Feeling Too Down to Rise Up

By SUDHIR VENKATESH

IN Chicago, during the summer of 1992, I watched a rally explode into a riot. Unruly public housing tenants were protesting high prices at local grocery stores. A request to speak with a manager turned into shouts and screams when the proprietor was spotted scurrying out the back door. In minutes, bottles flew overhead, gangs began shooting indiscriminately, people shouted for the heads of the management, and mothers scrambled to shelter infants from flying glass and bullets. In the eyes of the rioters, I could see both anger and euphoria.

These days, we are hearing a lot about “populist rage,” but so far no riots have broken out in front of the Treasury Department or the A.I.G. headquarters. The pundits assure us that Americans are furious, disgusted, mad as hell, but cabinet officials and chief executives haven’t been confronted by throngs of angry citizens. In fact, the only mass disturbance to make news lately was at an “America’s Next Top Model” audition, where three people were arrested on charges of “inciting a riot” — the cause of that uprising, for the record, was not the financial crisis.

The texture of discontent (or lack thereof) can say a lot about a nation, and that Americans today are less likely to rebel may not be an entirely positive sign.

It certainly doesn’t mean we have more love, patience or tolerance for one another. Indeed, it may mean just the opposite, that we tend not to trust one another and that we are more alienated from our neighbors than ever before. The lack of direct action could signal the weakening of a social contract that keeps people meaningfully invested in the fate of our country — which may, in turn, be hindering our ability to resolve this crisis.

Before blogs and radio call-in shows, people joined forces and turned to the streets as their most effective means of expression; a unified, angry crowd was often sufficient to win concessions from employers and governments. And so most rebellions of the 20th century were over bread-and-butter issues like unsafe work conditions, wages and high prices for basic commodities. Even “race riots” were usually motivated by competition between ethnic groups over access to jobs and housing subsidies.

But some outbreaks of lawlessness were also indicators of strong, shared sentiments and were driven by a sense of higher purpose. For example, in 1919 Chicago, black soldiers returned home from World War I to find segregated ghettos, white-dominated unions and racist government practices. Many joined their neighbors who battled white youth and police officers in the streets. They had fought an enemy overseas; now it was their moral duty to fight injustice at home.

Today widespread anger and collective passivity exist side by side. To explain this seeming contradiction, we might look for clues — as so many are doing — in 1930s America. Then, as now, the citizenry reacted angrily to high unemployment, mass layoffs and a crippled banking system.

But it was only several years after the stock market crash that large-scale protests, bread riots and street rebellions began to occur in small towns and big cities. That’s the most pertinent lesson of the Great Depression: people waited, with relative patience, for years for some government response before anyone looted a grocery store or fought off police officers who were evicting families. So it’s possible that if our economic hardships endure, civil unrest could follow.

But if American anger remains corralled on the Internet, into e-mail messages to Congress and in sporadic small-group protests, it is unlikely that the Obama administration will do much to assuage the anger of taxpayers. Administration officials certainly don’t seem concerned that rage will heat up and overflow; after all, anticipating unrest would mean a broad and intensive campaign to shore up housing, food and welfare safety nets. The proposed budget contains a few such line items, but a comprehensive, coordinated program to prevent violence and defuse anger would need sustained commitments from mayors, service providers and civic leaders.

Perhaps the lack of concern is warranted, as several factors make widespread revolt less likely today. Our cities are no longer dense, overcrowded industrial centers where unionized laborers and disgruntled strikers might take a public stand. Concentrated inner-city poverty has declined, too, so don’t expect 1960s-style ghetto unrest.

Our urban centers are instead corporate hubs and the victims of this recession include hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers. For obvious reasons, these folks tend not to have the particular sense of grievance — that a select few are receiving preferential treatment, that they’re on the losing end of a rigged game — that usually sets off a conflagration.

And in today’s cities, even when we share intimate spaces, we tend to be quite distant from one another. Mass disturbances are not highly orchestrated ballets. They require spontaneous interaction, a call and response among unidentified cries of rage, the possibility for a unified mass to form from a gathering of loosely connected individuals.

