Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption – MTPR

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption

Montana's U.S. House race looks to be tight and maybe getting tighter. New ads in the Senate race allege corruption and kowtowing to the "liberal mob." And the candidates in that race agree to three debates this fall.

Listen now on Campaign Beat with Sally Mauk, Rob Saldin and Holly Michels.

Sally Mauk Rob, in the U.S. House race Democrat Kathleen Williams continues to outraise her Republican opponent Matt Rosendale, but The Cook Political Report continues to see the races "leaning Republican." And in part, that's because no Democrat has won that seat since 1994. So it's still, I think, Rob, seen as an uphill battle for Williams.

Rob Saldin Yeah, I agree, Sally. You know, both of them are doing well in terms of fundraising, and in fact, they're both among the handful of top-funded candidates in the country, which to me is a clear indication that both the Republicans and Democrats see this one as a competitive election.

Williams is actually doing a little better than Rosendale, but, you know, he's going to have plenty to do what he wants to in the campaign. There was also one poll out this month that showed it all tied up.

But, yeah, my own sense, though, is that Rosendale has to be a slight favorite in this one. All things being equal, Republicans have a significant built-in advantage in Montana.

And plus, Rosendale's been around longer, so he's already been elected statewide as auditor. He ran that high-profile Senate campaign against Jon Tester two years ago. And he's almost, because of all that, certainly got higher name ID than Williams, who I think remains a little bit undefined for a lot of voters. And additionally, one of Williams' strengths as a candidate two years ago was her retail campaigning, and of course, that's not possible this time.

But yet, you know, all that said, the broader backdrop for this election is about as good as it can get for Democrats, and it's not easy to see how things are going to improve all that much for Republicans between now and November, between the pandemic and the economy and President Trump's continued struggles.

And Rosendale, of course, has some weaknesses as a candidate. He sometimes comes off as a bit awkward, and on the issues, he sometimes comes off as pretty strident as an ideologue.

Mauk Rosendale continues to oppose the Affordable Care Act, Rob, and that now provides health insurance for tens of thousands of Montanans.

And that might have been a popular stance for Republicans at one time, but is it now, in the middle of a pandemic to be opposed to something that's providing health insurance for thousands of Montanans?

Saldin Well, yeah, exactly, Sally. I mean, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, that's actually been one of his most identifiable positions, I'd say. And during his time as state auditor, which is the office tasked with regulating the insurance industry and protecting consumers, he's been right in the middle of it.

He's been a strong opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and as we talked about a couple weeks ago with regard to that Senate campaign, that position just isn't popular with the public anymore like it was a few cycles ago in the aftermath of Obamacare actually being passed. And, now on top of it, we're now in the middle of a pandemic and the various anxieties that that provokes. So this does have a potential, I think, to be a real weakness for Rosendale, and it's certainly one that the Democrats have identified and are trying to exploit.

Mauk Holly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has a new ad out basically accusing Gov. Steve Bullock of corruption, and the ad accuses Bullock of steering millions of dollars worth of state contracts to a firm that was founded by Bullock's brother. Here's the ad:

Ad "We all know about Steve Bullock' government-run health care plan that will close rural hospitals and raise taxes, but there's more: Bullock has been accused of steering state grants to his brother's firm."

"It turns out a company founded by Bullock's brother received more than $14 million from state agencies."

"Steve Bullock: Steering hospitals away from Montana, and business to his own family. Think about that."

Mauk The ad, Holly, leaves out some important details, and the president of the firm referenced in the ad has demanded that it be taken off the air because, in his opinion, it is so erroneous.

Holly Michels Yeah. Right after this ad started airing - it's Pioneer Technical Services in Butte, which isn't directly named in the ad - but they sent a letter to TV stations around the state who are running it, asking them to take it down.

The letter said that Bullock's brother Bill resigned as CEO from Pioneer in 2004, and has sold his interest in the company to the employees by 2009, which is three years before Bullock was first elected to the governor's office.

I reached out to NRSC, and they said they stand behind the ad. They pointed to these corporate filings that show that Bullock's brother is still chairman of the board at Pioneer.

But Pioneer sent another letter to TV stations again on July 27, again saying the ad was false, misleading and defamatory. They say that Bullock's brother became chair of the board in 2017, and the next year he got a stipend of just $1,500. And they say that aside from this stipend, the governor's brother doesn't make any money from the company and has no financial stake in it. NRSC's trying to say as chairman of the board, he still has direction over it and would have interest in the company doing well.

I did reach out to TV stations that are running the ad. One replied that they got the letter from Pioneer, talked to their lawyers and decided to keep the ad on the air.

I think it's interesting. We did see an iteration of this ad in 2012, when Bullock was a first-time governor candidate, and it was pulled by NBC Montana over claims about money going to Pioneer. At that time, they pulled the ad saying that as attorney general, Bullock had no oversight over the grants the ad talks about.

I think it's unclear at this point. I think next steps, if ads I haven't heard from any other stations that they would take down the ads. Pioneer did warn that they would consider a lawsuit over defamation, so that might be the next step that we see if nothing else changes and this ad keeps airing.

Mauk The thing about ads that sling mud is that sometimes the mud sticks, no matter what the facts are. And, of course, that's the point.

Also this week, Holly, the Bullock campaign fired a young staffer for some offensive tweets he had posted some years ago.

Michels Yeah, this was Evan McCullers, who was a junior staffer who worked on communications for the campaign.

These tweets - in them, he made statements that made light of sexual assault. Some language is homophobic. There were statements that were derogatory toward black people and women. And he was fired just a couple hours after these tweets were surfaced online.

It looks like McCullers was a teenager at the time that these tweets were written, and he released a statement through the campaign after he was let go apologizing for them and saying that he's evolved since making them. But the campaign, you know, they also issued a statement saying the tweets are inappropriate, and once they learned about them, they did let McCullers go.

Mauk Well, Rob, again in the Senate race, Sen. Steve Daines has a new ad featuring Wibaux Sheriff Shane Harrington. Here's that ad:

Ad "These liberal attacks on law enforcement are a real threat to public safety, but Steve Bullock refuses to stand up for law and order."

"Bullock's campaign is being bankrolled by the liberal mob. That's why Bullock's been silent while left-wing radicals try to defund our police, erase our history and turn America into a socialist country."

"Steve Bullock doesn't share our Montana values: He's with the liberal mob."

"I'm Steve Daines and I approve this message."

Mauk And whew, Rob, this ad has all the catch phrases: socialism, liberal mob and left-wing radicals.

Saldin Right? Yeah, it's a real doozy. I'm a little skeptical, though, that this one is going to stick because it just seems a little over the top. You know, maybe this is the kind of thing that would work on a candidate that no one has heard of, but Bullock is well-known after his now nearly two terms as governor, one term as attorney general, the state's top law enforcement position. So this ad, which features all these images of just full-fledged rioting, it just doesn't seem consistent with what we know of Bullock. It just strains credulity a bit too much, it seems to me.

It also strikes me as unintentionally funny in its assertion that we should be scandalized by Bullock's silence in the face of the far left's excesses, right? Not the Democratic Party's left flank, mind you, but the violent rioters depicted in this ad. It's just a bit ironic, because Sen. Daines has - for nearly four years now - maintained his own silence in the face of routine outrages from President Trump. To my knowledge, he's never leveled any direct criticism of the president. And unlike the so-called liberal mob that this ad is trying to connect to Bullock, Daines is undeniably linked to Trump, right? They have this close personal relationship, Trump is a leader of Daines' party. So it's a little amusing to me to see the Daines campaign condemning someone for cowardly silence.

Mauk Holly, it looks like there will be three debates between Gov. Bullock and Sen. Daines this fall.

Michels Yeah, we saw this week the Bullock campaign agreed to three of the four debates that Daines had proposed. He came out less than 24 hours after the June primary, calling for Bullock to agree to participate in these four debates.

There'll be a Montana Broadcasters Association debate coming up Aug. 8, which is pretty soon here, a Montana PBS debate Sept. 28 and a Montana Television Network debate Oct. 10.

I think Daines' campaign was critical for Bullock's camp not expecting a Montana Chamber of Commerce debate.

I do think debates are going to be pretty important this year, with the coronavirus and campaigns limited from hosting in-person events like they would in a normal year. This gives voters a chance to see the candidates at their, you know, on TV at home, and sort of see how they interact together, so I think those will hopefully be pretty heavily watched this year.

Mauk Holly, there's been yet another campaign finance complaint filed in the governor's race, and this time it's by the Montana Democratic Party against Republican Greg Gianforte.

Michels Yeah. What this complaint is saying is that Gianforte coordinated with a political action committee to work around campaign contribution limits that a governor's campaign has.

It's referencing an invitation to a campaign event where Gianforte told people if they'd already maxed out giving to his campaign, they could give to this political action group.

It's going to be up to the commissioner of political practices to determine if that counts as illegal coordination, but I think the point of these complaints...

I don't think individual people and voters really track them much or watch what happens with them. It feels like, to me, sometimes this process is more about getting coverage of a candidate being accused of wrongdoing than the actual complaint itself.

There are, of course, genuine findings of candidates breaking ethics laws. We saw Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney get dinged with the maximum fine for participating in a campaign call from his official office. But we also saw, right after that and while the complaint was still filed and pending, a lot of attack ads about that.

I think, you know, looking at so far this year, just looking at campaign finance complaints: There's been 11 that are still pending, 19 already resolved, so it gives you an idea of the magnitude of how many we've seen.

It's also interesting to look at who's bringing these complaints. They're most often brought by political opponents, or political parties or figures adjacent to them. It's not members of the public really using this process to ask questions about things they think that might not be compliant with the law.

So you see a lot of coverage. I'm not sure if voters are really tracking the granular details of each individual complaint and the findings, but more seeing it when they pop up in campaign advertising.

Mauk Rob, here we are, just three months out from the election, and we're in the middle of a raging pandemic and fire season is just beginning. I wonder if voters are so overwhelmed, they just want 2020 and the election to be over.

Saldin Maybe, Sally, but it's a little hard to escape.

I actually think there is a higher level of engagement than normal - and part of that may have to do with people having more time on their hands - but we're also just living through such a crazy and incredibly politicized time right now, it's hard to get away from the politics.

And that's clearly immersed itself in the pandemic, and debates over masks and opening schools and everything else: it's all politicized. With that heightened level of engagement and awareness, though, I also get the sense that we're looking at an electorate in which there are just fewer undecided voters than normal.

So my sense is people are pretty dug in, even if they are paying more attention, or are just forced into not finding a place to get away from the politics of everything right now.

Mauk We're going to keep following it all from a safe distance, of course, and Holly and Rob, stay cool and I'll talk to you next week.

Campaign Beat is a weekly political analysis program produced by Montana Public Radio. Campaign Beat features University of Montana political science professor and Mansfield Center fellow Rob Saldin, and Lee Newspapers Capitol Reporter Holly Michels and host Sally Mauk.

What are "Montana Values"?

Every campaign season, we hear a lot about Montana Values. Things like liberty, opportunity, and love of public land. Ideas that supposedly define Montanans. But when elections come around, that language seems to do just as much to drive people apart.

For our elections coverage, our news team wants to know what values matter to you, and how candidates are talking about them in the run up to November. What do you think of when you hear Montana Values - and why?

Call us at 406-640-8933 and leave a message to share your thoughts.

Continued here:

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption - MTPR

Chris Trotter argues Richard Prebble made Act competitive electorally by turning it into a right-wing populist party, and asks whether David Seymour…

By Chris Trotter*

It wasn't that Act was short of talent or money, it had plenty of both, but it was definitely short of something. That much was plain in the weeks and months that followed the partys launch in 1994.

The partys two leading campaigners, Sir Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley, toured the country tirelessly. Still enhaloed by the success of his 1984-1990 policy revolution, Douglas easily persuaded employers to give the duo access to their workforces. Hundreds, and quite possibly thousands, of working-class men and women thought it advisable (in this post- Employment Contracts Act world) to listen politely as Douglas and Quigley delivered their classical-liberal pitch. With equal docility they accepted the glossy pamphlets paid for by Acts bankroller, the multi-millionaire Craig Heatley.

And yet, in spite of Douglass confident predictions of Act rapidly attracting major-party levels of voter support, its poll ratings hovered stubbornly just below or fractionally above 1%. Classical-Liberal economics and politics does have an audience in New Zealand, but it is very, very small. Too small to provide Act with the 5%of the Party Vote required to make it into Parliament without the turbo-charger of an electorate seat however acquired.

Clearly, the something Act was lacking needed to be identified and supplied as a matter of urgency or the Herculean efforts of Douglas and Quigley, and the $1 million dollars spent by Heatley, would all have been for nought.

Enter Richard Prebble.

Douglas and Quigley had given it their best shot, but by March 1996 it was clear their ammunition was too lightly packed. If the revolution unleashed by Douglas (ably assisted by Prebble) in 1984 was to be protected and extended, then Acts cartridges would require a considerably heavier charge.

Nobody possesses a better understanding of the explosive material required to propel the Right into political contention than Prebble. His gut-level feel for the anxieties and prejudices of working-class and middle-class New Zealand voters had served the Labour Party well. Not that the partys activists were ever very comfortable with the ingredients of Prebbles political sausages. They looked at the Auckland Central MPs bull-necked enforcer, Gene Leckie, and shuddered. The Labour Left was equally perturbed by the sudden influx of voluble right-wingers organised by Prebble and his fellow Backbone Club members (many of whom went on to join Act) as Rogernomics tore the Labour Party apart.

Prebble understood what so many well-meaning Labourites refused to accept: that in Labours broad church there were deep reservoirs of racism, sexism, homophobia and full-throated red-neck authoritarianism. The trick, as Prebble knew, was to keep these people voting Labour while simultaneously hiding them from public view. He also knew (as Quigley, perhaps, did not) just how many more of these folk lurked within the ranks of the National Party. Perhaps only the kiwi-gothic novelist, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, understood more about the darkness which enshrouds the heart of rural and provincial New Zealand. (In the years that followed his takeover of the Act leadership, Prebble would discover how many dark impulses also lurked in the heart of Remuera!)

In March of 1996, with the first MMP election just months away, Prebble gently moved aside Acts classical-liberal trappings and steered it towards an unabashed courtship of the angry Right. In this regard, his party was not competing directly with either National or Labour, but with NZ First and the Christian Coalition. And precisely because Prebble was the principal wooer, Acts blandishments were clear and unequivocal (unlike NZ Firsts) and unencumbered by religious dogma (unlike the Christian Coalitions). When the votes were counted on Election Night, Prebbles right-wing populist Act had received 6.1%of the Party Vote roughly six times the level of public support which Douglass and Quigleys classical-liberal Act had attracted.

In the general election of 2002, Prebble topped-out Acts support at 7.14%of the Party Vote (9 List MPs). A contemporary outburst from Prebble, directed against Helen Clarks stated intention to increase the number of refugees admitted to New Zealand, reveals how wholeheartedly Act had embraced the right-wing populist agenda:

There are millions of refugees around the world and instead of taking those who have most difficulty settling in New Zealand e.g. those from desert cultures we should look sympathetically at refugees who would have no difficulty integrating into New Zealand society. For example, white farmers being driven off their land in Zimbabwe are real refugees and theyd make good citizens but theyd never be selected by this politically correct government. These Zimbabwean farmers are homeless because theyre not politically fashionable.

Prebbles sudden exit from the leadership of Act in 2004 (never satisfactorily explained) heralded the slow and seemingly irreversible decline of the partys electoral fortunes. The more distance Acts new leader, Rodney Hide, attempted to put between himself and the partys right-wing populist legacy the harder it became to sustain its electoral support. In the absence of Nationals strategic electoral support in the Auckland seat of Epsom, Acts determination to return to the classical-liberal principles of its founders would, almost certainly, have led to its demise.

How, then, to explain the steady rise in Acts support since 2019? Receiving just 0.5%of the Party Vote in 2017, it has surged to 5%in the latest Colmar Brunton poll. Polite commentators point to the current Act leaders, David Seymours, statesmanlike shepherding of his End of Life Choice bill through the House of Representatives. Others cite his sterling defence of the principle of Free Speech. Sadly, this will not do. The steady rise in Acts popularity stems not from these classical-liberal stances (which barely nudged the pollsters dials) but from its unwavering defence of New Zealands gun culture in the aftermath of the Christchurch Mosque Massacres.

The signal that went out into all the dark corners of rural and provincial New Zealand could hardly have been clearer or stronger. Deliberately, or as the result of the most unfortunate political happenstance, Act had turned to the same kinds of voters Prebble had courted in 1996. While the rest of New Zealand and all the parliamentary parties, except his own, were uniting behind the call for comprehensive gun control, Seymour allowed himself to be turned into the poster-boy for the very worst sort of American-inspired political paranoia.

Its a package-deal, of course, this far-right, conspiratorial, evidence-averse, Rapture-anticipating, 5G-fearing and Covid-19-denying rag-bag of political craziness. Buy into the gun-owners rights narrative and you risk getting all the others thrown in for free. Seymour should thank his lucky stars that his party has, too date, only had to suffer an influx of gun-owners rights enthusiasts. (Their spokesperson, Nicole McKee, is No. 3 on Acts Party List.) For the moment, at least, all the other conspiracists have rallied around the Advance New Zealand banner raised by Jami-Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika (BTK).

Its easy to laugh, but the astonishing numbers turning out to BTKs rallies and the sudden surge in Acts poll numbers point to a reservoir of popular anger and alienation that only remains hidden from Middle New Zealand because it so seldom finds any person or party with the ability and/or inclination to make its feelings known.Richard Prebble, who grew up in the bosom of a mass political party, has always known such people existed and where to find them. With their votes he turned Act into a genuine electoral force. The fervent response to BTKs populist conspiracy theories proves theyre still out there in their thousands.

The question is: If this is the something that Act is short of, then, surely, it is something Act should do without?

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found athttp://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.

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Chris Trotter argues Richard Prebble made Act competitive electorally by turning it into a right-wing populist party, and asks whether David Seymour...

Why Ramachandra Guha And Other Usual Suspects Are Coveted By Even Private Liberal Varsities – Swarajya

Roughly two years after modern historian Ramachandra Guha batted for KREA University to be given the tag of institution of eminence, he has been appointed distinguished professor of history at the same university. The university has said that Dr Guha will teach classes, interact with students, work with colleagues on curricular development, and help build the vision of KREA.

In a rant against Jio University being given the institute of eminence tag, Guha wrote in the Hindustan Times in July 2018: Even if, for arguments sake, the jury decided to favour one so-called greenfield project, why Jio Institute over the other contenders? Were the more impressive credentials of KREA considered and carefully scrutinised?

Guha went on: Why, for example, had the jury not selected the new KREA University, which is in a more advanced stage of preparation? With a campus rapidly being developed outside Chennai, KREA has a governing council which includes Anand Mahindra, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Anu Aga and N Vaghul. KREAs Academic Council is chaired by Raghuram Rajan; its other members include the gifted historian Srinath Raghavan, the brilliant classical musician T M Krishna, and the great mathematician Manjul Bhargava.

This is not to suggest any quid-pro-quo or even hint at Guhas unsuitability for the job at KREA he has the credentials but we need to make an entirely different point: Guha represents the outer limits of acceptability for the Left-wing cancel culture of mainstream Indian social sciences academia.

He is also seen to be a necessary ingredient in less-Left wing wannabe universities that want to prove intellectual heft. Another intellectual in the same mould as Guha is Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who functioned as Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University, which is moving away from its initial liberal character to more Left-wing politics, as faculty hiring trends show.

The problem for institutions like Ashoka University or KREA, which claim to want a liberal campus culture, is simple: they are not bold enough to hire true academics from the Right, someone like Belgian Koenraad Elst or Michel Danino today, or a dogged expert of the Rig Veda like Shrikant Talageri, or a mediaeval historian like Meenakshi Jain. This is why they settle for someone like Guha, who occasionally berates the Left, as a good enough stand-in for the Right.

Guha, on the contrary, is a closet admirer of the Left. Thus, while mildly critiquing the Left for putting up pictures of two Germans from the 19th century and two Russians from the 20th) at their political events (a reference to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin), he still thinks they are great human beings leading lives which are the simplest of any political party leaders in the country, and for investing in healthcare and education whenever they ruled any state.

Kerala may fit this bill, for reasons that have less to do with Leftist rule in the state than decisions made when Travancore was a princely state with enlightened rulers, but for a historian to believe that West Bengal and Tripura are some kind of leaders in education and health is bizarre. Also, the description of Leftist leaders as people living the simplest of lives fits the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) even better.

For his part, Guha refuses to engage with true Right-wing intellectuals. In his book on Makers of Modern India, he engages with the RSSs second Sarsanghchalak M S Golwalkar, but not V D Savarkar, the ideologue of Hindutva.

He prefers to believe that the Right-wing today has no intellectuals, when the question to ask is why? Is it because of the cancel culture of the Left, and the state-organised looting of all Hindu institutions (from temples to charitable trusts) in the name of secularism? If there are no good Right wing intellectuals, isnt it the job of liberal universities to develop them?

Balancing the Left-Right composition in new universities means picking centrists who are more opposed to the Right than the mindless Left. This is not just cancel culture but self-cancel culture, where promoters of new universities lose the plot without the Left firing the first shot. Guha, with his international linkages, is preferred because he can earn brownie points in Left-Liberal and Hinduphobic Western academia even for private liberal universities.

Unlike the US, where the Lefts cancel culture of denying space for non-Left-liberal voices in academia is of more recent origin, in India cancel culture came in as early as the mid-1960s, when Indira Gandhi handed over the culture and education portfolios to the Left.

This ensured two things: most universities, already biased towards the Left, became an in-bred crowd of people spouting similar ideologies. This is being said not only by the Right, but fellow travellers from the Centre and Left spaces, including Guha himself (read here, here). Secondly, this in-breeding has damaged the Left as much as stunted the Right. Shorn of any intellectual challenge, Left intellectualism has withered on the vine.

After more than half a century of dominating campuses, the Left cannot produce any legitimate scholarship that is genuinely India-centric or non-Hinduphobic. Most of its academic work is about sticking an Indian label on Marxist theory, with no original contributions or local insights to boot.

This is why the Left cannot produce any new intellectuals beyond the usual suspects, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, and even these intellectuals are busy defending their shop-soiled theories (Aryan invasion, class conflict and sub-alternism), even though no sub-altern has been allowed to wield any bit of academic power in the universities they dominate.

The Left denied caste till it became important to reinvent it to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the RSS as Brahminical. Ironically, almost all Left intellectuals and political leaders have Brahminical or upper caste roots.

