By the tender age of ten I had figured out that it was best to admit upfront to a misdeed.  Not so much to get it off my conscience–I really had enjoyed the candy and would likely take a similar risk in the future–but to minimize the impact of having been caught in the act red (actually brown) handed.

How did my strategy differ from that of Jamie Dimon?  His confession, We were wrong, dead wrong, was carefully crafted to lessen the impact of JP Morgan’s mischief.  The difference in a nutshell: I was hoping to avoid a tongue-lashing about how it was unhealthy to eat so much chocolate. On the other hand I had performed the George Washington thing about not telling a lie.  Taken together, my parents gave me a pass.

CEO Dimon must not get off so easily.  He’s not a ten-year-old anticipating the mercy of parents. He is a top of the pile money guy with a gaggle of lawyers, accountants, actuaries, and advisers telling him to fall on the sword.  Alas, the sword is a pen knife that would barely break skin.

This is not Forrest Gump–My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.  This is about two billion bucks gone because of greed. Dimon’s characterization, We made a terrible, stupid, egregious mistake and there’s almost no excuse for it, doesn’t cut it.  His logic: Because the bank’s actions were stupid and careless, there’s no need for regulation. Dimon’s contrition is all about opposing government regulation of the too big. If anything, his woe-is-me attitude highlights not only ‘too big to fail’ but ‘too big to succeed’ as well.  Financial industry critics scream that it is an absolute necessity to prevent risky banker-bets if the country is to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

Dimon and his minions are trying to write this off as some terrible mistake not to be repeated – -not in any way the outcome of continued lax regulation.  My chocolate escapade admission was based on there being no way out. I was the only one at home. The candy dish moments before had held a very finite number of chocolates that came out of a new box (guilty by subtraction). And I realized my parents would still love me despite my petty theft.

Not so with JP Morgan.  It is said that the fault lies with credit derivatives.  I’m not really sure the problem can be explained away that simply.  It’s been revealed, to date, that the bank’s loss was $2 billion.  It may be double that amount for all we’ll ever know. It is argued that the losses were the bank’s alone; not consumers’. Believe that and I’ll sell you a  partially eaten box of chocolates.

Do you know that the box of chocolates line was changed for the movie?  In the novel the line was “being an idiot is no box of chocolates”. The line was changed because it did not tie in with the theme of the movie, the line portrayed more of a dark theme.  The original line is far more appropriate of Wall Street today.

JP Morgan and its brethren needs a parent to give tough love.  We’re still waiting for that to happen. Dimon’s lament, We will learn from it, we will fix it, and we will move on, is astonishingly simplistic and dishonest.

What needs to be done:

• Fire the CEO.  Dimon’s fitness to lead the financial industry is unacceptable.
• Dimon must leave his position on the New York Fed, the entity that oversees banks’ financial practices.

• Do not trust Wall Street banks to regulate themselves.  Reenact Glass-Steagall separating risk-taking opportunities from traditional banking practices.

The Wall Street fiasco is no box of chocolates. Sweets give momentary pleasure and end up giving pimples. Not such a big price to pay for a simple pleasure.

Last week President Obama took a big risk challenging evangelicals and ultra-conservatives by stating his acceptance of the concept and practice of same-sex marriage.

There’s no sweetness in bringing the nation’s economy to its knees again.  I’m left hoping the president will do what’s right.  Tell the nation that the legal gambling conducted regularly by banks with the people’s money has to stop — soon.

Each reinforced Barack Obama’s commitment to moving forward and fairness. (see below)

President Barack Obama announced that it was important for him to go ahead and affirm that . . . same-sex couples should be able to get married.

I was not among the countless demonstrators at Wall Street yesterday. But I will always think about what I did first the morning of May 1, 2012. I flipped through photographs of my children and their children, wondering what their lives would be like in ten, twenty, thirty years. I imagine it will not be much like the America I knew when I was one, five, and ten. And that angers and frightens me.

