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LabourList: Life, Liberty and Happiness: If This is Socialized Healthcare, Sign Me Up!

2009-08-13T11:57:43Z

By Laurie Penny

My partner suffers from a joint disorder which requires regular operations, paid for by the British NHS. His most recent procedure was performed without anaesthetic by a drunken surgeon wielding a rusty hacksaw. As I forced a mouldy rag between his teeth to stop him screaming, an official wearing Nazi insignia burst in and informed us that limbs were not considered an NHS spending priority, so dirty chisels were employed to remove both his legs and one of his arms. My partner is now a triple amputee, and I am forced to prostitute myself for heroin to numb the pain of living in an Orwellian super-state. God save the Queen.

This decidedly made-up story is hardly more ridiculous than the lies that Republicans have been peddling about the NHS all week. To set a few spluttering records straight: patients over 59 are not denied heart surgery; Professor Sir Stephen Hawking has come forward to say that he would not be alive without the NHS; and Republican hysteria over 'death panels' reflects more accurately the situation in the United States than in Britain. On both sides of the Atlantic, lofty officials get to choose how best to allocate a finite amount of healthcare funding -- the difference is that the NHS bases decisions on its analysis of how best to deliver equitable healthcare for all, rather than basing decisions on the interests of its shareholders.

Brits all over the world have been stepping forward to defend the NHS, with 'WeLoveTheNHS' becoming a trending topic on Twitter this week, surely the ultimate signifier of public passion. The British are proud of our healthcare system, and even members of the right-wing Conservative party have pledged to defend it, knowing that without promising to uphold socialized healthcare their chances of election success would vanish.

What President Obama is proposing is not a simple transposition of the NHS setup, although it will make for a fairer system if it passes Congress. He is right not to base his plan on the British system: the NHS has its flaws; it's not a simple case of NHS good, Medicare bad. The reality, as ever, is much more complex, and is being obscured by half-truths, frothing right-wing paranoia and outright lies.

My partner's illness, however, is real -- so let me tell you what really happens.

Whenever he needs an operation, my partner receives top-quality care from our local hospital -- eventually. Because his debilitating, agonizing condition is not life-threatening, he normally has to wait several months for the free operations, and the process of consultation and aftercare varies on a sliding scale from risible to non-existent.

On the other hand, his disability makes him unfit for most work, and were we US citizens my meagre half-salary would doubtless put us amongst the 43 million Americans with no health care cover at all. We can and do complain about the NHS -- being British, it's one of our favourite hobbies -- but the specialist painkillers he needs to get through his worst days are free, and they will remain free for the rest of his life.

It isn't easy for my partner, being 25 years old and facing a lifetime of pain and limited mobility. He worries about his future; I worry, among other things, that any children we decide to have will inherit his condition. But one thing we never have to worry about is being able to afford those vital operations, or the medication that keeps him stable.

Moreover, if I were to fall pregnant tomorrow, even on my low-income I would be treated to regular check-ups, help to quit smoking with free NHS classes, ante-and-post natal care, and food vouchers so that I could afford to drink milk, eat vegetables and take supplements to safeguard my health and the health of the foetus. By contrast, staggering inequalities in the US health care system mean that the United States has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.

I'm proud to live in a country with 'socialized' healthcare. For all its faults, its shoddy waiting lists and its dreadful dental care, the NHS system erases health inequalities and relieves millions of people, rich and poor, from the burden of constant anxiety about medical bills and sudden sickness. Even more importantly, it creates the progressive impression that the physical and mental health of the nation is the collective responsibility of all its citizens. In the process, without making a fuss about it, the British NHS truly upholds the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. If that's socialism, then sign me up.

Laurie Penny is a columnist for the British progressive website LabourList.

Eric Alterman: Think Again: Chiller, Socialist Theater

2009-06-18T21:51:40Z

Crossposted with the Center for American Progress

With Danielle Ivory

A heated debate broke out last week over the degree to which incendiary talk by right-wing cable and radio hosts might be fueling a recent spate of murderous violence by disturbed individuals.

We'd like to take a moment to focus on the just plain crazy. Have you noticed that in conservative world, this administration is leading a march on socialism? That's right, the one that refuses to nationalize the banks against the recommendations of Alan Greenspan, among others; the one that has offered gazillions of dollars to bail out private interests run into the ground by billionaires; the one that, on Wednesday, did not even take strong action to regulate the derivative market, which as much as anything helped cause this crisis. No, really...

Just last week alone, Media Matters counted more than 143 mentions of the words "socialism," "socialist," and "socialistic" on the cable news shows -- and that's not including words like "communist" or "Marxist." The word socialist has virtually become an everyday talking point since the Obama administration moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Lest you think we exaggerate:

* Fox and Friends graded Obama's economic plan with an "S" for socialism.

* Pat Robertson warned that, "before long, we'll have this gigantic socialist colossus."

* Radio personality Michael Savage called Obama a "neo-Marxist fascist dictator in the making," and said that Obama "dreams of Maoist revolution" with "death camps."

* Actor Jon Voight sat down Bill O'Reilly and accused Obama of "bringing us to chaos and socialism," and then suggested that he -- yes, we're still talking about the actor -- might do a better job negotiating with North Korea.

* Glenn Beck called Obama a Marxist and said that we're on the road to socialism. Later, he noted that we are stepping beyond socialism and heading toward fascism.

* Sean Hannity met with Sarah Palin in a wooded area for a heart-to-heart and suggested -- and she agreed -- that Obama was leading the country toward certain socialism. Hannity has in the past crowned Obama the "Commissar in Chief," renamed America the "United States of France," and claimed that, "America is moving from a free-market economy to a Socialist economy." On the eve of the infamous tea parties, he asked Newt Gingrich: "Is this now a battle between capitalism and socialism?" In case you were wondering, Newt didn't say no, but recently, Hannity answered his own question, declaring that "the Bolsheviks have finally arrived!" He also praised congressional Republicans for finally using "the S-word."

Branding the United States of America as the newest socialist republic is not just a job for mentally unbalanced and/or drug-and-alcohol addicted cable "news" hosts. The Republican National Committee also held a special session recently to try and rebrand the Democratic party as the Democratic Socialist Party. (It was narrowly defeated.)

What's more:

* Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) called the president's policies "a new American socialist experiment."

* Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-IA) -- both politician and madwoman combined -- said that "if you look at FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama, this is really the final leap towards socialism."

* Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) called Obama the "the world's best salesmen of socialism."

* Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said he believes the Obama administration is taking the country down the road to socialism.

* Newt Gingrich said Obama's agenda was the "boldest effort to create a European socialist model we have seen."

Well, you get the point...

The socialist scare tactic may appear to be just one more desperate grasp from a conservative opposition that -- let's face it -- hasn't got much going these days. But it is really a reprise of tried and true scare-tactics past.

We saw a bit of it just a few years ago when conservatives were in the majority in Congress. Former House majority leader Dick Armey (R-TX) wrote that New Deal and the Great Society, on the one hand, and Soviet Russia's five-year plans and Communist China's Great Leap Forward, on the other, were created by "the same sort of person" separated only by differences of "power and nerve." Before that, Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) compared "liberals" to "scoundrels like Hitler," who were also "much like communists."

But we've been hearing this sort of thing for better part of three-quarters of a century now. Back in 1947, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce accused the Truman administration of taking a "backroad to socialism" in the fast lane toward a "police state."

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg notes that the tactic has been "part of the Republican lexicon for years and years. Any time the Democrats proposed any legislation on child labor, social security, the [conservatives] immediately cried socialism -- to the point where in 1952 Harry Truman said that when you hear someone saying 'down with socialism,' they really mean 'down with progress.'"

This is working to some degree. Lawrence O'Donnell has pointed out that only 6 percent of Americans used the word socialist to describe President Obama back in September 2008, but by April 2009 that number had grown to 20 percent. But like most everything -- particularly given the collapse of the Soviet Union and Chinese embrace of capitalism -- socialism as a scare tactic ain't what it used to be....

You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory's analysis in their recent article, "Think Again: Chiller, Socialist Theater."

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation.

Danielle Ivory is a reporter and producer for the American News Project. She lives in Washington, D.C.

This column was recently named as a finalist in the category of "Best Commentary -- Digital" for the Mirror Awards.

Michael Steele Hails End Of "Era Of Apologizing"

2009-05-19T09:37:18Z

Celebrating his 100th day in office, RNC Chairman Michael Steele did his best Thursday morning to present a GOP that was prepared to "turn a corner" from its current doldrums.

The process included what seems to be his first public rebuke of an effort from some in the Republican National Committee to official brand the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party."

"I'm not for that at all," Steele told "Fox and Friends" Tuesday morning. "And I've mentioned it to folks inside the party and said, you know, I think we should be smart and strategic about that. But a lot of people have passions and the beauty of the Republican Party is you get to express those passions in various ways."

The Fox appearance, and the wrist-slapping of the Socialist branding resolution that came with it, is part of a renewed push on Steele's behalf to bring the Republican Party away from the brink of caricature status.

The Chairman also penned an op-ed in Politico pointing to "three important ways" that "Republicans are turning a corner." The list, however, was rather mundane, including such promises as "the Republican Party will be forward-looking"; the "Republican Party will not shy away from voicing our opposition to the president's policies"; and "the Republican Party will seize upon momentum for a GOP resurgence that is already underway in states and local communities."

Steele planned to speak before RNC officials in a committee meeting in Maryland on Tuesday, in which he would call for an end to the "era of apologizing" in the GOP.

"Ronald Reagan never lived in the past," Steele will reportedly say. "Ronald Reagan was all about the future. If President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward."

As for the resolution branding the Democrats the "Democrat Socialists," Steele hasn't always taken such a hard line. Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, he said that committee members were entitled to their own advocacy. "If they do that, they do that." The chairman did, however, pen a memo last month opposing the resolution.

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Max Fraad Wolff: Car-Nage or Industrial Policy?

