Let's Have a Real Debate on Citizenship

There is a debate on citizenship that conservatives want to have. There is another debate on citizenship that some progressives are trying to have--so far, typically, without much success. There are arguments to be made, both good and bad, in both debates. I say we should have them both.

First, the conservative argument--which can be summed up in the closet racist and blatantly inhumane phrase “anchor baby.” Ironically, given their supposed reverence for the U.S. Constitution, teabaggers and their conservative fellow travellers have expressed an enthusiastic willingness to tamper with one of the core tenets of American society: the concept, as stated in the Constitution and reinforced by the 14th Amendment, that anyone born on American soil is, indeed, an American. Their reason for doing so? The fact that an increasing number of those native born Americans happen to be the offspring of people who happen to be in this country illegally. What anyone with a heart and a mind sees as a consequence of human beings attempting to make a life for themselves under adverse conditions, they see as a deliberate criminal effort by “illegals” to swindle American taxpayers by acquiring social services for which they are otherwise unqualified through the good graces of their newly-born citizen offspring.

This is as fundamentally inhuman and wrong-headed as the assertion (not surprisingly, often from the same people) that being homosexual is a matter of conscious choice. It shows a shocking lack of empathy for one’s fellow humans to suppose than someone chooses on a whim a sexual preference that can get you randomly killed on a street corner in a lot of places, render you ineligible for military service, and render virtually impossible the ability to enter into a legally recognized state of loving commitment with the person of your choice. It shows an equal lack of empathy to suppose that anyone would endure the extraordinary risks and dangers of traveling to this country illegally (frequently through the good graces of coyotes who will kill or abandon their clients in a heartbeat, should the need arise) and live in constant danger of deportation...merely to acquire a fraudulent welfare check.

Unfortunately, as heartless and wrong-headed as they are, these fair weather constitutionalists do have a point: no other industrialized nation on earth has as liberal a concept of citizenship as the United States, and there is, indeed, a social cost to that liberality. Canada, for example, has public health care and other social services that Americans would kill for and often die for lacking--but unless you speak English AND French, have an education, and an employer, you are NOT going to legally emigrate to Canada.

Nor are you likely to be employed as an illegal immigrant--which is really the point, and the real issue that quack notions like “anchor babies” are intended to distract from. If we don’t want people in this country illegally, all we really have to do is leverage punitively expensive measures against individuals and corporations that provide employment to undocumented workers. We don’t have to change the constitution, we don’t have to deport newborn infants. We just have to be willing to sanction the hell out of those who exploit illegal immigrants (and maybe accept the idea of national ID card...but that’s really part of a different discussion).

Consider for a moment that phrase, “individuals and corporations”. It leads us into the second emerging debate on citizenship, the one that conservatives and corporate-owned mainstream media don’t want you to hear about...or think about.

In a recent article entitled “Walmart is not a Person” (excepted from a forthcoming book), commentator and author Thom Hartmann made the entirely reasonable argument that the best way to undo the damage of the Citizen United Decision might be to close the legal loophole granting corporations First Amendment protection in the first place. The means of doing so? An amendment that explicitly defines the Bill of Rights as “humans only”-- in other words, to make it a matter of established law that not Walmart, Exxon-Mobil, AT&T or any other artificial legal construct enjoys the rights of U.S. citizenship.

The tricorn hat crowd should love this. The word “corporation” does not appear once in the original Constitution they treat as inerrant holy writ, and there is ample evidence (as Hartmann points out) that the Founding Fathers harbored a deep suspicion and resentment toward such entities. That resentment boiled over in the lead-up to the American Revolution as the REAL “Tea Party”--an event in which an insurrectionist gang wearing identity-concealing disguises destroyed over $2,000,000.00 (in current dollars) worth of property belonging to a multinational corporation. So... people who like to compare themselves to the Founding Fathers should be all over dismantling corporate power, right?

Don’t count on it. For all of the powdered-wig posturing and supposed reverence for the ideals that produced the American Revolution, the various groups that make up the “tea party movement” have never really been about anything else but making sure that the election of 2008 would be nothing more than a speed-bump in the path of the corporate/state power consolidation set into motion during the Bush Presidency. The people who show up at the rallies may be hapless bumpkins, gun nuts, and racist buffoons...the people who pay for the events are about as hapless as Dick Cheney.

