Obama's talking to himself again

It's good to know that Mr. Obama's omnidirectional placation sensors are still online, even after a grueling campaign season. (And by 'good to know,' I mean 'oh god.') In an aptly entitled piece - 'Snatching Defeat out of the Jaws of Victory' - Robert Kuttner points out that the president is negotiating with himself again, before he's anywhere near the negotiating table. This time it's about the so-called fiscal cliff, with regard to which Mr. Obama has freely declared, via the apparently indispensable Erskine Bowles, that he may be 'flexible' on the question of putting tax rates for top earners back to what they were before the Bush tax cuts took effect. (And by 'be flexible' he means 'may not bother with it, even though I have leverage now that the election is done, and even though the bulk of my constituents want it.')

Kuttner's best line:

Obama still has a novice’s habit of softening his negotiating position going in, rather than holding possible concessions in his pocket for the final round. Republicans just take the concession as the new starting point and don’t concede anything in return. Where is his learning curve on this? Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman would weep.

Today in 'What Everyone Knows' (11-28-12)

Everyone knows that public sector pensions are driving US states into insolvency, and that the road to fiscal sanity runs through virtuous austerity, and requires that we rein in these public sector commitments. That piece of common knowledge leads to stories like this one: stories that blame the pension problem - that is, that parrot 'fiscally conservative' politicians who blame the pension problem - for looming threats to vital governmental functions.

Here's how all that looks in Pennsylvania, where the state budget secretary released a report (a policy report, mind you, not a political document reflecting party discipline on a matter of ideology) saying just what you think it would say. First: "Without reforms, the state could be forced to cut funding for public safety, health and human services, education, roads and bridges." Then, the solution, as reported by Reuters: "Instead of raising taxes or cutting current retirees' pension payments, [PA Governor Tom] Corbett should consider increasing employee contributions, raising the retirement age and moving away from a defined-benefit plan, the report recommended."

What this story and stories like it leave out is that the pension problem is not just a problem; it is the core of a political tactic, and the tactic involves treating the problem as a fetish. The pension problem becomes a fetish in the sense that it is treated as a magical phenomenon, with no discernible causes or relations to other states of affairs. So it's not as if pension funds lost value when the bursting housing bubble took down state revenues, or when the stock market collapsed afterward. (Recognizing that factor might put the question of increasing revenue on the table. Or the question of what else took down state revenues, including shady Wall Street financing deals.) And it's not as if these public funds were throwing good money after bad by contracting with Wall Street investment managers, whose work underperforms both their benchmarks and cheaper index funds that are not actively managed. (Recognizing that factor might put on the table the question of our ongoing fealty to Wall Street, and of Wall Street's virtually unacknowledged responsbility for the dire economic straits that most people not on Wall Street now face in one way or another.) It's just that we've finally come to see that we can't afford these pensions, no matter what.

I mention this fetishization of the problem not to say that the underfunding of public pensions is not really a problem - it is a problem, don't get me wrong, given the horizons of our politics and economic policy now. I mention it because it is they key to a political strategy, one of the defining ones of our time. The pension issue is constructed not just as a problem but as the problem, when it might be construed instead as one of the many symptoms of some deeper problems. But treating public sector pensions as the main problem is nicely compatible with campaigns to shrink the state, and to discipline labor, and to foment tensions between private sector workers and their public sector counterparts as a way of disciplining labor, and so on.

Thinking Thanksgiving, part 2: What to the Wampanoag is the Fourth Thursday in November?

Yesterday I introduced the idea of bracketing as a way of accounting for my enjoyment of things that might otherwise be objectionable, like the film '300.' My hope was that this idea could then serve as a way to explain my posture toward Thanksgiving. The posture I have in mind is probably familiar. I recognize that the events we're meant to celebrate today were part of the first act in a drama of expropriation, colonial aggression, and, depending on how one consents to use this most controversial of terms, genocide. But this recognition does not move me to repudiate the holiday, or to reframe it as a day of mourning. Yesterday I thought bracketing was the key to this ambivalence. Today I think the key to making that point has to do with the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Thinking Thanksgiving, part 1: on '300'

I am a big fan of the film '300.' My admiration for the film survives the liberties it takes with history, which might just mean that I'm not an historian. More interestingly, my admiration also survives the film's ethical flaws. I mention this now, today, because I think Thanksgiving Day counts as a holiday for me, rather than as a day of mourning, for the same reason that '300' counts as a piece of entertainment rather than (just) as a piece of propaganda. The reason: I've become quite skilled in the fine art of judicious bracketing. By the time I finish this post I hope to have decided whether this is a good thing.

