As the Democratic Presidential nomination limps towards its conclusion, liberals and progressives are wondering what to do. While Barack Obama has revealed himself as an interesting candidate, the more one learns about him, the more he seems closer to the Democratic Leadership Council New Democrats who have dominated the Party for two decades than a candidate representing what Paul Wellstone once referred to as “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” that is the wing that see itself as following in the tradition of FDR, Truman, JFK rather than the Bill Clinton “Bourbons” who espouse triangulation and Republican Lite.

The blogs are alive with discussions of alternatives ranging from talking Al Gore into running to supporting Ralph Nader to sitting this one out. Personally I am not a fan of the latter nor of voting for Nader so John McCain can get into the White House. To me the deciding issue is still the Supreme Court and I cringe to think who John McCain will nominate, especially since he has had to cozy up to the right wing of his Party to nail down the nomination.

For liberals and progressives wondering where to put their energy and their money, I offer an alternative suggestion. It is the best kept secret in America.

Did you know there is an organization that for a $50 contribution will train a future President of the United States or Senator or Representative? That organization is Wellstone Action. The $50 will pay for a scholarship for some possible future office holder to attend a Camp Wellstone session designed to teach them how to run for and win elective office.

As the organization’s website notes,

Founded in January 2003, Wellstone Action’s mission is to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by continuing their work through training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations.

Led by the Wellstones’ sons, Mark and David and many old Wellstone staff members such as campaign manager Jeff Blodgett, Wellstone Action set about applying what some of us who knew Paul and Sheila call the Wellstone triad to rebuilding the progressive movement.

When he was a political science professor at Carleton College and engaging in his early community organizing attempts, Paul Wellstone used to passionately talk about how politics consisted of three equally important areas which he outlined in his book The Conscience of a Liberal:

Good ideas and policy, so your activism has direction; grassroots organizing so there is a constituency to fight for the change; and electoral politics, since it is one of the ways people feel most comfortable deciding about power in our country.

These three principles guide the many activities of Wellstone Action, including engaging members in non-partisan voter mobilization efforts; lobbying Congress on behalf of issues the Wellstones fought for including mental health parity, Social Security and protecting the Violence Against Women Act. The centerpiece of Wellstone Action is Camp Wellstone, a unique experience that may be the best hope we liberals have of re-energizing our country in terms what Paul called “the American justice tradition.”

Camp Wellstones usually last for one weekend and are divided into three strands: Citizen Activism, Working on a Campaign, and Being a Candidate. Each track is taught by expert facilitators, some of whom are former Wellstone campaign organizers or have worked on other campaigns, led community organizing efforts or advocacy groups. Having attended one of these I can assure you that first, there is nothing else out there like it and second, it’s a great time.

Camp Wellstones take place in cities across the country and also on college campuses, so if you are interested in possibly attending one, check the Wellstone Action web site for dates and locations. Now here’s the best deal–unlike a lot of political trainers who charge outrageous sums of money to attend their seminars–the cost of Camp Wellstone is based on a sliding scale based on ability to pay.

Rates are as follows: $200 (full cost), $100 (50% of training cost), or $50 (25% of training cost). This fee covers our book, Politics the Wellstone Way, materials, and three meals during the weekend.

After the 2006 election Wellstone Action announced that 78 Camp Wellstone alumni had won elections. These included several who won House seats including John Hall - NY, David Loebsack - IA, Tim Walz - MN, and Keith Ellison–MN. Fifty-nine alums won seats in state legislatures, and other victories ranged from school board to Secretary of State.

Jeff Blodgett of Wellstone Action notes:

Wellstone Action has now trained 17,500 people to run for office, manage campaigns, and advocate for a broad range of progressive issues. There will be twice that many by the next presidential election in 2012. There are now 4 Wellstone Action graduates in the U.S. House of Representatives and over 200 in city, county and state government.

But Blodgett along with those of us who have contributed to and participated in Wellstone Action harbor a dream:

This new wave of trained candidates and organizers will one day reach a tipping point, and a Wellstone Action graduate will mount a viable presidential bid. And that person will bring to the campaign all the skills and lessons they learned from Wellstone Action, and put to good use in earlier campaigns. They will have built a strong and active base of grassroots political and financial support. And they will be able to train and set loose talented, experienced organizers to reach enormous numbers of voters.

So that Presidential candidate may be the person who received the scholarship I donated to help send someone to Camp Wellstone. In my opinion right now Wellstone Action and the Camp Wellstones may be the best things the Democratic Party and Liberal Americans have going for them. We Democrats like to argue about issues, we get involved come election time, but few of us have paid much attention to the third part of the Wellstone triad–grassroots organizing.

The GOP has been doing this sort of thing for over a decade. Groups on the Religious Right such as the Christian Coalition have been running candidate training sessions since the days of Ralph Reed. If the Democratic Party is to hold on to its majority it will need more efforts like Camp Wellstone to support and attract candidates as well as community organizers who will work for their issues and organizations on a local level and keep the heat on the White House and Congress.

I find it most interesting that the Wellstone’s legacy is named Wellstone Action not the Wellstone Institute or some other pretentious-sounding title. Both Paul and Sheila were unpretentious people, as comfortable in an Iron Range tavern as a DC diplomatic reception. But most of all they were people of action. I’m not sure I ever saw either of them stand still for very long or not be passionately advocating for an important cause.

As we move into what surely will be a contentious summer we need to remember that it is action not words that will decide what direction this nation takes. Even for those like me who are disabled we can all play a role. If you think the Presidential race has left liberals and progressives out in the cold, you do not have to retreat into cynicism and inaction. You can do something.

