Heidi Li's Potpourri

"Could you stop braying at me?"

Over here is a compendium of the misogynistic and sexist language directed at Senator Clinton that has incensed so many women and men.

How do we make this sort of talk socially unacceptable? Just as we have made blatantly racist language socially unacceptable: we each, as individuals, must object every time and every place we hear or read sexist or misogynistic language.

I recommend that when somebody tells you Senator Clinton is shrill (as a colleague of mine kept shouting in the hallways of my workplace all primary season), you say, "Could you stop braying at me?"

Presidential Advisory Boards - Part Two: Do past members indicate objective, bipartisan input being provided to the President?

As I wrote in Part One, PERAB, President-elect Obama's new economic advisory board self-styles itself on Dwight Eisenhower's original PFIAB. So was the last Presidential economic advisory board, created by Ronald Reagan. Members of Ronald Reagan's President's Economic Policy Advisory Board:

Arthur F. Burns, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Counsellor to President Nixon, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Eisenhower.
Milton Friedman, senior research fellow, the Hoover Institution, and Nobel Laureate in economics.
Alan Greenspan, president, Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc., and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ford.
Arthur Laffer, Charles B. Thornton Professor of Business Economics, University of Southern California; president, A. B. Laffer Associates.

James T. Lynn, managing partner, Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue; former Director, Office of Management and Budget; and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Paul McCracken, Edmund Ezra Day University Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
George Shultz, president, Bechtel Group, Inc.; former Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Labor, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury.
Thomas Sowell, senior fellow, the Hoover Institution.
Herbert Stein, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
Charls E. Walker, chairman, Charls E. Walker Associates, Inc.; former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Walter B. Wriston, chairman, Citibank/Citicorp.

George Shultz will serve as Chairman of the Board. Martin Anderson, Assistant to the President for Policy Development, will serve as Secretary to the Board.

Hmmm..lots of Nixonians, lots of Hoover Institute types, plenty of neo-classical economic thinkers. Not the sort of group that seems likely to have provided unbiased, nonpartisan advice.

How will PERAB differ in this respect? We citizens need to know who the members will be sooner rather than later.

On Presidential Advisory Boards - Part One: Just exactly what is the President's Economic Recovery Board?

"The President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board..is modeled on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Eisenhower to provide rigorous analysis and vigorous oversight to our intelligence community by individuals outside of government, individuals who would be candid and unsparing in their assessment. This new board will perform a similar function for my administration as we formulate our economic policy. "
-Barack Obama, November 26, 2008

Since reading about the new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board ["PERAB"}, I have been curious about presidential advisory boards. I decided to check on how often they have been used and for what purposes. As it turns out, presidential advisory boards are not that uncommon, and the most recent President to use one dedicated to economic matters is Ronald Reagan. As for Eisenhower's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board "PFIAB", it has been in operation since then under one name or another except under President Carter, who canceled it - Ronald Reagan reinstated it.

According to the White House webpage on The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (emphases mine):

Introduction

The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (PIAB) provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, of counterintelligence, and of other intelligence activities. The PIAB, through its Intelligence Oversight Board, also advises the President on the legality of foreign intelligence activities.

The PIAB currently has 16 members selected from among distinguished citizens outside the government who are qualified on the basis of achievement, experience, independence, and integrity.

The Role of The Board

Unique within the government, the PIAB traditionally has been tasked with providing the President with an independent source of advice on the effectiveness with which the intelligence community is meeting the nation's intelligence needs and the vigor and insight with which the community plans for the future.

The History Of The Board

The Board was established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and was originally called the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. It gained its current name under President Kennedy and it has served all Presidents since that time except for President Carter. A record of chairpersons is available.

For over four decades the PIAB has acted as a nonpartisan body offering the President objective, expert advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign intelligence. This role reflects the vital assistance that intelligence provides the President in meeting his executive responsibilities. The President must have ample, accurate and timely intelligence; and most recent Presidents have sought the assistance of a separate, unbiased group -- the PIAB -- to advise them on intelligence matters.

PIAB Operations

Through meetings with intelligence principals, substantive briefings, and visits to intelligence installations, the PIAB seeks to identify deficiencies in the collection, analysis, and reporting of intelligence; to eliminate unnecessary duplication and functional overlap; and to ensure that major programs are responsive to clearly perceived needs and that the technology employed represents the product of the best minds and technical capabilities available in the nation.

