As so often happens with me, several discrete events came together to stimulate a lightbulb moment. One was a post by one of my favorite bloggers, field negro, which he titled “Time flies when you are having fun.” The second was a story buried in the New York Times’ Business section about how America�s income gap is widening. and the third is my son is briefly home from college on break bringing with him his voluminous CD collection. I have been playing one particular CD multiple times, NAS “Hip Hop is Dead,” especially the title song which is an amazing piece of work. Besides it blows a few minds when this white geezer with a cane sitting next to him drives up to the take-out window or the parking lot attendant with this CD blaring on the radio.

“Time flies when you are having fun” is a great post that is a one year anniversary milestone rumination that tells the story of the field negro�s blog and where it might be going. That started me thinking about this blog which is half as old.

As those few who have followed this site from the beginning may remember, I started this blog as a follow-up to my book, The Strange Death of Liberal America. After the book came out, I kept finding more examples of how the playing field continued to tilt. The blog became a way of supplementing the book, an online second edition. I also naively hoped that the blog would help bring more attention to book’s themes of America’s growing inequality, the Republican Counterrevolution that fostered it, and a Democratic Party that has lost its moral compass.

Six months later I question whether equality is an issue that resonates with America. I do not hear any Democratic presidential candidates talking about equality–not even John Edwards who made the phrase “Two Americas” resonate in the last campaign, but for reasons known only to him has decided to head in a different direction. Meanwhile Obama and Clinton seem in a race to see who can win the triangulation prize as each calculates their next speech and position paper with an eye to moving just a little this way or that in respect to the other.

The other candidates seem to take their roles as alternatives to the Big Three so seriously that few of them have offered anything memorable. Quickly tell me what Mike Gravel’s big idea is? Or Dennis Kucinich’s?

As for the mainstream media and the so-called progressive blogs, the Times‘ article represents as good a gauge as any of their interest in equality. The Times stuck the article below the fold in a corner of the business section. A search showed most other papers either buried it or did not carry the story. As for the blogs, a search on Technorati showed very few had any interest in it and those that did mainly reiterated the Times‘ story (I don’t need a blog to read the Times). On the other hand if you type Iraq or Gonzales or Elizabeth Edwards into a blog search be prepared to wait a bit for the results.

As usual, I went back to the original source which I found more interesting. I am embarrassed to say I did not know a great deal about the work of the two authors quoted in the Times study–Emmanual Saez and Thomas Picketty.

If you journey to Saez’s home page –a journey I would recommend by the way–you find that the Times‘ article is merely reporting an update of a study that originally appeared in 2003. Yet even I, who try to follow this issue closely had not seen that study. In short, the significant work that these two researchers have done has barely registered on the radar screen of America and that is a profound indictment of both the mainstream and Net media.

What is it about their work that makes it so important? Most people like me who follow income inequality tend to rely on Census Bureau data. These data are readily accessible and have a well-deserved reputation for reliability. Saez and Picketty, however, rely on a completely different data source, tax returns. When I saw this, I had one of those hit-yourself-in-the -head moments you have when you see a great idea.

In a recent reply the two wrote to a December 14 article by Alan Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal (where else) criticizing their results and methodology, they explained

Census Bureau figures, based on data which cannot measure top 1% incomes, misses the extraordinary gains going to the top 1%, which is perhaps the most striking change in the US income distribution in recent decades.

Tax return data, on the other hand, provide “a very accurate picture of reported incomes at the top.” Although economists have been using tax data for some time, the second extraordinary contribution made by Saez and Picketty is in their original article “INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1913-1998″ which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in February 2003. That study, the author�s acknowledge, “is the first time that a homogeneous annual series of top wage shares starting before the 1950s for the United States has been produced.”

You can find all these studies at Saez’s web site. They document the success of a Republican Counterrevolution dedicated to restoring INEQUALITY to American society. One major finding in the 2003 article is that income for the very rich follows a U-shaped curve during the 20th century, being high in the early years and now high again. The low point in the curve is due to the Great Depression and World War II as well as another factor–the progressive income tax.

In their article the two note

The evidence suggests that the twentieth century decline in inequality took place in a very specific and brief time interval.

What helped contribute to that decline was the philosophy of the level playing field that was the hallmark of the New Deal and is at the center of The Strange Death of Liberal America. According to Saez and Packetty

These strongly redistributive policy reforms show that American society’s views on income inequality and redistribution greatly shifted from 1930 to 1945.

In 2003 the two concluded their study by correctly predicting

Our proposed interpretation also suggests that the decline of progressive taxation observed since the early 1980s in the United States could very well spur a revival of high wealth concentration and top capital incomes during the next few decades.

This month the two decided to see if new data validated their prediction. What they found is best explained in their letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Our work has shown the top 1% income share has increased dramatically in recent decades and has reached levels which had not been seen since before World War II and even since before the Great Depression when including capital gains. The reduction in taxes at the top since 2001 has mechanically exacerbated the discrepancy in disposable income between the rich and the rest of us. Thus, it is obvious that the progressive income tax should be the central element of the debate when thinking about what to do about the increase in inequality. Even conservatives like Alan Reynolds would agree and that is why they prefer to dismiss the facts about growing income inequality rather than face the debate on income tax progressivity at a time of growing economic disparity.

To me this paragraph is one of the most important anyone has written in the last year. It trumps Iraq and all the other things the blogs and mainstream media seem fixated on because it puts in plain English the New America we all now live in, a New America that has been given to us by the GOP Counterrevolution.

You could say that based on that paragraph the Counterrevolution has succeeded in its aims to reverse the New Deal. The consequences of that are reverberating through America right now, but they are happening at the individual family level and they are at the moment just beginning to appear in stories about the current home loan crisis, the college tuition crisis, and that favorite issue of presidential candidates–health care.

Yet even as Saez and Picketty connect the dots for us, right down to their acknowledgment of the role the ideology of the level playing field played in reducing inequality, most Americans and presidential candidates do not seem to see the big picture. It’s not that they can’t see the forest for the trees; these idiots appear to be focused on the bark!

