when it comes to matters of war and peace. In particular, liberals routinely fall in line for the logic of so-called "humanitarian intervention," which was how Bill Clinton presented his bombing of Serbia in 1999 and, more recently, the Saddam-Hussein-is-as-bad-as-Hitler rhetoric for the war in Iraq.

Yet, in both the media and public opinion, Democrats are still held up as eternal champions of peace and diplomacy. All those "anti-war" liberals who were so convinced Obama was the "lesser evil" during last year's presidential election seem oblivious to the fact that both the gargantuan Pentagon budget and our military presence throughout the globe have increased under Obama. In fact, the president's proposed FY 2014 military-spending budget is the largest request since World War II. But he gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and not a true humanitarian like Chelsea Manning.

Yet all is not lost.

As of this writing, Obama's plans for a coordinated air-strike over Syria have, at least temporarily, been stalled. Russia's recent deal is one reason for this. Assad's agreement to disclose his (again, alleged) chemical weapons is another. (Recall that Saddam Hussein, even when faced with the prospect of war with the United States, continued to falsely insist he possessed weapons of mass destruction.)

But the real reason Obama's war is, at least for the moment, a no-go is not likely to be mentioned on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, or The PBS News Hour. It is because the American people do not want it.

Public opinion remains vastly opposed to military intervention in Syria. A recent CBS/New York Times poll finds 61 percent of Americans--Democrats, Republicans and Independents--oppose the strike. That is a ratio of six in ten opposed to military action. A late August Reuters/Ipsos poll, reported on in The Washington Post finds only 9 percent of Americans support an attack on Syria ("New Poll: Syria intervention even less popular than Congress," 08/26/2013).

The American people have spoken on the prospect of another Middle Eastern war. And by wide margins they have rejected it. Americans are finally saying "No!" to war. And, to his credit, President Obama, unlike members of his predecessor's administration, seems to be listening.

As it is, there are serious doubts surrounding the claims Syria even has chemical weapons at all. According to a recent story by Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel for McClatchy ("To some, U.S. case for Syrian gas attack, strike has too many holes," 09/02/2013), the Obama administration's case for war is "riddled with inconsistencies" and "hinges mainly on circumstantial evidence." The reporters note, correctly, "After the false weapons claims preceding the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the threshold for evidence to support intervention is exceedingly high."

Whether the allegations are true or not, Obama's failure on Syria is a victory for those of us on the anti-war left. And, whether or not the television news pundits are willing to admit it, right now we are winning.  

  

Welcome to the Servant Economy

I recently started a part-time job at Staples. It is hardly glamorous work. I spend most of the day waiting on prissy, condescending customers who routinely drop $100- $400 on ink cartridges and fancy paper. Most of them pay with credit cards issued by Bank of America, TD Bank, Wells Fargo and other noxious "too big to fail" banks. I get $8.25 an hour.

Did I mention I have a Master's degree...? Welcome to the servant economy.

For a retail chain known for its catchy promotional slogan, "That was easy!" it is actually absurdly difficult to get a job at Staples. I had to come in for two (yes, two) interviews before I was offered a job. The store's lengthy online application, like so many applications these days, redundantly asks applicants to regurgitate the same personal information over and over, in addition to attaching a resume, a cover letter, and the names of three references.

I have worked in retail before, but the biggest difference with Staples is the incessant product-pushing. As a Sales Associate, I am expected to constantly hawk Staples' Customer Rewards Program, coupons and sales items, and, especially, product warranties.

As readers are likely aware, product warranties--or "extended service plans" as Staples calls them--are almost always a rip-off. They are solely designed to earn the store extra money--a fact candidly acknowledged in one of the training videos. By way of example, I purchased a "lifetime warranty" with my 2006 Toyota Corolla which I have never used--mostly due to the fact Toyota's vehicles are already reliable, quality cars to begin with. That additional money for the warranty was essentially a bonus for the Prime Toyota dealer that sold me the car.

