I can't claim to be exhaustively familiar with any of the members of the Obama team outside of the big names most of us are familiar with. Unfortunately, a lot of Obama's choices have been either seemingly politically motivated (Clinton/Richardson) or just downright dumb (Geithner/Holder).
From what I've been reading, though, I think one of the more welcomed appointments is Arne Duncan as Education Secretary. Sure, there was that grammatical error made during his introductory remarks -- then again I'm sure there are several in this post -- but what I like about the man is his genuine support for charter schools. The pros and cons of charter schools have been debated all over so I won't go in to why this is a good thing. Perhaps even more importantly though, Duncan has under his belt the major accomplishment of having implemented a system similar to San Francisco's "weighted-student formula under which kids can take their education dollars to any school - public or private" and includes extra weighted funds for students with additional needs like special education, poverty, and English as a second language. These strike me as progressive and non-partisan solutions to restoring the lustre to our nation's most important national resource.
-- Danish Aziz
A timeline of George W. Bush's presidency, Pitchfork's best albums, and hip hop in the past eight years
11-07-00 - George W. Bush is elected 43rd President of the United States on a campaign stressing "compassionate conservatism" and the dangers of "nation building." Half the country is upset, but most expect a lame duck presidency. Rap flourishes.
01-01-01 - Pitchfork names Radiohead's Kid A top album of the year 2000. Rock takes an exciting and experimental (if dark) turn.
06-05-01 - I graduate from high school. In my valedictory speech I state "George Bush couldn't run a laundromat, let alone a country."
09-11-01 - Terrorists hijack four planes and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
01-01-02 - Pitchfork names The Microphones' The Glow, Pt. 2 best album of the year 2001. Static and feedback reign as a nation reels from its first serious blow since Pearl Harbor.
01-01-03 - Pitchfork names Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights best album of the year 2002, a band that was endlessly compared to Joy Division. This choice speaks to the doleful mood of the country, but Americans (and the rest of the world) were still "with" the President. It was dark but at least we were united.
03-19-03 - The United States invades Iraq.
12-31-03 - Pitchfork names The Rapture's Echoes best album of the year 2003 proving Bad judgment is endemic. Broken Social Scene release the best album of 2003, but we're told we'd find WMD's in Echoes. To be fair, the rise of dance punk precipitates the dance music revival.
12-31-04 - Pitchfork names The Arcade Fire's Funeral best album of the year 2004. The war enters its second year, and the nation mourns a second time as deaths (and funerals) continue to mount.
01-20-05 - Bush sworn in to second term as President of the United States.
12-31-05 - Pitchfork names Sufjan Stevens' Illinois best album of the year 2005. If our leaders can't save us, perhaps Christian indie folk will. We've seen the ugliness of the coastal elites, so we turn toward the heart of the country.
12-19-06 - Pitchfork names The Knife's Silent Shout best album of the year 2006. America's not doing it for us, how about the Swedes?
04-24-07 - Rapper T.I. says "If you want to fix America, you have to start at George Bush and work your way down -- you can't start at hip-hop and work your way up."
12-19-07 - Pitchfork names Panda Bear's Person Pitch best album of the year 2007. The sub-genres of Freak Folk and Blog House reach their heights as we binge one final time.
09-16-08 - Markets grind to a halt as the global financial crisis is laid bare.
11-04-08 - Barack Obama is elected 44th President of the United States.
12-19-08 - Pitchfork names Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut the best album of the year 2008. It's no surprise that after electing the first black president, white people feel okay openly enjoying the whitest music known to man. 2008 also marks the year only a single solid hip hop album is released, Lil' Wayne's Tha Carter III. A failed war and a failed economy launch a preson of color into office, but we're forced to sit back and watch as hip hop -- an American musical invention -- breathes its last breaths.
-- Danish Aziz
This week's prompt states "the last time a generation our age faced a recession of this magnitude, they overcame economic hardship, faced down fascism, and created a baby boom. Does our generation have it in us?" I certainly hope not, since although the "Greatest Generation" faced down Hitler and survived the Great Depression, they also begat the Baby Boomers -- the "Lamest Generation" as I like to call them. As James Quinn, senior director of strategic planning at Wharton says—
"they rebelled against their parents, protested the Vietnam War, and settled down in 2,300 square foot cookie cutter McMansions with perfectly manicured lawns, in mall infested suburbia. They have raised overscheduled spoiled children, moved up the corporate ladder by pushing paper rather than making things, lived above their means in order to keep up with their neighbors, bought whatever they wanted using debt, and never worried about the future. Over optimism, unrealistic assumptions, selfishness and conspicuous consumption have been their defining characteristics."
And so here we are, with Bernard Madoff's sons having to turn in their own father.
While it's lovely to think our generation is in a position to make sacrifices to save our country, the sad truth is that old people are still running the world. Take for example the Detroit auto bailout. This is pure conjecture, but I'd wager that the proportion of people who support this (or any other bailout) increases with age. Here we on the brink of a global depression, and we're about to pour billions into a dying industry that has long been a drag on American productivity. If we can't let a decrepit, tottering industry succumb to its deserved fate in a time of intense economic crisis, then how can we be expected to make real sacrifices?