Sign up for a Camp Wellstone in your area. If nothing else the networking with fellow progressives will reinvigorate you. Think about running for office in your area like the city council or school board. Become active in an organization fighting for a cause you can believe in whether it is ending the Iraq War, fighting poverty or making sure the votes get counted right. Take the skills you learn at Camp Wellstone to that organization or if you cannot attend offer to sponsor someone from the organization.

If you are a college student sign up for one of the many Camp Wellstone offered on college campuses. Learn how to organize your fellow students. Network with people. Stretch your mind.

The coming fight will be neither easy nor fair, for the other side has been playing “take-no-prisoners” politics for quite some time and they will not yield power easily. Most of all, they have the money. But one thing trumps money, as Paul Wellstone personified when he won his first Senate campaign on a shoe string in an election no one thought he had a chance to win, and that is people. Back in the 1960s there was a saying, “Power to the people.” It’s not a bad slogan for today, either.

Tagged with: Barack Obama • Camp Wellstone • Democraic Leadership Council • democratic presidential nomination • Democratic wing of the Democratic Party • FDR • grassroots organizing • Harry Truman • John Mcain • liberal americans • Paul Wellstone • progressives • Republican Lite • Sheila Wellstone • Wellstone Action • Wellstone triad

Hillary Clinton’s convincing win in West Virginia has convinced me that we need a real convention and not some made-for-TV pseudo-event. That is the only fair way out of the present mess.

Although I have criticized Clinton’s tactics and am no lover of the political philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Council, politics should not get in the way of fairness. Clinton has clearly earned the right to attend the convention as a candidate. I would love to see john Edwards there also and any other candidate who has picked up a delegate. Clinton has also earned the right to continue this campaign.

The Forbes Delegate Meter shows that neither she nor Barack Obama can win the nomination without the support of a majority of the superdelegates. All of this, of course, precludes Florida and Michigan. My personal opinion is that Clinton “cheated” to win these two states. She knew Obama would not run a campaign in either state, so she entered the contests knowing she would be the only one running.

Yet the two states deserve to attend the convention. The Democrats need both states to win the White House, but more important, the Party needs to heal and part of healing is to forgive. My solution is to split the delegations 50-50, which would be the most equitable solution. For those who think Clinton would have won both states, it would penalize Clinton for breaking the rules.

With those two states seated, we come to the superdelegates. They should not decide the winner. Because they are not chosen by the people, they should not even be allowed to vote. For the superdelegates to decide the race runs counter to everything this country stands for and that the Democratic Party SHOULD stand for. If the superdelegates decide the winner, supporters of the loser will inevitably cry “foul.” They will believe a deal has been cut or some of the delegates were “bought,” which if rumors are true may well be the case.

In short we need to have a real convention–an old-fashioned fire-eating, ballots into the wee hours of the morning contest. We need to let THE PEOPLE decide not a bunch of Party bureaucrats and retreads from the past. With the superdelegates relegated to the sidelines, the convention should hold delegates to their designated candidate on the few first few ballots only and then turn them loose.

Both parties seem afraid of real conventions these days. They have turned them into boring, pseudo-events where every detail is scripted like a Hollywood film and everything we see is just as real. The event becomes an over-long infomercial and just as bad as an hour with the Ronco pocket fisherman.

It is hard to believe, but many Americans have never seen, let alone participated in, a real convention so they have no idea what they look like. So let me describe one where the situation was remarkably like todays. In 1912 the Democratic Party was split between progressives and conservatives, much as it is today. Three candidates with any realistic hope of winning entered the stone armory in Baltimore that housed that convention: House Speaker Champ Clark, House Majority Leader Oscar Underwood and New jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson. Clark was the acknowledged front-runner. There was one undeclared candidate everyone both feared and hoped for: William Jennings Bryan, who controlled the progressive wing and had won the nomination three times.

The delegates gathered there expected a protracted fight-and fights they got, as the Baltimore police were kept busy trying to keep order, including one memorable moment when the banners of two marching armies of opposing candidates met in front on the speakers’ platform and like troops on a battlefield tried to capture their opponent’s colors. At one point the police formed a gauntlet in front of the armory through which delegates and others possessing credentials had to march before entering the floor.

The convention also featured the usual side shows. A prudish reporter for the New York Times noted, “The theatrical intrusion of girls to incite cheering became unbearable.” He softened his criticism by observing, “The intruding young woman, particularly if she is good-looking and has an inspiriting personality, may produce very good results in a political convention.”

The nominations actually took all night because back then states nominated “favorite sons,” usually a governor they wished to give a moment in the limelight and also showcase for a future run at the presidency or a shot at the Vice Presidency or a cabinet post. As a result the first ballot had votes for eight candidates, four of whom had over 100 votes.

Clark took the early lead with Wilson in second, Underwood and Ohio Governor Judson Harmon following. Still no one could get a clear majority. On the tenth ballot Tammany Hall boss Charles Murphy threw his support to Clark, giving him a majority. In every previous convention, at this point the delegates would move to provide the necessary two-thirds to clinch the nomination. But this time that did not happen. One of the old prairie firebrands, Oklahoma’s “Alfalfa Bill” Murray shouted, “Is this convention going to surrender to the Tammany Tiger?” The answer from the delegates was, “No!”