My "training" lasted two days. On the first day, I "shadowed" another cashier on the front-end, who essentially gave me a crash-course in every aspect of the job. The second training day consisted of eight hours of watching poorly produced instructional videos in a small, secluded room. Each video was followed by a quiz which must be passed before advancing to the next one. I found the quiz on preventing money laundering especially tricky, though oddly educational.

The lack of any actual, manager-oriented training does not surprise me. Employers have virtually given up on training new workers. Their excuse is they will invest all that time and effort into training a new employee, only for her to promptly defect to a better-paying position at a competitor company. In my case, this reasoning is absurd. I am already overqualified for the job to begin with. No amount of cashier training--which I already had anyway--is going to change that. As a result, you basically learn most aspects of the job on the job, which, in a retail environment, means for the first few weeks my line had lots of angry, impatient customers because I was constantly calling the manager for help.

Of course, there is an obvious solution to the difficulty in retaining new hires: Pay them a decent wage. As Wharton School professor, Peter Cappelli wrote in The New York Times last summer ("If There's a Gap, Blame it on the Employer," 08/03/2012):

Have you [employers] tried raising wages? If you could get what you want by paying more, the problem is just that you are cheap. The fact that I cannot find the car I want at the price I want to pay does not constitute a car shortage, yet a large number of employers claiming they face a skills shortage admit that the problem is getting candidates to accept their wage rates.

Then there was the obligatory anti-union video.

This fine piece of propaganda--devoid, incidentally, of one shred of factual evidence--is remarkably similar to anti-union training videos for Home Depot and Target. (Staples, like Target, also touts its "Open Door Policy" in place of a union.)

All three videos go out of their way to paint labor unions as some antiquated, sinister force bent on deceiving workers and undermining their "sovereignty." My favorite part was when the actors disingenuously note the steep decline in union membership in recent decades--most of which is due to massive union-busting campaigns by the corporate retail sector.

The employee-actors go to considerable length to insist Staples' employees have frequently "turned down" union membership. Yet, in the month I have now worked at Staples I have not once been approached by a union representative. I imagine the same goes for my co-workers. How can you "turn down" an opportunity you are never presented with?

In addition to my cashiering duties, I am also responsible for shelf-stocking, processing returned or damaged items, taking out the garbage, and cleaning the front-end and bathrooms. At times I feel like a glorified janitor. When I come home, my back is stiff from standing and lifting things all day.

Staples currently ranks #122 on the Fortune 500 list (topping Kohl's, Nike and Kimberly-Clark, but behind Halliburton, Time Warner and McDonald's). This year, the company had revenues of $24.7 billion. One would think, with that kind of money, they could afford to pay their workers more than a mere dollar above the federal minimum wage.

While I still do not regret my education (unlike most Americans, I do not believe the singular goal of college should be career advancement), it is hard not to resent my situation. I think back at all those teachers throughout high school who constantly assured me and my classmates we could do or be "anything you want," so long as we "work hard," and "apply yourself."

Looking back on it, I feel stupid for naively believing such horseshit in the first place. My generation has been sold-out to a voracious, oligarchic corporate state that responds exclusively to the whims of Wall Street and the corporate sector while leaving poor and working-class citizens to fend for themselves. And if we do not radically shift course soon, we will all be working dead-end jobs like mine.

George Carlin was right: "It's called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe in it."



Dear American public: Please continue buying cheap crap you do not need from corporate big-box chains. Your restless consumerism is currently paying my bills. Thank you.


 

In the event Staples fires me for posting this blog, I may finally have the time to write that book I have been dreaming of for years... In the meantime, feel free to make a donation--via the button on the right--to keep Guerrilla Press going. Any amount is greatly appreciated and, I think, a worthy investment.

...And Justice for All

 

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
                                                                              - George Orwell

Pfc. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's sentencing to 35 years in prison last week for leaking hundreds of classified documents of U.S. war crimes to WikiLeaks is proof positive of something I have long suspected of this country:

There is no democracy. There is only the illusion of democracy.

