Exclusive Song of the Day: "The Golden State," John Doe - All Salon

John Doe and Kathleen Edwards make like a skid row June 'n' Johnny on this raucous duet.

As a founding member of the legendary Los Angeles band X, John Doe was one of the first punk rockers to fully embrace the rebellious spirit of country and folk music. A quarter-century on, Doe’s music is a little more controlled than the punk bursts of yore, but as this track from his upcoming CD, “A Year in the Wilderness,” shows, he’s still mighty rambunctious. Spurred on by some seriously Stones-y guitars, “The Golden State” finds Doe rocking out with all the conviction and authority of the rebel music pioneers he cares so deeply for, thanks in no small part to Kathleen Edwards, whose spirited vocals make this track sound like a skid row reworking of a classic June and Johnny Cash number.

– David Marchese

(The Song of the Day is also available as a podcast. Subscribe: iTunes or RSS)

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Joan Walsh on NPR’s On Point

The Salon writer debates author Charles Murray about the supposed decline of the white working class

By Carmen Garcia

Topics:2012 Elections

On NPR’s On Point this morning, Joan Walsh debated “libertarian lightning-rod” Charles Murray about his argument that values, income, and “religiosity” have irrevocably split America between elites and “everybody else.” Challenging Murray’s belief that “the sorting and separation of the classes is inevitable,” Salon’s editor-at-large pushes her interlocutor to swap his outdated thinking for a far more realistic, 21st-century take, one that takes into account the vastly more complicated forces behind class division.

Listen here.

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Do we still need Black History Month?

Three great documentaries air, including "More Than A Month," where one filmmaker explores his conflicted feelings

By Roger Catlin

A still from "More Than a Month"

Topics:Television, TV, Documentaries

Black History Month is an idea that filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman finds passé. In his documentary “More Than a Month,” which premieres Thursday on PBS’ “Independent Lens,” he walks around with a signboard that says END BLACK HISTORY MONTH and receives plenty of dirty looks. But he also gets more support than he suspected — after he explains that history should be part of the American story, told even during months with more than 28 or 29 days.

As he goes about his somewhat whimsical quest, some caution him that without that annual anchor, there’d be even less black history taught than before. He takes his campaign on the road; peers into the home of the month’s originator, Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.; meets with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; and goes to Virginia to see what black history means to big fans of the Confederacy.

Eventually he gets more serious about his task, realizing that while history may convey how we were, the way we tell history conveys how we are. And he’s had one direct effect: His mother, an activist, moves the date for a black history performance she had been planning out of February to help demonstrate that it is part of the fabric of U.S. history all year round.

One day, even television networks may spread their black-heritage documentaries beyond the confines of February as well. Unfortunately, two remarkable documentaries air at the same time Tuesday in many markets.

After demonstrating that he’s a sensitive observer of life in black America with “Hoop Dreams,” Steve James is back with “The Interrupters” – a more ambitious film that follows a fearless group of activists and amateur psychologists determined to end urban violence. It makes its national TV debut this evening on Frontline (check local listings).

That James and author Alex Kotlowitz (“There Are No Children Here”) decided to focus on Chicago at the precise time its youth-killing rates and lurid viral videos made it a national news story put them in the center of the cyclone. Their alarming footage, from the center of exploding violence and retribution, put the superficial approach of the national news media and government officials — who did little more than hold press conferences — to shame.

Even more remarkable are the counselors and community-minded people, many of whom learned their lessons in the streets, who put their lives on the line to defuse the mayhem out of a regard for love and doing what’s right.

Among them, Ameena Matthews deserves to be some kind of national heroine for her street sense, humor, decency, insight and bravery, which seem to change everyone she approaches. No matter how explosive the situation, she can enter, speak sensibly and have people listen.

James and Kotlowitz do treat their subjects seriously, listen to what they have to say and show how the activists are getting things done. For the inches of progress made before our eyes, it’s a hopeful film.

“The Loving Story,” on HBO, may seem like it is tied to Valentine’s Day. But it’s only providence that the couple at the center of the story is also named Loving.

But loving is the key. Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were both members of a small community in Virginia where whites and blacks freely worked and socialized. They met and fell in love, and like anyone else might do, got married.

But there were laws in Virginia, as there were in more than a dozen other states, outlawing any such mixing of races through marriage, using a word that is as ugly as the prejudice, miscegenation.

