Most of the obituaries refer to him as a father figure – to technology, to his employees, and to his own children, and many of them cover some of his nastiest traits, like swindling his business partner out of 83% of his share of their first profits, or committing perjury to avoid paternity claims.  He was notorious for berating subordinates, and even chasing them down at home at all hours to get what he wanted.  The New York Times writes of his “public” battle with cancer, but the truth is, he lied and hid the disease, leading to ethics investigations and feverish speculation over his health and its effects on his company’s stock price.  He aggressively sued journalists for covering his company and brutally punished leakers inside Apple.  Everything about the company – not just products but information –  was considered proprietary, and he used his power to squash information rather than free it.  Meanwhile, ad campaigns painting his company as the underdog and celebrating “thinking different” aligned him in the public imagination with ideals that were the opposite of his business practices.  He ended corporate philanthropy upon his return to Apple from exile and his products upended the principles of an open internet by walling off information and locking it up for ransom.

Jobs was a perfect symbol of our era: a brutal dictator who wielded his immense power to give the public exactly what we wanted and he was beloved for it.  His authoritarian practices were hidden by brilliant showmanship, marketing, and by delivering products that dazzled with their technological advances and design fetishism. Jobs turned us all into subservient consumers, subjects eagerly awaiting the next aha! moment and willing to trade our money and our values for the perfect object of futuristic fantasy.

I have never used a computer that wasn’t a Mac, and I will be pre-ordering the iPhone 4S tomorrow.  I wish I could think different.  The King is dead.  Long live the King!

Your faithful servant.

President Obama is reversing himself on civil liberties, he is failing to deliver on campaign promises to gays and lesbians, and the bank and auto bailouts are continued giveaways to big business.  Congress is failing to do it’s job: the Democratic caucus is unable to unite to do much of anything, from investigating the lawlessness of the previous administration, curbing the expansion of executive power, or providing meaningful oversight of the billions of dollars of bailout money you and I provided to banks.  Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) recently told reporters the the truth about Congress, that the banks “frankly own the place.” It is time to put a stop to the endless compromises that the Democratic Party makes with powerful business interests who pay for their campaigns and the increasingly bold minority party, whose power to block legislation and nominees paradoxically seems stronger than ever.  There is one way, and only one way in our power to break this cycle: we must work to defeat Democrats in Congress.

This might seem crazy to you, or it might seem self-defeating.  There are any of a dozen arguments that you might make against this.  But consider this: there is a tremendous amount of pressure on Democrats to cave to the right, or bend to the will of powerful lobbies.  There is absolutely no pressure on the Democrats to listen to their liberal base – in fact, it’s considered politically savvy to ignore or even antagonize the base of the party.  Any Democratic politician is viewed as a “centrist” or a “pragmatist” when he or she opposes the faithful progressives who worked hard to elect him.   Because they know the truth – that the base will grumble and whine, but there will be absolutely no real consequences for caving to the right.

Progressives, it is time to get help.  We are in an abusive relationship with our party and it’s time to stand up and threaten to leave them.  There are no excuses left to be made – the Democrats are playing “smart politics.”  It’s time to learn to play hardball, it’s time to pressure them to do the right thing and stop waiting around for them to suddenly wake up and decide to listen to their hearts and not their campaign finance directors.

AccountabilityNow PAC was formed by a coalition of progressive bloggers to bring accountability to the Democratic party for this very problem.  There biggest target next year is going to be Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican who now pretends to be a Democrat in order to save his seat.  Although he still blocks much of the Democratic Party’s agenda, Harry Reid and the leadership are supporting his re-election and trying to block real Democrats from challenging him.  This is exactly the type of behavior that needs to be stopped, and it will require time and money from regular citizens like you if we ever expect to have a working democracy again.  I urge you to donate to AccountabilityNow.

In Los Angeles, Congresswoman Jane Harman is a Blue Dog who votes with the conservative Democrats from the South.  She was the Bush Administration’s staunchest Democratic defender of its illegal wiretapping program — until she was caught on a (legal) wiretap in an influence-peddling scandal allegedly agreeing to intervene in a federal investigation on behalf of lobbyists.  She once called herself “the best Republican in the Democratic Party.”  She is being challenged by Marcy Winograd, a school teacher and the founder of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles.  Her district, the California 36th, is often described as “conservative” in the media, but it voted for Kerry in ‘04 and Obama in ‘08 by huge margins.

