Is American Politics ran by "Dog Whistles?"

Dog Whitle is a term, not sure who coined it but it's taken on and used by Ian Heney Lopez (His book is Dog Whistle Politics)[1] to describe coded messages that politicians send to their target audiences. It's a racist message, it's a means of using the "N word" without using the "N word." A prime example is the classic story of Ronald Reagan's early primary campaign in 1980. He said something to the effect "don't you hate to see a big strong buck buying steak with food stamps." Bring and strong means he could be working, why does he have food stamps? "Buck" is a racial epithet, what southern bigots called young black men, especially strong ones. That statement took a lot of flack so he began saying "don't you hate seeing strong able bodied young fellow buying steak on food stamps." So he's telling them this is a guy doesn't derves food stamps becuase he's in good shape, they all know the color. He's saying 'I don't like black people getting help either." But he doesn't have to say that.

Lopez was on Bill Moyers the other night. (See the Video)[2] Lopez says that white middle class Americans no longer understand government as a tool to make life better, they see it as an obstacle to their own wealth. They don't accept people of color worthy of aid, so they are unfairly privileged. “It comes out of a desire to win votes. And in that sense… It’s racism as a strategy. It’s cold, it’s calculating, it’s considered,” Haney López tells Bill, “it’s the decision to achieve one’s own ends, here winning votes, by stirring racial animosity.”[3] This is hardly earth shattering news. My friends and I have been pointing this out to each other since the primaries of 2008. All we can do is keep watching it.

This tendency is also known as "The Republican Southern Strategy." 

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party strategy of gaining political support for certain candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to racism against African Americans.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}
Though the "Solid South" had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery before the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation.[4]

 The beginnings of the southern strategy were seen in the Johnson/Goldwater Election of 1964. Johnson feared that endorsing civil rights would drive the solid south into the Republican camp and it did.It really emerged in the election of 1980 when Regan was elected that the solid south really turned republican. We saw the dog whistle effects thick and fast in the last two elections, of course with a Black Preident.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

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The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans. [5]

Rick Santorum made some of the most flagerant exmaples, of course he wasn't even trying to encode his speech.

“I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not [president]. He constantly says that our Constitution is passé and he ignores it. … He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn’t something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.”[6]

Even if he was Muslim which he is not, what would that have to do with him not being legally qualified to be President? No legal right to call himself President, well there was that that election ting, that's just a technicality.

 The man who recently said he meant “blah people” — when the world heard him say “black people” — as  he spoke about parasitic Americans who get better lives by taking “somebody else’s money,” did not correct the assault on the truth. Instead he agreed that Obama is attacking the Constitution and said: “Well, look, I’m trying my best to get him out of office.”[7]

At that same time Presidential candidate Rich Perry began pushing in South Carolina (with a history of Jim Crow) for voter identification laws.

While it may seem obvious to people in other states, try living in Texas. Political time in Texas is always dicier but this year it's worse than ever. The Republican ads for their primary reek with dogwhitles and stupid statements and all sorts of things. It's obvious but that doesn't mean you can keep from commenting. A certain republican running for Agriculture commissioner promises to "reform school lunches." He doesn't explain what that means, but what about school lunches need reforming? Since poor kids get them he probably wants to take them away form the children of illegal aliens. In fact most of his ad is about how "those people who come illegally must stand at the back of the line." Last night all the extremes won. The more extreme candidates won in every race. Every race featured a tag phrase about fighting Obama, stop Obama's attack on Texas. As though Federal troops are amassed on the Red River just waiting to attack. One of them said congress votes pay raises for itself and does nothing to earn them, "so stop Obama." As though Obama is the reason congress get's unjustified pay raises!

