patrickmurfin

 
The Rev. William Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalsit Association 

This past week has been rife with the petitions for action that often clog my e-mail.  The Senate has repeatedly gone to the well to vote on various schemes to reign in the imperial ambitions of the Mal-Administration on Habeas corpus and on the war itself.  Each time I have been urged to communicate my support, and each time the tenacious rear-guard action of dutiful Republican minions has blocked any effective action.  Meanwhile the same body that could not curb the war found tome, with the assistance of some particularly craven Democrats, to condemn MoveOn for daring to exercise free speech.  It is all unimaginably discouraging.

Yet hope, faint hope, remains.  The House of Representatives is unconstrained by the Senate’s minority empowering cloture rules.  A simple majority is all that is required to act.  With a clear majority Democrats, joined by un-brainwashed Republicans in the House have the power to remove funding for continuing operations in Iraq, except as they involve safely extricating our forces.  In the face of a unified House majority, no bellicose Senate minority can compel funding.  An impasse on Defense appropriations may occur, but no money to fund the war would be forthcoming. It is not a perfect solution—it is messy and fraught with the well advertised dangers of a “Constitutional crisis.”  But we already have a Constitutional crisis with the attempted neo-con consolidation of total power in the White House.

Seventy members of the House have already pledged not to vote for any more war funding.  It is a good staret.  But more need to sign on to achieve the majority that can end the war.

When I received the following e-mail from Rev. William Sinkford of the Unitarian Universalist Association, I was stirred by the commitment of my faith community to bear witness for peace in a meaningful manner.  I urge my fellow UUs to read Rev. Sinkford’s appeal below and to sign the petition.

Friends: 

On September 6, I faxed a message to every member of Congress telling them, “Not another dollar.  Not another life.”  To make sure they heard me, I am headed to Capitol Hill with my colleague Rev. John H. Thomas, the United Church of Christ’s General Minister and President.  On October 10 we will be walking into your representatives’ offices to tell them to end the war and I want to bring you with me.

I Invite you to sign the petition linked below, calling for an end to our reliance on violence as the first, rather than the last resort and an end to the arrogant unilateralism of preemptive war.  Join me in speaking truth to those who have run from it.  Please sign this petition and add your voice to 25,000 other Unitarian Universalists who say that security is found in building beloved community, not by dominating others. 

Sincerely,

Rev. William G. Sinkford,

President, Unitarian Universalist Association

Read Rev. Sinkford’s September 6 letter to Congress:

http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/44811.shtml

Sign the following petition to be among the 25,000 Unitarian Universalists joining Rev. William Sinkford as he speaks truth to power at the following link:  http://tinyurl.com/29ttcd

Along with thousands of Unitarian Universalists, I call for an end to the war in Iraq, an end to our reliance on violence as the first, rather than the last resort, an end to the arrogant unilateralism of preemptive war.

I call for the humility and courage to acknowledge failure and error, to accept the futility of our current path, and I cry out for the creativity to seek new paths of peacemaking in the Middle East, through regional engagement and true multinational policing.

I call for acknowledgment of our responsibility for the destruction caused by sanctions and war and a beginning to rebuild trust in the Middle East and around the world.

I call for truth-telling in our nation and for the recognition in our congregations that security is found in building beloved community, not by dominating others.

 
I will join protest to prayer, support ministries of compassion for victims here and in the Middle East and cast off the fear that has made many of us accept the way of violence and return again to the way of love. Thus may bloodshed end and cries be transformed to the harmonies of justice and the melodies of peace. For this I yearn, for this I petition, and toward this end I rededicate myself as a member of our human family.

One of scores of MOVEON anti-filibuster rallies around the country.

Well, it’s over now.  A bleary-eyed SENATE has voted not to end the filibuster against the LEVIN-REED AMENDMENT to the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT budget allocation.  The final vote was 52-47.  Four REPUBLICANS—GORDON SMITH (Oregon,) CHUCK HAGEL (Nebraska,) OLYMPIA SNOW (Maine,) and SUSAN COLLINS (ditto) voted to end the debate and proceed to a majority vote on the amendment. JOE LIEBERMAN (Turd, Connecticut) of course voted with the Repugnitans.  But so did HARRY REID himself—a parliamentary maneuver that allows him to resurrect the amendment for yet another vote.  TIM JOHNSON, still recovering from a stroke, was absent for the vote.

