Julian Assange's rape charges

I was going to write a post about the need to take the rape allegations against Julian Assange seriously, no matter what you think of WikiLeaks, but Jaclyn Freeman at the American Prospect has done it much better than I could, so read this instead.

But in a nutshell: we have to take seriously and fight against all forms of nonconsensual sex, no matter how famous the accused is, how much we agree with his/her politics, or how well he/she knew the accuser. It may be true that the Swedes' pursuit of this case is politically motivated - but we should take ALL rape accusations as seriously as the Swedes are taking this one, rather than taking this one as un-seriously as we take most others. (n.b. I don't agree with Wolf's take-away message but I think she makes important points about the way most rape accusations are treated around the world.)

Update: check this out for a humorous/infuriating take on the situation.

Elections 101: Transfers of Power

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court's order to end the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election. Three days later, on Dec. 12, 2000, the Court released its Bush v. Gore decision and made George W. Bush the president.

I've been thinking about this a bunch this week because of what's going on in the Ivory Coast. The situation has garnered almost no attention in the U.S. (with the important exceptions of articles here and here), but here are the basics: a November 28 presidential election between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and challenger Alassane Outtara has had a disputed outcome, leading both candidates to declare themselves president. The United Nations, African Union European Union, United States, and many of Ivory Coast's West African neighbors have all said (more here) that Outtara won the election and called on Gbagbo to step down, but Gbagbo insists that he won and, with control of the state media and military, has a lot of power behind him. Outtara, on the other hand, has the support of a rebel army that has controlled the northern part of Ivory Coast since 2002. At least 28 people have been killed in election and post-election violence, shortages of food and gas are being reported, the U.N. has taken its non-essential staff out of the country, and people are beginning to worry about a civil war.

Obviously I thought that Bush v. Gore was a horrendous decision and that the weeks leading up to it were filled with all kinds of bullsh*t (terrifically chronicled and analyzed by Eric Alterman at The Nation today). I am, however, grateful to live in a country in which handovers of power are done peacefully (except for that whole Civil War). As Alterman describes, there were some threats of violence and rioting in Florida in 2000, but all in all the whole thing happened remarkably peacefully.

More about the tax cut deal

I have mixed feelings about the tax cut deal. I’m going to go against the conventional wisdom and say that when I first saw its basic outline, I thought it was a pretty good package given the political realities. In exchange for the extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest on both income and estates, which I obviously oppose, we got an unemployment extension and an extension of several Obama tax cuts from the stimulus that are good for lower income people. I was frankly surprised at how much Obama managed to wring out of the Republicans, who at this point I just expect will be totally unwilling to give an inch.

The conventional progressive wisdom, of course, is that this is a terrible deal because Obama gave in on the core principle – extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest. And I’m all for that wisdom being repeated over and over and over, because as I said in my post about McCarthyism, I think one of the most important things we can do is keep up vocal demands for truly progressive change. But I also think that the political reality is that this is how it goes.

The Republican base probably isn’t so happy today either (to wit: Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint, and the Club for Growth), but that’s the way politics plays. Our job is to keep pulling the debate farther and farther to the left, so that the next time we’re disappointed – which we will be – at least the compromise will be farther to our side than this one.

That said, there's plenty to be pissed off about in this deal. According to David Kocieniewski's analysis at the NY Times, tellingly called "Tax Package Will Aid Nearly All, Especially Highest Earners," "at least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population." People with extremely large incomes, inheritors of million-dollar-plus estates, and hedge fund managers can all look forward to huge tax savings. And the only people who stand to LOSE money from the deal are - wait for it - people earning less than $20,000/year (individuals) or $40,000/year (married couples). Granted, the tax increase they would face would be very small, "a few dollars a week," but that's pretty horrific given the $28,000 tax savings people in the top 1% of incomes can expect to see. As I said yesterday, this might be one of the problems with conceptualizing the entire lower 98% of the income scale as "middle class," because it blinds us to the differential impact fiscal policy has on people at different places in that 98%.

Some recommended reading: David Leonhardt on the plan as a "back-door stimulus"; A Talking Points Memo reader eloquently summing up why this deal might be the best Democrats could hope to get.

Tax cuts and the "middle class"

The political blogosphere today is abuzz with analyses of President Obama's tax deal with the Republicans. There are a lot of people out there who can analyze the meaning of this deal for progressives much better than I can (Ezra Klein, first of all, and Matt Yglesias, David Dayen at firedoglake, David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo**).

But I will say this: I am fascinated by the broadness of the category "middle class" in American politics. Here we are debating about "tax cuts for the middle class," as opposed to "tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans," when what we really mean are "tax cuts for 98% of Americans" and "tax cuts for 2% of Americans." How did 98% of Americans become "middle class?"

Thinking about McCarthyism in today's world

As we all know, one of the right wing’s favorite tactics these days is to call anybody to the left of Ben Nelson a socialist, a fascist, or some such nonsense. The latest to point out the absurdity of these claims is, of all people, David Brooks, who wrote last week about a debate he had with Congressional Representative Paul Ryan about whether or not President Obama’s plan is to turn the United States into a quasi-socialist welfare state.

The real function of these claims is to fully discredit any actually progressive or – gasp – left-wing policy proposals. After all, as we saw earlier this year, if Obama is a socialist (AND a fascist!) for wanting all Americans to buy health insurance from for-profit corporations, then any truly progressive proposals (national health insurance, single-payer plans) are off-the-charts-radical, and simply political non-starters.

These tactics aren’t new, and if we fail to see their historical precedents, we’ll underestimate the importance of countering these claims and rebuilding an actual American left.

Oh, by the way: Prop 8 appeal today

The appeal of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case questioning the constitutionality of Prop 8 in California, is underway in San Francisco.

The Long History of Gays Not in the Military

Yesterday and today on Capitol Hill, the leaders of the United States military are testifying that they believe openly gay soldiers should be allowed to serve. While John McCain is doing his best to show how bigoted he really is, leaders of the effort to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell are furiously organizing to pass repeal legislation in the Senate before the end of the year.

What has gotten a little lost in the politicking is that repeal would be not just the end of seventeen years of Don't Ask, Don't Tell - it would be the end of a century-long effort by the U.S. military to identify, prosecute, and exclude gay, gay-perceived, and gender-deviant service-men and -women. Margot Canaday describes this history brilliantly in The Straight State, in which she shows a bumbling early-20th-century bureaucracy desperate to rid the military of deviants - while not quite being able to put its finger on what, exactly, deviance was, or why it was so bad. By World War II the military had figured out what it thought homosexuality was and how to find homosexuals - by launching full-scale investigations into their private lives and fostering gossip mongering among soldiers.