2009-05-15T16:49:10Z

As GM slides toward Chrysler-style bankruptcy it is brutally obvious that we lack a national industrial policy. There is no debate that we need one. The screaming lack of any coherent macroeconomic plan is obscured by face-offs that pit union fans against bond holder rights advocates. The national media debate is staffed by 'Obama is always right and working for the little guy' people screaming back and forth with 'Obama is always wrong people'. In these confrontations ratings are the focus and understanding becomes the first casualty of cable news. The death of America's manufacturing economy, large swaths of the upper Midwest and a way of life demands closer attention. GM and Chrysler will produce far fewer cars in the future. Wages and benefits are being slashed. Over 100,000 people are likely to directly lose their jobs as a result of Chrysler and GM bankruptcies with an addition 200,000-300,000 likely to indirectly lose work.

The deal the U.S. government offered Chrysler bondholders, like the deal being offered to GM bondholders, is terrible. The terms and conditions offered make clear that the Federal Government wants -- or can live with -- Chapter 11 filings. Chrysler bondholders were offered 29 cents on the dollar with greater offers being made to the UAW employee trust despite its being a lesser creditor in standard Chapter 11 proceedings. Thus, this group had nothing to lose but Obama tongue-lashing if they refused the deal. They did refuse and the tongue-lashing came full of statements about those unwilling to make sacrifice. The political game is to blame another party -- perhaps with good reason -- for the ultimate bankruptcy. Public relations theater has gotten all the attention. We should be looking at the destruction of a region, an industry and the shocking lack of industrial policy. This matters. Who may or may not be at fault for the closing act in this tragedy is not of vital or lasting import. The terms and conditions for the UAW and workers are terrible. The impacts on communities -- already in dire straights -- will be cataclysmic.

At least 800 Chrysler dealerships and 2600 GM dealerships will be closed. Urban areas and the Midwest are likely to be particularly hard hit. Losses will run above 100,000 total jobs and be spread far and wide. Likely there were too many dealerships and some needed to be shuttered. Rapid geography-based mass closures risk lash-back, further damage to the brands and will spill hundreds of thousands more cars out into markets defined by lack of demand. The "summer breaks," lay-offs and closings are an expensive commitment to having a much smaller US auto industry. We are actively choosing rising importation of parts, growing market share for foreign makers and carnage in the industrial heartland. We so completely lack an industrial policy that we are presently working to spend money to maintain our car market while decimating US domestic car producers. Perhaps the goal is to be the first developed country with neither significant American car production nor, public transit?

Subsidizing, choosing sides and failing to plan are not the stuff that phoenix-like recoveries are made of. We have used billions in public funds to preside over the aggressive downsizing of GM and Chrysler. Much of these billions have vanished. We are thus paying to fire tens of thousands of Americans, de-industrialize the country and smash lives and communities throughout the nation. It is very true that real trouble has been long in the offing and the Obama Administration faced few palatable choices. They were handed a thankless job at the worst of times. They have not performed well. Every other major developed country offering assistance does so with stricter job retention demands. Every other state seems more concerned not to damage production capacity and subsidize foreign rivals. Maybe the rest of the world is not wrong?

Chrysler received $7.2billion in direct assistance over the last year. None of this will be paid back. The US government will retain an 8% interest in the firm. The Canadian Government will get the balance of the equity against the loans it has made. Thus, when Chrysler/Fiat becomes a $90billion company, the US government will break even less inflation and transaction fees. The UAW President has already pledged to sell into stock strength to fund the now speculative employee trust fund that traded cash for stock. What do we get? A lot less than Fiat. We get Fiat's small and gas efficient technology. We hope that Fiat will do well and Americans will want to buy small, fuel efficient cars made for other markets. Fiat will get 20% ownership and $500 million at no direct out-of-pocket cost with incentive options that allow Fiat to possibly own 35% of the new Chrysler at no direct cost. Fiat can raise its stake to 51%. What do we lose? The UAW employee trust will own 55% of Chrysler/Fiat when the dust settles. They will pay roughly a dollar a share from the employee fund. They need the firm to be worth $10 billion in short order -- that sounds really bad until you recall Uncle Sam is betting it will be worth almost 9 times as much! This calls into question the $15billion lent to GM. Employees are giving up security in the retirement fund, dental care, eye care and risking the future. Job banking will be drastically reduced or removed and the UAW has pledged not to strike before 2015. The UAW employee benefit association will own 55% of The New Chrysler/Fiat but have only 1 of 9 seats on its new board of directors. In addition, it is not free to vote its 1 share against the majority of the board's independent directors.

GM is poised to announce similar deals with the UAW, creditors and the Government in the very near future. $1billion in hourly wage savings are likely to be announced as GM closes 16 of 47 assembly plants in the U.S. and reduces its labor force from 61,000 to 38,000. GM agreed to fund a UAW employee benefit association with $35 billion. It will now get $15 billion to $20 billion topped off with up to 39% of the shares in a new company. Common share holders will get 1% of the new company -- in other words close to nothing. Bond holders will be offered cents on the dollar. We will wait as angry voices deride Obama as a socialist for taking a large ownership position in GM. Many will claim the UAW has done well. Meanwhile, workers present and retired will suffer. Communities will lose jobs, tax bases and hope. Dealerships will close, towns will find rising demands for assistance and falling revenues. All of this will go on until we devise and implement a national industrial policy. It is a choice between carnage and policy.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Socialist Successes

2009-04-22T09:57:48Z

Representative Spencer Bachus is one of the only people I know from Alabama. I bet I'm the only socialist he knows. I'm certainly the only one the congressman from Birmingham could name after darkly claiming that there are 17 socialists lurking in the House of Representatives.

I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism. I hope this is an opportunity to shed some light on a viewpoint that deserves more attention throughout America and in our capital.

At its best, Washington brings people like us together to fight for our principles and work things out for the good of the country. Spencer and I used to serve together on the House Financial Services Committee. I don't mean to hurt him back home, but the truth is that he even cosponsored an amendment of mine once on credit card ripoffs.

At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy. A standard refrain in John McCain's presidential stump speeches last fall was a claim that Barack Obama's Senate voting record was more liberal than Senate's only socialist, yours truly. That is nonsense on several levels. Even as political hyperbole, the attack didn't work out all that well for my colleague from Arizona.

Still, branding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh. Some, like Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism. "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff," Huckabee told last winter's gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.

I was honored last year to show Ambassador Pekka Lintu of Finland around my home state of Vermont. There was standing-room only at a town meeting where people came to hear more about one of the world's most successful economic and social models.

And what we learned impressed us. Finland is a country which provides high-quality health care to all of its people with virtually no out-of-pocket expense; where parents and their young children receive free excellent childcare and/or parental leave benefits which dwarf what our nation provides; where college and graduate education is free to students and where children in the public school system often record the highest results in international tests. In Finland, where 80 percent of workers belong to unions, all employees enjoy at least 30 days paid vacation and the gap between the rich and poor is far more equitable than in the United States.

One reason there was so much interest in the Finnish model was that even before Wall Street greed drove the world economy into a deep recession, more and more Americans were wondering why the very rich were becoming richer while our economy failed our working families. They wanted to know why the middle class was shrinking, poverty was increasing and the United States was the only major country without a national health care program.

Despite all the rhetoric about "family values," workers in the United States now work the longest hours of any people in a major country. Our health care system is disintegrating. At last count, 47 million Americans had no health insurance while we spend twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation.

We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Our childcare system is totally inadequate. Too many of our kids drop out of school, and college is increasingly unaffordable. One of the results of how we neglect many of our children is that we end up with more people in jails and prisons than any other country on earth. There is a correlation between the highest rate of childhood poverty and the highest rate of incarceration.

Let's be clear. Finland is no utopia. Not so many years ago, it experienced a severe economic downturn. Its economy today is not immune to what is happening in the rest of the world. There also are, to be sure, important differences between the United States and Finland - a small country with a population of only 5.2 million people. Finland has a very homogenous population. We are extremely diverse. Finland is the size of Montana. We stretch 3,000 miles from coast to coast.

Despite the differences, there are important similarities. Both countries share many of the same aspirations for their people. When one thinks about the long march of human history, it is no small thing that democratic countries like Finland exist that operate under egalitarian principles, which have virtually abolished poverty, which provide almost-free, quality health care to all their people, and provide free, high-quality education from child care to graduate school.

Whether we live in Burlington, Vt. or Birmingham, Ala., we should be prepared to study and learn from the successes of social-democratic countries. Name-calling and scare tactics just won't do.

Mike Lux: Historical, Hysterical Conservatives

2009-04-20T14:03:39Z

Conservatives have been in a historical state of mind lately, and as the author of a new book on the history of the American political debate (The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be), it has been pretty entertaining to watch.

First came the teabaggers, the faux spontaneous uprising backed by corporate contributors, carefully planned Astroturf consultants, and Fox News sponsorship and promotion night and day. Then we saw the right-wing Governor of Texas casually throw out the idea of secession from the union. Now we see conservatives debating amongst themselves whether to call Obama a socialist or a fascist. (My favorite quote from the story on this is from former Michigan GOP party chair Saul Anuzis: "You've got to be careful using the term 'economic fascism' in the right way, so it doesn't come as extreme.")

Conservatives know this country is at a historical crossroads, and I suspect that what they fear most is that they are just as much on the wrong side of history as their ideological ancestors were in the 1860s when the end of slavery was being debated, in the early 1900s when women's suffrage was being debated, in the 1930s when social security and the minimum wage were being debated, and in the 1960s when the civil rights were being debated. In every single one of those historical debates, conservatives:

-labeled their opposition socialists (and worse)
-called for states' rights instead of a federal solution
-said that they were the true heirs of the founding fathers, and were the keepers of America's traditions and values
-warned that the charges being proposed were frighteningly radical, and would destroy the economy
-that big government would lead to a destruction of all of our most basic liberties

These conservative arguments have always been tinged with more than a little hysteria, just like today. And no matter what, conservatives always insisted they owned the moral high ground. Defenders of slavery argued that slavery was not an evil but in John Calhoun's words, "a positive good," and that Southern society was based on the institution. Those opposing women's suffrage said giving women the right to vote would destroy the American family. Conservatives in the 1930s argued about social security that "never in the history of the world has any measure brought here so incisively designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people." Southerners violently opposed the end of Jim Crow, arguing that it "encroached upon the reserved rights of the states and the people."

