Freddie’s right when he points out that “pity charity liberalism” is disempowering as well as uninspiring.
What’s interesting to me is that there used to be a wing of the Republican party that defined its social programs in constructive opposition to pity charity. People like Jack Kemp, for example, proposed programs like enterprise zones to bring jobs to poor neighborhoods, and advocated changes in housing projects that would give residents some degree of power over their living situation. Kemp was naive, and most of the Republicans who used his rhetoric had no intention of actually funding the programs Kemp proposed. But at least there was a portion of the opposition party who felt responsible for proposing an alternative to simple redistribution.
Today, any vestige of that strain of Republicanism has died out or been purged. The Republican agenda has morphed into a monolithic opposition to safety net programs, especially Medicaid. Democrats have spent the last decade or so building moats around the current incarnation of the welfare state, rather than proposing new, more innovative alternatives to a set of programs that have never really done anything but provide bare subsistence and encourage dependence.
I’m not trying to excuse the left, or the Democratic party (not the same thing) for following an agenda that disempowers the poor. I’m just observing that empowering the poor used to be in the sphere of acceptable discourse for both parties in the 80’s and 90’s, but it’s not even part of the discussion anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
This was, I think, the nut of what Freddie was saying last night.
cleek
i think “conservatives” would argue that getting the government out of people’s business (figuratively and literally) empowers everyone; that’s the core idea behind the ‘small government’ rhetoric.
the problem with that is that the wealthy don’t need any more power; they already have a ton of it. and they use that power to get government to give them even more power. the poor can’t keep up.
Punchy
Speaking of “not in the discussion anymore”….whatever happened to Ann Coulter? She used to be on my TV at least once a week…now, never. What happened?
Mino
Conservatives don’t actually want the programs killed–they want to privatize and use the tax money to pay back their friends. The corruption of crony capitalism has reached levels that are killing to democracy.
PurpleGirl
@cleek: Except when it comes to certain personal matters where conservative men want to dominant women and treat them as chattel, i.e. the woman’s body is not really hers. Further the conservatives want to rule over what anyone can do in the privacy of their own home/lives, i.e., what our relationships and sexual practices can and can not be.
They see Small Government as staying out of economic life but having an open window into our intimate life.
rickstersherpa
I am going to put this up here because again, I find Bob Somerby’s take on the budget debate and its politics rather accurate. And it goes to the point that for the last 40 years the Left has failed to address and educate the public on issues like the budget, economics, and poverty and the lack of control that exists when whole industries start disappearing. Meanwhile, Republicans and their media allies repeat senseless memes about how “cutting” Government jobs will “create” private jobs and how “tax cuts” for rich people create “prosperity.” From yesterday’s Daily Howler:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh041211.shtml#permalink
…What will Obama say on Wednesday when he lays out his own budget plan? We have no idea, nor can we mind-read his motives. Hayes said he is “terrified;” we think he has every right. But please understand: Presumably, Obama’s plan will have been shaped, in part, by his desire to get re-elected—by his desire to get in line with a set of ideas the public will buy.
And by the way: If Obama doesn’t get re-elected? After that, the deluge?
Presumably, Obama will try to keep his plan in line with ideas the public will find acceptable. But the public’s views on these matters are very shaky—have been so for a very long time. The public has no earthly idea how the budget works—has no idea whose budget claims are true/bogus/false/just plain stupid. And the public’s head is full of ideas which have been driven by disinformation campaigns of the past thirty years—disinformation campaigns your liberal leaders and liberal sectors have widely accepted.
Maddow cited other polling data in which the public rejects cuts to Medicare. But we the people are clueless on all such matters, much like Mark Twain’s ineffectual mob. The public’s views can change overnight in response to bogus claims—and the public’s views can change for the worse. This seems to have happened in the recent budget fight, if Gallup’s polls can be believed. (By April, more people thought the Dems should accept bigger cuts, even after two straight months in which the Dems gave ground.)
