AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Funding Legal Aid
A campaign for wider civil justice
Editorial, concordmonitor.com, August 29, 2015
Many attorneys, no matter how long they’ve been practicing law, will tell you they still get butterflies when they enter a courtroom. Just imagine how a single mother seeking protection from an abusive boyfriend would feel under the same circumstances. Now imagine she is alone in the courtroom, without legal representation.
Every year, the New Hampshire Campaign for Legal Services seeks out private donations to fund the work of the Legal Advice and Referral Center and New Hampshire Legal Services, two organizations that assist people who need advice or representation in civil cases but lack the means to hire a lawyer.
The work the groups do often means the difference between housing and homelessness, proper health care and rapid deterioration, safety and danger. In the context of domestic violence, the importance of legal representation is dramatically revealed in a statistic included in a report released by the Institute for Policy Integrity last month: “83 percent of victims represented by an attorney successfully obtained a protective order, as compared to just 32 percent of victims without an attorney.”
The stakes couldn’t be clearer: Legal aid can be a matter of life and death.
Of the nearly 14,000 people the two groups helped last year (a small fraction of those in need), 3,948 were children, 1,433 were disabled, 649 were seniors and 417 were veterans. Approximately 78 percent needed legal assistance in housing or family law, such as fighting eviction or pursuing a legal separation. Another 13 percent needed help securing benefits to which they were entitled. Without services such as the LARC’s hotline and informational website or the NHLA’s counsel and representation, the clients would have been forced to navigate the system alone or simply succumb to more powerful forces. Neither option should be acceptable in a country that prides itself on the notion of equal justice.
The legal assistance provided by LARC and NHLA, as well as the New Hampshire Bar Association’s Pro Bono Referral Program, are crucial, but it’s a shame the services must exist at all. It’s a shame, too, that the Campaign for Legal Services needs to pass the hat every year in an attempt to fill a gaping hole in the American system of justice. Their goal this year is $350,000, and we urge businesses, the legal community and individual donors to do what they can to help. But significantly more help, and more reliable funding, is needed to meet the demand.
There are three main sources of legal aid funding: the state and federal government, fundraising campaigns and something called IOLTA, which stands for Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts. The level of state funding depends on who is in charge in Concord, and annual fundraising depends on donors’ ability to give. As volatile as those sources are, they’ve got nothing on IOLTA. When a lawyer holds client funds of amounts too small to warrant their own interest-bearing account, those funds, by law, are placed into a pooled trust account and the interest goes toward legal aid. Trust account revenue fluctuates with deposit interest rates, so funding dries up significantly when the economy stalls. There needs to be a more stable funding system.
The ideal solution is “civil Gideon,” which is the civil law version of the criminal right to counsel established by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1963 Gideon v. Wainwright ruling. While financial realities may make that a pipe dream, it’s in New Hampshire’s present and long-term economic interest to find a way to make a greater investment in legal aid services.
According to a study funded by the American Bar Association, just one year of legal aid cases has an $84.4 million impact on the New Hampshire economy over a 10-year period, a figure that includes direct benefits to clients, a lower social service burden on local communities and greater spending power among low-income residents.
While we wait for lawmakers to do the math, those who provide legal aid must continue to look for creative ways to extend services to those who can’t afford to pay. A big step in the right direction would be for the legal community to forge deeper relationships with the state’s social service organizations, which would benefit all involved. The state should also refuse to wake from the dream of “civil Gideon” and a society where all have equal access to justice.
2. Studying the Impact of the Arts in NH
Impact of the arts to be studied
by Chris Garofolo, nashuatelegraph.com, August 30, 2015
NASHUA - During a meeting of the House Commerce & Consumer Affairs Committee, Rep. Kenneth Gidge soon discovered some of his fellow lawmakers had a series of creative and unique talents.
Gidge, a Nashua Democrat, went around the committee table asking each legislator about a special skill they may have acquired over the years - some played piano or flute, others sculpted, painted or wrote.
"Then we found a lot more people were in choral groups, church groups. One person was an actor in a church group," he said. "I was looking around and said 'Wow, we just potentially could be the most creative Legislature in the world.' "
An artist by trade, Gidge started thinking of ways to show some of his budget-slashing colleagues the importance of a thriving arts scene to the New Hampshire economy, so earlier in the legislative session he proposed a bill to establish a new commission to examine the financial impact of arts and culture in the Granite State.
