Town Square Political Theory Daily Review

From The Nation, a debate of Labor's Future (including Sweeney, Stern, Wilhelm, McEntee, Cohen, and Hoffa). From In These Times, more on Wobblies!, and the religious right wants to include moral values in the debate over how our taxes are spent? Bring it on. Do Democrats need to get religion? Jim Wallis and Susan Jacoby go at it.

From WSWS, an article on secularism and the American Constitution. Christopher Caldwell on the sacred cow of religious rights. An article on Islam and the institutions of a free society. A review of Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism.

From LRB, a review of The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, and an article on secularism and the American Constitution. Christopher Caldwell on the sacred cow of religious rights. An article on Islam and the institutions of a free society. A review of Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism.

From LRB, a review of The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination, and an article on.

From NYRB, Peter Galbraith on Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic. Brendan O'Neill on how a risk-averse West has inflamed the terrorism it fears. What turns a man into a terrorist, and what can be done about it? And from Foreign Affairs, an article on How to Help Poor Countries

THOSE CRAZY MUSLIMS      recovering liberal the London bombs.

From NYRB, Peter Galbraith on Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic. Brendan O'Neill on how a risk-averse West has inflamed the terrorism it fears. What turns a man into a terrorist, and what can be done about it? And from Foreign Affairs, an article on How to Help Poor Countries

Religion and the Founders

The Founding Fathers were not devout by the standards of many of today's fundamentalist Protestants. To carefully examine writings by the principal framers (Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington and Madison) is to note the striking degree to which they all shared attitudes toward religion that would disqualify them as "Christians" in the eyes of the religious right, even though they described themselves as such. All these men emphasized the supreme importance of individual reason and conscience--not ecclesiastical authority and dogma--in shaping personal faith. To be sure, they recognized religion's valuable social role, but the assertion heard so often these days, that America was founded as a 'Christian nation', simply is not true.

The only mainstream media coverage I saw of the "Showdown on Wall Street" Thursday was on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show. Possibly everyone else was off covering a gathering of a dozen teabaggers, and could not spare the time to listen to working Americans:

More than 5,000 union members and others delivered a crisp message with their march from City Hall to the Bowling Green Bull. In contrast to recent protests on the right, the event was noticeably lacking in loaded and ahistorical symbols like Gadsen flags, and refrained from vilifying individuals in favor of calling out institutions. Of hundreds of signs hoisted, only one was branded with the Obama logo.

The signs were non-partisan and dealt with real problems -- namely, this country's rogue, unregulated finance sector. There was only one puppet, a fanged vampire squid meant to symbolize Goldman Sachs. The banners declared "Wall Street: Never Again" and "Less Audis, More Audits." Almost to a one, they echoed the clear policy demands of the day: regulatory reform, new taxes on banks and speculators, and a jobs bill.

The afternoon began with direct action protests in the lobbies of Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase. Next came a series of speakers -- teachers, students, workers -- that put New York City faces on the nationwide hard times. Representing hundreds of labor, religious and community groups, they demanded Wall Street do its part to fix the mess it created. They railed against budget cuts in city housing, health and education, overseen by the city's billionaire mayor who opposes a financial transaction tax.

"The result of these cuts will be more homelessness, more joblessness and more hunger," said Sean Banks, a high school teacher in Brooklyn. The planned cuts will also result in bigger class sizes. Currently the New York state House and Senate are considering bills that would see New York lay off between 4,000 and 8,500 teachers.

Before leading the march to the Bowling Green Bull, the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka issued a direct three-part challenge to the banks: stop fighting reform and call off the lobbyists; stop speculating and start lending; and "take responsibility for the mess you made."

The demands resonated with a crowd thick with the unemployed and city workers facing layoffs in their departments and agencies. "These bankers have no shame," said Marie Mitchell, a city clerical worker. "I saw the Goldman Sachs guys on TV the other day, still refusing to apologize for anything. They should be sent to jail, like Madoff."

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From This Week with Jake Tapper, an interview with Obama economic advisor Larry Summers:

TAPPER: OK. The president has said he wants -- in the next few weeks, he wants the Senate to pass financial regulatory reform. First of all, just quickly, do you guys have the 60 votes to pass Senator Chris Dodd's bill on financial regulatory reform?

SUMMERS: I expect that reform is going to pass. It's not easy. You've got $1 million being spent per congressman in lobbying expenses on this issue. Industry has four lobbyists per member of the House and Senate working on this.

