Rahm is a henchman for the Clinton machine and if they win will head the pogrom to rid the party of progressives. The fight is on.

bbl

Rahm (the cream-puff) Emmanuel needs to be sent back to the bakery.  The filling has turned rancid.

thank god I'm not playing football this weekend

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Phil,

The guys will be out in the elements for no more than, say 4 hours total...with breaks in between out of the elements and plenty of hi tech thermal protective layers..............besides, each man is gettig paided, say an average of about maybe, taking into acocunt their salary, bonus, endorsement, extra money for the championship game etc..........id guess abiut 100k at least.....

hell..............for that amount, Id go out there and play all day then.

The 5th Congressional district in Chicago has lots of DFA people near by.  Rahm needs to be challenged in the primary.  There's a Green who's giving it a try, but since he's also running for President, may be a bit of a flake.

What's distinctive about DFA is the focus on organization. 

If Rahm has to campaign for his seat, he'll have less time to mess with other candidates.  

I should point out that saying the opposite of what one means is a very important skill in the south--

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tsk tsk, Monica.........another swipe at the South. Now, for me, Ive lived in the South for 8 years straight, 6 years out West, 2 years in NE and the rest in upstate NY...................in all that time I think its fair to say that people are the same al over, just in differant ways...............racial prejudice, bigotry, hatred, ignorance, etc can be found in all areas but not in all people thank God.

I sense on this blog, especially from our NE contingent maybe a little jealousy perhaps as to the states with vibrant economies, relocations, beautiful plannede communities some gated and some not..................i will say one thing about NE though, taking into account the previous regions I lived in and keeping an open mind.............it was probably THE most prejuiced region of them all, but like you infer up above, they do it up there in such a subtle, tactical way..................

Look at your NE states.........mostly white, I dont see alot of minorities inplaces like Concord, NH, Brattleboro VT and bangor Maine..........some of the bigger ciites yes, but they were conveniently huddled "on theor side of the tracks"..............and NEers, probably like southerners wre pros at hiding their prejudices.................until like what we probably saw in NH last wek in the voting booth.

One thing I will say about the South, it is far better integrated socially and moraly as compared to NE..the South has to be if not by design than by chance...........the growing influx we see daily from people from your region, and especially like places like Michigan seeking a better life, a life of hope, challenge, vision for their future..........(Im sounding like Obameagan now) .

Now, these gated communites you people are so afraid of..let me tell you this, they are far better examples of the Obameagan "unity" he preaches than your 99% white, Norman Rockwell pretty little next to the lovely covered bridge typical NE country town..........but your cites like manchester, Boston, Portland, Hartford, new haven, etc are just as divided racially and probably more than any major or mid major city in the South........you may be surpised to know that our growing small, mid and major metropolitan areas have some of the nations best Universities , with students flocking, again away from the NE to either rid themselves of the hi taxes, crap weather and lack of hope, vision and future............

The South, and Southerners are far from perfect..........but Ive lived here long enough and witnssed other regions to give an honest assessment..............people do talk out of both sides of their mouths, but NErs disguise it better than any of the lot.............and in closing, I think thats a fair guess what happened in the voiting booth in the NH primary.

If Clinton wins the nomination kiss the progressive movement goodbye within the Democratic (sp?)Party or at least a major setback, and as long as there are three candidates racking up delegates a majority is very hard to reach even if Edwards and Obama combine for only 60%. Rahm has been doing this for years. But taking on the machine in Chicago isn't quite as easy as our wins here in Iowa I would guess, we have straight up honest politics and Clinton came in third.

The delegate count is going to be very interesting in Illinois. Don't think you don't matter this time.

Mike

as usual very astute, looking forward to your book

Thanks for this post. My mission today is to promptly send a donation to Mark Pera.

10. The "Democratic Wing" has already been defeated. Kucinich was their symbol and the media and party combined to make him invisible.

Rahm Emanuel is one of the chief reasons I am no longer a Democrat.

The party is really too far gone to save, despite the best efforts of its dwindling number of progressives.

When is Al Gore, or someone approaching his stature, going to come to terms with this dismal reality, and launch a progressive party?

9:43 am

mary vb

does your wrestler have to win three matches or four?