This is where the CD “Hip Hop is Dead.” comes in, because unlike the 1930s or even the 1960s when protest music came from a variety of sources, hip hop has been the protest music of the current era, but most white folks don’t get that. That also echoes a theme from Strange Death, which is that it is people of color and women who have largely been holding America’s feet to the fire over the issue of equality.

It has been implied by others that this may explain why a blogdom dominated by big blogs largely run by white males both seems to have moved toward the middle of the road and also largely ignored equality issues. That why field negro’s ruminations resonated with me. He writes

I started to wonder why some of us black bloggers who have a different perspective on the issues and who have something to say about all the f****d up sh** affecting black folks in America aren’t expressing ourselves out here.

Like that post, Nas’ raps contain an ominous message that white folks had better pay attention to. His contention is that hip hop, like other forms of black music, has been expropriated and commercialized and is in danger of losing its roots. In the hands of some it’s become “house negro” music. The title cut says hip hop

Went from turntables to mp3s
From “Beat Street” to commercials on Mickey D’s

and ends with a symbolic scene that has 80 people from “my hood” who “came to show love” only to find

Sold out concert and the doors are closed shut

and the cut ends just like those shutting doors. I played that cut over and over because of those last words, “Sold out concert and the doors are closed shut” because that is what we ALL face if Saez and Picketty are even close to being right.

Nas may not have their research, instead he has “data” much more personal and real. Listen and see if you can hear those closing doors above all the BS about Iraq and Gonzales, because my guess is you can�t because these doors aren’t slamming shut loudly, instead they are quietly closing behind you. Meanwhile the circus out front distracts you from what is REALLY changing your lives and has already radically changed the lives of your kids. And some day soon the media circus will be over and you will find the concert sold out.

Tagged with: Barack_Obama • bloggers • blogs • Bush • Bush_administration • Bush_tax_cuts • counterrevolution • Democrats_lost_moral_compass • economic_inequity • economic_justice • Edwards_campaign • equity • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • GOP_Counterrevolution • Great_Depression • health_care • Hillary_Clinton • Hillary_Rodham_Clinton • hip_hop_is_dead • incomes • Iowa_caucuses • Iraq • Iraq_War • John_Edwards • level_playing_field • liberal_america • mainstream_media • mortgage_rates • nas • New_Deal • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • nytimes • progressive_taxation • quarterly_journal_of_economics • Republicans • Republican_Counterrevolution • strange_death • student_loans • taxes • the_field_negro • the_strange_death_of_liberal_america • Thomas_Picketty • US_income_distribution • Wall_Street_Journal

Franklin Roosevelt gave him the nickname that stuck with him all his life in a 1924 nomination speech that essentially put the two of them on a collision course that would end their friendship. FDR had survived the polio that would leave him disabled for life, but many in the party wondered if he had the stamina to run for office again. Roosevelt proved his mettle with a rousing speech when he called his friend and New York Governor Alfred E. Smith the “Happy Warrior,” quoting Wordsworth:

This is the Happy Warrior; this is he That every man in arms should wish to be.

Smith lost the 1924 nomination in one of the most epic conventions in history–over 100 ballots–as it split between Smith and William McAdoo, who had been Woodrow Wilson’s treasury secretary. Finally on the 103rd ballot the convention essentially threw up its hands and chose a compromise candidate, former West Virginia Congressman John W. Davis. Davis is the 20th century presidential candidate no one remembers�with good reason. If there existed anyone duller than “Silent Cal” Coolidge it was John W. Davis. However, the behind-the-scenes big picture was the split in the convention between the between the rural populism of William Jennings Bryan and the rising tide of Eastern, big city progressivism.

Smith went back to New York nursing his wounds. Al Smith represented an anomaly among presidential candidates. You would have to go back to Abraham Lincoln to find one who grew up under as poor and squalid conditions as Al Smith. His father died when he was thirteen, forcing young Al to go to work at the Fulton Fish Market working for $12 a week at a job that today still taxes adults. The conditions were foul, brutal and dangerous.

When people like Karl Rove and other members of the Republican Counterrevolution speak of taking this country back to the days of William McKinley, be sure and remind them of Al Smith. Paint for them a picture of a world where young boys and girls–children just like your own–routinely went to work at exhausting and dangerous jobs because it meant the difference if their families ate or had a roof over their heads. Then have them read the accounts of people like Jacob Riis and others about what passed for life among the inner city poor. “Street Arabs” he called them, roving bands of children who had no family and lived on their wits.

One of the most famous and poignant photographs of the time is titled “Breaker Boys.” Taken by Louis Hine, another famous documentary photographer, it shows a group of young boys, their faces and clothes begrimed with black dust, standing in a group looking through the camera lens and into our consciences. What cuts right to the heart are the eyes of many of them, which no longer resemble the eyes of boys but of feral animals.

Al Smith escaped the fate of most of the Fulton workers when he came to the attention of the Tammany Hall political machine that ran New York City. Later on Smith would joke that he had earned an “FFM” degree for Fulton Fish Market. Intelligent and ambitious, Smith captured the attention of the Tammany boss, “Silent” Charlie Murphy. Smith rose through the ranks to become governor in 1918 and after losing a bid for reelection in 1920 won three-straight terms.

In 1928 he found himself running for president because essentially no one else wanted to. McAdoo, his 1924 foe, declined to run as did others who believed that Herbert Hoover already had the keys to the White House in his pocket. Smith, who had fought the odds all his life, set out to prove them wrong.

If Smith the candidate faced difficult odds, Smith the man faced impossible ones. To begin with, at the dawn of the media age, he looked more like a silent film comedian than a president with an oversize W.C. Fields nose and ever-present cigar and always wearing a derby like Oliver Hardy. He spoke with a pronounced New York accent that over the radio baffled and amused those in other parts of the country. He even used the jaunty song, “The Sidewalks of New York” (which sports fans hear every year at the beginning of the Belmont stakes) as his theme song which rankled rural voters.

