How The Mighty Has Fallen - Moynihan Revisited!

If Obama goes for real change and selects education reformers my hat will be off to him and so, eventually, will be the gratitude of the nation's school children trapped by union resistance to their getting a chance in life and a solid education. (See 1 below.)

Unions have become an impediment to progress and are more crippling than inflammatory arthritis. Most everything they touch is eventually ruined - the auto industry and education are obvious and glowing cases in point. If unions get their hands on WalMart, they will help destroy that company as well. (See 1 a below.)

Neither do workers always get a fair deal and management does take advantage. That said, unions have outlived their original purpose. They won the battle of poor working conditions, health care benefits and a fair wage decades ago. Now union leader rigidity and blind orthodoxy is causing their members to lose work, plants to be closed and relocated overseas.

A better way must be devised for reaching an accommodation between legitimate needs of workers regarding their safety, job security and health care and the equally legitimate needs of business to earn an appropriate return on invested capital so they can continue to invest, modernize and stay afloat. That there will always be a level of tension between labor and management is a given. However, this tension must be reduced and much of its destructive force re-channeled into sensible co-operation for the benefit of all.

If corporate management continues to disregard the needs of their workers, leverage company balance sheets thereby putting thecompany at financial risk, while lining their own pockets with outrageous compensation packages, they will not only continue to invite the wrath of the public but also of Congress. These managements should not be saved by bail outs. They should be allowed to fall on their own swords. Rewarding such behaviour sends the wrong message and wil perpetuate foolhardiness.

Since stockholders no longer control their companies, having lost leverage over management decades ago, change must occur here as well or capitalism runs the risk of becoming extinct at the very worst or imperiled by a public backlash which will encourage a vindictive grandstanding Congress's interference

Democrats receive enormous funding from unions and therefore have no interest in illing their golden calf so progress is not likely to come from that side of the aisle. It will take a president, from their own party, to defy rank and file politicians who keep their "collective" heads buried in the sand and their outstretched "collective" hands grabbing for union money. (See 1 a below.)

In the past, business generally aligned with Republicans but that connection has largely been broken and corporations now contribute indiscriminately to both parties.

As I have repeatedly said, we have the best Congress money can buy and in the process we all suffer. (See 1a below again.)

Obama can change the atmosphere and eventually the rules if he has true grit! If not, the know nothings and unenlightened in Congress will keep intruding their counterproductive solutions and making matters worse. Even China lectured Sec. Paulson this week, telling him America needs to get its financial house in order. How the mighty has fallen.

What I am subtly suggesting is that if president elect Obama wants to lay the groundwork for winning a second term, even before beginning his first, he might easily do so by doing what is best for the country. That means not pandering to the far left of his party. By pacifying the extreme he runs the risk of losing the middle. Obama enters office with an economy vastly different than the one that existed during the campaign. Much of what Obama said, to get elected, was never going to serve him or the nation well if he chooses to implement it. His ideas weren't particularly wise then and they would be even more destructive now if they became law.

This may be intellectually impossible for Obama because a confrontation with Pelosi and Reid and the extrme of his party might be a battle he neither has the stomach for nor the ability to win. I have sugested all along Obama's greatest eventual political threat could well come from within if he is see, even perceived, walking off the reservation. Romney and McCain learned that during their own campaign pursuits but with Obama it is different. Why? Because he is going to become our president. He ran and won and that gives him a lot of latitude if he has the guts to walk that lonely path and do right by the nation, aka Truman. Doing right by the nation means disavowing a lot of the inane populism and unrealistic pronouncements Obama made during the run for the roses. Will he, won't he?

It will make for a fascinating experience watching from the sidelines. (See 2 below.)

IAEA Chief finally acknowledges the U.N and the West's efforts to constrain Iran's nuclear program have failed. Meanwhile, Bush keeps playing his broken record at The Saban Conference. (See 3 and 3a below.)

Moynihan revisited - the legacy and aftermath of failed liberality. A lingering and intractable problem continues to confront our society. Rebuilding the family unit, paticularly in the black community, is a toughie!( See 4 below.)

