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Mr. President: Welcome Their Hatred |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Sunday, 26 September 2010 20:00 |
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The time has come for President Barack Obama to feel the power of the base that elected him ... and use it.
President Obama speaking at the Milwaukee Laborfest, 09/06/10. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
Mr. President: Welcome Their Hatred
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
26 September 10
Reader Supported News | Perspective
"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech at Madison Square Garden (October 31, 1936)
 ear Mr. President,
You were elected as a populist with a mandate for change. It is not that you have failed to deliver change; change is not an easy thing. It is that you have failed to embrace change in your own heart. It is not enough to give it a shot, or to do your best. Rather, you must personally display the resolve necessary to achieve the goal.
Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington on a sunny day. He also endured brutality, prison, and finally, death. FDR for his trouble was threatened with a well-armed, well-financed domestic insurgency if he persisted with his mandate for change. He persisted.
It is great to be reasonable, it is great to be willing to engage in dialog those with whom you disagree when ideology is at issue. But "government by organized money" has no patience with reasonable dialog.
House Minority Leader John Boehner is not going to work with you, he's not going to reach out across the aisle in a spirit of bipartisanship. Boehner is going to do what his benefactors expect of him: push through an agenda favorable to their interests. Boehner is a lobbyist with a knack for winning elections. It's not that he or his fellow congressional Republicans are inherently bad, it's that their power is rooted in private corporations, and that is who they answer to.
Your record for achievement in the White House is, frankly, not bad; in fact better by far than you are given credit for. Healthcare reform alone, however modest, was an historic accomplishment, you have won a Nobel Peace Prize, engineered the badly needed stimulus package, and quite a bit more. You have been productive.
The problem is that you are a baseless President. You have no base, no group that feels they can count on you, and on which you can rely. You have admirers, and those that respect you, many of each. But that is not the same as a base. What you had during the 2008 Presidential campaign was a base. A mass movement that fought for you and gave you a mandate.
Your mistake is trying to be all things to all people. You want your political opposition to think of you as a reasonable man, but they do not care. To them this is not your country, it is theirs, and you are in it. This is a contest of determination and resolve. You must look to Gandhi, to King, to FDR and come to understand that your struggle is no less than that which they faced.
Be who we thought you were, be who you are. Welcome their hatred.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Republicans Eating Their Own |
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Saturday, 25 September 2010 10:57 |
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"Remember Doug Hoffman? You might say he was the original Christine O'Donnell - and now he's back for a victory lap."
Conservative Party congressional candidate in New York's 23rd district Doug Hoffman, 11/03/09. (photo: Wenig/AP)
Republicans Eating Their Own
By David A. Graham, Newsweek
25 September 10
Doug Hoffman and other vanity candidates could undermine GOP pickups.
Remember Doug Hoffman? You might say he was the original Christine O'Donnell - and now he's back for a victory lap.
He's the very conservative candidate who cost Republicans New York's 23rd Congressional District in 2009, handing it to Democrat Bill Owens in a special election to replace John McHugh, a Republican who resigned to become secretary of the Army. In that race, he ran as a Conservative Party candidate facing moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava. It should have been easy for Republicans to hold, given that McHugh was a Republican and the district has historicall voted for Republicans for president, including in 2000 and 2004 (CORRECTION: This post originally stated that the 23rd district voted for McCain). But even after Scozzafava bowed to intense pressure and left the race, she drew 6 percent of the vote, enough to split conservatives and hand the election to Owens. (Hoffman had a hard time letting go, trying to "un-concede," then asserting that ACORN had stolen the election from him, despite having no evidence.)
At the time, he promised to run again the following year - since it was a special election, a regular race had to be held to fill the seat on a regular basis in November 2010. And Hoffman's a man of his word: he did run for the Republican nomination, and he didn't get it, losing a primary to Republican Matt Doheny. It took Hoffman 10 days, but he's now conceded - and promised to stay in the race as a Conservative Party candidate. That should set him up well to potentially sabotage Doheny's chance to reclaim the seat.
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GOP "Pledge": Weak Tea |
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Friday, 24 September 2010 11:07 |
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Donna Brazile: "Republicans released that agenda, a 'Pledge to America' that simply recycles warmed-over versions of the same failed policies Republicans pursued during the Bush era and injects them with steroids to make their negative consequences even worse."