It was this past summer that I stood across from Chicago’s Haymarket. Food stands fill its enormous hall today. Lots of people had died there in 1894. Surely they must have deserved their fates meted out by police sent in to disperse the fast growing crowd. After all, the protesters–along with similar numbers throughout the country–were demonstrating for an eight-hour work day. They got what was coming to them. Some died from policemen’s bullets; others, considered provocateurs, were hanged. Reasonable, no?

My morning recollections perhaps mirrored the thinking of tens of thousands who gathered at the corporate offices of Chase Bank, Bank of America, Newscorp, Standard & Poor. My frustrations were being acted out by protesters in painted faces at the teach-ins at Bryant Park. My hope for a better America was being proclaimed by a countless mass marching from Union Square to Wall Street.

And to think that similar scenes, parallel actions, were taking place all across our country. The activist groups, the progressive organizations, and the unions letting the powers-that-be know that change is in the air. Might we some day be singing the lyrics to Happy Days Are Here Again?  For the sake of the tens of millions who work at minimum wage, for the millions who hope that our country will some day have a comprehensive immigration policy, for the tens of millions of those who can’t find good jobs–college degree in hand or not–I hope so.

Imagine that in the day of the Haymarket Massacre–a short time before there was a national day to celebrate labor’s contributions to America–that the masses had access to the marvel of social networking. Maybe we would not be in the situation we find ourselves today. Maybe life in America would be fairer than too many find it in 2012. Maybe the middle class would have remained the engine of the economy. Maybe America’s level playing field would be the envy of people around the world.

I’d be looking at the photos of my kids and grandkids and thinking that–maybe–they could live their lives similarly to the way I had lived mine when I had been one and five and nine. At a time when my parents had every reason to believe that life would be better for their children than it had been for them.

Maybe. If we are to return to the happy days, maybe, it will be because lots of hard-working and non-working people made their way yesterday to the streets and parks and and courthouses and stock exchanges and corporate centers and made A Day Without the Ninety-Nine Percent a day for all to remember. Maybe.

I’m not wondering about what the protests will be about. In the case of the Occupy movement, May 1 will be A Day Without the 99 Percent.  Let’s hope so, although there does not seem to be a whole lot of talk about parades and celebrations.  Maybe that’s because in this country we do that kind of stuff in September, on Labor Day.  We know it as back-to-school day for little Johnny, which makes parents celebrate.  We do barbecues in the back yard. There was a time when baseball had single-admission double-headers to thank the fans for a summer’s worth of ticket purchases. My father figured this was the day to put the white shoes back in the closet.

Some attribute the origin of Labor Day to President Grover Cleveland.  What had begun as a day of demonstrations in Chicago in support of a general strike for an eight-hour work day, turned to chaos when a bomb exploded at Haymarket Square. Police fired at the crowd. Scores were wounded or killed, including several police officers. A group of anarchists were found guilty, some hanged. The others were eventually pardoned by the incoming governor.

Chicago may have been the center of the demonstrations, but events were commonplace in cities across America that day.  Accounts of the Haymarket Massacre vary.  But a known outcome was that Cleveland, thinking May 1 to be a date too emotionally charged,  decided to take the heat out of events by declaring a Labor Day for the country to be celebrated in September. This was the president’s way of gaining favor with the unions.

Yet May 1 remains embedded in the minds of organized workers as a day of conflict, a reminder of the tension that has long existed between workers and corporations.  More recently organized labor identifies with the air traffic controllers fired by President Reagan. Many consider that action as the beginning of the end of unions as we know them. The Republican party since Reagan  has successfully pitted non-union workers against union workers.  Evidence of this tension too often highlights the news. That’s why the Occupy movement can be such an important force.  We don’t need bombs or bullets to let the world know where we stand.  The Arab Spring demonstrated how social networking can spread a message swiftly and powerfully.  OWS may succeed where Congress has failed.  Three years ago Congress could have passed the Employee Free Choice Act amending the National Labor Relations Act enabling employees to form, join, or assist labor unions.   

