----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Schwartz
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
070331 - MY take on the Democratic Strategy in Congress
I like the way in which the resolutions being passed in Congress are
embarrassing the Bush Administration and that the media are presenting it as
much more confrontational than it actually is. It creates atmosphere of
criticism toward the war that is useful in sustaining and increasing
opposition. But I think that the idea that this is as much as the
Democrats could do is really a sorry rationalization. The notion that they
need to back off of wielding the budget power of Congress because they will
"lose" the 2008 election is simply an excuse.
In the House, the Democrats can refuse to pass a budget bill with a bare
majority and therefore cut off funds for the war. In the Senate, all that
the Democrats need are 40 votes to stop any budget bill. Everybody says
that it would be political "suicide" to do this, because the GOP would say
that they are abandoning our troops.
But recall how the GOP operated in 1995, after they got majorities in both
houses. They refused to pass budgets and almost anything at all, and then
negotiated with Clinton to get him to embrace their platform. They were
often forced to "compromise," but they never accepted a "take it or leave
it" sort of deal. They blocked whatever Clinton wanted and then bargained.
The Democrats could do this with the budget bill or any other bill the Bush
is pushing. Instead of using this strategy, the Democrats claims that the
President has them backed into a corner, and that they will lose the
election in 2008 unless they give in. But the Dems could turn this right
around on the GOP, which is what the GOP did in the 1990s. They could say
that they are unwilling to pass any budget (on any subject, not just Iraq)
until Bush sets a "date certain" for removal of troops. Then, once the
stalemate is established and the time clock is ticking towards a July crisis
(when he wouldn't have money to pursue the war), they could negotiate a
"deal" with him to promise a withdrawal by next year, or next month or a
de-escalation, or some other bullshit that would represent that they had
forced him to alter his plans and the strategy in the Mid East.
(Even something like "redeployment" would substantially reduce the amount of
death in Iraq by stopping the US blanket bombing of Sunni areas of Baghdad,
which is going on at an unprecedented level as we speak. )
But the Democrats refuse to do any of this because say that they will lose
the election. But why don't they look at it as the GOP did in 1990s--after
the policies they pushed through failed, they blamed Clinton for not giving
enough ground. They won in 1998, in 2000, in 2002, and 2004. All by
pushing as hard as they could and then blaming the Dems for stopping them
from pushing further. Why don't the Dems do this as their electoral
strategy? When things are still horrible in Iraq and the Middle East--if
the boys are still dying over there--they can say that Bush didn't get them
out and kept sending more, when he was told to remove them. Instead the
say their electoral strategy is refuse to pursue their 2006 electoral
mandate, because they claim the people will throw them out for trying to do
what they were elected to do. And besides that they are actually saying is
that they prefer to watch hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die, and thousands
of American casualties, just so they can gain a little advantage in an
election.
Quite honestly, I think that the backers of the Democrats do not want a real
withdrawal and neither do Clinton, Obama and other Democratic leaders: they
support the war and are hiding behind electoral "strategy" as an excuse for
not opposing it.
Michael Schwartz
Stony Brook State University
IraqViews is a not-so-occasional posting from Michael Schwartz regarding the
situation in Iraq, U.S. policy in the Middle East, and everything else
tangentially related to it.
If you wish to receive IraqViews postings, send an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
with the message:
sub iraqviews-l [plus your name or handle]
***
Memo To Our Media: How To Cover The Debt Crisis
By Danny Schechter
April 5, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/338/
Well over a year ago, I wrote an article for Harvard's
journalism journal Nieman Reports complaining about deeply
flawed media coverage of credit and debt issues in America.'
There is a credit divide in America that fuels our economic
divide,' I wrote, warning of a potential economic implosion
because so many Americans are squeezed by a debt squeeze. I
was not alone in projecting a crisis, although my focus was
more on the failure of many media outlets to track the problem
and ask deeper questions.
'Ours has become a nation in which the carrot of instant
affluence is quickly menaced by the harsh stick of bill
collectors, lawsuits, and foreclosures,' I argued. 'And yet,
this bubble can burst, and has. The slickest of our bankers
and the savviest of our marketers have been able to undo the
law of gravity, that what goes up must come down.'
One didn't have to be an expert to see the warning signs which
have since led to a massive market meltdown, a collapse of the
sub-prime mortgage market, bankruptcies by leading financial
lenders, billions of dollars in losses by top banks and
financial lenders, and predictions of even more pain to come
with nearly two million Americas facing foreclosures.