But the case for basic consumer protection, the case for regulating institutions that are able to bring the economy down and not leaving them completely unregulated, the case that we've got to be able to handle the failure of an institution without a major bailout through so-called resolution authority, the case that we can't let institutions choose their own regulator -- play one regulator off -- against another to reduce standards -- that case is so compelling that we are confident that a sufficient majority will see that case and will vote to support financial reform.

We've come a -- we've come a -- come a long way on this issue. We're now in the final stages. Our expectation is that we will get there, and there's no question, I mean, how can anyone take a position after what has happened, after -- I mean, it's not the first thing that's happened...

TAPPER: Well, some -- some -- some Democrats...

SUMMERS: ... that we don't need -- that we don't need comprehensive financial reform.

TAPPER: Well, some...

SUMMERS: Probably (ph) work on the details, but not compromise on the principles.

TAPPER: Some Democrats say it doesn't go far enough. Here's Delaware Democrat Ted Kaufman talking about the Dodd bill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAUFMAN: Unless Congress breaks up the mega-banks that are too big to fail, the American taxpayer will remain the ultimate guarantor of an almost certain to repeat itself cycle of boom, bust and bailout.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Senator Kaufman is saying that there isn't being -- enough being done about too big to fail. In 2000, you said, quote, "It is certain that a healthy financial system cannot be built on the expectation of bailouts." Can you honestly say that the Dodd bill changes that?

SUMMERS: Yes, I can. It changes -- it reduces the expectation of bailouts by insisting that institutions have much more capital so they won't need to be bailed out. It eliminates the prospect of bailout by creating a framework in which a failure can be managed with creditors taking responsibility.

It restricts -- and this was the important point that former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker has stressed -- it restricts the so-called proprietary trading activities, some of the most risky activities of these institutions. So, yes, this bill is a direct attack on too large to fail by making failure a possibility, as it has to be in a market system, and by making these institutions much safer and much sounder. Senator Kaufman is exactly right.

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Earlier this week, George Stephanopoulos had an interview with Timothy Geithner:

GEITHNER: You know, I think it's very important banks work very hard to start to rebuild trust and confidence of the American people in their institutions in the financial system. They did a huge amount of damage to the country, lost a huge amount of trust and confidence. They need to work very hard to restore that. One of the ways to do that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think they get that?

GEITHNER: I don't think they get it. I think some banks do; I don't think all banks get it yet.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What do they need to do to show that they get it?

GEITHNER: I think they need to make sure they're doing everything they can to help people who can afford to stay in their homes stay in their homes, help make sure they are lending in communities that need access to credit, they're working very hard to make sure that viable businesses that face some increased demand for orders now for their products now can get the credit they need.

They need to show some restraint and care in how they pay their people, and they need to be supportive of the kind of reforms we need to create a more stable system in the future.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's all encouragement. Where's the stick?

GEITHNER: The stick is through what Congress is going to have to legitimate through reforms. You know, we're not going to run a strategy to protect the country from future financial crises that rests on the hope that banks in the future behave more wisely and more nobly. We're going to run a strategy that requires reforms that are going to -- going to restrain risk-taking, provide better protections for consumers.

Really, Tim? Because I don't hear anything like reform happening in Congress. In fact, voters might somehow get the wrong idea (or the right idea) about your banking bailout after stories like this:

Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- In the first six months of 2010, about 6,000 employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will take a break from their spreadsheets and move across the southern tip of Manhattan to a new 43-story, steel-and-glass skyscraper.

The building was a bargain -- and not just because the final cost is expected to be $200 million less than the $2.3 billion price the company had estimated when construction began in November 2005. Goldman Sachs also benefited from the government’s determination to avoid losing jobs in lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Building a new headquarters cater-cornered to where the World Trade Center once stood qualified the firm to sell $1 billion of tax-free Liberty Bonds and get about $49 million of job-grant funds, tax exemptions and energy discounts. Henry Paulson, then Goldman Sachs’s chief executive officer, threatened to abandon the project after delays in addressing his concerns about safety. To keep the plan on track, state and city officials raised the bond ceiling to $1.65 billion and added $66 million in benefits. The interest expense on the financing is about $175 million less over 30 years than if the company had issued corporate debt at the time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“It was absolutely imperative that Goldman Sachs keep its world headquarters downtown,” says John Cahill, who took part in the negotiations as chief of staff to then-Governor George Pataki and now works at New York law firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP. “They had the financial resources to move anywhere.”

