Knowing When - And How - To Act

Nelson Mandela was not a saint.

For those who knew him, including former Washington Post South Africa Bureau Chief Paul Taylor, Nelson Mandela was every bit the positive, quiet, thoughtful, introspective leader that the world knew.

But as Taylor noted Thursday on the occasion of Mr. Mandela's passing, Mr. Mandela, "…was also cunning, iron-willed, bull-headed, contemptuous — and more embittered than he let on." What Nelson Mandela knew, seemingly above all else, was how and when to deploy all his resources, of both kindness and strength, to achieve the political goals he wanted.

We've sometimes thought that the former President of South Africa, and prisoner for 27 years, could have held lessons for the U.S. Congress in how to use the tools of wise governing. After all, if Mandela could guide his own country past the end of apartheid without serious violence, while uniting two highly divergent groups of people? He might have actually been able to get Republicans in Congress to get off their butts and DO something.

No matter what you may have thought of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, there is no arguing that he was truly one of the most gifted world leaders ever. Even the satirical newspaper, The Onion, acknowledged this with their headline late Thursday, 'Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician In History To Be Missed.'

For all of the amazing moments in his life, the one thing that has always stuck with us about Mr. Mandela was his insistence that hatred - of his captors, of his political enemies, even of those who'd rather have seen him dead - was simply an ineffective tool for most situations in life.

Nelson's quotes about leadership reflected that. Even if just a few of our favorites are pulled together, they cut right to the core of what it means to be a great leader:

"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." 

"Great anger and violence can never build a nation." 

"A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it's lowest ones."

That last quote is one that we wish Congressional Republicans would keep in mind, as they run away from the mess they made of the Affordable Care Act, while ignoring the needs of millions of unemployed Americans in their budget discussions.

Still - we shouldn't scream, yell, and bang our fists on tables about the obstructionist Republicans. As Mandela also was quoted as saying, "Long speeches, the shaking of fists, the banging of tables and strongly worded resolutions out of touch with the objective conditions do not bring about mass action and can do a great deal of harm to the organization and the struggle we serve."

Having the wisdom to know when and how to act made Nelson Mandela a true leader for the ages.

We can only hope that today's leaders, both here and abroad - and the leaders of the future - will take some of that wisdom to heart.

Naked Inequality

From time to time, when uncomfortable topics come up in professional or personal discussions, Americans often have a tendency to shy away. Many folks will simply clam up or try to change the subject, while others will try to mock the subject, effectively shaming others into changing the topic of conversation.

As Greg Sargent noted of President Obama's historic speech on Wednesday, in the midst of a massive number of unprecedented political moves against him and his policies, this President has chosen to make yet another ambitious move - to push forward against the rising tide of economic inequality in the U.S. today.

Not surprisingly, and as both Greg and Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly pointed out, many of our colleagues in the media - especially those on the right - will simply write off President Obama's comments and intentions for action as another distraction from whatever easy, empty political firestorm they'd rather cover.

As the President made abundantly clear on Wednesday, however, economic inequality in America is "the defining challenge of our time."

The President addressed several key parts of that challenge, including stagnant incomes for lower- and middle-class Americans, and stagnant or even diminished economic mobility. The same "trickle-down ideology" that Pope Francis recently blasted as a proven failure, was also cited by President Obama as a key force that has caused America to stop investing in our infrastructure, weakened the power of American workers, and has crippled much of our educational system over the last thirty years.

As President Obama nearly always does, he didn't simply state the problems at hand and note his opposition to them. He came prepared with several solutions that he boldly laid out, including a substantial increase to the minimum wage, a position that over three-quarters of Americans already agree with the President on.

That shouldn't be surprising. Not only has the minimum wage in America not kept pace with inflation, but the median average wage for U.S. workers also recently fell to the lowest level in fifteen years. Sadly, none of the thousands of fast food workers slated to protest in over 100 cities across America on Thursday would likely be surprised by these statistics.

What the President also made clear on Wednesday was that the wealthiest Americans have broken the social contract better known by most people worldwide as 'The American Dream.' That violation, due to the naked ambition and greed of Americans like those lining the criminal canyons of Wall Street, has nearly wiped out the premise that so many Americans console themselves with, whether in hardship or prosperity.

That premise is this: It is no longer a given that Americans can become anything they want anymore regardless of the economic class into which they were born - a fact the President noted on Wednesday is far out of sync with the vision of America's founding fathers.

As economists from Paul Krugman to Joe Stiglitz have pointed out, Americans must make a choice when it comes to the issue of economic inequality. As uncomfortable as that subject is, President Obama chose to tackle it head-on in Wednesday's address, noting that Americans cannot simply remain clothed in ignorance if we expect to be the kind of 'nation of opportunity' many still claim that we are.

As President Obama clearly reminded us all on Wednesday, it's time Americans made it that way once again.

Sadly, No Surprises

Throughout history, only the most craven and ethically bankrupt individuals have been known to regularly rob the bodies of the dead for any remaining valuables, even while the body is still warm. In our modern culture, most Americans would consider that kind of theft disgusting, and a sad relic of the past.

With the smack of a gavel, and an hour-long ruling, a Judge in Detroit ruled on Tuesday that the days of modern-day body snatchers are, in fact, alive and well - so long as the one doing the stealing is a massive Wall Street bank.

The macabre act we're talking about is the ruling, by a Federal judge, that the now-battered city of Detroit is, in fact, eligible to enter bankruptcy proceedings. The judge also ruled that the Constitution of the state of Michigan, which expressly protects the pension funds of retired public sector workers, was effectively nullified by the desire of banks to steal the hard-earned retirement funds of Detroit's former police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other former public-sector workers.

For any American who's ever put their retirement money in a private pension fund, this action should send chills down their spine, in the same way that robbing the dead body of a still-warm human would.

Of course, if you understand this is just the latest chapter in a long history of Wall Street pillaging Detroit, you're likely as unsurprised as we are.

As a study by the think tank Demos proved just last month, for all the hate and scorn the political right would like to heap on Detroit and it's unions, the reason that town has become such a bombed out shell of its former glory is simple: the greed of Wall Street banks.

As the study - and many others like it - confirmed, Detroit's disastrous current economic state stems from its history as a one-industry town. As David Sirota noted in Salon recently, the recession and free-trade-related deindustrialization decimated the city’s manufacturing job base and drove the population out of the city. When the jobs and citizens left, the tax base of Detroit went with it, leaving the decaying shell of a once-great industrial city.

The financial wizards of Wall Street didn't think the Motor City was going to be worthless until it was completely dead. Schemes crafted by some of Wall Street's most ethically bankrupt organizations were created to effectively steal anything else of value from the city - including one of the most incredible collections of publicly owned art in the world, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Up until Tuesday, hard-working retirees from Detroit didn't think that the money they'd saved in their pension funds - money they get in lieu of Social Security - had anything much in common with the amazing works of Diego Rivera, or or the works of Picasso and Rubens.

Now, thanks to the ruling of one ethically-challenged Federal judge, it's not just Rodin's Thinker that needs to re-think his safety. Retirees across the nation may now have good reason to worry about their pension savings being robbed by some of Wall Street's lowest, yet most profitable. Already in Illinois, the state legislature has agreed to a "fix" for their pension crisis that effectively steals millions in benefits that retired workers already paid for, and gives that money to banks and other creditors.

What's going on in Illinois shouldn't really surprise anyone, sadly.

If Wall Street is willing to basically pick over the corpse of a city like Detroit, why wouldn't they go after the still-living in Illinois, or anywhere else in America?