Instead of switching to Murphy the Wilson and Underwood delegations held firm. Woodrow Wilson, who had battled Clark since the opening of the convention waited for news at the New Jersey summer governor’s mansion in the poetically named town of Sea Girt. As the waves pounded an incessant rhythm in the background of the house designed to replicate George Washington’s headquarters at Morristown, floor manager William McCombs called Wilson on Saturday morning to tell him his case was hopeless. McCombs recommended Wilson release his delegates to Underwood. Wilson’s private secretary Joseph Tumulty, who was with him at the time, says on hearing this Wilson’s wife put her arms around her husband to console him. Wilson began to prepare a concession letter to Clark.

But again events intervened. On the floor Wilson delegate Roger Sullivan rushed over to McCombs and told him, “Damn you, don’t do that.” After a hasty conference at Sea Girt, Wilson decided to not release his delegates and the convention went on.

Then came one of the most dramatic moments in American convention history. On the fourteenth ballot, a familiar figure stood up and began to speak in a voice that resonated with everyone on that floor, a voice so clear and penetrating his followers likened him to a Biblical prophet. The voice made him the main attraction of his times, enabling thirty years of road tours that would have him deliver over six thousand public addresses and thousands more spontaneous speeches anywhere he had an audience. The voice allowed him a huge advantage over his rivals, for whether in a cavernous convention hall or the tent of a rural Chautauqua, the voice had the power to project almost superhuman distances. Without a microphone, the voice could reach an incredible 30,000 people in the open air-the population of a fair-sized Midwestern town.

It was the voice of William Jennings Bryan, the voice that had delivered the most famous convention speech in American history, the 1896 “Cross of Gold Speech,” whose ringing conclusion many of those delegates could recite by heart:

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

To punctuate this ending, Bryan employed the dramatic gestures of the turn-of-the-century stage, gestures which today would seem overblown, bringing his hand to his head at the mention of the crown of thorns and then spreading his arms wide, holding the pose so no one would miss its meaning. Bryan realized the significance of his speech, writing, “the situation was so unique and the experience unprecedented that I have never expected to witness its counterpart.” What he was about to say would come close and in terms of its impact arguably may be more important.

When Bryan rose to speak on the fourteenth ballot, delegates did not know what to expect. He had come to the convention as a Clark delegate, but Clark’s acceptance of support from Murphy crossed a line. Earlier in the convention Bryan had tried several maneuvers in order to neutralize the New York delegation Murphy controlled because Bryan felt it represented the interests of Wall Street, interests he had fought against his entire political career. When Clark accepted the support of Murphy it crossed a line for Bryan and everyone in that convention hall knew it.

Some thought he might be announcing his own candidacy. Others suspected Bryan was about to pull one of his celebrated convention maneuvers (Bryan may rank as our most accomplished convention tactician). All expected a taste of the celebrated Bryan oratory.

Bryan did not disappoint, announcing that he was switching his vote to Woodrow Wilson. Clark’s supporters tried to drown him out with boos and hisses. Delegates broke into fistfights even as Bryan was finishing what may well have been the second most important convention speech of his life.

Tumulty, Wilson and Clark all would state that without Bryan’s support Wilson would not have won the nomination. Clark was so incensed by what he termed a “betrayal” he went to his grave a sworn enemy of Bryan. Wilson would reward Bryan with the post of Secretary of State. Yet it would take many more ballots before Wilson would win the nomination on the 46th ballot.

Whether a 2008 Democratic Convention would be as dramatic as that of almost a century ago, one thing is certain, it would be a plus for the Democratic Party. First it would show that Democrats believed in the will of the people and were willing to let the people decide. For the Party itself, the prospect of an open convention would attract far more viewers than a scripted affair. It would be nothing less than the supreme political drama of this already dramatic election year.

It also would acknowledge several facts that everyone keeps wanting to deny. First, the contest has changed with each primary. Would the Iowans who voted for Obama in January vote for him now? Would the New Hampshire residents who voted for Clinton vote for her now? What has become clear is that each candidate represents a base of voters the Democrats need to win in November.

A scripted convention with a television-like Oprah or Dr. Phil reconciliation between Clinton and Obama will not bring these voters together. They need the chance to work it out at the convention, not let superdelegates decide for them. That is also why it is important that Edwards’ delegates also be seated and he be among the candidates. Biden, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel also deserve to have their names placed in nomination. If someone wants to, you can even add Al Gore to the list, since his name keeps getting mentioned as a possible compromise.

One of them just might be another Woodrow Wilson. In the end the objective is to take the leashes off the Clinton and Obama delegates and let them make their own decisions and if neither of the two can command a majority, perhaps a third candidate can. The time has come to open up the process, not shut the door.

Bryan himself said it best in “Cross of Gold:”

My friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter.

Tagged with: 1912 Democratic Convention • Baltimore convention • Barack Obama • Biden • champ clark • conservatives • Democratic Leadership Council • democratic presidential nomination • Dodd • favorite sons • Florida • gravel • Hillary Clinton • john edwards • kucinich • Michigan • progressives • superdelegates • Tammany Hall • the people • Wall Street • West Virginia • william jennings bryan • Woodrow Wilson

Normally primaries are time for candidates to solidify their party base, unless you are a Democrat. On the right John McCain has done a commendable–and for Democrats– formidable job of putting back together a Counterrevolutionary Coalition that six months ago looked ready to fall apart. The op ed pundits were writing gleefully about the death of the Reagan coalition and the disorganization of the Republican Party.

We forget that six months ago elements of that coalition such as the Religious Right and the Grover Norquist tax-cutters said they would vote for anyone but McCain. Some even said they would vote for Hillary Clinton or sit out the election. But McCain said the right words (pun intended) and made deals we will not know about until the election is over. It doesn’t take a six-figure salaried network talking head to know that two of those are the Supreme Court and the Vice Presidency.