When I started making a film on the subject, In Debt We Trust,
a colleague warned me that the issue might be too obscure to
rate media coverage. 'No one likes to talk about money,' said
a producer friend. 'This could be such a downer.'
Now what are they saying?
It doesn't feel good to be right when so many people are being
wronged. At the time I called on media outlets to take some
steps to beef up their reporting. Most didn't, but it's never
too late.
Here's what I proposed then, and repeat now:
= Report more regularly on these credit issues; billions of
dollars are involved, not to mention millions of lives.
= Identify the key corporate institutions and contrast the
compensation of their executives with the financial
circumstances of their customers. Look into the process of
'financialization' that is transferring more wealth from the
bottom to the top of society.
= Shine a spotlight on how special interests and lobbyists for
financialinstitutions contribute to members of Congress and
other politicians, across party lines, to ensure their desired
policies and lack of regulations.
= Expose political influence driven by campaign contributions.
Some reporting about this took place during the bankruptcy
debate, but there has been little follow-up.
= Examine the influence credit card companies have on media
coverage through their extensive and expensive advertising.
= Take a hard look at the predatory practices in poor
neighborhoods - and crimes committed against poor people, who
are least able to defend themselves. Legal service lawyers
tell me that they are overwhelmed by the scale of mortgage
scams involving homes whose value have been artificially
inflated.They are bracing for massive foreclosures,
= Focus attention on what consumers can do to fight back.
Robert Manning, author of 'Credit Card Nation,' explains: 'If
ten percent of American credit cardholders withheld their
monthly payments, it would bring the financial services
industry to a standstill. At a larger issue, what we have to
do is to get people involved at the state level, get their
state attorney generals involved, aggressively filing class
action lawsuits and then putting pressure on key legislators
to say, â?~This is unacceptable that they're not representing
and balancing the issues of commerce with consumers. The
balance is tilted dramatically against the average American."
= Report on initiatives like Americans For Debt Relief Now
that are setting up community, church and grass roots house
party screenings fot the film IN DEBT WE TRUST. (Stopthe
squeeze.org)
We need to educate the public about the deeper forces at work
and the need for structural changes, urgent reforms and
regulations and new consumer protections. We need to stop
restating problems and start exploring solutions. We need new
regulation, investigations and debt relief even debt
cancellation!
The globalization of our economy is about more than
outsourcing of jobs. There is a deeper shift underway from a
society based around production, with the factory as the
symbol of American economic prowess, to a culture driven by
consumption, with the mall as its new dominant icon.
Class struggle today is assuming a new form in the conflict
between creditors and lenders that reaches into many
Americans' homes, where each month bills are juggled and re-
juggled with today's credit card bills paid by tomorrow's new
card. Meanwhile, with interest compounding at usurious rates,
indebtness grows and people sink even deeper into debts they
cannot manage. No wonder we are becoming a nation of scammers
with consumers using every trick they can think of against
banks that then hide their own predatory practices in
legalese.
In this conflict, financial institutions function as well-
organized collection machines while individual borrowers are
forced to react as individuals. Many are browbeaten with
lectures about 'personal responsibility' by corporations that
only pay lip service to any form of social responsibility
while paying their own executives obscenely high salaries.
Centuries ago, we had debtors prisons. Today, many of our own
homes are similar kinds of prisons, where debtors struggle for
survival with personal finance pressures.
Who is really responsible for this? Few of us seem to know.
And fewer appear to know what can be done about it. 'They're
never going to be repaid,' says economic historian Michael
Hudson who for many years worked at Chase Bank. 'Adam Smith
said that no government had ever repaid its debts and the same
can be said of the private sector. The U.S. government does
not intend to repay its trillion dollar debt to foreign
central banks and, even if it did intend to, there's no way in
which it could. Most of the corporations now are avoiding
paying their pension fund debts and their health care debts.'
Yes, these can be complicated issues that lead to tune-out,
what TV producers call the â?~Mego Effect' - 'my eyes glaze
over.' Yet because so many people are involved, it is urgent
that our media push these issues from the business pages to
the front pages and humanize them so we can try to wrestle our
lives back from the ravages of a relentless debt machine.
News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He is
also the writer, producer, and director of the new documentary
In Debt We Trust. Visit Stop the Squeeze for what you can do.
Comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