PIAB Product

Independent of the intelligence community and free from any day-to-day management or operational responsibilities, the PIAB is able to render advice which reflects an objective view of the kinds of intelligence that will best serve the country and the organizational structure most likely to achieve this goal. The effect of the Board's recommendations over the years has been to influence the composition and structure of the intelligence community, the development of major intelligence systems, and the degree of collection and analytic emphasis that is given to substantive areas.

In carrying out their mandate, the members of the PIAB enjoy the confidence of the President and have access to all the information related to foreign intelligence that they need to fulfill their vital advisory role.

Assuming the P(F)IAB is really the model, I will quite curious to see who the additional 14 or so members of the new PERAB will be; how bipartisan it will be; what will ensure its objectivity and lack of bias; and what the full scope of its reviewing authority is going to be. Which Republicans will be serving? Will there be representatives from various economic schools of thought such as the Marxist School, the Institutionalist School, and the Keynesian School, just to name three of the major schools identified by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco? Will the members of the committe be able to/be expected to review the FEC, the FTC, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, the Department of Commerce, the Treasury Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Pentagon, etc. to gather all information related to economic recovery?

As these questions indicate, if the model is PIAB, PERAB could be an extremely wide-ranging and influential body. Note it will operate independently of legislative oversight, reporting to the President and not to Congress. Maybe this is fine, maybe it is not - much depends on just how influential and wide-ranging President-elect Obama intends it to be. We citizens need some details about this newly minted Advisory Board.

Based on a quick survey of the literature, the last President to appoint an advisory board specifically dedicated to economic matters was Ronald Reagan, who created the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board ("PEPAB"). PEPAB is not currently in existence; it is unclear whether PERAB is modeled upon it.

According to Martin Anderson, a historian and Reagan domestic policy advisor,  Reagan's economic policy board was also modeled on Eisenhower's PFIAB (remember Reagan reinstated PFIAB after Carter had discontinued it (see Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy, p. 261)). Anderson describes the formation of the PEPAB, and notes that it was meant to silence potential outside critics by bringing them "inside the Reagan Tent" (p. 262); it also served to empower Anderson, who mistrusted other Reagan administration team members such as David Stockman (pp. 262-64). PEPAB reported directly to the President to the consternation of the Treasury Department and, according to Anderson, to Don Regan. Anderson credit PEPAB with the creation and implementation of "Reaganomics" (p. 267).

Assuming Anderson is correct, and assuming that the new PERAB is intended to have the same force as the other self-styled economic descendant of Eisenhower's foreign intelligence advisory board, we citizens definitely need more details about President-elect Obama's intentions for PERAB.

Don't read me to learn about women and progressivism: read Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton one of the staunchest fighters for the passage of the 16th Amendment absolutely understood that right in progressive political terms: as key to equality of opportunity underwritten by a government that considered itself responsible for providing it to the republic. I advise reading her entire speech, Solitude of Self, which she delivered to the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, Monday, January 18, 1892, when she was 77 years old.

Here are some passages worth special note (emphases mine):

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should repeat them again.

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; [...] the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same--individual happiness and development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such as men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations, some of which a large class of woman may never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother, or a son, relations some of which he may never fill. Moreover he would be better fitted for these very relations and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual.

Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings.

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

[...]

To throw obstacle in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman's position in the nineteenth century--"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king's daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.

[...]

Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: a progressive and somebody who certainly saw the current fiscal crisis coming

In the postcript to an earlier entry, I wrote that if Senator Clinton does join Senator Obama's cabinet (she has not been officially offered nor officially accepted the position of Secretary of State as I write now), she will be the most progressive member of an Obama cabinet.

The reason I consider Senator Clinton an exemplar of genuine progressivism is that she has consistently believed in government's ability and responsibility maintain equality of economic opportunity - a constant shared baseline chance for all to achieve economic gains during their lifetimes. Thus, it made sense that as soon as Senator Clinton noticed the subprime mortgage problem brewing, she started expecting the government to get involved to protect individuals from a systemic disaster.

To review this aspect of Senator Clinton's economic progressivism from March 2007 until now, go here for her views on subprime mortgage lending.  See here for Senator Clinton's call on President Bush, which she issued in March 2008, to name a foreclosure working group to focus on the housing crisis. Or here, for her discussion, in Nevada in January 2008 of the stimulus package she was talking about implementing, were she elected President.

The reason I would like to see her as Senate Majority Leader is because I believe she could marshall votes to pass progressive proposals focused on maintaining the baseline equaliy of economic opportunity President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal originally envisioned: a New Deal for laborers was Roosevelt's promise in 1932. It is not clear to me that equality of opportunity for the working or middle class is a priority for the new executive administration or the current Democratic Party leadership. This is a signature issue for Senator Clinton and having her available to take the lead on it in the Senate might restore, at least to some measure, Americans' deeply diminished confidence in the U.S. Congress.

