Author: *Ruth Frick O’Brien

With the UN GA + Francis in town, this gives me great opportunity for a little fall sweeping.  And by sweeping, I means security clean up thanks to my brother-in-law’s sage advice.

So please be patient as we reorganize the menu.

The best place to read about my books, my edited books, and those I edit for The Public Square is on my Amazon Author page as well as the Princeton University Press’s wonderfully kept site.


Click on book collage


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Click here to see a short, informative, elegantly written piece entitled “Cautionary Comments” about eugenics by Dr. Daniel Kevles, who is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University and a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School.

As Professor Kevles would say “the past is the present in the contemporary Public Square.”

The Asia/Pacific/American Institute at New York University is currently holding an eugenics exhibit.

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Amazon is likening its new phone to a fire?  Makes sense, I suppose.  It’s burning down all the boundaries.  It’s setting all the so-called “physical books” ablaze.

But how can even one piece in the New York Times suggest they are disappointed it’s so expensive.  Who cares?  The fewer people that get caught up in this tether the better.  Amazon is the No. 1 killer or only the killer of the printed word left standing.  Look how loyal J.K. is.  Remember Stephen King’s attempt to become his own publisher, and how this sunk (unfortunately.)  This was perhaps when democracy/internet or what some call “personal” democracy lost.  We just didn’t know it yet.

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

FINALLY, Obama’s National Security Agency(NSA) gives us, the public, pages and pages (hundreds of pages of newly declassified documents) about its surveillance state. To be sure, it’s a surveillance state built on top of the George W. Bush surveillance state.

This is quite a lot to think about — documents we can incorporate into American political thought.  It is not likely to constitute the kind of thought that would make anyone proud to proclaim that they are American, yet it’s definitely bipartisan, so the GOP should stop its yapping about Obama’s hypocrisy and start wondering how a liberal got so “hard” after decades of being supposedly soft and liberal.  And Obama should think about how to start forgiving Snowden, rather than trying to be the most effective president to prosecute leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Talk about false consciousness.  Karl Marx or Herbert Marcuse would’ve loved the Supreme Court’s decision to give freeloaders a free ride, all in the name of First Amendment freedom-of-expression rights — putting another nail in the mostly built coffin of public unions.

In the 5-4 Harris case, the usual conservative Roberts Court — Alito writing the majority, with Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas in tow — ruled that a personal assistant working for a rehabilitation program has no need to support or join a union.

Pamela Harris, whom Medicaid pays to take care of her son, someone who lives with a genetic syndrome, reaps the benefits but is not liable to pay the costs associated with collective bargaining.   She can have it both ways: benefit from a public-union contract without paying for the cost of fighting state governments to secure a living wage, or the irony from the 2000s that state governments don’t ship all their jobs overseas.

Unlike states’ rights in Massachusetts, the Roberts Court upheld Illinois’s states’ rights (relying on the political-speech provisions of the 1977 Abood case.) “Preventing nonmembers from free-riding on the union’s efforts” is “generally [an] insufficient [reason] to overcome First Amendment objections.”

More later on the faulty or incoherent logic of using First Amendment rights against labor — or for employees to defeat their own self-interest.

For now, combine this with a “true” California judge ruling that tenuring teachers inhibits the state’s ability to fulfill students’ constitutional right to a “quality education,” and you’ve got a particularly precarious situation for anyone who chose to work in the public sector.

The idea that public-sector work attracted those who valued public purpose over private profits is long gone.  I can remember the days when the public sector was a place guaranteeing more of a meritocracy, liberating those burdened by discrimination in the private workplace.  The public sector also captured those who sought income stability, for instance, if they grew up simply poor and not part of the disadvantaged immutable-identity categories.

But then again, you have to remember the idea that the private sector pays too much in these times of über income and educational inequality.  (Where’s Sheryl Sandberg when you need her?)  The idea that this is gender-neutral and based on meritocracy would be highly contested at least by one or two in counties just south of San Francisco.

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Employees in the United States have feeble to no real rights.  Of course, the employee does not discover this until he is on the wrong side of the employer’s or his managers’ ire.  But in civil-rights and union law, scholars have known this for years.  Indeed, it is/was the theme of scholarship the moment the initial enthusiasm waned about the federal legislation, whether it was the Wagner Act unionizing employees, the Fair Labor Standards Act bestowing minimum wages, or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.   Or, should one say, at the very least with the first wave of revisionism, anywhere from 10 to 25 years after employees’ enthusiasm at getting less than a big fat nothing.

But employers’ profiting from their employees’ deaths — well, that’s another thing.  A category instead of a kind, if you were doing an SAT-exam prep on this.  It’s one thing if an employer doesn’t pay, or pays next to nothing, for an employee’s death that they’re culpable for causing (old news — see OSHA); but another if they profit from death.  That’s even better than OSHA’s stats on robots (uncaged, not curtained like the Wizard of Oz) killing their colleagues and co-workers.

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Governor Chris Christie knew what we all knew he knew.  But the Gov, being so savvy, also knew to release the cover-up . . . when? Ahh, on Friday night before the “New York” Super Bowl.  What a big “duh.”

And this being New Jersey means he’s the governor not from where*– but of “what exit” fame or infamy, which means the whole state is now going to have to hear about Bridge and Tunnel Gate.

*Mistake intended  — the Super Bowl, for all those who don’t know what exit to take, is being played in New Jersey.  As is their cultural right, the Super Bowl is being billed as being played in NYC (Bill de Blasio and Hillary’s town), not X (wherever it is . . .).

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

In President Obama’s Remarks on Trayvon Martin, he makes it personal.  “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

But why does he add “35 years ago”?  Why not say it more boldly — this could be him now, if he were 17 years old today?  Okay, I know he’s not 17, and this is why he spoke of 35 years ago.  But by referencing the years, this timeline makes his comment misleading — conceding progress, when Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal show we do not live in a postracial society.  If Obama were 17 today, this could have been him now, since surely Obama went out to the local convenience store to purchase Skittles and iced tea, as a way to get out of the house when he was that age?

Martin’s neighborhood is little different demographically from Obama’s neighborhood in Hawaii, where he was living at 17.   If Obama wants to get personal, Obama has to get personal in a way that speaks with authenticity to the civil-rights community. He must speak with conviction.

To exhibit leadership, Obama needs to do what all leaders do — walk toward the fire, or take sides in our polarized nation.  He needs to eschew his role as statesman.

Maybe Obama’s afraid to test being personal, since this raises the bigger question — is anyone listening anyway?  When Obama was running for president, or when he was in his first term, personal comparisons like this provoked outrage from the Right.  But now that Obama’s second term has been pronounced D.O.A. by middle-of-the-road members of the established media, like David Gergen, is anyone listening to anything, let alone calling him a leader?

Gergen is right.  With the annual August congressional recess looming, let’s face it, Obama has little chance now of passing immigration reform.  In his second presidency, Obama has tried and failed to pass immigration reform and gun-control reform, in addition to having put himself in a rear-guard battle about the politics of sequestration.

None of it passed. He failed as a second-term legislative leader.  Mind you, Obama is in line with all second-term presidents since World War Two.  Ronald Reagan’s only success — the immigration reform of 1986 — turned out to help the Democrats more than the Republicans.

And let’s not forget that when Obama passed historic legislation in his first term, like health care, he didn’t get leadership credit for that — even from the Left.

And while Obama did succeed in passing the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, no one seemed to pay attention long enough to call it a victory.   So, I agree — his presidency, at least the legislative leadership aspect of it, is over.  No more historic legislation.

So we’re now facing a three-year run for the presidency.  And the president’s best bet is to get very personal and turn the polarized nation into outright partisanship, rejuvenating his cosmopolitan rainbow coalition as he helps Hillary Clinton.  Hillary Clinton represents the Democrats’ best chance for 2016 (and women’s issues, in combination with the new and old civil-rights issues that unite Obama’s rainbow coalition).  But Obama can play a role, though it’s a role he’s been loath to exhibit, and that’s as a party leader who at the very least wants to protect and promote his own legacy.  There’s no better way to protect his legacy than to help Hillary.

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Watch this fascinating interview in which Cornell University’s Arts & Sciences Dean Gretchen Ritter and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg discuss her role in breaking down gender lines, the two worst cases that she dissented in (i.e. Citizens United and Shelby v. Holder, and how she’s heralded for her dissents as Notorious RBG.

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Cheryl Perich as I show in Out of Many One, Obama and the Third American Tradition,knows that last time, the Supreme Court decided that work conditions were beyond the reach of the federal government.  Perich wanted to fight discriminatory action by her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA).  She was out of luck, since her employer was a religious school.  Although she taught primarily secular subjects, her employer never had to face her allegations.  Instead, a unanimous Roberts Court reinforced the so-called “ministerial exception,” ruling that this school had the freedom to hire and fire ministers without having to follow federal employment laws — ignoring the content of what she taught.  The fact that she taught in a religious organization was enough.

Well, a craft shop like Hobby Lobby is not exactly a church.  It’s not a non-profit created for any public purpose.  It’s a for-profit family business.  Will the Supreme Court give private, for-profit, family-owned companies something akin to a ministerial exception?  Do businesses not in the business of religion have any business dictating the health care of only women employees?  This case pits women’s rights against religious freedom.

Neither the employers nor the employees are delivering a non-profit service.  They are not peddling any freedoms, the way a church peddles religious freedom.  So how could these employers dictate the health-insurance benefits of their employees?  Given the benefit these employers disagree with, how can they pick on only female employees, who have the right to equal treatment under law?  How could the right to manage become a block or a hindrance to a woman’s right to choose?  After all, abortions are a legal health procedure.  It is a woman’s right to choose, not an employer’s right to choose for them.  Will Seventh Day Adventists be free from giving their employees health care that requires types of medicine that violate their beliefs?

It’s good for the Supreme Court to address this issue head-on.  But there is only one conceivable outcome.

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Ruth O’Brien

Years ago, I got rid of cable (we still have the television, just not cable service). For the life of me, I couldn’t see how television — the “boob tube,” as my mother always called it — could ever be important.

Being 12 to 15 months behind on all the series that other people watch has often been a virtue. For instance, watching Bill Paxton on Big Love a season late turned out to be a big plus. The perfectly accurate, anti-Mormon Romney series turned out to be an allegory in advance, a vision, with its ending of Paxton, playing a former “lost boy” dying in a pool of blood from an assassin’s bullet (his disgruntled, unemployed neighbor who could not get his one wife to obey him), literally seeing the light (white, no less) as he freed all three of his wives, and then with his last breath ordained the first of the wives as a radical non-LDS, Mormon priest.

What an ending! What a series. It paid off to hold off and watch it later.

But Meet the Press and the debates are a different story.

My two teenaged boys, my husband, and I popped the popcorn and tried to watch the “town hall” last Thursday in my study (our version of a family room) on our largest computer screen, with our broadband service, but this was discouraging. Both Romney and Obama turned into pixel monsters and started stuttering, as all the other online viewers strained our service beyond its capacity.

So yesterday, with my on-line patience shot, I had nowhere to watch Meet the Press. And I knew I couldn’t wait for this a.m.’s news to find out what had been said on it, so I borrowed my friends’ couch, and while he gave me coffee, she collected their daughter’s oboe and ran off to a music lesson, and we talked — not fully concentrating, since (as I explained it to my sons on the way over, reluctant because they did not want to impose on my friends or get out of bed at 10:30) we only need to get a real-time sense of these talking heads.

And then of course I couldn’t help but talk to the TV. Has anyone had the courage to tell David Axelrod that his makeup is too orangey, and his eyebrows have too much shape and contour? Now, it may just be the color-contrast dial on my friends’ TV, and besides, Axelrod’s style and performance are so much improved from the last time I watched TV that I should not be so snarky. By contrast, the Democrats’ other pundit, Dee Dee Myers, looks marvelous! And New York Times foreign-policy reporter Helene Cooper, what can you say — she was just born this way, an articulate champion of comprehensive and deep thought of a kind that is so rare in political journalism.

But those GOP Floridians and Ohio members of Congress! Please don’t listen to them — or, as I told my friend, “hear” the opposite to find what they’re afraid of.

Anyhow, it wasn’t the television that gave me my news, my ending for this morning. Rather, it was the socializing while watching that did it. And I don’t even want to write itout loud for fear I may jinx it, so let me save it for last, and let’s whisper — as we try to all give Obama the pep and confidence he needs for tonight.

My friend, born and raised in Ohio, gave me the hint — a hint I hope is true.

Obama will take Ohio. In saving Detroit, saving jobs in Romney’s very own growing-up state (Michigan), he also saved jobs in the neighboring state — Ohio.

So, the GOP is wrong. The political landscape has changed since 2008; it has been transformed, but the enthusiasm and energy are still there behind Obama. The secret is, it’s all in the parts — the auto parts.

Over 1,000 posts and counting — all organized around categories that I reorganize according to events, compounded by my current research interests in terms of public and academic projects, teaching, and speaking under categories.*

Obama’s Leadership and World View in the 3rd American Political Tradition: embodied in his: foreign policy, domestic policy (including battling with Democrats and GOP in Congress as well as executive action in terms of implementing old and new civil rights and Obamacare), the surveillance state (NSA & PRISM), inclusivity at home and abroad; and second-term failures.

Hillary Clinton and 2016: such as undermining Obama’s governance with national campaigns; the intersectionality of their ideas and their identities in terms of cosmopolitanism; the intersection of gun violence and the war on women (neotribalism, reproductive rights, new civil rights or LGBTers and disability rights).

Idea Impact: Testing the role of the blogger in the academy in terms of “idea impact” or as “thought leaders” with more gravitas, and/or in amplifying or placing the mainstream media in context (practicing critical thinking).

*Being someone who gets more excited and therefore enthusiastic about “content,” rather than website cleanup, please be patient with my weekly organizing.

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Everything seems to be riding on immigration reform. Not only will it determine the future of the Republican party, but a workable deal will underscore Obama’s legacy as a successful second-term president.

Given the importance  of immigration reform — just as everything  seems to be riding on it — there’s a lot of blaming going on too. Supposedly, if Obama fails to lead immigration reform through Congress, it could “reignite anger among Mr. Obama’s Latino supporters . . .” For Republicans, it will reveal how strong the conservative movement is within the party.

Failing all-out sabotage, Mario Rubio proposes taking immigration out of the Obama’s hands: Congress, not the Department of Homeland Security, would determine the plan for border security. Can we imagine any more of a mess than letting Congress protect our borders? Obama is willing to compromise, but an institutional power-grab like this is absurd.

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

(7:15 pm March 24 2014 version)

The new menu — Obama Blogs — explain key concepts from Out of Many, One: Obama & the Third American Political Tradition. 

It is designed as an Open Education Resource, and I’m hyperlinking URLs;

• Obama’s Belief in Universal Anti-Universalism
• Obama’s Ideology of Inclusivity
• Obama’s Ideology of Freedom & Equality Based on Difference, not Sameness
• Obama’s Notion of Earned Egalitarianism
• Spinozan Ethics & Euclidean Logic (Necessary & Sufficient)
• Obama’s Cosmopolitanism
• Hell on Earth(Obama’s Religious Worldview)
• All-Encompassing Social Sphere(Private and Public Spheres Melded or Collided)
• Collaborative Governance
• Cosmopolitan Rainbow Coalition
• 2012
• GOP Attempts to Separate Rainbow
• Obamacrats21st-Century Racism and Racial Consciousness — Racial Scripting
• Intersectional Identities— New Civil Rights (LGBTers; Persons with Disabilities,Victims of Violence)
• Intersectional Identities— Old Civil-Rights Identities (African-Americans; Latinos-Latinas; Women & Girls)
• Intersectionality of Ideas & Identities
• Neotribalism Defined
• Neotribalism (War on Women)(Role of Religion) (Bold, Sassy & Uppity People)
• Neotribalism& Transuniversal Threats (Straight Conservative Anglo-Males and Straight Liberal Anglo-Males SCAMs vs. SLAMs)
• Passports for TranssexualsObama Haters
• Battling the Roberts Courtabout Civil Rights & Religion
• Diversityand Inclusivity in the Federal Judiciary
• New Faith-Based Initiative (Including Atheists)
• Calls for Citizen Actionor Deliberative Participatory Democracy
• Creates Domestic Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
• Obama’s modus operandi as a Leader
• Federalism for Public Purpose(Horizontal and Diagonal Federalism)
• Shared-Burden Foreign Policy
• Idealist/RealistBinary be Gone
• Bold Foreign Policy
• Civil Liberty Erosions (PRISM& NSA, Drones)
• Implementing Obamacare
• Fail to Pass Legislation?  Executive Action
• Second-term Executive Branch Failures
• Implementing Dodd-Frank’sSuccesses
• Separation of Powers politics, such as Immigration& Guns
• Running Republicans & Immigration& Gun Violence
• Democrats in Obstruction

These blogs discuss the key concepts behind Obama’s contribution to the third American political tradition during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns and his first presidential term.  The blogs showcase these ideas in Obama’s second term, since my book covers only the first Obama administration.

The blogs explain Obama’s worldview:

— Hell on Earth belief — Obama accepts and understands evil, but embraces the perfectibility of humankind

— Obama’s Spinozan ethics — his reliance on Baruch Spinoza, including the Euclidean logic of necessary & sufficient

The blogs illustrate Obama’s ideology, which is universally anti-universal and embraces earned egalitarianism and equality on the basis of difference, not sameness, and my interpretation of his rainbow cosmopolitanism.  Obama also rejects the classical liberal split between the private and the public spheres, opting for an all-encompassing social sphere.

The blogs cover specific issues that underscore Obama’s perspective about identity politics or civil rights, including the GOP’s 2012 War on Women; neotribalism; what role religion plays, given Obama’s worldview about Hell on Earth; and his battle against the Roberts Court, particularly regarding race, gender, and religion.

The blogs explain how Obama has manifested the third American political tradition in his governance style in both domestic and foreign policy.  This includes Obama’s modus operandi and his penchant for executive action, given party polarization and congressional obstruction and delay.  In particular, the blogs about the implementation of Obamacareand the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also highlight how Obama used what Out of Many, One calls “federalism for public purpose.”  This structure created a type of diagonal and horizontal federalist scaffold or structure that still could instill citizen action in what I refer to as domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Finally, the blogs illustrates how Obama governed, cementing a rainbow cosmopolitan cultural coalition despite the best efforts of Obama haters (including birthers and Tea Partiers), and the role that racial scripting played in Obama’s leadership.  (Racial scripting is a sophisticated 21st-century form of racism and racial consciousness, often stripped of overt or malicious racial intent.)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

It’s the war of all against all  as the GOP’s hate just keeps getting hotter. Are you surprised? I’m not.  GOP wars have not been reserved or restricted to a  war on women no matter what their women say.

It’s Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s self-described job to hate gays and lesbians every bit as much as she hates or engages in war on women, immigrants, children of immigrants, girls, African-Americans, and I’d guess atheists, and union organizers too— if you pressed her or took a look at Arizona’s “special” history.

In vetoing a state bill, Brewer temporarily stepped back in the war of all against all she helped instigate.  She stepped back by not giving the business community rights along religious grounds to refuse service to LGBTQers.  Are we supposed to thank her?

This is the face of the new Republican party, and by “new” I don’t mean yesterday of the last 5 years, when the Tea Partiers signed up, or even when Bush II became the second son to follow his papa into the presidency in 2000. Rather, I mean that the politics of hate goes to the venerable party of Ronald Reagan.

Most academics would date the 1980s as years when the party of Lincoln lost the legacy of Lincoln. How else could all the white conservative men (SCAMs) in the former Confederate states have run for shelter under the GOP’s umbrella, after all?

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Immigration reform is the GOP’s 1996 welfare reform. Just as Bill Clinton pulled the Democrats toward the center, the Republicans’ recognition that the electorate has changed, becoming much more tolerant and diverse, has compelled many of them to go into reverse. If they’re going to rebuild the Republican party, they cannot afford to let the Obama administration identify this policy with the Democrats alone, and turn theLatino vote into a Democratic vote.

Worse, on Monday, when the Supreme Courtheard the case on Arizona’s Proposition 200, adding extra citizenship requirements for voter registration that singled out Latinos, the Obama administration took the position that immigration is a national issue, not a state issue. Proposition 200 is the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen and Protection Act, and this means it’s not just a national issue, but an “us against them” piece of legislation. Many voters in the electorate at large are watching, and they see this state as being punitive.  This only increases the pressure on the GOP to get behind reform.

By turning immigration reform into a national issue, the Obama administration hopes to help the Democrats walk away with the most popular support. What is more, Obama followed his usual leadership M.O. of bringing everyone to the table — the bipartisan Gang of Eight. Obama has cleverly positioned the debate so that the GOP and Congress will be faulted for failing to resolve immigration reform, thus leaving himself room for more reform efforts, including airing his position in the national venue of the Supreme Court.

Neos & Isms combines two scholarly fields within American politics – American Political Development (APD) and American Political Thought (APT).

My perspective crosses intradisciplinary divides by relying on PD (political development, or historical institutionalism, as it is known in comparative) as a methodologywith two analytical axes of the role of ideas(stemming from a radical feminist interpretation of monism), and the bedrock for my latest book, Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.*

Neos & Isms are informed by the vast literature in humanistic social science given its emphasis on difference as the United States built a relatively strong nation-state and became a global hegemon. It pays particular attention to nation-building in juxtaposition with the recurring, crosscutting conflicts of class, disability, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

It includes discussions about formal and informal political institutions and identitiesapplied to Obama and other presidents from the very late 19th through the 20th and 21st centuries, during intercurrence or in, across, and/or over time (clash of political development and political thought) or engaged with the other so-called federal branches. In other words, it concentrates on enduring institutional and ideational juxtapositions and enduring or classic conflicts in the United States in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches as well as in the media (including social media) that effect political identities.

The intercurring conflicts raised in Part II are classic and representational ones in, across,and/or over time (contingency and history) and political time (macro historical events). They are reviewed in broad strokes to cover these enduring juxtapositions in the five federal institutions led by the American president (including the executive branch, or the bureaucracy he governs), as well as the legislative and judicial branches in play, and involving public opinion, given the role of communications in a representational democracy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The conflicts are classic and/or representative—involving the administrations of Andrew Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon though Reagan, and giving special attention to the differences between George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The “Neos & Isms” themselves involve thinkers, theories, and schools of thought, as well as full-fledged ideologies, or values and belief structures, and political cultures that alter or affect political and economic action and behavior in every form of consciousness.

Some of the “Neos & Isms” reviewed in APD are: 1) neoconservatism and neoclassicalcapitalism, 2) neoliberalism (containing critiques of capitalism, liberalism, republicanism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism), 3) neo-tribalism (juxtapositions found in fundamentalism, theories of supremacy, and spatial hegemony, and involving or impacting all vulnerable populations), and finally 4) multilateralism, reflecting earned egalitarianism within conceptions for horizontal domestic and transnational deliberative democracy or work on “commons.”

Relating APD methodology to “Neos & Isms” is three-dimensional from the perspective of 1) the individual (un-sub-non-full- consciousness, identity, worldview, and traditions, including those of and constructed by vulnerable and autonomous populations), 2) the five federal institutions (national, transnational, even local entities), and 3) time or contingency.  O’Brien taught it last as a graduate seminar open to M.A. & Ph.D. Political Science students and cross-listed with American Studies, and Women’s Studies Certificates at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York.**

*Finding a Nexus between APD and American Political Thought,” Clio, 2013

**Neos and Isms – 20403 – P SC 82001 – GC

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Unless you are William Howard Taft, who as Supreme Court Chief Justice would highly approve of his successor Chief Justice John G. Roberts.  Or unless you reside in the town of Taft) read it and weep.  More of that man-on-man (Roberts vs. Obama) action, as the Supreme Court blocks (partially) Obama’s ability to exercise executive action on the environment.

Another crude contest, and another excellent example of how an American president wields executive action in defense.  It is not an offensive move.  Read for yourself.

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

One of the themes of Out of Many, One: Obama and the 3rd American Political Tradition was that Obama relies on social technology to merge the public, the private, and the social spheres. Obama does not distinguish between these spheres; rather than having the state regulate society, or having society freed from state regulation, he advances a collaborative state and market and promotes a fully encompassing social sphere, or a collectivity. Unlike either the strong individual-rights (or civil-liberties) state or the strong welfare state, this third tradition is premised on forging alliances and on collective goodwill. Rather than operating in an absence of good faith and trust, with individuals suing to enforce their civil rights, Obama emphasizes human dignity and potential, not material potential, in a cosmopolitan collectivity of shared, yet shifting, alliances.

Well, all this broke down with PRISM.

Sure, there were earlier reports that this was happening, such as in Dana Priest and William Arkin’s excellent book Top Secret America. But who could have known the extent of it? Who could have known that all three branches of the federal government would cooperate when it came to asking Google, Facebook, and Apple, among others, to provide direct access to monitor all communication among all Americans?

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

The best way to figure out the law is to mixTor with Netflix — or at least, that has been my experience the last five years (which in tech years, according to Moore’s law, is somewhere between 10 and 50 years).

My computer knew I had left American soil before my European friends knew I’d arrived!  So the real lead is that EU competition commissioner (or let’s say competition “czar”) Joaquín Almunia — with his colleagues in the 28-country bloc — has got to figure out how the EU is going to compete with the gaggle (not just Google but the entire communications industry) under what I call information imperialism.

Will the EU limit it to antitrust (monopolies), or will Europe get more adventurous with information taxes and/or data mining — particularly the offensive “eye tracking”?  (The very term makes me want to go to the ophthalmologist for better sunglasses.)

I always use Venere rather than Expedia — much better hole-in-the-wall or authentic choices, no matter how many Google cars I saw climbing over the Alps.

Supposedly, if Google doesn’t settle, it faces up to $6 billion in fines.  Is that enough?  Will they deliver it in nickels, dimes, or quarters, I wonder, though this could be part of the trail of disinformation provided by Apple or Samsung.  (What we do know is the lawyers earned over a billion dollars and counting.)  But $6 billion doesn’t sound like much to trillionaires.

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

The Roberts Court is clearly less interested in protecting states’ rights — as it issued yet another 9-0 decision (McCullen v. Coakley) not allowing the Massachusetts citizens to determine how large the buffer zone around abortion clinics should be.  (The Massachusetts legislature passed a law giving women seeking their right to choose a 35-foot buffer going into a clinic.)

For elections, one gets 100 feet, but for women practicing their right to choose, it’s 65 feet shorter.  So electioneers are more dangerous than sidewalk counselors, I guess.  Or is it that states’ rights are less significant when it comes to practicing the war on women?

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Now that Germany is getting in line with theEuropean parliament, trying to fight and backing their new champion — Edward J. Snowden, President Barack Obama’s favorite anti-American hero or alleged outlaw — leftie filmmaker Michael Moore won’t have to hold hands with right-wing crazy Glenn Beck any longer.  The chorus against the United States’ surveillance state at home and abroad keeps getting louder.

As outrage against the least transparent president (okay, not the least, but he’s gaining stature as he gets more and more opaque) escalates, pundits of the far right and the bold left will no longer have to sing Snowden’s praises alone at home.  And perhaps, just perhaps, the editors of the three outlets giving voice to Snowden’s leaks could get a rest from all the Anglo-American governments bullying and intimidation.

Too bad Angela Merkel doesn’t ask President Barack Obama to meet her on the dais of the fine German public university for a publicly staged friendly handshake when the universityawards Edward his first honorary doctorate.

Barack could bury this legacy-tarnishing surveillance-state scandal by the academic year’s end if he would only start listening to the bipartisan or non-partisan chorus of complaints against his NSA’s spying.  But then again, maybe the president of this public university already asked Angela to ask Barack to start honoring Snowden back in June or July (academics do move at a glacial pace), and in listening in, Barack decided to duck this invitation.

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Can’t wait to read New York State Court of Appeals Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr.’s argument that the health-care issue of selling 20 oz. drinks (e.g. Coca-Cola and Pepsi)exceeds the Board of Health’s regulatory authority.

I guess judges don’t attend CUNY public-health classes or our new School of Public Health, which well covers obesity and diabetes, particularly among the poor in their own backyard.

What we do know is that not only is Michelle Obama concerned, but President Barack Obama is too, since at least people can retain protection as a person with the disability of obesity and diabetes, given his administration’s broad ADAAA rules.

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

It was a double slam-dunk of a day for Justice Samuel Alito.

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores is not fun, and no hobby for women, children, or anyone who is now dependent on the “good” faith of their employer’s belief structure — at least for the right to decide what to do with their minds and bodies.  In a 5-4 decision, Alito undermines President Barack Obama’s signature law by allowing employers to refuse to pay for health insurance that violates their belief system.

This was the other shoe dropping!  My, my what creative health plans we will see.  More on my imaginings later.

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Obama extended his universal anti-universalism abroad yesterday at Brandenburg Gate.  This is not exactly an “I’m a Berliner speech,” but rather a “Peace with Justice” speech that is arguably more controversial than JFK’s few words could be, given Obama’s being a “first” just like Angela Merkel (first woman and first leader from the former East Germany). Funny thing is no one is listening, at least in the United States.

Peace with Justice not only reflected Obama’s universal anti-universalism, and his preference for religious tolerance and pantheism, but showcased his shared-burden doctrine of American foreign policy and invoked the United States’ need for humility in history by showing solidarity with Germany about the complexity of history.

But most significantly, the Peace with Justice speech advanced Obama’s penchant for Euclidian logic.  Starting as a senator, Obama has consistently practiced the Euclidian logic of “necessary and sufficient” found in the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. This means that Obama practices tolerance in his acceptance of all gods that literary and social theory as well as social philosophy have made accessible by adopting the term “cosmopolitan.”

Relying on a cosmopolitan notion of civic religion — to frame his Cairo speech combating Orientalism or the idea of Western superiority — Obama notes that Islam has always been a part of the American narrative.  Now, in Peace with Justice, Obama no longer focuses on the City on a Hill, John Winthrop’s notion that has inflamed the American right wing as well as the Jewish lobby in the United States and Israel, but compares his political thought to that of James Madison, a measured political thinker if there ever was one, though misunderstood for what that middle was.

“No nation could preserve its freedom,” Obama quotes Madison as saying, “in the midst of continual warfare.”  Clearly Obama does not want to be wandering in the hills above the Potomac, as Madison did (with his own portrait, as legend goes).  “Madison,” Obama argues, “is right — which is why, even as we remain vigilant about the threat of terrorism, we must move beyond a mindset of perpetual war.”

Obama now anchors America’s identity, past and present, in tolerance and religious pluralism.  He extends a “peace with justice” theme that is not found in the American Anglo-Saxon Christian lineage, but rather the idea of Hell on Earth. Obama underscores the cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity of American and German citizens, making his notion of diversity so expansive that civic religion accepts both religion and atheism, as well as emphasizing the need to remember history (hell on earth) with humility.

Obama could make this leap because Merkel’s position as the first “Ossie” chancellor since the Berlin Wall came down created an opening that Obama haters, hopefully, will not use to taint him with fascism.

“ … let’s remember that peace with justice depends on our ability to sustain both the security of our societies and the openness that defines them.  Threats to freedom don’t merely come from the outside.  They can emerge from within — from our own fears, from the disengagement of our citizens … .”

Chancellor Merkel’s Cold War past made possible this type of nod toward freedom and openness, similar to religious pluralism or tolerance.

Obama uses necessary and sufficient logic to create what I call, in Out of Many, One: Obama and the 3^rd American Political Tradition, a jumbling, or “jumping together,” of different and divergent religious traditions around a shared principle of responsibility. In so doing, he unites Germany and the United States in understanding their culpability in history as we all strive toward Peace with Justice.

How big a punch did this speech pack?  Little to nothing, or not much in the United States.  Only one domestic newspaper covered (or condemned) it this morning – theWashington Times – a paper not known for being partial to Obama’s political thought.  It would be more accurate to say it’s a home for Obama haters, though even the Washington Times did not stimulate much hatred less for lack of animus than simply a lack of paying attention to the standing president any more.

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Just when I was thinking of going offshore to Norway (Runbox),  the Gaggle — Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo — compounded by the American government’s labored reasoning, convinced me “not so fast.”  I’d better slow down in deciding where to store my data.

Jeesh.  Each and every citizen needs a Ph.D. in data as well as civil liberties. The one thing we know for sure is that it’s complicated to even figure out what side you’re on.  There are too many sides.  And here’s the thing: The Gaggle of data-proprietary capitalists are also scaring the beejeevies out of Europe — the EU, which is very pro-EU business, too.

So how can we even locate our self-interest if we can’t sort it out with not two, nor three, but four to five contenders as to who you are going to trust with your data.

Side 1: American proprietary-information barons

Side 2: American government

Side 3: EU — pro-EU business and the large member nations, particularly Angela Merkel’s Germany

Side 4: What about Russia and China — the common threat to (yes, you’ve got it) both the U.S. and the EU

Putting all four sides aside, here’s how you have to look at it.  What are we talking about protecting when we think of the private sphere, anyway?  As Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lawyer Lee Tien said, “United States search warrants do not have extraterritorial reach,” so “the government is trying to do an end run.”

Microsoft agrees.   If the judicial order to surrender email stored abroad is upheldMicrosoft said, it “would violate international law and treaties, and reduce the privacy protection of everyone on the planet.”  Verizon filed a brief reflecting this view too.

Meanwhile, the Times reported that “European officials have expressed alarm.”  Alarm!? That’s a big word for the EU, if you haven’t been following the information trade wars.

New York federal judge James C. Francis made a ruling in April creating a grey zone, or — in Obamese — a hybrid.  The difference lies in the fact that there are two distinct types of investigative tools pertaining to communications — subpoenas vs. searches.

First, there is a subpoena, which is not that powerful, since information is limited to what is “relevant” in an ongoing investigation, and the person being investigated must be notified.

And second, there is a search warrant that allows for jurisdiction — virtual or physical — and, once in the door (or the back door of a router), the state can root around.  So what would you prefer?  The federal government favors a subpoena, whereas the Gaggle wants to limit the search.

Trying to find that middle, or what could be no-man’s-land, and therefore even more treacherous ground, Judge Francis held that the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act gave the federal government power and authority to protect American individuals from “indiscriminate data gathering that subpoenas might allow of online communications.”

What we know is as Obama is not going to let go of his hybrid.  The communication industry’s idea that you can differentiate between physical search warrants and digital ones as “misguided” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York “. . . Storing the data abroad” is not going to mean they don’t have to follow American laws.

Stay tuned for both the post-Snowden state’s or put simply the Obama administration’s arguments and the Gaggle’s arguments before Judge Loretta A. Preska on July 31.  Whose side will the American judiciary be on this time?

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

The Roberts Court reprimands President Barack Obama, again. With New Jersey Justice Samuel Alito writing for the court, the 9-0 opinion quibbles about what constitutes a recess — while accepting that executor-in-chief Barack Obama can appoint people to run the government during a proper recess.  Quibbling about what constitutes this or that is at least different from striking something down in kind.

While this Roberts Court’s legal move is not a surprise, it will help the GOP going into the midterm elections, since the Executive Branch can no longer govern without using the newly modified filibuster rule.

It’s not as if Obama wanted to wait until the Senate went on recess to find folks to govern or help him execute and implement laws.

Most notable was undoing the appointment of the new consumer-protection czar established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  This constitutes a slap or rebuke to now Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.  When Obama did not nominate her and she left to win the contested Massachusetts Senate seat, she left thinking her right-hand person or enforcer — Robert Cordray — would be appointed. And he was, for a while, at least along with a couple of key appointments at the National Labor Relations Board.