My earlier prediction of a Caroline Kennedy appointment to relace Hillary is gaining traction among the elite. Camelot lives on? (See 5 below.)

Dick


1) Who Will He Choose?
By DAVID BROOKS

As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.

During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view. Their disagreements were collegial (this is Obamaland after all), but substantive.

In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.

Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.

Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.

You can measure the anxiety in the reformist camp by the level of nervous phone chatter each morning. Weeks ago, Obama announced that Darling-Hammond would lead his transition team and reformist cellphones around the country lit up. Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford, is a sharp critic of Teach for America and promotes weaker reforms.

Anxieties cooled, but then one morning a few weeks ago, I got a flurry of phone calls from reform leaders nervous that Obama was about to side against them. I interviewed people in the president-elect’s inner circle and was reassured that the reformers had nothing to worry about. Obama had not gone native.

Obama’s aides point to his long record on merit pay, his sympathy for charter schools and his tendency to highlight his commitment to serious education reform.

But the union lobbying efforts are relentless and in the past week prospects for a reforming education secretary are thought to have dimmed. The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.

In some sense, the final option would be the biggest setback for reform. Education is one of those areas where implementation and the details are more important than grand pronouncements. If the deputies and assistants in the secretary’s office are not true reformers, nothing will get done.

The stakes are huge. For the first time in decades, there is real momentum for reform. It’s not only Rhee and Klein — the celebrities — but also superintendents in cities across America who are getting better teachers into the classrooms and producing measurable results. There is an unprecedented political coalition building, among liberals as well as conservatives, for radical reform.

No Child Left Behind is about to be reauthorized. Everyone has reservations about that law, but it is the glaring spotlight that reveals and pierces the complacency at mediocre schools. If accountability standards are watered down, as the establishment wants, then real reform will fade.

This will be a tough call for Obama, because it will mean offending people, but he can either galvanize the cause of reform or demoralize it. It’ll be one of the biggest choices of his presidency.

Many of the reformist hopes now hang on Obama’s friend, Arne Duncan. In Chicago, he’s a successful reformer who has produced impressive results in a huge and historically troubled system. He has the political skills necessary to build a coalition on behalf of No Child Left Behind reauthorization. Because he is close to both Obamas, he will ensure that education doesn’t fall, as it usually does, into the ranks of the second-tier issues.

If Obama picks a reformer like Duncan, Klein or one of the others, he will be picking a fight with the status quo. But there’s never been a better time to have that fight than right now.

1a) Let's 'Share the Wealth': America's most powerful union boss says Europe offers a good economic model.
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI

Washington:"We just won an election. It's no secret." By "we," Andy Stern means "American workers." He also means Big Labor. Speaking on behalf of the fastest growing trade group in America, the Service Employees International Union -- and as one of labor's most powerful figures today -- Mr. Stern sets this simple bar for the Obama presidency: "I expect nothing less than what he said he was going to do, and we should hold him accountable."

From his perspective -- atop SEIU's Washington headquarters, which offers an enviable view of the National Cathedral -- the first part is straightforward: "Massive investment" in a stimulus for the economy, the car industry, deficit-ridden states and infrastructure. Then universal health care, an issue on which the SEIU boss helped push the Democratic consensus leftward, and "tax cuts for the middle class" (and hikes for the upper bracketed). At the end of his list, Mr. Stern puts something particularly dear to unions: Quick adoption of the Employee Free Choice Act, commonly known as "card check," which would end secret ballots in union elections.

The bit about accountability is no idle warning. Organized labor put up some $450 million to get Democrats elected. The SEIU accounted for $85 million of that, making Mr. Stern's union the single biggest contributor to either party in this election cycle. And just in case, the SEIU set aside an additional $10 million fund to get people unelected if need be. "We would like to make sure people appreciate that we take them at their word and when they don't live up to their word there should be consequences," he says.

