Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Politics, propaganda

Last night I saw a video that shocked me: A spliced-together out-of-context montage from Barack Obama’s speeches and media appearances to create the illusion that he is a radical Muslim extremist (and disparaging Islam generally in terms that would be quite familiar to the Jews who were victimized by similar descriptions throughout history.

I will not dignify this filth with a link. Nor will I call, as some of my liberal friends might, for it to be taken down, all copies destroyed, etc. In the marketplace of ideas, I like to think the good ideas will win, eventually. It may take 100 years, as the abolition of slavery did. But you don’t convince people by telling them they can’t talk. Telling them you’re not going to listen and not going to provide a forum where others can listen, that’s your prerogative.

It was sent to me by one of my uncles, who happens to be extremely right wing and very active in Israel- and Jewish-oriented causes. I want to share my response to him:

As a Jew, as a member of a culture that has been discriminated against throughout history, that has been demonized by bigots from the Pharaohs to the Nazis, I am deeply distressed to see you sending around something that demonizes other people because of their culture and their faith–and that mixes together quotes out of context to try to create something that isn’t there: Obama’s supposed Muslim faith.

You and I disagree deeply on politics, but we’ve always treated each other’s views with respect. Watching this video, I don’t feel respected. I feel threatened, I feel that the psychological warfare it trains on Muslims could just as easily be turned against Jews.

It feels like a leaf from the Goebbels playbook. It is the Big Lie Technique to the second power: once, the lie that Obama is Muslim, and second, the lie that all Muslims want the destruction of our culture. And quite frankly, it makes me ill.

Obama, as we all know, is a Christian who happens to be well-versed in Islamic culture. I have seen or heard many of the speeches snipped into this video, and in context they are very different. And let’s be clear: this is not “an actual video of the President speaking” but rather a composite of tiny sound bites cut into tiny pieces, isolated from the surrounding words that illuminate their meaning, to make Obama look like a threat.

Believe me, I have plenty of disagreements with Obama. But one area where I think he’s been good is in reaching out around the world who want to end violence, expressing our unity as human beings.

And the mainstream Islamic culture he is praising is not the culture of terrorist extremists, any more than the anti-Semitic bigot Father Coughlin represented today’s mainstream Christianity.

I have heard many other Christians (yes, he is a Christian) praising Judaism for its contributions to civilization, including presidents. I don’t see his acknowledgment of Islam’s contributions to be any different from that.

I do not buy that the big tent is a problem. Fanaticism and fundamentalism, of every religion, is a problem–anything that fosters hatred of those who are different. I see this video montage as hateful, racist propaganda that tries to depict both Obama and Muslims as other, as demons, as intolerable–a path that ultimately leads to genocide, as we saw in Hitler’s Germany when it was applied to us. As unacceptable as Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ deep distortion of Judaism. Have you never visited a church or a mosque while traveling? I have visited both. What is the problem with Obama visiting a mosque?

I am sure you’re familiar with the famous quote by Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I am speaking out, with all due respect, not only because I want someone to speak out if they come for me, but also because my conscience would not treat me well if I remained silent. And because I care about you.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, did not have access to Youtube. He didn’t have Twitter and Facebook. He didn’t have blogs. All he had were radio, newspapers, and posters.

With our modern tools, the power to spread a message, for good or evil, is unparalleled. Every one of us can disseminate information across many channels, propelling English housewife Susan Boyle to international superstardom, helping elect Obama President, or spreading hatred and divisiveness as reprehensible as messages spread by the Nazis 70 years ago. A few clicks, and the message is on its way to a few dozen friends…or tens of thousands of associates on social media.

The media-savvy, politically sophisticated hatemongers who put this video together must have Goebbels beaming up from his particular circle of Hell, or at least jealous that he didn’t have these media.

We can use these tools to spread a joke. We can use them to organize for peace and justice. And we can use them to resist attempts to spread hate, as I hope I’m doing here. Love is stronger than hate. Let’s empower others and use these amazing tools the make the world a better place.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

This just in: Proponents of single-payer health care, a/k/a Medicare for All–the system used by almost every developed country in the world–will not get our promised floor vote after all.

