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Blog Action Day 2008

Carrie Burrows — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:03:37 +0000

Today is Blog Action Day 2008 for Poverty. I was late to register so I don't have any sponsors. The site has a list of 88 ways to combat poverty.

Jay White has a good piece about the topic over on Dumb Little Man.

Notes on Notes on the Financial Crisis

resistrantrelax — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:41:56 +0000

Yes, it is the day after the election. No, I am not going to comment on it. Rather, reflections on an article I read recently that I didn't particularly agree with but which has had me thinking.

An interesting take on the financial crisis follows below my comments. This comes from a couple of folks who are active with the Midnight Notes Collective - a group of anarchist/ Marxist/ post-structuralist types who publish an occassional magazine and the odd book out of the Boston area. I'm a big fan of Midnight Notes generally, and found this an intriguing read, though I must confess it's got some major gaps in it, and I'm feeling pretty disappointed.

Basically, here's the argument. The financial crisis should not be seen as some kind of accident - it is better understood as a strategic move, an attempt by capital to re-assert its control over US workers. Basically, we see here a US-based equivalent of the petro-dollar deal that led into to the Third World Debt Crisis and justified the imposition of structural adjustment and related austerity programs. Extend too much credit, watch the system collapse, as it can be expected to do, transfer public money to the private sector to bail-out the system and use the crisis and the now-public debt as an excuse to cut government expenditures.

OK, a fun little analysis, but one that seems to me lacking any foundation. A few problems. One, if this were a coordinated strategy, it would have to be solving a problem, and the problem would have to be a lack of market discipline among workers - i.e. too many workers doing too little to be productive, and too many workers finding too many ways to resist capital. This clearly has not been a political reality in the US in recent years, and the authors know it. So they surmise that, among other things, it is workers playing the investment game that is the problem. Workers try to make money by speculation rather than by working more, and capital wants them working more. But hang on...Two things here. One, workers are not being successful on the market, as is plain to everyone. By and large working people lose money playing this game, so there is no successful strategy that needs to be countered here. Secondly, the investment game is one of the fundamental ways capital extends the reach of the market, so even if the worker-investment thing were true this would hardly be a 'problem' for capitalism, but rather would be an indication of increasing trust in the market.

Next major problem I have with this analysis is that it smacks way-too much of conspiracy theory for my tastes. Now, don't get me wrong - I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, and I am certainly clear that there are some really vicious bastards out there driving the system. However, the beauty of capital - and the reason it has been so fucking hard to dis-lodge - is that it doesn't require this kind of manipulation. It is driven by real people, by a logic which unfolds almost-invisibly, by the celebration of greed, by day to day relationships of work. Crises do not need to be manufactured to be useful to the system. Take the example the authors use - the debt crisis. The debt crisis certainly did lead to all the things they note, and was pivotal in preparing the ground for the neoliberal onslaught. However, I am not convinced that the credit issues leading to that crisis and the flooding of the market with petro-dollars were part some nefarious plan - rather, those things flowed from capital's logic, the crisis followed, and a bunch of economists and politcal strategists recognized the class dynamics at work and put together a new strategy for capital. So, yes, petro-dollars make way for debt crisis makes way for neoliberalism. Yes, evil evil men pounce on the opportunity to crush workers' resistance and siphon public money into the market. But planned out from the earliest moments? No. Don't buy it. The strategy was a response to the crisis, not its genesis. as far as I can tell.

And this time? Definitely class dynamics here we need to unpack. But not, I don't think, the ones identified below. Workers playing the market? Clearly not. The global expansion of "illegal" migration, poaching, and squatting on public lands by which millions of workers simply remove themselves from the economy altogether? OPK, that part is interesting and I think worth exploring in more depth. But entirely absent in this analysis, and pretty central I'd suggest, are questions about global resistance to US empire, and how these have stretched the system beyond sustainable levels. The trillions being spent to quell revolt in Iraq and Afghanistan; the growing strength of a new left alternative across Latin America; the complete collapse of so many parts of Africa after a century and a half of pillage and plunder. These are the places we see capital forced to use its resources to quell dissent; these are struggles that have forced resources to be moved from the market to counter-insurgency. These are the battles that have stretched the empire's reach too thin to be sustainable. These are the things I'd suggest we look to if we want to put together a working class read of the crisis, and if we want to really understand where capital is weakest and where resistance is best targetted.

Anyway, here I am now far beyond the brief introduction I intended to write. Point is, this is an argument full of some pretty damn substantial holes.

Nonetheless, I'm posting it because I think it does help to alert us to the possibilities of what may follow. Capital will seek a new strategy to deal with this. And that strategy will involve bail-outs and the massive transfer of funds from the public sector to the private. Not overnight, but over time, we can expect this to take place, unless we can generate a substantial movement in the opposite direction, for more public good, more commons.

So, I recommend reading this through. I question a good deal of the premise, and I think there are some real leaps here that cannot be supported. But I'm glad that the Midnight Notes folks are talking about strategy here, and are recognizing that these political-economic moments have class meanings and involve class struggles, and are at least opening up the debate. Cause if we are to avoid this becoming a transition to yet a new austerity plan, we need to start by considering where capital might try to go, and putting together ideas and actions to not only resist but to leverage this crisis to move in an entirely different direction.

