What to do about Detroit

As is so often the tragic truth, the debate over saving the Big Three seems to have come down to a choice between "Do it" and "Do nothing". There is a third way, which would have the effect of letting these companies die their richly deserved death, while saving most of the jobs. We should save the money that would go into bailing them out (they are doomed anyway), and instead divide that money into two pools: One pool would go to providing unemployment benefits to the affected workers; the second pool would go into tax incentives and other benefits to attract the Toyotas and Nissans of the world to rebuild the industry here in the U.S., with requirements that they hire and retrain most of the displaced workers. No one from the Big Three who held a title of Vice President or above would be eligible. They have proven they are ineducable.

This plan is about as close to win-win as is possible in this situation. Make no mistake about it: the culture of the Big Three is such that if we simply throw them a life line, we will be facing this question again, and again, and again, after each bail-out. They are beyond hope and should be put to sleep.

Biting the Hand (link)

Several observers have noted that in the recent election, the drift of wealthy/high-income/rich people away from the Republicans picked up steam. David Brooks, among others, bemoans the GOP's practiced ability to alienate the professional classes, noting that even bankers contributed to Obama vs. McCain by over 2:1. It took genius, as Brooks points out, to achieve that.

As the country debates whether this election was a cry for change from a center-right country, or a mandate for a more leftward course, there has been a rise in volume from the traditional populists, who, even with the election won, are stepping up the rhetoric of vengeance against everyone making $250,000 or more, the number which Obama has arbitrarily defined as the boundary between "wealth" and non-wealth.

I am not against hard measures against individuals who committed malfeasance. There are many Wall Streeters who deserve to be put out on the street. These are people who harvested in a few years much of what this country took 200 years to build, mainly through clever tricks of financial manipulation and the purchase of a number of congressmen. They deserve punishment they are unlikely to receive. As we contemplate the bailout of the auto companies, we ignore the very real betrayals by a generation of executives, who willfully refused to adopt modern management methods to run their companies. All the blame being placed on the unions would be moot if those companies had kept making cars that people want. Many of those executives deserve time at hard labor for sheer negligence.

But to demonize everyone making $250,000 or more, most of whom actually contributed to Obama, is an early step toward destroying the still new and fragile coalition that has reversed the past decade's slide into the Rove-ian abyss. We have voted against our immediate financial self-interest, in part out of revulsion at the kind of conservatism that has taken over the Republican party, and in part in the conviction that our long-term interests ARE best served by a fairer, more tolerant and more stable society.

There is, however, a limit. Very few of the so-called "rich" are actually so rich as not to have to care about their tax bill. Most people in the educated/professional classes have a number at which they feel their own livelihoods threatened. Reach that number, and they will move back into the GOP column.

Leaving aside the need for short-term government spending to dig us out of the current crisis, there are many progressive goals that do not require still further increases in government spending, but simply require a change of policy. Environmental responsibility, equality under the law, respect for privacy and habeas corpus, reproductive rights, teaching science instead of religion in schools, and not launching wars of choice--all of these are things that would not require more money, or would in fact be LESS costly than current procedure. The new administration would do well to focus on some of these goals and be careful about too much "spreading the wealth". A safety net is one thing, and is essential, but it should not depend on pulling the net out from others.

Washing Their hands

The images were, and continue to be moving, even days after the election. A black mom sitting on the floor of her church, overcome with emotion as her little daughter touches her face. Jesse Jackson, standing alone in the crowd at Grant Park, tears streaming down his face. Mobs of young people, white, black and everything in between, dancing with joy.

A significant portion of white America voted for the other guy, but it is undeniable that millions of white people have stood shoulder to shoulder with blacks in the struggle for "a more perfect Union", millions of people of all colours worked for this day, and millions celebrated together in victory. This election was about far more than electing a black man to be President. It was also a referendum on a certain way of governing, and on the direction of this country. But the colour of the candidates had every potential to override the substance of the debate, and we showed, at last, that we could work together to get past colour.
Only, something went wrong in California. A group even more hated and despised than blacks were handed a bitter repudiation, as California amended its constitution to enshrine the idea that they are less than human. And blacks, even as they voted overwhelmingly for Obama, also voted overwhelmingly to kick that other group in the teeth. Over 70% of the Black vote went in favor of Proposition 8. In the midst of the celebration of their triumph, one has to wonder if it occurred to these people that they have simply handed off the role of nigger to another group of human beings.

I have spoken with a number of black people about this: colleagues, fellow school parents, friends. I have listened to their rationalizations on the radio. It is clear that the directive to vote for Prop. 8 came from the pulpit, from the very churches where blacks have gone for generations to exorcise their torment. What is remarkable is the lack of questioning with which they marched to the polls to vote for this piece of hate, and the utter blindness to the similarities between their own story and the story of this even more hated group.

The airwaves are full of retrospectives on this election. The debates over what to do about Prop. 8 are all about raising more money, organizing better, reaching out to conservatives to show them that gay people pose no threat, etc. Yet there is no voice with the courage to tell us the truth that stares us in the face: if the black vote had just been 50:50, that would have been enough to block Prop. 8.

It is time for the progressive and enlightened conservative community to turn to their brothers and sisters in the black community and say "We worked with you to get to this day, and it is time you close ranks with other oppressed people. Gays are the only group left that society thinks it is OK to oppress. You can't abandon them now."

It is time for us to go to Washington to revoke the tax exempt status of every black church that incited its parishioners to vote for Prop. 8. If Progressives don't apply the same rules to these churches as they are trying to apply to white churches that have been promoting Republican causes, then they, and we, are all hypocrites. It is time to get ALL of the preachers out of the business of making law, regardless of their colour or creed.