What Would the Sage of Fair Lane Think?

November 20, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Obama administration, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

As the big boys from the big three pressed their case this week for a taxpayer funded bridge or bailout (pick your metaphor), the role of big labor in Mr. Obama’s coming administration is being seriously tested even before the guy gets to say “so help me God.”

Of course, at issue is the fact that he promised the proverbial moon to an interest group not really known in recent years for its capacity to pack too much of an electoral punch. Whether or not he will be able – or inclined – to actually keep his pledges is quite another thing.

It is likely that many months ago, when Barack Obama was assuring various union dense audiences of his support for them, he never anticipated having to really do anything about it so soon. But it will be on his plate on day one and the issue may just keep him up some nights until 3:00 a.m. – in case the phone rings in the wee hours.

The problems with the American automobile industry are legion, but likely the most glaring is the cost of labor and management. Bloated salaries in the boardroom and borderline outrageous wages on the assembly lines have pretty much brought the entire U.S. auto industry, once the envy of the world, to its knees - if not the brink of disaster.

Workers at a Toyota plant in Kentucky, a non-union shop, receive about $47.00 per hour in wages and benefits. That translates to about $98,000.00 per year (not counting overtime). Those doing essentially the same job at GM, Ford, or Chrysler – whose assembly line workers are members of the United Auto Workers union – receive roughly $71.00 per hour – or about $150,000.00 annually (again, minus any overtime).

Public school teachers across the country make, on the average, no more than a third of that.

Detroit has been losing money on every car sold for quite some time. The easy criticism is that they have been building “gas guzzlers.” But that dog won’t hunt because one of the reasons they have had difficulty shifting gears (so to speak) to smaller, cheaper, and more fuel efficient models is that they would lose more money per unit on them. They have not been competitive for a long time and there isn’t a bailout number big enough to fix the problem without changing management (getting rid of the guys who ran the place into the ground) and renegotiating labor contracts downward.

And there’s the rub. The United Auto Workers is a formidable foe with a new best friend moving into the White House.

The irony is that this union looks and acts these days more like the guys they fought against back in the 1930s and 1940s. It began as an advocate for hard working people who had been getting the shaft. Who’s holding said shaft now?

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit hearing the legendary stories about “sit down” strikes and an epic encounter called “the battle of the overpass” - where Ford Motor Company “muscle” beat up Walter Reuther, his brother, and other union organizers who were passing out leaflets.

My father was a long time member of the Teamsters (same local as Mr. James Riddle Hoffa) and all the kids on the block had dads who loved and depended on the unions. I know that back in the day the UAW did some good stuff for those who had no real influence or voice. The union effectively helped its members “to free them from the tyranny of arbitrary decision or discriminatory action in the work place,” as Neil Chamberlain wrote nearly half century ago. I get that.

But we have come along way since those days. This is an age of change – remember?

Ford Motor Company was the last of the big three to agree to let its employees organize after a lengthy and brutal battle. Led by Harry Bennett, a close confidante of old Mr. Ford (who later wrote a book about his boss entitled, We Never Called Him Henry), a “goon squad” spied on and intimidated workers for years, keeping them in line and out of the UAW.

In the spring of 1941, as the nation was reluctantly preparing for inevitable involvement in the growing global war, Bennett fired several employees unwittingly creating the catalyst for the first real strike (exclusive of episodic “wild cat” actions) the company ever experienced. For ten days, work at the massive River Rouge Plant was at a standstill and tension was in the air.

Through surrogates like Bennett, Henry Ford insisted that the strike was the work of communist agitators. He had been working closely on the sly with a key, though out of favor, labor leader - Homer Martin. The first president of the UAW, Martin was, in fact, on Ford’s payroll, retained ostensibly as an in-house liaison to the increasingly restless workers.

Homer Martin is now little more than a footnote in the story of the rise of the UAW, having been outmaneuvered by the Reuther brothers and largely written out of the “official” history of the movement. A former Baptist minister, he had been fired by his rural Missouri congregation for outspoken support of workers who were pro-union. He then went to work in a Kansas City automobile plant and soon rose to the top of the fledgling labor movement. Known as “an orator of the evangelical, stem-winding school,” he could “draw fire from an audience.”

Under Homer Martin’s leadership, union membership experienced exponential growth in its early years. A strong anti-communist in a movement rife with socialists, Martin is largely characterized today as an incompetent leader and erratic personality. The truth may actually be that he was bitterly opposed by the Reuther brothers because of his religious faith and the strong support he had from southern workers who connected with his “preacher” persona. Whatever the case, though out of power he continued to spend significant time and energy on the labor cause in the auto industry. And he played an ironic role in the Rouge Plant strike.

As the walkout continued during the first week of April in 1941, Martin – at the urging of Harry Bennett - used his rhetorical skills to try to persuade strikers to quit and get back to work. Meanwhile, the Reverend J. Frank Norris, a fiery fundamentalist Texas preacher who was also pastor of a mammoth Detroit congregation, preached a sermon that was broadcast on WJR radio and printed word for word in the Detroit Times. Norris called the Rouge Plant strike the work of “revolutionaries” and “Bolsheviks,” and suggested that anyone participating in it was not being patriotic in light of the war clouds looming on the international horizon.

But on April 10th, Michigan Governor Murray Van Wagoner intervened and the strike was suspended. Mr. Ford was beat. For a brief time he pouted and moped around his 1,300-acre Fair Lane Estate in Dearborn - even threatening to shut his whole company down. But his wife Clara disabused him of the notion. And in a secret ballot – emphasis on that word secret – Ford workers elected to go into the UAW by a 97 percent vote.

