Kemstone's Journal

I suspect that the best place to get noticed in the progressive blogosphere is Daily Kos. Thus far I’ve avoided that site because I think its founder, Markos Moulitsas, is a pompous asshole wonderful guy. But seeing as how it doesn’t matter at all who how wonderful the site’s founder is, I’ve decided to start cross-posting certain entries over there in the hopes of boosting traffic over here. This is that first post:

Hi everyone, I’m Kemstone. I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now on my own website and I’ve recently stepped up my game, adding one to three posts every day. My site doesn’t get too many views yet, so if I want comments I have to cross-post to other forums. My first few diaries will be to test the Daily Kos waters, to see what kind of reaction I get and whether it’s worth it to keep posting here. If you like what you read, I’d humbly ask you to check out my blog where you’ll find much, much more.

I wanted to introduce myself by making a specific point about a very general issue—the issue that seems to dominate the threads here lately, especially now in the wake of Robert Gibbs’ insults hurled at the “professional left”. The issue of course is whether progressives are being too hard on Obama.

We’ve all had this argument. Hell, most of you have probably had it every single day for over a year. There are those who lambaste the president for not going far enough to deliver on the kind of Change he promised, and those who point to his various accomplishments and say we should just be satisfied with what we got. I am firmly in the “Obama is not going far enough” camp, and I suspect most Kos readers are as well. My view is that even we are criticizing the president too harshly, it’s actually a good thing.

Those who rush to defend the president are what I call “Obamapologists”. You’re familiar with their arguments: The president is doing the best he can. He needs 60 votes in the senate to get anything passed so it’s not his fault if he has to make compromises. Yes, he gave up on the public option but he got health care reform passed. Yes, he didn’t break up the big banks or include the Volcker rule in financial reform but he got the bill passed. Yes, he conceded to more offshore drilling but he had to in order to get the climate bill moving forward (even though it then blew up in his face). It’s not his fault that he can’t be as progressive as those on the left would like—he has to be the president of all Americans—not just liberals—and most of the country is centrist or conservative.

We have our replies at the ready: If you look at the poll data on specific issues, you’ll see that the country actually is liberal, even though most people don’t self-identify as such. What we want from the president is leadership. The majority is behind him and if he doesn’t have the votes in the senate we’re standing ready to sign as many petitions and make as many phone calls as we need to pressure the hold-outs. To use the public option as an example, with as much as 73% of people in favor of the policy, the president could have easily leaned on conservadems to get behind it. He could have threatened to remove chairmanships or withhold electoral support, but he didn’t. And this is just one example from a very long list of battles he could have won but chose not to fight.

Meanwhile, we see him cave in to every right-wing talking point that gets hurled his way. From de-funding ACORN to throwing Shirley Sherrod under the bus, Obama bends over backwards to deflect any and all criticism that comes at him from the conservative media. He even gives Fox News a front-row seat in the White House briefing room! As for progressives, they’re either high on drugs or a bunch of “fucking retards.”

The political calculation is obvious. Obama, under the ever-so-wise guidance of Rahm Emanuel, believes that progressives are with him no matter what. He can shit all over us and we’ll still come out and vote because the republican party is so far to the wackaloon right that we can’t afford to let them win. So he moves to the right as much as possible in an attempt to pick up a few right-leaning moderates to add to the liberals he already has in-the-bag and get that 50%-plus-one victory he needs.

Whether this calculation is correct, only time will tell. Progressives really are stuck in this election, as we neither want to reward democrats for their endless capitulations nor the republicans for their endless obstructionism.

But the point I want to make is that even if you are an Obamapologist who believes the president really is doing the best he can, you’re not accomplishing anything by telling the rest of us—the real progressives—that we should shut up, stop criticizing Obama, and just celebrate whatever small amount of Change he manages to deliver. You need us. Without strong criticism from the left, the president will just happily move farther and farther to the right in pursuit of those right-leaning moderates he thinks make up the majority of the country.

Just imagine if we’d stood behind him when he abandoned the public option. “Yes, Mr. President, go ahead and do whatever you need to get the bill passed, even if it means scrapping everything and letting the republicans write the whole thing.”

