You Know What Would Really Teach the Kids About History? A Old-Timey Lynching

Wow

A north Georgia history teacher faces punishment after administrators say she let four students wear Ku Klux Klan-like robes for a historical reenactment.

Administrators say four students in Ariemma's advanced placement history class donned Klan-like outfits while filming historical reenactments. Moye says students saw them Thursday and parents of a black student complained.  

I wonder how far such actions could go. Nothing would teach the kids about early 20th century north Georgia race relations than actually lynching a black person! But then, I'm sure that here in Texas, we're now teaching our children how the KKK had to stop crazy black men from raping our white women....

In Defense of The Nature Conservancy

Joe Stephens has an interesting piece in the Washington Post about The Nature Conservancy's ties to BP.

While a lot of Nature Conservancy supporters and environmentalists are upset to hear this information, I don't really have a problem with it. There are many ways to create change. We tend to romanticize those who work outside the system. We certainly need radical groups who protest BP and other companies. That's absolutely vital to forming a successful environmental movement. But it doesn't hurt to have organizations who work within the capitalist system as well.

The Nature Conservancy does a remarkable job of protecting (often) small pieces of important habitat that is threatened by development. They don't focus on the southwestern deserts, sublime beauty, or highly touristed areas. Rather, they worry about biodiversity--which is really far more important to protect than more desert wilderness.

In order to protect these lands, they work with big corporations. As the article states, BP has helped The Nature Conservancy protect Bolivian forests and gave TNC 655 acres of land in Virginia for wildlife conservation.

Does this strategy allow BP and other corporations to greenwash their actions? Yes. Does the 655 acres make up for the massive damage caused by the oil spill? Of course not. But BP is going to drill for oil regardless of whether TNC exists or not. And those 655 acres have important meaning. It's a good thing TNC worked with BP to save this land.

There's no question that TNC gets a bit too cozy with its corporate sponsors. A few years back, there was a small scandal when it came out that TNC executives were working with corporations to get those companies big tax breaks on conservation easements. Groups like TNC or the Sierra Club or the World Wildlife Fund need watchdogs to make sure they stay true to their mission. But that doesn't mean they don't do good and valuable work.

Kermit's Wingnut Cousin

I guess Kermit the Frog has a wingnut cousin who supports Arizona's new immigration law and is a close of friend of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who put together this absurdity:



I guess the habitat of this species of frog doesn't cross the border. He won't be cut off from others of his species like so many other animals.

The Finest the University of Oregon Has to Offer

When I graduated from the University of Oregon in 1996, I was dismayed that my graduation speaker was Today host Ann Curry. While my Mom was happy, I thought it was an exceptionally lame choice, particularly considering that the year before long-time Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield spoke and the year after it was Corazon Aquino, president of the Philippines.

But you see, Ann Curry is an alumni of the University of Oregon. And the quality of UO students isn't always the highest. So we have to celebrate what we can get I guess.

Curry hasn't given up her commencement addresses, despite the yawn-fest I sat through. In doing so, she demonstrated that awesome University of Oregon education:

When Ann Curry, news anchor of the Today Show, gave the commencement speech at Wheaton College in Massachusetts last Saturday, she listed several famous graduates -- Wes Craven and Billy Graham among them -- of the wrong Wheaton College.

Curry mistakenly listed the graduates of an evangelical school in Illinois rather than the secular, once all-women college in Massachusetts.

Nice. 

Historical Image of the Day

This week's theme is freemasonry and associated issues.

"A Meeting of Free Masons for the Admission of Masters," Thomas Palser, London, 1812

It's Lima Time In Heaven

Jose Lima, RIP

Lima really wasn't very good. But he was fun. And certainly memorable.

Texas State History Standards

By now, you've all read about the Texas State Board of Education's history standards that eviscerate any reasonable interpretation of American history in favor of right-wing talking points. I should be talking about this more. But plenty of people are reporting on it. And I am not good at expressing outrage. I think that's because very little that happens in this country actually surprises me. We could whole-heartedly embrace fascism in 2020 and I would not be surprised in the least. Mostly, I feel resignation about these things and want to move on to analysis and problem-solving.

Anyway, I do think these right-wingers are way overreaching. I don't know if textbook companies will actually conform to these standards. I certainly don't know what self-respecting historians will actually write these books, except maybe for these bozos. Moreover, by moving so far to the right, the Texas BOE has drawn unwanted attention to their agenda. The extremists have been voted off the Board, though they get to serve until the end of the year. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of this crazy stuff gets overturned, if other states choose not to adopt these textbooks (even conservative states, given just how embarrassing most of these directives are), and if liberals strike back at this hard, ensuring that textbooks are something we pay attention to going forward and working to ensure legitimate interpretations of the American past are taught to our students.

Also, I'd really like to see the American historical establishment take a harder line against the Texas BOE than it has. Major organizations like the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians have been far too quiet.

Historical Image of the Day

Cover of sheet music for "The Fugitive's Song," antislavery song from 1845

Zombie John C. Breckinridge: "Rand Paul Channels My Ideas"

Through me, Zombie John C. Breckinridge officially endorses Rand Paul for Senate. Zombie Henry Clay channeled himself through Farley, disapproving of Paul. Zombie Breckinridge simply couldn't stand for this. After all, Rand Paul completely approves of 19th century notions of how the government should regulate race relations. Paul may well even agree that the government has no place regulating the rape of enslaved black women by white men.

Of course, Breckinridge was a traitor and an all around loathsome human being. Any similarities between Breckinridge and Rand Paul are therefore completely coincidental....

Arkansas Police Officers Killed by Right-Wing Extremist

Yet another example of anti-government rhetoric empowering right-wing extremists to attack the government and its employees. In this case, 2 Arkansas police officers are dead. How long until militants successfully target a high-level official?

Historical Image of the Day

Cover of sheet music for "Get Off The Track: A Song for Emancipation," 1844

Are Anti-Immigration Activists Acting For Show?

As anti-immigration activists work to pass laws undermining the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, granting citizenship to people born here, I wonder how serious they are. There is almost no question that the recent Arizona anti-immigration is going to be thrown out of court almost immediately. While judges such as Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas vote for the Republican party line regardless of constitutionality, most judges at least have a semblance of respect for the Constitution.

Now, the same Arizona legislator who introduced the insidious legislation is coming back with a bill denying citizenship to babies born of undocumented people in the United States. This is blatantly and obviously unconstitutional. Anyone with even the slightest perfunctory knowledge of the Constitution can tell you this. So are these politicians just making a name for themselves by introducing racist legislation they know will never pass just to make a name for themselves? Quite possible.

Who Does This Sound Like?

Who said this?

History is bigger than you are. Politics and governing are much more like sailing than they are like operating a powerboat. You're at the whim of tides and of winds and of things that are so much bigger than you. You've got to take advantage every morning as best you can.

The answer is Newt Gingrich. But doesn't it sound like a line from The Battle of Algiers or some Marxist tract? The conservative movement has had a reverse-Marxism to it ever since the 1960s. Particularly when listening to the people who grew up during the 60s, they are taking the language and tactics of the leftist 60s and applying them to radical right-wing causes. The neoconservatives are the classic example of this. With several of their leaders coming out of New Left movements and most of the others, including Gingrich, from the tumult of the 60s, I guess this isn't surprising. 