For trivia fans, 1928 marks the first multimedia campaign. Smith’s convention speech was the first to be broadcast by a new and up-and-coming medium, television. But radio was king in 1928. Smith recognized the power of the medium, but with his accent he was the wrong man with the right idea.

But appearance did not kill the Smith campaign, three other developments share that honor. First, although he possessed a progressive record as governor and the Democratic platform contained ideas such as collective bargaining, the repeal of injunctions and support for farm relief, Smith decided that the way to the White House was to court big business. In this Al Smith may have been the first 20th century Democrat to adopt triangulation.

He particularly infuriated mainline Democrats, including Roosevelt, by appointing Republican millionaire John J. Raskob as his campaign manager. He also added four more millionaires to top positions on his campaign staff. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in The Crisis of the Old Order, Smith sought to reassure the business community by coming out for a protective tariff. Despite this, he managed to hold on to many of the progressive elements of the party. But the Bryan wing deserted Smith in droves because of this alliance with “moneyed interests” and Smith’s open distaste for prohibition.

Today, many revisionist historians argue that Smith’s campaign with its urban center helped to pave the way for the New Deal and the modern Democratic Party. In an article comparing the Smith and Kerry campaigns, Kevin Baker writes, “it is now clear that Al Smith was actually the wave of the future.” The vote totals for 1928 show that in the nation’s twelve biggest cities, which collectively had long returned a G.O.P. plurality in presidential elections, Smith won a net plurality of 38,000 votes compared with a net of 1,252,000 for Coolidge in the same cities in 1924.

Today, all most Americans remember about Al Smith is that he was the nation’s first Catholic candidate. He also was against Prohibition during a time when temperance associations represented a major political force. What people have forgotten is that 1928 may well have been the most vicious campaign in American history and certainly the worst in the 20th century. Smith’s campaign drew bigots out of all the dark corners of the American character where they dwell, nurturing their hatred and plotting unspeakable tortures for their enemies.

Of all those, none was more notorious than the Ku Klux Klan which made Al Smith their cause in 1928 issuing a “Klarion Kail for a Krusade” against him. In the 1920s the Klan had made a huge revival, so that they could hold rallies even in places like Long Island. They printed thousands of hate pamphlets that predicted the Pope would occupy the White House, openly burned crosses and marched in anti-Smith rallies. The Klan publication, Fellowship Forum, showed a Cabinet meeting with the Pope and a dozen fat priests sitting happily around the table, with Smith, in bellboy livery, serving them liquor. No Klan tale, however, surpassed the story that the Holland Tunnel secretly connected to the Vatican!

But so-called mainstream Republicans and mainline churches joined in the hatefest. More tellingly, no major Republican leader denounced the Klan and Hoover himself was silent about their bigotry and the tone of the campaign. It is telling that in a campaign where their lead was so large the Democrats had virtually conceded the campaign before it began, the Republicans showed the same lack of character they did with Joe McCarthy and that continues to this day with the Era of Bad Feelings.

Baker likens their tactics to those of Karl Rove, as Hoover’s minions funneled funds to anti-Smith bigots. Even Willliam Allen White, the esteemed editor of the Emporia Gazette, would charge,

The whole Puritan civilization which has built a sturdy, orderly nation is threatened by Smith.

Those Republican Counterrevolutionaries who today whine about those who decry the involvement of religion in politics forget about those Protestant ministers who preached anti-Smith sermons. It may be safe to say that in 1928 religion entered politics to a degree it has not until the Bush Administration.

Remember these were the days of a fundamentalist revival–the same one that brought us the Scopes trial–that has eerie parallels with the current situation. Sounding like Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist radio preacher John Roach Straton stated,

The election of Smith [would be] a boost for card playing, cocktail drinking, divorce, dancing, Clarence Darrow, nude art, prize fighting, and even greyhound racing.

When they weren’t attacking his religion they were attacking his dislike for Prohibition. The mildest of these tactics was to nickname him “Alcohol” Smith. More vicious rumor mongers accused him of being an alcoholic, of even being drunk at political functions, as well as financing illegal saloons and houses of prostitution.

The stage was thus set for one of the most memorable–and certainly most courageous–speeches ever made by an American presidential candidate, what is now known as the “Oklahoma City Speech.” Smith had tried to run a positive campaign, befitting his nickname, but finally in Oklahoma City he fought back.

Unfortunately, Al Smith was also one of the great extemporaneous speakers of his time, famous for writing his remarks on the backs of envelopes, so the most complete text of the speech exists that I could find is in Robert Slayton’s excellent biography of Smith– Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. If someone can produce a complete copy, please feel free to post it as a comment and I will move it up as a post.

When he arrived in Oklahoma City, the Klan greeted Smith’s train with a huge burning cross. That evening fiery KKK crosses burned around the stadium and a hostile crowd jeered him as he spoke. The next evening, thousands filled the same stadium to hear an anti-Smith speech entitled, “Al Smith and the Forces of Hell.” Thirty-five radio stations transmitted the speech. Among those listening were some of Smith’s relatives. Slayton quotes them as saying the atmosphere sounded so volatile “they expected a bullet, expected to hear a gun go off.”

Smith gave as good as he got, his barely-under-control anger heightening the impact of his words. Tonight, he said, he would “drag out into the open what has been whispered to you.” He went on to utter the quote to that to this day is still associated with him:

The best way to kill anything un-American is to drag it out into the open, because anything un-American cannot live in the sunlight.

He went on to condemn the attempt:

To inject bigotry, hatred, intolerance and un-American sectarian division into a campaign�Nothing could be so out of line with the spirit of America. Nothing could be so foreign to the teachings of Jefferson. Nothing could be so contradictory of our whole history.

Let the people of this country decide this election upon the great and real issues of the campaign, and upon nothing else.