Somebody called the cops and the happily married duo were hit with a felony charge in 1958 — and a year in jail – which would be suspended if they’d just leave the state. Any visits back to see family or friends would have to be done individually, lest they risk arrest. They decided to fight the law, not only for their own sake, but as Mrs. Loving says in the sweetest possible way, for other people as well — because “it isn’t right.”

“The Loving Story” is in some ways the exciting case of the two young American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who agreed to take the case on and brought it to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s only because lawyers like to talk, especially looking back at what they can now see was the biggest case of their lives. Although there is a surprising amount of footage of the Lovings in the film, they never do say very much. They just want the right thing done. And in the end, it is.

The two are not around to tell their story, though one of their daughters is. He died in a car accident in 1975; she in 2008 at 68, surrounded by family and friends. The last anti-miscegenation law wasn’t repealed until 2000 in Alabama. Theirs is a love story that hasn’t been fully told previously — and may not have had a showcase had it not been for Black History Month.

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Trench warfare rages over Keystone pipeline

The GOP tries every which way to undo the Greens' modest victory

By Alyssa Battistoni

Protestors outside the White House demand a stop to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

Topics:Keystone XL pipeline, Editor's Picks, Environment, U.S. Congress

When the Obama administration announced last month that the Keystone pipeline project would be delayed pending a more thorough environmental review of its impacts, Keystone’s opponents celebrated, but warned that the fight was far from over. Sure enough, pipeline politics remain front-and-center as those in favor of the pipeline seek to circumvent the longer review process while its opponents struggle to fend off attacks on their tenuous victory. The past few weeks have seen a burst of legislative maneuvering as Republicans seek a way to rubber-stamp the pipeline without the president’s approval.

The maneuvering is intense because the struggle over the 1,600-mile proposed pipeline has become a proxy battle in a larger war over climate change, corporate influence and the legacy of the Obama administration. Both sides agree that the fate of Keystone XL will influence more than just whether oil is transported from the tar sands of central Canada to the United States. It will signal whether the U.S. is moving away from the carbon-fueled economy or embracing it anew.

The Republicans are attacking from several directions. A House bill introduced by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., in December would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue a permit within 30 days of receiving an application, essentially removing the Interior Department and Army Corps of Engineers from the oversight process, exempting the pipeline from several state and federal environmental regulations, and eliminating any discretionary review process.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill on Feb. 7, while killing Democratic amendments to prevent Keystone oil from being exported after processing, to block TransCanada from using eminent domain to seize private land, and to certify TransCanada’s claims that most of the steel used in building the pipeline would be manufactured in the United States. Republican leaders have also indicated that they’re considering inserting the bill’s language into other legislation in a replay of December’s payroll-tax-bill shenanigans.

Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., would allow Congress to approve the pipeline without presidential review by invoking Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate international commerce; Sens. David Vitter, R-La., Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., co-sponsored a companion bill in the Senate. And today, Republican leaders added a provision to the same effect to a transportation funding bill that may go up for a vote as soon as Tuesday. In response, anti-Keystone activists are seeking to imitate the success of last month’s anti-SOPA online activism, aiming to inundate senators with a stated goal of half a million emails within 24 hours to demonstrate that opposition to the pipeline remains strong.

The Keystone provision is unlikely to pass the Senate, let alone get a signature from President Obama. But if the past few weeks are any indication, we haven’t seen the last of the pro-pipeline legislation by a long shot. Mitch McConnell gave the game away in a statement to the conservative publication Human Events, saying, “The only way we’re going to get the Keystone pipeline started is to defeat Barack Obama.”

The party’s aim is to make the pipeline’s rejection a symbol of Obama’s alleged failure to stimulate the economy, and more generally, to paint a portrait of the president as a weak leader more concerned with appeasing “special interest groups” than with taking decisive action. Said Mack at a recent press conference, “The president has decided he’s not going to lead on this issue … so we need to get him out of the way,” while Lugar declared, “The president has failed to lead.”

But pipeline protesters counter that Obama’s decision on Keystone represented a courageous refusal to give in to pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists: MoveOn.org called it a “bold stand against the power of the oil industry,” while Bill McKibben said he “did the brave thing” in standing up to the American Petroleum Institute. While the issue is frequently portrayed as one that could divide key factions of Obama’s base, with labor unions in favor of the pipeline and environmentalists against, several major unions have come out in support of the administration’s decision to delay the pipeline, calling efforts to speed up the review the “cynical move” of a “do-nothing Republican Congress” and stating, “President Obama has acted wisely.”