Let’s not forget that the core issue in the “Citizen United” case was whether or not the right-wing front group of the same name was free to advertise a hatchet job film about Hillary Clinton in violation of the McCain-Feingold Act. And now, thanks to the most reactionary right-wing Supreme Court in U.S. history, McCain-Feingold is history--and corporations now have a first amendment right to spend as much money as it takes to subvert as many elections as it takes to get what they want. The modern corporation was essentially created in 1886 as a workaround to subvert legal restrictions on large concentrations of wealth. It has worked quite well. The plutocracy of majority corporate shareholders who effectively run this country are not likely to give it up without one hell of a fight.

Just as attempts to deliver average Americans from the predations of an out-of-control healthcare system have been successfully relabeled as “socialism”, efforts at limiting the ability of large corporations to subvert U.S. democracy can expect to be slandered as “attacks on free enterprise” and worse. Not that it matters very much: any anticipation that the American progressive movement is going to be any more adept at fighting back against creeping corporate fascism than they have been to date is highly optimistic.

Just for argument’s sake, though, how about we have a real debate on citizenship? If it is acceptable to put parts of the Constitution on the table for purposes of restricting the citizenship of actual humans, it ought to be just as acceptable to consider restricting the “citizenship” abused by corporations on behalf of the relative handful of humans who directly profit from their existence.

A constitutional amendment can be many things, address many things. Citizenship is just one of several issues addressed in the 14th Amendment in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, although it is certainly the most important. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment guaranteed that the slavery that African-Americans had been delivered from at great cost would not merely re-emerge in a different form. It states unequivocally that any person “born or naturalized” in the United States is a citizen and cannot be deprived of their fundamental rights by any state or local jurisdiction, for any reason. If you are born in America, you are, simply, an American.

These same protections ensured the status of children born to the immigrants who flooded into this country in the Civil War’s aftermath. Those immigrants, their children, the subsequent immigrants (for as long as we would take them)... they helped build the greatest expansion of industrial power and prosperity the world has ever seen. If there is any true basis for the notion of “American Exceptionalism” it is that accomplishment--that a nation was made of peoples of many nations, and that of that diversity came greatness.

It can be fairly argued that this expansive and uniquely American notion of citizenship and nationhood is a luxury this country can no longer afford. Possibly so. America is not what it once was. What worked for a country that had for all its history been its own frontier may not work for a country that is now as thoroughly constrained as any of the “Old World” nations of Europe.

But it can also be fairly argued that this country has lost its way and become divided against itself as thoroughly as has ever been the case since the Civil War. It is very doubtful that the current tensions will escalate to a war between states (not least because the divisions run equally through every state, and the entire country), but very reasonable to assume that healing these divisions may very well require measures as sweeping as the post-Civil War Reconstruction.

The so-called “Reconstruction Amendments” addressed long-standing shortcomings in America’s original founding documents, and established new definitions of nationhood and citizenship. A new round of redefinition may well now be in order, as well as a little more honesty. There is a fundamental unfairness and hypocrisy to an immigration policy that turns a blind eye to the exploitation of undocumented workers, only to ritualistically scapegoat the victims on the eve of elections. Equally hypocritical, if more well-meaning: the notion that anyone has an inalienable right to parent children that neither they nor anyone else can afford to support, either in a host country or the place of their birth. The world is not inexhaustible.

Nor is the patience of those who have been and continue to be exploited. The “citizenship” and supposed inalienable rights of corporations have been used to created what is rapidly becoming the wealthiest oligarchy in human history. Their wealth comes at the expense of undermining the core democratic values of an American society to which they give astonishingly little in return. Sooner or later, one way or another, that issue will be addressed.

The Tea Party Movement is an elaborate fraud, the latest re-invention of Harry Dent’s “Southern Strategy”, but the resentments it exploits go beyond the anxieties created by the country’s first African-American President. In an increasingly pluralistic country, the issues of race, religion, and sexual identity the Republican Party has used to militate Americans against their own interests will lose power. Unless the staggering inequality in this country is reversed, the next “tea party” may have a lot less interest in cosplay reenactments of the last revolution... and a lot more interest in a real revolution of their own.

So, yeah...let’s have a real debate on what it means to be an American and who (and what) gets to claim citizenship. And let’s do it now...while America still exists; while that citizenship still has some measure of value.

Slouching Towards Irrelevance

I may have to give up on commenting on American politics.