But these days, technology separates us and makes more of our communication indirect, impersonal and emotionally flat. With headsets on and our hands busily texting, we are less aware of one another’s behavior in public space. Count the number of people with cellphones and personal entertainment devices when you walk down a street. Self-involved bloggers, readers of niche news, all of us listening to our personal playlists: we narrowly miss each other. Effective rebellions require that we sing in unison.

We may also have anger fatigue. Each day brings more layoffs and more news of taxpayer-financed corporate office renovations. Add to this the Iraq war, which is six years old this month, and a national debt that will likely rise by trillions. Such reports provoke fury but after some time, even the righteously indignant can tire and accept the outrageous as status quo.

Ultimately, however, what could keep the lid on unrest is the very issue that has pushed us toward the cliff: our high levels of personal and household debt. The average American owes about $9,000 on credit cards alone. Indebtedness redirects an individual’s energies inward: failing to pay the mortgage and college tuition can bring up feelings of anxiety, shame and a sense of personal failure.

It’s easy to feel that one isn’t working hard enough, that one should try harder to save money or take on additional work. To rebel publicly, even to engage politically, would mean exposing your own inadequacies, so most people just hunker down and keep plugging away at those monthly payments.

As our shame grows, we shutter ourselves inside. Afraid of acknowledging our anger and unable to join those similarly suffering, we grow distant. Worse, we judge quickly and harshly the actions of others; we devolve into snark, which will never lead to meaningful change.

To restore our social bonds, each one of us must overcome our isolating feelings of embarrassment and humiliation and understand that this is a shared plight. We’ll also have to accept that anger, real anger, has a role to play in producing collective catharsis and fostering healing.

Fury, after all, can manifest itself in more productive ways than urban rioting or cable-TV ranting. Fury can inspire real protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, even good old-fashioned, town-hall meetings. That’s how we’ll recover our public life and perhaps help one another through this crisis — storming angrily into the streets and then, once we’re out there, actually talking to one another.

Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia, is the author of “Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.”

Federal Workers Unions Want 'Burrowers' Lists

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; A06

Two powerful employee organizations are pressing the Bush administration to prove that in its final weeks, political aides are not improperly winning career government jobs at the expense of more qualified workers.

Leaders of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, and the Senior Executives Association, the group representing federal executives, said they want the government to release lists of political appointees who have been hired for career jobs and show whether agencies sought competition for the positions.

The two groups said they are pressing the Office of Personnel Management for this information because they are concerned the agency is not carefully overseeing last-minute hires of political aides. They point to recent reports in The Washington Post and other evidence suggesting political aides are leaping over qualified candidates or avoiding competition as they "burrow" into the civil workforce.

"The recent Post articles raise the possibility that political candidates are being placed in Senior Executive positions for which they may be unqualified or less qualified than other candidates, or that their service as political appointees was given undue weight," SEA President Carol Bonosaro and general counsel William L. Bransford wrote to the OPM. Such favoritism "is a disservice to those Senior Executives who were selected purely for merit without political assistance."

The OPM reviews the hiring by most government agencies of political appointees into permanent career posts from March until Inauguration Day. Hires made within this time frame are viewed with some suspicion by federal employee unions because they cover a period when many loyal political aides face losing their jobs and may be searching for more secure positions.

OPM Associate Director Kevin Mahoney declined last week to provide The Post with a list of political appointees his agency had approved to be moved into career jobs from March to Nov. 3. Though such hires and job titles are public, Mahoney said it was not the "general practice" of the OPM to release them. The White House did not respond to a request for the same information.

In one case The Post found, the Drug Enforcement Administration director hired a political aide to a career Senior Executive Service job -- the highest rank in federal service -- about a year after the same candidate was rejected as unqualified for a lower-level position. The Justice Department initially raised concerns about the DEA's plans to hire the employee with no competition. The DEA advertised the job for two weeks starting Oct. 26 and announced its selection Nov. 13.

Bonosaro and Bransford said veterans know that jobs can be tailored for political friends and competition can be manufactured on paper by limiting the qualifications that will be considered, advertising the job briefly and narrowly defining duties. Political influence and pressure help clinch an unfair hiring selection, they said.

