The mosque-haters have that gallows humor in their logic. My favorite is how they understand all that 1st Amendment stuff but that, really, this is sacred ground, and really, we should negotiate. The principal here is when some of “them” do something that hurts “us” anybody from “their group” has to to negotiate with “us” over every move. Forget about rule of law and zoning boards and the Bill of Rights. Common decency requires negotiating every breath. You know you have taken several steps down the scapegoating path when there emerges two sets of “rules” – one for “us” and one for “them.”

Anybody from NYC will inform you that many Muslims live and work in Lower Manhattan. Pictured - Bengal Curry and Kebab on West Broadway, two blocks from "ground zero."

And forget about the supposed East/West clash of cultures – the real clash here is between the cosmopolitan Lower Manhattan reality and conservative nativist parochialism. We’re hearing the objection that the community center is a deliberate provocation, a slap in the face to the memory of those killed on 9/11. Putting aside the fact that Muslims died when the WTC was hit, there’s the inconvenient fact that Lower Manhattan is home to a burgeoning population of Muslims from the subcontinent. Here’s a list of 17 Indian restaurants in Lower Manhattan. And most of these restaurants are run by Bengali Muslims. It was a natural and organic move on the part of the Muslims in the neighborhood to expand into the old Burlington Coat Factory building. It’s THEIR neighborhood as much as anybody elses and anybody who has spent time in Lower Manhattan will tell you that. But these are inconvenient details to the red-in-the-face conservatives.

It doesn’t matter that the polls tell us a majority of New Yorkers have contracted anti-mosque fever. Americans were wrong in 1963 when they opposed the Voting Rights Act and New Yorkers are wrong now.  The NYC zoning boards are going to handle this one and they won’t hesitate for a minute to grant the permit for construction. So all you mosque haters can take your pitchforks, torches and nooses and go back to scapegoatland where you belong. American history will keep rolling over your collective ass.

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A bunch of questions are raised but none were asked. I know that Jim Stinson and Tim Louis Macaluso are insanely busy reporters, but this situation is begging for more clarity. We deserve more than a rephrasing of the press release sent by Judy Seil.

Judy Seil's COMIDA routinely violates NYS prohibitions against subsidizing retail development.

Why are we subsidizing the creation of more retail and office space? Shouldn’t we let the market operate on its own rather than have government intervene? Last I heard the Rochester region’s office vacancy rate was higher than the national average and much higher than Syracuse or Buffalo. Why are we subsidizing the creation of more office space when a bunch of landlords are already sitting on vacant offices? Business reporters should be routinely asking about the market impact of government subsidies.

Is the Armory project subsidy in violation of the state prohibition against subsidizing retail? The state is absolutely right about prohibiting Industrial Development Agencies from handing out subsidies to retail establishments. Government has no role in taking sides and supporting one retailer or landlord over another. That just opens up a slippery slope into cronyism and insider baseball.

Tomorrow New York Jobs with Justice will release a report about the utter failure of these Industrial Development Agencies. I got my hands on an embargoed copy and can share with you that New York’s IDAs have pumped up the subsidy machine by 82% since 2003, from $354 million in 2003 to $645 million in 2008. Keep in mind that these are tax dollars that have been denied your local school system and municipality without your input. Also in the report:

• IDA’s waste $135 million a year on subsidies to businesses that create no new jobs and even cut jobs.
• Over 80% of IDA spending results in net revenue loss to local government.

If government is going to encourage job creation that’s wonderful but, with teachers and municipal employees being laid off, this bogus COMIDA subsidy scam isn’t a game we can afford to continue.

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I think the broader dynamic here is similar to Maxine Greene’s analysis of how some people use spirituality to justify social withdrawal.

Conspiracy theories seem to serve a psychological need of individuals to overcome feelings of helplessness while at the same time achieving a sense of superiority – feeling smarter than the next guy. It’s kind of a self congratulatory retreat from society.

Have you ever met a chem trails believer who is actually engaged in the civic sphere? No? That’s because the essence of any conspiracy is the notion that “those guys have the system rigged.” So the conspiracy theorist gets to wash their hands of any civic responsibility while at the same time nurturing the conceit that they understand what is “really going on.”

There’s something inescapably juvenile (especially in the face of all the evidence of successful grassroots social changes) about taking a stance that the big bad boys in the backroom are calling all the shots. Once you convince yourself of that notion you’ve successfully checked all your human agency at the door and can then view all those folks out on the streets getting petitions signed as “suckers.”

Successfully navigating the existential waters is a little more complicated than that.

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Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs.

The implications for organizing are simple – don’t waste your breathe on conservatives die hards. These folks don’t partake in dialogue. They have their preconceived ideas and their “facts” that they use to rationalize their views. And reality has that liberal bias.