I mean, really, what's the point? Things have descended to the level where a major party is running a senatorial candidate who is incapable of distinguishing getting busy with a copy of Hustler from having an affair--and is apparently equally incapable of telling the difference between attending a seminar at a university and receiving a degree from one. The only "jobs" Christine O'Donnell have ever held are running for public office and telling college students that touching their naughty bits makes Jeebus cry-- yet the blistering idiots that have taken control of the GOP regard any effort at fact-checking this female Munchhausen as equivalent to a witch-hunt... perhaps not wholly without reason, given that one of the more credible claims she makes about her past is having once made out with a would-be Satanist on a sacrificial alter (apparently she wondered, briefly, about the blood).

Meanwhile, the bloodless corporate sellout who could very possibly have run for and won the U.S. Presidency as an independent has the nerve to wonder why the people who put their passion, time, and money into his candidacy are not prepared to do the same for the party he decided to place ahead of their aspirations and hopes. Barack Obama was by no means the candidate of choice for the corporate establishment (that would've been Hillary Clinton), but as soon as they realized that he was almost certainly going to be elected, they began the process of making sure that their interests would be represented.

Obama was always far more centrist than either his campaign rhetoric or the despairing hopes of progressives led one to believe, but by the time he took power the principal difference between his positions and his predecessor's on matters of economic and military policy... amounted to little more than the ability to describe them in complete sentences. His administration continues to prosecute an utterly pointless war in Afghanistan, continues to conflate the welfare of America with the welfare of corporations, continues to watch on in apparently helplessness while the planet's capacity to support human life is eroded, and happily contributes to the even faster erosion of U.S. civil liberties.

I am beginning to think that the main reason the Election of 2008 produced so few real results is that the Democratic Party has no real interest in governing. I mean, come on--in the entire horrific eight years that Bush and his junta held power, the GOP never once had the kind of mandate that Obama and the Democrats received in the last election... yet they still managed to impose upon America a radical ring-wing agenda that at this point appears to be permanent. I don't know if it was always so, but the contemporary Democratic Party resembles nothing so much as a dog chasing a car--neither one has the slightest idea what to do if they actually catch the object of their pursuit...and, perhaps equally, neither one has the ability to actually do anything with it.

Contemporary Democrats seems quite content to be the permanent minority party Karl Rove once envisioned--after all, if they don't have power they can wring their hands over the GOP's open whoredom to the same wealthy elite that they merely service with greater discretion. They can wring their hands, protest, and attempt to convince gullible voters that things would be different were they in charge--and on the strength of that promise, win votes and campaign contributions and retain what a lot of Americans would like to have...a job.

One of the more hypocritical criticisms Democrats level at Christine O’Donnell is that she’s nothing more than a con artist who discovered that politics is the sweetest con of them all. Such criticisms amount to little more than an elderly prostitute telling a young upstart to find her own street... since this one’s already taken. It would be a lot easier to take seriously the idea that the dangerously cute Ms. O’Donnell was a threat to the Republic... if the Republic weren’t already such a monumental threat to itself and the rest of the planet.

I was recently interrupted on my nightly walk to the neighborhood supermarket’s beer and wine aisle by a call from a volunteer working for the organization formerly known as “Obama for America”, who was contacting those who had contributed time and money to The President’s campaign in hopes of soliciting more of the same on behalf of The President’s party.

Because I was raised in the traditions of the American Old South, I actually let her launch into her scripted litany of why now--more than ever-- the Democratic Party needed me. Life more recent (and the impending need to select a bottle of wine) eventually brought me to interrupt her.

“No offense,” I said, “but I’m going to cut this short. You’re right--in the last election, I firmly believed that Barack Obama was the last best hope for America as a country... I still do.”

“And that’s why, unfortunately, you’re not getting a dime.”

Selling Houston's Soul

(originally published in the March 2009 Free Press Houston)

Hardly anyone even knows it by name, but virtually anyone who has spent time in Montrose at all knows of Wilshire Village. Seventeen mostly vacant apartment buildings largely obscured from view by beautiful old magnolias and oaks. The buildings are in varying states of decrepitude, the consequence of generations of benign neglect. Most of them are effectively uninhabitable and uninhabited. Others are surrounded by carefully tended gardens, patio furniture... children's toys. The parking lots between the buildings contain an unusual assortment of vehicles. Vintage Cadillacs sit on blocks next to Cooper Minis while late model American pickups stand next to motorcycles, motor scooters and bicycles of every description.

