THE IDEA OF THE DEEP STATE AND "REAL ALTERNATIVES"

Harry Targ

The Deep State

Mike Lofgren defines the “deep state” as  “… a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”  (Mike Lofgren, “Anatomy of the ‘Deep State’: Hiding in Plain Sight,” Online University of the Left, February 23, 2014).   Others have examined invisible power structures, including class, that rule America (from C. W. Mills’ classic The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, 2000 to Robert Perrucci, Earl Wysong, and David Wright, The New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream? Rowman and Littlefield, 2013).  

The concept, “deep state,” describes the hidden policy-making process, particularly in foreign policy. It suggests that power to make critical decisions resides not in the superstructure of the political process; the place were competitive games are played for all to see, but in powerful institutions embedded in society that can make decisions without requiring popular approval. In foreign policy the “deep state” apparatus has led the American people into war or covert interventions that destroyed the rights of people in other countries to solve their own problems. In the end these hidden institutions have involved the United States in death and destruction all across the globe.

The idea of the deep state may be useful as a metaphor to alert the citizenry to policies that also are made mostly in secret, or if not in secret at least with very limited public visibility, in the states as well as in the federal government. Policy decisions of consequence made among semi-secret elites may concern issues that do not involve the high politics of foreign policy. Sometimes public policy decisions, made by powerful, but invisible groups, are only announced or uncovered after they are made. Opponents of policies adopted by deep state institutions become more difficult to challenge because decisions have already been made and appear irreversible.

The Mysterious “Real Alternatives” Contract With the State of Indiana

For example, on October 15, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana announced that Indiana had signed a $3.5 million contract for one year of anti-abortion counseling with Real Alternatives, a multi-million dollar non-profit organization. The contract would be funded by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) money. He reported that Real Services has a “pro-life mission.” It does not provide advice concerning contraception and most women’s reproductive health services. Its goal is to “actively promote childbirth instead of abortion.” The Governor indicated that this contract follows a prior one year $1 million pilot program carried out in Northern Indiana. He claimed that the contract provides important health services for women and families. The stated purpose of RA is to “actively promote childbirth instead of abortion.” The CEO of Indiana Right to Life praised the pilot program and the new contract.

What Is “Real Alternatives” and Where Did It Come From?

It turns out that Real Alternatives is among a growing industry of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) that have sprung up around the country to oppose abortions, contraception, and family planning. Jenny Kutner (“How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Using Taxpayer Dollars to Lie to Women,” Salon, July 14, 2015) points out that there are three times more CPCs than abortion clinics. They do provide some modest services, such as pregnancy tests, some basic childcare resources, and diapers for new born children of poor women. However, CPC services are typically “…misleading, manipulative or downright coercive, pushing a distinctly antiabortion agenda that relies heavily on lying to clients.” CPC counsellors are usually religious and misrepresent themselves as healthcare professionals.

At least 11 states provide millions of dollars to fund largely religiously-based CPCs. One of the largest CPC organizations, Real Alternatives, began operations in Pennsylvania in the 1990s. Former Democratic Governor Robert P. Casey put RA services in the state budget to actively oppose abortions. Over the years the state’s support for RA came from the legislature’s “pro-life” caucus and was followed by public money being used by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare to fund Morning Star Pregnancy Services and the Pennsylvania Alternative to Abortion Services Program. By 1997 72 CPCs received public reimbursements.

Support for RA spread to other states but Pennsylvania’s former Senator Rick Santorum failed in his effort to introduce the Women and Children’s Resources Act to fund CPC programs like RA in 1999, which would have been a federally-funded program. RA gave support to parallel CPCs in Florida, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. In 2001 Pennsylvania support for RA increased and the program was funded by moneys from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. By 2011, the RA model was used to establish anti-choice services in Texas, Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska, Louisiana, South Dakota, and in 2014 Indiana. Pence said that “We fund Real Alternatives because it’s the right thing to do! We know that the work that you all do is critical to making Pennsylvania a better place. We know that what you do every day is making a tremendous difference in the lives of our children and families.”  

The Deep States and the Anti-Choice Agenda

While so-called right-to-life groups are aware of CPCs and particularly the work of RA, most of the public had little knowledge of the pilot Indiana program. In addition, aside from a brief report on Indianapolis television, the Pence extension of the RA program with public money received little attention. The small but determined opponents of the right of women to control their bodies, including particularly religious organizations, create semi-public organizations such as RA and then set about building support among the political class to gain state funding for their efforts. By the time the public is aware of the state funding, it is too late to mobilize adequate political opposition.

