Reaction to Frank Ocean (I been thinking ’bout you…you know know know…)

This morning Gawker, Vibe and damn near every media outlet on earth told the world something like the following sentence:

“Odd Future member and rising R&B star Frank Ocean announced tonight via his tumblr that he’s gay.”

NO! Frank Ocean has not come out. Frank Ocean has not declared his gayness, homosexuality or bisexuality. He hasn’t offered up that he is “same gender loving” “queer” or even “curious.” What Frank Ocean has done is be fearlessly, unavoidably and beautifully honest about the fact that he fell in love with a man. I’m not going to expound on his words. I can’t. I don’t have anything to offer on his words that can’t be gleaned from the gift of reading them. So please take the time to do so, again and again.

http://frankocean.com/

But I am concerned that the LGBT and “gay friendly” press is going to increasingly thrust the label “coming out” onto Frank Ocean. They are going to fold him into “healthy queer narrative” as Jeffery McCune recently put it. He is about to be coopted as an agent of gay liberalism and that is a shame. Because gay liberalism, as evidenced by LGBT institutions excitement over Anderson Cooper’s weak-tea outing isn’t about what Frank Ocean did. Frank Ocean is not keeping it cute and tidy. Frank Ocean has the audacity to unselfconsciously drip emotion all over the place without coming close to embracing gay liberalism’s lexicon. This is not a “classy” “outing.”

Also? Gay liberalism, until today, hasn’t given a hoot about Frank Ocean the human. Until today Frank Ocean was understood principally as part of hip hop and R&B, which means he was understood as one of the enemies of gay liberalism. Part of the “most homophobic” cultural institution in the “most homophobic” community and so the HRC was not *studying* Frank Ocean before today. So I’m preemptively annoyed about inevitable attempts by gay liberals to get Frank Ocean to “work” on the rest of the “black community.” Please do not draft Frank Ocean into labor for your political project, the man has enough work on his plate right now.

Here’s what Frank Ocean is also not doing. In choosing not to come out Frank Ocean is not justifying the behavior of any human, regardless of their fame, who is dishonest about their sexual and emotional life because they fear some form of reprisal. Whether that reprisal is an act of physical or emotional violence, the loss of a home or a lucrative job or the self-inflicted wounds of self-hatred. I’m not going to diagnose those folks, yell at those folks, or hate on those folks. All I’m saying is Frank Ocean is doing something different. He’s not avoiding risk, he’s not “working behind the scenes” and he’s not waiting until he reaches that unknown precipice of material success before he feels “safe” or “secure” enough for honesty.

What is Frank Ocean doing? Again, I’m not going to try and write about that right now. I can’t. I’m too emotional about the whole thing and I’m not a poet. I look forward to the poets reading and expanding on Frank’s letter. All I can say is how Frank Ocean made me feel, which is inspired and grateful. This morning I read Frank’s letter lying in the arms of the love of my life and I instantly recognized in Frank’s letter emotions that circulate in my world. I felt so incredibly close and connected to him at that moment. And that closeness was not born of his or my racial or sexual identification, it happened because of the truly universal categories of in-love, have-loved, was-loved, not-loved back and wanting-love. Right now all I can muster is to wish love for Frank Ocean. I really, really want to hug this man.

Now is Not the Time to Be Politic

The elites that dominate and fund the Republican party are destroying this country. While it has become fashionable to blame the Republican-base (for all the big-”isms”), the rue culprits are the disinformation emerging from the elites of the Republican Party and the feckless complicity of the national media in covering up their sins.

Like any good progressive, I have been disappointed by aspects of Obama’s presidency. I, however, am absolutely terrified of a Republican victory in November. This is why we must work very hard to re-elect Obama, and increase the number of Democratic Congressmen.

1. In my lifetime, the Republicans have become the party of unnecessary wars, crippling decificts, and hateful rhetoric. In an era of unified government, from 2001-2006, they destroyed the surplus, launched at least two wars that have spiraled out of control, and implemented policies that have destroyed trillions of dollars of value from the American national economy. Along the way, they demeaned gay Americans, atheists, immigrants, and the non-married.

2. Although the Democratic Party has done little to defend civil liberties, it has proven much better on civil rights. This is no time to be politic: we do not live in a country in which all citizens possess equal dignity or can expect fair treatment under the law. Gays are regularly beaten and mocked to little pushback. Singles are demonized and discriminated against. Ethnicities associated with immigration (non-blacks and non-whites) are demonized, marginalized, and in some places viewed openly with suspicion. Many non-Christians and atheists are mocked and marginalized for their political beliefs. The police wage a largely unchecked war against the poor. Elites have little concerns for the contracts and expectations of the middle class — committed to the demonization of public and private sector unions, the re-writing of contracts during corporate restructuring and leverage buyouts in ways that destroy companies and limit the pay of workers, and the refusal to enforce the basic regulations on banks and housing markets, hard times have come to those who are not already wealthy.

