obama Archives — Page 28 of 51 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Calvin Trillin: Pat and Rush on Haiti

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February 2, 2010

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Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh on Haiti

A pact with the Devil’s what Robertson says

Has caused folks in Haiti distress.

If they had consulted Pat’s Jesus instead,

Tney’d now be a smashing success.

And Rush says Obama’s just scoring some points

With all of his darker-skinned backers.

We’ve alread given to Haiti, Rush says:

Our taxes supported those slackers.

When listening to what the two of them spew,

These theories bizarre and rococo,

It’s hard to decide who’s racist and mean

And who just needs help ’cause he’s loco.

Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, The Nation (2/08/l0)

Meister: Obama’s promise to women

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January 29, 2010

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It’s time to enact the Paycheck Fairness Act that would allow women to negotiate with employers for equal pay with men

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century.)

One of the most important promises made by President Obama in his State of the Union address has been largely overlooked – his promise to “crack down on violations of equal pay laws, so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work.”

The need for that is great. Despite the 47-year-old law that promises women equal pay, their earnings remain well below men’s pay. They average only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, even though their work is obviously every bit as valuable to employers and society at large as the work of men.

The pay discrepancy is even greater for women of color. African American women earn 63 cents and Latinas 52 cents for every dollar earned by men.

It’s estimated that if women were granted equal pay, they could earn as much as $2 million more over the whole of their working lives. It’s also estimated that if women were paid equally, the number of families living in poverty could be reduced by as much as half. Women’s earnings are needed by most families, and in many cases, women are their family’s only breadwinner.

Even women doing the same work as men, or work that’s as valuable to employers as that of their male counterparts, almost always are paid less. It’s as bad for women in the professions as for others. Female nurses, for instance, physicians and surgeons, professors, school teachers and lawyers earn as much as 30 percent less than men in their fields.

President Obama already has signed a bill that should help narrow the male-female pay gap. It was, in fact, the very first bill he signed after taking office – the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. It’s named for a retired tire plant supervisor in Alabama who discovered after nearly 20 years on the job that she was being paid less than male supervisors.

Ms. Ledbetter sued for discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the law requires workers to sue no later than 180 days after their discriminatory pay rate was set – even if, like Ms. Ledbetter, they don’t discover the pay discrimination until years later. As the result of the decision, hundreds of pay discrimination cases were thrown out of court.

Shortly after the Supreme Court acted, the House passed a bill that would have overturned the court’s outrageous decision. But Senate Republicans, claiming the bill would lead to a flood of unfounded suits against employers, blocked a vote, and President Bush vowed to veto the bill if it ever crossed his desk.

The bill that finally reached Obama’s desk for signing provides that the 180-day time limit for filing lawsuits under the Civil Rights Act doesn’t begin to run until the last discriminatory act by an employer.

What’s most needed now is enactment of the Paycheck Fairness Act that’s been pending for a dozen years. The bill made it through the House last year, but was blocked by Senate Republicans. Obama, who voted for the bill as a senator, is certain to sign the new bill – if it’s not kept from him by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

The Fairness Act would close loopholes in the 1963 Equal Pay Act that have made it relatively easy for employers to pay women less than their male co-workers holding the same jobs. The law would empower women to negotiate with employers for equal pay; prohibit retaliation against workers who share salary information with co-workers; strengthen government outreach, education and enforcement, and generally make the law much stronger.

There ‘s no doubting President Obama’s firm support for the act. As he’s said, “We won ‘t truly have an economy that puts the needs of the middle class first until we ensure that when it comes to pay and benefits at work, women are treated like the equal partners they are.”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com

Obama to base: “Continue to fight”

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January 28, 2010

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Tosca in North Beach was packed last night for the State of the Union watch party that was thrown by Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s grassroots organizing operation, and the crowd was predictably supportive of the president despite his political difficulties and declining popularity.

Karen Buchanan — who volunteered on Obama’s presidential campaign and has continued to do so since then, including phone banking to support his health care reform effort – responded positively to the speech’s call for renewed activism, even though she was less than thrilled with some of Obama’s policy prescriptions.

“I don’t agree with him 100 percent, but I’m not going to join the circular firing squad. I continue to support him,” Buchanan said. “He had a nice tone of optimism and we needed that.”

That may be true. Obama’s poignant call for the country’s political, corporate, and media institutions to make strong, good faith efforts to regain the public’s trust was the emotional high point of this speech. But unfortunately, Obama’s muddled and often contradictory policy priorities are frustrating to progressives who have been turning away from this president.

Editor’s Notes

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January 27, 2010

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When Ronald Reagan took office as president in 1981, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Republicans only had a narrow majority in the Senate. Yet Reagan was able to undertake a series of profound, far-reaching and radical policy changes that transformed the United States. He cut taxes on the rich, deregulated industries, drove up the military budget (and the deficit) and reshaped the Supreme Court — all without seeking bipartisan unity or offering major concessions to the Democrats.

That, I think, is why so many people are so mad at the Obama administration — and why we shouldn’t panic about the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Yeah, it’s terrible (and historic) to lose Ted Kennedy’s seat to a weak and lame Republican. And it’s alarming to think the Democrats could lose several more Senate seats this fall.

But that shouldn’t either stop Obama from pushing a legislative agenda or terrify the Democrats into paralysis.

Look, the Democrats still control Washington. The Republicans still have no ideas of their own, and are doing nothing but obstructing progress so the Obama administration will fail. And nobody seems to be calling them on it. The Democrats were a lot more vocal (and acted a lot more like Democrats) when Bush was in office.

I can’t get too agitated about the loss of a 60-vote majority in the Senate; the Democrats never really had that anyway. One of the 60 was Joe Lieberman, who isn’t even a Democrat in name anymore and who held Obama hostage, demanded concessions and cave-ins for his vote on health care, and still couldn’t be trusted. Now there are 58 Democrats instead of 59; most Democratic presidents in the past century would have loved those numbers. So would most Republicans.

And let’s remember — the economy was almost as bad during Reagan’s first year as it is now, and it wasn’t showing any signs of getting better.

Reagan was a Hollywood-trained actor who’d been a pitchman for cigarette companies; he knew how to look into a camera and make an emotional case for his positions. Obama is by far the best speaker the Democrats have had in decades, and he has the natural ability to go beyond what Reagan did. He can go after the Republicans, make the case for legislative action, push the voters to push their senators and Congress members to approve his agenda, and turn this political funk around. But he’s got to give up the bipartisan rhetoric (been there, tried that), convince the millions of people who put their hopes in him that there’s still reason to believe, and stop looking at the Massachusetts vote as a rejection of progressive policies.

The mood in the country is anxious, restive, impatient, and displeased — not with the ideas Obama presented during his campaign, but with his failure to make them happen. He can still turn this around by talking about the economy, creating (public sector) jobs — now — and using the still-solid majorities in Congress.

Or he can get all defensive and change course. We know how well that’s going to work.

Miami plays itself

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January 27, 2010

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ESSAY On opening night of Art Basel, N. Miami Avenue was a sort of Potemkin museum, every storefront packed with art, free wine and cheese, and the usually sleepy street clogged with taxis and limos. Ordinarily no one walks in muggy Miami, but tonight the cracked and littered sidewalks were deep with art patrons dressed in their Midtown Manhattan finery, looking out of place, as if passengers on a private jet that had made an emergency landing on a tropical Caribbean island. Wynwood is an area hard-hit by foreclosures. Up and down N. Miami Avenue, printed signs reading “Cash For Your Warhol” were nailed to the burned-out and boarded-up storefronts that remained untouched by Art Basel, a witty parody of the “Cash For Your Home” signs now popping up all over America’s inner cities.