The study would include income generated by art or cultural events, film and music festivals, symphonies, museums, visits to landmarks and other events, then recommend ways in which the state can enhance and expand this sector of the New Hampshire economy.
"Our whole goal (is to see) how much money does the arts bring in. My thing is if the state gives the arts groups here money ... if they give them a dollar, how many dollars come back from that?" Gidge said. "And if we can prove that the state gives a dollar and $10 comes back, then that truly is an investment."
In addition to examining the monetary value of the arts industry, the commission will promote cultural projects while educating lawmakers about the possible ramifications of putting such projects on the chopping block.
Gidge is serving as co-chairman of the 17-member commission with Bedford Republican David Danielson. Only four lawmakers - three in the House and one senator - are on the committee to leave room for representatives of the arts, tourism, state museums and craftsmen.
Its findings and recommendation are due back to the state's legislative and executive branches by Nov. 1, 2016.
Those interested in helping Gidge with the commission, who is looking to partner with media outlets and nonprofits, may contact him at 864-9332 or via email at kgidge@aol.com.
3. Regional Governors' Conference
New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers Adopt Resolutions on Climate Change And Transportation
from NH Labor News, nhlabornews.com, August 31, 2015
New England Governors Also Take Action On Opioid Abuse, National Surface Transportation Legislation, and Low Income Home Heating Assistance
ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR – Governor Maggie Hassan, her fellow New England Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers advanced regional collaboration on critical issues at the 39th Annual Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG/ECP) in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, adopting resolutions on climate change, transportation and mutual emergency aid.
In addition, the Coalition of Northeastern Governors (CONEG) issued letters to national leaders urging action on the opioid epidemic, national surface transportation legislation and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
“From energy to emergency preparedness, transportation and the opioid crisis, we face a number of shared challenges as a region that we must work together to address so that our people, businesses and communities can grow and thrive,” Governor Hassan said. “Our regional partnerships are critical as we work to expand middle class opportunity, support job-creating businesses, encourage innovation and combat the serious public health and safety challenge posed by heroin and other opioids. This year’s sessions were a valuable part of those efforts, and I am confident that the initiatives we have presented together will help create jobs, protect our natural resources and our communities, and improve the economies of all of our states and provinces.”
The NEG/ECP adopted three non-binding resolutions on climate change, transportation and mutual emergency aid at this year’s conference. Every state and province was represented at this year’s meeting, with Governors Malloy (CT), Baker (MA), Shumlin (VT), LePage (ME) and a representative from Rhode Island participating in today’s CONEG meeting.
On climate change, the NEG/ECP resolved today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 35 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. This is the most recent action in a series of collaborative efforts that began in 2001, when the governors and premiers were the first to adopt an international plan to address climate change in a region and set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2020 and by 75 percent to 80 percent by 2050 compared to the baseline year of 1990.
A recent regional inventory showed that the region has surpassed earlier targets and is nearing its 2020 target, and this resolution allows the region to set an interim goal between its current success and its 2050 goal. The NEG/ECP Committee on the Environment will oversee the development of a document presenting possible joint actions to present to the governors and premiers at the 40th NEG/ECP conference next year.
Recognizing that efficient and effective border security is critical for the economic development and the tourism industry throughout the region, the transportation resolution unanimously calls on Canadian and U.S. authorities to enhance rail infrastructure throughout the region and urges the Canadian and U.S. federal authorities to ratify as soon as possible an agreement negotiated in March regarding preclearance for land, rail, marine and air transport.
Acknowledging that emergencies and disasters from natural, technology-based and human-induced events do not honor state or international boundaries, the NEG/ECP resolved to continue the use of existing mutual aid compacts and to strengthen partnerships and exchange of information to achieve the strategic implementation of emergency management. They also resolved to build on lessons learned from joint state-province emergency training and to collaborate further to effectively respond to HazMat incidents in the region.
