Monthly Archives: April 2017

Human Rights – a line in the sand

Posted by on 2017-04-26 No comments

While Democrats argue whether a woman’s choice really is a “core Democratic value” they remain pretty comfortable ignoring the human rights of non-Americans. This week Human Rights Watch documented extra-judicial killings by Egypt’s army – let’s ditch the euphemism and call them what they really are – death squads. HRW is calling on the United States to cut off funding to Egypt’s dictator (and Trump Rat Pack bro) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. But Democrats are in an awkward position because, while they were running the circus, Clinton and Obama coddled Egyptian dictators as much as Trump. A GAO report written during Obama’s administration alluded to Egyptian human rights abuses. And they are worse now under Trump.

Last Month Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin proposed legislation that would violate First Amendment rights of those boycotting Israel for its military occupation and settlements. There is a similar bill in the House, co-sponsored by a number of Democrats, including one representative from Massachusetts. In the Massachusetts legislature there are two more of these “anti-BDS” bills being considered. In fact, these AIPAC-sponsored bills have popped up all over the country like the plague of ALEC legislation. In New York, governor Andrew Cuomo set up a blacklist to punish those using the constitutional right to boycott.

My point – foreign policy is not just national. It pulls states and even cities into controversies over everything from human rights to free speech. And out in the states and cities, we ought to have a voice.

The boycott controversy recently came up in Massachusetts Democratic Party platform discussions. Progressive Democrats want to insert language into the platform stating that “Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank are obstacles to peace.” Settlements have been condemned by virtually every nation outside the US, by the UN, and even members of Israel’s security establishment see the problem. If you can see how “gentrification” might be a problem, now imagine gentrification plus martial law, ethnic cleansing, and land theft. I’d call that an obstacle to peace. It’s as much a fact as global warming. And the reality is denied just as doggedly by Democrats.

Former AIPAC lobbyist Steve Grossman thinks the issue is “divisive” for Democrats and broadly hints that he couldn’t possibly remain in a party that won’t support Israel’s Occupation. Barney Frank’s former aide James Segel thinks the party needs to hold fast to “protect the values and commitments we hold dear” – meaning another half century of occupation and land theft? Rubber-stamp vetoes in the UN?

Democrats are on the wrong side when they attack free speech and human rights. And this has got to stop.

The Democratic Party’s platform may be the “most progressive” ever written. But this does not include its foreign policy section. That part was written by Hillary Rodham Clinton and reflects her neo-conservative and neo-liberal views. Traditionally, state parties have deferred on matters of foreign policy to a presidential candidate. But the approaches both parties have used for generations are not working. And despite Democrats calling for more “soft power” it’s hard power they always use. Invading new countries each year and spending our national wealth on war is bankrupting us, not making us safer. Right now, 53 cents of every dollar of discretionary spending goes to “defense.” And Trump wants even more.

So if Republicans are on the wrong track, what’s our plan?

One state Democrat Party – Washington – actually thought about it and did something. Progressives from this state wrote their own foreign policy platform, and it’s based on the golden rule, not on golden contracts for Raytheon and Boeing:

http://www.wa-democrats.org/issues/foreign-policy

In 2016 the two truly “divisive” issues separating progressive Democrats from Hillary Clinton-ites were her hawkishness and support for corporate-friendly trade deals. While we may all want to put the 2016 election behind us and join the unity tour with Bernie Sanders and Tom Perez, issues of Democratic support for neo-liberalism and neo-conservative foreign policy are not going away. They have to be resolved.

Democrats from each state need to weigh in separately. Like Steve Grossman, there are certain lines in the sand for some of us. I’ll never find a home in a party that turns its back on human rights. As a newbie delegate to the Massachusetts Democratic convention in June I’m optimistic that important changes can be made, at least in this state. But I’m not blind to the reality that Clinton and Obama people still own the party.

I hear the #DemExit and Draft Bernie calls, though impatience and the right wing seem to be driving many of them. I am reminded by my progressive brothers and sisters in the Greens and elsewhere that I may be on a fool’s errand. And maybe they’re right. My sixth sense tells me they are right. But I think patience and a certain amount of blind optimism are warranted right now. Now is a unique opportunity to move the center of gravity toward the left in a party that has lost its way – and admits it.

By the 2018 midterms we should have an idea of what the party is really committed to, how democratic it’s prepared to be, and how welcoming to progressive values it is.

And that should begin with a renewed commitment to Human Rights and new ways of formulating foreign policy.

Which side are you on, boys?

