Tag: tea party

Framing Innocence

We must vigilantly defend our own and other’s civil liberties, and we must always take the dialog away from those who find human sexuality inherently wrong, or, as they might say, evil.

chasdarwin1 Comment

It was an overflow crowd in a meeting room at The First Church in Oberlin (1834) –  the location on Sept 13 for the launch of  the book “Framing Innocence” A Mothers Photographs, A Prosecutor’s Zeal, and a Small Town Response, by Lynn Powell: the story of the prosecution of Cynthia Stewart for child pornography.  On 6 July 1999, Ms. Stewart – an amateur photographer, school bus driver, and mother of two- dropped off 11 rolls of film at a drug store near her home in Oberlin, Ohio.  The rolls of film contained pictures of her eight year old  daughter, Nora, including two of her in the shower.  She picked up ten of the rolls a week later (adding to the nearly 35,000 pictures she had already taken), but the store and its lab refused to return that last roll. A month later the police arrived, and she was eventually arrested for child pornography.   She faced as many as 16 years in prison, the loss of her children, and the destruction of her life.  The case attracted much local, regional, and national attention.  Life must have looked grim for Cynthia at that time, but her life partner David, many friends and others in the community came together for her cause, created a legal defense fund, and recruited legal help including the ACLU of Ohio, which filed an amicus brief.  Offers of help came in from across the nation, and in the end, justice was served: the charges were dropped.

A warm reception was held afterwards at the Black River Cafe – no tea served, if you know what I mean, and I think you do…

We must vigilantly defend our own and other’s civil liberties, and we must always take the dialog away from those who find human sexuality inherently wrong, or, as they might say, evil.

The book is published by The New Press, and is an enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring experience.

ISBN 978-1-59558-551-6

Four years ago, I was also in a packed crowd in a church – The Civic – in Cleveland Hts.  The occasion that Nov 4 was a big political rally, and the pastor observed how painful it was to have that many people in his church and not take a collection!  After an out of town speaker captivated the audience, Sherrod Brown – about to be elected to the Senate – looked back as he strolled to the podium and said “He’s going somewhere!”  Indeed: two years later to the day, Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States.  Both his victory and Cynthia’s were achieved the same way: by many people coming together to work for a result in which they deeply believed.

Yes, Yes, Keep our SS!

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Dr. paul Krugman, NT Times

Social Security turned 75 last week. It should have been a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate a program that has brought dignity and decency to the lives of older Americans.

But the program is  with some Democrats as well as nearly all Republicans joining the assault. Rumor has it that President Obama’s deficit commission may call for deep benefit cuts, in particular a sharp rise in the retirement age.

Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.

About that math: Legally, Social Security has its own, dedicated funding, via the payroll tax (“FICA” on your pay statement). But it’s also part of the broader federal budget. This dual accounting means that there are two ways Social Security could face financial problems. First, that dedicated funding could prove inadequate, forcing the program either to cut benefits or to turn to Congress for aid. Second, Social Security costs could prove unsupportable for the federal budget as a whole.

But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.

Meanwhile, an aging population will eventually (over the course of the next 20 years) cause the cost of paying Social Security benefits to rise from its current 4.8 percent of G.D.P. to about 6 percent of G.D.P. To give you some perspective, that’s a

So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count — because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget — while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable — because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people — including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission — are peddling this nonsense.

And having invented a crisis, what do Social Security’s attackers want to do? They don’t propose cutting benefits to current retirees; invariably the plan is, instead, to cut benefits many years in the future. So think about it this way: In order to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. O.K.

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

And neither wing of the anti-Social-Security coalition seems to know or care about the hardship its favorite proposals would cause.

The currently fashionable idea of raising the retirement age even more than it will rise under existing law — it has already gone from 65 to 66, it’s scheduled to rise to 67, but now some are proposing that it go to 70 — is usually justified with assertions that life expectancy has risen, so people can easily work later into life. But that’s only true for affluent, white-collar workers — the people who need Social Security least.