Conservatives have always hysterically opposed progressive change. They have used the same arguments-for tradition and states rights, against "big government socialism" -- in every era. In those past eras, history was not on their side. It is not in our time, either.

Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup

2009-04-11T13:59:30Z

This week, the Grand Old Party continued its march into madness -- and irrelevancy. Rep. Spencer Bachus pegged the number of Congressional socialists at 17. Rep. Michele Bachmann said she fears the Obama administration will use "volunteerism" to create "re-education camps for young people." Sen. James Inhofe responded to news that Obama plans to increase military spending by $31 billion dollars by claiming the president "is disarming America." And Rick Santorum penned an op-ed accusing Obama of having "disdain for American values." Elsewhere, proving that stupid has no borders, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the 17,000 survivors of Italy's deadly earthquake "should see it like a weekend of camping" -- a lovely companion to Barbara Bush's memorable observation that Katrina victims housed at a relocation center in Texas "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Happy Easter, HuffPosters.

Spencer Bachus Makes List Of 17 Socialists In Congress

2009-04-09T16:56:16Z

UPDATE 4/14: Rep. Spencer Bachus has ignored requests from both legislators and reporters to name the 17 socialists in the House.

Sen. Bernie Sanders wants Rep. Spencer Bachus to start naming names. [...]

When asked for specifics, Bachus named only one legislator -- Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist," whose vision of a socialist safety net is more Stockholm than Stalingrad.

Bachus' spokesman hasn't responded to numerous requests from POLITICO to name the other 16 lawmakers. [...]

"Has Spencer released his list yet? Everybody's waiting with bated breath," asked Sanders, an independent from Vermont who has enjoyed a friendly relationship with the Alabama conservative since their days in the House in the 1990s.

* * * * *

Not too long ago, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was on Hardball, calling for the media to investigate her Congressional colleagues to "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America." Well, it turns out that someone has taken up Bachmann's call on a proactive basis! His name is Spencer Bachus and he has made a list -- a secret list! -- of the socialists in the House of Representatives. Or so he told the Birmingham News. Who are the seventeen socialists? That's the secret part, apparently.

From The Hill's Briefing Room:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.

"Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.

Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.

By the way, I can't wait until someone tells Bachus about how "only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism." He is not going to take that news well, I imagine.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Taleb's Black Swan-proof World: Ten Principles

2009-04-08T10:04:32Z

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks -- and hence the most fragile -- become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

Harry Moroz: What European Fiscal Austerity Is Doing To The U.S.

2009-03-24T20:12:04Z

As the G-20 meeting of the world's 20 biggest economies approaches, the right is cultivating a strategic relationship with the "reformed socialists" of Western Europe. President Obama continues to press our European allies to commit to more stimulus spending, even appealing directly to the public in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune earlier this week. But Europe, like good classical liberals, won't budge. President Sarkozy of France put it simply: "We do not want to spend more money."

So the Wall Street Journal, stopping just short of apologizing for "freedom fries", basks in the irony that "in our newly upside-down world, it's the French who are warning Americans about runaway spending and false Keynesian stimulus hopes." Truly, a brave new world. Loyalists at National Review's The Corner are horrified that a State Department official would rebuff the British claim to a "special relationship" with the United States.

Meanwhile, at the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray worries that the very, in fact the only, institutions through which we humans can achieve happiness are threatened by how we answer the great question of the Obama administration: "Do we want the United States to be like Europe?" His question, posed in a speech just this month, seems to have been answered: Europe, in fact, will become more like the United States.

In this week's New Yorker, James Surowiecki outlines some of the general reasons why Europe is resistant to more fiscal manipulation. Essentially, Europe has a historically ingrained aversion to inflation and, of course, more automatic stabilizers (like unemployment benefits and health insurance) that simply are unavailable in the United States (a big portion of the stimulus package in the U.S. was simply extending unemployment benefits and shoring up Medicaid). To these general reasons, I would add that Europe as a whole has drifted slightly to the right (Sarkozy from Chirac and Merkel from Schroeder in the particularly important EU countries) and that Europe gains a strategic benefit from resisting Obama's calls for stimulus, not only because they can free ride on our stimulus (as Surowiecki notes) but because they might actually think the United States will spend itself over a cliff. So much for that unique relationship.

But it is important not to wonder too long at the irony of the right's "new relationship" with Europe. This is part of the same sleight of hand that rouses concerns about generational theft, about "leakage" of stimulus funds outside the country, and about foreign companies being employed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Jeffrey Sachs, who I quoted making a similar point last week, pinpoints why the debate about European/Keynesian/Socialist stimulus versus anti-inflationary/free market classical liberalism is so misguided:

The global economic crisis will be with us for a generation, not just a year or two, because it is really a transition to sustainability.

American and European economic advisers generally believe that a short sharp stimulus will be enough to restore economic growth. This is wrong. What will be needed is an overhaul of the world economy towards sustainability.

While there is much to lament about Europe's refusal to second the United States' commitment to further spending, the message that the right is taking from Europe's refusal is particularly dangerous for the United States. While the European Union has in recent years taken a cue from nations like China and India and committed itself to "retooling and revamping" its infrastructure, the United States, as the Urban Land Institute puts it, has coasted on its prosperity and delayed the investments that lead to sustainable economic growth.

Changing this will require altering how decisions are made about infrastructure investments, as Sachs points out. But, more importantly at present, the United States must recognize that the nation is, in important ways, at a competitive disadvantage to the rest of the world: stimulus spending is not just a helicopter drop.

Ed Kilgore: Elephants With Short Memories

2009-03-24T13:31:21Z

As Republicans continue to shriek about the possible use of budget reconciliation procedures for health care and/or climate change legislation as though this represented some sort of revolutionary new technique for sneaking legislation through Congress, they need to be reminded that reconciliation in its current form was largely the creation of the sainted Ronald Reagan.

You wouldn't know that from watching an exchange between Sean Hannity and Mike Huckabee on Fox late last week, wherein the duo acted like they'd never heard of reconciliation until it was spawned by the devilish socialists of the Obama administration:

HANNITY: [T]he Congress now along with the White House is looking now to use a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation as a means of passing their health-care reform, their tax increases, their extreme cap and trade, their energy policies. Now, that would mean that they pass all of these things without any Republicans even having an opportunity to vote. How dangerous do you think that is?

HUCKABEE: It's horribly dangerous because it really does bypass the entire system of the American government, where we're supposed to have an honest debate.

Aside from the fact that the "Republicans can't vote" assertion is nonsense (at most reconciliation means that Republicans can't filibuster), Hannity and Huckabee surely know that reconciliation as we know it--as a vehicle for large packages of legislation that don't simply alter funding levels--was largely invented by Reagan OMB director David Stockman as the means of enacting Ronald Reagan's entire agenda in 1981.

In the original Congressional Budget Act of 1974, "reconciliation" was an enforcement measure attached to the end of the budget process as a means of forcing rebellious authorizing or appropriations committees to remain within the bounds of the congressional budget resolution. In 1980, however, the procedure was changed allowing "reconciliation instructions" to be included at the front end of the process, to avoid time delays and to anticipate disputes. Only in 1981 did this "front-end reconciliation" become something very different: a fast-track measure to enact very specific changes in in a vast array of federal laws that happened to accomplish budget resolution spending targets. It was a giant tail wagging the dog of budget levels.

The audacious use of reconciliation by the Reagan administration in 1981 didn't end there, however. Once the reconciliation bill emerged from the committee system and came to the House floor for a vote, the administration's congressional allies, unhappy with some of the details, offered a comprehensive floor substitute, labeled Gramm-Latta II, that essentially enacted a couple of years' worth of legislation in one bill that virtually nobody had read. (The bill as enacted included lunch orders and lobbyists' phone numbers scribbled by staffers in the margins of the text). And hardly any significant federal program avoided a major re-write of its authorizing langage in ways that reshaped the federal government and its relationship with state and localities, businesses, and individuals in a sweeping array of areas.

While nothing will ever match the breath-taking chutzpah of Gramm-Latta II, short of an actual dictatorship (the so-called Byrd Rule did subsequently place some limits on fast-track enactment of legislation that has little or nothing to do with spending or revenue levels), reconciliation has been regularly used to package and enact major legislation in the ensuing years. Examples included the first Clinton budget package of 1993, the first Gingrich budget package (twice vetoed by Clinton until a final compromise was worked out) in 1995, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and the Bush tax cuts of 2001, among others. All of these bills included major policy changes that were remote from the task of simply laying out a federal budget or changing spending or revenue levels.

It may ultimately turn out that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats will decide to move some parts of the president's agenda, including health care and/or climate change legislation, outside the reconciliation process, to make changes that might run afoul of the Byrd Rule or to encourage some bipartisan support. But those whose alpha and omega in politics and policy is Ronald Reagan really do need to acknowledge that their hero created this particular tool for majority rule in Congress.

Cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist

Hungary?s premier resigns without clear successor

2009-03-24T13:11:17Z

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has announced his intention to resign.

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany officially announced his resignation to the parliament on Monday, leaving no clear successor in one of Europe’s worst-hit economies.

On Saturday, he had indicated his willingness to resign at a meeting of his Socialist party, saying “I hear that I am the obstacle to the cooperation required for changes, for a stable governing majority and the responsible behavior of the opposition.”

John Horvath is a citizen journalist for OhMyNews. He explores the political motivations behind Gyurcsany’s decision to resign and Hungary’s future.