Having mortgaged true intellectualism to Western liberals and Marx, the Left has produced true excellence on two fronts: it has been great in producing pamphleteers and propagandists. Thus, some of them could even fib in court about the non-existence of a temple below the Babri structure.

In fact, both the Allahabad High Court judgement in the Ram Janmabhoomi case, and the five-judge Supreme Court bench that finally decided to hand over the disputed land to the Hindus, rubbished the Lefts claims to writing objective history. When presented with the Left historians grandly titled Babri Mosque or Rams Birthplace? Historians Report to the Nation, the bench said that at best this could only be considered an opinion.

Only two of the historians who compiled the report had even visited Ayodhya before presenting the report, and even they had little knowledge of the puranas or the Hindu side of the argument, which had indirect information on the temple that existed before the mosque built over its ruins.

The reason why Pratap Bhanu Mehta at Ashoka University and Guha at KREA sound like exceptional choices is simple: the Left no longer has intellectual credibility, and the genuine Right is denied space for fear of offending the politically influential Left propagandists.

In the US, where culture has been moulded by evangelical Christianity, robber-baron entrepreneurship, free speech rules and widespread gun ownership, money flows both to Left and Right institutions. Many post-graduate institutions are run by churches, and many liberal institutions are funded by big corporations. Cancel culture cannot last as there are enough sources of funding for non-Left institutions.

In India, there is almost no funding for the Right because business needs Left support in order to survive in a hitherto crony capitalist culture. Even with a BJP government in power, business people worry about what may happen to them if the Congress returns to power, or the Left becomes an influential player in a future government (as in UPA-1 or United Front in 1996-98).

Giving money to the Left ensures that your company is protected from political attacks in future; giving money to the Right will get you no accolades, for the Right is anyway inclined to support a market economy and businesses.

Guha and Mehta are beneficiaries of this fear culture, where Liberal means largely Left in the Indian context, and Right means Right-hating opinion-makers like the duo. Academic institutions are still to free themselves from this self-imposed tyranny and diffidence.

Read more from the original source:

Why Ramachandra Guha And Other Usual Suspects Are Coveted By Even Private Liberal Varsities - Swarajya

Letters to the editor, July 31, 2020 – Idaho Press-Tribune

Education

Not everyone has the easiest time in school. I know I didnt. My mental health was something I struggled with coming up in the one brick-and-mortar school in my small town. It was difficult to succeed in the school district. Fortunately, I found a solution with online school.

I can now say that Ive grown so much from my transition from a brick-and-mortar school to online learning at Idaho Technical Charter Academy, as I look to complete my senior year of college at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX

I didnt have what one would call a normal life. For starters, my home environment wasnt great and my struggles with mental health made it difficult to take full advantage of everything that online school has to offer. My school provided me with an incredibly strong support system in the form of its teaching staff. I became very close with one of my English teachers who is part of the reason I even got into Trinity. I now study English there and Im really involved in advocacy and inclusion on campus.

With COVID-19, many families are concerned about returning to in-person learning but also hesitate to go fully online. I can assure you that with the right tools and guidance, online school works. It drove me to establish myself as a truly self-driven and self-directed person, and I appreciate that it could act as that buffer for my mental health. Lets make sure that every family has the ability to choose the school that meets their needs.

Brianna Duncan, Meridian

Lands

The consequences of swapping McCall land to Trident Holdings LLC will outlive sweet-talking Alec Williams. Its easy to imagine the owners of the contemplated private acre lots backing up to public land enjoying access to the public land and denying it to the public, as often happens. An easement on private property is only a right to sue for access, not access. Who wins that suit, the deep-pocketed, politically-connected rich guy or the public? If Tridents plans are so benign and financially beneficial, why doesnt the Land Board do them? And endowment lands arent public lands but Tridents would be? Huh?

James Runsvold, Caldwell

Kool-Aid

Sorry Mr. Cannamela, youve been drinking the same $17 Billion Dollars worth of Kool-Aid over the past 20 yrs that the majority of Governors, Congressmen and Native Americans have on how to renew the Salmon/Steelhead runs in the PNW. Imagine $17 Billion and still no solution; typical government scenario in wasteful spending. Well, I have a solution that is backed by Good Science. Contact Mr. Ron Harriman at ronharriman@q.com for the details and I would invite our Governor to do the same. Mr. Harriman has the solutions without losing any of our Hydro Power and it wont cost another $17 Billion of taxpayers money to do it. Will it be easy? No, but the plan will solve the problem.

Chuck Stadick, Caldwell

Grow a heart

An Idaho Press story over the weekend helped me understand why so many Idahoans do not wear masks or take protective measures urgently recommended by the governor and, most recently, the president.

While discussing the death of a St. Lukes nurse, Representative Tammy Nichols told the Idaho Press that information about the virus coming from government and medical scientists was without consensus. This suggests that, for many, science which seems unequivocal can be disregarded if, for example, medical advice changes about the importance of masks. She then implied a distinction should be made between those who died from the disease from those who died with it, as if Covid death numbers are also without consensus. Finally, Nichols said she did not want someone else to be held responsible to keep me safe.

It is obvious and undeniably we are responsible for ourselves. But have we no responsibility to protect others, which is the purpose of wearing a mask? What happened to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself or the Golden Rule?

The same weekend brought a call from my brother saying his dear wife had just been diagnosed with Covid and taken to a hospital. Apparently, three workers at a facility where she was in medical rehabilitation had brought the infection to her.

Should she die, it would be from three workers failing to wear masks or engaging in risky behavior or because testing, tracing or protective equipment was unavailable. Isnt the point to protect everyone possible, not statistical consensus? And, as with Samantha Hickey, the St. Lukes nurse who died, we will not care if Covid is only the immediate but not the sole reason we lost her. Please, Representative Nichols and likeminded Idahoans, grow a heart.

Jerry Brady, Boise

Baseball

It is good to see that major league baseball is now being played. It would be nice if the Idaho Press printed the box scores in a larger font so that we can read them, otherwise why print them at all. Please do what you can to present a sports page that is readable to all readers. Im sure you can spare a bit of additional space in the daily paper.

Craig Lochner, Boise

Subscriber no more

Please add my name the expanding list of readers dropping off your subscriber list due to your obvious tilt to the left. I was sold on the Idaho Press as it was presented to be an alternative to the liberal Statesman, but the July 28 article titled Black kids die more often after surgery, new research shows pushed off the ledge. How can an article stating that out of 173,000 operations 23 black youngsters died within 30 days of surgery compared with 13 whites be declared striking without any additional info such as the admitted slightly more heart and digestive problems among black children. How many of those surgeries were the result of domestic or gang violence for instance? When looking at the odds of dying after 173,000 surgeries (about 0.01%, it compares to the odds of dying after being struck by lightening. If you want to print something truly striking, why not print the odds of dying as a black child due to a gunshot in Chicago.

Michael Piechowski, Boise

Dictatorial

The Barr Hearing once again gave insight to what a Democratic Party governance would be. Dictatorial, lacking any fairness or truth, unprofessional. Once more we see that Democratic control of the House of Representatives proves to be out of control. If you do not see anything wrong with their actions you could go to Venezuela and enjoy that type of government right now. The governance we see in the House of Representative is the best reason I have seen to vote for Trump for President.

Richard Wasson, Meridian

Why?

Is anyone else concerned with the larger companies eateries. I chose to stay local because the local companies seem to have figured out the way to be safe. The larger companies choose to have their employees use gloves! They will put them on and wear them for long periods of time in between touching menus, money and delivering your food! The gloves only protect those who are wearing them- not us. They are spreading any bacteria, virus, e coli etc from pone patron to the next. WHY??? How often are they washing their hands, one of the #1 ways to prevent spreading anything.

Cheri Beauvais, Nampa

Liability

A recent article in the Newspaper written by Betsy Russell covered legal liability issues regarding school closures, and reopening risks for school districts, teachers and administrators.

The article vividly reminded me of one of the 8 primary reasons for moving OUT of California 20 years ago. While on the board of directors of a California company that was growing rapidly, but still not profitable, we cratered when 4 different investment bankers promising funding did not deliver.

Soon thereafter, the buzzards (lawyers) starting circling, and first sued the company but nothing there, then sued the management team and nothing there, and finally sued the board of directors. The board spent 3 years fighting the lawsuits, spent a fortune, and won all suits. But no compensation for our legal expenses was paid.

The United States is one of 2 countries in the world where the loser in a lawsuit does NOT have to pay all lawyer fees, which puts US companies at a real disadvantage to competing companies around the world which do not have all those ambulance chasing lawyers; there is no opportunity for them.

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Realizing that the California legislature was primarily lawyers, but the Idaho legislature was comprised of business people, teachers, farmers, etc. helped push us here. Unfortunately, California lawyers can sue anywhere, and this is probably a problem for the school districts today.

Finally, look at the mess California is in now---Dirty and financially broke cities, people camping in tents along the ocean beaches, no funds for clean up, declining quality of schooling, etc. And today Californians are moving quickly to Idaho, but thankfully, those moving are financially sound. Lets keep Idaho sound!

Chas Bonner, Eagle

Shameful

I cried watching destruction of our U.S, cities during the Barr hearings, then laughed when the dems showed their videos & denied knowing about the damage of our cities. Shameful!

I wear a mask, but what good is it when hundreds or thousands of protestors are out in many states. No masks, no social distance, then return to their state. Why should we tax payers pay for special guard just for political people ( left or right) who do not stand up for & insist on law & order with the protestors?

Why cant teachers have private session with the students assigned to her or no pay or give the designated money for each student to hire their own tutor? I worry about pay to play, as the 85 year old mother of six children, that I raised on my own when their father left us, I was not able to spend a penny for sports. One of my sons received a football scholarship. We better all pray if police are abolished or defunded to the point of being worthless or no one is willing to join because of no support. 3 of my sons served in the military, one retired military is now state police. Have we no appreciation for all these young peoples sacrifices?

As for BLM. They should have to take some of the responsibility for much of the destruction of our country. all known members & others who have encouraged all this damage ( federal & private) They should not only serve time, but be sued for all the cost involved. Along with many people I agree Trump is never or seldom politically correct in speeches & tweets. Never was a politician. I guess thats why he was elected.

Thanks for the opportunity to unload!

Pat Cone, Eagle

Whats right

Paulette is right on in her assessment of Risch. He is a puppet of Trump. No backbone to stand up for what is right.

Ed Crateau, Meridian

Thank you

I want to thank Americas Frontline Doctors and President Trump for taking the message to the public that outpatient treatments for COVID-19 exist. People need to know that they can ask for treatment and get help from their own physician.

I have been a pharmacist since 1981 and I am astounded at the attacks on hydroxychloroquine. The Frontline Doctors are brave to stand up against almost entirely negative coverage in the news media.

I also want to say that hydroxychloroquine is not the only useful drug in the early treatment of COVID-19 infections. People who should not take it because of possible adverse effects or are frightened of using it can use other medications that also reduce the chance of serious illness due to COVID-19.

In my opinion this is a battle for lives, and I applaud anyone who dares to stand against the most shameful episode of medical disinformation that I have seen in my career.

Brent Cornell, Boise

Link:

Letters to the editor, July 31, 2020 - Idaho Press-Tribune

Comments of the Week: Right-Wing UWS? ‘Homeless Hotels,’ Mopeds Cancelled – westsiderag.com

Posted on August 1, 2020 at 10:25 am by Carol Tannenhauser

A word of explanation: some comments below and posted on WSR exceed the 100-word limit we ourselves set. If a lengthy comment offers new information or perspective, or raises provocative questions, we will sometimes let it through. This is not an invitation to extend the length of your comments! Most long ones will be cut. The Editors.

re: Sean Hannity Says Upper West Sides Homeless Hotels Are Part of a New York City Nightmare

Bruce E. Bernsteinsays:Are UWS residents really as right wing as the comments imply? I know very few people like this in real life. There are some but they are few and far between.

UWSHebrewsays:I know those guys and others, like ex-servicemen and ex-NYPD detectives who live right here, and buy bagels every weekend, same as you. More of us right-wingers in your midst than you could know

re: Some Homeless Residents Coming to UWS Hotel Are Being Transferred From Another Hotel Where it Didnt Work Out And Drug Use Continued

Katesays:I love this neighborhood, but reading this piece makes me want to move further uptown. That people who are comfortable and privileged can so proactively want to withhold a basic human right like shelter from a group of human beings is appalling. Housing the homeless in hotels has long been done all over the city, but this NIMBY stuff terrifies me. New Yorkers have proven during COVID that we might be one of the only true societies left in the U.S.; when crisis hit, we leaned into the very meaning of community. While Im a young single woman always highly mindful of safety, the extent of any perceived risk is so much less than the extent of established need of those who have less than I do, and who did not have the advantages I had purely out of luck.

Peter says:Yes, we all live here. Under a social contract. The social contract that governs how we spend our citys resources, i.e., tax dollars, time and effort. The same contract that forces us to have community board hearings to determine whether the addition of a 22 ft coffee table to a sidewalk cafe is appropriate or unnecessarily infringing on someones rights or safety. Or commit vast city resources to establish that a new building can be 14 stories but not 15. Or conduct a myriad of surveys and assessments and public hearings to determine the impact of adding a science wing to a museum.

The same social contract under which matters that may reasonably be expected to affect the quality, safety of life here should be debated, given due consideration, and those most likely to be impacted should be able to voice their opinions. Not swept under the rug by unknown and unaccountable city bureaucrats on a Friday-for-Monday basis. Vulnerable population? Vulnerable to what? The covid-19 that the City claims to have under complete control? What was the spread and impact on these men at the peak of the crisis? How did they protect them then? Why now, at its supposed nadir?

re: Revel To Shut Down Until Further Notice After Second Rider Dies

Shara Feinstein says:You dont see this problem with Vespa and Motorcycle drivers because they invest in owning them and wear helmets and drive safety. It is a shame because having more transportation options would have been great. No helmets, no masks, no responsibility means we all lose out.

chuck D says:This is why we cant have nice things.

re: Photos: Upper West Siders Commune With Turtles, Cats And Each Other

Fred Kepler says:Beautiful photos. Even behind the masks, I could sense the smiles!

Read the original post:

Comments of the Week: Right-Wing UWS? 'Homeless Hotels,' Mopeds Cancelled - westsiderag.com

Peter Beinart and the Palestinian Right of Return Mondoweiss – Mondoweiss

Peter Beinart has made lots of noise in the past three weeks in his turning away from the two-state solution for Palestine-Israel, towards advocating for a single bi-national state. His advocacy has been a crisis for liberal-Zionists, of whom Beinart was a leading voice, and whose mantra in the past generation has been the two-state separation; and his advocacy has garnered charges of utopian nonsense, from a former ambassador, and of his being a Nazi, from Alan Dershowitz.

But reaching beyond the noise, there is a single crucial point that has always divided Zionists and Palestinians, even within the talk of a two-state solution: refugees. The issue of Palestinian refugee return is one single issue that like no other unites Palestinians, cutting to the heart of their continued dispossession. Its denial is also an essentially Zionist issue, as Israeli historian Benny Morris has noted:

Transfer was inevitable and inbuilt in Zionism because it sought to transform a land which was Arab into a Jewish state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population.

This is not just a historical matter. As former Israeli PM Ehud Barak noted in his dissent to Bill Clintons Parameters of 2000, no Israeli prime minister will accept even one refugee on the basis of the [Palestinian] right of return. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni negotiating under Ehud Olmert in 2008? Not a single refugee.

In short, the two-state solution was, as far as Israel was concerned, a means of consolidating the ethnic cleansing and ensuring a Jewish majority for a Jewish and democratic state. The whole point of it was demography. And just as allegiance to the two-state rhetoric has been a kind of litmus test for Zionists, entailing support for the Jewish State, the issue of accepting Palestinian refugee return is a real litmus test for seeing whether one is, after all, a Zionist.

And Peter Beinart is still clinging to Zionism in some way, with a certain romanticism of a cultural, or religious, connection, which he now says doesnt have to mean a Jewish state, but rather a general notion of a Jewish homeland, in what he now advocates should be a bi-national one state.

So what about those refugees then?

Beinart has been somewhat shy and hesitant in relating to this issue in his over 7000-word essay Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, published in Jewish Currents on July 7th. It appears over half-way down the piece, and Beinart cites some quotes on it, mostly in the context of something that needs to be compromised, reduced or trimmed. Here are the passages:

Scholars have imagined various ways to adapt these models to Israel-Palestine while tackling thorny questions of national rights, immigration, and military powers. Some involve federalism, a central government thatas in Belgium or Canadahands power down to local bodies, through which Jews and Palestinians manage their own affairs. Others involve confederalism, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state that each hand power up to a supranational authority that might look something like the European Union. A Land for All, a group that promotes confederalism, has proposed that Palestinian refugees could return to Israel yet be citizens of Palestine, while Jewish settlers could stay in Palestine and remain citizens of Israel. Alternatively, the famed Palestinian scholar Edward Said suggested in 1999 that in one state, [t]he Law of Return for Jews and the right of return for Palestinian refugees [would] have to be considered and trimmed together.

Trimming the Law of Return need not prevent Israel-Palestine from being a Jewish home. Whats crucial, if it is to remain a refuge for Jews, is not that a Jew from New York can land in Tel Aviv and become a citizen on day one. Its that the state enshrine in its constitution the obligation to be a haven for any Jewand yes, any Palestinianin distress.

It is a pretty dry approach, and Beinart does not seem to feel a need to insert much of his own feelings about it, as to why the Palestinian refugee return in itself is important, nor its backing in international law. He could surely take an example from Yousef Munayyer, who wrote:

The right of return is backed by international law and it is a human right. The right of return is enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration that all UN members, including Israel, agree to uphold. It is further enshrined, among other places, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discriminationtwo treaties to which Israel is also a state party. For Palestinians, it is also a sacred right.

Beinart was actually more morally assertive in a podcast with Americans for Peace Now after his piece appeared (July 11th), even if the issue came towards the end of the hour (from minute 47, in the context of a confederation):

I dont think that at this point that a solution, a two-state solution that does not allow for Palestinians to have the right of refugee return, is likely to ultimately be a morally acceptable

Hadar Susskind asked, Refugee return to where?

Beinart:

Well I think ultimately the right of a refugee return, not just to the West Bank but also to Israel proper. Now, one of the ways Land for All thinks about that, is through a notion of those Palestinians refugees remaining, being citizens of a Palestinian state based in West Bank and Gaza, even as they live in Israel proper, right? While Israeli settlers stay in the West Bank and retain their Israeli citizenship. Right, so this is where a confederation model could work. But I do think that the way a two-state solution has been conceived by some people, which is essentially to say, virtually no right of refugee Palestinian return to areas inside Israel proper I have come to the view that I think that would be unlikely to be that effective of a solution. And I also think that we have to really have a conversation about the morality of telling we are a people who for 2000 years have prayed every morning since the creation of modern liturgy, for a return to this land how do we tell people who grew up in a place, that they dont have the right to return to that place? So I think that one of the reasons that I would favor a confederation model over a two-state model, if I had to choose between the two at this point, is that I think it creates more opportunity for meeting peoples legitimate rights to have the option of returning. That does not mean going to someones house and kicking them out of their home. And I dont think its the way most Palestinians I know think about it. But it means maybe compensation and it means having the right to return to the city where you were born. I mean again, one of the things that comes across to anyone who spends time with Palestinian writing and learns from the Palestinian experience, is the enormous power and the importance for people of being able to go back to places that were precious to them. And one of the things that I find appealing about the confederation model, even if one doesnt go fully towards the one-state model, is it provides some way of realizing that. And I am saddened that in our Jewish discourse, that we are people who take so much pride in our ability to remember, to not forget, and to hold sacred memory and to try to fulfil it, are so dismissive of that when it comes to Palestinians.

Well, that is really a bit better. Lets look at that last bit, about remembering, in terms of Israels Law of Return for Jews. The return is mythical. Really, its about biblical myth from times literally immemorial. And thats supposed to somehow trump the actual right of return of Palestinians in times still in actual living memory.

When Beinart talks about how a two-state solution has been conceived by some people, with virtually no right of refugee Palestinian return to areas inside Israel proper its really not just some people. This position is one that cuts across the whole Zionist political spectrum.

Zionists have regularly derided Palestinians who long for this return. The liberal hero Amos Oz has also done so he told a Palestinian refugee from Lifta that the latter is ill, suffering from Reconstritis:

You are ill, I told the man. And I also diagnosed the illness You are ill with Reconstritis. You are seeking in space, what you have lost in time. If you miss Lifta so much, write a book. Make a film. Write a play. Write up a research. Seek what you have lost in time, not in space You miss your childhood? Thats OK, but if you start behaving like a 5-year old child [Oz is literally shouting here] because of your childhood longings, you need to be hospitalized!

But Oz himself was not ill with Reconstritis, by his own diagnosis. He wrote books, but he wrote them in Israel. Because for Zionists, it is not a dream anymore, and if we caused your nightmare by ethnically cleansing you, well, thats just tough write a book.

This position has been widely accepted as being morally legitimate by Israel supporters. It has been understood as a necessary evil, like Tom Cottons necessary evil of slavery in the US. Even if not explicitly stated (or not as explicitly as Barak and Livni), it was a Zionist assumption, the gains of ethnic cleansing must not be compromised.

Its interesting to see how Beinarts current positions on the binational state, are ones that he himself had deemed utopian back in 2015. Notice this, from a debate he had with Yousef Munayyer:

Im simply arguing that when people reject two states in favor of one binational state, which is the main proposed alternative, I wonder where exactly do they see the appetite for this binationalism on either side. Binational states are exceedingly hard to keep together. Binationalism barely works in Belgium. The Czechs and Slovaks couldnt make it work, Scotland is seriously considering seceding from the U.K, as is Catalonia from Spain, and these are all far, far more placid environments than the land between the river and the sea. What would we call this Israeli Palestinian binational state? In post-apartheid South Africa the answer was obvious, because whites and blacks both considered themselves citizens of South Africa. In Israel and Palestine by contrast, this imagined binational state, we have no name because no national identity undergirds it. Lets imagine that someone did create Israstine. What is its army going to look like? It would be an Army operating under conditions of unbelievable stress. [Beinart relates situations in which the army would be torn apart by tensions due to orders to evict or not evict Jewish or Palestinian residents.] This is not progressivism; its the great temptation of progressives, utopianism.