Enough ranting. The piece follows.

NOTES ON THE WALL STREET “MELTDOWN”

by Silvia Frederici and George Caffentzis

...it is important, first, that we realize that the so-called Wall Street “meltdown” is certainly the end, but also the completion of the neoliberal program. Let us be clear about it. To think otherwise is to ignore the lesson taught to us by the event that opened the present capitalist era: the 1973 coup again the Chilean working class experiment with socialism, that led to the victory of strong state backed market economy. Karl Polanyi’s theory that the single most important cause of the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe was the inability to control the financial market after the 1929 crash also resonates here. In other words, we should not read the restructuring taking place as a turn to socialism/Keynesianism, to the extent at least that Keynesianism was an intervention by the state into the economy aimed at increasing the state’s investment in social reproduction, starting with the reproduction of the working class, in exchange for an increase in the social productivity of labor. Despite the adoption of regulatory mechanisms, the operation presently conducted by the US government bears little resemblance to the Keynesian program launched with the New Deal.

Behind the $700 billion bail-out and the many others that will follow--some already in the pipeline-- is a massive transfer of funds from the US working class to capital, inevitably leading to an assault on the last remaining entitlements (like Medicare, Social Security) and a general program of austerity the like of which we have not seen yet in a long time. The fact that there is no organized response to this assault makes us fear the worst. For things would never have reached this point if over the last decade the US workers had responded to the repeated thefts of their money and benefits, through the Enron scandal and the many other “crises” that have followed it. That despite the “instability” of the market, despite its usage as a means to expropriate thousands of small/working class investors, US workers continued to trust their livelihoods and future to it is certainly a key factor in what we are presently witnessing and Washington/Wall Street confidence in launching the new austerity program. It is our argument that in the same way as September 11 served the US government to shed the last remains of “democracy” and move to a model of government where militarization is always around the corner (apparently Representatives were threatened with the proclamation of martial law if they did not pass the bailout bill), so the Wall Street crash will serve to shed the last remaining elements of working class “socialism” in the US political economy, starting with Social Security, Medicare, a thorn in capital’s flesh, but so far demonstrating a great resilience, the last shore for working class struggle in the nation.2. Lessons from the Debt Crisis.
There is a important parallel here, not sufficiently noted, between the present crash and bail-out and the “debt crisis” of the 1980s, which engulfed most Third World nations (except for China) and was the start of the globalization process. Both have been engineered in the same fashion.

The “debt crisis” was the outcome a financial campaign conducted by Washington and Wall Street, to practically force Third World nations to take cheap development loans --liberally dished out at the lowest interest rates-- at a time when capital was refusing to invest in Europe and North America in the face of the most successful working class attack to its profit-rate since the 1920s, and a new generation of Africans, Asians etc. were organizing to d emand a global redistribution of wealth and a program of reparations, that is, in the language of the Bucharest Conference of 1974 : A NEW WORLD ORDER.

Through the lending mechanism, the massive flow of petrodollars that had been amassed in the aftermath of the 1974 embargo (the first attack on US wages, organized through a stiff inflationary wave) was redirected to the coffers of Third World nations, which, attracted by the bait of cheap loans, were soon hooked to the global economy, all dreams of an independent path to development foregone.

In other words, loans at the lowest interest rates were key to the creation of a global debt and the process of primitive accumulation (through structural adjustment) that was imposed on most of the workers of the world.

As we know, within less than a decade, the rise of the interest rates in the US, turned manageable debts into a long-term process of economic and political subordination. Debt became the hook for a massive restructuring of Africa’s, Asia’s Latin America’s political economies, re-establishing a colonial dependency that for three decades has served to promote a massive transfer of funds from the Third to the First World and defeat the organizational efforts of TW nation for an independent road to development.

Under the guise of the “debt crisis,” portrayed as a case of “mismanagement” by backward countries, requiring First World-style fin ancial responsibility, countries across the world were forced to open their books to Washington--via the IMF and World Bank--accept any terms of repayment imposed on them. They were forced to freeze wages, terminate all social spending, open their markets to foreign investors and products, devaluate their currencies and so forth. The consequences of these policies are well known. While Washington and NY built forests of skyscrapers, sucking on the blood of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Caribbean people, such levels of impoverishment and expropriation were imposed on the people of the world that millions took the road out of their countries, unable to survive in them, while those remaining witnessed epidemics, elimination of schools, famines, wars, the loss of ancestral lands, waters and forests, brutal wars of privatization, all directly related to the debt.This is history now, though the politics of SAP have set back for decades the project initiated by the anti-colonial struggle, reformulated and reasserted, as I mentioned, at the Bucharest Conference of 1974, where TW nations emboldened by the defeat of the US in Vietnam, demanded a NEW WORLD ORDER, i.e. the redistribution, return of the wealth that Europe and the US have robbed from the colonial world.