A report released by the State Department investigator general last week also raised concerns about several aspects of the original environmental review. The report found that the original review failed to consider conflicts of interest: One of TransCanada’s lobbyists, Paul Elliott, is a former aide to Secretary of State Clinton, and the third-party contractor selected to conduct the review had prior financial relationships with TransCanada.

Moreover, the State Department neglected to address several regulations and had insufficient expertise to adequately consider issues like the pipeline’s potential impact on endangered species. The findings bolster environmental groups’ claims that the pipeline serves the interests of the oil industry, which is among the Republican Party’s top donors, and TransCanada, whose spending on lobbying has tripled in the past year to $1.73 million, $1.33 million of which went to Elliott for pipeline-related expenditures.

And it’s not just American politics that have been shaken up by the controversy over Keystone. After the delay was announced, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he would begin looking into alternative markets for the country’s natural resources, and during a recent visit to Beijing, “pledged closer trade ties with China.” That, in turn, has sparked a wave of concern about the specter of “foreign oil” back in the U.S., although most of the oil transported by the pipeline would ultimately be exported rather than used to supply the country’s energy needs. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., argues that Keystone would make the U.S. into “a middleman between Alberta and Asia” while doing nothing to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil.

: Alyssa Battistoni writes about the environment and politics from Seattle. More Alyssa Battistoni

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An offensive advocate for LGBT rights

By choosing Goldman CEO Blankfein as a spokesman, HRC signals that corporate malfeasance is perfectly acceptable

By David Sirota

Lloyd Blankfein (Credit: AP/Alessandro della Valle)

Topics:Wall Street, LGBT

Last week, the Human Rights Campaign, the organization that advocates for equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, announced that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein will be its first “national corporate spokesman for same-sex marriage.” HRC’s move was almost universally portrayed in the media as a laudable one for the cause of equality: a supposed Nixon-goes-to-China-esque coup that aligned a politically conservative icon with a liberal cause. As one HRC executive told the New York Times: “Lloyd Blankfein is not someone average Americans would think is going to support marriage equality.”

In all the ovation and self-congratulation, however, two big problems were left unmentioned.

First and foremost is the simple fact that this is not some brilliant P.R. move in the Nixon-to-China vein. On the contrary, many (though certainly not all) Wall Street financiers have long professed their support for gay rights, culminating in their pivotal role helping legalize gay marriage in New York state. That’s, in part, because it’s an effective strategy to divert attention from their economic agenda.

Taking a page out of corporate greenwashing strategies, many of the most offensively greedy, right-wing thieves in the business world have long touted their personally progressive position on select social issues like gay rights as a means of publicly presenting themselves as Good and Decent People. Not surprisingly, the particular progressive causes they choose tend to be those that do not impact their businesses or personal economic situations. In some cases, in fact, these thugs seem as if they are leveraging their stands on such progressive issues as a quid pro quo bargaining chip for their personal financial interests. As just one example of where that kind of dynamic may have played out, recall that almost immediately after Wall Streeters underwrote Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign to legalize gay marriage, Cuomo launched a public (though ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to halt the extension of a so-called millionaires tax on those same Wall Streeters.

This isn’t to say that Wall Streeters’ support for marriage equality isn’t a good thing; it most certainly is. (As a strong supporter of marriage equality, for instance, I’m glad those Wall Streeters helped New York State legalize gay marriage.) It’s only to say that Blankfein’s support of gay marriage isn’t some hard-to-believe coup; it’s probably exactly what many “average Americans” would expect from a Manhattan investment banker.

That gets to the second, even bigger problem: What, then, is the movement for equal rights really saying to “average Americans” when that movement promotes someone like Blankfein as its chief public spokesman? And what is the muted reaction to the HRC announcement saying about what is acceptable in America?

To answer that question, consider who Blankfein is — and recall specifically that he is not some quiet, buttoned-up executive in a staid manufacturing industry, nor is he known as a new Lee Iacoca or Steve Jobs — aka a person widely revered (rightly or wrongly) for how his innovation and business savvy (supposedly) helped the world. On the contrary, Blankfein is the singular — and rightly detested — poster boy for the lies, crimes and avaricious schemes that destroyed the economy, impoverished millions of Americans and ripped off taxpayers.

This is a man who refused to tell Congress the truth about the basic facts of how the firm he led bet against — and profited off — the destruction of the American economy. As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi documented, in 2010 Blankfein “went to Washington and testified under oath that Goldman Sachs didn’t make a massive short bet and didn’t bet against its clients” — even though the Senate’s “Levin report proves that Goldman spent the whole summer of 2007 riding a ‘big short’ and took a multibillion-dollar bet against its clients, a bet that incidentally made them enormous profits.” Blankfein’s lying was so egregious, the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations has recommended that the Justice Department consider perjury charges against him.