On the Democratic side the opposite has occurred. Hillary Clinton has run a classic Karl Rove-style Republican wedge campaign designed not to bring the Party together but to invoke all the old GOP tactics. We have had guilt by association and smears of elitism and lack of patriotism, and even some veiled racism. These have all been the GOP’s stock in trade since before Karl Rove added direct mail and microtargeting to them. In short we have seen attempts to split voters by class, education, income, sex, and, yes, race.

In Clinton’s favor no one can deny all is fair in politics. She has also demonstrated that the pipe dreams the Democrats had two years ago after the midterm surprise were nothing more than what software developers term vaporware. Democrats believed the mess George Bush has made of this country would hand them the keys to the White House–vaporware. They believed the Iraq War would help build Democratic victories in Novermber–vaporware. They believed the mortgage crisis, $4 gas, Bear Stearns and the rest of our economic mess would usher in a new Democratic era–vaporware.

Clinton has cleverly found the divisions between various traditional Democratic voters and driven a wedge between them. NAFTA is one issue. Patriotism and love of country is another. Elitism is a third.

There is nothing wrong with candidates pointing out differences, that is the essence of politics, but where the GOP campaign was run around the usual primary strategy of who can best appeal to the members of the Party’s Coalition, the Clinton strategy has been all about driving wedges. These wedges have largely been designed to cover up her major policy gaffes: Iraq, NAFTA and Health Care.

With Iraq she has successfully diverted attention from her vote to authorize the war by impugning her opponent for not wearing a flag pin. With NAFTA–a policy initiated by her husband–she has diverted attention from her own flip-flopping to pandering to blue-collar voters by portraying herself as some modern Annie Oakley and her opponent as a guy who doesn’t know how to bowl and doesn’t understand small towns. With health care she has diverted attention from what doomed her disastrous plan during the Clinton Administration –it’s dictatorial, no choice attitude–to raising questions about her opponent’s pastor.

So instead of bringing the Democratic Party together as McCain has done with the GOP, this primary has split the Democrats apart in exactly the way the raucous Right would have done it. No wonder Rush Limbaugh suggested people vote for Hillary Clinton. Yet in doing this she has also inflicted two serious wounds. First, she has exposed the heart of Clintonism, which now stands like a stripped emperor revealed as what everyone said he was all along: at best Republican Lite and at its worst mere triangulation.

All of this should be apparent by now, but what the Clinton campaign has demonstrated and the Democratic Party has ignored is that unlike the GOP, they have not solidified their base. Among that base none has been more ignored than Liberal America.

Understand when I use that term I am not referring to those I term “limousine liberals,” the folks who ran the abortive campaign for millionaire Ned Lamont while deliberately snubbing, even alienating, blue collar voters. Nor am I talking about that strange new mutation termed “progressive,” which for some has become a wimpy way of avoiding the “l” word. Nor am I talking about those single issue folks who run litmus tests dipped in cyanide-laced kool-aid reserved for those who don’t march to their one-note goose step.

I am talking about another definition of :Liberal–and definitely not the psycho authoritarian father framing of George Lakoff–but a moral compass lost over that last few decades that once pointed the way for everyone from William Jennings Bryan to Harry Truman. It runs through their speeches so much the same person could have written them.

A hundred years ago Norwegian immigrants in a little township in the high plains of North Dakota were among many who articulated that belief and lived their lives by it. In that elemental place the people of Big Meadow articulated a fundamental principle that represents the heart of what I term Liberal America: the duty of government is to insure a level playing field.

Like many during what was loosely-termed the Progressive Era, they knew what could happen to people. A farmer whose arm disappeared between grinding gears, a widow trying to make a go of it after her husband had succumbed to a fatal ailment, had their lives jerked out from under them through no fault of their own, the way someone clumsily yanks off a table cloth, leaving everything to crash to the floor.

The fingerprints of liberalism lie everywhere on this nation, from public buildings built by the Works Progress Administration, to schools, roads, homes and utilities paid for by government grants, loans, and subsidies. You cannot pass through the core of any city, drive on any road, visit any national park, or enter any school, hospital, or government building without passing over ground built by Liberal America. Liberalism pervades every American household, where someone has benefited from government programs, ranging from college loans to unemployment, from the minimum wage and collective bargaining to regulations assuring the safety of the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink. We do not live in fear of someone arbitrarily knocking down our doors in the middle of the night or of not being able to speak our minds, because the people who fought for those rights believed in the level playing field.

Perhaps one of the most unabashed liberals of all, Hubert Humphrey, movingly described what Liberal America meant to him when he wrote about growing up in a small South Dakota town during the Depression. Driven from their home, his family was in danger of breaking apart, as so many had during those times when monstrous, choking clouds blacked out all light and hope. “That period was to teach me,” said the future Vice President:

What government can mean to a society, how government can really affect the day-to-day lives of individuals for the better. It taught me what government can mean in terms of improving the human condition and improving the human environment. I witnessed how government programs literally rebuilt the territory and made life again tolerable, filling people with hope.

A generation later Humphrey’s successor, Paul Wellstone—who may have been the last senator to openly claim the label “liberal”—put his own generation’s stamp on Humphrey’s words. His short, stocky wrestler’s body punctuating the rapid, rhythmic phrases that were his trade mark as his hands and arms moved to put a headlock on whatever issue he was confronting, Paul Wellstone could recite a long list of what liberalism has given America. One of his greatest speeches, given to the Iowa AFL-CIO in 1998, captures this perfectly. Wellstone starts one of his classic riffs, which uses repetition to carefully build to his conclusion:

Because of you, families have more bread on the table.
Because of you, workers receive at least a minimum wage.
Because of you, labor has the right to organize.
Because of you, we have the right to join a union.
Because of you, working families have insurance against unemployment.
Because of you, workers have protections against unsafe workplaces…
Because of you, working families have more economic justice.
And because labor is part of a larger justice tradition,
because of you, our children have protection against ravaged air and water.
Because of you, people have protection against discrimination because of the color of their skin.
Because of you, women have protection against discrimination because of their gender.
Because of you, people have protection against discrimination because of their disabilities.
Because of these victories, even if they do not all yet work perfectly, the United States became a better country,
for all Americans.