• EFCA  would have provided for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes. 
• EFCA would have removed the right of the employer to demand an additional, separate ballot where a majority of employees have already given their signature supporting the union.
• EFCA  would have required employers and unions to enter binding arbitration to produce a collective agreement at latest 120 days after a union is recognized.
• EFCA would have increased penalties on employers who discriminate against workers for union involvement.

The obstructionists in Congress claimed that the legislation would not protect employee privacy; that card check elections lead to overt coercion on the part of union organizers. Subsequently, in 2010, four states have passed constitutional amendments guaranteeing a secret ballot on union recognition: Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. Workers have a long way to go.  Fifty minus four leaves forty-six.  Wisconsin may be getting the headlines but the situation is hardly limited to the Badger State.

Randi Weingarten has talked about collective bargaining being a necessary checks and balances model for workers. She’s absolutely correct.  Labor law reform needs to happen.  But it won’t without American workers, union and non-union, coming together to show strength at a time the working middle class remains under constant attack from the frighties.

The message for May 1 is simple: fairness.  It’s about a level playing field that allows workers to bargain collectively. Corporations are not people.  Never were. Never will be.

For those too young to remember the Nixon’s Wednesday Night Massacre, here’s the picture. Nixon was fearful that Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was getting awfully close to uncovering the truth about the president’s involvement in Watergate.  Cox was requesting tapes of Oval Office conversations. Perish the thought! So Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson, refusing to follow his boss’ directive, resigned. So Nixon turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to be his trigger man. He also refused, and resigned as well.

So Nixon went to Robert Bork who had no difficulty with who carrying out Nixon’s wish. Alas, the Supreme Court eventually ruled that Nixon had to present the infamous tapes. Nixon resigned.

Who says that similar conduct would not occur again under Romney?  Romney has tapped Bork to advise him on the kinds of judges who should serve on the Supreme Court.  This is serious stuff, man.  At a time when the Supreme Court is already sanctifying the power of large corporations and closing down individual Americans’ access to the courts, when reproductive freedom and voting rights hang by a thread, it is a cause for great alarm that Romney wants to try once again to bring a man like Bork (not like Bork, but Bork himself) to advise him on legal matters.

Consider Bork’s record as a circuit court judge: His voting record that consistently favored government when it was challenged by public interest groups, workers, or citizens AND favored business corporations whenever they challenged the government. During his Supreme Court confirmation fight, the Public Citizen Litigation Group published a report on Judge Bork’s judicial record. It could find no “consistent application of judicial restraint or any other judicial philosophy” in Bork’s work on the Court. Public Citizen found that “one can predict [Bork's] vote with almost complete accuracy simply by identifying the parties in the case.” When the government litigated against a business corporation, Judge Bork voted for the business interest 100% of the time. But when government was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers, Bork voted nearly 100% of the time for the government.

If that’s not enough to get you to mad enough, consider that Bork is one of the leading anti-women judges of all time.  Check out his record.  There is no question that Bork will greatly influence Romney who is no constitutional scholar–why else he made Bork his in-house counsel? Decades of Supreme Court decisions striking down gender-discriminatory laws under the Equal Protection Clause will be thrown into doubt as the Supreme Court revisits sex discrimination.

Romney intends his appointment of Bork as his counsel to persuade the Religious Right and the Tea Party that he is a severe conservative.  Given the opportunity Romney will nominate judges to the bench who will reverse civil rights and civil liberties law. How better to prove that he will be a frighty conservative president than to select a man who remains committed to reversing precedents that support free speech rights, abortion rights, gay rights–any rights but the far right.

What better proof that the formerly pro-gay rights and pro-choice Massachusetts governor has completed his conversion to right-wing conservatism than to pick America’s scowling critic of abortion, gay rights, free speech,progressive regulation and the separation of church and state as his constitutional in-house counsel?

Well, sorry Mom.  I have nothing nice to say about Robert Bork.  And I shan’t let this opportunity pass.

