Lincoln's 200th Anniversary Year

Nearly lost but not forgotten in the changing of the presidential guard is the long anticipated (especially in the three states that claim him) 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

This Bicentennial is receiving even greater attention on the national stage in part because our president-elect shares our reverence for Mr. Lincoln, and intends to draw upon Lincoln's willingness to listen - and his genius - when crafting his own strategies for reversing our nation's downward spiral.

I have heard it said repeatedly of late , by scholars and talking heads, that President-elect Obama faces a challenge unlike any seen by an incoming president since the national challenges faced by both Lincoln and FDR. Thankfully our next president is a student of history and plans to study the policies of our two greatest presidents... men who were not simply presidents, but national leaders.

What would Lincoln do? Who is our Lincoln? If he were dropped into the White House today, to face the perils that Obama will tackle, how would he go about it? Perhaps I can finally get to the point of this blog... now that the Evil Empire is on the verge of collapse.

Are we still a Republic? We swear allegiance to the flag 'and to the Republic for which it stands.' Does that Republic - and democracy - still stand? Or have we now morphed into a giant, greedy corpocracy hell-bent on looting our public coffers to further the bloated weath of the powerful elite?

Most who ask this question - the 'corporacy' question - are immediately labeled 'liberals.' I consider myself an Independent and a moralist. I manage to disagree equally with many liberals and conservatives alike, and then again agree with just as many others, depending on the issue. This is not a question of ideology. This is a question of democracy. It is time to hold a mirror to our national face and determine who and what we are today.

Recently Mr. Obama's transition team set up a website that accepted questions from the general populace. The top question - above even the dubious bailout - indicated that the American people want to know if there would be any sort of reckoning for the outgoing administration, and if a special prosecutor would be assigned to the task of determining whether war crimes were committed.

I agree with President-elect Obama that we need to look ahead and not behind. Who we are today was forged over many modern administrations. However the last eight years have seen changes in this country and its national face - the ideology that it shows the world - which mark a direct change of course from who we have always believed we are. America does not torture... yet our soon to be ex-president freely admits now that he allowed torture, in spite of the fact that it violated the Geneva Conventions.

We cannot be the nation we claim to be - a beacon of hope and democracy for the world - and not address what our government has become in the last eight years. Our works have defined us. Any behavior that is 'un-American' must be abolished, and any crimes that have been committed must be punished -- for the sake of our 'national soul,' our relationship with other nations and all future generations.

There is a very real danger that any crimes left un-punished will emerge again to haunt the next generation. This has already happened. By pardoning Nixon and closing any further investigation into Watergate, President Ford opened the door for Rumsfeld, Cheney and many others from the Nixon Administration who went on to form the backbone of the Bush Administration. They learned early that there were no real consequences for those in the highest levels of office. Basically if you could find a way to bend the government to do what you wanted, you could be king. No one would stop you, and no one would punish you.

When we as a nation refused to really pursue the Iran-Contra corruption, we left the door open once again. We are adverse to holding our highest level officials accountable to their oaths of office... or perhaps I should say that the people we elect to represent us are adverse to making waves among their peers (they appear to feel that they have more in common with others in government than with the great unwashed masses.)

President-elect Obama plans to involve us in the national dialog. This should be refreshing after eight years of being locked out of the people's government. I'm quite sure it is what our forefather's intended, and what Lincoln recalled in the Gettysburg Address when he expressed his hope that the 'government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.'

But along with moving forward, we need to finally do something about where we have been the last eight years - not in any spirit of malice or revenge, but simply to guarantee that the door is firmly shut this time, and this reckless law-breaking behavior cannot happen here again.

Does that nation 'of the people, by the people and for the people' still exist?

I believe that it does. We managed - against rather impressive technological odds - to elect a man to office that we felt would represent us -- not the establishment. We shocked the world, and perhaps now they finally realize who we - the actual American citizens - really are, and can differentiate us from our current government. We've been held hostage the last eight years. We are not our government.

We made it clear, when asked, that we expect the Bush Administration to be investigated. This must be done. It doesn't have to take center stage. But it must be done.

There is an excellent essay in The Nation about 'Our Lincoln.' It starts out with a strong and matter-of-fact treatment of Lincoln in his time: his attitudes towards slavery and race, and his dilemma when forced to choose between his heart, and the specific wording of the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln has always provided a lens through which Americans examine themselves. He has been described as a consummate moralist and a shrewd political operator, a lifelong foe of slavery and an inveterate racist. Politicians from conservatives to communists, civil rights activists to segregationists, have claimed him as their own. With the approach of the bicentennial of his birth, the past few years have seen an outpouring of books on Lincoln of every size, shape and description. His psychology, marriage, law career, political practices, racial attitudes and every one of his major speeches have been subjected to minute examination.

Lincoln is important to us not because of his melancholia or how he chose his cabinet but because of his role in the vast human drama of emancipation and what his life tells us about slavery's enduring legacy. The Nation, founded by veterans of the struggle for abolition three months after Lincoln's death, dedicated itself to completing the unfinished task of making the former slaves equal citizens. It soon abandoned this goal, but in the twentieth century again took up the banner of racial justice. Who is our Lincoln?

The article speaks to Lincoln's approach to the subject of slavery, and shows how his views came to change and grow over time. Lincoln's great strengths included the ability to think deeply, listen to many opinions... and his willingness to change. May President-elect Obama carry on this legacy - this willingness to think deeply and respond to the reality of the times - and thus ensure the continuation of democracy in this nation.

The Great American Swindle

Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.