I’d want to know more about how this rigidity breaks out along the continuum. I’ve met plenty of progressives who are set in their ways and aren’t too interested in counterfactual data or the necessity for nuance or grey zones. But I’d like to think that “our” side is more open to discourse. After all, there is some evidence that liberals are more flexible in their cognitive functioning.

I’ve always suspected that the angry white men taking aim at welfare might not be that aware of what is actually going on at St. Paul Street or Westfall and now we have the data to prove it.

more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong antiwelfare bias.)

Lakoff’s point about biconceptuals still stands – the individuals in the vast political middle hold different views, sometimes opposing views, within their own brains. All these studies merely reinforce the basic grassroots organizing ABC’s – Keep agitating your friends on the issues, and use data, stories and value frames to engage people who are in the middle.

And just keep moving past the folks on the other side. Forget about them. Don’t waste your breath.

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I’m not sure how it is possible to write about the Sherrod case without actually pointing the spotlight on the ongoing conservative race-based politics. Breitbart’s hit job on Sherrod follows a familiar conservative trope on race – turn reality upside down, ignore facts, and cry “reverse racism”.

And Breitbart’s last 15 minutes in the spotlight showed him deploying another conservative stratagem – use code to stir up the angry white male base. His  ACORN set up was part of a larger conservative fixation about ACORN, a group that organized in urban neighborhoods, provided services to help residents facing foreclosure and, perhaps most frighteningly to conservatives, registered millions of black and brown citizens to vote. Let us not forget that this fixation on ACORN and “voter fraud” (another fictional  conservative dog whistle) led to Karl Rove and Attorney General Gonzalez to have to leave the Bush administration in shame. Nonetheless, the outcome of the ACORN hit job was that grassroots group went out of business. I doubt that conservatives will now rush to American cities to do the work that ACORN used to do.

And Bai, apparently chastened by the howling objections of the conservative blogosphere last time Bai stuck a toe in the water on this issue, completely misses the side of the barn with his comment, “And a large element of the Tea Party movement that is simply angered over government spending..” You’re kidding, right? One can only write that sentence if one is taking pains to be perceived as somebody who would never be so bold as to point out the naked emperor’s bare ass. Whether it was the poll revealing the racial attitudes of the tea party adherents or the race-obsessed signs at rallies, or flat out racial epithets (Breitbart’s show-me-the-evidence stunt notwithstanding), we’re talking about a movement of angry white folks whose energizing animus is the perception that health care reform would transfer their tax dollars to  “those people.” That Mr. Bai could paper over this elephant in the room is astonishing to anybody remotely interested in the interaction of race and politics in the US. On the other hand, it’s par for the course.

And then, bizarrely, Bai launches this nugget, “Civil rights groups, meanwhile, are struggling with the question of how to fight racism in a nation led by a president with an African last name.” Given the incredibly vital work currently being done documenting racial disparities and organizing around public policy, this is an amazing statement and surely deserves at least one example. The statement only makes sense if one assumes that in Bai’s eyes America has moved by and large into a post-racial phase (with smatterings of holdover prejudice). How else to explain his complete blindness to the actual anti-racism work  going on?

Finally, let’s take notice that in a piece purporting to look at race and politics Bai offers up several interpersonal examples, yet completely ignores how institutions and social and political structures continue to perpetuate disparities along racial lines. In over 1000 words Bai fails to mention anything related to the gaps between white people and people of color within the education system, wealth, home ownership, poverty, joblessness, prison, disease, in fact anything. Once again the MSM discourse on race devolves into a discussion of interpersonal prejudice.

It’s not that white pundits like Bai are incapable of shining a light on the issues. It’s that through baiting and switching a conversation about personal prejudice for a meaningful discourse about how our society continues to sort health and wealth by race and the historical role of conservatives in fighting to perpetuate the status quo, he is complicit in stifling a real discussion.

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Isn’t it already their fair share if they’re paying the same rate as people making $40,000? If they make more money, they’re paying more taxes, the rate doesn’t have to be higher. They pay more taxes, but they get the same roads, schools and police that they don’t even use as much.

Good question. Why should the rich (the 5% of the population that earns over $150,000) pay more, don’t they already pay more  taxes? Well, yes they pay more taxes.  But that’s because they earn more- the top 5% take in a third of all income in the U.S.

The question is whether the top income earners are paying the same percentage of their income as we do. Nobody would argue that people with low incomes should pay more of their income in taxes than the wealthiest. The answer is that when you take into consideration all the taxes we pay, sale tax, property tax and income tax, we pay more of our income in taxes than the wealthiest. Granted the income tax system is slightly progressive, meaning the more you earn the more you pay but that is more than offset by the fact that sales tax hurts me a LOT more than Donald Trump.