Wearing an open-necked purple shirt, the color adopted for the SEIU's rebranding, Mr. Stern makes his threat with a genial smile. He's in an ebullient mood these days, after all, and plainly not a labor boss out of central casting. Trim and 58, with no blue collar bona fides to speak of, Mr. Stern started at Wharton before switching majors -- 1968, he says, was no year to be a business student -- at the University of Pennsylvania to education and urban planning. He became a welfare case officer out of school and worked his way up the union hierarchy, becoming at 46 the youngest SEIU president in history.

Mr. Stern feels at ease with CEOs and in the media limelight. His sentences come seasoned with business phrases like "market share" and "our customers" alongside well-crafted ideological sound bites. As in: "This election was the end of the line for 25 years of market worshipping, deregulating, trickle-down economics. It's over. It didn't work. Greed kind of ruled the roost and we've taken the greatest economy on earth and have it staggering."

Admire or despise him -- and many union bosses fall into the latter category -- Mr. Stern is undeniably sharp, innovative and successful. In his 12 years atop the SEIU, membership more than doubled, to two million, as other unions stagnated. He has used his growing stable of janitors, nurses and office workers to wield political influence and challenge the old labor consensus. In 2005, he took the SEIU out of the AFL-CIO, criticizing the latter's emphasis on political over grass-roots organization and the movement's inability to adapt to the realities of a 21st century, service-dominated and global economy.

His tactics are controversial. The SEIU targets private equity firms, shames business leaders, and competes with other unions to build up its membership. Mr. Stern is unapologetic. "We like to say: We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power." Inside the SEIU, a traditionally decentralized union, his dominant personality has earned him enemies among dissident local bosses. The biggest SEIU local in California is enmeshed in a corruption scandal. Some people wonder whether he's truly in charge. As an admiring adversary in Washington noted, these days "Andy Stern is surfing a high wave, and hanging on right by the edge."

It is the political seas in Washington, however, that look most interesting. The Obama camp says the future president, who won running left, intends to govern from the center. Moderate Democrats float possible delays, or the outright shelving, of legislation dear to the left. Card check, in particular, makes them nervous since it would provoke a battle with business in the midst of a recession. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce unveiled plans last week to spend $10 million to fight passage.

Mr. Stern betrays no doubts about future policy. I ask him which Obama pick so far pleases him most? "Obama," he shoots back. Yes, Larry Summers, the market-friendly free trader from the Clinton years, and Treasury nominee Tim Geithner, straight from Wall Street, headlined the economic team. But these "experienced, steady" men are there "to implement a new president's agenda" -- new financial regulations, job-creation programs and the rest. The pro-business, balanced-budget economics of the Clinton years isn't appropriate to today's world of income inequality and stagnant wages, he says. "It was not the same Larry Summers of '93 I saw on that stage."
All the political signs are favorable for a "universal," government-run health-care system. Mr. Stern hails the appointment of Tom Daschle to lead the push from the Department of Health and Human Services, and he considers Montana Sen. Max Baucus's reform plan a big step in the right direction. Unlike the last time it came up in 1993, Mr. Stern says, "it's hard to find an outspoken voice against comprehensive reform." Mr. Obama takes office at "an unusual Washington moment" when business, labor and the politicians "see common ground" on the president's headline initiatives, health care above all.

The exception is card check. And yet of all the things on the union wish list, this agenda item stands out as the single existential one for them. Its passage would ease organization and help reverse the decline in American union membership, today at just 12% of the workforce. Mr. Stern keeps the pressure on, saying card check ought to come up in the first hundred days. "You should do it early and I think it should be part of the basic second-tier economic package when we're dealing with health care, energy and other ways that over the long term begin to solve America's long-term economic problems." Just how it will pass -- in a single package, or a budget, or who knows -- is hard to predict amid all the economic uncertainty, he says.

Under the legislation passed by the House last year, if a majority of employees sign authorization forms, or cards, a union would be formed and employers would have 120 days to reach a contract. Failing that, the government would appoint an arbitrator to decide on the terms. This "minimum binding arbitration" provision worries employers as much as card check itself. But Mr. Stern rules out a compromise that would keep it out of the bill. Such arbitration has proven to be "a rational, reasonable, non-confrontational, cooperative way" to reach a deal. "It's not good for America when people fight," he adds.