Off the main drag on the dim side-streets, locals hustled cars into parking places in empty lots. With cheerful yet menacing Dade Country bravado, they ran the classic Miami scam of offering to “watch your car so that nothing happens to it” for $10. Just before Art Basel, newly released FBI crime statistics showed Miami had leapt to the fourth most violent city in the U.S., up from last year’s number 13. As I watched women in expensive heels stepping around a pair of scruffy, tan stray dogs, I reflected on some comments Craig Robins had made to me. When I asked the art mogul about the importance of Miami Vice to the redevelopment of Miami, he told me the 1980s TV show had “transformed the horror of the cocaine cowboy era, which was very real, into the fantasy of the cocaine cowboys, which was about sex appeal and fashion.” Miami’s brand name has always meant third world squalor skillfully repackaged as gritty charm.

“STREET,” “ART,” AND FAIREY TALES

Fittingly, much of the big-name art that served as the backdrop for Art Basel’s week-long street party in Wynwood was ephemeral street art that developer Tony Goldman and Deitch Projects commissioned for the outdoor exhibit, “Wynwood Walls.” Goldman, the famed developer of SoHo, was an early partner with a young and untested Robins in the ’80s and ’90s on South Beach. In 2005, Goldman bought 19 properties in Wynwood. Now, for Art Basel, in collaboration with Deitch, he was turning his warehouse exteriors into “a group of outdoor murals by the best artists in the field that will become an international street art museum.” Participating artists included the Brazilian twins Os Gemeos, SWOON, and most notably, Shepard Fairey of Andre the Giant/Obama Hope poster fame, who contributed an enormous piece on a wall in an empty lot on NW Second Avenue. SF artist Barry McGee also came to Miami to paint a tripped-out, fluorescent pattern of diamonds on an abandoned building farther down the block. Perhaps self-conscious of changing the neighborhood’s look too much, McGee added a wrecked, overturned car in the parking lot as part of the installation.

More “Wynwood Walls” murals by Kenny Scharf, AIKO, Clare Rojas, Jim Drain, and others could be found inside of a sort-of mural park made by opening a metal gate between two of Goldman’s warehouses. I spotted Goldman and Jeffrey Deitch standing together and grinning through the bars at the crowd inside, so I went up to talk to them. The two were something of an odd couple — Goldman relaxed and rumpled, Miami-in-December casual in shirtsleeves and ball cap; Deitch, his usual immaculate suit-and-tie self. Yet they seemed giddy and finished each other’s sentences like a couple in young love. I asked if there were plans to bring the graffiti museum indoors. “Who knows? “Right now — ” Deitch began, and Goldman waved his arm with a flourish and said, ” — we’re just happy to sit back and enjoy tonight.”

The murals on the streets and in the courtyard looked great. Yet, as visually arresting as many of these murals were, there was something about their appearance here in Miami that echoed the hollowness of the “pop-up” bar, Max Fish, that had come down from New York for the week. The Lower East Side bar had recreated an exact replica of itself in a previously abandoned storefront in Overtown just for the week of Art Basel. Similarly, “Wynwood Walls” was a “pop up” event that obscured the fact that the neighborhood had already long been famed for its illegal graffiti walls. Local graff heroes like CROME and CROOK had faced serious prison time for their art. Earlier in the year, a member of the notorious Miami graffiti crew the MSG Cartel died when he fell off a sign onto Highway I-95 while throwing up a tag. In this context, the new murals were corporate street art.

The cynical bait-and-switch in Miami’s stated goal to improve the city’s fortunes through hosting international art fairs was embodied neatly in Fairey’s work in Miami during Art Basel. His wall on NW 2nd Avenue was protected by an armed guard, 24 hours a day. I caught up with Fairey while he worked on another mural on N. Miami Avenue. He stood on a bucket and applied wheat paste while he held forth on the moral purity of street art. “People from Miami who have never seen my work before will be able to check this out,” he told me. “People aren’t intimidated by street art. They don’t need to go to a museum or have the right credentials for interpreting art to view it. If they don’t like it, they can just go up and tag it!”

“So why does your new mural have its own armed guard?”

Fairey stopped what he was doing, got down off the bucket, and looked me in the eye. “Look,” he said. “That wasn’t my idea. That’s Deitch’s [Deich Projects’] thing. If it was up to me, you’d just leave it up. If people tag it, you clean it off. But the mural is on panels, and Deitch wants to keep it clean because they’re going to move it later on.”

In other words, Fairey’s public street art for “Wynwood Walls” wasn’t really public at all. It only appeared to be public. But after the fair was over and the art world public had gone home, it would be moved indoors, possibly to a new graffiti museum, where it would be kept permanently or perhaps even sold.

SUSHI AND SHANTYTOWNS

Art Basel’s quest to absorb Miami’s street authenticity into its vortex continued a couple of blocks away in the middle of Midtown Miami Center, where New York/Miami/Tokyo Brazilian-Japanese fusion restaurant SushiSamba had spent $130,000 to install its own graffiti art show, Graffiti Gone Global.

Midtown Miami Center is a classic failed Miami real estate venture, at two years old an already fading outdoor mall. Its newly-built condos remain nearly half-empty, and many of the storefronts have never been occupied. (For Art Basel, Photo Miami hosted its photography exhibit in the storefront left vacant by the departure of Circuit City). “Graffiti Gone Global” reimagined an enormous, empty retail space by adding a shambling 25-foot-tall replica of a favela, a Brazilian shantytown – what the catalog called, “the infamous self-constructed housing units of the mountainsides in Brazil.” The towering model favela, covered in graffiti pieces, was surrounded by a two-dimensional cityscape of panels with photos of old Brooklyn storefronts, upon which the graffiti artists had also painted. Oddly, this fusion of fake New York and Latin American slums most evoked the feel of the temporary art fair outside on the real Miami streets. The program explained happily that “the favela installation will not only be used as a backdrop for works of art to be installed, but will also be sold as separate units — some even bearing a signature graffiti piece … allowing the viewer to see graffiti in its more natural setting.”

It was quite possible for the viewer to see actual favelas in their natural setting during Art Basel, too. Everyday during the art fair, thousands of art patrons taking the most direct route from the Miami Beach Convention Center to the art fairs of Miami via the Julia Tuttle Causeway drove past a sprawling tent city on the shores of Biscayne Bay just as you enter Miami. After leaving the SushiSamba show, I decided to pull over on the side of the road and check it out.

I counted 12 tents, seven cars, and a sturdy, and a handful of homemade wooden shacks arranged under palm trees along the shore. A long extension cord ran out of a tent toward a generator that sat in a clearing. At the end of the path, there was a café table with chairs around it, set up in the shade about six feet from shore, where I met Luis and Antonio. They told me there were about 100 men in the camp — almost all registered sex offenders who were unable to live anywhere else in Miami because of a strict new law prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school. In its fourth or fifth year, the camp has quasi-official government sanction — men are paroled out of prison directly to the camp and some even list “123 Julia Tuttle Causeway” as their address on their driver’s licenses. There was no water source or toilets, though the city came by once a month to pick up the collected garbage residents neatly stacked in bags by the causeway.

