This morning, the always brilliant and ever-sensible Ezra Klein  wakes us up with this:

The 111th Congress refuses to go quietly into that sweet night. Friday, of course, saw the $850 billion tax deal sent to President Obama. On Saturday, the Senate broke the filibuster protecting the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rules. On Sunday, it passed the food safety bill. Those three accomplishments — all of them significant in their own right — now join the 111th's other achievements: Health-care reform, the financial-regulation bill, the stimulus, Ted Kennedy's national-service bill, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program and student-loan reform, just to name a few. And the 111th may not be done: Chuck Schumer wants them to stick around to pass a bill giving health benefits to the Ground Zero responders.

That is not to say it hasn't failed on at least some of what it promised to do.

But for now, spare a thought for the 111th, the most productive Congress we've had in decades.

Ok, so that said…

And without even a sip of coffee to help me get off on what may prove an epic rant for a Monday morning, does THAT sound like the miserable, anti-progressive Congress and Administration that a few very vocal bloggers have been telling you it was for the past two years? If it does. you're contributing to a reckless, never-satisfied, never-realistic, and never-reasonable ideological framing that is as destructive to this nation as the Republicans are trying to be every day.

No, there is nothing wrong with "criticism," as so many of the complainer-apologistas need to hear to feel validated, if not exonerated from their complicity in helping to drive down Congress's approval ratings, widening the "enthusiasm gap," and turning the House back over to the Republicans. But there is a lot wrong with making those  criticisms so relentless, so vicious, and so irrationally intense that it merely fuels Republican message machines, dominates the media narratives, and tears down a very fragile relationship with those center-to-right leaning independents who still control our elections. We are already suffering from all that, and the 112th hasn't even begun yet.  And when it has, the "it's not progressive enough, good enough or fast enough" crowd will be blogging away as if they had nothing to do with the disemboweling of a painfully brief period of Progressive governance; one that miraculously intervened after 8 years of hideously incompetent conservative governance, which itself followed 20 years of mostly ruinous conservative hegemony. Despite their frequent carping to the contrary, those perpetually dissatisfied critics very much did play a role in that evisceration.  And anyone watching the past 18 months knows it. They've been rabidly gnawing at the fabric of this administration since being denied a grossly overrated "public option"—something which was always little more than a hacked-out consolation prize that the purists used to mollify and outrage the Single Payer hopefuls who never EVER had a prayer of success with the Blue Dog coalition and Conservadems in control of Congress.

The loss of a single policy failure, combined with the disappointment that comes with realizing that one Presidential election cannot possibly undo years of conservative operatives and policies buried in our Federal agencies, courts, state department, military, and local governments, became the defining attitude of the day. And the results, as the midterms just demonstrated, have been positively wretched. Hope has turned to horror. And not because it was inevitable. But because Obama never had the real majorities so many imagined that he did, and rather than work diligently to build them, progressives largely sat back as a few petulant voices controlled the media narratives and destroyed whatever leverage we may have had to move forward. Was Obama and his team blameless in all of this? Of course not. They've made many tactical and spiritual blunders. But every administration does. Just as every administration in our history has been criticized for not delivering on some of their promises. That's just the nature of our system, if not modern politics everywhere. No president can just reverse all that the previous president did wrong, or all of politics is nothing but a circular road to nowhere. It takes time, and the consistently expressed will of the people to make real and lasting change; a populist will that must be expressed by larger movements than mere parties can muster. The teaparty just proved that. Now the progressives must prove it again.

We are where we are, and it's not a pretty place to be. But there is still a chance to improve that place. Retaking the House in 2012 is a long shot, but it must be a key goal of a real and more potent progressive movement that we must build, and starting now. Because without the House, and a stronger Senate, we have no chance of any President fixing anything in the short or long term.  And if the "I want all the ponies I was promised" ideologues (and the stealth right wing operatives gleefully building atop their mawkish malaise), whose controversies are critical to their publishing revenue, continue attacking this current administration with the same intensity they have deployed thus far, then the productive 111th Congress will not be the last casualty.  The next victims will be the 2012 Senate, and probably the White house. And that will thrust our fate into the hands of these Teapublicans, a political class of know-nothings unseen in our history. A group that might not even be legally sane, let alone able to govern a diverse and complicated nation faced with an almost unmanageable number of complex issues.

The likely outcome of that transfer of power will be catastrophic. It will thrust new dead-weight atop a plunge already in progress; a dive so fast and steep that this nation is rapidly sinking toward a new depth that will feel like a dark age tinged with a backlit media glow.  By not coming together and giving President Obama a more unified base of progressive support that can help him chip away at the plutocratic excesses and religious conservative zealotry that forge the political plasma he was elected to work within, we are risking one of the most colossal nation-state meltdowns in history.  We will find ourselves deep in a new abyss, the contours of which will be defined by leaderless, science-less, reasonless, and totally senseless ignorance, malfeasance and greed.

At risk is nothing less than a complete dismantling of most liberal policies and achievements that made America the model of a modern nation that it has been—or at least pretended to be. And from that tragic and unnecessary gutting of our modern heritage, the American experiment will probably never recover. If that happens, our lack of health care and other progressive issues will pale in comparison to the even uglier, and probably totalitarian country we will have to become in order to appease a desperate, ignorant and myopically gullible Fox-fed public that will accept any solution that keeps our pathetically antiquated trains running anything close to on-time.

