A Time to Experiment

[Friend and teacher Linda Burnham has pinpointed the political challenges facing progressive activists in the Obama era. Replies are welcome. ey]

Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency

By Linda Burnham

The election of Obama, while enthusiastically embraced by most of the left, has also occasioned some disorientation and confusion.

Some have become so used to confronting the dismal electoral choice between the lesser of two evils that they couldn’t figure out how to relate to a political figure who held out the possibility of substantive change in a positive direction.

Others are so used to all-out, full-throated opposition to every administration that they wonder whether and how to alter their stance.

Still others sat out the election, for a variety of political and organizational reasons, and were taken by surprise at how wide and deep ran the current for change.

Now there’s an active conversation on the left about what can be expected of an Obama administration and what the orientation of the left should be towards it. There are two conflicting views on this:

First, that Obama represents a substantial, principally positive political shift and that, while the left should criticize and resist policies that pull away from the interests of working people, its main orientation should be to actively engage with the political motion that’s underway.

Second, that Obama is, in essence, just another steward of capitalism, more attractive than most, but not an agent of fundamental change. He should be regarded with caution and is bound to disappoint. The basic orientation is to criticize every move the administration makes and to remain disengaged from mainstream politics.

It is possible to grant that Obama is a steward of capitalism while also maintaining that his election has opened up the potential for substantive reform in the interests of working people and that his election to office is a democratic win worthy of being fiercely defended.

Obama is clear – and we should be too – about what he was elected to do. The bottom line of his job description has become increasingly evident as the economic crisis deepens. Obama’s job is to salvage and stabilize the U.S. capitalist system and to perform whatever triage is necessary to restore the core institutions of finance and industry to profitability.

Obama’s second bottom line is also clear to him – and should also be to us: to salvage the reputation of the U.S. in the world; repair the international ties shredded by eight years of cowboy unilateralism; and adjust U.S. positioning on the world stage on the basis of a rational assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the changed and changing centers of global political, economic and military power – rather than on the basis of a simple-minded ideological commitment to unchallenged world dominance.

Obama has been on the job for only a month but has not wasted a moment in going after his double bottom line with gusto, panache and high intelligence. In point of fact, the capitalists of the world – or at least the U.S. branch – ought to be building altars to the man and lighting candles. They have chosen an uncommonly steady hand to pull their sizzling fat from the fire.

For some on the left this is the beginning and the end of the story. Having established conclusively that Obama’s fundamental task is to govern in the interests of capital, there’s no point in adjusting one’s stance, regardless of how skillful and popular he may be. For the anti-capitalist left that is grounded in Trotskyism, anarcho-horizontalism, or various forms of third-party-as-a-point-of-principleism, the only change worthy of the name is change that hits directly at the kneecaps of capitalism and cripples it decisively. All else is trifling with minor reforms or, even worse, capitulating to the power elite. From this point of view the stance towards Obama is self-evident: criticize relentlessly, disabuse others of their presidential infatuation, and denounce anything that remotely smacks of mainstream politics. Though this may seem an extreme and marginal point of view, it has a surprising degree of currency in many quarters.

The effective-steward-of-capitalism is only one part of the Obama story. Obama did what the center would not do and what a fragmented and debilitated left could not do. He broke the death grip of the reactionary right by inspiring and mobilizing millions as agents of change. If Obama doesn’t manage to do even one more progressive thing over the course of the next four years, he has already opened up far more promising political terrain. His campaign

• Revealed the contours, composition and potential of a broad democratic coalition, demographically grounded in the (overlapping) constituencies of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, youth across the racial groups, LGBT voters, unionized workers, urban professionals, and women of color and single white women, and in the sectors of organized labor, peace, civil rights, civil liberties, feminism, and environmentalism. Obama did not create this broadly democratic electoral coalition single-handedly or out of whole cloth, but he did move it from latency to potency and from dispirited, amorphous and unorganized to goal oriented, enthusiastic and organized;

• Busted up the Republican’s southern strategy, the foundation of their rule for most of the last forty years, and the Democrat’s ignominious concession to this legacy of slavery;

• Wrenched the Democratic Party out of the clammy grip of Clintonian centrism. (Although he himself often leads from the center, Obama’s center is a couple of notches to the left of the Clinton administration’s triangulation strategies); and

• Rescued political dialogue from its monopolization by hate-filled, xenophobic, ultra-nationalistic ideologues.

This is not change of the anti-capitalist variety, but certainly it is change of major consequence.

If the criterion is that the only change to be supported is that which strikes a decisive blow at capital, then the gap between where we are now and the realignment it would take to strike such a blow is completely and perpetually unbridgeable.

A better set of criteria, in light of the weakness of the left and the decades of hyper-conservatism we are only now exiting, is change that: creates substantially better conditions for working people; broadens the scope of democratic rights for sectors of the population whose rights have been abrogated; limits the prerogatives of capital; constrains runaway militarism and perpetual war; takes seriously the prospect of environmental collapse; and creates better conditions for struggle. This is the potential for change that Obama’s presidency has generated. This is the democratic opening. It is potential that will only be realized and maximized if the left and progressives step up and stay engaged.

These are also the criteria to keep in mind as the Obama presidency unfolds, rather than flipping out over every appointment and policy move he makes. Far better to de-link from the 24-hour news cycle that feeds on micro-maneuvers, stop making definitive judgments based on parsing the language of every pronouncement, and keep our eyes on the broader contours of change.

Besides the sectors of the anti-capitalist left that are stranded on Dogma Beach, there are those who see the tide running high but are still watching from the safety of the shore, hesitant to get in the water. There are those who have been so long alienated from mainstream political processes and so disgusted with both political parties and all branches of government that their default response is instinctive distrust. They view Obama’s presidency through the lens of anticipatory disillusionment. Their basic orientation is to analyze the administration’s every move with the goal of concluding, “See, we told you so. Obama’s gonna burn you. You’re gonna be disappointed.” This is a mindset for jilted lovers, not political activists. Let us grant without argument that, from the vantage point of the left, there are many disappointments in store. This is easy enough to predict based not only on Obama’s own politics but also on the alignment of forces and institutions in which he is embedded. And so what? We can survive disappointment over this or that policy or concession as long as we are making headway on the broader criteria above.