What to do, what to do? Popular wisdom says massive public spending is the solution. That doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice to me. Let's start by updating our antiquated idea of what constitutes the "American dream." Let's stop subsidizing suburbanism and loading legislation with pork just to keep the red states afloat. If there are no jobs in small town America, maybe we don't need to "create" those jobs, maybe we need to make it easier for people to find jobs elsewhere and sacrifice the comfort of home for new opportunities. Let's sacrifice the idea that anyone anywhere can become a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO and start respecting work of every form, which means stop sending people to college who have no business going there.
As far as having it in us to be the next "great generation," I can't really say. We certainly should be with all the information at our fingertips. Unfortunately, nobody knows what's going to happen in the next few years. While throwing money down black holes might seem like a surefire way to recovery, let's hope everyone keeps the law of unintended consequences in mind.
-- Danish Aziz
Just to clarify, we're not talking about the band from Okalahoma, right? Because those dudes put out one heck of an album.
In all seriousness, this week's prompt appears to ask two questions: are Evangelicals becoming more progressive, and if so, what should progressives do to make these Evangelicals feel more at home? While I can claim no expertise with respect to Evangelical political beliefs (if such a monolithic thing exists), it does appear at least anecdotally that some Evangelicals are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the dittohead nature of their movement. However, I can answer the second question somewhat more conclusively: nothing. I don't mean that with any contempt, but I'll explain below why the idea of "accomodation" is anathema to me as an unaffiliated progressive.
I think of "progressive" as a label that is different from party affiliations like "Democrat" or "Republican." While candidates running for office may need to calculate centrist or mainstream positions and choose political stances based on focus groups with the hope of widening the tent, the political activists of the world should feel free to speak as openly and plainly as possible. Much like the avant-garde of the art world must serve as pioneers of the cultural terrain before more mainstream artists can reinterpret their work for a broader audience, so too must activists/progressives/ideologues advocate their positions in a vacuum void of public opinion. Once we figure out what we stand for and why, it's up to the people we choose to support for office to come up with a marketable political brand. In other words, if Evangelicals want to listen to our Steve Reich that's all well and good, but don't expect us to throw in some auto-tune to make it more palatable.
-- Danish Aziz
"We must patiently explain why taxing or regulating noble things (like work, saving, and entrepreneurial risk-taking) means you’ll get less of what makes America great and why subsidizing other things (like idleness and single parenthood) means you’ll get more of the destructive behaviors that ultimately will drag us down."
— An excerpt from a piece in the National Review by the vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.
I wish I lived in the National Review universe, where life is as simple as choosing between noble and idle pursuits. While I can certainly get behind the idea of not taxing or regulating "work, saving, and entrepreneurial risk-taking," I'm less clear as to how idleness and single parenthood is being subsidized by our government. Despite my strong libertarian leanings, I am not blind to our current political realities. When -- not if -- universal health care becomes a reality, there will be no hope of turning back the tide of statism that paleo-conservatives and libertarians fear. To be honest, this hope has been dead for quite some time. Recognizing this, it's important to consider what issues we classical liberals (I'm not speaking for Whyrooters here) can still have an impact on, and how best to direct the governing of a Europeanized America.
FDR once said, "Continued dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration." I think that is what the NR piece is getting at with its suggestion of subsidizing "idleness and single parenthood." It seems pretty clear, though, that the need for things like welfare for single mothers isn't because we think it will really help improve the lives of the people receiving the benefits, but rather that the alternative is even worse than the maintenance of the status quo. Broken homes exist because the vicious cycle of poverty breeds broken homes from broken homes. Most poor women don't forgo a steady marriage to become single mothers because they want to cash in on welfare bucks. Neither the cure, nor the responsibility for "destructive behaviors" rests with welfare policy. The "pragmatic" classical liberal should instead admire the steps we took in the 90's with the passage of the PRWORA which aimed to create "reform policies attempted to condition employment behavior among single mothers by implementing policies that would make working wages more profitable than welfare benefits and provide incentives to work, disincentives to remain on welfare, and disincentives to remain single or to have children out of wedlock. PRWORA prohibited states from using federal TANF funds to provide benefits to adults for more than five years over a lifetime. Time limits provide direct and anticipatory incentives to work. The direct effect arises from inability to receive benefits; the anticipatory incentive results when a forward- looking person decides to conserve welfare eligibility for when truly necessary. While individuals could prefer welfare benefits to employment at any given time, the prospect of worse employment opportunities in the future would make future welfare benefits more attractive."
As for the pros and cons of taxation and regulation, this is a debate that has been waged since the dawn of American government. I'm not sure what I can contribute with this blog post, but speaking as an advocate of free enterprise, I'd say our current system of rent-seeking and corporate welfare is far more loathsome than any well-intentioned re-distributions of wealth we might see from an Obama administration.