Imagine if we weren’t pressuring him to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? He would have already appointed Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, or some other Wall Street tool to fill the post and make sure the Bureau doesn’t do a damn thing to protect consumers.

Strong criticism from the left is the only thing preventing this president from moving from the center-right to the far-right, and it’s the only thing that has the potential to bring him back to the center, or (if you want to be wildly optimistic) to the center-left.

That said, we need the Obamapologists as well. Someone has to defend the guy or his approval rating would drop to 0% and he wouldn’t be able to get anything done. He also needs to win in 2012, as whoever the republicans run against him is likely to be an insane moon-bat who would make George W. Bush look like Noam Chomsky. It’s important to have people reminding us of the many things Obama has accomplished, lest we forget just how awful it could potentially be.

I’m currently living in Germany, and I recently attended an anti-war protest in which the crowd was shouting “murderer” at the soldiers. I would never say that, but I appreciate the impact of someone saying it. Because Germany has such a radical left-wing fringe, the political spectrum is shifted that much father to the left and more moderate liberals are free to embrace certain socialist ideals without being accused of going off the deep-end. In America if you so much as suggest that the government should pay for anything you’re some kind of Stalinist or Maoist.

You need the far left. You may not agree with everything they say, but you should be glad that somebody is saying it. You may not believe that Obama warrants all the criticism he gets from the left, but you should be glad that the left is criticizing him.

I have to confess that I’m not a very good activist. Oh, I’ll sign any petition you send my way and I’ll always include a personalized message. I’ve even been known to donate money from time to time, as I donated this past week to Firedoglake’s campaign to end marijuana prohibition. I tossed a few bucks to the Obama campaign back in 2008 as well (I don’t regret it—as disappointed as I am things would have been a lot worse under the other guy). But the best way to get a message to your elected leaders is obviously to call their office and actually speak to someone, and that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t been doing.

I really have no good excuse. I just hate talking on the phone. I even hate talking to friends on the phone, let alone people I’ve never met, let alone people with political power. There’s something about calling a U.S. Senator’s office or the White House itself that I can’t help but find intimidating.

As a writer I have complete confidence. Whenever I add a personal comment to a petition signature I take the time to craft a clear and concise remark that I know will not only drive my message home but make me come across as a constituent who knows what he’s talking about. But talking is different. The words just come out of your mouth and then they’re out there and can’t be deleted or rearranged. Unless you know exactly what you’re going to say, you risk sounding like a fool.

Plus, I always figure that plenty of other people must be calling these offices anyway so what difference would my phone call make? When the staffer draws up the list of what issues people called about and how many called on each issue, my call would make the number 247 instead of 246, or 3,174 instead of 3,173. No big deal, right?

But of course I know that’s the wrong way to think. Every little digit counts. And what you really want is the staffer to tell the senator or president, “We’ve been getting calls all day about suchandsuch. You’d better take this seriously.”

So yesterday when I got an e-mail from CREDO Mobile—a company that proves not all corporations are evil—warning me about an upcoming deal between Google and Verizon that would mean the beginning of the end of net neutrality, I not only signed the petition but I followed it up with a call to the White House comment line.

Net neutrality is probably the most under-appreciated issue of our time in terms of its importance. I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth repeating that if we open the door to allowing corporations to provide faster service for certain websites and slower service for others, it paves the way to complete corporate control of the internet. Seeing as how the consolidation of power by multi-national corporations is the single biggest threat to humanity that we currently face on this planet, it is absolutely essential the internet remain out of their hands.

See how eloquently I can express that point in written words? Of course the e-mail from CREDO provided me with a script telling me exactly what to say when I reached the comment line, but I scoffed at that and figured I could make my point well enough in my own words.

At first I figured I was just going to get some kind of automated “leave your comment after the tone” thing, which I would have been much more comfortable doing. But the automated message I got told me to hold the line for an operator. No way—an actual human being is going to take my call?