As Ned Beatty's Arthur Jensen, chairman of the fictional Communications Company of America in Sidney Lumet's Network explains to Howard Beale, "There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union-Carbide, and Exxon."

Manning, like Network's doomed Beale "meddled with the primal forces of nature,"--in this case the callous, murderous U.S. military industrial complex. And now, he too will be forced to atone.

From the beginning, Manning's trial was a rigged facade. The defense was prohibited from using any of the leaked documents as evidence in the trial. And, though the court ultimately failed to indict Manning on the specific charge, the prosecution nonetheless managed to convince the judge and the American public that her leaks somehow endangered U.S. security and "aided the enemy."

According to a Huffington Post/YouGov poll, 54 percent of Americans disapprove of Manning's actions, suggesting most still erroneously believe she somehow compromised U.S. security. Then again, the same poll also finds only 33 percent of Americans followed news of the trial closely-- compared with 67 percent who did not--which seems to negate the validity of the previous statistic.

Even before her trial began (indeed, long before she was formally charged with any crime), Manning was subjected to near-torture prison treatment, held for days in solitary confinement and forced to spend the night naked in her jail cell. Even former State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley called Manning's unwarranted treatment "counterproductive and stupid."

In nearly all of the commentary concerning Manning--whether from the right or the left--what is inevitably overlooked is the actual content of the military cables she leaked. This is, of course, no accident. When it comes to attacking and discrediting whistleblowers, the Obama administration and the corporate media employ the same tactic: Shoot the messenger, ignore the message. It is the same approach used with N.S.A. whistleblower, Edward Snowden.

So, let's talk about the war crimes Manning revealed.

Perhaps the most startling is the "Collateral Murder" video taken from a U.S. Apache helicopter as its pilot nonchalantly guns down nine innocent Iraqi civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two of those killed were Reuters reporters. At one point, the soldiers indiscriminately fire on a van carrying children.

The blurry, black-and-white helicopter video log, combined with the soldiers' detached, indifferent back-and-forth exchange make the incident appear like something out of a video game. As our military weapons and instruments of war become increasingly automated with unmanned predator drones and the like, soldiers become more alienated from the actual horror of combat. Killing innocent human beings via remote control some 3,000 miles away is now as easy as sending an email.

This dehumanizing effect is further reinforced by the soldiers' crude, callous references to the civilians as "fucking pricks," and their exclamations to "light 'em all up." Marshall McLuhan, in his prescient if often inscrutable musings on technology, was right: "We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us."

Chelsea Manning was not responsible for these crimes--she merely exposed them. Yet, since her disclosure of these blatant war crimes, Manning has been treated--in both her trial and in the media--as the criminal. It is as if, upon reporting to your boss your discovery that a co-worker is stealing company funds, your boss promptly fires you.

Such is the warped logic under Barack Obama's administration, which has prosecuted more American whistleblowers, including journalists, under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined. As Mother Jones' Peter Van Buren wrote in a story last year ("Obama's War on Whistleblowers," 06/12/2012), "The Obama administration has been cruelly and unusually punishing in its use of the 1917 Espionage Act to stomp on governmental leakers, truth-tellers, and whistleblowers whose disclosures do not support the president's political ambitions."

Conversely, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the other architects of the Iraq War--a war based on fabricated rationales--remain free citizens. The Democratic Party, upon reclaiming the Senate and the House of Representatives from a Republican majority in 2006, refused to impeach any officials in the Bush regime for such flagrant disregard for the rule of law and grossly deceiving the American public. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced impeachment as politically "divisive," and even went so far as to claim there was "no evidence" Bush had committed a crime.