Now, fast-forward sixty-seven years to current day. There is a curious and ominous piece of legislation floating around Washington, D.C. called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which has been nicknamed the “card check” bill. In effect, it would eliminate the idea of using the sanctity of the secret ballot for elections when employees of a company vote on the issue of whether or not to join a union.

So imagine you are working one day – and a guy comes along and says, “sign this.” Would you feel the pressure and the potential for intimidation?

Sadly, the UAW has in some ways become what they used to fight against – autocratic, coercive, intimidating, and manipulative. If such a bill passes and is signed by our 44th president, Harry Bennett wannabes will be back on the job, only this time they will twist arms for the unions. Even someone whose liberal bona fides are as unimpeachable as George McGovern thinks this is a terrible idea.

President –Elect Obama supports the EFCA. I would hate to think that democracy in America might one day find itself on a slippery slope toward becoming a “thugocracy.”

We are now at a crossroads. Labor unions grew during the Great Depression and peaked just after the Second World War. They have been in decline for years, but now as the economy tanks they seem to be getting another lease on life. The current scenario with the auto companies asking for money in Washington with one hand, while in the grip of the UAW with other, is going to yield powerful and revealing clues as to what the future will look like for American businesses.

The corporatism that came out of the New Deal, and took decades to even begin to undo, is knocking at the American door once again. And the man who, after January 20th, will be in a position to let labor back into the economic living room has already given every indication that he has a pro-union welcome mat in the moving van.

Be prepared to hear much more talk about “fair” competition than “free” competition. They are both four-letter words, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Long after the 1941 strike was settled (by the way, the company offered more generous terms than those the union was seeking), Henry Ford met with UAW leader Walter Reuther to congratulate the man now representing his workers. During an odd exchange, he told Reuther, “It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got UAW into this plant.” Caught by surprise by the comment, he asked, “How do you figure it?”

Henry Ford then told the man who became for a generation - Mr. UAW: “Well, you’ve been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you are here, and we have given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn’t it? We fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?”

His analysis may have been flawed – but then again, maybe the old man was on to something. I wonder what Henry Ford would think about company executives jetting privately to Washington to beg for money to “save” an industry he invented in his little backyard shop?

George Shultz’s Advice to the President-elect

November 12, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Afghanistan, American Politics, Barack Obama, Domestic issues, Economic issues, International Affairs, National Security, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In the days since Barack Obama’s election there has been quite a bit of talk about his reaching across party lines to seek the advice of elder statesmen. Today in the Washington Times (in a column by the deputy editor of the paper’s op-ed section, Benjamin Tyree), a man who is as accomplished and admired a statesman as they come, George P. Shultz, Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration (and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan), offers his suggestions and perspective on a range of issues.

Mr. Tyree reports that Mr. Shultz believes the President-elect should lose no time in making “an early major address to the American people, spelling out his program and how the current economic bind will be eased. And Mr. Shultz thinks such a speech should also take into account the present state of the trade balance:

“We don’t save enough to finance our investments. The federal budget needs ultimately to be brought back into balance, and then the trade balance will fall back into better shape and we’ll be paying of our own investments.”

From the perspective of his six-plus years at the State Department when he witnessed the futile Soviet effort to subjugate Afghanistan, Mr. Shultz also argues that Obama’s talk of increasing our military commitment in that nation

“raises some big questions. We should think much more carefully about putting more troops in there. We succeeded pretty well initially in 2001. Why? Because we made common cause with various tribes for whom the only common theme is the expulsion of foreigners, to deny al Qaeda the safe haven it previously enjoyed in Afghanistan.”

Where the economy is concerned, Mr. Tyree reports that Mr. Shultz thinks that the “key problem” in the current crisis

is that the “value of assets underlying” the mortgage credit freeze-up “is uncertain and changing, and was leveraged to beat hell. There is a huge mass of uncertain value sitting there, making banks more hesitant to deal with each other[...]“

Directing capital to the banks might help the credit market, but Mr. Shultz suggested it will not mend the damaged mortgage market. There remains the problem of assessing true value in the absence of a reliable and stable market valuation of the properties.

He said there should be a distinction between homebuyers who made down payments and those who did not. The latter, he suggested, might be more appropriately re-established as renters with an option to buy.

Mr. Shultz also recounts an experience from his days as Secretary of Labor, when

[H]e recommended that then-President Nixon stand back from intervening in a Gulf Coast Longshoremen’s strike that former President Johnson had prevented in the name of national security. “The strike will produce a kerfuffle, but not a national emergency, and will create pressures on both parties to settle the dispute. Staying out will help the collective bargaining process to work,” he advised Nixon. The recommended policy of disengagement proved effective. “The president was not hanging his shingle out” as a recourse for all with financial woes.

There is a lot more of interest in Mr. Tyree’s interview, and this reader, at least, came away from reading the column with the feeling that the President-elect would find it much to his benefit to have Mr. Shultz pay a visit to the Oval Office in January - or to Chicago before then.

The View From Tupelo

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Civil rights, Domestic issues, Episcopal Church, Faith | Leave a Comment 

Marcia Segelstein, writing at OneNewsNow in Tupelo, Mississippi:

No wonder the Episcopal Church is in trouble.  Dioceses continue to make the difficult but principled decision to leave the US Episcopal Church, setting themselves up for protracted and expensive legal battles.  Meanwhile, Episcopal leaders just don’t get it.