Posted by on 2017-04-24 No comments

There are a number of things wrong with the Democratic Party. Lack of a 50-state strategy and undemocratic party rules come to mind. Big donors and selling out to Big Pharma say a lot too. Their embrace of neo-conservative foreign policy and neo-liberal globalism alienated both progressives and Candidate Trump’s supporters. But the thing that fries many of us most about the DNC is its habitual refusal to stand up to Big Business, to name the source of our pain.

Last week Chris Hayes interviewed Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders, both of whom are on a Unity Tour to shore up the shaky relationship between centrist Democrats and progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party. Perez wants Americans to know the DNC has a positive vision for America. Whatever that specific vision is, it’s not clear Perez himself has any notion.

Sanders, on the other hand, wants the nation to know that we have to fight back against Trump and an American kleptocracy, oligarchy, autocracy – choose your phrase. Sanders chose “billionaire class.”

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But, despite the many hits the American working class has taken, Perez just could not be pressed by Hayes to admit that we are in the middle of a class war. Hayes asked him point-blank, “Do you have to name the enemy?” Perez waffled. This revealing moment told me the DNC was not quite ready to abandon its funding from Big Donors, that the DNC was not quite ready to trust its grassroots. The interview continued in this vein when Hayes asked Perez if the DNC supported single payer healthcare and – once again – Perez waffled and mumbled. He’s a man with no answers.

In contrast – hate him or distrust him – there’s no question which side Trump is on. With Tom Perez, you’re never quite sure which side the Democratic Party is on.

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One of my favorite blogs is Robert Paul Wolff’s “Philosopher’s Stone.” The other day Wolff wrote about what he had learned from a lifetime of studying Marx – what Marx got right, and what he got wrong. It’s a worthwhile read. According to Wolff, the thing Marx got most wrong was his conviction that the working class would rise up and fight back. He ended his meditation with this:

“I know all about gerrymandering and voter suppression, but that is no explanation. Bernie Sanders, God bless him, was the only candidate in the last Presidential cycle talking about the fact that the rich are screwing the poor. Why didn’t he pull 80% of the total vote of both parties? I don’t get it.”

Tom Perez can answer that question without saying a word.

They never heard the future calling

Posted by on 2017-04-23 No comments

When I was a twenty-something, just entering the computer world of the early 1970’s, computer languages to watch were Fortran, PL/1, COBOL, Lisp, Algol, APL, Pascal – and a hundred types of assembly language.

Even back then, one language was especially reviled for its ugly syntax – or rather the fact that no one could program with it without using special pads of coding paper. This was a language developed by IBM in 1959 called Report Program Generator (RPG). RPG was really only good for one thing – generating boxes and boxes of “greenbar” – thirty pound stacks of computer printouts. Even in 1971 the preferred business language was COBOL.

Fast forward a mere thirty years to 2000. RPG programmers were already recognized as an endangered species – endangered by evolution. One article provocatively (“RPG – the Walking Dead?”) asked: “Is RPG dead?”

So there you had it – a generation ago, on the cusp of a Y2K apocalypse (that never happened) – a forward-looking author counseling fellow programmers to abandon relics like RPG, learn computer languages of the next millennium – and be prepared for the wave after that – Object Oriented Programming:

Unless you’re ready to retire, you should stop by your favorite bookstore, pick up a copy of UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modelling Language or a similar book, and start learning the ubiquitous language of OO designs. Also download the Whiteboard edition of Together/J (www.togethersoft. com) and start familiarizing yourself with an OO design and analysis tool. Besides helping you learn OO concepts, Together/J will help you learn Java by reviewing the source code it generates. With this knowledge, you should be in a better position to learn the next OOP language in vogue with minimal effort. The clock is ticking. Where will you be when it strikes midnight? Hopefully, not with the walking dead.

The clock certainly was ticking, as it always is. Coal miners received similar advice a century ago – as New Bedford sperm oil whalers did a century before that – after prospectors found petroleum in Pennsylvania.

But after millions of years of human existence, is anyone really surprised that change is practically the only constant?

Besides the president?

This is a guy who’s made political pets of coal miners. Instead of actually helping them by rolling out alternative energy infrastructure projects and training miners for jobs with a future, Trump and his Republican Congress will simply give them federal pensions and hope they go quietly into the night. But as Alana Semuels writes in the Atlantic – why stop there?

If it bails out the miners, why stop there? Why not bail out all of the other pension funds, private and public, that are on the brink of insolvency?

Why stop there, indeed. The Trump administration could also create special programs to save the nation’s remaining 283 RPG programmers.

Like the miners (and the coal owners) who were warned a century ago that petroleum was coming, the poor pioneering RPG programmers were so hard at work on their coding pads – keeping American business humming – that they never heard the future calling.