With the debt crisis, international capital obtained three major objectives.

i) It disciplined the working class in Europe and the US, by dismantling its manufacturing structure and refusing for years to enga ge in any serious investment in these regions [remember “zero growth”?]

ii) It destroyed the attempt of the former colonial world to escape a dependent/subordinate position, as demanded by the new generation of Africans, Asians, etc., who, infused of the spirit of Fanon, were keen on import substitution schemes, were pressing for REPARATIONS, and pushing for some form of socialism (in Angola and Mozambique).(iii). In addition to defeating revolution in First and Third World, the “debt crisis” built the infrastructure for the new global economy. It forged the mechanisms by which industries and offices could be relocated, companies could run around the globe, the work process could be computerized and streamlined and the working class thereby could be flexibilized and re-divided.

Against this background, we must note some basic similarities between the engineering of the debt crisis and the engineering of the Wall Street crash and must assume these similarities will extend to the social consequences of the crash. The housing bubble was the result of loans made at very low though adjustable credit rates, redirecting the influx of capital coming from abroad (China and other countries) toward the US market.

Is it possible that investment banks, credit rating agencies, the head of the Federal Reserve all FAILED to realize what would be the inevitable result of an “easy credit,” lending policy that reversed decades of reg ulatory principles and rules? Unless we want to revel in the nonsensical tale of a blinding surge in human greed, the answer must be a negative one. Thus, we must stop using the concept of “failure” to describe the absence of regulations and the reasons for the crash. We must rule out that the architects of the housing/mortgage crisis did not know it would end in a financial disaster and cascade of foreclosures for the home owners, in the same way as banks are partly responsible for the debt of the US working class ($45.000 on average per capita).

Continuing with the parallel, we have to conclude that with this 700 billion dollar “bail-out,” coming straight out of our pockets and hides, the “structural adjustment” that since the 1980s has been imposed on countries across the world, is going to be extended to the US territory and the US working class. This time (after many beginnings and many deferrals) we too are being “adjusted.” I will discuss later what adjustment will mean at this time for us. For the moment we only want to stress that we are witnessing not only a financial meltdown, but also a great robbery, a macro-process of expropriation, an immense transfer of labor, this time siphoning funds to the US banking system not only from the Third World, as in the Debt Crisis of the 1980s, but from our households, through the classic maneuver of increasing the national debt. What we are witnessing is a capitalist coup, an exa mple of capital’s historic readiness to destroy itself in order to regain the initiative and defeat resistance to its discipline.3. Where does this resistance come from? How is the collapse of the financial systems a response to it?

We cannot understand the Wall Street crisis unless we read it in class term as a means to negotiate a different class deal and response to class struggle and resistance. However, in dealing with these questions, I also want to distinguish this approach and the growing tendency to view every development in capitalist planning as a realization of working class struggle and demands, the Negrian perspective on capital’s response to class movements.

This perspective is dangerous, because besides turning even defeat into a victory, (such as: we wanted globalization, we wanted flexibilization, etc), it ignores the fact that a capitalist response must use working class demands against themselves, use them to drive part of the working class out of the struggle, turn it against or away from the other half, use them in such a way as to spark off forms of development that decompose the class.Let us look now at the crisis as a disciplinary tools and strategy. There are at least three areas of resistance to the neoliberal accumulation project that the Wall Street collapse has to respond to. I will list them without an attempt to establish an order.

First, the crash and the bail-out must defeat the attempt of the US working class to circumvent class discipline by using financial markets, rather than struggle, sweat and labor, to increase their wages. While strikes and struggles have died out over the last two decades, workers have tried to increase their income in three ways: investing in the stock market, buying on credit, now even for everyday expenses, getting equity money through housing, and defaulting student loans. These tactics have clearly failed and now millions of workers are now to pay twice for them, in terms of their individual losses and in terms of the losses that will be inflicted on the US proletariat as a class through the bailouts. If successful, these bail-outs will in fact be conducive to a new regime of low wages and zero entitlements the like of which we have not seen since the last part of the 19th century.

The new regime will not be the end of market fundamentalism. It will be a revitalization of market investment through the injection of our social security money, and it will be a revitalization of some parts of American industry now presumably taking advantage of the fact that workers are desperate enough to accept any conditions just to have a job and a roof over their heads. A large part of capital has for a long time been lusting to bring back America to the situation before the New Deal, when employers had the upper hand. The “crisis” is giving them a chance to return to that era.

That this time Social Security is at stake is due to various factors. First, Social Security is the last pot of money available to re-launch the US market, in a context in which workers have no savings and monetary flows from the outside are drying out. It is also the last ‘scandal” on the list of US capitalists who have relentlessly for years now told us it must go. Most important of all, Social Security affects primarily the old, the retired, and it is therefore an easier target than entitlements affecting the whole working class.

So far workers in the US have resisted the privatization of Social Security despite many governmental attempts. But cuts in pensions have already gone a long way in the private sector, where employers have given stocks of their companies to workers, or stopped putting any money in their pension funds. The present crisis will extend that to government backed pensions. And the road to it has been cleared by years of false statements to the effect that Social Security is unsustainable. Though it is a colossal lie, younger generations have, however, accepted it. By cutting Social Security, capital undoubtedly hopes to pit the young against the old, who (as in Africa today) are being pictured as a crew of selfish gerontocrats sucking up the funds the young need to build their future.