The Bishop of Los Angeles, Jon Bruno, called Proposition 8 “a lamentable expression of fear-based discrimination that attempts to deny the constitutional rights of some Californians on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Other California bishops said the vote to uphold traditional marriage demonstrated a “fear of human sexuality,” and that Californians were driven by “fear, prejudice and injustice.”

As David Virtue writes on his website… “These bishops don’t give enough credit to the distinctions Americans can and are able to make.  Americans can reject racism and vote for a black president and at the same time uphold Christian standards for marriage…What Californians said was ‘no’ to gay marriage which they said is not marriage at all, either in God’s eyes or the state’s.”

Self-styled Christian traditionalists are prone to criticize the mainline denominations for toadying to people’s cultural and political whims. They proclaim that the gospel should stand as a rock against fickle fashion. Yet here Virtue invests the electorate with powers of keen discernment, rejecting racism while hewing thoughtfully to traditional marriage.

But how stood those wise voters with racism in 1860? And in Mississippi, for instance, in 1954? In each era, some in the church were opposing slavery and Jim Crow — some, but not all. A question for today’s witnesses is how our views, statements, and actions vis a vis our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters will be viewed in 50 years.

52-46 Is “Overwhelming”; 52-48, Not So Much

November 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

What Part Of “Overwhelming Electoral Defeat” Does The GOP Not Understand?
by Jonathan Chait

Is A 52-48 Vote Really Enough To Prove That The Courts Overstepped On Gay Marriage?
by Richard Just and Jeffrey Rosen

Prop. 8, Gay Marriage, And God’s Blessing

November 9, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Episcopal Church, Faith, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

On Saturday, over 20,000 demonstrated against California’s Prop. 8. Melissa Etheridge says she’s keeping her $500,000 a year in state taxes now that her second-class citizenship has been affirmed.

Protesters may be hoping to influence the courts that will rule on lawsuits claiming that Prop. 8, which amends the constitution to ban gay marriage, is invalid. President Nixon used to say that judges read the papers and feel the political heat just like ordinary people, so we shall see. (He also predicted we’d have gay marriage by 2000.)

Opponents of gay marriage, including the President-elect, often say that they support civil union and domestic partnership laws instead. This primer shows how these expedients aim for but don’t match the sturdiness of the marriage contract. One can understand the frustration of those who object to society making that contract not impossible for them to get — just considerably more complicated and expensive. What is the point of giving a couple 60%, or 75%, or whatever percentage of a thing but then withholding the last bit on the basis of some immutable principle, especially when we’ve already ceded the principle by establishing civil unions in some states, including California?

The explanation for a paradox is usually in the heart, wrapped in people’s ideals and fears as well their foundational experiences. The mom-dad paradigm, dominant since the beginning of time, is at the root of most people’s definition of family. Pin me to the wall, and I’ll say it’s best for a child to have a mom and dad. The irony is that my father was almost never around, and my mother had to go back to work when I was three weeks old. I might have done better with two attentive moms or two dads. As it was, I went searching for replacement dads, not extra moms (though some men do that when they choose their wives). I needed a father in my life — because of my conception of the godhead, because I was male, or for some other reason.

Everyone else has their own set of experiences, beliefs, and sometimes pathologies. On Nov. 4, it added up to 52% of Californians being against same-gender marriage. You can blame it on funding from the Mormons if you like, but my guess is that relatively few voters needed help making up their minds. These were votes that came from the gut.

As for mine, I tried to think about being deprived of the right to marry the person I loved because I’d been born gay. Besides, as ex-Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote several years ago, the gays are bound to do better with marriage than the straights. We may yet get back to the ideal of the traditional family, but in the meantime — and it will be a long time — men and women who beget children, both mindfully and not, will need significant help from nontraditional families to raise them.

In the end, I voted against Prop. 8, especially for the sake of the gay and lesbian people I care about, including mentors and partners in Christian ministry. I did so without being eager for the ban to fail. “Marriage” is a culturally defined term, and the best way a free people has to define their terms is at the ballot box. If the Holy Spirit was moving across the surface of the deep on this issue, I didn’t want my vote to be the one standing in her way. But as I voted, my heart and head were still tugging at one another.

Now that the measure has passed, gay and lesbian people are heartbroken and angry. Comparing their cause to civil rights for African-Americans and Hispanics, they criticize blacks for voting in favor of Prop. 8. It’s a harsh political reality that people’s visceral feelings about homosexuality run deeper than culturally and economically conditioned biases against ethnic groups. Instead of blaming those who voted yes, marriage equity advocates might look for new political and social partners. Those who oppose abortion also feel marginalized and unheard, not only by the majority of voters but the MSM, which at least is giving the anti-Prop. 8 demonstrators a fair hearing. Gay people and the unborn and their advocates — the last second-class citizens — may have the makings of an effective coalition.

As for how marriage is ultimately defined by secular society, my guess is that gay and lesbian people will soon be granted that last 40% or 25% of a durable legal contract. At that point, the debate will shift back to where the really difficult work is being done — the church and other faith communities.

Reformation scholars will tell you that the early Protestants didn’t think the church had any business solemnizing legal contracts between men and women or anyone else. The deed was done on the church steps, after which the couple came inside for the main event — the church’s mediation of God’s blessing, which God had envisioned for the couple at the beginning of all things. The church understands that the two people were meant for each other in the mind of God. In the marriage rites contained in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, the emphasis is not on the marriage itself, which the priest or bishop does as an agent of the state, but on God’s preexisting blessing.

That’s why the divisive debate in the Episcopal Church is over whether same-sex unions should be blessed. That debate won’t be any easier for churches, dioceses, or provinces just because polities decide to give all people access to the same durable legal contract.