In the case of RA, and most CPCs, state funding is in violation of the separation of church and state and the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Progressives need to become familiar with the “deep state,” those semi-invisible centers of power that shape the public policy agenda and at the same time work against policies that challenge the fundamental rights of all citizens. 

HAVING CONVERSATIONS, BUILDING MOVEMENTS

Harry Targ

Wednesday, November 4, Reverend William Barber, leader of the Moral Mondays Movement and Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, spoke at Indiana University in Bloomington. Friday, November 6, Democratic presidential candidates appeared on a televised debate on MSNBC.  

More modestly, also on November 6, 15 activists from a variety of movements in the Greater Lafayette, Indiana area watched a video and had a discussion about how the past can inform the present, what progressives can do to build a mass movement to create a more humane society, and what steps might be taken to continue dialogue, sharing experiences and ideas about social change. While lacking the visibility of the prominent speakers in Bloomington or the nationally televised candidates’ debates, the small meeting was informative, inspiring, and promising for the future.

The occasion was an event sponsored by the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). CCDS members were interested in getting the word out about their 25 year-old organization. But more importantly they were interested in bringing experienced activists from various groups and projects together to share ideas and possible political projects with each other. 

The impetus for this particular gathering was to remember, celebrate, and reflect on the life of Eugene V. Debs, five time presidential candidate under the banner of the Socialist Party. Born and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs began his political life as a teenager, served a term in the Indiana legislature, worked on the railroad, and spearheaded the formation and national mobilization of the American Railway Union, an early industrial union. When the ARU supported a strike of Pullman workers in 1894, the federal government, encouraged by railroad moguls, bankers, and the media, sent troops to Chicago to crush the workers’ movement. Debs and some of his comrades were sentenced to six months in jail for leading the Pullman strike. And it was in jail, reading, studying, and reflecting, that Debs became a Socialist. For the remainder of his life he worked to mobilize the working class to use the ballot, the strike, and mass actions to organize and agitate for a new, humane, Socialist society. He believed that those who produced all the wealth of society, workers (Black/white, men/women, native born/immigrants) should receive the fruits of their labors. They should receive the value of what they produced. They should control the means of their production. And they should have a predominant voice in the political institutions in their society.

For thirty years as a leader of the newly constituted Socialist Party, Debs articulated this vision before hundreds of thousands of workers. He garnered millions of votes over his five presidential campaigns. His party, the Socialist Party, produced a national newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, in Emporia, Kansas, which at one time had 700,000 subscribers.  His last incarceration resulted from his violation of the Sedition Act which prohibited any public opposition to World War I. He had made it clear in his famous 1918 anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, that the global working class had no interest in war; that the ruling class of bankers and manufacturers declared wars that workers were forced to fight. 

The Eugene V. Debs birthday celebration opened with a showing of a 29-minute video on his life (“Bernie Sanders 1979 Documentary on Eugene V. Debs”) http://youtu.be/w82pFvUq3o8. The video, divided into eleven chapters, briefly discussed the lack of contemporary awareness of Debs and his movement; the rise of finance and manufacturing capital and its war on workers; the emergence of the Socialist Party as one working class response to capitalist exploitation; and the personal biography of Debs, from his youth in Terre Haute Indiana to national and global acclaim. It highlighted the theory that capitalism is an exploitative system that in the end was antithetical to the interests of workers. Capitalists sought to divide workers (by race, gender, ethnicity, and nation) to weaken their capacity to organize. The inextricable connection between opposing capitalism and war was emphasized.

After viewing the video, our group, which included persons from labor, the religious community, students, feminists, the local alternative newspaper, and participants in local chapters of Moral Mondays, the ACLU, and the NAACP, launched a conversation. First, we discussed the life of Eugene V. Debs. We analyzed his theoretical approach to social change and his concrete political activity. We briefly sketched the historical context in which he acted. We assessed his strengths and weaknesses. And we heard about how he is remembered in his home community, Terre Haute.

Secondly, we began to assess the meaning of Eugene V. Debs for the twenty-first century. We talked about whether broad sectors of the American people would be receptive to the vivid language Debs used to describe class struggle, the incompatibility of the interests of workers and capitalists, and whether the use of words like “revolution” and “socialism” would deter workers from participating in contemporary movements. We talked about how activists inspired by Debs could and should participate in the electoral arena and Debs’ claim that both major parties were capitalist parties. We discussed whether, even if this central proposition is correct today, we should participate within or outside the two party system. We disagreed with the stance of some on the Left who reject participation in the electoral process at all.