Lopez argues that Republicans are destroying the social safety net by using the southern strategy and dog whistles to procure specific policy goals. The Solan makes the argument that

But the central point here is that race is being used to wreck the middle class. This has been the way conservatives have found that they can attack commitments to education, commitments to a social safety net, commitments to infrastructure, commitments to job programs, commitments to progressive taxation that taxes the most wealthy to help the rest of society. This is about all of us, and if we continue to think, “race is the way they go after poor minorities, and yeah, that’s bad, and I’ll get to that next, but I don’t have a job and my unemployment insurance has just been cut and my kids don’t have good public schools to go to and I can’t afford private schools,” we’ve missed the point, and we’ve missed the way that race has been used to destroy a society that promotes the middle class.[8]

The further argue that one can't interject race into the issue not even to talk about it positively. The person who mentions race is the racist or is using race unfairly but the one speaking in code is accepted because he has plausible deniable.[9]

The strategy is rational and calculating. It's a clear understanding of the racial gap faced by the democratic party. It exploits the mentality that still thinks only white people deserve privilege in America. In Matt 7:16 Jesus says "by their fruits you shall know them." But how many middle class white Chrsitians understand that their refusal to accept people of color as valid people is a bad fruit and that passage doesn't just refer to minorities on welfare?

The Republicans try to claim that the Dems are using their own dog whistles when we say they are racist or we talk about the 1%. That's not even the same thing. Saying that 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth and rules the country is hardly a secret code. That's pretty plain. Saying the right wing is racist is not a secret codes. It's not something something other than what it proportions to. Its' saying they are racist not using the term "racist" to mean something worse.The problem is not the Republicans have issues but that they wont present them honestly: they hate Obama becuase he's black. Vailed references to allowing "the minorities privilege" is not honest.

We are just working ourselves into a hole by allowing this course of action to be followed. Studies show that socieities that concetnrate wealth in the hands of few and allow privilage to be horded for the rich dont' last. Its' only when society creates instituions that spread power and opportunity about and create a level palying field that nations thrive.MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and the Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson, “Why Nations Fail” [10] Political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become “extractive” and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of only a few. “Inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few,” they write. “Inclusive economic institutions, are in turn supported by, and support, inclusive political institutions,” which “distribute political power widely in a pluralistic manner and are able to achieve some amount of political centralization so as to establish law and order, the foundations of secure property rights, and an inclusive market economy.” Conversely, extractive political institutions that concentrate power in the hands of a few reinforce extractive economic institutions to hold power. Thanks to miles Simpson on message board for showing me this study.


_________________________
Sources:


(all online sources accessed 3/4/14)

[1] Ian Haney Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014.
 Lopez, the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the Fletcher Foundation’s Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship and is a leading thinker on issues of racial justice and the legal system. (He’s also a senior fellow at Demos, where I am a research intern.) quoting Salon, see below.
[2] Billy Moyers,"Ian Haney Lopez On Dogwhistle Politics of Race," Moyer's and Company Blog for Bill Moyers tv show, Feb 20 (2014). 
http://billmoyers.com/episode/ian-haney-lopez-on-the-dog-whistle-politics-of-race/
[3] Ibid.
[4] "Southern Strategy," Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
[5] Julian Williams, "Racial Code Words Obscure Real Issues," The Hill, (Jan 30, 2012). Blog
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/207295-2012-racial-code-words-obscure-real-issue
[6] Rick Santorum quoted Ibid
[7] Ibid.
[8]"The Right's Dog Whistle Trick: how it Exploits Racism to Rip Apart The Social Welfare Net," Salon, Jan 20, (2014). blog
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/the_rights_dog_whistle_trick_how_it_exploits_racism_to_rip_apart_the_social_safety_net/
[9] Ibid.
[10] Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why National Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business publishing group, division of Random House, 2012.
on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219

Fire Trump part 2: the real reason for the Trump Band wagon

would you buy a used country
from this man?

Make no mistake there is a band wagon. Everyone knew Trump is an idiot but they kept flocking to his cause. Why? They common explanation is "he speaks his mind." As I pointed out before lots of people have spoken their minds and didn't get band wagons. The mind speaking thing is a dog whistle, its code. The translation of the code is the first of the real reasons for his groundswell. There are two reasons, this is the first one: because he says the nasty cruel Draconian things they wish they could say and do to those they fear. An extension of that is the hysteria he capitalizes on over illegal aliens, those brown illegal people taking all those sought after toilet cleaning jobs. The average person can't the bigoted things Trump can say, bur they wish they could. Now he says it for them, and they can applaud without owning up. Why is it Trump can say those things? That's related to the second reason.