            The DEMOCRATS thus picked up one GOP vote.  But Collins, in a tough re-election race, said that she only voted to allow an up or down vote on the amendment but would have voted against the amendment itself. This is desperate, meaningless hair splitting since the amendment was doomed any way.  And if it had come to a vote, it would have passed, even with her opposition.

            Republicans whined that it was all just theater.  That it was.  But it is important theater.  It required the parade of Bush loyalists to stand up and defend the indefensible.  It also showed them up as obstructionists at a time when the overwhelming majority of American voters want Congress to take action to end this unpopular war. 

            Reid knows from bitter experience that the public does not appreciate the nuances of Senate tradition and have little patience for the hallowed tradition of the FILIBUSTER as a means of thwarting the majority of the body.  The GOP was able to use that repugnance to wipe up the floor with Democrats in the hotly contested judicial confirmations of the last Congress.  Even though most voters disapproved of the kind of reactionary judges Shrub had sent to the Senate, they hated the obstruction more.  Now it was Reid’s turn to rub the new minority’s nose in its own shit.

            In recent years the filibuster has not much resembled JEFFERSON SMITH’S lonely crusade—or even the epic rear-guard actions of the segregationist Democrats against the Civil Rights acts of the 1960’s.  Instead it has been a carefully orchestrated dance in which the mere threat of a filibuster, when the votes are sure to sustain it, is enough to kill legislation or an appointment.  That way no one actually has to put any effort into one.

            But Reid has told the Minority that they must actually hold their “extended debate.”  What is more he has threatened to bring the issue of ending the War back again and again with this amendment or with others—perhaps with ROBERT BYRD’S and HILLARY CLINTON’S amendment to withdraw the Resident’s authority to wage the war under the original 2002 measure obtained under false pretences.  There is also a pile-up of progressive legislation already passed by the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that could be subject to the same strategy.  How bad with the GOP look filibustering, say, children’s health insurance?

            As for the Levin-Reed Amendment itself, it is far from the “bring-‘em-home-now” demands of much of the anti-war movement.  It is centrist in every respect echoing many of the recommendations of the IRAQ STUDY GROUP.  It calls for a draw down of American troops beginning 120 days after passage, limiting remaining troops to missions against AL-QAEDA—a provision repeatedly mocked by JOHN McCAIN as requiring that they “wear t-shirts” identifying themselves—and training Iraqi forces.  It also call for a diplomatic initiative with Iraq’s neighbors and mediation effort led by the UNITED NATIONS.

            Yet even action this limited represents a strong rebuke to the CHENEY/BUSH/NEO-CON war machine.  It would not stop the war, but it would put the breaks on and undoubtedly be followed by stronger measures.  Reid’s aggressive tactics represent a break with Democratic timidity that can not be underestimated.

            Like it or not, this war will not be ended in one fell swoop.  Some sort of steady, controlled departure is the best that we can expect from Congress.

            MOVEON recognized this, which is why it mobilized anti-filibuster actions around the country. They undoubtedly will be ripped as Democratic Party lackeys again.  Ignore the criticism.  Congretional Democrats are finally getting it right. 

                               
              Chris Hedges                                           James Luther Adams

CHRIS HEDGES is an award winning foreign correspondent with impeccable credentials.  But he may be best known for the headlines he made in May of 2003 when he was commencement speaker at conservative ROCKFORD COLLEGE in Illinois. Recently returned from Iraq, the speech was a blistering denunciation of the war and astonishingly prescient in its projections for a dismal result.  Hedges was booed and jeered in what some observers reported was a near riot.  He persevered and delivered the speech anyway.  A national examination of freedom of speech and academic freedom followed the well publicized address.

 He followed up this experience with publishing WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING, drawing on his decades of experience as a war coorespondent. 

But Hedges also was drawn to examine the rise of the religious right in America.  The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was a young student at HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL, where he studied under JAMES LUTHER ADAMS.  Adams gave him the intelectual tools, compounded by real world experience to analize the growing threat.

Although largely unknown to the public JAMES LUTHER ADAMS is commonaly regarded as the greatest Unitarian theologian of the 20th Century.  Studying in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, he advocated a rigourous, grounded religious humanism that could rise above empty platitudes and individual self-absorbtion to be a postitive force for good in the world.  He secretly filmed members of the anti-nazi underground CONFESSING CHURCH including KARL BARTH and ALBERT SCHWEITZERr, as well as Nazi apologists in the state sanctioned church.  Escaping the Gestapo by guile with the films, he returned to the states to sound a warning to both the nation and to complacent religious liberals.  Later also translated and intorduced to the American public the important German liberal theologians, including PAUL TILLICH.