The mainstream media, likewise, when it can be bothered to cover Manning's plight at all, has offered scorn and ridicule, painting her as a traitor. From the start the media used Manning's sexual orientation and gender identity issues against her in a disgustingly homophobic manner. Yet, gay rights advocacy groups--like Maine's prominent Equality Maine--raised no objections. Most LGBT groups, like those in the labor and anti-war movements, remain cloyingly loyal to President Obama. By their thinking, if Obama believes Manning is a traitor, then she must be a traitor.

(Curiously, Manning's coming out as transgendered the day after her sentencing seems to have generated more online support and praise from liberals than Manning ever received during her trial. In recent days, I have seen Facebook posts lauding Chelsea Manning's bravery and courage from people who previously seemed to have no opinion of her whatsoever. No doubt, Manning is a highly brave and courageous individual, but because of her actions--not her gender identity.)

Manning's sentence--the longest ever issued for a whistleblower--represents the last nail in the coffin for any remaining pretense of American justice.

It also sends a clear and chilling message to all investigative reporters: Be careful what you report on. Disclose any embarrassing state secrets, or evidence of torture or war crimes and you, too, will find yourself in Manning's shoes. As a result, according to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, "Investigative reporting has come to a standstill."

To get a sense of the rank hypocrisy behind Chelsea Manning's sentence, consider the following quote from Secretary of State John Kerry concerning Syria's (alleged) use of chemical weapons:

"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable."

Perhaps Kerry should have added to the second sentence, "Except when such actions are carried out by us. Then they are completely justified."

Indeed, in light of Manning's outrageous sentence, I propose we amend the Pledge of Allegiance accordingly. The final line should now read, "...with liberty and justice for some."

Who Owns the Land?



Congress Square Park during First Friday Art Walk.



On Wednesday, Aug. 21, the Portland City Council will vote on whether or not to sell off most of the downtown area known as Congress Square Park to a private, out-of-state corporation. All indications suggest a majority of the councilors will vote for the sale, much to the dismay of Portland residents who wish to keep the park open for public use.

The Ohio-based company, Rockbridge Capital, which bought the adjoining Eastland Park Hotel in 2011, will purchase the area--which the local media insist on calling "Congress Square Plaza"--for approximately $524,000, according to The Portland Press Herald ("Agreement Outlines Plan to Buy Congress Square Plaza," 08/17/2013). The company plans to build an events center in the area. Opposition to the sale is a key part of my campaign for the City Council.

Since the city began talks of "revitalizing" the park nearly two years ago, members of the public have been systematically shut-out of the debate. The proposal to sell off the area was never put to a vote. Opponents of the plan have voiced their disapproval at numerous City Council and Housing & Development Committee meetings, only to be ignored. Members of the group Friends of Congress Square Park, a diverse coalition of activists intent on preserving the park for public use, have been consistently derided as a "vocal minority," who simply do not understand how this "sweetheart deal" will benefit Portland economically.

I actually think Rockbridge is unrealistic about how economically successful this "events center" will be--though, for the city's sake, I hope I am wrong. But whether or not the soon-to-be-renamed Eastland Park Hotel rakes in a ton of money for Portland is not the point. (The city would have more money if it did not routinely throw it all away on TIFs, subsidies, tax-breaks and handouts to corporations. See: Portland Waterfront.)

Portland lawmakers seem hell-bent on privatizing, commercializing and "revitalizing" every square inch of the city. When they are through arbitrarily auctioning off large pieces of the city will there be anything left for residents to enjoy? At what point do we say, "enough is enough"? As my friend and Portland School Board member, Holly Seeliger noted in a recent blog post, this fight to maintain public land is not unique to Portland. A very similar confrontation led to the uprisings in Turkey earlier this summer.

This is all a symptom of the disease that is capitalism.

Unfettered, unregulated capitalism, with its singular obsession on maximizing profits at all costs, turns everything--including public space, the environment, and even human lives--into a commodity. And for Portland's City Councilors, that is all Congress Square Park is--a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder.

Ironically, in their zeal to draw more tourists to Portland, city officials are driving year-round, working-class residents out. Rising costs of rent and the lack of jobs have made Portland almost as expensive to live in as Boston. Soon only the wealthy will be able to afford to live here.

