Monday, July 20, 2015

Feeling the Bern Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is still putting aloe vera on its Berns as we assemble the best progressive blog posts from last week.


Off the Kuff looks at the lawsuit filed against the state for refusing to issue birth certificates to children of undocumented immigrant mothers.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos makes a compelling argument as to why the Democratic Party needs to sharpen its message in a way in which it resonates with and motivates the majority of D voters: Why we need a better Democratic story and how Sanders' candidacy underscores this point.

Socratic Gadfly says that if Obama is going to visit a federal prison and talk about commuting sentences, he ought to throw the long bomb by going to Florida and freeing Leonard Peltier.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know Greg Abbott screwed up the child support payment upgrade. Republicans don't really care about kids. You can tell by action after action.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson smells the rotting fruit of one-party rule in Williamson County: County GOP elected officials using courts for petty political battles.

The disruption at Netroots Nation's presidential town hall forum by activists associated with Black Lives Matter was a clash between the politics of the old-school Social Democrats and that of the New Democrats' identity politics. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs thinks there will a coming-together of the two movements or a cleaving of the Democratic Party as the dynamic unfolds.

Neil at All People Have Value discussed Obama's role in taking away our freedoms through the New Horizons mission to Pluto. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Egberto Willies went from the kerfuffle at Netroots Nation to the Bernie Sanders event in Houston, and even provided a live stream for online viewers of it.

===============

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Texas Election Law Blog celebrates its second anniversary, and reviews the case that led to its beginning.

Ken Janda asks how can Texas continue to ask for billions of dollars in uncompensated care payments to hospitals for uninsured patients coming to emergency rooms, when more than one million of those people could be put into Medicaid Managed Care?

The TSTA Blog warns of "dangerous anti-educator" Scott Walker.

Texas Vox cheers the forthcoming end of coal.

Grits for Breakfast is pleased to see that funding has been allotted for research into the underlying scientific bases for the forensic tools and methods currently used in the criminal justice system.

David Ortez gives a graphical representation of the Houston mayoral fundraising race.

Rachel Pearson explains why that video hit job on Planned Parenthood is "pure applesauce".

Texas Clean Air Matters documents the trend towards clean, affordable power.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Social Democratic class politics versus New Left identity politics


Traditionally, the term "progressive" has connoted a social democratic, class-based politics. It was a political perspective rooted in the socialist tradition of the early 19th and 20th century labor unions across Western Europe, Canada, the U.S. (Eugene Debs), and elsewhere. Over time, "progressives" moved away from anti-capitalism and become social democrats, working to reform capitalism while melding markets with robust safety nets. Old-school progressives wanted to unite the working class as a whole, to push for policies including collective bargaining protections, minimum wage laws, fair-trade deals, single-payer healthcare, affordable college, progressive taxation, public funding of elections, and more. Class solidarity was the primary goal.

However, "progressive" has come to connote a new term definition, especially among young people. As leftist movements across the developed world adopted neoliberal and corporatist Third-Way policies, "progressives" moved away from center-left and toward the center, and even often to the center-right on class issues. However, they still portrayed themselves as "leftist" by having a unique focus on politics of identity. Gay rights. Women's rights. Reproductive rights. While all of these issues are important in their own right, focusing too heavily on them and prioritizing them created an environment in which societies made much social progress, but they moved backward on economics. No longer in the U.S. is it controversial to support gay marriage: heck, even large corporations and Wall Street are fully supportive of LGBT rights and issues. But it's far, far harder in the U.S. to say "let's also raise taxes on the rich above 50%" or "let's enact Medicare-for-all" or "let's make college tuition free" or "let's reign in on Wall Street." These issues are politically unpalatable, while social progressive stances are much more easier for our elected politicians to adopt, even on race-based issues.

What we're seeing now is a pretty ugly clash between the old school social democratic progressives and the new left identity politics progressives. True, identity politics and class solidarity aren't mutually exclusive, and it is important and necessary to reconcile them. No good modern leftist is a class reductionist who believes LGBT rights is a "minor" issue, or that criminal justice reform is "insignificant." However, the problem is that there are too many "identity politics reductionists" in the "progressive movement." People are judged and reduced to their tangible identities: their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, visible disability status, religion, and so on. All that matters is whether someone is a white male, for example. That is enough to discount to what they are saying, even if they have a genuinely important agenda. Class issues are almost completely downplayed: poor or impoverished white people are often not viewed as needy of help. I've heard people say that "homeless white people don't need assistance because homeless PoC have it worse." In my view, that mentality is wrong. Oppression Olympics is wrong.