In a separate meeting on Monday morning, the Northeast Governors met to take action on the opioid epidemic, national surface transportation legislation and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
The six New England governors recommended to Dr. Stephen Ostroff, Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that the FDA require labeling changes for Immediate Release opioid analgesics that effectively communicate to patients and prescribers the serious risks of addiction, overdose, neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), and death associated with the drugs. They also wrote to Canadian Health Minister Rona Ambrose urging accelerated action by the Ministry to align the regulatory approaches of the U.S. FDA and Health Canada on regulations for tamper resistant/abuse deterrent guidelines for controlled-release oxycodone products. (Click here to read the full letter to the FDA and here for Health Canada)
On transportation issues, CONEG members also agreed on language urging Congress to act quickly to ensure continuity and stability of the nation’s highway, transit, rail and safety programs and the Highway Trust Fund. (Click here to read the full Surface Transportation Authorization letter)
In a letter to U.S. House and Senate authorization leaders regarding the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the six governors urged lawmakers to secure the maximum funding level for low-income families within the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill. CONEG members asked Congress to maintain the current language from the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015 so that states can efficiently assist low-income households with the delivery of essential home heating oil or restoration of vital gas or electric utility service as soon as winter weather arrives. (Click here to read the full LIHEAP letter)
4. Ayotte: No Friend of Workers
Kelly Ayotte Looks Out For Big Business and DC Special Interests, Not New Hampshire Workers and Small Businesses
by Ajacobs, nhdp.org, August 31, 2015
Ayotte Tries To Hide Record Of Voting Against Job Training, Higher Education, And Workforce Development Programs For New Hampshire
Concord, N.H. – Kelly Ayotte today claimed that she understands the importance of workforce development, but since going to Washington Ayotte has looked out for big business and DC special interests, not New Hampshire’s workers and small businesses.
While Ayotte has fought to protect tax breaks for outsourcers and big oil, she also voted repeatedly to cut job training, Pell Grants and workforce development programs that would strengthen New Hampshire’s economy.
“Kelly Ayotte’s empty rhetoric on strengthening our workforce is nothing but a shameless attempt to hide her record of putting outsourcers and big oil special interests first, while cutting job training programs and Pell Grants that would move New Hampshire’s economy forward,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley. “Kelly Ayotte has always put her special interest backers before New Hampshire’s small businesses and she always will – that’s why her special interest allies are already dumping millions of dollars into our state to try to rescue her vulnerable re-election effort.”
BACKGROUND
Ayotte Has Repeatedly Voted To Slash Funding For Pell Grants, Including The 2015 Senate Republican Budget That Cuts Pell Grants By Nearly $90 Billion
According to the Senate Budget Committee, the 2015 Republican budget that Ayotte supported “would further cut Pell grants by nearly $90 billion over ten years.” [Senate Budget Committee, 4/9/14]
According to the Senate Budget Committee, the 2015 Republican budget that Ayotte supported “would further cut Pell grants by nearly $90 billion over ten years.” [Senate Budget Committee, 4/9/14]
Ayotte Voted For Republican CR Would Have Cut Job Training Funding In New Hampshire By $3.5 Million, Cutting Off Job Training For 1,000 People And 700 Workers Whose Jobs Had Been Displaced. According to a March 2011 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the projected cuts from H.R.1 to job training grants under the Workforce Investment Act would have meant a cut of $33.7 million in New Hampshire. These cuts would have cut off job training for 1,000 people in New Hampshire and for 700 workers whose jobs had been displaced. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/1/11]
Ayotte Voted Against Extending TAA Benefits That Help Retrain Workers Who Had Lost Their Jobs Due To Outsourcing. In September 2011, Ayotte vote against: “passage of the bill that would revive expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits for certain U.S. workers who lose their jobs because of increased foreign competition. The increased benefits, which include additional job retraining, were contained in the 2009 economic stimulus law.” The bill passed 70-27. [CQ, 9/22/11; H.R. 2832, Vote 150, 9/22/11]
Ayotte Voted To Eliminate TAACCCT Program That Helped Provide Education And Job Training For Workers Whose Jobs Had Been Displaced. In September 2011, Ayotte voted for: “McCain, R-Ariz., amendment no. 625 to Casey, D-Pa., amendment no. 633. The McCain amendment would reduce the level of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) benefits to rates prior to the enactment of the 2009 economic stimulus law.” The amendment was rejected 46-53. [CQ, 9/21/11; S.Amdt. 625 to S.Amdt. 633 to H.R. 2832, Vote 143, 9/21/11]
5. The Shaheen Endorsement
Shaheen backing of Clinton comes at opportune time
by Paul Steinhauser, nh1.com, August 30, 2015
CONCORD – New Hampshire’s most popular Democratic lawmaker will formally back Hillary Clinton next weekend.