Blankfein is also the CEO who oversaw Goldman at the very moment that the firm engineered the infamous Abacus deal, a deal that was so insidious, that it ultimately drew a record $550 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lately, he’s made headlines personally lawyering himself up in preparation for possible criminal prosecution, which is probably a smart move because he’s already being formally deposed in a civil lawsuit related to the SEC settlement. And, of course, this says nothing about Blankfein and Goldman’s central role in the deceptive mortgage securitization schemes that, ya know, cratered the entire global economy.

Considering all of this through the prism of HRC’s decision to promote him and the political/media world’s supportive reaction to that decision, we see a disturbing message: namely, that in America, if you commit the most odious economic crimes against humanity, you can not only get taxpayers to bail you out, you can not only keep your job atop the most powerful corporations, but you get to keep your social status as well. In this case, you get to be promoted as the cheery spokesman of a progressive social cause.

This elucidates a troubling double standard between how we see civil rights/equality and how we see economic justice. Most mainstream organizations (and certainly all progressive organizations) would never willfully brand themselves to opponents of the former — that is, they would never make their spokespeople open proponents of bigotry, prejudice and homophobia, and they would never do so in the name of reaching “average Americans” (yes, there are of course still groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council that align themselves with that kind of hate, but at least as they do so it’s considered controversial and cause for widespread criticism). Yet, when a group pushing the progressive cause of civil rights and social equality promotes one of the avatars of economic injustice as a spokesman, there’s either no criticism at all — or widespread applause.

To be sure, when it comes to divisive political issues, there are no perfect high-profile spokespeople for public awareness campaigns. Everyone has a flaw, nobody is pure, and almost nobody is universally liked. But there’s a clear and obvious difference between imperfect and villainous. When a progressive group refuses to find the former and instead willfully aligns itself with the latter, it may help the specific and worthy cause at hand in the short term (in this case, marriage equality). But over the long haul, it sanitizes that villain and, worse, helps legitimize all he represents — including all the terrible things he represents.

That’s why Blankfein probably jumped at the chance to be HRC’s spokesperson — it’s a great deal for him, even as it gives the big middle finger to the millions of Americans he harmed in this recession.

: David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota

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Why Ron Paul is still relevant

Those of us who hate him need to understand those who love him

By Gary Weiss

He's wacky. He's wise. (Credit: AP/Robert F. Bukaty)

Topics:2012 Elections, Ron Paul, Editor's Picks

These are depressing days if, as I do, you don’t care much for Ron Paul.

His strong showing against Mitt Romney in Maine is further proof that the libertarian Texas congressman is not going away. So this is as good a time as any for those of us who view him as an off-the-charts extremist to come to grips with two larger questions presented by his candidacy: Why do so many people like this guy?

And even: Do Paul’s followers have a point?

My credentials in the anti-Paul camp are unassailable, and I have the hate mail to prove it. I haven’t changed my mind about his views. I still think that he’s a phony populist, because his positions would favor the 1 percent more than any other Republican candidate. I haven’t changed my mind that his “end the Fed” campaign is diversionary, and that his advocacy of the gold standard would put us in another Great Depression were it ever implemented. I’m concerned by the cult-like fervor of so many of his followers. I don’t buy his excuses for the racism that appears in newsletters that were published under his name.

But that doesn’t mean that those of us who aren’t won over by Paul should just dismiss the guy as a nut, which seems to be a popular practice in news organizations.. I don’t think he’s been terribly forthcoming, especially on those newsletters, but you can’t deny that Paul has a number of positive qualities that moderates and liberals needs to understand and appreciate, in order to effectively counter his views:

1. He has integrity. I grimace as I write this, but it’s true. Perhaps not compared to Mother Teresa, but certainly he does when stacked up against pretty much any other politician I know, including more than a few Democrats. (He obviously has more integrity than Mitt Romney, but that’s not saying much.) His consistent dedication to the same ideals, the same causes — obsessions, actually — cannor be seriously disputed. A perusal of his books, House of Representatives floor speeches and miscellaneous bloviating over the years shows that the man has been hammering away at the same isolationist/monetary/no-government/”Constitution” themes for decades. He has opposed the war on drugs for decades, just as for years he has opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mind you, he’s not always internally consistent, in the sense that he takes positions that stray from the libertarian ideal: taking earmarks for his district and stridently opposing abortion. But on most issues you can expect that his rigidity on matters of ideology will shine through, no matter how politically inexpedient.