Good thing the Senate is no longer allowing itself to hold the Executive Branch hostage, having overturned the long-standing filibuster rule that I’m sure Senator Warren enjoyed voting for.

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

A decision this bad is good.  Why, you ask?

First, it turns the Roberts Court into the enemy.  Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., with his 88 pages of huffing and puffing outside the Democrats’ cosmopolitan-coalition cottage, is a wolf — or, I guess, the leader of a pack of wolves (along with the four others).

A decision this bad is good because every social-justice movement needs not just a Rosa Parks (the perfect person in danger, who suffers blows for the opposition) but also a Sheriff Bull Connor with his bullhorn, who galvanized the opposition as he misjudged and sprayed children in the civil-rights movement, finding infamy in the international news.

A decision this bad is good because it galvanizes and mobilizes the opposition — and by the opposition I mean the power, or unity, of the Democratic party necessary to reestablish the separation of powers as Congress and the president unite to reverse this decision.

The president and Congress now have the capacity to stand up and overturn McCutcheon v. FEC. Remember, the first piece of legislation that President Obama signed was none other than the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This came after the Roberts Court tried to pull a fast one in the transition from Bush to Barack and undermine the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Power is power, whether it’s a wolf or Bull Connor or hiding a paycheck so that discrimination cannot be discerned. And this power play has the capacity to backfire. A power play like this that is barely legitimate, being decided 5–4, will hopefully create significant separation-of-powers blowback.

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

The Right Wing is snipping all the menus for my web site again.  Last time Rush labeled me “Professorette” in an attempt to humiliate me after the Weasel snippers (Right Wingers hackers who in 2013 admitted it, at least).  Obviously I know how to get to them.

What Cowards!  Instead of countering, they just try to silence.

The main book they are the most bothered by is :

2013 Out of Many, One: Obama and the 3rd American Political Tradition (University of Chicago Press)

Here is a sheet of key concepts with blog URLs that illustrates this book after publication.  This is why Rush Limbaugh so rudely calls me a “professorette.”  Clearly the right can’t stand up to a woman in academia (aren’t we supposed to be in Ivy towers?)

Blogs explaining key concepts from Out of Many, One: Obama & the Third American Political Tradition

• Obama’s Belief in Universal Anti-Universalism
• Obama’s Ideology of Inclusivity
• Obama’s Ideology of Freedom & Equality Based on Difference, not Sameness
• Obama’s Notion of Earned Egalitarianism
• Spinozan Ethics & Euclidean Logic (Necessary & Sufficient)
• Obama’s Cosmopolitanism
• Hell on Earth(Obama’s Religious Worldview)
• All-Encompassing Social Sphere(Private and Public Spheres Melded or Collided)
• Collaborative Governance
• Cosmopolitan Rainbow Coalition
• GOP Attempts to Separate RainbowObamacrats21st-Century Racism and Racial Consciousness— Racial Scripting
• Intersectional Identities— New Civil Rights (LGBTers; Persons with Disabilities,Victims of Violence)
• Intersectional Identities— Old Civil-Rights Identities (African-Americans; Latinos-Latinas; Women & Girls)
• Intersectionality of Ideas & Identities
• Neotribalism Defined
• Neotribalism (War on Women)(Role of Religion)
• Neotribalism& Transuniversal Threats
• Passports for Transexuals
• White Man’s Burden
• Battling the Roberts Courtabout Civil Rights & Religion
• Diversityand Inclusivity in the Federal Judiciary
• New Faith-Based Initiative (Including Atheists)
• Calls for Citizen Action or Deliberative Participatory Democracy
• Creates Domestic Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
• Obama’s modus operandi as a Leader
• Federalism for Public Purpose(Horizontal and Diagonal Federalism)
• Shared-Burden Foreign Policy
• Idealist/RealistBinary be Gone
• Bold Foreign Policy
• Civil Liberty Erosions (PRISM& NSA, Drones)
• Implementing ObamacareFail to Pass Legislation?  Use Executive Action
• Second-term Executive Branch Failures
• Implementing Dodd-Frank’sSuccesses
• Separation of Powers politics, such as Immigration
• Running Republicans & Immigration
• Democrats in Obstruction

These blogs discuss the key concepts behind Obama’s contribution to the third American political tradition during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns and his first presidential term.  The blogs showcase these ideas in Obama’s second term, since my book covers only the first Obama administration.

The blogs explain Obama’s worldview:

— Hell on Earth belief — Obama accepts and understands evil, but embraces the perfectibility of humankind

— Obama’s Spinozan ethics — his reliance on Baruch Spinoza, including the Euclidean logic of necessary & sufficient

The blogs illustrate Obama’s ideology, which is universally anti-universal and embraces earned egalitarianism and equality on the basis of difference, not sameness, and my interpretation of his rainbow cosmopolitanism.  Obama also rejects the classical liberal split between the private and the public spheres, opting for an all-encompassing social sphere.

The blogs cover specific issues that underscore Obama’s perspective about identity politics or civil rights, including the GOP’s 2012 War on Women; neotribalism; what role religion plays, given Obama’s worldview about Hell on Earth; and his battle against the Roberts Court, particularly regarding race, gender, and religion.

The blogs explain how Obama has manifested the third American political tradition in his governance style in both domestic and foreign policy.  This includes Obama’s modus operandi and his penchant for executive action, given party polarization and congressional obstruction and delay.  In particular, the blogs about the implementation of Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also highlight how Obama used what Out of Many, One calls “federalism for public purpose.”  This structure created a type of diagonal and horizontal federalist scaffold or structure that still could instill citizen action in what I refer to as domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Finally, the blogs illustrates how Obama governed, cementing a rainbow cosmopolitan cultural coalition despite the best efforts of Obama haters (including birthers and Tea Partiers), and the role that racial scripting played in Obama’s leadership.  (Racial scripting is a sophisticated 21st-century form of racism and racial consciousness, often stripped of overt or malicious racial intent.)

But I can imagine they are also unnerved by —

Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge Press)

Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace   (University of Chicago Press) + Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention

Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of the New Deal Labor Policy, 1886-1935(University of North Carolina Press)

(edited) Telling Stories Out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination (ILR Division, Cornell University Press)

(edited & ½ book’s essays) Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act (Oxford University Press, USA)  + Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention

(revised 7:13 Mar 23, 2014)

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Ruth O’Brien

by Professor Ruth O’Brien & Frederic D. O’Brien (a.k.a. Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

Could you get more moralistic? Don’t forget the Golden Empire, or The Embarrassment of Riches, as Simon Schama called it in a culturally sensitive and astute book that captured the character and personality of the nation. Could you get more patronizing (the key word here is patron)?

Well the Dutch could. Those supposedly blond, blue-eyed stoop-sweepers have started anew magazine, DeMoslimkrant, which might be roughly translated as the demos or citizens’ newspaper. The name of this magazine indicates that it is doing no less than re-educating the Muslims about their own society, culture, and religion.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I got informally educated quite extensively in Holland, so much so that a few people in the nuclear family speak fluent Dutch. Still, although the Nederlanders are moralistic, they are also bound and determined to make things “right.” And by right, I mean the world (think globe-turning) for sure. Not only does it pay to look at Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches, but also to take a second look at Spinoza’s excommunication, and where he was imprisoned by the Dutch.

But is a magazine-reading education ever so wrong? Well, of course that depends. As long as they are culturally sensitive, and even more importantly, as long as they are using education for real reasons (i.e. authentic), it should be all right.

Authentic education is to say not imposing the white, blond-blue-eyed’s own agenda, as patronizing behavior does. With this in mind, take a look at their columnists. Looks a lot more diverse than most American newspapers, no?

Authentic means that they cannot impose their agenda the way they did back in that good old golden 17th century. This means no state- or religious-sponsored merchants picking up spices, snatching tea, or stealing silk off any roads, mind you. Then, education — particularly public education, like The City University of New York — can be read up to 1 million strong.

Public education, particularly of the print kind, can only be a good thing. A thing, in other words, that could promote peace, tranquility through gender-free dignity (e.g. notneotribalism), and tolerance on our global colliding-social-spheres scale.

Prof. Ruth O’Brien

************************************************

Since neither one of us has seen a copy of this publication, I’m not sure how much scope for disagreement there is, but if De Moslimkrant is meant to help Muslims adapt to Dutch culture, it will take some doing. Just as Islam has many strict rules governing daily life, so do the secular but moralistic Dutch, and the social pressure to conform can be just as great.

A friend who has spent time in the Netherlands provides numerous examples of the nation’s libertine-busybody ethos, in which Christianity is mocked or forgotten, drugs are openly available, and gays are universally accepted, yet neighbors go to elaborate lengths to spy on each other. Strict yet unwritten social codes abound: In a koffiehuis, you eat a single piece of chocolate, no more, with each cup; entire neighborhoods take their summer vacation at the same time; the nation sits down to dinner at 6:30 pm sharp, and if you knock on someone’s door at that hour, you are assumed to be a moocher.

This makes for something of a potential culture clash with praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, and making the hajj to Mecca. As in any nation where two or more distinct cultures coexist, something’s got to give. The two may occupy separate sectors, as in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, etc.; or they can mingle freely, with some merging of cultures and concomitant loss of cultural cohesion. The latter doesn’t seem very Dutch, but neither does the alternative of French-style banlieues.

But if the Dutch think they have a problem with people taking their religion too seriously, the solution is simple: Just adopt it as an established church, and — as in England or Norway — pretty soon everyone will ignore it.

Editor Frederic O’Brien

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Sharks, on sea, land, and air, kill more Americans than robots do.  And to be sure, there are a lot of summer blockbusters about sharks and other water monsters. Still, robot killings have long taken center stage, and now John Markoff and Claire Cain Miller feature OSHA’s stats that robots have killed about one person a year since the mid-1980s. Again, this is fewer than are killed by sharks. Yet, with all the press about personal robots emerging (e.g. The Economist,Science), they are becoming more of an option for the über-rich to employ.

Robots who are supposed to work in cages no longer need to be restricted to auto factories. I guess we can look forward to Robocop variations next summer; perhaps it will say, “Coming soon to you: Robo maid kills non-robo master or mistress.” It could be set on Wall Street or in the Bloomberg building on the Upper East Side.

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

As higher education becomes the next healthcare, administrators and faculty alike scramble to explain why live-body teaching counts, and that tenure is important for teachers from K-12 or universities.  That said, this does not mean anyone in academia should ignore the student-loan debt crisis that everyone should face.

The debate over Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) versus brick-and-mortar teaching is a false one.  To my mind, the real battle is between live bodies and teachable (not smart) robots and machines who offer faculty templates for template-teaching.  Software is only as smart as those who write the programs.  Or at least until programming is written by machines, my brother-in-law assures me.

Robots and machines make rather poor mentors.  Not only do inanimate machines lack emotion or the passion required for teaching, faking it doesn’t work.  Even if programmers make computer voices more appealing (e.g. Scarlett’s voice in Her), they can’t inspire scholarship, or give students the ability to learn critically.

Our robots, computers, and template teachers may provide us with a lot of choices or information about education, but as happens commonly in the Internet era, it turns out that we are all burdened by too much, not too little, knowledge and information.  Indeed, there is a new job-consulting category since I last looked that upper-middle-class parents have begun using (college consultants, who help parent and students with the application process).  We all need our gatekeepers as we weed through the real and the misleading data on college and university websites.

Another alarming piece of news is that not only are undergrads coming out with five-figure debt, but the Chronicle reported in January that some graduate students have racked up six-figure debt — $190,000 and $250,000, as graduate students combine student loans with credit-card debt.

How did this happen? I dunno.  Many universities like mine have been offering five-year packages to help defray costs.  But clearly this is not enough.  And what I do know is that it’s time we all paid attention to this debt crisis.  And that rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water (getting rid of Ph.D. education in humanities or humanistic social sciences, which is fundamental for democracy as Martha Nussbaum so aptly shows), these fields should start tackling the problem.  While this is a heavy lift, surely prospective students and parents along with graduate students, and faculty could help administrators out, and work as a critical collective.  After all, both student and faculty governance operates, or should operate, on the basis of consensus, not conflict and sabotage.

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

When I was 16 or 17 years old, long before then-Rep. Chuck Grassley from Iowa called my mom, I got a bullet-hole tour of our nation’s Capitol.  Now, this bullet-hole tour guide was conducted by a young man my age.  And he was a guy, I happened to think, who knew a lot and was cool.  Very cool.

I listened to him explain the holes in the marble walls, as we traipsed down the spiral staircase.  He showed me each one.  Some were bigger than others, and, as he explained, musket balls made different holes than bullets.  At the bottom was where they had temporarily laid Abraham Lincoln’s coffin.

These are from 1812, he said.  But not those, he pointed.  Boy, did we look at them all.

Now, I had no idea if this was “the truth.”  I had no idea if his explanation had any veracity, let alone integrity or authenticity at all.  I assumed it did.  I don’t think I’d want to disturb my emotional teen memory with any new interpretations of truths about bullets or musket balls.

Remember, these were the dangerous days of the late 1970s.  I didn’t really know what was what.

I’d left home in a hurry, barely after relishing my interview with the former governor of California (then running against President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination).  Forgetting all about the latter’s falls (which I remember thinking had little to do with policy or ideology), all I noticed with his opponent the former governor was the tint of his hair.  That, and the vast number of empty chairs.  But then, again, this was years before he became POTUS #40.

You see, all I remembered was that he was not “cool.”

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Posted on March 16, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

I never thought Manhattan was a bad place for women.  Sure, you need a lot of energy, but that goes for both genders.  And sure, it goes without saying that you have to be well educated if you are a woman trying to fit into a highly competitive, male-dominated world.  But hey, in 2007 New York City women between 21 and 30  years old made 117 cents of every man’s dollar when the rest of the country’s women languished at 77 cents. That’s not bad.  Yet after the NYPD’s events over the past week, I may need to rethink this.

Manhattan is no longer the place to be — as a victim of domestic violence, that is, since the NYPD had its worst week in a long time.  Not only did one of their own get convicted of trying to put women on pits (as opposed to pedestals), but now the department is trying toarrest victims of domestic violence when they report the purported perps, who happen to be 92 percent men.

The NYPD couldn’t have localized this war on women at a worse time, given President Barack Obama’s big push for the Democrats to finally claim women, including all the moms who have eluded the Democrats for years — that is, soccer moms, tiger moms, and the oddest of all, mama grizzlies.  So the next question is, does Mayor Bloomberg (who is trying to make it onto the national anti-violence stage by giving away loads of gun-control funds) know?  Does ambitious Governor Andrew Cuomo, also trying to make it onto the national political scene, know?

If you are an anti-war-on-women politician, or (put positively) a pro-mom politician, you don’t let the moms or their children become victims of violence, or victims of being put in the criminal-justice system to stop them from complaining about domestic violence.  As it is, women have the greatest chance of being murdered when they try to leave, most often after reporting domestic violence.  So if Bloomberg is so anti-gun but not pro-mom, how can he think he’s shaping (with all his money) an anti-violence campaign when he’s encouraging moms to stop reporting violence?

And if Cuomo wants to join the big boys (and by that I mean Obama) down in D.C., or run in 2016 like Bloomberg, he should support gun control and support funding for women, or at the very least get behind Obama and the Obamacrats’ efforts to get the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) passed in Congress, and then through a conservative, and often anti-woman, Supreme Court.

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Posted on September 17, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

The Loss of the CUNY Distinguished Professor Marshall Berman: He would have been pleased by his funeral, with every speaker saying the same things and giving us the same image of the same man from very different facets (a spectrum, or a rainbow).  He would have enjoyed the smirking and grandstanding (for the political/journalism equivalent, see This Town.  And of course, he would have been comforting all his graduate students for his own loss, as well as his family and friends.  We will all be reading, re-reading, and teaching Marshall’s books.

I will miss Marshall.  I might not have married Fred, or have read certain books to my sons, had it not been for his influence on my life.  Marshall’s authenticity, his spirit, his truth (relative, of course, not universal), meant that he was not only an intellectual giant, an idiosyncratic voice, but also a mentor for so many on so many different levels that it would take a lifetime and a Ph.D. in urbanism to excavate the many lives he affected.  Play it Forward.

Tragedy of the Navy Yard:  Even more tragic, but the same goes for grandstanding andagenda pushing of any kind from any political perspective or gendered lens, though in the case of giving more to our vets, there is no contest.  War is war.  Two hundred days in combat, as the rather dreadful film about J. D. Salinger said, is the definition of insanity.  Twelve victims — is devastating and too much.  All involved should be given privacy.  We, as a family, turn any picture-making or repetitive media off as our sign of respect.

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Posted on March 26, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Women are being raped while protesting.  Women are sexually harassed, groped, in the very square from which the reformers sought change.  “A girl contributes 100 percent to her own raping,” says Adel Abdel Maqsoud Afifi, a police general, lawmaker, and ultraconservative Islamist, “when she puts herself in these conditions.”

What are these conditions?  Is what Afifi says unique?  Is it unique to Egypt?  No.

The tragedy is what these conditions are.  The tragedy is the relationship underlying these conditions.  Rape is violence.  Rape is violence against women, against girls, and against humanity.  So, naturally, when women protest, they put themselves in danger of being harmed.  The price women pay for fighting oppression, for trying to help other women, girls, and men who refuse to see that they are not superior, is rape.

It is wrong, however, to say this is special to Egypt.  It is simply neotribalism or patriarchal rule, inclusive of Islam and Christianity and Judaism.  It is inclusive of the Middle Eastand the West.  No continent is free.

After all, it took until 2008 to get the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution declaring that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes.”   It took until the 1970s for lawmakers to recognize that women in the United States — the victims — did not have to put their own sexual history up for examination on the stand.  And still, just two weeks ago, the NYPD issued a directive to arrest victims of domestic violence if they report it and have a warrant for another, completely unrelated, crime.

When women protest patriarchy, they pay.  They pay when it takes the form of sexual harassment in the workplace, where the harassment increases the minute the victim reports it and retaliation then becomes the game, so much so employers can no longer deny knowing it.  And they pay when it’s in a revolution, where women are victims of shocking violence and repression, where raping whole peoples becomes a new form of genocide.

Does this stop women and girls from protesting?  No. It’s a cost that women bear.  The only hope of changing “these conditions” is a) not to suggest this is an East/West conflict with the West claiming cultural supremacy, and b) not to allow those denigrating the opposition to offer false allegations and false promises, pointing the finger exclusively at them for the rape and repression of women and girls.

Absolutely superb reading on this complex, multidimensional problem, I might add, is Anne Norton’s new book On the Muslim Question.  Norton offers a different Public Square from the violence in Tahrir Square, yet she does not take the side of the West or the male aggressors.  Norton already sees the beginnings of our new world, a world where women seeking emancipation and enlightenment can effectively combat violence.  Yet this is not a world that falsely claims that Western cultural superiority or any “clash of civilizations” is leading us there.

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Posted on March 27, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

As Julie Bosman asks, what is Bill (de Blasio) going to do about our missing bookstores with all the Manhattan closings? His predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, already got rid of so many books through NYPL closings and consolidations.  But that was no surprise, given that he was (and still is) an online-information mogul, after all.  So now what?

How about a looky-loo library for writers and tourists?  Not a bookstore.  Not a lending library.  No check-outs of any kind.  Just a looky-loo store or an archive with documents one could handle.  So we (tourist readers/Manhattan readers/writers) could visit, almost like a museum, but without putting those pesky books on a pedestal.

A physical location in which we could read that first sentence that turned a potential manuscript into a book.  A looky-loo store for our children, including the all those impressionable teens and young folks who don’t know what a physical book* looks like.

Historian and biographer Robert Caro’s got it right.  He’s working “in a field that’s disappearing right under [his] feet” as we’re getting close to double-digit numbers of bookstores, with just 106 left thankfully standing (and affording) their ground in Manhattan.

* The first time I heard the phrase “physical book,” it was hard not to think “how awkward.”  What an odd turn of phrase being advanced by a university-press director from one of the oldest presses.

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Posted on April 14, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

When The Guardian starts mining one of its competitors — for information, truth, or irony — I start clicking sources.  I let my fingers do the walking, only to discover the truth of their statement that there are over four times as many spin doctors as there are journalists in the United States.  To be precise there are 4.6 employees in PR for every single journalist.

Yet the Wall Street Journal blogged about the same Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) press release on April 1st (seriously, BLS?).  Then wait another two weeks, and today, The Guardian blogs about it. In so doing, they literally proved their point that journalists being are four-cornered by PR.

Other than restating the obvious (and the serious) — that politicians and corporations cannot be trusted to set our information agendas (just go watch the movie Drone, released tomorrow) — The Guardian was too cheeky for me, an earnest American, to have missed the obvious irony of how they underscored their own point by having journalism recycle not just a press release, but an old one.

P.S. This said, congratulations to The Guardian on the Pulitzer Public Service Award announced post, this posting!

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Posted on February 11, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

The Los Angeles Times described Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement as “extraordinary,” since the last pope to leave office alive did it in 1415.  Hearing about Benedict has got me thinking about choice, and the lack of choice that women, girls, and boys have under neotribalism, and how all religions must stop keeping the weak and vulnerable in the dark.

I was a baby born into violence. Though not a child of rape or war, I had the misfortune of being thrown through a glass window before I could walk, talk, or crawl (though I think I could sit up; not sure about this, since everyone who was there is gone). So I have a difficult time with trust, and it took me 40 years to figure out why; the reasons have been difficult to unravel.

Neotribalism is a term I redefined in my own way to emphasize that it makes no difference which tribe and which male leader — we should equate all male tribes, from mullahs to Mormon bishops, like Mitt Romney once was, that deny the rights of women and children and stand behind religious values that use human dignity as a way of promoting religious intolerance and denying women and girls rights over their bodies. When comparing various types of fundamentalism, most people focus on the differences among them. To be sure, honor killings are not the same as denying women their reproductive rights. And while I acknowledge those differences, I redefine the term neotribalism as a means of understanding the assumptions they share — patriarchal rule on top of reasserting the primacy of the patriarch in the private sphere (the family).

Denying women the right to choose, and especially endorsing an outlier position by saying that raped girls and women should not have the right to choose, shares these two fundamental assumptions with the honor killings that fundamentalists in the Middle East argue are Islamic: They both assert patriarchal rule, and they both assert that a man’s rights to exploit women within the private sphere should be protected by the public sphere (as opposed to the Violence Against Women Act, now approaching a vote in the Senate, which protects women against such violence in public and private).  I do not support Benedict’s or the Catholic Church’s position on women in the priesthood, abortion, or birth control, and their refusal to let childless couples and childless people use fertility treatment.

All this got me thinking about the difference a pope makes.  Whereas Pope John Paul II attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 2004, giving great support to the UN and many developing nations, extending a hand to those in great need, Benedict’s emphasis on human dignity, without featuring women’s and girls’ rights or the idea that a nation-state can pass laws that are not consonant with Christian values, has only solidified polarization between the secularists and those who believe.  Benedict incites Christian values to end the “dictatorship of relativism.”  What is more, he has strained relations with Islam and Judaism, often being accused of insensitivity.  And as I indicated in an earlier blog I’d like to flog,“father doesn’t know best.”

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Posted on February 13, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

The debate over Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) versus brick-and-mortar teaching is a false one.  To my mind, the real battle is between live bodies and teachable (not smart) robots and machines who offer faculty templates for template-teaching.  Software is only as smart as those who write the programs.  Or at least until programming is written by machines, my brother-in-law assures me.

Robots and machines make rather poor mentors.  Not only do inanimate machines lack emotion or the passion required for teaching, faking it doesn’t work.  Even if programmers make computer voices more appealing (e.g. Scarlett’s voice in Her), they can’t inspire scholarship, or give students the ability to learn critically.

Our robots, computers, and template teachers may provide us with a lot of choices or information about education, but as happens commonly in the Internet era, it turns out that we are all burdened by too much, not too little, knowledge and information.  Indeed, there is a new job-consulting category since I last looked that upper-middle-class parents have begun using (college consultants, who help parent and students with the application process).  We all need our gatekeepers as we weed through the real and the misleading data on college and university websites.

Now The Economist tells us there will be celebrity professors instructing the world with their MOOCs.  I’m not so sure.  Look what happened to the most powerful professor?  (Obama that is.)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

What a Catch-22! On one hand, some small news sources are complaining about how much the City University of New York (CUNY) is paying for our promising new Chancellor’s rent on an apartment (not a house). Now, while I don’t have the data, I’ve been in teaching at CUNY long enough to know that I don’t need to bother looking up the “comps.” I have every confidence that our Chancellor’s digs are nowhere near comparable to those of the head of any public or private institution near New York City or in the tristate area.

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal runs a not-so-subtle warning or preemptive attack trying to slander this highly accomplished administrator’s ability to raise external funding for CUNY before he’s put a week worth of work under his higher-education belt.

CUNY is now the largest urban public university, bar none. Given the decimation of public education beginning in the late 1970s, as the federal government began winding down the postwar build-up of higher education that had led to more social mobility than the United States has ever seen before or since, it seems as if we’re long overdue for rebuilding our educational infrastructure. (I keep hoping Hillary Clinton will make higher education a big priority in her domestic agenda.)

Clearly, CUNY is trying to catch up as fast as we can to the rest of the big publics and the well-endowed private colleges and universities. And clearly we are woefully behind having depended on the public sector more than private donations. We needed a Chancellor who can help our almost half-million-strong student body reduce the educational-inequality gaps that plague the nation, and especially this nationally and internationally renowned city, as the income-inequality gaps grow ever larger.  And this does mean stepping up to the hybrid public-private model of funding public higher education practiced by the rest of the nation.

A couple of things a Wall Street Journal reader should keep in perspective: First, the big publics (e.g. UC-Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Virginia) have not been truly public for over a generation. The University of Michigan, for instance, is 95 percent not funded by Michigan state dollars. (And accordingly this so-called public university’s out-of-state tuition is the same as any Ivy League university.)

And second, the Ivies, and other prestigious private colleges that dangle legacy as their incentive to the upper middle class, are competing for the same donation dollars. Just read Science magazine’s special segments, including Jeffreys Mervis’ 2013 piece entitled “How Long Can the U.S. Stay on Top?.”  These articles outlines the pros and cons of the higher-education hybrid model that relies on philanthropy and federal, not state, funding.

So why would Wall Street begrudge CUNY a talented leader? Why is this news greeting our promising new Chancellor with so much anti-Midwest, East Coast establishment parochialism? Why shouldn’t the largest urban public university hire an administrator with an impressive public-education philanthropic track record?

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal is speaking strictly for Wall Street.  Perhaps Wall Street is afraid that CUNY might finally start getting its due raising money from private donors who value pure public purpose? What happens when Chancellor Milliken manages to turn over the applecart about the Big Apple’s dismal record of funding higher education?

And what happens when it becomes part of public consciousness how well CUNY has done, and still does so much for its students, with so little?  While former Mayor Mike Bloomberg donated huge amounts of monies that promoted his own private educational legacy, Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking in the right direction, noticing CUNY’s legacy — its contribution to New York City and economic recovery.

Chancellor Milliken’s past performance predicts promising future behavior. CUNY’s board voted for him unanimously with great enthusiasm, since his record spoke so clearly for him. (He exceeded his own $1.2 billion campaign after he left Nebraska, with the total being near $1.8 billion.) Chancellor Milliken left the Nebraska plains to return to America’s greatest city, where he will have undoubtedly even more success. Nebraska’s loss is New York’s gain, so why does Wall Street care so much?

Potential Political Thought (full texts of some of Obama’s speeches and remarks)

Legislator-in-Chief

Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2011)

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)

Obamacare of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)

Bureaucrat-in-Chief

Federal Regs — Federal Regulations (regulations indicating how the federal government plans on implementing a law, such as the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act ADAAA, defining a disability.  The judicial branch interprets federal regulations if any individuals or institutions contest a regulation.)

Directives and Guidance about how the Federal Government implements Civil Rights Laws:

How does the ADAAA define a disability?  The key means the Supreme Court gutted the ADA employment provisions ensuring that persons with disabilities found no relief from this civil rights laws was its limited definition of a disability.  In 2008, Congress and President George Bush overturned the Supreme Court restrictive decisionmaking by passing the ADAAA (See Crippled Justice, the History of Modern Disability in the Workplace). 

It was the Obama’s Justice Department, however, that issued the federal “regs” ensuring the definition of a disability became more expansive.

Executive-in-Chief

White Papers are reports released by the Executive Branch the President leads (Cabinet Departments, such as the Justice Department, the Defense Department, etc.)

White Paper on Patriot Act

White Paper on the Right to Kill

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Classic Obama.  But it’s only beginning to be called classic now that Obama’s first term is almost behind him and we’re heading into the second term.  Obama called the Republicans “to the table” so many times last term that the Democrats belittled him as foolish and, worse, weak.  So what was a president to do?  Executive action, that’s what.

That is precisely what Obama did during his first term, and what he is doing now to curb gun violence, as he comes out as a leader of reform in tackling one of the toughest issues in the United States, given the lobbying strength of the NRA, the Supreme Court’s reinterpretation of the right to bear arms as a constitutionally given individual right, and all those gun lovers not just from red states, but scattered throughout all fifty states.

The only difference now is that Obama is not just relying on executive action, but telling everyone about it.  Headlines like today’s in the New York Times even include the term “executive order.”  It’s as if we’re all in a civics class learning that, yes, it is the president’s obligation to execute the laws, and execution involves implementation.

There is a lot of room between implementation and execution, and Obama plans on using all of it when it comes to curbing gun violence.  The president is “laying out 19 separate actions” that “invok[e] the power of his office.”

Again, in classic Obama fashion, he does not restrict his executive action only to guns.  In addition to the Justice Department, Obama is calling upon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the role mental illness plays.  He also highlights how helpful the medical-records provision in Obamacare will be in assessing this role.  Finally, Obama plans on revisiting international restrictions to reduce gun-running from overseas.

Had Obama invoked this type of presidential action from the very beginning, he might have been pegged a unilateral executive, a president who tries to increase the authority of his office.  Having waited and been belittled, however, he can now simply call himself a leader who must lead when Congress can.

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Riveting.  What a story: cyber-warriors, China, Chinese cyber-warriors, corps of Chinese cyber-warriors — put it all together with the vague but threatening “growing corps” and you have quite the alliteration, which we should still juxtapose to our historical invocation of Yellow Peril, so I say be careful.

After the internationally best-selling trilogyGirl with the Dragon Tattoo, not to mention all the films that emerged in Swedish and English, we all have hackers on the brain now.  Whether by a rogue agent, as with Skyfall, or a rogue nation-state, this is serious stuff.  And it’s serious stuff that I’ve experienced.  But then, if you look closely, most of us have experienced it.

The question is this: Do you know it?  Was it for war or for profit?  Most people have, though they don’t know about it.  (Who knows their balance to the penny? But most of us have had our ATM cards go out on us when the bank freaks that it’s not you — when you use your card to buy a train pass, for instance, in Penn Station, where I for one have commuted for 20 years and only now get cut off?)  Not only did David Sanger’s excellent book Confront and Conceal spell it out on the cyberwar front, but a former Bush administrator had a book that  got me to pay attention, and then there was the Obama administration’s report.  It synced, in other words, with my own consciousness.

This former Bush official said it best with his phrase that I heard on an NPR book show (Leonard Lopate or Terry Gross, I’m sure).  And that is his point that internet activity — malware, hacking, stalking, harassing — is best compared to an STD.

So when you sit down with your morning coffee, I recommend reading this article after ordering your copies of Confront and Conceal. (Don’t read Terry Cook, sorry that’s just one professor’s opinion.)

Then when you’re ready to face the day and you have a WordPress page, download Google Analytics and this will show you exactly how well we can track each other, never mind about corps of cyber-warriors in China.  Start with who is tracking you at home first.

And remember to be a bit generous about our “enemies” abroad.  I myself take a bit of offense at the term cyber warrior. When I had tendinitis (carpal tunnel syndrome), I knew a number of New York Times editors, and our common doctor called them and me “typing athletes.”  I tell my family this whenever I want to hear laughter.  But, seriously I do think we should be careful about what we call such a large non-rogue nation; we should always hope to keep coming to the table.  After all, Nixon did it, so why can’t Obama?  And we can rest assured, he will try.

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Whack, whack, whack.  Hear the sound of Obama’s textbook executive actions paddling all the politicians who are sabotaging his administration (trying to squash him and his administration like a pumpkin).

Now, Obama was unable to use the threat of executive action very effectively, so he’s not practicing the ping-pong paddle justice that my mother wielded more effectively (i.e. the threat, not the use, of this power).

Nonetheless, Obama is using his ping-pong paddle justice as effectively as possible in this stage of his second term.  If he’s not stretching the regs of the EEOC by bringing an international crime against humanity — the global sex trade — into the federal domain, he’s trying to find new regs for the “neutral web” that a federal appeals court just destroyed.

Of course, Obama is surrounded by conflicts over the dilemmas associated with bicameralism, federalism, and separation of powers.  Even his form of federalism is not straightforward; it’s diagonal and horizontal, as I covered in my Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, about his first administration.

Even more significant, of course, is how his administration prepared for it. This was what I admired about parts of his first run, his first administration (the domestic side), and his second run.  That admiration for the administration lasted only until we discovered Edward J. Snowden — and Obama’s refusal to be on the right side of history when it comes to international security.

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

In a bold move, Obama will send not one butthree nominees for federal-court judgeshipsto the Senate.  He is putting forth Patricia A. Millett, a longtime appellate attorney; Cornelia T. L. Pillard, a professor from Georgetown University Law Center; and Robert L. Wilkins, an African-American judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  A frustrated Obama hopes that in proposing three at once, he might break through the Senate obstruction.  But whoObama is nominating is not new:  Obama is returning to his policy of reform through inclusivity and diversity.

Only 29 percent of the federal-court judges Obama appointed in his first two years in office were white (and presumably straight) men. In Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, I explain that Obama privileges diversity and inclusivity in terms of “empathy,” or the language of caregiving.  One could assume, Obama argues, that this type of judge has “struggled” in life. “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.”

Obama’s definition of diversity achieves several goals.  First, it remedies systemic discrimination by the presidents who chose federal-court judges in the past. Second, by the process of including all those groups symbolized by their exclusion in the past, it does the reverse: It creates a new process of symbolizing their inclusion. And finally, it opens up the judicial decision-making process, ensuring that all voices are heard. And more voices—be those of African Americans, Africans, Mexicans, Hispanics, or LGBTers—are valuable, since they have different perspectives. And more voices, in high and low tones, of women who are also African American or Mexican, or gay white men, and even gay African men, should be heard or registered in such a chorus. As one law professor has written, Obama is “the first president to rely exclusively on the theory of substantive representation to justify his diversity policy for the federal courts.”

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

When the bold Left and the crazy Right converge, one should pay attention.  Now Representative Darrell Issa and some Democrats agree the NSA and PRISM should be opened to public scrutiny.  Edward J. Snowden should (and could is my guess) get amnesty.  Why not?  As public trust fades (though not forever), Obama should stop the information bleed not by punishing the information bean-spiller, the whistleblower, but by pulling him in.  Indeed, the Obama administration just released a 308 page report on NSA’s excesses.

Folks should be as concerned about the looming information gap as they are about the income-inequality gap. No one can jump across an income-inequality chasm the size of the United States if we continue segregating higher education according to wealth (MOOCs for the underserved, though thankfully Internet-taught higher education is dangerous in a country that already doesn’t think the poor, the working poor, and the middle class have any entitlement to college).  The real crisis is what happens when the information gap creates another chasm on top of our already widening unequal-education gap and income-inequality gap.  Will the dissemination and acquisition of information get harder and harder the more we all move to encode and encrypt our own information?