Indeed, it is the wealthy and business elite that have clamored loudest for Rockbridge's events center. Surrounding shops like Emerald City, Queen of Hats, Cross Jewelers and Coffee by Design believe the events center will mean more patrons for their stores. This will undoubtedly be great for these businesses, but it is difficult to tell how the events center will benefit the rest of us.

Profit-obsessed members of the local business community, including the Portland Chamber of Commerce, denounce Congress Square Park as a "failed space"--"failed" because the park is not contributing to their personal finances. In the myopic mindset of the capitalist--a rapacious worldview that divides citizens into "producers" and "takers"--a thing's only value is its economic worth. The notion of intrinsic beauty or worth is completely foreign to them.

There is, furthermore, an additional class element to this controversy. Congress Square Park, for those unfamiliar with it, has long been a frequent hangout for the city's poor, homeless, and destitute. Again, when business owners call the park a "blight" this is bourgeoisie code for the fact that it attracts Portland's "less desirable" residents. And just as the City Council, last month, banned desperate panhandlers from standing in busy median strips, it is now looking to remove them from Congress Square as well.

Let's just call this what it is: a war on the poor.

Many of those that congregate in the park suffer from mental disabilities. Others are alcoholics or drug addicts. Most of them are simply looking for a place to rest for a while. They lack the family or social support systems the rest of us take for granted. These are the people society has turned its back on. Since these individuals have no money to spend, as far as the business elite are concerned, they are worthless.

"There is always more misery among the lower classes," Victor Hugo observes in Les Miserables, "than there is humanity in the higher." Given the recent resurgence in popularity of Hugo's classic novel-turned-musical, it is unfortunate audiences still have not grasped his central message concerning poverty and class-warfare.

Even members of Portland's arts community, like blues-guitar virtuoso, Samuel James, support the Congress Square auction. "I'm sick of being called nigger every time I walk by there," James, who is black, told me during a recent conversation.

The fact that James confronts such deplorable racism on a daily basis is, to be certain, a travesty--one that belies the constant assertion that we now inhabit a "post-racial" America. As a white person, I cannot, truthfully, ever fully understand the emotional impact of racism.

That being said, I find James' gross oversimplification of this issue into cheap identity politics disappointing. The poor and disenfranchised, most of whom do not have the benefit of a proper education and upbringing often speak in the baser, crude language of hate and prejudice because they do not know any better. Seeking any sliver of solace from their own miserable plight, the disenfranchised will lash out at anyone else they perceive to be "The Other." That is not to excuse the use of the "N-word" by anybody. But a compassionate understanding of class-struggle acknowledges this fact.

Then again, maybe the critically lauded songwriter figures the events center will give him another musical venue to book shows in. His reaction is, if anything, further evidence of how the withdrawal into identity politics has destroyed the Left.

We do not need Rockbridge's events center. What we do need, though, is more public space free and open to residents. This is about more than one park. It is about the very idea of who owns Portland--the taxpaying citizens, out-of-state corporations or the moneyed elite that run our local government.

Even if Congress Square's fate is already sealed, the fight to maintain and protect public space is far from over.

Business owners and Samuel James can send hate mail to adamd.marletta@gmail.com. Citizens who care about public space should send me to the Portland City Council this November. And if you just enjoyed this article and think it was worth the 1100-some-odd words it takes up, feel free to make a donation via the button on the right. Any amount is greatly appreciated.

Justice for Whom...?

The limits of "Boutique Activism."

The recent efforts of the group Justice for Mary raise legitimate questions about the nature of activism and civic engagement.

Justice for Mary seeks to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of 18-year-old Kennebunk resident, Mary Tanner in July of 1978. The teenager went missing one weekend and was never seen alive again. Local police discovered Tanner's beaten body in Lyman. An autopsy revealed she was three-months pregnant. The killer has never been found, though many of Tanner's relatives believe the individual may still be living in the area.