Over the years, tenancy at Wilshire Village has become a matter of word-of-mouth referral and waiting lists. Since its construction in the 40's, a close-knit and private community of residents has come into existence. Consisting primarily of artists, students, families of modest means and increasingly the elderly and/or disabled, the residents of Wilshire Village were, and very much are, a microcosmic reflection of the diverse community that surrounds them, with little more in common than a shared love of the place they call home.

Of course, it could not last. It has been considered a given for decades that there would come a day when the slow decay would be accelerated by bulldozers. Years of rumors of demolition began to segue into fact in 2005, when plans were announced for the construction of a pair of high-rise residential condominiums on the property. Although the plans never got beyond the press-release stage, public records show that within a year the property had changed hands. This change was largely invisible to residents. They continued to make out their rent checks to Wilshire Village and continued to drop them off at the same on-premise office. The property owner, Jay Cohen, went so far as to send tenants a letter advising them to ignore the news stories.

Ignoring the stories of impending demolition ceased to be an option at the beginning of February, when eviction notices began to arrive via certified mail. Although there were and continue to be questions regarding the legitimacy of these notices, it became something of a moot point on February 19 when city workers affixed notices from the Fire Marshal's office to the buildings of Wilshire Village. The notices state that the buildings are unsafe for human habitation.

It seems highly unlikely that anything can save Wilshire Village. Only 20 to 30 of the 144 units are currently leased, and not a single tenant has had a formal lease agreement in years. Even if the tenants were to organize, it is highly questionable that they could do anything to protect or retain their homes. There are virtually no city statutes to protect historical buildings and even less interest in the community at large in using what few protections do exist.

The purpose of this story is not to rally support for a worthy cause, no matter how worthy the cause might be. Allen Parkway Village was just as historically and architecturally significant, actually inhabited, and had residents who did fight for their homes. It was still destroyed.

There is a purpose served, though, in commemorating this place and its place in the community. There is a purpose served in speaking on behalf of people who are losing homes they love. There is a purpose served in pointing out the more dubious aspects of how this story unfolded, and how Houston's values and lack of values permitted it to happen.

Most of all, there is a purpose served in asking what, exactly, makes a place a home or makes a city a community. There is also a purpose served in questioning the unquestioned assumptions behind the story of Wilshire Village and wondering if this city can sustain itself... or if it even deserves to.

Houston is a little over one hundred seventy years old--but compared to other cities of comparable age, it might as well have been founded in 1950. What little urban planning the city's aggressively pro-business culture permits makes absolutely no provisions for the preservation of anything of historical or cultural value. There are no legal or social mechanisms to protect anything that might tangibly contribute to Houston's identity as a city. At the same time, that pro-business orientation means that property owners have no obligations beyond paying their taxes... and experience considerable leeway in even that obligation.

What it all adds up to is a city that is literally a hundred miles across and a few inches deep. A place where a sense of civic identity extends no further than cheering for the home team in your sport of choice, and any sense of shared social responsibility is derided as "socialism." In no instance are Houston's failings as a city more apparent than in the case of Wilshire Village.

Designed by Eugene Werlin, the same award-winning architect who gave the city Miller Outdoor Theater and Allen Parkway Village, Wilshire Village received widespread acclaim at the time of its construction in 1940. It was one of the largest FHA-insured garden apartment complexes in Houston and represented the pinnacle of New Deal-era public policy. As Houston expanded and became denser, Wilshire Village's eight acres of beautifully landscaped grounds became ever more of a rarity in a city not noted for attractive cityscapes. For decades, it served as an affordable and attractive housing option for students, artists and young families, as well as the elderly and the disabled.

Unfortunately though, when Wilshire Village wound up in the hands of a property owner who came to consider cheap rent a fair exchange for property neglect, it was considered the landlord's business, the tenants' business, and nobody else's business. And so Wilshire Village became a happy well-kept secret for the people who lived there and a subject for speculation and urban folklore for those who did not. Located in the Southwest quadrant of what is commonly considered The Montrose, Wilshire Village further benefited from being in one of the few parts of Houston where not minding the business of one's neighbors is virtually written into the cultural DNA.

The original owner of Wilshire Village was the Wilshire Village Corporation, which was registered in 1939 with J. Howard Cohen listed as its registered agent. In 1987 the deed for the property passed to Jay Cohen.

Described by residents as “a Howard Hughes-like" figure in his 60's, Cohen seems to have had the best of intentions over the years, if perhaps not the resources to carry those intentions out.