Hungary descends further into chaos

In a bold political move, Hungary’s Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany announced his intention to resign at a congress of the ruling Socialist Party on Saturday. While this may have come as a surprise to some, for others this announcement was something to be expected sooner or later. Over 90 percent of Hungarians feel that the country is heading in the wrong direction and the prime minister’s popularity rating is at an all-time low of 18 percent.

The prime minister’s offer to resign, however, comes with strings attached. His offer only stands if parliament can agree within the next two weeks on a person to take his place. Already this looks highly unlikely. The country’s largest opposition party, the Young Democrats (FIDESZ), is refusing to nominate anyone and is calling for early elections instead. Accordingly, replacing the person of the prime minister will not do much as the ability to enact policy still lies in the way power is distributed within parliament. Only with new elections and a redistribution of power does FIDESZ see a solution to the present crisis.

Meanwhile, as the former junior coalition partner, the so-called “liberals” or Free Democrats (SZDSZ), has taken up the challenge and is presently looking for someone to replace Gyurcsany, the conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) has already put forward its own divisive candidate, Lajos Bokros. Bokros was the finance minister during the Socialist government of Gyula Horn (1994-8) and was renowned for introducing a set of austerity measures commonly referred to as the “Bokros Package.” Recently his nomination as the MDF’s leading candidate for the upcoming European Union elections led to a major upheaval within the party, culminating in some members leaving the party and the MDF losing its faction status in parliament. This means that members of the party can now only sit as independents and are restricted in what they can do or take part in.

Although Bokros is so far the first concrete name to surface as a possible successor to Gyurcsany, the likelihood of this happening is remote. Many still have ill feelings regarding the Bokros Package some 15 years ago. Hence, while from an economist’s view Bokros would seem to be a fair choice, from a political standpoint he is unpalatable.

It’s quite clear that the prime minister’s offer to resign is nothing more than a calculated ploy to help bolster his popularity ratings within his own party. Knowing that the various parties can’t agree among themselves, Gyurcsany can claim to have ceded to opposition demands to step down. In turn, the inability of parliament to come up with a replacement then vindicates his position that the problem is not with him but with the opposition, for when given the opportunity to act it fails to do so. In the end, Gyurcsany is made to look like an honest statesman who is willing to do what is best for the country.

This ploy is also intended on helping to reconstruct the shattered coalition between the Socialists and the liberals, bringing them closer together. [...] Without a doubt, the political theater going on in parliament will only add to the economic chaos and social angst in Hungary. To observers on the outside, the political system in Hungary seems to be falling apart. For many within the country, the battles being raged are simply the clash of personalities of two leading politicians: Ferenc Gyurcsany on the left, and Victor Orban of the FIDESZ on the right. Neither side appears willing to leave the stage until it has seen the other utterly vanquished. As a result, the country appears to be adrift with no one capable of taking control of the situation.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World Economic Forum under a Creative Commons license.

A Worldfocus contributing blogger explores what Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s resignation may mean for the economically-hurting country.
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Read more: Socialists, Hungary, Home News

Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary's Prime Minister, To Quit Amid Tumbling Popularity

2009-03-21T09:24:56Z

BUDAPEST — Hungary's prime minister stunned the country Saturday by announcing his resignation because he had become an "obstacle" to the reforms needed to pull the country out of its worst financial crisis since the end of communism nearly 20 years ago.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, of the ruling Socialists, made the unexpected announcement at his party's congress, saying he was keeping a pledge made in January 2008 to change the leadership if the embattled party's popularity failed to recover.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Red-Baiting President Obama

2009-03-06T11:24:08Z

Nothing that House and Senate Republicans and would be ex-officio Republican kingpin Rush Limbaugh have said or done to torpedo President Obama's program has worked. So why not try one more thing, red baiting. In quick succession South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, one time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, and the more loonier House Republicans, Michelle Bachman and Zach Wamp have lambasted President Obama as the second coming of V.I. Lenin. Their silly, discredited, and thoroughly desperate commie slur of Obama is not new.

Midway through the campaign, fast-fading Republican rival John McCain, egged on by the Fox Network hit team, grabbed at a horribly outdated interview in 2001 in which then-Illinois Senator Obama told a Chicago radio station that he favored "redistributive change." He tweaked the Supreme Court for not doing more to make that happen. McCain and Fox screamed red. Obama was making the point that breaking down the barriers of Jim Crow segregation was a pyrrhic victory without decent jobs and income for poor blacks and Latinos. Civil rights leaders for years said pretty much the same thing and that's that the goal of the civil rights movement revolution was incomplete without an economic boost to the poor. Mercifully, the red tar of Obama got no traction.

This didn't stop a swelling pack of bloggers, web pundits, and conservative talk jocks from launching a shrill campaign of Kremlin taunts and baiting of Obama. Obama's big spending plan to ratchet up the economy, pay for jobs, expanded education and health care, and to hit the rich harder to pay for these has sent them into hysteria.

The red taint ploy fell flat during the campaign and it will fall flat again. Recent reports on wealth and income show that the staggering gap between rich and poor has grown even wider in the near decade since Obama casually uttered the term "redistributive wealth." A recent poll by of all places the Fox Network found that by big margins Americans say that making the rich pay a bigger share of their income in taxes isn't a bad idea. They agree that the tax system is way out of whack and that those from the Wall Street fast buck artists to tax dodging corporate executives wallow in obscene wealth while the poor get poorer and the middle-class get soaked.

Even a majority of Republicans agree that the rich can and should pay more.
Still, the red baiting bunch have managed to get some media play. And that's no surprise. The American economic sacred cow is that laissez-faire wealth is tantamount to a divine right of kings, and any attempt to touch it is economic heresy. In the past anyway, politicians knew that's it was the kiss of death to be seen as an advocate for making the rich pay more.

GOP presidents and presidential candidates for decades ritually played the tax-and-spend card to brand their Democratic rivals as dangers to middle-class wage earners. This stoked fear that underneath the Democrat's supposed taxing and spending that not only would the rich be hammered but the poor would be the beneficiaries. The wealth taking scare has worked in the past because wealth and income iniquities are so great, and the notion that there's nothing wrong with those iniquities is so deeply entrenched in the tax policy, philosophy and politics of the GOP and many Democrats.

Any talk of putting more wealth into the hands of the non-wealthy in the way of tax cuts, a Social Security tax increase on upper income wage earners, capital gain increases, and closing tax shelter loopholes will always draw swift and long shrieks from more than a few wealthy individuals and corporations. This is plainly regarded as wealth redistribution downward.

Democrats and Independent politicians from Upton Sinclair to Huey Long to Ralph Nader have railed against the top heavy wealth of the relative handful. They have been routinely branded as crackpots or socialists, and then quickly politically marginalized. In his wink and nod hint that there was a red taint to Obama, McCain simply snatched at the formula that GOP contenders have typically used. DeMint, Huckabee, and the wacky fringe House Republicans Republicans are just doing more of the same now.

Obama ridicules all such talk that his economic program is out of the pale and mocks the GOP self-appointed de facto boss Limbaugh who has whipped up the pack against the supposed socialist leaning tax and spend Obama. However, President Obama must be mindful that as the tax battle heats up over how and who will bankroll his job, health, housing and education programs, he'll hear the smear again. The red red bait card is just too tempting and time tested not to play, especially by a party that doesn't have much else going for it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Spain's Basque Voters End 29-Year Nationalist Rule

2009-03-02T09:43:16Z

Voters in Spain's northern Basque country yesterday ended a 29-year nationalist stranglehold on power, leaving the way open for prime minister José Luis Rodríguez's socialists to lead a new government in the region.

Paul Jenkins: Worst Week Ever: Republicans Unhinged

2009-02-26T18:31:44Z

When Republicans suffered a disastrous beating in November's election, it would have been fair to assume that things could not get worse for them: the-most-liberal-Senator was to be president, Nancy-Pelosi-from-San-Francisco was going to lead a massive Democratic majority in the House, and assorted socialists were going to run things. That was bad, yes, but this week, just like the stock market (funny how that goes), Republicans hit yet a new low. In recent days, Republican leaders were called cheesy, off-putting, disastrous, untrustworthy, and inconsequential, not by Democrats, but by their party's own members, from high-profile commentators to Governors.

The highlight of the GOP week was, of course, Governor Bobby Jindal's response to Barack Obama's Congressional address. The best that can be said for Jindal's performance is that it channeled Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, presumably not the objective, even for someone who willingly changed his name to "Bobby." But the past seven days have offered so many moments of breathtaking inanity by the GOP that our head spins at trying to organize them cohesively. With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama's citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of "Government Is The Problem."

In Alabama, Senator Richard Shelby took it upon himself to try to fan the fires set by Republican psychopaths, including Clarence Thomas: Obama is not really American because, Shelby said, he had "not seen any birth certificate." It is quite understandable that Shelby would want to detract our attention from the fact that he chaired the Senate Committee on Banking (!), Housing (!!) and Urban Affairs from 2003 to 2007, but in the end it only serves to increase the focus on the tragic consequences of his ineptitude. On the subject, John McCain this week became preoccupied with the order for a new presidential helicopter fleet, ordered by George W. Bush and, no surprise, dreadfully mismanaged. And, since McCain still can't chew gum and walk, this is now his sole obsession, a "good idea" that would "cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money," making it sound as if building Marine One was somehow akin to, say, the New Deal. Or perhaps akin to testing pregnant women for HIV or extending health care benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian government workers, both of which were decried this week by Republicans in the Colorado Senate because: a) pregnant women with HIV (or is just pregnant women?) are promiscuous and their unborn children should not be protected "from the negative consequences of their actions;" b) homosexuality is murder.

Other Republican nut jobs, convinced that the party lost power because it was too rational, moderate and accommodating, are circling like vultures. In Louisiana, Senator David Vitter, himself a right-wing madman, realized this week that he will likely face a dual primary challenge: by porn star Stormy Daniels (it is still unclear whether she -and we assume it is a she-- was involved in Vitter's pay for sex diaper play, but let's not rule it out); and by Family Research Council Tony Perkins, who is as sexually obsessed as Vitter, and is probably even more insane. Another barmy Republican, Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, whom his Republican colleagues are desperate to get rid of (yes, he is that cuckoo), has threatened to sue his own National Republican Senatorial Committee if they do not support his reelection in 2010. This week, he also said of the head of the Committee: "I don't believe anything John Cornyn says."