In January Hedges published his new examination of the religious right, AMERICAN FACSISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA.  

In an essay first published in TRUTHDIG and which I read in TRUTHOUT.ORG, Hedges explains the importance of Adams in the development of his critique. The article is so important, I have elected to reproduce it in its entreaty below.

Christianists on the March
    By Chris Hedges
    Truthdig

 Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age - he was then close to 80 - we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of THE BIBLE.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolf Hitler placed over the contents of his suitcases to hide the rolls of home-movie film he had taken of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied the Nazis, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the tops of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Führer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black-and-white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge. 

Adams understood that totalitarian movements are built out of deep personal and economic despair. He warned that the flight of manufacturing jobs, the impoverishment of the American working class, the physical obliteration of communities in the vast, soulless exurbs and decaying Rust Belt, were swiftly deforming our society. The current assault on the middle class, which now lives in a world in which anything that can be put on software can be outsourced, would have terrified him.

The stories that many in this movement told me over the past two years as I worked on AMERICAN FASCISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA were stories of this failure - personal, communal and often economic. This despair, Adams said, would empower dangerous dreamers - those who today bombard the airwaves with an idealistic and religious utopianism that promises, through violent apocalyptic purification, to eradicate the old, sinful world that has failed many Americans.

These Christian utopians promise to replace this internal and external emptiness with a mythical world where time stops and all problems are solved. The mounting despair rippling across the United States, one I witnessed repeatedly as I traveled the country, remains unaddressed by the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, like its Republican counterpart, for massive corporate funding. The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic - to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true - the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement.

And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens. We now live in a nation where the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in THE CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY, wrote that "the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense - not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide."

 Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand-wringing by Democrats, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me, I suspect half in jest, that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." But this too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

 Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House before the last elections earned approval ratings of 80 to100 percent from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups - the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council.

President Bush has handed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to these groups and dismantled federal programs in science, reproductive rights and AIDS research to pay homage to the pseudo-science and quackery of the Christian right. Bush will, I suspect, turn out to be no more than a weak transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck - who also used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampf," the word from which we get culture wars, against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck's attacks, which split Germany and made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse, paved the way for the Nazis' more virulent racism and repression.

The radical Christian right, calling for a "Christian state" - where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens - awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement - the most dangerous mass movement in American history - will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance. The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism.

There has been a minor buzz on the internet in response to the decision Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to uphold the seizure of papers from the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.)   Actually, the reaction has been surprisingly muted. That just means that the blog-o-sphere has been swamped by other juicy worthy targets ranging from the fortuitous death of Enron’s Ken Lay, the Joe Lieberman soap opera in Connecticut, Israel’s all out offensive in Gaza and now in Lebanon, the usual Iraqi blood bath cubed, the administrations sudden agreement to treat the Guantanimo prisoners “as if they were covered by the Geneva Conventions,” to the Resident’s patently ridiculous assertions that his tax cuts were responsible for increased tax revenue and will “wipe out the deficit.”  So many juicy tomatoes lined up on the fence and only so many shots to take with our .22 caliber single shots.

So it is not too surprising to find coverage of the court decision to slide down to mid page on many big time blog sites, or never to appear at all on others.

Still, the limited reaction has been decidedly mixed.  A large number of commentators, left and right alike, are enthusiastic supporters.  Congressmen, they assert in nodding agreement with the judge, are not exempt from the same investigative procedures to which a dime bag dope pusher may expect to be subjected.  And there is a certain reasonableness, not to mention rough justice in that view.

Others, however, with a wary eye on an insatiable administration, squirm like picnickers after sun cooked potato salad.  They understand that the court has just handed the executive broad, and easily abused powers, to intimidate Congress.

Put me in the latter group.  For my take on how Attorney General  Roberto Gonzalez, ever the obedient stooge of the President (and therefore of Dick “Edgar Bergan” Cheney) may be using the Jefferson case to intimidate Congress, including restive Republicans, see my June 1 posting “Hassert vs. Justice Department: Intrigue in Washington”. 

A quick review of the Jefferson case may be in order.  Jefferson, a Black Louisiana Democrat has pretty clearly been a very bad boy.  And a greedy one.  Unlike recent cases involving Republicans and complicated schemes with K street lobbyists, Jefferson apparently specialized in good old fashion retail corruption.  His legislative influence seems to have been on sale.  Among scads of damning evidence, the Feds found lots of cold cash stuffed into a freezer at his home.  They also have a ton of other evidence. At best anything found in an unprecedented raid on his Congressional office would have provided extra icing on an already very elegantly decorated cake, perhaps an extra butter cream rose or two. 