The idea of History (capitalized because in their view it is a THING) as a propellant force with inevitable phases that we can shape and control to a certain extent but that which ultimately shapes and controls us more comes straight from Marxist vocabulary.

Pac-Man Google

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, you can play a special Google Pac-Man game today on the Google website. Not that I love to promote omnipotent corporations or anything, but Google is our lord and master anyway, so we might as well play Pac-Man

Historical Image of the Day

Lydia Marie Child, comp., The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1843.

Not sure if this also included weather projects and planting information or not.

Delicious Oil Cake

It tastes just like environmental apocalypse...

Via Cake Wrecks

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Shooting Range (1979)

In 2 parts:






Wow.

I barely know what to say. My first question is this: how much access did Soviets have to LSD in the 1970s?

While "Shooting Range" clearly fits into the broader themes of propaganda, with the evil American capitalist taking advantage of massive unemployment to exploit workers, the political message really seems beside the point. I guess that's not surprising. By 1979, who really believed in doctrinaire Marxism anymore? Were the Soviet people really buying the political messages at that time? I'm not a Soviet expert by any means, so I don't really know. But certainly the political message here is obscured by the artistry.

The animation here is really interesting. Great use of shadows, color, and other techniques to create a very interesting cartoon. The music is also fantastic. Again, we see the Soviets employing American music to make a point. As is frequent, these cartoons use jazz as a whipping boy. "Shooting Range" uses dissonant free jazz to hammer home the point of American corruption. But as is frequent in Soviet attempts to slam jazz, it backfires because it's an utterly compelling and effective soundtrack to this film. Given the relative popularity of experimental jazz and other out-music in eastern Europe, I suspect audiences definitely did not take the negative message about jazz with them.

Other notes:

The scene at the beginning of part 2 where they fall in love might as well come straight from some sort of counterculture animation. The rabbit spewing rainbows out of his violin, two of the Seven Dwarfs hitting an anvil, just complete random psychedelia.

The use of American products and corporate brand names strikes me throughout many of these cartoons. I guess this cartoon is saying Coca-Cola is a bad thing, but it's not really expressing that clearly, it's directly using the brand logo, and it's basically free advertising. You have to feel that this cartoon made Soviets want American products more, not less.

I actually would really like to own the soundtrack. 

Most of this just really leaves me speechless.

Historical Image of the Day

The Slave's Friend, an abolitionist children's book, 1836

Shorter Rand Paul: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Destroyed Our Freedom!"

Seems pretty clear that Rand Paul will fit right in with his potential future GOP colleagues in the Senate:

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part—and this is the hard part about believing in freedom—is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example—you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

Sadly, using this against Paul in Kentucky would probably backfire. I wonder if a majority of Kentucky whites would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if it came up for a vote.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Black and White (1933)

This extremely powerful piece of animated propaganda from 1933 attacks U.S. race relations. It's hard to argue with this--the Soviets were right about American race relations. Paul Robeson's voice adds great power to the message. The scenes with blacks lynched from the telephone wires like Sparatcus' army leaves a haunting image in the mind. The film does make some attempt to place race relations within the general corruptness of capitalism; after all, the overseer whips both the black and white worker. But given that African-Americans were almost entirely working class and the upper class almost entirely white, talking about race and capitalism made perfect sense.

During the Cold War, the Soviet analysis of American race relations had great importance. As the nations of Asia and Africa threw off their colonial chains in the 1950s and 60s, and as Latin American nations began to choose governments less tied to the United States, American treatment of black people proved a powerful tool in the Soviet arsenal. Why would a newly freed African nation side with the U.S? After all, their president would have to stay in a segregated motel when visiting Washington! I don't know if the Soviets sent these race-based cartoons to their allies in the developing world, but they certainly played up each racial incident. And as Mary Dudziak convincingly shows in her book Cold War Civil Rights, the knowledge that segregationist violence was hurting the U.S. in the Cold War helped move presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson to move more aggressively on civil rights than they otherwise would have.

Finally, the animation is pretty first-rate for 1933. Between the simple figures of lynched blacks to the expressive face of the man at the end of the film to the rich capitalist who kills the black man who won't shine his shoes, this is first-rate art as well as effective propaganda.

Rural Environmentalists vs. Urban Environmentalists

Environmentalism is a multi-faceted movement. It has many strains and they often disagree. Many of these disagreements fall on a rural-urban divide. Urban concerns have always driven environmentalism, from the creation of national parks and hunting laws to ensure leisure for the urban upper classes to the Sierra Club's expansion in the 1950s because suburbanites wanted forest playgrounds. That doesn't mean rural people don't care about nature. Today there are many rural environmentalists and though self-identified environmentalists might be a minority in rural communities, they can certainly build bridges with conservatives who also like to be in woods and deserts.

Not infrequently, the needs of urban and rural environmentalists diverge. Recent developments in Colorado are an excellent case study. Governor Bill Ritter, who is not friendly with Colorado's not insignificant coal industry, has allied himself with urban environmentalists and the natural gas industry to promote natural gas production in the state. Urban environmentalists support this because Front Range cities suffer from bad air pollution. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal.

But this upsets rural communities because natural gas production leads to air pollution in their communities.

What to do? Producing any kind of energy has negative consequences. The question is who pays the price? In this case, it does seem that the urban dwellers have the better case--their bad affects the health of millions. And burning coal is never a good idea for nature. But this also reinforces the strong belief in rural communities that their environments are nothing more than a playground and space for exploitation by urban people. It's hard to deny that reality.

Thailand

I have a long piece up on the situation in Thailand at Global Comment. I conclude:

The United Nations has offered to mediate the situation, but the Thai government has rejected this. The government claims it doesn’t want to give legitimacy to the red-shirts, but of course, the government itself came to power through non-democratic means. It’s hard to say what leverage either the U.S. or the U.N. have in this situation and I believe violence will continue to mount.

William Barnes, writing at Asia Times Online, noted on May 13 that Maoist tactics are playing an increasing role in red shirt strategies. Were a large number of Thais to commit themselves to violent revolution, the situation could devolve into a more geopolitically important version of Nepal, which only recently ended its long and brutal civil war between the military and Maoist guerillas.

While we should condemn Maoist-inspired violence, it represents the desperation and poverty of rural Thais. They gave democracy a chance. They elected their leaders repeatedly and just as often their opponents threw their leaders out using non-democratic means. Unless the Thai military and middle-class accept democracy, understanding that they have to live with results they don’t like and that they will have to appeal to a majority of Thais in order to win power, political and social instability will result.

As the Thai elites have shown no inclination to respect democracy, I fear civil war will result that could lead to the destabilization of much of Southeast Asia.

The situation has worsened significantly in the last 24 hours, but however brutal the Thai military might act, it won't solve the problem of Thai elites not respecting democracy and poor Thais abandoning their commitment to democracy because they see it doesn't work.

