Four miles outdoors today, a bit more wind than I like, but still a nice morning to be out. Time was 35:34 — something I need to bring down. On the iPod: Marty Moss-Coen’s interview with Chris Hedges on WHYY from yesterday.
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The clearest way to explain my thoughts on empire and the unlikelihood that any of the major-party candidates will do anything to slow its growth is to quote Chris Floyd from his Empire Burlesque blog:
All indications continue to suggest that those who look to Obama to undo “the terrible damage done over the past eight years,” as Bruce Springsteen put it in his public endorsement of Obama last Friday, will be disappointed – especially as they watch Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other perpetrators of war crimes enjoy their comfortable, lucrative retirements in the years to come.
Basically, the Washington power structure is all too willing to allow the Bush cadre to fade peacefully into the sunset, to retire, as Floyd writes, with nice pensions and rich book deals without having to pay the price for their brazen destruction of the constitution and the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis.
It leaves progressives like me in a difficult position — do we vote for Obama knowing full well that he will disappoint us, or do we vote for someone like Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader and potentially shift enough electoral votes to John McCain?
We’ve been down this road before, and will likely head down it again. While some on the left blame Nader and his supporters for the 2000 election, claiming he siphoned off just enough votes to allow Bush to take Florida and the election despite Gore’s popular vote majority, the reality is that other factors — fraud, human error, Gore’s inept campaign, press bias — led to the Bush debacle.
But that doesn’t mean that, if enough voters back McKinney or Nader, it couldn’t swing the election to McCain. That’s what makes this such a tough call.
Chris Hedges is ready to walk away from the Democrats. During a radio interview on WHYY’s Radio Times, he expands on a theme he focused on in an op-ed in this weekend’s Philadelphia Inquirer. He writes that the American left has failed, that it has lost its nerve and
has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.
Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves.
The left, he says, has forgotten a central lesson of its own history, that political change is “created by the building of movements.”
The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us.
And this has left the field to the corporations, what Hedges calls the “rise of a corporate state, and by that I mean a state that no longer works on behalf of its citizens but the corporations.” Progressives have allowed the Democrats to abandon their core because the Democrats know that progressives have nowhere to turn and are too afraid — especially after seven-plus years of Bush and Co. — to flee the party. Demcorats know that Progressives will vote for Obama in the general election, regardless of his votes on bankruptcy and other corporate reforms and his lack of anything more than rhetoric on the war. And they will vote for Clinton — should she win the nomination — despite her vote to authorize the Iraq invasion and her vote on Iran.
Obama and Clinton both will be better than McCain, but they will not challenge the corporate status quo. They will not challenge American exceptionalism. Their presidencies would be better, but only by several degrees. They are not reformers.
And we shouldn’t pretend that they are.
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A story in today’s Record of Hackensack explores the kind of conflicts that state legislators who also hold local or county offices face, placing their divided loyalties within the context of the state budget.
New Jersey legislators who hold other elected offices face a dilemma as they consider Governor Corzine’s budget: Vote to do what is best for the state as a whole or what best serves their community.
At issue in the proposed budget, of course, is a series of cuts that could have huge consequences at the local level — in particular, a reduction in aid to municipalities. State Sen. Paul Sarlo, for instance, is both the mayor of Wood-Ridge — which is losing $393,602 in aid — and the vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Sen. Steven Sweeney is a Gloucester County Freeholder and member of the Budget Committee; and Assemblyman Gary Schaer, vice chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, is council president in Passaic — a city slated to lose about $1 million in aid. What concerns will they bring to the discussion and how will they weight the various arguments? Will aid to their communities be saved at all costs — and what would those costs be?
All three gave an indication of the lens through which they plan to view the issue:
“We are able to demonstrate what the unintended consequences of this cut would mean,” Sarlo said. “It’s not just my district, it affects the entire state.”
Does that mean the aid will be saved? The governor already is signalling a change of heart, though he has been adamant about keeping spending at last year’s level and not increasing it. If aid is increased, what gets cut instead?
Already, the governor has proposed shutting some state parks, eliminating the state Department of Agriculture and cutting aid to hospitals and colleges, so reinstating the aid without increasing spending will be difficult, especially when all of the other constituencies are pushing to reverse their own cuts. And that does not take into account the desire among some — antipoverty groups, for instance — for new programs.
Legislators who hold multiple offices may argue that they are in the best position to understand the needs of their dual constituencies, but that argument fails when you consider that many legislators, such as Linda Greenstein, Joseph Vitale, Kevin O’Toole and Peter Biondi, served at the local level, giving them a pretty good handle on how state actions affect local government.
The reality is that dual office-holding is a conflict of interest, creating dual loyalties and an expanded power base that could result in Sharpe James-style corruption.
“When all is said and done, the reason you don’t have dual office-holding is it’s a basic conflict of interest,” said Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics.
That inherent conflict is often overlooked because the possibility of pension-padding and double-dipping gets more attention, Reed said. Yet she believes the conflict-of-interest issue is the strongest argument against the practice, and when legislators have to consider how an issue will affect their different constituencies they have already crossed a line.
“Dual office-holding is about that clarity of who do you represent,” Reed said. “It’s very difficult to be fair and not have a conflict.”
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I stayed inside today — the wind outside Dow Jones, where I do my running, was pretty harsh and, well, I guess I’m a bit of a wimp. I managed five miles on the treadmill in 42:25 — 8:29 pace — while listening to a mix. Finished off with some weights — upper body.
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The Corzine administration is at war with itself over the environment, with the latest skirmish involving a resolution that
would give the Planning Commission the power to oversee and coordinate any laws that impact the environment and planning, oversee capital improvements of more than $1 million, including state Green Acres acquisitions, and evaluate any public expenditures based on how they meet the goals of the state master plan.
The key issue, according to environmentalists, is a recommendation
to give the Planning Commission the power to override DEP rules and local laws involving such issues at where development may occur, including near water
resources, and where sewer lines may be placed.“The governor said they were only drafts,” Tittel said. “But here is the State Planning Commission trying to implement them without meeting with environmental groups or the public. The planning commission is saying if it is not consistent with what we say, you should not be allowed to do these things.”
The governor has tabled the resolution — which, hopefully, means he’s planning to hold the line on this and protect the environment. Efficiency is great, but environmental protection is key.
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Hank Kalet 