Incumbent Philadelphia Mayor goes into tomorrow’s election with a twenty-point lead over his challenger, former Democrat Sam Katz. This is good news for those who believe that urban renewal means empowering communities and not gentrification and union-busting. And, as Governor Rendell observed today:
Looks like we’re going to get Democratic weather – 70 degrees and sunny…
A former Fox News Producer tells Salon just what “fair and balanced” means there:
All I can say is, everybody there knows what the politics of the bosses are. You feel it every day, and in good part because of this daily editorial note that comes out. I suppose there are similar things…But [in the Fox memo], oftentimes when there are issues that involve political controversy and debate or what have you, there are also these admonitions, these subtle things like, “There is something utterly incomprehensible about Kofi Annan’s remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are ‘with the Iraqi people.’ One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought.” That’s something you just don’t see in a traditional newsroom…
I was assigned to do a special on the environment, some issue involving pollution. When my boss and I talked as to what this thing was all about, what they were looking for, he said to me: “You understand, you know, it’s not going to come out the pro-environmental side.” And I said, “It will come out however it comes out.” And he said, “You can obviously give both sides, but just make sure that the pro-environmentalists don’t get the last word…
They know what they can do, what they should do, what they shouldn’t do and so on. There’s just an atmosphere of — I don’t want to say “fear,” but for some of the young people there that’s what it is. You know, I’d rail against this. I never made any bones about it. Right in the middle of the newsroom, I’d say, “Did you see what we did?” The typical thing would be for people to say to me, “So we’re not fair and balanced? Like you didn’t know that? What are you getting all upset about?”
The right-wing AADP (which graciously linked my piece oppposing Proposition 54 and my friend and fellow lefty Suzy Khimm’s excellent piece exploring the tactics and success of the opposition), shares a frank and perceptive analysis from an author of California’s anti-affirmative action Proposition 209, written before the recent election in California, of why the Racial Privacy Act was bound to lose:
The Racial Privacy Initiative’s fate on election day will rest on how voters weigh in the balance the appeal of abolishing the racial checkboxes against the arguments that opponents will marshal for why they should be kept. The most compelling argument against the RPI (by no means the only one) is that the publicly available data that is provided by these checkboxes is essential to monitoring and enforcing compliance with antidiscrimination laws, including Prop. 209. This argument is the single greatest direct threat to the RPI, because there is a mountain of survey data showing that voters want strong and effective laws protecting them against racial and ethnic discrimination, as I show in the paper “Discrimination is a problem—and voters care about it” (in preparation).
For the opponents of the RPI, the task will therefore be to convince voters that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. Voters must choose, because there cannot be meaningful enforcement of antidiscrimination laws like 209 unless potential plaintiffs, watchdog public interest law firms, and other monitors have essentially the same data about the race and ethnicity of applicants and others that the potential discriminators do, who can ascertain the race and ethnicity of individuals in a myriad of ways, quite apart from the information provided by the racial checkboxes. Once voters realize that abolishing the racial checkboxes helps potential discriminators and hurts potential victims of such discrimination, whatever tendency there is on the part of voters initially to vote for the RPI will be overwhelmed as the campaign against it gets underway.
Last night Yale President Richard Levin hosted the Yale undergraduate community at the second house the University provides him for such a event. Here’s the “trick or treat” of which several copies showed up:
Mr. Richard C. Levin
43 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520
NOTICE OF CLAIM OF LIEN
The undersigned claimant hereby claims a lien under State Senate Bill No. 568 of the Civil Code of the State of Connecticut and hereby declares the following:
1. That a statement of claimant`s demand, after
deducting all just credits and offsets, in the sum of
$42,000 per month, for the remainder of Mr. Richard C. Levin’s life.
2. That the name of the owner[s], or reputed owner[s]
of the property is [are]: Mr. Richard C. Levin, President of Yale University. Although he doesn’t really own it, but he might as well.
3. A general statement of the kind of work done or
materials furnished by claimant, or both is:
Fostering an environment of mutual respect and charitable relations. Payment is long past due by the claimant.
[insert]
4. That the name[s] of the person[s] by whom claimant was employed or to whom claimant furnished the materials is [are]:
Yale University, Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, Yale School of Medicine.