But now that utopianism (which is what his critics now chide him for) has become a viable, necessary vision for Beinart. Which is to say, that if you will it, it is no dream as Zionist founder Herzl said. And the Zionists could dream it, right? Call it Reconstritis or whatever, but they certainly dreamt it, and boy, did they make it happen.

So why, now that we see that the DNA of Zionism for all practical purposes is settler-colonialism and Apartheid, why cant we dream of a better future, one of equality and freedom? Is that so sick?

Peter Beinart has opened up the one-state discussion in Zionist circles, and those who could not dismiss him out of hand, sought to engage with him in serious conversation. That conversation leads inevitably to critical issues of righting injustices done to Palestinians, since it gives up to a large degree the assumption of Jewish supremacy and opens up for considerations of real equality. And that conversation definitely needs to be had.

Original post:

Peter Beinart and the Palestinian Right of Return Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss

How Does the National Education Policy Accelerate the Privatisation of Higher Education? – Economic and Political Weekly

The Draft National Education Policy (DNEP) 2019 continues to be in line with the neo-liberal, anti-democratic, and centralising tendencies that have been prevailing in higher education since the early 1990s.[1] These tendencies are pronounced in the latest DNEP with the incorporation of the elements of revivalism, communalism, and social insensitivity. While advocating for a multidisciplinary liberal education to meet the demands of the job market and the challenges of the 21st century, the DNEP insidiously overlooks the importance of upholding the Constitution, secularism, equality, social justice, and plurality that our social fabric demands. The absence of such inclusivity in the policy speaks much louder than its divisive overtones.

On the state of higher education, the document begins on a concerned note about what it calls the Fragmentation of Higher Education System (MHRD 2019: 203). The reason for this fragmentation is identified as the presence of over 800 universities and 40,000 colleges spread across the country. In effect, the sociocultural diversity, decentralised autonomy of the universities, and the reach and scope of affiliated colleges that have been catering to the needs of students in urban and rural areas are negated in a single stroke withthe label of fragmentation. The new policy proposes to overcome this throughthe establishment of higher educational institutions (HEIs) of a much broader scope and size, which indicates a move towards a monolithic and homogenised educational regime.

With its oft-repeated references to Indianness, the policy draft makes a case for homogenisation. It promises special funding for the study of Indian art, culture, and literature. The draft policy states,

All undergraduate programmes will also emphasise music, visual arts, performing arts, and sports. This shall include Indias deep traditions in the arts, music and sports, including the numerous remarkable local regional traditions. Yoga shall form an integral part of such efforts as well. Institutions will be encouraged and funded to offer full-fledged programmes and courses in these areas (MHRD 2019: 230).

The use of the term Indian in relation to art, culture, and literature is problematic. India is not a monolithic structure. Diversity and plurality are our hallmarks. The dangers of revivalism are inherent in the call to study Indian culture. There is a possibility that the majoritarian culture would emerge as the Indian culture at the cost of other cultures getting a raw deal. Fears abound that the plurality in the art and the way of life couldbe wiped out in this impending homogenisation. The policy makes it clear that adherence to this distorted view of Indianness is compulsory, or at least institutions are lured with the promise of funds.

Another important recommendation of the DNEP is to make students job-ready, and make the education system the hub of the next industrial revolution. It adds,

By focusing on such broad based, flexible, individualised, innovative, and multidisciplinary learning, higher education must aim to prepare its students not just for their first jobs- but also for their second, third and all future jobs over their lifetimes. In particular, the higher education system must aim to form the hub for the next industrial revolution. (MHRD 2019: 203)

The above quote says a lot more than what it does not spellout explicitly. It indirectly points to the fact that government-sector jobs and the security they provide would become a matter of a bygone era. The capitalist dictum of hire and fire at will would soon become a norm in the job market, and the new crop of job seekers have to grapple with this new reality.

The imagination that the education system should emerge as the hub of the next industrial revolution is worrisome because one fails to understand if the role of education is only about industrial prosperity. This is an attack on the fundamental premise of education thatgoes beyondthe "mass-production"of outstanding employees, citizens, and communitiesto make students socially conscious. It does not factor in the realities of our society that include providing basic education to every section of the population. Access, equity, and inclusiveness are the primary needs of our society. Even today, a substantial number of students in higher education are from first-generation-educatedfamilies.The educational goals set out by the DNEP only cater to the privileged lot who have had access to education overgenerations. Although the hyped internationalism and world-class education are desirable, it is essential and urgent to ensure that education reaches all, to pave way for a better life. But, such concerns are not adequately addressed in the current policy draft.

On the other hand, the policy perceives that there is a lack of novel initiatives from the teaching community to improve educational standardsbecause it isnot satisfied with theselection, tenure, promotion, salary increases and other recognition and vertical mobility (MHRD 2019:204).Still, the policycontinues with the unscientific Performance Based Appraisal System (PBAS), initiated under the 2010 Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) of the University Grants Commission (UGC). The academic performance indicators (API) for career advancements, which were discontinued after the release of UGC 2018 regulations, have not been reinstituted (University Grants Commission 2018). It is anti-academic to connect academic innovation, brilliance, and performance to material rewards.

The policy draft is critical of the current regulatory bodies, and accuses them of promoting mediocrity and corruption. It states, private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have not been treated on an equal footing with public institutions [] this approach has discouraged public-spirited philanthropic HEIs (MHRD 2019: 206). The use of the term public-spirited philanthropic HEIs to refer to private investments seem ironic in an age when education has been commoditised, and is part of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The DNEP calls for a thorough revamp of the current structure of higher education, favouring the establishment of large multidisciplinary universities. Accordingly, an educational institute in the country has to fall under one of these three types: research universities (type 1), teaching universities (Type 2), and colleges (type 3).

Both type 1 and 2 institutions have been planned as mega HEIs with 5,00025,000 or more students. These HEIs demand huge resources in terms of land, infrastructure, and all other basic amenities. The proposal to have at least one HEI in every district in the country is not feasible as per the current education system followed by the states. There is no clarity on the modalities, funding, and theoperationality of these HEIs.The idea of liberal and multidisciplinary education envisaged through such HEIs would be limiting in its reach to all sections of the society. It is evident that such centres of learning demand huge investments to procure land and infrastructure, and to administer. The move is directly aimed at increasing privatisation in the education sector. Only large-scale investors have the ability to set up such huge multidisciplinary institutes. This paradigm shift that the policy boasts of is nothing but a direct transfer of power to multinational corporations or big private investors. Meanwhile, that the policy draft makes only a single statement in passing about public education clearly underlines the governments vision for education.

While proposing to revamphigher education, it fails to clarify onthe practicality of such plans. No details are provided about the funding and implementation. The mandates it puts forward make it difficult for the colleges across the country to sustain their efforts to provide access to the regional multitudes. Colleges that do not meet these standards would be shut down, which is tantamount to the denial of opportunities for rural and semi-urban populations.

The suggestion that all institutions need to have student enrolments in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, for optimal use of infrastructure and resources"(MHRD 2019: 212) reveals the overarching design of the policy. There is a negation of the local, the little narratives, and the possibilities for knowledge production and implementation at different levels. The differentiation of HEIs as research and teaching universities is also irrational. HEIsas the centres of learning and knowledge productioncannot be viewed separately.

According to the policy, colleges categorised under type 3 educational institutionsneed to have more than 2,000 students. Colleges that do not meet the criteria, whether government, aided, or self-financed, would be converted to autonomous institutions by 2032 or would be merged with the university they are affiliated. The gradual, yet complete distancing from public education in favour of autonomy would pose a threat to many who do not possess the means for private education.

Granting autonomy to HEIs also has the potential to disturb the current recruitment process that factors in qualification, reservation, and other aspects of the applicants, and undermines natural justice. It could also pave the way for corruption in the form of favouritism, political lobbying, among others.

One of the most problematic parts of the policy is theproposed establishment ofRashtriya Shiksha Aayog, an apex body with the prime minister as its head to oversee the education sector in the country. Knowledge systems should be kept out of the intervention of political office, but the policy goes against this established principle. This is a threat to the education sector and constitutional values as ruling parties would find ways to further their agenda through curricula.

The proposed establishment of the National Research Foundation (NRF) is also restrictive in nature, and is against the assertion of the multidisciplinary approach referred to in the policy multiple times. The NRF is stated to act as a liaison among researchers, ministries of the government, and industry, in order to ensure that the most relevant and societally useful research reaches people (MHRD 2019: 209). As a free space for knowledge formation and dissemination, research need not have an overtly measurable or tangible output. In varied streams of arts and humanities, research leads to the creation of social knowledge and historical awareness about formations of power, culture, and knowledge. This results in the creation of a sociocultural sensitivity, and provides an opportunity to uphold constitutional values. However, as per the policy, the mandate for research is to [create] beneficial linkages among government, industry, and researchers (MHRD 2019: 279), which is an attempt to quantify research for its commoditised capital use-value.

Additionally, the NRF would be vested with powers to identify areas of research that are of special importance to the country, and prioritise funding to them (MHRD 2019: 270). This would certainly become a matter of concern as it would allow officials to act as per their prejudices and toe the line of the ruling dispensation to significantly undermine the research space.

In the section on teacher education, the policy calls for teachers to be "grounded in Indian values, ethos, knowledge, and traditions" (MHRD 2019: 283). The intention behind such a statement is suspect. However, nowhere in the document is it mentioned that a teacher should be socially sensitive, critique knowledge and power formation, and uphold constitutional values.

On the other hand, the policystates that substandard and dysfunctional teacher education institutes (TEIs) that do not meet the basic educational criteria would be shut down. However, the policy does not list out the requisite criteria, except a directive to TEIs to become multidisciplinary. From the policy, it emerges that the multidisciplinary approach is the only possibility by which good teacher education can be imparted.

Originally posted here:

How Does the National Education Policy Accelerate the Privatisation of Higher Education? - Economic and Political Weekly

Bill Talks with Heather Cox Richardson About ‘How the South Won the Civil War’ – BillMoyers.com

The Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Bull Run, Va. July 21st 1861, Currier and Ives. (Library of Congress)

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. If you want to understand this moment in American politics, heres a suggestion for you: Its the must-read book of the year HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short-lived. Slave states soon stripped Black people of their hard-won rights, white supremacy not only rose again to rule the South but spread West across the Mississippi to create new hierarchies of inequality. Thats the story Heather Cox Richardson tells in HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, with echoes resounding every day in the current wild and fierce campaign for the presidency. Here to talk with her about Americas ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy is Bill Moyers.

Photo courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you for joining me.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Oh, its a pleasure to be here.

BILL MOYERS: Will you take us on that long but vivid arc of how we got from Abraham Lincoln, describing the end of the Civil War as a new birth of freedom, to Donald Trump describing America as a land of carnage, a nightmare. From Lincoln to Donald Trump in 2016, what happened?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: If you think about the Civil War as a war between two different ideologies, two different concepts of what America is supposed to be, is it supposed to be a place where a few wealthy men direct the labor and the lives of the people below them, the women and people of color below them, the way the Confederacy argued? Is that America? Or is America what Lincoln and his ilk in the Republican Party in the North defined the democracy as during the Civil War? Is it a place where all men are equal before the law and should have equal access to resources? And of course, I use the word man there, but thats because thats the language that Lincoln used. But the principle is expandable of course. It looked by 1865 as if that latter ideology, that of the Republicans and that of the idea of equality had triumphed. And certainly, the Republicans and Northerners who had fought for the United States government in that war believed that they had redefined America to mean equality before the law. They really believed that was the case. And that they had defeated what they called the slave power, the oligarchs who had gone ahead and taken over the system in the 1850s. After the Civil War, Easterners moved West across the Mississippi in really large numbers after 1865.

April 2020, Oxford University Press, 272 pgs.

BILL MOYERS: White Southerners went too, of course, and you argue they saw the West as the final frontier ruled by elites, just as elites, with violence and intimidation, had ruled in the old South.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And in that West, they discover a land that is already susceptible to the idea of racial and gendered hierarchies, because it has its own history of them. And its a place out there where the new American system happens to be a really fertile ground for the Confederate ideology to rise again. And thats exactly what happens with the extractive industries in the West that encouraged the heavily capitalized cattle markets, for example, or mining industries, or later oil, or even agribusiness. You have in the West a development of an economy and, later on, a society that looks very much like the pre-Civil War South. And over the course of the late 19th century, that becomes part of the American mythology, with the idea that you have the cowboy in the West who really stands against what Southerners and Northern Democrats believe is happening in Eastern society, that a newly active government is using its powers to protect African Americans and this is a redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to populations that are simply looking for a government handout. Thats language that rises in 1871, and that is still obviously important in our political discourse. But in contrast to that, in the West, you get the rise of the image of the American cowboy, which is really our image of Reconstruction. In a weird way, people think of Reconstruction, obviously, they think of formerly enslaved people. But the image that has obtained in our textbooks and in our popular culture is the American cowboy, who is beginning to dominate American popular culture by 1866. And that cowboy a single man, because women are in the cowboy image only as wives and mothers, or as women above the saloons in their striped stockings serving liquor and other things is a male image of single white men. Although, again, historically a third of cowboys were people of color. Its a single white man working hard on their own, who dont want anything from the government. Again, historically inaccurate. The government puts more energy into the American plains than it does any other region of the country. But

BILL MOYERS: And also on land that had been taken from Mexico after the Mexican-American War, and on land that had been stolen from the Native Americans after genocide. I mean, its this whole notion of, Im free to roam the land and become a self-made hero, which was the cowboys image to those of us growing up in the 30s and 40s, was really a bastard idea.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And part of that bastard idea, though, was so interesting. Because it is, in part, the Indian Wars of the Civil War and immediate post-war years that helped to both create the image of the cowboy, but also reinforce the idea that a few white men belong above subordinate groups like the Indigenous people, like Mexicans or Mexican Americans. Like Chinese Americans, like Fiji islanders, about whom they care very much in the late 19th century. And that racial hierarchy and gendered hierarchy really gets tied into the image of the American cowboy. And popularized with this backlash against activism in the East, trying to help African Americans adjust to the new free labor economy. But that image becomes enormously important after 1880. Because in 1880, the South goes solidly Democratic. And, of course, in retrospect, we now know its going to stay Democratic for a very, very long time, indeed. But they dont know that at the time. But what Republicans do note is that they must pick up Western votes if theyre going to continue to dominate the White House and the Senate. After 1888, when we get the installment of Benjamin Harrison in the White House, he loses the popular vote by about 100,000 votes. But hes installed thanks to the Electoral College. The Republicans under Harrison between 1889 and 1890, they let in six new states in 12 months. That was the largest acquisition of new states in American history since the original 13 and its never been matched again. They let in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and then Idaho and Wyoming to go ahead and make sure that they would continue to control the Senate, and the Electoral College. And theyre not hiding this. They actually go onto their media which is their equivalent of the Fox News channel at the time and say, by letting in these states, were going to hold onto the Senate for all time and were going to make sure we hold onto the White House for all time. But what that does is it begins to shift the idea of that human freedom. All of a sudden, the Republican Party, which has tried to continue to argue that it is standing in favor of equality, although thats negotiable. After 1888 and the admission of those new states, the Republican Partys got to start adopting that racially charged language in order to get the West on board. And that begins the change in American history that leads to a later union between the West and the South around this idea that really white men ought to be in charge. Its not just a Southern thing. Its a Western thing as well. And they make up a voting bloc in Congress that manages to change a lot of the legislation of the 20th century.

BILL MOYERS: You write about how the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890, in South Dakota, was an atrocity brought on by politics. And that it played into the use of politics to reimpose inequality, and the use of force for malicious purposes.

Wounded Knee (LOC)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: It did. What happens is that with the admission of these new states in 1889 and 1890, the Republicans believe that they are going to do very well in the midterm election of 1890. And the big thing on the table in America in 1890 is the tariff high walls around the American economy that protect businesses inside America, they protect them to the degree that because they face no foreign competition, different groups can collude with each other to raise prices. So in 1860, the Republicans insist that an economic downturn thats been happening is only because those tariffs arent high enough. What happens in the election of 1890 is the Republicans think theyre going to win and they lose dramatically. It turns out when these ballots are counted, a Republican Senate or a Democratic Senate hangs on the seat of South Dakota, on one Senate seat. And that Senate seat has pretty clearly been corrupted. Theres a huge fight, then, in the legislature of who actually won. So there the situation sits.

BILL MOYERS: Sits there, for sure, with President Benjamin Harris needing to shore up his support in the Dakotas. So, he sends corrupt cronies out to replace experienced Indian agents and dispatches one-third of the federal Army as well.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And with that movement of the Army into South Dakota in the largest mobilization of the US Army since the Civil War, Lakota are trying to negotiate with the Army that increasingly wants to bring them into the reservation, to the agencies to make sure that theyre under control. And over the course of the next few months, that situation escalates until a Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, is killed in December of 1890. And then in terror after that, a group of Miniconjou Lakota move across the state. They actually find the Army, the Army doesnt find them. And in the process of corralling them and disarming them later on that month, the soldiers start to fire. And about 250 Lakota are massacred. So, it was a massacre that was really directly attributable to whether or not the Republican Party could control the US Senate in order to protect its tariffs that promoted big business, and protected a few oligarchs.

BILL MOYERS: When Americans moved to the wide-open spaces of the West after the Civil War, they kept alive the same vision of the world that had inspired Confederates. What was their argument?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: They certainly were not arguing at the time for a renewal of hostilities. But they did believe that America was one in which a few good hard-working white men should dominate women and people of color. And I think thats written all over the West, although we dont like to see that because we love our cowboys. But inherent in Western society, Western politics, Western economy and the Western society after the Civil War was the idea that a few wealthy men should control the industries. Or at least, did control the extractive industries of mining and cattle, and agribusiness and oil. And they should also control politics. And that the legal system should defend their interests while the workers should work for the people in charge. You know, these wealthy cattlemen, for example, were somehow the salt of the earth, hardworking little guys. That image was really in contrast to what was going on, which was the creation of a society that looked, in many ways, like the society of the pre-Civil War South. And by the late 19th and early 20th century, the rise of industrialists in the North who took a lot of their power and their ideological power from the cowboy imagery and from the support that they received in the American West. And to some degree, from Southern leaders as well.

BILL MOYERS: So, the pre-Civil War South was an oligarchy.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. I was very careful with that word. Because there are obviously a lot of words we could use for a system in which a few people take over. But the way that I was using it was with the idea that an oligarchy was a small group, usually of men in that case, who controlled the money in society and therefore came to control the political system, and also the social system.

BILL MOYERS: In order to use government policies to shore up white supremacy and prevent racial equality, right?

HEATHER RICHARDSON: And I think the echoes from that to the present are pretty clear, when you have again a small group of Americans now who define themselves that way, I think. One of the things that I found interesting is with the rise of this small elite group of large planters in the 1850s, the ways in which they came to monopolize popular culture and popular literature so that they simply didnt say, Well, were hard workers and weve been lucky. But they came to believe that they deserved what they had gotten. And that they were somehow better than everybody else. And you can see that through the pulpits, ministers starting to talk about how blessed they were to have these men in their congregations. You can see it through literature, the rise of novels that talk about people who own large numbers of other people as somehow paternalistic patriarchs. And you can see it through the construction of the other, the people who are enslaved, as being somehow almost sub-human. And thats a very deliberate construction in the 1850s. And I would argue, you can see something very similar in America in the 2000 aughts.

BILL MOYERS: In what sense?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The emphasis in popular culture on how the people who were at the top really belong there. That they somehow are the best people. That they know more than the rest of us. That if you have a billion dollars, you must somehow be really much more special than those of us who dont have a billion dollars. And I think that really shows in the way that President Trump talks about the people around him. He would appoint only the best people, who by definition, knew more than the experts did. And you look at the position that Jared Kushner has in this administration. I mean, hes a young man with really very little training in anything and hes supposed to be solving the Middle East crisis and handling coronavirus? And I dont even know what his portfolio looks like at this point. But I think thats a reflection that looks very much like that of elite Southerners in the 1850s when they simply thought by virtue of who they were, they could make things work better than anybody else could.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that as this Old South ideology moved West it influenced popular culture, especially in upholding white supremacy. There were Western movies like the classic STAGECOACH, remember? A Confederate soldier joins with the US Cavalry to defeat the savage Apache. And novels such as LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and GONE WITH THE WIND celebrating the union of Western and Confederate ideology.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. And isnt it fascinatingif you think about, again, Laura Ingalls Wilders a great example. People tend to dismiss her because they see it as a childrens book. And yet, its been enormously influential, enormously influential. And she writes about a world in which Pa takes care of the women folk and dominates the native populations around him. And certainly there are passages in that book that are extraordinarily racist, not only toward Indigenous people, but toward African Americans as well. Its gotten her in trouble lately. But the theme throughout that book is of individualism. Pa is doing it on his own. Pa is not doing it on his own. The reality of her life was that Pa was managing to keep the family together based on the fact his daughters and his wife worked because Pa could never manage to make ends meet. And theyre living in places that are habitable for white settlers like themselves only because of the protection of the US government. And, you know, even scenes like when when Mary goes to college. And remember, they scrimp and save for years for Mary to go to college. And the implication in that book is that they are sending Mary to college. No. Theyre raising money for her train fare and her clothing. Her room and board is being paid for by the state of South Dakota. South Dakota actually, weirdly enough, had the highest rate of literacy in the country in that era. But you dont see that in those books. Because again, you have this wedding, if you will, of individualism to racism and this concept of women being taken care of by their men. Its a very popular trope in American history. But it doesnt reflect reality.

BILL MOYERS: So, when a group of slave holders embraced the idea that they and they alone should control Americas economic and political system, the Americans fought back, won the Civil War, and rededicated the country to equality. But when it happened a second time, when very rich men of property mobilized to take over America again, they largely succeeded by convincing voters that equality for people of color and women and minorities destroyed the liberty of white men. Thats almost the drum beat in the background of American politics today.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: One of the things about that ideology that a few wealthy men should rule, its not new to America. Its been around for a very long time. And whats really radical is the idea that in fact, all of us should have the right to self-government. And the fact that were still fighting about it in America today suggests to me that those two fundamentally different concepts of the role of the American government at least are still absolutely the question of what America really is about. For all the frightening things that are happening in America right now, its also exciting to get to redefend the concept of human self-determination, which is really what weve been doing all along on this continent.

BILL MOYERS: But as you write, the ideology of the Old South and its new Western allies found a powerful reactionary force to reimagine it. Lets go to the very opening scene of your book. Its July, 1964. The Cow Palace outside San Francisco, packed with cheering Republicans whove just nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their candidate for the presidency. They came roaring to their feet when he declares, quote

BARRY GOLDWATER: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice in no virtue.

