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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter! Report From the Afghan Front
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Inside the New Print Edition of Our Subscriber-Only Newsletter!
Report From the Afghan Front
It's Obama's War and It's Going Very BadlyExclusively for CounterPunch subcribers, Patrick Cockburn files a special report from Kabul: the Taliban's tightening grip on most of the country; plumetting US popularity in a bankrupt country rotted by corruption. For fifty years, Seymour Melman waged intellectual war on Pentagon capitalism, making the case for peaceful conversion. David Price brings to light decades of FBI secret surveillance. Senator Jim Webb is launching the first determined bid in forty years to overhaul the US criminal justice system at whose call is the American gulag. Alexander Cockburn reports on the prospects for his success. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories June 26-28, 2009 Jeffrey St. Clair June 25, 2009 Kathy Kelly Jack Bratich Wendell Potter Charles R. Larson Alan Farago Jonathan Cook Gareth Porter Bitta Mostofi / David Macaray Mark Schuller Website of the Day June 24, 2009 Andrew Cockburn Dean Baker Andy Worthington James Bovard Diana Gibson / P. Sainath Gareth Porter Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi Website of the Day
June 23, 2009 David Price Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway / Dave Lindorff Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Gary Leupp Brian M. Downing Robert Bryce Nicholas Dearden Yousef Munayyer Website of the Day June 22, 2009 Michael Hudson Esam Al-Amin Chris Floyd Jack Z. Bratich Atash Yaghmaian Laura Carlsen Paul Craig Roberts Vijay Prashad Fred Gardner Andy Thayer David Macaray Website of the Day
June 19 - 21, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Al Giordano Henry A. Giroux Anthony DiMaggio Paul Craig Roberts John Ross Gareth Porter Carl Ginsburg Tommi Avicolli Mecca Joe Bageant Serge Halimi P. Sainath Jim Goodman Dave Lindorff Rannie Amiri Robert Fantina Harvey Wasserman Walter Brasch David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Ben Sonnenberg Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 18, 2009 Uri Avnery Robert Sandels / Anthony DiMaggio Robert Weissman Joshua Frank Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Norman Solomon Ali Jawad James Ridgeway Website of the Day June 17, 2009 Carl Boggs Dr. Bryant Welch Winslow T. Wheeler Liaquat Ali Khan Jonathan Cook Binoy Kampmark Karim Makdisi Dave Lindorff David Swanson Gene Marx Website of the Day June 16, 2009 Patrick Cockburn John Ross Afshin Rattansi Marc Levy Paul Craig Roberts Behzad Yaghmaian Brian M. Downing Merle Lefkoff David Macaray Robert Jensen David Swanson Website of the Day June 15, 2009 Michael Hudson Reza Fiyouzat Patrick Cockburn James Ridgeway Marjorie Cohn Rannie Amiri Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Leonard Schwartz Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day June 12-14, 2009 Alexander Cockburn Gareth Porter Mike Whitney Mark Ames Esam Al-Amin Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Andy Worthington Heather Gray Felice Pace Ron Jacobs George Wuerthner Jeffrey Buchanan / David Ker Thomson Renaud Lambert Kevin Zeese David Macaray Evelyn Pringle Chris Genovali David Michael Green Brian J. Foley Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
June 11, 2009 Kathy Kelly / James Bovard Tristan de Bourbon Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Ralph Nader Harvey Wasserman Nicole Colson Mark Weisbrot Dan Bacher Website of the Day June 10, 2009 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine Kathy Kelly Paul Craig Roberts Rev. William E. Alberts Peter Lee Carol Miller Emily Ratner Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day June 9, 2009 Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Stan Cox Sibel Edmonds Jonathan Cook David Macaray Robert Jensen Nadia Hijab Mark Weisbrot Website of the Day June 8, 2009 John Ross Paul Craig Roberts Franklin C. Spinney Franklin Lamb Uri Avnery Jonathan Cook Eric Toussaint Jim Goodman Norman Solomon Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day June 5 -7, 200 Alexander Cockburn George Galloway Paul Craig Roberts Jennifer Loewenstein Franklin Lamb Mike Whitney Andy Worthington Missy Comley Beattie Farzana Versey Stanley Heller John V. Whitbeck Robert Weissman Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff William Blum Ernest Callenbach / Greg Moses Ron Jacobs David Yearsley Tim Stelloh Belén Fernández David Ker Thomson Karyn Strickler Christopher Brauchli Charles R. Larson Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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Weekend Edition Ending ProhibitionFDR's Real Defining MomentBy FRED GARDNER Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek and is a frequent guest of Keith Olbermann’s. He’s one of those liberals we appreciate when the rightwingers are in control but who lose their critical edge when their crowd is in. It’s easy to imagine Alter pitching the idea for his book FDR's Defining Moment to a publisher as the prospect of a liberal Democrat in the White House became a likelihood, and easy to picture the president-elect reading it as he prepared to take office. What would it have taught or reminded Barack Obama about Franklin Delano Roose-velt’s decision to end alcohol Prohibition? What lessons might Obama apply in dealing with marijuana Prohibition? (And why does the ominous word require a capital P?) Like millions of other Americans, FDR, personally, never abided by the ban on alcohol. It had taken effect in January, 1920 after Congress passed and 45 states ratified a Constitutional Amendment (the 18th) banning “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Congress also passed the Volstead Act, which defined “intoxicating liquors” as any drink more than 0.5% alcohol by weight. Alter first mentions Prohibition in describing a period in the mid-1920s when FDR, stricken with polio, was