There are also those who stayed on the shoreline during the campaign because they are wedded to localism as a matter of preference, principle or habit. Others were lodged in organizational forms that, for structural, political or legal reasons, could not articulate with the motion and structures of the presidential campaign. These are complicated issues, bound up as they are with questions of resources and patterns of philanthropy. But for those who missed interacting with the motion of millions against the right, against the white racial monopoly on the executive branch, and for substantive change, their absence should, at the very least, prompt a serious examination of political orientation and organizational form.

Finally, there are those who are struggling to negotiate the existential shoals of a commitment to anti-capitalist politics in a period when the system is manifestly dying but not nearly at death’s door (and there have been all too many chronicles of that death foretold); major alternative systems have only recently collapsed or capitulated; and the vision, values and program that might bind together an anti-capitalist left and win broad support are still frustratingly obscure. There’s no remedy for this dilemma except to live in the times we’re in meeting the challenges we’ve been given and making the most of every opportunity, rather than anticipating capital’s demise or pining for a past beyond recovery.

In this period, then, the left has three tasks.

Our first job is to defend the democratic opening. This is a job we share with broader progressive forces and with centrists. Obama won big and retains the favorable regard of a sizeable majority. And meanwhile the Republican Party is in glorious disarray. But in no way should we take this situation for granted. The new administration faces daunting challenges and outright crises on every front. And while the right is disoriented and weakened, it has not and will not leave the playing field. The principal players and institutions of the right are, at this very moment, plotting how to undermine the administration, challenge every initiative that moves in the direction of democracy, progress and peace, and regroup to seize control, once again, of the state apparatus.

Defense of the democratic opening means many things and ought to be the subject for discussion and strategizing on the left. But in practical terms, first and foremost, it means consolidating and extending the electoral alliance that made the opening possible. Any work that strengthens and broadens the voter engagement of the constituencies and sectors that secured Obama’s election is work that defends the democratic opening. This kind of voter education, registration and mobilization work can be done in conjunction with an extremely broad range of local campaigns and initiatives. And anything that hastens the demise of the southern strategy, builds on the wins in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia (along with the significant southwestern shifts in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada), and challenges structural barriers to voter participation (e.g., felony disfranchisement, voter ID laws) is critical. All this is another way of saying that the electoral arena is an essential site of struggle for left and progressive forces in a way it has not been in at least 20 years. And this work, in which we have unity of purpose with the centrists, is vital to widening the Democratic majority in the 2010 congressional races, winning a filibuster-proof Senate majority, ensuring the successful re-election of Obama in 2012, and shaping both the parameters of viable Democratic candidates in 2016 and the outcome of that election.

Our second job is to contribute to building more united, effective, combative and influential progressive popular movements. This places the highest premium on strengthening and extending our ties with broader progressive forces, both inside and outside the Democratic Party, with an eye towards building long-term relationships and alliances among individuals, organizations and sectors. Anything that thickens and enriches the relationships among left and progressive actors in labor, religious institutions, policy think tanks, grassroots organizations, academia etc. is to be supported in the interests of strengthening the capacity of the left-progressive alliance to influence policy, to encourage and shore up whatever progressive inclinations might emerge from within the administration, and to resist administration tendencies to accommodation and capitulation to center-right forces. At this early stage of Obama’s tenure it is already evident what some of the most vital left-progressive alliance building ought to focus on. In foreign policy, on war and militarism in general and on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Iran and non-proliferation in particular. In domestic policy, on health care and on solutions to the economic crisis that hold the financial sector accountable for reckless and predatory practices while addressing the particular vulnerabilities of working people, the poor, women, immigrants and communities of color. And, at the intersection of global and domestic policy, on oil dependency and global warming. All that enhances our capacity to constructively engage in debating and influencing policy on these issues is to the good. All that obstructs or distracts is highly problematic.

We’ve exited a period of collective psychic depression only to enter one of global economic depression. Each day, as the institutions of finance capital collapse, the corruption, greed and mismanagement of the nation’s economic system are further revealed. Broad sectors of the population have been shocked into a more skeptical and critical stance towards capitalism, and the need for some measure of structural change wins near-universal acceptance. The clash of rising expectations (encouraged by the hope and change themes of the Obama campaign) and a sinking economy will likely spark new levels and forms of popular resistance. In this political environment, alliance building will be complicated, messy and filled with political tensions and tactical differences. It is imperative nonetheless.

Our third job, and perhaps the trickiest, is to build the left. First let it be said that unless we are able to demonstrate a genuine commitment and growing capacity to take on the first two jobs, the third is a non-starter, and a prescription for political isolation. In other words, defending the democratic opening in conjunction with the center and building long-term relationships between the anti-capitalist left and broad progressive sectors in the context of the struggle over administration policy must be understood as critical tasks in their own right, not simply as arenas in which to advance an independent left line or to recruit new adherents to an anti-capitalist perspective. Realizing the progressive potential of the Obama win requires the most committed involvement with the twists and turns of politics on the most pressing issues on the administration’s agenda. This same engagement is critical to rebuilding the left, a long-term process that can be advanced significantly in the context of Obama’s presidency if, and only if, the left can skillfully manage the relationship and distinction between its own interests, dynamics and challenges and those of broader political forces. Why is this the case? On the tell no lies front, the left is more isolated and fragmented than it has been in forty years. Truly fine work is being done by leftists in every region of the country and on every social issue. But the left qua left is barely breathing. This is not the place to go into the historical (world historical and U.S. historical), ideological, theoretical and organizational reasons why this is so. But let us, at the very least, frankly acknowledge that it is so. The current political alignment provides an opportunity to break out of isolation, marginalization and the habits of self-marginalization accumulated during the neo-conservative ascendancy. It provides the opportunity to initiate and/or strengthen substantive relationships with political actors in government, in the Democratic Party, and in independent sectors, as well as within the left itself – relationships to be built upon long after the Obama presidency has come to an end. It provides the opportunity to accumulate lessons about political actors, alignments and centers of power likewise relevant well beyond this administration. And it provides the opportunity for the immersion of the leaders, members and constituencies of left formations in a highly accelerated, real world poli-sci class.