BILL MOYERS: 56 years later, that scene still plays out in my head. Explain why you chose that moment to begin a story that spans America from the Civil War to now.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Barry Goldwater at that point was known sort of as a cowboy character. And that moment when the state of South Carolina, the state that was responsible for taking the Confederacy out of the Union. When those delegates stand up, they were the ones to put Barry Goldwater over the top, as their delegate yelled when he announced the delegations votes, its that moment when you recognize that there is a new force in American politics. And its the force of reaction against the liberal consensus that was widely shared by Democrats and Republicans both, that in fact, the government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. And thats the moment when you had that reactionary voice saying, No, thats not what America should look like. And its that theory that in fact a few people should run the system and make decisions for the rest of us that has taken over America since 64. It came across as a racial argument. But of course, his skin was in the game for the end of business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Regulation, right.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Thats what he really cared about. Its interesting the degree to which they harnessed the tradition of American racism and sexism as well, to their project of destroying business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Goldwaters big bone was government, but that was all mixed up with opposing Civil Rights and keeping segregation, discrimination. This fear of government that Goldwater was stoking at that moment was the same fear that Southern demagogues had stoked to keep Blacks in their place, it was government that was at stake here. It was what you can do with government.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, and I think you just hit the nail on the head there with the idea that all of this is about the proper use of government. Is the idea of the United States government to protect property, so that people can accumulate more and more of it, and thereby get the power and the education and the connections to go ahead and direct society in a way thats good for all us, which is their theory. Or is the role of government, in fact, to protect equality before the law, and to make sure that all men, in fact, and all, you know, all people are created equal and have equal access to resources and to opportunity? And those two questions are really the central questions of America.

BILL MOYERS: Ronald Reagan gave the conservative movement its present-day mantra

RONALD REAGAN: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, Im from the government and Im here to help.

BILL MOYERS: Now just imagine using that mantra today when the pandemic is rampant. And somebody knocks on your door and says, My name is Fauci, and Im here to help you. And they say, But youre from the government. We dont want you.

October 1, 2013, Updated August 14, 2014

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I love the way you put it earlier when you said, This is all a question of what the government should do. Coming out of World War II, we had a real resurgence of the idea that the government really had a responsibility to promote equality before the law, and to guarantee equal access to resources. And that was a principle that was shared across America, I think, from Republicans and Democrats both. I mean, obviously you saw it with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the New Deal. But you also saw it with Truman, of course. And then you also saw it Eisenhower and Eisenhowers Middle Way. And the idea was that this American democracy stood against the fascism that had drawn us into World War II. And that FDR was so articulate about fighting back against. You know, when he talks about Italy again and again, FDR talks about how, you know, American democracys messy, for sure, but look, Mussolini was supposed to make the trains run on time and instead, his people are dying and theyre starving to death. And we, us messy members of a democracy, are the ones feeding them. And he says this again and again. And coming out of that war, I think Americans really stood for that. But even before that, theres certainly a group of reactionaries who look at the New Deal and at the Middle Way and they say, We dont believe that the government should interfere in our businesses. We should have the liberty, the freedom to run our businesses as we see fit. And they, in fact, really believe that the New Deal is going to be erased. They really thought it was a temporary measure, and that Americans would turn against that. But, of course, Americans loved the New Deal. It had gotten us out of out of the Depression and it had won World War II. So they didnt have any intention of walking away from that.

BY Harvey J. Kaye | April 27, 2015

BILL MOYERS: But Goldwater and Reagan were riding away from it. And both, as you know, loved casting themselves as cowboys, white hats and all. They wrapped themselves in the mythology of the cowboy as hero; a lone white man carving a new world for white people from a hostile environment. So how did we get from Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon, a Californian in 1968, invoking the Southern strategy of stirring up the resentments and fears and hatreds of white Southerners. And Ronald Reagan who opened his campaign in 1980 in Neshoba County, Mississippi, just a few miles from where three Civil Rights volunteers had been murdered. And then George W. Bush buying a Stetson and a Texas ranch to prove he was a Westerner. Finally, to Donald Trump, the rich guy from Queens, not a part of the Southern culture or complex, who used the same racial fears, the same threats and promises that had been used in 64, 68, and 80.

George W. Bush Library

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, finally by 1951, you have that famous book by William F. Buckley Jr. called GOD AND MAN AT YALE in which he says, Listen, we got a problem. If we keep on trying to argue against the New Deal on the merits, we keep losing. So, we should stop trying to argue it on the merits. Because when we talked about what was best for most people, people voted for the New Deal. So, he suggests that we needed to start from a baseline, saying that the government should only protect what he calls free enterprise. That is, there shouldnt be regulation. And it should protect Christianity. You could wiggle around the edges. But you needed to have those two things. Well, that doesnt really get much traction. And, of course, William F. Buckley Jr. is the son of an oil man. And he is bankrolled by some pretty serious money there. Its a vision of a very few wealthy men. And it really doesnt get traction until after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, when a unanimous Supreme Court, where this chief justice is a Republican and a former governor of California

BILL MOYERS: Youre talking about Earl Warren.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. He says the government needs to stand behind the desegregation of public schools. And with that, a door is open to resurrect the idea of the Reconstruction years. That any kind of government action in trying to level the playing field for African Americans in American society is a redistribution of wealth. And in 1955, we get the formation of NATIONAL REVIEW, of course, with the hiring of James Kirkpatrick, whos a Southern editor. Who hammers again and again and again on the idea that in fact, if you let government be an active government, to go ahead and intervene in things like regulating the economy, or in this case, promoting desegregation, what you are going to get is an attack on liberty, by which they mean tax dollars, your, in coded words, White tax dollars are going to go to African Americans. Who, in their eyes, had not earned that sort of entree into public schools. Which is gonna cost tax dollars among other things there were needed to be troops to have that happen. Well, that idea, that somehow an activist government, a New Deal government, an Eisenhower government was a redistribution of wealth from hard working white people to first African Americans, and then that group of other is going to be expanded to eventually include, in the 1970s, feminist women. But that argument is really established in the 1950s. And the people who adhere to it initially are not traditional Republicans. And theyre certainly not Democrats. They self-identify as a group called movement conservatives. And they are not true conservatives. They are radical extremists. And they know it. They, a few group of capital C conservatives, are going to stand against capital L liberals. By which they mean virtually everybody else in America, Republicans and Democrats both. Because they make no distinction between the liberal consensus of FDR and Eisenhower and Chinese communism. To them, those are the same kind of redistributions of wealth. So that movement conservative argument that gets its roots in the 1950s and then is picked up by Nixon I think he gets backed into a full-hearted embrace of movement conservatism because of the problems hes facing in 1970, with the Vietnam War and Kent State. But by Reagan, you have Reagan fully defending that vision. And you remember, Reagans initial ideas of cutting taxes were not popular. And it was not clear that that was actually going to happen. He has to put George H. W. Bush into his administration as vice president. And he had called that system voodoo economics. But its really after hes shot that he manages to get the popular momentum in Congress to pass his first tax cut. And then he tries to cement the ability to hold those tax cuts through including Evangelicals into the political system on the Republican side, beginning really dramatically in 1986. But, also, by packing the court. So, you can see from there on, this vision snowballing. And then in the 1990s, of course, you get Newt Gingrich becoming the Speaker of the House, and really deliberately purging the Republican Party of traditional Republicans, those he calls, RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. By the time you get to Trump, that language is there. That whole set up is there. But Trump himself is an interesting character. Because if you remember, he was the most moderate of the Republican candidates when he was running. So he had the racism and the sexism down. But a lot of people who might have liked or might even have not liked the racism and the sexism loved the idea he was gonna make taxes fairer. He was gonna create a better health care system. He was gonna make wealthier people pay more. He was gonna promote infrastructure. All those things that went by the board. Hes put movement conservatism on steroids. And his platform in 2016 was stunning. It was William F. Buckley Jr.s wish list, or Goldwaters wish list. And a narrative that, by the way, has taken off, and been extraordinarily strong since the rise of Reagan.

He was elected in 1980. And you have that cowboy individualism gone wild with the STAR WARS series, which is the movie of 1977. That imagery, that one guy is going to do it on his own without the help of the government is a lovely image. Its a mythological image. Its one that Americans love, but its not reality. In fact, that image has enabled oligarchs like those really taking the reins of power under Ronald Reagan, to skew our laws in such a way that wealth has moved upward, opportunity has been taken away from the vast majority of us. The lives of most Americans, a majority of Americans, has gotten significantly worse, not better. And now under Donald Trump with the coronavirus, but also with the extraordinary dis-junction in the economy. Now, of course, were looking at the recession because of the coronavirus. But even before that, with the booming stock market, and the reality that most Americans didnt have $400 in the bank to meet an emergency. I think people are really coming to realize there is this extraordinary gap between that image and reality. And beginning more to want to root their politics in reality, both to fight the coronavirus and to fight the economic recession. But also to give credit to the essential workers of color, and to the women who are keeping this country running. I thought it was really interesting that one of the tropes from American individualism is, of course, that moms are home, right? Taking care of the kids. Over the weekend in Portland, moms went out and made a wall, a wall of moms to stand between the protesters and the federal troops.

BILL MOYERS: You say that the movement of women into politics rejects the construction of a society in which a few elite white men control the destinies of the rest of the country. And you find hope in that. But I wrote after your last sentence, Yes, but white oligarchs and their mercenaries still have the power.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes, they do. And I often dont sleep at night. But people ask me what gets me up every morning, and why do I continue to be optimistic. And I am because I believe in American democracy. I believe in the concept of human self-determination with almost a religious faith. And if I lose that faith, I feel like I will have broken that faith not only with the people around me today, but with all those people who came before us, and fought in wars, and who gave up their time and their money and their energy and did everything that they could to make sure that American democracy would survive. So, were in a very frightening time. But there are a lot of us, I think, who believe in this great American experiment, and will give it our all to make sure it doesnt end on our watch.

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for sharing your time and your thoughts, and for all the work that has inspired so many of us.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. Well, thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening to Moyers on Democracy. Read an excerpt from HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, a must-read book for understanding how we got to this moment. And, be sure to check out Bills podcast with Heather Cox Richardson, exploring how her daily LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN found a large and loyal following on Facebook and our website.Youll find all this and more at Billmoyers.com.

Excerpt from:

Bill Talks with Heather Cox Richardson About 'How the South Won the Civil War' - BillMoyers.com

Original sins and racial justice: What’s on the other side? – ABC News

The phrase original sin usually stops, not starts, conversations. Yet in these days of racial reckoning, its become powerful shorthand for the deep injustice suffered by people of colour at the hands of the white establishment.

The original sin of slavery stains our country today, said Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden after the death of George Floyd. Even across the partisan divide, Republican and US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agrees. This kind of language, at least in the United States, approaches the status of clich.

Here in Australia, far more secular, we rarely tolerate such religious speak in public life. Yet the ripple effects of Black Lives Matter here like protests over Aboriginal deaths in police custody and our own statue wars show that even if Australians shy away from the language of sin, they still believe in it.

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Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Chris Uhlmann, Nine news political editor and former seminarian, declared, Aboriginal dispossession is the Original Sin of Australias settlement. He meant that stolen land, language, and identity had robbed generations of Aboriginal people of dignity, wealth, and a fair go. For Uhlmann, Indigenous disadvantage today traces back to the founding of Australia.

Or rather, these lands now called Australia, as Brooke Prentis often says. Shes a Wakka Wakka woman, Aboriginal Christian leader, and CEO of Common Grace, which campaigns for Aboriginal rights, refugees, the environment, and against family violence. Brooke is also the first Indigenous CEO of a Christian organisation in Australia.

For her, original sin language has its limits. Original sin focuses on first or foundational sin, she said, but we need to address many of the injustices: stolen land, stolen wages, stolen lives, the failure to close the gap, overrepresentation in prison systems, Aboriginal children in Northern Territory detention centres, the destruction of sacred sites.

But if pressed to name one overarching offense? The sin of this nation is the theft of the land, and thats something that hasnt been dealt with.

To speak of sin, or wrongdoing, in national terms makes for a vivid, if imperfect, metaphor, according to Esau McCaulley, an African American assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts university in Illinois. In America, slavery is the usual culprit. But our First Nations people might say the original sin of America was the taking [of the land] and the disruption of our native peoples, McCaulley said.

Then theres the way the metaphor makes use of, not entirely faithfully, the Christian idea of original sin: the idea that all of us are broken in ways we cant fix. Since that goes for individuals as much as for nations, theres nothing all that original, so to speak, about Americas or Australias original sins.

But one thing the metaphor gets right, McCaulley says, is the pervasive nature of sin. It doesnt just describe personal failure, but the disordering of all human relationships. Structural injustice that disadvantages particular people groups is part of that picture.

In the same way that sin in the Christian context impacts every aspect of the human experience, the racism that undergirded slavery still impacts America, he said, citing, for instance, housing discrimination and educational inequality disproportionately experienced by African Americans. This brokenness about our country stalks us from decade to decade, century to century. Unless this sin problem is dealt with in an intentional way, its going to continue to plague us.

No doubt this is a gloomy picture. But it need not be hopeless.

Christianity has, perversely, been used to justify the enslavement of African Americans, to baptise the removal of Aboriginal people from their lands and sometimes Aboriginal children from the care of their families all for their own good. But it has also given victims of historic and present injustice the language to contest their own oppression. Theyve appealed to God for justice: the same God they supposedly share with the slave-master, settler, and other white Christians.

When you call something sinful, youre speaking to a transcendent moral norm. This is something that is clearly outrageous, its not simply because it upsets us. It is wrong on a fundamental level. It offends God himself. Calling it sinful is what it is, McCaulley said.

Protestors marching on the streets against racism or calling for the removal of colonial statues may not typically label what theyre protesting against as sinful. But their instincts are easily translatable into religious concepts. Their rage channels what the Bible calls righteous anger. They want an honest accounting of our failures as a nation and as a people, followed by the desire to change and put things right. Christianity has typically called this repentance and restitution.

But what may be lacking, McCaulley says, is a vision of what comes after the rage, and even the prospect of forgiveness and friendship. Clearly, its too soon to have that conversation. The reckoning and hard work of repair and, in the United States, reparations has barely begun.

But Brooke Prentis hopes that all people can live into the reality of what she calls reconciliation with repentance. Aboriginal peoples know the results of the sin of this nation and we grieve for that, but we stand up for justice and still call all non-indigenous people into relationship even after all the hurt, she said.

For McCaulley, Gods guarantee of ultimate justice allows him to imagine peace with his antagonists. If there is no God, if there is no transcendent moral norm, then lets just get revenge. Why not? Why not burn everything to the ground? he said. But if there is this sense in which there is this moral order to the universe, then maybe there can be this brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity on the other side of what were experiencing now.

Justine Toh is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity, host of the occasional Spiritual Lifehack series on ABC RNs Soul Search and, very occasionally, guest host of ABC RNs God Forbid.

Continued here:

Original sins and racial justice: What's on the other side? - ABC News

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption | MTPR – MTPR

Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption

Montana's U.S. House race looks to be tight and maybe getting tighter. New ads in the Senate race allege corruption and kowtowing to the "liberal mob." And the candidates in that race agree to three debates this fall.

Listen now on Campaign Beat with Sally Mauk, Rob Saldin and Holly Michels.

Sally Mauk Rob, in the U.S. House race Democrat Kathleen Williams continues to outraise her Republican opponent Matt Rosendale, but The Cook Political Report continues to see the races "leaning Republican." And in part, that's because no Democrat has won that seat since 1994. So it's still, I think, Rob, seen as an uphill battle for Williams.

Rob Saldin Yeah, I agree, Sally. You know, both of them are doing well in terms of fundraising, and in fact, they're both among the handful of top-funded candidates in the country, which to me is a clear indication that both the Republicans and Democrats see this one as a competitive election.

Williams is actually doing a little better than Rosendale, but, you know, he's going to have plenty to do what he wants to in the campaign. There was also one poll out this month that showed it all tied up.

But, yeah, my own sense, though, is that Rosendale has to be a slight favorite in this one. All things being equal, Republicans have a significant built-in advantage in Montana.

And plus, Rosendale's been around longer, so he's already been elected statewide as auditor. He ran that high-profile Senate campaign against Jon Tester two years ago. And he's almost, because of all that, certainly got higher name ID than Williams, who I think remains a little bit undefined for a lot of voters. And additionally, one of Williams' strengths as a candidate two years ago was her retail campaigning, and of course, that's not possible this time.

But yet, you know, all that said, the broader backdrop for this election is about as good as it can get for Democrats, and it's not easy to see how things are going to improve all that much for Republicans between now and November, between the pandemic and the economy and President Trump's continued struggles.

And Rosendale, of course, has some weaknesses as a candidate. He sometimes comes off as a bit awkward, and on the issues, he sometimes comes off as pretty strident as an ideologue.

Mauk Rosendale continues to oppose the Affordable Care Act, Rob, and that now provides health insurance for tens of thousands of Montanans.

And that might have been a popular stance for Republicans at one time, but is it now, in the middle of a pandemic to be opposed to something that's providing health insurance for thousands of Montanans?

Saldin Well, yeah, exactly, Sally. I mean, his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, that's actually been one of his most identifiable positions, I'd say. And during his time as state auditor, which is the office tasked with regulating the insurance industry and protecting consumers, he's been right in the middle of it.

He's been a strong opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and as we talked about a couple weeks ago with regard to that Senate campaign, that position just isn't popular with the public anymore like it was a few cycles ago in the aftermath of Obamacare actually being passed. And, now on top of it, we're now in the middle of a pandemic and the various anxieties that that provokes. So this does have a potential, I think, to be a real weakness for Rosendale, and it's certainly one that the Democrats have identified and are trying to exploit.

Mauk Holly, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has a new ad out basically accusing Gov. Steve Bullock of corruption, and the ad accuses Bullock of steering millions of dollars worth of state contracts to a firm that was founded by Bullock's brother. Here's the ad:

Ad "We all know about Steve Bullock' government-run health care plan that will close rural hospitals and raise taxes, but there's more: Bullock has been accused of steering state grants to his brother's firm."

"It turns out a company founded by Bullock's brother received more than $14 million from state agencies."

"Steve Bullock: Steering hospitals away from Montana, and business to his own family. Think about that."

Mauk The ad, Holly, leaves out some important details, and the president of the firm referenced in the ad has demanded that it be taken off the air because, in his opinion, it is so erroneous.

Holly Michels Yeah. Right after this ad started airing - it's Pioneer Technical Services in Butte, which isn't directly named in the ad - but they sent a letter to TV stations around the state who are running it, asking them to take it down.

The letter said that Bullock's brother Bill resigned as CEO from Pioneer in 2004, and has sold his interest in the company to the employees by 2009, which is three years before Bullock was first elected to the governor's office.

I reached out to NRSC, and they said they stand behind the ad. They pointed to these corporate filings that show that Bullock's brother is still chairman of the board at Pioneer.

But Pioneer sent another letter to TV stations again on July 27, again saying the ad was false, misleading and defamatory. They say that Bullock's brother became chair of the board in 2017, and the next year he got a stipend of just $1,500. And they say that aside from this stipend, the governor's brother doesn't make any money from the company and has no financial stake in it. NRSC's trying to say as chairman of the board, he still has direction over it and would have interest in the company doing well.

I did reach out to TV stations that are running the ad. One replied that they got the letter from Pioneer, talked to their lawyers and decided to keep the ad on the air.

I think it's interesting. We did see an iteration of this ad in 2012, when Bullock was a first-time governor candidate, and it was pulled by NBC Montana over claims about money going to Pioneer. At that time, they pulled the ad saying that as attorney general, Bullock had no oversight over the grants the ad talks about.

I think it's unclear at this point. I think next steps, if ads I haven't heard from any other stations that they would take down the ads. Pioneer did warn that they would consider a lawsuit over defamation, so that might be the next step that we see if nothing else changes and this ad keeps airing.

Mauk The thing about ads that sling mud is that sometimes the mud sticks, no matter what the facts are. And, of course, that's the point.

Also this week, Holly, the Bullock campaign fired a young staffer for some offensive tweets he had posted some years ago.

Michels Yeah, this was Evan McCullers, who was a junior staffer who worked on communications for the campaign.

These tweets - in them, he made statements that made light of sexual assault. Some language is homophobic. There were statements that were derogatory toward black people and women. And he was fired just a couple hours after these tweets were surfaced online.

It looks like McCullers was a teenager at the time that these tweets were written, and he released a statement through the campaign after he was let go apologizing for them and saying that he's evolved since making them. But the campaign, you know, they also issued a statement saying the tweets are inappropriate, and once they learned about them, they did let McCullers go.

Mauk Well, Rob, again in the Senate race, Sen. Steve Daines has a new ad featuring Wibaux Sheriff Shane Harrington. Here's that ad:

Ad "These liberal attacks on law enforcement are a real threat to public safety, but Steve Bullock refuses to stand up for law and order."

"Bullock's campaign is being bankrolled by the liberal mob. That's why Bullock's been silent while left-wing radicals try to defund our police, erase our history and turn America into a socialist country."

"Steve Bullock doesn't share our Montana values: He's with the liberal mob."

"I'm Steve Daines and I approve this message."

Mauk And whew, Rob, this ad has all the catch phrases: socialism, liberal mob and left-wing radicals.

Saldin Right? Yeah, it's a real doozy. I'm a little skeptical, though, that this one is going to stick because it just seems a little over the top. You know, maybe this is the kind of thing that would work on a candidate that no one has heard of, but Bullock is well-known after his now nearly two terms as governor, one term as attorney general, the state's top law enforcement position. So this ad, which features all these images of just full-fledged rioting, it just doesn't seem consistent with what we know of Bullock. It just strains credulity a bit too much, it seems to me.

It also strikes me as unintentionally funny in its assertion that we should be scandalized by Bullock's silence in the face of the far left's excesses, right? Not the Democratic Party's left flank, mind you, but the violent rioters depicted in this ad. It's just a bit ironic, because Sen. Daines has - for nearly four years now - maintained his own silence in the face of routine outrages from President Trump. To my knowledge, he's never leveled any direct criticism of the president. And unlike the so-called liberal mob that this ad is trying to connect to Bullock, Daines is undeniably linked to Trump, right? They have this close personal relationship, Trump is a leader of Daines' party. So it's a little amusing to me to see the Daines campaign condemning someone for cowardly silence.

Mauk Holly, it looks like there will be three debates between Gov. Bullock and Sen. Daines this fall.