The Democratic left frames the argument for increasing union membership in terms of closing the gap between the rich and poor. The question is, Mr. Stern says, "how to put money in peoples' pockets. One is to create more jobs and create wealth. The other is you find ways to, and I hate to use Joe the Plumber, to share the wealth differently. You do that through taxes, you do that through employee free choice. Employee free choice is only a process of giving workers the choice of sitting down with their employers about getting raises." He adds that "it's just amazing that people who don't want employee free choice, I'm not sure what they want to do."
Maybe, I venture, they just want to keep free elections for unions? "It is a total ruse," Mr. Stern responds. "We have a way of workers making the choice that no politician would ever live with." Employers can campaign directly with voters "and threaten them," and the union organizers "stand outside and hope to catch them coming home from work." Card check would do away with the secret ballot and ask workers publicly to declare themselves. This, the anti-card-check camp argues, would in fact make the choice anything but free and leave employees vulnerable to intimidation by unions and peers.

Another hot topic in the Democratic primaries was trade. Having backed trade liberalization in the 1950s, the unions today lead the charge to close borders. Mr. Stern plays the opposition, saying the important free trade deals have already been struck and ratified. The Korea, Panama and Colombia trade pacts now before Congress have little "economic impact." Though he won't endorse them, when I ask about a possible political trade-off, his eyes beam. "If they want to attach employee free choice to the Colombia free trade deal, I think we can work something out," he says, smiling again.

The current Washington preoccupation is the transition. Along with "200,000 others," the SEIU put forward a wish list for cabinet jobs as well as the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies. Aside from Mr. Daschle, the SEIU has close ties to Obama political director Patrick Gaspard and Mr. Stern "loves" Bill Richardson at Commerce. Mr. Stern wants an "an updating of our regulatory framework" at the National Labor Relations Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to better "enforce its laws." That kind of talk fast gets the business community's hackles up.

Universal health care, widespread unionization, stronger regulations on business, profit-sharing for employees, higher taxes -- all that sounds like Western Europe. Mr. Stern considers that a worthy model. "I think Western Europe as much as we used to make fun of it has made different trade-offs which may have ended up with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality."

Again, perhaps channeling the old Wharton student within, he couches his pitch in business-friendly terms. "When you have universal health care, employers compete without health care being a competitive factor. When you have higher wages, people aren't poor, they get to eat, they get to live a better life and have a social safety net. I also think that when CEOs don't make as much money off of stock options they don't make risky investments." And does unionization improve competitiveness? It helps productivity, he counters, arguing that cheap labor, as in China, is a disincentive for industry to innovate and use workers efficiently.

Andy Stern's ambition would seem to be nothing less than to remake American capitalism from the ground up. His union, and the labor movement, hasn't had this good a chance to do so in a very long time. "Being heard and being listened to are two different things," he says, suddenly looking to strike a modest note. "But we'll start by being heard and hopefully we'll be listened to."


2) Obama's Environmental Test: The president-elect's picks for his energy and environment team could undo any smart moves so far.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

You might think now that Barack Obama has staffed his economic and security teams, the hard choices are over. But he has one more doozy of a decision to make. And the worry is that his picks for that final, crucial team -- those overseeing energy and environmental policy -- will undo any smart moves the president-elect has made so far.

Chad CroweIt isn't yet clear Team Obama understands that it doesn't have the luxury of making a mistake here. Energy is the engine of, and inextricably linked to, the American economy. Environmental policies and regulations that punish energy markets will only deliver a further economic hit.

In the process, this will damage Mr. Obama's own goals. He has picked an economic team that has already successfully discouraged him from proceeding immediately with any tax hikes. Good. But an ill-crafted cap-and-trade program that dramatically escalates energy costs is the same as a giant tax hike. Mr. Obama is promising to save or create 2.5 million jobs. Fabulous. But drowning industries in exorbitant energy prices will only encourage further overseas flight. If the president-elect thinks Detroit is a problem, just wait for the impact an upward march in electricity prices would have on, say, the manufacturing South.