For unchurched Californians, overturning Prop. 8, should that happen, will be the end of the drama. For the faithful, more scenes have yet to be played out, and on their stage, legislation, demonstrations, and court cases aren’t as helpful. The church won’t be of one mind on the subject until the preponderance of those in the pews have the epiphany experience of looking across the aisle at Fred and Ed or Alice and Grace (or perhaps across the table at the family Thanksgiving feast) and saying to themselves, “You know, I’m not wild about this whole gay marriage thing, but those two were meant to be together.” For the faithful, meant-to-be is in the mind of God, the source of all blessing.

Do We Need Elites?

November 7, 2008 by Jim Gallen | Filed Under American Politics, Domestic issues, Public Opinion, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

The 2008 elections focused attention on “The Elites”: them, those who think that they are better than everyone else and on whom we lesser beings rely to create the world in which we humbly dwell. We heard about the media elites who feel the call to do the thinking for those of us incapable of thinking on our own. We heard how Sens. Obama and Biden think they have a natural right to rule us little people. This campaign also confronted us with the questions, “Do we believe in elites?” “Do we think that they really are better than us?” “Do we really a class born and bred to rule?”

For decades Sens. McCain and Biden, and for a few years Obama, had lived lives apart from those of ordinary Americans. Governor Palin, by contrast, has not. She is part of the Middle Class that the others were so anxious to help. The Palins have dealt, and do deal, with paying the bills, helping the homework, getting the kids to the hockey games and the other day in and day out chores that so many of us share. More than any other candidate for national office in living memory, Sarah Palin was one of us.

So, can one of us be trusted to run the country? We think that we have the common sense which is so uncommon in Washington. Well would we really trust ourselves, or our neighbors, with high office? We know our neighborhood grocer, who may be our town’s mayor, and countless others who have run the school auction, served on the hospital board, headed the church group or assumed any of the other tasks of civic leadership. Would we really feel confident in putting our nation’s destiny in their hands? They may not be ready to lead from day one, but, with a reasonable amount of seasoning in the vice-presidency, do we really believe that they, and we, could get up to speed pretty quickly? Or do we really need to know that our leaders have been trafficking with the elites and not with us little people?

When we look at Sarah Palin many of us look in a mirror. The way we responded to her tells us a lot about how we view ourselves. If we really do not feel comfortable with ourselves or our neighbors in high leadership, let’s be grateful for the elites and stop complaining about them If, on the other hand, we see someone in whom we can place our trust and confidence, let’s step up when we are called and support the Sarah Palins of the world who do.

Gay Marriage’s 13% Problem

November 5, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Sen. Obama won California by 61%, only one point less than in Massachusetts. In this Democratic year of years, in one of the most culturally liberal states in the union, those favoring marriage rights for gay and lesbian people, and thus opposing state Prop. 8, managed just 48%.

Andrew Sullivan, understandably heartbroken, calls it a “terribly close vote,” but it’s almost exactly as close as Obama’s national popular margin of four points, which I don’t hear him or anyone else minimizing. The real issue is the 13-point differential. It’s almost identical to Florida’s, where Obama won by 51% while only 38% voted against defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. This bloc of anti-gay marriage Obama voters is far too large to be blamed, as some will try to do, on Obama’s more culturally conservative African-American supporters or on bigotry and hate.

More later — my flight’s been called.

Turning The Corner In Yorba Linda

November 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Domestic issues, Nixon Library | Leave a Comment 

Prop. 8 signs, Yorba Linda Blvd. and Imperial Highway, Yorba Linda

Nixon Library director Tim Naftali:

Los Angelinos won’t naturally see the corner of Imperial Highway and Yorba Linda Boulevard in Northern Orange County, if they can conceive of where it is, as a mirror of social change. But every night last week dozens of people were demonstrating on both sides of Proposition 8, the attempt to roll back the California Supreme Court’s decision in May to end the state ban on same-sex marriages.

The marching formed a revealing pattern. Late in the afternoon a group of middle-agers (with a few kids) would start waving “Yes” signs only to be equaled in number by young people waving “No on 8″ signs, some handmade, by dusk.

Both sides believed they were standing up for the best traditions of this country. Some of the “Yes on 8″ signs made the argument that voting against this civil right was a vote for “freedom of religion” and “free speech.” Meanwhile, on Tuesday and Wednesday at least, I noticed that the only demonstrators carrying an American flag were those with “No on 8″ signs.

American history, logic and justice are on the “No” side.

Then We Came To The End

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, National Security, Public Opinion, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The title (itself borrowed from the opening words of Don DeLillo’s Americana) of Joshua Ferris’s much-acclaimed debut novel, set in a Chicago ad agency staggering through the end of the 1990s boom, seems to fit the national mood today.  After eight furious weeks of nonstop TV ads (especially those funded from the seemingly bottomless coffers of Sen. Barack Obama’s organization) and innumerable words and images and charges and countercharges, the 2008 presidential race reaches its conclusion tomorrow when all those who are registered and have not taken advantage of early voting (ie, most of the country) cast their ballots. 

(That is to say, the election will hopefully reach its conclusion tomorrow. A situation in which Sen. Barack Obama receives a majority of the popular vote, by however thin a margin, and Sen. John McCain prevails in the electoral college by a few votes would be a nerve-wracking one indeed.  And if only nerves were shattered, that would be the best-case scenario.)

As Americans get ready to vote, McCain’s campaign is focusing increasingly on Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and stressing one final point: that Obama, in an interview some time ago, spoke in terms that seem to indicate that his planned campaign against global warming would entail a scaling-down of coal production, the backbone of the economy in much of western and northeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Virginia, and parts of eastern Ohio.  If McCain can get these three states, he just might prevail even without Florida and Missouri.  If Obama can hold them and make inroads into the South (as in North Carolina), the White House is his.