At this point, it would take nothing less than Senator Harry Reid renouncing his the Majority Leadership specifically in favor of her becoming Senate Majority Leader for her to assume the role I think she could play in reviving a Congress that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid have led to record lows in approval rating. I do not anticipate this happening. But I take this opportunity to open the door to a discussion of what makes an American politician progressive (as opposed to right or left; Democrat or Republican): that fundamental commitment to government's ability and responsibility to maintain equality of economic opportunity for all of the governed.

True American progressives include, off the top of my head, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follete, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Mario Cuomo, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

These days Barack Obama seems increasingly like Lyndon Johnson

Before Lyndon Baines Johnson became President he was a critic of the northeastern establishment, a son of Texas, and a devotee of bipartisanship.  Barack Obama has been in political life for a much briefer time than Lyndon Johnson was before Johnson was elected to the presidency (after he first ascended to the office upon John F. Kennedy's death). Yet the parallels to LBJ are there. Prior to winning against John McCain on November 4, President-elect Obama critiqued the Washington establishment (including Democrats who had spent more time in office there than he ever has); both during and after the general election, he has operated from Chicago, thereby emphasizing his adopted mid-western mantle; during the primaries and the general election he campaigned as critic of partisanship.  Now President-elect Obama is joining hands across the aisle in an unprecedented manner, reappointing a sitting Cabinet member of the other Party's outgoing President. Not just any member of the Bush 2 team, either. Mr. Obama has selected  Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and Gates has agreed to the appointment.

Seems a hawkish move. Very in keeping with the Lyndon Johnson style.  LBJ represented the right wing of the Democratic Party when it came to foreign policy. During the mid-1960s, Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, a believer in the need to contain Communism by force. Ultimately, Johnson's hawkishness lost him the support of rank and file Democrats, leading him to decide against seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1968.

I am not suggesting that President-elect Obama will not attempt to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. Historical parallels aside, the Gates appointment makes clear that Senator Obama meant what he said during the general election: he does not oppose U.S. troop presence overseas or using military force to fight terrorism; nor does he oppose Republican foreign policy in a blanket way. What Senator Obama wants to do is redeploy U.S. troops, not bring them home. That is, he plans to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, to beef up  Operation Enduring Freedom, George W. Bush's other post post-9/11 war. (Sweeping redeployment, removing virtually all troops from Iran, seems destined to take at least another two to three years.) Whether the U.S. has learned enough about post-conventional warfare for it to make sense to use more troops in Afghanistan remains to be seen.

Do not get me wrong. Lyndon Johnson did some admirable and amazing things as President - including making sure that the Civil Rights Act of 1965 got passed and signed into law. So being like Lyndon Johnson is not necessarily a bad thing, at least from an overall liberal point of view.  Let us note, however, that President-elect Obama has not made any bold Great Society-like moves yet. He has created a new presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board, but this is not a New Deal or Great Society descendant. It is modeled on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. No President's Commission on Women  seems forthcoming; although, actually, now I have my sights set on a President's Advisory Board on the Status of Women in America. Really, I do.

POSTSCRIPT

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most genuinely liberal or progressive person President-elect Obama has reportedly asked to join his Cabinet. Senator Clinton: supporter of the view that womens rights are human rights; proponent of genuinely universal healthcare, early advocate of direct relief to mortgage holders. Whether Senator Obama's offer is made official or is accepted remains to be seen.  Wherever Senator Clinton ends up come January she will be to the left of those around her. I  hope she influences whoever she can to move her way.

Given my druthers, I, along with hundreds of others I know of, would prefer to see Senator Clinton become Senate Majority Leader. So would Marie C. Wilson, head of The White House Project. But whatever Senator Clinton decides to do, given her options, I have confidence she will indeed move those around her to progressivism and liberalism.

A message to readers

Thanksgiving 2008 - A message to readers

A potpourri of thanks to the people who read this blog.
For each of you, a poem to enjoy over your Thanksgiving table.

To achieve gender equality is to achieve human equality

This year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign, an annual event currently underway, has a theme of particular relevance to Americans who are becoming increasingly aware of the problems of misogyny and sexism in our own polity.

The theme: Human Rights for Women ‹—› Human Rights for All: UDHR60.

Note the dual arrow, < - > , indicating the equivalence between human rights for women and human rights for all. In one direction, the arrow can be read quite literally: without human rights for women there will not be human rights for all persons. The other direction is equally important, but rests on a different idea: by achieving human rights for women we achieve human rights for all persons. Since not everybody is a woman, why think this the case? That is, what is the justification for a claim that by achieving human rights for women one is achieving human rights for all, including men?