Congressional Dems, as mortified as the ethically challenged House GOP caucus was delighted, recently stripped Jefferson of his plum committee assignments.

So the argument was not over the dubious virtue of one chiseling scum bag.  The challenge was recognized by a frightened Speaker Denny Hassert, who by “coincidence” was the very same week as the raid the subject of a Justice Department leak that he himself might be under investigation. That drove him into the uncomfortable arms of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.  Together they denounced the raid and supported Jefferson’s appeal to have his paper returned.

They recognized a naked  political threat as bold as one is apt to find in Washington, and knew it came from the highest levels of the Administration.  So they trotted out the arguments of separation of powers.  Constitutional stuff.  Dull stuff, but important.

Judge Hogan, who had issued the original search warrant at the request of the Justice Department, was not amused.  In fact his opinion in rejecting the appeal, while called “comprehensive” by some legal observers, often had the impatient, scolding tone of someone whose own legal integrity was being challenged.  He had carefully considered all of the constitutional arguments, he said, before issuing the warrant.  He did not seem to like his judgment being questioned.  So his decision was sharply, even, by judicial standards, colorfully worded.

While I am not thrilled by the ruling (there is always a slender chance it may be over turned on appeal,) I recognized that the boys at Justice, and more importantly their bosses in the White House, may not be too thrilled either. 

Judge Hogan did not just affirm is original decision and leave it at that, as well he could.  He made some broad assertions.  The most critical was this:  that the Constitution does not make members of Congress “super citizens immune from criminal responsibility.”  More over “like members of the co-equal executive and judicial branches, members of Congress are not above the law.”

Those words “MEMBERS OF THE CO-EQUAL EXECUTIVE…ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW” must scream out to everyone in the administration from the Vice President, to the President on down.  If upheld on appeal, such language dooms the administration's claims of immunity under the “unitary powers of the executive” or even under emergency war powers.

Be careful what you wish for.  You might get it.

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Now I’m not much on guilt by association. Particularly in politics. You know the kind. Bill Clinton used to get smeared with it all the time. He would have a picture taken with some mope, one of hundreds and thousands that were taken with citizens at all sorts of events and meetings. Two years later it would pop up when the guy turned out to be a child molester, embezzler, or a one-time Klansman. It’s a dirty game. 

I remember that during one of Representative Jack Frank’s first campaigns he was stalked at an event on Woodstock Square by a Republican staffer hoping to snap a picture of him with Roland Burris. The idea was to put the picture in campaign literature thus wordlessly tying Jack both to evil state Democrats and—gasp—to a Black. 

But some associations, and the enthusiasm with which they are embraced by the candidate, cry out for comment. 

Take, for example David McSweeney, GOP candidate for Congress in the 8th District against Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean. He was proud as a pumpkin to be seen with Vice President Dick Cheney AKA the Prince of Darkness. He was also embarrassingly grateful. 

At a Chicago fundraiser the Vice President helped suck up $200,000 from cheering fat cats for McSweeney’s flagging campaign chest. Those aforementioned fat cats, of course, were motivated only by the highest minded civic virtue when they turned their pockets inside out. They could not possibly have been hoping for an inside track on the Federal goodies that this administration doles out so enthusiastically to its friends. 

See the NORTHWEST HERALD’S account of the fundraiser.
 
I probably don’t need to get into the long list of horribles about Dick Cheney. If you need a refresher, just go by to my recent posting “Hiding the Pea.” 

And Cheney was not shy about reminding us. Brazenly, the former Halliburton chief and petroleum industry shrill par excellence spent much of the speech bragging about administration energy policy and trying to pin high gas prices on Democrats. And it would not have been a Dick Cheney speech if he did not trot out 9/11, cheer for the “War on Terrorism,” and cast his approving vampire gaze over the blood bath in Iraq.
 
So what, you say, just typical Republican politics. We should not expect any different, Why tar McSweeney simply for associating with the leaders of his own party?
 
Well, for one reason, Cheney himself was quick to pull the guilt by association trigger. He reportedly got the partisan crowd to its feet when he said, “The stakes are extremely high. This race may decide who is going to control the United States House of Representatives. If Nancy Pelosi is elected Speaker of the House, we will face higher taxes and she is going to wave the white flag on the war on terror.”
 