And for Clinton, next Saturday’s official endorsement by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen at an event in Portsmouth, comes as the former secretary of state’s poll numbers in New Hampshire, other early voting states, and nationally, have slipped.
Clinton, who was once the overwhelming front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, slightly trails Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the most recent two public opinion surveys in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
Asked about the timing of Shaheen’s endorsement, Clinton campaign New Hampshire state director Mike Vlacich told NH1 News that "Jeanne Shaheen is a great leader who makes a difference for the people of New Hampshire and women everywhere, and there is no better way to move into fall than with Hillary Clinton and Jeanne Shaheen in Portsmouth on Labor Day weekend."
Before running Clinton’s Granite State campaign operation, Vlacich was a longtime Shaheen staffer who steered her challenging re-election victory in last year’s midterm elections.
Still, the endorsement comes at an important time. The recent polls indicating Sanders ahead of Clinton were a bit of a shock, as New Hampshire was long considered Clinton country. Bill Clinton was nicknamed the “comeback kid” after his second place finish in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary, spring boarding him to the nomination and a White House victory. Bill Clinton won the state in both the 1992 and 1996 general elections.
Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York’s comeback victory in the 2008 Democratic primary re-launched her into an epic battle with then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois for the nomination. Eight years later, Clinton enjoys the backing of almost the entire Democratic party hierarchy in New Hampshire. But Sanders, who is well known in the Granite State and who has made numerous trips to New Hampshire since last summer, has seen his poll numbers rise dramatically the past couple of months.
And the endorsement also comes as speculation mounts regarding a White House bid by Vice President Joe Biden.
Shaheen’s formal support is not unexpected. She backed Clinton in the 2008 nomination battle, and in 2013 she signed a letter along with the other female Democratic senators urging Clinton to run again.
After Clinton launched her 2016 campaign in April, Shaheen said in an email to supporters that “we all have to rally behind her starting right now.”
In an email Sunday, Shaheen wrote “now it’s time for us to come together again for a president who will fight for all of us, just like you fought for me. New Hampshire is a special place to Hillary -- always has been, always will be.”
The “Women for Hillary” event will take place at 195 Parrot Ave. in Portsmouth starting at 11:30am on Saturday.
News of the Shaheen endorsement comes just a few days after Clinton grabbed the backing of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsask, a former two-term Iowa governor. The most recent public opinion poll in Iowa indicated Clinton in the lead, but Sanders gaining ground.
Shaheen’s formal support also shines a light on the lack of a similar endorsement so far by Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Then-state Sen. Hassan supported Clinton’s 2008 campaign. But the governor, who’s battling GOP lawmakers who control the state Senate and House over the budget, has yet to make an endorsement. Hassan is also weighing running for a third term as governor next year or challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who’s up for re-election.
AND NATIONALLY
6. Populism and Fauxpulism
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The Populists
by George Packer, newyorker.com, September 7, 2015 issue
Thomas E. Watson, the populist from Georgia who had a long and increasingly demagogic career in American politics, wrote in 1910:
The scum of creation has been dumped on us. Some of our principal cities are more foreign than American. The most dangerous and corrupting hordes of the Old World have invaded us. The vice and crime which they have planted in our midst are sickening and terrifying. What brought these Goths and Vandals to our shores? The manufacturers are mainly to blame. They wanted cheap labor: and they didn’t care a curse how much harm to our future might be the consequence of their heartless policy.
The objects of Watson’s bile were the Italians, Poles, Jews, and other European immigrants then pouring into the United States. A century later, in the populist summer of 2015, some of their great-grandchildren have been cheering Donald Trump as he denounces the latest generation of immigrants, in remarkably similar terms.
American populism has a complicated history, and Watson embodied its paradoxes. He ended his career, as a U.S. senator, whipping up white-Protestant enmity against blacks, Catholics, and Jews; but at the outset, as a leader of the People’s Party in the eighteen-nineties, he urged poor whites and blacks to join together and upend an economic order dominated by “the money power.” Watson wound up as Trump, but he started out closer to Bernie Sanders, and his hostility to the one per cent of the Gilded Age would do Sanders proud. Some of Watson’s early ideas—rural free delivery of mail, for example—eventually came to fruition.