The second target of the attack is the global resistance to capital’s appropriation of natural resources beginning with oil and gas extraction. The defeat in Iraq is the peak of it. To this day, despite an immense expenditure in war funding, the US has not been able to put its hands on Iraqi oil. Resistance to international capital control over global energy resources has also come from Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Many more countries are also refusing the neoliberal packet, especially in Latin America. These refusals, not peak oil, are the true limits to capital’s energy plans.

There have also been bottlenecks in the exploitation of forests, waters, minerals, and lands which structural adjustment was to remove. A new “rurban” peasant movement has been growing that is fighting independently of unions, parties, ”civil society” and NGOs, using direct action tactics, to re-appropriate the lands and resources of which it has been robbed ---poaching, harvesting timber or produce in commercial plantations, mining diamonds and gold “illegally,” or farming in the very lands from which they have been “legally” excluded. When they move to the cities they squat on urban land and take over land not used, private or public to farm it for their needs. It is a vast re-appropriation movement that is redefining the fundamentals of social reproduction globally. It has put globalizers and adjusters out of government, it has forced the nationalization of local resources, and has redistributed wealth and political power, putting the World Bank and IMF almost=2 0out of business in Latin America. It has defeated the attempt to completely liberalize the economies of the TW through the rule of the World Trade organization. Though not sitting at the table, the specter of the rural/urban peasants of the world has guided the refusal of TW representative to comply.Third, global migration has developed in ways that make it difficult for governments to use it as a regulatory mechanism for the labor market. Far from being an easy device for driving wages down, migration is now an autonomous uncontrollable phenomenon, with a logic of its own that is not reducible to the needs of the labor market. It is important however to stress (against the idealization of the migrant and of Exit, Exodus, Flight as a the highest form of struggle) that the struggle of the migrants is not superior to the struggle of those who remain. In fact, migration can lead to the dissolution of local organizations, it can create new divisions among the locals, separating those benefiting from remittances and those deprived of them, it can boost the cost of living in the area of origin by the influx of new money and hook local economies more strongly to the international monetary system, fostering the expansion of monetary relations. These, of course, are not inevitable results. Actually, migrants have been able to use the wage against the wage, to refuse impoverishment, to create transnational networks, to move from country to country seeking a better deal and nullifying national boundaries and borders.

The attacks on immigrants of recent months, which have seen the most massive factory raids and deportations ever in the US, are response to this autonomy. They are part of the attempt to create a population of rightless workers, to function as a safety valve for the labor market. Only if they have no rights can immigrants function as regulatory mechanism for the labor market (in the same way as mass incarceration and expansion of unpaid labor do). The redefinition of immigrant workers as outlaws and the criminalization of working class--historically a key strategy to devalue labor power--will continue to be a tool of the world order we will see emerging from the crisis. But the crash will intensify the divisions between “natives” and migrants, attack the organizational strength of migrant organizations, unless there is strong opposition to this strategy.The Politics of the Financial Crisis and Our Response.

Crises are always a threat and an opportunity as they break down business as usual, and reveal something of the inner workings and nastiness of capitalism. This one is not an exception and we can be sure that what will come out of it will be greatly a result of what people do in response to it. If the Great Depression is an indication, it took more than ten years for capital to organize a different social order. Much can happen in such a period.

The problem for us today is that workers are only organized around electoral politics at best. And many still place more hope in a racist and imperialist stance than in working class solidarity. We certainly don’t have a communist or an anarchist movement organizing rallies of the unemployed, fight against evictions, or organize “penny auctions” of farms as they did during the Great Depression. Nor do we have an anti-capitalist alternative as the Soviet Union was in the eyes of many. We also do not have the kind of solidarity that in the Great Depression led to invention of new commons, like the hobo movement and the creation of “jungle cities.”

Where to start then? This is what we need to work on in the coming months and years. There is no clear path to this kind of mobilization. But we need to start somewhere. On two things we can get people to agree with us: First, we better find alternatives, because, as things stand presently, we are so incestually connected with capitalism that its demise threats our own existence. Second, unless we organize to resist government planning, what lies ahead for us, after a cut of more than a trillion dollars of our “entitlements,” looks much more like some variant of fascism than socialism.

With warm greetings,
Silvia and George

Someone Mentioned This Before

lobotero — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:57:41 +0000

Remember back in the day, the early days of the primary season, when John Edwards constantly talked about the existence of 2 Americas. One was the world of the wealthy and the other was the reality of the working class. I believe everyone scoffed at him for suggesting this premise. But right now, he looks like a profit, with the situation that has developed in the last month or so.

Look at the bailout! Who does it help the most? Now look at those who oppose it the most. In case you have missed it, it is two different sectors of the American people. I believe that we could call it two different classes. If we do call them two different classes, would that not be the same as saying two different Americas?