* * *

Next week – how to make America GREAT for elevator operators and movie theater projectionists!

Put Foreign Policy in the State Platform

Posted by on 2017-04-16 No comments

Only about six percent of Americans care about foreign policy. Thanks to geography and most of us speaking only English, Americans don’t really engage with the rest of the world – except when we’re pointing weapons at them. Most voters just accept that presidential candidates will formulate their own foreign policy by surrounding themselves with lobbyists and talking heads from ideological think tanks.

Well, if that sounds like a terrible idea to you, here’s another. Put specific foreign policy planks into all the state party platforms. And put the best and best-supported ideas into the national party platform.

Last year Democrats drafted a national party platform that some said was the most progressive platform of all time. And maybe it was – for the Democratic Party – and only when limited to certain domestic planks.

But when it came to foreign policy, the Democratic Party’s hawkish platform reflected its presidential candidate’s worldview. We would fight ISIS by giving taxpayer money to repressive and right-wing governments – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel – the Usual Suspects – though so far they’ve been useful only to Defense contractors. The DNC platform ignored Congress’s right and obligation to declare war while calling for the use of presidential AUMF statements – like the one Donald Trump used last week. The platform downplayed the use of ground forces while preferring technology – Tomahawks and drones – like the ones Donald Trump used last week. Nobody really has a different plan – just keep on using extrajudicial killing indefinitely, without ever declaring war, without ever clearing the endless war with Congress.

The DNC platform is full of jingoistic phrases such as “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism.” But many are beginning to question whether it just might be the United States that has inflicted the most damage on world peace and stability. We originally funded Islamists to fight the USSR, have given Israel $128 billion since 1948 while simultaneously turning our backs on Palestinians, created failed states in Iraq, Libya, and Syria – and then created millions of refugees Europe and Turkey have had to deal with.

We’re not winning any friends with this.

Republicans of the Bush administration, and Democratic Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry have all pursued policies of enlarging the world’s militaries – which ratchet up global dangers – failing to stop settlements, pulling NATO into our misadventures, conducting war games on Russia’s doorstep, throwing money at successive Egyptian dictators – all while playing God by deciding which regimes shall live, and which regimes shall die. Trump has pushed everything to its extreme, but what we’re seeing now is merely an exaggeration of the same foreign policy mistakes Democrats and Republicans have committed for years.

Meanwhile, the DNC leaves foreign policy to its presidential candidates. It also seems to think that, as long as Democrats pursue more enlightened domestic policies, maybe voters won’t even notice the foreign policy. But today’s progressive Democrats are taking notice. Many of the issues Democrats are arguing about now are not trivial differences. They deserve to be discussed, debated, and put into platforms.

Somewhere between domestic and foreign policy lie the American colonies. The ambiguous legal status and distances to places like Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Mariana Islands provide numerous opportunities for exploitation. Over decades, tax breaks and bonds bankrupted Puerto Rico. PROMESA was the Republicans’ way of sending thugs to break kneecaps and tell islanders to pay up. And PROMESA had bi-partisan support. To our shame, Democrats did almost nothing to help Puertorriqueños. Yet when it comes to taxpayer giveaways, “fiscal responsibility” rarely applies to the Usual Suspects, the DOD, or Defense contractors. That’s a bipartisan principle.

Now, if you don’t care about the people in our colonies – in far-flung places some of us can’t even find on a map – and you still haven’t been convinced that foreign policy is important, let’s consider how it affects you personally.

Police forces are now militarized. It’s not just the APCs and tanks, all that military surplus and the surveillance gear, but the many vets-to-cops who are now the face of the modern police force. State governments are passing draconian bills that threaten or abridge civil liberties. You can’t post a thought, send an email, or place a cellphone call without it being monitored. Right here in Massachusetts, partly out of good intentions – but also because of lobby groups – Democrats have proposed house and senate bills that strip the Constitutionally-protected right to boycott Israel. In New York, governor Andrew Cuomo set up a blacklist to punish these boycotters. But regardless of how you feel about Israel, stomping on the First Amendment is not something Democrats should be doing. That’s the GOP’s job.

You can’t fly into the country without being asked to give up your phone and passwords. You can’t fly out of the country without being subjected to increasingly intimate pat-downs. Men of a certain age can skip their annual prostate exams because the TSA now provides them free of charge. And you can’t climb on a plane without fear that someone will call the cops on you for speaking Arabic, working on a math problem, using the wrong word, telling the wrong joke, or having goons break your nose and knock out your teeth if you object to being bumped on a flight you’ve paid for.