That’s the volatile nature of populism: it can ignite reform or reaction, idealism or scapegoating. It flourishes in periods like Watson’s, and like our own, when large numbers of citizens who see themselves as the backbone of America (“producers” then, “the middle class” now) feel that the game is rigged against them. They aren’t the wretched of the earth—Sanders attracts educated urbanites, Trump small-town businessmen. They’re people with a sense of violated ownership, holding a vision of an earlier, better America that has come under threat.
Populism is a stance and a rhetoric more than an ideology or a set of positions. It speaks of a battle of good against evil, demanding simple answers to difficult problems. (Trump: “Trade? We’re gonna fix it. Health care? We’re gonna fix it.”) It’s suspicious of the normal bargaining and compromise that constitute democratic governance. (On the stump, Sanders seldom touts his bipartisan successes as chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.) Populism can have a conspiratorial and apocalyptic bent—the belief that the country, or at least its decent majority, is facing imminent ruin at the hands of a particular group of malefactors (Mexicans, billionaires, Jews, politicians).
Above all, populism seeks and thrills to the authentic voice of the people. Followers of both Sanders and Trump prize their man’s willingness to articulate what ordinary people feel but politicians fear to say. “I might not agree with Bernie on everything, but I believe he has values, and he’s going to stick to those and he will not lie to us,” a supporter named Liam Dewey told ABC News. The fact that Sanders has a tendency to drone on like a speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference circa 1986—one who happens to have an audience of twenty-seven thousand—only enhances his bona fides. He’s the improbable beneficiary of a deeply disenchanted public. As for Trump, his rhetoric is so crude and from-the-hip that his fans are continually reassured about its authenticity.
Responding to the same political moment, the phenomena of Trump and Sanders bear a superficial resemblance. Both men have no history of party loyalty, which only enhances their street cred—their authority comes from a direct bond with their supporters, free of institutional interference. They both rail against foreign-trade deals, decry the unofficial jobless rate, and express disdain for the political class and the dirty money it raises to stay in office. Last week, Trump even denounced the carried-interest tax loophole for investment managers (a favorite target of the left). “These hedge-fund guys are getting away with murder,” he told CBS News. “These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”
But the difference between Sanders and Trump is large, and more fundamental than the difference between their personal styles or their places on the political spectrum. Sanders, who has spent most of his career as an outsider on the inside, believes ardently in politics. He views the political arena as a battle of opposing classes (even more than Elizabeth Warren, he really does seem to hate the rich), but believes that their conflicts can be managed through elections and legislation. What Sanders calls a political revolution is closer to a campaign of far-reaching but plausible reforms. He proposes a financial-transactions tax and the breakup of the biggest banks; he doesn’t demand the nationalization of banking. His views might appall Wall Street, but they exist within the realm of rational persuasion.
Trump (whatever he really believes) is playing the game of anti-politics. From George Wallace to Ross Perot, anti-politics has been a constant in recent American history; candidates as diverse as Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama have won the Presidency by seeming to reject or rise above the unlovely business of politics and government. Trump takes it to a demagogic extreme. There’s no dirtier word in the lexicon of his stump speech than “politician.” He incites his audiences’ contempt for the very notion of solving problems through political means. China, the Islamic State, immigrants, unemployment, Wall Street: just let him handle it—he’ll build the wall, deport the eleven million, rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment, create the jobs, kill the terrorists. He offers no idea beyond himself, the leader who can reverse the country’s decline by sheer force of personality. Speaking in Mobile, Alabama, recently, he paused to wonder whether representative government was even necessary. After ticking off his leads in various polls, Trump asked the crowd of thirty thousand, “Why do we need an election? We don’t need an election.” When Trump narrows his eyes and juts out his lip, he’s a showman pretending to be a strongman.
There aren’t many examples of the populist strongman in American history (Huey Long comes to mind). Our attachment to democracy, if not to its institutions and professionals, has been too firm for that. There are more examples of populists who, while failing to win national election, extend the parameters of discourse and ultimately bring about important reforms (think of Robert M. La Follette, Sr.). Though populists seldom get elected President, they can—like the young Tom Watson and the old—cleanse or foul the political air. ♦
Donald Trump Is Not a Populist. He's the Voice of Aggrieved Privilege.
by Jeet Heer, newrepublic.com, August 24, 2015
Baffled by Donald Trump’s popularity, some observers have sought to make sense of it with a familiar—and often misused—political label. “Trump is not really a Republican, he’s a populist,” historian Geoffrey Kabaservice told the Guardian. Sarah Palin, who herself oftenbeen described as a populist, wrote of the xenophobic real-estate magnate, "Trump has tapped into America’s great populist tradition by speaking to concerns of working class voters." And countless journalists have
What is a populist, precisely? Is it someone who understands or represents ordinary people? Someone who speaks truth to power? Or who simply speaks the truth, unvarnished?