Finally, conversation inevitably led to analysis of the documentary filmmaker and now presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. We reflected on how much of the Sanders campaign was consistent with, or a deviation from, the message of Debs. And we discussed whether there was any reason to assume that making more concrete connections with the rich Socialist tradition of the past would make the Sanders campaign more effective.

The video was informative; the discussion probing and inspiring. Participants came away convinced that we need more discussions like the one we had just had. We had all been so busy building Moral Mondays, engaging in the Fight for $15, advocating for student rights, defending beleaguered trade unions, opposing military expansion in the Middle East, and producing a monthly newspaper that we had not stopped to take stock of what we were doing, why we were doing it, and what it was that was behind the variety of threats to the lives of most of us. We decided that we would find a way to continue to read and discuss materials together, watch short videos, and organize future conversations. 

We will see what happens.

RECONFIGURING A 21ST CENTURY LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES

Harry Targ

Mapping Left/Progressive Forces

The traditional Left         

 Socialist parties

 New youth socialists

Issue Groups                                      

Moral visionaries                  

Building new institutions     

Single issues                          

--anti-racist                           

--feminist      

--labor/workers                         

--environmental

 

Electoral politics

Sanders campaign
Some Clinton activists

Greens

Independent socialists at local levels

Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008 sent spirits soaring. The first African-American President had been elected. Also he had been an early opponent of the war in Iraq, indicated he supported worker rights to organize unions, and would take on the Wall Street bankers who were behind the dramatic economic crisis that was destroying the economy. Liberal pundits saw Obama’s election as a prelude to the institutionalization of a new New Deal that would reconstitute a reformist state for years to come. And, these pundits argued, the Obama electoral coalition would make the 2008 election a transformative one: liberal Democrats would dominate the federal government and several pivotal states in the East, Midwest, West, Southwest, and in a few Southern states. The eight-year foreign and domestic policy disasters of the Bush years, of necessity, would lead to a new and brighter future.

The years since 2008 did not work out the way the celebrants predicted. First, Wall Street dominance of the political system survived the public outcries to break up the banks, convict the criminal CEOs, and reestablish regulations of banking and finance. 

Second, despite demilitarization of Iraq and Afghanistan, the military/industrial complex and the advocates of humanitarian interventions around the world continued to influence the character of United States foreign policy. From the disastrous policies toward Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the use of drone warfare to avoid “boots on the ground,” to sending more troops into failed trouble-spots such as Afghanistan, the pursuit of U.S. empire prevailed.

Third, while unemployment rates dropped and the auto industry was saved, support for labor organizing continued to decline, real wages remained stagnant, and those workers who returned to employment were earning less in real wages than workers had made thirty or forty years ago.

And finally, almost literally wars on people of color, youth, and women escalated during the Obama years. Incarceration rates continued to rise. Police violence against the citizenry rose. Attacks on women’s health and reproductive services grew stronger. And new federal and state educational policies were adopted (charter schools, vouchers, egregious testing of young people) that weakened the quality of education particularly for poor, Black, and Latino children.  Vicious racism which has been a feature of United States history since the founding of the nation was rekindled by the Tea Party, rightwing media outlets, and major contingents of the Republican Party.  

Bringing the Left/Progressive Forces Together

As 2016 approaches, debates about the causes of the retaliation against the modest gains brought about by the 2008 electoral victory should shift to discussions about how to move ahead. It can be said that broad sectors of the American people—workers, people of color, youth, women—believe that creating a new society is critical and possible. But today people with a passion for fundamental social change have coalesced around a diverse array of strategies, ideas, visions, experiences, and practices. By identifying core components of those who are working for change, we can begin to see how unity out of diversity of thought and action can be achieved.

First, despite efforts of historians to deny it, there has been a vibrant Left tradition in the United States. Wobblies, Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists built the modern labor movement, struggled against racism, advocated for women’s rights, and opposed United States imperialism.  Today the traditional Left, manifested in political parties with historical pedigrees, still meet, advocate, organize, and agitate. In addition, newer generations of left activists have begun to dialogue about rebuilding the traditional Left, with 21^st century characteristics. Older and younger Socialists and Communists are beginning to talk together about what was relevant from the past and what can be learned for the present and the future. Both seek to link radical theory to radical practice. The traditional Left prioritizes viewing and acting to transform basic economic and political institutions, even as it engages in a political system in which discourse emphasizes reform rather than revolution.