spending a lot of time aboard a yacht with his secretary, Missy LeHand: “Missy and Franklin entertained a stream of visitors with plenty of drinking (during Prohibition)...” Running for the governorship of New York in 1928 Roosevelt distanced himself from then-governor Al Smith, the Democratic candidate for President, a “wet” who forthrightly opposed Prohibition. FDR didn’t want to risk alienating “dry” voters in upstate New York, so he took the “damp” middle position —leave it up to the states. Roosevelt won by a slim margin while Smith lost to Herbert Hoover and failed to carry New York. There was a heavy overlap between Smith’s “dry” adversaries and anti-Catholic voters. On election night Smith reportedly said, “Well, the time just hasn’t come yet when a man can say his beads in the White House.” By 1932, when Roosevelt was running for President, a pledge to repeal the Volstead Act and legalize 3.2 beer was the key distinction between his platform and Herbert Hoover’s. Their stated plans to revive the economy were not that different. After two years of relying on the private sector to voluntarily respond to the depression, Hoover had launched versions of many reforms we associate with the New Deal. “Public works, agricultural price stabilization, bank restructuring, and even a bit of federally supported relief were begun under Hoover,” according to Alter. Alter doesn’t tell us why FDR’s line on Prohibition shifted between 1928 and ’32, but James MacGregor Burns did in a biography called “Roosevelt: the Lion and the Fox.” In those days the New York governor’s term was two years, so Roosevelt had to run for re-election in 1930. “Two possible danger areas loomed for the Democrats,” Burns recounts.“One of these was prohibition. Roosevelt had long hedged on this issue. He had expressed the fervent hope that it would disappear from politics. It did not, but it changed in a direction favorable to the Democrats. By the end of the 1920s —a decade of speakeasies, raids by Treasury men, gang wars, and intemperance— New York Republicans were finding prohibition to be a political liability. Roosevelt had no intention of running as a wet. But when he heard that the probable Republican nominee was about to come out for repeal, the governor moved fast to outflank him on the wet side. In a letter to Senator Wagner in September 1930 he favored outright repeal [of the 18th Amendment] and the restoring of liquor control to the states. It was a potent move. The Republicans failed to pick up much wet support, yet they outraged the drys upstate... “Time for Beer” Roosevelt was sworn in on March 4. On Sunday evening March 12 he addressed the nation on the radio. The memorable intro was drafted by a CBS station manager: “The president wants to come into your home and sit at your fireside for a little fireside chat.” FDR had written his speech with a worker in mind —a man he had been watching take down the inaugural scaffolding. Roosevelt’s voice had a calm tone, which Alter describes lyrically: “The voice conjured memories of a lost world, before the bitterness of economic ruin, a world where the well-liked scion of the well-to-do family on the hill went off to college, then returned to preside over the community with an easy benevolence.” Will Rogers —the Stephen Colbert of his day— said of the speech, “He made everyone understand it, even the bankers.” “After the first Fireside Chat,” writes Alter, “Roosevelt relaxed in his office with Howe and Rosenman [two top aides]. About 11:30 p.m. he said: ‘I think it’s time for beer.’ Preparations for a bill to speed the end of Prohibition began that night.” The Myth of the First 100 Days Alter’s book could have been structured as a debunking of the First-Hundred-Days myth. “The hundred days themselves have been so mythologized that the real ones are barely recognizable,” he observes. “Most of the landmark New Deal accomplishments that endure to this day —the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934), Social Security (1935) and the pro-union legislation like the Wagner Act (1935)— date from later in the decade. The opening act of the Roosevelt administration brought fewer structural changes than is assumed... Some of the new laws simply extended Hoover’s efforts... “For all of the liberal reveries of later years, the first thrust of the Hundred Days was fiscal prudence... The original centerpiece of the Roosevelt program was the so-called Economy Bill, which... slashed federal outlays by an astonishing 31 percent, by far the largest reduction in government spending before or since. “Three quarters of the cuts came from veterans’ benefits, the first of what are now called ‘entitlement’ programs and the largest source of federal spending at the time.” So how did it come to pass that Roosevelt’s first months in office are remembered so fondly by the American people? You already know the answer. Alter provides the details:
Whether or not Barack Obama has read, “The Defining Moment,” he is ceretainly aware of the analogies to FDR ending alcohol prohibition as he considers how to deal with marijuana. Evidently, to our disappointment and shame, the new president is not going to bring the troops home swiftly or enact single-payer healthcare or push through pro-union legislation. And yet he could win the enduring respect and affection of the masses, and there’ll be dancing in the streets, if only he would legalize marijuana for medical use. Our demands are so meager it’s pathetic. *3.2 beer is about half strength. At a campaign event one Sunday in October, 1996, Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello) advised patrons of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club that if Proposition 215 passed, the Vatican was planning to assign jurisdiction over marijuana to “the twin sisters, Saintsa Maureen and Doreen, the patron saints of 3.2 beer.” It got a knowing laugh from a crowd that considered marijuana to be a relatively benign intoxicant. Fred Gardner can be reached at: fred@plebesite.com |
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