I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s a lot easier to imagine working until you’re 70 if you have a comfortable office job than if you’re engaged in manual labor. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society — and the growing disparities extend to matters of life and death. Life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot at the top of the income distribution, but much less for lower-income workers. And remember, the retirement age is already scheduled to rise under current law.

So let’s beat back this unnecessary, unfair and — let’s not mince words — cruel attack on working Americans. Big cuts in Social Security should not be on the table.

see:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=1&h

emphasis mine

The Reagan Revolution has come home to roost!

chasdarwin1 Comment

Watch what we do, not what we say.” (Famous Republican advice.)

The Reagan Revolution was first and foremost about cutting the taxes paid by the rich and corporations. Now, almost 30 years later, the United States of America is drowning in debt. And that is exactly what they wanted to happen.

The Plan

There were the reasons for the tax cuts Reagan said, and there was the plan Reagan had. Reagan SAID that there was this thing called the “Laugher” Curve that he said proved cutting taxes would actually increase government revenue. But what they were saying was a smokescreen, something to tell the rubes. Increasing government revenue was the last thing Reagan and his cohorts wanted. They knew (and have since said so) cutting taxes would lead to terrible deficits. They called this a “strategic deficit.” This was the plan.

Bankrupting our government (We, the People) was the plan and today we can see that it was what they did. They didn’t want revenue to increase because the idea was to “starve the beast.” Reagan called it “cutting their allowance.”

The plan was that by cutting the funding for government, government would have to cut back on what it does: regulating business, protecting regular people against powerful interests, building infrastructure, educating kids, taking care of the poor and elderly. With government (We, the People) out of the way businesses could be unleashed and really start to make money. And for those who could afford to pay, private companies would take over those other functions. That was called “privatization.”

Infrastructure? We had plenty of infrastructure back then – grab the cash now and worry about that later. (It’s later now.)

So taxes were cut. And immediately the budget went into deficit and the government started borrowing. The debt started to grow. That was the plan. They said so.

Conservatives well understood that the public was not behind their plan. This was why it was explained as a way to increase government revenue. “Watch what we do, not what we say” is about tricking the public – deceive people by telling them you are doing one thing while really doing another. They knew that if the public came to understand their plan they would all be voted out of office. The idea was to force the other party to make the cuts.

Every time someone did try to cut the public outcry was enormous. So they just kept borrowing, intentionally trying to make the debt get so bad that eventually the government would be faced with bankruptcy.

Clinton, for a time, foiled their plans. In 1993 there was a hard-fought battle to raise taxes at the top by just a small amount. Every Republican voted against it. The public was saturated with lie after lie about how this would destroy the economy. Of course, the economy boomed in the 1990s following the Clinton tax increases and by the end of Clinton’s term the government was paying off debt so quickly that Alan Greenspan called for Bush II to again cut taxes on the rich, saying it was dangerous to pay off the government debt – yes, the same Alan Greenspan who now says we have to get rid of Social Security to pay off debt. The plan.

Bush called restoration of deficits “incredibly positive news”

Seven months after taking office, George W. Bush learned that his budgets had already erased the previous administration’s huge surplus — that was paying off our country’s debt at a rapid rate — and had instead forced the country to start borrowing heavily again. Bush said the huge deficit was “Incredibly positive news” because it will create “a fiscal straitjacket for Congress.” That’s right, massive deficits were “incredibly positive news.” The plan.

Deficit Hawks Today

Now we’re experiencing part two of The Plan: use the debt as a reason to cut the things government does for We, the People. The deficit cutters insist that the government should cease investment in infrastructure, educating kids, taking care of the poor and elderly and protecting regular people against powerful interests. First and foremost they want to cut Social Security. They blocked a reasonable health care plan in the name of “less spending.” They fight every effort to stimulate the economy and create jobs so that We, the People can get out of this unemployment emergency. (High unemployment puts tremendous wage pressure on the remaining workers.)