If I were in Congress right now, I’d vote no. The bill has gotten weaker, more complicated, and more expensive with every turn. As I understand it, it is a giveaway to big insurers and might actually leave fewer people insured than we have now. A travesty!

President Obama–WHERE is the “change” you promised so loudly one year ago? As The Who sang in my very favorite song, “We Don’t Get Fooled Again,” “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss.”

Below is the public statement from Physicians for a National Health Program

November 6, 2009

Dear PNHP colleagues and friends,

We are disappointed to report that there will not be a vote on the Weiner amendment for single payer today in advance of the vote on the House bill tomorrow.

Two reasons were given by Rep. Weiner for withdrawing his amendment:

1. Speaker Pelosi said if she allowed debate on the single-payer amendment, she would have to allow debate on an expansion of the Hyde anti-abortion amendment, which the Democrats do not wish to do, and

2. There are at least 8 members who would vote against the House bill if they were given a chance to vote for Weiner’s single-payer amendment. At this point the Democratic leadership is desperately counting votes; they can only afford to lose 15 votes total, and according to the Washington Post, they are currently down by 25 votes.

Next steps and interpretation –

1. The fact that single payer got so far along in the House is a testament to the strength of our single-payer movement. The huge number of calls by single-payer advocates in support of single payer and the Weiner amendment in recent weeks have been noted by several members of Congress. Increasingly the public is learning what Harvard health economist William Hsiao told the New York Times, that “< #taiwan>[y]ou can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.”

2. It appears that nobody, particularly President Obama, expected our single-payer option to be alive in the Congress for so long. As you know, they attempted to keep it “off the table” from the very beginning.

3. The president was directly involved in the decision to not hold a vote on the Weiner single-payer amendment, and Weiner will be meeting with him later today. Stay tuned.

4. We need to increase pressure on the Congress and White House for Medicare for All through lobbying, speaking engagements, media outreach, grassroots organizing and civil disobedience. Senator Bernie Sanders will call for a vote on single payer in the Senate – this could come up anytime in the next month. Encourage your senator to support the Sanders bill (S. 703) and also an amendment he will offer for a state single-payer option. Our friends in the California Nurses Association/NNOC have already started lobbying visits to the Senate in D.C. Lobbying materials, slides, and other materials from our spectacular Annual Meeting in Cambridge are now on-line at www.pnhp.org/annual-meeting-2009

5. In the national office we are working on press outreach regarding uninsured veterans (we’ll have a release for you early next week on this) and civil disobedience by physicians in support of Medicare for All (see press release, below). Members are encouraged to continue to publish op-eds, letters to the editor, and articles in support of single payer (see articles in today’s Asheville, (N.C) Citizen-Times and the Palm Beach Post, below).

6. We have been asked how to tell members to vote on the House bill. Our response is that the bill “is like aspirin for breast cancer”. As noted by PNHP Past President Dr. John Geyman in his latest blog post “No bill is better than a bad bill,” even the public option in the House bill is a sham.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized

Talk about death panels! Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just releases–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

In an e-mail blast, the doctors group calls for President Obama to “start from scratch”: to ditch the unpopular, badly thought out, solves-nothing proposals floating through Congress and bring the US into alignment with the rest of the developed world: a single-payer health care plan.

And the group’s leader, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. of Harvard University, gave a great interview on this on Democracy Now.

Retired Senator (and former presidential candidate) George McGovern notes in a recent op-ed that all it would take is a one sentence law, extending Medicare coverage to all Americans.

I think all these folks are correct. I’ve been saying for months that the time for single-payer (something I started supporting in 1979, when I was a community organizer for the Gray Panthers and this was their main plank) is NOW.

If you’re in the US, tell your Senators and Congressional representative. And tell your state government to push for it.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, poverty

Not only did George W. Bush preside over the largest destruction of wealth in history, he also left the poor and middle class reeling, even before the Wall Street collapse. So says a new Census Bureau report that shows, according to the Atlantic Magazine article about it:

While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.