I, for one, hope the marriage of Michael Moore and Glenn Beck (both supporting Snowden), compounded now by Issa, indicates that the bold Left and the crazy Right are converging.  Maybe there is hope, if not for a direct income-inequality bridge, then at least for an information bridge so that those who can encrypt (buy privacy for search engines by using Tor, or purchase private email rather trading all your personal information to Facebook, Google, or Apple for free — they give you a service you can now pay for and it’s not expensive.  Try Tor, and bookmark EFF — know your right to privacy, since now private enterprise and the federal government are not going to provide you with it) will not have yet another advantage over the have-nots.

The Obamacare debacle with HealthCare.gov underscores how important information is not just for national security or these privacy concerns but for your own health and your pocketbook.  Tomorrow at noon I’ll be at the 92nd Street Y, explaining how all this is two parts of the same puzzle or paradox of the win-win and lose-lose in Obama’s leadership.

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Presidential leadership involves public prestige or professional reputation, but in the end, both prestige and reputation stem, directly or indirectly, from the pivotal role played by public opinion.  Only the court of public opinion cuts across partisan polarization.  Obama keeps hammering it home that he will use every bit of power he has through executive action to solve problems the public cares about in the face of legislative inaction.  Well, this strategy has worked — it has triggered real legislative action.

On Thursday the Senate introduced gun-control legislation, and today the same body introduced a bipartisan bill for sweeping immigration reform, giving up to 11 million undocumented immigrants the chance to apply for American citizenship.  While this bipartisan immigration team wanted to unroll its sweeping reform before Obama unrolls his tomorrow, the fact that New York’s Senator Charles Schumer is on board says a lot.  The participation of the most conspicuous Democratic member of Congress at Obama’s inauguration makes it doubtful the White House and Congress are too far apart.

What’s becoming clear is that Obama has gained enough power to inspire action from loyal and skilled Democrats such as Schumer and Senator Dianne Feinstein.  Obama’s greatest chance of legislative success is to have them push the Republicans toward action.  What Democrats and Republicans alike realize is that it’s all about 2016.  As Senator McCain blurted, the Republicans “are losing dramatically the Hispanic vote, which we think should be ours.”

Obama’s proposal tomorrow may show that there will be some wrangling over streamlining citizenship and/or less stringent enforcement on the border, but not much.  And if Obama succeeds in passing a serious piece of legislation like immigration reform, not only will he increase the Democrats’ chances of catching this key constituency, but he will be the first president since Ronald Reagan to exhibit such presidential leadership by using public opinion against Congress during his second term.

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

What a clever idea. The president who is taking collective action to a whole different dimension — the “You and I” of our nation, as articulated in his Second Inaugural — announced in his State of the Union Address that he plans to help revive the economy by funding a study of the innermost aspect of the You and I: the I — in other words, the brain.  Costing billions, this study of the human brain would do “what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.”

Investing in “best ideas,” Obama explained, has benefits beyond science:  “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar.”

Historians and students of politics date reform epochs with labels that start with “New”:  Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom, FDR’s New Deal, JFK’s New Frontier, or Warren Harding’s obscure New Normalcy.  Obama has thrown out a more complicated label — using the brain to study the brain, as one of his “invest in best ideas” projects.  To be sure, Obamacrats, or Team Obama, has not yet coined a two-word slogan that best reflects his first or second administration.

Reflecting the interdependence of the You and I (that government and individuals, and collectivities of individuals, are interconnected, intertwined and interdependent) in this new world that contains not two but what I call three colliding spheres — the public, the private, and the social — Obama has captured best as, I recall, what Alec Baldwin or Meryl Streep said “it’s complicated.”  It’s no longer enough to have a public versus private, or a big government versus small, or a protected identity or not — it’s all mixed up.

Just as everything becomes a Twitter acronym, Obama planted lots of “bombs” for what constitutes the “best ideas” for investment in his SOTU address.  Indeed, as John Markoffreports, there was some question that Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health “inadvertently” confirmed the plan when he wrote in a Twitter message, “Obama mentions the #NIH Brain Activity Map in #SOTU.”

Was this “inadvertent?” If there are bread crumbs about where Obama’s best ideas are leading the nation, and crumbs that are all tips as to how he will engage in the fiscal funding fight next month, then perhaps these inadvertent confirmations are a good thing for boosting the economy.

To my mind, or what dances around in my brain, double negatives create a nice space forthree-ways: ambiguity, disambiguity, and disambiguation.  And no matter what Obama intended to drop, it’s great for “you and I” if Obama throws funding at initiatives that could do another double whammy of helping us keeping growing the economy while getting a chance to better understand ourselves, since the “brain remains one of the greatest scientific mysteries” while continuing to lead us out of this slumped economy.

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

It would have never occurred to me to compare Congress to cockroaches.  What a pair.  Not quite a fair comparison if one believes in apples-to-apples, or at least apples-to-pears — that comparisons should stay within the same category of, say, well-rounded fruit.  But then again, withcockroaches getting a higher rating than Congress, who cares?  Wild comparison or no, Congress should rethink its appalling lack of leadership.

Congressional politics as we know it — the politics of obstruction, sabotage, and delay — is not working.   Congressional leaders should take a good look at their institution and ask Do they really want to give up?  Can executive action do it all?  And no, I’m not talking about the debt ceiling.

After the Newtown elementary-school shooting, it was Obama who stepped into the lurch, calling on Vice President Joe Biden to convene a task force.  And what does this task force recommend be done first?  What can the executive branch do?  It can enforce existing laws.  With only .0005 percent of those who “lie and try” to get guns being taken to court, the Justice Department can increase prosecutions.  Since the data shows 28 percent of these liars commit violent crimes, there is nothing wrong with this.

But is it enough?  It’s great Obama is not compared to cockroaches.  It’s terrific he steps into the leadership void and starts protecting American schoolchildren.  But public opinion is clearly pleading with Congress to step up and start doing its job.  There is much more to be done to stop gun violence in the U.S.

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Money talks.  By a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled — who cares about corruption.  American citizens now have to live with the third brick thrown at good governance, or the attempts to control corruption.

Supporting corporate crony capitalism, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. extended the logic underlying Citizens United.  This 2010 decision enraged citizens in the United States — who united to fight back and fought the fair fight for good governance, and just lost again.  The Roberts Court extended the idea that money is equal to free speech.  One cannot forget, however, that Citizens United was only an extension of the fundamental principles behind Buckley v. Valeo – or money talks.

Buckley v. Valeo led to an anti-corruption campaign-finance law.  The solution the legislative and executive branch proffered: Use public monies to finance campaigns for the public.  Campaigns and elections, after all, are all about the public good.  So, how can representational democracy be democratic if it disses the demos?  Then, if the candidate decides to accept public funding, s/he accepts the spending limitations.  But the Supreme Court back then, after Watergate, ruled they don’t care — money talks.

In his dissent, Stephen G. Breyer, lamented that what this new Roberts Court ruling does is open the “floodgates.”  And to be sure, this is true.

It does not just open the floodgates to  Koch-like brothers, who have been in the shadows running super PACs  and independent campaigns, but it means they’ll be running the money behind political parties and candidates too.

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Today Philip Klinker, a colleague of mine in politics and history, released a revealingsurvey on party polarization and President Obama.  The survey suggests that Republicans are “inclined to accept the worst about President Obama, regardless of facts, and believe that he is not a legitimate president, making it extremely difficult for him to overcome partisan polarization.”

Initially, I thought “sure.”  Then, to put a point on it, I said to myself, “to be sure.”  But then, mulling this over, I wondered:  What’s with the word “overcome” in this analysis anyway?  Of course Obama cannot overcome or conquer partisan polarization.  Polarization is the consequence of both parties and both popularly elected branches.  Polarization stems from a collision from both sides.

To be sure, this collision is less one of ideas than it is a test of Obama’s leadership.  And to be sure, this collision is not even about the usual presidential character issues.  It’s about place of birth.  This collision is about the absurd, demonstrable fact of Obama’s birth.  Given his birth in Hawaii, which many Republicans believe falsely was not part of the United States, Obama does not have a right to rule.  He did not have the right to be sworn in by the socially conservative Republican, and now Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts.

What I discovered in my book Out of Many, One: Obama & the 3rd American Political Tradition is that polarization both helped and hindered how the opposition, the GOP, characterized Obama.

Here is the Leadership Flip-Flop:

1. A win-win 2008 candidate who, once in office, emboldened great opposition with the rise of the Tea Party.  Then:
2. A lose-lose Democratic party leader in the 2010 midterm elections, Obama made virtually no inroads against a unified Republican opposition while also failing to form alliances with congressional liberal Democrats and progressive voters. His primary constituency—the youth—went back to college.  Then:

He again became a win-win candidate in 2012 by successfully marginalizing the Tea Party and turning the War on Women into a War on the Republicans, creating a quiet rainbow coalition.  Exit polls gave Obama a three-to-one edge among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as LGBTers, providing the “ultimate advantage” that pushed him over the edge.  LGBTers, along with African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Jews, may each, as a group, be individually small, a single color in the rainbow with a specific cultural hue, but together they made up one-third of the electorate.

He is already being characterized as a lose-lose Democratic leader in the 2014 midterm elections.  But now it’s time for that quiet rainbow coalition to start making a ruckus, and name Obama as their leader.

To let the GOP continue to get away with questioning his leadership means that social conservatives will divide and conquer the Democratic party, when it’s the GOP that has an identity crisis:  Are they the party of SCAMs?  Are they the party of Straight, Conservative Anglo-American Men or not?

The SCAMS have instigated a lot of wars.  And the war on women, the war on LGBTers, the war on same sex-marriage, the war on same-sex families, and the war on immigrants could cost them the 2014 election.

The rainbow coalition needs to stop being quiet and needs to help Obama help bold progressives who share his ideas, like Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton.  Now is not the time to unite behind either candidate, but rather to unite behind the ideas of the rainbow coalition—which can be put simply as Out of Many, One.  Obama supports a collaborative approach that recognizes the interdependence and interconnectedness of all Americans—except the SCAMs, who are trying their best to crush the rainbow or scatter the many by getting public opinion focused on a false set of facts—questioning, of all things, the legitimacy of Obama’s being in the White House

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Richard W. Stevenson’s right-corner lead in today’s New York Times lists it all: governors from red states signing on with Obamacare (it’s no longer a bad word, btw); red Republican senators poised to concede some points on Obama’s vision about immigration reform; and a democratic populace in both red and blue states who can no longer be counted on for their homophobia.  And as blogged before, I like the color purple when it comes to political parties, particularly when it indicates both sides collide.

Put positively, the populace has grown liberal, or expansive in its tastes, but it took Obama, who himself did a public turnaround on LGBTers, to lead the nation as it began expressing its own turnaround on culturally conservative issues.  For those studying the seismic, not subtle, cracks in American pop culture knew that Will and Grace did not just play well in the blue states; it played well in all states.  Indeed, years ago the Times did a piece on how the red states loved those tawdry television shows filled with sexual innuendo and violence in a you-can’t-have-it illicit type of extra-special bad dessert for former Confederate state viewers along with those in the Mountain states.

So what’s next for the turn-’em-around-and-lead-’em-in-the-right-direction (which happens to be left) president?  Well, a Supreme Court battle is brewing, if last week’sshameful display of questions about the Voting Rights Act from Justice Antonin Scalia is any indication.

And it looks like the Court is busy as it prepares for its June rulings on immigration and same-sex marriage. Yet, most important, it looks like the social-conservative Catholics on the Court will clash with the liberals and progressives on the Court in not one, but several cases about DOMA alone.

While Catholics dominate the Court, Sonia Sotomayor’s Catholicism, offset by her progressive stance on poverty, shows that once again, Obama was thinking ahead.  Knowing how divided the Court would be, Obama did not want a full-out religious war that could also be divided along partisan grounds.  He’s much too clever a cosmopolitan rainbow leader for that.

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Freedom of speech, education, and voting are the three issues my husband I have no dispute about in our radically divided household.  Contrary to what our friends think, we don’t have great political pillow talk.  Nor do we have heated political discussions (or brawls) at the dinner table with our two sons.  But we do have hand-waving discussions and contests, replete with time-outs over logic, root ideas, assumptions, and definitions.  Etymologies, epistemologies, and encyclopedias are fair game.  We each have our favorite edition or translation.  We dispute dictionaries or definitions, in other words.  (Fred and I prefer the OED, my sons prefer anything with a .com after.)

And indeed, if we had written a prenup, we would have included three things: 1. No writing about each other in public (published words, or leaked emails that wind up in other people’s publications); 2. no taking advantage of legacy in higher education, since my conservative college doesn’t have such a policy, and his liberal college does (grr) (he went to an all-male school and so did I, though only in name, as the M was replaced by McKenna before I graduated, while his college simply usurped control over the nearby women’s college — in New York, that is); and 3. no curbing the other person’s political participation.

Then we all take comfort in remembering what I heard recently — as to why members of Congress address each other as “honor”able.  We do live in a democracy, where everyone gets to participate; the question is HOW.  So the biggest argument around our dinner table is what on earth could be wrong with laws (unenforceable ones) that require you to vote; and why felons who have served their time should be denied the right to vote.

Before I interrupt myself again, the point is that neither the GOP nor big-D Democrats (liberals, progressives, Obamacrats, or members of the new cosmopolitan rainbow coalition [CRC]) can argue about the inherent value of political participation.  We can only whine or complain that the other side is corrupt in their implementation of this participation (denial of due process).

So, now that Obama got reelected and has hit a 60 percent approval rating, he gets to decide (okay, his administration does) who is and who is not “corrupt” by virtue of his ability to determine – yes, you got it – process around his national and international dinner table.  The executive branch, not the legislative branch, determines or dictates administrative process.

At our own dinner table, I struggle to maintain Ruth’s rules; Fred recites his definitions (including long historical etymologies); our youngest son, Theo, has accused me of practicing Theoism (discrimination against him, and he only smirks when you point out the egotism underlying this term); and my older son, Max, is the philosophical police person (his mom apparently doesn’t follow her own published definitions).  I just smile at this one too, because this is how I got him to read my books; and he can challenge me, but only in publication, since there is no prenup for kids.  Survivors of the Buckleys and Susan Sontag recently learned this principle.

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

This week Obama delivered two of his strongest messages so far about his second term. Both messages — a new strategy in breaking the Senate stranglehold blocking hisfederal judicial appointments, and his dramatic reversal on drone warfare — indicate just one thing: Barack Obama, like all second-term presidents before him, has hit his tipping point.  It’s over.  With his second set of 100 days starting out no less frustrating than his first, Obama, like all second-termers in modern history, has tipped from legislating the future to protecting his past — Obama’s historic legacy, stacked up against those of the other 42 presidents.

Now, this could be one last gasp for help, a grand stand, if you will, given the nature of Obama’s historic legislative legacy. Obama’s legacy is all about protecting legislation that passed in his first term — from Obamacare to consumer protection from the banks and Wall Street — and that conservatives in this country have stopped from being fully implemented.

Unlike most post–World War II presidents, Obama could never rely on Congress, nor the conservative federal judiciary, in either domestic or foreign policy.  As a result, he has pushed executive action to the limit in both.  While Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and Richard Nixon both pushed executive action to the limit as commander-in-chief in Vietnam, Obama has had to push hard on the domestic front as well.  But unlike Johnson and Nixon — where the blowback knocked them into the column with failed presidencies — we can still ask can Obama blow back the blowback?

The GOP stranglehold strategy could end up strangling social conservatives and social conservatism in the midterm elections.  Obama is pressing full-court on judicial appointments that will shore up his legislative legacy and the rights of all those in hiscosmopolitan rainbow coalition.  Meanwhile, reversing his administration’s reliance on drones, after pulling out of our last war, could be the win-win strategy LBJ never found.  Looks like it will be a long, hot summer and we will have to see which direction the blowback blows.

As a Democratic contender, outside the government ready to run more than three years before 2016, Hillary Clinton plays a different role than Barack Obama, a second term sitting president with his most productive governing years behind him.

Clinton can initiate ideas and pledge support as the top Democratic contender.  After all she ran a historic campaign for the Senate in 2000, raising an unprecedented war chest of over 50 million dollars.

Meanwhile, Obama has the office (but not necessarily the institutional clout in Congress or with the Supreme Court) to act as the leader of the Executive Branch, including the federal bureaucracy, and the nominator for all federal appointments including the Supreme Court. He retains most of his foreign policy powers as the Head of State, and Commander in Chief.

Where Obama’s power is most diminished after his second 100 days is he no longer wields much clout as the chief agenda setter in Congress, and will have a difficult time convincing Congress to pass any significant legislation.

And while he retains his unofficial position as head of the Democratic party, this power will wane since the presidential contenders start to run well over two years in advance of an election.  See ReadyforHillary.  Few, if any contenders for the presidency have been this organized so far in advance of the presidential election.

What remains within Obama’s reach power is the unilateral power of the Executive Office of the Presidency (EOP).  The president’s unilateral or prerogative powers include, executive actions such as executive orders and proclamations, recess appointments, and pardons, among others.

What makes all of this interesting from an identity politics point of view is we are witnessing gender versus race issues about leadership — Round II.   (Obama won round I with the 2008 nomination, appointing Clinton as Secretary of State.  Hillary Clinton made great use of being secretary of state, leaving office in early spring 2013.)

Presidents who first served as Secretary of State before entering national office were: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Munroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan.

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

“Houston buzzed Friday with tens of thousands of gun owners revved up for the National Rifle Association’s first convention since the Newtown school massacre and a pro-firearm victory on Capitol Hill.

 “But as the event got underway, it sounded more like a mustering of forces in the ‘culture war.’”

I don’t usually read the New York Daily News(though my husband sometimes does), but last month’s story on the National Rifle Association opened my eyes.  This newspaper understands Obama’s Catch-22 in the current political climate of polarization.  The Daily News article captures the real culture war in the United States — a war between SLAMs and SCAMs that is endangering Obama’s cultural-cosmopolitan issues, such as same-sex marriage, healthcare, and transgendered passports.

SLAMs are Straight Liberal Anglo-American Men, who hide their resentment and their anti-“other” or anti-cosmopolitan agenda behind seemingly unrelated issues, like Keynesian economic reform or anti-affirmative action.  Meanwhile, SCAMs are Straight Conservative Anglo-American Men, who intimidate and harass as gun-toting Bible thumpers.

The danger is that when the SLAMs and the SCAMs become strange bedfellows, they can unite in their opposition to propelling a woman, an LGBTer, or a person of color into a position as a rules maker — part of what I call the political 1 percenters practicing divide-and-conquer.

SLAMS are more insidious than SCAMS, since they hide their intent, or disguise their intention, while practicing the power politics of marginalization.  Even the elite, like Harvard historian Niall Ferguson — who just today apologized for blaming LGBTers for the economic meltdown of 2008, as the New Civil Rights Movement reports — seems out of sync.  He is an embarrassment to Harvard and an embarrassment to all but the academic country-club set.

Since they don’t hide or disguise their motives, SCAMS are much easier to fight or mobilize groups in opposition to them.  SCAMS are easy to identify.  Bold progressives, persons of color, LGBTers, and person with many identities fear SCAMS.  Their intentions, which include chasing women back into the bedroom and the kitchen with God’s word or deadly weapons, are clear.  (This is not to say that many women don’t support them too, of course.)

SLAMS, however, have no Bible.  The highly educated in the academy thump a different book: the former Harvard political philosopher John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.  Though Rawls has been dead since 2002, his Theory of Justice remains a perennial best seller in the academic world and recently passed the 300,000 mark in sales.  And now that there is a musical at Harvard about Rawls, who knows how popular this Anglo-American political philospher will become.

Rawls’ Theory of Justice, which garners upwards of 400,000 hits on Google and another 55,000 on Google Scholar, has, like Robert Dahl’s pluralism before it, been interwoven into the mainstream and translated for popular consumption in conservative and mainstream magazines, from the right’s National Review to bipartisan The New Republic.

And what weapons do SLAMS wield?  Not so much the gun-toting type, they are better described as Robert’s Rules rationalizing.

Robert’s Rules of Order constitutes the definitive guide to running supposedly fair, orderly, and smooth meetings and assemblies.  Created in the 1870s by Brig. Gen. Henry Martyn Robert, an Army engineer, they protect the SLAMs in the elite, though not so much Ferguson, who, as a SCAM, risks being routinely outed (and then possibly benefiting from the controversy by selling more books).

Why dwell upon this sectarian split, this pincer movement in the war on women, converging from different directions?  Why call out the SLAMS, who support women at times and then drop them at other times?  Because not understanding the dynamic between SCAMS and SLAMS in war on women imperils Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, or any other female Democratic nominee.  And it could divide and conquer the Democrats in 2016.

Guns & Religion

I don’t get it.* Why would an urban African-American president who as an adult has identified with urban issues support unions or organized labor, given its history of sexism, racism, and nativism in addition to being pro-seniority and anti-anti-poverty, a category or classification that correlates with age (children) and gender? Of course, Obama has “angry supporters” on the Left public opinion orFirebaggers (juxtaposed to Teabaggers or Tea Partiers) and in Congress.

Who did not anticipate this after the knock-down, drag-out Democratic primary between Obama and Hillary Clinton? Remember how Obama was belittled in April of 2008, when it went viral that behind closed doors with donors in San Francisco, the Democratic contender characterized Americans who live in rural areas as “bitter” and said that they “cling to guns and religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”?

I grew up in a gun-clinging demographic (the gun-toting church population is quite high, I know), and my experience shows that Obama was right.  Nonetheless, my budgetary point today is, who revived the term “entitlement” and juxtaposed it to liberals and progressives anyway? Wasn’t it the Clinton camp? All those “friends” (FOBs and FOHs) adopted the clever strategy, no doubt, when “liberal” became a dirty word. And what worked for Obama will work for Hillary Clinton or any woman in 2016, I hope.

But rather than this being a left/right or conservative/progressive or entitlement/no-handout issue, the question is: Who benefits from Social Security and Medicare the most, anyway? Social Security and Medicare benefit the white middle and upper classes, particularly women. There is, in other words, a spatial superiority correlated with but not caused by suburbanism. Put differently, there is a strong correlation between space and death (life expectancy for a black man in Detroit is 62 years, versus 74 for a white man in Bakersfield, California, and 83 for a white woman in San Francisco).

It’s the spatial middle class (suburban) versus the spatial rich/poor divide (urban). If we start visualizing our socioeconomic classes in geometric terms, stacking, at least for me, is simplified. Put differently, income inequality and social justice revolves around issues being raced, gendered, sexed, and classed.

And to put this in perspective, a little history of progressivism and paternalism or maternalism is always helpful, now that we’re around the centennial of the progressive movement. In the early 1920s, supposedly, a female reformer described the new urban areas by saying, “in the jungles of civilization the evolution is always downward — from man to beast, to reptile, and to that most noisome of living creatures, the human worm.”

So, as we’re reaching the end of the end — the liberal/conservative divide — of course the Democrats have more to lose than the conservatives in a debate about budgets and our so-called American “entitlements.”

Conservatives may lack a constituency, but the so-called “progress”-ive Democrats stand to lose entitlements that benefit those who live the longest. Correlation may not be causation, but if I’m going to bet on my lifespan, why do I really care?

As a Caribbean friend who lives in a tiny city in a demographically different suburb in New Jersey said, every year she lives beyond 50 is a gift. She doesn’t worry about the future, but then, looking at the demographics of Plainfield versus Metuchen, why should she? Why should she have retirement or worry about benefits when white men and women live up to 10 years longer? She is happy she’s alive post-50, after experiencing so much death from diabetes, asthma, and other ailments of those enclosed in poor areas — most of her friends, especially men, did not survive.

Raising a family and being trapped in the suburbs, I look at it differently. I tell my sons that as part of the peak of the pyramid of privilege, they should expect to have their privileges stripped, or at least their children’s privileges stripped, and when that happens, I hope they will be gracious about it.

*re-posted due to vandalism and categorized as Ruth O’Brien’s greatest blog hits since I warranted presumably right wing hacking.

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Remember when George H. W. Bush vomited in front of 135 leaders at the Japanese prime minister’s home, all filmed on TV?  Well that was pretty bad, but he was ill, so at least this was explicable or comprehensible, even if it was embarrassing (or yucky).

And, throw-up or not, clearly Barack Obama’s foreign-policy table manners are much worse.

With the plot thickening as all the details have started rushing in (George W. started spying on world leaders, not surprisingly, in 2002), what’s an American president to do?   Obama didn’t tell the whole truth, and Angela and François are rightfully peeved.  This is not going to “blow away” or blow over, as Obama hopes.

It’s time for Obama to pick up the phone again, and this time offer to hang out in Paris or Berlin (how bad can that be, after all?) and suggest that the French-German EU initiative against his own spying be turned into a template for a UN resolution.

How better to defuse a conflict than to go to that table to which you’re always calling your enemies?  Between them, Merkel and Hollande said they’re looking “forward” at least three times.  So they are ready to put this behind them, as long as Obama is willing to lose a little face and do some very public face-saving makeup.  I’d recommend some serious public sitting-at-the-table time.

Heck, I’d go even further, since you are so long due at the table, and work on a UN initiative about freeing whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden.  Don’t come up with your own policy — make it a UN policy to undermine the “Democrats are weak when it comes for foreign policy” narrative, so you can help your former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and make the Democrats a stronger team.

Given the Republican civil war, this means you can even make the War on Women global.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  Then watching those Republicans run for political cover in their failed attempts to run for federal office (link Virginia failed race ox Y) would be all the more enjoyable, no?  Now that Obama and the congressional Democrats won the government shutdown, let’s turn them into the running political soap opera of 2014 that they deserve to be.

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

I traveled to the Netherlands, Italy, France, England, and back again to the Netherlands in 1987 and 1988 with a Middle East scholar from a very moralistic tiny country (hint: few nihilists, though many bikes, and clogs).

As a result, I received a nearly postgraduate education in the modern-day history of the Middle East, compounding my undergrad education in the Balkans (exploring anti-communism, existentialism, worker self-management and the collapse of anti-anti-communism).

When I started, I thought I had a good grounding in moralism unsettled by inauthenticity, though then we just called it hypocrisy.  I mean, coming from what would become Tea Partyland (after riding Disney teacups) would, I assumed, give me a good ear for this, especially after an adolescent stint in D.C. with the now defunct Congressional Pages (who were not teens from families who had legacies, but rather dynasties).

In my nearly postgraduate travels, I learned why Iranians preferred to be called Persians.  I agreed the American Southwest pronunciation of I-ran was grating.  I was “informed”  what faction of what Persians ran off to Paris, and informed which ones went to Little Persia in California.  Having never gotten “schooled” in the distinction between A.D. and B.C., I found all this fascinating.  It also meant I didn’t need to have the irony of They Might Be Giants’ song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” explained.

I also got lectured by all these exotic European and Middle Eastern expats about the “western” biases of the Greek and Roman empires — a lecture that didn’t involve Dead White Men, which was different thinking.  I had to read or engage in long discussions about colonialism before I had a good grasp of postmodernism, let alone post-colonialism.  (How could these scholars apply Max Weber’s western notion of rationality and development to the Middle East?)

And having traveled extensively through the Balkans at the end of the end of anti-communism, I enjoyed seeing the end of the end of empires.  My peers taught me lessons in real time with people and persons who had on-the-ground experience that was not overburdened by the parochialism and moralism of American graduate and postgraduate studies.

Yet it was exhilarating only until it got to be real and scary.  What I learned by the 1990s was the dangers associated with the end of empires and the perils associated with rhetorical and political flipping.

People aren’t pancakes. It’s dangerous to flip religion with a side of Middle Eastern Marxism with a dash of women’s rights to be warriors.  It’s scary to flip secular rights with patriarchal rights, adding a dash of capitalism, under a strong social welfare state.

Flipping anything three times is dangerous.  Perhaps not along rhetorical grounds, but certainly along political grounds.  And the greatest dangers are not associated with the results — the consequences — but rather with the unpredictable nature of flipping.

In a word, predictions don’t work.  Extrapolations rarely make sense in hindsight.  Indeed, they often backfire, blowback, or better yet, ricochet.

Does this mean rationality, or (worse) pseudo-rationality, dogma or ideology should prevail?  No, of course not.

What it means is we have to take the grey line — the cautious line — the let’s-wait-and-see line, which ultimately should prevail.

This is why, no matter how much I think Obama is self-defeating in destroying his ownlegacy with NSA, he does get one thing right — and that’s our, or any nation’s, inability to predict or anticipate all the flips, other than our own.  We must hold our own and not give in to fear (an emotion), but this has to be balanced by remembering that we can’t afford too much caution or delay.  Although everybody demands simple solutions, and naturally everyone thinks they rational or reasonable, the most important thing to remember in this case is: It’s complicated.

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

While Attorney General (AG)  Eric Holder delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month program, he also released the 46 names of indefinite Guantanano detainees.  And while his remarks are easy to find, this list is not so easy to find on the DOJ site.

The Obama administration is ushering us into a Bi-Bi Party Polarization age, replete with progressive news on the domestic front and transparency news on the foreign front.  Transparency is a bipartisan issue, accounting for the second bi in the new era of Bi-Bi Party Polarization.

*Bold highlights are mine.
~ Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Thank you, Marc [Salans], for that warm and very moving introduction – and for your leadership as President of DOJ Pride.  I’d also like to thank Rhea Walker, of the Office of Justice Programs, for sharing her talents with us this morning, and Richard Toscano – and his colleagues from the Justice Management Division’s Equal Employment Opportunity Staff – for all they’ve done, working with DOJ Pride, to bring us together for this important observance.  It’s a privilege to be included – once again – in this annual celebration.  And it’s a pleasure to join so many friends, colleagues, supporters, and strong allies in commemorating LGBT Pride Month.

I’d like to begin today’s program by extending a special welcome to our distinguished guest speakers:  U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and award-winning recording artist Melissa Etheridge.  It’s an honor to have you with us.  I’d like to congratulate each of the award recipients whose contributions are being recognized by DOJ Pride today, and thank them for their courage – and their leadership – in helping to address some of the most persistent challenges facing the LGBT community.

Especially this morning – as we reflect upon the theme for today’s event, “Celebrating a Year of Firsts,” and await the Supreme Court’s decisions later this month, on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 cases – it’s fitting that we pause to highlight the achievements of a few of the key leaders who have made possible so many of our recent steps forward.  And it’s imperative that we continue to honor the core principles – of inclusion, opportunity, and equal justice under law – that must always define our nation’s justice system, and must continue to drive our pursuit of a more perfect Union.

Thanks to leaders in – and far beyond – this room, as Marc just said, our nation has made great strides in overcoming the obstacles and biases that too often affect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.  And nowhere is this clearer than in the work of the Civil Rights Division.

Under the landmark Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act – which President Obama signed into law in 2009 – we’ve strengthened our ability to hold accountable those who commit acts of violence that are motivated by someone’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability – and to achieve justice on behalf of all who are victimized simply because of who they are, or who they love.  Over the last two fiscal years alone, we’ve convicted the most defendants on hate crimes charges in more than a decade.  Beyond this work – as part of an Administration-wide commitment to stopping harassment, bullying, and abusive behavior – we have partnered with a variety of agencies, including the Department of Education, to forge new alliances between educators, school administrators, and anti-bullying advocates.  We’re drawing on the knowledge of experts as well as law enforcement professionals in seeking to promote healthy educational environments.  And we’re leading by example in this regard, by working to create an open and welcoming environment right here at the Department.

Through the internal Diversity Management Initiative I launched in 2010, the Department is working to recruit, hire, develop, retain, and support a workforce that reflects the rich diversity of the nation we’re privileged to serve.  We’re expanding programs for promoting fairness, equality, and opportunity for every member of the DOJ family, which today includes an increasing number of openly gay and lesbian U.S. Attorneys, senior Department leaders, U.S. Marshals, and career employees.

As many of you know, two years ago, I approved and expanded the Department’s Equal Employment Opportunity Policy to include – for the first time – explicit protections against gender identity-based discrimination.  And this morning, I’m pleased to report that – earlier this year – I approved the establishment of a formal LGBT “Special Emphasis Program” that will help us take these efforts to a new level – by helping to provide the opportunities, and instill the respect, that every public servant needs to develop, to grow, and to thrive – both personally and professionally.

There’s no question that these new actions and policies constitute promising steps in the right direction.  But – like all of you – I also recognize that our nation’s journey is far from over.  And, despite all that we’ve achieved in recent years, the road ahead – toward equality, opportunity, and justice for every American, regardless of identity or orientation – still stretches beyond the horizon.

Although we can be encouraged by the work that’s underway, and by developments like the bipartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act – which includes protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals – the fact remains that, across the country, far too many LGBT Americans suffer discrimination each and every day.  That’s why the Department will keep working to promote opportunity and access for every individual.  It’s why this will continue to be a priority for this Department as long as I have the privilege to serve as Attorney General.  It’s why we will continue to advocate for essential legislative changes and reforms, like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to extend workplace protections to all Americans.  And it’s why we’ll keep relying on the passion, the expertise, and the steadfast commitment of talented professionals like all of you – and leaders like our awardees and special guests – to keep building on the momentum we’ve established, and fighting to ensure that the successes we’ve seen are just the beginning.

There are, as we all know, two important decisions the Supreme Court must render in the coming days.  Through our capable Solicitor General, and backed by the President, we have made our positions clear.  Though we hope that the results of these cases are consistent with the core values that serve as the foundation of our great nation, the work that lies before us today will not be completed by favorable opinions.

Especially this morning, we must recommit ourselves to the work that – however the cases are decided – will remain undone.  We have traveled far together on the road to true equality and non-discrimination.  But we are not yet at the end of our journey.  There are still miles to go, children to be treasured, people to be protected, and rights to be ensured.  Important, life-changing work remains.

I can think of no one more qualified to discuss the importance of this work – and the impact of our ongoing efforts – than the dedicated public servant who, last November, made history by becoming the first openly lesbian candidate ever elected to the United States Senate, and the first female Senator to represent the State of Wisconsin – Senator Tammy Baldwin.

Senator, it’s an honor to have you with us, and a sincere pleasure to introduce you this morning.  Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Senator Baldwin.

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

In the New York Times, Charlie Savage calls attention to the problem with Obama’s so-called reform of the surveillance state.  He captures it between a couple of innocuous dashes: “— if approved by Congress —.”  Now we need the ellipsis, since (hello) this ain’t going to happen.

So now the president is sabotaging thesaboteurs in grand style – their style.  He’s pulling the turnaround.  Of course Obama’s being “reasonable.”  Of course Obama’s happy to partner legislatively with Congress for privacy reform.  Obama gets to practice being Moses (or is it Joshua?) and lead Congress across a bridge (or is it off a cliff?). Obama gets to divert attention to the real bad guys, along with the previous president, George W. Bush. This is sweet, sweet schadenfreude, part of Obama’s dinner-party modus operandi.

But wait, that’s not exactly true.  Who did Snowden go after, after all?

A whistleblower didn’t sound off in the deep, dark days of the Bush administration, during the GOP’s fruitless hunt for Osama while escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, the most effective whistleblower in generations waited until he saw the clear light of “hope.”  That ray — but it was the wrong kind of ray, embodied by PRISM.  Okay.  Edward Snowden sought hope; he just didn’t understand it was false hope.

Obama is being foolish in not offering sanctuary to all whistleblowers.  He’s the one who tucked the highly successful qui tam whistleblower provisions in his signature legislation — Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.  So why can’t Obama wake up to some of the alarms he himself devised and set?