3. The Republican Party evinces little appetite to guide and direct the explosive growth of the defense industry and its related sectors, and seems eager for a confrontation with any other country.

4. Nearly every economic Republican proposal we have seen thus far will make the middle class less secure, the upper class narrower, and will punish the poor the sin of not being lucky. Republican proposals expand the deficit, decrease government revenues, and further lock-in the cozy, crony capitalist culture that dominates Washington.

A progressive political party does not yet exist, but the alternative party is the stuff of nightmares.

What We Must Do: we must expand the Democratic Party’s control of Congress, and re-elect President Obama. Progressives have to further find the money and resources to eliminate moderate and conservative Democrats in primaries. (Lastly, we have to ensure that Governor Cuomo does not advance very far in any Democratic Party primary nomination for President in 2016. )

Obama-Biden 2012! Warren-O’Malley 2016!

Why the Obama Administration Screwed Up on the Economy

Many of you know that I have been a critic of the Obama Administration (since Day One), mostly from the left, particularly about foreign policy. (Some have taken this to mean that I don’t admire Obama; I do, but I also recognize the need for principled opposition and a defense of progressive principles. As a cautious politician, Obama will only go to the Left when a path is cleared for him.)

That being said, I have said and continue to believe that the Obama Administration bungled its response to the two most pressing tasks when he took office: the collapse of the economy, and the increasing militarization of foreign policy (wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the war on drugs). Some friends have pushed me to pen my thoughts, so in this post I’ll take on fiscal and monetary policy.

The Misguided Economic Analysis that Led to a Poor Political Response

My core disagreement with the Obama Administration’s response to the financial crisis is both economic and political.

Economically, the Administration viewed the financial crisis as a shallow recession, which required mild insurance (TARP and AARP) against the worst systemic outcomes. In contrast, I believed that the financial crisis exposed a fundamental rot at the heart of the American economic system, particularly as it was rigged toward massively rewarding short-term gains, blossoming private debt, stagnating wages, and increased wealth/income gaps. The housing bubble (and the (education) degree bubble) were the perfect incarnation of these forces. By the time that the bubble began to burst, several economic forces squeezed families: reduced equity in their homes, increasing mortgage payments, increasing cost of tuition, increased insurance costs, increased (car-based) commutes to work from the low density building boom of the housing bubble era, and increasing gas prices (for a variety of reasons). In short, by the time many Americans started losing their jobs, their debt levels—from activities that were considered good or necessary financial decisions such as home ownership, education, and health costs—accelerated the crisis cycle.

Politically, the Administration viewed the stimulus (AARP) and the bailout (TARP) as bitter pills to swallow on the way toward achieving signature Congressional “liberal victories”, including, but not limited to health insurance reform. In contrast, I believed that years of Republican mismanagement meant that economic regulation, and the staffing of government at the minimum was necessary for a sharp break with the Republican orthodoxies that had ruled more or less unfettered since 2001, and gained ascendancy in 1994. If we didn’t get the (political) economy right, all of our achievements were moot because we wouldn’t be able to sustain the partisan coalition necessary to defeat the right-wing.

When we say that Obama lacked a spine, we don’t only mean that progressives feel like they got rolled in the tactics of negotiation. We mostly mean that the President who ran on judgment seemed utterly incapable of diagnosing the fundamental illnesses in the American system and decidedly unwilling to roll them back. I would have settled for containment, but the man opted for conciliatory appeasement.  (Now much of this was apparent during the primary and the election, as I pointed out back then.)

In fact, even today the Administration believes that it has done all it should do about the economy, and we just have to wait it out.  From his Facebook Townhall:

[Obama] So those were all investments that we made in the first two years. Now, the economy is now growing. It’s not growing quite as fast as we would like, because after a financial crisis, typically there’s a bigger drag on the economy for a longer period of time. But it is growing. And over the last year and a half we’ve seen almost 2 million jobs created in the private sector.

Again, to be clear, note that Obama is not saying that it isn’t politically feasible due to Republican obstructionism – he saying that a stronger recover is not economically feasible because recoveries after financial crises just take longer and we’ll have to live with it. Now this idea is advanced in the recent book by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, called This Time is Different.