McCain’s campaign has also emphasized Obama’s remarks in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public-radio station in which he spoke of the courts as being a less than ideal forum to pursue “redistribution.”  Did he mean that word in a strictly legal sense of Federal court decisions which “redistributed” civil liberties and social equality to minorities and women, or in an economic sense? The overall context of the interview suggests the former, and to judge from the poll data, the argument hasn’t produced much traction in the electorate.  McCain’s introduction of Joe the Plumber into the political discourse helped tighten the margin between him and Obama, but in recent days the GOP candidate has been unable to narrow the margin beyond the five or six points shown in most surveys.

It may be that the most powerful argument the McCain campaign has now concerns Sen. Joe Biden’s closed-door prediction some weeks ago that Obama, like John F. Kennedy, would be tested in the foreign-policy field, in a big way, very early in his presidency.  Kennedy’s response to events such as the Bay of Pigs and the construction of the Berlin Wall was far from decisive, and this led into the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Biden’s implication, seemingly, was that with the assistance of a foreign-policy expert like himself Obama could display strong leadership and make the right decisions.  But there’s a big difference between talking foreign policy in the Senate and actually making it on the executive level.  Would an Obama-appointed team, headed by Biden and (as sometimes mentioned) Bill Richardson as Secretary of State, adequately handle the challenges posed by Iran or North Korea or even Venezuela?

There’s also the question of what might happen with a Democratic President and the sort of Democratic majority that appears possible in both the House and the Senate after Tuesday.  The chances seem good that, with such a combination, this country would see an expansion of government intervention in everyday life - and, before too long, an increase in taxes - of a kind perhaps unprecedented in American history.  And it can hardly be overemphasized that an Obama presidency would result in the most liberal appointments to the Supreme Court in forty years, perhaps starting with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Are the voters ready to accept all these things as the price of change?  Stay tuned. 

What Is To Be Done - To Us?

October 16, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, Islam, Islam and the West, National Security, Religion, Russia, Terrorism, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

The final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was primarily about the economy. That was appropriate and understandable. The big winner was Toledo’s new favorite son, Joe the Plumber – who will now be able to charge a lot more for his pipe-wrench artistry. And he will never again have a problem getting a table at Tony Packos.

It would be wise, however, for all Americans to remember something very important that is being overshadowed by the current cultural obsession. We are all concerned about our money. But the stakes right now are higher than mere dollars and cents.

In other words: It’s not just the economy, stupid.

As the long and hard fought presidential election campaign moves into the final frenetic stretch, there is an important court trial underway across the Atlantic - in Scotland. Two men have been charged with plotting terrorist bombings in Glasgow and London last year.

Two Muslim men - Mohammed Asha is from Jordan and Bilal Abdullaf is from Iraq.

Both are medical doctors.

While Americans worry about the possibility of another Great Depression, it is worth asking if we are in danger of being preoccupied with a Great Distraction at a crucial moment in our history.

Of course, our economic woes are quite real – ominous, in fact. And they cannot and should not be ignored. Not watching the store is what got us into this fix in the first place. But one has the sense that this nation is an increasingly soft target for something worse. And if it ever were to turn out that while we focused like a laser beam on the economy, our enemies decided to exploit our myopia, we could be in a bigger mess than we have ever imagined.

I am not trying to be “gloom and doom” here – just saying that it has probably crossed the mind of an adversary or two that this would be a fitting time to unleash something bad.

Bad, as in “where, oh where are you Jack Bauer?”

It is important for all of us to realize – even if it involves interrupting our current morbid fascination with the Dow and all things monetary – that the greatest strategic threat against our nation is not something that has been, or could be, done by people named Freddie or Fannie. Not even close. Our greatest enemy is, and will be long after the current financial mess is cleaned up, Islamism and its agenda to subdue all who persist in the audacity of being non-Muslim infidels.

In the sixth century B.C., Sun Tzu, in Art of War, said:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battle. If you know only yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or lose. If you know neither yourself, nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

He also said: “All warfare is based on deception.”

There is an elephant in the big room under America’s spacious skies. It has to do with the potential for us to eventually see some of the same things happen here that are happening more and more frequently in Europe. I am referring to things like two presumably intelligent, and certainly well educated, doctors in a plot to bomb and kill.

Daniel Pipes is a widely read expert on the threat of radical Islam. He is a director of the Middle East Forum and calculates that, “10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.” Let’s do the math (a fine young man on my staff, who has a graduate degree in theoretical mathematics would remind me here that this is arithmetic, not math – but you get my drift).

Estimates of the global Muslim population range between 1.3 and 1.6 billion – roughly one in five human beings. This means, if Pipes is right (and it is possible his estimates may be on the conservative side) – that there may be between 130 and 240 million people in the world who, in the name of Islam, hate America. These are the people who had a party on that sad September day seven years ago.

By the way, the total combined population of an earlier axis of evil enemies - Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in September of 1939 - was approximately 194 million. That’s total – as in every man, woman, and child.

How about the statistics right here in the U.S.? Well again, the estimates are all over the place, but it is generally accepted that between three and five million of our neighbors are Muslim. An article in Newsweek last year used the figure eight million. Applying the Pipes formula to here at home, we come up with the potential for anywhere between 300,000 and 1,200,000 people in this country who may be less-than-enamored of the rest of us. Or worse, some may be longing for the day when the fruited plain becomes a Muslim caliphate.