Historical Image of the Day

Anti-abolitionist handbill, 1837

Banning Books

I would think that if Elena Kagan believed the federal government had the power to ban books, as Mitch McConnell falsely claims, that McConnell would then support her.

Heck, if a Republican Supreme Court nominee actually did want to ban books, how many Republican senators would see this as a mark in her favor?

Animated Soviet Propaganda: We'll Keep Our Eyes Peeled (1927)

This very early piece of animated Soviet propaganda is great. The Soviets are facing down the capitalist threat (Britain, not the U.S.) and is calling upon its workers to join the cause.

Pre-World War II Soviet propaganda is particularly fascinating because the U.S. often plays a relatively small role. The Soviets saw the British as the real threat. In fact, Ford executives were working in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, helping spur its industrialization.

The artistry of the animation impresses me. For 1927, this is advanced animation. There are many things to love here--the capitalist's checkered pants, how he pops in the live-action shots of Soviet factories, how the Soviets turn the British ultimatum into fighter planes, how the capitalists cries at the end in the face of Soviet power.

It's also worth noting how little Soviet propaganda during these years differs from American propaganda. The call for Soviet citizens to buy government bonds could come straight out of the United States during either World War II. Much Soviet propaganda has mirrors in the U.S. Watch Alexsandr Dovzhenko's 1930 film Earth and then watch Pare Lorentz's 1936 state-sponsored film about the Dust Bowl, The Plow that Broke the Plains. They aren't that different in many senses, particularly in connecting nationalism to the land. In both, lots of plowing scenes, lots of fetishizing farm technology.

I'm also fascinated by the Soviets asking their citizens to buy government bonds. Isn't this an acceptance of the capitalist system the nation is supposedly fighting against?

Paging Ned Lamont

Jesus Christ....

Connecticut Democratic senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal has lied about serving in Vietnam. He said he did, he didn't, and now what was a very safe Democratic seat is quite open for Republican taking. Of course, Republicans would be a whole lot stronger if they had someone more creditable than Linda McMahon, wife of WWE founder Vince McMahon, as their likely candidate.

As I've argued time and time again, while national issues matter in local elections, we have to examine the local in order to understand why individual candidates win and lose. Lying about service in Vietnam is exactly the way to lose an election, even in a Democratic stalwart state like Connecticut.

Moreover, why would you lie about Vietnam in 2010? Who cares anymore? I know this is still a hot button issue for Baby Boomers, but it's only a problem in a Connecticut election if you make it a problem.

The only thing for Blumenthal to do is quit the campaign. He's now risking a safe seat. He needs to do what Chris Dodd did when it became clear he could not hold the seat--announce he will not run. Blumenthal was the savior for that mess. Luckily, Connecticut has a very deep Democratic bench. I'd say they should turn to Ned Lamont, who should be a senator from the state now, who has huge name recognition, and who has not a single black mark against his character. Of course, Blumenthal didn't either until yesterday, so that could always change.

God, politicians are weird and unpleasant people for the most part.

Finally, I know the big scandal story today is Indiana right-wing Representative Mark Souder resigning over an affair he had while defending marriage, etc. That's a good laugh. But it also has no bearing on the political landscape except to take a powerful and experienced Republican from the House. He'll be replaced by another hypocritical right-winger. Blumenthal's lapse of judgment is the lesser crime but will have far greater impact.

Historical Image of the Day

Cover of The Negro Woman's Appeal to Her White Sisters, by Richard Barrett, circa 1850.

Foreign Relations Thought of the Day

When the oil spill hits the Cuban coast, as now seems likely, it's really not going to help US-Cuban relations.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Someone Else's Voice (1949)

Someone Else's Voice, from 1949, builds upon yesterday's discussion of the Soviets and music. In this tale, the little peasant birds are singing their traditional songs. So pretty, so Russian. But along comes a magpie from a long time abroad. While abroad, the magpie has learned foreign ways and bringing foreign music into the motherland.



This foreign music, of course, is jazz. The magpie makes fun of the traditional bird music, calling it old-hat and talking about how foreign birds sing so much better. The magpie then puts on a performance of modern music. The magpie squawks and squawks. Some of the stupider birds like it. But the good peasant birds reject this noise as cultural imperialism. They attack the magpie and kick it out of the forest in a stand against foreign intervention.

The idea that the Soviets respected local musical traditions is absurd. A hallmark of totalitarian socialism is to marshal art for state purposes. These cartoons are a prime example. It wasn't much different than music. The Soviets can claim they based their appeal in Russian peasant traditions, but first, the USSR was much more than Russia and as any Ukrainian can tell you, Stalin didn't exactly foster their contributions to Soviet culture. Second, they didn't respect those peasant traditions to begin with when they challenged the goals of the Soviet state. We can start with collectivization and go from there.

A word on the animation. I'll talk about this in upcoming days, but Someone Else's Voice uses far more traditional animation techniques than many Soviet cartoons. One of the fascinating things about Soviet art is how artists managed to remain ultra-modern, pushing the envelope in any number of artistic genres, while working in a Stalinist and post-Stalinist state. Someone Else's Voice doesn't really do this--this animation would make any American cartoon viewer in 1949 comfortable--but many others do.

Also, the idea that the Soviets promoted a bucolic environment is completely absurd. The least believable thing about this cartoon is that birds could even survive in much of the USSR. Where's the massively polluting factories, hillsides of dead trees, eroded landscapes, and dead seas?

Overpopulation

Julia Whitty's long piece on overpopulation in Mother Jones is worth reading, but by and large makes the biggest mistake environmentalists are guilty of when talking about this problem--blaming the developing world.

Whitty focuses on India, talking about rapid population growth among rural people who then move to the cities, problems with topsoil depletion, water, growing consumption rates, etc. That's all fine and good.

Whitty however only pays lip service, buried in the middle of the article, to the real problem with overpopulation--first world people. Americans, Europeans and the Japanese may have far fewer children than mothers in India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, but their impact upon the globe has far greater ramifications. To be fair to Whitty, this part of her piece has great value. As you can see above, she includes this useful graphic demonstrating that 2 American children have the global impact of 337 Bangladeshi children.

So why focus so much on India? Why not say that while we do need to lower birthing rates in the developing world, we are on a slow progression to success? Why not say that what absolutely MUST happen is that first world parents stop having kids? Because that's what must happen. If 2 American children=339 Bangladeshi children, then we absolutely have to not have kids. If we do choose to have children, we need a Chinese style population law, limiting children to 2 per couple. If you have more than two, then there is a real financial penalty to you for doing so.

Of course, making these kinds of policy decisions will never happen in the U.S. But that's a big reason why we are plunging into an abyss of environmental catastrophe.

Whitty also mentions how anti-immigration racists tried to take over the Sierra Club during the 2000s on a platform of population restriction. But her own piece doesn't repudiate those ideas to a necessary extent.  By making overpopulation an Indian problem as opposed to, say, a Utah problem, she doesn't focus enough attention on the real issues at stake with population growth.

Historical Image of the Day

This week's image consist primarily of documents either produced by abolitionists or documents urging resistance to abolition.