I couldn’t help but feel a powerful nervousness rising within me as the phone rang. I don’t know where exactly calls to the White House comment line go—if it’s actually located in or anywhere near the actual White House—but naturally you imagine that your call is going directly to the secretary of the president himself, sitting right outside the Oval Office. I make a few clicks on Skype here in Germany and halfway around the world someone who works for the President of the United States hears their phone ringing.

I was ready to wait on hold for as long as it took. That would give me ample time to figure out exactly what I wanted to say. Imagine my shock when someone came on the line after only ten seconds. Seriously? Ten seconds? The White House must get a million calls a day—how can they have someone picking up the line within ten seconds? I can’t even call the Dell Computers service hotline without waiting on hold for a half an hour.

“Thank you for calling the White House comment line, would you like to make a brief comment for our records?” said the voice on the other line. It sounded like a nice, middle-aged black lady. I was picturing Shirley Sherrod.

Of course as soon as I’m actually speaking to someone I draw a complete blank. “Yeah…um…” I begin, now regretting that I’d tossed the script, “I’m reading about the deal between Google and Verizon on net neutrality, and um…”

Total blank. The silent pause seems to stretch on for an eternity. “Okay…” the woman says in a friendly tone. I realize I’ve already made my point—the recorded number of people calling the White House on the net neutrality issue will now be one higher than it otherwise would have.

“Yeah,” I continue, “I just wanted to comment that I really hope the president keeps his promise on net neutrality, and not to let the internet go…” I was going to say “to the corporations” but the woman said “Okay” again and I figured there was no need to go into any explanation of why I care about the issue. The president isn’t going to ask why people called to support net neutrality—I think he gets it—but he is going to ask how many people called, and whatever the final digit in that number may be it will be a direct result of my phone call.

“Okay, thanks for your call,” the lady said, and I said “thanks” and hung up. I know I must have sounded like an idiot, but the lady was friendly enough for it not to bother me. She actually gave me the impression that she was glad I was calling about net neutrality—that perhaps she cared about the issue too and was happy to have people calling in about it so she could tell her bosses that she was getting lots of call about it. I imagine that most of her calls are probably from Tea Party wingnuts screaming at her to tell her boss that he’s a filthy commie bastard who’d better stop destroying America or else. A call from a nervous liberal must be the most pleasant kind of call she gets all day.

Anyway, the whole experience was a bit of a rush, and it took several minutes after hanging up the phone for my pulse to return to normal. Damn, that actually felt really good, I realized. “Hell yeah!” I said to myself. “Civics! How awesome am I? Doing my part as a U.S. citizen and all that.”

Of course now that my “call your representatives”-cherry has been popped I plan on doing a lot more of it. Today I intend to call both of my senators and tell them they’d better throw their full support behind Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s currently the most important fight going on when it comes to financial reform, and I wouldn’t feel right unless I did my part. I’ll probably call the White House again to get my feelings about that on their records as well.

So to all my fellow citizens I’d urge you to get in the habit of calling your representatives as well. The times we live in are just too important not too, and circulating online petitions just isn’t enough. Apparently it’ll only take a few minutes and the person you speak to will probably be as cordial as can be—after all, these politicians wouldn’t want their liaisons to the public to be rude assholes, would they?

The number for the White House hotline is 202-456-1111. Why not call them now?

I’m on fire today, as you’ll know if you read the post below. I’m temporarily without internet access so until I take this computer to somewhere with a WiFi signal I can’t waste any time doing research and finding relevant links and videos—which is the most time-consuming part of blogging. So today I’m going old-school and just ranting straight from my head. As such I’m only covering the really important stuff—Sarah Palin will have to wait.