Is Obama correct? Interesting enough, the Chariman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, was asked a similar question in response to this book.

REPORTER: Mr. Chairman, Ken Rogoff, wrote a book looking at 800 years of financial history and discovered when you have a financial crisis it takes a lot longer for the economy to recover.

Are people expecting too much from the Federal Reserve in terms of helping the economy recover? Has that complicated your monetary policy making?

CHAIRMAN BERNANKE: Let me say first that Ken Rogoff was a graduate school class mate of mine. I even played Chess against him, which was a big mistake. I enjoyed that book very much. I thought it was informative and as you say, it makes the point that as a historical matter, recoveries following a financial crisis tend to be slow.

What the book didn’t do is give a full explanation of why that’s the case. Part of it has to do with the problems in credit markets. My own research when I was in academia focused a good deal on the problems in credit markets on recoveries.

Other aspects would include the effects of credit problems on areas like housing and so on. We are seeing all that, of course, in our economy.

That said, another possible explanation for the slow recovery from financial crises might be that policy responses were not adequate. That the recapitalization of the banking system, the restoration of credit flows and the monetary fiscal policies were not sufficient to get as quick a recovery as might otherwise have been possible.

And so we haven’t allowed that historical fact to dissuade us from doing all we can to support a strong recovery.

The Administrations Failed Response to the Economy

Have I overstated my case that the Obama Administration completely misdiagnosed the economic situation? See Ezra Klein’s reporting on how the Administration, at the time, skewed its estimates.

I want to lean on Brad Delong’s summary of the economic/political conversation of 2009 (posted in December 2009), and add a few words.

By December 2009, the Administration was ready to move to cutting the deficit according to reporting by Noam Scheiber. (Note that this is a full year before Democrats lost the House, and Obama supposedly “pivoted” to deficit reduction measures.) In Scheiber’s accounting, “As of late this summer, Democrats in Washington shared a tidy consensus about the economy: The stimulus was working more or less on schedule, and the job market was gradually recovering. That meant the administration could start thinking about how to rein in the country’s yawning budget deficit, if not actually scale it back yet…”

Progressives were criticizing the President’s move as of August 2009.  This is in August 2009. Obama took office in January 2009. This means he was getting it wrong from the get-go.

Importantly, the Obama Administration economic analysis dictated its political strategy: Obama wanted to scale back government spending long before the Republicans captured the House. Don’t let the 2012 campaign tell you otherwise.

What the Obama Administration Should Have Done About the Financial Crisis

The Administration, instead of champion TARP or AARP, should have passed a Debt and Housing Relief Act . This bill should have done the following things.

1. Restructured American Retirement: Lowered the Retirement Levels to 55 (for Social Security and Medicare), Raised the Payroll Tax Caps above 108, 000, and allowed these to be assessed on  dividends-based income, increased both employee/employer contributions by 1% but also raise the COLA adjustments and net payouts

This would have address the “too old to hire, too young to retire” glut of the workforce

2. Grant block grants to states and major cities (populations 1M+) for restructuring, meeting payroll,and pension requirements — states can opt out/ cities can opt out.  This aid should have been “automatic”, that is, tied to the level of unemployment in the city: (i.e. above 5%, above 9%, and above 15%).

3. Pass a law that in four years, the government would no longer be able to borrow from the Social Security Trust fund.

4. Any state who accepts stimulus money, along with federal government pension plans, should have been consolidated to create a Infrastructure Investment Bank. Investment managers use profits to pay for new and update infrastructure in the country.

5. Restore Glass-Stegal and break up the largest banks into the constituents parts (separating different types of banking) to create a Housing Bank: absorb all federal guaranteed mortgages, all subprime mortgages, and all toxic assets into a subsidized bank. The idea is that no bank is too big to fail, but that the government would purchase toxic assets into one new bank that was government financed but independent. This federalized bank would therefore be able to directly re-write mortgages, and offer better financing incentives for people who wanted to move into urban areas (500k or more) and buy homes/ properties there.

6. Expand opportunities for National Service: folks who participate in national service can write down up to 12k of student loans

7. Peg the value of Pell Grants to be 80% of In-state public school Tuition and remove private lenders from student loans.  Education institutions that receive federal money cannot increase the cost of tuition more than the rate of inflation + 1% ever year to prevent a subsidized growth of the university system.  Every student is eligible to receive up to 7 years of Pell Grant funding, though no more than 4 of which can go to undergraduate funding. (Note the Administration did remove private lenders from student loans.)

8. Cut Corporate Tax Rates to 8% + 3% for the state that corporation has a home base in — if an overseas company then +5% to the federal government instead. This would help with state financing.