I did some mental calculation: the camp was certainly within 2,500 feet of SushiSamba’s fake shantytown. As I drove off, I say the camp in the rearview mirror, dwarfed by the silhouettes of new and half-empty condos in the distance, and I thought about another thing Robins had said about Miami: “It’s America’s city of the future.”

By Saturday, Dec. 5, the last gala night of Art Basel, it was clear that sales had rebounded from the previous year and that the art world was surviving the global economic collapse. Perhaps fittingly, the blue chip sale of the fair was Andy Warhol’s iconic screen print of that old cultural revolutionary, Mao, for $2.2 million by Van De Weghe Gallery. The message of the fair was clear: the market can absorb anything. It will prevail.

This same aura of indestructibility makes Art Basel seem impervious to cultural critique as well, though every year some artists still try. This year’s most notable attempt was “Littlest Sister,” an exhibit at Spinello Gallery. Modeled after the layout of the convention center floor, it turned the tiny Wynwood gallery into a series of booths, using Art Basel Miami Beach’s official gray-and-pink color scheme. Pieces in this “sister” fair, like Pachi Giustinian’s amusing Valve, poked fun at Art Basel or the art world itself. Valve was simply a compressor air-hose nozzle sticking out of the gallery wall — perfect for blowing up balloons of art fair hype. The enervating Art Forum Accident 2005 by Kristofer Paetau demonstrated the difficulty, though, of taking on the hot air of the large art fairs. The video depicted Paetau making himself projectile vomit on the floor of the 2005 Art Forum Fair in Berlin, among the world’s foremost galleries. The movement of the art dealers around Paetau freezes — but just for seconds. By the time one of them has led him to a chair and covered the puke with a couple sheets of paper, his action has been completely forgotten. The film ends with Paetau dry heaving, completely ignored by eager art buyers.

But the most provocative element in the exhibit was “Window Shopping Series,” a group of eight color photo portraits of Miami prostitutes taken on the streets. Artist Zach Balber told me that he intended the photos as a commentary on how artists are exploited by galleries. Balber paid each of them women $10 to pose, with the condition that if their portrait sold in the show, Balber would split the money with the woman and her pimp. “I wanted to flip the script on the collectors because I feel prostituted as an artist.”

Seen in this context, the photos were something of a cheap, sexist, juvenile prank. It would be impossible for any viewer to equate the 26-year-old white artist’s privileged suffering at the hands of art galleries to the degradation of life on the streets faced by the gaunt, toothless, and likely drug-addicted women Balber photographed. But the photos had a life of their own beyond the artist’s limited conception. They were perhaps the most haunting artwork I saw during the entire art fair. Balber had inadvertently invited the real world of Miami’s streets — the real favela — into the city of art. Despite their haggard appearance, the women had composed themselves with a certain quiet dignity for the camera, and the effect was to transfer the sense of voyeuristic shame that Balber should have felt onto the viewer, presumably a collector, who is roaming Miami’s shantytown streets only for the weekend. As they stared into the camera and, in turn, into Balber’s eyes, I saw the city of Miami itself looking back at the art world and asking, “Who really benefits from all this?”

In the end, artists that attempt to subvert Art Basel often simply add to its spectacle. On the last night of the fair, Brooklyn-based artist Molly Crabapple staged a hit-and-run event that promised “a guerilla live-drawing insurrection in South Beach”. Her Twitter communiqué announced a bold takeover of the Art Basel streets. “At exactly 8 p.m., a limo will disgorge a cavalcade of depraved performers — burlesque queens, dominatrixes, midgets — on the streets for you to draw.”

Crabapple is the accomplished illustrator and performer behind the highly successful Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, a series of live events/drawing classes usually held in bars or clubs, where burlesque dancers perform and are drawn by the audience. When I met up with her that night around 6 p.m. at the Art Whino fair, though, Crabapple was distraught and texting. Several of the performers had already canceled, and she was looking for a new location in Wynwood, having decided against taking on the upscale art world on South Beach. Finally, Crabapple rounded up four burlesque performers in colorful, spangle-y underwear, big wigs, and six-inch heels. They were joined by a dreadlocked fire dancer and the promised midget, who — with his cut-off sleeves, black hair hanging over his eyes, and excessive eye makeup — looked like a tiny Alice Cooper. The unlikely team looked like something out of an ’80s hair metal or wrestling video. Sadly, at the last minute, they were unable to rent a limo and had to settle for a rented SUV to take them to the event.

The SUV pulled over and blocked traffic around 8:15 on a side street in front of the Miami Aqua art fair. Crabapple paced around the car, calling out to the crowd that this street takeover was a performance of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. The chauffer took pictures with his cell phone from the driver’s seat, while the four dancers and the midget assumed their first pose in the street in front of the car. With an audible “whoosh!” the fire dancer whipped his flaming torches on chains through the air, inches from the audience members’ faces. A crowd started to gather in a circle around the flames and the posing performers. The girls and the midget would stand absolutely still until Crabapple commanded, “Change!” and then would assume a new pose. When the notebooks were distributed through the crowd, the event at last made a bit of sense. It was actually pretty fun. My deformed stick figure drawing of the midget’s rugged pout, as seen through a veil of flames, serves now to remind me of the night when the fair drew to a close. When I see it, it is as if the camera is pulling back and the credits are starting to roll.

VANISHING POINT

Later that same night, I found myself at Max Fish. The fake bar had been hosting packed shows with live bands all week, and their Web site had posted notice of a Saturday-only “top-secret show tonight!” As the bar grew crowded, there was spirited debate about whether the top-secret guest would be Miami local Iggy Pop, last year’s Art Basel hit No Age, or someone else. I reflected that Max Fish the art installation had reached the height of its masterful success. This crowd was drinking in a bar that wasn’t even real, that wouldn’t be around the very next day, waiting to see a fantasy band that existed only in their mind.

Sometime after midnight the whole scene turned back into a pumpkin for me, though, when it became clear there was not going to be a show at all. As I walked back to Wynwood, the Overtown locals were still frantically hustling the last couple of trickle-down dollars out of the art fair tourists. I thought of the staring eyes of the women in Balber’s photos and wondered where they were tonight. I passed a construction site where a condo stood half-built or perhaps half-destroyed. It looked like art. Someone had nailed a “Cash For Your Warhol” sign to it.

On 22nd Street, as a stray dog trotted amiably past SWOON’s still-unfinished mural, I flashed back to Crabapple’s event and to the image that seemed to sum up the entire Art Basel week: four glamorous models and a rocker midget posing as if time had stopped, in front of a group of maybe 10 people trying with great concentration to draw them while they, too, were orbited by a much larger ring of perhaps 50 people taking photos of the people drawing the performers.

Half the mortgages in the state were underwater. Perhaps in a generation or two, due to rising sea levels, Miami would be too. From sandbar to paradise and back to sandbar in a century-long hallucination, a perfect work of art. What were the last words of the historians of Atlantis? I thought of Molly Crabapple’s parting words to the crowd that had gathered. As the girls and the midget got back into the SUV, promptly at 8:30, she waved her arm dramatically to the crowd and said, “Now we will vanish like a puff of smoke!”