Americans idolize the rich. No one without money could say the things Trump says. Any ordinary candidate would have wrecked his chances weeks ago. Rick Perry is an idiot and everyone knew it after his performance in 2012, Trump makes him seem intelligent by comparison. Yet Perry would never get away with saying the stuff Trump has, the proof is that he did not get away with milder statements. Since Americans idolize the rich we put them in a special exempt category and make all allowencs for them.

A lot of people think that if they are dedicated servants of the rich they will somehow be let in on things. They will get rich too. The rich don't want you to have money. They want it all for themselves. If there were any truth to the servant theory of gaining wealth the disparity between super rich and everyone else would not have grown as it has. Other motivations are related. Some don't go for the servant theory but they want things to favor the rich for when they make their fortunjes.

So now there's a groundswell and a bandwagon, just as with Reagan a guy who doesn't have the intellectual capacity to be dog catcher will be the most powerful man in the world. Trump is already one of the most powerful men. He will feel that nothing is beyond him. That will be the bend of social programs, millions will die before their time, no one will care because they will be jaded by Trump's value system that groups people into two camps, rich and losers. Thus the deaths of the poor will be accepted and even lauded as proper justice for those who committed the gravest sin, being poor.

Just as with Reagan, I know its coming. Mark my words and watch the news study the stats you will see life expectancy for the poor take a nose dive. It is coming. It will happen.

Fire Trump Before He Starts

My friends in Canada will soon find me at their door. Met, Betta, I demand political asylum. Trump is now with in striking distance of Hilary, she is only 4 points ahead. This is a huge tragedy. Trump is an idiot, he's a member of the 1%. He's one of the guys Wallstreet needs taking back from. In 2012 Americans voted for Obama rejecting Romney because he seemed unable to relate to the problems of the common people. Yet they are totally oblivious to the fact that Trump was born into money, he's one of the richest men in America, he has never experienced the feelings most of us have about not seeing where the money will come from. His is not a rags to Riches story.

Pundits have said that people flock to his band wagon like lemings because he speaks his mind. They said it so many times people have began repeating it. Two things wrong with this. First, lots of people speak their minds. It's a total fallacy to think that Hillary and Sanders are not speaking their minds. Joan Baez spoke her mind, the Smother's brothers, Pete Seager and Muhammad Ali all spoke their minds, but they suffered for it. Secondly, the things Trump has been saying are moronic.

He said that prisoners of war are not heroes. Granted, if a prisoner conducts himself in a cowardly way and helps the enemy he/she is no hero. But the original context was about John McCain in Vietnam, he conducted himself admirably. He was clearly heroic. It's how one bears up in captivity not that one was captured that counts. Speaking your mind is one thing but saying stupid things because there is no mind there to speak is quite another. Moreover Trump had five deferments in the Vietnam years, while McCain volunteered to fight. See the article by Michael E. Miller comparing what the two di8d during those years.

Trump said he would bomb everyone in Iraq to get the oil. "I would bomb the hell out of the oil fiels in Iraq to fight Isis." He doesn't care who he kills. I am for fighting Isis but its insane to destroy Iraq to do it. Use the oil don't bomb it! We always think we have to destroy the village to save it. He also made statements painting most illegal aliens as criminals and rapists, "with a few good people."

He'a a bully who is so lacking in any substance at all. He responds to every criticism with name calling. All who disagree are "losers." His immigration program is silly.

NYT reports: After staking his early campaign on caustic and contentious remark
s about undocumented immigrants, Donald J. Trump on Sunday outlined his plan to fix the country’s immigration system and deal with people who are in the country illegally.


The position paper, published on Mr. Trump’s website, centered on three principles. The first stated that “a nation without borders is not a nation” — a theme Mr. Trump has made a constant in his stump speeches — and called for a wall to be built along the southern border.

He also repeated his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall and laid out how he would do it: largely through increasing fees on border movement between the United States and Mexico.

“We will not be taken advantage of anymore,” the plan states.