Title page of Jonathan Edwards, Jr's. sermon, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans, 1794.

Marijuana--Becoming Like Every Other Product

I've been both fascinated and amused to read so many stories of how California's move toward legalizing marijuana has undermined the illegal economy of the northwestern part of the state. This NPR piece is a good example.

It's hard to feel sorry for the growers. People have this image of a bunch of hippies playing in the forest. That might be a fitting description of Humboldt County in 1976, but it's not in 2010. There are a large number of problems with clandestine grow sites. First, they cause pretty significant damage to the region's fragile forests, including redwood forests. Growers tear out the forest understory to clear land, they dam and divert rivers and streams to their operations, and without regulation, they are free to use whatever pesticides they want on the plants.

Moreover, violence is a significant problem in these operations. Growers are understandably defensive of their plots. Hikers can run across these operations accidentally, causing problems. More scary, the Mexican drug cartels have established operations in western forests. One of the biggest security issues in many national parks are unknown drug operations guarded by people with guns. While these are usually in isolated areas of the parks, backcountry hikers can and have run across these operations.

One of legalization's benefits will be to undermine the illegal economy and place marijuana growing under government regulation. First, legalization will destroy the Mexican gangs' presence in the forests. They'll have no reason to be there. It'll hardly destroy the Mexican gang problem, but legalization will severely undermine a major income source for the cartels. If Americans can get reasonably priced drugs from the U.S., the market for imported marijuana will fall apart. Of course, this still leaves cocaine, heroin, and increasingly crystal meth, but it makes a difference.

The environmental benefits of legal and inexpensive marijuana are a bit more complex. Certainly getting the growing out of the redwood forests and national parks is very important. Forcing growers to abide by pesticide regulations is extremely important as well. But what this all means is that marijuana is turning into tomatoes or corn or lettuce. People are developing a standardized expectation of what marijuana will look like and what it will do to them. From the NPR piece:

Indoor-grown marijuana is increasingly favored by dispensaries and consumers for its looks, consistence and potency. It costs more to produce than pot grown under the sun, but commands as much as double the price. That's one reason retail prices haven't hit the skids.

The consumer market is now shaping the marijuana industry. Whereas for years, producers ruled the roost because consumers would take what they could get, this is changing. Like consumers don't like tomatoes with black spots on them or corn with worms in the silk or spinach with small insect bites in the leaves, they now have a mental expectation of what they want. This could well mean a brief period of decentralized production followed by capitalists buying up production and working in enormous greenhouses, maximizing profits and providing drugs to consumers at prices that undercut individual operators.

The potential for industrialized marijuana production will mean the environmental and labor problems that come with any other agricultural product. It may be organic, but these giant greenhouses will have enormous energy requirements and will rely on cheap labor to keep prices down. Is that worth getting the pot out of the forests? Probably, but it's complicated.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: The Millionaire (1963)

This is a classic piece of Soviet animated propaganda.



Long before Leona Helmsley actually did leave her fortune to a dog, this cartoon follows the fortune of a dog whose millionaire owner leaves him all her wealth. He then leads the life of a rich capitalist, eventually using his money to become a senator.

Of course, for the Soviets, the difference between a bulldog and a capitalist is essentially nil, which is the less than subtle point to this exercise.

I'll talk about this again during this series, but I have to wonder about the efficacy of this propaganda. It assumes that the Soviet population actually doesn't want to live the high life of the capitalist. And I don't think that's true. Certainly the, how shall we say, less that subtle conspicuous consumption of the post-Soviet Russian elite suggests that the USSR didn't exactly kill materialism.

So it shows this capitalist dog riding around in a big Cadillac, drinking fine drinks, eating meat at every meal, seeing showgirls at clubs, etc. Are you telling me that the Soviet audiences in 1963 didn't want that as well? I have an awful lot of trouble buying that assumption. And how much meat was the average Soviet eating in 1963? Did they look at the dog with anger or with jealousy?

I consistently find these images of American capitalists missing their mark. Of course, I'm not the target audience, but who doesn't want to live the good life? The Soviets apparently assumed that their people didn't (never mind the obvious point that the same people approving this propaganda were also driving big cars, eating great food, and living in luxurious dachas on the Black Sea).

Another theme I want to discuss in these cartoons is that of music. It's very interesting how music and nationalism run together in these cartoons, particularly jazz. Here we see the jazz at the club represent the corruption and self-indulgence of the capitalist classes. As we'll see throughout these cartoons, the Soviets often used jazz to signify the evils of America.  Ironically, they also frequently discussed how poorly the U.S. treated African-Americans, completely missing or ignoring the fact that jazz was African-American music and was part of a long tradition of developing music in part to deal with or fight against racist oppression. We'll touch on this more later.

Finally, the dog drunk is pretty awesome, particularly when he pees on the policeman's leg while the cop salutes him. Second most awesome moment is when the dog and the capitalists are smoking cigars; the first image you see is just the tips of the cigars which look like missiles.

The Tea Party Calls for Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment

Much is mystifying about the Tea Party movement. The paranoia, racism, and anti-government extremism I can place into the larger context of right-wing lunacy that threads through American history. This I can more or less get a grip on.

What I can't understand is the seemingly innocuous constitutional amendments these people either want to rejuvenate or repeal. The 10th Amendment is the favorite of the Tea Partiers because they think they can use it to nullify any federal law they don't like. I'm sure they will believe in using the 10th Amendment precisely as long as a Democrat sits in the White House, but despite this hypocrisy they certainly have, um, interesting views on the relative power of the federal and state governments.

Even more bizarre is the attempt to overturn the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913. What is that? Direct election of Senators. Yes, the Tea Party finds you voting for your own Senator to be a threat to the Republic. Here's the text of this insidious amendment:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Wow, that is a threat...

Of course, the Tea Party activists didn't think of this themselves. It comes from high-ranking right-wingers. For example, in 1997 Bush hack and torture memo author Jay Bybee wrote "Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens' Song of the Seventeenth Amendment," arguing that the 17th Amendment vastly increased federal power at the expense of the states. 


Why was the 17th Amendment passed in the first place? Direct election of Senators was core to late 19th and early 20th century reformers attempts to make government accountable to the people. During the Gilded Age, large corporations such as U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and the big railroads would basically choose their men to be senators. They would have the candidate they wanted, go to the individual state legislatures and buy off enough politicians to get their man ratified. This outright corruption happened time and time again. The Populists made this corruption central to their platform because even though they had the numbers to force the railroads to offer better prices for shipping agricultural goods to market, they could never vote for senators who represented their views. Progressives built upon this, not quite because of concern for rural producers, but because they saw corruption as undermining the government and the ability of reformers to push through much needed changes throughout American society.