What an awful week

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January 22, 2010

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By Tim Redmond

I’m starting to feel as if we’re back in the Bush days, when reading the news was just depressing, all the time, every day. What a rotten fucking week: We lost the Senate supermajority (although I’d argue that we never really had it — as long as Joe Lieberman was one of the 60 “Democratic” votes, and the Democrats kept giving him everything he wants, there’s no way anything progressive was going to happen there anyway.) Health care reform is in serious trouble. Obama’s popularity is tanking, The unemployment figures are still alarming. Air America is shutting down.–

And we just lost one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in modern history, effectively giving big corporations the ability to even further control American politics.

Ick.

But at least this is funny, one of the better comments on the health care issue that I’ve seen:

Meet Gavin Newsom: whine clerk

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January 20, 2010

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Sorry, Maureen, but you omitted more than a few details of the real trials of Mayor Gavin Newsom…

I’m usually a fan of Maureen Dowd’s finely pointed writing, but her interview with Mayor Gavin Newsom in today’s New York Times left me with the sinking feeling that she was writing with an uncharacteristically unsharpened pencil.

Yes, it was funny when Dowd wrote, “It’s easy to picture the lithe and charming Newsom–with the well-cut suits, the electric Telsa, the beautiful blonde wife and baby–advising a Pacific Heights couple on a cabernet with aromas of eucalyptus and mint.”

But beyond that delightful dig, Dowd kept her pencil on an unusually tight leash.

Maybe that’s because Dowd doesn’t know the ins and outs of San Francisco politics and was fooled into misrepresenting Newsom’s whining as the rueful ruminations of a man so very far ahead of his time.

But it’s hard to believe that the indomitable Dowd doesn’t know that Newsom’s political career has been short circuited for a million reasons above and beyond gay marriage.

Maybe the fact that Newsom slept with his campaign manager’s wife isn’t perceived as a deal breaker in circles where everyone always seems to be betraying every one else.

But how about Newsom’s failure to show backbone when then Sup. (and now State Assemblymember) Tom Ammiano was trying to launch San Francisco’s trailblazing health care program–yes, the same one that President Obama has recently and widely praised, and for which Newsom has been happy to take all the credit?

Instead of showing leadership on Healthy San Francisco, Newsom stood back and let Ammiano do the heavy lifting, in face of the threat of legal opposition from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. Newsom’s cowardice on that issue seems entirely understandable, given that, as Dowd points out, “Before he got into politics, after all, he started a boutique wine shop in Napa Valley that blossomed into a multimillion-dollar business.” (Heaven forbid that the former owner of a wine boutique would be seen leading the charge to ensure that the restaurant industry helps employees go see a doctor instead of sneezing into the endive soup and eucalyptus-scented cabernet that the Pacific Heights mafia has come to enjoy.)

But Dowd doesn’t make that, or any other, connection.

Instead, she lets Newsom stick his not-so-subtle knives into Obama’s back on same-sex marriage, without pointing out that after Newsom rushed into gay marriage, he failed to launch a much needed statewide campaign to reach out, across the aisle of intolerance, and help defeat the Prop. 8 party poopers.

The final insult in Dowd’s puff piece is when she lets the current mayor of San Francisco get away unchallenged with his bogus claim that, “we’ve always fought for the rights of minorities and against the whims of majorities.” Try telling that to the immigrants whose families have been ripped apart because gubernatorial candidate Newsom failed to support giving undocumented kids their day in court, before reporting them to the feds for deportation.

But Dowd does at least gives us a preview of what to expect when we stumble unwittingly into a wine store, somewhere in the backwaters of Napa, and overhear the clerk complaining that no one really understood him, back when he was mayor of San Francisco. Meet Gavin Newsom: whine clerk.

Saving ocean ecosystems

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January 20, 2010

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GREEN CITY In the spring and summer months, pacific leatherback sea turtles arrive just outside the Golden Gate to feast on jellyfish. The turtles, which can weigh up to 1,200 pounds and live as long as a century, are some of the oldest reptiles in existence.

In a single year, a leatherback may swim 6,200 miles as it encircles the Pacific Ocean, migrating from nesting grounds as far away as Indonesia to feed off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The leatherback was listed as a federally endangered species in 1970, and scientists now worry that the turtles could go extinct in as little as 10 years.

The ancient reptile may be rare, but its vanishing act is becoming common for marine creatures. Jackie Dragon, a campaign organizer with Pacific Environment, told us large fish populations, including bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, marlin, and certain sharks, have declined by 90 percent since the advent of industrialized fishing in the 1950s. Meanwhile, ocean acidification due to rising carbon dioxide levels has imperiled key species, threatening to alter the food web with potentially drastic implications.

Recently, San Francisco’s ocean conservationists have displayed rare optimism, however, as historic new protections for ocean ecosystems and the leatherback seem within reach.

A coalition of local environmental organizations staged a Jan. 13 event at City Hall to rally for the creation of a new, comprehensive ocean-protection policy at the federal level. Dubbed Wear Blue for Oceans Day, the event drew a crowd of around 75 who donned blue in support of the federal policy, put forth by President Barack Obama last June.

Under the current regulatory system, there are 140 different laws relating to ocean management, and more than 20 disparate agencies, according to Dragon. “They have varying purposes and often conflicting mandates,” she explained. “Right now, it’s inconsistent with a healthy future for the ocean to have a piecemeal approach. And it’s absolutely necessary to appreciate that ecosystems in the ocean depend on a kind of management that takes into consideration the fact that these habitats … need to be looked at from a broader perspective.”

According to an interim report drafted by a 23-member task force convened by Obama to make suggestions for crafting a federal policy, the new approach would place ecosystem protection at the heart of regulatory decisions. Environmentalists hope it will improve the overall health of oceans.

The task force is scheduled to submit its final recommendations to Obama in early February, and the president is expected to announce the creation of the new policy shortly afterward. “The importance of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems cannot be overstated,” the report notes. “Simply put, we need them to survive.” Climate change and ocean acidification are named as top priorities.

A second regulatory victory seems imminent for the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, a San Francisco-based environmental organization that joined Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network in pressing for expanded critical habitat designation for the pacific leatherback turtles in 2007.

The groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for failing to take action for two years. Following a settlement, the agency finally submitted its proposal Jan. 5 for a new protection zone. The critical habitat area would span some 70,000 square miles of open waters along the West Coast.

Chris Pincetich, a campaign organizer with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, called the designation “a long overdue action by federal agencies.” However, the proposal doesn’t limit commercial fishing, which Pincetich notes is one of the greatest threats to the leatherbacks, because they can become ensnared in gillnets. Nor does it cover habitat areas in Southern California, where turtles have been known to migrate, Pincetich said. NMFS will accept public comments on the proposal until March 8.

Although it’s a major step forward, changes won’t be implemented until January 2011 at the earliest.

For the leatherback, with about a decade to fight for survival, time is of the essence.

State of the immigration crisis rally

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January 19, 2010

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Text by Sarah Phelan

As President Barack Obama prepares to make his annual State of the Union address, local immigrant advocates are calling on Obama to mention the need for national immigration reform in his address and to uphold campaign promises to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Describing themselves in a press release as “a diverse group of African, Asian, European, and Latino immigrants” the organizers of today’s protest rally, (from 4-6 p.m at the Federal Building at 7th and Mission Street, thunder and lightning notwithstanding) promised to urge Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Feinstein and Boxer to make immigration reform a priority because of local crises in the immigrant communities.