Michels Yeah, we saw this week the Bullock campaign agreed to three of the four debates that Daines had proposed. He came out less than 24 hours after the June primary, calling for Bullock to agree to participate in these four debates.

There'll be a Montana Broadcasters Association debate coming up Aug. 8, which is pretty soon here, a Montana PBS debate Sept. 28 and a Montana Television Network debate Oct. 10.

I think Daines' campaign was critical for Bullock's camp not expecting a Montana Chamber of Commerce debate.

I do think debates are going to be pretty important this year, with the coronavirus and campaigns limited from hosting in-person events like they would in a normal year. This gives voters a chance to see the candidates at their, you know, on TV at home, and sort of see how they interact together, so I think those will hopefully be pretty heavily watched this year.

Mauk Holly, there's been yet another campaign finance complaint filed in the governor's race, and this time it's by the Montana Democratic Party against Republican Greg Gianforte.

Michels Yeah. What this complaint is saying is that Gianforte coordinated with a political action committee to work around campaign contribution limits that a governor's campaign has.

It's referencing an invitation to a campaign event where Gianforte told people if they'd already maxed out giving to his campaign, they could give to this political action group.

It's going to be up to the commissioner of political practices to determine if that counts as illegal coordination, but I think the point of these complaints...

I don't think individual people and voters really track them much or watch what happens with them. It feels like, to me, sometimes this process is more about getting coverage of a candidate being accused of wrongdoing than the actual complaint itself.

There are, of course, genuine findings of candidates breaking ethics laws. We saw Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney get dinged with the maximum fine for participating in a campaign call from his official office. But we also saw, right after that and while the complaint was still filed and pending, a lot of attack ads about that.

I think, you know, looking at so far this year, just looking at campaign finance complaints: There's been 11 that are still pending, 19 already resolved, so it gives you an idea of the magnitude of how many we've seen.

It's also interesting to look at who's bringing these complaints. They're most often brought by political opponents, or political parties or figures adjacent to them. It's not members of the public really using this process to ask questions about things they think that might not be compliant with the law.

So you see a lot of coverage. I'm not sure if voters are really tracking the granular details of each individual complaint and the findings, but more seeing it when they pop up in campaign advertising.

Mauk Rob, here we are, just three months out from the election, and we're in the middle of a raging pandemic and fire season is just beginning. I wonder if voters are so overwhelmed, they just want 2020 and the election to be over.

Saldin Maybe, Sally, but it's a little hard to escape.

I actually think there is a higher level of engagement than normal - and part of that may have to do with people having more time on their hands - but we're also just living through such a crazy and incredibly politicized time right now, it's hard to get away from the politics.

And that's clearly immersed itself in the pandemic, and debates over masks and opening schools and everything else: it's all politicized. With that heightened level of engagement and awareness, though, I also get the sense that we're looking at an electorate in which there are just fewer undecided voters than normal.

So my sense is people are pretty dug in, even if they are paying more attention, or are just forced into not finding a place to get away from the politics of everything right now.

Mauk We're going to keep following it all from a safe distance, of course, and Holly and Rob, stay cool and I'll talk to you next week.

Campaign Beat is a weekly political analysis program produced by Montana Public Radio. Campaign Beat features University of Montana political science professor and Mansfield Center fellow Rob Saldin, and Lee Newspapers Capitol Reporter Holly Michels and host Sally Mauk.

What are "Montana Values"?

Every campaign season, we hear a lot about Montana Values. Things like liberty, opportunity, and love of public land. Ideas that supposedly define Montanans. But when elections come around, that language seems to do just as much to drive people apart.

For our elections coverage, our news team wants to know what values matter to you, and how candidates are talking about them in the run up to November. What do you think of when you hear Montana Values - and why?

Call us at 406-640-8933 and leave a message to share your thoughts.

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Campaign Beat: Money, Mobs And Corruption | MTPR - MTPR

The Struggle Against Dalit Oppression in India – Jacobin magazine

Review of Anand Teltumbde, Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva (Navayana, 2018)

Anand Teltumbde is a man of many shades. A senior professor at the Goa Institute of Management who identifies as a Marxist, Teltumbde has multiple qualifications: a degree in engineering from Nagpurs Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, a management degree from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and a doctorate in cybernetics from the University of Mumbai.

But his public persona is that of a Dalit writer and intellectual, and a long-time activist concerned with Dalit and civil-liberties issues. In his long-running column for the Economic and Political Weekly, Teltumbde has often been critical of Indias existing Dalit leadership. He recently turned seventy in a Mumbai prison, having been taken into police custody three months earlier under preposterous terrorism-related charges filed by the National Investigation Agency.

His book Republic of Caste is a collection of essays, reworked for publication, that take up a set of key issues concerning the relationship between caste and class, and assesses where Dalits stand today. Teltumbde develops his own perspective on Dalit emancipation through a critique of Indias mainstream communist and Ambedkaritepolitical movements.

In a chapter on the relationship between Marxism and the Ambedkarite movements, Teltumbde explores the gulf between two currents that should be allies, but are quite often hostile to each other. The overwhelming majority of Dalits are working class, or rural proletarians and semi-proletarians. But there has been very little serious collaboration between the Dalit liberation movements and the Indian left.

Teltumbde argues that Marx was aware of caste as a major impediment to Indias progress; both he and Lenin stressed the need for Marxists to focus on objective reality. He criticizes the approach of the Indian communists to the caste question, which was shaped by two factors: practical and intellectual. One was the fact that the bulk of left-wing leaders were upper caste. An unconscious Brahminism made them ignore the special oppression of Dalits.

At a theoretical level, they sought to explain caste or explain it away through a crude application of Marxs base-superstructure metaphor. Their problem in making sense of Indias caste system was similar to the one facing Marxists in other parts of the world when dealing with questions of race, ethnicity, or gender forms of social oppression that cannot simply be subsumed under a reductionist class approach.

As Teltumbde shows, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, the most influential leader of the struggle for Dalit emancipation, demonstrated the possibility of class- and caste-based movements coming together. He tried to organize trade unions, formed an Independent Labour Party (ILP, named after the British party of the same name), and urged the communist-led Girni Kamgar Union to address the question of caste segregation in employment, which would help foster class unity on terms favorable to the most oppressed groups.

It is Indias communist organizations that Teltumbde indicts. Over the last thirty years or so, different sectors of the communist movement using that term in the widest possible sense have concerned themselves with Dalits and made demands relevant to their social condition. However, there remains a strong belief among them that caste as a special oppression can be solved within the limits of capitalism, through some sort of equalization process.

Teltimbde appears to side partly with radicals within the left-wing movements who want to overturn capitalism, and partly with Dalits who argue that caste oppression must be integral to any fight for emancipation. But he does so within a Marxist framework, suggesting that Marxists should see class unity as something that develops through a struggle against an enemy class, rather than as a pre-existing reality around which a movement can be built. In the course of that struggle, there will always be differences that have to be addressed and negotiated.

However, the points missing from his argument, or the simplifications that he makes, prevent him from proceeding further in his critique of Indias several communist parties. One such factor should be stressed here.

The bulk of the communist movement in India falls into one of two camps. First of all, there are those advocating for a basically parliamentary road, however dressed up with revolutionary rhetoric it may be. They are committed to a two-stage theory of revolution, according to which the enemy in the first stage is imperialism, semi-feudalism, and only particular sections of capital, rather than capitalism as such.

Second of all, there are those advocating for a Maoist-style revolution rooted in the countryside, favoring insurrection over parliamentary politics, but also see imperialism, semi-feudalism, and comprador capitalists as the enemy. The section of the far left which is oriented towards the urban working class and mass struggle is much smaller, and its arguments have very little impact on the political scene.

As a result, Indian Marxist analysis of caste has most often related to the problem of semi-feudalism. This means that a blindness to caste divisions within the working class has persisted, because they have trouble perceiving caste as something that survives under modern capitalism, rather than as a relic of semi-feudal conditions.

Even when Marxists formally acknowledged that such divisions exist, they do not take seriously the need for strategies to combat them in order to unify the class. As Teltumbde himself points out, if the communist movement had taken caste seriously from the beginning, a separate Dalit movement should not have been necessary.

Teltumbde also takes a critical look at Dr Ambedkar himself, and those who claim the mantle of Ambedkarism. He examines Ambedkars philosophical pragmatism, relating it to his teacher John Dewey, and presents Ambedkar as a kind of Fabian socialist. This explains his attitude to Marxian communism critical of their methods, while sometimes sympathetic to certain goals.

In the 1930s, when Ambedkar believed that reform within Hinduism to ensure equality for Dalits was not possible, he turned to class as a category, launching the Independent Labour Party (ILP). But the actual ILP candidates put up in the elections of 1937 mostly came from the Mahar sub-caste among Dalits: it was unable to attract support from other sections of the working class, even among Dalits, showing the gap between the partys ambition and its achievement.

Later, in 1946, when Ambedkar proposed a model of state socialism in the tract States and Minorities, he again came to use the language of class, although he wrote the treatise itself on behalf of the United Scheduled Castes Federation. Ambedkars differences with the communists also included his approach to the state, and to education. He was opposed to any violent revolution, hoping for change without bloodshed, and expected the educated middle-class intelligentsia to take the lead.

In spite of these differences, Teltumbde suggests, Marxism remained a reference point for Ambedkar, even if it was only to argue that his methods were better than those of the Marxists. This implies that he saw the Marxists as his competitors, albeit inferior ones.

One conflict zone between them was in Bombay, where both Ambedkar and the communists were active. In the citys textile mills, communists dominated the powerful union for half a century. Dalits found themselves debarred from jobs in the better-paid weaving section, as the non-Dalit workers believed they would be polluted if they touched threads that Dalits had woven.

As late as 1938, Ambedkar was still raising this issue. One would search in vain for any communist intervention here. The assumption that class unity could be achieved only by sweeping the caste fault lines under the carpet would eventually come back to haunt the communists. As Teltumbde notes, they tended to locate caste in the superstructure, even though caste locations were very often linked to production.

On the other hand, he is deeply critical of latter-day Ambedkarite groups for their preoccupation with electoral politics. They were as opportunistic as the mainstream electoral CPs, and were quite aggressively anti-communist, as well as hero-worshipping Ambedkar. He argues that Ambedkar himself would have firmly rejected this approach.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages in India, memes have appeared on social media claiming that Indian doctors cannot treat patients properly because of reservations, which have supposedly eliminated the meritorious. This is a reference to the policy of affirmative action: the reservation of places in publicly funded schools and colleges for a range of socially deprived, historically oppressed and marginalized groups, with similar arrangements for public-sector jobs.

As Teltumbde correctly says, any discussion of caste in India soon enough becomes a discussion of reservations. One might gather the impression from such debates that casteism would not be a serious issue were it not for reservations.

Teltumbdes take is a complex one. He is sharply critical of the elite and forward caste critics of reservations, who talk of merit, ignoring the social hierarchies that surround each individual. He notes that opponents of reservations ignore the fact that their much-revered Hindu social order was based on reservations of the worst kind. Brahmins did not have to display any merit to assume dominance over society; the untouchables did not have to commit any crime to be condemned for generations to a societal hell.

At the same time, Teltumbde is skeptical about reservations based on caste, albeit for reasons very different from those of the Brahmanical elite. He points out that the logic of having a set of reserved seats in local, provincial, or central legislatures would have made sense only if there had been a separate electorate. Dalits being a small fragment of the population, even in reserved seats, and especially at the higher levels, the Dalit candidates most likely to win are those approved by the bourgeois parties, which are themselves dominated by the upper castes.

As a result, the policy of reservations, instead of becoming a way to build a strong Dalit fighting force, has led to the co-option of a small layer of Dalit politicians. He argues that Panchayati Raj a system of local self-government in rural districts has become de facto ruled by the dominant castes.

However, there are problems with Teltumbdes arguments about reservations. It would be one thing if all the places available through the reservations policy had been filled up throughout India. But as Maroona Murmu of Kolkatas Jadavpur University has shown, reservations have not been properly utilized, in spite of the egalitarian promises of the Indian constitution. Take one example Murmu gives from the higher-education system of West Bengal: in the 201415 academic year, out of 49,217 professors, just 3,037 came from Scheduled Castes (6.16 percent), and a mere 451 from Scheduled Tribes (less than 1 percent).

The core argument Teltumbe makes is for a strategy that brings class and caste together. This does not mean endorsing the fakery of economic reservation, whereby the authorities are to reserve seats for the poor, rather than simply on caste grounds. Since the reservation policy is intended to deal with forms of social exclusion that are similar to racism, it is not related to poverty. If poor students lack the necessary resources, the answer is to provide more funding for the education system.

Teltumbde believes that there is a need to reform reservation strategies at the very least. If caste has to be annihilated as Ambedkar demanded in a famous pamphlet then a caste-based reservation policy, operating in an environment where only untouchability is abolished, not the caste system itself, does not really seek to get rid of social inequality and oppression.

Dalit intellectuals and activists had hoped that the untouchable castes who were at the forefront of the original struggles led by Ambedkar would forge a broader unity among various oppressed Dalit subcastes. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is based on this conception the term Bahujan referred to all non-elite castes. In practice, however, instead of building such unity, those castes projected themselves as superior and tended to concentrate advantages for their own benefit.

Although the BSP has been the most successful of all the attempts to build up a Dalit-based electoral party, it has disproportionately favored its core component, the subcaste of Jatavs/Chamars. The Hindutva forces identified this limitation better than anyone else. By supporting politicians of non-Jatav Dalit castes, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was able to eat dramatically into the electoral base of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

One chapter of Teltumbdes book contains a valuable discussion of the BSP. It is not a Dalit party by self-definition: its name expresses its hope to constitute a majority bloc that would be wider than Dalits. In practice, even in UP where the BSP has been a regular fixture in coalition governments, it has not succeeded in winning support from shudras at the bottom of the caste hierarchy (now categorized among Other Backwards Classes or OBCs). Recent attempts to enlist Brahmins and other elite groups to the partys side have eroded the Bahujan identity.

Teltumbde does not make the same arguments as right-wing critics of the BSP, and points out the double standards of those critics, who never subject the BSPs rivals to the same harsh scrutiny. However, he believes that the BSP has largely ceased to be a vehicle that can truly fight for Dalit emancipation.

In several chapters, Teltumbde takes on the role of the Indian state, examining its violence towards Dalits and its handling of dissent, even though it routinely claims to be the worlds largest democracy. His book contains a detailed account of the Khairlanji massacre of September 2006. An upper caste mob murdered an entire family of Dalit Mahars, the Bhotmanges: the women were paraded naked and gang-raped before being killed, the genitals of the two boys were crushed with stones, and all the bodies were thrown callously into a canal.

In contrast with many other such cases, the government had to take action of some kind because of protests initiated by local Dalit women and taken up by Dalits elsewhere. Having been forced to assign the case to a fast-track lower court, the government made sure of the appointment of a public prosecutor who would present a weakened brief.

This court was supposed to apply the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, which Rajiv Gandhis government had passed under pressure from Congress supporters among minority groups (Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims). The legislation strengthened the penalties for discriminatory acts of various kinds. However, the court concluded that there was no caste angle to the crime, and so the Act did not apply.

Nor did it see any grounds to consider outrage to womens modesty (Victorian legalese for sexual violence). The court also ruled that the crime was not premeditated. As Dalit organizations and civil rights groups argued, all three findings flew in the face of the evidence.

Although several fact-finding reports had revealed that between 40 and 60 people were involved in the assaults, only 11 faced charges. The six who were sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by the High Court of Bombay. It is not even clear if the principal culprits were put on trial.

In his analysis of the case, Teltumbde makes a number of points. The Bhotmange family had broken caste codes; they were assertive, and hence they had to be put in their place. At each stage, there were Dalits (Mahars) present in the administration and the local police force, and among the doctors who performed and supervised the autopsies. For Teltumbde, this shows that merely having some Dalits in important posts will not address the systemic oppression and violence suffered by Dalits as a whole.

Indias social transformation since independence had turned rural Dalits into a part of the agricultural proletariat. Violence against Dalits therefore often has a dual character, with a specific caste-based motivation and a broader class-based one, buttressed by the sense on the part of rural capitalists that Dalits in particular are deserving of such violent treatment.

Lax in its handling of violence against Dalits, the Indian state is quick to deploy repression against them for dissent. The authorities frequently label Dalits and other groups notably Adivasis as Maoist or Naxalite subversives if they protest about anything, using anti-sedition laws inherited from the colonial state, along with the more recent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Arrests of Dalit activists under these laws are commonplace: many spend years in prison awaiting trial, denied access to bail, only to be released when the courts find them innocent. Teltumbdes own arrest under the UAPA is yet another confirmation of how accurate his indictment of the Indian state is.

Violence against Dalits is greatest in Narendra Modis own state of Gujarat. The author discusses how Gujarat became the region where Hindutva forces succeeded in winning support from Dalits, despite their own aggressive casteism. But the states experience also shows how Dalit politics can be shaped in a different way.

It is Dalits who flay and dispose of dead cattle. In July 2016, a so-called cow-protection group assaulted a Dalit family at Una because they were skinning a dead cow. Dalits, led by a young man, Jignesh Mewani, responded by boycotting this form of work, as well as the cleaning of sewers. They sought to earn their livelihoods in alternate ways by demanding land from the state government. The state government had formally allotted over 160,000 acres of land to Dalits three decades earlier, but the land was never actually handed over.

The agitation led to the immediate transfer of 300 acres, which did have a positive symbolic impact. As Teltumbde reminds us, while Ambedkar himself stressed the importance of land rights, the mainstream Ambedkarite movements have not pushed for this as a route to greater emancipation. By the end of 2019, Dalits had received about three thousand acres of land slight progress, albeit at great cost.

Elsewhere, the author explores the arguments put forward by a section of the Dalit middle-class intelligentsia, who depicts neoliberalism as a caste-neutral system. The Bahujan Samaj Party voted in favor of the proposal to open up Indias retail sector to foreign capital, which would allow companies like Walmart to enter the country. Defending this move, these intellectuals suggested that foreign investment would be beneficial for Dalit entrepreneurs, as it was not casteist.

Teltumbde rebuts the claim that neoliberalism has been or will be comparatively beneficial for Dalit capitalists. He looks at sectors where Dalit capitalism is meant to have been a success, suggesting that these are simply extensions of the old, caste-based Dalit occupations. And as Teltumbde points out, the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has acknowledged that there is really no level playing field, even among capitalists, by seeking to have the reservation policy applied. He compares the rhetorical function of Dalit capitalism in India to that of black capitalism in the United States, as a diversion from the real struggle for emancipation.

Teltumbde directly confronts the attempt by Hindutva forces to co-opt Ambedkar. M. S. Golwalkar was the second of the Supreme Leaders (Sarsanghchalak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the architect of its key theoretical ideas. When we look at Golwalkars writings, it is easy to see how he identified Muslims, Christians, and communists as the enemy. But Golwalkar and his co-thinkers also had to bring the Dalits into the fold, in order to construct a homogeneous Hindu majority against these alleged enemies. This posed a serious problem.

When Balasaheb Deoras was chief of the RSS, the groups leaders attempted to win over Dalits. In pursuit of this goal, they put about a fable concerning the alleged friendship between the RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and Ambedkar, and attempted to depict Ambedkar as having been hostile to Muslims and communists, and as a champion of Hindus. In response to this, Teltumbde cites Ambedkars 1945 work, Pakistan or the Partition of India, where he wrote the following:

If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the Hindus say, Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity.

Teltumbde presents a wealth of information to show that the practice of the RSSBJP is entirely at odds with Ambedkars thinking, and utterly hostile to any notion of genuine equality with or for Dalits.

He also puts forward stinging condemnations of the BJPs principal rivals, the once-dominant Indian National Congress and the recently formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He criticizes the AAP, which mobilized support on an anti-corruption platform, for refusing to face up to caste and capitalism as structural realities in India, and attacks the Congress for its historic opportunism towards Dalits.

The party has treated them as vote banks, to be placated with tokenistic measures, without ever being allowed to stand on their own feet or to achieve meaningful equality. Teltumbde sharply disputes the Congress claim to have represented Dalit interests: despite decades of post-independence Congress rule, about nine Dalits in ten still lead impoverished lives as landless laborers, small-scale farmers, village artisans, slum-dwelling casual workers, and peddlers in the informal sector of the urban economy.

As the author recalls, Mahatma Gandhi rejected the idea of a separate electorate for Dalits. His 1932 agreement with Ambedkar, the Poona Pact, made Dalit representation subject to the votes of their oppressors, the upper castes, through reserved seats. The Simon Commission had proposed separate electorates, which would have meant Dalit voters alone would elect the Dalit candidates. Gandhi saw this as a blow to the Hindu community and religion. Bringing nation and religion together long before the current Hindutva leaders, he went on hunger strike, demanding an end to the separate electorate for Dalits.

Gandhis supporters threatened Ambedkar, warning that if their leader died, they would take revenge on people from the Depressed Class people. The result was the Pact, which Abedkar felt compelled to sign. It increased the number of Dalit seats; however, since the electorate was a common one, Dalits were mostly dependent on support from voters and parties of higher castes. This has remained the case to the present day.

Republic of Caste, on a careful reading, presents the reader with a picture that differs sharply from two forms of congealed orthodoxy: the rhetoric of liberal modernization, which deems Indian-style neoliberalism to be necessary for progress, or the kind of Marxism that presents India as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial economy.

Some questions remain. The most important is his critique of identity politics, and his desire that all subcastes of Dalits should be consolidated into a class. Yet Dalits are socially differentiated: as Teltumdbe himself records elsewhere, some 4 percent of the Dalits form a middle class. So who is a Dalit? The identity is actually a political project, as is the BSPs Bahujan.

Secondly, after years of Dalit feminism, it is disappointing that Teltumbde does not examine the relations between class, caste, and gender, apart from his examination of repression, rape, and sexual violence. Economic and Political Weekly has published several important essays on this triad, including a dialogue between Gopal Guru, Sharmila Rege and Chhaya Datar.

Overall, however, this is a careful work, which distinguishes between those the author sees as opponents within a zone of possible engagement, like the BSP and the Indian left, and those he considers forces of exploitation and oppression, namely Hindutva, the mainstream bourgeois parties, and capitalism. It should become a touchstone for discussion among radical Dalit organizations and sectors of the Marxist left.