Extreme adherents of radical identity politics argue that the problems in society are inherently caused by white cisgender heterosexual males. Every single event and action by white men, even if they are progressive, is seen through the lens of power relationships or "privilege." These radical leftist ideologies are in fact very counter-productive because they divide people, and are hostile to whites joining social justice movements to show solidarity with PoC. Radical identity politics leftists say white progressive "allies" often "invade space," "derail conversations," and "aren't critical enough." They claim white people can't ever understand the struggle of PoC, or ever empathize, or ever be good. There is some truth to this, but radicals crank it up to the extreme. To say that Bernie as an old white male cannot want equality for someone else and offer his support and help in an active manner is... not anywhere close to equality. In believing that white people can't truly care about social justice, racial justice, or economic justice, these radical identity politics leftists are the ones being bigoted toward white people. And I'm saying this as a person of color who has been in progressive activist circles.

I'm not white. I'm South Asian: I immigrated from India to the U.S. as a child. I'm 22 years old, and was active in campus politics at UC Berkeley. And I've been around these radical identity politics leftists. They praise MLK and Malcolm X, but ignore how Malcolm X changed his views toward progressive whites after the Hajj. Many of them are voting for Hillary solely because she is a woman, and because they feel our society is characterized by systemic patriarchy. While it is important to break down glass ceilings and to effect gender equality, and I'd love to see the first female president, I think other issues and policy stances are important too. I think it's also demeaning to Hillary to vote for her simply due to her gender. I've met a lot of well-meaning, genuinely progressive white allies throughout my life, and I think it's horrible to portray them as the enemy when we all need to come together to make a more equal society.

It's viewed as a deficiency of Bernie's that he's focusing his agenda on economic populism, that he's not talking enough about race, gender, or other topics. But that's missing the point. Sure Hillary Clinton gave speeches on mass incarceration, white privilege, immigration reform, and other important social justice topics. But she's not calling for reinstating Glass-Steagall, single-payer healthcare, raising the minimum wage to $15, or other important economic policies. She's not focusing on overturning Citizens United, tackling the top 1%, etc. That's because the billionaire class holds the true political power in the U.S., and the billionaires (Wall Street, the Koch Brothers, etc.) are the root of our evils.

It's much harder to advocate for economic populism than it is to call for social justice on other topics. Economic injustice also exacerbates systemic racism, sexism, etc., and we can't eliminate racism without economic reforms. No one in the Democratic Party establishment is talking about economic injustice, or eliminating poverty. Only Bernie.

Bernie's talking about the issues he's talking about because they have been ignored and dismissed as "fringe" for so long, ever since LBJ's "War on Poverty" since the 1960s. Economic justice is one the most important issues that have been neglected in the U.S., and of course it makes sense for Bernie to make it the center of his campaign. When rural, socially conservative states are backing higher minimum wages, support protecting entitlement programs, and support collective bargaining, that shows they aren't supporting the GOP due to an agreement over pro-business economic policies. Sanders is tapping into a nascent economic populism in the country, and in my view, it is important to make that the central topic of the 2016 presidential election. It is actually a deficiency that the rest of political establishment has ignored economics for far too long. And it happens to be the fact that Bernie's policies would mostly affect poor people of color given that minority communities have been hit the hardest by wealth and income inequality, poverty, unemployment, poor education, and low social mobility.

Like Bernie was saying in Iowa the other day, we can't divide ourselves by gender, sexuality, and race. But that's exactly what the hecklers earlier today in Arizona want to do, as they chanted "what side are you on," and spewed profanities. Sanders, in contrast, has the ideology that all poor and working class people, regardless of race, should unite in a broad movement. And he says the problems in society can be traced to the billionaire class' stranglehold on government. It is a populism based on economic class, rather than ethnic or racial identity, and I think it is a much more workable leftism and and has a better shot at building a genuine grassroots movement.

Bold and italic emphasis in the excerpt is mine.