A Wilshire resident recalls that there had been a property manager who passed away in the 80's, and that Mr. Cohen sought to save money by assuming those responsibilities himself. Doubtless, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Wilshire residents have, for some time, had responsibility for basic maintenance and upkeep of their apartments, Cohen continued to take an interest in matters like landscaping and upkeep of common areas until recently. He has, according to tenants, always been prompt in attending to matters like roof or plumbing repair. Over the last two years, attention to matters like landscaping has all but completely waned. Nevertheless, the residents I spoke with were unanimous in their praise for Cohen's generosity and caring spirit.

His finances and business acumen, however, are another matter. In 2002 Cohen filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The title for Wilshire Villages then passed to two subsequent limited partnerships, both of which had the same registered agent, Matthew Dilick.

Even after Dilick assumed ownership of the property, rent checks continued to be made out to Wilshire Village and continued to be dropped off at an office on the premises that may at one time have been Cohen's residence. Cohen continued to represent himself as the property's owner to tenants. After residents received the eviction notices Cohen promised several tenants that he would provide a letter clarifying matters by the end of the month and advised them to ignore the notices from Dilick's office.

The first contact any of Wilshire Village’s residents have had with Dilick dates from the arrival this month of the eviction notices mailed from his office.

While Matthew Dilick's name may not be familiar to his tenants, it is very well known in the world of Houston real estate. Between 1994 and 2001, he served as Director of Real Estate for Landry's Restaurants, Inc. During that time Dilick supervised the development of the Kemah Boardwalk. More recently Dilick's current company oversaw the demolition of the Bayou on the Bend Apartment complex. Bayou on the Bend was a 40-year-old, 31 unit complex on four acres of land facing Memorial Drive. It has been replaced with 242 units of high-density luxury housing.

The proposed pair of 16-18 story residential towers that have been on the drawing board since 2005 to replace Wilshire Village would sit at the intersection of a pair of narrow two-lane streets, neither of which has much possibility of being widened. The same criticisms leveled at the proposed Ashby Highrise, which developers are attempting to create at the nearby intersection of Dunlavy and Bissonnet, apply with equal, if not greater force in this case.

West Alabama and Dunlavy streets can’t handle the traffic two high rises would bring. Such a development would also inevitably alter the character of the neighborhood. The only real difference is that the developers of Ashby High-rise are dealing with protests launched by relatively affluent home owners, while the majority of those who live in the near vicinity of Wilshire Village are neither affluent nor property owners.

It is also difficult to understand where Dilick thinks he is going to get either financing for his project or potential buyers in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It seems all too likely that he intends to follow the example of the developers of the Sonoma midrise project in Rice Village. They apparently had enough money to tear down several blocks of vintage mid-20th century commercial property, but not enough money to actually start building anything in their place. Recently, the rented fences restricting access to the property went away... not a good sign.

It would be easier to assume that Dilick intended to deal in good faith if he had done so to date. The eviction notices distributed at the beginning of February to Wilshire Village Residents were plain-paper typed documents advising residents that they had until the end of the month to vacate, at which time utility services would be cut. The only problem is that, at that time, no formal eviction process had been carried out.

When contacted, City Council Member at Large Sue Lovell expressed doubt about the notices' legitimacy, stating that there "appears to be a dispute amongst the partners.” Lovell also stated that her office is “trying to find out who has [the] legal authority" to evict. Lovell also pointed out that the normal eviction process requires a Justice of the Peace order, which is delivered by a Deputy Constable, and a 30 day period to vacate.

Wilshire residents contacted for this article characterized the notices as "intimidation"-- a description also applied to handwritten lists of available, low-income housing options that appear to also have been distributed from Dilick's office.

The most confusing thing for residents has been lack of consistent communication. Cohen has been assuring them that they have no urgent need to vacate, even as his apparent partner tells them they are being evicted. The Houston Department of Public Works stated that “the City of Houston is not shutting down the property” mere days before another city agency, the Fire Marshal's office, posted condemnation notices.

Public Works’ claims are even more suspect in the light of the extensive street and sewerage repairs now underway on Sul Ross street between Wilshire Village and South Shepherd Drive. At the very least there is one colossal failure to communicate taking place; whether it is intentional or not remains to be seen.

None of this will be sorted out by the time this story goes to press. In all likelihood, it will all still be in a state of confusion when the bulldozers finally show up to settle matters, at least in the short run. In the meanwhile, I want to share some of the thoughts and comments that Wilshire residents have shared with me.