There's a certain extent of fetishizing the states as the proper space for power in America going on here, particularly by the rank and file teabagger, but among the generators of these ideas like Bybee, Karl Rove, and Dick Armey, there's a conscious dislike of how the Progressive Era undermined corporations' ability to rule America unchallenged by a strong federal government. They want corporations to buy entire state legislatures. Imagine such a situation--Boeing needs some permits to expand their operations outside of Seattle and they buy the entire Washington state legislature. BP is receiving flack for its oil spill--time to write enough checks to Louisiana legislators so that BP can get their man elected Senator! (Note: given that it's Louisiana, those checks are probably already changing hands. But those corrupt politicians can't actually name a senator BP wants).


Repealing the 17th Amendment doesn't put government back in the hands of the people--it takes it out. What this would do is place power into the hands of the corporations. Along with the Citizens United decision, it is part of a broad Republican strategy to allow corporations to rule America like they did in 1890.


Turns out that Teabagger calls to repeal the 17th Amendment might not be so popular with the American people, or even the average Republican primary voter. Say what you will about average Americans, but they do at least like the right to vote for their politicians, rather than, say, have shady state legislatures choose for them. Several Republican congressional candidates answered Teabagger surveys asking if they supported a repeal of the 17th Amendment. It hasn't gone well for those who said yes:

In Idaho, Republican Vaughn Ward is in a similar pickle. Ward, the NRCC's choice to challenge Rep. Walt Minnick (D), is currently locked in a primary fight with state Rep. Raul Labrador. As happens so often in Republican primaries these days, the candidates are doing their best to appeal to the ultra-conservative vote. (And considering that Minnick is the lone Democrat to be called a Hero by the Tea Party Express, we're talking extra tasty crispy conservative here.)

On April 30, Ward told a TV audience in Boise that he, like Labrador, favored repealing the 17th Amendment. But after the issue drew some heat in the press, Ward thought better of the idea and changed his tune.

"I do not want to take away the power of people to elect senators," Ward told the Spokesman-Review newspaper. "What I do support is amending the Constitution and adding a two-term limit for U.S. senators."

Ward said "I'm not changing position, I'm clarifying," but reporters in Idaho called it like it was. One columnist put it this way: "Um, no."

Tea Party Boise President Brendan Smythe told me Ward's new take on the 17th Amendment is a "massive flip-flop." He said that Ward's change of heart "means a lot to us" and could have an effect on Ward's chances in Idaho's May 25 primary.

"It sounds to me like he's answering to the GOP machine," Smythe said. He said that most establishment Republicans in Idaho don't support repealing the amendment and he speculated that they may have influenced Ward's decision to change his mind on the issue.

"He probably got some advice from the incumbents," Smythe told me. "[Ward's reversal] is typical party before country behavior. That's all it is."

Incidentally, the following states either rejected or never bothered to pass the 17th Amendment. Given the right-wing nature of many of these states, I can't wait for the Tea Partiers to use 10th Amendment nullification to declare the 17th Amendment null and void in these particular states!

Utah
Alabama
Mississippi
Kentucky
Virginia
South Carolina
Georgia
Maryland
Delaware
Rhode Island
Florida

Finally, I just need to say that I cannot believe it is 2010 and I am writing about fights to overturn the 17th Amendment. What crazy constitutional idea will the Teabaggers come up with next, overturning the 12th Amendment, changing the way the Vice-President is selected?

Historical Image of the Day

Portland, Oregon, 1890.

Animated Soviet Propaganda

I've been watching a great many Soviet propaganda cartoons this year. This week, I showed a set to my students in my Cold War film class. I think it'd be interesting to discuss them here. Many are on You Tube, which will make it easy. Each day next week I'll be discussing one cartoon. Please watch and discuss. Here's the trailer below.



To analyze this trailer a bit, one thing I consistently find interesting is the lasting power looking at the US-USSR rivalry in terms of good and evil. Certainly that was on both sides, which is understandable in the context of the time. However, we often slip into that language today. This trailer talks about the "disinformation" the Soviet state gave to the people. That may be true, but it's not like Americans were having open and free discussions of communism in 1950, 1980, or even 2010. If we are looking negatively at how the USSR blinded its people with propaganda, we should be honest and admit the U.S. was doing the exact same thing. The Cold War was a war of ideology, fought with great vigor on both sides, both internally and externally. These animated Soviet films are just one, albeit very interesting and sometimes extremely weird, aspect of this broader multinational media war.

If Not Now, When?

Michael Tomasky gleefully reports that in the summer of 2009, Rahm Emanuel urged President Obama to ignore health care for the time being in order to focus on jobs. Tomasky is gleeful because he believed the same thing.

I really disagree with both Emanuel and Tomasky. From a sheer political perspective, maybe they have a point. The economy was horrible in 2009 and its failure to improve rapidly has hurt Democratic chances in the 2010 elections. Some criticism of the Democrats does hit home, particularly that Obama acted to protect big banks and auto companies and not working people.

However, we can challenge these arguments both on their merits and on their political acumen. First, had Obama not bailed out the banks and the auto makers, would unemployment be 15% now? It's a clear possibility. Certainly Obama didn't channel populist anger toward big corporations. I would have liked to see a little more of that, but his moves helped stabilize the economy and begin to move it back on the right path. Now, I definitely believe that the nation has only touched the surface in dealing with the structural problems that led to the recession, but that's not strictly or even primarily Obama's fault. In any case, for the time being, his measures seem to have helped.

But more to the point, Obama's decision to plow ahead on health care makes a lot of sense. The idea that you can put off a social program or legislative platform until later makes no sense. Political capital gets spent very easily. If anything, Obama was not aggressive enough in spending it, letting a lot slip through his fingers. But he was elected on a platform that included major changes to health care. He made that his top priority and he got at least some semblance of his plan passed. This is a huge legislative achievement, particularly in today's political climate.

You can make choices about legislative and political priorities. But on issues you don't prioritize, you absolutely cannot assume that you can just get to it later. Obama wanted his legacy to rest on health care and indeed it will.

Historical Image of the Day

Helena, Montana, 1870

Native American Health Care

Well, this ain't good:

Dozens of people given free blood sugar tests April 24 are at a slight risk of having been exposed to two forms of Hepatitis and/or HIV, which causes AIDS, due to the improper administration of the testing devices, University of New Mexico School of Medicine officials announced Thursday.

As many as 33 of 55 given the free blood sugar tests at an event at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center could have been exposed to other people’s blood and possibly infected, said Dr. Bob Bailey, associate dean for Clinical Affairs for the UNM School of Medicine.

...

What they had determined by Thursday was that 10 students from the University of New Mexico Physician Assistant program had decided to administer free blood sugar tests and bought the testing devices themselves.

A faculty member from the PA program accompanied the students to the event, where the students administered the tests. The first error occurred when the students employed a particular testing device meant for a single patient on multiple patients, exposing them to another person’s blood, Bailey said.
The students were not properly trained on the device, he added. The third error happened when the students kept no records, so the school had no names of those potentially infected when they began trying to track them down.

“The UNM School of Medicine deeply regrets this error and sincerely apologizes to all those who may have been exposed, and to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center,” Bailey said.