I can't speak about or judge Martin O'Malley  -- I'll leave that to Egberto -- but Bernie Sanders has been a staunch advocate for African American civil rights for over 50 years.  He marched with MLK in 1963, and witnessed the "I Had a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  He was a student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  He coordinated sit-ins against segregated housing at the University of Chicago, and got arrested for civil disobedience, protesting racially segregated schools in Chicago.  He has consistently denounced police brutality and the criminal injustice system in America as applied to people of color... as recently as yesterday in Phoenix, even as he was being shouted down.

Bernie Sanders backed Jesse Jackson's 1988 run for POTUS, opposed the "tuff-on-crime" policies of the 1990s, opposed the 1996 welfare reform -- a Bill Clinton initiative, mind you -- that marginalized poor women of color the most.  He continues to oppose mass incarceration, the war on drugs, police militarization, the death penalty, etc.

Bernie Sanders has come correct on the issues that matter to all black lives, all of his adult life.  So when protestors at Netroots Nation -- or anywhere else, such as perhaps in Dallas and Houston today -- chant "Whose side are you on", I just hope they'll check the facts.  And to Tia Oso's question, the answer is yes.

I would add that her question, slightly revised, would be an excellent one to ask Barack Obama:

"After nearly seven years as president, where is your racial justice agenda that will dismantle, not reform, not make progress, but will begin to dismantle the structural racism in the United States?"

Update: From Oliver Willis (a black man, for those who might be unaware, and so we can avoid the "whitesplaining" nonsense):

There is a fine and upstanding tradition in America of protest. At its most effective, protest is a great tool towards changing public attitudes about key issues (gender, race, sexual orientation, economic policies) and has actually been able to pass laws producing amazing change.

At its worst, protest can simply be an exercise in vanity, an almost childish temper tantrum with no goal or policy set in mind beyond the venal egos of the protesters.

This event appears to be the latter.

[...]

...It isn’t that the issues of Black Lives Matter don’t exist, but what in God’s name can Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley do on a Saturday afternoon to fix them? It isn’t as if either man has given the issue a cold shoulder. The establishment front runner, Hillary Clinton, has made speeches and policy proposals on these issues as well.

And even while President Obama has been addressing these issues – just this week he visited a prison, the first time any president has done so — the protest would have been less impotent if it had targeted him or policy makers with the ability to do something over the next year.

But instead, they yelled at Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, which accomplishes nothing more than proving the case that there are elements of the left who would protest the Easter Bunny if it meant being able to yell some sort of slogan.

I bet they feel great about themselves, having done nothing to advance the issues they profess to care so dearly about. I bet they feel great.

Update: If you want to understand the complexity of the struggle between the two factions, the irony being used as leverage, and the power of Twitter employing it, just scroll through #BernieSoBlack, or read this for the short take.

Sunday Funnies

Plutocracy is not a planet.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Ben Hall and Steven Hotze

A person only casually interested in the Houston mayor's contest might ask oneself why a candidate who claims to be a Democrat would be accepting large donations from the Republican kingmaker of Harris County, especially when there are two Republicans in the race.  But municipal elections are non-partisan, so if you're a virulent homophobe in either one of those two parties, you probably won't be asking yourself anything.



Via Kris Banks (from Facebook)


Via Charles Kuffner (from Facebook)


Can't remember exactly who Hotze is?  Here you go.

A prominent Houston Republican activist is making some strong assertions about same-sex marriage. Among them: that anal sex will be pushed on kindergarteners following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the country.

Dr. Steven Hotze, president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and Houston talk radio host, articulated that thought yesterday in Dallas while speaking at a kick-off for a new anti-gay marriage organization, the Texas Observer reported. He was joining conservative allies in founding "Real Marriage: One Man/One Woman for Life," a group he said will campaign against the cultural influence of "homo-fascists" in Texas and beyond.

[...]

"They want to intimidate individuals, churches, schools and families to celebrate those that participate in anal sex. That's what they love and enjoy: anal sex. And that's bad, that's evil. It's a terrible thing to try to do and they want to try to teach it to kids in schools," he said. "Kids will be encouraged to practice sodomy in kindergarten."

Real Marriage, he said, will target and influences businesses that don't resist "the homosexual political movement."