And then with the full fury of a man angered by hypocrisy and bigotry he lit into the Klan. Perhaps the only similar speeches in our history are Robert Welch’s famous “have you no shame” retort to Joe McCarthy and Ed Murrow’s closing words in his documentary on McCarthy.

How [can] any man or group gathered together in what they call the K.K.K., that profess to be rock-solid American, forget the principles that Jefferson stood for, the equality of man.

There is no greater mockery in the world today than the burning of the Cross by these people who are spreading this propaganda . . . while the Christ that they are supposed to adore, love and venerate . . . taught the holy, sacred writ of brotherly love.

In closing Smith minced no words in stating the principle at stake:

I have the right to say that any citizen of this country that believes I can promote its welfare, that I am capable of steering the ship of state safely through the next four years, and votes against me because of my religion, he is not a real, pure, genuine American.

The verdict on Al Smith’s campaign is a mixed one. Certainly, Al Smith represents a key transitional figure in the Democratic Party, for he helped to enlarge its reach from Bryan’s largely rural and Midwestern base to the East and the inner cities. In a way, Smith stands with one foot in the 19th century and the other in the 20th.

In some ways that transitional nature explains Arthur Schlesinger’s analysis, “His campaign was too liberal for the business community, but it was too mild for the more ardent reformers.” (Schlesinger, 1957, p. 128.) From a contemporary perspective it provides an instructive lesson in a campaign run on triangulation and is reminiscent of many recent Democratic campaigns that try to find some mythical middle ground.

Yet in Oklahoma City, Al Smith forgot the middle ground, articulating Liberal America�s core belief in a level playing field. As Slayton notes,

Al Smith, more than any national politician of his day, bucked the conflicts of his time and defended the idea of an inclusionary society.

It makes you wonder how history might have been different had Smith made the level playing field the theme of his entire campaign. Instead, Franklin Roosevelt would become 20th century America’s most forceful advocate for Liberal America�s core belief. Al Smith would end up supporting Alf Landon and Wendell Willkie, breaking with his old friend.

NOTE: This is the third in a series on Democratic presidential candidates. The purpose of this series is quite simple, to knit the threads of the past into the fabric of a political party so that they form a vision of what that party once represented and must recover if it hopes to govern.

Tagged with: 1928-campaign • Al_Smith_ • American_democracy • American_justice • Arthur_Schlesinger • Bryan • Calvin_Coolidge • Christian_fundamentalists • Democratic_Party • Democrats • equity • FDR • first_catholic_candidate • first_televised_convention_speech • Franklin_Roosevelt • fundamentalists • GOP_Counterrevolution • happy_warrior • Herbert_Hoover • Jerry_Falwell • Joe_McCarthy • John_Kerry • John_w_Davis • Joseph_McCarthy • justice • Karl_Rove • kkk • ku_klux_klan • level_playing_field • louis_hine • New_Deal • oklahoma_city_speech • presidential_campaign • presidential_nomination • prohibition • Republicans • Republican_Counterrevolution • Scopes_Trial • Tammany_Hall • WC_fields • wendell_willkie • White_House • william_allen_white • William_Mckinley • Wilson_administration • Woodrow_Wilson

If you actually read the entire text of H.R. 1591, U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health, and Iraq Accountability Act, 2007–which can admittedly be a daunting task since the table of contents alone goes on for more than 100 lines–you will find about two-thirds of the way down, sticking out so it is hard to miss, Title III: Agricultural Assistance. Below this are the following: crop disaster assistance,livestock assistance, spinach, milk income lost assistance, and peanut storage costs among other entries. At this point you have to be shaking your head, as I was, wondering what the heck spinach and peanut storage have to do with troop readiness and Iraq?

A lot of other people also want an answer to the same question, including George W. Bush, who has made the spinach provision the punch line of his speeches pledging to veto the bill. In tracking the answer, you face serious questions about the Democratic Party, the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and the question of whether this bill, which probably received as much press and blog coverage as any piece of legislation in the last year, really is a good bill?

There is little question this bill has more garbage in it that a large municipal landfill. Admittedly, this was an appropriations bill, which for Congress has often been a bit like handing someone the keys to a bank vault and saying, “Take all you can.” But this one is a real eye-opener.

A run down the table of contents finds provisions for the Fish and Wildlife Service (for avian flu detection–maybe that will aid veterans’ health), the National Park Service (for the same), The Forest Service ($400 million for wildfire management–wouldn’t want veterans to get caught in a forest fire), the Public Health and Social Services Fund ($969 million to prepare for a flu pandemic–maybe in Iraq), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($60 million for relief for fishing communities–fill in pun of your choice), and on and on. In fact, the question anyone should have after reading this incredible piece of legislation is “Who didn’t get something?”

Tracking the whys of the bill starts with examining the Democrats who did not vote for it. If you don’t know by now, there were fourteen of them. TPM Cafe, which has had some of the best blog coverage of the vote, made it easy for me to find them. The link takes you to the entire list. An analysis of the lists shows an interesting dichotomy. Half of the nos were principled liberals like John Lewis, who did not believe the bill went far enough in ending the war. In voting his conscience yet again, Lewis demonstrated that he may be the last true liberal left.

The other half of the no votes came entirely from members of the Democrats’ Blue Dog Caucus, a group which had made passing the bill difficult from the beginning. Back in December, shortly after the election, I blogged that the results showed “Essentially, without the Blue Dogs, whose group discipline is legendary, the Democrats will be unable to govern.”

In case somehow you have forgotten the Blue Dogs, they style themselves as “promoting positions which bridge the gap between ideological extremes” according to their web site. First formed in 1994, the group gained a reputation for pushing for fiscal conservatism, particularly a balanced budget, but in recent years their economic focus has enlarged to take in issues such as immigration and drilling in ANWR. A Washington Times review of key votes in recent years shows how they have contributed to the Republican majority on a host of issues.

Who are the Blue Dogs is an interesting question. Their web site lists 42 members, of whom 17 come from Southern or border states, 11 from the Midwest, two from mountain states, and seven from California. Quite of few of the California Blue Dogs represent suburban districts based on the addresses of their home offices.