In these circumstances, among our biggest challenges is how to attend to building the capacity of the left without succumbing to the siren songs of dogma, the old addictions of premature platform erection, or the self-limiting pleasures of building parties in miniature. For the anti-capitalist left, this is a period of experimentation. There is no roadmap; there are no recipes. Those organizational forms and initiatives that enable us to synthesize experience, share lessons and develop broad orientations and approaches to seriously undertaking our first two tasks should be encouraged. Those that would entrap us in the hermetic enclosures of doctrinal belief should be avoided at all cost.

The Obama presidency is a rare confluence of individuals and events. There is no way to predict how things will unfold over the next 4-8 years. But this much we can foresee: if the opportunity at hand is mangled or missed, the takeaway for the left will be deepened isolation and fragmentation. If, on the other hand, the left engages with this political opening skillfully and creatively, it will emerge as a broader, more vibrant force on the U.S. political spectrum, better able to confront whatever the post-Obama world will bring.

WOO HOO!!! HILDA SOLIS CONFIRMED AS LABOR SECRETARY!

WOO HOO! HILDA SOLIS CONFIRMED AS LABOR SECRETARY!


80-17!!!

Senate Confirms Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary

Mike Hall On February 24, 2009 AFL-CIO Blog



Hilda Solis is the new secretary of labor. After Republicans backed away from an [1] expected filibuster and agreed to stop their weeks of delaying tactics, the Senate this afternoon approved Solis’s nomination by an [2] 80-17 vote.

Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

The confirmation of Rep. Hilda Solis is a huge victory: Finally, Americans will have a secretary of labor who represents working people, not wealthy CEO’s. It is also a historic moment as Rep. Solis becomes the first Hispanic secretary of labor.

The delay of Rep. Solis’s nomination for partisan and ideological reasons was overcome by the grassroots support of millions of Americans who are struggling and desperately need a secretary of labor who will be their voice.

In today’s vote, 56 Democrats and 24 Republicans voted for confirmation. All 17 votes against were cast by Republicans. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) did not vote.

Solis, a Democratic member of the U.S. House from California, was announced in [3] December as President Obama’s choice to lead the Department of Labor, and her confirmation hearing took place [4] Jan. 9. However, Big Business groups and some far-right Republican senators loudly complained about Solis’s long record of support for working families and unions and delayed the confirmation vote until today.

After a scheduled Feb. 12 vote was postponed because of Republican objections, the union movement created a Facebook page, Americans for Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor to build some e-roots support for Solis. Nearly 2,000 people signed on.

During the floor debate today, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said Solis’s working family background—both her mom and dad were blue-collar union members—gives her a real connection to the problems and trials those families face—something those on Capitol Hill might not be as close to. Dodd said:

We may be aware, but do we really understand? None of us are facing losing our jobs, our homes, our retirement security….We need a secretary of labor who understands what working families are going though.

During the past eight years, the Department of Labor has moved away from protecting employees to protecting employers and weakened the right to organize….I don’t believe that’s its role, and neither does Congresswomen Solis. It is essential that the Department of Labor recommit itself to protecting the rights of workers.

Sweeney said:

She understands that the [5] Employee Free Choice Act is critical to rebuilding our economy because working men and women deserve the freedom to choose whether to form a union without employer harassment and intimidation.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that in the past eight years, the voices of working families “haven’t been heard enough” and the voices of corporations and the powerful have been far too loud at the Labor Department.

President Obama, with the selection of Hilda Solis as secretary of labor, has given working families a voice back. Throughout her career, she has been a forceful advocate for working men and women.

Before her election to Congress in 2000, Solis served in the California legislature, first in the Assembly and then in 1994 becoming the first Latina elected to the state Senate.

Says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club:

Hilda Solis was a champion for workers’ rights, a champion for the environment and a tireless advocate for environmental justice during both her service in California and in the Congress.

In the U.S. House, Solis earned a 97 percent AFL-CIO working family [6] voting record.

Sweeney added:

Rep. Solis is uniquely qualified to help struggling families through these difficult economic times because she knows firsthand what they are going through. She grew up in a working class family and understands what programs our nation’s workers need the most.

She will fight to improve skills development and job-creation programs, including development of “green collar” jobs. She will work to assure that workers get the pay they have earned and that they work in safe, healthy and fair workplaces. She’s ready to address the retirement security crisis and will work hard to protect every worker from job discrimination, regardless of race, sex, veteran status or disability.

A Point of Convergence

As the right closes ranks, as the center tries to keep hold of the wheel, the left is just beginning to regroup.

One focal point seems to be the legal prosecution of the last administration. It's an easy argument to make, but not so easy to mobilize around in the midst of a system-wide crisis.

The Bush gang were and are criminals. There are two problems. The Obama administration does not seem eager to bring them to justice. And for most people, justice always takes a back seat to food and shelter.

The statement below was signed by groups representing some of the real opponents of the Bush agenda, including the peace, equal rights, veterans and military families movements. It's a step toward some kind of unified left, and should be supported, if only because if it succeeds, it will isolate the right by exposing their role in creating the current crisis--on so many levels.

Sadly, the pro-active left alternative is still a way's away. ey

GROUPS REQUEST SPECIAL PROSECUTOR FOR BUSH, CHENEY, et alia
For Immediate Release
February 24, 2009
Contact: David Swanson david@davidswanson.org

Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or “truth” commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.

Drafted by The Robert Jackson Steering Committee


Signed By:

Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street, American Freedom Campaign, Ann Wright, retired US Army Reserve Colonel and US diplomat, Backbone Campaign, Brad Blog, Cities for Peace, CODE PINK: Women for Peace, Daniel Ellsberg, Truth-Telling Project, Defending Dissent Foundation, Delaware Valley Veterans for America, Democrats.com, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Gold Star Families for Peace, Grandmothers Against the War, Grassroots America, High Road for Human Rights Advocacy Project, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Justice Through Music, Marcus Raskin, co-founder of Institute for Policy Studies, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, Naomi Wolf, author, National Accountability Network, Northeast Impeachment Coalition, Op Ed News, Peace Action, Peace Team, The Progressive, Progressive Democrats of America, Republicans for Impeachment, United for Peace and Justice, Velvet Revolution, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Veterans for Peace, Voters for Peace, War Crimes Times, Wisconsin Impeachment/Bring Our Troops Home Coalition, World Can't Wait

De-escalation by Degrees?