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Resolution?  Resolving civil-liberties issues?  How could such atepid response to the NSA scandal not fulfill the old adage: When politicians want to deflect/detract/pretend to solve a problem, they create a non-solution.  One durable method is to appoint a commission and have it issue a report.  (See the Warren Report about JFK’s assassination, or the Kerner Commission about the rioting in Watts.)  This is American Politics 101.

But here’s something that is not American Politics 101 but rather comes from the economics department: The idea that small businesses in Europe are marketing anti-Americanism.  What an idea!  Capitalize on the American empire.  Capitalize on or monetize the hypocrisy of the U.S., all the while undermining our economic dominance. An example is Norway’s Runbox email service, which does not use U.S. servers.

Technology companies that shun the U.S. are having a heyday, to the tune of 36 to 180 billion dollars in lost revenue by American companies.  That’s right, $180 billion, though it’s hard to document opportunity losses, when American firms are not being invited to submit bids.

Clearly, Obama tapped the wrong phones.  Arguably the worst ones to tap were Angela’s and Dilma’s (that is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was “Born in the USSR” — or its satellite, East Germany — and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff ).

The Obama administration out-Stasied the Stasi.  It’s time for Obama to Netflix The Lives of Others.

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Are you frustrated?  Are you seeing the glass as half-empty or half-full in the long saga about Obamacare?  Well, the weekend Internet workers (federal contractors, subcontractors, I wonder) got it working, and so we can all take it down a notch.

Thinking about the Internet crush rather than a crash or clogging, why (again) can’t we vote this way?  To be sure, state-by-state or even institution-by-institution, we as Americans could register, and then potentially vote.

Here’s the key:  Just divert some of those federal contractors and subcontractors working for Booz Allen to make sure we all vote, or at least register to vote in real time.  They already sort through our data on a meta level (e.g. Google-like machines and algorithms that conduct keyword searches).  I, for one, could use a nudge down to those polls, or at least a cute pop-up reminder and a smiley face once I vote for my mayor.

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Ruth O’Brien

Qui Tam reminds me of Tae Kwan Do. The name is Latin, not Korean, and it’s pronounced Kwee Tahm, not to be confused with quinoa (kinwah), which is from an indigenous South American language.  So practice your K’s and know your Latin, but what you really need to know is obviously what Edward R. Snowden figured out long ago — Qui Tam is like Tae Kwan Do in that an individual can use it to take a stronger individual (in this case a corporation) down.

Now, everyone got upset about Citizens United.  I got a couple of calls after that case because my first book, Workers’ Paradox, examined the outlandish but truly American idea that corporations are persons, and of course being persons — American persons — they have all the rights of all persons — civil rights and civil liberties (e.g. freedom of speech; freedom to assemble; freedom of expression).

Nowhere are these supposed personhood rights more apparent than in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

But don’t despair; do a “Snowden.”  And by that I mean since the passage of the False Claims Act in 1986 — the depths of the Ronald Reagan administration —  Americans have had the right, the duty, and the payoff (individual incentive) to practice Qui Tam litigation to enforce American laws.

How?  By providing information.  Information, after all, is the key that unlocks any corporation.  Information, after all, is the key that unlocks any democracy. The absence of information, after all, amounts to a blackout.  Where I come from (the West), the absence of information gets resolved — and they’re all called Sunshine Laws.

Oh, and in case President Barack Obama forgot to tell you — he had Congress put a few whistles into his signatory laws — Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection Act.  So start listening and watching.

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

I love the Über-P.C. television showPortlandia, or should I call it hyper-P.C.?

A four-way stop is either a death trap or an opportunity to get to know your neighbors. A student I know who spent time in Oregon suggests the skit at the four-way stop where no one moves because there is a competition of niceness — “no, you go” — is realistic, which means it differs from the ones I experienced growing up, when we drove out to various farms to visit relatives in Weed Patch, Arvin, and Lamont, California. In the country, next to the crops, I grew up being cautioned that there were no such things as courteous exchanges, only collisions.

So, now we have another indication of this — and more of a glimpse at Obama’s notion of participatory democracy or federalism for progressive purpose — in Oregon’s experiments with Obamacare at the “pioneer’s end of the road,” as Kirk Johnson tells us in the Timesover the weekend.

Under former ER doctor Governor John Kitzhaber, Oregon is implementing Obamacare by creating 15 advisory panels.  These panes constitute participatory democracy or a real avenue of reform for participatory democracy at the local level.  This is small “d” progressivism in practice.

Yet, Johnson calls it the federal government’s and Oregon’s almost $2 billion “wager” that Medicaid can be reformed with “hyper-local focus.” But why is it “hyper”?  What the state supposedly has to fear from this effort at frontier participatory democracy is that if “Oregon fails on either front [i.e., improved outcomes and reduced spending growth], the consequences are grave, potentially tens of millions of dollars in penalties a year, bleeding a state budget still wounded from recession.”

This is federalism for progressive purpose. For the sake of alliteration, let’s call it “frontier federalism,” with advisory councils practicing public-health principles such as helping pregnant women stop smoking. And their “invasive” tactics are shocking, such as giving gift cards (presumably not for a wine-and-blue-cheese basket).

Is this new? Don’t think so. I remember a Dutch friend with child (less than 6 months) bitterly complaining about how everyone was too happy about her news, all while her maternalistic state’s munificence beat gift cards by a mile (you got a nanny and a cleaner so you could sleep and your male partner wouldn’t feel too put out). Since she was not even showing, I couldn’t figure this out — how did they know? Then she explained that the minute she was sure, she had registered for a safe delivery at the local agency — and they would practically paint her nursery, if she couldn’t and her partner didn’t feel up to it, given the “life change.”

Now, in the Netherlands, this is independent of income, or at least back in the late 1980s it certainly was. In the United States, it’s entirely dependent on income — all our help to the poor — whether it was with charities and religious institutions before the 20th century, or on the state and federal levels in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Our charity has always been invasive.

Johnson cites concerns about invasiveness: The next wonky worry is what will happen when the federal government pulls the rug out if Oregon’s Obamacare pioneers cannot achieve their “measurable goals within the five-year timeline of the federal agreement.”

All these what-ifs are exhausting, but we know the story.  If nothing happens, the executive branch will do for Oregon what it always does in federalism, let alone frontier federalism for a progressive purpose: exception, exemption, extension. Five-year plans are not exactly Stalinist in the United States — and besides, it will be another president’s headache anyway.

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

The “server overload” message, and even the error (null message), that you receive because of the heavy traffic today on healthcare.gov is deceptive.  Yes, filling in your application today may be tough, at least in the states where I looked: Illinois (home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago); hopefully the future home of mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio (New York City), after his riveting interview this morning; as well as the home of Governor Chris Christie.  Since we have over 700 “boros,”* cities, town halls, and school districts in the Garden State, most residents not only don’t vote (falling behind NYC in turnout), but also don’t know the name of their member of Congress, let alone their mayor, unless they’re eagerly participating in their locality.  I remember a long time ago when our mayor was an O’Brien (boy, that was fun, though we are of NO relation, and he never knocked on my door when I was home).

But getting back to my IT point, do go on site and start “learning.”  Learning about healthcare is a lot easier on these static pages.  You can do your homework about what plan works best, and dismiss whatever fears you have by going to All Topics under the LEARN tab.  I would guesstimate that there might be a bit of “social” reading.

Meanwhile, I have not even checked the District of Columbia to see if their servers are working.  What brilliant timing that the government shutdown, more accurately known as the federal-government employee lockout, gives workers the day off to figure out their own healthcare.  No matter what Salon says, this isn’t “involuntary servitude.”  (Have some respect for global workers who do indeed perform involuntary servitude, given the laws of their sovereign nation-states.)

Who cares if the servers are slow?  It’s good for all of us to be so eager that we have a collective wait, no?

*And yes, that’s how they spell boro in the state with some of the highest incomes and the lowest poverty rate. New Jersey residents pay some of the highest taxes in the U.S. for their “misspelling” privileges.

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

I’ve got lots of hands now.  And by that I mean that on the one hand, my book Out ofMany, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, published by the press of the university that Obama relates to the most — University of Chicago — a great university that also contains a great K-12 lab school*, shows how Barack Obama’s first campaign and his first administration fascinated me.

On the other hand, I’m deeply disappointed by all this NSA stuff (though I remain stubbornly aligned with him on Obamacare).

To keep it simple, let me start with just these foreign-policy hands.  What is Obama thinking?  Why isn’t he backing off?  How is he getting “more defiant,” as one blogger put it?  Especially after Angela Merkel’s phone call.

On the other hand, the order for tapping the 35 leaders was implemented in 2006.  Think about it — 2006, when Barack Obama was one of the tiny few in the Senate from either sides who had opposed our invasion of Iraq.

Now, throwing up my hands, I don’t know what to think.  Whether it’s 2006 or January 20, 2009, Obama clearly knows what is going on, and since Snowden’s disclosures began last June, he has indeed been increasingly defiant.

So for anything NSA-related, I’m going to stick with my backhand and ask: What is going on?  How can any second-term president, from the right or the left, not believe he is destroying his own legacy with this defiance?  Being a former civil-rights professor from the University of Chicago, who supposedly ran a very even-handed class on a hot topic, makes it all the more mystifying that he would want to be the president second only to George W. and Ronald Reagan in terms of having the strongest legacy of undermining our civil liberties.  Drop the defiance . . . and start running, not “inching,” toward that apology to us all.

—————————–

* My father, who was not even a child of faculty at the University, was a student here, so my family taught me to be proud of being associated with University of Chicago, and especially the lab school John Dewey started.

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

It’s a truism to say that half-truths are more difficult to disprove than absolute untruths.  So what about quarter-truths?  And what do quarter-truths do in terms of journalistic agenda setting — or when political journalists from reputable inside-the-Beltway sources like the National Journal try to make these prophecies become truths?  Put differently,this Ahistorical or Acontextual, well-written, declarative blog is one-quarter out of context about Obamacare.

Lame-duck presidents always face divisions (duh — you don’t even need a textbook to know this truism).  So it’s true that Obama is facing it all “early,” but then again, Hillary Clinton is running historically earlier than ever — particularly for someone who held the second-most prestigious position, which gives her great cred to get her former boss’s job.  (Also, Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been the only competition among potential women leaders who could challenge Hillary Clinton, so neither this nor the polls on this are news other than possibly to SLAMs and SCAMs – straight liberal or conservative Anglo-Saxon men.)

Yes, Obamacare is Obama’s “signature.”  Yes, Obamacare constitutes the largest single hope that Obama will leave office with a legacy (positive is implied in the word).  Yes, it’s frustrating that so few have signed up (and incomprehensible how the federal government could have the resources to maintain such impressive surveillance capability, particularly peeking into the offices of most or all of our world-ally leaders, but not the resources to roll out a universal health-care site).

But no, it was never supposed to be his “namesake law.”  And who ever heard of Obama loyalists, at least after his first 100 days in 2009?  (Bob Woodward and others say Obama is arrogant, but he’s not exactly a king or knighted — so is this an oblique “uppity” reference?)

President Obama and the Obama administration just gave up trying to get everyone to call it the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  They switched strategies and decided to “own it.”  Obamacare is Obamacare, since both the right and the left knew that for anything named Obama in the fall of 2009, the name was what endangered its passage.

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

We live in a polarized time. There’s no better evidence of this than the three options for Obamacare (Doors #1, #2, and #3) proposed or hinted at this week.

Door #1.  GOP governors: Extend Medicaid — NOT.  The Obama administration has now created a “data hub” for the ACA so everyone can check out every state rather than misinterpret misleading rhetoric.

Meanwhile, critics do not expect Governor Tom Corbett to extend Medicaid to the poor.  This will not be Pennsylvania’s solution.  (To qualify today, a lone person must earn less than approximately $12,000 per year and have a temporary disability.  A family of three must earn less than about $20,000.  If you are alone and have no children, you can’t qualify anyway.) Double negative and barn doors intended.

By contrast, Obamacare suggests single adults who are not 65 should be covered if they earn less than $16,000 or live in a three-person household making less than $26,000.  Private insurance will have to take care of all those who fit neither criterion.  The federal government pays for 100% of the Medicaid expansion, with Corbett’s state of Pennsylvania kicking in only 10% by 2020.

Door #2. Running Republicans = sabotaging until 2017.

Door #3. Warring on men and all bullies who beat up on women in the oldest profession (though we should never forget “lost boys” or men).

Apparently many in the House have been whining to JB (Speaker of the House John Boehner) — too many bullies saying “boo-hoo.”

The worst, I suppose, is Vitter, who, in his own alliteration, is protesting vindictive treatment against Vitter (boo-hoo).  How dare the Democrats pick on him when it comes to the Democrats’ maintaining their pushback proposal(s), keeping the GOP from sabotaging Obamacare?  Nancy (Pelosi) and Harry’s (Reid) solution: Let’s just deprive all members of Congress — men and women alike; single and married alike; straight, gay and lesbian alike — from preventive care or treatment from any and all issues connected with sexworkers (e.g. the “clap”).  Clever common solution.

I find the “universality” of their proposal appealing.  After all, they did not mention only women who are prostitutes nor boys and men, but left that open.  And after all, they did not say the new 98 (women in the House and Senate) could not get caught visiting prostitutes either.  To describe this exemption as “colorblind” would not be appropriate to persons with disabilities, so I prefer to describe this type of universal exemption as applying to men and women alike.  A good euphemism might be: including those who can’t see rainbows.  But now I have to wonder if I’m being fair to leprechauns?

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Gotta love the Friday New York Times.  I used to read the art section for the reviews.  Now I read the front page, the national news, but not until after I’ve digested the business news, which lets me know what is actually happening.  Ignoring budgets (the Paul and Patty budget show) or Obamacare, I found it pleasing, alarming, and then soothing to see how the Obama administration might, just might, get some areas of American governance back on track.

There’s an end-of-the-year holiday giveaway as Obama gets to wield his executive-action powers as “Executive-in-Chief.”  But don’t be dual-minded: It’s not about regulating the private or the public spheres in the United States.  For good or for bad, it’s all about regulating that all-encompassing social sphere (globalism and globalization — the good and the bad).   In Out of Many, One I went so far as to title a chapter “The Prius President” in honor of Obama’s introduction of the “hybrid” state.

Today’s hybrid produces four crosscutting results:

1st, Dodd-Frank, Wall Street, and consumer reform. It looks like we’ll be getting presents, as Treasury will finally regulate or attempt to regulate the insurance industry (federal-state regulation).  The big present is the increasing territory the Obama administration is taking over, as its hybrid regulates cross-cutting executive domains — crop failures, flooding, and terrorism (read agriculture, anything climate- or weather- or emergency-related, and just about anything international).

2nd, the lumps of coal are for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s possiblefederal regulations on creating “quiet airplanes.” Folks don’t like being forced to listen (or eavesdrop) sitting next to others yapping on cell phones on planes (unlike the federal government).  But what happens as the federal government or other governments start scooping up our data when we’re 10,000 feet above ground and not over our own friendly (or formerly friendly) domestic soil?  And why would Obama’s advisory committee think that phone-data collection should continue?  Where’s public outrage when you need it?

3rd, let’s go underwater to discover the international hybrid.  I don’t have a clue if it’s a good idea for our nukes to be put so many leagues under sea.  Japan’s meltdown makes this awfully compelling, but the idea of international standards could be calming. Spending $226 million to explore safety sounds like money well spent.

4th and finally, the bigger hybrid international news is that in certain areas, the Obama administration does care about global health. The United States’ puritanical perspective about smoking (anti-smoking) has really taken hold since the Clinton administration.  And perhaps the international community’s protests about tobacco being dumped on the shores of the less prosperous nations will lead to the United States signing a treaty stopping Big Tobacco from “intimidating low and middle income countries” into accepting their bad products. Will the U.S. get to sign a global public-health treaty, for once?

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Finally, I can buy milk for our children without have to read the darn label and worry if they will get sick and die in the hospital. One almost did, so I wish I was exaggerating.

After that dreadful experience, I used to stand in the Costco refrigerated room, squinting and weighing my sons’ options.  Bones or immunity?  Should I buy food to build their bones or protect their immune system?  What option was best?  Then I read in some Utne-like reader that the guys in charge of “Got milk?” saved only 10 cents a gallon by giving the cows enough antibodies to fight off their infections, which meant my sons couldn’t combat theirs if either one ended up in the emergency room.

But milk was easy.  Telling my sons to drink their hormone-free milk worked, but denying them chicken fingers and fries was not so easy.  After all, I prided myself on having the only suburban sons under the age of 6 who didn’t know what French fries (e.g. in a Happy Meal) or broadcast television were.  Then my pediatrician told me to stop trying so hard:  Hormone-suffused chicken fingers and hamburgers were everywhere in the United States.  It didn’t matter if we went for fast food, like McDonald’s, or to a swanky place in Manhattan; I wasn’t going to find hormone-free food when it counted the most.

Barack Obama’s executive action in his FDA’s new policy should bring us all some good cheer in this crowded time of holiday spirit, when no one dares to brave the Costco crowds to protect their children from the “epidemic of antibiotic resistance.”

Potential Political Thought (full texts of some of Obama’s speeches and remarks)

Legislator-in-Chief

Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2011)

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)

Obamacare of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)

Bureaucrat-in-Chief

Federal Regs — Federal Regulations (regulations indicating how the federal government plans on implementing a law, such as the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act ADAAA, defining a disability.  The judicial branch interprets federal regulations if any individuals or institutions contest a regulation.)

Directives and Guidance about how the Federal Government implements Civil Rights Laws:

How does the ADAAA define a disability?  The key means the Supreme Court gutted the ADA employment provisions ensuring that persons with disabilities found no relief from this civil rights laws was its limited definition of a disability.  In 2008, Congress and President George Bush overturned the Supreme Court restrictive decisionmaking by passing the ADAAA (See Crippled Justice, the History of Modern Disability in the Workplace). 

It was the Obama’s Justice Department, however, that issued the federal “regs” ensuring the definition of a disability became more expansive.

Executive-in-Chief

White Papers are reports released by the Executive Branch the President leads (Cabinet Departments, such as the Justice Department, the Defense Department, etc.)

White Paper on Patriot Act

White Paper on the Right to Kill

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Obama’s cultural triumph is paying off in spades (can one say spades – is it too black?  Too African?).  As Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times report from sunny, diverse California: “After the crushing presidential loss in November, national Republican leaders offered a blunt message in a postelection report: Unless the party appealed to women, minorities and voters with divergent views, there was little hope of reversing their national losing streak.”

What is a party to do?  They can’t support women.  They can’t support African-Americans.  They can’t support Latino/Latinas.  They can’t support LGBTers.  Oops . . . Who are they going to invite to their party?  Who do they have?  White, Anglo-Saxon men who are presumably heterosexual.  The 1 percenters, as I call them at home.  (I live in an otherwise all-male, blue-eyed, presumably straight home – we are only “culturally Christian,” though.)

But is the dominant group dominant enough to do anything in a national election?  I dunno.  What I do know is that this is exciting, watching the economically dominant majority get toppled by the cultural masses – okay, not masses, but at least the new cosmopolitan rainbow coalition I call Obamacrats, since after all, he invited them all into his party.

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

American health reform is health-insurance reform.  Please.  Unless you were a child at the time, we all know this.  So Robert Pear should not lead in one of our most distinguished papers of record by pointing out that “in many states . . . smaller networks of doctors and hospitals than are typically found in commercial insurance” will be available to consumers under the Affordable Care Act.  These states extend “from California to Illinois to New Hampshire” and include many politically and regionally different states in between (red, blue, and purple).  Again, it’s duh.

What did folks expect?  When President Barack Obama bludgeoned Congress into passing ACA in 2010, it was members from his own party and his closest advisors from his own White House team during his 100 days that betrayed him.  It was this side of the aisle and these advisors, among others (Timothy, Larry, Rahm, and even David A.), who put their President between two legislative stools and then condemned his leadership skills.  (The tell-all books and leaked stories didn’t take very long after all.)

Democrats or members of his own political party — formerly known as progressiveDemocrats –- who now either call themselves bold Democrats or are re-embracing the earlier term “liberal,” ensured that health-care reform was health-insurance reform, undermining President Barack Obama’s original vision.  Obama’s not only a lose-lose leader, but he’s got a lose-lose legacy issue if the GOP and the slightly obstructionist Democrats stay in cahoots and get their way.

The Democrats are not the only ones into name changes, by the way.  As I cover in Out of Many, One, not even Obama’s closest supporters called it the Affordable Care Act or the ACA (deemed in a derogatory way to denigrate (word intended ironically)).

In the “right” circles, “Obamacare” is said with a haha in the middle — “Obama — are you kidding — cares?”  The Obama administration, having lost that battle, decided to own it.  It was a defensive move; they hoped to undermine the underminers.  Obamacare couldn’t be culturally referenced to bash or denigrate his leadership.

But dare I digress.  When I read comprehensive and well-researched articles in either theNew York Times or the Washington Post that neglect our recent history or the legislative history of universal health care, I balk.  Then I get my hands dirty searching for the rest of the story, as well as the cultural context. Where’s the legislative history?  What about the cultural context?

Don’t tell me these two papers of note are going to be “presentist.” Surely these esteemed political journalists who write books using their access are not rewriting history from their own present perspective, tainted by their current (not political but editorial) agenda.  And who cares if the Times, the Post, and the Wall Street Journal often call it differently?

Information is not about competition.  Let’s get the spin, at least, off the front page and put news “analysis” where it belongs — on the editorial page.

Let’s have our papers of record refresh their collective readership’s memory.  We do all have a tendency to forget — that the ACA’s “issues” are not limited to the GOP’s shameless attempts to harm the vulnerable, but they are also because of legislative folks like Nancy (Pelosi), who failed to back Obama when he needed backing, so Kathleen Sebelius had to save the day.

*to be sure

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

The rest of the world moves on, and the news (read political gossip) is all about the website rolling out so that the U.S. can join the rest of the wealthy democratic nation-states in having insurance.  Is this PArochiaL or not (caps intended)?  What happened to governance?  What happened to letting people just sign up, working out the kinks, and possibly having politicians and pundits alike stop worrying about their own careerism or self-interest?  The next national election isn’t until next fall, for heaven’s sake, and even then 65 percent of voters will stay home, so it’s only the 35 percent who care.  And among the 35 percent who care, at most 10 percent are big enough news junkies to know what is political theater and what counts.  We will find out next week how many New Yorkers vote for a new mayor for the first time in 12 years.

Meanwhile, Obama’s firing another leaker — I mean, please.  If he tweeted even half this stuff, he should’ve been gone political eons ago (after the third tweet).  No one who works in any presidential administration should be publicly sabotaging it on the basis of gender, sex, sexuality, or body-part jokes. (I’ve color-coded what follows for more exciting reading.*)

—————-

“Look, [Republican Rep. Darrell] Issa is an ass, but he’s on to something here with the @HillaryClinton whitewash of accountability for Benghazi.”

“I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett [a presidential adviser],” reported The Daily Beast, “concerns me.”

“Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Wiener?” [Huma, for those who don’t remember every sex or sexting scandal, is a valued senior aide in Hillary Clinton’s camp whom Fox News and the Right love to attack as an extension of their constant barrage of HC attacks.  It’s a four-for-one: New York Democrats + Washington woman with a Middle Eastern name + anti FOB (Friends of Bill) + anti FOC (Friends of Hillary, who are now “ready for Hillary.”)]
—————–

Here’s the perfect syllogism: 1) My sons have to sit in high school auditoriums attending anti-bullying sessions to ensure that they and all their hundreds of classmates are not bullies (and, sadly, to give our schools and their administrators — be they public or private — their own protection from lawsuits).  2) A bully is, by definition, someone who picks on those who should be protected, and relies on the most personal, humiliating, cowardly means possible.  3) Michelle Obama’s agenda as a First Lady promotes well-being and healthy practices, particularly among those who deserve more protection (e.g., girls, LGBTers, those practicing pansexuality), so what was Barack doing?  Why did he wait to use his bully pulpit to fire a bully?

A tweet bully who supposedly helped with the negotiations against the Iranian nuke buildup is a “bully.”

Well, bully for Obama in firing a bully.  And no doubt the Right will simply portray this policy-wonk loser as another leaker, or a heroic whistleblower, when he should’ve been a bully without a pulpit years ago — that is, if any of this is true.

Then, again, how can Obama pay attention to all of this when his administration is being blamed for website rollouts?  Talk about trying to pull the Obama presidency into the micromanaging muck . . .

* (Red, Blue and Violet.  The lilac stands for a mixture of blue and red, since HC’s preparations to run can be and are played by both sides of the aisle. So, lilac is dangerous.)

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Ruth O’Brien

Wow! What a difference a day makes.  I’m pleasantly surprised by how well President Obama is succeeding in pushing this behemoth into action — Congress, that is.  Obama shelved his own immigration plan entirely.  To be sure, he learned the hard way during his first administration to have it on a shelf, and keep it close by and handy.  Congress, he insists, must pass its immigration plan “in a timely fashion,”or he’ll take down his own and send it over.

Obama has shown the public that his administration is fully prepared and ready to act if Congress does not go through with the bipartisan immigration plan introduced on Monday.  The point is that his plan will be held in reserve, and that the public knows it, now that he’s got Congress on the run (from the judgment of public opinion, which its members, surprisingly, seem to care about, given election concerns despite high incumbency rates).

I always resisted Paul Light’s thesis about the presidency — that just as a president gains the requisite executive experience of knowing how to get his domestic agenda done, he’s lost all power as a lame duck.  To be sure, Light describes what scholars call the big reform presidencies of FDR, JFK, or LBJ, all of whom had a united government.  He does not describe the unilateral executive that began with Ronald Reagan and that Obama most typifies among later presidents.

As a unilateral executive, Obama lets the public know he will change the laws through executive action, so that at least something will happen.  In terms of immigration reform, Obama has already made a very public show of giving 800,000 undocumented people amnesty.  While 800,000 is 10 million less than 11 million, which is what the bipartisan immigration bill proposes, the public still gets it.

All this means that Obama, a lame duck, is starting to lead the Democratic party, a party he had great difficulty leading during his first term.  Obama’s threat of executive action has such a sting to it that he is successfully lording it over both the Republicans and the Democrats.  Both big parties understand that perhaps only what I call “Obamacrats” will capture the next presidency, since a large portion of the most burgeoning populace — the Latino/Latina vote — is located in the highly and hotly contested West, or the purple states.

President Barack Obama could take a lesson from the career of Jackson, Mississippi’s principled and pragmatic mayor, Chokwe Lumumba. Lumumba left his leadership early and suddenly — and was so beloved that someone wondered if his fatal heart attack could have been caused by foul play (it was not). The irony of Lumumba’s leadership, in a city that is 82 percent African-American, is that, according to the New York Times, “his most significant concrete achievement as mayor was the passage of a regressive tax to fix potholes.”  Surely not.

For a black separatist to be elected to any office, no matter how high the concentration of any one identity group, is an achievement — pothole taxes or not.

Ironies always abound, and while Obama should take inspiration from such a beloved, principled leader who was also a pragmatist, there will be many ironies and possibly a few last laughs as Obamacare unfolds.

Indeed, New York Times reporter Erica Goode covered one of the potentially most complicated and yet inspiring ones to date.  (Second, potentially, only to the fact that persons with mental disabilities — injuries or impairments — must receive parity in treatment under Obamacare.) And that is that the states will start piling on to re-federalize (in effect) one aspect of the prison system — getting inmates, be they in jail or prison, signed up for Obamacare.  This will save the states hundreds of millions of dollars.

What do all the social workers, jail wardens, and anyone working for a municipal, state, or local incarceration facility know? They know full well that “about 70 percent of prison inmates in the state have problems with addiction . . . and 34 percent suffer from mental illness.” Part of Obama’s legacy could be that his administration ended up funding some of the most vulnerable population that politics of any kind — left or right — can ever serve.

There are two ways of looking at the Republican attempt to “cement inequality”into the immigration bill, as one advocate for LGBTers put it.  It is either what I described in yesterday’s blog — the GOP’s attempt to divide and conquer or separate the many colors of the rainbow coalition in an attempt to crush it — or else the social conservatives are “that insecure” about the nuclear family.

As I write in Out of Many, One, “Republican rule did not stop free-market television from creating and producing Murphy Browns, Simpsons, Wills, or Graces. . . . [But] out of government, parts of the Moral Majority — largely white, upper-middle-class and working-class heterosexual Christian men — triggered the ferment that today underlies the Tea Party movement, expressing their dismay, discontent, and disgruntlement with hegemonic cultural change” about the nuclear family.

They are up against a president who supports the New Normal family.  Obama supports equal adoption rights for LGBTers.  He has urged states to treat members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) community and same-sex couples with “full equalityin their family and [under] adoption laws.”  The Obama State Department started issuingpassports to transgendered people.  And Obama supports the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).  This little-known and little-publicized legislation offers same-sex binationalcouples the same “rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.”

How can President Obama ask the world to accept the LGBT community — particularly the transgendered, who can obtain a passport during the transition stage — and then not expect our own nation to respect the full rights of all LGBTers?

The Washington Post today covers Senator Schumer’s hard decision.  But this decision is not hard.  Stand behind the LGBTer community and fight for immigration rights to secure 11 million new Latino voters.  Don’t let the GOP parse any colors out of that rainbow.

Half a century ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 almost went down when Rep. Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a powerful and vehement opponent of civil rights for African-Americans, included an amendment prohibiting sex discrimination in the legislation.  While no one knows if he did this in a cynical move to defeat the Civil Rights Act, one thing we do know is it backfired, because the amendment passed and remains in the law to this day.

So let this discriminatory provision in the immigration bill backfire, please.  If the United States breaks out into a full-fledged cultural cleavage, then the Democrats will finally have found a foothold in the culture wars.  If the Democrats take Obama’s side in featuring this coalition, they can win.  The United States is less homophobic and more accepting of all peoples and all rights, including the rights of the transgendered.  The former “moral majority” is now a minority.  And Democrats like Schumer must stand tall next to Obama.  They can’t afford to back down.

Obama’s victory yesterday, with the Senatechanging its filibuster rules, gives him the best chance yet for a lasting legacy — diversifying the federal bench.  If past behavior predicts future, Obama will now stuff the federal courts full of judges based on diversity, not ideology.

I found in my book Out of Many, One that “only 29 percent of the federal court judges Obama appointed in his first two years in office were white, presumably straight, men.”  A full 71 percent of the judges were “other” – that is, other than SLAMs or SCAMs, who have forever dominated the federal judiciary.

To fill a large majority of the bench with others, the Obama administration reached far outside the halls of the judiciary, talking with minority and women’s groups to see whom they could recommend. They hoped to “negotiate the selection gauntlet,” one law professor relayed, going so far as proposing “that officials and their panels adopt special initiatives to recommend persons of color and women.”

Obama is counting on the new federal judges to be “norm generators.” Women, and people from all races, reflecting all sexualities, will have a chance to create norms.

What is more, if Obama does indeed pass the presidential torch to Hillary Clinton, he can count on her maintaining this diversity on the court.  The Tea Party must be livid — purple, really.  And Rush Limbaugh must be apoplectic.  No doubt absurd “reverse affirmative action” accusations about the federal judiciary will abound.  Let them.

So much for the isolation of the professoriate.  So much for the tired ol’ phrase about academics living in Ivory Towers.   Not one, but two social-science professors from a conservative private liberal-arts college — Randolph-Macon — will be dueling.  A pair of Virginia Philosopher-Kings — what we could call the neo-Virginia Dynasty, or Mute Tribune — coming from two politically divergent disciplines: economics and sociology.

The pair is Tea Party Professor David Brat, an economist with a divinity graduate degree, who is a macro-growth and international trade/finance economist, vs. mainstream moderate Democratic Professor Jack Trammell, a sociologist who specializes in disability in higher education (what luck for Barack and Hillary, who support helping persons with disabilities and increasing funding in higher education).

A pair of Randolph-Macon professors will be vying this November for the unthinkable (that is, if you continue reading textbooks on the 98 percent advantage for incumbents in Congress).  This makes even opposition Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nervous about the unseating of Eric Cantor, her opposition.

To me, the idea of dueling professors — or elite philosopher-kings — is much more exciting news than the idea that the mainstream in Washington or inside the Beltway is emphasizing. This makes a much better historic story than what’s rolling round in the mainstream press — the unprecedented unseating of an incumbent, who is part of the majority party’s establishment, no less (making his odds 1 in 100 years of being displaced).

Will the moralistic preacher/philosopher/economist win, or will the sociologist, who wants to offer a helping hand to all members of society, prevail?

Women have been waiting a long time.  Some women even threw their “hat in the ring”before they won the right to vote nationwide in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment. When I went to Washington as a Congressional page, there were no women in the Senate, and the surest way for a woman to become a member of the House of Representatives was to have her husband die in a plane crash.

Now there are 20 women in the Senate and 78 women in the House of Representatives, as well as 5 women governors.

Since most presidents have used either the Senate or a governor’s mansion as their antechamber, this page is dedicated to the 21 plus 5.  (The 4 Republican and 1 Democratic women governors are Jan Brewer (Ariz.), Nikki Haley (S.C.), Susana Martinez (N.M.), Mary Fallin (Okla.), and Maggie Hassan (N.H.).)

Hillary Clinton’s path to the presidency is similar to that of most women who have hit the pinnacles of their profession — she’s overqualified.  Aside from being First Lady, Hillary Clinton has had not one but two jobs that have been the way station before becoming president — a Senator and a Secretary of State.**

Men who were elected president or chosen as a two-party nominee as well as being Secretary of State and a Senator include: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, William H. Seward, James G. Blaine, William Jennings Bryan, Charles Evans Hughes, and John Kerry.  That’s only one in the century since Hughes, and no presidential winner since JQA, so if Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2016, she will be making history in more ways than one.

While I was torn about not getting to vote for Cory (Booker) in our special Senate election called by Chris (Christie), I am so thrilled to be voting in NYC at last — knowing I don’t have to vote for Eliot, and I don’t have to vote for Anthony.  I can cast a vote for another first with Christine (Quinn), our first openly lesbian mayor, I hope.  And finally, I can rest easy knowing that Hillary too is from my new home state.

Yet it was the former (first female) Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who described her fellow Democrat Anthony Weiner’s behavior best — as  “reprehensible; it’s so disrespectful of women,” reminding us that the war on women is not always waged by one side of partisan divide.  Also people should stop picking on Huma (a former Hillary Clinton aide).

But since Republican and Democratic men seem to have various “boundary” issues, addictions, and sexual tics that they try to describe as “inappropriate” — an explanation few women could believe, since sexual harassment and unreciprocated sexting are more akin to non-consensual groping and rape than sex (i.e. about power and humiliation) — I hope I won’t be taken to task as a neo-Victorian moralistic voter if I let the war on women influence my first NYC election.  Power is power.

3 categories of study are: 

1. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION (more elite based)
2. Framing & Scripting
3. Narratives, Metanarratives
4. PUBLIC OPINION (more mass based)
5. Framing & Scripting
6. Narratives, Metanarratives

III. HYBRIDS, CYBORGS or the LOGIC OF NECESSARY & SUFFICIENT or the VORTEX

My definition of intersectionality of ideas and identities is referencing , Barach Spinoza, Irving Goffman, Clifford Geertz, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Stanley Fish, and Elizabeth Grosz as well as my own applications in Out of Many, One: Obama and the 3rd American Political Tradition and Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care

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Most social movements in the 1980s and 1990s were conservative to reactionary, focused on rescinding rights and reestablishing traditions.  This did not constitute a clash of civilizations, nor can it be explained fully by neoliberalism.