"I think OPM has just turned their back on their obligation," said John Gage, president of AFGE. "If OPM would do its job, they could make sure there weren't any musical chairs to land political people in SES and other positions."

Gage said he is disturbed by reports from members that the OPM has not warned agencies this year to avoid moving around senior executives in the final months of the administration in an effort to avoid the appearance of political influence. Gage said such warnings have gone out in past turnovers, most notably during the exit of the Carter administration, when there was a freeze on such moves.

"The prevailing thought that this kind of thing happens in every administration is just not good enough for me," he said of burrowing. "It has to stop."

Why I'm Voting for Obama (from Eisenhower's granddaughter)

By Susan Eisenhower

Saturday, February 2, 2008; Page A15

Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term "military-industrial complex," and he offered advice that is still relevant today. "As we peer into society's future," he said, we "must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

Today we are engaged in a debate about these very issues. Deep in America's heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population.

I am not alone in worrying that my generation will fail to do what my grandfather's did so well: Leave America a better, stronger place than the one it found.

Given the magnitude of these issues and the cost of addressing them, our next president must be able to bring about a sense of national unity and change. As we no longer have the financial resources to address all these problems comprehensively and simultaneously, setting priorities will be essential. With hard work, much can be done.

The biggest barrier to rolling up our sleeves and preparing for a better future is our own apathy, fear or immobility. We have been living in a zero-sum political environment where all heads have been lowered to avert being lopped off by angry, noisy extremists. I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation's impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded.

No measures to avert the serious, looming consequences can be taken without this sense of renewal. Uncommon political courage will be required. Yet this courage can be summoned only if something profoundly different transpires. Putting America first -- ahead of our own selfish interests -- must be our national priority if we are to retain our capacity to lead.

The last time the United States had an open election was 1952. My grandfather was pursued by both political parties and eventually became the Republican nominee. Despite being a charismatic war hero, he did not have an easy ride to the nomination. He went on to win the presidency -- with the indispensable help of a "Democrats for Eisenhower" movement. These crossover voters were attracted by his pledge to bring change to Washington and by the prospect that he would unify the nation.

It is in this great tradition of crossover voters that I support Barack Obama's candidacy for president. If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America's greatest challenges. To be successful, our president will need bipartisan help.

Given Obama's support among young people, I believe that he will be most invested in defending the interests of these rising generations and, therefore, the long-term interests of this nation as a whole. Without his leadership, our children and grandchildren are at risk of growing older in a marginalized country that is left to its anger and divisions. Such an outcome would be an unacceptable legacy for any great nation.

Susan Eisenhower, a business consultant, is the author of four books, most recently "Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War."

Ed Rollins: More Dirty Tricks (this time for Huckabee)

Note from Greetings: If you think Huckabee is a "down home guy", all you have to know is that Ed Rollins, part of the old Bush apologists and dirty tactics crew, is leading Huckabee's campaign. Read on.

The Sleuth, Mary Ann Akers, Washington Post, January 7, 2007

If you thought Iowa was full of dirty tricks, wait 'til you get a load of the fun Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee's campaign chairman has in store for New Hampshire!

A blogger for Townhall.com was the only other person in a little dive restaurant in Des Moines Thursday where the legendary political operative Ed Rollins happened to be dining with his wife - and, luckily for the blogger, talking (and cursing) loudly.

The blogger's notes are full of wonderful little nuggets, such as Rollins - who proudly considers himself a bare-knuckles bruiser - calling NBC newswoman Andrea Mitchell "sweetie," and telling CNN Immigration Czar Lou Dobbs that he'd be ready to have drinks with him after Iowa to strategize about "Hillary."

Rollins, while he munched on a tuna melt sandwich during his phone chat with Dobbs, also made reference to his now infamous comment about needing to check his temper around Mitt Romney "whose teeth I want to knock out." In the restaurant, according to the blogger, Amanda Carpenter, Rollins told Dobbs: "they are all porcelain."

Carpenter also writes that Rollins was telling his "blonde female dining companion" - who turned out to be Rollins' wife - that Rudy Giuliani is "done" and was "hurt terribly by those police cruises with his girlfriends." Rollins, in an interview later with Chris Wallace on Fox News, didn't deny saying any of this. (Click on this link to Townhall.com to see the Fox News video.)