- Grover Norquist ('Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan)

Has the government drowned yet? (Can we finally shut off the water?)

Good piece from The Nation, by William Grieder:

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses--many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

Actually... if they're brought down, perhaps we can start over. Its probably time to let these two bloated, corrupt parties crash with their buddies in the bloated, corrupt financial market. They all sleep in the same bed. The Republicans are now Neocons; the Democrats... Neocon collaborators. Any semblance of their former party platforms has long ago vanished.

While the growing ranks of angry Independents watch both parties hang themselves with their own neckties (you can make that a purse strap for Palin,) Greider talks about what our government could be doing... if it wasn't in bed with Wall Street lobbyists:

Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.

A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.

Since both parties serve their campaign financiers - corporate and banking lobbyists - of course nothing substantial will be done... other than dumping the entire thing on the backs of the already-struggling taxpayer.

The tub is overflowing. Can we turn off the water now?

The Nation: Amy Goodman arrested in St. Paul

Now this from 'The Nation' magazine:

This morning in St. Paul, Minnesota, an estimated 50,000 antiwar protestors gathered for a big rally outside the state Capitol building originally planned to coincide with the start of the now-delayed Republican National Convention. In the face of this peaceful, permitted protest, as Ari Berman reports, were a phalanx of cops seemingly ready for the apocalypse, turning downtown St. Paul into a surreal scene featuring tear gas and dozens of arrests. Berman also got exclusive video of the aftermath of the violence.

Among the arrested, reports John Nichols, is radio host Amy Goodman, who was detained with two members of her staff.

Nichols wrote:

I was with Goodman earlier this afternoon, as she was reporting on the major anti-war demonstration. She and her crew were, as always, interviewing everyone they could in the calm, assured manner that has made the daily Democracy Now! program a widely-watched and well-regarded news programs on radio and cable television stations across the country.

Moynihan and Burke, in their statement, say that:

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

They are urging journalists and concerned citizens to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman (651-266-8535) and the Ramsey County Jail (651-266-9350) and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar.

The calls are important.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild are also on the case.

Save the Nation

Dear Friend of the Nation, I've never written a fundraising letter, not counting the few notes I sent my parents when I was in college. I'm a journalist. I write articles and books about politics, national security, and the world around us. And I'm damn lucky; I get paid to do so by The Nation. But our legendary magazine has been hit by a fiscal crisis; one caused by the sort of institutional Washington corruption I often cover and I've been asked by our publishing team to ask people like you, who care about independent media, for help. Please click here to pitch in. Teresa Stack, The Nation's president, explains the crisis this way: Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time-Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time-Warner's own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up less than other magazines or even decrease. But smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase of half a million dollars a year. For The Nation, $500,000 a year is a lot of money. Believe me, I know. I've been working at the magazine for over 20 years. The pay ain't great. But there are few media outlets that allow their writers and reporters the freedom to go beyond the headlines and take on the powers that be to ask inconvenient questions and pursue uncomfortable truths. This whopping postal rate hike took effect last month. Not to be melodramatic, but this rate increase is a threat to democratic discourse. Why should magazines that can afford high-powered lobbyists receive preferential treatment? This rise in mailing costs will make it harder for the magazine to deliver the investigative reporting and independent-minded journalism upon which you depend. (Take my word; I see the editors and publishing people in our New York office freaking out about this postal rate hike and discussing possible cutbacks.) The magazine is fighting this corporate-driven, unfair and anti-democratic increase as best it can. It has joined forces with conservative publications in an attempt to beat back the rigged rate structure. (Imagine The Nation and National Review, working together!) But even if we "win" which, I'm told, is a long shot, The Nation will still face hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional postage. So I'm turning to you. I've never asked alternative media readers like you for anything except the time it takes to read what I write for the magazine and its website. But The Nation needs help to cover this shortfall, and it needs that help now. Simply put, I'm asking you to send us money: whatever contribution you can, as soon as you can. Click here. I'm not entirely comfortable writing to you as a fundraiser. Because people like you have supported the magazine, I've been able to do the work I enjoy for years. I appreciate that. Now I'm hoping you'll come through in this time of need. Certainly, I'd rather be chasing kick-ass stories than worrying about magazine budget cuts and writing pleading letters. So please help us deal with this unfair rate hike, and I'll go back to my day job. Sincerely, David Corn, Washington Editor The Nation P.S. You can also help by writing letters to your local newspaper, contacting your elected officials, and reaching out to family, friends, and co-workers to educate them about this threat to independent media. Go to www.stoppostalratehikes.com to learn more.

___________________________________________________________

We might also want to consider boycotting Time-Warner. I sure intend to.

Bye-bye Time Magazine! You were slanted anyway.

The money I save on your subscription will now go to the Nation; I'll be better informed, and I won't be just another 'sucker contributor to corporate bullying.'

It's a win-win... one of those phrases you corporate-types like to toss around.

You've gotten too big, too arrogant and too greedy. Time for a little financial slap down from the masses.

The 'free market' idea says that you still need us to buy your crappy products. If you continue to bully smaller competitors by dictating to our Federal Government (which should know better; but of course it is currently held hostage by neocons,) I for one will never again buy your crap.

Get it? You lose money, and may finally come to grasp that democracy idea once and for all.

- M

P.S. If you are a conservative reader, please help the National Review. I can't afford to help both.

Either way-- stop buying Time, People and Sports Illustrated, until Time-Warner stops bullying independent media. Surely we have enough corporate bullies in this country, and surely we're all getting a little tired of having our democracy dictated to us by the corporate media.