Today's Sports Short (11-21-12)

Apparently some kid scored 138 points by himself in a D-III game (on 108 shots, but still). I have one thought about this, inspired by Jalen Rose's hilarious account of Kobe scoring 81 (video) against his Raptors: "Hey Coach... you think we might wanna double-team that guy?"

To Purge or Not to Purge or What it Means to Have a Big Tent

  Just in the midst of some good ol' fashioned Democratic chest thumpig, here we have reminders of congresses past. Digby at Hullabaloo reminds us that Blue Dog democrats still live and breathe. Senators from states that Mitt Romney carried have their doubts deficit fighting strategies such as raising revenue and cutting loopholes/subsidies to energy companies. Sens. Landrieu (LA), Hagan (NC) and Baucus (MT) want to make sure that their state's interests are protected (along with their asses in the 2014 campaigns). In short, despite the "mandate" given to the party on taxing the rich and the weakness of the Republicans on this issue, the "financial cliff" battle will be the same absurdist drama as every other attempt to govern at the federal level. Sigh.

Shit Can Get Funky Being Human or Finally! Richard Pryor's Heir Apparent!

I don't say this often and if you ask me about it tomorrow, I may say something different but I dare say comedian Louis C. K. is approaching Richard Pryor levels of genius. There is a lot that can be said about the use of the word genius but that is a conversation for another day. For me aside from his vernacular genius

his amazing emotional bravery

and his physical comedy gifts

what I realize is the heart of Pryor's appeal is his insight that what links us all together are the fucked up things of  social existence. Unlike Bill Cosby who forged an early Civil Rights comedic persona on the bourgeois commonality of Black people and white people (child rearing, living in the suburbs, marriage, etc), Richard Pryor understood, that those qualities were lies and it was the fucked up, angry, awkward, dangerous and inconsolable yet hopeful sides of us that holds us in common.

That for me is where Louis CK lives. Whether it is the homoeroticism of homophobia

                                                             


the mysteries of sex

or a confrontation with race

 whatever the issue, Louis CK is unafraid of putting himself at the center of that surgery. Louis CK may be the bravest man in entertainment. Anyone that can make Abe Lincoln fresh and different after 160-odd years of solemnity is fastwalking it to genius town.

Oil, Twinkies, and Casting Lead, again: Today's links (11-16-12)

1. Small, very small, victories, the DoJ edition: The Justice Department extracts $4bn from BP to settle criminal charges in the Gulfwater Horizon disaster, payable over 5 years. BP's profits last year alone were $40bn. And the damage is many orders of magnitude worse than $4bn. We'll see what happens with the civil suits.
2. Get your hands off my twinkies, you dirty commie capitalist: If you've heard about Hostess' plans to shut down and you, like Hostess' CEO, want to blame the striking workers for taking away your Twinkies, not so fast: "as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then-CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256." There's more.
3. Poking the bear, Hamas edition: Given Israel's eagerness to rain lethal violence on the occupied territories at the slightest provocation, you might be wondering why Hamas would fire rockets across the border. Well (and for the moment granting this 'they started it' frame for the sake of argument), it probably wasn't Hamas to begin with, and taking out Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari will likely make things worse instead of better. (Though 'worse' is relative in this astoundingly asymmetric struggle.) It turns out that Israel's leaders are highly motivated to ignore this complexity and gin up a conflict. It's election season, and, as Ahmed Moor puts it, death in Gaza is an effective Israeli electoral strategy. (Helena Cobban provides interesting background on Hamas here and here, from around the time of Operation Cast Lead.)

Today's Best: The Philosopher's edition (11-15-12)

1. Today's best way to celebrate World Philosophy Day: As reported by Inside Higher Ed: "I've gotten word from a philosophy major at Howard University that he and other students will be occupying Alain Locke Hall on Thursday, November 15, to protest tuition rates, administrative mistreatment of janitorial staff, and program cuts."
2. Today's best diss from a philosopher : The mighty Jurgen Habermas writes that the German Constitutional Court is 'solipsistic and normatively depleted.' Wish I'd had that line handy in some arguments with former friends. ("You're not just inconsiderate. You're solipsistic and normatively depleted.")
3. Today's best beneficiary of the view from nowhere (journalistic version): popular-musician-turned-politician Michel Martelly, known during his performing days as 'Sweet Micky,' has taken to the Haitian presidency with enthusiasm.