None of this is new. And this is not just Trump’s Great New America. This is the authoritarian America that Democrats had a hand in making.

Two hundred million Americans no longer enjoy civil liberties along borders with Mexico or Canada, or within a hundred miles of the oceans. Homeland Security can set up checkpoints, stop and question you, confiscate your belongings, detain you, subject you to the third degree. All in violation of the 4th Amendment. Democrats voted for the Patriot Act, the FISA Courts, expansion of Homeland Security, and resisted effective oversight of the NSA and CIA. Many Democrats didn’t even read the Patriot Act before signing it.

So if you think that foreign policy doesn’t affect you, think again. Foreign policy is not something that should be decided by a presidential candidate. This is why it is critical that foreign policy planks be presented, debated, and adopted in each of the state Democratic Party platforms. Besides setting forth principles for legislative priorities in our own states, they’ll also send strong messages to the national party.

Censorship

Posted by on 2017-04-14 No comments

The two month experiment by centrist and progressive Democrats in resisting Trump while simultaneously trying to fix their troubled marriage is showing signs of strain.

The odd couple, who have been sleeping “indivisibly” in a narrow double bed since Trump’s inauguration, may be once again getting tired of each other’s morning breath – if not their mate’s true nature.

From the introduction of Democratic Party platform planks, to discussions of how much support the DNC is giving progressive candidates in special elections, differences are apparent and profound. Centrist Democrats are asking for money already, and Progressives are giving instead to progressive PACs. Progressive Democrats are challenging the GOP in special elections, while the DNC hasn’t figured out what its national strategy is.

Still the veneer of “indivisibility” must be preserved. And this is being done with a little sleight of hand – or, rather, some heavy-handed censorship.

To be sure, the Right Wing enjoys the friction in this stressed Democratic marriage. If nothing else it’s a nice distraction from the GOP’s own relationship problems. Jared Kushner’s New York Observer ran a piece recently telling progressives what they already know – that the DNC hasn’t been doing much to help progressives. The discussion over the Kansas election provoked a bit of heat on Facebook and on political discussion groups, though it was not unusually rancorous. But Indivisible’s response was to simply censor the whole discussion:

Elsewhere we’re seeing exhortations to avoid reading the right-wing press, to install content blockers in your browser, and to consult lists of “safe” vetted publications – all at a time it’s important to know what the bastards are up to.

Not only that. An old adage reminds us that even a stopped click is right twice a day. Why not, occasionally, the Right Wing? Must we ignore them, even if they occasionally make a good point? Or should heavy-handed “moderators” shape the discussion and, like the Great Chinese Firewall, protect us from opinions we shouldn’t be hearing?

Libertarians and Tea-totalitarians both claim that Democrats succumbed to political correctness in the 2016 elections. One aspect of this charge was that Democrats support “identity politics” – defending vulnerable constituencies. Well, good for Democrats! And – centrist or progressive – we all had better acknowledge that, right now, the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between GOP authoritarianism and a vulnerable public.

But another aspect of the Right’s criticism points at the Democratic reticence to get out in the alley and mix it up, to habitually smooth over differences until no one really knows what Liberals stand for, to avoid conflict like delicate little “snowflakes.” And they’re right, pardon my saying so.

So, people, the Democratic couple this essay started out with is going to have to figure out how to move forward. They’re going to have to have it out, scream out loud – maybe even in public or at a polite dinner – and resolve their differences once and for all.

I’m getting a bit tired of hearing that pushing for Democrats to try a new, progressive, strategy is tantamount to rehashing the Clinton-Sanders primary all over again. But we can’t have a discussion about strategies and directions if “moderators” decide it’s off-limits.

If you’ve ever seen Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf?” you know that denying problems in a relationship never ends well. It’s time to let George and Martha have at it.

Democrats need to engage on their differences. They exist, and they are not trivial. Disputation and resolution is the only way forward. Censorship is not only counter-productive, it’s something we should simply not stand for – whatever the good but misguided intentions.

The Plot Against America

Posted by on 2017-04-11 No comments

Review of “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth (ISBN 9781400079490)

This book, written in 2004, is one of those – like The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and It Couldn’t Happen Here – books that have had second lives following Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Philip Roth imagines an America that finally gives in to its darkest xenophobic impulses. His real-life hometown near Newark, New Jersey, experiences first one shock, then another, then another, and another, as fascism creeps into the White House under a Charles Lindbergh presidency. The story Roth tells is a slow-moving nightmare – and it really resonates because a nightmare is precisely what we are living in now.

Lindbergh, of course, really did have a real-life flirtation with Nazism, even accepting an award from Hermann Göring.