Most of Mr. Obama's decisions so far have reflected the fact that the economy he is taking over is far different from the one he campaigned on. (No one would have thought eight months ago of a Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, but $700 billion financial rescues have ways of changing things.) Yet so far, all signs suggest the Obama crew is stubbornly refusing to acknowledge this reality when it comes to its militant past promises on energy and environment.
The transition itself is being handled by John Podesta. After leaving the Clinton White House, he founded the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, where he became deeply immersed in environmental issues. His recent book, "The Power of Progress," ruminates on how one duty of "progressives" is to save the world from climate change. At his side in the transition is former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Carol Browner, who is as committed a green revolutionary as they come.

Having enraged the left wing of his party with several initial high-profile appointments, Mr. Obama is now under pressure to placate this mob. One obvious, if frightening, choice would be to reward them with the energy-and-environment portfolio, turning it over to a team that shares the grass-roots' green agenda.
The appointments at stake here are big, with the potential for even greater influence. There's chief of the EPA, the prominence of which is growing in the climate debate. Another is secretary of the Energy Department, a body that traditionally serves as a cheerleader for the entire mix of domestic energy sources (including nuclear, oil and coal), but which, with a weak or turncoat head, could easily fail in that duty.

Mr. Podesta is also a fan of creating a National Energy Council (akin to the National Economic Council). This council would presumably include a much-discussed "climate czar," with a straight line to the president.
Sanity is all the more in need given the Washington environment. Henry Waxman's ouster of the thoughtful John Dingell as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee proves the left is raring to sweep through a climate agenda, with little or no debate about the economic consequences. Mr. Obama needs a team that will push back, and think through the ramifications for his broader agenda.

And then there's the regulatory temptation. Last year the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants." This opened the door for vast new EPA powers that could, in the wrong hands, make that agency a central planner for the entire economy. Environmentalists love that idea. Voters may not.

The EPA will also have purview over whether to grant California's request for tougher auto standards -- a move that might well finish off Detroit, even as Mr. Obama attempts to save it. Better to have a team that is aware of the political and practical implications of an EPA power grab.

This last point is downright terrifying considering that Mrs. Browner is not only helping with the transition, but is a rumored pick for a second run at EPA. Mrs. Browner's worldview is that the only way to accomplish environmental good is to use blunt regulatory and legal force to squeeze targeted industries. Her last ride at that agency was marked by a series of diktats and lawsuits that dog companies to this day.

Mrs. Browner encapsulates, in fact, the choice Mr. Obama has to make. A team of Browner-ites, armed with even greater regulatory powers, would certainly bring change. But the cost would be huge, both to Mr. Obama's political accountability and to the economy he has promised to restore.

This is the new reality. The president-elect can't have it both ways.


3) UN nuclear watchdog chief: Western policy on Iran "a failure"


Dr. Mohammed El Baradei sees futility of sanctions - belatedly
Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohammed El Baradei, says five years of US and international efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions are a failure. He told the Los Angeles Times Sat. Dec. 6: "We haven't moved one inch toward addressing the issues."

Political sources: ElBaradei's words are the answer to president George W. Bush's reiteration Friday in a summing-up of his foreign policy record that the US would not allow Iran to develop an atomic weapon.

The UN official bluntly marked the sanctions-incentives policy "a failure."

The same mark automatically applies to Israel's leaders and their dogged reliance on the international community to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons – a line favored by president Shimon Peres, ex-prime minister Ariel Sharon, incumbent Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and defense minister Ehud Barak.

The IAEA director stressed: "Tehran continues to acquire nuclear technology and stockpiling sensitive material" after three sets of international sanctions and the US-European offer of economic and security incentives.