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The Struggle Against Dalit Oppression in India - Jacobin magazine

Group of youth take on province to protect climate – Anishinabek News

A group of seven young people from across Ontario are hoping to proceed with a lawsuit that would force the Ontario Government to increase its targets for reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Back row: Shelby Gagnon, Aroland First Nation and Thunder Bay (third from left), Shaelyn Wabegijig, Chippewas of Rama and Timiskaming First Nations (fourth from left). Front row: Beze Gray, Aamjiwnaang (far right). Photo supplied

By Colin Graf

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION A group of seven young people, including three First Nation youth, lead efforts to prevent the Government of Ontario from weakening its climate change targets.

The young group, backed by the environmental law charity Ecojustice, are suing the government becausethey believe that lowering targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will violate portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protect rights to life, liberty, and security of the person, and are therefore unconstitutional.

Lawyers representing the youth argued in court earlier in July againstgovernment lawyers trying to convince the court to strike down the lawsuit before the case is heard in full.No date has been set for a decision on the governments motion.

Beze Gray, 25, of Aamjiwnaang First Nation, says she is excited to join the case after several years of environmental activism in her community, which is located next to the cluster of refineries and petrochemical plants near Sarnia known as Canadas Chemical Valley.

Since I started in environmental work, people have been asking me, Why dont you take this to court? she says in an interview.

Citing financial support from Ecojustice, Gray is pleased she and the other applicants, some as young as 12, can finally get their day in court.

In 2018, Premier Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives repealed what Ecojustice calls relatively strong greenhouse gas reduction targets, set by the former Liberal government.By weakening the targets, the government will allow significantly more greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change-related impacts such as heatwaves, floods, fires, and poor air quality, the group claims.

This court case echoes events around the world, according to Ecojustice lawyer Fraser Thomson.

Our young clients have seen and heard politicians promise things before, and theyve continued to see broken promises, and a failure to act on climate change.They are coming to the court in the same way youth from around the world are going to their own courts, as a last hope, he tells Anishinabek News.

The case came to be through connections some of the group made through the Fridays for the Future group, which organized student school strikes to protest against government inaction on climate change around the world. One of the youth, Sophia Mathur of Sudbury, Ont., was the first to stage a climate-change school outside of Europe, says Thomson. Members of the group saw there were legal cases in other countries, so, after a conversation between them and Ecojustice, the case against the Ontario government was launched.

Were in a climate emergency. The best available science is telling us we have 10 years to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions before we risk locking the planet into irreversible climate change, Thomson says. We have to act very quickly and our clients think going to court is one way to force this issue.

Georgian College Anishinaabemowin and Program Development graduate says her environmentalism comes from growing up feeling that she lived somewhere different situated amid the pipe structures, cooling towers, and flare stacks of the Chemical Valley.

What are those things that shot out fire? What are the things (smokestacks)that I thought were cloud-makers? What a pipeline was. I used to use them (pipelines)as bridges to cross the creek, Gray recollects wondering as a child. My parents would take me off reserve and we would see different towns and would see that not everyone had a refinery in their backyard.

At a young age, Gray and family were forced to evacuate their homes because of a chemical leak, but the next day in school, it was clear only the Aamjiwnaang students had that kind of experience the previous night.

Grays sister Vanessa was acquitted of charges with two other activists after being accused of criminal mischief when the Enbridge Pipeline Line 9 was shut off near Sarnia in 2015. More recently, Vanessa has worked with the University of Toronto to create a cell phone app that enables Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia residents to report chemical spills and leaks quickly and easily to the Ontario Spills Action Centre.

The young group is facing an uphill battle with the court case, admits Thomson.Similar cases have been launched around the world, he says, but Canadian courts have yet to rule on the issue.

The facts matter; the window in which governments and societies have to fix the climate crisis is rapidly narrowing, and I think judges understand that. Judges understand this is not a battle about science, this is about either the government accepting the scientific consensus on climate change or not.

Thomson thinks his clients have a good shot at winning their case.

Shaelyn Wabegijig of Peterborough grew up in Chippewas of Rama First Nation and joined the lawsuitfor everyone, for future generations and for our non-human relatives.

If I ever bring children into this world, I want to be able to share healthy air, land and water, a safe climate, and my culture. As a member of the Caribou Clan, my cultural identity is interconnected with Ontarios boreal caribou, and it risks disappearing if this species is wiped out, she says.

Another plaintiff,Shelby Gagnon, 23, Anishinaabe of Thunder Bay, says she is worried about how climate change will impact food sovereignty for Indigenous peoples across Canada.

This makes me sad for myself and for future generations, who may one day be unable to harvest traditional medicines.

Excerpt from:

Group of youth take on province to protect climate - Anishinabek News

The true crime documentary crushing it on Netflix – Looper

Over a period of roughly 18 months, Heemeyer equipped the Komatsu with a full complement of concrete-reinforced steel armor, external cameras, and automatic weaponry. He detailed his progress and his belief that he was being actively assisted in his endeavor by God in a series of disturbing audio tapes of whichTread makes liberal use.

On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer climbed inside the cockpit of his creation and unleashed it on Granby. For over two hours, he tooled around the town at a leisurely pace straight-up demolishing any and every building associated with his tormentors: Granby's town hall and police station, a bank, the offices of the local newspaper, a hardware store, and more. The police were basically powerless to stop him (you can't really slow down a bulldozer with a handgun), and mostly tried to stay out of his way.

Heemeyer's rampage only ended when the Komatsu became stuck in the basement of a building Heemeyer had just destroyed. He used a sidearm to end his own life as police closed in; his was the only death to occur that day. In total, Heemeyer had caused upwards of $7 million worth of damage, and inflicted psychological wounds on the town and its residents that linger to this day (viaDenver Post).

Heemeyer's story inspired Russian film director Andrey Zvyagintsev to make the 2014 filmLeviathan, one of the most acclaimed pictures to come out of that country in the last decade. The real story, though, is more bizarre than anything that any screenwriter could have dreamed up andTread lays it all out in fascinating and engaging fashion. The flick is available to stream right now on Netflix.

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The true crime documentary crushing it on Netflix - Looper

Right-wing militias warned of excessive federal power. Where are they now? – Salon

Militias and many other Second Amendment advocates have long argued that their primary desire to own firearms often, many of them is rooted in a need to protect themselves and their families from a tyrannical federal government, or to discourage the government from becoming tyrannical in the first place.

But with the mayor of a major U.S. city warning that "tyranny and dictatorship" have already arrived on the streets in the shape of unidentified federal troops using questionable tactics militia groups appear reluctant to throw their lot in with protesters. In fact, many have been supporting government action to suppress peaceful demonstrators.

Certainly the scenes in Portland have alarmed civil liberties groups: Heavily armed and camouflaged federal officers, wearing no name tags or other insignia, are on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and have teargassed and arrested seemingly peaceful protesters with little or no provocation. President Donald Trump has said similar forces are coming to other citiesmany run by Democrats.

To some, it may look exactly like what the militias have been warning of.

As a scholar of the U.S. domestic militia movement, I have seen in recent months a new divide emerging in these groups.

Some, often calling themselves the "boogaloo movement," see the current political unrest as an opportunity to wrest power from an overbearing federal government. Others support police and their enforcement of strict law and order, even if that means authorities using powerful weapons and overwhelming force.

Shifting online dynamics

Assessing what these groups are doing, and how they are discussing recent events, has become more difficult for observers like me in recent weeks. On June 30, Facebook announced it had removed hundreds of accounts and groups allegedly related to the "boogaloo movement."

The move came in the wake of several arrests of alleged boogaloo adherents across the country, including three in Nevada accused of plotting to "firebomb" federal land and one in Texas accused of killing one police officer and critically injuring another.

Boogaloo groups still have a social media presence and, until recently when the portion of the site they used was closed, a large presence on the Reddit discussion site, where comments are loosely regulated and people can post anonymously.

Now the movement's public face is smaller and harder to find without insider knowledge. For instance, until recently it was common to see groups with the words "big igloo" in their names, a play on the word "boogaloo." After Facebook's crackdown, some groups are using the word "icehouse" or other synonyms that may not be as obvious. They are therefore harder for algorithms to find, but also for people to find whether to observe or to join in.

Some 'back the boog' social media groups are sharing memes like this, warning of government exercising too much power. Big Doc's Icehouse Bonanza/Facebook

"Backing the boog"

The groups who "back the boogaloo" imply, or even outright declare, that the U.S. is no longer a free country, and generally call for supporters to oppose, violently if necessary, federal forces and the government they represent.

In the days after George Floyd's death, I saw some of these groups call for members to participate in protests opposing police violence. But I have not seen similar calls in response to federal officers' violence in Portland.

That may change if federal forces do appear in other places, especially areas geographically closer to active "back the boog" supporters. It is also possible that the groups are discussing protests or other actions in less public ways, in private messages or on platforms like Parler, that have marketed themselves as friendlier toward a variety of conservative views.

"Backing the blue"

There are still militia members who support police, often called "back the blue" groups. Commentators have observed that silence from them and other Second Amendment supporters certainly seems to be hypocritical, at best, and possibly supportive of tyranny in the current context.

That's not the way they see it. They argue that one of the few legitimate functions of the federal government is to protect citizens from others who might infringe on their rights or safety. They support police who say that Portland authorities have failed to protect regular people from violent protesters.

That's also what these groups claimed happened in Seattle's autonomous zone though they rely on news sources that describe the protesters as inherently dangerous and hampering business and free association. They seemingly ignore or discount other reports that these characterizations are exaggerated. In my research, I found that militia members were likely to exclusively trust sources like Fox News or even more conservative sites for their information, and recent data confirms that such sources may strongly shape viewers' understanding of political and other events.

Federal officers beat and pepper-spray a Navy veteran standing in peaceful demonstration.

Mistaken perceptions?

This view of protesters as violent is amplified by some "back the blue" members' belief that the demonstrators are "Marxist" members of antifa, a mostly nonviolent leaderless collective movement generally opposing fascism.

For example, one Facebook group shared a video of Christopher David, the Navy veteran beaten by federal officers in Portland, talking about his experience. A commentator responded, "The end of the video tell[s] the tale, he's going to raise money for [Black Lives Matter]! He is a liar he went there to stand with his commie comrades."

Scholarship on conservative groups argues that they use anti-communist language to cast political opponents as not real Americans who have thus have forfeited any protections U.S. citizens should have.

Anti-liberal rhetoric

Some other "back the blue" members see hypocrisy in liberals, noting that few, if any, on the left objected when federal officers killed LaVoy Finicum during the 2016 standoff between federal officials and armed supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy during a land dispute elsewhere in Oregon.

There are sharing pages like one on a well-known conservative satire site that suggests the same Oregon authorities opposing federal officers tolerate violent behavior from protesters because of "identity politics" the idea that certain groups favored by liberals, in this case, Black people, are held to a different and more lax standard.

Image shared on Facebook of a modified Gadsden flag.

Several Facebook pages shared an image of a modified Gadsden flag, with a Black Lives Matter fist and promising "we will tread" as "proof" that Portland protesters would take away others' rights, including the right to bear arms, if given the chance and thus do not deserve protection themselves. One comment in support of such a post read, "I['m] glad to see I'm not the only person happy to see these commies being snatched up and dragged away. Yes, I know that this could just as easily be turned around and that we could also be dragged away in broad daylight. But if they aren't stopped now, and they do somehow manage to gain complete power, we'll get dragged away anyways. Better them than us, before it's too late."

Federal intervention has not stopped the Portland protests from growing, but some analysts expect Trump to increase the response in an attempt to appeal to his supporters as the country heads into the November election. Many people fear that move would spark violence.

The "back the blue" militia members generally respect law and order enough to not fulfill their threats of violence or criminal action but the "back the boog" groups may not be so restrained. The "back the blue" groups may also act if federal action escalates, and members believe they are needed or useful to help defend the interests of average citizens.

Amy Cooter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Right-wing militias warned of excessive federal power. Where are they now? - Salon

Picking a premier: Q&A with Andrew Furey – CBC.ca

With the race for the leadership of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Party winding down, both candidates sat down for interviews with The St. John's Morning Show.

Belowis John Andrew Furey'stake on what lies ahead if he is chosen to be the next leader and in turn inherits the role ofpremier of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Furey spoke withhost Krissy Holmes about N.L.'s $16-billion debt, the province's relationship with Ottawa, and why he thinks he's the leader needed right now.

John Abbott'sinterviewcan be found here.

Online voting for Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador members and supporters started Tuesday and runs until Monday at noonNT. The party will announce its new leader Monday.

Krissy Holmes: As this race winds down, we're contending with $16 billion in debt. We're more than $2 billion short this year alone. What do you think is the way through this financial mess?

Andrew Furey: Well, before I tackle that question, Krissy, I'd like to take this opportunity just to pass along my condolences to the Todd McLean family and to the entire community of the great Northern Peninsula for the recent loss. With respect to the deficit and debt, I mean they're overwhelming. I mean, to borrow Premier [Clyde] Wells's words, there is no sense in sugarcoating this. We are in a tough fiscal and financial situation right here, right now. But we can't lose sight of the fact that this is a global economic crisis and we are one of many facing similar levels of debt and deficit.

That means that we need to take this opportunity right now to put it together, strong strategies to deal with the debt and deficit in the short, medium and long term and in the short term, frankly, there is no path forward without a robust, healthy, strong relationship with Ottawa and that's not to say that we're not firm in our negotiations and our back and forth with Ottawa. But it means that we need to work with them to help stabilize the ship to help get Newfoundland and Labrador into a safe port so that we're able to look internally at our own structural deficit so that we can develop medium-term strategies in order to right the ship for the long term.

It's certainly challenging timing every other province is feeling the pinch right now, too. So, I mean, the argument could be made that this province has had plenty of time to get its act together. I mean, can we really just rely on Ottawa to fix this?

We can spend all kinds of time looking in the rear-view mirror, but like handling a patient that has a medical problem in front of you now, there is no sense looking at bad behaviours. You need to look forward and look at it in terms of solutions. And that's where I'm focused. Of course we could have changed things along the way but again that's water under the bridge. We need to look forward to create solutions and I think the solutions involve Ottawa. I don't believe there is a path forward without Ottawa right here, right now. I think we're very lucky to be part of a strong Canadian federation. And as I've said before, we've contributed financially, we've contributed culturally to this federation and I believe in the concept of a federation and now it's time for the centre to help us in tough times.

What would you be asking for from Ottawa specifically?

I think we need help with looking at stabilizing electricity rates. [Federal Finance] Minister [Bill] Morneau has already given his guarantee until the commission of the [Muskrat Falls] project and given a promise to help negotiate beyond that. I think we need to build on that and hold him to that promise. But I think we need to get creative in looking out so that our debt-servicing costs and when you look at the Atlantic average compared to the other provinces, we pay more than any other province in Atlantic Canada with respect to debt servicing, and of course that is our second [largest] budget item. So we need to look at ways to potentially unlock the Canadian potential in order to decrease some of those costs.

We've been hearing over and over again that revenue is not our problem, that spending is our problem. And people really want to know before they vote where would you make up for this shortfall in order to balance those books?

It's a combination of revenue and spending, in my estimation. We need to grow revenues but we need to get spending under control. And I think we have seen that the size of government has exploded over the last 10 to 15 years. And we need to right size that, but we need to do that in a balanced, measured way. Right now we're seeing governments around the world borrowing trillions of dollars to help stimulate the economy, to help stabilize jobs. So I don't think, you know, today in this global economic crisis, it's right to talk about massive cuts but we do need to look at the size of the civil service and balance and responsible way and right that size, over that, over the medium term.

What would that strategy look like?

I think we need to kind of look at program triage, because I believe that no waste can be tolerated. So we need to look at what programs we're delivering to the people of the province and if we're getting a good return on investment, whether that be an economic return or a social return. And we need to have a strong evaluation of those and if programs aren't delivering what they're supposed to be delivering, or doing so in an ineffective and inefficient way then they need to be looked at being eliminated. And I also look at using attrition and of course in early retirement and within the civil service as well.

When we talk about program delivery, the obvious challenge we have is that our population is spread out over a lot of geography and it's getting more costly to supply those services. What potential solutions do you see to potentially solving that issue?

Well, of course, it's a great discussion and it's one that I think we need to bring to Ottawa, as well, because frankly some of the formulas they use in terms of transfer payments just don't work for our population. And we have one-third the population of the Maritimes and three times the land mass and it's scattered around the province for historical and cultural reasons. And that's, you know, over 500 years of history that's caused that. But we need to look at stabilizing and diversifying the economy in rural areas as well. But we also need to look at the demographic crisis that's facing this province right now. This is a silent one that's been creeping up.

And right now you know 20 to 25 per cent of the population is approaching 65 years of age and leaving the labour market, and that's going to cause a strain on the economic potential with the labour market. So we need to unlock labour potential for it to develop economic opportunities and that involves unlocking potential labour force here right now, including what we've proposed is $25-a-day daycare but also developing a healthy immigration policy that helps correct this demographic crisis that we're currently in. I mean right now we have the oldest population in the country.

We have the highest dependency ratio in the country. To my knowledge, we're the only province with an outmigration issue. So that means that when you're looking at the social transfer payments and the equalization payments, the denominator changes such that these will never really work well for us. So this is a discussion that we need to have with Ottawa moving forward.

What is the solution in your mind to plugging that outmigration issue that we've been challenged with for so many years?

I think that we need to develop opportunities for the youth of our province and develop opportunities for immigrants in the province. And one of the things that I've talked about a lot in the last couple of months is the idea of technology and developing an ecosystem here for technology. Look, there's nothing particularly special about Waterloo or Silicon Valley. It's just that they created a good ecosystem for technology development and I think that we've seen as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that we're good at this space. We're creative and we're entrepreneurial and you can see that either in CoLab or Verafin. And we need to build on that ecosystem to attract firms here to grow that sector. But we need to develop a pipeline to that and similar to what we did with oil and gas in the late '80s and early '90s for high school students and university students. We need to develop through K-12 coding opportunities in the schools and then develop targeted investments in our university and colleges towards technology, and provide a labour force for that developing ecosystem, whether it's in retraining displaced Newfoundlanders and Labradorians or developing healthy immigration strategies so that there is a labour force presence to grow and sustain a healthy technological environment.

And of course you can develop that strategy to other renewable economic opportunities like arts and entertainment. I truly believe that we've just scratched the surface of our potential with arts and entertainment in this country and around the world.

What role does oil and gas play in your vision of the short- and the long-term future in this province?

Oil and gas is incredibly important right now. It's 30 per cent of our GDP and it's the reason why we're able to provide a lot of the services we are able to provide. So it's an incredibly important economic driver, but we realize right now that the environment is the No. 1 priority around the world and I think that Newfoundland and Labrador is perfectly positioned in this environmental revolution, not dissimilar to the Industrial Revolution, as the world transitions from non-renewable to renewable energy sources.

We have some of the lowest carbon footprint oil around the world. It's not landlocked. We don't need pipelines. We have some of the sweetest crude products to deliver around the world and we need to invest in that and capitalize on that while it's still valuable. But then balance that on the other side of the equation by investing in what we're also very lucky to have an abundance of, which is clean, green energy. We can be the battery that drives the Eastern Seaboard, for sure.

If you do win this race, it will be your first time in public office. And you've said that you don't intend to be a career politician. So what makes you the leader for this moment in time?

I think that I have an outside vision and experience right now to lead the province in this pivotal time of our history. I think that I've proven in my life that I'm not afraid to surround myself with the best and the brightest. I think that's what defines my leadership style. You can't know everything about everything, but you need to attract the best and the brightest to be able to provide the best evidence to make the best decisions and create the best frameworks moving forward. And I think that's something that I bring to the table and hopefully be able to leverage for the future of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Picking a premier: Q&A with Andrew Furey - CBC.ca

Canada not walking the talk on its miners’ abuses abroad, campaigners say – Mongabay.com

Home to nearly half of the worlds major mining companies, Canada has failed to fully implement promised reforms to hold corporations accountable for abuses committed overseas, according human rights advocates.

Ahead of its 2015 election win, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberal Party promised to create an independent ombudsperson to investigate companies that violate human rights or poison the environment when extracting resources in the developing world, along with better protections for land rights campaigners there.

Officials with Global Affairs Canada, the foreign ministry, began meeting with human rights activists, as described in internal government files. Going into one meeting, in March 2017, campaigners told Mongabay they felt a sense of optimism: after a decade of Conservative Party rule, when officials froze NGOs out of the decisionmaking process, a new administration promising sunny ways and increased corporate accountability wanted to hear from them.

Today, though, land rights campaigners opposed to Canadian mining operations face more threats than ever, according to the activists. And while the governments rhetoric has stressed human rights and accountability, it hasnt introduced binding rules to crack down on companies that commit abuses overseas.

But a decision by Canadas Supreme Court earlier this year could provide an avenue for redress in the courts when campaigners say the political system has failed.

Just over 600 pages of partially censored Canadian foreign ministry documents, accessed under freedom of information laws, detail the Trudeau governments approach to human rights defenders and the mining industry. They include internal policy briefings for officials, minutes from meetings with activists and others, background research, and other correspondence for 2017 and part of 2018. A litany of abuse allegations dogging Canadian mining companies features prominently.

The documents cite data in bold from the Toronto-based Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, a legal advocacy group, noting that 28 Canadian mining companies and their subsidiaries were linked to 44 deaths, 403 injuries, and 709 cases of criminalization, including arrests, detentions, and charges in Latin America between 2000 and 2015.

Considering that over 60% of mining concessions held by foreign companies in Ecuador are in Canadian companies hands, mining issues are of great interest to Canada, reads a 2017 internal foreign affairs department briefing on Ecuadors human rights situation that was marked secret and included in the documents.

However, strong opposition by some indigenous and environmental groups continues to pose problems for mining development. Local human rights organizations have reported abuses from mining companies, (including, in the past, from Canadian companies), and from security forces hired by these companies, the briefing continues.

When it comes to environmental conflicts between companies and communities, Canadian firms are overrepresented compared to their international peers, McGill University natural resources researcher Leah Temper told Radio Canada International. She was part of an international team that published a study on global environmental conflicts this month in the journal Global Environmental Change. Canadian firms are involved in 8% of the more than 2,700 conflicts analyzed in the study, Temper said.

Examples include the recent death of Mexican labor campaigner scar Ontiveros Martnez. He was allegedly murdered on May 12 by forces linked to organized crime groups operating around a mine in Guerrero state owned by the Canadian company Torex Gold Resources, according to the Ottawa-based advocacy group MiningWatch Canada. His assassination is believed to stem from his involvement in a 2017 strike at the mine. There have been at least three other murders and one disappearance related to the labor action.In aletterresponding activists inquiries,Torex Gold Resourcessaid that the deathswere criminal matters that were quite outside of our control.