Architectual Symbolism and Geographies of History or MLK is in a tight spot

    This past weekend was spent at a marvelous gathering of Black philosophers at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Free time allowed for me to wander down to Washington, DC and take time to peruse the sights. On my list was the National Mall's newest exhibit, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. I hadn't paid very much attention to the debates around the monument (facial expression, wording of the quotes, etc) and simply as someone whose childhood is chocked with memories of visiting the national memorials and the sense of awe that I felt.
  Awe remains an appropriate term to describe my experience at the King memorial.

Playing off of King's use of the metaphoric mountain of freedom, the memorial depicts King as having been hewed from the mountain of resistance and challenge to the quest for human freedom and dignity. The break in the wall is stunning as one mentally shapes the narrative around the constituent parts

In the late afternoon light one seeming walks through a darkened tunnel into an expanse of light and peace

The piece or rather the King character narrates the exhibit underlining the meaning of the monument's design and lays out the character's vision of a just world. Along a curved wall reminiscent of the Vietnam War Memorial, quotes from King's writings surround the peaceful setting.
























King stands, arms folded, though I think the arms should have shown him striding (yes, Toward Freedom) with a manifest temperment 'pon his brow.

No doubt a smiling King would have been problematic at that scale but there is a severity about him that we are not used to from the photographs of his life.

  Like a pharaoh of old (insert the crook and flail for peace) King stands in judgement of a nation too devoted to its harmful past. Yet garden like, the space invites cool reflection as the wind gently blows across the water's surface.

Twixt the Jefferson and Washington Memorial, King is positioned in the midst of the purveyors of the original sin King gave his life exorcising. It should be noted that the Lincoln Memorial is not within sight of King's.

 Though King's visage is not one of a man satisfied with what sits before him, this monument to him sits in the midst of an urban garden peaceful, reflective, contemplative and welcoming.

 The King Memorial is inviting and as I spent an autumn day their I watched all manner of citizen come and go, laugh and  think, no doubt on the man and his legacy, its transformative power and all those that are and will be touched by the ripples of it.

Yes Were Are Here or Y'all Should Be Ashamed Vol. (I am Looking at You Cornel West)

  In an ongoing demonstration of what even the most sympathetic allies think of as deeply problematic, Dr. Cornel West (I would mention the other guy but do we really care) continues his criticisms of the policies of Pres. Barack Obama. Except policy critiques are no longer enough. Apparently Dr. West's consistent attempt to establish a new Black authenticity demands that Barack Obama be seen ideological, thus

Obama should be criticized for the use of drones in Pakistan, the lack of real corporate sector reform and magical thinking around poverty in the US and his failures to even imagine a real re-organization of the manner in which US economic, social and political culture arraigns itself.  But this shit above? This shit above is insulting to anyone that once looked to Dr. West for insightful meditations on the nature of US society. Cancel Christmas because those days are over! There are more reasoned, engaged, credible and mature ways to engage in political debate and criticism. However Dr. West seems to be ramping up the Black authenticity debates of the 60s by accusing Obama of a "fear of free black men and the like. This shit is childish and beneath people that want to engage in a real criticism of centrist neo-liberal policies. What Dr. West is doing is the opposite and his slinging of dated, nationalist provocation is beneath rationality. I am almost waiting for West to start talking about whose has the bigger afro and the longer penis. (F*** the flourishes) Dr. West You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself.

New Jambangle department: 'grand bargain hunting'

Now that the election is over, we've already been introduced to the Next Big Thing in politics. Turns out it's one of the previous Big Things: the so-called Grand Bargain. This is the name that's gotten attached to the on-again, off-again attempt to exchange cuts to entitlement programs (the democratic concession to the bargain) for higher taxes (the republican concession). The bargain-hunting impulse has manifested itself most recently in Obama's Deficit Commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson; in the scuttled 2011 debt deal between Obama and Boehner, effectively chronicled by Matt Bai in the Paper of Record; and in the 'fiscal cliff' that will loom larger and larger in the media imagination - like this - as a December deadline for automatic spending cuts and tax increases approaches.

The Simpson-Bowles Commission, also known as "The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform" (its formal name) or 'The Catfood Commission" (the derisive moniker chosen by some of its critics), established our bipartisan commitment to the mania for deficit reduction and entitlement reform. There are many questions to ask about just how bad it is for sovereign, currency-creating states to run deficits, what kind of shape social security is actually in and what it would take to fix it, who stands to gain from the most popular schemes for reforming public programs (here's a hint: who would want to take money that would go to a public program and divert it into something that earns someone a commission?), and just what it means for Democrats, in a tradition stretching back at least to Clinton and Robert Rubin, to thumb their noses at the New Deal in the pursuit of bipartisanship, or in pursuit of the post-public-service goodies they get for pursuing certain forms of bipartisanship while in office.