Roth’s childhood, re-imagined in terrific detail, doesn’t need to stray too far from real American history because intolerance and nativism was baked into the national cake. Rich white plantation owners gave way to automotive magnates like Henry Ford, whose Dearborn Independent featured headlines like “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” But with an epidemic of Islamophobia and Brown People Phobia today, hate-peddling billionaires like the Kochs, Mercers, and Adelsons, and modern day equivalents of the Dearborn Independent, we haven’t moved the needle a millimeter since 1920.

Much of Roth’s story is about political conflicts within his own Jewish family, which become a lens into the Jewish community of the time – or maybe the one of today. Roth’s fictional brother Sandy is a self-hating Jew, as is his fictional aunt Evelyn and her husband, Lindbergh sycophant Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf – a man who never met a Nazi he didn’t like. This brings to mind the curious relationship between the right-wing Jewish community of 2017 and the Trump Administration. Our modern day Bengelsdorfs – settler-ambassador David Friedman and “Rabbi to the Stars” Shmuley Boteach – now occupy prominent positions in and around the most xenophobic presidency of all time.

For a book designed to make you think, The Plot Against America also has one hell of a great plot. Father Coughlin, Walter Winchell, Fiorella LaGuardia and hundreds of real historical figures make believable appearances in this tale of what coulda, mighta been – could have easily been. For those who don’t know their history, there’s even a postscript that fills in some blanks.

I won’t spoil the book by giving anything away. Needless to say, the Jews of America don’t come out unscathed.

But Roth’s insights into the ease with which the United States can slide into fascism can’t be ignored. This is an argument, a though experiment even, and Roth makes his case.

Philip Roth understood in 2004 how easily, even wordlessly, a sitting president could unleash a pogrom on a helpless minority – and his choice of words gave me the chills for its accuracy and prescience:

The week after the September assault on Detroit’s Jews – which was addressed with dispatch by neither Michigan’s governor nor the city’s mayor – new violence was directed at homes, shops, and synagogues in Jewish neighborhoods in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, violence that Winchell’s enemies attributed to his deliberately challenging appearances in those cities after the cataclysm that he’d instigated in Detroit, and that Winchell himself – who, in Indianapolis, barely escaped being crushed by a paving stone hurled from a rooftop that had broken the neck of the bodyguard stationed beside him – explained by the “climate of hate” emanating from the White House.

Five stars.

Keating Applauds Trump’s Missiles

Posted by on 2017-04-10 No comments

When they invaded Iraq Republicans turned the country into a failed state ISIS could move right into. But then Democrats repeated the same mistake in Libya and Syria.

Fast forward to 2017. Many Democrats now recognize the mistake. But not William R. Keating, a slow learner who in my humble opinion needs a new job.

After Trump sent 50 Tomahawk missles into Syria on April 6th, the top five American newspapers ran 18 editorials praising the attack. There was not a single criticism. Breitbart’s Charles Krauthammer rejoiced that there was a new sheriff in town. Defense hawk and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Trump’s attack and urged him to take out Assad’s airfields. By bombing Syria, Farid Zakaria said, Donald Trump had finally “become president.” MSNBC’s Brian Williams called the missiles flying off to do their lethal work “beautiful.”

For the most part Democrats didn’t even bother to question whether it had been the Syrian government that killed the civilians with sarin gas. The Liberal Atlantic Monthly ran a piece titled Why America Should have Hit Assad Four Years Ago. Meanwhile, CIA-sponsored rebels are fighting US Army-sponsored rebels along the Turkish border. What the hell is going on? US involvement in Syria is not merely a fiasco, but a giant bipartisan fiasco demonstrating – once again – that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can be trusted to execute a coherent American foreign or military policy.

Sending a barrage of missiles into another nation is well beyond dispatching a drone to kill a suspected terrorist (and everyone nearby). This kind of attack is without question an act of war. The War Powers Act requires the President to report to Congress within 48 hours of initiating “hostilities” and forbids forces from remaining past 60 days. So far we have heard nothing from the President. Tellingly, three weeks before the sarin gas incident, the U.S. beefed up troops intended for Syria, and signalled its intent to stay in Syria, even after ISIS had been defeated.

Here in Massachusetts, where we are fortunate to have sensible Senators, voters still need to pay attention to Liberal hawks. Elizabeth Warren, to her credit, demanded to know what Trump’s strategy in Syria was. Ed Markey, to his credit, voiced concern that Syria could become another quagmire.

But our very own 9th Congressional district Representative, William R. Keating, stands with Trump. Keating is an Iran hawk and had to have his arm twisted to accept Obama’s Iran deal. Keating also voted with the GOP to limit Syrian refugees. No big surprise, then – Keating applauded the missle launch.