-- Danish Aziz
After living through the massive bailouts on Wall Street, a number like "five billion" seems pretty small to me in terms of government spending. With that in mind, I take this week's prompt to mean "what's the most important 'low hanging fruit.'" Personally this is a no-brainer: end the War on Drugs. Besides, after all is said and done we'd probably wind up making a lot more than we would spend during the legalization and regulation process.
Our very own President-elect (and most probably his predecessor) has admitted to using "a little blow when [he] could afford it." We all know where this tragic tale leads: The Harvard Law Review, the U.S. Senate, and the Presidency. Clearly we need to make this stuff illegal (read: expensive) or else regular people will not be able to help themselves and will fall into equally drugged stupors. Seriously though, it's unlikely that many of you need to be informed of this but the War on Drugs has been a miserable failure. Drugs still exist, people still use them, criminals get rich off their illegal trade, and all of this begets incredible amounts of violence and wasted resources.
"What would legalization look like?" you might ask. Great question. When I say legalization, I don't mean "decriminalization." In my ideal world, there would be no "controlled substances." Drugs would be treated like food and alcohol, subject to certain safety standards and taxation, but that's it. Licensed sellers would replace violent gangsters and could sell their goods at the market dictated prices just like alcohol. Contrast this to the current state of affairs, wherein criminalization drives some users to criminal activities to afford the sky-high prices sellers are able to demand by virtue of a "risk premium." Additionally, addicts of more serious drugs would be able to find dependency assistance without fear of going to jail, and public health would improve through the use of sanitary products and delivery methods (the demand for truly horrendous drugs like methamphetamine would disappear with superior, cheaper, and safer alternatives). Perhaps most importantly though, government expenditures for enforcement would be reduced (e.g. the millions we spend fighting coca farmers in Columbia) while we'd simultaneously experience an enormous increase in our tax revenue via the taxation of these goods -- anywhere from $10 billion to $14 billion a year nationally according to Jeffrey Miron, a visiting professor of economics at Harvard.
All of this does not even touch upon the tremendous environmental impact the illegal drug trade has on our country, the racist and classist ways in which our drug laws impact Americans, and the destruction these laws cause to families of non-violent offenders. Barack Obama has previously implied he would support the decriminalization of marijuana, which is an important first step that a majority of Americans support, but to truly create lasting change we need to go even further.
-- Danish Aziz
Via Compete, this is based on traffic trends to the candidates' websites in October of 2008.
-- Danish Aziz
I understand that Thanksgiving is basically just a harvest festival with some feel good racial friendship themes attached, yet I'm loathe to participate in a Thanksgiving themed prompt as I feel like celebrating this day is throwing salt in the wounds of Native Americans. I'd ask a Native American how he/she feels about Thanksgiving, but for some reason these people are hard to find. Sure, America's a great place but that doesn't mean we need to gloss over our troubled history. Celebrating Thanksgiving the way we currently do would be like Jews in Israel eating "peace falafel" on Naqba Day. Having said all that, we live in the greatest country in the world, and as the child of immigrants I feel especially thankful for a great number of things afforded to me by simply having been born here.
My father came to the United States with a mechanical engineering degree and fluency in English, yet was forced to drive a cab to make enough money to bring my mother, brother, and sister over from Pakistan. He was able to save up enough money to start a small business, at which point he and my mother felt comfortable enough to have another child -- me. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to be the only family member born in the United States, which I can only assume is the reason I am both the tallest and highest SAT-scoring Aziz.
I'm spending my Thanksgiving on the beautiful coast of Oregon where my parents run a small coffee shop in their semi-retirement. Having grown up in Iowa, small-town Oregon is strikingly familiar. These are the parts of America that seem to have been left behind despite the great economic advances seen in other parts of the country. Every other day or so, some soul will wander into my parents' shop and ask if we're hiring and I can't help but be reminded of those heart-wrenching scenes recounted in The Grapes of Wrath. The unemployment rate in Oregon is rapidly approaching eight percent and is on its way to nine percent in neighboring California. It's not just blue-collar and rural workers who are feeling the brunt. Recently a number of my friends were laid off from their jobs in San Francisco. These were all hard-working, well-educated young people who find themselves in the same situation as the laid off lumber industry workers in Oregon for example.
This will indeed be the "the worst recession in a generation," and I fear it could last longer than the two years some are saying it will take for our economy to start growing again. In times like these I'm just thankful that I and my family are all currently employed and that we now have people in charge of this country who will hopefully tackle this issue with the urgency that is required.
-- Danish Aziz
Looks like someone over at Salon is reading Whyroots. Michael Lind asks "If the conservative era is over, can liberals come out of their defensive crouch and call themselves liberals again, instead of progressives?" As a fiscal conservative and social liberal, I think the term "progressive" creates a bigger tent, but I can see why run of the mill lefties might be dying to be "out and proud" if you will.
-- Danish Aziz
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