Why Obama will lose in November:

1. The Bradley effect
2. Karl Rove
3. Swifties
4. Voter Suppression
5. Vote Theft
6. Fear
7. Stupidity of electorate

Why Hillary will lose in November

1. Sexism
2. Clinton fatigue
3. 2 through 7, above

Good morning, everybody

Well, unless Sitka's moniker has been stolen, he's been here so long he can't possibly be a Republican.  They don't have that much staying power.

...

+++

Good morning to you too, Monica.

Great response in defense of Sitka.

John wrote "The 'Democratic Wing' has already been defeated. Kucinich was their symbol and the media and party combined to make him invisible."

How did this come to pass?  Kucinich wasn't the symbol of the Democratic Wing in 2004, so there may be some semantic discordance employed here.

John wrote "Why Obama will lose in November: . . ."

I'm also interested in your list of reasons why the Republican nominee will win in November.

Kucinich wasn't the symbol of the Democratic Wing in 2004, so there may be some semantic discordance employed here. 

The media and the party combined to destroy him too.

I'm also interested in your list of reasons why the Republican nominee will win in November.

1. The Bradley effect
2. Karl Rove
3. Swifties
4. Voter Suppression
5. Vote Theft
6. Fear
7. Stupidity of electorate

Huron John 

don't write too much into Kucinich's failure as a national candidate, because to be the movement you have to make it about more than yourself

we have three leading candidates that all pulled off that feat, and no, none are truly representative of the democratic wing. like say a Russ Feingold would have been

the three have actually had movements handed to them by history and have joined rather than led, from a symbolic standpoint, and Dennis never was able to become that symbol even as he nailed the positions of the progressive wing (which I distinquish slightly from the democratic wing)

if you call it the progressive/populist wing two of the three still in contention can put on that mantel if they chose

it will never fit Clinton

Immigration is the topic that allows people to be racist and couch it in terms of national sovereignty and security (fear).

fear and hate, it is how Republicans have won every election they ever win since Lee Atwater

our candidate doesn't have to just find Martin's cadence, but his message of brotherhood and justice

John Edwards would go a long way switching his message to one of love.

John wrote "The media and the party combined to destroy him too."

That has rather little to do with whether he represented the Democratic Wing of the Party.  In 2004, Kucinich chose to contrast himself with Dean.  He challenged the underlying presumptions of the Dean campaign and joined forces with Edwards in Iowa to cripple it.  It would be too big a stretch to call Kucinich the head of any type of movement politics because, as a presidential candidate, he is insignificant.

I would distinguish that from his role in the House, where Kucinich is able to make more of a contribution as the body's conscience, be he isn't spearheading any sweeping change in how we view and practice politics.   He can't.

America isn't in the middle of some winter night; it is one the cusp of that spring day when liberty and justice are going to flowereverywhere.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

to say it in 27 words

I'm afraid I don't understand John's lists of reasons to presage a Republican administration in November.  They basically apply to Bush's victory in 2004.  Most astute observers can discern the sea change in the political climate since then.

America isn't in the middle of some winter night; it is on the cusp of that spring day when liberty and justice are going to flower everywhere.

don't under-estimate the capability of sheeple herders to be stampe them with fear Tom

my brain is frozen from the cold, time for a fresh cup

Phil wrote "we have three leading candidates that all pulled off th[e] feat [of making a movement about more than yourself] and no, none are truly representative of the democratic wing. like say a Russ Feingold would have been."

Well, at least one isn't according to Sen. Feingold, who in an interview told the Appleton Post-Cresent that: 

"The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.

"When you had the opportunity to vote a certain way in the Senate and you didn't, and obviously there are times when you make a mistake, the notion that you sort of vote one way when you're playing the game in Washington and another way when you're running for president, there's some of that going on."

155.

