What to Do About the Racist Remarks of William Bennett?

Sarah Posner has published a well-researched piece at The Gadflyer, about the Salem Communications radio empire that carries a vast array of conservative programming. Here is an excerpt:

"Michigan Democrat John Conyers has written a letter to the Salem Radio Network," writes Posner, "requesting that it suspend Bill Bennett's program for his outrageous remarks that '[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."' But who owns Salem, and what do you think they're going to do about Bennett?"

"Salem Radio Network's parent company is Salem Communications, a publicly traded media company which openly claims its programming is from a conservative Christian perspective. The company owns over 100 radio stations in major metropolitan markets and syndicates its programming to 1,900 stations around the country.

"Salem's principals, CEO Ed Atsinger and his brother-in-law and Board Chairman Stuart Epperson (himself a radio host), are long-time patrons of the Christian right and its favored Republican candidates and causes."

Much more.

Its Time to Fight the Religious Right

DefCon, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, officially launched today.

The campaign promises to aggressively challenge the religious right on the facts, the law and the Constitution. One defining characteristic of DefCon's approach -- is that it has apparently made a clean break with the dubious Inside-the-Beltway driven tactic of name-calling that has hobbled Democratic and liberal responses to the religious right for a generation. Instead of relying on focus-group derived labels such as "radical religious extremists," DefCon is choosing to focus on delivering clear, forceful arguments and messages. This is very good news and offers hope of the development of a far more productive strategy to persuade the American people that theocracy is not the direction we want to go.

Duke University Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky writing at the DefCon Blog says its "Time To Fight the Religious Right."

"I believe, Chemerinsky declared, "that the greatest threat to liberty in the United States is posed by the religious right, largely comprised of Christian fundamentalists. Across a broad spectrum of issues they want to move the law in a radically more conservative direction, ultimately threatening our freedom."

DefCon also released a report today titled Islands of Ignorance, describing the threat to American science education in ten states and localities where "intelligent design" is being promoted by the religious right as an alternative to evolution.

DefCon also released a letter, signed by leading scientists, clergy, Nobel Laureates and others, urging the governors of all 50 states to work to stop the erosion of American science education.

Specifically, we are concerned about efforts to supplement or replace the teaching of evolution in our public schools with religious dogma or unscientific speculation. Science classes should help provide our children with the tools and scientific literacy they need to succeed in a 21st century economy.

We are well aware of studies showing American children falling behind those of other nations in their knowledge and understanding of science. We certainly will not be able to close this gap if we substitute ideology for fact in our science classrooms – limiting students' understanding of a scientific concept as critical as evolution for ideological reasons.

We do not oppose exposing our children to philosophical and spiritual discussion around the origin and meaning of life. There are appropriate venues for such discussion -- but not in the context of teaching science in a public school science classroom.

We have come together -- people of science and people of faith – for the sake of our children and the competitiveness of our country, to urge you to ensure that:

-- Science curricula, state science standards, and teachers emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power.

-- Science teachers in your state are not advocating any religious interpretations of nature and are nonjudgmental about the personal beliefs of students.

-- There are no requirements to teach "creation science" or related concepts such as "intelligent design," or to "teach the controversy" -- implying that there is legitimate scientific debate about evolution when there is not. Teachers should not be pressured to promote nonscientific views or to diminish or eliminate the study of evolution.

-- Publishers of science textbooks should not be required or volunteer to include disclaimers in textbooks that distort or misrepresent the methodology of science and the current body of knowledge concerning the nature and study of evolution.

Our nation's future rests, as always, in the hands of our children. We hope to have your commitment to ensure that our schools teach science, not ignorance, to our children as they prepare the next generation for the challenges of a new century.

[Crossposted at Talk to Action]

Roy Moore to Make a "Major Announcement"

Roy Moore, the disgraced former Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court is thinking of making a comeback -- a run for the GOP nomination for governor of Alabama in 2006. According to the web site We Need Moore, the web site of the Draft Roy Moore campaign (backed by Conservative Christians of Alabama), Mr. Moore will make his intentions known in what is described as "a major announcement" on Monday, October 3 at 1:00pm in Gadsen, Alabama, Moore's hometown. "This will be an historic occasion," according to We Need Moore. "The eyes of the nation are upon Alabama. We need a crowd to show support for Judge Roy Moore and the media that we have strength. Ya'll come and bring a carload."

Moore, popularly known as the "Ten Commandments Judge" is thought to be a serious contender against the business oriented incumbent Republican governor, Bob Riley. Moore is also said to be seeking to field a full slate of candidates for statewide office.

On the Democratic side, the Associated Press reports that current Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley is expected to square off against former Gov. Don Sielgleman.

Moore is best known for installing a two and a half ton monument to the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse, shortly after his election as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. A federal judge declared that the monument was religious display that violated the constitutional separation of church and state and ordered Roy's rock removed. Moore refused to remove the monument and was subsequently removed from office. In so doing, he became a national hero of the Christian Right, and a central figure in far right efforts to undermine the federal judiciary.

As much as many Christian Right pols are a departure from the golf club Republicanism of much of the latter 20th century, Moore is a further departure, representing an overtly and confrontationally theocratic politics -- reminiscent of the pugnacious populism of former Gov. George Wallace.

The Birmingham News recently reported about one of Moore's recent appearances at a church in Ozark, Alabama: "More than 200 people filled the green pews of the Glory to Him Church to hear Roy Moore preach about God and government on a humid Thursday night. "We will always be one nation under God. No federal court, no federal government, no state government can deny it," Moore thundered. "Amen" the crowd answered back.

Mike's Message for Democrats

A California college student and blogger named Basie, has an important interview with Michael Dukakis -- who has a message for the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Singer: Your one-time Lieutenant Governor John Kerry came very close to the Presidency this fall. What are some of your thoughts and feelings towards the election?

Michael Dukakis: I think the one great missing piece in this campaign, and it's something that we Democrats have got to get serious about at every level, was that we still aren't doing the grassroots job the way it has to be done. I happen to be a product of grassroots campaigning, grassroots organization. I wouldn't have been elected dogcatcher in my state had it not been for that.

When I'm talking about grassroots organization, I'm not talking about parachuting kids in with two weeks to go from seven states over. I'm talking about a precinct organization with a precinct captain in every precinct and block captains -- maybe a half a dozen per precinct -- who systematically make contact with every single voting household in that precinct, beginning early. This is not something you do in the last couple of weeks. You have to start months in advance. And you do it on a 50-state basis. I don’t care if the state is red, blue or polka dot.

We didn't do that. We didn't even do it in the battleground states. That isn't to take away from what otherwise I thought was a very strong campaign with a very strong candidate. I thought John did a good job and was a much better candidate than I was, frankly. I think his campaign was much better than mine.

We still aren't doing this grassroots job. I know there are people who don't think that old-fashioned grassroots campaigning works. They're just plain wrong. They've never done it, they don’t understand it. And that's what we have to do beginning now.

New Group to Fight the Religious Right

DefCon, short for Campaign to Defend the Constitution: Because the Religious Right is Wrong, is a promising new Washington, DC-based internet campaign modeled on the success of MoveOn.com.

I have had a few advance peeks while it was in development, so I can attest that considerable thought has gone into its creation. DefCon says that "Americans deserve all the freedoms and rights promised in the Constitution. We cannot let religious zealots turn back the clock on civil rights, privacy, scientific progress, and quality education."

So check them out. They've got a good daily summary of articles on the controversy over intelligent design; and useful profiles of some religious right leaders.

Here is some of the press release about the official launch planned for Thursday"

New Online Campaign Launched Against Religious Right

Report Thursday Will Highlight Top Ten "Islands of Ignorance"
Where Teaching Evolution Is Threatened

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution will release a letter on Thursday to all fifty governors signed by Nobel laureates, other leading scientists and scores of clergy, calling on the states to ensure that science classes teach evolution and base curricula on established science, not ideology.

The Campaign will also release a report highlighting the top ten "Islands of
Ignorance" around the country where science education is under attack.