When I wrote about the history of Liberal America and its assault under a Republican Counterrevolution whose ideal, in the words of Karl Rove, was the McKinley Administration, I identified the level playing field as being supported by four cornerstones: economic and social justice, educational equity, media fairness and voting rights.

Go to the websites of either of the two Democratic candidates and search for those values. Search for a commitment to the level playing field. It is this principle that can bring the Democratic Party back together. It is this principle the candidates ought to be debating not flag pins and bowling scores. It is this principle they ought to be spelling out how to actualize through specific programs not analyzing the Reverend Wright’s latest attempt to grab fifteen minutes of fame. It is this principle we all ought to be pushing the candidates to support and articulate not the narrow objectives of our own narrow single interest group.

I have written how Bill Clinton disavowed this principle in his Second Inaugural and thereby put Liberal America in intensive care. Now his wife proposes to euthanize the patient. And Barack Obama keeps telling us, like the kind doctor who is designate to explain a death to the next of kin, that we need to move on, that such a change can be good, that the patient is not worth fighting for.

There have been times in the past when people have tried to declare the patient dead, but some group , some movement and even a few new political parties have brought those principles back to life. I believe it will happen again because I believe in the American people, but I am losing faith that it will happen this November.

Tagged with: Barack Obama • Bill Clinton • democratic presidential nomination • Democrats • GOP • Harry Truman • Hillary Clinton • Hubert Humphrey • Iraq War • Karl Rove • level playing field • McCain • mortgage crisis • Paul Wellstone • Reagan • Republican Counterrevolution • Republicans • Rush Limbaugh • Supreme-Court • triangulation • wedge issues • william jennings bryan

Homeless Mothers

Every year the Census Bureau publishes a fact sheet to honor Mother’s Day. Some sample selections from that sheet lead to a discussion of the more frightening stats about mothers and families the Bureau’s press release omits.

94.1
Number of births in 2006 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Utah, which led the nation. At the other end of the spectrum was Vermont, with a rate of 52.2 births.

82.8 million
Estimated number of mothers in the United States in 2004.

55%
Among mothers with infant children in 2004, the percentage in the labor force, down from a record high of 59 percent in 1998.

751,322
Number of child care centers across the country in 2005.

10.4 million
The number of single mothers living with children younger than 18, up from 3.4 million in 1970.

Below are what the Census Bureau press release does not tell you because Guess Who is in the White House!

Unless otherwise noted, all numbers 2005 data from Statistical Abstracts.

1,909

Number of families in thousands receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF–formerly AFDC). Down from 2,554 in 1999 and 4,791 in 1995 (The year before welfare “reform.”). In other words, under the GOP the federal government has cut aid to families needing assistance in half. Has the need fallen by half? See the following statistics for an answer.

25.7 Million

Number of people receiving food stamps. Up from 17.2 in 2000. In other words, under the Bush Administration the number of people needing food stamps has increased by an astounding 67%.

8.0 Million

Number participating in the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) supplemental food program in 2005. In 2000 the figure was 7.2 million. George Bush has increased the number of mothers needing supplemental food by 11%!

2,475 million

Number of free lunches served, up from 2,205 in 2000 a 12% increase under the Bush Administration.

322 Million

Emergency feedings which the Census Bureau defines as “provides free commodities to needy persons for home consumption through food banks, hunger centers, soup kitchens, and similar nonprofit agencies. Includes the Emergency Food Assistance Program, the commodity purchases for soup kitchens/food banks program (FY 1989−96), and commodity disaster relief.” In 2000 this number was 182 million. Again life under the Bush Administration has become so hard for some families that the number of emergency food requests has almost DOUBLED!

10,070

Number in thousands of households receiving food stamps. Over half of these are households with children and a third are single parent households! In 2000 the figure was 7,335. Again, George Bush has increased the number of people needing food stamps by an unbelievable 50%!

This year when you settle down to your Mother’s Day Dinner, whatever it may be and wherever you are think of what the Bush Administration has done to America’s mothers. It represents nothing less than a national disgrace! No administration in modern history has so dramatically worsened the lives of American families. This from an administration and a party that preached the importance of “family values.”

Under George Bush “family values” has come to mean that on Mother’s Day more families than in the last year of the Clinton Administration will be sitting down to barely adequate meals–if they have any meal at all. More families need food stamps, emergency food, free lunches for their children, and other assistance. Of course, if your family makes over a quarter of a million dollars a year the Bush tax cuts have enabled you to have a very pleasant Mother’s Day meal, complete with thousand dollar bottles of wine.

Perhaps nothing else better speaks to the Republican Counterrevolution’s desire to roll back the gains of the New Deal and its successors. Under George Bush America is rapidly regressing to the nineteenth century when mothers were lucky to make it past middle age–and those that did were old beyond their years. As for the families of these mothers, their sons and daughters often worked as soon as they were able. When they sat down to eat, hunger took a seat as as an unwelcome guest at too many tables.

Maybe we should call today’s sad situation the Bush Mother’s Day Tax, because George W. Bush is taxing America’s mothers like no one in a long time.

Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation

Julia Ward Howe is probably most famous for writing the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A staunch abolitionist and peace advocate, (she had walked battlefields still strewn with Civil War dead with her friend Abraham Lincoln) In 1870 she wrote a poem that has since become known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Given the current situation her words mean more now than ever.

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Woodrow Wilson

Given Howe’s words, there is a certain resonance when you recall President Wilson declared the first official Mothers Day on May 9, 1914, a little more than a month before the world was about to plunge into another great war.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the said Joint Resolution, do hereby direct the government officials to display the United States flag on all government buildings and do invite the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.

Tagged with: afdc • budget_cuts • Bush_administration • Bush_tax_cuts • Census_Bureau • commodity_purchases • emergency_food_assistance • family_values • food_assistance_program • food_banks • food_stamps • free_lunch_program • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • George_Bush • GOP • mothers_day • needy_persons • New_Deal • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • Republican_Counterrevolution • single_mothers • soup_kitchens • supplemental_food_program • temporary_assistance_for_needy_families_tanf • wic

Since I wrote my essay on Bill Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and its role in the mortgage crisis, the Internet is full of similar articles. Yet despite this interest in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the mainstream media refuses to dig deeper into the issue or to press Bill and Hillary Clinton on it.

As is often the case, the story of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the growth of the subprime mortgage market that is now crumbling around us like a financial house of cards can be best be told by a graph:

Yet critics, including those commenting on this blog continue to maintain that Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the present mess. Most of them point out that it was a Republican-dominated Congress that passed the bill that repealed the key parts of what is officially known as the Banking Act of 1933-the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Act (GLBFSA). As pointed out in my earlier essay, Bill Clinton not only signed the bill rather than veto it but also intervened at a crucial stage to assure it passed. One pen he used to sign the bill has a prominent place in the office of former Citigroup CEO and Billionaire Sanford Weill.

A few commenters have pointed out that the rise of the graph begins just before GLBFSA, not realizing that one motivation of the bill was that in 1996, former J.P. Morgan director and then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had issued a ruling that according to economist Alan Blinder:

Raised [the amount banks could participate in securities] to a degree that, except in some extraordinary cases, it was probably enough for almost any bank to do almost any amount of security underwriting that they’d actually want to do.

In 1998, the Clinton Administration essentially looked the other way when Weill created Citigroup from Travelers Insurance, Salomon Brothers, and Citicorp (which owned Citibank). Citigroup plunged into the subprime market so that according to one study:

Nearly three of every four mortgages originated within Citigroup’s lending empire were made by one of its higher-interest subprime affiliates—nearly 180,000 loans out of a total of 240,000-plus mortgages for the year.

A 2003 article by Michael Hudson in Southern Exposure of captures it all:

Citigroup looks the way it does today because Weill bought a middling-sized subprime finance company and used it as a vehicle to acquire other companies and create a behemoth that put him in position to win the biggest prize of all: Citi. The 1998 merger was, at the time, the largest in history, uniting Citicorp, Travelers Insurance, Primerica, Commercial Credit, and Salomon Smith Barney.

Hudson’s article details the rise of Sandy Weill which began with his 1986 purchase of subprime lender Commercial Credit. In short, Citigroup–which essentially engineered the repeal of Glass-Steagall–had its beginnings in a subprime lender. But more on that later.

The important point is that since the mainstream media and those with more economic expertise than I possess refuse to connect the dots and fill in the picture, the situation demands a follow-up that specifically details the role of the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the current financial crisis.

The two key questions that need to be asked are: 1) If Bill Clinton had not repealed Glass-Steagall would the current crisis not have occurred or been less severe? and, 2) Do we need to bring back Glass-Steagall? To understand the answers to both questions you need to know exactly what Glass-Steagall prohibited and how the bill that repealed it changed those prohibitions. In short, You need to know a bit of history.

The Mortgage Crisis of the Great Depression

The auctioneer stands in the bed of the horse-drawn wagon surveying the crowd with wary eyes. Two rail-thin deputies with bushy mustaches stand on either side of him casually cradling rifles like hunters walking a field. The auctioneer pounds on the wooden sides of the wagon with a ball-peen hammer to get the attention of the small crowd, each measured stroke echoing like a shot in the enclosed wagon bed.

Off to the side as if trying to hide under the shade of a large elm, stands a man whose face appears almost transparent for its lack of flesh. The sun catches the flash of a tear slowly trickling between his unshaven stubble as he glances down at the ground, avoiding the eyes of the family gathered around him. His wife squeezes his hand as if maybe a drop of hope will come from it while at the same time she gently grips the small fingers of a little girl with what reassurance she can muster.

As Hollywood has long recognized, the auctions of the Great Depression remain among its most iconic moments. Yet for all their symbolism, few remember that the financial crisis of the Great Depression also in part stemmed from a mortgage crisis. In the late 1920s, just as today, many banks were making questionable mortgage loans. An excellent PowerPoint presentation by Yale finance professor Zhiwn Chen explains how. I reproduce one slide that represents the key to understanding how mortgages played a role in the Great depression.

Chen points out that in the 1920s, it was routine for mortgages to have only five year terms with a balloon payment at the end. Essentially as the Great Depression worsened, land lost value, so if someone could not pay the mortgage on their farm the bank would seize everything. Hence the auctions.

The Census Bureau’s “Historical Census of Housing Trends” shows the impact of those auctions. In 1930 47.8% of Americans owned their own homes, but by 1940 this had fallen to an all-time low of 43.6%. Foreclosures and bank failures created a deadly whirlpool which sucked in many Americans and pulled them under. In addition banks engaged in what John Kenneth Galbraith has referred to as “thimble-rigging:”

This took a variety of forms, of which by far the most common was the organization of corporations to hold stock in yet other corporations, which in turn held stock in yet other corporations.