The ostensible new leader of the Republican National Committee, Michael "Hip Hop" Steele, also thinks that the party has veered way too far left, this week leaving open the possibility that the three moderate GOP Senators who voted for the Obama stimulus package could face retribution. "Oh, yes, I'm always open to everything, baby, absolutely," he told an interviewer when asked whether he may withdraw funds from those Commie Republicans ("Baby?" It was on Fox News, but still). Is it any wonder that moderates everywhere are mulling party changes? Mortified by his Republican colleagues, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week made sure we realized that he had recently considered leaving the party, although why he did not is unclear. At the same time, New York City Republicans (sounds weird, no?) also took steps to remain out of power forever by refusing to support Mayor Michael Bloomberg's bid for a third term, unless he becomes a card-carrying Republican. Again.

Other GOP members don't bother leaving the Party, they just assault it from the inside. Some do it subtly, such as once-lifelong bachelor Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who said this week that there is "a national leader, his name is President Obama," clearly meaning there are no Republican leaders. Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah also gave us a sense of how low his GOP has sunk, saying of the party's Congressional leaders: "I don't listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential -- completely." This is not from a strange leftover Vermont Republican, it is from the Governor of the most consistently Republican state in the country. In New Hampshire, former Senator Bob Smith, an early victim of the state's leftward tilt, is also intent on destroying any comeback for his Republican party in the state. This week, he appeared to threaten to move back from Florida to New Hampshire (one more sign of his madness if any was needed) to challenge his Republican nemesis, former Sen. John Sununu, himself humiliated just this November in his reelection effort (all very complicated for a small party in a small state.) Not even their favorite cheerleader/pundit Stuart Rothenberg's irrational prediction that "2009 and 2010 could be the beginning of a rebound for the party in the Northeast" (ha!) is likely to save Republicans from their cannibalistic instinct.

That said, Republicans are not only molesting one another. Yes, they are powerless against Obama or Pelosi, but they have shifted their time and money to a Democratic threat even bigger, or at least one they think they have a shot at: Al Franken, who won his challenge to Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman by a slim margin. Coleman, who has already taken a new job but actually seems to want to remain a Republican, this week called for a do-over, and Republicans everywhere are throwing money at his challenge to the November election. From an electoral perspective, it is not entirely clear why, however. Republicans are busy trying to kick out the three Northeastern GOP moderate Judases from the Senate (and surely they know they don't have a shot at replacing them with anything but a Democrat, whatever Rothenberg may hope for), but they are fighting tooth and nail to keep the Minnesota moderate? The truth is, of course, that the GOP's Minnesota focus has to do with the fact that Franken is the author of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and that Limbaugh, besides being a big fat drug-addled idiot, is also the actual leader of the Republican Party in 2009. Presumably this would explain why Republicans, to their dying breath, are fighting the slanderous Franken. In return, they can expect various favors to be bestowed by the head big fat idiot, and even be saved from political death. "I love Bobby Jindal [...] he's brilliant," Limbaugh said this week, in what is sure to be the Republicans' determining verdict on Jindal's very Bobby-ish performance.

With the sweet smell of defeat lingering in Republican Washington, three of the party's biggest losers are back. Tom DeLay, run out of the capital because even by its standards he was woefully corrupt, called Obama's Congressional address "the most irresponsible, hypocritical speech I have ever witnessed." This from the man who blamed the Columbine shootings on "school systems [teaching] our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup of mud." Speaking of irresponsible, hypocritical, primordial and muddy, Newt Gingrich is also back and you will be stunned to hear that he is "disappointed" with Obama's performance so far. Mitt "Who Let The Dogs Out" Romney, who drained $100 million on a creepy presidential campaign, this week decided to come to the financial rescue of embattled Republicans who are "standing up for fiscal responsibility and saying no to spending abuse" (ie, the stimulus package). Yes, that's right, the man who spent $400,000 per delegate in the Republican primary is proudly lecturing others about fiscal responsibility. Any moment now, we expect Rudy Giuliani, who outdid Romney by spending $59 million for just one delegate, to share some of his own financial wisdom, probably spicing it up with his usual light-handed touch of 9/11 doomsday.

In just seven days, Republicans have offered up more amusement and fodder for an election campaign than even the most hopeful among us could have expected. What is especially thrilling is that it comes at little expense: Obama is competently in charge, as are, by and large, Democrats elsewhere, and change is happening at a mind-blowing pace. In the long run, yes, there should be concern that having buffoons in opposition is not healthy, but for now let's enjoy the moment. Of course, you ask, what about Sarah Palin, one of the likely buffoons-in-chief in 2012? Well, her very serious documentarian took charge of her faltering public relations this week. He went on national television to tell us emphatically that she is not a "moron."

Lester Sloan: Obama and the Berlin Wall

2009-02-26T18:07:00Z

I made a new friend in January. Her name is Susan James and she's a writer based in Los Angeles. We met at a press luncheon at the Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), sponsored by the Berlin Tourist Board. This year marks the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the moments in our recent history that prompted then President George Herbert Walker Bush to pronounce the beginning of "A New World Order."

The luncheon also marked the opening of an exhibition, Art of Two Germanys/ Cold War Cultures, which runs through April 19th of this year before traveling to Nuremberg. It's a fascinating exhibit showing how the art from the two Germanys reflected the social and economic systems that spawned them. Warning! There's a lot to digest, but it may offer interesting lessons for those of us emerging from our own divided social fabric.

Susan and I found ourselves sitting at the same table and I knew we were going to get along the moment she agreed to help me put on the cuff links that I had been carrying around in my pocket. When one of her friends approached the table, Susan simply looked at her and said "This is Lester and I'm helping him with his shirt." You may attribute such immediate familiarity to the afterglow of Obama mania, but I think Susan is just special.

Wine was poured, a few opening remarks made, and then "Bon Appetite." The real meat of the luncheon was to discuss the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Questions about the exhibit had been handled at an earlier press conference. This year in Berlin, there are a slew of events planned running up to the actual November 10th anniversary, and the tourist board was trying to sell the assembled writers on the idea of punching out a few stories.

The principal speaker was Burkhard Kieker, CEO of Berlin Tourism Marketing. Twenty years ago, Kieker was a young, idealistic reporter working for Die Zeit, one of Germany's leading weekly newspapers. It has an erudite staff that produces well-written theses on the news. Its co-publisher Marion Gräfin Dönhoff was something of a legend up until her death in 2002 at the age of 93. She was a founding staff member of the paper and it would be generous to say that Katherine Graham, Barbara Walters and Susan Sontag were, collectively, an approximation of her. She was a journalist who fought in the resistance against the National Socialists, and participated in the failed July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. After the war, she became one of Germany's leading journalists and intellectuals, and a staunch proponent of reunification.

Kieker's CEO, or executive editor of Die Zeit at the time was Teo Summer, who was both physically and intellectually imposing, and who had also served as a sometime adviser to the German government. It was from this milieu in 1989 that the young man went forth to check out rumors that something was happening on the other side of the wall. In the days ahead, he discovered that what many had considered impossible was about to happen. By midnight on November 9th, East Berliners started streaming across the wall. For those gathered at the luncheon, Kieker's words provided a personalized view of one of the greatest historical moments of the century. He emphasized that 20 years later, much needed to be done.

When he had finished, Susan turned to me and said, "Obama's election was like the fall of the Berlin Wall." I gulped down my last piece of steak and signaled the waiter to refill my wine glass.

"That's an interesting metaphor. How so?"

"I felt as though the entire country took a deep breath the night Obama was elected, like we had turned a corner. It was like the wall coming down; there had been a wall separating us as a people for so long. And we talked about freedom so long and now we were finally living it."

Given that she has three history degrees, including a Ph.D., I felt that she spoke with some authority.

Obama has called for caution in our expectations. Like Germany, America was imbued with euphoria after the inauguration. "It's going to take us a while," says James. "Everyone should get used to that and look at historical precedent like Germany."

James' observation is borne out in two perspectives: one is racial and the other is economic. The divide in America between the haves and the have nots has widened significantly. The current economic downturn has virtually wiped out the savings of a generation of Americans who have yet to reach retirement age. Stimulus notwithstanding, we'll be lucky if that damage can be repaired before the end of Obama's term in office. And while the racial divide suffered a serious blow with the election of Obama, we have, in the words of Robert Frost, "miles to go before we sleep."

In a reunited Germany, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country is still years away from being whole again. And Germany doesn't have to carry the responsibility of being the leader of the free world. German documentary filmmaker John Amoateng Kantara, makes this observation:

"It's been twenty 20 years since the wall came down and it seems to many, that the economic demise of the East in the wake of unification, is followed by even more economic troubles, which lie ahead."

What lies ahead for Germany in the wake of the worldwide economic downturn is bleak. With the country's unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, if Wessies (the name for those residing in the west) are catching a cold, the Ossies have pneumonia.

"Mind you," Kantara continues, "not everything has been bad. There was a chance for close to two million upwardly mobile Ossies to migrate to what was formally West Germany, to find housing, a decent job and prosper.

"This rosy picture looks considerably bleaker, when watched from the perspective of those who were left behind in the east. Despite the over two trillion Euros which were spent in the East, you'll find only clusters of growth in the east. "

I was in Berlin when the wall came down. I arrived on the morning of the tenth of November to a city where thousands of Ossies, seemingly dressed in denim (a fabric and style associated with the west) walked along Kurfurtendamm, then the Madison Avenue of West Berlin. As if in a daze, they strolled past the shop windows behind which expensive leather goods, jewelry and shiny BMW's beamed prosperity back at them.

A couple of days later, Pat Cole, a Time Magazine staffer on sabbatical and I (working for Newsweek) crossed over Check Point Charlie to visit Leipzig. We ended up outside of the Stasi headquarters (the East German Secret Police) where a group of east Germans were holding a candle-light march in protest. They were singing "We shall Overcome."