The real story here is that the health care system provides such poor care for Native Americans that student-provided testing, however poor it may be, proves really appealing for them. In fact, Native Americans receive less access to virtually all of our social services and other forms of infrastructure. For example, it took until the Clinton Administration for Navajos poisoned by uranium mining in the 1950s to receive anything resembling adequate care and compensation, by which time many of the affected were dead. A majority of residents on the Navajo reservation do not have electricity, despite the fact that enormous coal-fired power plants are just off their land in New Mexico.

Native Americans suffer from extreme obesity and diabetes rates due to the radical changes in their lifestyles and diets over the past 125 years. Infant mortality rates are higher than the national average, as is drug use, suicide, and many other negative health indicators. While some of this story is unique to Native American and Native American history, it also shares many commonalities with urban African-Americans, poor whites in Appalachia, and Latinos in many parts of the nation. For all of these groups, health care is inadequate and when it is available, it is often shockingly sub-standard, as we see in this story.

The other thing to wonder is why the students chose to do this. Obviously they saw this as a good opportunity to practice their craft. Was it because the patients were Indians? Do we just assume that the extreme poor and racial minorities are a open field for medical testing? Certainly we have in the past. While I doubt the students were malicious in their actions, it does suggest an unconscious belief about Native American bodies and medical testing.

But again, the real story is how our health care system serves so many of our citizens so incredibly poorly.

Gerson and Immigration

This may be the only time in history I will agree with Michael Gerson, but he is making sense on Arizona's recent racist anti-Mexican laws:

Immigration issues are emotional and complex. But this must be recognized for what it is: political suicide. Consider that Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona, 44 percent in Texas, 47 percent in California, 54 percent in New Mexico. Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.

Even describing this reality invites scorn from those who regard immigration as a matter of principle instead of politics. But this represents a deep misunderstanding of politics itself. In America, political ideals are carried by parties. Republicans who are pro-business and pro-life, support a strong national defense and oppose deficit spending depend on one another to achieve influence. Each of these convictions alienates someone -- pro-choice voters, economic liberals, pacifists. But Republican activists who alienate not an issue-group but an influential, growing ethnic group are a threat to every other constituency. The vocal faction of anti-immigrant Republicans is not merely part of a coalition; it will eventually make it impossible for anyone else in that coalition to succeed at the national level.

The good news for Republicans is that Hispanics tend to be entrepreneurial and socially conservative. While the general image Hispanics hold of the GOP is poor, individual Republican candidates can make significant inroads. In presidential elections, Hispanic support can swing widely. In 1996, Bill Clinton got 72 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2004, John Kerry's support was in the 50s. And Republicans do not need to win a majority of the Latino vote to compete nationally, just a competitive minority of that vote.

But even this modest goal is impossible if Hispanic voters feel targeted rather than courted.

For all the massive evil of the Bush Administration, Bush and many of his cronies did see the political reality his former speechwriter describes here. Republicans cannot be knee-jerk anti-Mexican and survive. And Gerson is right that if Republicans weren't so damn racist, they could make real inroads into the Latino vote on issues like abortion and gay marriage.

What Gerson doesn't say is that Republicans made a choice to be the white man's party in the 1960s and today they are paying the cost for that decision. Nixon's Southern Strategy made brilliant sense from a political perspective in 1968, but by fostering and coddling the racist elements within the Republican Party while also driving out moderates of all stripes, the Southern Strategy today means extreme anti-Mexican prejudice in many corners of the party is not just accepted, but expected.

And for all their social conservatism, Latinos are going to vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers across the nation, just like they do in California today.

While I'm glad this reality is going to help the Democratic Party for the rest of my life, I'm sad one of the two political parties in this nation still has such a strong commitment to racism.

Social Security for Students

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez lays out an example of exactly the kind of progressive social policy we need from our Democratic leadership. He wants the expansion of social security to cover college students.

This might seem off the wall, but in fact covering college students with social security benefits was a piece of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation. From 1965 to 1981, if you were in college, you could apply for social security benefits. Of course, Grandpa Caligula killed it off when he took office. I'm not sure if it was before or after he tore the solar panels off the roof of the White House and began covert funding of the Contras.

Hertel-Fernandez makes a very strong case for this expansion, showing convincingly that higher education has become so incredibly expensive that a large number of young people are being forced out. Given that we have deindustrialized our work force in favor of "information technology," we are essentially dooming young people who are too poor to acquire a college education to a life of underemployment.

I do wonder what kind of response this proposal would receive if announced by the president or Congressional leaders. No doubt Republicans would oppose it, as they oppose everything else having to do with higher education and helping poor people. However, it might be the kind of proposal that could peel off the Maine senators and Scott Brown. Unfortunately, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson probably wouldn't support it.

What's disturbing is that these sorts of New Deal-esque proposals have not come from the Obama administration. Of course, he's a very moderate Democrat who has clear discomfort with using the power of government to help the poor in more than incremental ways.

On the other hand, these are precisely the sorts of policy proposals we need to get behind as progressives. It is a targeted and effective expansion of government that would make students' lives better and possibly also help turn them even more toward the Democrats than they already shown themselves to be in the 2008 elections. 

Historical Image of the Day

Seattle, 1870, from Harper's New Monthly Magazine.

Drinking and Watching

Like Wendell Jamieson, I increasingly find my drinking habits heavily influenced by the films I am watching. I first started noticing this in the last year as I've engaged in television series for the first time in a decade. I realized when watching Deadwood how much more straight whiskey I was drinking, sometimes backed with a beer, sometimes not. After finishing that show, I've moved on to Mad Men, which of course has spawned a whole literature on the nation's alcohol habits in the early 1960s. And while I haven't been drinking old-fashioneds like Don Draper, I have significantly increased my consumption of martinis and Manhattans, while my drinking of straight whiskey has declined just as much.

I like the idea of trying to match my alcohol with the movie. I can't be too exacting--after all, while I have a not small amount of alcohol in the house, I hardly have the money for everything. But I can be in the ballpark most of the time. Of course, when it's a movie I haven't watched before, I have to guess what the alcohol of choice will be. Last night, I watched Lukas Moodysson's fine film Together, about a Swedish commune in the early 70s. I figured that since they were Swedes, vodka would be the drink of choice. I was wrong (it was wine) but whatever. It's fun to guess.

Arizona

Gabriel Arana provides worthy analysis of Arizona's recent spate of racist legislation:

The story of Hispanics' political powerlessness in Arizona is partly a story about big demographic trends. Since the 1990s, the state has seen an influx of two groups: white Midwesterners and undocumented workers from Mexico. The swell of Midwestern retirees and families to the Phoenix area follows a pattern of migration from post-industrial cities in the middle of the country to the Sun Belt, where the cost of living is lower and economic opportunities more fruitful. In addition, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the rate of illegal immigration to the state jumped 70 percent between 2000 and 2008.

Experts say the influx of the two groups has led to a cultural clash and strengthened the conservative base in Maricopa County, which dominates state politics. Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship, which left Democratic representatives -- who hail largely from Southern Arizona -- relatively powerless to stop SB 1070.

"[Midwestern immigrants] are less familiar with Latinos as a group, which partially explains the support for tough immigration laws," says John Garcia, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.