Intersectional ideas that challenge the rise of the reactionary right that became politically dominant in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East,did so not by falling into sweeping neoliberal critiques imbued with first or second Enlightenment principles or a rejection thereof in the postmodern, anti-political debate.

Post-1989 identity groups, such as the disability rights movement, ask controversial questions in a non-polarizing way.  The intent is not to say, “We’re right and they’re wrong,” but to analyze what the questions are and how we might think productively about them.

These questions are not just academic.  They serve  a public purpose.  The longer political thinkers delay in raising uncomfortable questions, the easier it will be for governments, international public and private organizations, and markets to create paths that can no longer be easily diverted by a crisis or a big event.  Then it will be much harder to reverse course or even moderate or temper the cultural trajectory.  If political thinkers are going to influence where the world is going, they need to start now.

One of the fundamental principles of the series is that no one should assume that an absence of intent is tantamount to an absence of accountability or responsibility.  When ideas get separated from their birth parents, it is still important to discover their lineage to protect future generations.

Contemporary American Political Thought, including political communication and public opinion and the intersection between the two, therefore occurs in real time as well as in, over, and across time.  Having the race/gender dichotomy dominate political thought from 2008 to 2016 makes identity issues particularly salient.

Political thought can also be contemporary and contingent.  This is all to say that ideas have resonance and can be viewed as political and cultural currency.  Political Thought is traditionally considered the thought of politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals, as well as ideas floated by domestic and international statesmen and stateswomen (as expressed in speeches and remarks, for instance).  Political thought is also exhibited in political culture and can be viewed through the lens of public opinion and political communication.

Washington Post Blog Column

Only a female columnist could swallow this in a secular state like the United States. Just because Alexandra is a she does not mean she can assume that “God knows best” and that her god has the right to dictate my choices, my sisters’ choices, or the choices of any girls I know who face the question of whether to have a child conceived in the violence of rape.

The one thing this columnist is right about is equating “God knows best” with the facile TV show from the white-male-dominated description of the 1950s. She obviously buys into this despite its romanticization of the past in trying to bury the racism and sexism and other forms of supremacy that were raging in the 50s and began to be stamped out in the 1960s.

Substituting “God knows best” for Father Knows Best is simply code for “I don’t know,” which I guess stems from her self-loathing in her acceptance of patriarchy.

While I understand why the Washington Post would want this to come out of a female columnist’s mouth, I’m rather surprised it gives such voice to what I call a neotribal view. It’s neotribalism, a term I reappropriate and redefine to mean that it makes no difference which tribe and which male leader.
 I equate all male tribes, from mullahs to Mormon bishops, like Romney once was.

When comparing various types of fundamentalism, most people focus on the differences among them. To be sure, honor killings are not the same as denying women their reproductive rights. And while I acknowledge those differences, I redefine the term neotribalism as a means of understanding the assumptions they share — patriarchal rule on top of reasserting the primacy of the patriarch in the private sphere (the family).

Denying women the right to choose, and especially endorsing an outlier position by saying that raped girls and women should not have the right to chose, shares these two fundamental assumptions with the honor killings that fundamentalists in the Middle East argue are Islamic: They both assert patriarchal rule, and they both assert that a man’s rights within the private sphere should be protected by the public sphere.

1. ROBERTS’ COURT EQUALITY CASES on OLD CIVIL RIGHTS
2. These cases involved two statutes from the 1960s — the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Voting Rights Act of 1965

Diversity & Race

Fisher v. University of Texas (sending diversity as affirmative action down to lower level)

Workplace Discrimination, an EEOC expansive definition struck down

Vance v. Ball State University (restricting the Obama administration’s EEOC’s expansive definition of who constitutes a supervisor.  Defining who supervises who in employment is vital for sexual harassment situations .  Unlike anti-discrimination based upon the intent of the person discriminating, sexual harassment is based upon either the creation of ahostile workplace environment and/ a quid pro quo situation.  Actions rather than intent count in sexual harassment situations. This makes management accountable for supervisors they have been informed harass an employee.  Management, in other words, faces responsibility for keeping a harassing supervisor in place.

Voting Rights

Shelby v. Holder (Formula for preclearance declared unconstitutional by 5-4 majority with Chief Justice writing for the majority, rendering key blow to Voting Rights Act of 1965).

1. Federalism:

Immigration & Citizenship

Arizona v.Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (striking down punitive state voting law, requiring proof of citizenship)

1. Sovereignty and States Rights (states rights in family courts and  national sovereignty, involving Native American tribal rights.

Native American Rights

Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

When has sectarian complaining ever benefited identity groups in the United States?  Are the Democrats going to start a sectarian brawl and fracture the rainbow coalition that got Obama reelected?

Divisiveness among minorities rarely works as a strategy.  What will the Asian American lawmakers gain with their conversation with Obama at the White House?  Splitting up into sects with single-digit demographics (or even low double digits) doesn’t get lawmakers very far in a three-branch government with a bicameral Congress, lacking any tools for coalitional or proportional representation in the legislative process.  Playing the blame game doesn’t do any good.

With Hillary as the frontrunner, scaring off many Democratic contenders, is it a good moment to start the sectarian battles between race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality? Isn’t it better to unite?

I understand that most groups in identity politics are frustrated with Obama’s defeat on immigration reform and with the implementation difficulties surrounding Obamacare.  And they have every right to be disappointed in his lack of leadership in the Trayvon Martin case, where George Zimmerman got off without so much as manslaughter.

But it’s only going to get worse as members of Congress return to their home districts for the August recess and the GOP gets ready to launch its tried-and-true 2016 campaign strategy — arguing that Obama’s budget and sequestration “threaten” the financial superiority of resentful white men. Clearly, the GOP has decided on pursuing a variation of Nixon’s “Southern strategy” for 2014 and 2016, with Chris Christie positioned second behind Rand Paul for 2016.  Chris might do well against Hillary, with Paul poised to fall behind as the election draws closer.

For how many centuries have progressive causes in the United States been defeated by the same old “divide and conquer” conservative strategy? Whether it was a craft or guild fighting skilled labor (Knights of Labor versus the AFL), the industrial unions battling international solidarity (CIO versus the Wobblies), or the AFL fighting the CIO (and the CIO finally purging their leadership of progressives), the results are sadly familiar.

Divide-and-conquer is the American conservative classic, like the original Coca-Cola recipe. Coke Zero may make some headway among edgy imbibers, but Coca-Cola Corporation always steps up marketing its classic if Pepsi gets too many drinkers.

“One of the sadder, stupider pieces  . . . about the Navy Yards killings last week was the almost automatic categorization of Aaron Alexis, the shooter, as a ‘troubled veteran’ with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . . . Alexis had never been deployed overseas . . . .”

While this blogger got it right — this is “blatant discrimination” — it’s not the fact that Tom Perez is our newly appointed Labor Secretary that inspired him to revise federal rules so that 7 percent of all employees working for federal contractors and subcontractors must be persons with disabilities.

No, this is consistent with Obama’s collaborative worldview, or his common-good(s) and common-solutions approach to advancing a state and a nation-state that mediates and facilitates change.*  In this case, Obama does it by combating discrimination against persons with disabilities, whether they are persons with long- or short-term mental, physical, or intellectual disabilities under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and going further with the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) of 1974.

With 22 percent of the workforce being federal contractors alone (not including subcontractors), this is no drop in the bucket but an important step that gives persons with disabilities a real shot at employment. After all, who is footing the bill for federal contracts (and subcontracts) anyway?  We are.

There has long been a strong correlation between wars and giving persons with disabilities help in fighting for their dignity and against discrimination.  Be they civil rights, human rights, or economic rights, it all began with the Civil War.

Indeed, in Crippled Justice, I traced the correlation between World War II, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.  Former Surgeon General William Menninger, who conducted research during World War II in several theaters on persons with mental disabilities such as PTSD, was so widely recognized as a hero that Time made him Person of the Year in 1948.  Though he headed back to Kansas to help his brother Karl run the Menninger Clinic, they both helped pass significant legislation for community mental health and persons with disabilities.

We may be a war-weary nation, given the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But the one positive, productive fallout is the executive action that Obama is following through on – which, in its latest incarnation, is fighting to help persons with disabilities gain employment despite tragedies like the Navy Yard.

#

* See Partnering for Impact, which summarizes Obama’s vision, breaking it down into 11 easy steps that can be applied to many different domestic-policy issues:

Here are my excerpts:

“1. No one is to blame for the current condition of the government-nonprofit contracting system . . . [which] has developed over many decades. . . . [There is] no value in focusing on blame because it prevents progress.

“2. Everyone recognizes the need for reform. Governments and nonprofits are hampered by the cumbersome, redundant, and antiquated processes, and all are eager for improvement, effectiveness, and cost savings.

“3. Everyone’s concerns are valid . . . potential conflicts must be identified so solutions can be developed that are mutually beneficial.

“4. Establish clear common goals.

“5. Representational diversity, [meaning] 1st, “governments came to the table in a nonpartisan manner not with just one agency represented, but with several because the problems — and solutions — extend far beyond the expertise of just one governmental agency. 2nd, a common denominator for all the task forces was participation, directly or indirectly, of the state association of nonprofits, which by their nature are both statewide and sector-wide, allowing them access to a broader pool of insights.

“6. Collaboration is a process, not an event. Trust is a necessary component of collaboration. . . . It is not uncommon for participants of any group to initially come with baggage related to their past relationship with another participant that may take time for them to overcome. However, trust can be built by sharing important information.

“7. Although the “storming stage” can feel difficult, embrace it as a sign of progress because the best solutions flow from constructive conflict.

“8. A collaborative effort needs public support from government leaders.

“9.-The successful implementation of any plan includes changes to the organizational culture.

“10. Everyone must be open to doing things differently. Participants must be willing to make adjustments mid-stream because nothing ever goes exactly as planned.

“11. Meaningful change takes time. Decades of evolving problems cannot be solved overnight.”

Same Patriarchy, Different Tribe  

“Where are the women?” asked New York congresswoman Carolyn Maloney when the Republicans convened a subcommittee panel about birth control last spring.  It had not occurred to the GOP that women could know and represent their own interests.  It had not occurred to them that perhaps women should be the ones in control of their own bodies. Apparently Republican congressmen can and should speak on the behalf of their daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. This is why the Republicans have been trying to defend themselves ever since, protesting that they are not against women. Yet clearly they think (and feel) that they are entitled to decide against the basic rights of women while women are out of the room.

When comparing various types of fundamentalism — Christian, Islamic, and Judaic — most people focus on the differences among them. To be sure, honor killings are not the same as denying women their reproductive rights (as these Republicans in Congress hoped to do). Yet while the differences in kind are stark, we need to understand that the War on Women is a universal concept, one that can and should be described as neotribalism.

Using the term “neotribalism” helps us focus on the primary assumption that religious fundamentalisms share: patriarchal rule, carried out in a re-enlarged private sphere. “Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women.”

Getting the public sphere to limit a woman’s autonomy regarding her reproductive capacity, or killing her for sullying the family’s surname, are both examples of neotribalism. There is a “trifecta of sex, death, and religion,” as Mona Eltahawy writes in Foreign Policy (“Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East”). The extended family — the tribe — reestablishes the primacy of the patriarch. After all, the nuclear or extended family is typically governed by one of the three dominant world faiths or religions, all of which have fundamentalist branches that are premised on patriarchy. In the United States, religious organizations, primarily Christian ones such as conservative Catholic dioceses and evangelical churches, in effect declared the War on Women, hoping to push reproductive health back into the private domain.

Now, as the Democrats convene in Charlotte, they are right to call on all women, as well as all men in support of their women, to exercise their right to vote, making sure the Republicans retain little power.

The graphic and well-written New York Times story about Timbuktu in Mali is heart-wrenching.  It’s very disturbing, to be sure.  Let me jump up and down a few more times on top of my sentence so no one accuses me of not having compassion, or in any way not being a feminist with a capital F (for pride and emphasis).

But this piece, like last fall’s front-page piece about Malala Yousufzai’s shooting when the Taliban tried to assassinate her in Swat Valley, Pakistan, is foreign and exotic and pushes all the right buttons about neotribalism (anti-feminist or patriarchal, in a word), so much so that I realize I can’t read just one newspaper — I need to read at least six, in as many time zones, to be sure about the atmosphere this story conveys.  But how can I check all my facts when I don’t have the time to travel to Timbuktu, let alone Kabul, or read five more newspapers before preparing for next week’s Mellon Sawyer Seminar on these types of questions by my esteemed colleagues Joan Wallach Scott and Anne Norton?

As editor of my high-school newspaper decades ago, in the heart of current Tea Party land, I was taught that the right column of the paper’s front page was reserved for breaking news.  If there was no breaking news (as was usually the case at my high school), it was at least supposed to be significant news.  But human interest?  Or, as it would be more accurate to say in this case, anti-human interest, or textbook “othering” of the enemy of our allies?

As a high-school reporter, I was also forbidden to use adjectives.  Now, my journalism advisor went on to teach at Bob Jones University, so he was apparently quite good, but aren’t journalists, like academics, supposed to avoid using subjective terms (“there are no illusions that they have ceased to be a threat,” “the city remains dangerously isolated,” “forbidding scrubland territory”)?

And then the journalist throws in a few alliterations to boot (ambulances at sun-baked squares by sand dunes?).  What is “sun-baked” to you could be rather chilly to me, after all.  And how can you have a square in dunes?  Do they sweep it all the time?  This defies logic.  This reads more like rhetoric than news.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but this piece, like many pieces about the Taliban, is so overwritten, has so much atmosphere, that it gets my suspicions up, and again rest assured, I’m a Feminist.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not contesting what is happening there. I’m politely asking: Could we have a more dispassionate account filled with numbers (e.g. “center of learning for centuries” isn’t a number)?  And it’s clever to quote quotes, but isn’t this a bit too slippery?  Am I really to believe: “They said, ‘We are Muslims. We came here to impose Shariah.’”

The professor in me thinks I’d better do all the fact-checking on this piece myself before I can even gain enough perspective to render a proper judgment.  It’s not about left or right brain, but accessing that “critical” side of my brain, the side we should all call upon more often when reading the news.

Another first — the first female head of the Fed.  Wow!  Now juxtapose this with the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.  Perhaps she could use her position to shed some light — enlighten this potentially powerful social movement that has a lot to offer the city and the nation, and could have more effective global reach.

And, another victory for women and girls (and a defeat for neotribalism)!  The Sixth Circuit appellate court did not give a secular business (not a corporation with personhood) standing as an individual.  This business claimed that giving its employees contraception coverage violated the family’s religious freedom, even though this family was not liable for the non-compliance fees.  The Third Circuit court ruled similarly early, but since the Tenth Circuit court took the opposite view, the circuit-court split means the Supreme Court could weigh in soon.

The blogs for this caategory refer to old and new civil rights social movements and their impact on ideas, institutions, and identities within the two party coalitions (Democrats and Republicans).

Old civil rights movements are defined by race, gender

And new civil rights movements are categorized as much by everyday practices and/or fluid identities given their differences.  This includes LGBTQers, persons with disabilities, ethnicity and multiple racial identities, and victims of violence.

This category also features blogs on both the positive (read effective) and the negative (read ineffective or worse, compounded bias) of being the first woman Democratic challenger to follow the first African-American President Barack Obama.

The concept intersectionality was created by Kimberlè Crenshaw.

I teach Power, Resistance, and Identity or variations thereof.  My special topics American Political Development Ph.D. seminar teaches the Presidency from this APD approach.  It is called Neos & Isms.

Neos & Isms takes an APD perspective about the intersectionality of ideas, institutions, and identities by studying the political thought of American presidents over time. It includes Obama, though more with an eye to his first term.  Also see Out of Many, One: Obama & the 3rd American Political Tradition.

Your mother is on the 17th floor of a high-rise on 13th Street and First Avenue.  She depends on a machine-operated oxygen tank to sleep.  You, her son or daughter, helped her set this up next to the nightstand in her bedroom.  You know she can’t walk very far, let alone climb out of her wheelchair, with or without your help, with this heavy piece of equipment in tow and slide down the 16 floors to an evacuation site at the elementary school nearby.  Yet it’s 5:30 PM, and she’s calling you after getting a call from New York City telling her it’s time to evacuate.

This call comes after you took a day off from work, coordinating with your brother or sister to come in from your suburban home to make sure she had enough food, water, batteries, and candles to endure the storm.  It’s not that you don’t love your mom.  Heck, she could help play with your children (her grandchildren) while you all endure the storm.  And her best friend will go out of her way to put your mother up in her own apartment — but for people with disabilities, it’s too hard to find that special taxi that could take her to either her son’s house or her best friend’s apartment.

If this isn’t a nightmare, I don’t know what is.  Almost a million people faced this scenario during Hurricane Irene in 2011.  Presumably the numbers hit over a million for Hurricane Sandy — and that’s before you throw the many, many people in hospitals into the evacuation disaster mix.

The terrible part about this scenario is not that it doesn’t make a great disaster movie, or that it wouldn’t make the roster of indie films or social-justice documentaries that hit the Sundance film festival each year.  This is a tough topic to turn into a good narrative because it’s too predictable.  There is little room for a sudden plot shift that wouldn’t make the narrative either silly and unrealistic or corny.  And the scenario outlined above is a grandmother, not someone who has had a disability since their late childhood or early twenties and might not have much of a nuclear family in the area.

But all this said, there is one place the narrative did turn.  And that’s in the courtroom drama that happened late last week, with help from the Obama Justice Department.  Judge Jesse Furman ruled in Manhattan federal court that the city had an obligation to protect those who suffered unnecessarily during Hurricane Irene.  The Obama Justice Department, to its credit, gave them the right to sue.  And sue they did, winning a judgment that the city discriminated against these 900,000 New Yorkers.

Well, Mayor Bill (de Blasio) will get his first test as he withstands the hurricane blast of another class-action lawsuit, this time over the ADAAA violations under Hurricane Sandy.  What Judge Furman ruled in terms of “benign neglect” for Irene sounds too generous here.

It looks like New York City might be sued into reform.  So, here’s hoping that our incoming mayor will draw up a real evacuation plan for what will surely be over a million New Yorkers with disabilities.  Despite the threat of this lawsuit in federal court, and the knowledge quite a while ago that the Justice Department enforcing the ADAAA would not tolerate this, Mayor Bloomberg’s post-Sandy evacuation plans still did not include a good plan for all those with disabilities.  That must change immediately.

When taking my sons on college tours, there is one question I don’t ask at the information sessions. Being on the consumer side in this situation, my sons have forbidden me from asking that question, which could put them on the defensive (and hurt their chances, since they do get some points from the college for going on a tour).  Here’s the question I’m forbidden from asking: What’s the ratio between men and women?  What is your gender enrollment gap?

Now, if your son or daughter is going to an Ivy League college, no worries.  They are largely 50–50 now, or close to it.  These formerly all-white, all-male colleges with Christian legacies have many anti-legacies to recover from (e.g. anti-Semitic, anti-African-American, anti-anti-affirmative action, etc.).  And if you want to apply to your mom’s Seven Sisters college, be prepared to be as disappointed as I was, if you have sons.  Only one of the sister schools — Vassar — has turned to co-education, back in the late sixties.

Bracket one more set of colleges and universities (those that specialize in arts or sciences, for instance) out of the equation, and where most of America sends its children to college is a different picture — it’s largely women.  Women account for over 60 percent of the college-attending population.  Many liberal-arts colleges that have smaller lab-based science programs are as much as 65 percent female.

Why?  No one has the definitive explanation.  And as Tamara Yakaboski observed three years ago, the “mainstream media male victimization” explanation has less than no credibility: It’s misleading and it blames the victim — those who are underrepresented in writing the rules (laws) or enforcing them (courts).

It not only obscures the problem, but, given the polarizing politics of the last three years with the GOP’s turn harder right — privileging men in a society that practicesneotribalism, repressing women and girls with overt religious strictures from the three main religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) — it is downright dangerous.  Look at what’s happening to women seeking abortion today in Texas.

The media’s male-victimization explanation deserves as much credence as the neocon anti-affirmative-action rhetoric and the GOP’s and Supreme Court majority’s anti–Voting Rights Act position.

The 60–40 ratio matters, of course, because when parents and their children are paying more than the average household income for a state college (not a liberal-arts college), it all matters.  College in the United States used to be a socio-economic leveler.  So here is our second wake-up call — since it’s not.

Higher education has been replicating income inequality, and a comprehensive study of private elite education, I suspect, would find affirmative action for enrolling boys long being practiced.

So of course, I’m happy the girls are cleaning up in K–12, and claiming all the awards. Girls play competitive sports more than ever; and girls enter math and science competitions more than ever.  And it’s not as if these girls are avoiding the creative arts to do so; they are taking away the prizes in creative arts as well.  Indeed, when one of my sons was inducted to the National Honor Society, I was proud he made it, since he was in the minority. At the same time I was proud of all the girls, who took a full two-thirds of all the seats.  It’s about time, no?

And, thankfully, now the gender and income gap question can all be narrowed to: What happens to all these women when they leave college?  What happens to all these women who would like to mix a career with a family?  Law schools and medical schools have been close to 50 percent for many years.

A family, after all, is not a female thing either, so this is where men do need to kick in more effort. Indeed, if they’re not going to college in a curiosity-based competitive economy (pure science now calls itself “curiosity-based science” since “pure” is considered too abstract and therefore too decadent to fund), then we should start adapting our college for more stay-at-home dads, not moms.  Both our sons and daughters would benefit from this kind of demographic shift.

*Tamara Yakaboski. “‘Quietly Stripping the Pastels’: The Undergraduate Gender Gap.”The Review of Higher Education 34.4 (2011): 555-580. 

Are we surprised that immigration reform won’t be achieved this summer?  A joint Bill Kristol–Rich Lowry editorial unified opposition against immigration reform in a “kill the bill” piece.  But the editorial didn’t cite any real issues; the two editors just threw out some general critiques of the legislative process, with its haste and loopholes.  The only issue of substance they raised was that the Senate bill paves the way for more low-wage, not high-wage, workers.  Well, duh!  Who ever worried about high-wage IT workers?  They have a way of finding their way into the country without too much red tape.  Clearly, the Republicans want the Democrats to fail more than they want to succeed in gaining the Hispanic vote in 2014.

Obama met with the Hispanic leaders this morning, and while they may not have much power to turn the legislative tide, the one thing the president can assure them of is that Latinos belong in the Democratic fold.  With Latinos making up 10 percent of the electorate in 2012, this realigns them, placing them squarely in Obama’s rainbow coalitionand preparing the Ready for Hillary campaign.

It used to be embarrassing whenever I visited my former in-laws in the Netherlands.  The anti-Americanisms usually got served with the first cup of Douwe Egberts coffee (along with a nice little chocolate treat).  After 20 years, I could count on one hand what issues fascinated them most about the United States, and they all had to do with violence—the death penalty, guns, and urban violence.  Working as I did for years at an institution that specialized in criminal justice, it was hard to claim ignorance about violence.  But I tried.  And then as my scholarship moved toward (dis)ability, I could no longer even feign ignorance over foreign coffee.  It is barbaric.

We are aligned with Somalia and Saudi Arabia in our death-penalty practices.  To be sure, the Supreme Court banned executing persons with intelligence scores of less than Warren Hill’s 70 IQ, but straddling the edge of being smart enough to be put to death is a problem.  It’s good that Hill’s execution has led Georgia to take a second look at the justice of killing someone who is a person who has lived with an intellectual disability his whole life.  But it’s darn embarrassing that this issue, I’m sure my foreign former in-laws would say, getsmore coverage in Canada than it does in the U.S.  No one is defending Hill, but they are for sure opposing the barbarity of a nation that executes people with intellectual or cognitive disabilities.

Indulge me for a moment.  With everyone sleeping in this morning, I got to enjoy a magnificent view in serenity and silence, so I decided to do a bit of cleanup — blog post cleanup, that is.  I figured out the difference between categories, tags, and SEOs.  (For all those Internet public bumblers like me, it’s new words for indexing that we get to do for ourselves!)

While coming up with these tags for my post about Ann Coulter, it dawned on me that I loathe her because she is the worst kind of self-loathing woman, one who harms all our daughters, sisters, mothers, and girlfriends to get attention.  She’s turned self-loathing into an art — a snarky, not very well-written “art” — all for attention (and dollars).  She’s the little girl who lifts up her skirt, and were she still a little girl, her mother would come rushing over to save her from her absurd self-humiliation.

But then Google provided me with a much better analogy.  Anne Coulter is just like a “grub.”  A grub is the new term replacing the Log Cabin Republicans of yesteryear.  AsMichael Musto explained in the Village Voice blog, grubs are the “wave of gay Republicans who grovel before the enemy, making lavish excuses for politically repellent candidates — you know, the Romney/Ryan ticket — who would gladly turn us into a subordinate class without any semblance of full equality” and “who rally to the defense of power-crazed bigots, spinning them as champions of decency and fairness who happen to be grossly misunderstood.”

I feel sorry for Ann Coulter, and all the women who rally to the defense of their abhorrent fellow GOP members who call sitting national-government officials “dogs” and “retards.”  The self-hatred, the self-loathing must be hard to live with.

It must be even harder knowing how painfully they fell flat with women in their attempt to repackage the war on women as a myth.  But now there is a new, more virulent strain that is best embodied by Martha McSally in her attempt to capitalize on all of this and win a seat in Congress from Arizona.  So, “sick and tired of the Left pushing its ridiculous ‘War on Women’ myth,” McSally has the gall to call herself a “woman warrior.”

The myth is the myth of the war of women, but that did not fit neatly on any tag or SEO.  I haven’t tested it yet, but I’m afraid my own computer will only throw up and out this notion that women like Coulter and McSally can be equated with warriors.

As my pity re-congeals into anger against these women who resemble World War II collaborators, I realize that McSally is falsely trying to equate her own wartime experience in the Middle East with her party’s equally determined (and equally unsuccessful) attempt to impose its worldview on a hostile population.  And indeed, the GOP gets to say it tootried to save women in the Middle East.

But let me save this for another blog.  As a supporter of the Romney/Ryan ticket, McSally is no woman warrior.  Rather, she is a woman who fights against women and children in her own country.  By supporting the Republicans and their war on women, which reasserts patriarchy in trying to push women and girls into a private sphere that men dominate and control, including depriving us of our right to choose, McSally promotes fundamentalism.

I don’t care if “Billy Graham’s Association Removes Mormonism From List of Cults.” McSally does not just support the religions practiced by Ryan the papist or Romney the Mormon bishop, who are no longer leaders of cults.  McSally, a novice, misrepresents her own military service when she supports the very mullahs she falsely claims to have condemned in their war on women in the Middle East.

Obama once again showed his loyalty to civil rights — and by civil rights, in this case I mean LGBTers’ rights — at the G20.  Obama’s devotion to gay and lesbian as well as full transgender rights does not capture the complexity of their civil rights fully, and how this spectrum could be found in disability rights. (See my Bodies in Revolt.)

Civil rights about sexuality are more complex than the old civil rights protecting women and persons of color.  As with disability, the fact that there is a fluidity, a flow, and the constant possibility of change makes protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, persons with non-traditional sexualities, or persons from different ethnicities like golden babies.

What is a golden baby?  How does Obama embody it?  As I wrote in Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, Obama himself embodies what the youth residing in the former Confederate South call a “golden baby.“ With his mixed race (read white/black), mixed ethnic (read Midwestern American, African, Indonesian), mixed continents (same as ethnic, only refocused through a macro-spatial lens), mixed sectional (read urban and suburban with a micro-spatial lens), and mixed class background intersected with his spatial background (read urban/suburban in conjunction with the correlation between race, class, and education), the president has witnessed a transformation.

Obama’s multiracial heritage went from being considered all negative (miscegenation being effectively legalized in Loving v. Virginia when he was five years old) to being considered golden. Privileged and untouched by poverty, a golden child is a rarity and supposedly better than a white or black child. The baby glows. She shines. The embodiment of luminescence and change, a golden baby is a rarity.

Similarly, new civil rights shines in that it reflects not just intersectionality but also a vortex.  New civil rights differs from those that protected persons in immutable categories like race, particularly African-Americans, given the one-drop rule.

To be sure, old civil rights does involve intersectionality, as Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw show so valiantly.  But the new also has legs — there is the possibility today more than ever for movement.  So I label this the vortex and will blog more about this.

For now, let’s just hope the sweet spot of the unofficial rivalry between Obama and Hillary in terms of the Democratic public spotlight will transform itself into a vortex.  Let’s hope her 2016 run (unannounced, I know) from June 2013 to November 2016 will turn into a long, productive journey for the Democrats.

Let’s hope Hillary Fatigue won’t set in.  Let’s make hay of the GOP’s bowling (knocking down 2 or 3 candidates at once).  And let’s ensure that mud doesn’t run downhill but is turned back into wonderfully refreshing mud pies the Republicans might enjoy.

Intersectionality is it.  Let’s just hope the nexus has legs.  But Bill de Blasio’s surprise victory (or soon to be victory) as the next mayor gives me hope.

2016 could be better than 2008 — for women and girls, that is. It’s our century! We have all benefited as Hillary Clinton waits patiently for President Barack Obama to serve his two terms. It’s not race or gender, but race andgender, that’s giving the Democrats a cosmopolitan cultural consensus that stands poised to make the 21st century a different, or rather a diverse, century.

After a millennium of male rule, with the 20th century being one of the bloodiest and most conflict-ridden ever, it’s about time that women, or at least 20 percent women up against a permanent majority of men, got a chance to show what they can do for government when they change the rules.  I imagine it will be a lot less exclusive than any set of rules devised by a former, nearly all-male government.

According to the Washington Post, Hillary supporters fault her handlers for being afraid to let her put feminism front and center in ’08. Now Hillary has new handlers, and the one thing the Ready for Hillary campaign has already discovered is that women count, and whoever wages war on women can get hurt (remember Mitt? I’d like to know who was his handler on feminism).  Even more important than remembering Republicans like Romney is that 98 women sit in the House and Senate today, right now (or 101 if you include three delegates in the House).

Close to a quarter of the power in Congress, in combination with a feminist female president running a feminist executive administration, means women and girls could finally start to benefit from all the laws that already exist but lie in languor, given how poorly they are enforced by the federal courts (e.g. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Pay Equity Act).

Employers in the United States continue to discriminate because they have little to fear when facing a lawsuit.  Women in top Fortune 500 companies have risen only 0.8 percent over the last 3 years.  The private sector is not being as “efficient” as the public sector when it comes to enforcing equity.  Surprise, surprise.  This is, after all, the less accountable private sector.

If you need more encouragement, just look at tomorrow’s blog on this topic and the stats for the public sector, particularly in K-12.  It’s a lot rosier there — and this gives us an indication of just what women in government could and should do in working with the Obama administration for the next 3 years, all in preparation for the post-2016 inauguration.

Problems need solutions.  Public policies are no different.  Framing shows us how to find those solutions.  Diagnosis/prognosis – what is the public-policy problem?  Emanuela Lombardo and Petra Meier give great insight about framing gender in the EU.

Here’s the key, though: One follows the “problem” with no question.  It’s not: What is the solution?  Instead, so often in political communication, and particularly with bloggers amplifying mainstream media, the media provides the frame – the prism – or the cage, and then subtly suggests: Here is the solution.  Voilà!

Ideational intersectionality, or what I call the vortex, means organizing your solution in sections after we — a collective we, not “they” (established media, mainstream politicians supported by their lobbyists, or the polarized partisan few, like cracked Tea Potters) — define the problem.

What section of the intersection should we tackle first?  Think fruit.  How do you peel an orange?  What about a tangerine, since the skin comes off so easily?  How do you eat half a grapefruit?  What about the decorative red cherry on top?

Social movements, like the civil-rights movement, should lead the way in ideational intersectionality.  With women* and girls being more than half the population, African-Americans constituting 12 percent, and then throw in Latinos and LGBTers – we’re huge.  The problems and the solutions are ours for the taking.

—-

*Women, in fact, are so common that they can’t even represent a class, according to the anti-women men still sitting on the Supreme Court bench, like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts, as discussed in my introduction in and Risa Liberwitz’s astute commentary in  Telling Stories Out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination.

In President Obama’s Remarks on Trayvon Martin, he makes it personal.  “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

But why does he add “35 years ago”?  Why not say it more boldly — this could be him now, if he were 17 years old today?  Okay, I know he’s not 17, and this is why he spoke of 35 years ago.  But by referencing the years, this timeline makes his comment misleading — conceding progress, when Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal show we do not live in a postracial society.  If Obama were 17 today, this could have been him now, since surely Obama went out to the local convenience store to purchase Skittles and iced tea, as a way to get out of the house when he was that age?

Martin’s neighborhood is little different demographically from Obama’s neighborhood in Hawaii, where he was living at 17.   If Obama wants to get personal, Obama has to get personal in a way that speaks with authenticity to the civil-rights community. He must speak with conviction.

To exhibit leadership, Obama needs to do what all leaders do — walk toward the fire, or take sides in our polarized nation.  He needs to eschew his role as statesman.

Maybe Obama’s afraid to test being personal, since this raises the bigger question — is anyone listening anyway?  When Obama was running for president, or when he was in his first term, personal comparisons like this provoked outrage from the Right.  But now that Obama’s second term has been pronounced D.O.A. by middle-of-the-road members of the established media, like David Gergen, is anyone listening to anything, let alone calling him a leader?

Gergen is right.  With the annual August congressional recess looming, let’s face it, Obama has little chance now of passing immigration reform.  In his second presidency, Obama has tried and failed to pass immigration reform and gun-control reform, in addition to having put himself in a rear-guard battle about the politics of sequestration.

None of it passed. He failed as a second-term legislative leader.  Mind you, Obama is in line with all second-term presidents since World War Two.  Ronald Reagan’s only success — the immigration reform of 1986 — turned out to help the Democrats more than the Republicans.

And let’s not forget that when Obama passed historic legislation in his first term, like health care, he didn’t get leadership credit for that — even from the Left.

And while Obama did succeed in passing the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, no one seemed to pay attention long enough to call it a victory.   So, I agree — his presidency, at least the legislative leadership aspect of it, is over.  No more historic legislation.

So we’re now facing a three-year run for the presidency.  And the president’s best bet is to get very personal and turn the polarized nation into outright partisanship, rejuvenating his cosmopolitan rainbow coalition as he helps Hillary Clinton.  Hillary Clinton represents the Democrats’ best chance for 2016 (and women’s issues, in combination with the new and old civil-rights issues that unite Obama’s rainbow coalition).  But Obama can play a role, though it’s a role he’s been loath to exhibit, and that’s as a party leader who at the very least wants to protect and promote his own legacy.  There’s no better way to protect his legacy than to help Hillary.

At last Obama’s defense against the War on Women has his administration placing women in war — combat, that is.  The Obama administration lifted a Pentagon rule put into place, oddly enough, during the Clinton administration that restricted women from engaging in combat.

This is another example of how Obama fulfills what theNew York Times calls the president’s “liberal agenda.”  That’s misleading: The term “liberal” has more to do with the size of government (big or small) and economics (to regulate or deregulate the economy).  It does not capture the cultural dimension of Obama’s agenda:  its cosmopolitanism.  Obama advances a contemporary cosmopolitan culture that promotes difference and diversity.

During the 2012 election, the more Obama protected women from the Republican War on Women, the more he won public opinion, cementing his rainbow cosmopolitan coalition.