These announcements are the first actions of the newly formed Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon), an online grassroots movement to combat the threat posed by the religious right to American democracy, public education and scientific leadership. The Campaign is led by prominent national scientists, legal scholars and clergy......

The Campaign's Advisory Board includes such notable leaders as:

Bruce Alberts, former President of the National Academy of Sciences
Francisco Ayala, former President and Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Ira Glasser, former Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
Rev. James Lawson, former President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Harold Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health
Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor of Constitutional Law, Duke School of Law

The launch of DefCon coincides with the start of the trial in Dover, PA over a school board mandate to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

I will be a guest blogger at the DefCon blog from time-to-time, in addition to launching Talk to Action over the next little while.

The tide is turning, folks. We are adding a focused, netroots capacity for taking on the religious right that we have not had before. DefCon officially launches on Thursday. Talk to Action launches soon.

And you are invited.

The Blogging of the Deval Patrick Campaign for Governor

Please welcome the Deval Patrick for Governor Blog to the MA political blogosphere.

This is, to my knowledge, the first candidate blog for any office in Massachusetts. Patrick earlier broke new ground across the summer by granting interviews to MA political bloggers.

On their first day, they are inviting comments on Patrick's economic plan which can be viewed here (pdf). For some additional perspectives on Patrick and economics, see the endorsement rationale of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Governor Makes His State the Butt of His Jokes;Republican's Out-of-Town Act May Alienate Majority Democrats

That's the headline on a story in today's Washington Post.

Making his state the butt of his jokes may go over big with with Christian Right and golf club Republicans in South Carolina, but here in MA, we just call him Governor Toast.

Evolution; Just a Guess?

The blog Religion Clause has great primer for what is shaping up as a classic court case over the teaching of evolution or intelligent design in science classes. The federal trial begins Monday Sept 26th in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania regarding the "Dover Area School District's policy on intelligent design. Intelligent design has become a flash point in the war over the role of religion in American society, and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District seems destined to become a symbolic battle..... At the heart of the case is a statement that the school district requires biology teachers to read to ninth-grade students:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, "Of Pandas and People," is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.

No doubt one aspect of the case will be the religious right's slippery use of language. One key arguement in the religious rights's grab bag is that the theory of evolution is well, "just a theory" and that other "theories" such as intelligent design, deserve to be presented in the name of academic freedom. The New York Times recently published a set of F.A.Q.s about evolution borrowed from a pamphlet used by the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY as part of their staff training program.

Is evolution 'just a theory'? A "theory" in science is a structure of related ideas that explains one or more natural phenomena and is supported by observations from the natural world; it is not something less than a "fact." Theories actually occupy the highest, not the lowest, rank among scientific ideas. ... Evolution is a "theory" in the same way that the idea that matter is made of atoms is a theory. Is it true that there is lots of evidence against evolution? No. Essentially all available data and observations from the natural world support the hypothesis of evolution. No serious biologist or geologist today doubts whether evolution occurred.

This is Why We Need Talk to Action

Bruce Prescott has a hair-raisingly important post over at Talk to Action.

Two weeks ago Paul Pressler, the architect of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, described how the Religious Right intended to deal with Roe v. Wade. After expressing his elation with the selection of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court he said, "Roe v. Wade won't be revoked, it will die the death of a thousand cuts and qualifications and regulations until it gradually disappears."

I suspect that Pressler has described the Religious Right's strategy for dealing with more than Roe v. Wade. They are already applying the same strategy to repealing the First Amendment and civil rights legislation.

One of the most egregious examples is the authorization that congress gave churches and religious groups to discriminate in hiring yesterday. Churches and religious groups have always been free to discriminate in their hiring when they were spending money received from private donations. Yesterday congress authorized them to discriminate in hiring with the money they receive from federal grants.

Much more.

Its to be able to discuss important posts like this, that we are developing Talk to Action into a fully interactive scoop-based site. (Scoop is the underlying software behind The Daily Kos and Booman Tribune among others.) We need to be able to talk about stuff like this in a more considered way. We need to flesh out-the implications and discuss the short, medium and longterm things we can do about it. We need to know more about the religious right and governmental players behind such initiatives.

As we all know, things worth doing often take more time than anyone could reasonably have imagined. And that has been true in developing Talk to Action. But we are nearing launch. With any luck, we won't have to take it off the launch pad and call in the engineers, or go back to the drawing board. But I think that this time, luck is with us.

Values, Culture and Politics

Who's afraid of freedom and tolerance? Why are fundamentalists so frightened by liberal family values? A look at competing worldviews, by Doug Muder, is the cover story in the Fall issue of UU World magazine, published by the Unitarian Universalist Association.

For those seeking to find progressive religious "values-based" approaches to understanding and responding to conservative evangelicalism, it is an interesting and important read. Muder makes a spirited and convincing case that conservative values hold no distinct advantage for the family or for anything else, and that statistics on such matters as divorce and pornography bear him out. He calls for greater understanding of conservatives and better articulation of progressive religious values as essential in the culture war. Here is an excerpt:

"It is tempting, human, and (to an extent) inevitable for religious liberals to respond with our own feelings of persecution, helplessness, and anger. But in doing so, we fall into the vicious cycle of polarization: Our anger feeds their sense of persecution just as theirs feeds ours.

We have a way out of this cycle: a message of hope that the Right cannot match. Our way of life works in this new world and does not demand that we roll history back. We need to broadcast this Liberal Good News loud and clear.

But in order to communicate our message, we need to understand the anger and helplessness of the Christian Right, so that we can cut through the static that jams our signal. We need to talk about more than freedom and choice; we need to explain why we want freedom and choice. We need to talk about the committed life and how committed liberals escape the superficiality and nihilism that the Right fears and assumes we represent.

We need, in short, to reclaim one of Christianity's best ideas and hardest practices: We need to love our enemies and to bless with hope those who curse us with anger. Such love and such blessing would not be a signal of weakness or an overture to surrender, but rather a portent that we had found the true power of our religious heritage. Armed with that power, we can win these culture wars. Without it, we may not deserve to."

While I agree with much of the article, I think there is a problem, well more of a limitation, I suppose, with this approach. And its not unique to this article, it's a limitation endemic to liberalism across the board in the U.S. The article substitutes the idea of "values" and "message" for political strategy and electoral activism -- when there is a need for both. Love and understanding and good message are not to be confused or conflated with recruiting and fielding good candidates, mobilizing voters and winning elections. There is no evidence that reframing of values, and coming up with better articulations of those values taken by themselves, affect electoral behavior or electoral outcomes.

That said, I do think that people of liberal or progressive values can and should better understand conservatives of all sorts. They should also, as Chip Berlet has persuasively argued in several essays on Talk to Action -- stop the pointless and counterproductive demonization of conservative Christians. There are those who think that calling conservatives names like "religious political extremists" is smart politics. But this focus-grouped, inside-the-beltway-manufactured style of sloganeering has often substituted for having an actual political and electoral strategy in response to the Christian Right. I think the current composition of Congress ought to give anyone who thinks this stuff is a good idea, considerable pause.

Let me be blunt: there is no substitute for direct engagement as a citizens in electoral politics. Electoral politics is citizenship. It is here that our major civic conversations take place, and choices are made for our communities by electing our governmental representatives to office at all levels. It is the nature of electoral politics that there is some conflict as people differ about what choices should be made -- and by whom. This is normal, and valuable. The avoidance of this conflict means abandoning the playing field to the far-better organized Christian Right.

The Christian Right political movement is crystal clear about this -- and works across the election cycle to build for power sufficient to make their values real in public policy. Liberal and progressive organizations, with a few exceptions, (notably Neighbor-to-Neighbor and Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts), are not so engaged.

Politics begins, but does not end with values. "Message," whether a message of love and understanding, or ruthless labeling and demonization, is only one dimension of political life in our constitutional democracy. A key to the success of the Christian right has been the way that it has integrated participation in civic and electoral life with their values. In fact, that participation is a value in itself. There is no liberal or for that matter, Democratic, "message" that will make much, if any electoral difference, absent a major retooling of our approach to electoral politics.