Many people more learned and expert in this area have addressed this question. So, my answer must be understood as that of nonspecialist.

 Women constitute half or slightly more than half the population worldwide (slide 34), and therefore they include people of every nationality, race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, economic status etc. In this sense women are a microcosm of the entire population, except in one respect: women are still subordinate and disempowered relative to men the world over.  Two very basic examples:

• The most common form of violence experienced by women globally is physical violence inflicted by an intimate partner. On average, at least one in three or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime.

• Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data.

source: UNite To End Violence Against Women fact sheet, “How Widespread is Violence Against Women?” (can be downloaded here)

One simple way of appreciating that to achieve gender equality is to achieve human equality:

Because women crosscut all demographic groups (except men) empowering women works to empower all races, religions, creeds, sexual orientations, economic levels (especially the poor).  Thus, ensuring women’s full human rights - in all areas and respects - we go a long way to empowering all the demographic groups that disempowered men also belong to.

Internationalism about women's issues and Senator Clinton's international involvement with these issues

Around the world, people are thinking about women's issues from an international perspective today, November 25, designated by the U.N. as as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Indeed, today kicks off sixteen days of activism on this issue.

From the United Nations:

The 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence (25 November – 10 December) is an annual campaign that is symbolic of the global women’s movement and end-violence networks. Its starting day, 25 November, is observed each year to honour the Mirabal sisters, three political activists from the Dominican Republic who were assassinated on the same date in 1961. The end of the 16 Days is marked by 10 December, International Human Rights Day.

If you want to do something about today's significance, remember this is the first day of

16 days of activism. Hit the button for more information from the Center for Women's Global Leadership, based at Rutgers University and a partner with the U.N.

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******

For those who are spending time obsessing about Senator Clinton allegedly adding too much drama to the Obama administration - another latently sexist turn of phrase (women create "drama", men bring "charisma") - take note. Entirely apart from Senator Clinton's experience in the Senate and as First Lady, she has taken an active role in women's affairs at the international level by working with and even serving as honorary co-chair (along with Senator Kay Bailey and former Senator Nancy Kassenbaum) - of at least one NGO that takes an internationalist perspective: Vital Voices.

From the Vital Voice's site:

"The nonprofit Vital Voices Global Partnership grew out of the U.S. government's successful Vital Voices Democracy Initiative. The Vital Voices Democracy Initiative was established in 1997 by then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to promote the advancement of women as a U.S. foreign policy goal."

Being an honorary chair of an organization does not usually translate into much day to day operational work. The significance, for the present moment, of highlighting Senator Clinton's role Vital Voices, an organization which arose in part because of her famous speech in Beijing, during which she declared that women's rights are human rights, is to illuminate (especially for those who seem to be missing the point) Senator Clinton's recognition around the world as international leader. Not a bad (although certainly a rather dramatic) starting point for a Secretary of State.

Learn more about Vital Voices.

Giving thanks, giving gifts, building momentum

Looking for a way to live a political life without breaking the bank? Want to spend your hard-earned money in ways that benefit multiple recipients at once? Want to begin to Salt March?

Support the White House Project - Send a Woman to the White House
Help the National Women's History Museum Build a Home in the Nation's Capital

As the winter holidays arrive, we will be giving thanks and giving gifts. The gift-giving will be, for many, curtailed due to financial circumstances. But there is a way that even those on a tight budget can give gifts that will be received with great thanks by two organizations, one focused on American women's accomplishments here and now, the other dedicated to educating and celebrating American women's achievements in the past. I think of this pair of institutions as the yin and yang of making sure that women count. Both organizations accept donations and one can join either as a member. With a bit of creativity, you can give as little as five dollars to either organization, print out the receipt (cross out the amount of money donated if you like) and decorate it or wrap it up and give it to a friend (maybe somebody with whom you are forming an SWWH group). This year, give the people you love a donation in honor of that love and in support of two groups who are helping to stamp out misogyny and sexism in favor celebration and empowerment of women.

For children, you can give the book Call Me Madame President from The White House Project shop. Or do your all your holiday shopping through the iGive portal and designate the National Women's History Museum as the beneficiary (the charitable cause you designate gets a percentage contribution based on your total purchases from cooperating merchants).

When millions of people combine financial forces, change happens. For an interesting read on the general topic, with specific reference to cause organizations mutually supporting one another, see this article, "Money Talks", by Eric L. Smith.