The story is undoubtedly tragic and one certainly must admire the way the community has rallied in support of Mary's memory. Having grown up in Kennebunk, I cannot recall a similar outpouring of support. (I did not know Mary. Her murder took place three years before I was born.)

What I do know, given the small size of my hometown, is those spearheading the Justice for Mary campaign are not at all what I would call political activists. I have no doubt they faithfully show up to vote once every two years or so. But if they are involved in additional forms of civic engagement, I am unaware of it.

Which leads to my question: Why will otherwise non-politically motivated people rally behind an admittedly noble cause like Tanner's, but not that of say, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden or Trayvon Martin? Yes, I realize none of these individuals live in Maine. Yes, I understand those supporting Justice for Mary have likely never met any of them. Let's momentarily put all questions of local proximity and personal intimacy aside and just focus on the broad, general concept of "justice."

Why justice for Mary Tanner but not for any of these individuals? It is a valid question and one that, again, is in no way meant to discredit or dishonor the memory of Tanner.

Here is one possible explanation:

Justice for Mary, like other popular social activist campaigns like Komen for the Cure, The Dempsey Challenge and Mary's Walk (named for a different Mary), represent the corporate co-option of traditional activism. They are what Chris Hedges calls "boutique activism."

These events and causes, while well intentioned, do not threaten systems of power or authority in any manner. They do not lead to violent police raids, as Occupy Wall Street and its various sub-groups did. Participants are in no danger of being arrested. And they ultimately require no personal risk or sacrifice on the part of supporters.

Indeed, many of these campaigns are funded by some of the wealthiest Fortune 500 corporations. Komen for the Cure, for instance, lists as its sponsors General Electric, Dell, and Bank of America. The major sponsor of the more local Dempsey Challenge is the Amgen insurance corporation.

Liberal, upper-middle class socialites can pat themselves on the back for supporting these causes without ever threatening the slightest bit of societal change. Incidentally, Tanner's immature joke about stealing cigarettes so she could pre-smoke them for the homeless, as recounted by her brother during her recent memorial gathering, suggests she was brought up in just such an affluent, morally indifferent household. Again, having grown up in Kennebunk, I can attest such classist attitudes are all too common among residents.

Participants will often claim breast cancer or Disease X is a "horrible illness that needs to be cured." This is undoubtedly true. Yet the same could be said of war. Where were these people back in 2003 when the U.S. was gearing up to invade Iraq? Why were they not invested in "saving lives" then?

What's that you say? "Justice for Mary is not intended to be a political group"? I would argue the murder (and possible rape) of a young woman in a traditionally patriarchal society is a highly political issue. Then, of course, there is the issue of the media's longstanding obsession with missing, young, attractive, white women...

What, for instance, are Justice for Mary's supporters intending to do to prevent further acts of violence against women in the community or nationally? As far as I can tell, nothing. Their singular focus is on securing judicial justice for Tanner's death. Assuming the killer is someday found and imprisoned, the group's work will apparently end there.

I reached out to Tanner's brother, Charles Tanner, a resident of Portland who has spearheaded the efforts to solve his sister's murder. I posed these very questions to him. He responded by merely referring me to the group's Facebook page.

What is most frustrating about organizations like Justice for Mary is their missed opportunity. Groups such as this could potentially serve as an introduction to social/political activism for otherwise apolitical citizens. But their narrow, myopic focus often prevents participants from branching out into broader issues.

I do hope Mary Tanner's case is eventually solved. I hope the murderer(s) is brought to justice. But I also hope Tanner's legacy does not end there. I hope supporters of her cause will, perhaps feeling awakened and fulfilled from their burgeoning civic lives, continue to fight for justice for others beyond Kennebunk's town boarders.

Unfortunately, given the largely self-imposed limits of boutique activism, I fear this particular cause will remain something of an aberration in supporters' otherwise apolitical lives.



Runners at a 2012 Pink Ribbon marathon.