The discussions leading up to the Iraq debate provide an interesting insight into the Blue Dogs. Fox News, ever on the lookout for trouble in the Democratic Party, ran a story, “Blue Dog Democrats Flex Muscle on Iraq Plans,” noting “the Blue Dogs have played a key role in halting an emerging plan to place strict conditions on war funding. ” “It should be obvious that very little is going to pass in the House that a majority of Blue Dogs do not support,” said former Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, who led the group when he was in Congress and keeps in close contact with House Democrats. As for Iraq, Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla), told Fox, “Some of us are really uncomfortable playing general.”

If the Blue Dogs essentially stand for fiscal conservatism, yet also expressed reservations about a withdrawal timetable from Iraq why did we end up with a garbage bill full of spinach? Since California is the nation’s major producer of spinach and seven Blue Dogs come from California, one might assume the spinach provision was aimed at them.

Unfortunately that was not the case. The “Spinach Man” was none other than Sam Farr, who represents the district where 75% of the nation’s spinach originates. In fact it is often known as “the salad bowl of the world.” Farr, who had been an opponent of the war inserted the spinach clause into the bill, in what many viewed as essentially a deal to win his vote. “It’s very disappointing,” long-time peace activist Sherry Conable, who lives in Farr’s district, told the Inter Press Service News Age. “There was a lot of jubilation after the Democrats took back Congress that Sam had finally stepped forward in the leadership and was really trying to bring the war to an end, and I think this vote is just very disturbing.” Farr’s actions won him the “Porker of the Month” award from Citizens Against Government Waste. Farr is not a Blue Dog.

An attempt to link Blue Dog members to specific provisions of the bill ran aground against the sheer volume of the bill. I invite my blogging colleagues to follow up on this lead, for the question remains why would a majority of the Blue Dogs support the bill? The only answer at this point may come from John Lewis. By that I mean the bill may have been watered down enough to earn their support. And who knows what deals lurk down the road?

Along with “Spinach Man Farr” was Democrat Peter DeFazio of Oregon who voted “yes” after Congressional leaders added 400 million dollars in funding for rural schools. “That’s pretty vital for our district, so we’ll be voting for the bill,” his spokesman Danielle Langone told the website Politico.com

These examples of pork barrel politics controlling the Iraq Bill, lead Citizens Against Government Waste to issue a condemnation of the entire bill. Pointing to Democratic congressional leaders’ pledge to cut back on budget-busting earmarks, CAGW President Tom Schatz said. “It seems the commitment to reform was short-lived, as Congress fattens up the emergency spending bill with special-interest goodies.” “Members of Congress will pay a price if they go back to the usual pork-barrel politics. Taxpayers must demand that Congress remove the waste and bloat from the final bill and stop the routine abuse of emergency spending,” Schatz concluded.

All this leads to the question of whether spinach for an Iraq withdrawal date was really worth it? By trading votes for pork barrel projects, the Democrats fell into a Republican trap yet again. The pork will allow the GOP to again resume their characterization of Democrats as big spenders and captives of special interests. It will also allow the President Bush to veto the bill not because of Iraq, but because the spending went too far. Finally, it yet again paints the Democrats as a Party that puts expediency over principles. The Iraq Bill has triangulation written all over it.

You could also color the bill blue for the Blue Dogs, who supported compromises that resulted in a`flawed bill. In systems terms, by playing coy with their votes, the Blue Dogs forced the Democrats to cater to people like Farr and opened the doors to a fire sale for votes. Plus it remains unclear what price Pelosi may have paid for the Blue Dogs’ cooperation.

The worst part of this is that there was another way, one that would have remained fiscally sound while putting Bush in a corner. That alternative would have made further funding of the Iraq War contingent on cutting back the Bush tax cuts. Then the Democrats could have said to the president, “If you want to have your war, then all Americans need to share equally in the burden.” This also would have helped to flush out the Blue Dogs, for it is still unclear whether their so-called fiscal conservatism masks beliefs that have more in common with the Republican Counterrevolution than they do with Liberal America.

This also would have helped to recover the Party’s lost role as the supporter of a level playing field for all Americans. They could have even revived the “guns or butter” argument the GOP used during the Vietnam Era. Most of all, though, they could have pointed out that this war has not demanded equal sacrifices from all Americans. It is morally wrong to pursue a questionable war on the backs of budget cuts for poor people in a country where the very rich can afford $60,000 backyard fireplaces and $20,000 bottles of wine while people go without heat or food and the rest of us struggle to balance our own personal budgets.

But Pelosi and others wanted their withdrawal date, one that will prove meaningless when Bush vetoes it and could prove detrimental when he makes an issue of trading earmarks for votes. This war is wrong and it is wrong because it violates all that this nation has stood for. We should not cheapen those values by selling them for the equivalent of roast pork and spinach.

Tagged with: alaska_national_wildlife_refuge • anti_war_movement • avian_flu • blog • bloggers • Blue_Dogs • Bush • Bush_administration • Bush_tax_cuts • citizens_against_government_waste • Clarence_Darrow • Democratic_Party • Democrats • Fish_and_wildlife_service • flu_pandemic • fox • fox_news • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • George_W_Bush • GOP • guns_and_butter • Hillary_Rodham_Clinton • HR-1591 • Iowa_caucuses • Iraq • Iraq_War • Johnson_Administration • John_Lewis • level_playing_field • liberal • mainstream_media • Nancy_Pelosi • national_park_service • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • Pelosi • peter_defazio • rush_limbaugh • sam_farr • troops_in_Iraq • Vietnam • war_in_Iraq • war_policy

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he
-Alfred Hayes

There are many versions of this song, one by Joan Baez used in the movie of Hill’s life is especially moving, but there is only one definitive recording and that is the one sung by Paul Robson, whose other-worldly deep bass voice seems to come from a higher place.