And Vancouver-based Pan American Silver, which operates eight mines in Central and South America, has been accused of polluting land and stoking violence in Peru and Mexico, including threats against local community members, according to research released in March by the Environmental Justice Atlas. Pan American Silver denies the charges.

Stock markets in Toronto are the worlds biggest listing venues for mining companies, accounting for almost 50 percent of global listings, according to official data. This means Canadian policies on dealing with environmental and human rights abuses abroad are particularly important for regulating the sector internationally.

Activists attended the meetings with foreign ministry officials to push for changes, armed with firsthand accounts of human rights violations surrounding Canadian-backed mines.

The delegation urged the Canadian government to take steps to provide access to remedy in Canada to victims of human rights abuses by Canadian companies, read minutes from the March 2017 meeting, which included a delegation from the Philippines describing its experiences with Canadian mining activities. More precisely, they encouraged the Liberal Party to fulfil its electoral promise of creating an ombudsman for the Canadian extractive sector.

The government created that position last year, but without the power to subpoena documents or penalize companies, making it effectively toothless, activists told Mongabay.

The government has also failed to follow through on binding rules for companies operating abroad, a move it took deliberately, the government documents reviewed by Mongabay indicate.

To-date, Canada has taken the position that it does not support a legally-binding instrument on Transnational corporations and other business enterprises, states an internal government briefing for an official speaking on a U.N. panel about business and human rights on Nov. 28, 2017, that was included in the documents.

Kyle Matthews, executive director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, said the governments current voluntary approach to human rights regulations doesnt send a strong message.

Canadian mining firms are among the largest in the world and are present from Latin America, to Asia, to sub-Saharan Africa, Matthews said in an interview. People in the private sector dont have an international responsibility to uphold human rights, he added, so government regulation is essential for holding companies to account when abuses happen.

However, a decision by Canadas Supreme Court earlier this year could change that, potentially instituting legal liability at home for Canadian companies operating overseas.

In a split decision in February, the Supreme Court ruled that a case filed by Eritrean refugees who say they were victims of modern slavery at a mine part-owned by Toronto-listed Nevsun Resources could proceed in Canadian courts.

The three plaintiffs say they were conscripted by Eritreas military and forced to build the Bisha gold, zinc and copper mine starting in 2008. They say they were forced to work long days in filthy and dangerous conditions with minimal food or pay, according to court filings.

Nevsun, now owned by Chinas Zijin Mining Group, denies the charges. The company argued that the legal case should not be allowed to proceed in Canadian courts because they couldnt rule on the laws of foreign states and indefinite military service is compulsory under Eritrean law. However, Canadas Supreme Court ruled that customary international law prohibits slavery, so the case could proceed.

Other cases against Canadian mining companies have reached Canadas court system. But in being issued by the Supreme Court, the Nevsun decision was a first in Canadian legal history, wrote lawyers from the Toronto-based firm McCarthy Ttrault, and it may result in more actions being brought against Canadian companies operating in countries notorious for human rights concerns. The firm handles mining litigation but was not involved in the Nevsun case.

Following the Supreme Courts decision, the Nevsun case will be heard by a lower court in British Columbia next year in what is expected to be a drawn-out legal battle.

The two main industry bodies representing Canadian mining firms, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada and the Mining Association of Canada, both declined to comment for this story.

Prior to the Nevsun decision, Canadian officials had responded to corporate abuses overseas as a communications problem, not as a real problem, Jamie Kneen, communications coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, told Mongabay. Kneen attended the March 2017 meeting and has seen the internal files.

They call it issues management, Kneen said. They are more concerned about the impacts that any publicity would have, or the impact that any sort of resistance would have, rather than the actual abuses people are reporting.

Connie Sorio, a campaigner with the Toronto-based rights group Kairos, also attended that meeting. She said the government hasnt kept its pre-election promises despite seeming to take the issues seriously during the meeting.

None of this has been translated into concrete actions to provide redress on the issues communities are facing, she told Mongabay of the governments stated commitments to improved accountability for mining firms.

Government officials at the meeting promised to follow up on threats from paramilitary groups faced by Nenita Condez, an environmentalist on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines who had been campaigning against a Canadian-backed mining project, Sorio said. But the officials never contacted her or provided other follow-up, she added.

Now, its unfortunate it could be seen as window dressing or good optics, Sorio said.

Responding to Mongabays questions about the internal documents, a spokesperson for Canadas foreign ministry said it takes corporate responsibility seriously.

Human rights are at the core of Canadas foreign policy, Guillaume Brub, the spokesperson, said via email. Responsible business conduct abroad represents a competitive advantage for Canadian business.

In 2019, the government created a program called Voices at Risk: Canadas Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders that offers practical advice for Canadian diplomats on how to assist environmental campaigners and human rights activists overseas who seek help, he said.

While a positive step, Sorio said many lower-ranking embassy staffers in the field arent familiar with the program and dont know what to do when an environmentalist under threat asks for help.

Canada has also provided $20 million in funding to the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, which helps countries better manage their mineral wealth to ensure the benefits are shared equally, while championing a feminist foreign policy, Brub said.

Brub did not address what activists consider the governments failure to implement binding rules for companies operating abroad. He did note, however, that the Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise can launch reviews on her own initiative, can advise cabinet ministers, and will make reports on corporate conduct publicly available to improve transparency. Moreover, he said, the government can deny trade advocacy support or government-backed loans to companies that refuse to engage with the ombudsperson.

Daryl Copeland, a former senior foreign ministry official and currently a senior fellow at the Calgary-based Canadian Global Affairs Institute think tank, described the governments approach to corporate responsibility as the triumph of process over substance.

There is lots of busy work, lots of meetings, but little has been accomplished, he said in an interview.

When the Liberals were first elected in 2015 pledging a change in priorities from the previous Conservative government, Copeland said foreign ministry staff were excited. Today, he said, the messages hes hearing from ministry staff range from frustration to despair.

The impulse within the bureaucracy to move forward on human rights or any other major file is now lacking, he said. I dont think that Canada has done a particularly good job and the record of Canadian mining companies particularly is bad.

Banner image: Residents in Putaendo, Chile, protest against a proposed copper mine planned by the Canadian company Los Andes Copper on April 26, 2020. Putaendo had been declared free of mining following local protests. Activists say the Chilean government took advantage of COVID-19 lockdown measures to approve an environmental license for the mine to continue exploratory drilling. Image courtesy of Putaendo Resiste.

Chris Arsenault is a professor of journalism at Conestoga College in Canada. He has been a long-time foreign correspondent covering resource and environmental issues with the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Brazil and Italy, and with Al Jazeera in Qatar. Twitter: @chrisarsenaul

Citations:

Scheidel,A., Del Bene,D., Liu,J., Navas,G., Mingorra,S., Demaria,F., Martnez-Alier,J. (2020). Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview.Global Environmental Change,63, 102104. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104

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A Planner’s outlook on the politics of housing affordability 2020 – Utah Policy

Housing affordability and reform of local land-use practices have been a hot topic around the country over the last couple of years, including here in the state of Utah. And it appears that it continues to be on political agendas, even amid the pandemic, with its apparent but uncertain impacts on future urban growth.

Most notably, changes in local land use controls have taken place on a statewide level in California and Oregon, and in cities such as Minneapolis, Seattle and Toronto. In Utah, the housing gap issue more new family units being formed than the number of new dwellings produced has prompted the creation of a housing affordability task force, a business-led Housing Gap Coalition, a state Commission 0n Housing Affordability, and changes in state code to require cities and counties to consider and adopt housing strategies from a menu of options, as well as tying state transportation funding to local land use actions.

The rapid collapse of the nations economy with the COVID-19 pandemic should have, in keeping with other economic recessions, relieved upward pressures on cost in the housing markets and thus helped with the housing affordability crisis. But, as noted in an earlier post on the APA Utah website (Zoning, Affordability, and COVID-19), this seems not to be the case. And the continued political pressure to pursue state-level policy actions on local land use management has not abated (see comments reported in the APA website post).

All of this is being supplemented and enhanced by the recent emphasis on racial equality. Many writers have noted the underlying segregation in the wholesale adoption in many cities years ago of exclusive single-family zoning (see, for example, How Housing Policies Keep White Neighborhoods So White in Governing Magazine). We are thus now seeing even greater calls for reformation of local zoning laws.

In last weeks issue of The Economist, a story titled Segregation still blights the lives of African-Americans noted:

Zoning rules which keep the cost of housing high by restricting supply make it very hard for poor black families to move to better neighbourhoods. As income inequality has risen, well-to-do families have bid up the price of homes near good schools, further concentrating poverty. Public-housing programmes, which could break up these patterns, do little. Continuing discrimination makes matters worse. A recent investigation into rentals in Boston showed that in situations where a white applicant secured a viewing 80% of the time a black applicant with identical financial credentials would get a viewing just 48% of the time.

The story then goes on to suggest solutions to this issue, including:

The most obvious starting-point is stripping away the zoning rules that ban apartments in high-cost cities. They deny opportunity to poor families of all colours even as they drag down economic productivity.

The effort to limit exclusive single-family residential zoning, or at the very least require inclusion of more options, is very much alive and well across the country. California is still seeing activity (Sen. Wiener Want to Abolish Single-Family-Only Neighborhoods in California).

In Connecticut a newly organized group is pushing the state legislature to consider a variety of measures, hopefully in an upcoming special legislative session later this year:

The coalition, known as DesegregateCT, is pushing a series of ideas, including allowing accessory apartments as large as 1,200 square feet to be permitted on large, single-family lots. In addition, they are calling for more small-scale townhouses and duplexes or so-called middle housing that could be built within a half-mile of train stations and a quarter-mile of commercial developments. They want towns to designate 10% of their property as middle housing or multifamily in order to diversify the housing options. They also want to relax minimum parking requirements that they say are highest in wealthier towns. We have too many freestanding single-family homes, which are expensive and, for many, undesirable, the groups says on its website. We have to give people more opportunities to choose where and how they live.

One of the more notable aspects of the Connecticut effort is the role of the states Conference of Municipalities (similar to our League of Cities and Towns). Such organizations usually take the position that the crafting of land use reforms should be left to those who work with them every day - the local governments. But to some, this has seemed to be a bit like the fox being asked to watch the henhouse. Asking locally-elected officials to lead the way on changing land use regulations away from predominant single-family zoning, who are the very officials that originally enacted and subsequently have perpetuated it, may not result in the needed changes, they say.

In a change of tone, heres the statement from Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) Executive Director Joe DeLong at the coalition event:

Our organization, for years, has really focused on local control, DeLong said. I think the first thing that CCM needs to do is reflect on ourselves and understand whether or not were being a part of the solution or whether were being a quick path to no.' Thats why were here today. We have members all across the state that have mixed views on this issue. Some probably support every proposal in here, some support some and not others. But the message I want to deliver is dont use us as a reason not to act. We want to be a part of the solution. We want to be at the table.

As long as Im here at CCM, our focus is not going to be on no.' Our focus is going to be on making a difference in how we get to yes.

State legislatures in Virginia, Washington and Maryland have just this year considered similar measures. And even in that liberal urban hotspot, Nebraska, the legislature this year considered, among others, The Missing Middle Housing Act. A story in Bloomberg noted:

the battle over single-family homes (has come) to Nebraska. A state legislative committee heard arguments about a number of bills designed to lower housing costs by lifting local bans on duplex homes, triplexes, townhouses and other options in cities across the state.

So, what can we expect in our fair state this coming year? Well, the state Commission on Housing Affordability indicates that they will be continuing to work on this issue, and likely will generate more recommendations for the state legislature, administration, and cities and counties to consider. And the Commission has asked commission member Chris Gamvroulas, President of Ivory Development, to head a subcommittee charged specifically with looking at local land use regulations and their impact on housing affordability. That subcommittee will hold its first meeting on July 23 week.

We havent heard the last on this topic just yet.

Wilf Sommerkorn is a retired urban planner who served during his career as, among other things, Planning Director for Davis County, Salt Lake City, and Salt Lake County. He continues to serve as co-chair of the Legislative Committee for the Utah Chapter of the American Planning Association.

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A Planner's outlook on the politics of housing affordability 2020 - Utah Policy

Bill talks with Heather Cox Richardson about HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR – BillMoyers.com

The Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Bull Run, Va. July 21st 1861, Currier and Ives. (Library of Congress)

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. If you want to understand this moment in American politics, heres a suggestion for you: Its the must-read book of the year HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short-lived. Slave states soon stripped Black people of their hard-won rights, white supremacy not only rose again to rule the South but spread West across the Mississippi to create new hierarchies of inequality. Thats the story Heather Cox Richardson tells in HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, with echoes resounding every day in the wild and fierce campaign for the presidency. Here to talk with her about Americas ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy is Bill Moyers.

Photo courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you for joining me.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Oh, its a pleasure to be here.

BILL MOYERS: Will you take us on that long but vivid arc of how we got from Abraham Lincoln, describing the end of the Civil War as A new birth of freedom, to Donald Trump describing America as A land of carnage, a nightmare. From Lincoln to Donald Trump in 2016, what happened?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: If you think about the Civil War as a war between two different ideologies, two different concepts of what America is supposed to be, is it supposed to be a place where a few wealthy men direct the labor and the lives of the people below them, the women and people of color below them, the way the Confederacy argued? Is that America? Or is America what Lincoln and his ilk in the Republican Party in the North defined the democracy as during the Civil War? Is it a place where all men are equal before the law and should have equal access to resources? And of course, I use the word man there, but thats because thats the language that Lincoln used. But the principle is expandable of course. It looked by 1865 as if that latter ideology, that of the Republicans and that of the idea of equality had triumphed. And certainly, the Republicans and Northerners who had fought for the United States government in that war believed that they had redefined America to mean equality before the law. They really believed that was the case. And that they had defeated what they called the slave power, the oligarchs who had gone ahead and taken over the system in the 1850s. After the Civil War, Easterners moved West across the Mississippi in really large numbers after 1865.

BILL MOYERS: White Southerners went too, of course, and you argue they saw the West as the final frontier ruled by elites, just as elites, with violence and intimidation, had ruled in the old South.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And in that West, they discover a land that is already susceptible to the idea of racial and gendered hierarchies, because it has its own history of them. And its a place out there where the new American system happens to be a really fertile ground for the Confederate ideology to rise again. And thats exactly what happens with the extractive industries in the West that encouraged the heavily capitalized cattle markets, for example, or mining industries, or later oil, or even agribusiness. You have in the West a development of an economy and, later on, a society that looks very much like the pre-Civil War South. And over the course of the late 19th century, that becomes part of the American mythology, with the idea that you have the cowboy in the West who really stands against what Southerners and Northern Democrats believe is happening in Eastern society, that a newly active government is using its powers to protect African Americans and this is a redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to populations that are simply looking for a government handout. Thats language that rises in 1871, and that is still obviously important in our political discourse. But in contrast to that, in the West, you get the rise of the image of the American cowboy, which is really our image of Reconstruction. In a weird way, people think of Reconstruction, obviously, they think of formerly enslaved people. But the image that has obtained in our textbooks and in our popular culture is the American cowboy, who is beginning to dominate American popular culture by 1866. And that cowboy a single man, because women are in the cowboy image only as wives and mothers, or as women above the saloons in their striped stockings serving liquor and other things is a male image of single white men. Although, again, historically a third of cowboys were people of color. Its a single white man working hard on their own, who dont want anything from the government. Again, historically inaccurate. The government puts more energy into the American plains than it does any other region of the country. But

BILL MOYERS: And also on land that had been taken from Mexico after the Mexican-American War, and on land that had been stolen from the Native Americans after genocide. I mean, its this whole notion of, Im free to roam the land and become a self-made hero, which was the cowboys image to those of us growing up in the 30s and 40s, was really a bastard idea.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And part of that bastard idea, though, was so interesting. Because it is, in part, the Indian Wars of the Civil War and immediate post-war years that helped to both create the image of the cowboy, but also reinforce the idea that a few white men belong above subordinate groups like the Indigenous people, like Mexicans or Mexican Americans. Like Chinese Americans, like Fiji islanders, about whom they care very much in the late 19th century. And that racial hierarchy and gendered hierarchy really gets tied into the image of the American cowboy. And popularized with this backlash against activism in the East, trying to help African Americans adjust to the new free labor economy. But that image becomes enormously important after 1880. Because in 1880, the South goes solidly Democratic. And, of course, in retrospect, we now know its going to stay Democratic for a very, very long time, indeed. But they dont know that at the time. But what Republicans do note is that they must pick up Western votes if theyre going to continue to dominate the White House and the Senate. After 1888, when we get the installment of Benjamin Harrison in the White House, he loses the popular vote by about 100,000 votes. But hes installed thanks to the Electoral College. The Republicans under Harrison between 1889 and 1890, they let in six new states in 12 months. That was the largest acquisition of new states in American history since the original 13 and its never been matched again. They let in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and then Idaho and Wyoming to go ahead and make sure that they would continue to control the Senate, and the Electoral College. And theyre not hiding this. They actually go onto their media which is their equivalent of the Fox News channel at the time and say, by letting in these states, were going to hold onto the Senate for all time and were going to make sure we hold onto the White House for all time. But what that does is it begins to shift the idea of that human freedom. All of a sudden, the Republican Party, which has tried to continue to argue that it is standing in favor of equality, although thats negotiable. After 1888 and the admission of those new states, the Republican Partys got to start adopting that racially charged language in order to get the West on board. And that begins the change in American history that leads to a later union between the West and the South around this idea that really white men ought to be in charge. Its not just a Southern thing. Its a Western thing as well. And they make up a voting bloc in Congress that manages to change a lot of the legislation of the 20th century.

BILL MOYERS: You write about how the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890, in South Dakota, was an atrocity brought on by politics. And that it played into the use of politics to reimpose inequality, and the use of force for malicious purposes.

Wounded Knee (LOC)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: It did. What happens is that with the admission of these new states in 1889 and 1890, the Republicans believe that they are going to do very well in the midterm election of 1890. And the big thing on the table in America in 1890 is the tariff high walls around the American economy that protect businesses inside America, they protect them to the degree that because they face no foreign competition, different groups can collude with each other to raise prices. So in 1860, the Republicans insist that an economic downturn thats been happening is only because those tariffs arent high enough. What happens in the election of 1890 is the Republicans think theyre going to win and they lose dramatically. It turns out when these ballots are counted, a Republican Senate or a Democratic Senate hangs on the seat of South Dakota, on one Senate seat. And that Senate seat has pretty clearly been corrupted. Theres a huge fight, then, in the legislature of who actually won. So there the situation sits.

BILL MOYERS: Sits there, for sure, with President Benjamin Harris needing to shore up his support in the Dakotas. So, he sends corrupt cronies out to replace experienced Indian agents and dispatches one-third of the federal Army as well.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: And with that movement of the Army into South Dakota in the largest mobilization of the US Army since the Civil War, Lakota are trying to negotiate with the Army that increasingly wants to bring them into the reservation, to the agencies to make sure that theyre under control. And over the course of the next few months, that situation escalates until a Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, is killed in December of 1890. And then in terror after that, a group of Miniconjou Lakota move across the state. They actually find the Army, the Army doesnt find them. And in the process of corralling them and disarming them later on that month, the soldiers start to fire. And about 250 Lakota are massacred. So, it was a massacre that was really directly attributable to whether or not the Republican Party could control the US Senate in order to protect its tariffs that promoted big business, and protected a few oligarchs.

BILL MOYERS: When Americans moved to the wide-open spaces of the West after the Civil War, they kept alive the same vision of the world that had inspired Confederates. What was their argument?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: They certainly were not arguing at the time for a renewal of hostilities. But they did believe that America was one in which a few good hard-working white men should dominate women and people of color. And I think thats written all over the West, although we dont like to see that because we love our cowboys. But inherent in Western society, Western politics, Western economy and the Western society after the Civil War was the idea that a few wealthy men should control the industries. Or at least, did control the extractive industries of mining and cattle, and agribusiness and oil. And they should also control politics. And that the legal system should defend their interests while the workers should work for the people in charge. You know, these wealthy cattlemen, for example, were somehow the salt of the earth, hardworking little guys. That image was really in contrast to what was going on, which was the creation of a society that looked, in many ways, like the society of the pre-Civil War South. And by the late 19th and early 20th century, the rise of industrialists in the North who took a lot of their power and their ideological power from the cowboy imagery and from the support that they received in the American West. And to some degree, from Southern leaders as well.

BILL MOYERS: So, the pre-Civil War South was an oligarchy.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. I was very careful with that word. Because there are obviously a lot of words we could use for a system in which a few people take over. But the way that I was using it was with the idea that an oligarchy was a small group, usually of men in that case, who controlled the money in society and therefore came to control the political system, and also the social system.

BILL MOYERS: In order to use government policies to shore up white supremacy and prevent racial equality, right?

HEATHER RICHARDSON: And I think the echoes from that to the present are pretty clear, when you have again a small group of Americans now who define themselves that way, I think. One of the things that I found interesting is with the rise of this small elite group of large planters in the 1850s, the ways in which they came to monopolize popular culture and popular literature so that they simply didnt say, Well, were hard workers and weve been lucky. But they came to believe that they deserved what they had gotten. And that they were somehow better than everybody else. And you can see that through the pulpits, ministers starting to talk about how blessed they were to have these men in their congregations. You can see it through literature, the rise of novels that talk about people who own large numbers of other people as somehow paternalistic patriarchs. And you can see it through the construction of the other, the people who are enslaved, as being somehow almost sub-human. And thats a very deliberate construction in the 1850s. And I would argue, you can see something very similar in America in the 2000 aughts.