"Join us," they called out to the two African-Americans in their midst. "We learned from you."

In retrospect, it seems, Obama's election signaled something to the entire world. Hopefully, American's return to wholeness begins with the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. We can only hope that it will be "the shot heard around the world" and that it marks the beginning, to paraphrase Bush Sr., of restoring some order to our world.

CPAC Agenda: Joe The Plumber To Advise Young Conservatives As Panelist

2009-02-25T18:47:22Z

On Thursday, conservatives will be descending on Washington DC, the place they like to slam the most, to galvanize their mission to take back Congress and the presidency. Reports say this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will bring in record numbers despite it not being a midterm or presidential election year. According to The Washington Times, 7,000 people attended last year and 9,000 are expected this year.

Last year President Bush and Cheney were the stars of the event. And Mitt Romney chose the conference to announce that he was suspending his campaign.

This year, Cheney and Bush are off the agenda, replaced by ghosts of the campaign trail like Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher) and documentarian John Ziegler, who has been making the rounds to restore Sarah Palin's self-imposed media debacle with his documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." And of course Rush Limbaugh will be there as the biggest draw.

Other events include: "Al Franken and ACORN: How Liberals are Destroying the American Election System"; "The Presidential Banquet with Master of Ceremonies: Rep. Michelle Bachmann"; "Bailing Out Big Business: Are We All Socialists Now?"; A book signing with Ann Coulter; "Media in the Obama Era: Is Journalism Dead?"; "The True Cost Of Global Warming Hysteria"; and "Will Congress Take Your Guns?"

HuffPost will have more reports on the convention. So check back!

David Rees: Stand Up For Ayn Rand: Fall Fashions For Free Markets

2009-02-24T12:50:40Z

As our free market comes under deadly assault by the Socialists and the Trotskyists in the White House, we must rally around the principles of innovation, competition, and excellence that made our country great -- back when it was a free-market laboratory and not the USSR paradise it's turning into because of the Leninists known as "The Government."

If we don't stand our ground, circle our wagons, and march in a parade, everything that we and Ayn Rand have slaved for will be lost.

So I'm proposing we hold a big fashion show and give all the money to the free market. Who's with me?

I'm going to design a fall line whose amazing dresses and jackets will celebrate Ayn Rand's legacy as well as our continuing "guerilla war" against those who would chop off the legs of the free market and serve them to poor people as "Special Leg-Burgers."

The textures, colors, and clean lines of my fashion collection will suggest the power, elegance, and intellectual texture of the innovation that can only flourish when government gets out of the way and allows schemers, dreamers, and meme-ers to do what they do best. And just wait until you see the socks I'm designing!

Does anyone have Kenneth Cole on speed-dial? If you do, please press your phone button and call him and say, "We need some hot slogans and mottos for our Ayn Rand Fashion Fundraiser."

Does anyone wait tables at Le Bernaddian (sp)? (That fish restaurant that was on Top Chef last week.) If so, please tell your boss that we need to reserve the restaurant for our after-party dinner with exclusive flavors inspired by Alan Greenspan's breath.

More details soon ...

(If you didn't know I'm a free-market fundamentalist and budding fashion designer, I'm sorry.)

Lisa Nesselson: A Film Without an Award is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle

2009-02-18T18:00:55Z

I had a dream the other night here in Paris about being the director of two movies, both of which were contenders in the Best Motion Picture category at the Oscars.

One of my films was called "Apples" and the other (you guessed it): "Oranges."

And the Oscar goes to: "My Subconscious For Daring to Express the Inherent Ridiculousness of the Academy Awards However Much Fun They May Be."

The European edition of "Newsweek" keeps declaring that the U.S. is becoming more and more like France ("We Are All Socialists Now...As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French" -- Feb 16, 2009; "The Last Model Standing is France" -- Jan 19, 2009), so, as Oscar hoopla keeps America's remaining journalists jumping through hoops, I thought I'd share a few observations about how the French treat movies during the peculiar span of time known in the English-speaking world as "awards season."

Although film awards are given in Gaul, there is no such thing as "awards season" -- at least not one that results in "goody bags" comparable in value to the going rate for a foreclosed house. (A concentration of campaigning and influence-trafficking is, however, applied to books, for which prizes -- chief among them the Prix Goncourt -- frequently do translate into sales.)

"Season" in France applies to fruit, vegetables, truffles and the prospect of shooting, killing and eating various animals, as well as to the presentation of fashion collections. But films that might qualify as "serious" or "interesting" are not jammed into the theater-programming equivalent of a massive highway pile-up. Professionals in a position to vote for awards are assumed to have attention spans and memory banks sufficiently elastic to stretch back more than two months.

Result: Fare spanning the spectrum from suitable-for-grown-ups to suitable-for-parameciums is released every week of the year and not just from the holiday with the turkey to the holiday with Father Time.

Picture this:

On Dec 12th at Fouquet's, a venerable restaurant on the Champs-Elysées, Gilles Jacob of the Cannes Film Festival stepped up onto a slightly elevated, completely unadorned stage to announce in a voice not much stronger than a whisper the winner of the 66th Prix Louis Delluc.

The winner was not in the room. Nor, as is the tradition, were any of the contenders. The select handful of journalists and film-o-centric Parisians in attendance waited patiently for nearly an hour while lucky laureate Raymond Depardon made his way to the ceremony that wasn't a ceremony, to receive his certificate for having made the best French film of 2008.

The Louis Delluc jury opted for "La Vie moderne," the third installment of Depardon's documentary tryptich "Profils paysans," about the now-fading ways of rural life in France. For the better part of a decade, world class photographer Depardon has been filming a group of mostly elderly farmers in the sparsely populated corner of France where he was raised.

Described with pride as "the Goncourt of cinema," the Prix Louis Delluc is determined by a jury of 14 film critics. Its members, much like the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, serve for life.

The Delluc has previously gone to the likes of Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. You can disagree with or scratch your head at their choice, but you can be certain that the jurors actually watched the year's domestic filmic output (200 or so films are made in France each year); the general public has no such guarantee when it comes to the Academy Awards. (Or indeed, the Cesars, France's much younger answer to the Academy Awards; the Cesars ceremony will be telecast, live, on February 27 -- without commercials.)

Nobody "enters" the Delluc race. The jurors make their own short list at a preliminary meeting in November. And they make their final choice at a deliberation that takes place at Fouquet's right before the announcement.

There is no campaigning, for there is no way to campaign. Even if there were, it would be considered in beyond bad taste to do so.

Most invitations for important events say something like "1 p.m. sharp." Louis Delluc invitations say that invitees should show up "around 12:45."

The film that won the Louis Delluc prize for Best First Film (a junior Delluc started a few years ago) also concerns the rural underpinnings that make France, well, France. "L'Apprenti" (The Apprentice), directed by Samuel Collardey, wasn't even on the short list that attendees were handed when they showed up around 12:45. Nobody on the jury had seen the film yet at their last gathering. The jury reserves the right to add films they think have merit. Including at the last minute.

Oscar ballot watchdog Price Waterhouse Coopers would be about as useful as a "More Attractive Features Through Plastic Surgery" symposium chaired by Mickey Rourke.

Who was Louis Delluc? Glad you asked. He has been called the spiritual father of film criticism. For just as inventors had to invent motion pictures, so did somebody have to put quill to paper to extoll the virtues of the 7th art. Delluc's contribution to the blossoming field was to insist that apart from the story it told, a good film should find ways to tell it cinematically.

Delluc (1890-1924) was part of the first wave of film critics to become film directors. In the teens -- which is to say, in the silent era -- he founded the earliest "ciné clubs" where early film buffs gathered to watch movies and discuss their merits.

While Monsieur Delluc had a fine imagination, I doubt he could have imagined the bespangled behemoth the Oscar telecast has become, awash in fashion frippery and pointless speculation. (Some two hundred million people are eligible to vote for President of the United States; under 6000 individuals are permitted to vote for the Academy Awards. It has nothing to do with you and me unless You & Me are voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.)

The Prix Louis Delluc shows, year in and year out, that it is possible to honor excellence without a sliver of hoopla. Hence, it is possible for a film that you -- and an awful lot of French people -- have never heard of, to be honored as Best French Film of the Year.

And once that decision is announced, it is disseminated by the press. It has an impact precisely because it's so understated.

Also on Dec 12th, after several weeks of heated debate the highlights of which dominated the national news nearly every day, beleaguered representatives to the French General Assembly voted "yes" on a legal provision in a new audiovisual law launched by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy couldn't think of a good reason why the nation's television viewers should be subjected to advertising.

As a result, since January 5, 2009, commercials have been forbidden on "public television" from 8 at night until 6 the next morning. The decree applies to free-to-air broadcasting, entailing all but two channels, which are privately owned. By good friends of Mr. Sarkozy.

(It should be noted that every household in France is assessed an annual fee of 116 euros -- roughly $148 -- earmarked for public television and radio. Such fees are much higher in the UK and in Germany, for example.)

The resulting shortfall of 450 million euros (about $556 million) in production funds previously contributed by advertisers will, apparently, be poached from industries that are doing well. Like privately owned TV channels and Internet Service Providers.

A late-December decree also aimed to authorize "an additional commercial break" when films or TV series are broadcast. That's an additional commercial break added to the one -- yes, one -- permitted to date.

Broadcasters are not permitted to chop up the final reel of a suspenseful film every few minutes followed by a voice intoning "And now we return to a fleeting glimpse of several frames from 'The Formerly Most Diabolical Multiple Trick Ending Film Ever Made, In Easy Viewing Segments for Fruit Flies and Their Families.'"

Cut to December 10th at the Pompidou Center, opening night of the insanely complete retrospective of all 55 films made by Werner Herzog. During the post-film discussion, the accomplished German filmmaker was asked to comment on the role of The Discovery Channel in the film we had just seen, the South Pole-set documentary "Encounters at the End of the World." (The doc is up for a an Oscar.)