Are we going to fall for it? Are we going to walk right into part two of The Plan? Or are we going to restore the tax base, which is the lifeblood of democracy. Taxes on the wealthy and big corporations are what brings the ability of We, the People to control our own destiny instead of yielding always to the powerful interests.

This is the choice we are faced with. The “deficit hawks” are offering only The Plan. So far restoring the tax base back to where it was is off the table, not even to be discussed. Are we going to allow that? Or are We, the People going to fight back and demand that democracy be restored?

Previously: Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling and Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation.

see; http://www.truthout.org/reagan-revolution-home-roost-america-drowning-debt59819

emphasis mine

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May 4 … “When will they ever learn…”

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May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy in Chicago:
” In connection with the nation-wide strike for the 8-hour workday, which began May 1, 1886, a mass meeting was held on the night of May 4th in the Chicago haymarket. Its purpose was to protest a police attack on Union pickettes at McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in which workers were injured and killed. When police ordered the protest meeting to disperse (peaceful though it was), a bomb was thrown toward the police by an unknown person. The police responded by firing at the crowd.… “:an unknown of civilians died.

Governor John Peter Altgeld dared to defy the combined financial, political, and journalistic powers of the state simply to do the right thing. …Altgeld boldly scrawled his name across the pardons for Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab on June 26, 1893, he unleashed upon himself a torrent of political and personal abuse from such “respectable” organs as the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times that has rarely been matched.

As surely as the term “communist” during the McCarthy era was enough to brand an individual undeserving of simple justice and constitutional rights, affixing the description “anarchist” to one in late 19th-Century America made them fair game for an uneasy and vindictive ruling class that in Chicago and other places controlled the courts and the press.

Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab were the survivors of the Haymarket martyrs–originally a group of eight men who were charged with murder following the explosion of a bomb at a Chicago labor rally on May 4, 1886 that killed several policemen. None of the eight was ever tied to the bomb, some were not even at the rally when the explosion occurred and the bombthrower was never found. But the Chicago establishment, led by Joseph Medill’s Tribune, saw the incident as a chance to wipe out the leadership of the city’s radical labor movement and send a message to all who would seek just wages, decent working conditions, and reduced hours for working men and women.

In a trial that Altgeld would later expose as riddled by abuses from jury-packing to blatantly biased rulings from the judge, the eight were convicted on evidence consisting of nothing more than popular passion and prejudice. Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer died on the gallows. Louis Lingg committed suicide in his jail cell. Weak- willed Gov. Richard Ogelsby, who privately admitted the innocence of the men, worked up enough spine to reduce the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life in prison. Neebe, who even the state’s prosecutor confided was innocent, received a sentence of 15 years.

Those enjoying increasingly concentrated wealth in Chicago had little patience with working people, especially those of foreign birth, who had the gall to stand up for their rights. Such activities were seen as a threat to the free market, the individual’s right to work 10 to 12 hours a day for a pittance…”

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/prisoner.htm

May 4, 1970: four killed and nine injured at Kent State University,

by random gunfire from National Guard troops.  (Two of those killed were changing classes, not even involved in the rally.)

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE 
words and music by Pete Seeger
performed by Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?

Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone?

Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

©1961 (Renewed) Fall River Music Inc

All Rights Reserved.

Tea Time for Fox Noise

Fox news realizes that the best way to defend right-wing victories is to keep American politics in a state of chaos, with tea parties and fresh social outrages at every turn.

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From: The Nation, by Leslie Savan

“Fox news realizes that the best way to defend right-wing victories is to keep American politics in a state of chaos, with tea parties and fresh social outrages at every turn.