So we here at Jambangle hereby introduce a new addition to our recurring offerings. Alongside 'Y'all should be 'shamed" and 'Today's Links' and 'What [blank] looks like,' we will have (hopefully) regular updates on 'grand bargain hunting.' The name is negotiable - if you have ideas, please share them - but whatever we call it, we will be watching.

Election 2012 in historical perspective, maybe

I wonder what The Detective thinks of this piece from Naked Capitalism, which attempts to read the election against the currents of US political history. The money quote, or one of a few:

The 2012 Election was a demonstrably party line affair. ...[I]t was a canvas with a deeper meaning in US history than the results for individual candidates and parties: this is the first time in American history that all of the rural vote was committed to a single party. That seems a non-earthshaking statement, but is non-trivial looking at the socio-political landscape in the USA previously, and has implications for the future.

Some of the comments complain about the author's shortsighted view of the relevant histories, but I'm not a practicing historian and so can't evaluate. So the ball's in your court, Detective.

That aside, here's a good line developing the author's claim that the election was less about the candidates (and what I've and others have referred to as the electoral spectacle) than about deeper forces:

Obama simply had to convince his side of the electorate that ‘he cares about people like us,’ while Romney had to convince his that he was a nativist bigot. Both succeeded in misrepresenting themselves successfully...

Today's links (11-8-12): Ole Miss is not post-racial, David Brooks is still David Brooks, and education is a tough racket

1. Today's best repudiation of facile post-racialism: Ole Miss students protesting Obama's victory - by doing what at least some people found worrisome enough to refer to as a riot (n.b.: it takes a lot to get journalists to say that white people are rioting), an activity that  apparently featured the shouting of racial epithets. Let's hear it for the land of cotton - good times there are indeed not forgotten.
2. Today's best nod to a more subtle approach to race: a nice Seattle Times article on Jack Turner's fine book, Awakening To Race.
3. Today's glimmer of hope that David Brooks isn't who we thought he was, until you remember that he is:...

The show's over. Now for the serious politics.

The best thing I saw during our recently concluded election season came from the Working Families Party in New York. Like many of us, the people in the WFP are distressed at the state of US politics, dominated as it is by the two legacy parties and their deep-pocketed backers, indifferent as it often is to the needs and interests of ordinary citizens. Like not-quite-as-many of us (though more than one would think), the people in the WFP translate their distress into work aimed at putting us on a better path. The precise path they have in mind is interesting, and I'll say more about it in a moment. More interesting, though, is what the path leads to. The WFP has a serious politics in view, and signaled it with the image below. I ran across the image near the end of the campaign, and immediately recognized it as an emblem for the kind of serious politics that we need, now more than ever in the wake of this presidential race. 

Don't You Have Something Else You Should Be Doing? or Happy Election Day!

  Hey you! Unless you live in one of the states that has early voting Ohio, Florida etc and have voted already don't sit on your a** looking at this screen, go vote! We will talk later. And in case you need some encouragement . .  .

Race in Real Time

A few days ago, I was talking with a friend about a sticky state of affairs that bubbled up in my office a few weeks back.  Like most situations that arise in an office occupied by humans, this one was probably more than a bit overblown; it was also marked by a clash of egos, and viewpoints that were just far enough apart to ensure a heightened level of rancor.  Relevant musical aside: In “Lush Life”, the classic jazz ballad penned by Billy Strayhorn, the protagonist remarks that the object of his affection wears a “poignant smile” that is, perhaps, “tinged with a sadness”, a sadness that (may) mark her true feelings for him. I love that line, if for no other reason that it stands out as a most elegant speculation; the lovelorn protagonist thinks it’s there, and the possibility of its presence alters the essence of their interaction. That “tinge” – it changes everything.

Back to my office.

The conflict was tinged with a racial dynamic that was evident to everyone caught up in the discord – everyone, it seems, except the lone white male in the middle of the melee’.  As I tried to explain the contours of the conflict to my friend, and illuminate the sundry issues that I thought needed to be hashed out, I lingered on the racial dimension of the conflict, in an attempt to explain how its presence served to further complicate an already complicated situation. In response, my friend offered an old, familiar chestnut that wrecked the edifice I was trying to construct: “Well, if it were me, I would look past all the race stuff you’re talking about…”

Yes, of course you would. Thanks.