All of the people who spoke to me requested anonymity--partly to avoid possible legal issues, partly out of respect for Cohen's well-known desire for privacy. A desire for privacy is one of the few well-known things about him.

One resident wrote they “hate to see this place go. It kept me and a very dear friend safe through Ike without even a sound. If I had not seen the news or listened to the radio, I would not have known we were having a hurricane. My grandchildren have played in the courtyards and hidden Easter eggs in the structures each year. They have climbed in the big magnolias and played hide-n-seek among the buildings and the landscape... What a shame. It's destined to become another huge plot of land that will have a honeycomb of tiny residences that no one can afford in this economy. It will be filled with people who will further congest the small streets, and the utility capacities. In the name of progress, I think we will regress..."

Another resident told me that "this place, for all the pain it has sometime brought, allowed my wife to take five years of maternity leave to raise our daughter. The affordable rent gave us the chance to travel. Leaving here will change our lives completely."

A former resident who lived in Wilshire in the 60's as a Rice student wrote "...I believe that most of the other residents of Wilshire Village were older people – people who had retired and had sold their houses to live more simply... My husband’s father, who I never knew, lived in Wilshire Village in the forties after he and his first wife were divorced and while he was building himself a house... I met my husband while I lived in Wilshire Village...

"I hate to think of Wilshire Village being torn down. Houston has changed so much since 1965 when I went there to attend Rice. All the old places have changed. Rice Village is unbearably overbuilt and congested...

"I actually liked Houston back in those old days. It had a soul back then, which I think has since been sold to the devil."

Oh, yeah....and his middle name is hussein

I can still remember the first time I ever heard a republican political consultant announce, with lip-smacking glee and country hick accent, how much he relished the thought of running a candidate against "Barack HUSSEIN Obama". It was about a year ago, when the "smart money" was on an inevitable contest between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

Its funny what a year's time in the real world does to fantasies of inevitability. Rudy Giuliani's smug assumption-- that his alleged leadership in the aftermath of an alleged terrorist attack automatically equaled a shot at the white house-- overlooked both the irrational stubbornness of the conservative right (they're still voting for Huckabee, the last time I checked) and the absolute weariness of America at large with anything or anyone having to do with 9/11.

Hillary Clinton had similar assumptions, ran as a virtual incumbent--and has received an electoral trouncing that would've led anyone less convinced of their own privileged status to throw in the towel by now.

And so now it falls upon the voters of Texas and Ohio to cast what may well be decisive votes in the contest to choose the next President of the United States. For Texans who do not identify with the Republican Party, this is a particularly odd moment. For once it really matters what we think and how we vote--it really matters that we do vote. And this is one time that squandering your vote on a Green, a Libertarian, or some other principled exercise in futility doesn't cut it. It really matters who next becomes president of the United States. It matters to the entire world. The world doesn't get to vote--but you do. Even if you think the entire electoral system is an elaborate sham, you should vote anyway.....just on the off chance that you might be wrong and that your voice and your vote actually can make a difference. As for myself, I'm voting for the skinny black guy with the weird name. I think you should, too.

This really is a defining moment in American History. In eight short years that seemed to last forever, George W. Bush committed this county to the costliest war of choice in history, set into motion what may well wind up becoming the next "Great Depression", forestalled critical action to counter what may wind up being irreversible climate change, and set back basic principles of social justice and equality by almost a century. Because the last eight years have been so devastatingly bad, the need for overwhelming change in American domestic and foreign policy is absolute and crucial.

There is substantial evidence that the basis of Barack Obama's lead over Hillary Clinton is based on his ability to increase participation--to bring in younger voters who have never participated, bring back older voters who lost faith, and bring in disaffected independents. This alone is reason to support his candidacy. The American political system is by no means a perfect democracy. In some ways, it is not a democracy at all. But the surest remedy for those anti-democratic tendencies is participation. It was only razor-thin margins in key states and precincts that enabled the Supreme Court to give George Bush the White House. Greater participation might've spared us the worst president in history. Say what you will about the vapidity of some of his supporters. By re-energizing the electorate, Barack Obama is doing this country an enormous favor.