Here's a sign that we are already playing by different rules:

“The ultimate goal here is for the Obama administration to come out with something 50-plus days from now that most people can live with,” explained National Security Network executive director Heather Hurlburt, referring to the progressive community. If a progressive consensus can be reached, Hurlburt said she planned on taking the consensus document to the Obama team’s review committee, which is headed by former CIA official Bruce Reidel, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy and Richard Holbrooke, the special administration envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mirroring the stated goals of the Obama team’s policy review, the National Security Network document seeks to address Afghanistan policy from the perspective of first-order concerns. It endorses the war, contending that “Afghanistan’s continuing deterioration would allow al-Qaeda central, which intelligence agencies identify as the greatest national security threat to the United States, to operate with impunity under a resurgent Taliban.” But the document also echoes recent recognitions by members of the Obama team, like Defense Secretary Bob Gates, that the war’s humanitarian and governance components “will be better served by a smaller-scale effort which can enable local, regional and non-governmental efforts than a massive one which cannot be sustained.”...

Perhaps most controversially, the document endorses a counterinsurgency strategy against the Taliban-led coalition seeking to overthrow the U.S.-allied government in Kabul. Noting that counterinsurgencies are historically won by those who “outgovern …rather than outgun” their opponents, the National Security Network urges military leaders to make decisions “with an eye to meeting Afghan security concerns,” bolstering Afghan security forces and “phasing out tactics that have increased civilian casualties with questionable payoffs.”

Read the whole story in the Washington Independent.

Can progressives "live with" troop deployment and foreign military bases? No. But saying that the concerns of progressives even matter in shaping military policy is something unheard of before.

The power of the military will be the toughest nut to crack in the now-tottering imperial complex of post-Cold War America. Support your local peace coalition, and the national United for Peace and Justice:

We urge you to immediately call on President Obama to choose diplomacy, not escalation. We must let him know that a military solution is not the answer in Afghanistan. Call 202-456-1111 today!

Tell the Obama administration that:

1] You oppose the President's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan this week

2] You want to see this administration take a new approach in Afghanistan, which includes:

* Reducing troop levels in Afghanistan and rejecting the idea that there is a military solution to the problem
* Immediately withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan
* A commitment to diplomacy involving all major regional players
* Addressing the real needs of Afghans by funding improvements in health care, clean water, education, security, etc., through Afghan NGOs, using local labor and services

Click here to download the Afghanistan Working Group's 'Escalation' Fact Sheet. And click here for more resources at the Afghanistan Working Group's web page.

ey

Solidarity is Just a Four-Letter Word

Roll Call reports:

A top labor adviser to President Barack Obama and a central negotiator in union merger talks hinted late last week that it was unlikely that Change to Win and the AFL-CIO will finalize a deal by the target date of April 15...

"We've been having regular meetings and we're going to
continue to do that. ... We hope to have something to
show in the next couple of months," former White House
transition adviser and ex-House Democratic Whip David
Bonior (Mich.) said...

A union official, who declined to be named, said that
recent collaboration on card check and organized
labor's huge push for Obama last year belies a
lingering antagonism and lack of focus between the
various labor groups, as was apparent when AFL-CIO
affiliates jumped ship for Change to Win three and a
half years ago.

"The rationale behind it would be to have a unified
labor community, particularly with all of the political
fights going on, so labor would appear to be unified
and stronger," the official said. "We've been working
together through all of our political efforts ... but
it's choppy."

Read the whole story at PortsideLabor.

Team Obama has reason to be concerned. For the first time since the Johnson administration, we have a White House that would rather have labor as an ally instead of a whipping boy, or at best an annoying stepchild.

To do what he needs to do--set aside what he might want to do--Pres. Obama has to counterbalance the power of the GOP and their rabidly anti-labor backers. Minority or not, big and small business and free market-worshippers make up a force in the body politic with a lot of clout. A revived, unified labor movement would help a lot.

If they won't do it for their members, maybe they'd do it for themselves? So sad that we even have to ask. ey

Is Anyone Against Nationalizing Banks?

There must be something about this in the Book of Revelations.

Rep. Maxine Waters was lambasted as a left-wing radical last year when she raised the idea of nationalizing the oil industry. But on a Sunday morning talk show, a Republican senator came off even more supportive than her of nationalizing banks.

“I would not take off the idea of nationalizing the banks,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Graham, a confidant of former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), said that the problems in the economy and the financial sector are so severe that U.S. policy makers may have to start thinking about things once labeled unthinkable.

“This idea of nationalizing banks is not comfortable,” said Graham, appearing downcast. “But I think we have gotten so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community throughout the world that we're going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes.”...

Waters (D-Calif.), who was ripped on blogs as a “communist” and “tin-pot collectivist,” after suggesting a government takeover of the oil industry at a hearing on gasoline prices, was more reluctant.

“The word ‘nationalization’ scares the hell out of people,” Waters said. “Citibank is probably almost nationalized with the amount of money that we've put in it. But I don't think that we are ready to move to the point of a formalized nationalized banking program yet.”...

The prospect, though, was raised by two New Yorkers who are free-market economists. Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini, professors at New York University's Stern School of Business, penned an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post entitled “Nationalize the banks! We’re all Swedes Now.”

“We feel downright blasphemous proposing an all-out government takeover of the banking system,” they wrote. “But the U.S. financial system has reached such a dangerous tipping point that little choice remains.”
--TheHill.com

How about you, Mr. President?

"I will not allow our financial system to collapse. And we are going to do whatever is required to get credit flowing again so that companies and consumers can do their business and we can get this economy back on track."
--interview with E.J. Dionne

This is really happening. For a touch of reality we turn to veteran Chicago political analyst Don Rose:

It’s clear the GOP has locked into a strategy of solid opposition because, though they won’t say it out loud, they agree with Rush Limbaugh’s battle cry, “I want Obama to fail.”

They have nothing to lose by opposing him. Their ranks are diminishing and there will be nothing to gain if his program works. Their only hope of coming back will be if Obama fails.

Never mind that the country might fail with him.

If the GOP thinks they have found Obama's weak spot, I hope it works. ey

More Rumbling in the Heartland

Union members and other workers marched Tuesday in Granite City to support the federal stimulus plan.

From St. Louis Today:

A line of more than 5,500 laid-off steelworkers from Granite City, auto workers from Decatur and Fenton, Mo., and their supporters stretched out for more than eight blocks along a mile-long route as part of a “Put America Back To Work” march Tuesday morning in Granite City.

The march, sponsored by local and state labor unions and several community groups, was held to support passage of a federal stimulus bill, including a “buy American” provision.

Both city and union officials said slightly more than 5,500 people participated.

The march went from a parking lot at U.S. Steel-Granite City Works to Amsted Rail, a distance of about one mile.

Read the whole story

Gearing Up

There are real efforts in gear to figure out how to define demands and broaden coalitions to make promised reforms happen.

The Good Jobs, Green Jobs 2009 national conference took place in Washington on February 4-5. Carl Davidson's report gives a sense of the breadth and depth of the participants and their common outlook.

On February 11, the Thinking Big, Thinking Forward conference, also in D.C., called for "a new economic plan … grounded in responsible, jobs-based growth that creates broadly shared prosperity."

"The fundamental challenge facing this country is whether or not we make the structural reforms needed now to ensure that the new economy works for working people," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Institute for America's Future. "This conference was the first step in what we anticipate will be a continuing campaign to describe and push for those structural reforms.

"Today's conference made the case for an expansive vision of activist government rather than the use of the stimulus as a temporary one shot," said Robert Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect. "While the stimulus bill is surely necessary, it should be understood as a down payment on increased federal spending for social and economic needs that have been deferred for four decades."

"The economy was broken long before the recent meltdown because we failed to improve living standards corresponding to our ability to produce more," said Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute. "As we work to extricate ourselves from the current mess, we must also focus on how to build an economy based on good jobs and shared prosperity.

"What our economy needs is a substantial investment, now and for a sustained period, which will ensure growth, and restore the social contract that has so badly frayed the last eight years," said Miles Rapoport, President of Demos. "A real change of course-- not just a stimulus--is desperately needed."

Go here for more about the conference.

Power Shift '09 is coming up:

From February 27th to March 2nd, 2009, young people from across the country will converge on Washington D.C. to take a message of bold, comprehensive and immediate federal climate action to Capitol Hill....

Our window of opportunity is short; the first months of the new administration are critical in achieving significant, lasting changes. We must use the time we have to redefine what is politically or financially feasible and achieve what is scientifically and economically necessary to safeguard our future. Our political moment is now and we must not let it pass us by....

At Power Shift, not only will we deliver our message of change to our elected officials, but we will continue to strengthen the climate and clean energy movement by infusing our nation's young leaders with new ideas, skills, connections with each other, and opportunities for employment and action.

The website is pretty impressive. There are the usual big guns of the environmental movement among the supporters. Interestingly, the speakers will include both Nancy Pelosi and Ralph Nader. Van Jones of Green for All will be there along with Judy Bonds, a coal miner's daughter now leading the fight against Big Coal, 'clean' or unclean.

She says:

Even if we could get rose petals to come out of the smokestacks, that coal still has our blood on it. As long as mountains and communities are blasted and our water and air are poisoned to mine the coal, then it is still filthy. You can't just talk about coal power plants without talking about the high price of coal extraction.

ey

The New N-Word

Robert Borosage lays it on the line:

The Obama administration has made its first serious misstep. No, it wasn't the wooing of ingrate Republicans, or the dining with clueless reactionary pundits. It is much more significant. Faced with the failure of the Paulson-Bernanke banking bailout, the Obama administration has decided to double down. The new plan, described in broad outline by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Tuesday, antes up another $1.5 trillion or more to keep the banks afloat.

Major economists, including Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, crash predictor Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, and Dean Baker, say it's time to nationalize the banks -- before, not after, they make the money disappear. The Geithner plan won't touch nationalization, or at least not by name. It's the new n-word.

Financial Times' Martin Wolf says Geithner is calling an empty glass half-full:

The banking programme seems to be yet another child of the failed interventions of the past one and a half years: optimistic and indecisive....

All along two contrasting views have been held on what ails the financial system. The first is that this is essentially a panic. The second is that this is a problem of insolvency.

Under the first view, the prices of a defined set of “toxic assets” have been driven below their long-run value and in some cases have become impossible to sell. The solution, many suggest, is for governments to make a market, buy assets or insure banks against losses. This was the rationale for the original Tarp and the “super-SIV (special investment vehicle)” proposed by Henry (Hank) Paulson, the previous Treasury secretary, in 2007.

Under the second view, a sizeable proportion of financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities....

But this is not the heart of the matter. That is whether, in the presence of such uncertainty, it can be right to base policy on hoping for the best. The answer is clear: rational policymakers must assume the worst. If this proved pessimistic, they would end up with an over-capitalised financial system. If the optimistic choice turned out to be wrong, they would have zombie banks and a discredited government....

Why then is the administration making what appears to be a blunder? It may be that it is hoping for the best. But it also seems it has set itself the wrong question. It has not asked what needs to be done to be sure of a solution. It has asked itself, instead, what is the best it can do given three arbitrary, self-imposed constraints: no nationalisation; no losses for bondholders; and no more money from Congress.

As Borosage points out, no nationalization leaves banks insolvent; no bondholder losses means taxpayers pick up the tab; and cutting off funds from Congress undermines public confidence in the banks, guaranteeing failure.

Wolf again:

What is needed? The answer is: focus and ferocity. If Mr Obama does not fix this crisis, all he hopes from his presidency will be lost. If he does, he can reshape the agenda. Hoping for the best is foolish. He should expect the worst and act accordingly.

Read Borosage at Huffington Post.
Read Wolf at Financial Times. ey

Why No Single Payer? Just Because

Right now the administration's default mode on health care is "reform now, as long as insurance companies still make a profit and dictate coverage."