9. TARP for Education: The government takes on all student loan debt except for 10K per person. Citizens with less than 10k in debt or who have recently (ten years) paid off student loan debt would receive a 2k in negative income taxes for 5 years.

Next Up (in a few days): Why the economic and political logic of this plan was.

What to Do in Libya: Principles for Post-Gaddhfi Libya

Removing a regime is much easier than putting a new one in its place. Ostensibly united to prevent further massacres by Gaddhafi, a coalition of Cerenician rebels and international allies have successfully vanquished Gaddhafi’s regime in Tripoli.

This outcome — the ouster of Gaddhafi — was never in doubt. The international allies possessed unrivaled control of the air and sea,  and the regime, retrenched in the capital city, could not recapture Benghazi as long as they possessed international backing.

This putative humanitarian effort, however, is now in its most fragile phase: what can the new Libyan regime and its international allies do to forge a peace worthy of the war they’ve won?

The most important thing the regime must do is create a stable political coalition that is capable of navigating the difficult process of building a Libyan state. Building a stable political coalition is very difficult — and its even more difficult when the state is largely dependent on foreign funds and petrodollars to function.

This new state may not be able to work for all of its people — even the American state is heavily tilted toward the mega-rich and large corporations — but the people should not fear the state.  Importantly, elites have to believe that they have more to fear from the absence of a functioning state than the presence of a functioning state.

Non-elites, “the people”, on the other hand, need accountability from their political leaders and political institutions. The people must believe that even when they cannot observe the political process that it is fundamentally concerned with working for them (rather than against them), and that expressions of popular pressure will not result in suspicious detentions or intimidation.

There are five things the United States and its allies can do to encourage this process.

1. The United States has to state unequivocally that it will not recognize or release assets to any regime that engages in mass killings, mass incarceration or ethnic cleansing. There should be zero tolerance for political manipulation that involves violence against civilians.

2. The United States should restrict its oil companies, and aid Libya in restricting other foreign oil companies from ownership of Libya’s natural resources. Instead, the US should encourage Libya to privatize its oil interests and nationalized business by selling them to local businessmen and engage in: affirmative action to ensure demographic balance; heavily regulation to encourage tax compliance; and strictly limit foreign owned shares of these companies to keep the tax base local. This privatization can also be partial through the issuance of common stock that pays dividends based on revenue. The key is that the funds can’t just go into a government slush fund; there needs to be another actor to keep the government accountable to encourage it to develop taxation capacities.

3. The United States should push progressive fiscal policies. It must re-issue Libyan foreign debt to Libyan capitalists and shareholders; constitutional limits on the amount of yearly government spending that can come from oil-based revenues, debt financing, or foreign aid. Tie foreign aid to regular and full payments on domestic debt. Tie new international loans to first being able to raise that amount of debt domestically.

4. Partner with Europe to create a new civil society capable of sustaining a professional class that has an interest in a functioning government

5. Lastly, the The United States should push for a regular Census, freedom of peaceful association, and freedom of speech. Political representation and citizenship must become linked to residence to prevent xenophonia, and Libya must allow for the flourishing of all speech — even speech that we disagree with.

A New Season of Interventions

Hello Readers of A Much Needed Intervention:

1. We run a companion to this blog on Facebook. We’ve been trying to practice the discipline of short-form blogging there.

2. We have the archives of old blog (from many years ago) here.

3. We will continue updating this site whenever we need to make longer interventions into the discourse as our professional commitments allow. Kwame is a newly minted historian; and I’m much closer to being a newly minted political scientist.

4. Follow me on twitter, @hegemonprime.

5. Coming up: a piece on Libyan stability, likely a piece on the non-authorization of the war, and a cut at defining a progressive vision of foreign policy. If my thoughts come together I have some ideas on cities and social geography, but those are congealing more slowly in my mind.

Add us to your Google Reader feeds, so that you never have to worry about whether you are missing a post!

Growing Up, or When Will We Learn to Say No to Bad Democrats?

I thought that this would warm Kwame’s heart. It has the added benefit of being right. We can’t complain that we are being abused if we consistently support the wrong candidates in primaries.

What We, As Labor Leaders, Must Do!

Dear Union Brothers and Sisters,

This letter is more of a “cry for action” rather than just an informational or ideological statement or platform. It is meant to be serious and intense, and I hope you take this letter in that form! This letter is being sent to as many union brothers and sisters as possible.