The term is a notoriously slippery one, yet there is no reason it should ever be applied to Trump.
The British scholar Peter Wiles, in a much-quoted 1969 definition, encapsulated populism as the belief that “virtue resides in the simple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions.” Trump’s entire style, his gaudy bragging about his own wealth and achievements, is the opposite of the traditional populist celebration of ordinary humble people. Throughout Trump’s rhetoric runs the theme that wisdom is not to be found in ordinary people but in the leadership skills of Trump himself, who alone has the brains to squash the losers and make America great.
Moreover, as Daniel Drezner notes in The Washington Post, there’s little reason to think that Trump’s positions are popular ones outside the Republican base. Trump has called for the mass expulsion of undocumented immigrations and a reduction of the number of legal immigrants. Anti-immigrant nativism has been in a long-term secular decline since the early 1990s. In 1995, 65 percent of Americans told Gallup that the level of immigration should be decreased. By 2015, in a poll asking the same question, only 34 percent said immigration should go down (as against 65 percent who wanted to maintain the same level or increased).
As The New York Times reported on the weekend, Trump's actual supporters come from a broad demographic swath of the Republican Party. "He leads among moderates and college-educated voters, despite a populist and anti-immigrant message thought to resonate most with conservatives and less-affluent voters," the Times noted. College-educated Republicans hardly constitute a populist constituency, so there is good reason to think Trump's putative populism deserves another label.
Rather than a populist, Trump is the voice of aggrieved privilege—of those who already are doing well but feel threatened by social change from below, whether in the form of Hispanic immigrants or uppity women (hence the loud applause he got at the first GOP debate when he derided “political correctness”). Far from being a defender of the little people against the elites, Trump plays to the anxiety of those who fear that their status is being challenged by people they regard as their social inferiors. That’s why the word “loser” is such a big part of his vocabulary.
Trump is not the first authoritarian bigot to be mislabeled a populist. In truth, the term almost always gets misused to describe movements that are all about persevering (and enhancing) hierarchy, not about creating a more egalitarian society. Populism has been misused to describe Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade, the John Birch Society, and David Duke’s white nationalism, among others.
The person most responsible for the word's misuse is the great American historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose deeply flawed work on right-wing radicalism remains influential. Prior to Hofstadter, American historians tended to have a positive view of the original populists—the agrarian movement that emerged in the 1880s in the form of the People’s Party and other groups, and which eventually shaped, in attenuated form, the agenda of the Democratic Party of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These original populists where radical small-d democrats who had a sweeping critique of the inequality of Gilded Age America, which saw the rise of giant corporations ruled by robber barons. They demanded government ownership of utilities like railroads, telephones, and telegraphs as well as a progressive income tax and democratic reforms like the direct election of senators and female suffrage.
In his 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Age of Reform, Hofstadter painted a much different picture of the original populists than had previously existed, arguing they were conspiracy-minded nativists and anti-Semites. For Hofstadter, populists were forerunners not of modern liberalism but of right-wing movements like McCarthyism. "My own interest has been drawn to that side of Populism and Progressivism—particularly of Populism—which seems very strongly to foreshadow some aspects of the cranky pseudo-conservatism of our time," he wrote (by "pseudo-conservatism," he meant McCarthyism).
Alan Brinkley of Columbia University described The Age of Reform as “the most influential book ever published on the history of twentieth-century America.” Yet its influence has been a curious one. For many educated Americans, it remains the main prism through which populism is understood. As historian Walter Nugent wrote in a 2013 preface to his 1963 book The Tolerant Populists, Hofstadter stood at the head of a revisionist scholarship which argued that “the 1890s Populists were the forerunners not of liberal movements but of nativism, anti-Semitism, the rants of radio priests Charles Coughlin in the 1930s and of Joseph R. McCarthy and McCarthyism in the 1950s. Until then, ‘populism’—with a small p—was not a dirty word. But it became one, and it has continued to carry the connotation of demagogic, unreasoning, narrow-minded, conspiratorial, fearful attitudes toward society and politics.”