[Crossposted at Talk to Action]

PDM & Patrick in the News

The cover story in The Valley Advocate this week is about Deval Patrick and the just-announced endorsement of his candidacy for governor by Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. Here is how it starts out:

Fred Clarkson sees the political tide turning in Massachusetts, and he likes the direction it's flowing. "Things are changing," says Clarkson, a Northampton-based author well regarded for his political reporting, most notably tracking the influence of the Christian Right. "All the trends are trending progressive and Democratic."

There was, for instance, Mitt Romney's smashing failure to extend the coattails of his 2002 gubernatorial victory to fellow Republicans in last year's legislative races. Clarkson also points to the resignation of heavy-handed House Speaker Tom Finneran (replaced in his district by a Haitian woman, no less) and a general "shaking out of old guard in the Democratic Party." The electorate, he says, is ready to replace the old models of patronage and insider politics.

"They're in the mood for reform," Clarkson says. "They want clean government. They want honest government. They want functioning government."

This is great news to Clarkson and his colleagues at Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, which formed after the 2002 gubernatorial election to help like-minded candidates. Last week, the group is endorsed the man it believes can lead Massachusetts to a brighter, more progressive, more inclusive future: Deval Patrick (see "Our Obama," May 26, 2005).

"This is a man who clearly has progressive values and who can connect them with a large and comprehensive vision," says Clarkson, who sits on PDM's state coordinating committee. "That's something you rarely see in a candidate."

Much more.

PDM Endorses Deval Patrick for Governor

Below is the text of the press release issued this morning by the Patrick campaign. But before we get to that, a few preliminaries.

In the wake of Bob Reich's 2002 campaign for governor, PDM set out to establish a statewide network of activists who could provide a base of active support -- in effect, a standing field organization -- for whomever emerged as the logical choice for progressive, reform oriented Democrats. The candidate turned out to be Deval Patrick -- and PDM has become the organization it set out to be. I am proud to have been one of the founders, and am currently a member of the executive committee. I have come to understand that it is not enough to know about candidates and then vote. Or even to volunteer for candidates. There is no substitute for making activism in electoral politics a part of our lives as citizens. If we don't, we abandon the playing field to the monied interests, campaign consultants and TV ad agencies. Deval Patrick is the candidate of the engaged citizenry, as the PDM endorsement rationale makes clear. The document is now available on the PDM web site.

The endorsement press release is also featured on the Deval Patrick campaign site.

------------

Proving that his focus on the issues that matter to voters is connecting with grassroots activists, Deval Patrick has today been endorsed by The Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. A unanimous vote of the PDM coordinating committee, representing progressive voters and volunteers from all over the state, is putting all of the organization’s efforts behind Deval Patrick's historic candidacy.

"We are proud to be one of the first organizations to endorse Deval Patrick for governor," said Peter Dolan, chair of PDM. "We not only enthusiastically support Deval Patrick’s candidacy, but we pledge to work hard to ensure that he is the Democratic nominee – and the next governor of Massachusetts."

The PDM endorsement comes on the heels of endorsements by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, as well as that of Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA). PDM is committed to building both on Patrick’s 2000 volunteers from all over the state, as well as on his campaign’s fundraising efforts which recently topped a million dollars and have engaged over 10,000 people.

The grassroots fervor created by Reich's 2002 Democratic primary campaign for governor was the moving force behind the founding of PDM. It has since built a network of dedicated and knowledgeable activists across the state to provide a base of support for progressive Democratic candidates.

"It is said that in politics, whichever side has the best ground game wins," said Frederick Clarkson of Northampton, a member of the PDM coordinating committee. "We bring to the Patrick campaign a statewide network of seasoned, knowledgeable and dedicated activists who are able to work together in a way that is far greater than the sum of its parts."

Patrick released his "Moving Massachusetts Forward" economic development and jobs plan last week, including 10 ideas to grow the state's economy and create jobs. He will be continuing to talk about the plan this week at a number of events.

Blogging Religion and Politics

Religion and politics is a hot topic these days. And one of the very best places to talk about it online will be a new site called Street Prophets. Some of the names over there will be familiar to readers over here. Its the first of a promised series of "spin-off" sites related to The Daily Kos, and the effort is led by pastordan, who is also one of the founders of Talk to Action, which is still inching along to launch into a fully interactive site that will function much like Street Prophets.

So what's the difference?

"Street Prophets is a place to talk about faith and politics," writes pastordan. "That's it. You're welcome to hang around here, on the condition that you're not a jerk or a hater."

At Talk to Action, we will focus on the religious right as a political movement, and what to do about it. That's it. (We will have somewhat more detailed site guidelines, although avoiding jerks and haters will be important over there too.)

Street Prophets lists this blog and Talk to Action as among the "friends of the blog." And indeed we are.

Patrick on Health Care

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts (PDM) had produced a remarkable document and sent it to the statewide membership. "We are," wrote state chair Peter Dolan in his cover letter, "nearing a decision to endorse Deval Patrick for Governor. Before we make our final decision, we want to share with you the process and the thinking that are leading us to this decision, and hear your thoughts."

The document was a detailed rationale that included this succinct summary of the candidate's position on health care. The entire document is now posted on the PDM web site.

Health Care

"Single payer is my medium-term destination. Where I want to go is single payer." But of the proposals now out there, he is currently supportive of Health Care for All, with some modifications. On the way to our destination, ".... we have to do what we can do now. It's immoral to have this number of people [1/2 a million] who go to bed every night worried about getting sick. It's hard to ask these people [the uninsured and the underinsured] to wait for the stars to be aligned for Single Payer. Health Care for All is the most attractive and ambitious proposal that we can do right now.... but where I want to go is single payer."

He spoke of the problem of multiple meanings of Single Payer -- ranging from a single clearinghouse for bill paying to a government-managed delivery system. His focus will be on inclusiveness, transportability, simplicity, quality and real cost savings (e.g. cutting the 30% administrative costs of the current system).

"A politics of hope means universal health care in our state. This is a unique moment in time. No one is happy with the current system - not employers, not doctors, not the hospitals, certainly not the uninsured and underinsured. Even if you have health insurance, you know how hard it is to get to the care you need. If no one is happy with the current system, why don't we change it? It's not going to be easy. It's going to take hard work and vision. It's going to take bold and creative leadership and it's going to take a governor not afraid to take on some political risk."

Can You Feel It?

A few days ago, I wrote a piece about the then-upcoming star-studded Katrina benefit concert hosted by Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Over at The Daily Kos I added: "Benefit concerts are always about compassion, but sometimes they also surface deeper concerns and higher aspirations -- and inspire political involvement. This may be one of those times."

The event itself, broadcast on NPR, PBS, and BET, among other outlets, did indeed surface anger and outrage, higher aspirations and I believe, political inpsiration. A story written by Associated Press Music Writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody, captures some of this. She reported that the

"Higher Ground" hurricane relief benefit concert Saturday night....[was] stirring for the emotionally charged performances and speeches that assigned blame for the tragedy.

"When the hurricane struck, it did not turn the region into a Third World country.... it revealed one," actor and activist Danny Glover said in a speech with Harry Belafonte in which both criticized the government, not only for the response to the hurricane but for the conditions prior to it.

"Katrina was not unforeseeable," Belafonte said. "It was the result of a political structure that subcontracts its responsibility to private contractors and abdicates its responsibility altogether."

Robin Williams poked fun at the administration during his standup routine, in which he imagined an ethnically named Hurricane and its attitude: "I'm going to go to Kennebunkport and see if they respond any quicker!"

The Bush family compound is in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Bill Cosby played it straight as he called on the American people to hold government accountable.

"This happened to the people. The constitution says of the people, by the people, for the people," he said. "But the people who got the office, got into office and forgot about the people."

Elvis Costello, who performed with jazz giant Allen Toussaint, said he heard conservatives were worried about Katrina's rebuilding cost: "I just hope we keep in our minds that an effort like this can never be too expensive."