I thought about Robson and Joe Hill and a lot of others when I did my periodic check of the Bureau of Labor Statistics not too long ago. In this climate of bs and raucous indignation that reminds me of a flock of ravens fighting over road kill, some of us sometimes seek the solidity of numbers to provide perspective.

In late January the BLS issued one of its periodic reports on union membership. For those who bothered to read it or even managed to catch the small box-like articles that a few newspapers printed about the report, it made for sobering reading. In America these days, press releases tend to fall from the air like dead leaves, most of them so dry and desiccated that their words sound like feet scuffling across a late October forest floor littered with Summers past. The release from the Bureau on January 25, 2007 seemed yet another nondescript addition to this pile, right down to its generic format and matter-of-fact headline, probably written by a staff member buried deep amidst dozens of coffin-like cubicles who had grabbed a piece of stationary and filled in some boiler plate prose from the network hard drive.

“UNION MEMBERS IN 2006,” it read. It then went on to note,

In 2006, 12.0 percent of employed wage and salary workers were union members, down from 12.5 percent a year earlier…The union membership rate has steadily declined from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available.

The language may sound dry, but like a forest littered with dead leaves they have the power to become a conflagration if someone touches a match to them. They point to a serious American crisis, one that for many may kill the American Dream and this nation’s ideal of a level laying field.

The release “highlights” state:

• Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly five times that of private sector employees.
• Education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate among all occupations, at 37 percent.
• The unionization rate was higher for men than for women.
• Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

What the press release refers to as “highlights,” record one of the most dramatic shifts in American culture, economics and politics since the beginnings of the union movement during the industrialization of the 19th century. Nowhere in these numbers can you find the old stereotypical union member–a blue collar worker in a steel mill, mine or automotive plant. Instead the new union worker is a teacher, a government bureaucrat, a police officer. The BLS also pointed out, “The union membership rate for government workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than for private industry workers (7.4 percent).” Almost half (42%) of all local government workers are unionized.

The conventional arguments for this immense shift state that industrial workers are no longer interested in unions or that the economy has changed to a service, technology-driven environment far different from the one that spawned the old craft unions that were the heart of Samuel Gompers original AFL. Yet the unions themselves point out that independent surveys and data show most workers would join a union if they could. One reason may be that BLS stats in that January press release show union workers:

Had median usual weekly earnings of $833, compared with a median of $642 for wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions.

The major force preventing brother and sister workers from joining a union lies with the GOP Counterrevolution, which has identified busting the unions as a major priority. After all bust the unions and you’ve carved the heart out of the Democratic Party just like one of those gory scenes in Mel Gibson’s new movie. How have they done this?

Mainly they have made it harder to form a union. A September 2000 report by a respected international organization makes this nation sound like a third world plantation. In Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards,which was based on an 18-month survey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that in the United States, “workers’ freedom of association is violated routinely, protections for workers forming unions are inadequate and enforcement of existing laws are much too weak.” The report’s online introduction lays out the grim realities of American workers:

A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. All that awaits an employer determined to get rid of a worker who tries to form a union is a years-later reinstatement order the worker is likely to decline and a modest back-pay award. For many employers, it is a small price to pay to destroy a workers’ organizing effort by firing its leaders.

The result of this assault is that union membership in the private sector is the lowest since 1900. Karl Rove, who has stated he wants to take this country back to the days of William McKinley, no doubt is smiling at these statistics. But anyone who knows their history has to find the idea of returning organized labor to the McKinley era frightening. Most of us vaguely remember those times as an era of labor strife. We may remember the Homestead Strike and a few other events, but I’ll bet my mortgage no one reading this has heard of the far more deadly, more vicious Latimer Massacre. Most of the account that follows comes from a web site maintained by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.The sanitized history many of us received in school, never mentioned such events, for they would destroy the myth of the robber barons as people whose worst sin was manipulating money. But people died so that you and I might enjoy the right to organize and some of those people died in the Latimer massacre.

Latimer was a company town built in 1869 in the midst of the Pennsylvania coal fields. Mine owner Ariovistus Pardee, one of the wealthiest people in the United States at the time, rented the houses to the workers, sold them whatever they needed through the infamous “company store” and literally controlled the lives of those who toiled long hours underground as if they had been slaves or prisoners in a gulag labor camp.

On top of this, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an “alien tax,” which required all immigrant workers to pay three cents a day–a large amount back then. The Slavs who worked the Latimer mine were also angry that the Welsh workers who had been there before them were paid more for the same work. (Any of this sound familiar today?)

Like miners across the Pennsylvania coal fields, the Latimer miners heard about the new United Mine Workers Union through a local union organizer. Urged on by the union, mine workers in the area went on strike in 1897, a strike that quickly swelled to more than 5,000 workers. According to a web history of the Latimer massacre, “Coal operators thought that they had a war on their hands.”

On cue enter the villain in the guise of one James Martin, Sheriff of Luzerne County, who interrupted his Florida vacation at the request of the mine owners who ordered him to end the strike. He proceeded to put together 150 “enforcers” made up of company goons and whoever else was willing to take on the “hunkies.”

On September 10, 300 miners from the area gathered in nearby Harwood to march to Latimer to demand their rights. At the head of the column one marcher carried an American flag. When the marchers, who had swelled to 400, arrived on the outskirts of Latimer, Martin and his goons lined the v-shaped entrance to the town. Anticipating violence, mothers pulled their children out of school. Like a bell setting off a heavyweight fight, the whistle at the mine went off as the marchers approached.

Martin tried to wrestle the flag from the worker carrying it and when that didn’t work, he drew his pistol and fired at point-blank range. The gun misfired, but those of the goons did not. The flag bearer was the first to fall along with those near him, crying out to God in their native language. The shooting lasted anywhere from a minute and a half to three minutes, according to witnesses, as the goons fired away, shooting strikers in the back as they tried to escape the carnage.

According to one eyewitness the wounded on the ground cried out for water and aid, which prompted one goon to shout, “”We’ll give you hell, not water, hunkies!” When the massacre was over nineteen marchers were dead and thirty-six wounded. The goons walked among the bodies, kicking them to see who was still alive.

