Tag: the national memo
Who Will Win The Senate?

Who Will Win The Senate?

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Joe Conason Discusses Poverty On ‘Morning Joe’

The National Memo Editor-in-Chief Joe Conason discussed poverty in the United States on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today. Joe joined Dr. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Howard Dean, and the hosts to examine inequality, Occupy Wall Street, the economy, and the poor U.S. population. Watch the clip here:

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‘They’re Going To Kill You’: Why Norman Lear Founded People For the American Way

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of People for the American Way by Norman Lear, the legendary “All in the Family” producer, who still bristles when anyone insists on “progressive” instead of liberal. In a conversation with The National Memo, Lear recalled how he became increasingly furious watching TV evangelists like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. What could he do?

“I started to write a film, titled ‘Religion,’ a satire, like Paddy Chayefsky’s ‘Network.’ But then I heard Jimmy Swaggart one morning, calling on his listeners to pray for the ‘removal’ of a Supreme Court Justice — and it scared the shit out of me.” He wanted to do something more, and fast.

“I’ve got to find my replacement,” Lear soon told associates at his production company, because he intended to focus all his creative energy on the threat to freedom represented by the religious right. “I’m going to do some commercials.” Somebody warned him, “Norman, you’re a Jew from Hollywood. They’re going to kill you if you go after the religious right.” Perhaps that spurred him to go ahead and make the original TV spot featuring “a middle-aged guy,” a forklift operator who is troubled because “here come these ministers telling him he’s a good Christian and his wife is a bad Christian, based on political criteria…and he says, ‘That’s not the American way.'” The commercial ran only on a local Washington, D.C. station, but as Lear anticipated, it was swiftly featured on all of the network evening news programs, and CBS ran the entire spot.

For all the achievements of People For, as his group has come to be known, including the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and the defense of Sonia Sotomayor, Lear understands that the nation faces an even more implacable brand of conservatism than when Reagan was president. “The chief contender for the Republican nomination is Mitt Romney,” he says, “and there is Romney on a stage with Bryan Fischer,” currently a powerful figure on the religious right, who has said, among other outrageous remarks, that gays were “responsible for the Holocaust…he’s a lunatic!” And of course the Romney campaign has brought Bork on board, to benefit from his dubious wisdom on the judiciary.

Back in those days, Lear believes, decency was more likely to prevail between political opponents. He was quite friendly with the Reagans, despite political clashes during his presidency, and flew up to the recent debate at the Reagan Library with the late president’s widow Nancy. “The fact is, I had some very positive dealings with him,” said Lear, something he can scarcely imagine with today’s aggressive Republican leaders.

Now working on a personal memoir and other projects, Lear is no longer at the helm of People For, which is led by president Michael Keegan and a board that includes Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. But the exceptionally vital 89 year-old seems proud, if mildly astonished, that the group he founded in fear and frustration has grown into a preeminent liberal presence, spanning three decades. “I would never wake up any morning in my life thinking that this is what I would be doing,” he said. Today Americans who cherish liberty can be thankful he did.

Joseph Stiglitz Supports Occupy Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia professor, Nobel Prize winner, and former chief economist at the World Bank, is best known for his critical attitude toward globalization and “free-market fundamentalism.” After he visited the Occupy Wall Street protest (video below) this week, he spoke to The National Memo about what can be done to satisfy the frustrations of those who see a mostly unchanged financial system since the crisis of 2008 — and his sense of the new protest movement generally.

“Protests are a way of articulating unhappiness, dissatisfaction, that something is wrong with the system,” he said Tuesday. “Unfortunately, they arise when political proceses themselves have dealt with a problem inadequately. For instance, we saw that very clearly in 1999 in the globalization protests, where there was a strong sense that the democratic political processes were not working and the interests of the environment and those concerned about the poor in developing countries were dominated by special interests, including interests of financial markets and pharmaceutical companies and so forth. And I think what we’re seeing now is that same kind of frustration.”

He said the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation signed into law last year was “in many ways a step in the right direction” but that it “didn’t go far enough,” especially when it comes to preventing a situation where certain banks are “too big to fail.”

One idea that has been gaining traction across the world — even in some conservative governments — is a tax on the largest financial transactions. Stiglitz is a big supporter.

“There’s been a realization that the time has come for a financial transaction tax. Many people on both sides of the political spectrum from left to right, Merkel in Germany, France, Spain. Broad support is now coming out. The general principle in economics is it’s better to tax bad things than good things. Transaction taxes are directed at really excessive financial [behavior]. It’s one of those taxes that can really enhance economic efficiency, and it’s a tax on the sector that has been one of the clear culprits in our economic woes.”

He expressed hope that the Occupy Wall Street protests would shake things up in Washington.

“We haven’t seen the economy restored to health, and in that context it’s very natural that there’s a high level of frustration, and a desire by ordinary citizens to vent their frustration, and hopefully, that that will motivate a change in behavior on the part of the political process.”

Here’s the video of the economist’s appearance with journalist Jeff Madrick at the protest over the weekend: