As the nation continues to muddle through the bailout mess, a new idea is emerging for how to channel government funds directly to those in need: a bailout of the non-profit charitable organizations.  A non-profit rescue plan avoids many of the pitfalls of the corporate bailouts:

(1)  No greedy executives demanding $10 million bonuses or flying around on luxury private jets even as their companies go bankrupt.

(2)  No outlays of $450 million of taxpayer money to name baseball stadiums after failed corporations.

(3)  No questions of whether the bailout money is actually being used or is just being set aside as an investment.

As one non-profit expert puts it, let’s give the money to people that deserve it and that we know will do good things with it:

Nonprofits are now not only facing financial shortfalls … they are trying to deal with the increased demand for services in communities across the country.  These nonprofits are not in this financial position due to greed, bad management or poor investments.  Rather, they are part of the fallout of the current economic situation we all are suffering from today. 

It was reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that “Independent Sector, a coalition of charities and foundations, is working on a proposal for a government revolving-loan fund to help cash-strapped nonprofit groups respond to growing caseloads as the economic crisis takes its toll.”

But as it appears that the economic crisis will get a lot worse before it gets any better, it seems that a bridge loan program will be insufficient.  Without direct cash handouts like the ones that have been made to the financial sector, many if not most non-profits will be looking at extinction in the coming months and years - especially the small, local charities that don’t have much in the way of endowments or cash reserves.

There are approximately 300,000 operating public charities in the United States.  $700 billion (the amount of the original bank bailout) divided among these would mean $2.3 million each.  More realistically, just $10 billion dedicated to a non-profit bailout could give a million dollars each to the 10,000 charities that need help the most - with a priority on those that meet basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, and clothing.  As the estimates of the total bailout figure reach $7 or 8 trillion, what could possibly be the objection to giving a very small fraction of that amount to help those who are suffering most from this crisis?

(cross-posted at Discipline for Justice)

If mainstream progressive sites like Kos are going to hire foreign policy front-pagers, do they have to make such strange and awkward arguments?

In the following I make three claims, which I will state upfront in exaggerated terms, both to get the point across and so my errors are more visible. (1) The United States (or factions in it) has more of a stake in the outcome in the Israel/Palestine conflict than Israel does. (2) Israel does not need the U.S. (3) Understanding (1) and (2) is key to resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Come on dog.

I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that a good deal of Kos readers (and netroots participants in general) don’t follow foreign affairs closely. So if a big site wants to introduce foreign affairs coverage, it should be accessible and coherent. It should also be truthful and historical. I’m not saying I always hit that standard myself, but at least I try.

Oh, and to take on the content: (1) is dubious, (2) is false - I’m pretty sure we helped out in 1967 and 1973, to say nothing of present military aid, and therefore (3) is meaningless. But the content isn’t even the point - the problem is the style and the approach. People won’t take interest in foreign affairs if writers continue to present it as murky and esoteric.

Alex has a great point:

I don’t even know that people inherently object to taxes - I think they object to taxes most when they feel they’re getting a bum deal.

…

But that doesn’t mean people always favor cutting taxes. If the government can create good jobs, provide decent healthcare, offer dependable pensions, and maintain high standards in infrastructure (trains, internet access, etc), people won’t demand tax cuts.

A couldn’t agree more. The anti-tax movement is a basic obstacle most progressive reforms must climb over to become reality. But, as Alex points out, most people, when shown the value of good government working for them, are more inclined to pay taxes.

So, how do we kill the anti-tax movement? I’d put forward that we do it by pushing Obama but not to the point of purity. More importantly, we do it by passing our reforms and letting the results speak for themselves (well, not for themselves, with a generous helping of PR).

I’ve seen some message testing Americans United For Change put out, and the results show public opinion is pretty split on the message of taxes. Specifically, when you ask people whether they’d rather “focus on public investment” or “reduce taxes,” 51% would rather reduce taxes. If you change up the messaging a bit and say “focus on public investment to create jobs” or “reduce taxes,” 61% are for job creation.

Either way, a majority or a large minority of the country wants to simply reduce taxes to fix our economic crisis. It’s a testament to how powerful and well-funded the broad anti-tax coalition is in this country.

Pushing Obama to do more investment and less tax cutting is a good message, especially when tied to job creation. But, coming into the battle over Obama’s economic recovery plan, I’m not going to howl if the eventual package includes some tax cuts, especially if they are the more progressive kind, like the Earned Income Tax Credit. The important thing is for Obama’s plan to pass, and for it to center on massive public investment focused on creating jobs.

Then, we can destroy the anti-tax movement after the plan does what it’s designed to do, create jobs and long term economic growth.

From mid December until the New Year, at the behest of President-elect Obama and Senator Tom Daschle, America talked about health care.

Health Care for America Now helped organize hundreds of these meetings across the country, and they were exactly what we (and the Obama transition team) were hoping for: Regular folks getting together and discussing this important issue, like these people from Alabama and California:

The news coverage of these events across the country was extraordinary, which gives me hope. Here’s a small sampling.

The New York Times kicked off the coverage by attending a house party outside of DC held by members of DC for Obama:

A recent post on the legalization of marijuana prompted debate among authors here at the Seminal. Most everyone was in agreement that pot should be decriminalized, if not legalized. In making the argument, some emphasized the fact that marijuana is not a “hard drug,” and is therefore less harmful to society than, say, heroin or cocaine. While I agree that adverse consequences of marijuana are dwarfed by those of coke and heroin (and even those of alcohol and tobacco) I take the legalization argument a step further - not only pot, but all drugs, should be legalized. I justify my belief with two facts: the War on Drugs is ineffective and largely futile, and the social consequences are too great to warrant existing laws, both in the US and abroad.

First, a cursory examination of the War on Drugs shows minimal efficacy:

In 2005, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related assets and $477 million worth of drugs. However, according to the White House’s Office of Drug Control Policy, the total value of all of the drugs sold in the U.S. is as much as $64 billion a year, making the DEA’s efforts to intercept the flow of drugs into and within the U.S. less than 1% effective.

When victories have occurred they’ve often been pyrrhic in nature. Colombian cocaine provides a good example: after stanching traffic through the Caribbean route favored by Colombian cartels, the open US-Mexico border became the route of choice. Felix Gallardo emerged as the point man in Mexico and eventually became the largest drug trafficker in the Western Hemisphere. Over time, power fractured and the four modern cartels emerged: the Tijuana Cartel, the Sinaloa-Sonora Cartel, the Juarez Cartle, and the Gulf Cartel. Today, we have the neverending stream of violence at the Mexican border. We have the astonishing amount of firepower reveleaed by recent raids. We have demand comfortably met by supply.

If US-Mexican efforts succeeded in taking down these cartels, another route would soon emerge, just as cocaine production in Colombia survived the toppling of the Medellin Cartel, the Cali Cartel, and the Norte del Valle Cartel with barely a hiccup. Production has proven equally oblivious to billions of dollars in US aid delivered via Plan Colombia.

Despite this inability to reduce or control the illicit trade, or to reduce or control the main engine in the narco-machine (US and European demand), the US government continues to throw lives and treasure into this black hole. We continue to lock up citizens guilty only of drug dependency. We continue to push sale and use into society’s darkest corners, thereby assuring that power, money and influence accrue in the hands of dangerous men. The dire circumstances in Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan and Guinea Bissau all, to varying degrees, bear the point.

My argument is no doubt hastily made, and would benefit from substantial extrapolation, but the point remains the same: we have, in sum, an ineffective policy that costs billions, ruins lives, destabilizes governments, funds terrorism, and enables a scrupulous undeground culture. And yet we continue to ignore the simple (and profitable) remedy.

From a pragmatic standpoint, yes, legalization efforts should be focused on marijuana. From most every other standpoint, all drugs deserve the same treatment. The revenue generated from the legalized sale would be put towards education, rehabilitation and prevention. The expenditures currently slated for the “War on Drugs” could be reallocated towards social programs that solve the problems that lead to drug use. The government of the United States of America could focus on development aid to Colombia in place of military aid, potentially stabilizing that society and phasing out production altogether. Most importantly, America would be stronger and the world would be safer.

For the sake of common sense, legalize it. Legalize it all.

Krugman hits Obama from the left on taxes and stimulus:

Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.

OK, maybe this is just a head fake from the Obama people — they think they can win the PR battle by making bipartisan noises, then accusing the GOP of being obstructionist. But I’m really worried that they’re sending off signals of weakness right from the beginning, and that they’re just going to embolden the opposition.

Reading my boys at Agonist, mainly Sean Paul and Stirling, has convinced me that the anti-tax movement is one of the biggest obstacles toward progressive governance. We can’t keep feeding that troll. If every economic plan has to include tax cuts, we’re going to have a hard time solving problems. I don’t even know that people inherently object to taxes - I think they object to taxes most when they feel they’re getting a bum deal. As a friend put it the other night, he gives a third of his check and in return gets a police state that could kick down his door and bust him for smoking pot at literally any moment. And he doesn’t see much other benefit from his taxes. But that doesn’t mean people always favor cutting taxes. If the government can create good jobs, provide decent healthcare, offer dependable pensions, and maintain high standards in infrastructure (trains, internet access, etc), people won’t demand tax cuts.

Anand Gopal’s “The Surge That Failed” is worth reading in full, but here’s an important excerpt:

When, decades from now, historians compile the record of this Afghan war, they will date the Afghan version of the surge — the now trendy injection of large numbers of troops to resuscitate a flagging war effort — to sometime in early 2007. Then, a growing insurgency was causing visible problems for U.S. and NATO forces in certain pockets in the southern parts of the country, long a Taliban stronghold. In response, military planners dramatically beefed up the international presence, raising the number of troops over the following 18 months by 20,000, a 45% jump.

During this period, however, the violence also jumped — by 50%. This shouldn’t be surprising. More troops meant more targets for Taliban fighters and suicide bombers. In response, the international forces retaliated with massive aerial bombing campaigns and large-scale house raids. The number of civilians killed in the process skyrocketed. In the fifteen months of this surge, more civilians have been killed than in the previous four years combined.

During the same period, the country descended into a state of utter dereliction — no jobs, very little reconstruction, and ever less security. In turn, the rising civilian death toll and the decaying economy proved a profitable recipe for the Taliban, who recruited significant numbers of new fighters. They also won the sympathy of Afghans who saw them as the lesser of two evils. Once confined to the deep Afghan south, today the insurgents operate openly right at the doorstep of Kabul, the capital.

This last surge, little noted by the media, failed miserably, but Washington is now planning another one, even as Afghanistan slips away. More boots on the ground, though, will do little to address the real causes of this country’s unfolding tragedy.

I haven’t seen the correlation between military escalation and civilian casualties laid out in such stark mathematical terms before, but it fits with what I’ve long suspected intuitively. Gopal goes on to point out how those civilian casualties play a direct role in driving Afghans into the arms of the Taliban - which of course brings the cycle around full circle.

Despite zero involvement in Virginia politics, telemarketing money-collecting expert Terry McAuliffe wants to be Governor.

I’m with Booman: (emphasis mine)

If he holds a progressive idea anywhere in his head, it is merely a branding decision that makes him distinct from George Allen-Republicanism. It’s little more than a charade. McAuliffe is every bit the Economic Hit Man. He’s a James Carville ‘D’ to Mary Matalin’s ‘R’. They are so in bed with each other that they’re raising each other’s kids. That kind of branding is no branding at all. It’s just a deceit.

The health of the Democratic Party depends on it ridding itself of the soulless moneygrubbers, like McAuliffe, that stole its soul during the 1990’s and delivered one devastating defeat after another. But McAuliffe prospered anyway. That’s how that game is set up. Mark Penn made a killing last year, too.

He has already made it clear that he intends to win by sidestepping hard questions and flooding the airwaves with paid advertising. Given the fact that Virginia gets bluer with each cycle, why should Virginia Democrats vote for a corporatist DLC candidate whose main qualification is his ability to place calls with rich people? The short answer: they shouldn’t.

Brian Moran for Governor.
Creigh Deeds for Governor.

An op-ed in the New York Times, part of their Transitions series, urges Obama to act quickly on immigration reform:

Immigration reform is the sort of complex and costly project that, as a rule, presidents accomplish only at the peak of their power — when their term begins. If Mr. Obama decides to postpone immigration reform until later, he runs the risk of no longer possessing the leverage to convince his party’s legislators to brave the furies of the extreme right wing.

The argument for quick action is not confined to this issue alone - what Rick Perlstein called a “liberal shock doctrine” could be applied to any and every issue on Obama’s lengthy agenda. But Immigration reform takes precedence, in the mind of the author, because significant progress can be made without comprehensive reform:

After his inauguration, Mr. Obama could put an end to all of this by suspending the raids, detentions and deportations. He should return to the approach followed by all of his predecessors until 2006: stop illegal entrants at the border when possible, but refrain from hunting them down once they cross the border.

