Friday, February 29, 2008

Iraq Campaign 2008 (4:55 pm)

If you ignore Spencer Ackerman’s revisionist dismissal of the Vietnam anti-war movement, his piece on the newly-formed Iraq Campaign 2008 is informative. What is this new coalition?

A coalition announced Monday and called Iraq Campaign 2008 seeks to tie anxiety over the faltering economy to anxiety over the duration of the war. Part of its agenda is targeting what it calls “obstructionist” members of Congress—Democrats as well as Republicans—that don’t seek a rapid withdrawal from Iraq.
There’s been talk of this framing going around, and on it’s face it’s a little problematic. For one, it’s clear that Bush would not have been rebuilding the safety net if we didn’t go to war, so the opportunity cost comparison isn’t necessarily apt. And Paul Krugman has pointed out the small jolt the war has given to our economy more broadly. But overall, I think it’s an effective frame in that it contrasts what good Democrats and Republicans value. How do we build make sure our society is prosperous and just? Endless war or sound investments that benefit a broad swath of the populus?

Edwards is the frontman of the campaign, which I think is a good position for him. Sure, he’s vulnerable for his war vote, but he’s owned up to it and this allows him to use his populist platform on a larger scale. And targeting vulnerable Senators from Dem-trending states is highly cost-effective and smart. Let’s hope these folks make an impact.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Friday evening links (4:24 pm)

1) Sweet graphic from Foreign Affairs on world-wide credit card use.

2) Digby on transformational politics.

3) Obama’s organization in Texas.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Breaking: Contempt plans (11:26 pm)

Today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a major step forward on contempt. In a letter to Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the Distrect of Columbia, Pelosi certified the subpoena breeches by Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten:

The undersigned, The Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, pursuant to the attached House Resolution 979, One Hundred Tenth Congress, hereby certifies to you the failure and refusal of Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, to appear, testify, and furnish certain documents in compliance with a subpoena before a duly constituted subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. The undersigned further certifies to you the failure and refusal of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff, to furnish certain documents in the custody of the White House in compliance with a subpoena before said committee. These failures and refusals are fully shown by the certified copy of the House Report 110-423 of said committee which is also hereto attached.
In a second letter—this one to Attorney General Michael Mukasey—Pelosi demanded to know within one week whether the Justice Department plans upon forbidding Taylor from considering the charges.
According to the testimony of your predecessor, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and your recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department intends to prevent Mr. Taylor from complying with the statute and enforcing the contempt citations against Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten. You claimed that “enforcement by way of contempt of a congressional subpoena is not...   read more

posted by Brian Beutler, Media Consortium | start the discussion

Women Behind Bars (12:57 pm)

I just noticed Dana Goldstein’s post on TAPPED about the staggeringly high incarceration rate for black women between the ages of 35 and 39. (One in 100!) If you want to get a sense of the human cost beyond the statistics, you really need to read Silja J.A. Talvi, who has literally written the book on this phenomenon. I can’t recommend Women Behind Bars enough: Powerful, heartbreaking, but necessary. Read it.

posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Kate Sheppard is on a roll (4:13 pm)

Read her take here on NAFTA, which challenges her colleagues’ strange dismissal that it’s an effective, or at least neutral, policy.

I think both Clinton and Obama are right in plugging for a reevaluation of the labor and environmental standards of the deal and its counterparts, though they may well be doing so in Ohio now largely because it’s politically expedient in a place where the deals have few supporters. Even if the deal has had little impact in the United States outside of concerns about the corporate welfare it provides, as Ezra argues, there is a serious need to reevaluate it based on what it’s failed to deliver for our trade partners, and for the decline of labor and environmental standards that it facilitates.
Aside from the crucial labor and environmental concerns, it’s also important to mention the effects NAFTA has had on immigration patterns. Here’s some numbers from 2004, which have only worsened since.
Philip L. Martin, a leading farm-labor demographer, estimates that just seven percent of 900,000 migrant farm workers employed in the U.S. pre-NAFTA were undocumented. Ten years later, half of the two million U.S. farmworkers are undocumented.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Survivng the recession, one bulk item at a time (3:56 pm)

Interesting stuff from Slate’s Daniel Gross on Wal-Mart’s recent success, surprising given the instability of the economy. While retail sales have stalled across the country, Wal-Mart’s are rising, along with its stock price. What gives? Well, it’s actually pretty intuitive. For one, Wal-Mart isn’t in the luxury goods market.

The overwhelming majority of its sales are not impulse buys. Even in a recession, most people don’t drastically reduce their spending on staple groceries, light bulbs, or diapers.
Also important is the company’s brand identity — if people’s pay checks are getting smaller, they are more likely to turn to the store with everyday low values — and its international growth. On a larger scale, it’s important to understand Wal-Mart’s resiliency, especially if labor and its allies are to reform some of the company’s more heinous business practices.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Obama’s defense on public financing (1:09 pm)

Ezra’s right here. There’s a simple solution to McCain’s attacks about public financing.

So far as the whole public financing controversy goes, is there a reason that Obama shouldn’t simply say, “I never wanted to have a campaign run by corporate interests, and I never understood that I could have a campaign funded by more than a million Americans making small sum contributions?” His ability to get more than a million separate individuals to contribute is remarkable, and should be turned into the story.
I came around on this too, and I think this route paints McCain (or Clinton) as not only cynical about civic action (in the very loose, consumerist sense) but beholden to large donors.

posted by Adam Doster | 3 comments

The Slacker In This Race (1:07 pm)

Frank Rich takes on Hillary Clinton’s last remaining arguments about how she is the candidate of action. Check it. It’s brutal and right on the mark:

…It’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating

The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3…

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.


posted by Jarrett | 3 comments

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