Post by Okwes on Feb 6, 2008 11:03:40 GMT -5
Russell: Indians in a change election
Posted: February 01, 2008
by: Steve Russell
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton I administration, made
a
remark recently that bears serious consideration. We should not, Reich
suggested, pick a presidential candidate by making a list of salient
issues
and ticking off positions one by one, finally settling on the candidate
who
agrees with us the most. All of the challenges facing the country this
year
are interrelated, and more important than any one of them is how a
candidate
is able to understand and explain those connections and deal with each
problem in a way that does not make too many others worse.
Some Indians claim that only Indian issues matter in their feelings
toward
the presidential contest, but those Indians are few for a couple of
reasons.
First, Indian country is not exempt from economic downturns or global
warming or the military misadventures that our people always wind up
fighting in disproportionate numbers. Second, there are few enough
policy
wonks for what Robert Odawi Porter calls ''American Indian control
policy''
that most candidates' positions could have been spit out of the same
copier.
Reich says our troubles all fit together. My son just got back from
Iraq, so
the war has been worrying me, the war of choice in Iraq where the issue
appears to be the identity of the proper Caliph at the time Mohammed
ascended to heaven. This is the theological dispute between Sunni and
Shi'a.
I was raised to think, contrary to the Bush II administration and the
debate
in the Republican primaries, that the United States has no public
policy on
theological issues.
Everyone but a purblind Bush II sycophant knows it's about oil. As is
the
economic downturn about oil - both the rise in energy prices and the
funding
of the oil war on credit rather than by raising taxes like countries
normally do when they fight a war. As is the global climate change
problem.
Our reliance on fossil fuels and the growing economies of China and
India
doing the same lead directly to the destruction of habitat that is
ruining
subsistence hunting for Inuit and Athabascan Indians.
There is another American Indian side to the energy policy issue that
is not
so bleak. Most people agree that one solution is to remove the
incentives
(read ''corporate welfare'') for fossil fuels and replace them with
incentives for renewables, except the Libertarian Ron Paul, who thinks
the
market can fix it all magically because if climate change is really a
problem every single consumer will pay to stop it on an individual
level
whether that individual has any money or not and in spite of the fact
that
government has spent over 100 years tilting the playing field the way
it is
now - in favor of Big Oil.
Should national energy policy move to renewables - solar, wind,
geothermal,
hydro, biomass - Indian country is well positioned in every way except
for
having transmission lines to become a major source of clean power.
Tribal
governments have the authority to issue tax-free revenue bonds for
governmental functions such as power generation. The trick is to issue
bonds
to power the reservation and build in a manner that allows the tribe to
feed
the U.S.-Canadian electrical grid. It's not that hard, since power
generation is normally built in modules to accommodate growth.
Turning energy policy to renewables is far more important to much of
Indian
country than an increase in social spending. With such a turn we could
prosper far beyond the Bush I policies that depended on the fact that a
rising tide lifts all boats and certainly beyond the Bush II policies
that
depended on the fact that a rising tide lifts all yachts.
It's a cliche to call 2008 a change election but it's not an empty
cliche. A
Clinton II administration or an Obama administration or even a McCain
or
Romney administration will at the very least have to change back to
what
Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff under Bush II, disdainfully called '
reality-based politics.'' His disdain was based on the conviction that
power
defines its own reality, as when the administration was able to find
several
grown men with college degrees who would profess not to know whether
waterboarding is torture.
If Rove had been in charge during the Reagan administration, ketchup
would
now be a vegetable in the eyes of the school lunch program because the
evidence we used to beat back that nonsense would have been
inadmissible.
What Bush II has given us that could never have happened even under
Bush I
is a government where facts don't matter, where employees of the
National
Park Service tell tourists that the Grand Canyon is evidence of Noah's
flood
and where there is no moral distinction between a glob of human cells
and a
human being.
The biggest change we can anticipate in 2008 with any candidate except
perhaps Mike Huckabee is that we can negotiate differences because we
once
more agree on the nature of reality and we once more feel a shared
obligation to explain our values to each other. Huckabee is now only a
player for the vice presidency on a McCain ticket.
Even with McCain/Huckabee or Romney and whoever, I think we are about
to
re-enter a time where evidence matters and persuading others to our
positions is more important than being able to bludgeon anybody who
dissents
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo used to say we run in poetry but
govern in
prose.
For many years, the United States has been awfully short of political
poetry
the importance of which traditional Indian leaders certainly
understood. It
often takes an orator to create consensus. Sen. Barack Obama's speech
upon
winning Iowa was political poetry of the highest order and those who
complain that ''change'' is not a platform miss the point. That speech
recalled Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and for those of us who remember a
vision
of what might have been. The recollection was strong enough in me to
awaken
assassination fears, so it's ironic that Obama's base appears to be
young
people who can't possibly have such memories.
So while Robert Reich is correct that our problems are interconnected
and
involve all our relations, I do not join the cynics who claim that
''change'
is by its nature an empty promise. When electoral cynicism is the
subject,
I remember Vine Deloria Jr.'s bon mot that Indians tend to elect crooks
and
white people tend to elect morons. Not this election. Coming off eight
years
of reality defined by power, there is little room to be more crooked or
more
moronic than the status quo. When a candidate calls for ''change,''
most
voters of all ethnicities understand we are so far down that any change
is
up.
Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court
judge by
assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana
University - Bloomington. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today.
Posted: February 01, 2008
by: Steve Russell
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton I administration, made
a
remark recently that bears serious consideration. We should not, Reich
suggested, pick a presidential candidate by making a list of salient
issues
and ticking off positions one by one, finally settling on the candidate
who
agrees with us the most. All of the challenges facing the country this
year
are interrelated, and more important than any one of them is how a
candidate
is able to understand and explain those connections and deal with each
problem in a way that does not make too many others worse.
Some Indians claim that only Indian issues matter in their feelings
toward
the presidential contest, but those Indians are few for a couple of
reasons.
First, Indian country is not exempt from economic downturns or global
warming or the military misadventures that our people always wind up
fighting in disproportionate numbers. Second, there are few enough
policy
wonks for what Robert Odawi Porter calls ''American Indian control
policy''
that most candidates' positions could have been spit out of the same
copier.
Reich says our troubles all fit together. My son just got back from
Iraq, so
the war has been worrying me, the war of choice in Iraq where the issue
appears to be the identity of the proper Caliph at the time Mohammed
ascended to heaven. This is the theological dispute between Sunni and
Shi'a.
I was raised to think, contrary to the Bush II administration and the
debate
in the Republican primaries, that the United States has no public
policy on
theological issues.
Everyone but a purblind Bush II sycophant knows it's about oil. As is
the
economic downturn about oil - both the rise in energy prices and the
funding
of the oil war on credit rather than by raising taxes like countries
normally do when they fight a war. As is the global climate change
problem.
Our reliance on fossil fuels and the growing economies of China and
India
doing the same lead directly to the destruction of habitat that is
ruining
subsistence hunting for Inuit and Athabascan Indians.
There is another American Indian side to the energy policy issue that
is not
so bleak. Most people agree that one solution is to remove the
incentives
(read ''corporate welfare'') for fossil fuels and replace them with
incentives for renewables, except the Libertarian Ron Paul, who thinks
the
market can fix it all magically because if climate change is really a
problem every single consumer will pay to stop it on an individual
level
whether that individual has any money or not and in spite of the fact
that
government has spent over 100 years tilting the playing field the way
it is
now - in favor of Big Oil.
Should national energy policy move to renewables - solar, wind,
geothermal,
hydro, biomass - Indian country is well positioned in every way except
for
having transmission lines to become a major source of clean power.
Tribal
governments have the authority to issue tax-free revenue bonds for
governmental functions such as power generation. The trick is to issue
bonds
to power the reservation and build in a manner that allows the tribe to
feed
the U.S.-Canadian electrical grid. It's not that hard, since power
generation is normally built in modules to accommodate growth.
Turning energy policy to renewables is far more important to much of
Indian
country than an increase in social spending. With such a turn we could
prosper far beyond the Bush I policies that depended on the fact that a
rising tide lifts all boats and certainly beyond the Bush II policies
that
depended on the fact that a rising tide lifts all yachts.
It's a cliche to call 2008 a change election but it's not an empty
cliche. A
Clinton II administration or an Obama administration or even a McCain
or
Romney administration will at the very least have to change back to
what
Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff under Bush II, disdainfully called '
reality-based politics.'' His disdain was based on the conviction that
power
defines its own reality, as when the administration was able to find
several
grown men with college degrees who would profess not to know whether
waterboarding is torture.
If Rove had been in charge during the Reagan administration, ketchup
would
now be a vegetable in the eyes of the school lunch program because the
evidence we used to beat back that nonsense would have been
inadmissible.
What Bush II has given us that could never have happened even under
Bush I
is a government where facts don't matter, where employees of the
National
Park Service tell tourists that the Grand Canyon is evidence of Noah's
flood
and where there is no moral distinction between a glob of human cells
and a
human being.
The biggest change we can anticipate in 2008 with any candidate except
perhaps Mike Huckabee is that we can negotiate differences because we
once
more agree on the nature of reality and we once more feel a shared
obligation to explain our values to each other. Huckabee is now only a
player for the vice presidency on a McCain ticket.
Even with McCain/Huckabee or Romney and whoever, I think we are about
to
re-enter a time where evidence matters and persuading others to our
positions is more important than being able to bludgeon anybody who
dissents
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo used to say we run in poetry but
govern in
prose.
For many years, the United States has been awfully short of political
poetry
the importance of which traditional Indian leaders certainly
understood. It
often takes an orator to create consensus. Sen. Barack Obama's speech
upon
winning Iowa was political poetry of the highest order and those who
complain that ''change'' is not a platform miss the point. That speech
recalled Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and for those of us who remember a
vision
of what might have been. The recollection was strong enough in me to
awaken
assassination fears, so it's ironic that Obama's base appears to be
young
people who can't possibly have such memories.
So while Robert Reich is correct that our problems are interconnected
and
involve all our relations, I do not join the cynics who claim that
''change'
is by its nature an empty promise. When electoral cynicism is the
subject,
I remember Vine Deloria Jr.'s bon mot that Indians tend to elect crooks
and
white people tend to elect morons. Not this election. Coming off eight
years
of reality defined by power, there is little room to be more crooked or
more
moronic than the status quo. When a candidate calls for ''change,''
most
voters of all ethnicities understand we are so far down that any change
is
up.
Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court
judge by
assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana
University - Bloomington. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today.