He's not going to make Mexico pay for the wall. Increasing fees on boarder movement might just make more people try the illegal way, or just over less. Walls never work. Great wall of China did not keep the Mongols out. Berlin wall did not keep everyone in nor did it last. Taking money from the aliens so they can't send it home would mean opening mail, and they get the money for real toil and labor. They still take the jobs no one wants. The American fruit industry wou8ld not survive without them.

One of the more insane aspects of his plan is the paranoid acuzation that illegals are flooding the boarders because of a plot by the Mexican government.

(Ibid NYT above) The crimes committed by undocumented immigrants have been a focus of Mr. Trump’s early campaign. He has accused Mexico of sending criminals and rapists to the United States, and has often infuriated Latinos with his remarks.

In his formal policy, as he has many times before, Mr. Trump maintains that “Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty in their own country.”

That's a peranoid idea started back in the 90s by the Arian Nations to work up fear and panic about foreigners. Its been brewing for a long time. I knew people into that back in the 80s. I don't know where Trump got it but it was coming up from Tax revolt groups and right wing extremists. If there were any truth to it Mexico should have done nothing or worked to increase the flow of children into the US. In fact, according to pew research Mexico helped reduce the flow.

The hysteria over illegal immigration is based upon the historical tendency to scapegoat immigrants when times are bad:

(Salon)

Historians have noted a strong correlation between large migrations of foreigners to the United States and increased acts of violence against immigrants. For example, riots and violence erupted in Philadelphia in the mid-1800s following a large influx of Irish Catholic immigrants. The KKK peaked in the 1920s with approximately five million members, at the time lessening its focus on African-Americans and shifting its attention to Catholic and Jewish immigrants. In Texas, during the 1980s, a Klan group systematically harassed and attacked Vietnamese fishermen in an effort to put them out of business and drive them from the town.

The imagined crisis over job loss is laughable. Commentary in Orlando Sentinal:

And, yes, they are taking jobs away from some hardworking folks who are U.S. citizens. But for the most part, they are simply taking jobs that no one else wants. Example: After a federal raid on the Swift plant in Iowa, a strong majority of Caucasians displaced a strong majority of Hispanics in the work force. The turnover rate then soared from 30 percent to 114 percent.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan group, estimates that in 2005, illegal immigrants accounted for 24 percent of farm workers, 17 percent of cleaning workers and 14 percent of construction workers.

It's easy to beat up on the disenfranchised, especially when they can't speak the language and may be here illegally, trying to make a better life for themselves. So we humiliate them every which way, from employers who pay them less than minimum wage, to the vigilantes who try to rustle them up as if they were rabid cattle on a rampage.

Illegal immigrants in production and consruction have been falling since 2007 due to stresses of US economy:

(Pew ResearchBy Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn)

In a reflection of changes in the overall economy since the Great Recession, the U.S. unauthorized immigrant workforce now holds fewer blue-collar jobs and more white-collar ones than it did before the 2007-2009 recession, but a solid majority still works in low-skilled service, construction and production occupations, according to new Pew Research Center estimates.

Trump is capitalizing on the hysteria for his own ego. He saysthe country is goint to hell. That is insane, things are not perfect a lot of people still having hard times but we are much better off now than we were in 2008.

Trump is not popular because he speaks his mind. That is code its a dog whistle. I'll tell you the real reason in part 2.

Anti-Miminum Wage Contra Statism?

Originally posted at dpsst25.

I recently had a chance to observe some comments on social media when someone posted something supporting an increase in the national minimum wage in the United States. The reactions included claims of socialism as well as fears of creeping statism in the name of compassion.

Rather than getting into an extended debate over the issue, which rarely has any potential or opportunity for serious or legitimate discussion on places like Facebook, I chose to pose the following questions instead:

1A: Is anything that questions neoclassic economic theory and neoliberal economic policy automatically now labeled "socialist", and, is that supposed to be a warning or fear marker rather than a policy critique?

2A: Is the potential loss of jobs for youth entering the workplace worth more than the well-being and dignity of those who need to support themselves and their families at minimum wage jobs?