The article goes into substantial detail about all of these. It makes for vital, if sobering, reading. And adds up to yet another reason why I believe George W. Bush was the worst president in US history.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

I may get smeared for this as Van Jones was, but let me say that I find it disgraceful that Van Jones was the target of a smear campaign and was forced out as Obama’s Green jobs person. He was one of the few genuine progressive voices in a sea of “moderate-centrists” who would have been considered quite far to the right a few decades back.

What were Jones’ “crimes”?

* He called for an investigation into possible government foreknowledge about 9/11. It’s pretty clear that elements within the U.S. government had advance knowledge that something was brewing (even George W. Bush was briefed on this the month before the attack, as Condoleezza Rice admitted in her May 19, 2004 testimony in front of the 9/11 investigation commission), and many respected scholars such as David Ray Griffin have widely circulated hypotheses of U.S. government involvement. My own view is that the U.S. saw the attack coming and decided for its own purposes to let the attack occur (our Reichstag fire, if you will)–but were not directly involved. Why is it unreasonable to ask for an investigation?

* He used an unfortunate metaphor to describe his radicalization in the aftermath of the acquittal verdict in the Rodney King beating case:

By August, I was a Communist,” he says in the article, describing his sense of radicalization at the time.

* He said that Republican strong-arm legislators who managed to force through legislation even when short of a super-majority in the Senate were “assholes.” How is this any worse than commentator Glenn Beck, who led the charge against Jones, calling Obama a racist, or
George W. Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, threatening a legislator with “I’m going to kick your butt if you don’t go along with me.”. And if you listen to it in context, the subtext was that Democrats are too gentlemanly to play this kind of hardball, and that’s why they can’t get their agenda enacted. This, unfortunately, is patently obvious to observers of the current political scene.

Glenn Beck, this is the latest in a long line of despicable things you’ve done. You may feel smug now, but you’re the one whose conscience will bother you–not Van Jones.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Since the Republicans have taken a few pages from the Saul Alinsky organizing playbook—Alinsky was the legendary Chicago community organizer who influenced Obama, known for such tactics as a fart-in—maybe it’s time for Barack Obama to ask himself “What would Alinsky do?

What he wouldn’t do is capitulate. Alinksy would know, as Obama should know, that if he lets health reform die now, his entire agenda will be sunk in a quagmire of intransigence, lies, and loud, even violent public opposition. He will have no legacy beyond this point, and that would be a tragedy.

Barack Obama, President should turn to the Barack Obama of the past: that community organizer and brilliant marketer who knows how to galvanize a crowd, frame an issue, and move the discourse.

The Barack Obama who understood from Alinsky the impact a group of low-income could have when they move from disenfranchised, socially alienated aloneness with their troubles to a cohesive community group able to press the power structure. The Obama who was a contributing writer to a book called “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.”

THAT Barack Obama would not be talking about taking the public option off the table. Instead, he’d make a speech something like this:

“Fellow Americans, for the past several months, we’ve been trying to move this health care system forward from the disastrous present where good solid working folks can’t afford to get treated, but healthcare executives live the high life. All we’re trying to do is create a system where health care is the right of every American, just as it is the right of the citizens of almost every other industrialized country in the world. But we are blocked at every turn. We’ve tried to meet them half way, and we have been rebuffed. We try to negotiate, to compromise. And instead, we’re shouted down, we’re lied to, and we’re faced with people who will not budge an inch because they want to protect their own perks.

“We will not allow this little group of small-minded selfish liars to control the dialogue. We made a promise to make healthcare not only affordable but he guaranteed right of every American, and we’re going to keep this promise.

“To get out of the stalemate, I am withdrawing the existing health reform legislation and replacing it with just one paragraph that everyone can understand, that can’t be misrepresented, and that will rapidly transform us to full universal coverage. I ask your wholehearted support of this clear and simple action plan. It uses the one part of our healthcare system that has been working, and working well, since 1964. It’s tested and proven.

“As of one year from the passage of this legislation, the effective age of eligibility for Medicare shall be lowered to age 55. As of three years from passage, the eligibility for Medicare shall be age 35. And as of five years from passage, all citizens of the United States shall be eligible from birth. Companies now offering healthcare coverage to their employees shall continue to extend coverage until they are Medicare-eligible or until an employee takes a position with another company that offers equal or better coverage.