Over the past week or so, stories about conservative hypocrisies have been popping up in mainstream media like cute kitten videos on the internets. There was the Vatican blaming the news media for the pedophilia practiced by priests; the Republicans blaming the violence against Democrats on the Democrats themselves; Sarah Palin, intoning that “violence isn’t the answer,” studding a map with gunsights to target the Dems who should be gotten rid of come November; and, of course, fundraisers for the family values party trying to expense-account their visit to that faux-lesbian, bondage-themed nightclub in West Hollywood. It almost made you think the conservative movement was about to collapse under the weight of its own delusions.

But then the cable ratings came out and showed that Fox News had had its best quarter ever, and that it’s the second most-watched cable channel in prime time, right after USA Network.

And that made me think of another recent story, the purge of former Bush speechwriter David Frum from the American Enterprise Institute, largely for delivering quotes like this: “The Republicans originally thought that Fox works for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox. The balance here has been completely reversed, and the thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party.”

How is it that conservatives keep getting caught violating their supposed bedrock values, weakening and ultimately discrediting the party that carries their political hopes, yet the network that promotes their cause continues to soar above its competition?

What neocons obsessed with Israel and American foreign policy (like Frum, who coined the term “axis of evil”) can’t seem to grasp is the domestic failure of the Bush administration at just about every level. Frum believes his own hype, and thinks the battle can still be joined for a “muscular” foreign policy. But Roger Ailes and Fox News realize that the worm has turned. They recognize the need to wage a rear-guard fight in defense of fragile right-wing victories (from tax cuts to a packed courts system) won over the past quarter century. They also need to keep their people out of jail for war crimes. And the best way to do that is to keep American politics in a state of chaos, with tea parties and fresh social outrages at every turn.

And that’s Fox’s storyline, which happens to be pretty good TV. It’s like an episode of Lost –it doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to keep the feeling of claustrophobic, terror-induced suspense bubbling away.

So, in Fox’s Sim Nation, white America feels victimized, spat upon, and ultimately vindicated by the outcome of every story. Fox allows viewers to complete each arc of moral judgment in their minds, if they keep watching long enough. For example, Republican whip Eric Cantor started last week as the hamhanded apparatchik who tried to say the Dems were attracting violence by whining about it. Someone had shot a bullet through his office window after the health care bill passed, too, he said, but you didn’t hear him complaining about it–that is, until he mentioned it in a press conference, provoking local cops to announce it was only random gunfire and not a deliberate attack.

Embarrassing, isn’t it, when reality mocks your spin? Fortunately, Fox viewers didn’t hear all that much about the Virginia police report, but they got an earful about Philly resident Norman Leboon, who was arrested a few days later for threatening Cantor and his family in a weird YouTube rant. That Leboon had threatened people of just about every political persuasion–he was arrested last June for threatening to have the angel Gabriel kill his roommate–wasn’t nearly as important to Fox as the fact that his threats, circulated when they did, seemed to vindicate Cantor’s original thesis.

Today’s left doesn’t have a dream machine that makes whatever they do seem to come out all right in the end. Quite the opposite, in fact. Always open to self-doubt and willing to acknowledge that the truth might yet be hidden from view, science-friendly liberals gravitate toward complexity and even ambiguity, themes difficult to squeeze into a bumper sticker. The left has its own spin, of course, and I’m all for it (luv ya, Ed Schultz), but it’s not the spin that eludes us, it’s the big-picture arc that we miss.

And the big picture is an art form, not a term paper. The left was once the master of such forms, couched in popular traditions and served up with brio, like the “Four Freedoms” FDR preached in 1941 (freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and fear). Two years later, at the height of World War II, Norman Rockwell did four patriotic paintings that have gone on to become his most memorable images (“Freedom from Want” is the Rockwell used every year as an illustration for a family Thanksgiving).