Herzog was quick to praise Discovery for having picked up his documentary "Grizzly Man" and for helping to fund "Encounters." But Herzog explained that when he turned in his edit of the film, Discovery went about finding ways to insert 9 commercial breaks.

"This is not something unique to America," said Herzog, who lives in the U.S. when he's not globe-trotting in order to make a film. "It is also the case in many other countries. It is an endless plague that allows storytelling to be interrupted on television. Storytelling is a gift that humanity has developed and we must not give it up. We cannot hand it over to the world of consumerism."

When I first came to France 30 years ago, I was often asked by French friends who had visited the U.S., "How can you bear those horrible commercials chopping up films on TV? Why do people stand for it?"

As a then-recent graduate of the Radio, TV and Film department of the School of Speech at Northwestern University, I tried to explain that my courses in radio and television production had been geared toward making absolutely certain that the record you were playing or the scene you were directing or editing would be "done" at precisely the moment the advertiser had paid for. Airtime was a valuable commodity. (In France at that time, if a panel discussion was going well, it would run over its allotted time slot. The next show could, literally, wait. In the U.S. this courtesy is only extended to live sporting events and --hmmmm -- the Academy Awards telecast.)

In some of my college classes, the content of the TV show or radio program you created was almost entirely beside the point: Could you or could you not "backtime" (fade in on a song in progress) a record to end just as the commercial was due to intercede in the slot the advertiser had purchased?

If Sarkozy has his way, advertising at all times of day will vanish for good at the end of 2011

But while commercials, per se, will no longer be accepted on the 5 TV channels concerned, I was suprised to hear that product placement would be allowed.

Hmmm. So imagine there's a made-for-TV movie about life in the court of Louis XIV. And while he and his queen are out riding horses at Versailles, what should we see but a carriage in the distance from a 20th century French department store or perhaps from Darty, the chain of home appliance stores to which Sarkozy's daughter-in-law is heir.

So, yes, let us tell stories -- this "gift to humanity." And let them not be interrupted, in this or any other season, by anything except our emotions.

Bob Cesca: Sean Hannity's Ridiculous War Against Socialism

2009-02-18T17:00:16Z

When I watched the video of Sean Hannity's Tuesday night show, I was half expecting him to leap out of his chair, grab his producer by the lapels and scream something about a goblin on the wing of the airplane -- all puffy and bloodshot, hair mussed, tie undone, spittle and sweat flying all around.

There was Sean Hannity on television: breathlessly announcing the red dawn of "socialism you can believe in." "The New America." He called the recovery bill, "a liberal hijacking of the American way of life." Uh-huh. Hijacking. Terrorists rather than goblins on the wing. I get it. And even though we just wrapped up eight years of the largest government expansion in our country's history, Hannity derided the recovery bill as "the largest government expansion in our country's history."

But, unbelievably, that wasn't the most ludicrous part of the show. The frantic announcement was preceded by a newsreel-style montage featuring video of the various congressional floor debates about the bill, footage of Boehner throwing down the bill and, naturally, President Obama signing the bill. All backed with the frighteningly pulse-pounding choir chants of the apocalyptic anthem "O Fortuna."

There's no gray area in what he was suggesting. Socialism is here, said Hannity, and it's really scary. The choir music said so.

Hannity is once again joined in this crusade by very serious pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Steve Doocy, Alex Castellanos, Joe Scarborough, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck who, at one point, claimed that President Obama is both a socialist and a fascist -- a feat that calls to mind an old George Carlin joke about how it's physically impossible to "put your seat-back forward."

The message is clear. The voices on the far-right are unanimous.

Therefore, I'm calling upon Sean Hannity to use his prime time television program as a platform to rally Republican politicians, cable news hacks and citizens alike to refuse delivery of not just recovery bill spending, but all so-called "socialist" government programs. Send it all back. End American socialism now! All of it.

Refuse to send your kids to socialized public schools and universities; refuse to use socialized roads and highways; refuse to call upon socialized police and fire departments; shut down the socialized air traffic control; refuse to visit socialized national parks; tell grandma that her Social Security and Medicare will have to be sent back to the government; demand the immediate dismantling of our socialized American military. Sarah Palin and her supporters in Alaska should refuse all forms of "redistributed wealth" by sending back their checks from the socialized oil program there.

Send it all back. I'm sure the entire roster of Neo-McCarthyite pundits enumerated above -- Limbaugh, Scarborough, Hannity and the like -- have already forgone their usage of these socialist services so we can assume they've figured out a ways to get by. How hard can it be really? I mean, who needs roads when there are hot-air balloons and jet packs. Socialist fire departments? A house fire will eventually burn itself out, won't it? As for the pre-socialist 50-percent poverty rate for the elderly? If we can put a man on the Moon (also a socialist program), we can invent some bootstraps that'll fit over grandma's therapeutic stockings.

As for the recovery bill, the states aren't forced by law to accept the funding. They're entirely within their rights to, borrowing Hannity's spasmodic metaphor, thwart the hijacking.

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is apparently mulling the idea of refusing the recovery funds. Paul Begala, in his weekly column, has already dared Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina to send it back.

Meanwhile, on her MSNBC show Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow asked Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota if he would refuse his state's share of the recovery plan. Pawlenty hemmed and hawed and finally relented that he wasn't totally opposed to the recovery bill -- just the yucky parts. I assume Pawlenty meant the totally nonexistent parts like the fake ACORN thing and the fake mouse thing, both of which were entirely conjured from thin air by the Republicans. Or did he mean the part of the bill that's otherwise known as, you know, the largest middle class tax cut in American history? Was he opposed to that part?

The recovery bill is expected to create or rescue an estimated 50,000 jobs in Louisiana, and Jindal would be refusing $7.68 billion in federal funds. The recovery bill allocates $7.7 billion and 50,000 jobs for South Carolina. $9.34 billion and 66,000 jobs for Minnesota. John Boehner's home state of Ohio will be receiving $20.09 billion and the recovery bill is projected to create or save somewhere in the range of 133, 000 jobs. Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky? $7.18 billion and 48,000 jobs. John McCain's Arizona? $10.27 billion and 70,000 jobs. In Rush Limbaugh's adopted home state of Florida? $28.33 billion and 206,000 jobs. Glenn Beck's home state of Washington? $10.41 billion and 75,000 jobs.

Send it all back.

But if the money somehow gets through Hannity's blockade and steams its way to socialist Republican governors like Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger (embracing "economic girly man" status), and if those jobs are created anyway, Sean Hannity ought to heroically command his viewers in these states to not accept those jobs. They're socialist jobs, after all.

While he's at it, Hannity might as well refuse delivery on the president's new socialized home rescue plan as well. I wonder how many McCain-Palin voters who ripped into Barack Obama for "redistributing the wealth" will actually participate in the program.

Funny what happens to ridiculous Neo-McCarthyite sloganeering when the shit really hits the fan. I expect that a year from now we'll be able to look at statistics indicating that zero dittoheads and zero occupants of Hannity's America chose to have their homes rescued by the socialist federal government.

No?

Of course not. It'll never happen because it turns out that most Americans are, to some degree, closeted socialists, especially when they're suddenly confronted by the darker realities of free market capitalism and the destructive long-term effects of both Reaganomics and Bush Republicanism. In practice, this week's cover of Newsweek is only half right. We've always been socialists (with some obvious and necessary limits). A system in which the federal government provides commonly held services while also regulating industry isn't a brand new concept in America, no matter how apoplectic Hannity pretends to be on his show. Hell, even the Republicans who voted against the recovery bill are scrambling to make sure they get their chunk.

But if, in fact, Hannity is right and I'm missing the big picture on this thing, then every Republican who voted against the recovery bill and every Republican dittohead who is currently joining with the far-right talkers in this red scare uprising has an obligation for the sake of consistency to send it all back.

If it makes them feel better, they can even play some scary music via our socialist radio airwaves while they're doing it.

BobCesca.com

Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.

Marc Cooper: Chavez Wins: "Socialism" Or Death!

2009-02-16T12:19:17Z

During the days of the Pinochet dictatorship there was that joke about the Chilean dictator going on a state visit to Bolivia, a long-time rival of his own nation.

At a state dinner, the Bolivian President introduces his Chilean counterpart to Senor so-and-so, Secretary of the Bolivian Navy. Feeling slightly mocked by the leader of the landlocked nation, Pinochet raises his eyebrow and says "You have a Minister of the Navy?"

The Bolivian President doesn't bat an eyelash and responds, "What's the problem? After all, you have a Minister of Justice."

In that respect, if Hugo Chavez wants to call himself a socialist and pretend that the armed forces that currently hold the levers of power in his country and who swear an oath to defend the fatherland, revolution and socialism are the armed representatives of the working class, I suppose that's his right. After all, if Dick Cheney can call himself a defender of democracy, why can't Hugo claim to be a tribune of socialism?

There have been worse characters in history who have claimed the title of socialist. From Stalin to Pol Pot to the younger Mussolini.

But Chavez is hardly in their league. He's much more of a cross between Peron and Fidel with a dash of the Woody Allen character in Bananas. Make that two tablespoons.

I, on the other hand, venture to believe that Mssrs. Marx and Engels had a rather different species in mind when they were theorizing about a post-capitalist world and who might lead it.

But then again, Venezuela is hardly post-capitalist. If what Chavez has got going there has anything to do with the democratic and egalitarian notions that have inspired generations of socialists throughout history, please count me out.

No question that Chavez --utilizing all the state resources of an incumbent that controls ALL branches of the government, much of the media and manipulates the levers of oil-financed patronage-- won a clear victory Sunday in the referendum that will allow him to indefinitely run for re-election when his current term (and his FIRST 15 years in power) expires in 2013.

In broad terms, the vote can be called democratic. More or less the same as what passes for democracy in many places of the world. And Chavez was democratically re-elected president last time out. And, in case, anyone attempts to put some unsanitary words in my mouth, Chavez is the legal and constitutional ruler of Venezuela. Duly elected, lawfully elected.... and so on.