2B: As a corollary to the last question, is the only money in play from a low wage worker-vs low wage worker in a zero sum game, or is it OK to look at the money in CEO salaries and corporate profits as part of the equation as well?

3A: Does anyone disagree that the current legal and cultural climate sets up corporations as somewhat amoral "persons" whose primary overriding goal and responsibility is to increase the monetary value of the business to shareholders?

3B: Do the potential employee and employer represent two individuals with equal power who meet face to face to discuss the social and monetary value of the employee's labor, the value of the employer's business, capital, and product, and what a fair and livable arrangement would be in terms of work schedule, salary, benefits, and so on until a mutually satisfactory arrangement is reached and legally bound in a contract?

3C: If not, what forms of recourse should a current or potential employee have to counter the ability of the employer to demand more value from the worker's labor than the worker receives in useful compensation? To arbitrate a fair and livable arrangement?

3D: Is not the goal of immediate, short-term corporate profit and the power of the employer relative to the worker going to tend toward lower wages, fewer benefits, and an unfair and unlivable arrangement?  Do not labor unions and legal protections help to balance out the interests of such myopic profit motives?

3E: Are there not corporations and cooperative-based businesses that pursue long-term benefit to community and worker above the profit motive yet still make money? If so, why shouldn't the legal and cultural climate favoring the less generous and sustainable business practices be criticized, restricted, and ultimately replaced?

3F: For those who favor the libertarian style solution to corrupt and unfair business practice, do you assume that employee and employer have equal power? That the employee has multiple readily available options of equal value to choose from? That these choices, if they exist, do not carry additional burdens? That being fired (for objecting to workplace conditions or questioning compensation) or quitting in protest has no social repercussions and no effect on gaining future employment (especially in the same industry)? And even if these things were true, is there no ethical obligation to those who must suffer until the situation resolves itself by such Laissez-faire principles?

3G: If, based on the last question, workers do not have the social, cultural, and economic freedom to choose their way out of a bad employment situation (either doing so with great difficulty or peril or simply lacking any viable options), or if it is not ethical to let people suffer until Laissez-faire principles eventually intercede and improve working conditions and employment options, does not the government have the obligation to intervene? Especially since the welfare of the people is one the primary duties of government in the US Constitution?


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Liberty and justice for all?

Originally posted at dpsst25.

At the end of a recent blog post I briefly mentioned ENDA, the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which is making it's way through the US Senate. As the title of the bill suggests, the law prohibits workplace discrimination because of factors such as gender-identity and sexual orientation.

While the bill is going to pass the Senate and the President is ready to sign it, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, released a statement through a spokesperson last week declaring that he "believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs." Later his office added that Boehner believes the bill is unnecessary because such workplaces protections are already protected under existing law.

The claim that federal law already guarantees such protections is not tenable, and most states don't have such explicit protections. If such legal protections already existed, then the possibility of lawsuits for unfair labor practices based on gender and sexual orientation would also exist. So the two statements eat each other.

But let's get back to the initial press release. There are two important things that are being explicitly said.

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An Introductory Critique of Current Economic Philosophy

Originally posted at dpsst25.

Current economic philosophy is rooted in large measure in debates about human nature that took place between Scottish, English, French, and German philosophers between two and three hundred years ago.

Those individuals were echoing debates that have been going on for much longer, debates about whether humans are intrinsically "good" (caring, empathetic, generous, cooperative, altruistic, etc) or "evil" (indifferent, cruel, selfish, greedy, manipulative, etc), and to what degree external circumstances and choice could draw out or strengthen different social qualities.

Whether intentionally or accidentally evolved or imbued by some unseen force, humans have a capacity for various social states and qualities. In adaptive terms, this can be cast a conflict between gene-centric selection (focused on the immediate benefit of the individual) versus group-centric selection (focused on the benefit of individuals as part of a larger social collective).

Contemporary postmodern industrial societies tend to construct their economic perspective on 1) status/wealth as reward, 2) uncertainty of worthiness, 3) scarcity of virtue, 4) abundance of resources, and 5) belief in meritocracy. I'll review these briefly before challenging their effectiveness at creating a just society full of actualized and productive citizens.

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