In retrospect, the sanctions may have led to "more hardening of the position of Iran," ElBaradei said. "Many Iranians who even dislike the regime [are] gathering around the regime because they feel that their country is under siege."

Nonetheless, Israel's government leaders stick to the demand for more sanctions in the face of the IAEA director's confirmation that this course has got exactly nowhere.

3a) Bush vows US won't allow Iranian nukes

The United States will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, even after US President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, US President George W. Bush said on Friday.

Speaking at the Saban Forum in Washington, the US president went on to call Teheran's nuclear program "a major threat to peace," noting that diplomatic and economic incentives from the West had been turned down by the Islamic Republic.

"While Iran has not accepted these offers, we have made our bottom line clear: For the safety of our people and the peace of the world, America will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said.

Bush also spoke of his administration's efforts to bring about an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and said Israel is America's "closest ally in the Middle East."

The US president noted he had been "the first American President to call for a Palestinian state, and building support for the two-state solution has been one of the highest priorities of my Presidency."

"To earn the trust of Israeli leaders, we made it clear that no Palestinian state would be born of terror, we backed [former] prime minister [Ariel] Sharon's courageous withdrawal from Gaza, and we supported his decision to build a security fence, not as a political border but to protect his people from terror."

He called the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a "terrorist who stole from his people and walked away from peace," but was complimentary of the current Palestinian Authority's leadership, saying that the US was "strongly supporting its efforts to build the institutions of a vibrant democratic state."

"In all our efforts to promote a two-state solution, we have included Arab leaders from across the region, because their support will be essential for a lasting peace," the president added. "I believe that the day will come when the map of the Middle East shows a peaceful, secure Israel beside a peaceful and democratic Palestine."

Noting that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has not yet been reached, as was agreed at the Annapolis conference in November 2007, Bush said that both sides had "made important progress. And as they have stated to the Quartet, they have laid a new foundation of trust for the future."

The US president went on to speak about problems in the entire Middle East, saying, "Iran and Syria continue to sponsor terror, Iran's uranium enrichment remains a major threat to peace, and many in the region still live under oppression."

Still, Bush proclaimed that the Mideast was a freer, more hopeful place today than it was when he took office in 2001. He cited examples: The Lebanese are free from Syria's military occupation; Libya's nuclear weapons equipment is locked away in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are emerging as centers of commerce; Iran is facing greater international pressure than ever before; and the threat from terror organizations like al-Qaida has been curtailed.

On Iraq, Bush defended the US-led invasion on grounds the world could not have risked leaving President Saddam Hussein's power unchecked. While it is true Saddam was not connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the decision to oust him cannot be viewed in isolation, he said.

"In a world where terrorists armed with box cutters had just killed nearly 3,000 people, America had to decide whether we could tolerate a sworn enemy that acted belligerently, that supported terror and that intelligence agencies around the world believed had weapons of mass destruction," the US president said, referring to intelligence reports that later proved false.

"It was clear to me, it was clear to members of both political parties, and to many leaders around the world that after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take," President Bush said about the Iraq war, which has claimed the lives of more than 4,200 US military personnel and many times more than that Iraqis.



4) An Enduring Crisis for the Black Family
By Kay Hymowitz


In the nearly half-century in which we have gone from George Wallace to Barack Obama, America has another, less hopeful story to tell about racial progress, one that may be even harder to reverse.

In 1965, a young assistant secretary of labor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan stumbled upon data that showed a rise in the number of black single mothers. As Moynihan wrote in a now-famous report for the Johnson administration, especially troubling was that the growth in illegitimacy, as it was universally called then, coincided with a decline in black male unemployment. Strangely, black men were joining the labor force more, but they were marrying -- and fathering -- less.

There were other puzzling facts. In 1950, at the height of the Jim Crow era and despite the shattering legacy of slavery, the great majority of black children -- an estimated 85 percent -- were born to their two married parents. Just 15 years later, there seemed to be no obvious reason that that would change. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, legal barriers to equality were falling. The black middle class had grown substantially, and the first five years of the 1960s had produced 7 million new jobs. Yet 24 percent of black mothers were then bypassing marriage. Moynihan wrote later that he, like everyone else in the policy business, had assumed that "economic conditions determine social conditions." Now it seemed, "what everyone knew was evidently not so."