Many seem afraid to address this turn. Why? To admit it would be admitting that there are inequalities that exist in this country. Even the Dems who profess to be the voice of the middle class seem to be afraid to admit to the inequalities that exist. They look for cute little slogans to say something without actually saying it.

Appears that Edwards had it right all along. The people are starting to see that the two Americas are a fact and they are the pawns being used to sure up the economy and bailout the wealthy.

Biden: McCain’s “Fightin’ Mad”

blaqsage — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:42:01 +0000

- by Aaron Bruns

Kicking off a two-day bus tour through working class Eastern Ohio, Biden told a crowd heavy with union members that yesterday’s speeches by the two candidates present the clearest contrast yet on where they want to take the country. Read more...

A Minority Goverment and just a bit of arrogrance from Prime Minister Harper before the polls open

thegtapatriot — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:02:05 +0000

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="233" caption="Prime Minister Harper"][/caption]

Barring an almost miraculous shift of public opinion the Conservatives appear set to win enough seats in the Commons to form another minority government. It will probably be a minority government with less seats, because of the economic turbulence in the air. However, Harper has already said that if that happens, he will take it as a mandate from voters to do as he sees fit. This does not sound good to Canadian voters and he should have used different language. It makes him look uncaring and indifferent to the voters. Ironically, that attitude towards Canadians, although leadership like, makes him look bad in the public eye. So this leaves the opposition parties with two choices. They can either bring down the government or cowardly do nothing.

For those who do not understand let me explain what will probably happen.

Harper will win a minority government with less seats.
The combined seats of the Liberals and NDP will probably be more than the Conservatives.
Since Harper wins the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, will ask the Prime Minister if he can form a viable government.
Seeing that Harper believes he can, due to arrogance or simple survival, will say "yes"
Based on percentage the Conservatives will not (most likely) have most of the popular vote - however changing the system is of voting is probably a debate for another day
Now this is where it gets interesting.
There will be a confidence motion in the House (Parliament)
They will be defeated, which will require the Prime Minister to hand in his resignation
The Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, will then ask Dion (probably), if he can form the next government.
He will, of course, say "yes".
That yes is pending that he is in a coalition government.

So, in reality, there is not much we can do other than get a coalition government. Can Jack Layton work with Dion and the Liberals? What would happen if Jack Layton was in opposition instead? It is probably unavoidable. There is the possibility that Stéphane Dion and the Liberals win a minority government. Based on the polls this is unlikely, however who really knows. Based on polling about 1/2 - 1/3 of Canadian voting are making up their minds now over Thanksgiving dinner.

There is really no way to avoid this situation. If Canadians really wanted change or to avoid another election in 18 months, they would have to vote for Jack Layton and the NDP in large numbers or give the Liberals a larger minority. There is the chance that a rout of the Conservatives in Quebec and Ontario would decimate the party enough to avoid this entire situation. However, do not count out the Conservatives. People are taking time to carefully assess their personal situation. Everyone remembers the shift from the NDP in Ontario to the "hard right" of the Mike Harris government. It will definately be an interesting election on October 14th, 2008. Make sure you vote!

By: Andy MJ
a.k.a The G.T.A Patriot

The hockey mom gets booed by hockey fans.

schreiwire — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:29:59 +0000

wait a minute Sarah... it doesnt get much more working/middle class than philly hockey fans. maybe you don't 'represent' them after all. or maybe introducing yourself as the 'best known hockey mom in the United States' comes across as exactly the shameless pandering that it is. or maybe philly fans will take any excuse to boo...

What I've been missing!

S.O.S — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:57:13 +0000

It is such a pleasure to be in Ohio right now. The drive north was almost unbearable at times, particularly because I don't have cruise control and my leg started cramping after several hours. However, the view in Virginia was exquisite---a landscape of orange red green yellow leaves.
The cats didn't make a peep on the drive. I was impressed with their calmness and the fact that they didn't have any accidents in their carrier. There's been a lot of hissing and yowling here at mom's house as her two cats try to defend their territory and my cats try to claim unclaimed territory.

Paul tries to explore downstairs

Paul encounters Marcy and much growling ensues

(no cats were injured during this photo shoot)

I've decided to stay here for the week while DS goes on to Illinois to find a house. This keeps me from having to drive back to pick up the cats later, and it gives me some much needed quiet time to work on the thesis.

The big news of the week is that Sen. Biden is visiting the town on Wednesday! Mom's house is about a mile away from the local branch of OSU, and he's going to give a speech there! He was scheduled to visit the eastern part of the state, and from what I understand, his decision to visit Newark was made recently. DS and I suspect he made the decision when word got out that Holophane (my mom's factory) was closing. I mean, this is a factory that's been opened for over 100 years, and the fact that it's closing is emblematic of what is happening in a lot of places, and to a lot of working class people. I have every intention of attending the speech, and, perhaps, making a spectacle of myself on behalf of the workers losing their jobs at Holophane. Well, maybe I won't make a spectacle of myself, but I think I'll seek out the media to see if I can make a public plea for why health insurance shouldn't be dependent on employment, and why universal health care makes the most sense.