Jazz singer Jon Hendricks best summed up the tone of the evening. After singing one tribute, he said: "That's the way I feel about New Orleans; This is the way I feel about the country right now."

Then he launched into the angry song "Tell Me The Truth," singing lines like "Nowadays, wrong is right, down is up, black is white, bad is good, truth is a lie" before defiantly singing, "Somebody tell me what's right," to applause.

But some of the most poignant moments didn't need a political agenda.

Young jazz trumpet player Irvin Mayfield of New Orleans played the melancholy tune "Just A Closer Walk with Thee," and dedicated it to the rebuilding of New Orleans and "to my father, who is still missing."

Successful political movements have great music. The labor movement; the civil rights movement; the peace movement (Vietnam), and even the Christian right, has had terrific music that speaks to and from its participants.

I wonder what music(s) will emerge from the vast, gathering movement for social change of which the disaster of New Orleans is but a further catalyst?

Can you feel it gathering? Gathering with the political strength of a hurricane that will sweep away Bush's congressional majorities in 2006?

Can you feel it?

Deval Patrick Wins First Party Straw Poll of the Season

You know the campaign season has really started when straw polls are held at political party functions. The results of straw polls are far from scientific samples of popular opinion -- but they can be strong indicators of activist strength. Its a full-year before the 2006 Democratic Party primary and there will undoubtedly be lots of straw polls. But it will be interesting to see if this first one was a fluke, or an early sign of an historic upset.

Deval Patrick beat front-runner Tom Reilly by 3-1 in the first straw poll of party activists a local democratic party fundraiser at the Weymouth Elks Hall on September 16th. "The straw poll is an early indication about the support of the leading Democrats who are vying to be the next Governor of Massachusetts," said Jim Cantwell, Chairman of Co-op 8/South Shore Democratic Caucus, the group which held the straw poll.

The group was asked: If the election were held today for whom would you vote?

Deval Patrick 46
Thomas Reilly 16
Undecided 8
Bill Galvin 1

The South Shore Democratic Caucus is made up of the communities in the Plymouth & Norfolk State Senate District including the towns of Cohasset, Duxbury, Hingham, Hull, Marshfield, Norwell, Scituate and Weymouth.

Health Care Week on the MA Political Blogs

Welcome to Health Care Week on the MA political blogs!

Here are three posts I have spotted so far on the first day.

Wonk Not! writes "my suggestion at the start of this 'health care week' is that we be bold and try to get beyond the usual players, the usual mindsets and the usual ruts that prevent progress. Despite our denial when we are healthy, in our shared vulnerability, we are all in it together."

Charley on the MTA at Blue Mass Group has a reading list of books and articles -- with links.

Cape Cod Works has a post about a proposal being developed for a Cape and Islands health system.

The effort is being led by Blue Mass Group, Left in Lowell, and Wonk Not!

Be sure to stop by and thank them for their leadership on this.

Attn: Northampton MA Voters -- Marjorie Hess for Library Trustee! Tuesday, Sept. 20

There is a preliminary election on September 20th in Northampton for several offices. I want to highlight the race for Forbes Library Trustee. The nine member field will be winnowed to four who are running for two open seats on the board. The general election is November 8th. I will be voting for Marjorie Hess.

I have gotten to know Marjorie through Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, an organization which among other things, is about encouraging new leadership, encouraging good people to run for public office -- and to support those that do.

I am grateful that Marjorie is stepping up to run for this important position. Not only is she exceptionally well qualified for the post she is running for, but she is a person of great competence and integrity and a role model for the kind of person we all want to see in positions of public trust and responsibility. Please join me in voting for her on Tuesday.

Nohomissives has more details on her views and qualifications, and a number of endorsement statements, including that of the Northampton chapter of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts.

Richard Lands an Oxymoron

Richard Land, a honcho over at the Southern Baptist Convention has been a pivotal figure in the building of the theocratic movement in the United State for a generation. But in a recent speech reported by The Baptist Press, noted by the fine legal blog Religion Clause) he has also made a significant contribution to the wider culture by his high-profile use of an oxymoron.

Dr. Land's distinct, albeit inadvertent, contribution to the culture is not entirely original. Dr. Bruce Prescott of Mainstream Baptist reports that several speakers used the term. However Land gets the credit, because I happened to realize its significance when I read his use of the term. Land's contribution joins the list of such classics as jumbo shrimp, final draft, saying nothing, hot chili, industrial park, junk food, plastic glasses, working vacation, computer jock, incomplete stop, natural additives and, of course, cheap gas.

Drum roll please:

badda badda badda badda badda badda badda badda boom!

Secular Fundamentalist

Ta Da!~

The occasion for Dr. Land's contribution to our culture was his twistedly preposterous argument that "The greatest threat to religious freedom in America are secular fundamentalists who want to ghetto-ize religious faith and make the wall of separation between church and state a prison wall keeping religious voices out of political discourse."

There is no suppression of religious voices in American political discourse. This is variation on the same strawman the Christian Right has been relentlessly knocking down for a generation. What Land and his theocratic cohort don't like is religious equality and separation of church and state. For government to be the protector of the rights of all in religiously diverse society, it cannot be in the business of forming alliances with various sects and coalitions of sects to promote their interests; or promoting religion or religious practices.

Land and the theocratic movement are desperate to claim that there is religious persecution in the U.S. and the stifling of religious expression. This desperation is well-exemplified by their use of term "secular fundamentalist," which is being used to tar the values of those who actually stand for religious freedom; and to reinterpret the Constitution and American history to advance their contemporary political and religious goals.

More Traction for Patrick on the Campaign Trail

Deval Patrick has been doing a lot of listening since he announced his insurgent campaign for governor of Massachusetts.

While some have waited impatiently for him to make specific pronouncements on pet issues, he has spent time figuring out what he wants to say instead of spouting what he thinks people want to hear. One result is a ten-point economic program which is now available on the campaign web site, and is certain to get alot of attention in the political community and in the media over the next few days.

"If you share my vision and support these ideas, or have better ideas," Patrick writes, "join us by signing up at www.devalpatrick.com. And in the style that has marked his campaign from the beginning, Patrick is soliciting comments and feedback.

Unlike most pols, Patrick sees politics -- and indeed, governance -- as an ongoing conversation. He knows that people are bored to death by wonkitude. Its not that people think public policy is unimportant; quite the opposite. But we all yearn for pols who speak in plain English about what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it. We want pols who have a biggervision -- and the skills and realism it takes to get there.

Patrick's vision, skill and realism shows in his campaign. Starting early and with zero name recognition, he has systematically been speaking with and listening to people all over the state. Considering where he began, he is making tremendous progress. One of the innovative features of his campaign, continues to be his outreach to bloggers -- few of whom have large readerships, but all of whom are engaged in turning this nascent media into a powerful engine of civic activism and democratic renewal. Patrick's latest bloggerview was with The Progressive Blog, which describes itself as "an outlet for Progressive Students and Thinkers residing in and around Lynn/Boston." Each bloggerview tends to have a ripple effect. Each one is written about by at least some fellow bloggers, thus reaching more readers and continuing the statewide conversation.

For example, Sco has some observations on Patrick's latest foray into the blogosphere, and Left in Lowell has highlights.

Meanwhile. Patrick's more traditional campaign appearance in Burlington was the subject of a major article in the Burlington Union.

Upstart liberal candidate Deval Patrick.... who is looking to become the first African-American governor in state history, made his pitch to voters here last weekend, touting an aggressive platform of education expansion and health care reform, while vowing to infuse the Democratic party with energy and hope.

"If the Democratic party doesn't stand for anything, we will lose and deserve to lose," said Patrick, .... "We need to stiffen our backbones and become the party of hope and opportunity again."

One highlight of his appearance was the way that he underscored the difference between his view of government and that of the rightist cabal running the Bush administration. The Union continued:

"Patrick later blasted the federal government's sluggish response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster but stopped short of saying it was the result of racism.