What might possibly have possessed severely conservative presidential candidate Mitt Romney to appoint severely, severely, severely conservative Robert Bork to be his presidential campaign’s legal adviser? One of the most divisive figures in recent American history?

Talk about sucking up to the frighties.  How far need one go to convince the unconvinced that you are further to the right than Attila? And if that be your goal, how do you get there?

Teddy Kennedy described “Robert Bork’s America” as “a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government . . .”

If nothing else Romney’s decision is scaring the willies out of every American who retains an ounce of belief in the American way and old enough to recall the politics of the seventies and the eighties.  Tea Party frighties are celebrating. Social conservatives (ultra-religious nut jobs) are high five-ing and panting over the announcement. Bork represents everything a rational, freedom-loving, American detests, abhors, rejects, finds vehemently distasteful and repugnant. Again, sorry Mom, can’t help it when it comes to Bork. He makes Newt look like Mr. Rogers (you remember he designated himself cheerful because nobody else would–not even Calista).

And I’m being kind.  To be brief, Robert Bork is the extremist’s extremist. Bork opposed the1964 Civil Rights Act – which banned forms of discrimination such as whites-only lunch counters and motels.  He considered the law to be state coercion and a principle of unsurpassed ugliness.

Talk about turning the clock back.  Think goodbye civil rights, civil liberties. Bork has fixed positions against gay rights, abortion, free speech, regulating industry, separation of church and state. His anti positions know no limits–anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-union, anti-women’s rights.  He still disagrees with the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut which struck down as a violation of the right to privacy a law that prohibited married couples from using contraceptives.

Just the kind of guy you can’t wait to sit down and have a beer with.

Recall when he intervened in Watergate on behalf of ‘Tricky Dicky, I am not a crook’.  Of course Bork’s involvement then was for the good of the country. What else might his reason have been?  Reagan later thought Bork was peaches and cream, nominating him for the Supreme Court.  Bork’s rejection by the Senate, by a goodly margin–I think the largest negative vote for a Supreme Court candidate in the history of the country–was a godsend (although his replacement, Scalia, is hardly a blessing).

In the world of poll taxes and literary tests for voters Bork is seen as a hero. To those who are one million percent against abortion for any possible reason, Bork is ‘the man’.  Sex discrimination? Never happened, never will.  Not in his courtroom.

I’m trying to find something nice to say, Mom, really.  I can’t.  Not even close.

So there has to be at least a grain of truth to Romney’s self-proclamation as severely conservative. What kind of candidate might even consider this legal neanderthal to direct one’s political campaign?

Can’t wait for the word to get out.  Think of every group that finds Romney’s positions repulsive and repressive going nuts.   Romney is hurting  badly on all the likability graphs, trailing President Obama substantially.  Place youthful, baby-faced Paul Ryan on one side of Romney and clean-shaven Robert Bork on the other and the trio will present quite a portrait.

Might Romney appointing Bork be akin to McCain selecting Palin as his running mate?  I certainly hope so.  This could be fun if the media decides to devote a little time and effort.  The only thing better would be for Romney to make Bork his vice presidential choice. Headline: Romney borks himself.

Mom says, in this particular case, the man deserves anything I might say. I feel better now.

  ]]> http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/28/2459/feed/ 0 http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/26/jon-huntsman-need-for-a-gop-un-reality-reality-check/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jon-huntsman-need-for-a-gop-un-reality-reality-check http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/26/jon-huntsman-need-for-a-gop-un-reality-reality-check/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:01:28 +0000 Marvin http://www.yeswecanli.org/?p=2452 Last week Tom Friedman’s piece (NY Times) encouraged Mayor Bloomberg to enter the fray and run for president as a third party candidate.  He was clearly wrong here.  Any gesture, supposition, or suggestion that President Obama might make in response to a centrist candidate’s positions would serve to further migrate any discussion of economic or social issues further to the right.

