Obama was now imprisoned within the cozy Summers-Geithner group “and it would be increasingly difficult for him to see beyond its borders.” This “disconnection from the world,” Alter concludes, was not due to ideology or the clout of special interests but was instead “the malign consequence of the American love of expertise, which, with the help of citadels of the meritocracy, had moved from a mere culture to something approaching a cult.” For all Obama’s skepticism of cant, he was “in thrall to the idea that with enough analysis, there was a ‘right answer’ to everything. But a right answer for whom?”

From: “Why Has He Fallen So Short” by Frank Rich in The New York Review of Books

As I sit on the set of GrassRoots – our comedy about a small City Council race in Seattle back in 2001 – there are so many images that float through my mind. The extras getting ready, sure. The crew setting up the lights and our RED camera (some of the new digital technology). We’re shooting in Seattle, trying to recapture what happened up here during that local election, trying to capture what it meant/means in a larger context. Just a little campaign (I’m not going to give away what happens in the campaign/film but I will say that the production is small – in Hollywood terms – which has actually made it easier for us to create images that are more real – less gloss – the feel of a genuine Seattle — grunge humble.)

Then there are other images that float to the surface of my mind, not so humble, but far grungier – images of the BP oil spreading itself quietly over our gulf, for instance, its consequences seemingly now less a problem since the media has let it slip away as other stories move front and center (poor Lohan, lucky Labron).

New “big things” to pay attention to.

But isn’t it the little things (growing) that entangle us so dreadfully? Those first cancer cells? Those termites, untended? How does a civilization collapse? How do powerful businesses go belly up? Isn’t it the little “unpleasantries” ignored, that ultimately bring about demise?

The unpleasantry of a cheap safety valve, for instance, or of an over confident BP executive, an under zealous regulator with the easy answer that those that work hard and succeed in business or in government are capable of – more or less – doing the right thing.

The easy answers – almost always dangerous, too often catastrophic. And from where I sit looking out at the state of our world, the easy answers just aren’t gonna cut it anymore.(Did they ever?)

Regulate Wall Street and the banks. Not easy. Clean up the BP disaster. Not easy. Get decent humans elected to office. Not easy. Get our citizens, all our citizens, decent jobs. Not easy. Global warming. Deteriorating wars. Not easy. Not easy. And so on…

But, frankly, it may be impossible for the people now running our world to do anything substantive about any of this.

It may be, for instance, impossible for Obama not to wage his various wars (too much money being made, too much power being accumulated and too much strength and grit being shown by doing it). It may be impossible for the rich (seemingly no different now than the royalty of old) to get out of their high powered cars, their air conditioned mansions, their plush first class seats, their yachts.

So what’s to be done?

And that’s when I come back to our little movie, back to that little Seattle City Council race, in which Grant Cogswell (unemployed and broke) decided that a monorail system – a serious public transportation approach – was absolutely necessary for the survival of a genuine Seattle (interesting in the light of all that oil spreading itself across our oceans now – Grant’s concept of mass transportation – which obviously uses so much less of BPs wayward product).

The results of what Grant was trying to do back in 2001 may not be fully felt for a long time to come. Hopefully our little movie will help – help to push the discussion of grassroots politics, grassroots thinking, grassroots approaches – ideas, actions and commitment from the ground up, not from the “royal top,” not from that utterly strange Republican/Reagan/Royal concept of “trickle down”. What an interesting approach: “trickle down,” just a trickle, folks, that’s all you get. And it will trickle down to you like manna from heaven – but how about the concept of trickle up, which after awhile becomes something, say a little bit bigger than a trickle, something – say – closer to a flood that washes away the mess of what our 19th/20th/21st Century royalty has been all about?

So there it is from where I sit, trying to make this little movie, Grassroots — real change seems to come only from the bottom. Don’t recent events make it sadly too clear what “change” from the top looks like – our laughable financial reforms, our new health-pharma-corporate care, the various wars that continue to expand and bleed us, particularly bleeding the bottom (that expanding group below the working class)?

But what’s so worrisome in all this is that change from the bottom isn’t usually pretty, boiling up in violence and rage, whether from the right or the left or even the center. So how do we nourish such change from the bottom without being destroyed by it? Well, it was grassroots that got Obama elected. But it was also those very grassroots that Obama had to ignore to function with the royalty of Washington, NY and in the other world capitals.

But he does it at his peril.

And it’s even more perilous for the rest of us because it seems to me that it’s those at the bottom who feel the pain of the mistakes from the top most acutely and most clearly. It’s also at the bottom where we finds roots, the real roots, working their way into the good earth (both metaphorical and real) from which, as I understand it, the sustenance for everything else is delivered.