This is sage advice. Obama should take these smaller steps right away - it would do as much to repair the damaged US brand in Latin America as the closing of Guantanamo will do elsewhere. Democrats as a whole, however, should wait until, say, the third year of Obama’s first term before essaying comprehensive legislation. The reason for delaying action is simple: strategy, stupid.

At present, there are weightier issues than immigration reform in the minds of most Americans, ones more deserving of that New Prez Leverage the author refers to. Postponing action, then, gives precedence to issues that hit closer to home for most US citizens. It also helps Obama’s re-election bid in clear, concrete ways. Bear with me as I flesh this out:

Given their status as the fastest growing minority group, Latinos are a valuable electoral block - one without insoluble links to either party. The last two elections (2006 and 2008) make clear, however, that Democrats are currently the “in” brand.

After the 2004 election, pundits made much of Latinos affinity for Bush. Four years later, and 2/3 of Latinos went for Obama. Now talk is of a “black/brown coalition,” and a potential “long-term, center-left political realignment.” There are two sure ways of solidifying that coalition for the foreseeable future: having a Democratic president help push humane immigration reform through a Democratic congress, OR, having humane immigration legislation thwarted by Conservative efforts. Doing it late in the term ensures a strong Latino turnout at the polls, as either an expression of gratitude to Democrats or scorn for Republicans, if not both.

Of course, there is always the chance that Republicans will drop the xenophobia, adopt a newfound respect for human rights, and try to salvage a share in the future Latino vote. In this scenario, the GOP cooperates and helps to pass immigration reform, thereby damping the enthusiasm of their Minute-madmen and women out West. Of course these wall-builders won’t turn blue with rage or resentment, but they will be more likely to stay home on Election Day.

As satisfying as either of those two scenarios above may be, the last is no doubt the best - comprehensive immigration reform gets passed in the legislative fury that accompanies Obama’s first “100 days,” as the man addresses numerous issues in one fell, refreshingly progressive swoop. Progressive Democrats then clean up at the polls in 2010, and we bury the GOP in our ever-shrinking carbon footprint.

Barring that option, timing a vote on immigration reform for the months leading up to November 4, 2012 is the best bet. It would put Republicans in a classic Catch-22, with their only choice being (to spin a phrase of Yossarian’s) “to die in an attempt to live forever.”

As Roosevelt described it, the cabinet was “slightly to the left of center.” Three members (Hull, Swanson, and Roper) were old Wilsonians. Three were Republicans: either Republican-progressive (Ickes and Wallace) or Republican-conservative (Woodin). Two had served in the Senate (three, counting Walsh), and one (Dern) was a governor. There were two Catholics (Farley and Walsh), and for the first time a woman joined the ranks. All regions of the country were represented, and all the appointees had been FRBC - For Roosevelt Before Chicago. FDR had a fingertip feel for political nuance. He was also the most calculating and hard-nosed politician of his generation. His pre-convention rivals, Al Smith and Newton D. Baker, were not consulted about, let alone appointed to, any position in the administration, nor were their supporters. The same was true of Maryland’s governor, Albert C. Ritchie. FDR’s former antagonists on the National Committee, John Raskob and Jouett Shouse, were consigned to outer darkness. Roosevelt reached out to Republican progressives and independents, but he snuffed out rivals in his own party.

- Jean Edward Smith, FDR, p. 295.

Now, I think that the breed of progressive Republican referred to here was already dying out by the 40s. Noteworthy is the fairly heavy representation of “old Wilsonians,” of whom FDR (former assistant secretary of the navy) was one. Wilson makes me shudder: a racist who believed he was on a mission from God, lacking a keen political sense. But this continuity with Wilson’s administration clearly did not determine the shape of FDR’s.

Moreover, according to Jean Edward Smith, in his early presidency FDR did not see his cabinet as a “decision-making body,” an opinion Harold Ickes echoed in his diaries (Smith, 335).

I point all this out not as an oblique way of saying that history tells us Obama and his cabinet will forge a progressive course in spite of themselves, but rather just to say that the heavy Clintonite presence does not automatically mean we know what we’re in for with Obama.

Moreover it’s important to understand in what ways FDR represented continuity with the earlier Democratic party and in what ways he represented a break. Some bloggers talk about 1932 like it was the year 0 AD, but American history had already been going for quite some time prior to that date.

And man, I wish we had a few progressive Republicans on hand right now. They were pretty key in giving FDR a Senate majority. But like I said, that’s a breed known mostly now only by the political fossil record.