Politicalpostaholic's Weblog

Endorsed

politicalpostaholic — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:37:20 +0000

This morning on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw, Colin Powell, a hailed general and former Secretary of State (among many other remarkable honors), endorsed Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. Mr. Powell’s lucid articulation combined with his characteristically cogent reasoning this morning. Mr. Powell conveyed the sense that his decision carried with it a tremendous weight, as he reiterated his unquestionable regard for Mr. McCain, as a man and politician, before issuing his support for Mr. Obama. Ultimately, Mr. Obama has created the truly transformative vision for our country’s future, on the world stage and on the homefront, Mr. Powell seemed to conclude. A “generational” shift, among others, was sited by Mr. Powell as a key asset that Mr. Obama will bring with him into office.

Now then, Mr. Powell “is military.” He also claimed to identify with “compassionate conservatism” and would not recant on his prior statements legitimating controversial Bush administration decisions. This man would appear to have experienced an utterly profound inner struggle during the past several weeks leading up to his endorsement. Not only did Mr. Powell express sincere affection and admiration for Mr. McCain resulting from a long history with him, but confided that he had looked to the Obama campaign in recent weeks to see proof of Mr. Obama’s preparedness for leadership. The tide of Mr. Powell’s favor in no way seemed to be biased toward Mr. Obama until this morning. And when pressed about the role that race might play (or might be supposed by the public to play) in his endorsement decision, Mr. Powell firmly insisted and compelling suggested that, were it the case that race had factored into his decision to endorse Mr. Obama, he would have made his endorsement long before today. In a touching and patriotic note however, he added that should we elect Mr. Obama, all of us would have reason to be proud of the fact that he is an African American.

No matter the factors involved in Mr. Powell’s decision, his endorsement ought to quickly stir up commotion in these last few days before the election. At the very least, Mr. Powell placed our campaigns back in the realm of The Issues and declared character or trustworthiness a non-issue. The main message that Mr. Powell’s endorsement will send to all who consider it, I believe, is that qualms raised about Mr. Obama’s potential to act as commander and chief of our military should be put to rest. No small message!

We regret this most serious post: our most serious post ever

politicalpostaholic — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:59:50 +0000

The last eight years have been hard times for most people but now we’re entering the most serious of serious times. Presidential debates, vice-presidential debates, and interviews with Katie Couric aside, we remember what we must make clear to voters now, so that we can at least get a four-year reprieve from market fundamentalism, if not a plan for economic recovery:

ECON 2008: Econ for real

Economic growth that creates jobs is created by investment. Investment drives what is known as “Capitalism.” We invest in capital, including human capital (people), to create wealth. Investment is something that governments, individuals and firms do. They all have to do it. For example, governments invest in roads, bridges, airports, schools. We can not do business without such investments occurring regularly. Individuals invest in homes, education, health. Firms invest in equipment and education too. Invest today, earn income tomorrow. Investment is done in the context of markets. Markets are the realm, the arena, where investment takes place. For the investment to flourish, for it to successfully generate wealth and for the cycle of investment and wealth creation to continue, markets must be regulated. No economist alive believes that market regulation is not required although some may advocate less than others. Remind everyone: investment and regulation are not the inventions of Democrats, but requirements of the successful functioning of our economic system.

Two presidential candidates will have a role in decisions on collecting taxpayer money as president. Spending is not the same as investing. Republicans are fond of fiscal responsibility, apparently, even if not recently demonstrating it. They are also fond of wealth, which they seek to protect fiercely with tax breaks. They label ‘big spending’ as the addiction of Democrats. What they have done, quite successfully, is blur the distinction between spending and investing. They have also somehow forgotten that taxes enable investment. Remind everyone: Barack will invest. To grow our economy with jobs, we must invest, especially with levees breaking and bridges crumbling. Tax breaks for the richest few does not compel them to invest in the things the rest of us need and it deprives our government of some of its ability to invest.

Two presidential candidates will contend with regulatory reform. Republicans are wary of regulation, lest it hinder the market and prevent wealth creation. We like markets, right? We want them to work, right? We don’t want them to fail. It is a fact that markets are prone to failure. They are social institutions. We aren’t perfect because we’re human and the markets aren’t perfect because they’re made up of human participants. Republicans love wealth creation and its arena so much, that they have deified “The Market” as an entity to make sacrifices for. What is forgotten is that markets are created by us for helping us. Fortunately, we have enough experience to know steps we can take to regulate markets, to encourage market activity and avoid certain failures. Remind everyone: Barack will ensure regulation to protect against failures so that trust and confidence in markets are restored. Firing the head of the SCC does not constitute improved regulation of financial markets.

Democrats are champion investors and proponents of reasonable market regulation. Republicans are not. Collecting taxes from citizens and businesses to pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. and imposing market regulations smack of “Socialism” to many with Republican sympathies. Socialism is associated with government intervention in markets and regulation in the extreme, which is inefficient and keeps us from creating wealth. Funny, but collecting taxes from citizens and businesses to pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. and imposing market regulations are also essential to well-functioning Capitalist societies. Remind everyone: While Barack and McCain are advocating progress and change, economically speaking, a drastically new era like we’ve never seen before is not what we’re after at the moment; we’re going for sound economic policy, which we have in fact seen before. Change, yes. Change to what works.