During 1929 one investment house, Goldman, Sachs & Company, organized and sold nearly a billion dollars’ worth of securities in three interconnected investment trusts—Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation; Shenandoah Corporation; and Blue Ridge Corporation. All eventually depreciated virtually to nothing.

The Background of the Glass-Steagall Act

In the midst of these bank failures, Franklin Roosevelt and his advisors knew something had to be done to protect depositors and bring rationality to the chaos of the financial markets. The man whose name would become attached to what is formally known as the Banking Act of 1933 was a banty rooster from Lynchburg, Virginia who was best known as the father of the Federal Reserve System, which he helped to shepherd through Congress.

Born three years before the start of the Civil War, Carter Glass held on to many old-school, small town values among which had always been a mistrust of stocks and financial manipulation. He first entered the national political stage as a member of the resolutions committee at the famous 1896 convention where he supported the free silver policies of William Jennings Bryan. He may have been the only New Dealer who had actually heard the “Cross of Gold” speech.

In some ways, Glass may have been the last Bryanite–although he and Bryan had their personal differences–for all his life Carter Glass echoed Bryan’s opposition to bank speculation. One major disagreement between Bryan and Glass came over the Federal Reserve System, with Bryan and Wilson’s then Treasury Secretary William McAdoo supporting governmental control of the system while Glass advocated for private control. In the end President Wilson and Congress created a system that leaned more towards the Bryan/McAdoo point of view.

When he left office as Wilson’s Treasury Secretary Carter Glass issued a stern warning about allowing this to happen, but the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations had different ideas. In November 1932 in the waning days of the Presidential election, Carter Glass became so incensed with the statements and policies of Herbert Hoover and his recently-resigned Treasury Secretary, the tycoon Andrew Mellon, that he let loose on both of them in a national radio address that received front page coverage. His descriptions of Galbraith’s “thimble-rigging” sound eerily familiar:

With Mr. Andrew Mellon as chairman of the board and the dominant figure, in a single six-month period in 1929 ten of the largest banks in New York alone were given access to $750,000 of Federal reserve credits under the fifteen-day provision of the act. Plainly interpreted, this means that a large, if not greater part of this sum was being loaned to brokers for stock gambling purposes.

Mr. Hoover and Secretary Mellon followed Mr. Coolidge into the stockpit, until these brokers’ loans reached the stupendous total of $8,000,000,000!

Taxes have been abolished that should have been retained. Four million taxpayers, at one swipe, had been released from all obligation to their government. (New York Times, November 3, 1932)

What angered Glass was the policy of Mellon and Hoover to bail out banks that had been playing the stock market using money from the very Federal Reserve system Glass had created! Mellon, by the way, is one of the “forgotten men” Amity Schlaes evokes in her revisionist account of the New Deal.

The Passage of Glass-Steagall
With all the contemporary backpedaling to deny the importance of Glass-Steagall, what many have forgotten is the impact the legislation had on the Great Depression. Had Glass-Stegall not passed, one shudders to think of the alternatives.

In 1931 over a hundred people gathered at the Von Bonn farm in Madison County, Nebraska for a foreclosure auction. A picture of the event (see above) from the Wessels Living History farm in York, Nebraska symbolically captures a knot of people dominating the center of the photograph with a white frame farm house on the left and outbuildings on the right. Whether the photographer intended it or not in the upper right corner a cross-like wooden structure looms over the scene, standing above the flat, treeless prairie horizon and everything else in the frame.

The photograph documents the first of the so-called penny auctions which began spreading throughout the Midwest. Friends and relatives of the foreclosed family would show up, some armed with whatever weapons they could find, to make sure that whatever the auctioneer tried to sell in the name of the bank yielded only a fraction of its value. At the Von Bonn farm the total bids amounted to only $5.35 for an auction in which the bank needed and expected to make hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile in Iowa the radical Farm Holiday movement blocked roads with fence posts, railroad ties and other timbers to prevent crops from reaching the market in an effort to drive up prices. In Sioux City the roads flowed white with milk as farmers poured away their hours of sitting on a milk stool. This liquid blizzard was measured not in inches of snow but in the dollars of debt that poured from each container of milk. It left dark roads enveloped in a slick, white shroud that as the day wore on smelled of the stench of decay.

Glass-Steagall–What Did it Do?

Americans at the time felt as though they had a one-way ticket on a runaway train and none of them would have been surprised to see a skeletal hand on the engine throttle and the Devil himself stoking the firebox. The Glass-Stegall Act pulled the brake chord with such effectiveness that the train virtually slammed to a stop.

Glass-Steagall served as one of the linchpins of New Deal legislation. Had it not passed or passed in weakened form, the American experiment could well have ended. In a systemic sense, the CCC, the WPA and all the other acronyms of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust would have failed without Glass-Steagall to provide financial security. The Act was instrumental in helping to level a playing field that many Americans saw as tilted against them. There is little denying that it kept that milk running in the highway from turning red.

Carter Glass, that old foe of banks entering into the stock market insured that the Banking Act of 1933 contained four key provisions:

• Section 16 - restricted commercial national banks from engaging in most investment banking;
• Section 20 - prohibited any member bank from affiliating in specific ways with an investment bank;
• Section 21 - restricted investment banks from engaging in any commercial banking; and
• Section 32 - prohibited investment bank directors, officers, employees, or principals from serving in those capacities at a commercial member bank of the Federal Reserve System.