The Americans in the lowest 20% of income earners pay more of their income in taxes than the millionaires in the top 1%

So, in order for everybody to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes we’d have to increase the income taxes on the wealthiest.

But you are asking a more philosophical question. Should the tax system be progressive in general? In the United States we have committed to a progressive tax structure in which we expect the wealthy to pay a higher percentage of their income than those less well off. But the system has been whittled down through tax shifting, increasingly moving the tax burden to sales and property taxes which take up a bigger percentage of the income of the rest of us.

Why is the U.S. committed to a progressive tax structure? It’s the same reason that third piece of pie you eat at Thanksgiving doesn’t taste as good as the first piece of pie. It’s the same reason that Donald Trump’s second yacht doesn’t mean more to him than health insurance for my kids means to me. It’s the law of diminishing marginal utility. The more you have of something the more the pleasure it gives you starts to decrease. Earning your first $30,000 in Brooklyn is way more important to you than the hundredth stack of $30,000 means to someone earning $3 million. They’ve already earned $30,000 ninety nine times. What’s another $30,000 to them? But to you, my god, it’s barely enough to make it. So every dollar you earn is precious, but those last $30,000 dollars earned by that trillionaire are less precious. Our culture says that it’s ok to tax the trillionaire’s last $30,000 at a higher rate than your first $30,000. As Americans we have made a moral judgment about what is right and just about how we take care of each other.

Not everybody agrees with that moral stance. Some people say there should be a flat tax because they say that would be more equitable. I don’t know what to say except repeat the arguments above. Either you are moved by those arguments or not.

Inequality in our society is growing. While the wealthiest have benefited from steep income increases the rest of us are being squeezed. Moreover, the wealthy got to pocket the lion’s share of Bush tax cuts and the Pataki’s tax cuts. There are at least three problems with growing inequality that I can think of:

1. Inequality can lead to unequal influence on public policy. There are informal ways this happens, like our natural tendency to value the words of the wealthy more than the words of the working class (who gets more time on news and the talk shows?) But the formal influence is more pernicious. With politicians having to amass large campaign war chests they have to go to wealthy individuals for funding. They can talk all they want about their integrity, but at the end of the day it’s obvious who gets to have lunch with the candidate and who gets 20 minutes with their aide. In fact all too often corporations and the wealthy actually get to write the laws that the congresspeople sponsor. This influence on public policy explains why the tax system has shifted toward regressivity.
2. Growing inequality leads to more unhappiness and ill health. We can discuss theories about why this might be, but the fact is that studies show that the more unequal your society the more miserable most people are and the more likely there are disparities in health outcomes (even when there is equal access to health care).
3. Inequality is economically inefficient. You and I are a LOT more like to spend every dollar we earn than that trillionaire with two boats. That trillionaire will invest in speculation, which doesn’t help our economy. You and I will circulate every single dollar we earn. Give us more dollars and we’ll put more into the economy. Give the trillionaire more and she’ll just buy more stock.

Nevertheless, our tax system has lost its progressivity and is now regressive. Even if you disagree with the morality of a progressive system, you still need to increase taxes on the wealthy to get the taxes to flatten out. If you agree with the morality and logic of a progressive tax system then we would have to increase the income taxes on the wealthy by a LOT (and talk about other taxes like stock transfer taxes).

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Hmm… Let’s think about this for a minute.

Right now Al Qaeda is a marginalized faction among Muslims all over the world. Most Muslims don’t see a conflict between the United States and Islam in general. Sure, there is some justified anger in certain regions about the US coddling of Israel, but by and large, if you ask any ten Muslims on any street around the world who’d they’d rather do business with, the United States or Al Qaeda, is there any doubt that 8 out of 10 would pick the US?

This situation stinks for Al Qaeda. One way they could bolster their recruiting efforts would be if the United States were perceived to be against all Islam in general. Instead of being perceived as an open and inclusive nation we would be seen as a place that discriminates against anybody calling themselves Muslim.

So, if Carl Paladino succeeds in making this about America versus Islam, then Al Qaeda benefits. Al Qaeda gains more recruits, more donors, and expands the network.

How is it possibile that Carl Paladino could be pushing for this scenario?

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Katherine Sciacchitano’s article in Dollars and Sense comes to the same conclusion but comes at it from the point of view of “the American dollar.” The article really helped me understand why it sucks that the world monetary system is pegged to the dollar and how that has lead to the current  global economic recession.

Do you understand global monetary policy? I sure as hell didn’t. This article has at least given me a clue.