House Minority Leader John Boehner (center) unveils the Republican party's 'A Pledge to America', 09/23/10. (photo: Loeb/Getty Images)
GOP "Pledge": Weak Tea
By Donna Brazile, Democrats.org
24 September 10
 his year, the Republican Party has embraced out of the mainstream candidates and ideas, but when it comes to their agenda for America…well, let's just say their agenda is pretty weak tea. Today, Republicans released that agenda, a "Pledge to America" that simply recycles warmed-over versions of the same failed policies Republicans pursued during the Bush era and injects them with steroids to make their negative consequences even worse.
Republicans are pledging to hold up tax cuts for middle class families in order to secure tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires - tax cuts that would cost America $700 billion and are, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, among the least effective ways to grow the American economy and create jobs.
Republicans are pledging to roll back the Affordable Care Act and roll back Wall Street reform - giving big insurance and big banks a license to resume the same reckless, destructive policies that hurt middle class families before Democrats undertook reform.
The cost of Republicans' pledges would be hundreds of thousands of American jobs and trillions of dollars in deficit spending. But even while running up America's debt, Republicans wouldn't invest in the things that matter to most Americans. Their pledge fails to mention any Republican commitment to investing in education for America's children, in the growth of critical industries like clean energy or manufacturing, or in rebuilding America's infrastructure.
Not only does the Republican "Pledge to America" ignore our country's recent history by pushing for the same policies that led to the economic crisis, the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the loss of 8 million American jobs - it also ignores the input of everyday Americans.
The "Pledge to America" was supposed to be based on ideas solicited on Republicans' "America Speaking Out" website, but the number one idea on that site - ending tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas - is nowhere to be found in the "Pledge to America." In fact, Republican leaders have gone on record time and again to defend those tax breaks and oppose Democratic efforts to repeal them - demonstrating more clearly than ever that Republicans' aren't interested in governing for the middle class; they're more interested in representing the special interests.
Republicans can keep peddling this agenda and all their other weak tea ideas, but I don't think most Americans are interested in gathering by their water cooler anytime soon.
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GM Has No Business Using Our Money |
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Thursday, 23 September 2010 19:43 |
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Robert Reich begins: "General Motors has given $90,500 to candidates in the current election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. Hmmm? Last time I looked, you and I and every other US taxpayer owned a majority of GM. That means some of the money we're earning as GM owners is being used to influence how we vote in the upcoming mid-term election."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
GM Has No Business Using Our Money
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
23 September 10
GM has no business using our money on campaign contributions.
 eneral Motors has given $90,500 to candidates in the current election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Hmmm? Last time I looked, you and I and every other US taxpayer owned a majority of GM. That means some of the money we're earning as GM owners is being used to influence how we vote in the upcoming mid-term election.
To put it another way, we taxpayers are paying some people (GM executives) to tell us how we should vote for another group of people (House and Senate candidates) who will decide how our taxes will be used in the future.
GM spokesman Greg Martin justifies the expenditure as a competitive necessity. "We're not going to sit on the sidelines as our competitors and other industries who have PACS are participating in the political process," he told the Wall Street Journal.
In other words, now that we taxpayers own GM, it's in our interest that GM use our money to affect how we vote, lest we mistakenly decide to support candidates who, once in office, enact legislation that helps GM's competitors and not GM.
Wait a moment. I smell hypocrisy. Didn't we help GM (and Chrysler) with a big bailout, and not help competitors Ford, Nissan, Honda, or Toyota or any other automaker that builds cars in the US?
Moreover, the circularity of GM's logic leads to some strange places. It would presumably allow any big corporation to get tax deductions (in effect, tax subsidies from the rest of us) for outlays for lobbyists, political ads, and political donations to members of congress - so long as these expenditures help the company relative to its competitors.
Problem is, the tax laws don't allow this.
Nor does the law allow taxpayer-supported entities to use taxpayer dollars to influence elections. And yet this is exactly what GM is doing.
Since TARP, suspicions about big government in cahoots with big business have fueled angry tea partiers on the right and despairing cynics on the left. GM's crass disregard for the spirit if not the letter of the law continues to fuel them.
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ew polls released in Kentucky, Nevada, and California show that Democrats are making a big comeback in each state, and the tide may be turning against the GOP. In Kentucky Rand Paul has blown a 15 point lead in less than a month. In Nevada, Harry Reid is up by 5 points on Sharron Angle, and in California the Democrats in both the gubernatorial and the Senate races now lead.