The paradox of Obama’s presidency during his first term was that to be sustained, his achievements, like issuing transgender passports, had to be buried.  Now it’s the reverse.  To advance a cosmopolitan civic action — action that features diversity and difference — Obama will boldly take every executive action possible to help our culturally diverse citizenry become fully engaged, and will dare the other branches — both the legislature and the judiciary — to follow suit.

Since cultural advances like these are rarely reversed in democratic nations, the Republicans have every reason to fear that, as Obama continues to lead his rainbow coalition, they will not be able to get rid of the cosmopolitanism underlying it.

Obama’s reelection shows that the Democrats bested the Republicans’ War on Women. And with 280,000 women having been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, women go to war. They fight with men. And they die in military combat alongside men. But the United States military, now run by a renewed Obama, has yet to get rid of its own part in the War on Women. It needs to shed all its exclusionary policies and make the military more welcoming for women, instead of putting them in the position of having to sue to eliminate these policies.

Since 80 percent of Army generals come from combat-arms positions, women should have the same opportunities as men to rise through the ranks. While Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta opened 14,000 positions to women, this is not enough. According to the ACLU, 238,000 positions remain closed to women.

Finally, a more disturbing reason the military should end all its exclusionary policies is that there is safety in numbers. The more women join the military, the safer those women will be — not from the enemy, but from their own troops. One-third of all women in the military report being sexually harassed.

Women constitute only about 14 percent of the military. Nowhere near 50 percent is needed to make women safe; according to one report in Scandinavia, the figure to aim for is 30 percent. Once women constitute 30 percent of any office, body, sector, or institution, they can no longer be considered the token or the outside by men, and as such, albeit still a minority, they cannot be marginalized as easily and are therefore less vulnerable to harassment and abuse. The Obama administration should push Panetta into increasing the military from 14 percent toward 30 percent women.

When taking my sons on college tours, there is one question I don’t ask at the information sessions. Being on the consumer side in this situation, my sons have forbidden me from asking that question, which could put them on the defensive (and hurt their chances, since they do get some points from the college for going on a tour).  Here’s the question I’m forbidden from asking: What’s the ratio between men and women?  What is your gender enrollment gap?

Now, if your son or daughter is going to an Ivy League college, no worries.  They are largely 50–50 now, or close to it.  These formerly all-white, all-male colleges with Christian legacies have many anti-legacies to recover from (e.g. anti-Semitic, anti-African-American, anti-anti-affirmative action, etc.).  And if you want to apply to your mom’s Seven Sisters college, be prepared to be as disappointed as I was, if you have sons.  Only one of the sister schools — Vassar — has turned to co-education, back in the late sixties.

Bracket one more set of colleges and universities (those that specialize in arts or sciences, for instance) out of the equation, and where most of America sends its children to college is a different picture — it’s largely women.  Women account for over 60 percent of the college-attending population.  Many liberal-arts colleges that have smaller lab-based science programs are as much as 65 percent female.

Why?  No one has the definitive explanation.  And as Tamara Yakaboski observed three years ago, the “mainstream media male victimization” explanation has less than no credibility: It’s misleading and it blames the victim — those who are underrepresented in writing the rules (laws) or enforcing them (courts).

It not only obscures the problem, but, given the polarizing politics of the last three years with the GOP’s turn harder right — privileging men in a society that practicesneotribalism, repressing women and girls with overt religious strictures from the three main religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) — it is downright dangerous.  Look at what’s happening to women seeking abortion today in Texas.

The media’s male-victimization explanation deserves as much credence as the neocon anti-affirmative-action rhetoric and the GOP’s and Supreme Court majority’s anti–Voting Rights Act position.

The 60–40 ratio matters, of course, because when parents and their children are paying more than the average household income for a state college (not a liberal-arts college), it all matters.  College in the United States used to be a socio-economic leveler.  So here is our second wake-up call — since it’s not.

Higher education has been replicating income inequality, and a comprehensive study of private elite education, I suspect, would find affirmative action for enrolling boys long being practiced.

So of course, I’m happy the girls are cleaning up in K–12, and claiming all the awards. Girls play competitive sports more than ever; and girls enter math and science competitions more than ever.  And it’s not as if these girls are avoiding the creative arts to do so; they are taking away the prizes in creative arts as well.  Indeed, when one of my sons was inducted to the National Honor Society, I was proud he made it, since he was in the minority. At the same time I was proud of all the girls, who took a full two-thirds of all the seats.  It’s about time, no?

And, thankfully, now the gender and income gap question can all be narrowed to: What happens to all these women when they leave college?  What happens to all these women who would like to mix a career with a family?  Law schools and medical schools have been close to 50 percent for many years.

A family, after all, is not a female thing either, so this is where men do need to kick in more effort. Indeed, if they’re not going to college in a curiosity-based competitive economy (pure science now calls itself “curiosity-based science” since “pure” is considered too abstract and therefore too decadent to fund), then we should start adapting our college for more stay-at-home dads, not moms.  Both our sons and daughters would benefit from this kind of demographic shift.

*Tamara Yakaboski. “‘Quietly Stripping the Pastels’: The Undergraduate Gender Gap.”The Review of Higher Education 34.4 (2011): 555-580. 

What’s with all the cooking references?  Yesterday, the Supreme Court listened to oral argument in a case involving a question of power: Does a supervisor, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have to be someone who has ultimate power over an employee — the power to hire, fire, demote, promote, or discipline?  Or is a supervisor someone with the power to tell another employee what to do?

This case involves the hostile work environment that Maetta Vance endured as a person who told her what to do issued racial epithets and uttered veiled threats.  These are very serious allegations.  Yet three of the Supreme Court Justices seemed to have cooking, sex, and power — quid pro quo — on their minds, when this is a case about something different: a hostile work environment.

If you don’t date me, Chief Justice Roberts asked, can I make you “listen to music, all day long, that the listener found unpleasant”?  Or, as Roberts said, “you’re going to be cutting the celery rather than, you know, baking the bread” if you don’t date me?  What is he talking about?  Is she supposed to cut celery, bake bread, or, as Alito chimed in, cut onions as she listens to the person who tells her what to do throws racial slurs at her?

This important civil-rights case about power isn’t “Listen to my racial slurs, or I will make you chop onions.”  Vance had to endure racial epithets while being made to chop onions.  The employee in charge of telling her what to do had the capacity to exploit this person’s vulnerability, and she did so. “Professors don’t have the ability to fire secretaries,” explained Justice Elena Kagan, “but professors do have the ability to make secretarial lives living hells.”  It’s simple.  These professors have the power to tell the secretaries what to do.

A supervisor is someone who dictates work conditions.  A hostile workplace is about who has the capacity to determine these conditions.  The Justices’ trivial cooking references were less significant than what could be a purposeful misunderstanding of the difference between sexual harassment that stems from a quid pro quo situation — an exchange — and harassment that is not meant to extract a concession.  And a supervisor is simply the person who has the power to make another person’s work environment hostile.

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When it comes to today’s 7-1 decision, Fischer v. University of Texas, while it was always a federal case, it was remanded down not to the state level* but to the lower level. While it is being sent down (and I earlier reported to the states, no one should think about down as in punting — either kicking footballs or using poles to guide yourself down any tame and civilized rivers — think pole vaulting.  The Supreme Court invites all lower courts to toss out affirmative action plans premised on diversity,which is after all a positive rather than a negative way of viewing race.

I will speculate as to the possible consequences of this decision soon, but the one thing any thinking person can conclude is they will be undoubtedly significant.  Meanwhile read thedecision yourself before coming up with your own conclusion or opinion that there is little gentle about this 7-1 decision despite the strong majority Chief Justice Roberts’ rallied.

*correction (thanks)

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If the Obama administration stopped collecting our emails in 2011, why can’t it stop tapping our phones?  What inspired the administration to stop, anyway?  What constitutes necessary and unnecessary?  How can you determine what is necessary when you’re referring to a whole country?  The Obama administration needs the whole haystack?

This is what courts are for: to make such determinations, to create such categories, to render rulings for all to follow.  Ordinary courts, that is.  But the court that allowed the collection of all emails is the top-secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  From windowless rooms in undisclosed locations, FISA courts seal all arguments and render opinions that they also deem classified secrets.  So now we can’t find the needle or the haystack.

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So long civil rights, at least for voting, or at least it took a heavy, Die Hard–like blow.  Say goodbye to the VRA (Voting Rights Act), a historic piece of legislation that has become just that — history — as the Supreme Court gutted a key section, ruling the formula for preclearance unconstitutional in a 5-4 decision with Chief Justice John Roberts woriting the majority (winning) opinion.

I certainly thought there would be a man-on-man tussle between Obama and JR (Roberts), as I mentioned in Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.  I didn’t quite see it going down like this — man-on-man Die Hard action, with JR more Bruce (Willis) than Matt (Damon).  Well, we all knew that JR was spoiling for a Separation of Powers fight, and he threw a heavy punch this morning at our former civil-rights professor, President Obama.

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Sekhar v. United States

Prop. 8 Case – Californians of Same Sex can Marry if …

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Headline reading is fascinating, fun, and maddening . . . but what I notice most with my own headline data-mining is how the news travels from East to West — the English-speaking news that is, much of which is controlled (as we all know) by one individual’s empire. So in the empire’s origin — Australia — the U.S. “clings” to affirmative action; whereas in New Zealand it’s more accurately “struck down,” and then by the time you reach London it’s “gutted.” But affirmative action is not a baby, or a needy dependent, or a fish – and history is not just what happened over 50 years ago. It’s all about IMPLEMENTATION — the title of Aaron Wildavsky’s famous book that I read decades ago and never forgot . . .

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Supreme Court Docket for 2013(SCOTUS)

1. ROBERTS’ COURT EQUALITY CASES 

Immigration & Citizenship

Arizona v.Inter Tribal Council of Arizona(striking down punitive state voting law, requiring proof of citizenship)

Diversity & Race

Fisher v. University of Texas (sending diversity as affirmative action down to lower level)

Voting Rights

Shelby v. Holder (Formula for preclearance declared unconstitutional by 5-4 majority with Chief Justice writing for the majority, rendering key blow to Voting Rights Act of 1965).

Native American Rights

Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Workplace Discrimination, an EEOC expansive definition struck down

Vance v. Ball State University (restricting the Obama administration’s EEOC’s expansive definition of who constitutes a supervisor.  Defining who supervises who in employment is vital for sexual harassment situations .  Unlike anti-discrimination based upon the intent of the person discriminating, sexual harassment is based upon either the creation of ahostile workplace environment and/ a quid pro quo situation.  Actions rather than intent count in sexual harassment situations. This makes management accountable for supervisors they have been informed harass an employee.  Management, in other words, faces responsibility for keeping a harassing supervisor in place.

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To celebrate today’s two partial victories for same-sex marriage, I recommend champagne for your aperitif tonight — from France, since we finally shed our bias against same-sex marriage.  Or, put differently, our Puritan (read prudish), antiquated protection of marriage only between a man and a woman, or heterosexual marriage.  DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) went down in a 5–4 decision inU.S. v. Windsor. and while the Court left it up to the states to decide their own marriage laws, it is still a victory.

But for the Prop 8 case (Sekhar v. U.S.), you’d better switch to a California champagne, since you can hopefully marry in this state.  The Supreme Court will not try to fight the nationwide trend in support of same-sex marriage, though this is on the basis of jurisdiction (a question of standing), rather than the merits of the case.* That the question was one of jurisdiction (many scholars would call this a “technical”matter), is reflected in the larger vote that was not cast along right/left ideological grounds.

Scalia delivered the opinion, with Roberts, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer joining.  Then, Alito writing a concurring opinion with Kennedy and Sotomayor joining.

Now, if you’re not too tipsy yet, go ahead and get on the states’-rights or “federalism for public purpose” bandwagon that Obama supports, not just with same-sex marriage but also climate control and in the implementation stage of Obamacare, and even the Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection Act, as I spelled out in Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.

And go ahead and switch the order of domestic versus foreign bubbly, since this same-sex celebration is a glass that’s half, or let’s say 3/4 full.

Personally, yesterday’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act put a damper on me imbibing anything, unless it’s drunk at a civil-rights protest or a march across some bridges in the South or Arizona.  Let’s hope Representative John Lewis from Georgia or other civil-rights leaders can lead us there, and it does not turn into a historic brawl.

*corrections from yesterday.

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Ignoring the Roberts Court, ignoring Putin and the whole PRISM scandal (Snowden leaking NSA civil-liberties violations and then rushing off to Russia), Obama held his own immigration-reform roundtable with business leaders.

What did he hone in on? Practicing social-media etiquette, Obama liked (and refrained from overtly disliking) what the Senate has devised as he put a spotlight on the “shadow” economy. He juxtaposed the above-board economy to the below-board economy, emphasizing how the low economies “oftentimes exploited at lower wages, and that hurts those companies that are following the rules, because they end up being at a disadvantage to some of these less scrupulous companies.”

Was anyone listening? It’s doubtful. The few reporters who cover the national news were all assigned to cover what happened across the street from Congress (the Supreme Court decisions).

It’s not just timing that’s everything in politics; and it’s not just the attention span of listeners that accounts for less-than-“deliberative” democracy — the public lacks information, as reporters (being as scarce as paper) all do what I call swarm-and-spin reporting. And naturally, those who benefit most from the lack of information — special interests or the lobbying industry that spans both sides of the aisle in Congress — do not like any spotlight. And Obama himself should stop defending secrecy and PRISM, since it will casts a large dark shadow over his presidential legacy. As Jill Lepore put it well, “the case for privacy comes too late. . . .Your photograph is already on Facebook. Google knows that, notwithstanding your demographic, you hate kale.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/24/remarks-president-immigration-reform-roundtable

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U.S. v. Windsor DOMA unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, relying on federalism (for progressive purpose?)

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In its second 5-4 decision of the day, the Supreme Court ruled against cultural diversity.

A lower court had ruled against  two heartbroken adoptive South Carolina parents, who were ordered to return their adopted girl to her biological father, a Native American, despite the “loving family environment” they provided.  Overturning the reasoning behind the decision, the Roberts Court’s majority decided that the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act does not automatically give the biological father the right to take the child back.  The couple from South Carolina can go back to the lower court to determine custody now on the basis of the “best interests of the child” doctrine.  (Alito wrote the opinion with Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Breyer, though the latter two wrote concurring opinions.)

Who said the Supreme Court believed in diversity, anyway?  Yesterday’s affirmative action decision already showed that.

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Ruth O’Brien, Taught Spring 2013

Contemporary American Political Thought/Theory (CAPT)

PSC 80300 [80300 [17874 
(cross-listed with ASCP 82000 & WSCP 81000)
 4 credits


This new course represents the second course in the American Political Thought track of American Politics, focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries.  (The seminar entitled American Political Thought concentrates on the 18th and 19th centuries.)

This seminar not only enlightens those interested in American Political Thought but also helps students prepare for the electoral and behavioral aspects of the American Politics examination by concentrating on public opinion and social movements of post-war identity leaders and their followers.

Unlike American Political Development, this seminar examines largely original documents, rather than secondary texts analyzing these documents.  APD and APT complement each other, though given the use of primary and secondary texts used in APD and political theory (primarily modern and contemporary political theory).

Contemporary American Political Thought/Theory examines the spaces and juxtapositions created by identity movements and vulnerable populations on three analytical tracks: 1) Race; 2) Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Vulnerable Populations; and 3) Class, American Capitalism, & Hegemony.  First, the track on race compares and contrasts universal civil rights, black power, radical black feminism, and multiculturalism and multiracialism.  Second, the track on gender and sexuality reviews first- and third-wave feminism, queer theory, post-modernist feminism, theories of the body, and immigrant and vulnerable populations.  The final track focuses on American capitalism, transnationalism, and hegemony (anti-imperialism and post-colonialism, post-war neoclassical economics or neo-liberalism, and behavioral economics).

This seminar modernizes American political thought and includes the revolutionizing American Studies scholarship at the Graduate Center, with its emphasis on genealogies of revolutionary action, discourse, and political culture(s).  It does this by giving attention to the writings, pamphlets, and thoughts of social-movement leaders and members and analyzing the question of political rhetoric and resonance (is the trajectory top-down or bottom-up?).  For instance, the manifesto of S.C.U.M. (the Society for Cutting Up Men) had as much resonance for its leader, who shot Andy Warhol, as did its minuscule membership.  How are events on Wall Street today similar to early-20th-century events?

Finally, this seminar provides a foundation for students interested in contemporary political theory by reading modern and contemporary political thinkers as diverse as William Faulkner, Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, W. E. B. Dubois, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Malcolm X, Gloria Steinem, Patricia Collins, Judith Butler, Anne Norton, Friedrich Hayek, Rose and Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Michael Sandel, Antonio Negri, and Michael Hardt.

Requirements: 1/3 of grade is seminar participation and outlines (1 to 2 pages); and a 20 to 25 page paper accounts for the other 2/3rds of the grade.  Students preparing for the exams can elect to do 2 questions each 10 pages long instead of a paper.

Outlines should be emailed the night before or brought in paper copies for the whole seminar. A round robin reply all group email will be constructed.

1. BOTTOM UP; TOP DOWN – VERTICAL/HORIZONTAL/DIAGONAL

POLITICAL CULTURE, DISCOURSE, TRACTS, & HISTORIES

1/31 1. Introduction: What is Social History; Political Thought, Political Theory,  Political Philosophy, Political Advocacy/Activism?

2/7   2. How to Differentiate, Distinguish & Define – Culture(s) & Histories – Advocacy or Resonance?

Reading:

Argument&Logic

http://www.themathpage.com/abookI/logic.htm#if-and-only

David Brion Davis, “Reflections: Intellectual Trajectories: Why People Study What They Do,” Reviews in American History 37 (2009): 148-59

Judith N. Shklar, “Redeeming American Political Theory,” APSR 85.1 (1991), 3-15

Recommended:

Anne Norton, 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method (New Have, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

Partisan review in Perspectiveshttp://users.polisci.wisc.edu/schatzberg/ps855/McClure2006.pdf

Gabriel A. Almond, “Political Theory and Political Science,” APSR 60.4 (1966), 869-879

Charles Mills, “Ideal Theory” as Ideology,” Hypatia 20 (2005): 165-84

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth Richard Philcox (Translator), Jean-Paul Sartre(Preface), Homi K. Bhabha (Foreword) (Grove Press, 2005).

1. RACE

2/14   3. American Existentialism, Power, & Separatism

Reading:

W.E.B. DuBois, The Soul of Black Folk (New York: Signet Classic), I, II, IV, X, XIV

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (Ballatine Books, 1987)

Recommended:

*William Faulkner, Light in August (Signet preferred)

Marcus Garvey, Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey (any edition)

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking, 2011)

(2/21 Classes follow Monday schedule)

2/28   4. Booker T. Washington & Martin L. King, Assimilation & Normalcy

Reading:

Booker T. Washington, Booker T. Washington: Up From Slavery (any edition)

Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail  26 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 835 (1992-1993)http://mrluko.webs.com/Civil%20Rights/Letter%20From%20Birmingham%20City%20Jail%20(H).pdf

Recommended:

Andrew Koll, The Colorblind Constitution (NYU Press,)

Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokley Carmichael, (Scribner, 2005).

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (Delta, 1999).

Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)

Carol A. Horton, Race and the Making of American Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Introduction

3/6   5. Postracial: Beyond Race?

Reading:

President B. Obama, “A More Perfect Union” Speech, Philadelphia, PA, Mar 18, 2008http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords

David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995), intro/chapter 1

Recommended:

John Pittman, African-American Perspectives and Philosophical Traditions (New York: Routledge, 1996), intro/chapter 1

Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action was White (Norton, 2005)

Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (University of Chicago Press, 2003)

Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (Vintage, 1992).

III. GENDER, SEXUALITY, & VULNERABLE POPULATIONS

3/13   6. 1^st Wave Feminism: From Home to Work

Reading:

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001)

Gloria Steinman, “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” New York Magazine, 4 Apr, 1969. http://nymag.com/news/politics/46802/

Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)

Recommended:

Anita Hill, Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home (Beacon, 2011).

Eileen Boris, “On the Importance of Naming: Gender, Race, and the Writing of Policy History,” Journal of Policy History 17 (2005): 72-93.

3/20   7. 3^rd Wave Feminism, Intersectionality, Collaborative?

Reading:

Kimberlee Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43 (1991): 1241-58

Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, eds. In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)

Catharine MacKinnon, Only Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)

Recommended:

Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (Anchor Press, 1998).

Sabine Gurtler and Andrew F. Smith, “The Ethical Dimension of Work: A Feminist Perspective,” Hypatia 20 (2005): 119-34

Iris Marion Young, “Fighting Words: Black women and the Search for Justice,” Hypatia 16 (2001): 91-93

Joan Tronto, “Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care,” in An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Mary Jeanne Larrabee (New York: Routledge, 1993)

Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, & Class (Vintage, 1983)

3/27   8. Postmodernist or Radical Feminism?

Reading: 

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990, 2000, 2008)

Gloria Anzaldua, This Bridge Called my Back The Gloria Anzaldua Reader, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009)

bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (New York: South End Press, 1984 or 2000).

SCUM Manifesto, Society of Cutting up Men http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm

Recommended:

Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992)

Katherine Adams, “At the Table with Arendt: Toward a Self-Interested Practice of Coalition Discourse,” 17 Hypatia (2002), 1-33

1. Denise James, “Theorizing Black Feminist Pragmatism: Forethoughts on the Practice and Purpose of Philosophy as Envisioned by Black Feminists and John Dewey,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 23 (2009), 92-99

Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (Yale University Press, 2011).

Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2006).

Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978 and 1990).

Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1970) (Reprinted editions: Bantam, 1979; Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003)

Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989)

Ellen Willis, “Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism,” No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1992), 117-50.

4/3   9.  Queer Theory, theories of the body, and immigrant and vulnerable populations.

Readings:

Leonard Kriegel, “Uncle Tom and Tiny Tim: Some Reflections on the Cripple as Negro,”The American Scholar 38, 3 (Summer 1969), 412-30

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge any edition will do)

Recommended:

Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence, Selected Prose 1966-78 (New York: Norton, 1979).

Arlene Stein and John ” I Can’t Even Think Straight”: Queer Theory and the Missing Sexual Revolution in Sociology A Stein… – Sociological Theory, (1994)

http://www.ucm.es/info/rqtr/biblioteca/Estudios%20gltb/I%20cant%20even%20think%20straight%20queer%20theory.pdf

Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Indiana University Press, 1994).

James R. Barrett, “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880–1930,” The Journal of American History(1992) 79 (3): 996-1020.

Jeffrey E. Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants  (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex, Constance Borde (Translator), Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (Translator) (Vintage, 2011).

Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One

Brett Beemyn and Michele Eliason, Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology (NYU Press, 1996).

Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998).

Eve Kosofsky Sedawick, Epistemology of the Closet: Updated with a New Preface(University of California Press, 2008).

1. CLASS, AMERICAN CAPITALISM & HEGEMONY

(4/10 Spring Recess)

4/17   10.  Class

Reading:

Samuel Gompers American Federation of Labor (AFL), John McBride, AFL-CIO, William Green, AFL The American Federationist, 8 (1901), 413.

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1989)

David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1999)

Recommended:

Samuel Gompers, The Samuel Gompers Papers: The Postwar Years 1919-21(Champaigne, IL: University of Illinois Press)

Eric Arneson, “Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History,” Reviews in American History 26 (1998): 146-74

Alonzo L. Hamby, “Is There No Democratic Left in America? Reflections on the Transformation of an Ideology,” Journal of Policy History, 15 (2003): 3-25.

Barbara J. Love and Nancy F. Cott, Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006)

Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds. Radical Feminism (New York: Times Books, 1973)

4/24   11. Antimonopoly Capitalism, the New Deal, Consumerism

Reading:

Louis Brandeis, Other People’s Moneyhttp://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/191

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Mineola, NY: Dover Thrift, 1994) Chps 1, 4, 12;

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991)

Recommended:

Gerald Berk, Louis D. Brandeis and the Making of Regulated Competition, 1900-1932(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Harry Chatten Boyte, “Seeds of a Different Politics,” The Good Society 12 (2003): 70-73

Malcolm Rutherford, “Institutional Economies at Columbia University,” History of Political Economy 36 (2004): 31-78

5/1   12. The Rise of the Right: From Serfdom to Freedom?

Reading:

Frederick Hayek, Road to Serfdom (New York: Routledge, 1944)

Milton Freedman, Capitalism & Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)

Rose and Milton Freedom, Free to Choose http://freetochoose.com/

Newt Gingrich, 1994 and 2012 Contracts with America

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/newt-gingrichs-new-contract-with-america/

Recommended:

Jeff Madrick, The Case for Big Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009)

Thomas B. Edsall, The Age of Austerity: How Scarce Resources Could Shape U.S. Politics(New York: Doubleday 2012).

 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june12/ageofausterity_01-26.html

Michael Sandel, Choosing Freedom WGBH/Harvard Seminar, Free to Choose, Who Owns Me?

5/8   13. Neo-Liberalism & Empires

Readings:
Occupy Wall Street, http://occupywallst.org/

Niall Ferguson, Civilization, The West & the Rest (New York: Penguin Press, American edition, 2011)

Barak Obama, Cairo Speech, Cairo, Egypt, Jun 4, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html?pagewanted=all

Recommended:

Kevin Mattson, “Why We Should Be Reading Reinhold Niebuhr Now More Than Ever: Liberalism and the Future of American Political Thought,” The Good Society 14 (2005) 77-82

Susan K. Gillman, “The New, Newest Thing: Have American Studies Gone Imperial?”American Literary History 17 (2005): 196-214

Sandra M. Gustafson, “Histories of Democracy and Empire,” American Quarterly 59 (2007): 107-33

Harold Meyerson, “Liberalism and Its Friends,” Dissent 56 (2009): 128-31.

5/15   14. Collaborators: Behavioral Economics & Collaborative Justice?

Reading

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2011), chp. 1

Interview with Richard  Posner, John Cassidy, “Rational Irrationality,” New Yorker (Jan 13, 2010).

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1998)

*confirm non-standard hours by email no later than 11 pm the night before, as a professional courtesy to me and your colleagues/peers in our seminar.

Full Texts include mainly presidential speeches & remarks, as well as significant discussions by key officials, (categorized by topic).

1. Foreign Policy

June 2013

2013 Obama Speeches of Note*

Brandenburg Gate Speech, June 2013

(related blog)

Civil Society Organization Remarks, Gorée Island Senegal, June 27

Quotables: “… a democracy is not just about Election Day.”

“Democracy and good governance involves the need for transparency and accountability on the part of government, but also active citizens who are monitoring what the government is doing — they’re speaking out. . .”

September 2013

Addresses the Nation about Syria, September 10, 2013

related blog Empire’s End September 11, 2013

Civil Society Remarks in St. Petersburg, Russia involving grassroots, Faith Based society notion of civil society groups.  This also pertains to New Civil Rights or LGBTers rights.

It also shows Obama’s belief in expanding the concept of NGOs to the United States.  “I’m now in government,  said Obama, “but I got my start as a community organizer, somebody who was working in what would be called an NGO in the international community.”

1. Domestic Policy

June, July, August 2013

Climate Control

Use of executive action in way Obama is scaling back attempt to pass legislation.

Remarks on Trayvon Martin’s Death (Zimmerman Trial)

Surveillance State Blogs

White Paper on Patriot Act

*beginning June 2013 after publication of Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition

POLITICAL THOUGHT

Imprint of American Political Thought (weighing how contemporary political thinkers in the United States affect political action with their ideas).  Politicians pass legislation and design public policies that can help or hinder the United States, depending upon one’s political perspective, but what role does political thought play in the construction of  the polity, the society, and the market?

Traditional American Political Thought (measuring rhetoric in terms of speeches delivered, etc., significant court decisions.)  The field of American political thought is dominated by 18th century and 19th century work about the founding fathers or political thinkers from the Federalist Papers written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to John Calhoun’s A Disquisition of Government. 

Contemporary American Political Thought  examines the spaces and juxtapositions created by ideas, identity movements and vulnerable populations.

These spaces generally occur along three analytical tracks: 1) Race; 2) Women, Gender, Disability, Sexuality, and Vulnerable Populations; and 3) Class, Religion, American Capitalism, & Hegemony.

To study a track on race involves comparing and contrasting universal civil rights, black power, radical black feminism, and multiculturalism and multiracialism.

Another track can concentrate on the most fluid.  It reviews ideas about gender and sexuality first- and third-wave feminism, queer theory, post-modernist feminism, theories of the body, and immigrant and vulnerable populations.

To understand both tracks, however, power inequities must be taken into account.  These inequities are for instance found in 21st American capitalism (anti-imperialism and post-colonialism, post-war neoclassical economics or neo-liberalism, and behavioral economics), transnationalism, neotribalism, and other forms of cultural hegemony.

Most social movements in the 1980s and 1990s were conservative to reactionary, focused on rescinding rights and reestablishing traditions.  This did not constitute a clash of civilizations, nor can it be explained fully by neoliberalism.

Intersectional ideas that challenge the rise of the reactionary right that became politically dominant in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East,did so not by falling into sweeping neoliberal critiques imbued with first or second Enlightenment principles or a rejection thereof in the postmodern, anti-political debate.

Post-1989 identity groups, such as the disability rights movement, ask controversial questions in a non-polarizing way.  The intent is not to say, “We’re right and they’re wrong,” but to analyze what the questions are and how we might think productively about them.

These questions are not just academic.  They serve  a public purpose.  The longer political thinkers delay in raising uncomfortable questions, the easier it will be for governments, international public and private organizations, and markets to create paths that can no longer be easily diverted by a crisis or a big event.  Then it will be much harder to reverse course or even moderate or temper the cultural trajectory.  If political thinkers are going to influence where the world is going, they need to start now.

One of the fundamental principles of the series is that no one should assume that an absence of intent is tantamount to an absence of accountability or responsibility.  When ideas get separated from their birth parents, it is still important to discover their lineage to protect future generations.

Contemporary American Political Thought, including political communication and public opinion and the intersection between the two, therefore occurs in real time as well as in, over, and across time.  Having the race/gender dichotomy dominate political thought from 2008 to 2016 makes identity issues particularly salient.

Political thought can also be contemporary and contingent.  This is all to say that ideas have resonance and can be viewed as political and cultural currency.  Political Thought is traditionally considered the thought of politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals, as well as ideas floated by domestic and international statesmen and stateswomen (as expressed in speeches and remarks, for instance).  Political thought is also exhibited in political culture and can be viewed through the lens of public opinion and political communication

Obama once again showed his loyalty to civil rights — and by civil rights, in this case I mean LGBTers’ rights — at the G20.  Obama’s devotion to gay and lesbian as well as full transgender rights does not capture the complexity of their civil rights fully, and how this spectrum could be found in disability rights. (See my Bodies in Revolt.)

Civil rights about sexuality are more complex than the old civil rights protecting women and persons of color.  As with disability, the fact that there is a fluidity, a flow, and the constant possibility of change makes protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, persons with non-traditional sexualities, or persons from different ethnicities like golden babies.

What is a golden baby?  How does Obama embody it?  As I wrote in Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition, Obama himself embodies what the youth residing in the former Confederate South call a “golden baby.“ With his mixed race (read white/black), mixed ethnic (read Midwestern American, African, Indonesian), mixed continents (same as ethnic, only refocused through a macro-spatial lens), mixed sectional (read urban and suburban with a micro-spatial lens), and mixed class background intersected with his spatial background (read urban/suburban in conjunction with the correlation between race, class, and education), the president has witnessed a transformation.

Obama’s multiracial heritage went from being considered all negative (miscegenation being effectively legalized in Loving v. Virginia when he was five years old) to being considered golden. Privileged and untouched by poverty, a golden child is a rarity and supposedly better than a white or black child. The baby glows. She shines. The embodiment of luminescence and change, a golden baby is a rarity.

Similarly, new civil rights shines in that it reflects not just intersectionality but also a vortex.  New civil rights differs from those that protected persons in immutable categories like race, particularly African-Americans, given the one-drop rule.

To be sure, old civil rights does involve intersectionality, as Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw show so valiantly.  But the new also has legs — there is the possibility today more than ever for movement.  So I label this the vortex and will blog more about this.

For now, let’s just hope the sweet spot of the unofficial rivalry between Obama and Hillary in terms of the Democratic public spotlight will transform itself into a vortex.  Let’s hope her 2016 run (unannounced, I know) from June 2013 to November 2016 will turn into a long, productive journey for the Democrats.

Let’s hope Hillary Fatigue won’t set in.  Let’s make hay of the GOP’s bowling (knocking down 2 or 3 candidates at once).  And let’s ensure that mud doesn’t run downhill but is turned back into wonderfully refreshing mud pies the Republicans might enjoy.

Intersectionality is it.  Let’s just hope the nexus has legs.  But Bill de Blasio’s surprise victory (or soon to be victory) as the next mayor gives me hope.

BE WARY OF THE NARCISSISTIC CONSUMER OF IDEAS – Being human means living in our bodies, for our own perspectives and those of others, with our minds, and in proximity to others.  No people or peoples can live autonomously in their private habitats.  For better or worse, the world is now interdependent and interconnected.  Exploring the frontier in science and human sciences means that we should feature ideas that challenge our definition of human nature — not just what is normal in politics, society, and the global market and/or the global commons — and defy what used to be called the cosmos.

Put positively, these ideas can create a vortex — or a whirlwind of ideas that can be liberating.  These ideas can also be threatening, going so far as to become transuniversal threats.  As either productive or destructive or both the implementation of ideas free of the political thinker’s choice or intent create a challenge for the study of idea impact. 

Instead trying to reach the narcissistic reader, who reads as a means of shoring up their own identity, idea impact and the new book series Heretical Thought I am editing for Oxford University Press challenges political thinkers, and those who subscribe earnestly to their thoughts, to wake up the narcissistic consumer of ideas in politics, global markets and/or commons, society, social media, science, human sciences, and social science.

The goal is to give this consumer the perspective of others by making it up close and personal, not abstracted away or intended to affect the mind and bodies of “others” in foreign nations.

Given the complexity of globalism, globalization, or the global commons, people often do not know the origins of their ideas, and therefore their preferences.  Without engaging in uncomfortable conversations, they consume their ideas from their own perspective.  Not knowing where these ideas came from means there is a rent between ideas and preferences, or real preferences.  What makes this perilous is that proprietors of the commercial uses of science and human sciences understand this dissonance and make use of it.  They study it while the public tries to catch up (and will only bother catching up if the preferences turn out to be clearly disadvantageous).

Do you want to consume the idea of a genetic counselor employed by the hospital with money from a grant originally funded by the insurance industry?  Is this counselor giving you the statistics for genetic birth defects for your sake, or for the sake of the insurance industry?  Does the counselor know the history or lineage of her discipline?  Does it even matter, if you’re not faced with any hard decisions?  Information is information; or is  information power?  And if it is power, does this mean power for good or for bad purpose?

Chances are it is both.  Chances are it is not an either/or equation.  Few people object to the information they receive during genetic counseling unless they encounter a decision that puts them or their future prospects for a family in harm’s way.  Hidden, partially hidden, or barely concealed interests that help shape how information is conveyed can easily influence decisions without rising to the level of fraud, let alone corruption.  These intentions were all good.  Yet this means that we consume others’ perspectives about information, and thus consume their ideas, their very imagination, without a real understanding of the long- or short-term fallout. The books in this series will tease the ideas out — their origins and the epistemologies supporting them, and the long- and short-term implications.