In theory, these two demographics would both influence state-level policy. But the infrastructure for political participation by Hispanics doesn't exist in the same way it does for native-born Americans, the exceptions being states like California and Texas, which have more multi-generational Hispanic families and a larger percentage of eligible voters who are Hispanic. There is the obvious problem that about a quarter of Hispanics in Arizona are undocumented, but political participation is also low for citizens and permanent residents. Hispanics in Arizona – as well as nationwide -- are less likely than whites or African Americans to register to vote or participate in civic organizations. Only 17 percent of voters in the state are Hispanic. 

Agreed entirely. But I think it's worth stating more bluntly than Arana the commitment of many white Arizona voters to white supremacy. While they may not state it as such, the older Midwesterners who move to Arizona came of age in the generation of white backlash. Many of them themselves likely moved out of neighborhoods when blacks moved in, participating in anti-busing or anti-civil rights protests, or just think this is a white man's nation.

Of course, this is a very old demographic in Arizona. But while they will pass from the scene soon, will new generations of old conservative racist whites move to Arizona and continue the state's long white supremacist history? Or will the Latino population mobilize and take over the state politically. Both perhaps. As we forward in time, older people are less likely to have a strong commitment to white supremacy I suppose. But as I've stated in a much longer piece on Arizona and race here, the state is likely to become the next California after Prop 187: an empowered, growing, and angry Latino community ready to attack the state's white conservative power structure.

In California, that led to the state becoming one of the most liberal in the nation. We forget easily that through most of the 20th century, California was arguably the single most conservative state in the U.S. Today, it's among the most liberal. Of course, there are many reasons for this. While Arizona has its own version of right-wing Orange County, it definitely does not have its own San Francisco. So the ability of Arizona Latinos to unite with large numbers of white liberals may make the transition of Arizona to a liberal state slower. But I do believe it will happen and we may possibly see the effects in the next few years.

Wrong and Unfair

I usually really like Steve M's work, but I have to disagree with him pretty strongly in his analysis of Democrats and the economy.

Nine years ago, 47% of Americans thought Democrats were on the side of average Americans and 29% thought they favored big corporations -- an 18-point advantage for "average Americans."

Now it's an 18-point advantage for fat cats. However inaccurate the old perception may have been, the Democrats needed it, and they've lost it. I don't know if they even want to get it back, but they're risking long-term minority status, starting in the next couple of election cycles, if they don't get it back.

Look, you can give the vast majority of the goodies to the fat cats and a lot less to ordinary people when ordinary people don't need that much. But when people are hurting, the reality needs to match the FDR-like rhetoric. You have to deliver for ordinary Joes. And the current crop of Democrats didn't. That failure is the Democrats' Katrina.

...


Democrats have had a year and a few months to blunt the appeal of GOP talking points on these issues (and yes, I know that the president's approach on deficits and drilling has been GOP Lite). Instead, they pissed away the better part of a year on a health-care bill that's helped virtually no one so far and that most Americans think is awful, even if they don't know why. This could turn out to be a GOP decade, and it's because there are people on rooftops all over America, and Democrats haven't rescued them.

I think this is a severe overreaction and is unfair to the Democrats. First, I absolutely reject the idea that Democrats will become a long-term minority because people believe they support Wall Street fat cats. This is strictly a response to the economy and to effective right-wing rhetoric painting the Democrats as out of touch with common people. When the economy gets better, as it is already doing, Democratic numbers will improve. We can already see this begin to happen in a lot of polling data.

And wasn't it just 2 years ago that we were talking about Republicans becoming a long-term minority? And wasn't it just 6 years ago that Karl Rove was talking about a permanent Republican majority?

It's just not useful thinking in these ways. Things change, often fairly rapidly. This is especially true of the economy.

This argument is also unfair on the merits. There was a knee-jerk reaction among a lot of Progressives against TARP and the bank bailouts. I didn't exactly share this--because I frankly don't know what's best for the economy. That is such a complicated issue that I really don't know what had to happen. But I do know that banks could not continue to fail. Something had to be done to stablize the system. I've read in several places suggesting that TARP and the stimulus package prevented the nation from seeing 12, 13, even 15% unemployment. Those become pretty good bills with that in mind.

Moreover, I don't know that we can rightfully say Obama "pissed away" a year on health care reform. That was a hugely important bill. From an immediate political perspective, maybe health care reform as Obama conceived it didn't build a lot of political capital. And there's no question that Obama did a very poor job of using executive power to make immediate changes in Americans' lives. (This gets to another issue--if Obama holds an expansive view of executive power, as have most recent presidents, why does it only seem to apply to military and foreign policy issues and not domestic policy making? But that's for another post.) But the health care bill is a massively important piece of legislation. In one year, Obama left a greater positive impact on this nation than the majority of American presidents. It's more than either Bush or Bill Clinton accomplished.

The bill may be flawed and Obama's way of shepherding the bill might leave much to be desired, but let's not minimize the significance of health care reform just because Democrats are currently unpopular.

Historical Image of the Day

Chicago, 1915

Historical Image of the Day

Salt Lake City, 1850

Happy Mother's Day

A very happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

Hack of the Day

Jan Brewer.

Dear Jan,

You know know what else hurts innocent people, Jan? Laws that mandate that everybody in your state have legal papers on them or face arrest and fines. Do you really think that your law is fool-proof, and that only the "guilty" will be caught while the innocent are untouched? The whole "it's an anti-crime bill" (in addition to the patent racism involved in associating crime with Mexicans) doesn't float here. You don't get to pass a bigoted law that will undoubtedly affect innocent people in real ways and then complain that "innocents are being hurt" just because many in the rest of the country have decided to react to your foolish laws. Until you express worry about all of the innocent people currently present in your state, you don't have a pot to piss in when you complain about proposed boycotts from people in other states. Period. You enacted your "rights"; they're enacting theirs. End of story.

Trend

Historical Image of the Day

Main Street, Louisville, 1846

¡Viva los Suns!

Some time ago, we had some discussions about athletes and politics (and the disturbing trend of many professional athletes espousing fairly conservative political views, as well as the exceptions). For the most part, athletes tend to avoid politics, and the owners of large multi-million dollar sports franchises even more (at least publicly).

All of that makes this even more outstanding.

Yes, the Phoenix Suns are donning jerseys that say "Los Suns" for the second game of their Round 2 matchup with the San Antonio Spurs (on Cinco de Mayo) in an effort to publicly rebuke the asshattery of the new Arizona Immigration law (perhaps the Arizona Einwanderungsgesetz would be more appropriate...) The NBA Player's union has even issued a statement against the law; presumably a kind of amicus gesture on behalf of the many foreign-born NBA players.

This small gesture is something the NBA needs-- long thought of as a league of basketball divas long on flash and short on class, I very much welcome this kind of act. That it was instigated by team owner Robert Sarver and voted on unanimously by the players just makes it that much better. It's also a really, really smart business move-- states like Arizona have rapidly growing Latino communities, and the old conservative retired white people that moved from Missouri to die in the desert will, well, you know, die in the desert. It's nice (and too rare) when ethics and good business practice converge.