You wouldn’t know it unless you’ve been paying really close attention, but we’re approaching what will be one of the most defining moments of the Obama presidency. In fact, it may be the most important cross-roads that Barack Obama has ever come to. He’s faced with a choice—a choice that only he can make and for which the responsibility will rest on his shoulders alone. It would seem like a small decision, like just one of a thousand little decisions the president makes every day, but taken in the broader context it’s a decision that will define how he is perceived by the public for the remainder of his presidency. The decision is over who to appoint as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s no secret that the financial reform legislation that came out of the senate is weak and watered-down. It won’t change the way Wall Street does business and it won’t prevent future bailouts. The only thing it does that has the potential to do real, substantial good on behalf of the American people is the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which would serve as a much-needed watchdog to protect consumers from corporate greed and abuses of power.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will only be as strong as the people who control it. It it’s run by establishment insiders and friends of Wall Street bankers, it’s probably not going to do too much to protect consumers. It’ll just exist for the sake of public perception, to make it look like Obama accomplished reform.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether Obama wanted real reform and was just forced to accept what he could get from a congress drowning in Wall Street money, or whether he’s as complicit as they are and has no interest in changing the status quo either. When Obama chooses who to appoint as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we’ll know the answer.

Elizabeth Warren is the person who came up with the idea in the first place. From her current position as chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, she has been an incredibly forceful advocate on behalf of the middle-class and her zeal for standing up to big corporations on behalf of the little guy is well-known and celebrated by progressives everywhere. If she were put in control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there is no doubt that she would give the corporations a run for their money. She would take the strongest possible approach to dealing with Wall Street and while she might still not have the power to prevent another financial crisis, she’d be able to warn everyone when she sees it coming, and people would have to listen to her because she would be in a position of power. We need a progressive in a position of power. We need someone who is not beholden to Wall Street with the capability to exert pressure on Wall Street.

If Obama appoints Elizabeth Warren, then nearly all of my cynicism about the financial reform legislation will evaporate. I’ll bow my head and concede that at least in this instance, Obama delivered on some of the Change he promised.

Obviously, the rich and powerful are completely opposed to Elizabeth Warren. She’s their worst nightmare. They’d rather have anyone but Elizabeth Warren at the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Preferably, they want someone who isn’t really interested in protecting consumers. Someone like Tim Geithner whom they already know and whom they’re buddies with. Someone whose top priority will be protecting Wall Street first, and protecting consumers only insofar as it doesn’t interfere with the way Wall Street does business.

If Obama appoints someone other than Elizabeth Warren (assuming it’s not another progressive like Paul Krugman or Robert Reich), then you can rip the “Change We Can Believe In” sticker off your bumper and bury it six feet under ground, because the promise of the Obama presidency will be dead. It will be completely over. He will have raised the white flag and surrendered to the very establishment he said he was going to change.

Why is this decision so important as compared to all the others? Why will this be more of an indicator of Obama’s true character than, say, the fight over the public option? Because this time, there’s no one else to blame. This time the decision is squarely on his shoulders and there are no Joe Liebermans, Blanche Lincolns or Ben Nelsons to hide behind.

You can already see indications that the White House is leaning away from appointing Warren. They don’t want to piss off progressives too much so they keep insisting how much they like her and how great she is, but…

The ‘but’ is key. They’ll say “But there are other good options” when in reality the only other names being thrown around are friends of Tim Geithner—people with the Wall Street stamp of approval. They’ll say “But she’s unconfirmable because republicans will filibuster her” but in reality Obama could appoint her with the stroke of a pen. I’m pretty sure the way the legislation is written she doesn’t need senate confirmation, but even if she does there’s the option of a recess appointment.

The point is, it can be done and the only thing that would stop it is Obama deciding not to. He knows that progressives really want him to appoint Warren, but so far his whole governing strategy has been to ignore progressives and do everything he can to try and appear like a centrist moderate (see my rant below). So far, he seems to have done everything the establishment has wanted him to do.

Will the pattern continue? Will he decide not to appoint Warren because he’d take too much criticism from Fox News? There’s no doubt they’ll be throwing the entire Socialist/Maoist smear machine directly at her, but they’ll do that to anyone he appoints even it’s Lloyd Blankfein (the CEO of Goldman Sachs) himself!

Will he decide not to appoint Warren because Wall Street won’t stand for it? They’re almost certainly threatening to pull their funding from Democratic candidates this election if he goes with Warren, so he might think he has no choice but to cave in again.