"What's on display is the failure of a political philosophy, and that's a philosophy that says everyone is on their own, particularly the poor," said Patrick. "And I think that philosophy compounded to make both class and race factors in the [hurricane] recovery.

"If you want a closer look at the vision of government urged by the right, turn on your television and look at what's going on on the Gulf Coast.

"You can't say to people evacuate and not take account of the fact that some may not have the means by which to evacuate, and then say it's up to them to do so," he continued, adding that if a similar disaster befell Chicago when he was a child, ""It wasn't a question of my family being able to hop in the car and dash out to O'Hare Airport and high-tale it out of town." Patrick also criticized President Bush's actions in the days immediately following the deadly storm.

"It's important for leadership to show up," he said. "I was astonished when I read that the president flew over [the region] in Air Force One. Someone asked me what I would have done differently, I said I would have gotten out of that airplane."

Katrina, Jazz and Democracy

Jazz at Lincoln Center is hosting an extraordinary Katrina benefit concert on September 17th, "Higher Ground: Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert." This important event will be broadcast live on PBS and NPR and other outlets, and a benefit CD will be produced from the event.

Wynton Marsalis, the Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center has important things to say not only about the role of New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz (and his hometown), but the role of jazz as a fundamental expression of American democracy. I think he is right about that. And I remember him saying similar things in the course of his extraordinary interviews in Ken Burns' PBS documentary on the history of jazz a few years ago. Here is his statement from the JLC web site:

New Orleans is the most unique of American cities because it is the only city in the world that created its own full culture – architecture, music and festive ceremonies. It's of singular importance to the United States of America because it was the original melting pot with a mixture of Spanish, French, British, West African and American people living in the same city. The collision of these cultures created jazz and jazz is important because it's the only art form that embodies the fundamental principals of American democracy. That's why it swept the country and the world representing the best of the United States.

New Orleanians are blues people. We are resilient, so we are sure that our city will come back. This tragedy, however, provides an opportunity for the American people to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world that we are one nation determined to overcome our legacies of injustices based on race and class. At this time all New Orleanians need the nation to unite in a deafening crescendo of affirmation to silence that desperate cry that is this disaster.

We need people with their prayers, their pocketbooks, and above all their sense of purpose to show the world just who the modern American is and then we'll put our city back together in even greater fashion. This is gut check time for all of us as Americans.

In a country with the most incredible resources in the world we need the ingenuity of our best engineers to put the cultural heart of our nation back together. To put it together with 2005 technical expertise and with 2005 social consciousness, which means without accommodating the ignorance of racism, the deplorable poverty, and lack of education that have been allowed to fester in many great American cities since slavery.

We're only as civilized as our level of hospitality. Let's demonstrate to the world that what actually makes America the most powerful nation on earth is not guns, pornography and material wealth but transcendent and abiding soul, something perhaps we have lost a grip on, and this catastrophe gives us a great opportunity to handle up on.

Hat tip to Tom Reney who read Marsalis' statement on the air during Jazz a la Mode on WFCR in Amherst, MA this evening.

Fast Times in MA State Politics

Politics is changing fast in Massachusetts. And the movement for progressive, Democratic reform is getting boosts due to the record and behavior of leaders in both major parties.

On the Republican side, the vice-chair of the state party -- and former treasurer -- has been indicted for laundering drug money. Meanwhile, Governor Mitt Romney has been testing the waters for president -- and failing the test. His popularity in the state has been tanking as he criticized his own state in front of conservative Republican audiences in the south and west. Nevertheless, rumor has it that he may run for reelection after all.

Meanwhile Attorney General Tom Reilly, who has been running for governor for years as the candidate of the oligarchic wing of the Democratic Party -- raising $3 million along the way -- is losing support over his controversial ruling to allow an initiative to place an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution on the ballot. The Reilly-certified initiative, which he says he personally opposes -- is the new focus of antigay forces in the state in the wake of the defeat of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have revoked same sex marriage rights, but recognized civil unions. The amendment lost by a vote of 157-39. Some of those voting against it were conservatives who do not support civil unions and were, along with Governor Romney, supporting the new initiative. But there is little disagreement that same sex marriage is widely accepted in Massachusetts, and those who oppose it are on the wrong side of history, of decency, and of the law.

The Brockton Enterprise reports that

"Local attorney and Republican Party leader Lawrence Novak was caught in taped conversations mapping out plans with a jailed drug suspect to launder $107,000 in illegal drug profits, federal officials allege.

"You need to clean the money," Novak told the suspect, also a federal informant, according to papers filed in federal court Tuesday.

Novak, 54, state vice chairman of the Republican Party and a councilor-at-large candidate in Tuesday's city primary, was arrested and charged with federal money laundering offenses Tuesday, minutes after depositing drug money at a Brockton bank, authorities said.

Novak told the bank teller that "he had found the money," court papers said.

The head of the city's Republican committee was arrested at his.... home following a three-month investigation by federal agents into allegations he offered to file false paperwork in court and launder drug money for a client.

Tim O'Brien, Republican Party executive director, said the charges are unrelated to Novak's GOP role. Novak served as the party's treasurer in the late 1990s....

"This is very strange and very unexpected," Mayor John T. Yunits Jr. said. "He is not known.... as an underworld lawyer who would be dealing in drug money."

Meanwhile, Attorney General Reilly claims that he is just following the law -- but his reasoning seems highly dubious to many. Interestingly, he sided with the argument of the Massachusetts Family Institute, the state political unit of one the top Christian Right organizations, James Dobson's Focus on the Family. In a letter to opponents of the initiative, Reilly claimed that the petition does not overturn the court decision that legalized same sex marriage, but that the constitution allows for an initiative to amend the constitution in response to the court's declaring unconstrained a statute. Many critics see this as a distinction without a difference. Some see it as a radical failure of moral leadership.

A former top Reilly aide, Mary Breslauer, writes in The Boston Globe

"....this attorney general has consistently hid behind existing order, even when it is blatantly discriminatory. Reilly is vigorously defending a 1913 law which was created to perpetuate discrimination and was ignored for decades until same-sex couples from out-of-state came to marry here. I think he's forgotten that civil rights advances occur when people, including attorneys general, challenge bad laws rather than stand behind them.

Reilly said last week that even though he's personally opposed to the ballot measure, the state Constitution required him to certify it. But when pressed by reporters whether that meant he would personally work to defeat it in the Legislature or use the bully pulpit of the governor's office to fight it, he said that was a question for another day.

I can tell you what gay families heard. They heard the attorney general waffling yet again on a very basic question of fairness and equality. And the waffle came after the kick in the stomach."

While Reilly has sought to present his decision as a profile in courage, calling it as he sees it, The Boston Globe reported that

"Reilly's decision triggered immediate condemnation from the state's gay and lesbian community, as well as sniping by a fellow Democratic candidate for governor, Deval Patrick. It also prompted Barbara Grossman, the wife of Steve Grossman, Reilly's campaign treasurer, to withdraw her support. She not only endorsed Patrick, but donated $500 to his campaign.

"In the core of my being, I believe it is a civil rights issue," she said Friday. "I certainly don't want to inflate my importance in any way, but I could not continue my support for Tom Reilly in light of this."

For his part, Deval Patrick said: "I am disappointed in the Attorney General's decision, but not surprised. He has had more than one chance to show leadership and political courage on this issue over the last few years and he has failed every time. The [Supreme Judicial Court] got it right. By ruling in favor of same sex marriage, the Court affirmed that everyone comes before their government as equals. Equality before the government and the law is a central value of our society."

Blogger Nohomissives writes about the rally on the steps of city hall in Northampton yesterday -- and has the exact language at issue in Reilly's ruling.

"It was a moving event -- songs, speeches, stories, etc. A great moment was when Peter Vickery took out his copy of the Massachusetts constitution -- a document, he said, that trumped Reilly's -- and read the section on citizen-initiated constitutional ammendments."

Governor's Councilor Vickery, according to The Springfield Republican, "blasted Reilly."