And so, we reach a basic question: Who lost the public? How have we reached the point where the public has no idea what’s in the budget—where the public thinks all sorts of ludicrous things which derive from conservative disinformation campaigns? However we have reached this point, political possibilities are defined by the public’s beliefs—and the public’s beliefs are quite shaky.
We’ll stop here, though more should be said. But at Rachel’s site, the headline for her segment with Hayes says it all: “Obama tactics baffle, disappoint left.” Could it be that we liberals are “baffled” because we don’t understand American politics? Don’t understand the public’s outlook? Don’t know, don’t even want to know about the public’s beliefs?”
PeakVT
a set of programs that have never really done anything but provide bare subsistence and encourage dependence.
How much dependence can a program that provides bare subsistence really encourage?
mai naem
I heard John Yarmuth in an interview on XM’s POTUS yesterday. He’s the Ky rep who I thought was one of the blue dawgs but apparently not. Anyhoo, he was talking about the budget deal, taxes etc. and the way he explained it was so well. I don’t understand why Obama can’t do it that way. Yarmuth talked about how his brother and father and himself had built up sizeable businesses in Ky and how any business decision(expansion etc.) they made was never made based on tax policies. He talked about how his brother has a BBQ place and how his brother said it didn’t matter a whit if his income tax rate was 4 percent less if he didn’t have customers who couldn’t afford to buy BBQ. He also talked about whether it was more effective to give more money to some millionaire to buy a bigger house or a bigger yacht or whether it was better to have the money moving around the economy by paying into the fed govt or lower taxes/rebates for the poor. This guy was really well spoken(simple, smart but not professorial) and how come I have never heard him represent the Dems on the tawk shows etc.
mai naem
@rickstersherpa: You obviously didn’t see the Seattle guy who was interviewed after the 2010 elections that was highlighted in a post at BJ. People work their butts off and are too tired to pay attention after work, looking after their kids and all the other stuff that makes up life today. And then the Repubs come in with their misinformation ads to complete the cycle.
Comrade Javamanphil
I’ve also noticed in the last few years the GOP has dropped the Laffer curve from the conversation. It used to be they’d justify tax cuts by invoking this magic theory that lower rates increased revenue. They don’t even bother with this anymore. I also note that the media completely fails at every opportunity to question them on this nonsense.
OzoneR
@mai naem:
you’re thinking of Ben Chandler…John Yarmuth is certainly not a Blue Dog.
Constance Reader
“I’m just observing that empowering the poor used to be in the sphere of acceptable discourse for both parties in the 80’s and 90’s, but it’s not even part of the discussion anymore.”
The social safety net does not disempower the poor. Unemployment, marginalization, stigmatization, corporatization and denial of personal agency and dignity disempower the poor. But of course, nobody would dare do anything about those problems, the poor might start thinking they were equal to the rest of us.
ericblair
@PeakVT:
I think their problem with it is that it encourages dependence on the wrong things. If you get this pesky safety net out of the way, poor people will be dependent even more on religious charities (with three thousand strings attached) and crappy dangerous poverty-wage jobs. Both of which suit both the Republican party’s Bible-thumping and slumlord wings just fine.
Or if they don’t like it, the poor can go starve in a ditch. That’ll work for the Repubs too.
Napoleon
This behavor by the Dems is actually defensible. To provide an analogy if your house is under attack from mauraders in the neigberhood you don’t go outside to paint the house or work on replacing the roof.
Any attempt to “reform” a program by the Dems will be used by the opposition as an excuse to trash the whole concept of whatever the program is intended to achieve. You could very well end us worse off then when you started.
OzoneR
@rickstersherpa:
They live in a bubble with rational people and don’t understand that it isn’t just simple to convince the irrational majority to be, you know, rational.
Further, I think liberals realize they’ve lost the policy argument and just want Obama to make their case, however fruitless it would be. They won’t get another chance for five more years.
Though I think it’s sooner than that
Paul in KY
@mai naem: In today’s congress, Rep. Yarmuth is like Che Guevara. He is one of the best we have in congress, IMO.
Bob
Okay, let’s stipulate that there are two choices, 1. empower the poor 2. provide a safety net, “pitty charity liberalism.” Which one of those strikes you as being more Utopian?