Here is where it gets complicated. We are a nation of people fierce about liberty. We believe in things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, to vote, and hold these things to be precious. We have no desire to become a police state, with neighbor turning on, or turning in, neighbor. We do not want to become hysterical and paranoid.

But there are bad people out there. They have guns and bombs and ugly ideas. And they have no problem “blending in” – even spending a long time cultivating a reassuring cover.

Bear in mind that the guys on trial across the pond right now are doctors.

There is a precedent for this, and it is one Americans should study. A few years ago, Margaret Thatcher, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979-1990, described an often-overlooked previous pattern for what we are now witnessing.

Writing in 2002, she said:

Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.

The Iron Lady nailed it. Though the terms Islamo-fascist and Islamo-nazi are used these days with regularity, perhaps Islamo-bolshevik should become part of our vocabulary. Though Islam and communism as ideologies bear little resemblance to each other, beyond a mutual affinity for subduing and controlling others, they do have much in common methodologically.

It is a mistake to think of terror as the only weapon in the Islamist arsenal. It is a very public one, indeed – and horrifying. But behind the ugliness of terrorism lies a persistent and pernicious pattern of deceit and manipulation. The term taqiyya refers to the practice of deliberate deceit in the service of Islamist goals. The ends justify the means, in other words - lying, fraud, stealing, cheating, all things that most religions commonly consider sins, are perfectly appropriate in the pursuit of jihad.

John J. Dziak, Ph.D., a professor at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., has written extensively on Russian Intelligence. Last year, his article, Islamism and Stratagem, appeared in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies. He drew parallels between the methods used by current day Islamists, and those used ninety-plus years ago by Lenin and company:

The Bolshevik regime was a conspiracy come to power. The Soviet Union in practice was a seventy-one-year old counterintelligence operation raised to the level of a state system.

Organic to such a counterintelligence system is the widespread practice of provocations, diversion, deception, disinformation, ‘maskirovka’ (military focused deception), penetration, and other active measures of a highly aggressive nature.

He also noted that, “from its earliest history Islam has practiced what westerners label stratagem, deception, dissimulation, concealment, etc., in its dealings with not only the Infidel but with other Muslims, as well.” He identified Islamism as, “the twenty-first century heir to the counterintelligence state traditions of the totalitarian systems of the last century.”

During a recent radio interview, Brigitte Gabriel, author of the new book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, told me, “history reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate, and the complacent are subdued by the committed.”

I have written before about the love Islamists have for a spurious document called, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This anti-Semitic tract, though long-ago exposed as a forgery created by the Tsar’s secret police to foster anti-Jewish sentiment in early 20th century Russia, has long been a favorite of demagogues from Adolf Hitler to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The ironic thing is that, though the idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy to control the world has been so clearly proven as false, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood actually did write a plot of their own.

And this document is no forgery.

Brigitte Gabriel devotes an entire chapter to this in her book and it is chilling to read. Discovered in Switzerland just a few weeks after September 11, 2001, “The Project,” as it has come to be known, outlines a century long plan “to dominate the West and establish an Islamic government on earth.”

It is a 14-page “How To” manual about infiltrating a society en route to eventually subjugating it. Among its instructions are such motivational nuggets as:

• Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation.”
• Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them toward the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals.
• Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, so long as it doesn’t conflict with Sharia law.
• Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically elected institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations, and labor unions.
• Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be converted and put into the service of Islam.
• Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support jihad around the world.

And so on.

Lenin could not have said it any better in What Is To Be Done.

Some Thoughts On The Final Debate

October 15, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

I think Antonio Gonzalez, head of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, was correct when he said on the Tavis Smiley show tonight that while Sen. John McCain scored the most points in tonight’s debate with Sen. Barack Obama, he did not score a knockout blow.

The format of the debate worked much more to McCain’s advantage than the town-hall meeting last week. CBS’s Bob Schieffer, the moderator, was careful to make sure each candidate had their say, and did not become obsessed with timekeeping the way Tom Brokaw did.  (Remarkably, despite the leisurely feel of the debate, it finished almost exactly at the 90-minute point.)  The candidates developed a give-and-take that tended to highlight McCain’s strong points and and point up the fact that Obama, more often than not, sounded scripted.

Several of the commentators I saw tonight stated that McCain was strongest in the first half-hour and I would agree. He offered cohesive arguments for his economic proposals, and made solid criticisms of Obama’s emphasis on increasing taxes on corporations - which, as the Arizona senator noted, will make many of them disinclined to expand personnel, while it is not at all certain that the Obama plan can create a situation where small businesses can create enough jobs to make up for those being lost now.  Obama was on the defensive, more often than not, in his replies.

But when Schieffer raised the question of the tone of the two campaigns, McCain slipped somewhat.  It was probably unwise for him to bring up Rep. John Lewis’ criticism of the atmosphere of his and Gov. Sarah Palin’s recent rallies; Obama promptly pointed out that his campaign had made clear it did not endorse Lewis’ words, and that the civil-rights veteran had admitted that his remarks were the overheated side.  Obama also parried McCain’s reference to Bill Ayers rather expertly.

When the debate went back to domestic issues, McCain scored fairly well on the education side, at the very end, but was a bit weaker defending his healthcare plan.  CNN’s reaction meter, compiling the response of a group of Ohio voters, indicated that in the second half Obama scored strongest in his discussions of healthcare and, somewhat surprisingly, abortion.