"His job is to apply the clear language of the constitution," Vickery declared, "and the constitution says that you should not use a ballot initiative to reverse a judicial decision."

Its the Substance, not the Slogan

Lately Democrats have been going through all kinds of gyrations to try to make themselves seem more religion friendly. But Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates, reports at Talk to Action that it isn't working. And thinks he knows why too.

Less than a third of Americans think the Democratic Party is friendly toward religion. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July of 2005, only 29% of those surveyed thought Democrats were “religion-friendly;” down from 40% in 2004. More than half of those surveyed--55%--thought the Republicans were friendly toward religion.

At the same time, 45% of those polled thought that "religious conservatives" had too much control over the Republican Party, while 44% thought that "non-religious liberals" had too much control over the Democratic Party.

These results can be interpreted in many ways, but I think they show that the Democratic Party and its allies need to spend more time thinking about how the average American perceives their attitude toward religion.

Indeed. Chip and I have been beating this drum for a long time.

There is an odd psychology in play here. Some Democrats, particularly some inside the Beltway, publicly pander to "people of faith" to the point of aping evangelical styles of religious expression that are, well, unconvincing. But on other occasions, Democratic leaders and aligned interest groups will trot out focus-group tested slogans with which to label everyone remotely associated with the Christian Right. On one day we love them because they are people of faith. But on another day we hate them because they are out to destroy America as we know it. Or something like that.

No wonder the polls are weird on this.

I wrote about this in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in a subsection titled "Its the Substance, Not the Slogan." I called for use of accurate descriptors instead of the language of demonization.

There are pols who think that cheap slogans can substitute for the inherent persuasiveness of people who know what they are talking about, and who care enough to speak in ways that communicate values that connect with people's interests. They have been around forever. But in our time, cheap sloganeering has substituted for aquiring relevant knowelege and putting it to use in evolvling political strategy in response to the growing strength of the Christian Right.

Berlet continues about the particulars of the slogan industry:

"Every week I get postal mail and e-mail solicitations for donations that use demonizing buzz phrases such as "Radical Religious Right," or "Religious Political Extremist." That type of rhetoric may scare some people into writing checks in the short run, but it makes it harder in the long run for grassroots organizers to build a broad-based movement for social change that includes people in progressive, liberal, and centrist religious groups.... Most Christian evangelicals, however, are not part of the Christian Right. I know from talking with evangelicals and fundamentalists across the country that they are offended by the rhetoric from some liberal and Democratic Party leaders who do not seem to be able to talk about religion without chewing on their foot."

Read the rest of his essay here.

"Demonization is a two way street," I wrote in Eternal Hostility, "and is engaged in by demagogues for purposes of their own. Sometimes, it simply adds a B-movie excitement to the normalcy of politics. [But] Whatever the outcome of the political struggles of the day, people still need to live in the same communities when it is over. This does not mean that debate and political mobilizations need to be meek and mild -- only that those who would speak for democratic values need to effectively and forcefully speak for those values, in ways that demonstrate those values in action."

I am not going to put forward a whole manifesto on language in this short piece. Maybe another day. Or maybe Chip will get around to it first. But as Dems gear up for 2006, I just want to suggest that different approaches to talking about religion and politics are definitely in order.

Conference on Dominionism, Oct. 21-22

Last spring, the Graduate Program of the City University of New York and the New York Open Center, co-sponsored an important conference on the theocratic Christian Right. I was pleased to be among the speakers, and am honored to be participating in the follow-up conference. Here is some info about the event, and a link to where you can get registration info.

Dominionism, Political Power & the Theocratic Right

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future.... Just how has this religious ideology gained influence in Congress, American political culture, and in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East and on the environment? What can be done to alert concerned citizens to the theocratic impulse growing in their midst? The goal of this seminar is to examine the power and influence of a religious and political movement that questions the separation of church and state, and that aims to establish a biblical society governed by biblical laws.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; Michael Northcott, teaches Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; author, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire; Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm & Saturday Oct. 22 10am-6pm $85; $50 students

Friday October 21 7:30-9:30pm $15

Saturday October 22 10am-6pm $75

A DVD of highlights from the previous conference Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right is available for $19.95. It features Karen Armstrong, Joan Bokaer, Joseph Hough, Robert Edgar, Hugh Urban, Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson.

On the Road with Words of Choice

Abortion can be hard to discuss -- between family members; between ostensibly pro-choice allies in the Democratic party; among friends. But there is one place where abortion is discussed in a lively, engaging and dynamic way, where the voice of the lives of ordinary people, not wonks, are heard. And that's following a performance of Words of Choice, a play by my friend Cynthia Cooper.

Words of Choice is about to go on the road -- in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas: St.Louis (Sept 14); Webster University (Sept 15); Lawrence KS (Sept 16); Manhattan, KS (Sept 19); Wichita, KS (Sept 20); Tulsa, OK (Sept 21); Washington University, St. Louis (Sept. 23).

"I didn't set out to measure the health of Roe v. Wade when I toured my play Words of Choice from New York to 10 states in the past year," Cooper wrote earlier this year for Women's eNews. "But traveling to Missouri and Florida, Virginia and Minnesota, I keep feeling the temperature: signs of liveliness and weaknesses in ways I didn't imagine.

At a church in suburban St. Louis, a young woman in a hip pink poncho offers me one clear insight when she strides up to the front of the community room after the "Words of Choice" performance. The play weaves together a dozen diverse writings about true-to-life experiences, comic and serious, with contraception, childbirth and abortion; my role is guiding the post-play discussion.

"Can you come to my college in Kansas?" presses the young woman. "This made me realize that I'm pro-choice and I want my friends to see it." she says.

Another woman, whom I soon learn is her mother, steps forward. "Just a minute," the 40ish woman interjects. "You grew up in a pro-choice household."

"But we never talked about it," the student says in a tone of exasperation best known to mothers and daughters.

"I told you about your grandmother's illegal abortion, didn't I?" the mother continues.

The daughter's unblinking stare indicates otherwise. Within moments, we hear the decades-old story of a frightened Midwestern girl willing to gamble on outlaws and dangerous conditions to procure an abortion in the time period before the U.S. Supreme Court said, on January 22, 1973, that the government cannot criminalize abortion in all circumstances--the decision known simply as Roe to many.....

The experience of Roe in the lives of ordinary people is far from the world where policy analysts describe Roe's wrinkles and sagging losses to hundreds of state anti-choice laws, or explain that one or two anti-choice replacements on the Supreme Court could make Roe into an historical artifact. More than one newswriter has confessed to being tired of the whole saga.

But tell that to the woman from Southside Chicago who approaches after a performance. She has never heard of Roe before. "I intend to do some research," she says.

Roe is the pulsating heart of America's right to privacy. If it is eliminated, many rights are in peril: right to contraception, in vitro fertilization, medical privacy, sexual freedom, gay and lesbian rights, end-of-life medical options, and, of course, abortion. Roe articulates the right to be free from government restriction in all manner of personal decision-making--essential individual rights in a free society."

The play, which weaves together comic and serious stories by 15 writers, Angela Bonavoglia, Kathy Najimy, Emily Lyons, Michael Quinn, Emilie Townes, Alix Olson, Judith Arcana, Sherica White, Kathleen Tolan, and Justice Harry Blackmun, has been produced in over two dozen cities and states.

The true-to-life stories in Words of Choice touch upon hot-button topics such as emergency contraception, sexual assault, unintended pregnancy, abstinence education, and safe and legal abortion.

"It is funny, moving, informative, entertaining, and an evening of theatre like no other," says Joan Lipkin, director.

Words of Choice is touring three 'red states' in a time period in which the right of privacy is under attack," according to the tour press release. "The state attorney general of Kansas has subpoenaed the records of women from two abortion clinics, and most recently, he sued the state to stop payment for the abortions of survivors of rape. The governor of Missouri is spending $100,000 in an "emergency" special session to pass anti-abortion legislation. The U.S. Senator from Oklahoma decries the use of condoms for birth control or safe sex."