I live in Southern California and am getting tired of the cycle of Lakers euphoria / Lakers angst / Lakers euphoria... I'm pulling for Nash and company to fly their way into the finals. ¡Estoy con los Suns!

Nullification Taken to the Next Level

Minnesota's likely Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer has proclaimed that not only do states have the right to nullify federal law but that "A federal law does not apply in Minnesota unless that law is approved by a two-thirds vote of the members of each house of the legislature and is signed by the governor. Before voting to approve a federal law, each legislator must individually affirm that the legislator has read the federal law and understands it."

Current governor and 2012 Republican presidential wannabee Tim Pawlenty has endorsed Emmer, as of course has Sarah Palin.

Now, I think all of this reeks of hypocrisy. I'd put the chances of most of these people endorsing nullification once a Republican retakes the White House at about 0%. These people don't believe in nullification, they only believe in nullification for laws they don't like.

Plus, there's the question of just what role the federal government should play in American life. Whereas much of the Tea Party has embraced Arizona's racist immigration law, Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio has rejected it, saying that immigration policy is one area where the federal government should trump the states. Well, why Marco? Is it because you need Cuban support to get elected?

And what if a state was to nullify a declaration of war, nullify the Selective Service Act, or refuse to allow military recruiters into their state? How would these nullification activists respond?

Of course, we all know their response. They would proclaim that these are liberal traitors.

So they are just total hypocrites.

Except that some of them actually believe this shit. And mainstream Republicans are empowering these true believers. These extremists have credence they never dreamed of before November 2008. They are converting others to their crazy beliefs.

If one political party is dominated by people who want to destroy the federal government, can governance happen? We are seeing that the answer might be no.

There really isn't any historical precedence for this in the U.S. The only time a political party has completely opted out of the government was in 1860, but I hate to make cheap and meaningless comparisons to that year. Still, it's hard not to be fearful based upon that time that if half the nation simply rejects government, severe and possibly unsolvable problems result.

Acts of God, or, Rick Perry is a Moron

Rick Perry again proves that his well-coiffed hair has grown into his brain.

Or maybe he is just evil.

In fact, it's clearly the latter. Perry has claimed that the oil spill may be an "act of God."

Calling disasters acts of God is a tried and true strategy of industry (especially the insurance industry) and conservative politicians to deflect blame for the aftermath away from people. 

We've seen this in any number of ways. People argued you couldn't blame the Bush Administration for the post-Katrina disaster because the hurricane was an act of God. Of course, not getting those people out of the way or having no plan to save them had nothing to do with Katrina.

As historian Ted Steinberg has pointed out in his excellent book Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, this kind of argument has a lengthy past. In 1993, for instance, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers flooded. In Hannibal, Missouri, local leaders had decided to protect the historical district where Mark Twain grew up. They put up large levees around this part of town. But all those levees did was force the water further south where it exploded upon the poorer area of the city south of the historical district. Local leaders then said they weren't responsible because it was an "act of God."

You see this all the time--when heavy rains fall and cause a poorly built dam to burst, it's an act of God. When a tornado rips through a mobile home and leaves well-built homes standing, thus killing the poor, it's an act of God, never mind that the larger issue is that poverty forces people to live in homes without foundations. When deforested mountains and mountaintop removal cause erosion and clogged riverbeds that leads to flooding in West Virginia, it's an act of God.

But Rick Perry takes this morally bankrupt claim to a nefarious new level. At least when people usually claim something is an act of God, there is some kind of natural process involved--hurricane, tornado, earthquake, fire, etc.

In this case however, nothing remotely "natural"  happened at all. I guess it's the Gulf Coast's fault for having oil underneath!

If this is an act of God, what isn't? I guess mountaintop removal will be an act of God! And the cancer caused by chemical plants in Perry's state of Texas? Also, an act of God!

Utterly revolting.

Oil Spill

I wrote a lengthy piece at Global Comment on the oil spill. In part, I said:

Now we have the oil spill. This disaster will exacerbate the region’s problems. It will devastate the fishing industry. It could kill millions of birds, some of which are endangered species. Spring is the migration and breeding season and thus the spill’s damage to birds will be more far-reaching than if it happened in December.

But perhaps we can find a silver lining in this catastrophe. American reliance on oil imports means that we can remain ignorant about drilling’s effects. Not since the Santa Barbara, California oil spill of 1969 has a major spill affected the Lower 48 states. That previous incident helped shape the environmental movement that created the first Earth Day in 1970 and a tremendous amount of legislation during the next decade which cleaned up our rivers, air, and soil, placed industries under new regulations, and led to the recovery of many endangered species.

Moreover, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska turned much of the American public against oil drilling in our most beautiful places. Memories of this event and the millions of dead birds, seals, and fish made it impossible for George W. Bush to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. Yet none of this has dampened Americans’ zeal for consuming foreign oil, where we can’t see the consequences.

Perhaps then it is better that the oil spill happened in the United States instead of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela. A giant spill and subsequent environmental disaster means nothing to most Americans if it happens far away. The oil industry has created ecological and human catastrophes across the world for a century. But we keep driving our vehicles, oblivious to our impact upon the world. Seeing that damage in the form of oil-covered herons and alligators may create a moment for serious reflection of our actions.

 As they say, read the whole thing and such. 

Historical Image of the Day

Italian-American fishermen repairing nets, San Francisco, 1891

Historical Image of the Day

Shirley Bolton, "Renovation (Tenement Series)" 1970

Dublin Notes, Days 2-4

1. One thing I like about Dublin is how your beer marks you--literally. Every beer is served in a glass emblazoned with its own name. Of course, that's easy to do when only 5 beers are served in the whole country. However, if you are stupid enough to order a Coors Light in Ireland, you should have it in a Coors Light glass. It means I don't have to work to feel contempt for you. I know you have terrible taste.

2. I was watching the local news. Always an interesting experience. The woman doing the weather had a look that wouldn't quite fly in the U.S. First, like most of us, she was a little overweight. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm only saying that a woman like that would not be allowed in a prominent position on our anorexia-supporting television networks. More of note, she was wearing a leather dress. Now that was interesting.

3. I spent part of the day at the Kilmainham Jail, where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion were executed, among other Irish independent leaders. It was good, but pretty depressing. I felt I needed a drink after I finished the tour. However, I decided to visit the Ireland Museum of Modern Art first. Those exhibits really made me need a drink. Call me a savage, but jesus those were some stupid exhibits. Of course, between the two institutions was a pub, so my need was satisfied.

4. The exception to the above rant was a very interesting exhibit on how modern art influenced the composer Morton Feldman. That was well-put together and somewhat more exciting than Feldman's actual music.

5. Yes, I rode on the top of a double-decker bus. And yes, I enjoyed it.

6. I've seen way too much anti-Irish propaganda from 19th century America. I know this because every now and then I see someone and think, "Wow, you look exactly like the Irish stereotype images in 19th century newspapers." This probably isn't a good thing.

Historical Image of the Day

"Great Railway Station at Chicago-Departure of a Train." Engraving, circa 1880

Historical Image of the Day

Men playing chess in Central Park, 1946