Those schmaltzy pictures are as phony as John Boehner’s tan (absent as they are of blacks, Asians, gays, etc.), but they capture the promise of a democratic America that cares for all its people. The elisions in their cast of characters are a little like the details Fox de-emphasizes in its presentations–like, for example, the pre-recorded celebrity interviews that Sarah Palin never conducted but was able to commandeer for her Fox special last night, Real American Stories Fox knows never to let the details get in the way of its message, which in this case is that Palin is a caring television professional, not to mention a “real” American. The show strings together inspirational people profiles like those that end each nightly network newscast (ABC’s “The American Heart” is the most treacly titled). Palin, of course, benefits by the association with courageous citizens, and Fox is able to use Oprahanian TV techniques to domesticate her virulent rightwing politics.

And that’s why even when the Dems win, they don’t always gain traction (post-health care vote poll numbers are all over the place). They have to reconquer the same territory over and over again, in no small part because Fox is maniacally faithful to its big picture.

Leslie Savan is the author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever.

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/146297/will_fox_news_destroy_the_republican_party_

A November to Remember

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Robert Creamer, HuffPost:

The political conventional wisdom has already concluded that Democrats will suffer major losses in November midterm elections. Indeed, if the election were held today, that might be true. There have been very few midterms in modern political history where the party that holds the White House has not lost a lot of seats in the first midterm after its President first took office.

But there are six months and a great deal that Democrats can do to succeed this fall.

Rule #1: Keep our eyes on the prize. Democrats have four goals in the coming midterms that should define our allocation of financial and political resources. In descending order of importance they are:

Maintain control of both houses of Congress.

Assuring our ability to actually pass progressive legislation….our resources should be focused on candidates that support the President’s agenda…

Use the elections to prove that support for a progressive agenda is good politics.

Take beachheads for Democratic power.

Rule #2: Midterm elections are all about turnout.

the next six months we have to be all about inspiring the Democratic base…

turnout is about execution.

Rule #3: We can’t afford to allow the Republicans to make the midterms a referendum on Democratic performance. It must be framed as a choice between the failed Republican policies of the past and the Democratic program to lay a foundation for sustained, widely-shared economic growth.

Rule #4: We have to frame the debate in clear populist terms — about who is on your side…If we don’t focus that anger on the people who really caused this economic disaster, they will blame Democrats, who are in charge of the Government.

Rule #5: The outcome of midterm elections are hugely dependent on the popularity of the President….that means that Members of Congress have an enormous personal political interest in passing his agenda.

Rule #6: In midterm elections, whichever party nationalizes the contest almost always wins.

Rule #7: No flip-flops.

Rule #8: Stay on the offensive. We must go after Republicans for the failed policies of the past that led to the recession.

Rule #9: Keep winning.

Rule #10: It’s the economy, stupid.

A lot of political water will flow under the bridge between now and November 2nd. In large measure the outcome of the midterm elections is in our hands. If Democrats do what we need to do, there is no question that we have the ability to achieve our goals and set the stage for continued progressive success in the two years leading up to the Presidential election in 2012.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

Empahsis mine

see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/ten-rules-for-democratic_b_521574.html?view=print

Hypocrisy, Fear, and Ignorance

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By Russell King, Russ’ Filtered News
Posted on March 31, 2010, Printed on March 31, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146237/

A Republican’s message to fellow  R’s:

“Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice.  You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from yours; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some examples – by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you’re going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you’ll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can’t flip out — and threaten impeachment – when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that’s centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can’t vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it’s done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against is especially ugly) —  114 of you (at last count) did just that — and it’s even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.

You can’t refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn’t meet with you.

You can’t rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.

You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can’t be for immigration reform, then against it .

You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

You can’t flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent when the white presidents did the same.  Bush.  Ford.

You can’t complain that the president hasn’t closed Gitmo yet when you’ve campaigned to keep Gitmo open.

You can’t flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush.  Nixon. Ike. You didn’t even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed leaders of a country that’s not on “kissing terms” with the US.

You can’t complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent.  (And, no, Newt — the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)

You can’t attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn’t issue any condemnation).  *The Obama administration did the day of the event.

You can’t throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when — in fact — only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.

You can’t condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.