5. A description of the property sought to be charged
with the lien is: The official residence of the President of Yale University, 43 Hillhouse Avenue, in compensation for the houses of working people in New Haven put under lien by Yale Psychiatric Institute. At least Mr. Levin has someplace else to go.
DATED: __October 31, 2003______________
Sincerely,
The Future of New Haven
I really do like James Carville, even if he comes down significantly to my right. His We’re Right and They’re Wrong is a decent read, and he argues with a passion and wit too many in the Democratic party lack – or wouldn’t recognize if they saw them. But before he expects me to take him seriously when he sends me mail asking for money if I’m
…fed up with mushy moderates who think the best way to win elections is to act like warmed-over Republicans…
and
…believe the Democratic Party should fight for our principles without compromise or apology
and belong to what the late Senator Paul Wellstone called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party”
he’s going to have to renounce the warmed-over Republican he spent eight years helping to screw the Democratic wing of the Democratic party without apology…
Breaking news from Business Week:
Howard Dean’s Presidential ambitions are poised to get a major lift on Nov. 6 when the AFL-CIO’s largest union, the 1.3 million member Service Employees International Union, is set to endorse him, BusinessWeek has learned. The SEIU’s action, coming shortly after Dean won pledges from two small unions, the International Union of Painters and the California Teachers Assn., goes a long way toward completing the transformation of the former Vermont governor from a niche candidate backed by limousine liberals, antiwar activists, and tech-savvy young people into a mainstream candidate who can also connect with blue-collar America. Says SEIU President Andy Stern: “It’s clear that Dean has gained the most support amongst our members and local leaders.”
For all my reservations about Dean, I do see truth in Jacob’s argument that
if anyone is going to win against Bush, that candidate needs to unite the foreign policy left wing of the party with the economic policy left wing of the party, and combine all that with a strategy that gets people riled up, donating money, and voting. I’d happly back anyone I thought could do that, from John Edwards to Al Sharpton. Kucinich tries to to the part where he unites the two important parts of the party, but fails at actually running a campaign. Gephardt was thought to have the unions but his wishy-washy politics on the war, combined with his proven record of failure (most recently in 2002) make him a poor candidate. Dean is the man to unite around, and now it seems that the biggest unions in the country agree
As I’ve probably said here before, Dean is the candidate who has had the most success so far in building a left “Contract with America” – mounting a (generally) coherent, passionate, and resonant critique of the current administration and articulating a vision of a more (if insufficiently) progressive alternative – and he knows better than many of the other eight how to organize around it. Shame that he has a record of prioritizing balanced budgets over social services.
One place where I agree with Jacob wholeheartedly:
…it’s nice to see SEIU, AFSCME, and CWA working together on something. If only SEIU can get AFSCME and CWA on board with the New Unity Partnership…
This front-page story in the YDN focuses on the committee formed in Local 35 which will consider fines – along with other approaches, like new organizing approaches – as a response to the 1 to 2 percent of the membership that continued working during the strike. It’s quite similar to a story the YDN ran a couple weeks back on the same topic, also as a top story. What’s missing is a conversation with any of the hundreds of members who’ve pushed for a response; their absence contributes to the sense that setting up a committee is some kind of autocratic punitive stratagem by Bob Proto. That sense, and the erasure of workers from the narrative, are furthered by the absence of any mention of Bob Proto’s uncontested re-election as President of Local 35 yesterday, or of the race for Chief Steward.
Also misleading is this front-page analysis which continues the YDN’s narrative of GESO of late: GESO sinned by organizing and was punished by losing the referendum last spring, and has since redeemed itself by pushing issues instead. While this account has meant some less openly nasty coverage of GESO by the YDN of late, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the labor movement works, one shared by too many students. Unions don’t choose between pushing issues to make members happy or organizing to make their leaders happy. Unions organize by bringing workers together through common experience and interest and shared issues, and unions bring change on issues through the power of their organizing. GESO has, as the YDN acknowledges, been responsible for substantive change in the benefits and resources Yale makes available to its graduate students. But only through the power of its organizing, and the threat of unionization. So while it’s true, and admirable, and GESO has conducted an exciting series of surveys, produced damning and enlightening reports, and generated its first unified platform over the past months, pushing for change on the issues which affect graduate students is not a new development – and organizing and fighting for recognition are not only old news.