Justin
Amazing how people can become so dependent on subsisting. Social Security should be expanded and improved as Medicare and Medicaid are under health care reform. Less loopholes that make people ineligible or require one to come up with large amounts of cash that you just don’t have. But this has nothing to do with “dependence,” which was always basically a GOP code for saying the lazy (dark-skinned) poor are leeching off the rest of us. Of course Americans depend on these programs, just as succeeding generations must be able to. You depend on your paycheck and your health coverage, don’t you? Jesus. Empowering poor and struggling Americans means giving them meaningful choices in their lives that aren’t predestined or decided by “the market” or some rich demagogue politician who gets their rocks off messing with programs that help people they will never meet or have to care about. There has to be a minimum level to which we will allow our fellow citizens to fall, and that level is woefully inadequate right now, much lower than in Europe where they’re experiencing their own austerity assault. Without empowering people in that way, with the current system, you’re essentially just empowering them to find a cardboard box or a tent and start living in that, or empowering them to eat catfood as the saying goes.
Paul in KY
@rickstersherpa: I’m repeatedly baffled that our Democratic politicians don’t spend more time when on TV, debunking the Repub lies.
It’s not fun, must be done with the single mindedness of Cato the Elder ending every speech with ‘Carthago delenda est’, but it is necessary or people start believing that shit.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
The problem with both your and freddies and argument, is that the initial conditions are fubar as the result of a decade of free market “solutions”.
The social justice engineers feel a need to put the house fire out first…the one that is burning down the middle class? And this isn’t easy, with the country still 50% bubba.
The freemarketeers just want a do over, because this time, honest injun, those magickal free market solutions will work.
also, I object to the notion that PCL dems are “hostile” to organized labor.
KyCole
John Yarmuth is my awesome Rep. and the only person I will be voting for with enthusiasm in 2012. Also, he donates his salary to charity.
jcgrim
Residents were never provided power over their living situations in such zones. The Dems embraced this model by shifting development of such zones to public/private partnerships in which private investors in such zones receive huge tax breaks. More jobs for the community residents were the smokescreen that hid capital distribution to wealthy investors. Jobs in the communities have never improved as a result of that capital investment- residents have a choice of fast food or service work- low pay, crappy hours, no benefits. New boss- same as the old boss.
Banks continue to make huge windfall profits on the backs of the poor. Charter schools are the latest example of our fetish with public/private partnerships:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/juan_gonzalez_big_banks_making_a
Omnes Omnibus
@cleek: Neither beggars nor millionaires may sleep under bridges.
BudP
Whatever happened to Noblesse oblige?
It once meant that if you found yourself among society’s elite, you had an obligations to society at large, especially to the those less fortunate than you. Today’s crop of overlord seem to think that society owes them. After all, they are the producers, not the parasites.
OzoneR
@Paul in KY:
I don’t think that’s a decision for Democratic politicians to make. I think that’s a decision to TV producers to make.
mistermix
@jcgrim: Yeah, I understand that the programs didn’t work, but at least it was OK for Republicans to say that they wanted to do something to empower the poor. All they can say today is “cut Medicaid” and “young bucks buying T-Bones”.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Paul in KY: doesn’t work Paul. Conservative backfire effect.
Contradicting the conservative base just increases the salience of the falsehood. Case in point, birtherism.
suzanne
As much as John Edwards’ personal life makes me feel as if I need to de-louse, this was the important thing he brought to the table. No one else really wants to talk about systemic poverty and how to fix it. The way most politicians (on both sides) talk, you’d think that the middle class are on the Bataan death march. And while I’m not saying that there isn’t unfairness there, life is far shittier for the poor and working class.
rea
I’ve also noticed in the last few years the GOP has dropped the Laffer curve from the conversation.
They haven’t, though–the belief that tax cuts generate more revenue is at the heart of the Ryan proposal. He has to assume that tax cuts on the rich will significantly increase revenue in order to make his figures add up to deficit reduction rather than deficit increase.