You can’t mount a boycott against singers who say they’re ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he’s ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.

You can’t cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it’s too short.

You can’t support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.

You can’t demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it.  Repeatedly.

You can’t praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it “treasonous” under a Dem president.

You can’t propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.

You can’t be both pro-choice and anti-choice.

You can’t damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you’ve paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.

You can’t condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harm’s way, then attack the president when US troops are in harm’s way , the only difference being the president’s party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).

You can’t be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.

You can’t vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of  ‘open debate’.

If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it’s 2004 or 2010.  This is true, too, if you’re taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN.  Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution.  This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God’s stand, too.

When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can’t send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).

You can’t criticize Dems for not doing something you didn’t do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.

You can’t decry “name calling” when you’ve been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.

You can’t spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare

You can’t praise the Congressional Budget Office when its analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it’s unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don’t.

You can’t vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president.  Either you support X or you don’t. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.

You can’t call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.

You can’t spend tax-payer money on ads against spending tax-payer money.

You can’t condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.

You can’t demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don’t.

You can’t whine that it’s unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party’s former leader admits you’ve been doing it for decades.

You can’t portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can’t complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you’ve routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain — threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.

You can’t question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn’t object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can’t preach and try to legislate “Family Values” when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer’s wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife’s mother;

Hyperbole

You really need to disassociate with those among you who:

History

If you’re going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they’re NOT synonymous!)

You can’t cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you’ve decided you don’t like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word “terrorism” or say we’re at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you’re going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can’t just pretend historical events didn’t happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn’t make it less of a lie.)

You can’t say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from “socialist utopia”; is not “reparations”; and does not create “death panels”.

Hatred

You have to condemn those among you who:

Oh, and I’m not alone:  One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.

So, dear conservatives, get to work.  Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bald-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred.  Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America.  We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we’ll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms.  We need you.

Read more of Russell King’s work at Russ’ Filtered News.

© 2010 Russ’ Filtered News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146237/

RootsCamp 2010 ( That’s Twentyten)

chasdarwin1 Comment

The 2010 Ohio Rootscamp – a grassroots convention – was  attended by about 160 people at the OCSEA Union Hall on Saturday 6 March 2010.

Erin Upchurch, Social Worker at Columbus AIDS Task Force. provided the welcome, and then introduced Ohio Treasurer Kevin Boyce .

Mr. Boyce reviewed his life and its motivation for getting into politics: he was raised in a housing project, and his Dad – a Vietnam Vet –  was murdered. He was the first in his family to attend college , went on to a career in public service, and observed that being a good politician requires being a good person . Success, he learned, is a product of much hard work, and it also brings responsibility.

An outstanding Candidate.

Doug Kelly of the ODP then talked about “The Knockout in 2010 ”, and motivated us that we must elect Democrats to keep the Apportionment Board.

Lauren Wargo , also of the ODP, told us: the GOP is organized and energized , but the ODP is strong, where we have been, and where we need to go, and that we need to hold OH in 2010 .

We then had our first breakout session.

N.B.: a breakout session is what happens to an adolescent on the day of the big dance.

In the first breakout session I attended we discussed Niccolo Machiavelli and his influence on politics.

Of his two works – “The Prince “ and “Discourses” – the former is better known. It is from it that most of what we term “ Machiavellian” originates, while the latter was a more general political treatise which introduced terms such as “checks and balances”, anticipating some of the political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. From Bertrand Russell: “The doctrine of the Prince makes no attempt at giving pious advice on how to be a virtuous ruler. He recognizes that there are evil practices which are conducive to the acquisition of political power. Machiavellian takes on a sinister and derogatory meaning. He did not advocate villainy – his field of enquiry lies outside of good and evil. He should not be attacked for documenting practices common at the time in Italy.”

One cannot understand modern politics while remaining ignorant of Machiavelli.

We then had a union provided lunch, and heard a keynote from Gov. Ted Strickland .