There is also evidence to support Obama's claims that he will move past the partisan paralysis that has so much defined Washington. Many of his accomplishments as an Illinois state senator were fundamentally based on bipartisanship. There is no reason whatever to assume the same of Hillary Clinton--certainly not when she cites her track record of "winning fights with Republicans" as one of her principal qualifications to be president. After the last eight years, this country does not really need a President who can win fights; it needs someone who is smart enough to win without fighting. Nor would it hurt, necessarily, to have a president who's written a couple of books as opposed to one who might've read a couple. Nor would it be a bad thing to have the White House occupied by a former professor of constitutional law-- none of which is to say that Hillary isn't smart also.....or is it? Obama's speech denouncing the Iraq war pretty well predicted everything that has happened since. Not only did Clinton vote to authorize the war, she has steadfastly refused to admit error ever since....didn't we just go through eight years of presumed presidential infallibility? Do we really need four more?

But the single biggest reason to support Barack Obama in the Texas Primary, the Texas Caucuses, and the November general election is the fundamental message of change his presidency would send to the rest of the world. Even if Barack Obama wasn't one of the smartest men to ever run for the office, even if he wasn't an inspiring and charismatic leader with the ability to mobilize millions, even if he didn't have both the intention and ability to move past the gridlocked business that currently passes for governance....even if none of that mattered as much as it does, there would still be that one signal, inescapable moment when a man with a brown skin, an African surname and an Arabic middle name solemnly swears that he will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of his Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

That moment changes everything. A decade overdue, in that moment the United States of America joins the 21st Century.

His middle name's Hussein....and you're damned right I'm voting for him.

Visions of a Promised Land

Robert F. Kennedy's widow's has this to say of Barack Obama:

"...I think he feels it. He feels it just like Bobby did,” Mrs. Kennedy said in an interview that day, comparing her late husband’s quest for social justice to Mr. Obama’s. “He has the passion in his heart. He’s not selling you. It’s just him..."

The words were spoken on the occasion of what would've been Robert Kennedy's 80th birthday, an occasion when Mrs. Kennedy introduced Senator Obama as "our next president."

This week, several other member of the Kennedy family are adding their uniquely influential voices to the chorus of those who think that Barack Obama at least should be our next President--not least among them the surviving daughter of John F. Kennedy and the surviving brother of RFK and JFK, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachussets.

This is a remarkable development in may ways. Most immediately seized upon in the media is how devastating a censure this endorsement is to Mr. Obama's principal rival, the virtual co-presidency of Bill and Hillary Clinton. While this aspect of the announcement is undeniable (the catalyst for Senator Kennedy's decision, according to unamed sources, was specifically the Clintons' recent decent into race politics and Karl Rove-like distortions), it is by no means the most significant. Certainly, there is a tactical advantage to being embraced by the one political family more central to the Democratic Party than The Clintons....but there's a lot more on the table than that.

Somewhat more important, but by no means tantamount, is the strategic advantage this announcement confers in the matter of the so-called "Super Delegates." For those who have heard the phrase but not it's definition, Super Delegates are Democratic members of Congress, members of the Democratic National Convention, and former holders of high office (yes, Bill Clinton is a Super Delegate) who are entitled to vote in the Democratic National Convention, but not bound to honor the wishes of any state's voters--or, in fact, any voters at all.

To date, Hillary Clinton has held a hundred delegate lead over Barack Obama (despite the fact that Senator Obama has acquired a greater count of delegates won in primaries and caucuses). This lead is based on the fact that, even though Super Delegates are not called upon to formalize their choices until the convention, they are free to make them public in advance. In other words, every single one of the super delegates who has declared in advance for Hillary Clinton has plenty of opportunity to change their minds....and the 700 or so supers that have yet to declare a preference now have a lot more to think about.

The real significance of the endorsement goes beyond either the tactics or the strategy of securing the Democratic Presidential nomination. The real significance goes beyond the "how" of U.S. presidential politics, into the all-important "why". The Clintons are masters of the "how". Their campaign is built upon it. But when it comes to *why* Hillary Clinton wants to be President, or why the American People should choose her as such, the questions become considerably harder to answer.

The Kennedy endorsement brings into even sharper focus the many comparisions that have been made between Senator Obama and Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy....and, inevitably, Martin Luther King. Neither King nor the Kennedy brothers lived long enough to witness the "promised Land" that Dr. King spoke of in the speech he made the day before he too was struck down by an assassin's bullet.....nor have any other Americans. The promised vision of a more just and more honorable America that movitated the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of The Sixties has been lost for decades. When Dr. King spoke of a "promised land" he was analogizing himself to Moses, who--having led his people out of bondage, wandered with them for forty years in wilderness before his people--not he--were finally permitted to enter the promised land.