While he "let the f-bomb fly twice," Rollins reportedly also "distinctly talked about going negative in South Carolina and told someone on the phone to 'put some good in there if you have to, with the bad. Do what you gotta do.'" Rollins also apparently indicated he believed Huckabee was the victim of "dirty tricks."

Well, bless his heart - as they say in South Carolina, where Huck apparently will do what he's gotta do to keep Christian evangelicals on his side.

Thompson Linked to Work for Libyans

Note from Greetings: Would Fred also say (as he does below) that those at Guantanamo deserve fair representation, as he said of the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing? Would he be willing to advise them, as well, just as he did the Libyans?

9/7/07, NY Times Editorial

A little over three years after Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Fred D. Thompson provided advice to a colleague about one of his law firm’s new clients: The man representing the two Libyan intelligence officials charged in the terrorist bombing.

The colleague, John Culver, a partner at the Washington firm of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn began advising the two suspects’ Libyan lawyer in February 1992. Mr. Thompson, according to a memorandum from that era written by his secretary, held “discussions with Culver re: Libya” that same month.

At the time, Libya was facing international outrage for refusing to comply with a United Nations demand that the two suspects be extradited to the West for trial in the 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people. Revelations that American firms were representing Libyan interests provoked a furor among the Pan Am victims’ families. Some law firms refused to represent the country or the suspects, while others withdrew.

The involvement of Mr. Thompson, who worked part-time for Arent Fox as a lawyer and lobbyist from 1991 until shortly before his election to the Senate in 1994, never became public. But Arent Fox’s chairman, Marc L. Fleischaker, confirmed that Mr. Thompson, who is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, briefly provided Mr. Culver with advice about the suspects’ case, billing the firm for 3.3 hours of his time.

The firm was hired to provide guidance on the tense questions surrounding where the two men should be tried, Mr. Fleischaker said, and Mr. Thompson’s background as a former prosecutor, as well as his government relations experience — he had close ties to senior officials in the first Bush administration — “gave him insight on jurisdictional issues such as that.”

Karen Henretty, a spokeswoman for his presidential campaign, said that Mr. Thompson had no authority to decide which clients the firm represented. Mr. Thompson has faced questions about his work for two other Arent Fox clients. He initially denied working on behalf of a family planning group seeking to overturn an abortion counseling ban at federally financed clinics, but billing records showed that he spent nearly 20 hours on the matter. His work on behalf of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the deposed Haitian leader — a phone call to John Sununu, then the White House Chief of Staff — has also become fodder for his rivals because of human-rights abuses during Mr. Aristide’s presidency.

The memorandum by Mr. Thompson’s secretary reviewing his work for Arent Fox, compiled in 1993 as he was running for the Senate, was buried among thousands of Mr. Thompson’s papers archived at the University of Tennessee, and casts new light on his time there, beyond his work on the Libya case.

It lists the clients he brought into the firm, which included construction firms and a Texas chemical company embroiled in a case involving the illegal dumping of hazardous waste.

Mr. Thompson also helped others at Arent Fox, the memorandum shows. He met, for instance, with the Chilean ambassador in 1991 and then traveled to Chile to try to garner business for the law firm from that country’s government. He consulted with one of the firm’s partners about a Mexican trade agreement and helped other lawyers with introductions to important Republican officials.

Mr. Thompson has said he makes no apologies for his legal and lobbying work, emphasizing in one online essay that every person, no matter how unpopular, is entitled to representation and that lawyers’ work on behalf of a client is no indication of their own personal views.

Asked about Mr. Thompson’s participation in the Libya case, James Kreindler, a lawyer who represents 130 of the victims’ families, said: “Pan Am 103 was really an attack on the United States, so while some families understood the concept that everyone deserves a defense, a number were offended and angered that American lawyers were willing to earn fees by doing anything to help this pariah nation or the two bombing suspects.”