By pretending that perpetual dissatisfaction is the same as constructive criticism, and thinking every interest group can get every prize it thinks it deserves without first working with every other group to achieve a real and lasting control of this government, the entire game will be lost to a ruthless and unrelenting conservative-corporate enemy. For want of a better and more perfect pony, and right this very minute, America will lap the entire pack of empires that stumbled and fell, and be reduced to one more also-ran in the horse race of history.

 

 

The baby boomers and the price of personal freedom

As the postwar baby boomer generation begins to enter comfortable retirement, their children face a future of massive debt and uncertainty

Yet the big question of our time, after the financial crisis and the prospect of years of low growth and high unemployment, remains what it was in 1968. Capitalism cannot continue as it has at home and abroad. There needs to be a countervailing force to hold it to account and keep it honest. CEOs cannot enrich themselves for ever, without limit, with no wider economic and social consequences. If today's market economies cannot create jobs and prosperity for the mass of the working population, the restiveness will grow.

Although written in August…

this essay didn't get nearly enough play in America.  While it focuses on the cultural sea changes in Britain since the 1950s, its central premises use American counter-cultural events, memes and movements as the defining frames of almost every substantial change that has affected both of our nations since the end of World War II.

The bottom line? Despite some social changes which have unquestionably been good, our dismantling of the old cultural and political regimes have not seen a corresponding rise of new ones that can govern, or govern well. And the consequence of that will now be seen as the conservative lunatics in both countries have taken the reigns of power, with far less knowledge of, nor interest in, the goals of social justice that defined (at least our popular conception of) ourselves for decades.

While the American left, armed with ever scarcer charity dollars to produce the advocacy efforts we desperately need, progressive billionaires seem disinterested in the struggle, and a social networking/media revolution appears far more centered on selling corporate entertainment products and the technology and journalism celebrities who help them to pimp those products to an ever shrinking proportion of the electorate that still has any disposable income at all.

It the wake of this new digital ship of fate,  the principles of  social justice which defined the aspirations of western culture for two generations now seem to be regarded by too many as quaint relics. Like so many of the defining words, images and ideals of the Woodstock generation, they feel to be vectored toward the deep six of history. And when they're gone, I fear that the weight of whatever ghost ship remains on the surface—a lifeboat carrying only the very wealthiest of survivors, for as long as it can stay afloat—will ultimately capsize and sink us all.

We'd better find a better boat,  or learn how to swim under water.


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Those Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right

We're a Crowd making a list

As the midterm elections approach, there is a need for a list of Obama Achievements that progressives can use for voter and media education efforts. The administration has had far more significant accomplishments than the media have given much notice to, and better information can and will help to motivate and educate voters.

Media perception of the administration has been obscured by an unprecedented number of national disasters and crises, all of which were inherited from the prior administration, or related to 30 years of conservative Republican policy decisions. Despite a hyper-partisan and nearly dysfunctional political climate in one of the most critical time-lines in our history, the administration has still forged an impressive record of positive and progressive legislation and direction. 

This project will document those achievements in a crowd-sourced public list built solely with volunteer collaborators.  It will be authoritative, and not just limited to only  laws and executive orders. It will also include the initiatives and intangible gains the administration has made in changing the tone, substance, and effectiveness of the presidency on behalf of all the American People, and not just the richest 1%.

The list will assist politicians, analysts, strategists, campaign mangers, GOTV workers, and volunteers in their many efforts from now until the November elections—and beyond to 2012. With strong wins in an always challenging midterm, we can work to move the Obama administration toward a more productive second half that isn't crippled by a contentious Republican majority in the house.

How you can help

Give us just 10 minutes a week for the next month, making just one edit (or citation source) for just one entry. This alone is a huge help. And if 20 others do one or more, we get the work down quickly, and with an economy of effort for everyone (except the project admins).

Just visit the public landing page here:      http://bit.ly/obamawiki

Once you're granted access to the Google group  (you'll be notified by email) to both the Wiki site and our authoring document (on GoogleDocs), you can help anywhere you choose.

 


List example

The actual list (in a Google document) is not yet public, but here's a preview of a single category from it. Notice we try to keep it simple and readable, with any sources appended via short, simple Ref links. In this example, many entries still need rewriting, and the all important source. That's were you come in.

     Banking & Financial Reform

  1. Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) —  a program to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector. Ref
     *  Banks have already repaid 75% of Federal TARP Loans (a.k.a. Bailout), bringing cost down to only $89 billion by April, 2010   Ref
  2. Closed offshore tax safe havens Ref
  3. Negotiated deal with Swiss banks to permit US government to gain access to records of tax evaders and criminals
  4. Ended the previous policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource American jobs; the new policy is to promote in-sourcing to bring jobs back
  5. Ended the previous practice of protecting credit card companies; in place of it are new consumer protections from credit card industry's predatory practices

 

 

* A primary source is a document, speech, or other sort of evidence written, created or otherwise produced during the time under study. Primary sources offer an inside view of a particular event. In this case, a good primary source would be a speech written by Obama or a piece of legislation. By traditional definition, newspaper articles if written at the time of study are considered primary sources, but for our purposes they are 2nd choice sources because they are not from the horse's mouth so-to-speak. Even so, they are acceptable here.  In many cases, citing both types of Ref is ideal, but never required.