Turtle Island Project: President's lack of knowledge about Native American tribal sovereignty is sad and scary

yoopernewsman — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 02:37:37 +0000

President George W. Bush’s apparent lack of understanding on tribal sovereignty is examined by Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard, executive director and co-founder of the non-profit Turtle Island Project in Munising, Michigan.

Bliptv:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1344468&dest=-1]

youtube:

This video was made as Hubbard made two presentations on September 24, 2008 during the third annual UNITED Conference at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan.

This video is about infamous comments about Native American Tribal Sovereignty made by President George W. Bush on August 6, 2004 at the UNITY conference in Washington D.C.

President Bush was asked the tribal sovereignty question by Mark Trahant, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Page Editor, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe in Idaho and former president of the Native American Journalists Association.

Bush answered the question but that answer was so bizarre it caused journalists to laugh:
“Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign," President Bush said. "You’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity.”

The conference involved about 7,500 journalists of color from the Native American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Asian-American Journalists Association.

Hubbard said it’s funny, scary and sad that President George W. Bush doesn’t understand the important issue of Native American tribal sovereignty.

The Turtle Island Project thanks Democracy Now for the use of their video of President Bush’s remarks on tribal sovereignty.
Democracy Now
-------

Turtle Island Project: Silencing Native Americans & author hails American Indian genocide over the rainbow

yoopernewsman — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:22:15 +0000

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1355557&dest=37444]

Silencing Indigenous People and Cultures: Wizard of Oz author celebrates death of Native American culture in Sitting Bull obit

This is the second in a series of videos from two talks that Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard - the Turtle Island Project Director and Co-Founder - gave on Sept. 23 during the 2008 UNITED Conference at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

Zoologist and philosopher Neil Evernden wrote that vivisectionists cut animal vocal cords so they did not have to hear the tortured animal cry as they conducted experiments.

The vivisectionists silenced the animal and therefore did not acknowledge it was a tortured being.

The right of passage into the scientific (way of being) centers on the ability to apply the knife to the vocal cords - not just of the dog on the table - but to life itself.

It was about silencing voice then - and reflects the silencing of voices today.

Wizard of Oz versus today's sneaky politicians and the way we treat the environment and one another.

Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard, Turtle Island Project Director and Co-Founder:

We are on the tip of an iceberg and the iceberg runs deep and the ship is running right into it.

Industrial civilization is not sustainable. We all know that. It cannot be sustainable.

Any technology that relies on the use of non-renewables is by definition not sustainable.

We could have solved these problems 50 years ago, but we are not going to solve these problems in the next 20 years. We can start, maybe. But I think we are in for a very, very difficult time.

Dorothy is not in Kansas anymore. And Dorothy is not coming back to Kansas.

This is not going to be easy.

And like that Great Oz asked Dorothy and her friends - so are the politicians of our day - they ask us.

Pay no attention the Great Oz says to the man behind the curtain. Because the great deception is alive and well.

Hubbard compared the yellow brick road to gold and the Emerald City to the green of money where Dorothy though shed find her salvation.

The Great Wizard of Oz is this old white guy doing his thing, pulling his levers, lying to the people to maintain is power.

This is what we have been doing as a culture for how many years ignoring the man behind the curtain.

And now the chickens are going to come home to roost.

Hubbard reminded the audience of how we all look forward to the Wizard of Oz because it was shown only once a year.

Wizard of Oz was written by L. Frank Bauman (Born May 15, 1856)

Originally author Bauman was a failed businessman as a store owner - then edited the local newspaper the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer.

After the (first) Wounded Knee massacre in 1890, Native Americans were the targets of his editorials in his paper.

He explained that the safety of Euro-Americans depends upon the extermination of Indians.

Upon hearing of the death of the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, Baum wrote an editorial for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer:

Sitting Bull, the most renown Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was a chief but without kingly lineage - he arose from a lowly position to the great medicine man of his time by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce bloody wars for their possession lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull.

With his fall the nobility of the redskin is extinguished.

And what few that are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them.

The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.

Why not annihilation?

Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.

After reading the editorial, Hubbard then told the audience:

That was act one the great Wizard silencing nature.
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Native American Genocide Advocate L. Frank Baum - ironically married kin of a civil rights activist.

Baum married Maud Gage, a daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a famous women's suffrage and radical feminist activist who learned much from American Indian women.

Native Americans were the target of Baum's editorials after the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Miniconjou Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow following Wounded Knee Massacre on Dec. 29, 1890.

Big Foot was the half-brother of famous Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. Two weeks earlier on December 15, Chief Sitting Bull was killed at his cabin on the Standing Rock.

Baum wrote that the safety of Euro-Americans requires the "extermination of Indians."

Baum written attacks on American Indians are evident in his obituary of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer.

L Frank Baum - the author of Wizard of Oz - promoted the genocide of Native Americans:

Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.

He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his.

In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites.

And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery.

What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt?

What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull.

With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them.

Why not annihilation?

Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.

After the massacre, Baums second editorial on Jan. 3, 1891 said Americans should exterminate Native American Indians because having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization ... and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.

Baum wrote:

The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department.

There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.

The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians.

Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.

In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands.

Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that 'when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."
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Related Links:
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Zoologist and philosopher Neil Evernden:

http://www.derrickjensen.org/essay.html

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/168159.php

http://haydon4.tripod.com/id20.htm

Neil Evernden books: The Fragile Division; Nature and the Ultrahuman; The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment:

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Alien-Humankind-Environment/dp/0802077854/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223868003&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Neil%20Evernden

http://www.derrickjensen.org/comm.html

http://www.derrickjensen.org/books01.html

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Anti-Vivisectionists - cutting of animal vocal chords:

http://www.adaptt.org/animalrights.html

http://www.samizdat.com/micah/animal_rights.html

http://pharyngula.org/index/science/comments/good_for_doug_bjerregaard

http://www.infonature.org/english/world_news/eng-nature_news_animal_torture.htm

http://www.tonglen.oceandrop.org/Letter_Ban_Vivisection.htm

Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum celebrated the death of Sitting Bull:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Baum,+L.+Frank

http://www.put.com/oz/ozdi/199712.TXT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz

Apology by fans of Baum and others - plus public comments:
APOLOGY AND PLEDGE: From Planners and Anticipated Participants in the L. Frank Baum Conference for Aberdeen, South Dakota Planned in 1997

http://www.dickshovel.com/roeschbaum.html

http://www.dickshovel.com/TwistedFootnote.html

http://www.dickshovel.com/baumcom.html

Provide comments on apology website:

http://www.dickshovel.com/com.html

Photo credits:

Oz photos/video:

http://battellemedia.com/images/wizard-behind-curtain.jpg

http://www.milfordtheatreguilde.org/WOCastHome.html

http://oblivio.com/archives/02011701.html

http://www.mulholland-drive.net/pics/reference/wizard_shot.jpg

http://www.reelclassics.com/Musicals/Wizoz/wizoz.htm

http://ayearofoz.blogspot.com/

http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/?p=3361

http://ozproject.egtech.net/book.php?book_ID=676

http://www.moviejustice.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3038

L. Frank Baum circa 1901 - Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/L_frank_baum.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:L_frank_baum.jpg

L Frank Baum Poster from Wikipedia (unknown artist):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Baum_poster_1b.jpg

Baum photo from Looking Glass Review website:

http://www.lookingglassreview.com/html/l_frank_baum.html

Baum photo from Pixie Palace website:

http://www.pixiepalace.com/2007/06

Baum photo from Literary Traveler website:

http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/l_frank_baum.aspx

Baum with Green outline from oz.org website:

http://wizardoz.home.att.net/index.html

Wizard of Oz Poster of Tin Man from Wikipedia (The Tin Man).

Poster for Fred R. Hamlin's musical extravaganza was created by "The U.S. Lithograph Co., Russell-Morgan Print, Cincinnati & New York." - 1903 U.S. Lithograph Co.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Tin-Man-poster-Hamlin.jpeg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tin-Man-poster-Hamlin.jpeg
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Vivisection photos from Ocean Drop website:

http://www.tonglen.oceandrop.org/Letter_Ban_Vivisection.htm

http://www.tonglen.oceandrop.org

White Buffalo Calf Woman Society, Inc. (WBCWS)
PO Box 227
Mission, S.D.
57555

For more info on the WBCWS:

Javier H. Alegree
Public Relations Specialist
Media and Education

(605) 856-2317
(605) 856-2494 (fax)
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Official website of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe - Sicangu Lakota

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Northern Michigan University (NMU)

NMU on Wikipedia
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NMU Center for Native American Studies:

Center for Native American Studies

Northern Michigan University

112F Whitman Hall

Marquette, MI

49855

(906) 227-1397
(906) 227-1396 (fax)
e-mail:
nasa@nmu.edu

April Lindala, Director
Center for Native American Studies

(906) 227-1397
(906) 227-1396 (fax)
---

Grace Chaillier

NMU Adjunct Assistant Professor

Sicangu Lakota band of the Rosebud Sioux

112G Whitman Hall

UNITED Organizers:

Dr. Judith Puncochar

NMU Professor

906-227-1366
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Turtle Island Project

Munising, Michigan

Turtle island Project Co-founders:

Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard

Rev. Dr. George Cairns
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Turtle Island TV (blipTV)

Turtle Island TV (youtube)

Turtle Island (myspace)

email the non-profit Turtle Island Project:

TurtleIslandProject@charter.net

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Book “Pagans in the Promised Land” by Steven T. Newcomb (2008):

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9781555916428&ourl=Pagans-in-the-Promised-Land%2FNewcomb
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Anishinaabe News:

NMU Native American student-run newspaper

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Chomsky: Anti-people Nature of U.S. Capitalism Exposed

redflags — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:53:05 +0000

[caption id="attachment_3670" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Trickle down of financial panic"][/caption]

Kasama regularly posts important and interesting analyses of major questions. Such a posting does not imply agreement. This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

By Noam Chomsky

THE SIMULTANEOUS unfolding of the US presidential campaign and unravelling of the financial markets presents one of those occasions where the political and economic systems starkly reveal their nature.