Rare among historians, Hofstadter was a beautiful writer, which explains why his books have continued to shape perceptions decades after they’ve been released. But he wasn’t much of a researcher. As he once said, he considered himself “as much, maybe more, of an essayist than an historian.” His ideas about the populists rested on a very thin dive into the archives. While The Age of Reform enjoyed a brief vogue among fellow scholars after its initial publications, there soon emerged a strong, heavily researched literature that revealed it to be a deeply flawed text—that almost all of Hofstadter’s claims about both populism and McCarthyism were wrong, analytically and factually. Nugent’s work and Lawrence Goodwyn’s Democratic Promise, which were based on a much more thorough and systematic archival research, demonstrated that the original populists were not particularly bigoted or nativists. As historian Michael Kazin argued, summarizing this authoritative literature, anti-Semitism “a minor element of the movement’s language.” Actual hatred of immigrants, African-Americans, and Jews was as likely to be found among elite opponents of the populists.
If the original populists were not particularly bigoted, subsequent bigots were not particularly populist. In a 1955 essay for a book called The New American Right, Hofstadter blamed the rise of Joseph McCarthy on the fact that “in a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy... it is possible to exploit the widest currents of public sentiment for private purposes.” But the political scientist Michael Rogin, in his 1967 book The Intellectuals and McCarthy,showed that Hofstadter and other 1950s scholars were simply wrong in their understanding of the anti-communist demagogue. Using a sophisticated public polling data and a reexamination of McCarthy’s career, Rogin proved that far from being a product of a populist mass movement, McCarthy’s locus of support was the traditional Republican Party base of business owners, particularly those in small and medium-sized cities. McCarthy appealed to the business elite because his anti-communist crusade promised to roll back the New Deal and newly empowered labor unions. He, no less than Donald Trump, was the voice of aggrieved privilege, not the champion of the common person.1
What’s true of McCarthyism is also true of subsequent movements and figures like the John Birch Society, David Duke, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement and Donald Trump. As Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons noted in their 2000 book Right Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, the Birch Society uses “populist rhetoric” but “Birchites distrust the idea of the sovereignty of the people and stress that the United States is a republic, not a democracy… Birchites want to replace the ‘bad’ elites with ‘good’ elites–presumably their allies.” Among the big backers of the Birch Society were the Koch family, who later underwrote the Tea Party movement. Members of the Tea Party, often described as populist, tend to be wealthier and better educated than most Americans, as well as being predominately white.
The word populist causes too much confusion when used to describe movements like McCarthyism, the Tea Party, or Trumpism. These are not mass movements of the people hoping to make a more democratic society. Rather they are political factions of authoritarian bigotry, backed by the rich, and designed to protect aggrieved privilege. Trump is best described not as a populist but as an authoritarian bigot, a quality best seen in his callous response to the news that two men evoked his name when they beat up a homeless Mexican man. "I will say that people who are following me are very passionate,” he said. “They love this country and they want this country to be great again.”
Richard Hofstadter was both a historian and a product of his times, and his dark view of the populists was a product of his own political evolution. He had been a leftist radical in the 1930s, but became a Cold War liberal after World War II. Traumatized by the rise of Stalinism and Nazism, he rejected his youthful Marxism as a mistake and became suspicious of mass movements, instead putting his faith in elite-guided consensus politics. This led him to misunderstand populism and rightwing authoritarianism—an understandable mistake, but one that we need to stop repeating today.
7. Poseur
A Heckuva Job
by Paul Krugman, nytimes.com, August 31, 2015
There are many things we should remember about the events of late August and early September 2005, and the political fallout shouldn’t be near the top of the list. Still, the disaster in New Orleans did the Bush administration a great deal of damage — and conservatives have never stopped trying to take their revenge. Every time something has gone wrong on President Obama’s watch, critics have been quick to declare the event “Obama’s Katrina.” How many Katrinas has Mr. Obama had so far? By one count, 23.
Somehow, however, these putative Katrinas never end up having the political impact of the lethal debacle that unfolded a decade ago. Partly that’s because many of the alleged disasters weren’t disasters after all. For example, the teething problems of Healthcare.gov were embarrassing, but they were eventually resolved — without anyone dying in the process — and at this point Obamacare looks like a huge success.