With these four provisions, Glass had the preventative measures he felt would avert another financial crisis. Added to these was Steagall’s contribution: the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The success of the Banking Act of 1933 can be measured in part by noting that there were 4,000 bank suspensions in 1933. According to Federal Reserve statistics, a year later only nine insured banks and 52 uninsured licensed banks suspended operations.

It would take over half a century until the country would experience mortgage crisis of the magnitude of those before Glass-Steagall. Part Two will deal with that crisis and the role the repeal of Glass-Steagall played in causing it.

Tagged with: alan greenspan • American democracy • Bill Clinton • Carter Glass • Citigroup • farm holiday movement • financial crisis • Franklin Roosevelt • Glass-Steagall Act • Gramm-Leach-Bliley • Great Depression • Herbert Hoover • Hillary Clinton • level playing field • mortgage_foreclosures • New Deal • penny auctions • stock market • subprime • Ted Sorenson • william jennings bryan

Reuters: John Gress

A certain weariness has set in among people I know about the entire Democratic Presidential race. My son says he doesn’t even bother listening to television coverage anymore. A friend says he just wishes it would be over because he is bored because the media don’t seem to want to talk about the real issues. Another friend says if he hears one more mention of a certain reverend he is going to puke.

These admittedly subjective opinions make me wonder if this weariness might not be impacting the voters in Indiana and North Carolina. So one thing you will need to watch tonight is turnout. Which of the two candidates can guard against their supporters becoming bored? Also, if the turnout among regular Democrats is low that leaves a larger opening for Limbaugh’s dittoheads. It would be a cruel joke if the Democratic nominee were to be decided by Rush Limbaugh.

An associated factor I have heard is that with the race at its present point we have a bizarre situation in which the remaining primaries no longer really matter. Unless one of the candidates can run the table and also win by fairly large margins, the primaries are not going to decide the winner. This has also created some apathy among Democrats who feel that from here on in it will be in the hands of the superdelegates and Democratic Party bigwigs.

This important question will not be part of the exit polls but it should be. If tonight’s race ends up as close as the polls predict, neither candidate will have delivered a knockout blow and with only a few primaries left, the chances for that grow slimmer.

North Carolina

As everyone knows, the networks have projected an Obama win in North Carolina. The final totals are not in, but the Obama’s margin of victory is obviously safe.

Indiana Exit Poll Data

Exit poll data are in for Indiana and here is what it looks like on our analysis chart:

Let’s walk the chart across and see how each column is influencing the race. First, note the extremely high number of crossovers. Remember this includes both Republicans and Independents. The breakdown for this 11% Republican and 23% Independent. However, nineteen percent said they would vote for McCain in November, so the GOP total may be much higher. It would suggest almost an even split between GOP-leaning vo9ters and true Independents which is not good for Obama, given the vocal campaign being waged by Rush Limbaugh and others to urge GOP voters to cast their ballots for Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic contest.

The African American total is extremely good news for Obama. That is about is much as he could have hoped for in Indiana. Preliminary data show him winning an incredible 93% of this vote which again is outstanding.

Where Obama has some cause for worry is that number of younger voters is below what he needs. If this turnout does not increase it will be difficult for him to win.

On the other hand, Clinton has to be pleased by the turnout of older voters, women and union voters. They have been her core constituency through most of this contest. The interesting data is that right now Clinton is only narrowly winning this vote: 53% to 47%–in contrast with her earlier victories. The union total is even higher if you count union households: 35%.

Based on these early data, it appears Clinton will eke out a narrow victory [note: it was 7:30 when I wrote this], but the race is too close for me to call at this point.

Analysis

CNN has Clinton with a healthy twelve point lead with about one third of the precincts reporting. This suggests what many feared would be the worst possible outcome–a split. Obama’s big win in North Carolina gives him back some momentum. Right now projections have him winning easily–by almost 20 points. However, if Clinton can hold a double-digit lead in Indiana–which is unlikely, that will be a decisive win for her.

A question I have at this point is how much the Republicans are helping Clinton in Indiana. Clinton gets 87% of McCain voters and 53% of the Republicans. Obama’s staff had hoped they might land some of what they term Republicrats–Republicans who are dissatisfied with their party.

Projection: A Clinton Win [Time: 8:00–THE FIRST BLOG OR MEDIA TO PROJECT THE WINNER]

This may be another night like Pennsylvania where the networks want to draw this out so they can keep viewers on the hook. The data show Clinton with all the piece sin place for a win, so I am going to project a Clinton win. Why? Obama has turned out as much of the African American vote as he could have possibly hoped for. I do not see this number increasing too much more, and certainly not enough to overcome Clinton’s lead. The younger voters who had helped him win earlier primaries again have deserted him. He needs a sizeable increase here to have an impact. Finally, the Republican cross-overs appear to have neutralized the third key Obama constituency–Independents.

Meanwhile, while Clinton has not turned out her core constituents to the degree she did in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she has turned out enough of them win.

I am not ready to project a percentage.

Second Data Set [Time: 9:30]

The fact the data have remained exactly the same with 50% of the vote tallied in Indiana, suggests the projection of a Clinton win still stands. In fact I am ready to project a percentage: 52% for Clinton. This would be slightly closer than Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Analysis

First, there are reports from Indiana, mostly anecdotal at this point, that the voter ID law may be responsible for holding down the total of young voters.

Second, based on Clinton’s winning 87% of the 19% of Indiana voters who said they will vote for McCain in November, it may well be that Hillary Clinton won this state because of Republican cross-overs. What is interesting to me is that none of the talking heads seems to