I’m grateful for the TV work I’ve had recently (and documented a bit here with videos) and paying my bills and getting to explore technique, etc, but there’s nothing like working on something you really believe in.

I really believe in GrassRoots and I find it coming to life with the crew, actors, the locations — Seattle — a real world being played with to make another real world on the screen. Magic. (Check out our slowly expanding Website: GrassrootsTheFilm.com)

And then it’s the 4th of July and I can’t help but come back to the ocean growing blacker, to BP defusing the truth (not the oil), to Wall Street having slipped through the fingers of the government. No regulations. No less money going to the people at the very top – bonuses – bonuses – bonuses. The Stock Market sliding now because no one took the painful steps earlier.

Grassroots.

Somehow it has a stronger and stronger ring for me. The guys at the top. (Pretty much guys – white, rational, struggling a bit with their weight, good at picking wine — these are the guys that have been running our show into the ground._So…

Grassroots.

The people.

Wasn’t that what July 4th was all about? 1776? People, of the people, by the people, etc?

Happy July Fourth…not just for the U.S., but for the world…Happy Independence Day…

some day…

Just under a year ago Dr. Binayak Sen, India’s most famous political prisoner, was released on bail after 2 years of imprisonment. Dr. Sen is a world-renowned “physician of the poor,” winner of the 2008 Jonathan Mann award for global health and human rights, and Vice President of India’s oldest civil liberties organization the People’s Union for Civil Liberties.

He was charged under the draconian and widely critiqued Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (or UAPA) and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act (CSPSA). The allegations against him ranged from helping the Maoist insurgency, being a member of a terrorist organization, to waging war against the Indian state.

Today is the third anniversary of his arrest and the trial against him continues. Democracy Now’s Anjali Kamat reached Dr. Sen in India.

Click here to listen to the interview

Equally disturbing is what will happen in the mind of the policeman. The police talk today about how they do not wish to, and will not, engage in racial profiling. Yet faced with the option of using common sense and compassion, or harassing a person who has done nothing wrong, a particularly sinister aspect of Arizona’s new immigration law will be hanging over his head. He can be personally sued, by anyone, for failing to enforce this inhumane new act.

I recognize that Arizona has become a widening entry point for illegal immigration from the South. The wave has brought with it rising violence and drug smuggling.

But a solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution. A solution that fails to distinguish between a young child coming over the border in search of his mother and a drug smuggler is not a solution.

I am not speaking from an ivory tower. I lived in the South Africa that has now thankfully faded into history, where a black man or woman could be grabbed off the street and thrown in jail for not having his or her documents on their person.

How far can this go? We lived it — police waking a man up in the middle of the night and hauling him off to jail for not having his documents on his person while he slept. The fact that they were in his nightstand near the bed was not good enough.

Of course if you suggested such a possibility today to an Arizona policeman he would be adamant that he would never do such a thing. And I would believe him. Arizona is a long way from apartheid South Africa.

The problem is, under the new law, the one or two who would do it are legitimized. All they have to say is that they believed that illegal immigrants were being harbored in the house. They would be protected and sanctioned by this law.

Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population. They start with trying to solve a problem by asserting superior force over a population. They start with stripping people of rights and dignity – such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty – that you yourself enjoy. Not because it is right, but because you can. And because somehow, you think this is going to solve a problem.

However, when you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict.

Such “solutions” solve nothing. As already pointed out, even by people on the police force, Arizona’s new laws will split the communities, make it less likely that people in the immigrant communities will work with the police. They will create conditions favorable to the very criminals these laws are trying to disarm.

The Latinos in Arizona have not come to Arizona because they want to live in communities wracked with violence and crime. I would guess that the most recent arrivals have fled their border towns and the growing violence there as drug lords tightened their control of the communities. They want to live and raise their children in peace, just as you or I do.

I am certain that, given the chance, the leaders of the Latino immigrant communities in Arizona would enthusiastically work with the state to find constructive solutions to these problems. I am very sure that they would like, as much as others, to rid Arizona of the drug smugglers, human traffickers and other criminal elements infiltrating their communities.

We can only hope that this law will be thrown out of the courts in short order. I do not disagree with the calls to boycott the businesses in the state until it is turned around.

In the meantime, it has opened the door to some smart state leaders sitting down with the leaders of the Latino communities in Arizona and hammering out some solutions that actually work. Hopefully these solutions would recognize the difference between a drug smuggler and a man willing to stand outside a gas station in the hot sun for hours in the hopes that someone will give him some work for the day.