Beyond that, Katrina was special in political terms because it revealed such a huge gap between image and reality. Ever since 9/11, former President George W. Bush had been posing as a strong, effective leader keeping America safe. He wasn’t. But as long as he was talking tough about terrorists, it was hard for the public to see what a lousy job he was doing. It took a domestic disaster, which made his administration’s cronyism and incompetence obvious to anyone with a TV set, to burst his bubble.
What we should have learned from Katrina, in other words, was that political poseurs with nothing much to offer besides bluster can nonetheless fool many people into believing that they’re strong leaders. And that’s a lesson we’re learning all over again as the 2016 presidential race unfolds.
You probably think I’m talking about Donald Trump, and I am. But he’s not the only one.
Consider, if you will, the case of Chris Christie. Not that long ago he was regarded as a strong contender for the presidency, in part because for a while his tough-guy act played so well with the people of New Jersey. But he has, in fact, been a terrible governor, who has presided over repeated credit downgrades, and who compromised New Jersey’s economic future by killing a much-needed rail tunnel project.
Now Mr. Christie looks pathetic — did you hear the one about his plan to track immigrants as if they were FedEx packages? But he hasn’t changed, he’s just come into focus.
Or consider Jeb Bush, once hailed on the right as “the best governor in America,” when in fact all he did was have the good luck to hold office during a huge housing bubble. Many people now seem baffled by Mr. Bush’s inability to come up with coherent policy proposals, or any good rationale for his campaign. What happened to Jeb the smart, effective leader? He never existed.
And there’s more. Remember when Scott Walker was the man to watch? Remember when Bobby Jindal was brilliant?
I know, now I’m supposed to be evenhanded, and point out equivalent figures on the Democratic side. But there really aren’t any; in modern America, cults of personality built around undeserving politicians seem to be a Republican thing.
True, some liberals were starry-eyed about Mr. Obama way back when, but the glitter faded fast, and what was left was a competent leader with some big achievements under his belt – most notably, an unprecedented drop in the number of Americans without health insurance. And Hillary Clinton is the subject of a sort of anti-cult of personality, whose most ordinary actions are portrayed as nefarious. (No, the email thing doesn’t rise to the level of a “scandal.”)
Which brings us back to Mr. Trump.
Both the Republican establishment and the punditocracy have been shocked by Mr. Trump’s continuing appeal to the party’s base. He’s a ludicrous figure, they complain. His policy proposals, such as they are, are unworkable, and anyway, don’t people realize the difference between actual leadership and being a star on reality TV?
But Mr. Trump isn’t alone in talking policy nonsense. Trying to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants would be a logistical and human rights nightmare, but might conceivably be possible; doubling America’s rate of economic growth, as Jeb Bush has promised he would, is a complete fantasy.
And while Mr. Trump doesn’t exude presidential dignity, he’s seeking the nomination of a party that once considered it a great idea to put George W. Bush in a flight suit and have him land on an aircraft carrier.
The point is that those predicting Mr. Trump’s imminent political demise are ignoring the lessons of recent history, which tell us that poseurs with a knack for public relations can con the public for a very long time. Someday The Donald will have his Katrina moment, when voters see him for who he really is. But don’t count on it happening any time soon.
8. China, or Republicans?
GOP a threat to U.S. economy, say economists
by Jon Perr, dailykos.com, August 24, 2015
Despite pledges from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that his party will not shut down the government or once again hold the debt ceiling hostage, the Journal's round tableisn't convinced:
After watching Congress repeatedly crash into fiscal deadlines in recent years, a majority of economists are expecting a repeat performance, with 55 percent of respondents to the latest Wall Street Journal survey of 62 economists--not all of whom answered every question--predicting at least some disruption to the economy and financial markets in the months ahead.And that potential disruption could have a real impact on their forecast for 2.2 percent GDP growth and a 5.1 percent unemployment rate by the end of 2015. As the chart above shows, three-quarters of the respondents said the debt ceiling crisis of 2011, the fiscal cliff showdown to start 2013, and the GOP shutdown that fall produced mild or significant damage to the American economy. But with Uncle Sam needing a new budget and new borrowing authority for the start of the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1, Republican senators as diverse as Texas' Ted Cruz and Arizona's John McCain are threatening to shut down the government if Planned Parenthood is not defunded. The effect of that posturing?
Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist of High Frequency Economics, a forecasting firm in Valhalla, N.Y., said the past episodes have damaged the economy by harming consumer confidence.O'Sullivan is exactly right, as you'll see below.
FINALLY
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