But he is the ruler. As none of the above negates or contradicts the rather obvious fact that Chavez intends to never leave office -- at least, not alive. His usurpation of any pluralism, of any semblance of debate and consensus in the most important levels of government is something that merits no celebrations and certainly bodes nothing very uplifting about the Venezuelan future.

Legal or not, democratic or not, Chavez is bent on and has effectively already achieved one-man rule. And that, brother, ain't got nothing to do with socialism.

Socialism should mean more democracy, not less. More transparency, not less. More distribution of power, not centralization in the hands of an ego-maniac who lends himself to five hour Sunday TV spectacles and who refers to any and all critics as "squalid...terrorists...and fascists."

No question that when Chavez initially came to power, his opposition was led by rather doltish and corrupt representatives of a corrupt and discredited oligarchy. What a gift to a demagogue like Chavez!

But things have changed in Venezuela in the last five years. The opposition has broadened and deepened, now extending far beyond its original right-wing and sometimes hysterical base. There are plenty of democrats, centrists, and even leftists (and socialists) in what is now a much more mature and pluralistic opposition.

And it's now their move. They have a limited historical window in which to pull it together and forge a credible, progressive, and attractive alternative to the brutish Chavez. Either that, or they should be prepared to have their grandchildren listening to Chavez rants and raves thirty years from now.

P.S. I am now going to contradict what I just wrote. I am willing to bet real cash that Chavez will not make it for another decade. He has given far too much power to the Venezuelan military and that will be his eventual downfall. The world economic recession and the plummeting price of oil, Chavez' failure to invest in a diversified economic development program, rampant corruption (and a horrific murder rate), will inevitably -- and probably sooner rather than later - lead to massive discontent. I would guess that such popular disillusionment (of the sort that usually lends itself to a yearning for an iron fist) will kick the doors wide open for a military coup by one or another general not anxious to go down with Chavez' dingy. This seems a more likely end to this story than an opposition victory anytime soon. I would not cheer nor support such a coup. It would probably produce something worse than the status quo. I just find it the most likely of outcomes.

This piece was originally published on Marc's blog.

We're All Socialists Now: Newsweek

2009-02-07T21:41:31Z

In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French.

Pierre Péan Book Accuses French Foreign Minister Of Taking Cash From African Dictators

2009-02-05T18:08:14Z

The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner yesterday dismissed claims that he had mingled humanitarian activities with paid work for African dictators as "grotesque" and anti-Semitic.

The allegations against M. Kouchner, co-founder of Médecins sans Frontières, are contained in a vitriolic book published yesterday to a divided response from the French political establishment. Its author is one of France's most experienced - and most controversial - investigative journalists.

The book, which critics contend relies on innuendo and is fatally flawed by the biases of its author, claims that M. Kouchner ignored a conflict of interest between his humanitarian work and payments he was receiving as a consultant on health matters from two African dictators, President Omar Bongo Odimba of Gabon, and Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville. It alleges that, as Foreign Minister last year, he intervened to get rid of a junior minister who had angered the two African leaders. The book also claims that M. Kouchner, 69, took advantage of legal loopholes in the regulations of the European Parliament to bump up his travel expenses when he was a Euro MP.

Former colleagues on the French left took the opportunity to embarrass M. Kouchner, who jumped ship to join the Sarkozy administration in May 2007. Politicians of the centre-right mostly - but not entirely - flew to M. Kouchner's defence.

In an emotional statement to the national assembly yesterday, Mr Kouchner dismissed the book as being full of "confusions and insinuations". He pointed to "insidious" passages which accused him of being a "cosmopolitan" and representing an "anti-France". M. Kouchner said this was a "disturbing" revival of language from the 1930s.

The word cosmopolitan has long been used by the French far right, and sometimes the far left, as a code word for "Jew". M. Kouchner's father was Jewish but he was brought up as a Protestant.

The book, Le Monde Selon K, by Pierre Péan, is an aggressive re-examination of M. Kouchner's life's work as a doctor, humanitarian campaigner and politician. M. Péan, usually regarded as a man of the left, makes no secret of his dislike for M. Kouchner's politics. He suggests he is someone who has always been influenced by the American or "Anglo-Saxon" world view, and has sought to denigrate French influence.

Much of M. Péan's book is an attack on M. Kouchner for trying to improve French relations with the Tutsi-dominated regime in Rwanda. This is hardly a central plank of Kouchner-Sarkozy diplomacy, but it is a theme dear to M. Péan's heart. The investigative author's previous, equally controversial, book argued that the Tutsis were more guilty than the Hutus of murderous crimes in the genocidal civil war of 1994 - an argument rejected by almost all African scholars.

M. Kouchner therefore suggested yesterday that he was the victim of a "double revisionism" - "that of yesterday [in other words, anti-Semitism] and that of today, those who want to rewrite the history of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda."

Political controversy has erupted in France, however, mostly over a relatively short passage in the book which examines M. Kouchner's activities in Africa between 2002 and 2007, just before he infuriated his fellow Socialists by joining the Sarkozy administration.

During this period, M. Kouchner was working on African health policy as president of Esther, a pressure group aiming to improve international hospital standards. At the same time, according to M. Péan, he was working as a paid consultant for two French companies which had €4.6m worth of contracts with Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville to advise on health policy.

M. Péan suggests - without conclusive proof - that M. Kouchner intervened to make sure payments on these contracts were honoured after he took office as foreign minister. The book alleges that M. Kouchner moved to have the development minister Jean-Marie Bockel sacked after he annoyed presidents Bongo and Sassou Nguesso by saying publicly last year that the old tradition of "Francafrique" - close collusion between Paris and authoritarian African leaders - was "dead".

Another chapter in the book says that M. Kouchner, as a Euro MP, had declared his principal residence to be Corsica, rather than Paris. Under the parliament's rules, he was then entitled to claim travelling expenses from Corsica to meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg.

M. Kouchner yesterday rejected all these allegations. He told the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur: "I never signed a single contract with an African state... I was a consultant for a French company in an area that I know, medicine and public health. In three years of work, I earned about €6,000 a month, after tax."

He rejected any suggestion that there was a conflict of interest with his humanitarian work. But the fact that he admitted earning €72,000 a year after tax from consultancy work in two of Africa's poorest countries caused eyebrows to be raised.

M. Kouchner has made many friends and many enemies. After helping to lead the May 1968 student revolt, he volunteered as a doctor in the Nigerian civil war and founded Médecins sans Frontières in 1971.

Read more from the Independent.

Leeat Granek, PhD: Who Wants to be the Goose Anyways?! Why Being Single Doesn't Suck

2009-02-05T13:26:09Z

When I was little there were three games that I hated with a passion.

The first was Duck Duck Goose. The anxiety of never knowing when you were going to be tapped "goose" was painful. The only thing worse than being tapped, was not being tapped, because it meant you weren't chosen.

The second game was Red Rover. I hated running, I still hate running, and being captured in a net of arms is almost as uncomfortable as breaking through the human barrier.

But, the bane of my existence, the game that truly sent chills up my spine and filled me with overwhelming dread was Musical Chairs. You had to move fast or you would be left standing alone with no chair, no home, and no friends. I hated that there wasn't enough for everyone. I hated when I was left chairless, and I hated when anyone else was left standing too. I offered to share my seat on a number of occasions, but my kindergarten teacher, compelled to teach us the rules of this frighteningly capitalist game, discouraged us by taking the two rebel socialists out of the running.

Twenty-five years later and I am again feeling like the odd one out. But this time, the proverbial chair has turned into The Partner.

Every single one of my friends is married or in a long-term relationship. Every. Single. One. I don't know how this happened. Most of us are not even thirty yet. And then, one day I woke up and everyone had paired off in some weird Noah's Arkesque compulsion.

For the most part this doesn't bother me. I am searching for Mr. Right and it's always buzzing around in my mind, but it's not the centerpiece of my life, and it certainly doesn't keep me up at night. It will happen when it will happen, I tell myself. And if it doesn't happen, well, then, I'll do what I always do, pull myself together and make the most out of my situation. This is how I feel on the good days.

But the bad days can be brutal.

One thing that I have learned is that the bad days are usually instigated by other people's anxieties about my singleness. That is, I don't worry about it until I'm told to be concerned by others. It's a bit like Duck Duck Goose again. You don't really want to be tapped, but it worries you that you aren't being chosen because everyone else seems to want to be the Goose.

Indeed, the Goose question comes up daily. The first thing my girlfriends ask when I speak to them is if I'm dating anyone new. My parent's friends and my relatives say things like "next time it will be you" at all the weddings, baby names, bris', and engagement parties we are invited to. My colleagues want to know who I met over the weekend and whether he was cute.

I find this incredibly strange. Many of my married friends talk about how hard their relationships are and how they wish they could get a break from the kids. My extended family and my parent's friends have been through their fair share of painful divorces that they are still recovering from years later, and those who remain together seem pretty miserable to me. When I think of this, I can't help wondering, why I would want to be the damn Goose anyways?!

And then there is the mysterious disappearance of the rest of my personality in these conversations. I am a writer. I am a researcher. I work full time in a health care setting. I travel. I like esoteric movies and abstract art. I take African dance classes. I read constantly. I have a rich social network and a bright future to look forward to in my profession. Why doesn't anyone ever ask me about these things? Like I said, it's strange.

I suppose the wish to be like everyone else, or alternatively, to have everyone else be like you is natural. We are relational beings and are constantly striving to build connection through our sameness in anyway we can. We want to justify our own choices by having them mirrored in everyone else around us. But just because this inclination exists, doesn't mean it's necessarily right.

In fact, lot's of very interesting things happen when you are "out." When I lost at Musical Chairs, I would lean against the wall outside the circle and daydream, or read my Amelia Bedelia books, or play and talk to the other kids who were also out of the game. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is a lot more fun to be had outside the circle than in it. You should try it sometime.