Hall polled 3% in the KHOU/HPM survey three weeks ago, ahead of the two actual Republicans, Bill King and Steven Costello, who earned 3% and 2% respectively.  It's going to take a hell of a lot more gay bashing than accepting ten large from the Hotze family -- and loaning himself $850,000 -- for Hall to get some traction in this race.

Maybe he could hire James O'Keefe and heavily edit a clandestine video of someone posing as a transitioning person in a bathroom assaulting a child.  Or something.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Bernie Sanders schedules Texas stops this weekend

Dallas and Houston on Sunday, July 19.


-- The Big D details (Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. at the downtown Sheraton ballroom)

-- University of Houston's Cullen Performance Hall Hofheinz Pavilion (larger venue needed; see revised map) at 7 p.m. that evening.

(Reports here from the scene.)

And there are seventeen additional organizing meetings scheduled in a 100-mile radius around Houston -- including Beaumont, Katy, The Woodlands, Conroe, and even Edna (!) -- during the month of July.

Update: Sanders and Martin O'Malley will share the stage at Netroots Nation on Saturday morning, at the presidential town hall forum there.  Hillary Clinton, you may recall, had a scheduling conflict.

Texans get to #FeelTheBern first-hand.  I'm going to go see what the fuss is all about... as if I didn't know already.


Update: More from Culturemap, and from HuffPo.

"The other thing I want to do is to take these debates into the so-called red areas of the country," Sanders told The Nation's John Nichols. "I think it is insane that the Democrats do not have a 50-state strategy [along the lines championed by Howard Dean]. How is it that, if you are the party of working people, supposedly, you abdicate your responsibility in some of the poorest states of America? Where are you in Mississippi? Where are you in South Carolina? Where are you in Alabama? Where are you in other low-income states? If you don’t get started now, you will never advance. So I intend in this campaign to go to states that many Democratic candidates don’t usually visit."

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Touch and go scattershooting

-- Last night's mayoral forum turned into a cage match.  While Stephen Costello got the piñata treatment from pretty much everybody else, it was Chris Bell's cross-ex of Adrian Garcia that got my attention.

Bell inquired about when Garcia initially found out that a mentally ill inmate was being held in squalid conditions in the Harris County Jail, under his watch.

Garcia did not directly answer whether his former chief deputy had indeed told him about the case a year before it became public last fall, saying instead, "when I found out about this issue, I took action." 

Same old dodge.  Doesn't seem to be hurting him any yet.

-- Republicans are having such a terrible month that they had to play the "killing babies" card way too soon, and they used a James O'Keefe-styled, redacted, clandestine video to light the fire under their freak base.

(A)n eight-minute “undercover” video surfaced purporting to show Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services talking about selling the body parts of aborted human fetuses for the non-profit’s financial gain. Which would be shocking, certainly—if any of it were true.

Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott -- the latter taking a break from monitoring Operation Jade Helm, starting today -- have all weighed in with a "Kill Planned Parenthood" diatribe already.  It's a full-blown prairie fire on conservative media, but is barely a blip so far elsewhere.

Let's be candid: conservatives will not rest until Planned Parenthood goes the way of ACORN.  They hate women having birth control just as much as they do abortions.  Essentially, you broads are simply disallowed from having sex at all until you meet a nice Christian man and get married.

With 95% of women holding no regrets at all about their choice, I see another electoral demographic -- women -- ready to explode in Republicans' faces.  But hey, I thought Wendy Davis had sufficiently motivated that voting bloc in 2014, so I could still be wrong.

PP is at a real crossroads with this latest attack.  More from Amanda Marcotte.

-- Have you heard?  Donald Trump is "really rich", and he's going to prove it to you.

The celebrity businessman's campaign is expected to reveal details Wednesday of his fortune, which he estimated last month at nearly $9 billion when announcing his Republican presidential candidacy.

If accurate, that number would make Trump the wealthiest person to ever run for president, far surpassing previous magnates like Ross Perot, business heirs like Steve Forbes or private-equity investors like Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee.

"I have a Gucci store worth more than Romney," Trump told the Des Moines Register last month, referring to the fashion company's flagship store in New York's Trump Tower.

The GOP is now officially concerned about plutocracy.

Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory, the thinking goes. Already, big-money groups have raised about $86 million to support a handful of second- and third-tier candidates.

Poor them.