Doug Henwood's Blog, page 60

That john a. powell talk…

The excerpts from the talk by Berkeley law prof john a. powell [sic] that Adolph Reed and I discuss on my December 25 radio show can be found here.

Fresh audio product

Just added to my radio archive:

December 4, 2014 Anatol Lieven of Georgetown U–Qatar (and author of ) on Hillary the Hawk • Alex Vitale, author of City of Disorder, on Ferguson in the context of American policing

November 27, 2014 Lucia Green-Weiskel on the U.S.–China climate quasi-deal • Steven Teles talks about Hillary, kludgeocracy, and neoliberalism.

November 20, 2014 Yanis Varoufakis on the eurocrisis • Howie Hawkins, Green candidate for NYS governor, on the party’s future

November 13, 2014 Detroit bankruptcy exit special: Shea Howell of Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, offers an activist perspective, and Wallace Turbeville (see writings here) runs the numbers

Fresh audio product, in quantity

Catching up on a major backlog of fresh audio product, just posted to my radio archives:

September 18, 2014 Gilbert Achcar on the Middle Eastern landscape

September 25, 2014 Mark Blyth on the Scottish independence referendum • Laleh Khalili on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency.

October 23, 2014 [back after fundraising hiatus]  Ryan Grim (author of this article) on Gary Webb, crack, and the CIA • Jake Blumgart (author of this article) on a mini-Detroit on the outskirts of Philadelphia

October 30, 2014  Kevin Alexander Gray, co-editor of Killing Trayvons, on racist police and vigilante violence • Trudy Lieberman on the snares of Obamacare

November 6, 2014 Heather Boushey, director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, on inequality • George Joseph, author of this article, on Teach for America

Note the fundraising gap. If you like these shows and want to keep them coming, please contribute to KPFA—and mention Behind the News if you do.

More Hillary

Me on CNN, interviewed by Andrew Cuomo’s brother, of all people.

Hillary publicity update 2

This just in, from my old pal Russ Smith, publisher of New York Press in its splendid heyday.

Hillary publicity update

Updates to the Hillary publicity catalog:

One I left out—the  New York Observer
And fresh German publicity, based on the Die Welt article

Hillary publicity roundup

Lots of nice publicity for my Hillary piece in Harper’s:

Page Six (New York Post)
Huffington Post Live (video)
Salon interview with Elias Isquith
interview by Chuck Mertz for This Is Hell (radio)
brief mention in Wall Street Journal (10th paragraph)
“Amerikaner, stoppt die Clinton-Dynastie,” Die Welt (German)

More, one hopes. One always hopes for more.

On Hillary

[I said this on my radio show yesterday as a Hillary teaser. Jane McAlevey urged me to circulate it, and I do what Jane says.]

A little self-promotion. I have a cover story in this month’s Harper’s on Hillary Rodham Clinton, which the editors gave the tabloidish headline, “Stop Hillary!” (And I do mean tabloidish—it caught the attention of a New York Post reporter, who wrote it up for the paper’s Page Six gossip feature.) In it, I review Hillary’s life in a very non-friendly way, in hope of derailing her unannounced yet all-but-certain presidential campaign.

I have three major objections to Hillary (which is how she seems to brand herself these days): the dynastic, the personal, and the political.

First, after two Bushes, do we really need another Clinton?

Second, the personal. Hillary has a long record of dishonesty, ranging from making up a stories about the origin of her name (she said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, but he didn’t climb Mt Everest until several years after she was born) to lies about all the various Arkansas scandals she brought with her to Washington. Par for the politician course, I suppose, but her supporters like to think of her as several cuts above the ordinary, a judgment I’m sure she concurs with.