CNN’s flash poll showed that those sampled, once again, regarded Obama as the winner of the debate, although McCain scored 31%, considerably better than his showing last week.  It may be that in the next few days, as voters discuss what they saw and heard, McCain can move up two or three points.  But that is not enough to close the gap, and if further bad news on the economic front emerges by the end of the week, there may be yet another downturn for McCain at the polls.

More On Obama And Prop. 8

October 15, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Slate:

There’s an interesting demographic wrinkle to the debate over [California's] Proposition 8 [a yes vote bans gay marriage]. Obama has come out against the measure—but his supporters are another matter. The Democrat is expected to bring a surge of black and Latino voters to the polls on Election Day. This spells trouble for gay marriage; in some surveys (PDF), minority voters have expressed much greater support for banning same-sex marriage than have whites. Chip White, a spokesman for the pro-Proposition 8 campaign, stopped short of saying that Obama’s presence on the ballot will help the measure. But he did point out that the campaign plans a big push in minority communities, especially through churches and other religious networks. “Traditional marriage initiatives have historically been supported by African-Americans,” he says. “We think this one will be no different.”

[Yvette] Martinez of the anti-Proposition 8 campaign, meanwhile, says that her side has also begun to tap minority communities, and several prominent black ministers as well as La Opinión, the large Spanish-language Los Angeles daily, oppose the gay-marriage ban. Still, Martinez concedes, minority voters could be a problem. “We think these communities have to hear our message a little stronger,” she says.

McCain’s Problem

October 11, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, Public Opinion, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

The Gallup tracking poll data compiled during the days immediately after this week’s town-hall debate between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama shows Obama ahead of McCain by a 51-to-41-percent margin, which is so close to the 52-to-41-percent result taken just before the debate as to make any difference negligible. I found McCain’s overall performance in the debate to be a disappointment, and, indeed, every poll of the viewers taken after the event shows that Obama was seen to have prevailed in it.

It would appear that what has kept Obama from moving any higher in the polls since the meeting of the two candidates is that the 4 or 5 percent of likely voters who still identify themselves as “undecided” do not seem won over, in this extremely uncertain period for the economy, by his rather vague assurances of action in the future. But then again, Obama seems to be taking a page from the playbook of FDR, who, in the last weeks of the 1932 campaign, declined to get into specifics.

By contrast, McCain has presented a specific plan for the federal government to acquire mortgages at face value and reconfigure them into ones that are affordable for affected homebuyers, but his problem is that he presented this idea for the first time at the debate, with no advance warning, and that it had the feel of an almost spur-of-the-moment idea, without any detailed presentation (which wasn’t possible anyway, in the context of moderator Tom Brokaw’s obsessive timekeeping).

There is also the difficulty that the plan, while stirring no perceptible enthusiasm in voters, has resulted in considerable angry criticism from conservatives and libertarians. The last thing McCain needs now is an abrupt exodus of supporters, no matter how small, to the camp of former Rep. Bob Barr in those states where he’s on the ballot as the Libertarian candidate.

Meanwhile, although Gov. Sarah Palin continues to enjoy sizable and enthusiastic turnouts at her rallies, she hasn’t been able to attract many more hardcore supporters to the Republican ticket in the last week or so. On cable TV, one hears pundits start to talk, more and more, about how she could figure in the GOP primaries in 2012 - a definite sign that McCain’s chances are beginning to be written off completely in some quarters.

Unless the G-7 meetings this weekend produce a magic formula that can somehow stabilize things and start the Dow inching back to 10,000 before Election Day, things do not look good for the Arizona senator. This week’s Connecticut court decision legalizing gay marriage, in different circumstances, would galvanize the evangelical vote and give Obama some cause for worry, but in today’s climate, it seems unlikely that this issue will be a factor. Still, there’s a lot that can happen between now and the first Tuesday next month. The 1992 election was still a tossup right into the last 72 hours, after all. But from where will an “October surprise” come from and who will it benefit?

FDR and the Great Deflation

October 4, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Money, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The period between late 1929 and the beginning of the 1940s is, of course, known as the Great Depression. But in a real sense, it could be called the Great Depressions. There was more than one massive downturn in all things economic during those days of deprivation.

Five years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke so eloquently about “fear itself” - and then began to fulfill his promise of “experimentation” (as opposed to an actual plan), things were really no better than the day he took office. His “hundred days” of frenetic legislation gave way to years of false starts and faded hopes.

In early 1938, unemployment was at the 1931 level of 17.4 % and the Dow Industrial Average – at 121 - was still less than half of its 1929 high. The Dow would not actually return to pre-crash levels until Dwight D. Eisenhower was well into his first presidential term.

Amity Shlaes, in her fascinating book – a must read these days – The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, gives us a snapshot of the situation half a decade into the politics, policies, and promises of the New Deal:

The country was now at an odd moment. There was a new sense of permanence about the Depression. Being poor was no longer a passing event – it was beginning to seem like a way of life.

What started as a panic in 1929 soon morphed into something more sinister, deadly, and often overlooked: deflation. As money became scarcer, prices fell. Declining prices, if allowed to continue for long, tend to lead to a dangerous downward spiral of negatives – things like falling profits, closing businesses and factories, shrinking employment and incomes, and increasing defaults on loans by companies and individuals.

Deflation is the monster – the category 5 economic storm – to watch out for and guard against.

Early on during the Great Depression, housing values, though not starting the problem, became a leading indicator of the severity of the crisis. As prices moved down, homeowners found themselves with homes worth less than the mortgage amount. This led to a deflationary meltdown.

Sound familiar?