Passion about the campaign may not be universally shared but almost everybody can feel the anxiety from the foreclosure of a million homes, and concerns about jobs, savings and healthcare at risk.

The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly modified. Under intense lobbyist pressure, they were reshaped as "a clear win for the largest institutions in the system... a way of dumping assets without having to fail or close", as described by James Rickards, who negotiated the federal bailout for the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998, reminding us that we are treading familiar turf. The immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that is, freeing the markets as much as possible from government regulation.

These steps predictably increased the frequency and depth of severe reversals, which now threaten to bring about the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Also predictably, the narrow sectors that reaped enormous profits from liberalisation are calling for massive state intervention to rescue collapsing financial institutions.

Such interventionism is a regular feature of state capitalism, though the scale today is unusual. A study by international economists Winfried Ruigrok and Rob van Tulder 15 years ago found that at least 20 companies in the Fortune 100 would not have survived if they had not been saved by their respective governments, and that many of the rest gained substantially by demanding that governments "socialise their losses," as in today's taxpayer-financed bailout. Such government intervention "has been the rule rather than the exception over the past two centuries", they conclude.

In a functioning democratic society, a political campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by which people suffering the consequences can take effective control.

The financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient", as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.

The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.

Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and "vote" against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power.

Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.*

The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy.

John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.

In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".

In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population.

But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures".

The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration.

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans".

Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.

Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace.

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* The Bretton Woods system of global financial management was created by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in 1944.

Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the system of rules, institutions, and procedures that regulated the international monetary system, under which were set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into effect in 1945.

The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value.

The system collapsed when the US suspended convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the US dollar became the "reserve currency" for the other countries within Bretton Woods.

Things I'm Doing Well As A Mother

minnesotamom — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:30:31 +0000

Heather of the EO had a post up this morning encouraging us to list the things we are doing well as mothers. And you know what? I think we spend all too much time focusing on what we’re doing wrong, so I am going to DO THIS. I hope you will to. And if you do, leave a comment linking to your post over at her place.

Things I’m doing well:

1. I never let Anja sit in her own doo-doo. That is, unless I think Daddy will be home within 10 minutes, then I might…sometimes…let her sit. Don’t tell!

2. I read Anja book after book after book, sometimes the same one many times. Her current favorite: Where the Wild Things Are. I like this book because it describes a child’s decision to let his misbehavior stay There, in the Land Where the Wild Things Are. And he returns to be present with his family, to be loved and treated well. I will continue to read this one over and over, even if I hide We’re Going on A Bear Hunt under the chair cushion. Reading is not only a skill, it is a tool. You can learn almost anything by reading. Husband and I share a passion for it; we read all the time. And we really wanted to pass that love on to Anja. So far, I think she’s a reading addict. We are happy about this.

3. I feed Anja nutritious meals. No Lunchables, chips, hot dogs or other processed meats, pop or juice, and very little refined sugar. She gets fruits, veggies, beans, whole grains and soy and rice milk.

4. I teach Anja about the world. An example: I stop on our walks and pick up leaves for her to touch (and sometimes taste…), telling her about why they change color. I explain why conifers don’t lose their needles and how they propagate.

5. I am working my butt off (two 10-hr days at one job, 20-40 hours a week at photography when she’s napping or asleep) so that I might be able to be home with her as much as possible. Currently she only has to be in daycare 1 ½ days a week. I praise God for this, because not every mom has that ability. Many moms who want to stay home aren’t able to financially, and aren’t able to have a secondary income through at-home work.

6. I stay in touch with my Father. I strive to be in the Word every day, drinking in wisdom so that I might impart it to my daughter.

7. I read the scriptures to Anja on a regular basis. Even though she can’t understand them yet, I am training myself to follow a pattern that will continue, Lord-willing, through her childhood and precarious teen years.

That felt really good. I usually dwell on the bad (which I’m not going to even mention), and while it’s good to strive for better, sometimes we can stress ourselves out so much that we can’t function properly. If you’re a mommy, I recommend making your list today!

Sarah Palin symbolizes what's wrong with GOP

jjcdaddy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:23:09 +0000

The Class War Before Palin

By DAVID BROOKS

Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals. Richard Weaver wrote a book called, “Ideas Have Consequences.” Russell Kirk placed Edmund Burke in an American context. William F. Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. But he didn’t believe those were the only two options. His entire life was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.

Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines. They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.

Ronald Reagan was no intellectual, but he had an earnest faith in ideas and he spent decades working through them. He was rooted in the Midwest, but he also loved Hollywood. And for a time, it seemed the Republican Party would be a broad coalition — small-town values with coastal reach.

In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party — the anti-immigration fervor, the isolationism — but stylistically he fit right in. As Fred Barnes wrote in his book, “Rebel-in-Chief,” Bush “reflects the political views and cultural tastes of the vast majority of Americans who don’t live along the East or West Coast. He’s not a sophisticate and doesn’t spend his discretionary time with sophisticates. As First Lady Laura Bush once said, she and the president didn’t come to Washington to make new friends. And they haven’t.”

The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone.

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking “eastern elites.” (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite.

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.