The problem of migrating populations is not going to go away any time soon. If anyone should know this, it should be Americans, many of whom landed here themselves to escape persecution, famine or conflict. With the eyes of the world now on them, Arizona has the opportunity to create a new model for dealing with the pitfalls, and help the nation as a whole find its way through the problems of illegal immigration. But to work, it must be a model that is based on a deep respect for the essential human rights Americans themselves have grown up enjoying.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/arizona—-the-wrong-answ_b_557955.html

And I guess I was able (to some degree) to bring myself to understand (with a little less clarity) when Obama bailed out GM and Chrysler. Look at all those jobs that would have gone away. Never mind that if you look at the roster of new cars coming out from GM and Chrysler now (thanks to our cash) they look just about like the same big, old, gas guzzling machines of yore – not even the designs have changed much. And the CEOs, etc there (with their bonuses) haven’t changed much either. Pretty much all the same old guys are running things over there (same guys, different money – our money). But never mind. I was able to – more or less –understand the position of most of my friends here as well. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

I wrestled a bit more with Obama’s absolute evaporation around the Public Option (which he and everyone else in Congress – liberal, Conservative, smart, foolhardy – have). Nonetheless it is true, as my friends pointed out – there is one hell of a vocal and dangerous right wing. What was Obama to do, really? Better to try meet them part way. He is a pragmatist, after all. And he has been a brave, brave soul to take them on and get this bill through at all. Had I been aware, they asked, of the rage towards our young President?

And yes, the Health Care Plan was a patriotic victory, a victory for America. I have even admitted this to most of my friends (and on this blog and in the Huffington Post). And it felt good to do it, too – for once to be able to feel that I wasn’t just a bitter and angry guy, that I could be – at least somewhat – grateful to my government.

Never mind that my Congressman, Rep Henry Waxman put it a bit differently, when he told the pharmaceutical and insurance industries that they had “invested well” in this past Presidential election (having supported Obama – as well as McCain). The message between his lines? You got your man –either one- to do exactly what you wanted – a new infusion of government trillions into your bank accounts. It was – under the circumstances – the best that President Obama could do, I was told.

Oh, and then there’s the war in Iraq. I mean the two wars: Afghanistan. I mean the three wars (a new “secret” war in Pakistan now). And I’m taking the promise of closing Guantanamo Bay off the table. Unfair. I’m not going to even bring it up. I’m not an idiot.

So let’s just recap.

Trillions of dollars for the top guys to use on Wall Street, to use in banking, for automobiles, for pharmaceuticals, for insurance and – yes – yes – for new weaponry and more troops in the Middle East. Trillions Okay, who’s left? Who’s been left out?

Well, the students. Terrific.

With great fanfare – some billions went to the students this past week.

Anybody left?

I shouldn’t have been surprised, or shocked or completely horrified – to have learned that Obama has now opened up all these new drilling fields for oil – the east coast, Alaska. The Jeb Bush politicos et al must be so pissed off. Obama’s outflanked them with their primary constituency and patrons, the oil gang. Brilliant!

Only I’m wondering how my friends will now explain this to me. I want to understand. I do. More jobs? National security? Enough gas into the future so that the big cars still being built in sad Detroit will remain cheap to drive?

What’s fascinating is there doesn’t even seem to have been any public argument or discussion for making this drilling decision happen. No melt down can be pointed to; no bankruptcies; no skyrocketing medical costs. Why now? Why at all?

I need a little help here again. I’m open to listening. I like my friends. And I really like that hope springs eternal. I could really use a little hope about now.

And it would be easy to just say that a majority of Americans just don’t believe they have the right to decent medicine, to being healthy. You could say that a majority of Americans would rather suffer and die prematurely than to have at their disposal what all their representatives have the moment they get elected (what all the rich people have all the time). You could argue that at least the rich people and the people in government aren’t self destructive because they “got theirs,” but then you’d have to note that they still have to walk around in the streets (or at least take airplanes, et cetera) where disease could get them at the drop of a hat. Or (if they only use Lear jets, et cetera) where at least their children – who are taken care of by housekeepers, nannies et cetera – could have a nasty germ or two sent in their direction.

So what is it? Are we just genetically designed to be self- destructive? Have we been put together by the universe (or whatever) to run off cliffs like lemmings?