Keating, especially, needs to hear from voters. But call everyone. If you live near one of the local offices, drop in.

Representative William R. Keating

  • Hyannis Office: 297 North St., Hyannis, MA 02601
  • New Bedford Office: 558 Pleasant St., New Bedford, MA 02740
  • Plymouth Office: 170 Court St., Plymouth, MA 02360
  • Phone 202-225-3111

Senator Elizabeth Warren

  • Boston Office: 2400 JFK Federal Building, 15 Sudbury St., Boston, MA 02203
  • Springfield Office: 1550 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103
  • Phone 202-224-4543

Senator Edward J. Markey

  • Boston Office: 975 JFK Federal Building, 15 Sudbury St., Boston, MA 02203
  • Fall River Office: 222 Milliken Blvd., Fall River, MA 02721
  • Springfield Office: 1550 Main St., Springfield, MA 01101
  • Phone 202-224-2742

MassDems Platform Changes

Posted by on 2017-04-09 No comments

The 2013 Massachusetts Democratic Party Platform is not limited to concerns of the Commonwealth. The Preamble alone mentions immigration, infastructure, national defense, diplomacy, and multiculturalism. The “Ethics and Transparency” section calls for the overturn of Citizen’s United, for example.

Delegates to the June 3rd state Convention in Worcester have an opportunity to send a message to the national DNC by voting on amendments to the following platform sections: Business and Entrepreneurship; Economic Growth; Education; Energy and Environment; Climate Crisis; Ethics and Transparency; Healthcare and Human Services; Housing; Immigration; Justice, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Labor; Public Safety and Crime Prevention; Revenue and Expenditures; Transportation and Infrastructure; Voting and Democracy; and Women.

The current platform needs updating as a matter of course. It also needs changes in light of what just happened to our country. Our Revolution Massachusetts, Progressive Massachusetts, and Progressive Democrats of America have collaborated on a number of amendments and additions to the platform (you can find another version here). Based on delegate and other input, the Massachusetts Democratic Platform Committee will then rewrite the state platform.

What’s missing

The 2013 platform isn’t bad as a statement of liberal values – and the 2017 Progressives’ changes aren’t so radical as to give Democrats much heartburn. The old platform mostly gets a day at the spa. But for a picky reader like me there are a number of things missing from both the current version and new proposals. Despite language on reducing “defense” spending (when we’ve had a quarter century of war), nowhere in the platform is there any mention of Foreign Policy. Plus, there are a number issues that Democrats have neglected that now demand clear statements of principle – especially since the Trump administration is attacking them so viciously.

Some of my suggestions below assume Democrats will eventually regain political advantage, but some of them assume we may not – and that it may now be up to state government to protect health, environment, civil liberties, and community policing.

  • Foreign Policy and Militarism – stop supporting autocratic and undemocratic regimes – no more weaponry for Saudi Arabia – slash the military budget – end undeclared wars – insist on Congress’ right to declare wars – no more aid to Israel until they end settlements – no more aid for Egypt’s dictatorship
  • Democratization of the Democratic Party – will we ever be rid of superdelegates?
  • End the Surveillance State – enhance citizen privacy (a word that doesn’t appear even once in the document) – get rid of the Patriot Act – eliminate FISA courts – get rid of or make No Fly lists transparent – breathe life back into the 4th Amendment
  • End useless tax breaks – remove vague language guaranteeing favorable tax rates for “businesses that generate community growth and participation” – Wal*Mart? really?
  • Free college education – make it even clearer that free “higher education” means a four year college education
  • Environment – now that EPA and Superfund money has been slashed, Massachusetts should sue for remediation (for example, Aerovox dumped PCBs in New Bedford’s harbor and then moved to Mexico) – strengthen our own MA Dept of Environmental Protection
  • Healthcare backup plan – create with other Blue States a Single-Payer Healthcare system
  • Improve the “Immigration” plank by calling for Massachusetts to follow California in prohibiting any local or state officials or agency from acting in a federal capacity or spending state money to do so (this would effectively endorse Eldridge and Cabral legislation at the convention)
  • Put teeth in planks that call for gender parity – all publicly-traded corporations must have at least 40/45/50% women board members
  • Put teeth in the Women’s Choice plank – no public funding for institutions that refuse to provide full counseling or direct services to women
  • Restore Net Neutrality to the FCC
  • Create a Citizen’s Data Bill of Rights guaranteeing that your personal and online data belongs to you and not to Comcast (Europeans have had this for years)

Support Rep. Cabral’s Legislation

Posted by on 2017-04-07 No comments

Massachusetts Representative Antonio Cabral has written a bill (H.3033) that places limits on the use of state funds that can be used for the federal ICE program. Another bill (H.3034) prohibits sending prisoners out of state [for example, working on Donald Trump’s Great Mexican Wall].