Cooper has blogged about Missouri Gov. Blunt's draconian legislation at Talk to Action (the temporary site of what will launch as a national, interactive site in a few weeks. Cooper will be a front page writer.)

"I want to break open the conversation on reproductive rights," Cooper says. "The right to privacy belongs to all of us. It can't be left to politicians trying to score points."

No Experience Necessary, Part III

FEMA Director Michael Brown, who was relieved of day-to-day responsibility for Katrina relief efforts in the Gulf is not gone and not forgotten. Knight Ridder newspapers is reporting that Brown is "the boy for what's gone wrong with an agency once lauded for its lightning reflexes. The nation's federal disaster agency has been politicized and dismantled over the past four years and Brown is a symptom of that transformation, said disaster and government-efficiency experts.

"The Bush administration has filled FEMA's top jobs with political patronage appointees with no emergency-management experience, cut disaster-preparedness budgets and marginalized the agency by merging it with the new anti-terrorism bureaucracy, according to those experts, which include four former senior FEMA officials. The number of career disaster-management professionals in senior FEMA jobs has been cut by more than 50 percent since 2000, federal personnel records show.....

New York University Public Service professor Paul C. Light....[said] 'The real problem here is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the appointments process. It's the people who decided to put him in place and put all those politicals in place.'

George Haddow, a former FEMA deputy chief of staff under President Clinton and the co-author of an emergency-management textbook, called what happened in the last four years the 'deconstruction of the most robust emergency management and effective response system in the world.'"

Robert Reich On Supporting Deval Patrick

Deval Patrick's campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts is picking up steam. Following up on his Labor Day op-ed in The Boston Globe in which he and fellow former U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman endorsed Patrick as the choice for working people, Robert Reich has followed up with a letter to supporters.

Reich came in a strong second in the Democratic primary for governor last time -- after waging an energetic progressive reform challenge to the party establishment. Reich's campaign activiated thousands of people who had previously felt alienated from electoral politics. Reich's campaign preceded by two years the similar reform movement that arose out of the Howard Dean campaign for president. The organizational outgrowth of the Reich campaign is Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, (to which a lot of Dean supporters have joined) which is nearing a formal endorsement of Patrick, following the publication of a detailed endorsement rationale.

Here is is part of Reich's letter.

On September 19, 2006, the Massachusetts Democratic primary for Governor will be held and the winner that day could play a major role in the direction of this state.

After 15 years of Republican rule in the Governor's office, we can elect not just a Democrat, but a Democrat who will make us proud--my friend Deval Patrick.

Deval could have led a private, comfortable life, but he chose a more difficult and rewarding path. He chose to run for public office and motivate others to get involved or re-involved in politics. Judging from the 1,850 volunteers who have already signed up, Deval is having a substantial impact. He will have active operations in every community in the state by next summer.

But there's more. Deval is attempting to run a unique campaign, one in which --

-- he appeals to our better nature, not our worst
-- he supports Democratic values of fair play, equality and opportunity
-- he has the listening skills and imagination to find bold, creative answers to problems of unemployment, inadequate education and costly health care
-- he is the rare Democratic candidate who knows what makes businesses tick, and whose corporate experience has prepared him to create and keep good jobs in Massachusetts
-- he reminds us of the forgotten and vulnerable in our society, even if it makes us uncomfortable
-- he tells us the truth, not what he thinks we want to hear
-- he is inspiring and exciting and reminds us of the type of leaders we can be proud of
-- he brings to the Governor's job a unique blend of leadership in the public, private, non-profit and community sectors.

Read the rest of Bob Reich's personal endorsement letter to supporters.

Bill Moyers on Confronting the Christian Right

Bill Moyers delivered a powerful address at Union Theological Seminary in New York last week. He drew on central themes of American and Christian history to offer perspectives on what Americans need to do to come to grips with the dangerous, anti-democratic Christian Right.

An edited version appears on TomPaine.com.

Its worth sitting down to read Moyers'speech with a cup of coffee, a notebook, and a mind to figure out how we can preserve the best of constitutional democracy in our time, against the most dangerously anti-democratic movement to come along since the McCarthy era. Here is an excerpt to get your mind warmed-up for a stirring read:

"At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do. My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others. 'Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils,' thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience.

In l651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, 'that must free the soul.'

Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights 'a haven for the cause of conscience.' No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would 'the loathsome combination of church and state' -- as Thomas Jefferson described it--be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable.

The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed 'soul freedom.'.....


Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they're talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them -- the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America 'a safe haven for the cause of conscience.'

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies--political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies--cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don't fight fair; Robert's Rules of Order is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front -- and especially freedom of conscience -- never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting."

No Experience Necessary, Cont.

Amidst all the cat-5 scale spin that is going on inside-the-beltway over who is to blame for the disaster of New Orleans, some facts about the Federal Emergency Management Agency are nevertheless coming out.

The picture that has been emerging is an agency whose mission was underappreciated by Bush administration higherups obcessed with terrorism; whose budget and staff were cut; which suffered in the bureacratic deck shuffle that created the Department of Homeland Security; whose most experienced top personel departed and were replaced by patronage hires.

The Washington Post reports: that "Five of Bush's Eight top FEMA appointees are "Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience: 'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited"

Meanwhile the FEMA employees union is speaking out:

"All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, 'This isn't going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn't going to be enough.' But nothing more seemed to be happening," said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.

Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.

"One of the big differences I see," said Bosner, "besides taking away our staff and our budget and our training, is that Homeland Security now, in my view, slows down the process."

The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA's decline a year ago. State emergency managers also warned Capitol Hill and Homeland Security just weeks ago that DHS was too focused on one thing -- terrorism.

In an editorial The New York Times adds:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced this week that it didn't want the news media taking photographs of the dead in New Orleans. A FEMA spokeswoman talked unconvincingly about the dignity of the dead. But the bizarre demand, a creepy echo of the ban on news media coverage of the coffins returning from Iraq, is simply the latest spasm of a gutted federal agency.

It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing....

The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.

Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience.... Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials....

The Times further observes that

"President Bill Clinton appointed political pals at FEMA who actually knew something about disaster management. The former FEMA director James Lee Witt, whose tenure is widely considered a major success.... had run the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. His top staff came from regional FEMA offices....

But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies.... What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief.

No Experience Necessary

The callous indifference and astounding and far-reaching incompetance of the Bush adminstration is just unspeakable. So for now, I want to zero in on one thing: How FEMA was turned from a crack disaster relief agency under Bill Clinton and into a patronage parlor by George W. Bush in his top three appointments to the agency:

As the Chicago Tribune reported:

"Top officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have strong political connections to President Bush, but they also share at least one other trait: They had little or no experience in disaster management before landing in top FEMA posts.... Before joining FEMA in 2001, [FEMA head Michael] Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management."

Brown's lack of relevant experience is matched by his Chief and Deputy Chief of staff. Kos had the story on these characters on September 6th.

The Chief of Staff is a guy named Patrick Rhode. He planned events for President Bush's campaign. Rhode has no emergency management experience whatsoever. From Rhode's official bio:

His first position with the Bush Administration was as special assistant to the President and deputy director of National Advance Operations, a position he assumed in January 2001. Previously, Mr. Rhode served as deputy director of National Advance Operations for the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign, in Austin, Texas.


The Deputy Chief of Staff is Scott Morris. He was a press flak for Bush's presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush's campaign commercials. He also has no emergency management experience. From Morris's official bio:

Mr. Morris was also the marketing director for the world's leading provider of e-business applications software in California, and worked for Maverick Media in Austin, Texas as a media strategist for the George W. Bush for President primary campaign and the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign.

"FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule," according to The Chicago Tribune, "said the absence of direct experience managing emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need 'the ability to keep the organization running.'"

Deval Patrick Gets a Labor Day Boost

Deval Patrick got a big boost in his insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor today. In a Labor Day op-ed in The Boston Globe, Patrick received the endorsement of the last two Democratic secretaries of labor: Robert Reich and Alexis Herman. The article, titled "Patrick works for workers" is heartfelt, compelling and enthusiastic.