Ted has an honest, upbeat handle on what is happening. His perception of where we are:

o In Jan 09, when the Obama administration took office:

– that month we had lost 700,000 jobs

– auto industry in dire straights

– we were on the verge of a great depression

o Now

– new leaders at GM said 3rd shift 1200 jobs in lordstown and 59mill $ in Defiance, Oh

– will pay back loans and $700 Mil interest (e.g. ‘bailout’)

– the stimulus has pulled us out of free fall

+  it has provided $2 billion in OH used to provide essential services to people in need &

+ 1/3 more in infrastructure in OH than any time in history

– we must focus on jobs

o funding from feds at same level as 2003

o positives:

– steel seeing increases in orders

– US Steel investing 400mil in Leipzig and 250 in Lorain

– wind component company from Germany may locate in Toledo

– Solar companies in Toledo

o we need a manufacturing policy

– on our way

– need to remember those in need

o DNC,DCCC,ODP size rank -the ODP is third

o we can win again in 2012 with OH

o other side is energized

o our base is not as energized

o Grassroots org is our trump card

o John Kasich

– Lehman Bros

– Fox news

– eliminate estate tax (80% goes to local gov)

– eliminate SIT TS says most irresponsible policy ever

o take this across the state

o From John Lewis (D-GA): we should never give up, never give out, and never give in

o we must be prepared for the toughest campaign in our memory.

Ted shared with us that in the 2008 campaign, he would tell supporters that at about 11:30 on election night of 2008, Bill O’Reilly of Fox would – tears streaming down his face – announce that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States.  I was wrong, he admitted: It was 9:45.

N.B.: in “Sleep Walking Through History”, author Hayes Johnson notes that when he wishes to know what is happening, he listens to the Governors.

Breakout session on Republican crimes: Cliff Arnebeck (Atty)

o first victim of Republican crime was John McCain

o committed treason against US in 2000: Rove & Blackwell & Tom Donahue

o prongs of Conspiracy: steal states and us courts

o Blackwell didn’t say: he brought into state office gov tech, smart tech, triad

o same team that was involved in election theft of FL 2000

o Iraq war: election theft cover & reelection prop

o made war go on to secure election

o we must issue new emancipation proclamation.

Brian Rothenberg

o organize online to off line, and you may use

o twitter and facebook

tea party

o Who are they?

o should we worry?

o where will there supporters come from: D’s or R’s?

o Thus far, their election success has been almost nil

Brian Rothenberg spoke on closing, and introduced David Pepper – an excellent candidate for auditor of state .

Income Disparity on the Rise; Services in decline…

socialism in reverse.

chasdarwinLeave a comment

From Common Dreams:

A Progressive Tax: It’s Not Socialism, It’s Correctionism

by Paul Buchheit

“People don’t want to talk about taxes. Most of us are afraid that a tax increase will impact ALL of us. The media shies away from such a controversial topic. Certainly the rich don’t want to talk about it. And even lower-income people seem to have this sense that they will be wealthy someday, and government shouldn’t interfere with their plans.

So on we go with the cutbacks in train and bus service, and the loss of teachers, the cancellation of after-school programs in low-income areas, reductions in library hours and park services. Plus, of course, increases in state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, cigarette taxes, utility costs, license fees, parking meter rates.

The public rarely hears about one of the major causes of this assault on the middle class.

From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America TRIPLED their after-tax percentage of our nation’s total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.

That’s a TRILLION dollars a year, one-seventh of America’s total income, that went to the richest 1% while 90% of us went backwards.

But, many people ask, don’t the very rich pay most of the taxes? Just federal income tax. And they pay less than 23% of their incomes in federal income tax. If state and local taxes, social security tax, and excise taxes are included, the lowest-earning half of America pays 24% of their incomes in taxes.