Nancy Pelosi—translation: “homo coddling, baby murdering, surrender monkey, tree hugging, class war advocating, pinko San Francisco LIBERAL!! For God’s sake deliver us from that evil!” 

If Dick Cheney wants to play that game, I don’t feel too guilty about turning the tables on him.
 
Now I know a lot of the folks who read this blog are less than enthusiastic supporters of Melissa Bean. I have been sharply critical of many of her votes. But as Dastardly Dick himself points out, her race is critical to Democratic hopes of recapturing the House of Representatives, one of the slender hopes we have yet of averting a complete slide in open dictatorship. 

So I’m all for letting David McSweeney take the heat for the company he keeps.

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According to an article by Mike Dorning and Andrew Zajac in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE (as posted at TRUTHOUT.ORG,) House Majority Leader Denny Hassert has made out very well on a land deal in the western suburban boonies.  As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise!”

Hassert, first using his wife as a front and then hiding his interest in one of Illinois’s unique and handy “secret land trusts,” turned a tidy profit on the parcels of farm land out by Plano.  In a mere three years Hassert and his partners turned a nifty $3 million dollar profit on the deal.

The TRIBUNE ties the rapid rise in value of the land to long proposed "Prairie Parkway," a western belt expressway, which Hassert has made a career of promoting in Congress.  The deal followed by months his securing funding for the early stages of engineering and development for the project. 

But the land in question is about 51/2 miles from the route of the proposed highway.  That is too far to be directly tied to the development.  And in fact any one who has been paying attention knows that land values in the area have been skyrocketing as part of the self-destructive race to erect giant sub-divisions among the corn fields that is stalking all of the collar counties.

So I don’t think much will come of this in the way tarring Hassert directly to a corrupt “insider” deal—everyone knows land like that is going up.

What I do find interesting is that the supposedly humble former high school wrestling coach had enough money—or the where-with-all to borrow enough money to get into the land speculation business to begin with.

How is it that so many Republican Congressmen of modest means seem to be able to turn themselves into millionaires in short order?

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Finally, someone said it.  I was beginning to think I was alone in my reservations.  Last week TRUTHOUT.ORG, ran a special perspective piece by David Bacon, “No Immigration Bill is Better”. In the piece Bacon quotes some immigration activists who have concluded that the supposedly “liberal” Senate bill is nearly as damaging at the House version—death by a thousand cuts rather than decapitation.

If the Senate bill had been up for consideration two years ago, immigration reform activists and the immigrant communities themselves would have been up in arms.  Many of its provisions add onerous burdens on individuals and families.  Others seem to strengthen and institutionalize the exploitation of their labor for virtually no reward at all.

Instead, the Sensenbrenner bill caught the attention of millions of undocumented workers and drove them spontaneously into the streets.  From the beginning of the remarkable marching season, many supported the Senate version as a reasonable alternative to the draconian criminalization of millions.  That was understandable.           

The Senate bill, with the backing of the President, at least offered what was seen as a “path to citizenship.”  But the path is so narrow most will never be able to negotiate it.  On top of that ever more restrictive amendments were added to the package to entice the House to bite the bullet in conference.

But now groups such as the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the San Francisco Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, the AFL-CIO, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund have recognized the flaws in the Senate plan and are beginning to withdraw support.

At any rate the ideologically driven House of Representatives seems ready to stand by its demands for a harsh measures and rejection of  “legalization.”  Congressman Sensenbrenner, principle architect of the House plan, rejected any compromise with the Senate on the talking heads shows last Sunday.  He is getting fifth column support from Senate Majority Leader Frist, who is still scrambling to prove his fascist credentials to the right wing in the ramp up of his presidential aspirations. 

Any compromise that could be reached would be much closer to the House version, anyway.

It looks more and more likely that there may be a stand-off between that two houses and no final bill may emerge.  Some bewail this as a disaster.  I believe it is likely a blessed gift to struggling immigrant workers.  Certainly no bill is preferable to anything that stands a chance of passage, even if the status of millions is in no way clarified.

In the late 1960’s the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan surveyed the failure of many Great Society Programs to alleviate poverty in urban Black communities.  Indeed, he believed that many programs had made matters much worse.  He recommended that, instead of continuing to commit social experimentation, a period and policy of “benign neglect,”—leaving the situation alone—might be called for.  Moynihan was roundly criticized by many liberals for bailing out of the War on Poverty.  What ever the merits of that might have been then.  Certainly today some “benign neglect” of immigration policy might save much heart ache and tragedy.

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