The next day the governor ordered the state militia into the area to restore order. Sheriff Martin and several deputies were tried for murder and acquitted after a 27-day trial. The massacre so angered the workers that they became one of the strongest locals in the UMWA. In 1972, Pennsylvania erected a monument to the massacre which read:

It was not a battle because they were not aggressive,
nor were they defensive because they had no weapons
of any kind and were simply shot down like so many
worthless objects, each of the licensed life-takers
trying to outdo the others in butchery.

Five years after the Latimer Massacre, Joe Hill emigrated to America, becoming an organizer and song writer for the International Workers of the World (IWW). He was executed by firing squad on Nov. 19, 1915 in a trial that is still the subject of rumor and speculation.

The point of this story rests on that little-noted statistic, that union membership is now what it was in 1900. We have had no Latimer Massacres, but what we have had is perhaps as deplorable: workers in America, as Human Rights Watch pointed out, now face a tilted playing field unless the Democratic Party or some other group reaffirms the values of Liberal America. The “licensed life-takers’ of the Republican Party threaten to pick off workers one-by-one, figuratively shot in the back, just like those who died at Latimer.

When you are disabled and in pain there are nights the combination of drugs, sleep medicines and pain itself results in some bizarre dreams. One night as I was drafting this post, I found myself in what I took to be a basement full of file drawers. The labels on the front of them said something about the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thinking they were full of more reports and press releases like those above I pulled open a drawer. What I saw were bare feet with a tag on one toe, like in a morgue. In a frenzy I pulled open drawer after drawer. Each held another body. Outside I could hear the sound of gunshots.

Last week while reporters followed Valerie Plame like paparazzi chasing a move starlet, another hearing took place which held far more significance for the American people than Plame’s testimony–the future of their children. The witnesses who testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and House Committee on Education and Labor on the renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act did not see their pictures on newspaper front pages or their words in oped pieces and blogs. Yet that hearing and those that follow will decide the direction of American society for the next decade.

As leaders of the teachers’ unions, the Council of the Great City Schools and other key organizations gave their testimony, their remarks seemed little more than variations on the script of opening witness Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes, Co-Chair of the Commission on No Child Left Behind. Barnes admitted, “While the goals of NCLB are sound, our work has shown that the statute and its implementation are not perfect, and in some instances need significant improvement.”

A report from the Center for American Progress and U.S. Chamber of Commerce showed the effectiveness of NCLB. “Education By the Numbers” points out that the number of states receiving above average grades in all categories is zero as is the number of states with a majority of 4^th and 8^th graders proficient in math and reading. It also documented the manipulation of data by various states. Alabama, for example, reported 83% of its fourth graders were proficient in reading using the state’s own test, while the National Assessment of Educational Process calculates the number is closer to 22%.

One “witness” the Committees might have called to provide meaningful testimony about NCLB has disappeared: the now-forgotten SCANS report. SCANS stands for Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. The secretary referred to is not the Secretary of Education but the Secretary of Labor. SCANS began with the George H. W. Bush administration when Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole proclaimed,

If you do not possess the basic skills required to survive in today’s world, then you can not get into the system, you can not get a job, you can not succeed, and you will spend a lifetime on the outside looking in.

In November 1989, Dole authorized a series of initiatives charging that “Simply put, America’s workforce is in a state of unreadiness.” Among those was SCANS, which was carried on by her successor, Lynn Martin.

In 1991, the SCANS committee consisting of representatives from business, labor, education, and foundations issued its first report What Work Requires of Schools. A decade and a half later its recommendations still seem fresh and far-sighted. The report begins by painting a bleak portrait,

What we found was disturbing: more than half our young people leave school without the knowledge or foundation required to find and hold a good job.

The basic thrust of SCANS follows: “Good jobs depend on people who can put knowledge to work. New workers must be creative and responsible problem solvers and have the skills and attitudes on which employers can build.” The report identifies the skills those workers will need, dividing them into two areas-competencies and what it termed “the foundation.” The five competencies called for workers who could productively use:

Resource allocation of time, money, materials, space, and staff;
Interpersonal Skills including working on teams and with people from culturally diverse backgrounds
Information skills such as acquiring and evaluating data;
Systems skills–understanding social, organizational and technological systems;
Technology skills such as selecting, applying, maintaining and troubleshooting equipment

The foundation included what SCANS termed the “Basic Skills” of reading, writing, math, speaking, and listening. But it also added:

Thinking Skills such as creative problem solving and knowing how to learn, and
Personal Qualities including individual responsibility, self-esteem, and integrity

In explaining the list the report stated, “In the broadest sense, the competencies represent the attributes that today’s high performance employer seeks in tomorrow�s employee.” The report concluded, “If your children cannot learn these skills by the time they leave high school, they face bleak prospects & dead-end work, interrupted only by periods of unemployment, with little chance to climb a career ladder.”

Fast forward to the presidency of the son of the man whose administration created SCANS. Instead of SCANS we have the No Child Left Behind Act which says nothing about the need for these skills. It is as if SCANS had never been written. The George W. Bush plan for renewing No Child Left Behind begins,

The law’s ultimate goal: [is] steady academic gains until all students can read and do math at or above grade level, closing for good the nation’s achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority students and their peers.

The goals for the reauthorization are as follows:

Close the achievement gap through high state standards and accountability.
Middle and high schools must offer more rigorous coursework that better prepares students for    postsecondary  education or the workforce.
States must be given flexibilities and new tools to restructure chronically underperforming schools, and families must be given more options.

Reading such language (”flexibilities�” maybe these people need NCLB) and reviewing the SCANS competencies, makes it abundantly clear that the administrations of George the father and George the son have entirely different perspectives on education. Which of the goals would you want to guide your child�s education: SCANS or NCLB?