Sciacchitano ties together the IMF’s predatory relationship to developing countries, assaults on labor, the housing bubble, 1970′s stagflation and OPEC, trade deficits, the fall of American manufacturing and, most importantly, how this increased Wall Street’s power over domestic policy.

Once again, Keynes emerges as the tragically correct figure who got ignored.

Check it out.

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In a recent post Paul Krugman puts up a pie chart from the IMF. It shows what actually is going on with the US deficit. We should pay attention and draw the proper lesson, not run around screaming that the sky is falling.

Krugman is pointing out that the stimulus dollars (in yellow) are a small piece of the pie, and that the larger pieces are about how the recession has lowered the amount of revenue that government can collect. So the deficit is driven by the recession (people aren’t earning as much so therefore they aren’t paying as much taxes, therefore there is less revenue), not what Obama proposed to do about the recession (stimulate the economy by putting dollars in peoples’ pockets so they can spend spend spend, thereby giving other people more income, so that they can then pay more taxes).

The next logical stimulus step would be to spend government dollars to put people to work (the last employment figures showed that the Census hiring was the only reason we got an uptick). But the howling about the deficit and the conservative echo chamber mantra about government getting too big and socialism blah blah is likely to kill any second stimulus plan. Meaning this shit will stay bad for a while.

Moreover, if we cave in to the deficit hawks and start austerity budgets and cut back on programs that help Americans keep their heads above water, the recession will get worse and government will collect even LESS taxes and therefore the deficit will actually grow.

Sometimes I think that what the conservatives do is a tantrum, not problem solving. It’s like they want the world to be a certain way and try to jam that square peg down everybody’s round throat.

This is why progressives are freaking out about Obama’s deficit commission. Why is he taking deficit hawk shit seriously? It doesn’t seem like he’s doing his usual political judo. It seems to be pandering to something that doesn’t even exist. When the economy is in the tank voters get anti- incumbent – its basically tautological. So if Obama wanted to really pander politically he’d throw government cash (huge WPA and CCC type employment programs) around Huey Long style and buy back everybody’s confidence in the Dems.

I just don’t get his deficit hawk commission idea.

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Yglesias reserves the right to scorn and mock stupidity. More on that in a few paragraphs.

I’ve also encountered (many times) a similar attitude and I think this is actually a problem for the Left.

There’s a bunch of new research into how differently Liberals and Conservatives process political issues. And Liberals need to understand that although they value polite rational discourse not everybody else on the planet experiences the public sphere the same way. Lakoff and Haidt and others have written about this. We’re talking about concrete differences in brain response to public policy issues and very different value systems. Think Women are From Venus Men are From Mars type difference. Some folks just don’t agree that the way you arrive at truth is through some sort of interpersonal dialectic, let alone “building consensus.”

That’s part of it. The other part is that history isn’t kind to the notion of dialogue as a social change mechanism. Politicians need to engage others who disagree in order to gain working majorities, but successful grassroots movement have gained ground when they built power and used it to push representatives.

As far as I can tell, the history of successful grassroots social movements is about tactical flexibility, strategic savvy in building and leveraging power and lot’s of luck. If we are serious about making a more just and equitable world that will sustain human life on this planet for at least a few more generations, then we should be serious about tactical flexibility.

But not everybody has that temperament. Some folks just don’t like polarization. I’ve been an activist for 25 years and it’s been alarming to meet people who are rigidly wedded to certain tactics. For some people, this idea about dialogue seems less like a strategy to make a better world than about adhering to some idea about how to get past St. Peter at the pearly gates – I mean that’s fine to work for your own personal salvation, but let’s not confuse that with social change.

And a successful grassroots movement runs on righteous indignation and inspiration. We are fueled by our core values and those values come to life when juxtaposed to the values of those who disagree. If you oppose theocracy/kleptocracy and want to live in a world that values the worth and dignity of all members of society you need to understand that some folks disagree with you and that there is nothing you can do to change their minds. I guess, in order to avoid becoming the evil that we deplore, we should not scapegoat or dehumanize those who oppose us – but hey, mocking the hypocrisy and lies coming from Fox News doesn’t cross that line in my humble opinion.

Is dialogue useless? There’s a bunch of fence sitters and you can talk to them, but you need to keep in mind that many people form their opinions based on what others (leaders, peers) think and some just don’t like to step to far in either direction on any continuum (“can’t we just put a few Jews in the ovens?”) But it wouldn’t hurt to ask these people where they are at and what they are thinking and feeling and see if there are any openings to fan their flames.

Public debates can serve to rally your side and introduce your views to those who haven’t made up their minds, but let’s be honest- some folks will be basing their judgment on how wrinkled your shirt is.

Dialogue is pretty damn limited.

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