Political thinkers must rally to renew their waning influence, in light of constant attacks on the public sphere and the academy itself, and of the 21st-century preference for fast-paced progress.  Only ideas can challenge the way youth across the globe surrender information that compromises their civil liberties.  Only serious political thought can explore why third-generation Muslims in Rotterdam are more religious than their parents, or cousins who stayed back in the homeland.  Serious political thought is required so that the disability-rights movement does not criticize politicians for giving more rights to animals than to them.

It’s also time to get serious because of how receptive the current global youth is.  Occupy Wall Street reveals a hunger for change, a rejection of the status quo.  Many of the post-1989 identity groups face less resistance than before.  Yet this did not happen overnight, and there is no predicting how long this enlightenment will last.  There was not necessarily one crisis or event that caused the new identity movements to emerge, find solidarity, and fight for their rights, and without support from political thinkers, they could fade away.

The VORTEX:  Idea Impact focuses on the Intersectionality of Ideas & Identities or the intersection of ideas and our changing conception of identities, and the official and unofficial institutions (e.g. culture) that house them.  I write about this in my own work.  I teach seminars on this, most recently, including Neos & Isms as well as Contemporary American Political Development.  Finally, I’m launching a book series called Heretical Thought for Oxford University Press that seeks books advancing these ideas.

Heretical Thought is an academic series in contemporary political theory that calls the tenure elite to arms.  It will publishes books that advance heretical thought in human sciences, science, law and; political communication-public opinion in new and/or social media. 

Instead of featuring heretics themselves, it focuses on heresy or heretical thought — ideas containing so much insight that they shape a course of thinking.  The academy contains  “thought leaders,” who challenge the universalities of the 1990s given the depth of their experience and education.  Contemporary or living political theorists advance our definitions of ethical bodies, minds, selves, cells, and humans, as well as plant and animal capacities and reproduction(s).

Ideas are never static, and nor are our identities, or the institutions that constrain our ideas and our identities. 

BE WARY OF THE NARCISSISTIC CONSUMER OF IDEAS – Being human means living in our bodies, for our own perspectives and those of others, with our minds, and in proximity to others.  No people or peoples can live autonomously in their private habitats.  For better or worse, the world is now interdependent and interconnected.  Exploring the frontier in science and human sciences means that we should feature ideas that challenge our definition of human nature — not just what is normal in politics, society, and the global market and/or the global commons — and defy what used to be called the cosmos.

Put positively, these ideas can create a vortex — or a whirlwind of ideas that can be liberating.  These ideas can also be threatening, going so far as to become transuniversal threats.  As either productive or destructive or both the implementation of ideas free of the political thinker’s choice or intent create a challenge for the study of idea impact. 

Instead trying to reach the narcissistic reader, who reads as a means of shoring up their own identity, idea impact and the new book series Heretical Thought I am editing for Oxford University Press challenges political thinkers, and those who subscribe earnestly to their thoughts, to wake up the narcissistic consumer of ideas in politics, global markets and/or commons, society, social media, science, human sciences, and social science.

The goal is to give this consumer the perspective of others by making it up close and personal, not abstracted away or intended to affect the mind and bodies of “others” in foreign nations.

Given the complexity of globalism, globalization, or the global commons, people often do not know the origins of their ideas, and therefore their preferences.  Without engaging in uncomfortable conversations, they consume their ideas from their own perspective.  Not knowing where these ideas came from means there is a rent between ideas and preferences, or real preferences.  What makes this perilous is that proprietors of the commercial uses of science and human sciences understand this dissonance and make use of it.  They study it while the public tries to catch up (and will only bother catching up if the preferences turn out to be clearly disadvantageous).

Do you want to consume the idea of a genetic counselor employed by the hospital with money from a grant originally funded by the insurance industry?  Is this counselor giving you the statistics for genetic birth defects for your sake, or for the sake of the insurance industry?  Does the counselor know the history or lineage of her discipline?  Does it even matter, if you’re not faced with any hard decisions?  Information is information; or is  information power?  And if it is power, does this mean power for good or for bad purpose?

Chances are it is both.  Chances are it is not an either/or equation.  Few people object to the information they receive during genetic counseling unless they encounter a decision that puts them or their future prospects for a family in harm’s way.  Hidden, partially hidden, or barely concealed interests that help shape how information is conveyed can easily influence decisions without rising to the level of fraud, let alone corruption.  These intentions were all good.  Yet this means that we consume others’ perspectives about information, and thus consume their ideas, their very imagination, without a real understanding of the long- or short-term fallout. The books in this series will tease the ideas out — their origins and the epistemologies supporting them, and the long- and short-term implications.

Political thinkers must rally to renew their waning influence, in light of constant attacks on the public sphere and the academy itself, and of the 21st-century preference for fast-paced progress.  Only ideas can challenge the way youth across the globe surrender information that compromises their civil liberties.  Only serious political thought can explore why third-generation Muslims in Rotterdam are more religious than their parents, or cousins who stayed back in the homeland.  Serious political thought is required so that the disability-rights movement does not criticize politicians for giving more rights to animals than to them.

It’s also time to get serious because of how receptive the current global youth is.  Occupy Wall Street reveals a hunger for change, a rejection of the status quo.  Many of the post-1989 identity groups face less resistance than before.  Yet this did not happen overnight, and there is no predicting how long this enlightenment will last.  There was not necessarily one crisis or event that caused the new identity movements to emerge, find solidarity, and fight for their rights, and without support from political thinkers, they could fade away.

The term Idea Impact refers to both a Hit and Hits.  Idea Impact refers to a target or a Hit, whereas the term Hits measures theimpact of an idea within political culture, broadly defined using my perspective on Euclidean logic.  It focuses on the intersection within political communication and public opinion — or the vortex and/or vortices.

1. Political Communication

First, the field of Political Communication within political science studies the role of ideas in political, social, and economic culture or cultures, though it focuses on the ideas formed by elites primarily.

The political science literature on elite behavior has been eclipsed by the more interdisciplinary work in communication studies.   This seems to be changing rapidly.  Browse the American Political Science Association Annual Program that convened in Chicago in 2013.

1. Public Opinion

Second, Public Opinion, by contrast, is a field in political science that focuses on the masses or the audience consuming mass media or different mediums (blogs in social media).  Again, I would encourage everyone to browse through APSA’s 2013 Programusing the keywords: social media; thought, tradition, ideas.

Since the 1990s the social constructionist perspective, which concentrates on the reciprocity between the elite and the masses or the producers and consumers of media has played a significant role in communication studies in addition to the more narrow field of political science.  (See Dietram A. Scheufele, “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects”Journal of Communication 1999 for an excellent overview.)

III. What I call the Vortex, and refer to as going Beyond Polls indicates how I will analyze political communication and its effect upon public opinion by virtue of traditional and social-media impact in terms of the role of ideas.  Just as culture has become ascendant under globalism, so has the role ideas play in shaping politics.   In addition to keeping track of articles in political science journals, university presses, particularly the elite university presses have had great impact on political science.  (For the presses that have the most impact in political science click here.)

The approach I take is qualitative and quantitative (relying on metadata, though from a critical perspective). It includes book impact by university presses, in the long and short term as well as some study of mainstream media (relying on the papers of record, as well as Google alerts, and key social media sites). And it emphasizes the vortex or the reciprocity between political communication and public opinion.

Whether in political communication, public opinion or the vortex or whirlwind of what goes viral – the vortex — the term idea impact relies on narratives as well as  framingand scripting as well as understanding metadata (defined as models created to target a predefined class of issues, concerns, and problems).

For framing see chapter 6 of Out of Many, One about race as a Foucauldian construct for understanding Obama’s leadership constraints as a candidate in 2008 and during his first term).

For enlightening article on folklore and Political Communication see Margaret Duffy, Janis Teruggi Page, and Rachel Young, “Obama as Anti-American: Visual Folklore in Right-Wing Forwarded E-mails and Construction of Conservative Social Identity,” Journal of American Folklore 125, no. 496 (S 2012).

1. Thought Leaders and American Political Thought

Put differently, this tab will measure traditional political thought as well as the thought of the tenured elite in American universities  —  yes, those “liberal” professors, like me, whom Rush Limbaugh referred to as a professorette.*

What is so galling about the right-wing portrayal of the academy is they cannot even get their labels right (I’m to the left of a liberal), and that their labels are reductionist, redundant, and outdated by more than 50 years (which is to say antiquated, since an antique is 50 years old, not 100).

Contemporary Political Thought as opposed to Political Communication occurs in real time as well as in, over, and across time.  Having the race/gender dichotomy bound to dominate political thought from 2008 to 2016 makes identity issues particularly salient from the perspective of media consumers and producers.  The term Thought Leaders best captures this

Political thought can also be contemporary and contingent and it is reflected in work about political communication.  Contemporary political thought is ideas that last or have resonance and can be viewed as political and cultural currency.

Political Thought is traditionally considered the thought of politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals, as well as ideas floated by domestic and international statesmen and stateswomen (as expressed in speeches and remarks, for instance).

Categories:

1. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
2. PUBLIC OPINION

III. THE VORTEX

1. POLITICAL THOUGHT  and THOUGHT LEADERS

Imprint of American Political Thought (weighing how contemporary political thinkers in the United States affect political action with their ideas).  Politicians pass legislation and design public policies that can help or hinder the United States, depending upon one’s political perspective, but what role does political thought play in the construction of  the polity, the society, and the market?

Traditional American Political Thought (measuring rhetoric in terms of speeches delivered, etc., significant court decisions.)  The field of American political thought is dominated by 18th century and 19th century work about the founding fathers or political thinkers from the Federalist Papers written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to John Calhoun’s A Disquisition of Government. 

Contemporary Political Thought & Thought Leaders

Who or what is a Thought Leader? This term is not a product of the right or the left, or of England or the United States, as both the Guardian and Forbes will tell you.  And, as suits both publications, the Guardian uses the term for the section of the news that does blogs, opinion, and analysis, whereas Forbes markets it as part of a hot social-media tip about what’s hot in social media (repetition intended).

It also means the information barrage we all face is being streamlined or simplified.  We will get more pictures, explaining why I have three.  Hence the rise of Pinterest and other new image centered platforms along with those social media services like Klout that tell us who has it (klout) or who is a “networker” or better yet, an unpaid Huffington Postmedia “moderator.” The social media will have more gatekeepers, clearly.

So is a thought leader a good idea?  I think so.  A thought leader is different than all of these folks.  S/he performs or tries to persuade on a different kind of platform — one that is content rich.  The content, however, mush have weight so the author must have some kind of “cred.”  Nowhere better is this then the academy so wealthy with ideas.  Finally, thought — political thought or any kind of academic thought could mean that professors have ideas with impact.

 

*Presumably Rush Limbaugh gave me this nickname since I’m a woman (a diminutive); and/or since my blogging is reminiscent of “The Wonkette” published by Ana Marie Cox.  Cox was one of original three “liberal” blogs.  The Daily Kos, founded by Markos Moulitsas; and TPM founded by Josh Marshall still exist, whereas The Wonkette is defunct, with Cox writing for The Guardian.

Clouds.  Cloud giants.  Here’s my personal paradox or Catch-22:  The more transcendent, meditative, transcendental, new-age, peace-loving, and global the term, the more hegemonic and oppressive it is.  Or at least that’s where I set my personal default if I wanna be cautious.

But then again, I need to wait five years until I can have my own hyper-personalized assistance, as voiced by Scarlett Johansson inHer.  This is what computer scientist John McCarthy said, and he coined the term “artificial intelligence”way back in the middle of the 20th century (1955).

And now that the Google boys have scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil helping out with “Google Brain,” who knows? (What we do know is Google is investing more than the 100 million President Obama is.)   It was Kurzweil who came up with the notion of “the singularity,” or deep learning (e.g. the Google Brain team studies how the brain works as humans become redundant, or at least a little slow, as machines outstrip our individuality and performance).  But don’t worry, that’s not until 2045, so if you’re alive today and anywhere near my age, we shouldn’t be concerned.

For now, worry more about your data, since, as the New York Times’s Quentin Harding, who has the technology beat, put it, “everyone works in the clouds.”  That is, unless you live where the gods must be crazy and you are the one person who can truly live off the grid with no smartphone, tablet, PC, or web browser.  Nor if you use Dropbox or Netflix, or buy any physical or virtual good or service on Amazon.  Ninety percent of industry on this planet will be spending its income on such clouds that manage computer servers, data storage, and networking.

We are all in it together.  After all, China (Quros), Obama’s socially savvy 2012 campaign,and the CIA use Azure, Amazon’s dark cloud.  And here I’m not even taking into account what Facebook is doing in having its 1.28 billion existing users think they’re finding their own self-interest as they monitor and change their settings themselves.  (Do you want friends or do you want to choose your ads?)

How did IT acquire all this power?  Intel co-chipmaker Gordon Moore supposedly thought of all this in, you guessed it, a law named after himself called “Moore’s Law.” What it predicts is that “the same amount of money buys twice as much computing capability every 18 to 24 months.”  So “flush with the scale and cost savings they have already seen, think they can keep crushing costs indefinitely, increasing the impact of Moore’s Law.”

And we can review.  Initially it was the hardware, then the software, and now the services that cost consumers money.  And once we all got rid of cable, it looked like we’d replace our cable fees with some form of web-rental fee.  Just look at Salesforce, which increased in value 1,200 percent in 10 years and has a $33 billion market capitalization.

All of this get back down to the same old two-handed story, contradiction, Catch-22, or paradox.  We can all dream, since every person on the planet now has great capacity (how could Pinterest load 60 million pictures without Amazon’s dark Azure cloud?). But here’s the bottom line for all of us planet plebs, as Microsoft distinguished engineer Yousef Khalidi put it: The “actual design of these things will be understood by just a few hundred people.”

All of these clouds make the 19th-century robber barons look pretty darn small next to the few in the planet trillionaire-club.  And I’m with 87 percent* of the planet in suggesting that someone, something, or some sovereign of any thing should make those folks accountable.  One thing I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict is that those few hundred will all be a “few good men.”

*Planet Poll Highlights (15,000 consumers in 15 countries):

Question: Would you be willing to trade some privacy for greater convenience and ease?

Planet – No: 51%; Yes: 27%

U.S. – No: 56%; Yes: 21% percent. (Britain similar);

Germany — No: 71% Yes: 12 %; India: No: 40%; Yes: 48%.

Terrific publicity for one of the largest (if not now the largest,  given our almost 1/2 million-person enrollment) great public universities – the City University of New York (CUNY).

There are three links to put together while we are in our honeymoon period or wait-and- see mode with J.B. or our new CUNY-Chancellor-to-Be, while he untangles New York City, New York state, and federal government hybrid-intricacies in our politics.

Look closely while you (or one) connectsthose dots . . . And we can only hope that our new Chancellor’s Midwestern charm will help us in Washington — D.C. that is.

Obama is issuing those regs (executive action) in a fast-and-furious fashion that will only increase.  Let’s hope higher education remains on Obama’s To Do list, along with climate control and sending out canvassers to implement healthcare.  Guess his days as a community organizer paid off after all.

Will Florida senator Marco Rubio land a punch on Obama that hurts?  It’s true: African-Americans cannot get angry.  And if they do, they’d better apologize lickety-split.

Rubio is sure trying to pick a fight with Obama, after it came to light that the Obama team handwrote a reply to a colleague — University of Texas art professor Ann Collins Johns.  This was after he suggested on a GE shop floor in Wisconsin that students should study areas that will give them the possibility of employment.

Again, fighting between two poles, or should I say bullies (SCAMs and SLAMs), does not mean that Obama’s going to go down.  But it does mean he’s not going to be a second-term president that the Right or the Left truly ignores.

I guess what we can conclude is that it will all be fun.  In looking for the vortex, or the whirlwind, in terms of the intersection of political timing when it comes to rhetoric and ideas, it’s easy to look for all the punches.  That is, look for the conflict and you will have possibly found your vortex, or the eye of the storm.  Put differently, Obama can’t be a lame duck if all he does is keep ducking as Hillary runs.  I can imagine he’ll be ducking until January 20, 2017.

What’s in a rule? Everything and/or nothing. Who knows . . . yet.

Monday’s breathtakingly bold announcementrevealed that President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency will require electrical utilities to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 30 percent over 25 years — though don’t get too excited. This proposed rule won’t even become a federal regulation until 2015.

But let’s start at the beginning. How does Obama do it? Where does he get the power and authority for this executive action? As Bureaucrat-in-Chief, of course.

But the politics of being Bureaucrat-in-Chief (ayy ayy ayy) are even more complicated than those for Legislator-in-Chief (these are the politics where Congress gets compared to a cockroach), let alone Diplomat-in-Chief (where, when the President fails or falls short, as in Syria, Iran, and Russia this year, he is quickly labeled a quitter, leading from behind, or a failure).

As Bureaucrat-in-Chief, Obama has breathtaking power to issue federal rules (known as regs). Once a rule becomes a federal reg, it could have a short shelf life or a long one, depending. And what it all depends on is a lot and/or a little.

Like most things in American government, it’s very complicated, since it’s all about the governance of federalism and separation of powers.

Then, when you throw in the politics of federalism or the war between and among the states, as well as the war between states and the federal government, or the separation of powers or war among the three branches — the executive branch including the judiciary, the federal bureaucracy, the White House, and all the independent and quasi-independent regulatory agencies in a hotly contested midterm-election year — it’s about the politics ofsabotage and posturing.

Obama’s rulemaking powers are breathtakingly bold, but so shallow that all we can do is throw up our hands and say: Who knows how it will all turn out?

What we can count on is that the dirty-energy industry will not give up without a fight if the EPA thinks it is going to reduce carbon pollution by 30 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2030. It will be caught up in the federal courts, all the while becoming, hopefully, a divisive issue separating the Republicans from the Democrats. In this case, the Democrats can say they are Ready for Hillary.

Resolution?  Resolving civil-liberties issues?  How could such atepid response to the NSA scandal not fulfill the old adage: When politicians want to deflect/detract/pretend to solve a problem, they create a non-solution.  One durable method is to appoint a commission and have it issue a report.  (See the Warren Report about JFK’s assassination, or the Kerner Commission about the rioting in Watts.)  This is American Politics 101.

But here’s something that is not American Politics 101 but rather comes from the economics department: The idea that small businesses in Europe are marketing anti-Americanism.  What an idea!  Capitalize on the American empire.  Capitalize on or monetize the hypocrisy of the U.S., all the while undermining our economic dominance. An example is Norway’s Runbox email service, which does not use U.S. servers.

Technology companies that shun the U.S. are having a heyday, to the tune of 36 to 180 billion dollars in lost revenue by American companies.  That’s right, $180 billion, though it’s hard to document opportunity losses, when American firms are not being invited to submit bids.

Clearly, Obama tapped the wrong phones.  Arguably the worst ones to tap were Angela’s and Dilma’s (that is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was “Born in the USSR” — or its satellite, East Germany — and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff ).

The Obama administration out-Stasied the Stasi.  It’s time for Obama to Netflix The Lives of Others.

Another full disclosure early summer or June sting!  Read the Full Text Drone Memo and try not to wince is all I can recommend.

Blogs explaining key concepts from Out of Many, One: Obama & the Third American Political Tradition

• Obama’s Belief in Universal Anti-Universalism
• Obama’s Ideology of Inclusivity
• Obama’s Ideology of Freedom & Equality Based on Difference, not Sameness
• Obama’s Notion of Earned Egalitarianism
• Spinozan Ethics & Euclidean Logic (Necessary & Sufficient)
• Obama’s Cosmopolitanism
• Hell on Earth(Obama’s Religious Worldview)
• All-Encompassing Social Sphere(Private and Public Spheres Melded or Collided)
• Collaborative Governance
• Cosmopolitan Rainbow Coalition
• 2012
• GOP Attempts to Separate Rainbow
• Obamacrats21st-Century Racism and Racial Consciousness — Racial Scripting
• Intersectional Identities— New Civil Rights (LGBTers; Persons with Disabilities,Victims of Violence)
• Intersectional Identities— Old Civil-Rights Identities (African-Americans; Latinos-Latinas; Women & Girls)
• Intersectionality of Ideas & Identities
• Neotribalism Defined
• Neotribalism (War on Women)(Role of Religion) (Bold, Sassy & Uppity People)
• Neotribalism& Transuniversal Threats (Straight Conservative Anglo-Males and Straight Liberal Anglo-Males SCAMs vs. SLAMs)
• Passports for TranssexualsObama Haters
• Battling the Roberts Courtabout Civil Rights & Religion
• Diversityand Inclusivity in the Federal Judiciary
• New Faith-Based Initiative (Including Atheists)
• Calls for Citizen Actionor Deliberative Participatory Democracy
• Creates Domestic Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
• Obama’s modus operandi as a Leader
• Federalism for Public Purpose(Horizontal and Diagonal Federalism)
• Shared-Burden Foreign Policy
• Idealist/RealistBinary be Gone
• Bold Foreign Policy
• Civil Liberty Erosions (PRISM& NSA, Drones)
• Implementing Obamacare
• Fail to Pass Legislation?  Executive Action
• Second-term Executive Branch Failures
• Implementing Dodd-Frank’sSuccesses
• Separation of Powers politics, such as Immigration& Guns
• Running Republicans & Immigration& Gun Violence
• Democrats in Obstruction

These blogs discuss the key concepts behind Obama’s contribution to the third American political tradition during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns and his first presidential term.  The blogs showcase these ideas in Obama’s second term, since my book covers only the first Obama administration.

The blogs explain Obama’s worldview:

— Hell on Earth belief — Obama accepts and understands evil, but embraces the perfectibility of humankind

— Obama’s Spinozan ethics — his reliance on Baruch Spinoza, including the Euclidean logic of necessary & sufficient

The blogs illustrate Obama’s ideology, which is universally anti-universal and embraces earned egalitarianism and equality on the basis of difference, not sameness, and my interpretation of his rainbow cosmopolitanism.  Obama also rejects the classical liberal split between the private and the public spheres, opting for an all-encompassing social sphere.

The blogs cover specific issues that underscore Obama’s perspective about identity politics or civil rights, including the GOP’s 2012 War on Women; neotribalism; what role religion plays, given Obama’s worldview about Hell on Earth; and his battle against the Roberts Court, particularly regarding race, gender, and religion.

The blogs explain how Obama has manifested the third American political tradition in his governance style in both domestic and foreign policy.  This includes Obama’s modus operandi and his penchant for executive action, given party polarization and congressional obstruction and delay.  In particular, the blogs about the implementation of Obamacareand the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also highlight how Obama used what Out of Many, One calls “federalism for public purpose.”  This structure created a type of diagonal and horizontal federalist scaffold or structure that still could instill citizen action in what I refer to as domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Finally, the blogs illustrates how Obama governed, cementing a rainbow cosmopolitan cultural coalition despite the best efforts of Obama haters (including birthers and Tea Partiers), and the role that racial scripting played in Obama’s leadership.  (Racial scripting is a sophisticated 21st-century form of racism and racial consciousness, often stripped of overt or malicious racial intent.)

Two firsts on New York Times front page: Sequencing DNA is finally paying off, and sugary drinks test local prevention of obesity, a public-health disease-prevention problem that Obamacare took care to address (though hang on, since this type of federalism is multidirectional).

Why shouldn’t locales like New York City be able to prevent diseases, particularly ones that strike the urban poor the hardest, from exacerbation when the state has a public-health exchange?

Obamacare gives states and municipalities the capacity to test jurisdictional limits with the federal judiciary. This type of expansive power will be hard for the next President to ignore, neglect, sabotage, or defeat. But don’t think President Barack Obama didn’t think of this. Obamacare is nothing if not built on federalism — and federalism that goes in all directions is diagonal and horizontal federalism, as I explain in my latest book.

2016 could be better than 2008 — for women and girls, that is. It’s our century! We have all benefited as Hillary Clinton waits patiently for President Barack Obama to serve his two terms. It’s not race or gender, but race andgender, that’s giving the Democrats a cosmopolitan cultural consensus that stands poised to make the 21st century a different, or rather a diverse, century.

After a millennium of male rule, with the 20th century being one of the bloodiest and most conflict-ridden ever, it’s about time that women, or at least 20 percent women up against a permanent majority of men, got a chance to show what they can do for government when they change the rules.  I imagine it will be a lot less exclusive than any set of rules devised by a former, nearly all-male government.

According to the Washington Post, Hillary supporters fault her handlers for being afraid to let her put feminism front and center in ’08. Now Hillary has new handlers, and the one thing the Ready for Hillary campaign has already discovered is that women count, and whoever wages war on women can get hurt (remember Mitt? I’d like to know who was his handler on feminism).  Even more important than remembering Republicans like Romney is that 98 women sit in the House and Senate today, right now (or 101 if you include three delegates in the House).

Close to a quarter of the power in Congress, in combination with a feminist female president running a feminist executive administration, means women and girls could finally start to benefit from all the laws that already exist but lie in languor, given how poorly they are enforced by the federal courts (e.g. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Pay Equity Act).

Employers in the United States continue to discriminate because they have little to fear when facing a lawsuit.  Women in top Fortune 500 companies have risen only 0.8 percent over the last 3 years.  The private sector is not being as “efficient” as the public sector when it comes to enforcing equity.  Surprise, surprise.  This is, after all, the less accountable private sector.

If you need more encouragement, just look at tomorrow’s blog on this topic and the stats for the public sector, particularly in K-12.  It’s a lot rosier there — and this gives us an indication of just what women in government could and should do in working with the Obama administration for the next 3 years, all in preparation for the post-2016 inauguration.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Hitting Huma Abedin (in her “good wife” role) is not just hitting Hillary and knocking out Anthony Weiner (and raising the disgust of many leaders in the Democratic party, aside from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), it’s the perfect trifecta to go from sullying to revelation or revival of the morality of the GOP.

Perhaps I overuse the phrase I learned growing up in Kern County (a Tea Party stronghold)  — kill two birds with one stone.  I went to church; I even attended Bible school or study as a child and a teen.  As a child, I went because I had no choice (I got tired of the Bible teachers’ not explaining what adultery was, and I was naïve, so I kept asking).  I also attended Bible study very briefly as a teen, as much for social reasons as religious ones.  Here I got tired of my mother’s complaints that the Bible school teachers emphasized revelations too much.  By then, though, I wasn’t paying much attention to hail or frogs falling from heaven.

In raising my own children, I’ve tried to explain that we’re secular Christians or cultural Christians.  None of this has hit home with them.  I know this because a number of years ago, one of my sons, who was tired of my hitting two birds with one stone, said in exasperation:  “Mom! Everyone doesn’t think it’s a good idea to kill two birds.”

I looked at him stunned, and rather impressed that he had heard me.  So I asked him why not?  As it happens, he liked birds more than stones at the time.  Yet he also didn’t necessarily like efficiency when it came to conflict.  I was proud that what is call an ethic of care had been heard at home.  (We prefer an ethic rather than a morality burdened by universal truths.  We all have a penchant for particular truths and many perspectives).

I was also proud of my son’s logic, even if it is foreign to a cultural or secular Christian like me.

Now the GOP has picked up on this, but it’s more the domino or ripple effect: Make fun ofAnthony Weiner to hit Huma to hit Hillary, and hopefully it will also bounce back and even hit Barack too.  Are we talking about one stone or a plague of frogs?  I’m not sure.  Clearly, we will have three more years to find out

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Money, money, money — is Bloomberg or de Blasio soft on soft money?

Masculinity, masculinity, masculinity — is Obama or Hillary soft in campaigns?

For a first — the first woman, I’m predicting, to land a major-party nomination in 2016 — we’re right on historical target, or a just a wee bit early. But then again, Hillary’s learned a lot about birds and worms over the last 20 years while watching runs for national or even nationally important local offices like the NYC mayoral race.

Hillary Clinton began running for president in June of 2013. Actually, the minute she announced her planned retirement, in 2011, she was running from that all-visible platform, the Department of State. She began running while following the Founders’, or at least the so-called Virginia Dynasty’s, long tradition of the Mute Tribune. (Adams, Jefferson, and Monroe all had to be coaxed out of retirement and into running for office.)

Hillary may not have beaten Obama into being the first in terms of identity politics and the presidency, but she’s faster than Obama, who had an incredibly fast clock (2004 run for Senate; 2006 Democratic speech; 2007 declaration of run for office).

And since we all face three years of animal references (e.g. horse racing), it’s hard not to start applying all the classic campaign references early too.

Clearly everyone wants to be in Hillary telephoto range, even if the references are blurry and opaque, like this article on Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s emissary, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, and his criticism of Bill de Blasio — his former “brother-in-arms” — who is now leading the race. The tenor of the article is that de Blasio is a “tax and spend” Democrat, the kind last spotted in the 1970s.

The main reference to money, however, is less taxes than soft money. Both de Blasio and Wolfson worked for Hillary when she took a successful stand against “soft” money in her historic New York senatorial campaign.

How many registered voters remember her run for senator in New York in 2000, let alone the 1970s? Think back a century — or take a turn in political time; we’re just about at World War I. It’s old news that the Ford Model T hit the road. How far is that from Civil War Reconstruction and the Grant administration?

Neera Tanden, Hillary Clinton’s campaign policy director, steering away from any references to anything “soft” as well as any reminders of how long ago Hillary ran for Senate in 2000, said, “On most major issues, they saw eye to eye.”

With the mayoral election looming, and a field this large and undistinguished, compounded by the social reality that outgoing mayor Bloomberg learned a few things about politics and the dissemination of information after a career in Wall Street and information technology, Bloomberg and his emissaries know well the differences between: 1. unfriending friends; 2. fake trolling for fake friends; and 3. unfriending friends in an attempt to elevate a real friend you can count on for a rain check, say in late 2016.

Is Bloomberg paying off a debt to City Council speaker Christine Quinn (after all, it’s not just Obama who should be concerned about his legacy, and the Quinn ship is all but sunk)? Or is Bloomberg taking a page out of Hillary’s book, and looking for his post-retirement worms that come after rain checks?

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

When I visualize this lead in the Washington Post, I find myself humming the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s“Blowin’ in the Wind”:  “How many roads must a [wo]man walk down before you call [her] a [wo]man?”

“After nearly a million miles of travel to 112 countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing her term on the familiar home ground of partisan politics and crackling fascination with the ambitions of a woman almost no one thinks is really leaving public life.”

Apparently Hillary Clinton can do it all.  And, as is true of so many women in leadership, her greatest strength as well as triumph is that everyone always underestimates her.

Back in the 1990s, when I was coming of career age and discovered that she had been perceived as the “better” half of the Clinton couple when she went to Yale Law School, I looked up her valedictory speech at Wellesley, which was covered in Life magazine.  It was amazing.  Then I learned that she gave up being a lawyer on the Watergate investigation to move to Arkansas.  Hun?

Then, at Rose Law Firm, she defended Walmart . . . the story got worse and worse, and just when you thought you’d hit bottom, it got worse still.  Hillary was doing what so many women do: sacrificing her principles and squandering her enormous potential to have a family.  Who ever heard of such a thing in the 1970s?

To me, Hillary Clinton’s nadir happened when I watched her on television explaining how she turned a supposedly “proper” and legal gift of 1 grand into 100 grand by playing the cattle-futures market, all while dressed up in her pink-and-black Chanel suit.  That’s when I turned off.

Well, I was a child of the 1980s and 1990s, so this seemed like squandered potential to me.  But then, I never saw any bra burnings or got to participate in anything with brightly colored stockings.  Maybe it’s time for me to rethink a few of these things.  Since I finally got it all (career, sons, husband who took my surname, and supports me and my sons) so I should be generous.  And now that I have the benefit of experience in a male world (senior women faculty in the political science academy might even be a smaller percentage then women in the Senate, though thankfully, the Graduate Center has many, many senior women so this too is another version of “it all.”)

Like most powerful women leaders, Hillary has had to make a lot of lemonade.  Obama thought he would put Hillary on a plane so she’d never touch American soil and steal his thunder, but perhaps this time it means our first female president will be intersectional just like Obama, having two vulnerable identities simultaneously:  a “senior woman.”  It doesn’t sound half bad.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Hillary Clinton is a “vessel” for the neocons who want to reinvade Iraq under the term “liberal interventionism”?  Are the neocons getting more Greek, Babylonian, or Roman?

The masculine overtones in this piece about a dueling, or not so much dueling but ideologically independent, couple are breathtaking.  To be sure, academics on summer research time love this kind of article.  I mean, what’s better than a piece predicting the reemergence of our favorite nemesis – the neocons?

But the idea that this will metamorphose from a neocon intervention under W. into liberal interventionism under HC seems like a bit thick (or deep, depending upon your archeology), particularly if the New York Times reporter, or whoever Jason Horowitz is, likened HC to a “vessel.”  (Is that a reference to pottery dug up in Greece, Babylonia, or Rome?)

Whether HC becomes a neocon or neoliberal vessel, and whether it’s categorized later by academics as neo-Babylonian, neo-Grecian, or neo-Roman, I highly doubt (and can only hope) that, although Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s spouse) was HC’s former State Department spokesman, it does not mean her former boss will propagate the views of her trailing spouse.

Take a look at HC’s record when it comes to supporting co-workers who are wives with downward-dragging, or just plain knuckle-dragging, spouses. Victoria can ask Huma* how loyal HC is.  She can ask Huma how she’s able to separate the wheat from the chaff so the former third female Secretary of State can see the problem without being called a “vessel.”  Why would HC want to be pulled back into Babylonia again, anyway?  Didn’t Kagan read her new book yet?  (HC admits she made a mistake in 2002, voting for W’s invasion.)

* (Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner did it again.  The sexting pattern is beginning to emerge, since there is some kind of correlation in which Huma is always by Hillary’s side, hawking HC, whenever this happens.  But what do I know about trailing spouses, or any husband but my own?)

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

When a conservative radio host “jokes” about shooting Democratic wanna-be contender Hillary Clinton, is this hate speech, inciting violence, and crossing a line if someone does it or gets caught trying?  Or is this free speech?

The best point of reference can be found in Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s upholding the socialist Eugene Debs’s conviction in 1919, Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Dates matter. It’s the when that counts. In the study of politics, we call this notion of chronology “political time.” Then you wrap up the when with the who, what, and where, and you’ve got a story. Well, that is certainly true with House of Cards. It’s an American version of the British classic that the entertainment industry — Netflix — can be proud of. Or can it? Is it a Democratic or Hillary-bashing device, just more gripping and well acted than most?

Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright as Mr. and Mrs. Francis Underwood are such good actors playing deliciously evil, cruel, violent, and corrupt fictitious Democrats that they almost top the shenanigans of the protagonist in the original BBC House of Cards. And of course, the final episode of Season 2 guaranteed that there will be Season 3 — you guessed it, next Valentine’s Day, in 2015, during the at least two-year run by those getting Ready for Hillary.

I guess Valentine’s Day is as good as any Hallmark Holiday to release such a cynical, Machiavellian analysis of how corrupt corporate America and all politicians are in power, working for the United States (not just Washington), just as Hillary will be Ready to take her nomination after eight long years of preparation for the White House. To be sure, this is a tale about national politics and multinational corporations, less about state and local politics.

Now, I don’t know if the owner of Netflix (who does believe in freedom and responsibility management-labor practices), or any of the crew and cast of this power play about the corruption of American business and politics, is behind setting up a wider viewership to receive such cynicism. Nonetheless, the wonderful season sure plays up one significant message dear to the GOP: Why bother voting? Or, put differently: They are all corrupt. So why would any sensible voter go out and vote anyway? (Vice Presidents do not have to get elected if they assume the American presidency, after all, by any means. Or put more cautiously: VPs, like LBJ, serve the remainder of their predecessors’ presidency when they take office, and can run for one or two more full terms.)