Even more troubling is how in two decades, America’s vision for education has become pinched, pedestrian, and downright primitive. SCANS presciently looked forward to the global economy we now inhabit, while NCLB looks backward to the 19th century of McGuffy Readers and rote learning. NCLB at best prepares students to work in service economy McJobs, while SCANS aims to prepare them for technological, fast-paced careers that require workers to think on their feet.

The educational philosophy of the son focuses only on reading and math and doesn’t even mention the third R-writing, let alone all the skills in SCANS. “Math and science have become the new currencies of the global economy,” says the NCLB renewal, “Our students must have the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in this changed world.” One wonders what world NCLB refers to since math and science have been part of the global economy for at least two centuries? SCANS had little use for the philosophy that underlies NCLB, noting, “The scenarios make clear that tomorrow’s career ladders require even the basic skills & the old 3 Rs & to take on a new meaning.”

The contrasts become more striking when one examines the difference between father and son on what motivates students. No Child Left Behind takes a punitive approach which is wrapped up in the buzzword associated with it, “accountability.” With NCLB, if schools and classrooms (and by implication students) do not meet performance goals set for them there will be consequences, as my parents used to say.

SCANS comes from a entirely different mental model. It is motivated by a belief that students must see their education as relevant, not as some requirement to be met.

We know that many students work very hard. But many more do not because they do not believe the lessons they are learning are connected to the real world or that the diplomas they are earning will bring them a brighter future.

This brings us to the most controversial part of NCLB and its key difference with SCANS–assessment. NCLB has brought the return of “high stakes testing” employing the multiple guess, short answer, fill-in-the-blanks tests we all loathed, especially when we had to take them to get into college or some other program.

In contrast, the final section of SCANS acknowledges:

The thinking inherent in many of the competencies, such as improving systems and allocating resources, is much more complex and open-ended than generally can be assessed using conventional testing methods. A variety of innovative assessment techniques undoubtedly will be required to solve these problems.

SCANS envisions what educators refer to as �performance-based assessments,� in which a student actually must demonstrate what they know. In SCANS educators and business people alike openly opposed the kind of testing used for NCLB, saying that the ability to fill in blanks on an answer sheet had little relationship to real-life. With a multiple choice test a student could guess the answer to the question what if someone handed you a dollar for a 75-cent purchase, what was`their change?

So what happened to SCANS? Its date provides the clue: it came at the end of George H. W. Bush’s term. When the Clinton administration came to power, it concentrated its efforts on Goals 2000, a continuation of another Bush initiative, America 2000. Under Clinton, Goals 2000 became proscriptive and federally-managed, which simultaneously raised the ire of educators and those on the far right. After the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994 with much help from their fundamentalist Christian allies, education reform of any kind atrophied under the Gingrich Congress and the combination of budgets cuts and “back to the basics.”

SCANS still stands as one of the most notable casualties of what I term the Republican Counterrevolution and as such is an important historical lesson in how easily democracy can move from a place of freedom and innovation to one tinged with authoritarianism and thou-shalt-nots.

Under the assault of Christian fundamentalists who dictated much of the GOP’s education agenda, even the business supporters of SCANS faded into the night as a new Dark Ages descended over American public schools. Two developments exemplify this: the rise of so-called “creationism,” which like some sleeping beast arose from the days of the Scopes Trial to once again stalk the land and the Counterrevolution’s open support for private school vouchers so people can send their children to American versions of Iran’s “Ayatollah Academies.”

In the Dark Ages, corporate executives no longer advocate “workers must be creative and responsible problem solvers.” The forward-looking corporate leaders who backed SCANS appear to have gone into exile or ceded education to the fundamentalists. This Era of Bad Feelings with its vitriol and the return of McCarthy-like attacks has America’s vaunted public school system fighting for its life. Some believe NCLB is nothing more than an attempt to ultimately do away with public schools.

As the Counterrevolutionary assault on public education gathered momentum, the Democratic Party began triangulating rather than standing for principles. Somewhere in the 1990s it lost its moral compass, leaving those who still believed in public education and reforms like SCANS without allies as they fought a rearguard action with diminishing resources. Like the vote on the Iraq War, the Democrats cowardly voted for NCLB, ceding education policy to the Counterrevolution. So they casually discarded one of the four best cards in their hand–the defense of public education.

As we head into another presidential campaign, the waffling and lack of unity the Democrats have about NCLB is strangely reminiscent of similar reactions to the Iraq War. In fact the official Democratic Party website section on education makes no mention of NCLB! It would be so easy for Democrats to run ads picturing Jerry Falwell that ask, “Do you want this man to decide what’s right for American education?” Or to show a one-room school with children writing on slates that asks, “Is this the education we want for our children?” Then there is Dubya reading a book upside down!

Rather than admit they made a mistake voting for the Iraq War and NCLB, the Democrats have tried to finesse the American people. But America is fed up with finesses and spin-mastering by a party that seems to no longer stand for any fundamental principles. Yet in education, if they had any imagination–or sense of history–they could easily point back to the bipartisan goals of SCANS.

Like Iraq, NCLB seems to be unraveling. The second Bush administration has made many of the same mistakes with No Child Left Behind as they have with the war, the most indefensible being their refusal to supply those on the front lines–teachers and troops alike–with even the most basic tools they need to survive. Like Iraq, NCLB also fails to acknowledge cultural and community differences. Finally, like administration officials making Iraq policy, NCLB officials appear to have no strategic sense. Perhaps had they been educated under SCANS, their systems, resource allocation, information and critical thinking competencies might be better.

Meanwhile SCANS’ vision still stands unfulfilled.

For over 200 years Americans have worked to make education part of their national vision, indispensable to democracy and to individual freedom. For at least the last 40 years, we have worked to further the ideal of equity & for minority Americans, for the disabled, and for immigrants. With that work still incomplete, we are called to still another revolution & to create an entire people trained to think and equipped with the know-how to make their knowledge productive.

Resource Shout Out for NCLB: One of the best sites opposing NCLB is Fair Test. Give them a look.

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