Or will he just this once actually make the right decision and appoint Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Will he just this once accomplish some real Change? Will he listen to the people that got him elected just this once instead of spitting in their faces?

I doubt it. But I really hope more attention gets paid to this because it’s of monumental significance. This is a moment where Obama can really change course and begin to regain some of that progressive support he’s been losing since taking office by standing up to Wall Street and doing something that will actually help average Americans.

What’ll it be, Barack? Was the promise of Change just a big fat fucking lie that you had no intention of keeping? Or are you really trying to do the best you can? Your decision will reveal the answer, and we anxiously await it.

Financial reform legislation is hurtling towards final passage, severely watered down and riddled with loopholes. Most economists agree that it’s not strong enough to prevent another crisis and does nothing to end Too Big Too Fail which makes taxpayer bailouts a necessity. The only silver lining in this cloud is the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a government watchdog to keep an eye on Big Industry for the sake of average Americans. Among this agency’s many responsibilities would be to make sure credit card companies are straight with their customers, that they don’t hike up interest rates too quickly or charge excessive lateness penalties—things every credit-card user would appreciate.

Whether or not this agency will have any teeth depends to a large degree on who is in control of it. Most of the regulatory power in this bill goes to the treasury secretary, currently Wall Street’s favorite tool: Tim Geithner.

The effort to dramatically expand financial regulation bears the stamp of no one more than Geithner. The bill not only hews closely to the initial draft he released last summer but also anoints him — as long as he remains Treasury secretary — as the chief of a new council of senior regulators. The legislation also puts him at the head of the new consumer bureau until a director is confirmed by the Senate, allowing Geithner to mold the watchdog in coming months. And it will be up to him to settle a raft of issues left unresolved by the bill — for instance, which financial derivatives will be subject to the tough new trading rules and which risky activities big banks will be required to spin off.

Every step of the way, Geithner has fought against the strongest provisions in the bill. He opposed breaking up the banks, he opposed the Lincoln amendment to regulate derivatives, and he even opposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he gets to control and mold in the interim before Obama appoints someone else to be in charge.

Progressives want Elizabeth Warren, the current chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel where she’s been a strong and consistent advocate for transparency and accountability. Not only that, she has a knack for boiling complex financial issues to the core and explaining them with crystal clarity:

If she were put in charge of the Consumer Protection Bureau, there’s good reason to believe she’d give Wall Street a run for their money. So naturally, Tim Geithner is opposing her nomination. Geithner’s philosophy is to do as little regulation as possible and let Wall Street handle itself. If it were up to him, there would probably be no financial reform whatsoever.

Now, Obama is once again put to the test. Simon Johnson, author of 13 Bankers, says this can only go two ways: Will he actually listen to progressives for once and appoint Warren to head the new agency (outcome #1), or will he side with his Treasury secretary, as he has done nearly every step of the way so far, and appoint someone else (outcome #2)?

Despite the growing public reaction, outcome #2 is the most likely and the White House needs to understand this, plain and clear – there will be complete and utter revulsion at its handling of financial regulatory reform both on this specific issue and much more broadly. The administration’s position in this area is already weak, its achievements remain minimal, its speaking points are lame, and the patience of even well-inclined people is wearing thin.

Indeed, Obama has been throwing progressives under the bus repeatedly since the beginning of his administration, and progressives have been remarkably patient thus far. But we’re not buying the line that this is the most sweeping reform since the Great Depression, and we don’t believe for a second his blatant lie that this reform means there will never be another bailout. If he sides with Geithner over his base yet again and appoints some weak-kneed tool of the industry to head the Financial Protection Bureau, that will be the last straw for many.

Unfortunately, it’s entirely possible that Obama will stick with his strategy of pleasing Wall Street at the expense of progressive goals because he knows progressives have nowhere else to turn in November. He keeps throwing us under the bus because he knows we could never vote republican, so he might as well keep those Goldman Sachs campaign contributions flowing. If you want to help send him the message that we’re not going to let him kick us around anymore and he’d better appoint Warren, you can sign the petition here.