Here's the point man, Senate Finance Committe Chair Max Baucus (D-Montana):

We're a big country. We're an ocean liner, not a speedboat. It takes time to turn big ships. We're constituted differently than European countries and Canada. We're younger than other countries. We need a uniquely American result. And that will be a public/private hybrid. There may come a time when we can push for single payer. But that time is not yet, and so I'm not going to waste my time.

--Cited by Ezra Klein

Pretty much the same approach taken by Better Health Care Together, the labor-business coalition spearheaded by SEIU and Wal-Mart.

The argument is that America isn't ready for single payer. The argument is untrue:

Americans are more likely today to embrace the idea of the government providing health insurance than they were 30 years ago. 59% say the government should provide national health insurance, including 49% who say such insurance should cover all medical problems.

In January 1979, four in 10 thought the federal government should provide national insurance. Back then, more Americans thought health insurance should be left to private enterprise.--CBS News/New York Times poll, 1/30/09

Progressive Democrats of America is on the case. Push Ted Kennedy to sponsor a Senate version of John Conyers's Medicare for All bill, HR 676. ey

Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

By Bob Wing

Whether President Obama can help orchestrate a turnaround of the economic crisis now facing the country, indeed the world, will be revealed in the coming years. But he has already made a major contribution to changing the pattern of U.S. politics, a pattern that was set by slavery and enabled conservative Republicans to dominate the presidency for the last forty years.

However, the development of a mass progressive movement with its own agenda will be critical to consolidating that realignment, and to winning systemic change in the years to come.

The Color of Election 2008

The magnitude of Obama’s victory has led to much hyperbole about the end of racism and the advent of a colorblind society. This notion deserves closer examination lest Obama’s victory become an obstacle, rather than an opening, to future racial progress.

Much of the press has focused on celebrating the willingness of many whites to elect a black president. But just how colorblind is the U.S. electorate?

Despite the fact that the Republicans had failed miserably, even on their own terms, and run the country virtually into the ground, whites still voted for McCain by 55 to 43. In stark contrast, blacks voted for Obama by 95 to 4, Latinos went for Obama by 66 to 32 and Asians backed Obama by 61 to 35. (1)

In 2008, the white vote was virtually identical to election 2000 and continued to exert a strong conservative pull on the electorate while the votes of peoples of color and young people of all races headed powerfully in a more progressive direction.

The color lines, in life and politics, are alive and well.

Indeed, peoples of color made the biggest shifts in their voting between 2004 and 2008. It was they who proved decisive in Obama’s victory. Left to white voters, John McCain would have won a landslide twelve-point victory.

African Americans voted for Obama by an astonishing 95 to 4, a fourteen-point swing for the Democrats compared to 2004. (2) Many a pundit has dismissed this result as a knee-jerk racial solidarity vote for Obama. How soon they forget that the majority of black voters favored Hillary Clinton for the many months leading up to the Iowa primary.

Much of the mainstream media declared that Latinos were too racist to vote for Obama. They pointed to the large Latino primary vote for Clinton as “proof.”

Latinos resoundingly put the lie to these cynics by voting for Obama by 66 to 32, a huge sixteen-point swing to the Democrats compared to 2004. Even a 58 percent majority of Cubans in Florida, traditionally solidly Republican, went for Obama.

Latinas led the way toward Obama, casting 68 percent of their votes for him and only 30 percent for McCain. Latino voters under 30 went for Obama by 76 to 24, perhaps indicating the direction of future Latino voting patterns.

Asians swung Democratic by fourteen points over 2004, voting for Obama 61 to 35. The political trajectory of Asian voters has been striking. In 1992, Bill Clinton received only 31 percent of the Asian vote. Since then Asians have steadily moved Democratic, reaching a highpoint this year.

So much for the pundits who believed that Latinos and Asians would never unite behind black leadership. These results amount to a massive progressive motion by peoples of color.

Meanwhile the white vote swung toward Obama and the Democrats by five points compared to 2004. White voters under 30 were the only age group among whites to favor Obama. They voted for him by 54 to 44. All other whites voted for McCain by about 57 to 41.

The most anemic swing was made by white women, who voted for McCain by 53 to 46, moving a mere four points toward the Democrats, This was particularly disappointing in light of their ten point swing to Bush from 2000 to 2004, a change that accounted for Bush’s victory in that year.

White men favored McCain by a bigger margin, 57 to 41, but this represented a sizable nine-point swing to the Democrats compared to 2004 when they voted for Bush overwhelmingly, 62 to 37.

Overall, Obama carried the white vote in only 18 states, mostly in the Northeast and the West Coast.

The Changing Color of the Electorate

From a long-range point of view, the change in the racial composition of the electorate as a whole is perhaps even more important than the recent shifts towards the Democrats. In 1976 whites constituted 90 percent of the vote; in 2000 they still accounted for 81 percent. This year the white share of the vote fell to 74 percent, quite a dramatic change in a short time.

Just as surprising, the main group increasing its share of the electorate is not Latinos, but African Americans. Blacks constituted thirty percent of all new voters in 2004, and an even greater mobilization this year brought them to 13 percent of the overall vote, a thirty percent increase over 2000.

The sheer numbers of Latino and Asian voters have risen significantly over the same period, but their percentage share of the overall vote is virtually unchanged since 2000: nine percent for Latinos and two percent for Asians. (3)

Surprisingly, the percentage of the electorate that is under thirty years of age, regardless of color, also remained stable, at 17-18 percent. However, these voters increased their Democratic vote by 12 points compared to 2004, voting for Obama by 66 to 32. Young voters were also the main corps of Obama field organizers and their energy gave the campaign much of its movement-like quality.

Historic Realignment?

The true maverick in the 2008 campaign was not McCain who pursued the same old reactionary Republican Southern Strategy, but Obama whose bold strategy of fighting for the South and the Southwest, indeed all fifty states, ran counter to all previous electoral “common sense.”

His success was both astonishing and history making. He won the southwestern states of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, and the former Confederate slave states of Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, as well as former slave states Maryland and Delaware. The Latino vote was decisive for Obama in Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.

In all, nine states switched from red to blue from 2004 to 2008: Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, New Hampshire and Iowa. Obama lost Missouri by the narrowest of margins.

The historic nature of these victories is brought into sharp relief by the accompanying maps.