BILL MOYERS: In what sense?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The emphasis in popular culture on how the people who were at the top really belong there. That they somehow are the best people. That they know more than the rest of us. That if you have a billion dollars, you must somehow be really much more special than those of us who dont have a billion dollars. And I think that really shows in the way that President Trump talks about the people around him. He would appoint only the best people, who by definition, knew more than the experts did. And you look at the position that Jared Kushner has in this administration. I mean, hes a young man with really very little training in anything and hes supposed to be solving the Middle East crisis and handling coronavirus? And I dont even know what his portfolio looks like at this point. But I think thats a reflection that looks very much like that of elite Southerners in the 1850s when they simply thought by virtue of who they were, they could make things work better than anybody else could.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that as this Old South ideology moved West it influenced popular culture, especially in upholding white supremacy. There were Western movies like the classic STAGECOACH, remember? A Confederate soldier joins with the US Cavalry to defeat the savage Apache. And novels such as LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and GONE WITH THE WIND celebrating the union of Western and Confederate ideology.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. And isnt it fascinatingif you think about, again, Laura Ingalls Wilders a great example. People tend to dismiss her because they see it as a childrens book. And yet, its been enormously influential, enormously influential. And she writes about a world in which Pa takes care of the women folk and dominates the native populations around him. And certainly there are passages in that book that are extraordinarily racist, not only toward Indigenous people, but toward African Americans as well. Its gotten her in trouble lately. But the theme throughout that book is of individualism. Pa is doing it on his own. Pa is not doing it on his own. The reality of her life was that Pa was managing to keep the family together based on the fact his daughters and his wife worked because Pa could never manage to make ends meet. And theyre living in places that are habitable for white settlers like themselves only because of the protection of the US government. And, you know, even scenes like when when Mary goes to college. And remember, they scrimp and save for years for Mary to go to college. And the implication in that book is that they are sending Mary to college. No. Theyre raising money for her train fare and her clothing. Her room and board is being paid for by the state of South Dakota. South Dakota actually, weirdly enough, had the highest rate of literacy in the country in that era. But you dont see that in those books. Because again, you have this wedding, if you will, of individualism to racism and this concept of women being taken care of by their men. Its a very popular trope in American history. But it doesnt reflect reality.

BILL MOYERS: So, when a group of slave holders embraced the idea that they and they alone should control Americas economic and political system, the Americans fought back, won the Civil War, and rededicated the country to equality. But when it happened a second time, when very rich men of property mobilized to take over America again, they largely succeeded by convincing voters that equality for people of color and women and minorities destroyed the liberty of white men. Thats almost the drum beat in the background of American politics today.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: One of the things about that ideology that a few wealthy men should rule, its not new to America. Its been around for a very long time. And whats really radical is the idea that in fact, all of us should have the right to self-government. And the fact that were still fighting about it in America today suggests to me that those two fundamentally different concepts of the role of the American government at least are still absolutely the question of what America really is about. For all the frightening things that are happening in America right now, its also exciting to get to redefend the concept of human self-determination, which is really what weve been doing all along on this continent.

BILL MOYERS: But as you write, the ideology of the Old South and its new Western allies found a powerful reactionary force to reimagine it. Lets go to the very opening scene of your book. Its July, 1964. The Cow Palace outside San Francisco, packed with cheering Republicans whove just nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their candidate for the presidency. They came roaring to their feet when he declares, quote

BARRY GOLDWATER: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice in no virtue.

BILL MOYERS: 56 years later, that scene still plays out in my head. Explain why you chose that moment to begin a story that spans America from the Civil War to now.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Barry Goldwater at that point was known sort of as a cowboy character. And that moment when the state of South Carolina, the state that was responsible for taking the Confederacy out of the Union. When those delegates stand up, they were the ones to put Barry Goldwater over the top, as their delegate yelled when he announced the delegations votes, its that moment when you recognize that there is a new force in American politics. And its the force of reaction against the liberal consensus that was widely shared by Democrats and Republicans both, that in fact, the government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. And thats the moment when you had that reactionary voice saying, No, thats not what America should look like. And its that theory that in fact a few people should run the system and make decisions for the rest of us that has taken over America since 64. It came across as a racial argument. But of course, his skin was in the game for the end of business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Regulation, right.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Thats what he really cared about. Its interesting the degree to which they harnessed the tradition of American racism and sexism as well, to their project of destroying business regulation.

BILL MOYERS: Goldwaters big bone was government, but that was all mixed up with opposing Civil Rights and keeping segregation, discrimination. This fear of government that Goldwater was stoking at that moment was the same fear that Southern demagogues had stoked to keep Blacks in their place, it was government that was at stake here. It was what you can do with government.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, and I think you just hit the nail on the head there with the idea that all of this is about the proper use of government. Is the idea of the United States government to protect property, so that people can accumulate more and more of it, and thereby get the power and the education and the connections to go ahead and direct society in a way thats good for all us, which is their theory. Or is the role of government, in fact, to protect equality before the law, and to make sure that all men, in fact, and all, you know, all people are created equal and have equal access to resources and to opportunity? And those two questions are really the central questions of America.

BILL MOYERS: Ronald Reagan gave the conservative movement its present-day mantra

RONALD REAGAN: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, Im from the government and Im here to help.

BILL MOYERS: Now just imagine using that mantra today when the pandemic is rampant. And somebody knocks on your door and says, My name is Fauci, and Im here to help you. And they say, But youre from the government. We dont want you.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: I love the way you put it earlier when you said, This is all a question of what the government should do. Coming out of World War II, we had a real resurgence of the idea that the government really had a responsibility to promote equality before the law, and to guarantee equal access to resources. And that was a principle that was shared across America, I think, from Republicans and Democrats both. I mean, obviously you saw it with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the New Deal. But you also saw it with Truman, of course. And then you also saw it Eisenhower and Eisenhowers Middle Way. And the idea was that this American democracy stood against the fascism that had drawn us into World War II. And that FDR was so articulate about fighting back against. You know, when he talks about Italy again and again, FDR talks about how, you know, American democracys messy, for sure, but look, Mussolini was supposed to make the trains run on time and instead, his people are dying and theyre starving to death. And we, us messy members of a democracy, are the ones feeding them. And he says this again and again. And coming out of that war, I think Americans really stood for that. But even before that, theres certainly a group of reactionaries who look at the New Deal and at the Middle Way and they say, We dont believe that the government should interfere in our businesses. We should have the liberty, the freedom to run our businesses as we see fit. And they, in fact, really believe that the New Deal is going to be erased. They really thought it was a temporary measure, and that Americans would turn against that. But, of course, Americans loved the New Deal. It had gotten us out of out of the Depression and it had won World War II. So they didnt have any intention of walking away from that.

BILL MOYERS: But Goldwater and Reagan were riding away from it. And both, as you know, loved casting themselves as cowboys, white hats and all. They wrapped themselves in the mythology of the cowboy as hero; a lone white man carving a new world for white people from a hostile environment. So how did we get from Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon, a Californian in 1968, invoking the Southern strategy of stirring up the resentments and fears and hatreds of white Southerners. And Ronald Reagan who opened his campaign in 1980 in Neshoba County, Mississippi, just a few miles from where three Civil Rights volunteers had been murdered. And then George W. Bush buying a Stetson and a Texas ranch to prove he was a Westerner. Finally, to Donald Trump, the rich guy from Queens, not a part of the Southern culture or complex, who used the same racial fears, the same threats and promises that had been used in 64, 68, and 80.

George W. Bush Library

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Well, finally by 1951, you have that famous book by William F. Buckley Jr. called GOD AND MAN AT YALE in which he says, Listen, we got a problem. If we keep on trying to argue against the New Deal on the merits, we keep losing. So, we should stop trying to argue it on the merits. Because when we talked about what was best for most people, people voted for the New Deal. So, he suggests that we needed to start from a baseline, saying that the government should only protect what he calls free enterprise. That is, there shouldnt be regulation. And it should protect Christianity. You could wiggle around the edges. But you needed to have those two things. Well, that doesnt really get much traction. And, of course, William F. Buckley Jr. is the son of an oil man. And he is bankrolled by some pretty serious money there. Its a vision of a very few wealthy men. And it really doesnt get traction until after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954, when a unanimous Supreme Court, where this chief justice is a Republican and a former governor of California

BILL MOYERS: Youre talking about Earl Warren.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. He says the government needs to stand behind the desegregation of public schools. And with that, a door is open to resurrect the idea of the Reconstruction years. That any kind of government action in trying to level the playing field for African Americans in American society is a redistribution of wealth. And in 1955, we get the formation of NATIONAL REVIEW, of course, with the hiring of James Kirkpatrick, whos a Southern editor. Who hammers again and again and again on the idea that in fact, if you let government be an active government, to go ahead and intervene in things like regulating the economy, or in this case, promoting desegregation, what you are going to get is an attack on liberty, by which they mean tax dollars, your, in coded words, White tax dollars are going to go to African Americans. Who, in their eyes, had not earned that sort of entree into public schools. Which is gonna cost tax dollars among other things there were needed to be troops to have that happen. Well, that idea, that somehow an activist government, a New Deal government, an Eisenhower government was a redistribution of wealth from hard working white people to first African Americans, and then that group of other is going to be expanded to eventually include, in the 1970s, feminist women. But that argument is really established in the 1950s. And the people who adhere to it initially are not traditional Republicans. And theyre certainly not Democrats. They self-identify as a group called movement conservatives. And they are not true conservatives. They are radical extremists. And they know it. They, a few group of capital C conservatives, are going to stand against capital L liberals. By which they mean virtually everybody else in America, Republicans and Democrats both. Because they make no distinction between the liberal consensus of FDR and Eisenhower and Chinese communism. To them, those are the same kind of redistributions of wealth. So that movement conservative argument that gets its roots in the 1950s and then is picked up by Nixon I think he gets backed into a full-hearted embrace of movement conservatism because of the problems hes facing in 1970, with the Vietnam War and Kent State. But by Reagan, you have Reagan fully defending that vision. And you remember, Reagans initial ideas of cutting taxes were not popular. And it was not clear that that was actually going to happen. He has to put George H. W. Bush into his administration as vice president. And he had called that system voodoo economics. But its really after hes shot that he manages to get the popular momentum in Congress to pass his first tax cut. And then he tries to cement the ability to hold those tax cuts through including Evangelicals into the political system on the Republican side, beginning really dramatically in 1986. But, also, by packing the court. So, you can see from there on, this vision snowballing. And then in the 1990s, of course, you get Newt Gingrich becoming the Speaker of the House, and really deliberately purging the Republican Party of traditional Republicans, those he calls, RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. By the time you get to Trump, that language is there. That whole set up is there. But Trump himself is an interesting character. Because if you remember, he was the most moderate of the Republican candidates when he was running. So he had the racism and the sexism down. But a lot of people who might have liked or might even have not liked the racism and the sexism loved the idea he was gonna make taxes fairer. He was gonna create a better health care system. He was gonna make wealthier people pay more. He was gonna promote infrastructure. All those things that went by the board. Hes put movement conservatism on steroids. And his platform in 2016 was stunning. It was William F. Buckley Jr.s wish list, or Goldwaters wish list. And a narrative that, by the way, has taken off, and been extraordinarily strong since the rise of Reagan. He was elected in 1980. And you have that cowboy individualism gone wild with the STAR WARS series, which is the movie of 1977. That imagery, that one guy is going to do it on his own without the help of the government is a lovely image. Its a mythological image. Its one that Americans love, but its not reality. In fact, that image has enabled oligarchs like those really taking the reins of power under Ronald Reagan, to skew our laws in such a way that wealth has moved upward, opportunity has been taken away from the vast majority of us. The lives of most Americans, a majority of Americans, has gotten significantly worse, not better. And now under Donald Trump with the coronavirus, but also with the extraordinary dis-junction in the economy. Now, of course, were looking at the recession because of the coronavirus. But even before that, with the booming stock market, and the reality that most Americans didnt have $400 in the bank to meet an emergency. I think people are really coming to realize there is this extraordinary gap between that image and reality. And beginning more to want to root their politics in reality, both to fight the coronavirus and to fight the economic recession. But also to give credit to the essential workers of color, and to the women who are keeping this country running. I thought it was really interesting that one of the tropes from American individualism is, of course, that moms are home, right? Taking care of the kids. Over the weekend in Portland, moms went out and made a wall, a wall of moms to stand between the protesters and the federal troops.

BILL MOYERS: You say that the movement of women into politics rejects the construction of a society in which a few elite white men control the destinies of the rest of the country. And you find hope in that. But I wrote after your last sentence, Yes, but white oligarchs and their mercenaries still have the power.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes, they do. And I often dont sleep at night. But people ask me what gets me up every morning, and why do I continue to be optimistic. And I am because I believe in American democracy. I believe in the concept of human self-determination with almost a religious faith. And if I lose that faith, I feel like I will have broken that faith not only with the people around me today, but with all those people who came before us, and fought in wars, and who gave up their time and their money and their energy and did everything that they could to make sure that American democracy would survive. So, were in a very frightening time. But there are a lot of us, I think, who believe in this great American experiment, and will give it our all to make sure it doesnt end on our watch.

BILL MOYERS: Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for sharing your time and your thoughts, and for all the work that has inspired so many of us.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Yes. Well, thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening to Moyers on Democracy. Read an excerpt from HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, a must-read book for understanding how we got to this moment. And, be sure to check out Bills podcast with Heather Cox Richardson, exploring how her daily LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN found a large and loyal following on Facebook and our website.Youll find all this and more at Billmoyers.com.

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Bill talks with Heather Cox Richardson about HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR - BillMoyers.com

Militias’ warning of excessive federal power comes true but where are they? – Jacksonville Journal-Courier

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Amy Cooter, Vanderbilt University

(THE CONVERSATION) Militias and many other Second Amendment advocates have long argued that their primary desire to own firearms often, many of them is rooted in a need to protect themselves and their families from a tyrannical federal government, or to discourage the government from becoming tyrannical in the first place.

But with the mayor of a major U.S. city warning that tyranny and dictatorship have already arrived on the streets in the shape of unidentified federal troops using questionable tactics militia groups appear reluctant to throw their lot in with protesters. In fact, many have been supporting government action to suppress peaceful demonstrators.

Certainly the scenes in Portland have alarmed civil liberties groups:Heavily armed and camouflaged federal officers, wearing no name tags or other insignia, are on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and have teargassed and arrested seemingly peaceful protesters with little or no provocation. President Donald Trump has said similar forces are coming to other cities many run by Democrats.

To some, it may look exactly like what the militias have been warning of.

As a scholar of the U.S. domestic militia movement, I have seen in recent months a new divide emerging in these groups.

Some, often calling themselves the boogaloo movement, see the current political unrest as an opportunity to wrest power from an overbearing federal government. Others support police and their enforcement of strict law and order, even if that means authorities using powerful weapons and overwhelming force.

Shifting online dynamics

Assessing what these groups are doing, and how they are discussing recent events, has become more difficult for observers like me in recent weeks. On June 30, Facebook announced it had removed hundreds of accounts and groups allegedly related to the boogaloo movement.

The move came in the wake of several arrests of alleged boogaloo adherents across the country, including three in Nevada accused of plotting to firebomb federal land and one in Texas accused of killing one police officer and critically injuring another.

Boogaloo groups still have a social media presence and, until recently when the portion of the site they used was closed, a large presence on the Reddit discussion site, where comments are loosely regulated and people can post anonymously.

Now the movements public face is smaller and harder to find without insider knowledge. For instance, until recently it was common to see groups with the words big igloo in their names, a play on the word boogaloo. After Facebooks crackdown, some groups are using the word icehouse or other synonyms that may not be as obvious. They are therefore harder for algorithms to find, but also for people to find whether to observe or to join in.

Backing the boog

The groups who back the boogaloo imply, or even outright declare, that the U.S. is no longer a free country, and generally call for supporters to oppose, violently if necessary, federal forces and the government they represent.

In the days after George Floyds death, I saw some of these groups call for members to participate in protests opposing police violence. But I have not seen similar calls in response to federal officers violence in Portland.

That may change if federal forces do appear in other places, especially areas geographically closer to active back the boog supporters. It is also possible that the groups are discussing protests or other actions in less public ways, in private messages or on platforms like Parler, that have marketed themselves as friendlier toward a variety of conservative views.

Backing the blue

There are still militia members who support police, often called back the blue groups. Commentators have observed that silence from them and other Second Amendment supporters certainly seems to be hypocritical, at best, and possibly supportive of tyranny in the current context.

Thats not the way they see it. They argue that one of the few legitimate functions of the federal government is to protect citizens from others who might infringe on their rights or safety. They support police who say that Portland authorities have failed to protect regular people from violent protesters.

Thats also what these groups claimed happened in Seattles autonomous zone though they rely on news sources that describe the protesters as inherently dangerous and hampering business and free association. They seemingly ignore or discount other reports that these characterizations are exaggerated. In my research, I found that militia members were likely to exclusively trust sources like Fox News or even more conservative sites for their information, and recent data confirms that such sources may strongly shape viewers understanding of political and other events.

Mistaken perceptions?

This view of protesters as violent is amplified by some back the blue members belief that the demonstrators are Marxist members of antifa, a mostly nonviolent leaderless collective movement generally opposing fascism.

For example, one Facebook group shared a video of Christopher David, the Navy veteran beaten by federal officers in Portland, talking about his experience. A commentator responded, The end of the video tell[s] the tale, hes going to raise money for [Black Lives Matter]! He is a liar he went there to stand with his commie comrades.

Scholarship on conservative groups argues that they use anti-communist language to cast political opponents as not real Americans who have thus have forfeited any protections U.S. citizens should have.

Anti-liberal rhetoric

Some other back the blue members see hypocrisy in liberals, noting that few, if any, on the left objected when federal officers killed LaVoy Finicum during the 2016 standoff between federal officials and armed supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy during a land dispute elsewhere in Oregon.

There are sharing pages like one on a well-known conservative satire site that suggests the same Oregon authorities opposing federal officers tolerate violent behavior from protesters because of identity politics the idea that certain groups favored by liberals, in this case, Black people, are held to a different and more lax standard.

Several Facebook pages shared an image of a modified Gadsden flag, with a Black Lives Matter fist and promising we will tread as proof that Portland protesters would take away others rights, including the right to bear arms, if given the chance and thus do not deserve protection themselves. One comment in support of such a post read, I[m] glad to see Im not the only person happy to see these commies being snatched up and dragged away. Yes, I know that this could just as easily be turned around and that we could also be dragged away in broad daylight. But if they arent stopped now, and they do somehow manage to gain complete power, well get dragged away anyways. Better them than us, before its too late.

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Federal intervention has not stopped the Portland protests from growing, but some analysts expect Trump to increase the response in an attempt to appeal to his supporters as the country heads into the November election. Many people fear that move would spark violence.

The back the blue militia members generally respect law and order enough to not fulfill their threats of violence or criminal action but the back the boog groups may not be so restrained. The back the blue groups may also act if federal action escalates, and members believe they are needed or useful to help defend the interests of average citizens.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/militias-warning-of-excessive-federal-power-comes-true-but-where-are-they-143333.

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Militias' warning of excessive federal power comes true but where are they? - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Ethics commissioner expands probe of Morneau on eve of PM’s WE testimony – The Outlook

OTTAWA Federal ethics commissioner Mario Dion is widening his investigation of Finance Minister Bill Morneau's dealings with WE Charity.

Dion was already investigating Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for possible violations of the Conflict of Interest Act for not recusing themselves during cabinet discussions about an agreement to have WE Charity run a federal volunteering program for students who couldn't find work in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both have apologized for not doing so.

Morneau's problems grew bigger Wednesday over his repayment of $41,000 in WE-sponsored travel expenses for family trips three years ago, with Dion telling the opposition parties he would look into that potential ethics violation.

Rules prohibit ministers or their families from accepting free travel, lest it be seen as buying influence in government policy.

In letters released by NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus and Conservative critic Michael Barrett, responding to their complaints, the commissioner wrote he will look into whether Morneau ran afoul of that rule and a separate one for "failing to disclose these gifts" that could lead to a fine, albeit not a large one.

For Trudeau, the issues stem from speaking fees and related expense reimbursements the WE organization paid to his mother, brother, and wife, amounting to over $500,000 based on testimony the charity's co-founders provided to the House of Commons finance committee Tuesday.

During an afternoon news conference Wednesday, Conservatives said the new numbers related to the travel expenses also demand an additional investigation by Dion to see if the payments violate conflict-of-interest rules.

Dion rejected a call from the Tories to look into whether Morneau has failed to publicly declare previous recusals from cabinet decisions, saying they offered him no reasonable grounds to believe that had happened.

It all landed on the eve of Trudeau's own appearance at the Commons finance committee about the events that led to his cabinet to ask WE Charity to oversee a program that provides grants to students and graduates for volunteering if they couldn't find work this summer due to the pandemic-related economic slowdown.

His chief of staff, Katie Telford, is also to appear.

The two were originally scheduled to appear separately for one hour each, but opposition MPs on the finance committee voted Wednesday evening to have Trudeau appear for at least three hours and Telford for at least two each of them alone.

The partisan barbs and rhetoric on display Wednesday set the stage for a potentially contentious and rare prime ministerial appearance.

"We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said in Ottawa.

He warned the Opposition would look to pry more testimony out of Trudeau this fall if he didn't provide detailed answers.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he wanted Trudeau to explain why the Liberals opted to have the charity run a service program when there were other, potentially easier, avenues to help financially strapped students.

He cited increasing student grants or putting more money into the Canada Summer Jobs program as examples.

"This was never about helping students," Singh said Wednesday in Burnaby, B.C.

"This was about helping close friends of the Liberal government and of Prime Minister Trudeau and that is deeply troubling."

The Liberals budgeted $912 million for the student-volunteer program, but only agreed to pay a maximum of $543 million to WE. That included about $43.5 million in administration fees to the group, with the remainder to be spent on the grants.

The program is to pay eligible students and graduates $1,000 for every 100 hours of volunteering, up to a maximum of $5,000. The government has yet to roll it out nearly a month after WE backed out over the controversy.

On Tuesday, WE co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger told the finance committee they expected the program to cost up to $300 million because the majority would earn between $1,000 and $3,000, with few hitting the maximum amount.

They also spoke about the expenses paid to Trudeau's family members, and the $41,000 in travel expenses for Morneau and his family, which the finance minister paid back last week.

Their message to the committee was that it was their history as an organization that earned them the deal, not any political ties. Similarly, the Liberals say they acted on the advice of the non-partisan public service.

The ethics committee is meeting separately to look into the conflict-of-interest safeguards around government spending decisions.

While its members have asked Trudeau to testify there, a Conservative proposal to have cabinet ministers declare whether any of their relatives have ties to WE failed to land the necessary votes.

The Conservatives' Barrett argued opposing the motion amounted to "complicity in a cover-up," prompting Liberal MP Greg Fergus to argue the committee shouldn't be used for a political witch hunt where MPs investigate each other.

Angus, the New Democrat on the committee, cautioned against forging ahead with any probe against MPs or ministers absent a specific reason: "Fishing expeditions, I believe, are beyond the purview of the committee."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2020.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the commissioner is expanding investigations of both Bill Morneau and Justin Trudeau; however, he is only expanding his investigation of Morneau.

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Ethics commissioner expands probe of Morneau on eve of PM's WE testimony - The Outlook