Please send emails in support of Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral’s bills to both the Massachusetts House and Senate chairs of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary — Senator William Brownsberger and Rep. Claire Cronin:

“Sen. William N. Brownsberger, Chair (Senate)”
“Rep. Claire D. Cronin, Chair (House)”
“Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral”

If you’re not an enthusiastic letter-writer, here is one possibility:

Dear [–]:

I am writing in support of two bills introduced by Rep. Antonio Cabral and recently assigned to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. These bills limit (a) the involvement of Massachusetts resources in ICE’s deportation efforts (HD 3033) and (b) the use of prison labor outside the State (e.g., to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico) (HD 3034). I also support Senator James Eldridge’s Safe Communities Act (S 1305).

These bills both deserve our support. Residents of Massachusetts towns and cities should be able decide for ourselves what type of community policing we want. The nation’s police departments have not (yet) been federalized. It will be a dark day if this ever happens.

How voluntary is a prisoner’s consent to be used as a “Great Wall” builder when prison is an inherently coercive environment and when a prisoner’s treatment depends on the goodwill of a sheriff supporting that wall? Are there no other educational and rehabilitation programs prisoners can participate in within the Commonwealth? And how can the fair treatment of our state’s sons and cousins be guaranteed if they are transported thousands of miles out-of-state?

The current wave of deportations is being executed without prioritizing the removal of truly dangerous individuals or concern for the destruction of families. It is also being carried out without regard for the previous administration’s promises to young people who grew up in the United States and know no other home. And this ideologically motivated purge is being done without regard for the economic impact the disappearance of thousands of workers will have. Worse, these reckless and cruel deportations are causing chaos and fear.

But we have an opportunity to restore tranquility and security.

I am not advocating anarchy or the selective application of law. We are indeed a nation of laws, but federal laws have their own scope and their own agents of enforcement, while the same is true of states. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts should not be compelled to effectively turn its law enforcement officials and county prisons into ICE agents and federal facilities.

I appreciate your consideration of this letter, and I hope you will give prompt and favorable attention to the bills I have endorsed. Thank you.

Sincerely,

[me]

ICE or Pol-ICE – YOUR Choice

Posted by on 2017-04-07 No comments

They swarm the porch shouting “Police!” But it’s a lie.

It sounds like something out of a totalitarian state, and it is – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are allowed to lie to citizens – even impersonate police officers. But the real police don’t like it at all. It undermines trust and creates problems. And it’s gotten so bad that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the LA City attorney, and City Council President Herb Wesson sent a letter to ICE telling them to knock it off.

As the LAPD, the city’s police department, had to point out, rousting and terrifying communities undermines actual police work. The problem is so severe and so widespread that a proposed House Bill seeks to end the practice by prohibiting ICE agents from lying about who they are.

This single issue highlights an important point – that federal and local policing have different objectives. Donald Trump’s xenophobic purge of brown people should not be conflated with the needs of American cities.

With already serious problems of police militarization, taser abuse, police shootings, racism and misconduct elsewhere, many communities are trying to do something about it – regain control over the hiring and firing of officers, conducting public reviews of police misconduct cases, and re-introducing community policing. But now they have another problem – ICE agents eroding the trust of communities that police departments serve.

Police officers are obliged to forward fingerprints and other arrest information to a variety of federal databases, and they often detain suspected criminals on behalf of Immigration and Custom Enforcement – only as long as the Constitution permits. But in communities with large immigrant and minority populations, many police departments would simply rather not be in the Immigration business. In Santa Clara County, California, for example, the DA and county police chiefs signed an agreement spelling out their involvement with federal policing:

“The agencies of this county will not enforce federal immigration laws,” said Morgan Hill police Chief David Swing, president of the county chiefs association. “It is not our mission nor our role … we will treat all of our residents with dignity regardless of status.”

Conscientious police officials also adhere to the letter of the law by not honoring ICE detainers beyond certain limits – because? – well, because the U.S. Constitution says so:

Two weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security started issuing a weekly report that aims to identify and publicly shame law enforcement agencies that released people from custody despite an ICE detainer request. And U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions went a step further last week, promising to withhold federal funding from law enforcement departments that don’t get in line with ICE. But several sheriffs said their defiance is not rooted in ethical or political opposition but legal concerns. Federal court rulings, including one in Oregon where a judge found that police violated a woman’s constitutional rights by keeping her in jail at ICE’s request, have left California’s law enforcement officials worrying that they could expose themselves to legal troubles for doing the same.