“That’s it. Instead of hundreds of pages of confusing legal jargon, a single paragraph of enabling legislation to open the door to the right of healthcare for millions of Americans. Citizens of America, this is your birthright.

“I will introduce this legislation every year that I am in office, until it passes. And I will work with you to organize, community by community, until your Senators and Representatives, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, support this bill or are replaced by those who do.”

Let’s see this speech on every network, every blog, every radio show, and in every newspaper in the country. Delivered, as he surrounds himself on stage with the victims of today’s healthcare policy madness: those who can’t get treatment, get the wrong treatment, are marginalized or even see family members die because of the cost-first, profit-only, single-bottom-line narrow-mindedness of today’s system.

In 1979-80, Shel Horowitz advocated for single-payer healthcare as a staff organizer for the Gray Panthers of Brooklyn. His eight books include Apex Award winner Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Source for the “fart-in story and Obama’s book contribution: Bill Dedman, “Reading Hillary Rodham’s hidden thesis,” https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388372

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

My friend Elsom Eldridge has a nice article about how to avoid becoming “Social Media Roadkill.” And I agree with almost everything he says.

Almost everything. With my usual focus on transparency, here’s what I disagree with (emphasis added):

Be personable but don’t give people a reason to dislike you. Mention your dog or your kids so that consumers see you in a dimensional way; skip over religion and politics where you are sure to make enemies no matter what you say.

This was my response:
On the whole, good advice–but I think it’s possible to succeed in social media without hiding your politics. As long as you don’t promote them in an offensive way. I’ve had spirited but friendly debates on political issues for years via social media. My politics are part of who I am, and it would be a blow against integrity to hide them.

I find that most people respect my stances, even when they disagree. And I am careful to challenge views while not attacking the person who holds those views, to keep the debate positive, to avoid namecalling or other forms of dumping.

Some of the people I disagree with strongly about politics have in fact sent me clients, endorsed my books, and had long, complex off-list explorations with me about our points of agreement and disagreement. I am seen as a friendly, helpful, and yes, opinionated person.

Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Media Ethics, Politics, Transparency vs. Secrecy

What an outrage! If there is a PR equivalent of disbarment, Bonner & Associates would be a candidate.

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization,” said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville’s Hispanic community. “It’s this type of activity that undermines Americans’ faith in democracy.”

You can read the newspaper article here If you prefer audio. Democracy Now covered this today (briefly) as well.

I make a good part of my living as a Pr copywritier and marketing strategist, and I’m totally appalled. I also note that all the press coverage I’ve seen points out that this particular firm has a long history of “astroturfing,” which casts suspicion on the claim that this was an accident. I don’t know how you forge a letter from an imaginary person on someone else’s official letterhead—twice!—and call it an accident. I also don’t know how you can run a PR agency for decades for 25 years and not think that the Public Relations Society of America Code of Ethics has any relevance to you.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical is a sweeping, 144-page document addressing and interlocking a wide range of social issues. He calls on the financial industry to tame its greed and turn to ethics, asks the United Nations and individual governments to address deep-rooted poverty issues–not only from economic development perspectives but also making sure these countries have a voice and a seat at the table of power–a political shift, in other words.

Good coverage in the Washington Post (see above link). And a shoutout to Allan Holender of the World Wide Association of Zentrepreneurs, for bringing this important document to my attention.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Yesterday, the fate of Minnesota’s Senate seat, undecided since the November election, was finally decided; the margin, out of 2.9 million votes cast, all of 312. Congratulations to Senator Al Franken.

In 2000, George W. Bush’s winning margin in Florida (and thus the presidency of the United States), was 537 votes, in an election whose legitimacy is still hotly debated (and to me, will never be legitimate). The hanging-chads issue alone could have swung the election to Gore by thousands of votes–just one among many irregularities. But in any case, it was close enough that it was possible to steal.

Years ago, I managed a friend’s campaign for local office; he was declared the winner by seven votes, and in the recount, his margin of victory slipped to four.

Four votes determined that election. If just five more people had shown up up to vote for his (entrenched incumbent) opponent, he would have lost.

Of course, it’s not enough that every vote counts. Who counts the votes is also an issue; witness the calamity in Iran.

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