Monday, March 24, 2008

Welcome, Progress Illinois (12:12 pm)

In These Times interim web editor and contributing writer, Adam Doster, being a humble and stand-up guy, has not yet plugged his exciting new employer, Progress Illinois, on this here blog. So, I’ll just have to go ahead and do it for him: Progress Illinois is a brand new website providing news and commentary on issues important to Illinois working families and the progressive movement at large. They’ll be covering Illinois politics, with an eye toward the state’s five or six tight congressional races, the presidential campaign (as long as our favorite son is still in the mix), and a host of topics that have nothing (and everything) to do with electoral politics (labor, education, the war, etc.). Considering the dearth of good online coverage of issues facing Illinois citizens, this website’s more than welcome.

In what is a loss for In These Times, Adam will be moving on soon to work for Progress Illinois. But as long as Adam is still writing and blogging daily for the progressive movement, everybody wins.

Read a few of his most recent pieces by clicking the links below:

*Blueing the Collar Counties
http://progressillinois.com/2008/03/20/blue-ing-the-collar-counties

*Hillary’s Big State Hoax
http://progressillinois.com/2008/03/14/-big-state-hoax

*Ozinga for Congress?
http://progressillinois.com/2008/03/20/ozinga-for-congress%3F

*UNITE-HERE tells Trump, “You’re Fired!”
http://progressillinois.com/2008/03/14/unite-here-tells-trump

Good luck, Adam.

posted by Jarrett | 1 comment

The Obama doctrine (11:42 am)

I urge everyone to read Spencer Ackerman’s cover story over at TAP, “The Obama Doctrine.” By speaking at length with Obama’s foreign policy team, he lays out two central tenets of the Illinois’ senator’s foreign policy vision that differentiate him from both Clinton and McCain: a rejection of fear and an emphasis on “dignity promotion.”

As Hayes’ points out, the piece doesn’t address a few key aspects of Obama’s platform that don’t necessarily gel with said vision.

My only question is why the hell they want to add 90,000 troops to the US Army, refuse to call for a ban of mercenaries, and won’t commit to a full withdrawal.

It’s also debatable whether military counterinsurgency programs are the best means to meet the needs of the world’s dispossessed (I’m skeptical to say the least). But an approach that takes into account local context and human needs is certainly preferable to the Bush line, which pushes democracy as a cure all, and a Commander in Chief who reinvisions our place in the world is long overdue.

The Obama foreign-policy team describes it as “the politics of fear,” a phrase most advisers used unprompted in our conversations. “For a long time we’ve not seen much creative thinking from Dems on national security, because, out of fear, we want to be a little different from the Republicans but not too different, out of fear of being labeled weak or indecisive,” another top adviser says. Identifying that fear as the accelerant of the Iraq War mind-set is the first step to a new and innovative foreign policy. John Kerry was not able to argue for fundamental change in foreign policy because he was consumed by that very political fear. Obama’s admonition to Democrats is much like Pope John Paul II’s to the Gdansk shipyard strikers — first, be not afraid.

The only thing I’m scared of: what if the voters reject it?

posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment

The world’s scariest graph (10:47 am)

Apropos of my post below, here is a good graphic representation of U.S. household debt in relation to GDP, one that shows how much our economy’s growth has relied on credit as opposed to broadly shared wage increases. (h/t Anya Kamenetz)

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Red ink rising (9:37 am)

Dean Starkman has a great piece in this month’s CJR on the coverage of the credit card industry in our nation’s financial publications. Academics, documentarians and others, he argues, have written extensively on the shifting relationship between consumers and their plastic and how it has affected people’s lives negatively.

These non-business-press sources place their credit-card story within a broader context, that of a besieged American middle class caught in an iron vice of stagnating incomes; shrinking disposable income; rising costs for health care, housing, and education; the aforementioned usurious and rapacious practices of the credit-card industry; a growing, consolidating, and increasingly sophisticated debt-collection industry; and, to add insult to injury, a new bankruptcy law that closes the courthouse door to formerly eligible debtors.

This narrative, as we will see, is fully supported by credible anecdotal and aggregate data and happens also to be true.

The business press, on the other hand, has written the Wall Street narrative but largely ignored the repercussions on Main Street.

The financial press, I would suggest, did not rise to the journalistic challenge presented by this radical shift. Focused on traditional earnings and marketing stories, it didn’t really ask how it was that retail banking, of all things, the maturest of mature industries, had become a phenomenal driver of earnings growth and share price performance. Instead, it stuck to the script:

This speaks to a broader critique of media coverage on the economy, one that many have made recently regarding the housing bubble. For one,... read more

posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment

Hagee, nowhere to be seen (9:30 am)

It’s far from a perfect comparison, but the coverage Rev. Wright has received from the national media as compared to John McCain’s active courting of Rev. John Hagee is pretty astonishing. Steve Clemons did the dirty work:

Using Nexis and Google News, I went ahead and did another search this morning. How many of the nation’s largest daily newspapers ran stand-alone articles about McCain’s outreach to a bigoted and nutty televangelist?

Here’s the list:

Washington Post — Zero

New York Times — Zero

Los Angeles Times — Zero

Boston Globe — Zero

Chicago Tribune — Zero

USA Today — Zero

Wall Street Journal — Zero

posted by Adam Doster | 2 comments

Friday, March 21, 2008

Free Trade Trickery (9:40 am)

If anyone else has been confused about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s position on free trade and NAFTA, check out this short article by The Nation’s Washington Correspondent John Nichols. The piece exposes Clinton’s attempts to hoodwink voters into thinking she’s anti-free trade.

posted by Sanhita Sinharoy | 1 comment

Thursday, March 20, 2008

He did it again! (11:17 am)

This time, in a written statement! Honoring the fifth anniversary of the war!!!!!

“Today in Iraq, America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism. The security gains over the past year have been dramatic and undeniable. Al Qaeda and Shia extremists — with support from external powers such as Iran — are on the run but not defeated.”

God have mercy on us all. Via HuffPost.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

One nation under Elvis (10:42 am)

Rebecca Solnit, one of America’s most astute and beautiful writers, has a challenging and engaging piece in this month’s Orion about racial and economic schisms in the environmental movement — and the progressive movement more broadly.

So on the one hand we have white people who hate black people. On the other hand we have white people who hate other white people on the grounds that they hate black people. But that latter hatred accuses many wrongfully, and it serves as a convenient coverup for the racism that is all around us. The reason why it matters is because middle-class people despising poor people becomes your basic class war, and the ongoing insults seem to have been at least part of what has weakened the environmental movement in particular and progressive politics in general.

Instead of reaching out to “the old Progressives, Wobblies, and agrarian insurgents” of rural America — who more often than not value conservation, economic justice, and a host of other progressive ideals — we hide behind an oversimplified, and in some cases outdated, analysis of race and class. The solution, she says, is breaking out of our comfort zone and engaging people of all backgrounds in honest discussions about identity and power.

We must also talk about class again, loudly and clearly, without backing down or forgetting about race. This is the back road down which lie stronger coalitions, genuine justice, a healthier environment, and maybe even a music that everyone can dance to.

Solnit hits... read more