Paul in KY
@KyCole: Man, I’m jealous. I’ve got Ben as my rep. I’ve met him several times, know his wife, etc., but he’s just too conservative for me.
His area probably is a bit more conservative than Rep. Yarmuth’s district.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@BudP: I think you are talking about White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Model. When the bankstahs went to church every sunday and had to look their neighbors and god in the face, it suppressed their natural rapacious greed.
Alas, the WPSCM failed as a social compact when blacks and women got the vote.
Paul in KY
@OzoneR: When they let you on TV, they don’t give you a script. That’s your time to take a few secs to lambast some Repub memes. Maybe they won’t let you back on after that, but it’s the responsibility of our Democratic politicians, not a fucking TV producer.
aimai
Maybe someone mentioned this before but there was a very distinctive shift from group action that focused on changing the system: protesting, rioting, organizing around work/civil liberty issues to one that focused on voluntarism and consumerism.
I’m thinking of both the divestment from SA and, later, the “save the tuna” style advocacy. Naturally the divestment campaigns were, in fact, collective actions that brought people together to attempt to create long term structural change. But there was an emphasis on pressuring powerful entities and specifically using consumer power to make things happen which strikes me as, ultimately, disempowering to people who aren’t connected or don’t have the money or privilige to withold from the system.
Then we got the rise of small scale protests and boycotts that were aimed, laudably in a way, at getting individuals to use their consumer power to change corporate behavior/protect the environment. Then the “adopt a charity” model where charitable action is streamlined and instead of doing something to eliminate the problem you band together to ameliorate it. Its all very laudable and I’m doing it myself. Its part of an older “service” model to the community that is a good thing. But it certainly is no subsitute for “teach a man to fish” politicking.
aimai
Paul in KY
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: They have several more destructive memes that are alot more implausable than Birtherism (as implausable as that is).
Corner Stone
@Comrade Javamanphil:
It’s not so much that they’ve dropped it, but rather the concept has become inherent in their tax proposals.
It’s like they don’t even need to say cutting tax rates produces more revenue. Duh.
cleek
@Paul in KY:
or, in the words of the best debunker the Dems have right now, Anthony Weiner:
but, for some reason, Weiner seems to get little love for his efforts, on any of the blogs i read.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@mistermix: the programs didn’t work because they were not actual social justice programs, but free market solutions masquerading as social justice programs.
As far as I can see, conservatives simply do not believe in social justice.
jinxtigr
It’s like a Maslow hierarchy of needs thing. Starting with freedom from death, then freedom from threat, then freedom from despair, then freedom from obscurity etc.
You don’t set up an award program where the poor can feel good about their artistic abilities and have their work hung in galleries (helping their esteem and self-worth), and then shoot them. First of all it’s not unreasonable to expect people to take care of their own self-esteem, and secondly that’s putting the cart before the horse, and shooting the horse :)
If you have a ‘minimum expected citizen existence’ AT ALL, it has to start with bare survival, and if that’s seriously threatened as it IS, you’re doing triage.
Let’s work up to where we have the survival thing covered and then address the safety/security, ability to have a decent job. Maybe leave off short of trying to make all citizens satisfied or happy- but your government net has the following layers:
security (hey, part of the name of Social Security!)
safety (discredited- we’re supposed to revel in being unsafe)
survival (starting to be ‘serious’ly attacked)
It’s disgusting to cling to Security for the supposed middle class so long as they’re white republicans, while trying to eradicate survival for the untouchables.
OzoneR
@Paul in KY:
Well they do, Anthony Weiner does this pretty often, so does Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Alan Grayson did this pretty well, but whenever they let him on, they piled on him before he could make a statement.
The problem is when you have 5 minutes of Anthony Weiner and 25 of right wing garbage, Weiner doesn’t really make an impression
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Paul in KY: sure, but that is an obvious example. For a year CNN and other outlets have been showing Obama’s birth cert on terebi, the conservative elites like Rove have been trying to get rid of birtherism, and there are more birthers today than ever.
It is classic backfire effect.