In fact, according to the National Sheriffs Assocation, a majority of sheriffs departments have stopped honoring ICE hold requests because so many of them are unconstitutional.

Tom Hodgson, ever the right-wing grandstander, appeared yesterday at a forum on immigration at the UMass Law School in Dartmouth. By the next afternoon he was making guest appearances with shock jock Howie Carr, auditioning for Joe Arpaio’s old job – Wingnut Sheriff of America. One wonders why the guy can’t put in a full day at work. But I digress..

Besides previously calling for the arrest of a co-panelist, Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, Hodgson made a number of odd and false claims: that sanctuary cities are hotbeds of crime (statistics say otherwise); that California prohibits reporting to ICE of human traffickers and gun runners (a lie politifact rates as false); that terrorists hide out in sanctuary cities and Massachusetts is a “magnet” for terrorists (“we have terrorists all over this state,” he said, sounding a lot like Donald Trump); and that no statistics support that improved policing occurs in cities where openness with officers is improved by not being part-time ICE agents.

On Hodgson’s last point – it’s possible that the statistics are as hard to come by as police shooting data, but according to Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, the nation’s police chiefs know something our local talk radio gadfly doesn’t – that sanctuary cities keep crime down. And apparently the still unaggregated data confirms it to their satisfaction.

But whether we call them sanctuary cities, freedom cities, or give them some other designation, the real debate has nothing to do with “sanctuary” – and everything to do with local control of police departments.

There is no suspension of federal law in cities that do not compel Officer Friendly to become an ICE agent. There is no suspension of federal law in cities that hold all suspects for a Constitutionally permitted period. There is no suspension of federal law when cities complain that ICE agents are lying to citizens and undermining the trust of their communities. There is no suspension of federal law when cities, counties, and states decide – for themselves – what kind of community policing they want to do.

There are now three bills in the Massachusetts legislature that would help the Commonwealth protect our communities and community policing programs from ICE and rogue sheriffs.

Next time – I’ll be asking you to call your representatives to support these important pieces of legislation.

Support Bill … H.676

Posted by on 2017-04-02 No comments

Bill Keating wants your money. In the last week alone I have received three or four appeals from the Democratic representative of the 9th Massachusetts Congressional District. In each is his “ask” – “support Bill.”

Well, I would send this right back at Rep. Keating:

Support Bill 676 – the Medicare for All Act.

Rep. Keating may be basically an honest and decent guy, but he is among the least progressive portion of Democratic congressmen who have not signed on to John Conyers’ proposed legislation to expand Medicare into a single-payer system.

This is hardly a surprise.

Keating may be a social liberal – and he has respectable legislative ratings from Planned Parenthood, AFSCME, and the Sierra Club, for example. But when it comes to foreign policy – and now healthcare – he is a disappointment.

The Congressman is not merely an unreliable voter on foreign policy, he is a member of both the House Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees and can do real damage on a national level. He has terrible grades from peace groups. Keating has a 47% rating from Massachusetts Peace Action, 50% from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and 50% from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. He has been an Iran hawk and only reluctantly supported Obama’s Iran deal. He has been a consistent defender of Israeli settlements and he received a 44% rating from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

Also somewhat of a “Defense” hawk, Bill Keating has been an inconsistent ally of civil liberties. In 2011, for example, he received a 50% rating from the American Civil Liberties Union.

My bottom line – I may not be inclined to shop around for another congressman quite yet, but William R. Keating isn’t going to get a dime from me until he starts acting like a progressive.

* * *

Those who have thrown themselves into political action recently are completely united in opposing the Trump administration’s efforts to deconstruct democratic America – “democratic” with a small “d.”

But the coming elections are going to expose divisions between Democrats blissfully content with representatives like Keating – and those who want the Democratic Party to really show some teeth and testicle. And principles.

Party machine Democrats are going to have to accept that the party is changing. Democrats wandered forty years in the wilderness of centrism. Well, it didn’t work – and voters didn’t want it. If the party has a future, it’s a progressive one.

But progressive Democrats (and progressive allies) are going to have to accept the fact that not every Democrat on a ballot will completely be to their political taste. We are going to have to hold our noses and vote for some of these guys.

On the other hand, until its direction is fully clear, the Democratic Party also needs to know why many of us are giving donations to Progressive political PACs, and not directly to lackluster candidates or the DNC.

If you want the voter’s money, come and earn it.