“The time for reform is now,” Eric Quezada, Executive Director of Dolores Street Community Services, said in a press release. ” The President promised immigration reform on the campaign trail and we are here today to make sure that he keeps his word,”

Quezada noted that Obama pledged on his 2008 campaign campaign trail to pass humane changes to US immigration laws if he were elected President, including a legalization program for undocumented immigrants.
“Immigrants are part of the fabric of our communities, and we need to fix our immigration system so everyone who lives here can contribute as full members of society,” said Biniam Fantay with the African Advocacy Network.

Today’s demonstration is part of “100 days of action” campaign for immigration reform that began in December and is led locally by the SF Immigrant Legal and Education Network and the San Francisco Organizing Project.

Don’t call it a comeback

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January 14, 2010

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By Steven T. Jones

The defensive reaction of some (but not all – some have welcomed this public discussion) Greens to my story this week on the party’s declining fortunes in San Francisco seems to underscore a key reason for the fall: many Greens would rather hurl insults or adopt self-righteous postures than engage in critical self-examination or do the hard work of progressive organizing.

Researching my story, I was amazed to learn that nearly one San Francisco voter in three declines to identify with any political party. That represents a significant opportunity if progressive political parties and entities can figure out how to organize these independent voters and address their issues. It might even create pressure on President Obama to reengage with the left.

Yet the Green Party numbers have dropped just as the DTS ranks have risen. And in the comments section after my story, Greens try to simply deny that reality (falsely claiming a comeback has already begun), question my motives, and write-off the newsworthiness of this story (despite the fact that the Wall Street Journal today published a very similar story to mine).

But I’m more heartened by some of the thoughtful comments about my story, creating an interesting conversation about the relevance of third parties, the mechanisms of power, and the pitfalls of following charismatic leaders. That’s the kind of productive discussion that I hoped my article would create, and I hope that it continues.

Outside SF Federal Building, freedom of assembly is carefully controlled

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January 5, 2010

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By Rebecca Bowe

GSA’s denial of a permit for an event outside the SF Federal Building inspired some art.

Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a homeless advocacy group based in San Francisco, says he’s got busloads of people from cities up and down the West Coast headed into San Francisco Jan. 20 for a rally designed as a plea to the Obama Administration to make affordable housing a priority. But the estimated 1,500 participants in the event, dubbed “Homelessness Ends With a Home,” were left without a home base after word came down from the San Francisco Federal Building that the permit to hold it there had been revoked.

The event has since been changed to a permitted march that will go by the building, but Boden says the message he’s getting from the feds is essentially that freedom of assembly outside the new federal building will only be granted on narrowly defined terms, and with restrictions on the number of people who can attend. The San Francisco Federal Building, a green-design tower on Mission and 7th streets that opened in 2007, houses the offices of senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Jean Gibson, Regional Public Affairs Officer at General Services Administration (GSA), a government agency that manages the new federal building, says the permit denial was “no effort to silence the group,” but purely a decision to ensure functional operation and public access to the building.

WRAP had initially applied to hold the event in the plaza outside the building, and Boden says he specified in his permit application back in October that roughly 1,500 people were expected to attend, and that they planned to use a sound system. GSA approved the application and sent the nonprofit an event permit on Nov. 30, according to Boden. But a couple days later, after he called to ask where the port-o-potties should be placed, he says GSA responded with a disheartening email.

“After further review, General Services Administration (GSA) has made the decision to deny the use of the San Francisco Federal Building plaza area on January 20, 2010,” the email stated. “Thanks in advance for your understanding regarding this matter.”

Meister: Union rights for airport screeners

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December 29, 2009

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Airport screeners and other vital employees of the
Transportation Safety Agency should finally have the basic rights and protections they have so long needed and deserved

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

The underpaid, overworked and otherwise poorly treated airport screeners who are essential to air passenger safety may finally be winning their long struggle for the badly needed union rights guaranteed other federal employees.

There are more than 40,000 screeners –- a first line of defense against terrorism — posted at X-ray machines, checkpoints and elsewhere in air terminals throughout the country. They work for the Transportation Safety Agency (TSA) that was set up in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 1, 2001.

Such related workers as federal border guards and immigration and Custom Service employees are unionized. But in 2003, President Bush denied union rights to screeners and other TSA employees on grounds that their unionization would somehow “threaten national security.”

A majority in the House and Senate voted in 2007 to restore the screeners’ union rights. But the congressional majority wasn’t large enough to overturn a veto threatened by the president, and the attempt was abandoned.

Denying the fundamental right of unionization to the screeners, as the United Nations’ International Labor Organization ruled, violates “core labor standards.”

The screeners’ need for unionization should be as obvious as the nation’s need for their invaluable service. Their complaints are widespread and numerous. They cite, for instance, inadequate pay, low morale, a high rate of workplace injuries, unfair promotion and scheduling policies, arbitrary work rules and high turnover rates.

The screeners’ hope for wining union rights rests primarily with President Obama, who voted as a senator to grant screeners union rights and promised during his presidential campaign to make granting them the rights “a priority for my administration.”

Winning congressional approval won’t be easy, but is also expected, despite stiff opposition expected to be led by a notably anti-labor Republican senator, John DeMint of South Carolina. He argues, much as George Bush had argued, that unionizing TSA employees would amount to putting air security and safety in the hands of those old right-wing bugaboos, “union bosses.”

Senator DeMint and his reactionary colleagues probably will lose their attempt to deprive some of our most deserving workers their basic rights. But they undoubtedly will cause some damage along the way to their ultimate defeat.

DeMint already has managed to stall Senate confirmation of Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Safety Agency and carry out the reforms sought by Obama and TSA‘s employees. He’s invoked Senate rules to postpone the vote on whether to confirm the president’s appointment of a well-regarded former FBI agent and assistant chief of the Los Angeles Airport Police, Erroll Southers, to run the agency.

In the meantime, two government employee unions are competing for the right to represent TSA employees once they are granted union rights. The competition undoubtedly will result in more and stronger employee demands for improved conditions as the two unions vie vigorously to represent them.

One of the unions is the largest of federal employee unions, the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, the other the 150,000-member National Treasury Union. But despite its much smaller size, the Treasury Union won three years ago in competing with the Federation of Government Employees to represent airport Customs and border protection officers.

The unions have been waging a vigorous campaign , signing up members, establishing union locals at airports nationwide, helping workers appeal unfair disciplinary actions, filing grievances against employer mistreatment and other actions. Both unions have promised to press hard for pay raises, better promotion policies and work rules and other matters important to TSA employees.

No matter which union wins, it’s certain that the airport screeners and other vital employees of the Transportation Safety Agency should finally have the important basic rights and protections they have so long needed and so long deserved.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister,com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

Editor’s Notes

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December 29, 2009

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A year ago, we were dancing in the streets celebrating Barack Obama’s election. Now we’re marching in the streets protesting his escalation of the war in Afghanistan — and a lot of us are calling for the defeat of his signature legislation. That’s a failure that goes well beyond a couple of bad policy decisions, and it threatens more than just the next few years of Obama’s presidency.

The late philosopher Herbert Marcuse used to say that the worst disaster of the Vietnam War was the division it created between the baby boomers and their parents, the generational distrust that would last well beyond the final artillery fire. And I fear that the worst legacy of Afghanistan and the mess that is health care reform will be another deep blow to whatever fragile faith remains among young Americans that a well-meaning president and his party can make a difference, the faith that government can accomplish something worthwhile — and that the public sector is worth the fight it takes to save it from a well-organized and lavishly funded effort to continue the privatization of the United States.