But the most important objection is political: the last thing we need is another hawkish, Wall Street-friendly Democrat in the White House. Many people—including me, when I started researching the piece—don’t appreciate how deeply involved Hillary was with creating the New Democrat paradigm, tough and business-friendly, replacing the old New Deal/Great Society model. While governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton took a number of swipes at unions in the state as part of a campaign to shred the longstanding Democratic alliance with labor. He, with Hillary closely involved, launched an attack on the teachers union in Arkansas, a campaign with ugly racial undertones, that was a model for later edu-reform efforts. Once on the board of the Children’s Defense Fund, Hillary supported Bill’s efforts to end welfare, which is responsible for keeping millions of people, mostly women and children, in poverty now—though, of course, she likes to present herself as an advocate for women and children. That advocacy mainly takes the form of photo-ops and symbolic programs. It’s very reminiscent of her husband’s approach. I remember, back in the 1990s, taking apart his budget proposals. The prose sections always contained rhetoric about “investing in people” and “building a bridge to the 21st century,” but when you looked at the actual numbers, you had to take them out to two or three decimal places to notice any change. That’s the essence of the New Democrat paradigm.

But it isn’t new anymore—it’s more than 20 years old. It represented a consolidation of Reaganism, the conversion of what is supposed to be the popular party into a near-pure instrument of neoliberalism. To a neoliberal, the solution to a social problem should always involve a market, and if the market doesn’t exist, it must be created ex nihilo. (That’s the logic of Obamacare.)

That whole approach has lost even its novelty value now. It is not adequate to deal with climate change, polarization, and structural economic stagnation—problems that are caused by an excess of markets, not a deficiency. The marketization of everything has led to severe social fragmentation and the erosion of all notions of solidarity. Hillary sometimes evokes those notions of solidarity, but usually in photo-ops with women from poor countries in their colorful native garb, where she uplifts them by her mere presence. As for policies that might change their actual material and social status, well, they’re rather thin on the ground, because they might spoil the investment climate.

Minimum wage politics

I haven’t used this venue to promote my Harper’s piece on the awfulness of Hillary Clinton, but that’s about to change. First this little note, and then some bits from the cutting-room floor that wouldn’t fit next week.

Some Democrats have been saying that a Hillary presidency would almost certainly lead to a rise in the minimum wage and a Republican wouldn’t. Maybe. But here’s the recent historical record. I have to admit I was surprised by this, but here you go:

• The real value of the minimum wage rose 7.7% under George H.W. Bush (measuring from January 1989–January 1993—subsequent calculations follow the same template).

• It fell by 1.5% under Bill Clinton.

• It rose by 5.4% under George W. Bush.

• So far under Obama it’s down 1.3%

This history aside, I’m not saying that the minimum wage is more likely to rise under a Rep than a Dem, but Dems’ faith in the certainty of a minwage increase under Hillary seems misplaced.

PS: Yes, Harper’s is beyond a paywall. They also paid me well and have an excellent staff of editors and publicists. You can’t get that good stuff for free.

More companies dropping health coverage, thanks to Obamacare

Back in 2011, I argued that Obamacare would lead employers to drop existing health insurance coverage and throw employees onto the mercies of the exchanges. (See this post and links therein.) Liberals, including no less than Paul Krugman, denied this. But it’s looking like it’s happening.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart, that paragon of the modern employer, is dropping coverage for 30,000 part-time employees. It joins Target, Home Depot, and UPS, who’ve already cut coverage. And, at the high end, the so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous insurance plans is also leading to cutbacks; JetBlue and FedEx are shifting employees into high-deductible plans.

Obamacare’s popularity

Meanwhile, Gallup finds that more Americans think the cleverly named Affordable Care Act  has hurt (27%) rather than helped (16%) them—though a majority (54%) say it’s had no effect. Almost half (46%) think the ACA will make things worse over the long term, and just 15% think it will make things better.

Maybe they’re wrong. But the typical response of Democrats is basically to say they’re mistaken, and that the Act is the greatest bit of legislated social progress since Medicare. Except almost everyone loves Medicare. It’d be nice if everyone could have something like it.