There are two knee-jerk things that both Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt did that actually ensured that the Depression would have a long run. First, Hoover stifled free trade when he, against the advice of many economists and business leaders, signed a protectionist tariff (Smoot-Hawley) bill. He ignored doomsday warnings that this “would spell economic isolation” and lead to the “most severe depression ever experienced.” Sadly, those warnings came true.

And both Hoover and Roosevelt fought the Depression by raising taxes.

Mr. Hoover gave us the Revenue Act of 1932, which burdened people already having a hard time holding on to homes and making ends meet. With deflation, dollars were worth more, so the government was taking these increasingly rare and more valuable dollars out of the hands of the people, in many cases sealing their financial doom.

Franklin Roosevelt wanted to change society through tax policy. He seldom met a tax he didn’t like. The president clearly cultivated his image as an enemy of the “great accumulation of wealth” and the protector of the “people” from corporations, utilities, and other usual suspects who become convenient rhetorical targets during times of economic crisis and confusion.

As the Great Depression lingered, Americans languished. Washington tended to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. As people watched the president, with a complicit Congress, raise taxes they wondered: “With business so hard, why make it harder?”

Conventional historical wisdom – the legend and lore of days gone by – suggests that Hoover was a “do-nothing” president who fiddled (better: fished) while the country burned. Then came Roosevelt on his white horse – a man of action (like his distant relative who also served as president). He saved the nation – and everyone lived happily ever after until he had to save us again – from the Nazis.

But, as Shlaes points out, the two men actually had much in common:

Hoover and Roosevelt were alike in several regards. Both preferred to control events and people. Both underestimated the strength of the American economy. Both doubted its ability to right itself in a storm. Hoover mistrusted the stock market. Roosevelt mistrusted it more.

Both presidents overestimated the value of government planning.

And both men doctored the economy habitually. Hoover was a constitutionalist and took pains to intervene within the rules – but his interventions were substantial. Roosevelt cared little for constitutional niceties and believed they blocked progress. His remedies were on a greater scale and often inspired by socialist or fascist models abroad.

Deflation impacted the American worker the hardest. In times of even moderate inflation wages increase (along with prices). But during a deflationary cycle, wages either remain the same, or drop, or worse - disappear entirely. It brings to mind one of the more morbid sayings from those days: “The Depression isn’t that bad if you have a job.”

The fact is that the crash of 1929 did not cause the Great Depression – at least, not right away. The precipitating force triggering the cascading crisis that gripped the world back then was deflation, something that Hoover overlooked – and Roosevelt missed completely.

So – why, then, was FDR elected four times? Well, in 1932 he was just plain better at campaigning than President Hoover – and people were upset and wanted change.

In 1940, the storm clouds of war certainly worked in Roosevelt’s favor. And by 1944, the people were not going to vote a sitting president out of office during a time of war (bearing in mind that an overwhelming number of Americans supported the war effort).

1936, though, is an enigma. Amity Shlaes suggests that FDR invented a “new kind of interest-group politics.” Many Americans became part of a movement that “demanded something from government.” Also, the initiatives developed during Roosevelt’s first term increased federal spending. For the first time in our nation’s history the national government spent more than all the states combined.

And 1936 was really the first election year where federally driven entitlements – a persistent challenge ever since – were part of the national experience. Enter the politics of the trough.

In other words, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was successful because he convinced enough people he was trying to do something for them. The record shows that he did not really do all that much, but such facts tend to fall short when countered by a compelling narrative.

“Bold, persistent, experimentation,” that’s what Mr. Roosevelt promised on day one of his presidency. One wonders if anyone could be elected today by saying, in effect, “I will keep making stuff up until something works.” But FDR was actually that good at politics.

As an example of FDR’s experimental economic savvy, one day he announced to his staff that he was considering raising the price of an ounce of gold by twenty-one cents. When someone inquired as to the rational behind that figure the president replied: “because it’s three times seven. It’s a lucky number.”

Imagine what Oliver Stone could do with Franklin D. Roosevelt if he gave it a try.

Hillary May Now Have Two Worst Nightmares

October 3, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Domestic issues, Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Mickey Kaus on Gov. Palin:

Big loser, again, is Hillary. In two years Palin will be so much better she won’t even be in the same league.

What If? How Would We Do?

October 3, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Culture, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Lifestyle, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

Last Sunday, as I shared my sermon with our congregation, I talked about the current economic crisis and reflected on the possibility of very difficult times ahead.

As I was speaking, my eyes fell on a man who is about 95 years of age. He was looking at me with eyes that seemed to say: “Pastor, you have no idea how bad an economic crisis can get.”

Of course, he is a Great Depression - and everything else - survivor. And I suspect that most of us need to find an octogenarian or two to talk to - someone who can show us the ropes.

In the same vein, I came across a column written by Max Hastings that came out a couple of days ago in the London Daily Mail. It’s entitled: New Age of Austerity. In the piece, Hastings reminds his readers that

“few of us, in our hugely privileged lives, have ever experienced the hard times we’re about to face.”

Here’s a link to “across the pond.”

Watch What We Mean Not What We Say

September 27, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Domestic issues, Economic issues, Media, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to be a bit unsettled by the image of that long empty corridor behind President Bush in his too-little-too-late attempt to address the nation’s concerns about the careening economy.

(What the President was really trying to say in those thirteen minutes —apparently aware that he was keeping people from watching David Blaine’s “Dive of Death” special, Mr. Bush at least had the good grace not to ramble on— was much better expressed the next morning when, in an off-the-record and off-the-cuff moment, he spoke the words that will define his administration in the annals of presidential rhetoric: “This sucker could go down”.)

It’s interesting to see how, unlike most Presidents, two eventful terms in office h