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Is there really nothing more the White House can do about this? Seems like pretty weak tea to tell them to "think about it." Here's hoping there's some arm-twisting going on behind the scenes:

In the wake of reports that Goldman Sachs is set to pay a record 23 billion in bonuses this year, the President’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod told me this morning that he thinks big banks dishing out bonuses to their employees is “offensive” and advises banks to “think through what they are doing.”

“The bonuses are offensive and to the firms that still have federal TARP money there’s some jurisdiction, the pay master of Treasury is working on trying to limit that,” Axelrod said. “You’ve seen a lot of firms go to stock rather than cash, so at least people have a stake in the success of their company and they’re not just walking away with cash-making short-term decisions.”

“They ought to think through what they are doing and they ought to understand that a year ago a lot of these institutions were teetering on the brink and the United States government and taxpayers came to their defense. They have responsibilities and they ought to meet those responsibilities.”

Jesus' General: Torture's Harvest

The Grey Matter: Further proof that financial institutions own congress

Dissenting Justice: Obama on National Security: I am doing the right things. I have not broken campaign promises

Daniel W. Drezner: One of the handful of conservative voices with whom I often, merely disagree (rather than consider insane)

Bitter Lawyer: 11 famous law school dropouts

Afronerd: The great Jody Watley pays a visit to Afronerd radio tomorrow at 7PM ET

AFL-CIO NOW Blog, (h/t Norwegianity):

Looks like literally nothing is sacred. A new report by the National Labor Committee reveals that crucifixes for sale at major religious institutions such as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church in New York City were made in Chinese sweatshops.

Distributed by the Association for Christian Retail, the items are not labeled “Made in China.” In fact, they sometimes seems to be labeled “Made in Italy,” according to National Labor Committee Director Charles Kernaghan. Following a National Labor Committee press conference yesterday outside St. Patrick’s announcing the report, Kernaghan said both St. Patrick’s and Trinity pulled the items from their store shelves...

The report, “Today Workers Bear the Cross: Crucifixes Made Under Horrific Sweatshop Conditions in China,” notes that the workers who make the crucifixes are paid just 26½ cents an hour, less than half China’s legal minimum wage of 55 cents, which is itself set at below subsistence levels. read more...

ZDNet: (link fixed)

Five of the largest ISPs in the US are to start charging businesses for guaranteed delivery of their emails, in a bid to combat spam.

Goodmail Systems, which provides a service called CertifiedEmail, announced on Thursday that it had signed up Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon as customers. Emails certified using the system are marked with a blue ribbon to show they come from a trusted source, thus bypassing spam filters - a privilege which will cost the sender a quarter of a US cent per email.

The voluntary scheme is aimed at large corporations and financial institutions whose mass mailings are most likely to be spoofed and caught in spam filters. Non-profit groups will be able to use the service for roughly a tenth of the commercial rate.[..]

According to Goodmail, seven US ISPs are now using CertifedEmail, accounting for 60 percent of the US population. Goodmail - which takes up to 50 percent of the revenue generated by the scheme - will for now only approve mail sent by companies and organisations which have been operational for a year or more. Ordinary users can still apply to be whitelisted by individual ISPs, which effectively provides the same trusted status.

I'm reading their justification, but...call me cynical, this just seems like a very dangerous slippery slope. In fact, I asked a few other bloggers their opinion and one directed me to this EFF statement:

Remember the famous email rumor that made the rounds in the 1990s: "Congress is trying to tax your Internet connection, write in now!"

Well what wasn't true in the 1990s is apparently coming true in 2006, only the beneficiaries won't be Uncle Sam -- it will be Yahoo, AOL, and a company ironically called Goodmail.

Cory Doctorow: There's an inverse correlation between the regulation of speech and the freedom of a society. Trying to filter the internet is ridiculous and dangerous.

If Mrs. Clinton were merely a movie star, one could shrug off the Klein book as tabloid trash, but she is the junior Senator from New York and former First Lady of the United States of America. So when national publications offer legitimacy to smear artists who attack our elected officials, the consequences are real, as it further degrades the profession of journalism and injures our public servants and the institutions they serve....read on

Duncan nails it: Maura Moynihan skins Ed Klein alive and demonstrates that he is indeed a complete and total fraud, which will only ensure that gets the royal media treatment.

Sean Hannity will probably set up his microphone outside Ed Klein's home for thirteen straight days, going over paragraph after paragraph of this polemic while Dick Morris swills down a few shots of "Jack" wearing a T-shirt that reads: "The original Hillary Liar"