Tim Connor
@Mino: This is correct. I quote Charlie Stross on the subject:
El Cid
The initial anti-poverty campaigns preceding LBJ’s (but including LBJ’s earlier efforts) did indeed aim at economic participation by the poor in their own liberation.
In fact, the laws actually said such. In the early 1960s, both federal and state programs were aimed to do what liberals / progressives say now (and a bit earlier) that should be done instead of passively received welfare.
Including in the segregated South.
Sorry to link to myself, but I typed this up last night and can’t redo it today.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@OzoneR: Relative airtime doesn’t really matter. Backfire effect has only been observed in conservatives, where correction actually increases the salience of the falsehood.
jinxtigr
Dude, revenue is bad. Didn’t you get the talking point? ;)
I’m ha-ha-only-serious. Since when are they trying to produce revenue? These people are basically saying, there should be no revenue. There should be no government. There should be no rules. The economy would boom and make huge prosperity if there were no government and no rules, but mostly there should be no rules because there should be no rules.
Two-year-old policy, unironically.
Corner Stone
@PeakVT:
If they provided more than subsistence then you may be able to build a cushion and afford a cel phone or glasses that fit. And we can’t have that.
Corner Stone
It’s fairly difficult to innovate, and have room for failure in that innovation, when reducing revenue and actively cutting budgets has been the accepted norm from both parties.
Do more with less is a nice slogan.
Bondo
The alternative to pity charity is to stop fucking calling it pity charity. We shouldn’t provide access to education, health care, food and housing because we are charitable, we should do it because they should be considered essential rights of being American. The problem with the American welfare state is that we’ve decided to be cheap by means-testing rather than providing universal benefits. This has the tendency to look a lot more like charity.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Corner Stone: Yes, that was exactly my point. They’ve institutionalize the concept and created, if not a new zombie lie at least a new zombie fantasy. It will never die now. I blame the media. And Obama. And kittens.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@jinxtigr: Nice catch!
That is, of course, Dr. Jim Manzi’s model for Distributed Jesusland.
Ija
The word “empowering” has lost most of its meaning for me. “Empowering” the poor usually means putting more and more onerous rules and regulations for them to get any kind of social services with the rationale that “free handouts” will strip them of their dignity etc etc.
Gozer
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Fix’t
Paul in KY
@cleek: I’m a big fan of his. Don’t agree with him on Israel, but I understand his constituents views (and his) on that matter.
Can’t let perfect be the enemy of great.
cleek
@Bondo:
this, x1,000,000.
acallidryas
There are a number of organizations-usually small, usually struggling-that are dedicated to actually helping people in poverty develop their power, and make changes in the system an in their own lives. These are community organizing groups, ACORN, even Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). But these groups are relentlessly under attack by the right, because they don’t actually want the system changed or people’s lives made better, and for some reason most of the Democrats can’t be bothered to stand up for them.
Barry
@PeakVT: “How much dependence can a program that provides bare subsistence really encourage?”
Remember, enough food to barely keep a poor person alive will crush their character, while no amount of crony capitalism wealth would harm the character of a rich person – they’re simply better.
Paul in KY
@OzoneR: Unless every Democratic politician does it (Sen. Feinstein on Left), it doesn’t work.
I guess my wish is ‘pie in the sky’ for the current class of Democratic politicians we’ve been saddled with.
Mandramas
Well, american liberals have a problem. They don’t have ideology or a constructs of social theories. Safety net programs are guided by the principles that a Nation must grant some rights at their citizen, that are more important that the right of the properties. Right to live well, to be healthy, to have an education. A government must grant those services. This is not a charity thing; a government needs to have healthy and smart citizens because this will empowered the nation itself.
RP
Isn’t this the key phrase? Look at the stats for appearances on the Sunday morning shows.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Mistermix, I just think this is glibertarian demagoguery to weasel some freemarket fuckery into the system.
Haven’t we had enough?
You, Freddie and Konczal denigrate PCL with the name, sneer at it, and accuse “pity charity liberalism” “liberals” of hostility to labor.
I don’t see any evidence of hostility to labor. Social Justice engineers are just more focused on putting out the fire that is burning down the middle class.
A fire started by free market solutions, BTW.