2. He’s likable. Paul doesn’t give off mean-S.O.B. vibes like Newt Gingrich. He’s rumpled, and walks with the head-forward bad posture of a slightly distracted junior college professor, shuffling along, late for his next class. He doesn’t make a big show of bullying debate moderators as Gingrich has been doing (though he has walked out on an interview). Though his positions are even more uncompassionately conservative than Romney’s, he comes across with considerably more warmth (again, not saying much). His delivery on the stump is folksy, not fanatical. He talks about cutting $1 trillion out of the federal budget like your family doctor telling you he’s got to take out a gallstone. It’s good for you. It won’t hurt for long. Paul is often compared to the old man in the neighborhood who shoos the kids off his lawn, but he reminds me a lot more of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, the antiwar Democrat of the 1968 campaign. He doesn’t have McCarthy’s urbane wit, but that’s asking a bit much.

3. He’s smart, and in a nice way, unlike Gingrich or Romney. He doesn’t lecture; he doesn’t talk down to people. I think this explains a great deal of his appeal to the young. He’s this generation’s Mr. Wizard, the affable TV science teacher who taught baby boomers how refrigerators operate and how to get electricity out of a spool of wire and a magnet. Ron Paul’s Mr. Wizard character similarly reduces complex issues that people don’t understand into simple concepts amenable to simple solutions, such as abolishing a good part of the federal government and getting rid of the income tax. Yet he is able to embrace these off-the-charts positions in a manner that doesn’t make them seem extreme. It takes a genius to do that, and I don’t mean that in a nice way.

4. He knows the American people are fed up. He’s struck a chord with a lot of people I respect. His talk about American “empire” makes many a progressive feel warm and fuzzy. More than any other candidate — including President Obama — he understands how tired Americans are of being underemployed, exploited by the big banks and sent to engage in nation-building overseas. Sure, his policies would entirely wipe out regulation of banks, but he gets away with it from sheer force of personality. (And yes, I can already see the comments — the hedge fund managers and bankers support Romney. Sure they do: because he’s going to get the nomination.)

Paul’s views on foreign policy hearken back to the Republican isolationists of the 1930s, the Robert Tafts and Gerald Nyes, and he similarly taps into the latent Heartland “fortress America” mentality. He cannily exploits the paranoia that has long characterized American politics, and the deep-rooted dislike of foreign entanglements that has been dormant for decades. There’s an aroma of the old America First movement to much of what he says about foreign policy, and that’s scary to people who’ve read a lot about the 1930s, and know that we’d all be speaking German today if the Firsters had gained power. But they didn’t. Most people don’t give a hoot about what happened five years ago, much less 70.

5. He talks some sense. That’s what Paul haters have had a lot of trouble digesting: He’s an extremist on most issues who makes a lot of sense on foreign policy. He’s the only antiwar candidate in 2012. Even people who don’t agree with him totally on foreign policy have to admit that his opposition to the U.S. getting involved in Libya is looking smarter as every day passes, as do his views on staying out of the maelstrom in Syria. Sure, it’s insane for progressives to support a candidate who wants to turn back the clock on the New Deal and Great Society, as I pointed out a few weeks ago. But Paul has outsmarted us. He knows that dismay about Iraq and Afghanistan is strong enough to overcome any lingering doubts about his foreign policy views among a staggering number of people who’d otherwise find him repugnant.

The solution, I think, is the same one that applies to the spreading influence of another extremist who has gone mainstream, Ayn Rand. What’s needed is not shunning but debate, and an understanding that his positions need to be viewed as part of an organic whole. Anyone who reads “Atlas Shrugged” knows that laissez-faire capitalism is just part of the Randian package. So are atheism and a lot of other concepts that people in the Tea Party don’t always recognize when they brandish those “Who is John Galt?” posters.

It’s the same with Ron Paul. If you swallow his foreign policy, you guzzle down laissez-faire capitalism as well, whether you like it or not. So, sure, he makes sense on Syria, but he has one of the worst records on the environment and global warming of any member of Congress. That’s just one part of the price tag. It’s a long list.

Politics is compromise, and so do the choices that voters have to make. Those of us who oppose Ron Paul believe that his positions are too extreme to warrant compromise. But we need to understand why so many reasonable people feel differently.

: Gary Weiss is a journalist and the author of "Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul," to be published by St. Martin's Press on February 28, 2012. Follow him on Twitter @gary_weiss. More Gary Weiss