April 2003
NOtesonlinea newsletter for the social democratic community in the United States
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Come to Our May 17th SD Spring Institute!
Here is your personal invitation to our May 17th Spring Institute. Since space is limited, please RSVP to 202-467-0028 or info@socialdemocrats.org.
We hope to see you there!
"Everything
Changed"
What Now for Labor, Liberalism and the Global Left?
Washington Court Hotel
555 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Saturday, May 17, 2003
ATRIUM BALLROOM
Session I
9:30 am America
Donna Brazile
Campaign Manager, Clinton-Gore 2000; Commentator, CNN, "Inside Politics" and "Late Edition"
Richard Bensinger
Consultant on Organizing, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union; United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; and Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
Session II
11:00 am Europe, the Left and Anti-Americanism
Andrei Markovits
Visiting Professor, Harvard; author, The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond; Keynote Speaker, Green Congress, Germany in 2001
Jeffrey Herf
Professor, University of Maryland; author, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Republic, and "A View from the Left; Auschwitz, Munich and Iraq"
Michael Allen
Visiting Fellow, the National Endowment for Democracy; Visiting Scholar, Cornell University's Institute of Labor Relations; contributor to Renewal, a journal aligned with the Blair wing of the British Labour Party.
Session III
1:00 pm Lunch Discussion: "Neo-Social Democracy?"
Penn Kemble
Senior Scholar, Freedom House; Executive Committee, Social Democrats, USA
Session IV
2:30 pm The Middle East: "Terror and Liberalism"
Paul Berman
author, Terror and Liberalism.
"Berman's latest book 'Terror and Liberalism,' is a minor masterpiece of moral seriousness and scholarly research." --Andrew Sullivan
Saad Ibrahim
Director, Ibn Khaldun Center, Cairo; internationally renowned sociologist and advocate of democracy and human rights.
Joshua Muravchik
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; author, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism; Adjunct Scholar, Washington Institute on Near East Policy.
CAPITOL ROOM
4:30 pm Reception
The stand-off at home between those who see government as simply "the problem" and those who reflexively look to government for every solution is giving way. The public wants government to be reformed and modernized, not hacked at or starved out. A revival of creative public policy debate should be possible.
The importance of the organized labor movement to democracy and a decent livelihood for many of our citizens is not widely understood. We need to explore new ways to strengthen the labor movement, and to win support for it in mainstream civic life.
Finally, there is today no organizational voice in our public affairs that speaks from the perspective framed above. We need to discuss whether this is a gap that can be filled, and how that might be done. There is a place for an American voice that finds some inspiration in the New Labour of Britain's Tony Blair, some in our own tradition of Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Bayard Rustin, Albert Shanker and Sidney Hook.
We welcome all who share our values and ideas to join us for a day of dialogue about these matters. Space is limited, so please register early. And—most important— do take a moment to suggest others who might contribute to this discussion whose names we may not have. We want to widen the circle.
Space is limited. To register call: 202-467-0028 or e-mail: info@socialdemocrats.org
Tony Blair and The Road Map Ahead
Prime Minister Blair is pressing George Bush to lean on Israel and the Palestinians to re-start the Mideast peace process. SDers took pride in Tony Blair's determination in the debate over Iraq. Let's hope he won't (to borrow Lady Thatcher's phrase) "go wobbly" now. Saddam's defeat does create possibilities for easing tensions and strengthening Palestinian self-government, but only if the Palestinian leadership becomes transparent, democratic and willing to give up the delusion that Israel can slyly be dismantled. Yassir Arafat's weaseling performance under the Oslo Accord was not unlike Saddam Hussein's response to U.N. Security Council resolutions, as President Clinton and Dennis Ross have attested.
Stubborn insistence on democracy for the Palestinians will be scorned by some as pro-Israel. The truth, of course, is that it is even more profoundly pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab. The Arab world is watching to see if the pledges of support for democracy the President has made are meant to be taken seriously. To turn away from this road now, back toward the notion that a Palestinian Authority still deep in corruption, terrorism and authoritarianism can be a real partner for peace, will more than break the President's word. It will gut the march to Baghdad of its meaning and promise.
Natan Sharansky, the Soviet dissident now serving as Israel's Minister for the Diaspora and Jerusalem, makes the case with his very special authority. (For text of full article, go the the Jerusalem Post site --registration is free.)
Max M. Kampelman on Trusting the U.N.
Max Kampelman, a distinguished diplomat and former Chairman of the U.S. United Nations Association, has written a powerful summary of why we can't just "go to the U.N." when it comes to matters affecting our basic democratic values or security interests. Kampelman believes we should continue to work in the U.N. to reform it, but cites a list of examples where the U.N. has failed to deliver on the "fundamental human rights" that its charter commits it to.