The more recent urging of Jon Huntsman to go third-party deserves attention. It is based on the reality of the Republican Party’s lack of reality.  He actually made a very candid comparison between the Republican Party and communist China.  That remark was responsive to the RNC’s exclusion of Huntsman from a fundraiser because of third-party advocacy. He should know both sides of the equation having been our country’s ambassador to China before his weak attempt to run for president on the Republican ticket.  

He went so far as to lament the GOP field of presidential candidates. Best: I don’t know what world these people are living in, describing the Republican candidates’ positions on foreign policy. Also: describing the initial cohort of GOP presidential candidates, Is this the best we can do?

Regarding the horde of conservatives in Congress who have signed the Grover Norquist no tax under any circumstances pledge, Huntsman’s wife cautioned that she would leave her husband if he signed on.  Stating his recognition that science plays a major role in social and environmental policy-making, Huntsman looked out at a sea of bewildered faces when he reinforced his belief in science.

Perhaps what Huntsman is most loudly conveying via his silence is what many Republicans feel–that he holds little favorable regard for Romney as a president: I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas. 

His family has commented that he will not stump for Romney and is enjoying life as a private citizen.

To which I suggest, Now’s the time for President Obama to find Huntsman another ambassadorship somewhere, anywhere.

******

 There’s a huge gap between McCain and Romney.  It will be interesting to observe how the Mittster-Fibster will morph his positions to appear less severely conservative as he has campaigned.

From campaign finance reform and foreign policy, to immigration and the economy, Mitt Romney and today’s Republicans are far more conservative than John McCain was in 2008:

·         Mitt Romney is campaigning in Arizona with Sen. John McCain, who Romney once said was “probably not a conservative.” In fact, four years after McCain ran for president, Romney and the Tea Party have dragged the GOP further to the extreme right than it’s been in 100 years. From campaign finance reform and foreign policy to immigration and the economy, Romney and today’s Republicans are far more conservative than McCain was in 2008.

·         McCain’s signature piece of legislation was his campaign finance reform, which sought to weaken the influence special interest money had in politics. Romney said the law was “a disaster” and that we ought to “get rid of” it.

o   When the Supreme Court issued the Citizens United ruling that gutted McCain-Feingold, McCain rightly called it “an outrage.”

o   Meanwhile, Romney said the Citizens United ruling was the “correct decision.” It legalized the SuperPACs funded by oil companies, Wall Street and other special interests that let Romney tear down his opponents with negative ads during the primary.

Republicans went from a presidential nominee known for his heroism and foreign    policy experience to one who lacks the judgment and values to be a Commander      in Chief.

• Romney undermined what little foreign policy credibility he had by irresponsibly claiming that Russia is “without question our number one geopolitical foe.”
• Romney said he doesn’t believe waterboarding is a form of torture. McCain disagreed, saying “waterboarding is torture” and that he was “very disappointed” by Republican candidates who support waterboarding.

• Romney’s stance on immigration is far more extreme than McCain’s. In fact, Romney will be the most extreme nominee on immigration in recent history.
• Romney said the answer to illegal immigration is to encourage “self-deportation,” which McCain rightly called inhumane.
• Romney derided the bipartisan McCain-Kennedy immigration reform proposal as “amnesty to every illegal alien already in the country.”

• While McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, Romney wants to make them permanent. In fact, Romney wants to further cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires at the expense of our economy and investments in a strong middle class, and his tax plan would likely add $5 trillion to the deficit.

Source: OFA’s Talking Points

I’ve got hope
But you can’t eat hope
I’m not done
Not giving up
Not cashing in
Too late

There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for me
It’s for all those creeps watching tickers on TV
There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for me

–Neil Young, 2009

Neil Young rants about change and choices.  His road-as-metaphor-for-life lyrics point to the global economic crisis, to climate change, and to America’s auto industry.

But Young goes beyond pointing out the problems. That’s the easy part. He sings about how once you recognize a problem, then you call out the need to address it, and finally you do something about it.

That’s pretty much where we find ourselves today–the doing part.  We recognized the problems early on.  We have spent three years talking about them.

With a critical presidential and congressional election looming, now’s the time to do something about it.