Oops! Now I’m giving away Netflix’s punch line. But who cares? It was obvious from the very beginning. What was less obvious, or more ruthless at least, was all the corruption, violence, and cruelty that will have viewers binge-watching.

Meanwhile, we all know one place where there won’t be a binge in 2015 or 2016 — and that’s for anyone waiting for any documentaries or biopics about Hillary, since the mainstream networks settled this last summer, getting cold feet.

It’s always better to fictionalize history than to try to document — or at least don’t try to document it until it becomes history. Documents are just too precarious, being so open to interpretation, at least before they are unclassified. It’s better to have a good-faith fictionalized account than to attempt a good-faith interpretation of the facts that can easily get caught up in litigation or be a casualty to public opinion polls or be the source of corporate profits. Don’t believe me, just watch Fox News after you turn off Netflix. Didn’t someone say something about something that we all know is news?

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Remember when Hillary raised over 50 million dollars and didn’t even spend it all? And she was in the Senate race to watch in 2000.  She was running as a carpetbagger while about to leave her role as First Lady.

I remember all this.  But what I remember most was what she did with the remainder of her war chest after being seated in the Senate. Rather than saving it for her next run for Senate, Hillary gave it to BFFOH’s (best future friends of Hillary). She gave part of her war chest to women running for office — not just the House or Senate (79 of the 435 representatives are now women), but other offices as well.

Well, what a surprise — Hillary shares, motivates, and governs like a woman.  (Or can I say she “runs like a girl”?) And that’s a good thing.

This means Hillary Clinton motivates people in terms of appealing (like a mom) to their good side. She shares what’s at the dinner table (probably cooking it herself) and then rules with reciprocity (rule and be ruled) and in good faith (the opposite of the politics of resentment and sabotage) after having done her homework (due diligence).

Of course, it’s not surprising that one chapter of what promises to be an interesting book talks about Hillary’s Hit List (giving a chapter title this nice alliteration), but who wouldn’t? At least we know that Hillary grades on a 7-point scale.  (Again going beyond the pale and doing more diligence than the regular old 4.00 GPA.)  And  if you’re on the right side of the scale you might even get a handwritten note, presumably on nice stationery, written by her senior staff, and signed with a flourish by your new BFF.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Movie [√]. Okay, it’s a miniseries, but that’s where all the talent goes, now that we’re in “indie” land, as opposed to Hollywood giving us one “chick flick” a summer.  Besides, I’m being played by none other than Diane Lane . . .

Documentary [√].  It may only be CBS, not PBS or the BBC, but still, not far from the documentary gold standard, I would think.  Surely, CBS and Time-Warner will patch up soon enough.  (Reminder to self, check with Ken B.)

White House Lunch [√]. Barack ate a TLT (that’s turkey bacon, for those not in the know, but still very “American” in case the Birthers are concerned about the White House kitchen), and Michelle approved.

White House Breakfast [√]. No, not turkey with the bacon and eggs, but Joe was so gracious . . . and what a winning smile . . .

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

“Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is set to raise money for New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio (D).” Is this news, or even blog-alysis? It’s not analytical, not temporal (being 2 days old), so I’m baffled as to what category it falls into. If you look through the Washington Postor New York Times archives, the Democratic wannabe 2016 contender raised more than $50 million for her 2006 campaign and spent only $35 million, so she shared the rest with her friends. Why not?

Being an FOH really meant something back then, and I for one believe it still does, even if FOH was too related to FOB, so they understandably reconfigured an acronym change. Spending money on your friends has nothing to do with being female or a Democrat, let alone a progressive Democrat. The person who raised the initial bar was, after all, Arianna Huffington’s husband, who spent $28 million on himself tried to unseat Diane Feinstein in 1994.

Money begets money . . . a better adage than success begets success, since you do need money first, or let’s say it comes in handy (along with a foundation or two).

Posted on by Ruth O’Brien

Is Roosevelt’s Rule Akin to Barack’s A More Perfect Union?

While naming everything after Roosevelt has many upsides, it could give the American public more clarity about Hillary’s position on the private and public rights and privileges of women and girls in the United States.  What feminist wave is Hillary riding?  A CNN blogger referred to Hillary’s statement that

“One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard is from Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1920s who said that women in politics or public roles should grow skin like a rhinoceros,” Clinton said. “I think there’s some truth to that.”

Remember that Barack Obama had to clarify his position on race before winning the Democratic nomination in 2008.

This so-called Roosevelt Rule does more than articulate Hillary’s position on women’s and girls’ rights or her version of feminism.  It also puts some distance between Eleanor and her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt (who shot a few rhinos in his day).  It puts even more distance between Eleanor and her supposedly philandering husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, which explains her move to a different residence (essentially across the street) in Hyde Park, New York, while FDR served as President of the United States.

Posted on by Ruth O’Brien

Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of the Daily Beastand Newsweek, and the former editor ofVanity Fair and the New Yorker, among other publications, just pegged Hillary Clinton’s 1995 speech delivered in Beijing as a“battle cry” for women in an article about  famous speeches from Pericles to Hillary Clinton. You be the judge if you care to hear it, or better yet, read it:

“Thank you very much, Gertrude Mongella, for your dedicated work that has brought us to this point, distinguished delegates, and guests:

I would like to thank the Secretary General for inviting me to be part of this importantUnited Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration, a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in the community, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens, and leaders.

It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country. We come together in fields and factories, in village markets and supermarkets, in living rooms and board rooms. Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concern. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may appear, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future, and we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world, and in so doing bring new strength and stability to families as well.

By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in our lives — the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of our countries.

There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou — the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems. Wasn’t it after all — after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum. In that forum, we talked about ways that government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working to address the health problems of women and girls. Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local — and highly successful — programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.

What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children, and families. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world.

I have met new mothers in Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care. I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in safe, and nurturing after-school centers. I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping to build a new democracy. I have met with the leading women of my own hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for children in their countries. I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, or rickshaws, or thread in order to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. I have met the doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath ofChernobyl.

The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued — not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.

At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.

Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own country, women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.

I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air, and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who find that, after raising their families, their skills and life experiences are not valued in the marketplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, or fast food chefs so that they can be at home during the day with their children; and for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each and every day.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.

We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.

Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments — here and around the world — accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. The — The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one — No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture.

Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse. I believe that now, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.

These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed — and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries, if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure. It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend — or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle, before that happened, on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America’s most divisive philosophical wars. But it was a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.

But we have also been reminded, in V-J Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and to build a better world. We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war. But we have not solved older, deeply-rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world’s population.

Now it is the time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care. Families rely on women for labor in the home. And increasingly, everywhere, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives.

As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes — the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let — Let this conference be our — and the world’s — call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see — for our children and our grandchildren.

The time is now. We must move beyond rhetoric. We must move beyond recognition of problems to working together, to have the comment efforts to build that common ground we hope to see.

God’s blessing on you, your work, and all who will benefit from it.

Godspeed and thank you very much.”

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

As higher education becomes the next healthcare, administrators and faculty alike scramble to explain why live-body teaching counts, and that tenure is important for teachers from K-12 or universities.  That said, this does not mean anyone in academia should ignore the student-loan debt crisis that everyone should face.

A alarming piece of news is that not only are undergrads coming out with five-figure debt, but the Chronicle reported in January that some graduate students have racked up six-figure debt — $190,000 and $250,000, as graduate students combine student loans with credit-card debt.

How did this happen? I dunno.  Many universities like mine have been offering five-year packages to help defray costs.  But clearly this is not enough.  And what I do know is that it’s time we all paid attention to this debt crisis.

And that rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water (getting rid of Ph.D. education in humanities or humanistic social sciences, which is fundamental for democracy as Martha Nussbaum so aptly shows), these fields should start tackling the problem.

While this is a heavy lift, surely prospective students and parents along with graduate students, and faculty could help administrators out, and work as a critical collective.  After all, both student and faculty governance operates, or should operate, on the basis of consensus.

I wonder what Hillary’s position is on student debt?  Even if students don’t vote (when they could), their parents do, don’t they?

We know what action Obama took on student loans giving them to the Department of Education rather than letting all those profits go to private banks.  We can only hope Hillary can see the salience of this issue for 2016.

Posted on by Ruth O’Brien

Boy! Or should I say my, my “boys” (by boys I’m referencing the GOP’s good ol’ white boys), you have turned this into a brawl, with the Republican party just voting to “punish” CNN and NBC for running a documentary and a mini-series about Hillary Clinton.
The GOP won’t let either network sponsor Republican-primary debates. What terrible punishment not to see the likes of Rand Paul debating Marco Rubio, or some woman that they dredge up from their past, like Sarah Palin (though the GOP still seems shellshocked from how well she outmaneuvered them so, I dunno if they’ll go there). What a shame that CNN and NBC didn’t listen to GOP chair Reince Priebus’s warning that they would face RNC retaliation.

On one hand, Hillary’s critics emphasize all the “drama” surrounding Hillary Clinton (her husband, her aide Huma Abedin’s husband former Congressman Weiner) by referencing it as “Clintonland” and trying to turn it into a circus, especially on FOX “News.” And yet, on the other hand, the GOP is afraid that Hillary’s story will make her look so good that the two shows will be “little more than extended commercials supporting Secretary Clinton.” Please.

The GOP needs to decide which side they’re on — pro-drama or anti-saga Hillary Clinton — at least if they want us not to suspect that she’s such a great warrior in the war against women that they’re really afraid of the real drama. And quite possibly this will be riveting once NBC and CNN string a few narratives together, so I guess I can’t blame them for being as scared of Hillary as they came to be of Sarah Palin.

Perhaps the GOP’s war on women is simply fear? Before I get carried away with this logic, though, who slaps who in male-dominated GOP households? PEW ought to do a poll — but then again, we know which party was against the Violence Against Women Act that President Obama signed into law last spring as well as the link between the GOP and guns.

Posted on by Ruth O’Brien

The House of Representatives has finally engaged in a “frank” discussion about national security, particularly metadata dragnets.  Parts of the Patriot Act that are set to expire in 2015 will alter these practices anyhow.  Wow, that is something.  Something good.

But when the Obama administration refused to discuss revising those sections, as President Barack Obama had promised, House libertarians from both partiesintroduced an amendment to sharply limit NSA surveillance now.  Obama worked with Republican leaders to block it.

Still, what some call a “wing nut” coalition of some of the most liberal Democrats (such as Jerrold Nadler, Democrat from a district including the Upper West Side of Manhattan) and the libertarians the Republicans love to hate (or marginalize), such as Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Western Michigan, found 205 votes.  How fringe could that coalition be?

I don’t recall ever knowing of a Congress filled with 205 extremists of any kind, and I’m thinking all the way back to those Western “insurgents” like Republican progressives George W. Norris of Nebraska and William Borah of Idaho, who served a whole generation in the Senate, spanning from Teddy Roosevelt’s term as president to that of his cousin Franklin.

Are liberal Democrats in Congress finally developing enough of a backbone to discuss privacy issues?  Or are liberals gearing up for 2014 midterms that will support a 2016 Hillary bid for the presidency?

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

American health reform is health-insurance reform. Please. Unless you were a child at the time, we all know this. So Robert Pear should not lead in one of our most distinguished papers of record by pointing out that “in many states . . . smaller networks of doctors and hospitals than are typically found in commercial insurance” will be available to consumers under the Affordable Care Act. These states extend “from California to Illinois to New Hampshire” and include many politically and regionally different states in between (red, blue, and purple). Again, Continue reading →

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Can anyone be surprised that a politics professor, a BFFOH, might take notes about national politics?

Diane Blair, one of Hillary’s closest friends, is a politics professor we might remember. At the very least, all the coming political strategists, along with the political-science and history professoriate mining through the Clinton Presidency archives located in Little Rock, will remember in her in their footnotes as they document not one but possibly two Clinton presidencies.

Btw, this picture is pre-Little Rock, I’m pretty sure, but don’t quote me.  What I’ve always wanted to see (and read) is Hillary’s research on Saul Alinsky.  After all, we know Hillary, like Barack Obama, was enamored with this public intellectual, or professor of the streets. This could give us insight into the intersectionality of race, gender, and economics.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

By now you’ve heard the headlines — that is, unless you have your head in the sand or are hiding your radio, iPad, iPod, pod, vod, or any other medium for a blog under a rock. Better yet, you could be pretending it’s still late August and enjoying that last day on what must be a deserted beach. But otherwise, you’ve heard the headlines that “Hillary Supports Obama on Syria.” The headline appears on conservative, liberal, foreign, and barely foreign (owned by Rupert) media and screens of all types.

But since when does a wannabe contender — from the same party, no less — “support” a sitting president, particularly if this same contender left the very office that is now officially charged with “supporting” Obama? Lame duck or otherwise, isn’t this backwards? Not since RFK stole LBJ’s thunder have we witnessed such a demoralized lame-duck president, and even Lyndon didn’t have to put up with it for more than 6 months. (And don’t forget Bob, the declawed Secretary of State.)

If there weren’t so much preparing to do (for the invasion), one might even feel sorry for Bob and Barack.  But hey, who knows, maybe Hillary, Bob, and Barack have a deal — they’ve decided Joe (Biden) will get to fly around on an airplane during her entire presidency as a consolation prize, while Obama pulls a Bill, Hillary, or Jimmy by becoming a diplomat with no power but plenty of time to rest and collect speaker monies.

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

Now that President Obama is recovering from politics as usual, with his second-term scandals beginning to clear up, he is carving out a clear course for the midterms — though ideally he would have started a bit earlier, perhaps before Tuesday’s primaries in such bellwether states as Iowa, New Mexico, New Jersey, and California (along with four others).

How is he doing it?  By hiring, of course. Obama is hiring two critical fresh faces —Sylvia Mathews Burwell at HHS, and the soon-to-be-announced new head of the all-American VA (perhaps this man).

All this comes just in time as we head into what promises to be one of the nastiest, most personal-identity mud-slinging midterms in American history. Or, to qualify that, at least since the GOP tried to displace longstanding Western insurgent senator George W. Norris of Nebraska in the 1930 GOP primary with a different George Norris, this one a grocer from Broken Bow.

How do I know about this? When I read my dissertation (which became my first book,Workers’ Paradox) aloud to my black-sheep great aunt, who had lived through the Progressive era and the New Deal, she got all upset when I mentioned this election, and having participated at Chautauqua in the Depression era, her concern was not surprising.  (On the other hand, if today you went out and found a small-town supermarket manager named Mitch McConnell, he would probably do a better job of running the Senate than the man who currently does that job.)

So much for the isolation of the professoriate.  So much for the tired ol’ phrase about academics living in Ivory Towers.   Not one, but two social-science professors from a conservative private liberal-arts college — Randolph-Macon — will be dueling.  A pair of Virginia Philosopher-Kings — what we could call the neo-Virginia Dynasty, or Mute Tribune — coming from two politically divergent disciplines: economics and sociology.

The pair is Tea Party Professor David Brat, an economist with a divinity graduate degree, who is a macro-growth and international trade/finance economist, vs. mainstream moderate Democratic Professor Jack Trammell, a sociologist who specializes in disability in higher education (what luck for Barack and Hillary, who support helping persons with disabilities and increasing funding in higher education).

A pair of Randolph-Macon professors will be vying this November for the unthinkable (that is, if you continue reading textbooks on the 98 percent advantage for incumbents in Congress).  This makes even opposition Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nervous about the unseating of Eric Cantor, her opposition.

To me, the idea of dueling professors — or elite philosopher-kings — is much more exciting news than the idea that the mainstream in Washington or inside the Beltway is emphasizing. This makes a much better historic story than what’s rolling round in the mainstream press — the unprecedented unseating of an incumbent, who is part of the majority party’s establishment, no less (making his odds 1 in 100 years of being displaced).

Will the moralistic preacher/philosopher/economist win, or will the sociologist, who wants to offer a helping hand to all members of society, prevail?

Could someone explain poking on Facebook? Is it similar to winking on Match.com? How can Facebook concentrate on liking, and yet instill poking? Is it a male 8th-grade sensibility?

Remember that piece in the Sunday New York Times about divorcebeing the one taboo.   We can watch video of “collateral damage,” innocent children, and dictators being killed. But the one thing everyone avoids, not just on Facebook but all social media, is two partners splitting up? Really?

As a couple untwines, they are armed to the teeth against each other, knowing how to sabotage. It’s better than neighbors in Bosnia, or brothers in the Civil War. But no Pinterest. No Instagram.

Why? It’s not because it’s too bitter. (Doesn’t death trump bitterness as something too sordid to see?) No, that’s not why. The why to divorce being taboo has nothing to do with sexism, gender roles, or the best interest of the children. It has to do with arms — people throwing stones from within glass houses. It is mutually assured self-and-collective destruction.

Obviously both sides have their ammunition if you lived together for anything over 3 months. No, what this speaks to is shame. And that’s that men can no longer shame women into silence the way they did before. Or, at least not here in the United States.

No when two sides know everything, they know how to harm each other. And while it used to be that one side could silence the other with shame . . .

–shame through co-optation (the woman takes the money and runs)

–shame with no co-optation (the woman had enough money on her own to run and rescue her children)

or just

–shame on the street (you’re out; you’re fired; you can’t provide for your children)

. . . well, things have changed. Not for everybody, to be sure; and in Manhattan, thestatistics remain the same.

And as the Times has told us, public documents work both ways. It’s messy for Silicon Valley, those Frisbee-playing gerks (combination of geek/jerk = gerk).

It turns out that Silicon Valley may be good at hiring women who front the shop and are not entirely white (Asian women and men are there in higher proportions — just look at MIT’s demographics). But this gets to my four questions for the week, to wrap up in one or two blogs:

1. Does it matter if women are Telling Stories out of Court? (we will see as we follow the ins and outs of the new round of traditional Title VII cases in California)
2. Should Hillary Clinton be allowed to hide all her documents (email) whereas other similarly situated Secretaries of State had private email accounts, thought they had faith in how we classify documents as a nation.
3. How will House of Cards end in February 27, 2016, after all the caucuses and primaries that count been decided? (i.e. Iowa: New Hampshire; Colorado caucuses, Minnesota caucuses; New York; Utah; Nevada caucuses; South Carolina; North Carolina; and Michigan.) Does the cliff hanger promote HC, putting Republicans more on the run?
4. Did American students finally find a way to challenge authority effectively, through freedom of speech that, at UC Irvine, universally bans flag waving?* The operative word is universal, which I would call Spinozan.

Fred and I will yin-yang about this all week. Because in the end, all we can really say is that we will see, we will see. #FredOBrien, FredericDOBrien@gmail.com or raob2006@gmail.com

by Professor Ruth O’Brien & Frederic D. O’Brien (a.k.a. Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

Am I surprised NBC suspended Brian Williams? Am I surprised Bill O’Reilly is being backed up? Nope.

After growing up Republican in what is now Tea Party territory, I know there is one word for Fox’s Roger Ailes — and that’s “relentless.” There’s also a song sung in Bakersfield – and that’s “Stand by Your Man.”

This said, no one stands by their man if he doesn’t have the proper title of “professional provocateur.” And worse, you must be authentic. And for Bill O/Reilly that can only mean one thing – he practices what he preaches – the Politics of Hate. # Prof. Ruth O’Brien

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Wow, Bill O’Reilly’s a blowhard? Who could have seen that coming? It does appear that he has exaggerated and embroidered some events from his past, though perhaps not on the heroic scale we’ve seen from Brian Williams. If O’Reilly were still a reporter, we could expect a reprimand or suspension like the one Williams got from NBC News — not because any degree of honesty is required to read words off a teleprompter, but because news operations like to preserve a pretense of trustworthiness. The thing is, O’Reilly makes no claim to be an impartial or scrupulously honest and thorough reporter. He’s just a political commentator with a gift for oversimplification and inflammatory remarks, like dozens of similar personalities on the left and right. And in that line of work, the habit of overstating things is practically a requirement. # Fred O’Brien

Posted by Ruth O’Brien

After a friendly tolerant discussion about different European nation-states at the in-house publishing dinner-time discussion, we’re making the following argument adjustment (i.e. developmental editing).  We deleted one sentence from last Friday’s blog deciding it’s more Danish than Dutch.

Stay tuned for “Potential Presidential Characters (e.g. Hillary vs. Jeb or Scott); and/or Clashing Court Rulings — as Fred and I continue to Yin & Yang on Mondays.

Posted by Professor Ruth O’Brien & Frederic D. O’Brien (a.k.a. Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

My, my. It is Presidents’ Day again. February is that kind of month—polarized, that is, and I’m not talking about needing goggles or glasses (ski or otherwise). Nor am I kvetching about the vacuousness of that truly silly civil holiday—Groundhog Day (Bill Murray made that one boring, no?). Nor am I making any oblique 1970s or ’80s references about ice storms or polar climates in our polarized or bipolar world. Rather, I’m comparing apples to oranges, or religious-rights leaders to presidents, and it does seem that the former (surprise, surprise) comes up short in the recognition department.

On one hand, George and Abe get to merge and create a faceless yet stronger four-day weekend. On the other hand, Martin Luther King gets short-shrifted.

To be sure, MLK gets mean name recognition and a catchy acronym. Yet not only was this holiday not enjoyed in all states (such as Arizona) for many years, and not only is the holiday merged in several southern states with one for Robert E. Lee (born January 19), but even in states that embrace it completely, it depends on your workplace whether you will get the day off.

What I know is that MLK, as a stand-alone in mid-January, is short-shrifted, given that we have had 40-plus white male presidents and only one prominent religious-rights leader, even though we’re supposedly a predominantly Christian state?*

Is this reverse discrimination? Or is it reverse-reverse discrimination if you were part of the religious police? (I’m thinking of the Hobby Lobby Roberts Court here.)

I can’t imagine what this Court would say, but I can imagine what the Log Cabin Republicans might say about all these twists and reverses. But then again, would I want to be at either president’s or religious rights leader’s parties on any Friday or Monday?

by Professor Ruth O’Brien

*In-house development editors found a small logical leap.  Find it if you can. 

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Well, it’s difficult to quantify whose shrift is shorter, but remember that Presidents’ Day is shared by two men, whereas King gets a day all to himself (except in those few Southern states Ruth mentioned that bring in Lee, thus borrowing the civilian civil-rights hero–plus–slaveowing general template from Presidents’ Day). In fact, if you consider Presidents’ Day to be a day for all presidents, then Washington and Lincoln have to share their glory with 41 others, most of whom are distinctly low-rent in comparison.

Moreover, George and Abe have long since been conscripted as pitchmen for holiday sales at appliance dealers, whereas the respect accorded King because of his inherent dignity (and his heirs’ zealous guarding of his personality rights) has kept him in the public mind as a hero instead of a kitschy figure.

But perhaps the biggest factor working against King’s holiday is the timing. It falls in the fallow period after the Christmas/Kwanzaa/New Year’s bacchanalia, leading to a general attitude of “What, another holiday?” Not to mention the weather—which is just as bad for Presidents’ Day, to be sure. Perhaps the solution is to celebrate important winter birthdays on an arbitrary day in summer, as the British do with Queen Elizabeth.

There’s a case in favor of restricting birthday holidays to presidents and Revolutionary figures, to keep them from multiplying too greatly. Yet even if you accept this, the unique status of slavery and its aftermath in American history would argue in favor of making an exception for King. Washington, Lincoln, and King all risked (and two of them lost) their lives to create and preserve freedom for Americans. But comparisons are futile; their lives and achievements speak for themselves, far above our poor power to add or detract with ski holidays and blockbuster weekend sales events.

by
Frederic O’Brien​ (a.k.a Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

by Professor Ruth O’Brien & Frederic D. O’Brien (a.k.a. Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

 

When a print publication’s most popular foreign-policy headline is “Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli warplanes” and the CPAC straw poll has Rand Paul winning and Scott Walker “surging,” while CPAC attendees would have “walked out on Jeb,” it would have been strategically unwise for the Democratic potential presidential nominee, former New York senator, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to put her toe in the ring. Why would HC endanger not only her candidacy but all the candidacies of the Democrats who want to win in 2016?

If HC sticks her neck out today by declaring her official Democratic candidacy, as Cokie Roberts contends on NPR than HC will be triangulated to death.

HC gives every man in the GOP field (and don’t forget that one woman, former Hewlett Packard President Carly Fiorina) a chance to prove either his foreign-policy creds (which those Governors Jeb, Scott, and Rick sorely lack) or their not-so-wacky Christian, tax fearing Tea Party creds against her.

How do conservatives get away with ¼ truths and absurdities, like the headline above about Israeli warplanes? A few well-placed bald-faced lies about HC’s position on Libya in foreign policy is the triangulation – death by association with something entirely false, such as saying the Obama administration had a military response available to save the diplomats in the consulate in Libya.

Similarly with the Tea Party, fringe conservatives are trying to convince their fellow Republicans that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker could win. Scott’s got all the Tea Party touchstones or creds: He is part of the war on women as well as the entire spectrum of the rainbow refraction coalition. Walker’s against a woman’s right to choose. He’s against same-sex marriage. And not only is he against any form of regulating business, he’s got that impressive public-union-bashing cred. Public unions, like the National Education Association (NEA), represent not just the working and professional class, like teachers, but also women and persons with different identities more than the ever-shrinking, almost-gone unions for the private sector with their Rust Belt history.

So as much as I hate to disagree with Cokie Roberts’ NPR analysis (she is, after all, the author of an interesting book on First Ladies) in this, she’s wrong. Hillary should stay out of the ring until the Republican candidates sort themselves out, at the very least in terms of money. And by money, I mean give me the Koch brothers’ money.* #RuthOBrienGC

*Chances are those brothers are giving all viable candidates money. When you have that much why wouldn’t you. So the better question is who are they enjoying giving their money to the most?

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If Hillary has learned the lesson of 2008, she will openly declare her candidacy now. In 2008 she adopted a rope-a-dope strategy, low-keying it for most of 2007 in hopes of landing a knockout blow in the first round of caucuses and primaries. Then along came a charismatic young senator from her native state, and before you could blink, she was so far behind that the race was effectively over by Valentine’s Day. She can’t rely on inevitability again, not with the Democratic base all a-Twitter over Elizabeth Warren.

Hillary’s strengths come under the heading of inside politics: raising funds, building alliances, making deals. Few people are enthusiastic about her; she doesn’t have that once-in-a-generation charisma that we have seen in Obama, Reagan, and Kennedy. The longer she stays out of the race, the more time there is for other candidates to steal her support or create a groundswell in opposition. Her age will also be an issue, and the best way to show she isn’t tired or worn out is to campaign vigorously, instead of reciting her standard speech for $250K a pop before adoring campus audiences or favor-seeking corporations.

Most important, perhaps, starting her campaign early would be the best way to distinguish herself from President Obama, her boss not long ago. Right now she is cautiously waiting to see how popular he is next year before deciding how tightly to embrace him. Again, this leaves the field open for other candidates to run as progressive alternatives to the Obama-Clinton administration.

Waiting until the last minute to declare would make Hillary look exactly like what her detractors say about her: Entitled, above it all, physically fragile, overcautious, a backroom dealmaker who’s not good at mixing it up. She did her best in 2008 after it was effectively over and she transformed into Fightin’ Hillary. This time around, she doesn’t have to wait until it’s too late.  #FredericOBrien

Court Cultural Clash Round 2: American Anti-Terrorism Act

PROF. O’BRIEN:
The New York Times called it again — it’s a “huge victory” that will “strengthen Israel’s claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces were directly linked to terrorism.” The U.S. District Court located in Manhattan found the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority liable for damages in terrorist attacks on American citizens who were in Israel between 2002 and 2004.

We get it . . . in this polarized world in which Rudy (Giuliani) wakes up enough to have the gall to be agnostic or “not know” whether President Barack Obama, the Commander-in-Chief, loves his country, and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin doesn’t know if Obama is “a Christian” or not, we know one thing for sure — it’s complicated, and unintended consequences will abound.

The good/bad in this federal court’s territorially expansive ruling substantiating the Obama administration’s, the Democrats’, and the Republicans’ (i.e. Americans) support of the American Anti-Terrorism Act is that it gives all Americans (and their relatives) standing to sue if they are victims of international terrorism.

How is terrorism defined? First, it involves violent acts or “acts dangerous to human life” that are against American law. Second, terrorism is used to intimidate or coerce Americans or our government, or make the government alter its conduct. And third, these violent acts are generally outside the U.S.

Given how opposed the United States (Republicans and Democrats alike) has been to signing international treaties, many Americans (particularly law professors) suggest that we should tread lightly on transnational regulation, whether it affects the Internet or the environment, and particularly when it affects us as civilians, not just as civilians within the United States, and when the United States has to act to protect its national-security interests or its interests as a sovereign nation-state.

What this means is – if U.S. private citizens sue as victims of international terrorism, floodgates will open. Now I’m all for open gates. I’m participatory democracy that certainly includes using the courts. That said, how many citizens will these open gates accommodate?

In September 2014, a Brooklyn jury found Arab Bank ($46 billion in assets) liable for “knowingly supporting” terrorism by Hamas in the second Palestinian uprising. We don’t know the damages yet, or how much the 300 victims of 24 separate attacks will be paid, but a quick click onto Osen Law gives you a temperature read on what their litigators will be asking for, and it won’t be a small amount.

Is that good if you’re Zionist; bad if you’re PLO? Yes, for now. The real story, however, will be tracking how this nation-state and any American nationals will be using the American courts to sue foreign nations and foreign private enterprises like banks that don’t necessarily explicitly reflect our nation-state’s national security.

This is an equal-power tool for all citizens. It is a tool for everyone. So the big story is about jurisdiction — and jurisdiction is hard to wrap your head around or understand.

It is something I happen to dabbled in having grounded my last book in a spatial understandings of neotribalism internationally and of Obama’s grounding himself in the use of conservative means or methods for progressive purpose (such as the federalism underlying Obamacare and the bounceback he’s facing before the Supreme Court this June). Further, this has been one of my favorite topics to write about — due process and procedures since my dissertation turned into my first book.

In Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, I discovered it was Chief Justice William Howard Taft who not only liked being Mr. Jurisdiction (establish the rules and then gain the power) but relished backing the American Judiciary Act of 1925, which involves one more power-grabbing turn by increasing the federal courts’ discretion in deciding what issues to hear.

When it’s courts fighting nations, it’s all about lines, not identities — about standing (to sue), not sitting (being disengaged and discussing it in the U.N.).

An institution or a country gains power if it can 1) entice the sovereign nations who are battling into its own jurisdiction (think sinkable waters) and 2) sink the right ships in these dangerous waters at the right time.

Now, will this come back to bite the United States as a sovereign nation? Absolutely.

Will one of our frenemies as a nation-state establish moral superiority (e.g. universal jurisdiction that those pesky moralistic nation-states like Spain are adopting to gain the moral high ground against the United States)? Probably.

Do we have the moral authority as a nation to skip recognizing UN treaties such as theConvention on the Rights of the Child. I dunno. Do you?

What a power play in terms of clashing cultural courts on a global scale.

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EDITOR FRED*: Despite the entirely justified outcome, conservatives have reason to be uneasy about this case, because if the plaintiffs are allowed to seize the PA’s assets, there’s nothing stopping any other country from putting Uncle Sam on trial and seizing his assets (or Israel’s, for that matter). That’s if they bother with the formality of a trial at all.

It has been suggested that this verdict will make people overseas hate America even more than they already do. I’m not sure I can quite picture that:

***

“Hey, Abdul, let’s go sign up with the PLO. All the cool kids are joining.”

“I don’t know, Mohammed. I’m actually getting kind of ambivalent about the whole terrorism thing. Sometimes I think it just perpetuates the cycle of violence and makes a fair and equitable solution even harder to negotiate.”

“Wait a minute, dude — check out this case from the Southern District of New York. Raises serious jurisdictional issues, wouldn’t you say?”

“What!? Why, that’s a completely unjustified extension of the principle of extraterritoriality. I feel like strapping on a bunch of explosives and blowing up some tourists!”

***

The bad guys deservedly lost in this case, and of course they merit the most severe punishment possible. Still, the interests of maintaining America’s global position, and its need to follow international norms, must predominate, even when dealing with perps as abhorrent as these. It’s far from clear whether the plaintiffs will actually be able to recover anything, but enforcing a court order against the government of a sovereign nation — or even (as in this case) the quasi-government of a quasi-sovereign quasi-nation — could well be considered tantamount to war, and at the very least would invite reprisals. It would also undercut the United States’ case against submitting to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or to courts in places like Belgium and Spain that claim “universal jurisdiction” over what they deem to be human-rights violations.

The trial had undeniably positive aspects. It established beyond a reasonable doubt that the PA and PLO are terrorist groups. And since, as the article notes, these organizations have settled two prior terrorism cases on confidential terms, the victims may get some relief after all. To be sure, courts should not be vehicles for making statements, and international relations are normally best conducted through diplomacy. But with something as extreme as terrorism, lawfare does have a role to play, and if the victims of these horrific acts can get a measure of both compensation and vindication, the trial can be considered a success.

*Frederic D. O’Brien’s views are entirely his own.  They  do not reflect The Graduate Center at the City University of New York or The City University of New York

Posted by Ruth O’Brien Professor Ruth O’Brien & Frederic D. O’Brien (a.k.a. Fred Schwarz, Deputy Managing Editor, National Review)

Being a longtime New Jersey voter, I noticed that Gov. Chris Christie went after the gold standard when it comes to public employees – judges.

If this intimidating governor can take away a judge’s pension, who’s next? Everyone’s vulnerable – from teachers in Wisconsin to social workers taking care of the elderly, who are vulnerable since they do not have grown children in the state to protect them.

Today our Gardener State non-Green Governor Christie insists at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he’s the people choice. Huh? Having lived in that state for 20 years plus, I know that Christie reminds most women of your sibling’s husband or former husband. Is that warring on women? No, he’s just the blowfish (i.e. blowhard) every relative wants to avoid. #RuthOBrienGC

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Well, he is kind of a blowhard, but that’s never been a disqualifying factor in politics. I think Governor Christie’s biggest problem in chasing the GOP nomination is that he’s just too New Jersey. HIs act goes over well enough in Avenel and Ridgewood and Manalapan, but will it play in Peoria? Or Paducah or Pasco or Pine Bluff? Women will see their overbearing brother-in-law, and men will see The Situation crossed with Tony Soprano.

Truth be told, I was never quite sure what Christie’s justification for reducing the state’s pension payment was (though New Jersey’s heavily Democratic legislature did approve it). The approach described in the Times, in which Christie negotiates with the unions to work out a deal on pensions, seems much more promising and legally sound.

The culprits in these cases are neither the unions (who are only doing their job) nor today’s politicians (who must try any expedient they can to plug ever-greater budget holes). The culprits are the politicians of decades past, who, like New York’s Gov. George Pataki in the 1990s, made rash promises of future gold to secure union support, knowing that they wouldn’t be in office when the bills came due. Conmen like that deserve every bit of scorn their states’ current residents can muster. #FredericOBrien

Dunno.  Even though Jon Stewart is leaving the Daily Show because, as he explains it, he is “slightly restless” — this does not resonate in any authentic way with me.

And even if it is true (or should I say also true, and truth is different than authenticity anyway), I’d still have to protest.  This is simply so not Jon.

Besides, your idea of being even slightly restless, Jon, is so much less than what we all need in this era of infinite silencing.  Put differently, I’d say, Jon, this is infinitely definitely not so!  (triple negative with spatial visual metaphor intended)

Put differently, or put bodily, I’d scratch my head and have to say Huh?

Or put mindfully, I’d say I’m visualizing Buddha with her back turned, shrugging.  And hopefully all Buddhas won’t be pushed into any vortex or black holes.