Here are a few excerpts:

"On Labor Day, Americans honor the contributions of labor to American life. Today the two of us, former secretaries of labor in the Clinton administration, honor and endorse the candidacy of someone we believe has demonstrated a commitment to improving the conditions of working people -- Deval Patrick.

We know Patrick from his work in the Clinton administration as the Justice Department's chief civil rights prosecutor. He took on crimes such as attacks on churches and synagogues, gave life to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and inspired a groundbreaking fair lending program that helped focus lenders on risk rather than race and gave thousands of people a chance to own their first homes....

Having worked as a janitor, lathe operator, and snow-cone vendor, Patrick also knows how important a living wage is. And he appreciates how much we have all benefited from the hard-fought gains of the American labor movement....

This is a man whose life spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and who is ideally suited for the position of governor. On this Labor Day, knowing how important jobs and labor issues are, we enthusiastically support his candidacy and honor his service to workers and their families. Patrick is no ordinary leader.

Read the whole article.

Progressive Democrats Of Massachusetts Goes Deep with Deval Patrick

One of the most remarkable political documents you will see this year was recently sent to the statewide membership of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts (PDM).

"We are," writes state chair Peter Dolan in his cover letter, "nearing a decision to endorse Deval Patrick for Governor. Before we make our final decision, we want to share with you the process and the thinking that are leading us to this decision, and hear your thoughts."

"Over the summer, the SCC [State Coordinating Committee] developed a set of PDM endorsement criteria," Dolan continued. "We wouldn't expect any candidate or campaign to measure up perfectly on all these criteria, but a statewide candidate endorsed by PDM should strongly exhibit a majority of these characteristics and positions, and not actively oppose or reject any of them."

What follows Dolan's letter is a ten-pager on why Patrick is a compelling, principled and viable democratic candidate for governor. I can't think of any other organization that has produced such a thoughtful and detailed rationale for supporting a candidate for any office. As a member of the PDM State Coordinating Committee, I suppose it figures I would say something like that. But I would not go to the trouble of telling you about it if I didn't think it was really good stuff. You can read some excerpts below, and you'll have a chance to check out the whole document for yourself when it is posted on the PDM web site in about a week.

One of the distinctives of PDM's approach was to develop a set of criteria for endorsement that was not merely a checklist of issues:


1. Does the candidate support the basic tenets and spirit of the Democratic
Party platform -- especially on critical, in-play issues?
2. What is the endorsement benefit to PDM?
3. Is the candidate an agent for changes PDM is working for?
4. Does the candidate's vision support PDM's strategic vision?
5. Is the candidate viable (i.e. has a clear strategy for winning and a compelling and well articulated message)?
6. Is the candidate making an effort to reframe issues in a progressive context?
7. Does the candidate embody the value of fairness?
8. Is the candidate a person of principle?

The PDM evaluation was based on discussions with Deval Patrick and his senior campaign staff, as well as a review of the campaign's website and the texts of Patrick's recent speeches.

When PDM leaders went to interview Patrick, they selected Health Care, Education, Economic Issues, and Labor to zero in on. It is worth underscoring on this Labor Day weekend that in his interview, Patrick supported, among other things, the right of workers to organize; and he opposed the "dirty tricks" sometimes employed by management, among other unfair impediments labor organizing.

Here are some excerpts from PDM's evaluation and rationale for endorsing Devel Patrick for governor:

"I respect the right of workers to choose third-party representation, and it makes good business sense for companies to negotiate in good faith. Dirty tricks to undermine the unions are never a good idea."

"I have always worked to create more inclusive, more effective work environments. I believe that the right to organize must be respected. That is a judgment and chance that workers get to make.... that workers have to be able to make openly and freely."

"I am in favor of a simplified card check process." He favors expedited union representation elections without employer interference. If a majority of employees in a given work site sign cards clearly expressing their desire to join a union (not just to hold an election) he feels the employer must honor those wishes.

"I am in favor of increasing the minimum wage although I don't yet have a point of view on indexing." He shared a concern that indexing (i.e. automatic cost of living adjustments) may mask the underlying issue that the minimum wage is not a "living wage". "The 'living wage' concept is closer to what I'm interested in -- for everyone, [union and non-union]." He noted that while some of these issues are questions of legislation, some really are issues of leadership. It's about using the bully pulpit of the governor to create an environment in which these issues are raised and become part of the political discourse. He said: "Opportunities for public leadership are broader than a Governor's enumerated powers."

Patrick resigned from Coca Cola when the company decided not to support an independent investigation of the deaths of several union leaders in Columbia. He agreed to return to the company as a legal consultant only after new company leadership agreed to support the independent investigation. This is a compelling story that indicates at a deep level his commitment to fair treatment of workers and unions.

Patrick knows that he cannot run a traditional Democratic campaign. He will be running a very deep grassroots campaign, bringing in large numbers of people to actively participate in their democracy, and the Democratic Party. This supports one of PDM's goals: a revitalized Democratic Party that takes its lead from the broad party membership.

His willingness to draw in people who hold divergent views on critical issues will also go a long way to changing the nature of the political dialogue in Massachusetts -- a specific goal of PDM. In his speech on August 3rd marking the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act he said: "Why have we worked so hard to make voting easier and failed so miserably at making voting more meaningful? Fewer citizens care. And I think that has much to do with politics itself."

"Increasingly, the political class is insular. We have perfected a conversation with ourselves about how elections get won, while everyone else wants to know why it matters.... while insiders and political 'wags' focus on who votes, where they live, how the hot-button issues move that vote, what time of day they vote, etc., most people see that the game is not about principle but power and too many just check out."

Patrick supports PDM's strategic vision in several ways: he is bringing many new people into the political dialogue and process, he expresses in many contexts a progressive view of the role of government, his commitment to civil rights and non-discrimination, and his very candidacy (bringing new leaders into the public arena)....

"I like Barney Frank's definition of government -- It is the name we give to the things we choose to do together. And I emphasize 'together'. It's about community. Government is not a bad thing. It's an essential for any successful society. I have lived in the Sudan where there was no government. There was rampant poverty, no safety, no services...." He lamented that people don't connect up what they get, to what they have to give. Government is both the basis of society and the means of achieving the dreams of society.

His campaign manager, John Walsh, also spoke of the campaign's inclusive approach -- "bringing people back into the system -- people who don't think politics has something to do with their lives."

"People want to talk about why Democrats lose elections. I think it is because we spend too much time focusing on how to win elections and not enough time talking about why we should."

Patrick's whole career shows evidence of having successfully integrated acting on principle and effectively getting the job done. His reputation is that of a problem solver and as someone who is always part of the solution. His career with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and as head of the Civil Rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice in the Clinton administration (in charge of among other things, enforcing the [Americans with Disabilities Act], his reputation as a creative problem-solver as well as his resignation in protest from Coke indicate his ability to marry principles with getting things done.

"I have helped lead two of the largest companies in the world, and I am just as proud of that as I am of my service in the Clinton Administration, the NAACP LDF and in private law practice. Because I get hired to be a change agent, and in every one of those jobs I've done my level best to leave the organization better than when I arrived. I have never been willing to check my conscience at the door, and never had to."

-------------------------

To read the whole thing, you will have to wait a few more days. (It may be tweaked a bit before we publish a final version.) But in the meantime, I just want to say few words about PDM:

PDM is a statewide organization founded in the wake of Robert Reich's 2002 Democratic primary campaign for governor. We have, among other things, sought to build a network of dedicated, knowledgeable and capable electoral activists to provide a base of support for a progressive, democratic reform candidate in the 2006 gubernatorial race. So far, we have developed seven chapters and chapters-in-formation, and a network of smaller organizing committees and individual activists. We have been involved in a number of state and local races, including the special elections for state representative and state senate this year. We have greatly increased our knowledge about electoral politics, built lasting political relationships, and honed our skills. The PDM network is in place -- and it is growing -- and now it looks like we have a candidate.