A second tradition, the mobilization of issue groups, is deeply embedded in American political history. Groups motivated by opposition to particular outrages--destruction of the environment, police killings of young black men, attacks on reproductive rights, efforts to reduce the rights of citizens to vote, the marginalization and deportation of immigrants—form to address immediate concrete peoples’ concerns. Most issue groups share the sense that there are deep structural causes of the problems they oppose but they believe that immediate action to address their specific problem takes first priority. The issue orientation is part of the narrative about American “democracy.” From James Madison, to Alexis de Tocqueville, to modern political science, citizens are told that things change when citizens organize around lobby groups. Issue groups implicitly, if not explicitly, embrace an interest group model of political life. Sometimes issue group mobilizations seek to blend arguments about interests with moral claims. Throughout American history many issue groups—such as those addressing war or racism—have organized on the basis of moral arguments.  Finally, it should be mentioned that some progressives are engaged in building alternative social institutions, such as cooperatives, to address issues of worker rights, community power, and economic justice. Here the activities seek to circumvent centers of power by working on new grassroots partnerships.

A third political tradition, also with deep roots in the American experience, prioritizes electoral politics. Sometimes progressives have sought to participate in one or both of the two major political parties. At various points in US history, vibrant third parties have formed, despite restrictive electoral laws, to articulate new policies, programs, and visions. Efforts to transform major parties or organizing alternative parties have been features of state and local political life as well. Central to electoral political approaches is the proposition that for most Americans, politics is seen as involving elections. Also, it is clear that the dramatic shift toward reaction in recent years is intimately connected to the election of rightwing politicians at the national, state, and local levels, often as a result of low voter turnout. Sectors of the political class, such as the Koch brothers, have used their enormous financial resources to transform political institutions and public policy. As Reverend William Barber and others have pointed out, contemporary politics is about the struggle between the super-rich and the many.

Having mapped a 21^st century “US Left,” several tentative conclusions about political practice emerge.   

Millions of Americans identify with traditions of reform and/or revolution and that the roots of these have been deeply embedded in American history. Social and economic change has occurred because of the multiplicity of efforts from all of these traditions.

In addition, a significant portion of those who participate in issue groups and progressive electoral politics share the sentiment of the traditional Left that fundamental, systemic, and revolutionary change is needed if social and economic justice is to be achieved.

And perhaps most fundamentally, given the growing power of political reaction, the traditional Left, issue groups, and those working in electoral politics need to find ways to work together and support each other if some kind of humane and environmentally sustainable society is to be created.               

THE REAL BENGHAZI STORY: Reposted

THE PERFECT "SCANDAL": BENGHAZI

Harry Targ,  May 23, 2013

On the night of September 11, 2012, an armed group attacked a diplomatic post in the city of Benghazi in eastern Libya. The next morning a CIA annex was attacked. Out of these two attacks four United States citizens were killed including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. According to a November, 2012 Wall Street Journal article (quoted by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, May 13, 2013):

“The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.”

On March 17, 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing humanitarian intervention in Libya. It endorsed “Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory….” Five Security Council members abstained from support of this resolution: Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia.

Passage of the resolution was followed by a NATO-led air war on targets in that country. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 as a military alliance to defend Europe from any possible aggression initiated by the Soviet Union. If words mattered, NATO should have dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The United States, so concerned for the human rights of people in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, including in Libya, was virtually silent as non-violent revolutions overthrew dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in 2011. The United States continued to support regimes in Bahrain and Yemen in the face of popular protest and violent response and remained the primary rock-solid supporter of the state of Israel as it continued to expand settlements in the West Bank and blockaded the transfer of goods to Palestinians in Gaza. And, of course, in the face of growing ferment in the Middle East and Persian Gulf for democratization not a word was said by way of criticism of the monarchical system in Saudi Arabia.

So as the Gaddafi regime in Libya fought its last battles, leading ultimately to the capture and assassination of the Libyan dictator, the NATO alliance and the United States praised themselves for their support of movements for democratization in Libya. What seemed obvious to observers except most journalists was the fact that the overthrow of the Libyan regime, for better or worse, could not have occurred without the massive bombing campaign against military and civilian targets throughout Libya carried out by NATO forces.