And now, America has wandered for forty years in a wilderness of our own making--a barren wasteland of violence, brutality, and injustice. When Barack Obama speaks of healing this country's divisions and injustices, he speaks to a higher purpose than the mere mechanics of governance and the mere tactics of winning elections--he speaks to finally winning past the battles the Clintons are so good at fighting, but that ultimately still cripple this country. Far more than anyone, the Kennedys are the stewards of the dream that John F. Kennedy's presidency once seem to herald. As much as Bill Clinton tried to build upon the symbolism of his youthful meeting with Kennedy, and as much good as he did accomplish in his presidency, he and his wife are not the successors to the stewardship of that dream.

The Kennedys feel that torch is appropriately passed to Barack Obama. My feeling is that they are correct. All that remains now is for Americans to decide they no longer wish to wander in the wilderness.

Not So Fast, Evita

In the midst of all the attention being given to our own little Evita crying herself up a thin win in New Hampshire, a counter-narrative has been forming on the 'Net and finally broken through to mainstream attention (in places as diverse at Salon, NPR, and Fox News): the distinct possibility that the New Hampshire Primary that stalled Barack Obama's march to the White House might've been a rigged election.

The basis for this suspicion: 80% of precincts reporting in the New Hampshire primary use Diebold-supplied optical scanners to digitally tabulate votes, while 20%--primarily in poorer, rural areas-- tabulate votes by hand. The hand-counted votes are in accordance with both the predictive polling and the exit polling and show Obama winning. The electronically counted ballots show Clinton ahead. More damning: the percentages, according to at least one watchdog group, appear to be exactly switched.

The stories appearing in the mainstream media all contain the disclaimer phrase "of course, no one suspects the Clinton campaign" (no one, that is, who wants to keep their job). The official "explanation" is that the vote discrepancy mere reflect the preference patterns of the voters in these different parts of New Hampshire. In other words, we're suppose to accept that more people in rural farming communities voted for the young and controversial black man than for the old and utterly staid white woman, while the younger, better educated, and more affluent voters in urban areas did exactly the opposite.....yeah, right.

The other explanation being touted for Mrs. Clinton's unexpected win is the unprecedentedly high number (15% or better) of voters who remained undecided up until the moment they stepped into the polling place. ALL of these undecided voters, we are told, waited until the last possible moment to cast their vote for one of the most widely-known figures in American politics, without considering ANY of the alternatives.

If you are finding all of this a little bit improbable, you aren't alone. To his great good credit, Dennis Kucinich has used his position as one of the candidates in the contested election to demand--and pay for-- a recount. Kucinich no more accuses Clinton of complicity in the dubious results than he expects himself to benefit from a recount. He simply believes that this election cycle is far too important to be tainted by even a suggestion of fraud.

As is the case with all "conspiracy theories", it is necessary to provide a motive for conspirators and at least provide some likely suspects. In this case, there is no shortage of both. The presumed innocence of the Clinton operation is, to begin with, just a bit naive. They've proven themselves willing to do pretty much everything short of election fraud to win, and they absolutely believe that the end justifies the means-- if anything authentic emerged from Madam Clinton's little crying jag, it is her absolute conviction that she is far better equipped to discern what is good for the American people than we are able to do so for ourselves.

Nor is it entirely far-fetched to believe that the same people widely suspected of delivering an election for George W. Bush would not have been inclined to do Hillary the same favor. In the first place, anyone with an interest in keeping the White House in Republican hands would infinitely prefer to have Mrs. Clinton at the head of the Democratic ticket than Barack Obama. In the second place, if the corporate interests that run this country have to concede the White House to the opposition party (which is highly likely), the only "democrat" who would be any more suitable to their interests than Hillary Clinton would be Joe Lieberman. It has been obvious from the start that Mrs. Clinton fills the same role in this election cycle as that filled by John Kerry in the last--the "safe" democrat, the one who can be trusted to not rock the boat (interesting,given that Kerry has now declared support for Obama--over both Clinton and his former running mate, Mr. Edwards).

The results of a recount will not be available in time to impact the Democratic nomination process, and may not even be available in time to matter in November. It would be nice to see a statement from the Clinton campaign praising Dennis Kucinich's commitment to democracy. It would be nice to see the Obama campaign learn the full lesson of what happened to them in New Hampshire and find momentum and victory in South Carolina. It would be nice to see the pall of suspicion, distrust, and paranoia that is the true legacy of the Bush Administration fade like the clouds of a passing storm. Sadly, all of these things are far less likely than any of us would want to believe.

fuck politics!

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