I have been involved in the labor movement now for about ten years, from non-union worker/union activist, to member, and officially becoming a union representative for UFCW Local 152. I have been a part of every aspect of the union movement, and now I must take the next step – Labor leader.

What do I mean by leader? Being a leader does not mean having the title of Business Manager or President of a local.

It means standing up and saying what needs to be said against the status quo. There were numerous forms of this leadership before me, and their will be numerous ones after me – but I am worried about what is happening in today’s present labor environment.

Many of you might have heard about me in my run for State Representative as an Independent with the Green Party, and I am proud of that decision. I ended up getting the highest vote of any third party in Philadelphia and I am pretty sure I received the highest in a three way race. This is what needs to be done! I did this using basic union organizing skills and having a handful of unions behind me. Imagine what would have happened if I had all of the Philadelphia unions behind me?

Why do we support the Democrats and Republicans when all they do is take our money, use our man power, and then leave us out to dry? Why do we support CEO’s, corporate consultants, and corporate attorneys, when 365 days of the year when they are not running for office, they are fighting unions, breaking labor laws, and spreading their greed? But all of a sudden when they run for office as a ‘Democrat”, they have changed their ways? This just proves that the Democrats are as corporate as the Republicans.

Labor has the power to change this, and we must! Many labor unions still believe the Democrats are “labor’s friend”. Really? How can this be when they failed to pass EFCA, they bail out the super rich, failed to pass Single-Payer health care, pass horrible trade laws (NAFTA), attack pensions, and most of all – are in the pockets of the same people we fight everyday, the corporations! I am not writing this letter so I can fill it with boring facts, but the Democrats took 53% of the total “corporate” contributions – 53 %!

Why are we, the strong men and women of the labor movement, bowing down to the corporate bosses and politicians, when we could run for office, win, and do what we need to do – enact laws that benefit working people and poor people. We have the man power, money, and knowledge to run OUR UNION REPRESENTATIVES and win!

But here is the catch, we CANNOT run as a Democrat or Republican; those two parties are too corrupted and entrenched. We must strengthen and build a THIRD PARTY! Yes, we must do what our past labor leaders tried to do and that is build a party that is about us. Some of you might say, “That will never work, and it can’t happen”. Well I would say you are dead wrong! The corporate Democrats ONLY win because we fuel them, but then they turn their backs on us. If we run with a clean and fresh party such as the Green Party, we can call the shots and be as progressive as we choose.

It amazes me how some local leadership bows down to the Democrats and “fears” them. Union brothers and sisters, when any one of us becomes “fearful” or “controlled” by a political party – it’s time to step down and pass the torch on. WE are the voice of working people, and WE should be telling these politicians what to do; not the other way around.

We owe the Democrats and Republicans NOTHING, because they have done NOTHING for our members, for our contracts, and for the movement. How much longer are we going to support a bunch of failures? WE don’t have to because WE can blackball them just like they blackballed our members and the movement. We gave them plenty of time and opportunities and each time, they spat in our face!

Here is what needs to happen:

*We have to come together and make a collective of progressive, fearless, and strong locals that will run with the Green Party.

*We have to talk about the issues we want passed in City Council and in the State Legislature.

*We then must pick union representatives to run for these seats in City Council and the State Legislature.

*We must stick together and focus on winning for once!

*WE CAN DO IT AND WE WILL DO IT!

The Green Party is the party of labor. They have a platform that is 100% pro-labor (repeal Taft-Hartley, NAFTA, and prosecute CEO’s who break the law). Other labor unions around the country are supporting Green Party candidates in local races, I say we RUN AS GREEN PARTY CANDIDATES. Here is the link, http://www.gp.org

It’s time we make history and do the right thing. We have an obligation our members, to our future, and we have an obligation to the men and women who died to form and join unions. If we keep on doing what we are doing, then we have slapped everyone in the face that fought for us.

Sincerely,
Hugh Giordano, Union Organizer

The End of the American Age

This is what happens when the country comes to believe that you can have government and a social safety net without taxes, and that an extremely progressive tax system (that targeted high-income families as well as millionaires, billionaires and big banks) was not worth fighting for.

Apparently freedom is so fragile that the 2 to 4% increase on the highest income earners is the difference between free markets and abominable socialism.

The progressive movement is letting this happen– we need to get our lives right and make some noise.

The Tea Party are not the only angry people in this country (though they may be the only angry people who can carry guns and march on Washington. God help us if brown people did that; the police organizations would trip over themselves to fire on the protesters. Remember kids: it’s a riot or some kind of victim sweepstakes when, urbanites, brown men, brown women,  and white women ask for equal rights — it’s “free speech” when white men do it ).