The first is the map of slave versus free states and territories just prior to the Civil War.

The other is the electoral map of the 2004 election.

Depressingly, they are almost identical: the former slave areas are almost universally Republican and the former free areas, with a couple of exceptions, are Democratic.

Almost 150 years after the abolition of slavery, the political patterns wrought by the “peculiar institution” still shape U.S. politics. Barack Obama’s campaign may mark the beginning of the end of this historic pattern, with tremendous implications for the future of U.S. politics. The main window into this change is the Electoral College.

Electoral College: a Pillar of Racism

It is not so surprising that slavery set the pattern of U.S. politics if one knows that the Electoral College itself was a product of slavery.

The Founding Fathers, led by slaveholders such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, invented the Electoral College out of thin air to serve their interests.

They codified the notorious idea that slaves were non-humans, and thus deserving of no constitutional or human rights. The one exception to this rule was the stipulation that slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person, solely for the purpose of determining how many congressional representatives each state would be allotted. The three-fifths rule vastly increased the slave power in the House of Representatives and therefore the Congress.

The Electoral College, in which each state receives a number of Electors equal to their congressional delegation, was invented as the institutional means to transfer that same pro-slavery congressional allocation to determining the presidency. Slaveholders held the presidency for 50 of the 72 years before Abraham Lincoln, who was elected in 1860, became the first U.S. president to oppose the expansion of slavery. The South, used to wielding political power through the selective enumeration of slaves, promptly seceded.

Since the end of slavery the Electoral College has remained a racist and conservative instrument. It has given the Republicans a running head start to win the presidency ever since reactionary Southerners switched en masse from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in protest of the 1960s civil rights legislation.

As then-Republican strategist Kevin Phillips put it in 1970,

“The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are.”

Based on that switch, the Republicans adopted the notorious Southern Strategy that has enabled them to dominate the presidency for the last forty years. The Republicans learned to skillfully fashion a winning combination of the solidly Republican white southern voters with conservative and moderate whites in the Midwest and Southwest, through barely coded racist appeals.

The Southern Strategy has been the glue with which the Republican Party has united powerful corporate capitalists to conservative white workers, farmers, gun aficionados, small business owners and suburban homeowners.

Negating the Southern Black Vote

The racial bias embedded in the Electoral College system is the structural basis of the Republican’s Southern Strategy. The winner-take-all Electoral College system ensures, even requires, that about half of all voters of color be marginalized or totally ignored. (4)

About 53 percent of all blacks live in the southern states, and in 2000 and 2004 they voted about 90 percent Democratic. However, in those elections white Republicans out-voted them in every Southern state and every border state except Maryland.

As a result, every single southern Electoral College vote was awarded to Bush. While whites voted 54-42 for Bush nationally in 2000, southern whites gave him over 70 percent of their votes in both 2000 and 2004. They thus completely erased the massive Southern black vote for the Democrats in that region.

The Electoral College result was the same as if blacks, and other Democrats, in the South had not voted at all.

Similarly negated were the votes of millions of Native American and Latino voters who live in overwhelmingly white Republican states like Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, the Dakotas, Montana and Texas. Further, the peoples of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam, territories ruled by the U.S., get no Electoral College votes at all. The tyranny of the white, conservative majority prevailed.

Compounding the reactionary and pro-Republican bias of the Electoral College, the system gives as much as three times as much weight to the mainly conservative and white Republicans in the rural states compared to states with large, racially diverse and majority Democratic populations.

For example, Wyoming has a little more than 240,000 voters and has three Electoral College votes: one for every 80,000 or so voters. By comparison large population states like California have about one Electoral College vote for every 220,000 voters.

Thus, the Electoral College system violates the principle of one person, one vote, drastically undermines the impact of the black vote and gives the Republicans a major advantage in presidential contests. Its abolition should be a key part of the progressive agenda.

Final Thoughts

Although the political dynamics of each of the nine states that turned from red to blue in 2008 need to be examined closely in their own right, it is likely that a minimum of three or four will move decisively into the Democratic column. A number of others that swung Democratic in 2008 have moved from being solidly red states to battleground states.

The solid Republican South and Southwest may be a thing of the past. In the wake of Obama’s hard-won victories, the Democrats have no excuse for essentially conceding these regions, as they have done for decades.

This will qualitatively shift the Electoral College math. Since 1968 the Electoral College has clearly favored the Republicans and the Democrats had to pull off an upset to win. Indeed, Bill Clinton won only because of the third party candidacy of Ross Perot. In the future, it may be that the Electoral College math will favor the Democrats, and that the Republicans can only win by staging an upset.

Just as important, for the first time in U.S. history the two political parties clearly represent the two broad wings of U.S. politics. At the national level, the southern reactionaries no longer hold the Democratic Party hostage.

This augurs well for the possibility that an Obama presidency may be able to gather the political strength to undertake a major restructuring of the economy in favor of working people and peoples of color in general, and to reorganize our foreign policy in a positive direction.

However, there is still a major political element missing from the political equation: a powerful independent peoples’ movement. In the 1930s the union movement, and especially the newly formed, radical CIO, was key to the New Deal. In the 1960s the civil rights movement was the driving force of the War on Poverty.

Herein lies the principal task of progressives in the coming period: to forge powerful independent, mass movements and organizations that can help shape the Obama coalition in a positive way. Our relative success or failure at this task may determine the future of the U.S. and the world every bit as much as President Obama himself.

Bob Wing is a writer and organizer in South Los Angeles, and former editor of ColorLines magazine and War Times newspaper.
-----------------------------------------------------
Footnotes

1. Unless otherwise noted all voting figures are drawn from the National Exit Polls for 2000, 2004 and 2008, as reported by CNN.

2. I calculate the “swing” or “change” in the vote in the traditional but rather confusing manner as the change in the vote differential. For example, in 2004 blacks voted Democratic by 88 to 11, a 77 point differential. In 2008, they voted Democratic by 95 to 4, a 91 point differential. The vote differential thus changed from 77 points to 91 points, so I report a 14-point “swing” or “change.”

3. No national exit poll numbers are available about Arab or Native American voters for any year.

4. Only Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral votes more or less proportionate to the vote rather than on a statewide winner-take-all basis.