Primary defeats for Specter and Harman will send a powerful message to the Democrats.   We’ve had it — we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!  Taking our money and running can no longer be a winning strategy for Democrats.  There must be powerful consequences for ignoring the liberal base and from now on, doing so must be a grave political risk.  Any more excuses from us are just an invitation to be ignored.

Accountability Now PAC
Winograd 4 Congress

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Nixon used the FBI to spy on ordinary Americans.  All Americans, Democrats and Republicans, agreed this was bad so Congress passed laws in the 1970s to make this explicitly illegal.  Because the President kept using the threat of foreign operatives as cover to spy on ordinary Americans, Congress specifically established a secret court that could review classified information and give warrants for wiretapping in 24-72 hours, sometimes retro-actively if there was a really dangerous Russian spy that needed immediate action.  Thus the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978.  The act has been updated and modernized to keep up with technology, in the 90s, and again as part of the PATRIOT ACT in 2001.  The government has all of the tools it needs to do its job.  The failure of intelligence that led to 9/11 was not caused by us not having listened to the right things, it was caused by us not knowing what to do with the information we did have, and not taking it seriously at the highest levels of the administration.

The Bush Administration began spying on Americans and paying large sums of money to the major telecom companies to essentially vacuum up all of our telephone calls, text messages, emails, faxes, and browser histories.  We know that AT&T built a special room that funneled information to the government and allowed them to access anything they want at their pleasure without a warrant or any oversight whatsoever.  We also know that Qwest refused to cooperate because their attorneys deemed the governments request illegal.  When parts of this program were made public by the New York Times, and a coalition of civil liberties groups like the ACLU and electronic privacy advocates sued the telecom companies for violating their constitutional rights.  The Administration moved quickly to have Congress act to make their activities legal, and to give “immunity” to the companies that broke the law in complying with the administration’s requests.  Meanwhile, Congressional hearings were stalled and ignored by the Administration, using dangerous claims of executive authority to say that Congress does not have the right to investigate these activities.  The lawsuits became the only hope of forcing the telecoms to reveal the details of the program, which is why “immunity” was so crucial — to stop the lawsuits from moving forward at all and revealing the still-secret details of the Administration’s domestic spying programs.

The Administration and the powerful telecommunications industry have had a great deal of help from Democrats in protecting their illegal activities, covering their tracks, and allowing the United States to become just like the Soviet Union or East Germany in its abilities to surveil its own citizens without any reason, oversight or limitation.  The list of powerful Democrats who have helped try to pass the Bush/Cheney wish list include: Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and Steny Hoyer.

It looked like this issue was settled this winter when House leadership defied the Senate leadership and the Administration and in the face of threats and scare tactics, said the law was sufficient as it stood.  After that fight was “won” an amazing thing happened.  The Administration started looking for a “compromise.”   Yes that’s right, after we gave and gave and gave and held out for the bare minimum of protection we could solidly keep, after we were told that the any compromise on their full bill would cost us American lifves, after the battle was won, then the Administration started looking for new ways to win, and calling it a “compromise.”  And now they have found it.  And once again, they’re counting on us not paying attention.
TAKE ACTION NOW!

• CALL YOU CONGRESSMAN/WOMAN.  Say you’re opposed to warrantless wiretapping and you’re opposed to retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

• JOIN THE ACLU.  They are truly doing the lion’s share of the work here.

• JOIN THE CAMPAIGN AT FIREDOGLAKE.COM: they are leading the coalition of bloggers who are reporting on this story, because, big surprise it’s not being covered in the corporate press.

• GIVE MONEY.  See the link to the right of this post under “take action.”

ASK YOURSELF: Do you believe that the people of a nation are accountable for the atrocities committed by their leaders in their names

IF YES: Are you okay with the fact that the United States tortures so-called enemy combatants? Are you okay with the fact that our constitution, which gives this country its sense of moral authority, only applies to US Citizens, itself a designation subject to revocation by our government

IF NO: Are you okay with the fact that an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed because the US didn’t like their government? Are you okay with the fact that thousands of Afghani civilians (no organization has been able to accurately count) have been killed as a result of the armed conflict against The Taliban

ASK YOURSELF: Have you expressed your opinion to your government? If you haven’t contacted your Congressman or Senator because you don’t think they care, you should know that they haven’t done anything about it because they don’t think you care

Who Represents Me? – Congress.org

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