Kampelman has joined other experts and notables to propose a number of specific reforms that might be pressed by the U.S and other democracies a the U.N. (This report, by a joint task force drawn from Freedom House and the Council on Foreign Relations, was endorsed by Congressman David Drier, Lee Hamilton, Madeleine Albright, Jeane Kirkpatrick and many others.) Among the group's proposals: create an effective caucus of democracies in the U.N. and other international institutions to battle the dictators, break the grip of gangster states on the Human Rights Commission, and end prattling debates about terrorism to begin actually rooting it out.
The Bush Administration still lacks any conceptual approach for engaging in international politics and diplomacy. This leaves the U.S. looking like a smug or arrogant loner. The Freedom House/CFR report suggests a strategy that would reassure our real friends and further discomfit our enemies.
Republicans Fight Anti-Labor Red Tape
Republicans have argued, often with merit, that government regulations can stifle the entrepreneurial spirit. Some 28 Republican Members of Congress -- including some thought of as militants of the New Right -- have now taken the view that excess regulation should not be imposed on labor unions, either. And that scourge of Big Government, the Wall Street Journal, is outraged at them.
The issue is something called "expanded LM-2 reporting requirements", a new regulation being proposed by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. It would require small union locals to provide much more detailed financial reports -- details that compound already difficult requirements.
Many in labor see this proposed rule as an attempt to swamp small union organizations often run by volunteer staff with onerous paperwork. They contend that it represents an assault by big government and big business on one of our society's important "mediating structures" -- local labor unions. Some Republicans agree.
Says Representative Rob Simmons (R-CT),"We should not have union representatives filling out forms in triplicate or poring over government paperwork any more than we want excessive government 'red tape' on the business community. We are all working to build our local economy in the short and long term and create a reliable and healthy work environment. This involves communication, not excessive bureaucracy."
(See full text of the Republican letter.)
SD Hosts Committee from Socialist International
A distinguished group of social democratic leaders, including Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister, visited Washington recently to confer with officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The SD organized a reception for the group (formally named the Socialist International Committee on the Economy, Social Cohesion and the Environment) with generous cooperation from the energetic Washington Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the educational arm of the German Social Democratic Party. Members of the Committee reported useful dialogue about globalization issues at the Bank and Fund, and were especially interested in the US debate about Iraq, which reached high pitch at the time of their visit. Evidently the diversity of views on the American left has no counterpart in Europe.
In the April 7 New Yorker Jack Cassidy nicely summarizes New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer's campaign to rescue Wall Street investment firms from greed run riot. The market boom of the 90s brought out voracious financial operators who had no reluctance to do to the U.S. securities industry something like what looters did to Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. But Spitzer reined them in -- without generating a destructive panic.
In-house research analysts at brokerage firms were supposed to provide accurate information to brokers and clients about the health of publicly traded companies. Instead, they cooked their assessments of certain companies whose executives paid sumptuous commissions to the analysts' firms for handling their banking and stock offerings. Brokerages that manage initial public stock offerings (IPOs) also granted blocks of stock at below market prices to executives who brought the brokerages other kinds of business. The most plummy story: the iconic Sanford Weill, Chairman of Citigroup, helped secure a coveted place at the 92nd Street YMHA pre-school for the child of an associate who jacked up AT&T's performance ratings. Tom Wolfe couldn't have written it better.
The episode shows how much capitalist markets need effective and disinterested regulation -- and can't police themselves. But Spitzer also demonstrated that the spirit of such regulation need not be crudely anti-capitalist. He refused to bring criminal charges against Merrill Lynch, for example, because he wanted brokerages to reform their practices -- he did not want to pillory one offender. He even persuaded a judge to withhold a court order when he learned that it would close down a company's business. (The New Yorker isn't on line -- if you want this article, let us know.)
The AFL-CIO Lawyers' Coordinating Committee's April Bulletin posts notice of a breakfast meeting of members of the National Lawyers' Guild at its coming New Orleans conference. This event could not come at a more appropriate time. The National Lawyers' Guild has been among the most ardent defenders of Fidel Castro's Cuba. Two weeks ago the Castro government sentenced some 80 pro-democracy civic activists to brutally long terms -- up to 28 years -- for challenging its totalitarian controls. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions states bluntly that the Castro regime "explicitly prohibits independent trade unions." Here's how a task force of the Lawyer's Guild sees it:
"Cuban unions and workers have responded to the crisis of the “special period” by
implementing a program of direct workplace democracy and participation which appears to provide both effective representation and many lessons for U.S. labor and employment lawyers and trade unionists." (See full text of the report.)
NYC Workers Support War Effort
Many Notes readers may have missed news about this impressive demonstration, organized by the
New York City Building and Construction Trades. It was actually quite big -- some 15,000 participants. It was planned at the time the war seemed stalled, although by the time it took place the 3rd Infantry was at the Baghdad airport.
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