The fight over the public option in the health care bill wasn’t just about containing costs, or preventing tax hikes, or mandating fair competition. The insurance industry knew that from the start.

One of the reasons the radical right has always hated Social Security is that it’s a government program that helps people, one that tens of millions of citizens rely on and support. When the government sends you a check every month, you tend to think of the folks in Washington as something other than crooks, liars, and villains.

And if the government offered health insurance that cost less than the private companies, covered more, and was less of a hassle to use, then millions more American voters would begin to realize that the public sector can do some things very well — much better than private industry. And that would be a social transformation on the scale of the New Deal.

So that’s why the insurers and their toadies wouldn’t allow it to happen — and why, in the wake of the Afghanistan fiasco, Obama’s failure to force the issue is such a momentous disappointment.

Just look around the streets of San Francisco at any antiwar demonstration and you see the problem. We’re mad at the president, not at the insurance industry. Nobody’s marching in front of the headquarters of the handful of big companies that have — as a matter of course and intentional policy — destroyed the health care system in America. We figure: hey, they’re just big businesses, doing what they do.

So instead, we’re going to be pissed off for a long time at the man who — maybe for just a moment, one bright shining moment — had the ability to turn around about 50 years of cynicism and distrust that has poisoned American politics. And we should be pissed, because he let us down. He promised us hope. Now he’s giving up, without even putting up much of a fight.

The prison health-care fiasco

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December 28, 2009

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy was recently released after serving time an a California state prison. He continues to report for us on prison and law-enforcement issues.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court the federal three judge panel’s decision forcing him and Californina to release around 40, 000 inmates, but I just can’t fathom the rationale behind this appeal. The Santa Cruz Sentinel article says that California is proclaiming the courts have overstepped their authority by ordering this release, but hasn’t anyone in the state government considered that maybe the feds are ordering this release because California’s government has overstepped its bounds?

Don’t Arnold and the state government see this isn’t about just health care for inmates, but also about rational laws, rational sentencing, and treating human beings with dignity and respect? I know the majority of the public would rather bury its head in the sand than face this issue, but this issue is in your living rooms, in your classrooms, and on your streets. It isn’t just the gang-banging jerk from the hood that’s being thrown in jail for ridiculous amounts of time in California — it’s also middle class addicts, college students etc … It’s your neighbors, your friends’ kids, and your kids that are all affected by this insanity. All the judges are trying to do is bring a small amount of sanity back into your fucked up state.

From the article:

“But at the same time, Schwarzenegger and prison officials have been urging the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the three judges have trampled on the right of the state (my emphasis) to run its prison system and operate within its budget.”

Isn’t it ironic that the state’s appeal is based on the premise that the courts are trampling the state’s rights? The panel’s order is based on the fundamental constitutional rights of, mostly, Americans to receive adequate medical and mental health care! Isn’t there a huge push in this country with Obama’s healthcare bill to ensure that all Americans are able to receive healthcare? Why is it any different for Americans in prison? Not just Americans though, but any human being in this country? Wouldn’t you, if you were on vacation and became sick in another country, have the hope that you would be able to get adequate medical care? People are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.

I have Hepatitis C. I was supposed to be on a program called chronic care, in which I should have seen a doctor once every 60 days to get my blood drawn to check my viral load. I was not seen for the last 18 months that I was in prison in California. Another time I received an injury called a calf strain while playing handball. My calf muscle detached from the tendon. By the time I was given an MRI and the results of the MRI the muscle had healed, but healed improperly, so now the right calf muscle looks deformed:

I had a bunk mate, Mark, who was having severe problems with various organ failures. His legs would become so swollen that he had a hard time walking to the restroom and his stomach so distended he looked as if he were pregnant.

The only way he could get medical treatment was to do what’s called a “man down” (this means he would have to have the medical staff come to the building by proclaiming it was an emergency medical situation. In other words, there would have to be an emergency alarm, the entire yard would have to be closed down and the medical staff brought to the building) to get treatment. The building co’s were so disgusted by the situation that they would encourage Mark to do a “man down” just to be seen. Ultimately Mark was put in to hospice and died. (see picture of Mark’s legs taken in December of 2008).

I specifically remember a time when Mark did this “man down” and the nurse (or nurse’s aide) tried to talk Mark into staying in the building until the following day because the doctor that was supposed to have seen Mark that day had called in sick.

I am sure there are plenty of people who will read this and say to themselves or to others that if the people didn’t commit the crimes than they wouldn’t have to worry about such things as healthcare. Or that inmates are getting better healthcare than people on the streets. Or that inmates don’t deserve healthcare. To these people I say this: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. I wonder how the pictures attached to this blog may cause people to think a little differently about the entire situation. These pictures are just a small idea of how healthcare really works in the system, the reality of it. So, my question is this: Who is really getting their rights trampled and who stood up for Mark’s rights?

SF soldier’s death was tragic and unnecessary

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December 28, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

Staff Sgt. David H. Gutierrez was killed on Christmas Day by an IED near Kandahar Air Base.

The flags at the State Capitol are flying at half-staff to honor Sgt. David H. Gutierrez, a soldier from San Francisco who was killed in Afghanistan on Christmas Day. Obviously, the death of this 35-year-old father of three by an improvised explosive device is sad and tragic, but it’s a dangerous fantasy to cast his life as the price we must pay for freedom and security.

“David was committed to the safety and protection of his fellow Americans and we are forever grateful for his service. We join all Californians in honoring David’s sacrifice and we send our thoughts and prayers to his family, friends and fellow soldiers,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in a public statement.

It may be true that Gutierrez had noble intentions, but this was also a senseless and unnecessary death, one of what will be an increasing number of dead American soldiers caused by President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. And the more we accept the notion that this is a necessary and heroic effort to protect Americans, the higher the death toll will rise and longer this so-called “War on Terror” will drag on.

Flares in the Political Dark

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December 22, 2009

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Norman Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics. He wrote the weekly “Media Beat” column from 1992 to 2009. His latest book is “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” (2007). To read more from Solomon, visit www.normansolomon.com.

The winter solstice of 2009 arrived as a grim metaphor for the current politics of healthcare, war and a lot more. “In a dark time,” wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, “the eye begins to see.”

After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking healthcare reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration.

In recent months, the responses from the progressive base to the Obama presidency have often resembled stages of grief — with rotations of denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance.

Mobilization of progressive movements to pressurize Obama in the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill has always been essential. It hasn’t happened. Instead, among Democratic loyalists, reflexive support for the latest line from the administration has made it easier for Obama to move rightward.

In 2010, we should concentrate on generating the kind of public information, vigorous debate and grassroots organizing that could shift the center of political gravity in a progressive direction.

At every turn, progressives should be putting up a fight — not only in all kinds of venues outside the electoral system but also inside the Democratic Party. Winning elections will require doing the methodical and difficult work of running candidates in Democratic primaries, sometimes against entrenched incumbents.

For instance, that’s what stalwart anti-war progressive Marcy Winograd is doing in her challenge to Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Los Angeles area. Across the country, dozens of strong progressives are running for Congress with a real chance to win. They need our volunteer help and our financial support.

In some congressional districts with many progressive voters, blue dog Democrats are running for re-election without any declared primary opposition so far. That should change.