Today, in the post-Sept. 11 political climate, all the presidential candidates are jockeying to prove their antiterrorism credentials, with Mr. Thompson vowing last week to fight “radical Islamic terrorism” vigorously. Yesterday, his campaign noted that during his eight years in the Senate, Mr. Thompson supported sanctions against Libya.

In 1992, Libya was among those countries the United States listed as state sponsors of terrorism for acts that included the 1989 bombing of a French airliner and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two American soldiers.

Arent Fox, in papers it was required to file with the federal government, reported that from February 1992 to August 1993, it provided advice on American and international law to Ibrahim Legwell, the Libyan lawyer appointed by the Libyan Bar Association to represent the two intelligence officials charged with the Flight 103 bombing. Arent Fox received $833,960 in fees and expenses for its work on the case.

Mr. Legwell, reached in Tripoli, said his main goal was to see that his clients were tried in Libya or in a neutral country. He said Arent Fox “contributed a lot” to the defense effort. Mr. Legwell said he had no record of ever speaking with Mr. Thompson but noted: “I remember that this name was mentioned.”

Mr. Culver, a former Democratic senator from Iowa, said that Mr. Thompson was not a primary member of his team, and that his contribution amounted to “a couple of conversations.”

“In a large firm, you frequently consult with people who have experience” in the field of law at hand, he said. In the end, after protracted negotiations with the United Nations, Libya agreed in 1999 to hand over the two men for trial by a special court in the Netherlands. One of the men was convicted and is serving his sentence in a Scottish jail.

In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay the victims $2.7 billion in compensation. After Mr. Qaddafi’s renunciation of terrorism and his agreement to end programs to develop unconventional weapon, the United States last year removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Why I Was Fired By DAVID C. IGLESIAS

Op-Ed Contributor, NY Times

The argument that eight federal prosecutors — including myself — were fired for “performance related” reasons is starting to look more than a little wobbly.

Published: March 21, 2007, Albuquerque

WITH this week’s release of more than 3,000 Justice Department e-mail messages about the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors, it seems clear that politics played a role in the ousters.

Of course, as one of the eight, I’ve felt this way for some time. But now that the record is out there in black and white for the rest of the country to see, the argument that we were fired for “performance related” reasons (in the words of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty) is starting to look more than a little wobbly.

United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.

Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges — the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about — before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, “I am very sorry to hear that,” and the line went dead.

A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign — even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a “diverse up and comer” in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)

When some of my fired colleagues — Daniel Bogden of Las Vegas; Paul Charlton of Phoenix; H. E. Cummins III of Little Rock, Ark.; Carol Lam of San Diego; and John McKay of Seattle — and I testified before Congress on March 6, a disturbing pattern began to emerge. Not only had we not been insulated from politics, we had apparently been singled out for political reasons. (Among the Justice Department’s released documents is one describing the office of Senator Domenici as being “happy as a clam” that I was fired.)

As this story has unfolded these last few weeks, much has been made of my decision to not prosecute alleged voter fraud in New Mexico. Without the benefit of reviewing evidence gleaned from F.B.I. investigative reports, party officials in my state have said that I should have begun a prosecution. What the critics, who don’t have any experience as prosecutors, have asserted is reprehensible — namely that I should have proceeded without having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The public has a right to believe that prosecution decisions are made on legal, not political, grounds.

What’s more, their narrative has largely ignored that I was one of just two United States attorneys in the country to create a voter-fraud task force in 2004. Mine was bipartisan, and it included state and local law enforcement and election officials.

After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally. I worked with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s public integrity section. As much as I wanted to prosecute the case, I could not overcome evidentiary problems. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. did not disagree with my decision in the end not to prosecute.

Good has already come from this scandal. Yesterday, the Senate voted to overturn a 2006 provision in the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint indefinite interim United States attorneys. The attorney general’s chief of staff has resigned and been replaced by a respected career federal prosecutor, Chuck Rosenberg. The president and attorney general have admitted that “mistakes were made,” and Mr. Domenici and Ms. Wilson have publicly acknowledged calling me.

President Bush addressed this scandal yesterday. I appreciate his gratitude for my service — this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.

David C. Iglesias was United States attorney for the District of New Mexico from October 2001 through last month.