But then I look at (again – for a moment – from an Italian distance) the attack on the concept of real Health Care by the insurance, pharmaceutical and right wing industrial complex – the media, et cetera. The incredible manipulation of information and I compare it with the cathedrals I’ve been wandering through here in Italy – the endless crucifixions (the Christ died for our sins-thing so we better do a little dying too for the Church or whomever), the glittering Madonna and child images – over and over and over – and I can’t help but see some parallel…

I can’t help but connect up a dot or two around these beautiful cathedrals, the priests, the horrific child abuse sex scandals that are emerging like a pox here in Europe (not to mention the US), possibly even staining the Pope (it would be about time) – priests using children for their pleasure – and I make a strange link – a quantum strange jump perhaps – that a few people use the rest of us – hammer us with images and ideas – over and over and over again – so that we finally succumb, give up, let them have their way with us…

And then I wonder if maybe someday we will be able to wake up and realize that we are not self destructive at our core at all, but that so many of us are being (or have been) destroyed – from an early age on, like those poor children in the shadows of their altars — being damaged, being fooled, being buried alive in pain and confusion. That at the very core we are good, hopeful, healing – at the very, very core. And that from that core we can perhaps begin someday, if we can wake ourselves up and grow ourselves up, start really healing ourselves (which I suspect we have to do together, by the way) and then we can heal our leaders into really taking care of the situation they were elected to take care of, rather than raping us from the position we put them in. And then after that maybe we can begin healing this planet rather than raping it as well (which I would submit will also have to be done together)

Coat Maker Transforms Obama Photo Into Ad
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD Published: January 6, 2010

A garment company in New York known for publicity stunts has seized the attention of the Obama administration.

The Weatherproof Garment Company installed a billboard in Times Square on Wednesday showing President Obama wearing what appears to be one of its coats. The image, which is licensed by The Associated Press, was taken during the president’s visit to the Great Wall of China last November. Weatherproof also put the image on its Web site home page for a time on Wednesday, promoting “The Obama Jacket.”

The White House expects to contact the company on Thursday and to ask it to take the billboard down, aides said. “This ad is clearly misleading because the company suggests the approval or endorsement of the president or the White House that it does not have,” said a White House aide.

Weatherproof’s president, Freddie Stollmack, said he recognized the coat after he saw a photograph of the presidential visit, and ordered a high-resolution photograph for confirmation. “With a magnifying glass, we saw our logo and zipper pull, and we said, ‘That’s our coat,’ ” Mr. Stollmack said.

The company issued a press release in December praising Mr. Obama’s choice of coats. And on Wednesday, it installed the billboard in Times Square at 41st Street with the image.

A Weatherproof spokesman, Allen Cohen, said the company had also tried to run ads in The New York Times, The New York Post and Women’s Wear Daily with the image, but had been turned down by the publications — something it tried to publicize this week.

The Obama administration had not approved the use of the image, a spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said in an e-mail message. “The White House has a longstanding policy disapproving of the use of the president’s name and likeness for commercial purposes,” he said.

Paul Colford, a spokesman for The A.P., said that Weatherproof had paid it the appropriate license fee for the billboard image, “but the agreement is that it requires the licensing party, in this case the Weatherproof Garment Company, to obtain the necessary clearances — that is their obligation.”

Mr. Stollmack said the company had not gained approval from the White House. Asked whether he was taking a risk, he said: “Is it a calculated risk? Not being an attorney — I’m being, really, a designer, merchandiser guy in the apparel business — I would leave that to the attorneys or whatever. We’re not saying President Obama endorses Weatherproof apparel.”

He added: “If we were to get a letter or a call from the White House saying they didn’t approve of it or they didn’t like it or whatever, or they see it as an ad, we’ll do whatever we have to do. We’re not looking to alienate the White House.” But as of early Wednesday evening, the White House had not contacted Weatherproof, Mr. Cohen said.

Kevin M. Greenberg, a lawyer who handles intellectual property cases, said that while Weatherproof should have obtained consent from Mr. Obama as a matter of practice, “legally, the framework is that it’s very unclear where the First Amendment ends” and where public officials’ right to control their endorsements begins.

While Mr. Obama could probably get an injunction against Weatherproof’s use of his image, “the advice any good lawyer will give is sometimes there are fights not worth fighting,” said Mr. Greenberg, a partner at Flaster Greenberg in Philadelphia. “And if Barack Obama were to win this fight, he would in fact be rewarding the bad actor, simply because the fight itself” — over an injunction and damages — “would go on for a very long time and provide tremendous return to this company that’s stealing his image.”

Weatherproof’s history of attention-grabbing efforts suggests the company may be seeking controversy.

In 2008, it issued a release saying that it would run the shortest television commercial ever during the Super Bowl, at two seconds. The same day, it issued an update saying that, unfortunately, it had just learned that two-second Super Bowl slots were unavailable.