Primaries and caucuses are in the rear view mirror.  Just ahead awaits the fork in the road.

You may take the left fork.  You may take the right fork.  Each of us is confronted by that choice.

The left fork is about fairness, a level playing field.  The right fork leads to further deregulation and growing the advantages favoring those already possessing the wealth and influence that gets a foot in the door.

The left fork leads to judicial appointments that might be about fairness and a level playing field.  The right fork will add to the trail of Bush v Gore, Citizens United, Stand Your Ground, . . .

The left fork will, with greater likelihood, explore alternatives, impose sanctions, build coalitions. The right fork will, with greater likelihood,  send more young Americans to fight somewhere for some reason that young Americans disagree with or simply do not understand.

The left fork will understand that the law of supply and demand applies, that the middle class is the engine of our economy, that with jobs and decent wages people spend money, and that when people spend money businesses flourish and grow.  The right fork supports the trickle-down notion that if the wealthy allow for a drip to reach the masses, they can justify CEO growing salaries while business diminishes because too few enjoy the resources necessary to consuming goods and contract for services without building greater debt.

The left fork understands the Ryan-Romney budget to be a continuance of the attack on the middle class.  The right fork calls such commentary class warfare.

The left fork honors the belief that the future of our country is in the hands of its youth–an educated, optimistic youth that sees the fruits of study and work leading to well-paying jobs and security for their families. The right fork will value working for hedge funds and Wall Street while foregoing careers in engineering, medicine, and teaching.

The left fork believes that every person has the right to worship, or not, as they choose, and does not focus its energy on how to govern the inalienable rights of people.  The right fork believes that it can impose its narrow set of values on people.

The left fork believes that there can be comprehensive and humane solutions to social issues such as immigration and voting rights. The right fork offers simplistic, hurtful solutions aimed at denying opportunity to each and every person born in this country.

The left fork knows that our musket-toting Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen that weaponry would evolve so that hundreds of rounds could be fired off in seconds and from great distances.  The right fork wants people to carry automatic weapons into national parks, onto city streets, and any place that a person may possibly, to whatever the extent of one’s imagination, feel endangered.

The left fork enables women to be educated and free to make choices about issues involving reproduction.  The right fork says there is but one set of rules and women do not have the right to question it.

The left fork understands that none of us chooses his/her gender, skin color, nationality, or religion; that we are all born with a good-housekeeping seal of approval until someone thinks they have the right to decide otherwise.  The right fork, too often, believes that it can conjure up ideas about others based upon some distortion of innate human properties.

The fork in the road serves a real purpose. When one arrives at the fork he or she has to make a conscious choice about what the best thing to do is–for oneself, for one’s family, for one;s community, for one’s country, for the world.  Unless, that is, you elect to stand there scratching your head.  Not an option. Yogi Berra is known to have said, When you come to the fork in the road, take it. As a Yogi-ism, that’s humorous. As a real life choice, that’s a different story altogether.

Each time frighty Romney has come to a fork he has chosen the road further right. Further right. Further right. For political reasons. For political reasons. For political reasons.

President Obama straddles the center. Some label him left-of-center. Others insist he’s right of center. But ought not be pigeon-holed. His decisions, whether or not you agree with him each and every time, have been far more rational than political. His responses to tough situations–bailing out the auto industry (the unions), capturing and killing bin Laden, pursuing health care reform, were decisions not easily arrived at. Ultimately, his courageous choices have proven his instincts to be reliable and trustworthy.

On the radio
Those were the days
Bring ‘em back

There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you
It’s for all those creeps hiding what they do
There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you
Bailout coming but it’s not for you

Got my flat screen
Got it repo’d now
They picked it up
Left a hole in the wall
Last Saturday
Missed the Raiders game

There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you
There’s a bailout coming but it’s not for you
It’s for all those creeps hiding what they do.

I try really hard not to repeat myself.  And YWC!LI 2012′s Board made a commitment three years ago to suspend dues and to limit its expenses to necessities like maintaining this newsletter and our website. They have been since Obama’s victory our way of staying in touch.  Until now!