President Lyndon Johnson was deeply shaken by Moynihan's findings. Neither man was driven by sentimentality or religious conviction, but both believed that fatherlessness undermined the "basic socializing unit." Intent on sounding a public alarm, Johnson declared during a commencement address at Howard University: "When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled."

Unfortunately, those warnings were as prescient as they were reviled. Civil rights leaders, worried about reviving racist myths about black promiscuity, objected to what they viewed as blaming the victim. Feminists were inclined to look on the "strong black women" raising their children without men as a symbol of female autonomy. By the fall of 1965, when a White House conference on the black family was scheduled, the Moynihan report and the subject had disappeared.

But the silent treatment was the wrong medicine. Since 1965, through economic recessions and booms, the black family has unraveled in ways that have little parallel in human cultures. By 1980, black fatherlessness had doubled; 56 percent of black births were to single mothers. In inner-city neighborhoods, the number was closer to 66 percent. By the 1990s, even as the overall fertility of American women, including African Americans, was falling, the majority of black women who did bear children were unmarried. Today, 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. In some neighborhoods, two-parent families have vanished. In parts of Newark and Philadelphia, for example, it is common to find children who are not only growing up without their fathers but don't know anyone who is living with his or her biological father.

And what has this meant for racial progress? Fifty years after Jim Crow, black U.S. households have the lowest median income of any racial or ethnic group. Close to a third of black children are poor, and their chances of moving out of poverty are considerably lower than those of their white peers. The fractured black family is not the sole explanation for these gaps, but it is central. While half of all black children born to single mothers are poor, that is the case for only 12 percent of those born to married parents. At least three simulation studies "marrying off" single mothers to either the fathers of their children or to potential husbands of similar demographic characteristics concluded that child poverty would be dramatically lower had marriage rates remained what they were in 1970.

Black married couples make a median household income of $62,000, which is more than 80 percent of what white households earn and represents a gain of 13 percentage points since the 1960s. Yet overall, black household median income is only 62 percent that of white households, a mere six-point increase over the same period.

Merely walking down the aisle can't explain these differences. Rather, the institution of marriage appears to promote ideals of stability, order and fidelity that benefit children and adults alike. Those who pin their hopes for black progress on education tend to forget this. Numerous studies, when controlled for income and race, show that, on average, children growing up with single mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and go to college. And Moynihan's discovery of a negligible relationship between "economic conditions and social conditions" suggests that even increases in black male employment are not a certain cure.

Through the power of his own example, Obama presents a chance to revive what Lyndon Johnson called "the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights." Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," conveys the economic, emotional and existential toll of growing up fatherless, and he has spoken movingly of his determination to ensure for his own children a different life. Yet tackling this issue won't be easy. When Obama gave a Father's Day speech lamenting "fathers . . . missing from too many lives and too many homes," Jesse Jackson was so incensed that he said he wanted to castrate Obama. Still, painful as the subject is, the alternative is far worse: racial inequality as far as the eye can see.

5) Another Sen. Kennedy?

After taking on a more active political role during the election, ABC's sources say David Paterson may be considering Caroline Kennedy, and she may be considering the offer:

A Democrat who would know tells ABC News that New York governor David Paterson has talked to Caroline Kennedy about taking the seat, which was once held by her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy. It’s not exactly shocking that Paterson would reach out to one of the most highly respected public figures in New York, but this is: Sources say Kennedy is considering it, and has not ruled out coming to Washington to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.


When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disavowed interest in the job this week, he suggested Caroline as a replacement, and her endorsement of Obama during the primaries would make her a pleasing choice for the president-Elect, to whom she'd likely have great access. It was partly her comparison of Obama to her father that allowed Obama to luxuriate in a week of Kennedy comparisons when the primary contest was heating up, as it gave a news hook to everything the media had wanted to say about him.