It’s time for progressives to get out there and fight the good fight in election campaigns. We should do what our conservative and centrist and mushy-liberal adversaries least want us to do. They don’t want more progressives to seriously engage in electoral battles.

During the last year, left to their own devices, the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House have managed to demobilize the progressive base that swept them into office. The latest nationwide polls are foreshadowing grim consequences; Republicans express far more eagerness to vote in 2010 than Democrats do.

In Washington, the conventional wisdom of top Democratic strategists has run amok, continually splitting the difference with Republicans. All year long we’ve seen Congress undermine basic progressive principles, whether for healthcare or peace or economic justice or environmental protection or civil liberties.

Despite the Democratic Party’s leadership, we have a huge stake in thwarting GOP ambitions and in replacing tepid Democrats with progressives. It might be more comfortable to just engage in the politics of denunciation — but we also need to change who is casting votes on Capitol Hill.

Among progressives, there’s a surplus of frustration, anger and despair. Let’s transform those downbeat energies into fuel for the imperative political work ahead.

FAIR: The 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards

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December 21, 2009

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FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.

The 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards

For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

Starting this year, FAIR has the somewhat dubious honor of reviewing the nominees and selecting the winners. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, without further ado, we present the 2009 P.U.-Litzers.

–The Remembering Reagan Award
WINNER: Joe Klein, Time

Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09), not altogether impressed by Obama’s announcement of a troop escalation in Afghanistan, wrote that a president “must lead the charge–passionately and, yes, with a touch of anger.”

He described the better way to do this:

Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance. He might have found, or created, a grieving spouse–a young investment banker whose wife had died in the World Trade Center–who enlisted immediately after the attacks…and then gave his life, heroically, defending a school for girls in Kandahar. Reagan would have inspired tears, outrage, passion, a rush to recruiting centers across the nation.

Ah, Reagan–now there was a president who could inspire people to fight and die based on lies.

–The Cheney 2012 Award
WINNER: Jon Meacham, Newsweek

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham declared (12/7/09) that Dick Cheney running for president in 2012 would be “good for the Republicans and good for the country.” He explained that “Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people…. A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way.”

While the 2008 election might have seemed a sufficient judgment of the Bush years, it’s worth pointing out that at beginning of the year (1/19/09), Meacham was adamantly opposed to re-hashing Cheney’s record, calling it “the rough equivalent of pornography–briefly engaging, perhaps, but utterly predictable and finally repetitive.” The difference? That was in response to the idea that Cheney should be held accountable for lawbreaking. Apparently a few months later, the same record is grounds for a White House run.

–The Them Not Us Award
WINNER: Martin Fackler, New York Times

The New York Times (11/21/09) describes the severe problems with Japan’s elite media–a horror show where “reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced a relatively spineless press that feels more accountable to its official sources than to the public. In their apparent reluctance to criticize the government, the critics say, the news media fail to serve as an effective check on authority.”

The mind reels.

–The Thin-Skinned Pundits Award
WINNER: Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cilizza got into trouble when, in an episode of their “Mouthpiece Theater” web video series, they suggested brands of beer that would be appropriate for various politicians. What would Hillary Clinton drink? Apparently something called “Mad Bitch.” The video, unsurprisingly, was roundly criticized, and was pulled from the Post site. So what lesson was learned? Milbank complained (8/6/09) that “it’s a brutal world out there in the blogosphere…. I’m often surprised by the ferocity out there, but I probably shouldn’t be.”

Yes, the problem with calling someone a “bitch” is the “ferocity” of your critics.

–The Sheer O’Reillyness Award
WINNER: Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Channel–TWICE!

1) Asked by a Canadian viewer, “Has anyone noticed that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?,” Fox’s O’Reilly (7/27/09) responded: “Well, that’s to be expected, Peter, because we have 10 times as many people as you do. That translates to 10 times as many accidents, crimes, down the line.”

2) Drumming up fear of Democrats’ tax plans: “Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That’s not capitalism. That’s Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn.”

Perhaps Castro was president of the United States in 1982-86, when the top rate was 50 percent. Or maybe all of the 1970s, when it was 70 percent. Or from 1950-63, when it was 91 percent.

–The Less Talk, More Bombs Award
WINNER: David Broder, Washington Post

Post columnist Broder expressed the conventional wisdom on Barack Obama’s deliberations on the Afghanistan War, writing under the headline “Enough Afghan Debate” (11/15/09):

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision–whether or not it is right.

–The Racism Is Dead Award
WINNER: Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote (5/5/09): “The justification for affirmative action gets weaker and weaker. Maybe once it was possible to argue that some innocent people had to suffer in the name of progress, but a glance at the White House strongly suggests that things have changed. For most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant. Everyone knows this. Every poll shows this.”

For the record, “every poll” does not actually show this; the vast majority of Americans continues to recognize that racism is still a problem. Cohen went on to write months later–still presumably living in his racism-free world–that he did not believe Iran’s claims about its nuclear program, because “these Persians lie like a rug.”

–The When in Doubt, Talk to the Boss Award
WINNER: Matt Lauer, NBC News

Today show host Lauer announced a special guest on April 15: “If you really want to know how the economy is affecting the average American, he’s the guy to talk to.” Who was Lauer talking about? Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke. The ensuing interview touched on the Employee Free Choice Act, which Lauer noted was supported by many unions but opposed by some large corporations–leading him to ask Duke, “What’s the truth?” Yes, look for “the truth” about a proposed pro-labor bill from the new CEO of an adamantly anti-labor corporation.

–The Socialist Menace Award
WINNER: Michael Freedman, Newsweek

Newsweek’s “We Are All Socialists Now” cover (2/16/09) certainly turned heads, but one of the stories inside explained in more detail the real threat. As senior editor Michael Freedman asked: “Have you noticed that Barack Obama sounds more like the president of France every day?”

The real problem, though, is what that’s going to do to us Americans, says Freedman: “If job numbers continue to look dismal, or get even worse, an ever-greater number of people will start looking to the government for support…. It’s very easy to imagine a chorus of former American individualists demanding cushy French-style pensions and free British-style healthcare if their private stock funds fail to recover and unemployment inches upward toward 10 percent and remains there.”

Pensions and healthcare for all–this is worse than we thought!

–The Iraq All Over Again Award
WINNER: Too Many to Name

After the invasion of Iraq, countless journalists who had treated allegations about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as facts were embarrassed when there were no such weapons to be found. So you’d think they’d be more careful about thinly sourced claims that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. But in 2009, many journalists are still willing to treat such allegations as facts.

-NBC’s Chris Matthews (10/4/09): “As if Afghanistan were not enough, now there’s Iran’s move to get nuclear weapons.”

-NBC’s David Gregory (10/4/09). “Iran–will talks push that country to give up its nuclear weapons program?”

-Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly (9/25/09): “All hell breaking loose as a new nuclear weapons facility is discovered in Iran, proving the mullahs have been lying for years…. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has now reached critical mass. And worldwide conflict is very possible. Friday, President Obama, British Prime Minister Brown and French President Sarkozy revealed a secret nuclear weapons facility located inside Iran.”

Some even went further, turning allegations of a nuclear weapons program into the discovery of actual nuclear weapons:

-ABC’s Good Morning America host Bill Weir (9/26/09): “President Obama and a united front of world leaders charge Iran with secretly building nuclear weapons.”