No electronic means of communication can ever be as effective as the face-to-face, direct services to a community as that provided by the Obama storefronts YWC!LI maintained in the months leading up to President Obama’s election.  Hillary wrote about how it takes a village. When it comes to community organizing there’s nothing like a place in which people congregate and organize and get the necessary tasks.

So, despite my commitments to avoid repeating and pleading, I am hopeful of persuading you of the necessity of opening local Obama storefronts.  That’s the sole reason for the May 8 fundraiser led by the TOH Democratic Committee and Yes We Can! Long Island 2012. We are expecting the May 8 fundraiser to provide the resources to maintain three spaces through the November election.

Just as they say, You don’t have to be Jewish to eat Levy’s rye,

it is also true that

you need not live in the Town of Hempstead

to support this key effort.

We can’t accomplish this without your support. A ticket to the fundraiser is $100. Beyond the gratification of meeting with people committed to supporting our president, you will make the storefronts reality.
Please buy your ticket today.  Mail a check to the TOH Democratic Committee, c/o Bob Young, Deputy Town Democratic Leader, 29 Central Parkway, Merrick, NY 11566.

As the program takes shape, I’ll keep you posted.  But, please, don’t hesitate to demonstrate your commitment. Thank you.

Marvin and Bob ]]> http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/20/hillary-revisited-it-takes-a-storefront-or-three/feed/ 0 http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/18/on-the-backs-of-the-poor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-the-backs-of-the-poor http://www.yeswecanli.org/2012/04/18/on-the-backs-of-the-poor/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:21:25 +0000 Marvin http://www.yeswecanli.org/?p=2444 Compare and Contrast. It was not so very long ago that Bush II proclaimed that he refused tobalance the budget on the backs of the poor. Saying this shocked the GOP establishment. After all, isn’t playing to the ‘needs’ of the well-to-do while suppressing minorities and the poor the existentialist goal of the frighties?

Somehow, candidate Romney is going to have to merge Bush’s notion of compassionate conservatism with the increasingly merciless conservatism of the Republican Party of the 2012 campaign.  Lots of luck, Mitt (not really). 

We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know-canny investors, erudite authors-sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration . . . Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief . . . The Bush years cannot be repudiated, but the memory of them can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP platform that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land freely: ultralibertarianism, crank monetary theories, populist fury, and paranoid visions of a Democratic Party controlled by ACORN and the New Black Panthers. For the past three years, the media have praised the enthusiasm and energy the tea party has brought to the GOP. Yet it’s telling that that movement has failed time and again to produce even a remotely credible candidate for president. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich: The list of tea-party candidates reads like the early history of the U.S. space program, a series of humiliating fizzles and explosions that never achieved liftoff.A political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing-but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But Cain’s gaffe on Libya or Perry’s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them . . . The thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics . . . Providing health coverage to all is a worthy goal, and the core mechanisms of what we called Obamacare should not have been obnoxious to Republicans. In fact, they were drawn from past Republican plans. Democrats were so eager for Republican votes to provide bipartisan cover that they might well have paid a substantial price to get them, including dropping the surtaxes on work and investment that supposedly financed the Affordable Care Act. My urgings went unheeded, obviously. Senator Jim DeMint predicted that health care would become Obama’s Waterloo, the decisive defeat that would destroy his presidency, and Republicans accepted DeMint’s counsel. So they bet everything-and lost everything . . . Some call this the closing of the conservative mind. Alas, the conservative mind has proved itself only too open, these past years, to all manner of intellectual pollen. Call it instead the drying up of conservative creativity . . . The conservative shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology has ominous real-world consequences for American society . . . The people the political system supposedly serves, who must feel they have been subjected to a psychological experiment gone horribly wrong, pressing the red button in 2004 and getting a zap, pressing blue in 2008 for another zap, and now agonizing whether there is any choice that won’t zap them again in 2012.