From the friend of a friend: the rally we didn’t see

politicalpostaholic — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:10:42 +0000

“Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect . . . I felt a bit apprehensive. I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success . . . When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park . . . Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by . . . The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans. The citizens of Alaska, who know her best, have things to say.”

On recent, unending, econ woes

politicalpostaholic — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:46:12 +0000

“John McCain seems to think that the problem is that C.E.O.’s are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We’re all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives.”

This lighthearted piece gives a wee bit of insight into the wreckage that is our corporately-ruled universe. Nicholas Kristof uses the Lehman Bros exec as his gateway. Read on:

Need a Job? $17,000 an Hour. No Success Required.

OMG, Make noise about this: McCain-Palin Healthcare Reform Plan

politicalpostaholic — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:22:38 +0000

Who knew? Employer-based coverage: what most people who have coverage depend on and what makes losing a job life-threatening, is scheduled for execution by McCain-Palin. When unemployment is at 6% and financial crises threaten to further weaken our economy, McCain’s solution is keep the Bush tax-breaks for the rich, so that the deficit stays high, and tax the rest of us on our, yes, healthcare, you know, healthcare, what puts more people into bankruptcy than anything else? How about we address the cost of healthcare, and say, reduce it? So if your mortgage hasn’t bankrupted you, fear not, healthcare reform will take care of that. Read on:

September 16, 2008

OP-ED COLUMNIST

McCain’s Radical Agenda

By BOB HERBERT

Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?

These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.

There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”

For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.

“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.

According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”

The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”

Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.

While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”

You may think this is a good move or a bad one — but it’s a monumental change in the way health coverage would be provided to scores of millions of Americans. Why not more attention?

The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.

When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.

That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.

The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”

Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.

In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.

This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.

You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.

But we’re not even paying much attention.

Lets get down to business: election countdown

politicalpostaholic — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:31:49 +0000

So, we, as despicable as the mainstream media, have been engaged in the latest games of partisan blowholes but are now committing ourselves to reform via our election countdown. With 50 days until the day of decision, we must focus all efforts, in the blogoshere and elsewhere, on our priorities:

1) Voter Turnout: register voters and help people we know get their election season affairs in order

a) volunteer with a local party office or election board and get forms to register friends/neighbors

b) conduct a little outreach/awareness and make sure registered voters know where/when they’ll vote

c) customize your usual salutations/greetings for election season:

“good morning, mr. soandso, squared away for voting day? l know where to get a voter registration form if you need one.”

“thanks a lot, let me know if I can ever give you a hand with something. you know, I’ve been helping with election season things around here and can always help you or friends and acquaintances get registered or find out where the polls will be.”

“I’ll take the paper bags today, thanks. I’m a fan of recycling paper since there’s so much paperwork around me all the time; I do a lot of election paperwork, like getting people registered to vote. By the way, if you or anyone you know needs to get registered, I can get right on that!”

“I’ll have the soup of the day please, and this voter registration form completed and returned to me. I also have a stack of forms here that you can put next to the take-out menus or salad bar.”

–ok, don’t freak people out, it’s counterproductive, but do try to reach out when possible/appropriate.

2) Convince Undecideds: These kids are clearly confused folks, so lets not overwhelm anybody

a) offer them literature, such as pages you print off the Obama website or pamphlets you got volunteering

b) ask them if there’s a particular topic/issue of interest this election and initiate relaxed conversation on it

c) ask them if you can help them get any info on candidates that they’ve been looking for but can’t find

d) tell them, only after doing the above, that Obama has caught your attention for suchandsuch reasons

–and remember, curb the elitist attitude, you out-of-touch, intellectual liberal with socialist tendencies and no idea what wartime requires!

3) Visibility for Obama: love his name, his image, and all the latest paraphernalia

a) get the signs, stickers, pins etc. from your local campaign office (which you find online)

b) respond cheerfully if neighbors ask/comment about the sign in your yard; your only response should be, “are you registered to vote? lots of purple states this year and all our voices count!”

c) encourage people you see wearing Obama t-shirts and pins and let them know you’re rooting for the same dude! we all need to know there are a lot people behind this effort, even if we don’t see them everyday!

–keep your spirits high and the campaign for Obama will keep looking like the bright place to be!

“Is Palin channeling her inner Dick Cheney?”

politicalpostaholic — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:42:24 +0000

Excerpt from Chicago Tribune blog, September 12, 2008:

According to the Washington Post, Palin told a brigade of soldiers (that included her son, Track) that they were headed to Iraq to “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Of course, that Iraqis helped the 9/11 plotters was a key element of the Bush administration’s original case for an invasion of that country. That view, however, has long been discredited, even by the administration itself.

So, is Palin channeling her inner Dick Cheney?

Check out the letter that’s circulating

politicalpostaholic — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:31:07 +0000

This letter, written and circulated by Anne Kilkenny, was taken from The Nation’s website:

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

Lets Review: Spin-doctor Secrets

politicalpostaholic — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:44:22 +0000

Because hypocrisy is much more tolerable when it is amusing, we’d like to introduce one of the more inane exploits of GOP spin-doctors this election season with this video we found posted by our facebook friends. The exploit we are referring to is this week’s use of the over-analyzed “gender card” to respond to anything short of praise of John McCain’s recently chosen running mate, Sarah Palin.