–The Talking Like a Terrorist Award
WINNER: Thomas Friedman, New York Times

In a January 14 column, New York Times superstar pundit Tom Friedman explained Israel’s war on Lebanon as an attempt to “educate” the enemy by killing civilians: The Israeli strategy was to “inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical.” Friedman added, “The only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians–the families and employers of the militants–to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” That strategy of targeting civilians to advance a political agenda is usually known as terrorism; Osama bin Laden couldn’t have explained it much better.

–The It Only Bothers Us Now Award
WINNER: Wall Street Journal editorial page

When Barack Obama only called on journalists from a list during a press conference, the Wall Street Journal did not like the new protocol (2/12/09):”We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.”

Actually, Bush was famous for calling only on reporters on an approved list; as he joked at a press conference on the eve of the Iraq War (3/6/03), “This is scripted.”

–The No Comment Award
WINNERS: MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Rush Limbaugh

When asked by Politico (10/16/09) to name her favorite guest, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski named arch-conservative Pat Buchanan “because he says what we are all thinking.”

Rush Limbaugh on Obama (Fox News Channel, 1/21/09): “We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles…because his father was black.”

Choosing fear over kids

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December 21, 2009

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As a global treaty designed to protect children around the world celebrated its 20th anniversary last month, the United States found itself in the sole company of Somalia as one of just two countries that still has not implemented the most widely ratified human rights treaty in recorded history.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), available for adoption since 1989, has now been ratified by 193 nations around the world and is seen as a universal guide to helping governments ensure that the basic needs of children are met. Although the Reagan administration played a major role in drafting the convention, experts say it has now been “intentionally misinterpreted” by conservative groups, which claim implementation would threaten American sovereignty and diminish family values.

The convention is set out in 54 Articles and two Optional Protocols and covers four main objectives: nondiscrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. During last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to review the treaty, saying: “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land. It is important that the U.S. return to its position as a respected global leader and promoter of human rights.”

Yet since Obama has been in office, there has been little movement toward ratifying the convention, which sets international standards in the provision of children’s health care, education, and legal, civil, and social services. For children’s rights advocates, this failure of the U.S. to legitimize the rights of the child has resulted in the country’s loss of credibility in the international community.

“It just undermines us internationally as a leader of children’s issues,” said Jo Becker, Advocacy Director for the Children’s Rights division at Human Rights Watch, one of more than 200 organizations partnered to the volunteer-run Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the CRC. “The U.S. is a country that claims to care a lot about children, both nationally and internationally, but it hasn’t ratified a treaty endorsed by virtually every government in the world. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

But while Meg Gardiner, current chair of the Campaign for U.S. Ratification, acknowledged that the U.S. customarily takes a long time to consider and ratify a treaty of any sort, she noted that implementing the convention is also being delayed by frequently misdirected and misguided concerns from various individuals and organizations.

The CRC is a legally binding treaty, and once the U.S. ratifies the agreement — by getting two-thirds of the Senate to approve it — it is committed to undertake actions and policies to reach the standards it advises. The government must submit a detailed report to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is made up of 18 members from different countries and legal systems, within two years of ratification and every five years thereafter.

The committee reviews the progress of each country’s government, then sends recommendations back to the country in question. Although U.N. officials claim that this is a collaborative process, not one that is antagonistic in form, opposition groups view this as a risk to U.S. self-governance.

“A forum for dialogue is fine, but we absolutely do not support the notion of world government,” John Schlafly, a lawyer at Eagle Forum, a conservative interest group that is campaigning against U.S ratification of the CRC, told the Guardian. “We think America is a self-governing country and that we should make our own laws. Our courts and officials should not be subject to decisions and viewpoints of those in other countries, but remember that our Constitution is our supreme law.”

Quoting Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution — which says that all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be “the supreme law of the land” — Schlafly said if the CRC is ratified then the U.S will sign away any authority it has over children’s rights, with federal laws being changed to meet the criteria in the CRC.

But Jonathan Todres, an associate professor of law at Georgia State University and coeditor of a book on the CRC and the possible implications of its ratification, told us that’s a “misunderstanding” of the process involved. He said the CRC would almost certainly be ratified as a “non-self-executing treaty.” That means that although the U.S will have to comply with international law, it would not take effect domestically until the U.S. adopts legislation to fulfill treaty obligations.

He added that the United States also has the right to add reservations to the treaty if there are any articles that might conflict with U.S. law. For example, Article 37 of the CRC indicates that no “life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age,” something that certain states in the U.S still impose.

Despite supporters’ desire for a “magic bullet” that will improve the lives of children in the U.S., they said the treaty will operate as a template for the government to assess how well U.S. law protects children. While Article 24 decrees that “states parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to … health care services,” ratification will not mean an immediate implementation of universal health care for the 8 million to 9 million children who do not have access to it, campaigners say.

“It in itself can’t change law. It is a road map that informs a dialogue around the way we treat children,” said Vienna Colucci, managing director and senior advisor for policy for Amnesty International. “It is a set of principles for the well-being of children, to help inform national discussions about what they really need to thrive. But any implementation of laws go through the same process any bill would.”

The U.S already has ratified the two Optional Protocols of the Children’s Convention, including the protocol on the sexual exploitation of children and enlisting children as soldiers, strengthening the exploitation protocol by adopting the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Todres said this should be used as an example of what ratifying the entire CRC could do.

Many who oppose the CRC fear it will diminish the rights of the parent, such as when it comes to disciplining children. Article 9, which says children can be separated from their parents against their will when “competent authorities subject to judicial review” determine it is in their best interest, is often cited as a loss of parental freedom.

In March of this year Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) put forward a brief Parental Rights Amendment to the CRC, asserting that “the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right,” and deauthorizing the ratification of a treaty that would infringe on such rights.

According to Michael Ramey, spokesman at Parentalrights.org — an organization that claims to “protect children by empowering parents” and an affiliate of the Home School Legal Defense Association — the amendment currently only has six cosponsors in the Senate, a far cry from the two-thirds majority it would need to pass.

“This really is not a question of whether the CRC is all that bad or kind of bad. It is whether it is an improvement for us on what we have now,” he told us. “We already have laws in place against child abuse and neglect in all 50 states and we don’t gain anything by ratifying. None of the good parts of the convention are missing from U.S law.”

However, Todres said the U.S still has child laborers, citing a current bill in Congress that is seeking to strengthen child labor provision related to the agriculture sector. He also reminded opponents that the U.S has a relatively large high school dropout rate, with some U.S children going hungry and hundreds of thousands at risk of sexual exploitation each year.

“Ultimately if one is concerned about the loss of parental authority, then one should look at the text of the CRC itself,” he said, highlighting 19 provisions in the text that stress the role of the parent in the child’s life. “Drafters understood, when ensuring the rights of children, they would be most successful when ensuring the rights of the family too.”

Although there are other articles in the convention that conflict with American law — it prohibits corporal punishment, for example — Linda Elrod, a law professor at Washburn University and supporter of the Campaign for Ratification, said she had not experienced countries receiving “report cards” from the U.N. Committee in the 20 years it had been operating.

“My reason for supporting it is that it is basically a bill of rights for children that says they are people,” she said, stressing how Article 12 in particular gives the child a voice and a way to express it. “We helped draft the U.N. convention and got the rest of the world to adopt that standard. Yes, it gives children rights, but I don’t think this takes away from anyone else’s rights. It just adds a balance.”