I left our meeting feeling crummier than usual in the wake of this “advice”, and immediately began wondering why.  Was it the willful ignorance that my friend thought he could simply impose over all things/issues that even remotely carried within them a racial component? Was it the “I don’t see race” canard that irked me more than usual? It took me a few days, but I think I finally figured out why this little “post-racial” nugget stuck in my craw more than usual.   It occurred to me that my friend has little to no substantive experience interacting with people of color in a sustained way. His anchoring institutions (church, schools, neighborhood, civic organizations – the places that comprise the totality of his social universe) are overwhelmingly white.  I may be wrong about this (although I doubt it) but I don’t see him entering into any type of sustained interaction in which he would find himself in the racial minority. So, when I and other colored folks present him with scenarios that cry out for racial analysis, he substitutes the platonic ideal of himself in the situation – the guy he would be if he ever found himself in a long-term relationship with a gaggle of colored people struggling with the vagaries of race.

To be sure, we all place this platonic version of ourselves in situations that will more than likely never actually happen to us. Why yes, if I ever landed in the middle of a war, I would bring honor upon myself and upon my grateful nation, thank you very much. And yes, if I found myself in the middle of a terrorist plot to rob the Nakatomi Towers in Los Angeles during Christmas, I would singlehandedly thwart the plot, even with shards of glass stuck in my feet. Come to think of it, if I ever held high office, I would always be thoughtful and passionate – and the accolades my colleagues would heap upon me would be most deserved.  The point here is that we all do this. And even when we know what we’re doing, and own up to our unique set of shortcomings, we hedge our bets in this little game, reluctant to concede the possibility that our humanity might intervene: “I’d like to think that I would…”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem.  My friend told me that he would “look past all the race stuff.” Yup – that’s just what his best self would do if given the chance.  His platonic doppelganger would never seek to engage in the hard, slow work related to racial understanding; for him, the best position is to remain “above the fray” when it comes to white supremacy and its many-headed minions. (Incidentally, I think this is why the dubious concept of “post-racial” is so popular with a contingent of white folks in the country right now.)

But here’s the kicker about this little game: while my friend gets to imagine he would behave like Atticus Finch in all matters racial at every point, he’s also comparing this idealized version of himself with the real me. My friend – who in his mind would be a superb ally to the Negro – floats above it all, while I confront the concentric entities of race, blackness and white supremacy with my humanity painfully intact. It’s an unfair comparison, and everything I do will more than likely fall short in Atticus’ eyes.

Well, at least now I know what I’m up against.

Today's links (11-2-12 edition)

1. I wanted to write something about the latest act of historiophotic gentrification (been waiting a long time to use that), this one involving Spike Lee's ouster as director of the James Brown biopic (to be replaced by the guy who directed 'The Help'). But Aaron Overfield beat me to the punch in bringing the gentrification meme to this week's head-scratching movie news, and I couldn't bear to take this on after thinking about Nina Simone all week. Even though it may be a bit strong to say that Lee was 'ousted' and 'replaced', just based on the circuitous paths that films take to getting made, one needn't be a standpoint theorist to think that the James Brown story  might benefit from having a black director. There's something to say here about the overlapping but different things that soul music and r&b mean to people of different races - you have this thought to thank for the still from 'Animal House' that appears above - but, like I said, I can't bear to think about it anymore. (The guy from 'The Help'? Really?)
2. The Feminist Wire is 5 days into a great, great series on Black women in academia and their health. In an interesting coincidence, I had just read this interesting piece in Meridians (subscription required to get the entire piece) by Grace Hong that begins by reflecting on the health costs of being an academic WB&F (while black and female).
3. I came some days ago to condemn facebook, now let me praise it: were it not for my friends posting on fb, I would never have discovered this wonderful marker of GOP campaign strategies jumping the shark, again. Then again, maybe black people in 2012 should vote Republican -  because, you know, Lincoln freed the slaves. In semi-related news, I'm really tired of hearing about Obama's war on coal. My fault for living - for watching TV - in central PA, I guess.
4. Sometimes a headline makes you angry even when it sort of gets things right. Like this one. Seriously: what if Mike Bloomberg is right, and Sandy was a function of climate change? Bloomberg? Some smart communication theorist must have a name for this. It happened as the Iraq War, the latest one, descended into an orgy of ill-motivated waste and theft and senseless death and stupidity. It happened as the financial crisis exploded into our lives and, well, continues to rain shrapnel on us all. In all these and still more cases, some people tell us how things are for years and years only to get ignored, until the truth can't be denied anymore and then all of a sudden the people who couldn't countenance the foolishness of the doomsayers before suddenly become converts - but without giving any credit to the proselytizers of doom. Maybe Bloomberg believed in climate change before Sandy - I dunno, I've tried not to pay attention to the man. But the fact that Forbes makes him the prophet of climate realism is just - well, it's not quite like saying that Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan are going to save the world from economic collapse. But it's in the ballpark. Still, not a bad article from Forbes.