Its like you are all in a house engulfed in flames and you and freddie point over to the corner and say bringing in a few more fire extinguishers would put the fire out. You have to put the fire out first, and then you can bring in the fire extinguishers to prevent the next one.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: its because right now there is not a robust existing social compact.
White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Model was destroyed when blacks and women got the vote, and we are in the middle of evolving a new social compact hopefully based on social justice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: I would argue that American liberals do have such an ideology. Unfortunately, American liberals are ~20-25% of the population of the US. To enact liberal policies, liberals must tailor them in such a way that sympathetic moderates will sign on. As a result, policies are watered down from the start.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Gozer:
well that would explain A-stan and Iraq I guess.
>:(
Mandramas
@Omnes Omnibus: No, you can’t have an ideology just with feelings and sympathies. You need doctrine, theory, social writings, an structure. Europa and South America have a lot of those technical “leftist” theoretical construct. On those countries, the equivalent of this blog will have a lot of quotes of well known and respected leftist theoretical writers. Here, we uses to quote a couple of economist like Krugman and Stiglizt, three journalists, and a pair of politicians.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Yeah, what’s up with this “pity charity” garbage flying around here today? Most of us are fighting for Unemployment insurance, Food assistance programs for the undernourished, Social Security for elderly who are in physical danger without it, Medicare for the ill who are also in physical danger without it, etc. These are not “pity”, they’re the basic building blocks to a better life, as many many many studies have shown.
I don’t see liberals fighting for outmoded existing programs that don’t work, or even building “moats” around them. They are fighting against proposed privitization policies, which is the alternative that repubs are currently supporting, which usually fail for programs like this.
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Greetings, sister.
Macarthism and the cold war destroyed the american intelectuals. Then, Free markets ideologues brainwashed the rest of the population. It is funny that the rest of the world remember the Haymarket incidents every year on mayday, but nobody remembered on America, the country where it happened. America used to be a country of intelectuals and writters respected by the entire world in the first half of the XX century. Today, only people like Krugman or Auster are saving face for US.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandramas: I am not sure that a survey of citations used on a very snarky blog proves much. YMMV.
Mandramas
@Omnes Omnibus: No, it don’t proves anything. It is only my perception of the subject. But I’m pretty sure that the american intellectuals are biased to the right in a way no other developed country are; and they are not awake of that.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
Free market solutions = privitization policies.
C’mon, freddie, mistermix.
Gimme a free market solution that WORKED.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: salaamu aleykum brother.
Because America was founded as and still nominally is a protestant nation. Protestant individualism, anti-intellectualism and evangelism (we call it american exceptionalism) inform both foreign and domestic policies.
But we are evolving.
When conservatism completes its death throes, America will have plenty of third culture intellectuals on the left. There will never be any on the right.
That is why no one knows the mission in A-stan and Iraq.
Because America was proselytizing evangelical westernstyle democracy.
btw, Cole, the Pakistanis have officially asked the US to leave.
Angela
The Republican Party seems to have misconstrued the meaning of “the war on poverty.”
Dems aren’t much better.
Viva la revolucion!
Bill Murray
@Omnes Omnibus: but since the Tea people are not much more than 25% of the population but get much of what they want without watering down, your thesis may need more explicating.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Angela: nah, its because highschool never ends. Repubs are aging jocks. Dems are younger geeks and nerds.
But the geek will inherit the earth.
;)
Redwood Rhiadra
@BudP: Noblesse oblige was killed by Calvinism, which is the foundation of much of American Christianity. Calvinists believe that one’s ultimate fate (i.e. whether you go to heaven or hell) is predestined and is displayed on Earth by how successful you are. So the rich are considered superior people who will get into heaven, and the poor are destined for hell and unworthy of any help.
Most American Christian’s won’t come out and say it like this – most aren’t even aware of how much Calvinism has influenced their church’s doctrines. But that’s where it comes from.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Redwood Rhiadra: Lutheranism is a large influence too, because of anti-intellectualism and objectivism. That is why we still live in a Martin Luther country, instead of a Martin Luther King country.