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Bob Herbert

By Bob Herbert
Former New York Times Columnist

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely. (more…)

David Sirota

By David Sirota
Political journalist, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist

I don’t get it.

I know that’s the simplistic refrain of every 10-year-old, but I’m 33 and I mean it: I just don’t get it.

Specifically, I don’t get why Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) — or any Republican senator, for that matter — is attracting so much attention.

In the last few months, Democratic senators eliminated the public option and substantially weakened their health care proposals in order to buy insurance industry acquiescence and, thus, Snowe’s vote. Now, based on the deafening media noise, all of American politics is focused on this unaccomplished backbencher and whether or not she will endorse the final bill. It is as if Republicans control Congress — as if Snowe, not Barack Obama, won the biggest presidential landslide since Ronald Reagan.

This is bizarre for what should be obvious reasons.

First of all, Snowe’s much-celebrated initial vote this week for an embarrassingly flaccid health care initiative wasn’t necessary to pass the bill — Democrats had enough votes to move the legislation out of the Senate Finance Committee without her approval. That’s a mathematical fact, as is the fact that Democrats control the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster with or without Snowe; as is the fact that Democrats have the 51 votes to enact health care reform through a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation — again, with or without Snowe.

So the notion that Snowe’s vote — or any GOP vote — is inherently pivotal to health care reform is a fantasy created by the Beltway media and the Democratic congressional leadership. The former is desperately trying to manufacture headline-grabbing drama; the latter is looking for a Republican excuse to water down the bill and protect corporate interests — all while absolving Democrats of legislative responsibility.

Second, the idea that Snowe’s support will result in the final legislation being called “bipartisan” — and that such billing will politically protect Democrats — is absurd. How do we know this? Because Democrats themselves taught us that via the Iraq War.

Recall that with solid Democratic and Republican backing, the 2002 Iraq resolution was far more “bipartisan” than any health care bill will ever be. Yet, Democrats turned right around and used the Iraq War to criticize Republicans — and because the conflict was so wildly unpopular, Americans in 2006 and 2008 were willing to overlook the contradiction and vote for the only major party echoing any semblance of an antiwar message.

On health care, it will be the same in reverse: The GOP will invariably attempt to turn any bill into an electoral cudgel against Democrats — regardless of how many Republicans end up voting for it.

The lesson, then, is simple: If Democrats’ hypocritical Iraq criticism only worked because the war was such a disaster, then the GOP’s inevitable health care attacks — however hypocritical — can only be thwarted by making health care reform the opposite of Iraq (i.e., a major success). For Democrats, in other words, good health care policy is great politics, and bad policy is the worst politics.

Whether passed by one congressional vote or 50, real reform that improves the system (i.e., a bill with a public option, tough insurance regulation and universal coverage) will transform the Democratic Party into an election-winning force forever known as “the generous protector of middle-class interests,” as GOP strategist William Kristol admits. Conversely, even if passed unanimously, bad legislation that makes the system worse (i.e., a bill empowering insurance companies, preventing a public option and leaving millions uncovered) will make GOP criticism of Democrats extremely effective.

That’s a truism, no matter if Snowe or any other Republicans add their support to a health care bill that doesn’t actually need it in the first place.

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David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books “Hostile Takeover” and “The Uprising.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com.

By David Sirota
Author of “The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt”

“What do we do now?”

That’s the question Bill McKay ponders in the classic movie “The Candidate” after he wins office promising “a better way.” America will now ask Democrats the same haunting query following the historic election.

These are heady times for the party of Jefferson, Roosevelt and now Obama. Only a few years ago, Democrats were almost relegated to permanent minority status by a Mission Accomplished sign and a flight suit. But since President Bush’s 2004 re-election, they gained at least 50 House seats, 12 Senate seats, seven state legislatures and seven governorships. As Republicans used “socialism” attacks to make the national campaign race a referendum on conservatism, Democrats also registered their biggest presidential triumph since 1964.

So, while the President-elect talks of forming a bipartisan cabinet, his victory wasn’t the public’s cry for milquetoast government-by-blue-ribbon-commission. As the Center for Community Change’s Deepak Bhargava says, Obama’s win was an ideological mandate presenting “an opening for transformational, progressive change.”

Maximizing this opportunity relies on Democrats understanding the parable from Spiderman comics – the one about great power coming with “great responsibility.” In politics, that latter phrase is a euphemism for high expectations.

What the party gains in strength it loses in a Republican scapegoat that previously justified inaction. On huge issues — whether re-regulating Wall Street, reforming trade, solving the health care emergency, or ending the Iraq War — America envisages enormous progress in the months ahead, and Democrats will have no one to blame for failure but themselves. After all, with over 340 electoral votes, President Obama cannot credibly claim he lacks the political capital to legislatively steamroll a humiliated GOP and its remaining senators. The same goes for Democrats everywhere. Meeting expectations requires championing far-reaching — even radical — initiatives.

That was always ‘08′s theme. Amid lipsticked pigs, Joe the Plumber and Super Bowl-sized candidate events, the election became a choice between continued conservative rule and a progressive agenda as far-reaching as the current crises. And as a defeated John McCain said, “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.”

To meet the challenge, Democrats have to abandon their worst habits.

They must, for instance, acknowledge their progressive mandate, rather than denying it like Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did on Tuesday. “This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology,” he fearfully told reporters.

They should also retire the Innocent Bystander Fable — the myth about being powerless onlookers. Democrats first cited this fable as reason the Iraq War continued during their congressional majority — expecting the country to forget that Congress can halt war funding. Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says “there’s not much we can do” to amend the sputtering bank bailout. In 2009, such mendacity will metastasize from banal dishonesty into grist for scathing comedy-show punch lines.

 Democrats need to discard other lies, too — especially those about Bill Clinton. To hear pundits tell it, Clinton’s first-term pitfalls underscore why the next administration should avoid “governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left,” as the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus most recently asserted. History, of course, proves the opposite. Recounting Clinton’s early years to Politico.com, a lobbyist correctly noted that the new president didn’t move left — he pushed conservative policies like NAFTA, thereby demoralizing his base and helping Republicans take Congress.

Obama rose on a promise to eschew those triangulations — and he won because America realized invertebracy and sail trimming will not solve problems. Voters rejected Clinton-style incrementalism in the primary, then scorned conservatism in the general election, meaning Democrats’ best response to Bill McKay’s “what do we do now?” question is a two-word answer: Go big.

That is not merely the better way — it is the only way.

David Sirota is a columnist, fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and board member of the Progressive States Network — both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is atwww.credoaction.com/sirota.

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By Leo W. Gerard
International President
Staking everything
Today, in Las Vegas, a town where jackpots are sought and fortunes are lost, Derek Simpson, general secretary of the UK-based international union, Unite the Union (Amicus Section) and I together staked everything on a worthy cause — working men and women world wide.
We signed an agreement at the USW convention in the Paris-Bally’s Conference Center joining our two great unions, creating the first global one. It is called Workers Uniting, the Global Union because we foresee industrial unions from other continents joining us to face off unregulated multinational corporations that exploit labor worldwide. (more…)