From a YDN report on decreased alumni giving:
While Yale President Richard Levin and the development office may affect alumni giving from year to year through campaign efforts, fluctuations in donations are primarily market-based, according a Yale economics professor who wished to remain anonymous. Except for cataclysmic university public relations mistakes, the main factor in determining the amount a donor gives to a college is the economy, the same professor added.
The article breezes past, of course, without a hint of irony.
Abi Vladeck gets to the heart of a key issue in the Aldermanic race, and exposes what’s at stake:
Americans all agree that there should be no taxation without representation, but its reverse — representation without taxation — should not be tolerated, either. Noblesse oblige is not a democratic virtue. In a democracy, citizens and institutions pay taxes, and their elected leaders should decide how this money will best serve the community. As the biggest landowner and private-sector employer in New Haven, one of the richest institutions in the country, and a world leader in education, Yale should not build tax shelters in order to place itself above this laudable democratic principle. Charitable programs are great, and no one can argue that Yale’s programs have not done a lot to fix up New Haven, but the fact remains that they do not empower this community in the same way that taxes would because, unlike taxes, they can be discontinued on a whim. Citizens have the right to expect their governments to provide for the well-being of the community; they should not be required to ask for alms from private interests when they need help.
The YDN, in endorsing Ben Healey for re-election, gets it right:
“While Kruger has some admirable abstract ideals, Healey has concrete platforms and substantive policies, and the experience and understanding to effectively implement them…
While we found Kruger’s approach compelling, his platforms lack the depth that make Healey’s issues-based campaign so strong…
Healey has a concrete agenda that he formed over the past two years and will continue to build over the next two. We believe that Healey’s philosophy — what is good for New Haven is good for Yale students — is on target. Healey’s proposal for grassroots financing of mayoral elections and his commitment to press Hartford for adequate funding for city homelessness programs, for example, show clear insight into local politics and reflect issues we think are fundamentally important to students. Healey has shown a commitment to many of these issues during his first term and seems to have a clear vision for how to legislate even more effectively — including how to pass the failed domestic partnership amendment he sponsored last year — if he is elected to another term…
We are confident that Healey can use what he has learned during his last term and this campaign to continue working for Ward 1 and the city. We believe that Healey is fighting for the right causes and that in a second term he will be able to affect change that benefits us in our dual roles of Yale students and residents of the city of New Haven.”
Mark Fiore brings the threat posed by Domenici’s new energy legislation, well, to life…
The New York Times has a piece today about the Free State Project, the brainchild of some libertarian Yalies (not surprising, given the tendency of an Ivy League college environment to inculcate – rightly – social freedom and – wrongly – a false faith in economic meritocracy), to move as many libertarians as possible to New Hampshire and achieve a critical mass so to swing elections and eventually build the kind of libertarian state which neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to see realized:
“Having so many people move into a state means we can really raise issues,” Mr. Somma said. “Once we start to elect people to the Statehouse, I think the low-hanging fruit will be issues like educational reform and medical marijuana.”
Like many on the left, I’d argue that libertarians are right to embrace civil liberties but that the substantive ability of the individual to live a full and self-determined life depends much more on freedom from want than property rights. I have little sympathy for folks like Jackie Casey, who wants a machine gun for Christmas, hopes to destroy the government safety net entirley, and says:
“I want to be a billionaire in my lifetime…and I don’t want to live among people who think that’s bad…I radically oppose public education. It’s demeaning and it creates criminals…The thing that hurts poor people is they don’t know how to think of themselves as rich.””
That said, I think these libertarians are right to recognize that their voices – like those of Catholic workers, socialists, anarchists, nativists, and a slew of other ideological groups (some more savory than others), as well as those of most sexual, religious, or ethnic minorities – are underrepresented in a two-party, winner-takes-all, regionally-based system. That underrepresentation is a vital culprit in the narrowing of political discourse in this country. So what I as left-of-Democrat and Jackie Casey as a libertarian have in common is a shared interest in a political system that really represents us – even without asking us to pack up and leave our state.
Josh Eidelson 