From the vantage point of the Benghazi crisis of September 11, 2012, humanitarian intervention, which in Benghazi included 23 (of some 30) U.S. representatives who were CIA operatives suggests that the attacks on U.S. targets might have had something to do with the history of U.S interventionism in the country. Great powers, such as the United States, continue to interfere in the political life of small and poor countries. And, the mainstream media continues to provide a humanitarian narrative of imperialism at work.

The post-9/11 Benghazi story is one of Republicans irresponsibly focusing on inter-agency squabbles and so-called contradictory Obama “talking points” after the killings of the four U.S. representatives in Benghazi. They chose not to address the real issue of the United States pattern of interference in the internal affairs of Libya.

And the Obama Administration defends itself by denying its incompetence in the matter, desperately trying to avoid disclosing the real facts in the Benghazi story which might show that the CIA and the Ambassador’s staff were embedded in Benghazi to interfere in the political struggles going on between factions among the Libyan people.

As Alexander Cockburn put it well in reference to the war on Libya in The Nation in June, 2011:

“America’s clients in Bahrain and Riyadh can watch the undignified pantomime with a tranquil heart, welcoming this splendid demonstration that they have nothing to fear from Obama’s fine speeches or Clinton’s references to democratic aspirations, well aware that NATO’s warplanes and helicopters are operating under the usual double standard--with the Western press furnishing all appropriate services.”

If Cockburn were alive today he would have added that the Libyan operation was about U.S. covert interventionism, anger on the part of sectors of the Benghazi citizenship, and not about the United States encouraging “democratic aspirations” of the Libyan people. Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to have a conversation about U.S. interventionism but prefer to debate about a “scandal.” The real “scandal”is the cover-up of what the U.S. was doing in Libya.

THE CUBS AND SOCIALISM (reposted)

I became a Cubs fan 70 years ago and a Socialist 45 years ago. Maybe this year and next are relevant to both so I repost this old essay. "Go Cubs!" "Go Socialism." HT

Friday, April 10, 2009

Harry Targ

In February, 2008 I sent an e-mail to some old high school friends declaring boldly that this was going to be my year: Obama would be elected president, Socialism would come to America, and the Cubs would win the world series. One dear friend responded by saying he hoped my nurse would be able to adjust my medication.

In years prior to my bold declaration, I would tell my students that Socialism would come to America before the Cubs would win the world series. Since they were on an awesome pace throughout the 2008 season I was sure we would achieve Socialism soon because the Cubs were going all the way in 2008. Alas my team was summarily eliminated from post-season competition by pitifully losing every playoff game.

The impact on my psyche was profound. Not only would I not be able to celebrate with those Cub fan survivors of 100 years of solitude but I would have to return to political activism to achieve Socialism because I could not count on the Cubs to get us over the hump. Even my wife, a heretofore Cub fan, said Basta! “60 Years is Enough.” When I asked her a week ago about going to the world series this year to root for the Cubs all she said was she would give me money for a hot dog.

I began writing this column Tuesday morning, just hours after the Cubs with smooth pitching from Carlos Zambrano and an Alfonso Soriano lead off home run defeated the Houston Astros. I even began to fantasize about a long winning streak, even 162 victories. Unfortunately, I did not finish the article before the Cubs lost game two in the tenth inning. There goes the perfect season.

What is behind my pathology. After all Ronald Reagan used to broadcast Cubs games, off of ticker tape reports so he had to make up stories about the game. Right-winger, George Will is one of the most famous Cub fans. And until quite recently the Cubs only played day baseball, thus prohibiting the attendance of most working people.

But there is another element, a kind of spiritual connection between the Cubs, working class Chicago, and all the down and out men and women who have struggled to survive and in the face of economic catastrophe continue to struggle to achieve wellbeing for themselves and their loved ones. Progressive Chicago cultural icons have had a soft spot in their hearts for the Cubs: for example newspaper columnist Mike Royko and folksinger Steve Goodman who wrote a song pleading to be buried in Wrigley Field.

In the end, when Ernie Banks, the Cubs Hall of Fame shortstop, says “wait ‘til next year” he is reflecting that hope and passion for victory that is the essence of all Cubs fans. Activists in the struggle for a new humane, really democratic socialist society also bear down, continue to organize and with full confidence say also “wait ‘til next year.”