UK Refinery Wildcats Settled

From BBC News:

Strikers have voted to return to work at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire after a deal was struck over the foreign workers row.

The deal, negotiated by the union, opens 102 new jobs to British workers in addition to the posts awarded to an Italian company.

No foreign workers will lose their jobs at Total's oil refinery, the firm said.

Meanwhile staff at Nottinghamshire's Staythorpe power station are staging a protest in London over a lack of work.

Around 400 workers at Longannet Power Station in Fife have also ended their unofficial strike action and returned to work.

The unofficial strikers at Lindsey had argued they were being excluded from applying for jobs that went to the Italians.

'Fight continues'

They will return to work on Monday, allowing them to rest over the weekend.

GMB union official Phil Whitehurst said: "We have now got the chance to go back to work but the fight does not stop here.

"The fight continues at Staythorpe and anywhere else where an injustice is being done.

"It was a unanimous decision. It was an excellent vote. We have got the MPs worried. I think we have got Gordon Brown worried."

Read the whole story.

Here's a Q&A on the background of the wildcat strikes against firing British workers and replacing them with Italian and Portuguese workers outside the union contract.

The leader of the left wing of the governing Labour Party has sharp words for management and Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

If we are to provide effective support we can learn from some of the lessons of this dispute so far.

First, as the Government has refused to abolish the anti trade union laws, the lesson is that if workers are sufficiently determined they can just ignore them....

Second, if cheap labour is being used by employers to undermine wages and conditions, its country of origin is irrelevant. Similarly, “British jobs for British workers” [Gordon Brown's earlier promise] was designed to divide us to compete for increasingly scarce jobs, forcing down wages and eroding job security. Just as many of the stewards in this dispute have made clear, we should never allow the bosses or the media to divide us on grounds of nationality or race. Our demand is the right to work for all.

Third, because the EU legislation and court rulings associated with the open market are being used to divide worker from worker the onus is upon us to build urgently the links of solidarity with European unions to enable joint action to protect jobs, wages and conditions....

Fourth, as the depression forces more workers onto the dole queue industrial action alone will not be enough to protect jobs and living standards. The question of who will pay for this crisis will be determined by the answer to the question who controls our economy. The battle for control of our economy needs to be fought out politically as well as industrially, and nationally as well as at the level of the firm and industrial sector. Our demand is for a national economic strategy aimed at protecting and creating jobs, investing in public services, ending privatisation and promoting public ownership, tackling poverty and inequality and creating a sustainable environment....

Fifth, the depression is likely to present the Left with ever new situations and challenge us to respond swiftly and effectively. Very quickly we need to decide the best mechanisms for the faster flow of information and for the co-ordination of solidarity action.

Read John McDonnell's statement. ey

Divide Here?

More splitting in a major union, reported by the Las Vegas Sun:

Unite Here General President Bruce Raynor has sued the man with whom he shares power, former Las Vegas union leader John Wilhelm, for allegedly attempting to seize control of the international union....

Raynor’s lawsuit also goes after D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary. Taylor, along with six other defendants, sits on Unite Here’s executive committee and is widely considered Wilhelm’s protege. Throughout the 1990s, the two men rebuilt the Culinary after years of decline and a devastating citywide strike, making it into the country’s largest and most successful union local....

Tension between Raynor and Wilhelm has been brewing since Unite, the textile and apparel workers union, merged with Here, the hotel and casino workers union, in 2004. At the time, the two men devoted considerable attention to developing a power-sharing arrangement, enabling “a merger of equals … without either side fearing domination by the other,” according to Raynor’s complaint, filed last week in U.S. District Court in New York.

Raynor accused Wilhelm and his former Here allies, including Taylor, of using an executive committee meeting in New York last month to seize power, forcing votes on a number of internal administrative and spending measures that were the province of the two co-presidents. By circumventing Raynor, Wilhelm and the other committee members violated the union’s constitution, the complaint said.

Read Big union reels as card-check fight looms

Harold Meyerson is nervous:

Whatever the equities on all sides, one thing is clear and tragic: At a time when unions are battling for their lives in the fight over the Free Choice Act, two of America's best unions are busy battling themselves.

[Read Labor's Real Fight]

SEIU and UNITE HERE are big, but are they the best? Their problems come from mismanagement. There's an urgent need for the membership as well as leadership to tackle this problem, movement-wide--before the next disaster. ey

No Easy Walk to Peace

Bad news--or is it good news? Gareth Porter reports that Pentagon chiefs are out to reverse Pres. Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq by Spring 2010:

CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama's decision to override Petraeus's recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama's decision.

Short partnership. But perhaps it would have been crazy to expect the big war dogs to change direction so quickly. This is an indication that Obama may be as serious about peace as so many had hoped.

If he is, fights with generals are guaranteed. Calm between the White House and the Pentagon would mean more of the same--war and endless military buildup.

Read the whole story.
ey

The Big Split

BNA reports:

One day after the Service Employees International Union placed United Healthcare Workers-West under trusteeship, the former leaders of the 150,000-member local Jan. 28 announced plans to form a new union—the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

In a teleconference call, Sal Rosselli, who was removed as president of the large California health care local, told reporters that some 100 elected leaders and members of the full-time staff had resigned their memberships from SEIU earlier that day.

Rosselli said the leaders were responding to demands from thousands of UHW members across California that the local disaffiliate from SEIU, which is moving 65,000 of UHW's long-term care members to a new statewide local of long-term care workers.

SEIU President Andy Stern Jan. 27 announced that he had placed UHW under trusteeship, removed all the elected leaders, and appointed two international executive vice presidents—Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan—as the trustees in order to “correct financial malpractice and to restore compliance with democratic procedures” (16 DLR A-20, 1/28/09 )....

Stan Greer, spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee, said Stern “has very specific ideas about how he wants the union to be run” and is not a hands-off leader.

“Now it seems like Andy Stern and the people working most closely with him are grabbing at any pretext to get rid of local union officials that they don't think are on the team,” Greer said. “I have seen a variety of abuses but there's a distrust of the officers of the affiliated unions [that] is of a level I don't recall seeing before.”

Read the whole story.