Also in 2008, Mr. Stollmack tried to wrap the guitar-playing Naked Cowboy, a street performer familiar to tourists, in a Weatherproof coat in Times Square, getting his picture taken while doing so.

The White House contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals after it started running an anti-fur ad last week that praised Michelle Obama. Semonti Stephens, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama, said her office had not consented to that ad. The White House declined to comment on whether the matter had been resolved.

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting.
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Obama billboard to come down, company wants Palin
BY JOCELYN NOVECK, ASSOCIATED PRESS MONDAY, JAN 25, 2010 18:31 EST

How long does it take to dismantle a billboard?

Close to three weeks, apparently.

The outerwear company that mounted a giant billboard in Times Square showing President Barack Obama in one of its jackets, prompting a call of protest from the White House, says it’s finally removing the offending sign on Wednesday — and it hopes Sarah Palin will agree to take Obama’s place.

Weatherproof hasn’t heard from Palin yet on whether she’ll serve as a model — this time, they’re asking permission — but that’s not even all the news on the Times Square billboard brouhaha front.

The AMC network, seeking to grab a piece of the spotlight for one of its TV shows, has mounted its own, even bigger billboard next to the Weatherproof sign, replacing the president with the main character of “Breaking Bad,” who just happens to be a drug dealer.

Still with us?

The second billboard features Walt White, a high school chemistry teacher suffering from terminal cancer who turns into a drug kingpin in an attempt to ensure his family’s financial security. The show’s third season premieres March 21, and AMC was looking for an edgy and interesting way to advertise it, said the network’s president, Charlie Collier.

“We saw that first billboard, and we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we were the ones to replace it?” said Collier. But apparently Weatherproof wasn’t in a huge rush to remove it, so the company decided to place its own billboard next to it.

The original billboard — Weatherproof’s, that is — uses an Associated Press news photo from Obama’s trip to China. It features Obama standing by the Great Wall, wearing a Weatherproof jacket, with the tag line: “A Leader in Style.”

Weatherproof had purchased the right to use the photo, but the agreement required the company to seek any necessary clearances for use. A White House lawyer contacted the company on Jan. 8 and asked that they remove the billboard.

On the AMC billboard, Walt White (played by actor Bryan Cranston) is also pictured against the backdrop of the Great Wall of China. But where Obama went bareheaded, Walt White wears a gas mask, “the most critical accouterment in the drug-making biz,” according to a release from AMC.

Instead of “Weatherproof,” it reads, “YouGotNoProof,” a reference to his drug dealing. And instead of “A Leader in Style,” it reads: “A Dealer in Style.”

Weatherproof plans now to continue with a presidential theme, says its president, Freddie Stollmack, using Abraham Lincoln, for example, as a model in one of its ads.

But it really wants Palin, and has even done an internal mock-up of how the former Alaska governor and Republican VP candidate might look hawking the new women’s collection.

“It would just be a little move to the right,” quips Stollmack.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

That’s a lie.

Every single Right Wing Senator whole-heartedly supports single payer Health Care coverage wholly paid for by the Federal Government because he has it. His whole family has it. Obama has it. Dick Cheney has it. All the moderates who struggle with where to position themselves on this issue – they have it. Every Representative in the House who has taken contributions from a pharmaceutical company and can’t find clarity on this issue – he (in a few cases, she) has it too: full government sponsored single payer Health Care coverage. All their employees have it.

They believe in it, alright. And not a single one of them has stopped taking it. Proof is in the nasty pudding.

I’ve tried to point this out for months now. Nobody has seemed particularly concerned. Why? Why are we basically going to live with this kind of inequity? Do we believe these people have somehow earned it, like the CEOs earned all those bonuses? Do we believe they have a right because we elected them?

Why hasn’t a single Senator (or Congressman/woman) offered to give it up and go out on his/her own like so many of the rest of us to find some “great” corporate developed Health Care Plan? Why? Why hasn’t at least one secretary in a government office done it? And if it is such a horribly socialistic thing, why hasn’t the GOP left it en mass, like they’re leaving (in droves now) the concept of unemployment insurance?

And why haven’t there been piles of petitions demanding all these Representatives put the lives where their mouths are? Or why isn’t there a real Tea Party movement along the lines of what was actually going on back there in Colonial Boston?

It’s depressing. It’s tragic. It’s a joke, but I don’t have anything left in me that wants to laugh or even cry about it. What has happened to this country that we have not only allowed this to happen, but we have allowed ourselves now to live with it and (given the Health Care that many of our citizen now – and will – have) die with it?