But isn’t taxing the rich a form of socialism? Since 1980, if the average working family had received compensation based on its relative contribution to America’s prosperity, it would be making an average of $45,000 a year instead of $35,000. Through 30 years of deregulation and financial maneuvering, the richest 1% have taken $10,000 a year from every American family. That’s socialism in reverse….

More significantly, our economy allows a tiny percentage of us to take an inordinate amount of money from society, at an increasing rate. Some people may have dropped out of this elite group, but those who have moved in are making even more! The result is a system in which one man (hedge fund manager John Paulson in 2007) can make more money than the total of the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago, while another man stands hungry in the cold. And any attempt to fix the system is called socialism.

So what’s the solution? Several states have implemented more progressive tax systems. And they have apparently not caused wealthy people to transfer their fortunes out-of-state. A 2008 study by Princeton University determined that “the ‘half-millionaire tax,’ at least in New Jersey, appears to be an effective and efficient revenue-generation mechanism, having little impact on migration patterns among half-millionaire households.” [1] Similarly, little adverse effect of higher taxes was found in Maryland or Oregon. [2] A study by the California Budget Project revealed that the number of high-income households actually grew during periods of higher income tax rates for top earners. [3] Oregon recently passed Measures 66 and 67, which impose modest income tax increases on the wealthiest residents and raise the corporate minimum tax for the first time in 80 years.

President Obama is right to seek a progressive federal tax structure in which the very rich will return some of the money derived from years of deregulation and shrewd financial strategies. We need Congress and the media to support this way of thinking.”

Paul Buchheit is a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University.

Note: All the facts cited herein are from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

1. Tax Foundation. Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data. July 18, 2008 <http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html>.

2. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “Who Pays?” (January, 2003) <http://www.itepnet.org/wp2000/text.pdf>; see also Citizens for Tax Justice <http://www.ctj.org/itep/ilquestions.htm>: Citizen’s Guide to the Illinois State Tax System: What Every Concerned Illinoisan Should Know (Illinoisans who make less than $15,000 per year pay 13 percent of its income in state taxes. Middle class families pay 10 percent of their income in taxes. Wealthy Illinoisans, with an average income of $1.2 million pay only 6 percent of their income in state taxes.

3. U.S. Congressional Budget Office. “Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005,” December, 2007. <http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml>. (Note: the corporate income tax, which derives from capital ownership, are not considered in this analysis; the responsibility for these taxes is subject to dispute; see William C. Randolph, “International Burdens of the Corporate Income Tax,” Congressional Budget Office, August 2006 <http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/75xx/doc7503/2006-09.pdf>: “..domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax”; see also Andrew Chamberlain, “Who Really Pays the Corporate Income Tax?” The Tax Foundation, May 4, 2006 <http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1467.html>; Bob Williams, “Who Really Pays the Corporate Income Tax?” Tax Policy Center, August 2008; Scott A. Hodge and Gerald Prante, “Personalizing the Corporate Income Tax,” The Tax Foundation, October 25, 2007 <http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22694.html>.)

see: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/04-7

New WashPost Poll: Two-Thirds of Voters Say Pass Comprehensive Reform

chasdarwinLeave a comment

by MCJoan

”

Americans spread the blame when it comes to the lack of cooperation in Washington, and, in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most want the two sides to keep working to pass comprehensive health-care reform.

Nearly six in 10 in the new poll say the Republicans aren’t doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little to get GOP support. Among independents, 56 percent see the Republicans in Congress as too unbending and 50 percent say so of the president; 28 percent of independents say both sides are doing too little to find agreement.

WaPo poll

Look at that graph–63 percent want comprehensive reform to pass, and more Independents want to see it pass than Republicans want to see it fail. But a note of caution, while the blame is primarily falling on Republicans now, ultimately the blame will be shared if it fails, and the bulk of it would fall on Obama and the Dems, since they are in charge.”

see: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/9/835523/-New-WaPo-Poll:-Two-Thirds-of-Voters-Say-Pass-Comprehensive-Reform

Emphasis Mine.