Monica Smith
Sat, 01/19/08

I should point out that saying the opposite of what one means is a very important skill in the south--
=====================
I believe you are referring to the use of irony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony to bring humor and/or lightness to a situation. Since you last commented on this I've noticed that it is a device I use often, probably part of my southernness but reaching farther back, I'd say it is a Scots-Irish thing. I went to a 'shrink' once in CA who called me on giggling/laughing at some very serious matters. I didn't realize till I returned to the South that is is just a cultural communication tool. An example - when my oldest brother died a few years ago, the remaining siblings stood around the gravestone and sang Old Black Joe, a Stephen Foster song that has lost favor due to lack of PC, although there is a diorama depicting the song at the official Stephen Foster memorial, which has also lost favor. We certainly were not making any kind of racist comment, it's just that as a family we used to sing the song and somehow found it mildly humorous and very appropriate. So we sang the song, basically to keep from crying -- some families might have stood in silence, played taps, sang Amazing Grace. We liked Old Black Joe.

Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay,
Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away,
Gone from the earth to a better land I know,
I hear those gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.
Chorus:
I'm coming, I'm coming,
for my head is bending low,
I hear those gentle voices calling
Old Black Joe.

Re-examining the lyrics, it does appear to be a dirge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Black_J...

Phil wrote "don't under-estimate the capability of sheeple herders to be stampe them with fear Tom."

There will be fear in November.  It will be the fear of voters without jobs in an economy swirling down the toilet bowl.  Where is Fox with his market analysis and economic forecast?

A little humor.

Obama ended by calling Clinton’s comments “tricks” and said voters will stop listening to politicians because of them. At the end of the event, a man yelled out to Obama that he will be a better president than George Bush. Obama responded, “So would you!”

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/01/18/politics/fromtheroad/entry3726679.shtml

On CSPAN this morning I noted what I'll call a consensus on the economic stimulus plan -- to wit -- where are they going to find any money since as a country we are wildly in the red already, and it will be such a pittance that they really shouldn't bother.

33. LOL

Phil Specht
Sat, 01/19/08
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Well Phil..like the old baseball term goes..."I call em as I see em".........no fancy smanshy political doubletalk from me..........simple, honest an true.

The Phil Rivers injury is holding up my prediction............these are very tough to decide.

Obama is not the only one getting attacked by hit and run tactics, even Tiger Woods gets attacked and then apologized to (jealousy is alive and well in America):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2008/01/19/sgspan119.xml

By Art Spander

The game became secondary to the story. Golf needed something to get attention the weekend of the NFL conference championship games, but even the pros were asking if it needed the embarrassment it has received.

The 90-hole Bob Hope Chrysler Classic made it through a third round with Robert Gamez leading on an 18-under-par 198 and D J Trahan and Justin Leonard one shot behind. Yet the man in the headlines was Dave Seanor, who has been fired as editor of Golfweek magazine.

Two weeks ago Kelly Tilghman stuck her Footjoy in her larynx on the Golf Channel when she suggested the only way to stop Tiger Woods would be to "lynch him in a back alley".

...

Then Golfweek came out with a cover of a noose set against a purplish sky with the caption: "Caught in a Noose: Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can’t wriggle free."

The PGA Tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, said it was "outrageous and irresponsible" and Seanor was dismissed.

...

When Tiger said what he said,'' Trahan explained about Woods pardoning her, "that should have put it to sleep. She made a mistake, and she regrets it.''

Good morning, folks:)

Quick shout out to Judy for Dean: Hey:)

I'm Tivo'ing the Aussie Open and have yet to watch our Roger's match but delighted to hear that he triumphed, afterall.

FDR "you have nothing to fear but fear itself"

FDR, if he was alive today, IMO he'd add to his fear comment with one acout --

jealousy:

"you haver nothing to be jealous about if you aren't jealous by nature"

typo - haver  s/b - have

well off to do Saturday errands

9.  Mike, it's my understanding that you presently live in North Carolina.  By no stretch of the imagination is that the South, even though the natives are very proud of their southerness.  I lived in Florida and Georgia for twenty-five years.  The spouse is a New Orleans native.  While I actually have little to do with New Hampshiremen, the spouse finds them not very different from the people he grew up with.  So, they may be every bit as deceptive, but it's not something I know.  If they are, it would be with less reason.

37.  Unfortunately, it's a very short step from "beating" the oponent to "stringing him up in a back alley."  That's the basis of my objection to the pugilistic verbiage associated with campaigns and sporting events.

Golf is actually such a perfect game in that there is no violence against people (just a hard little ball) and there's a tripartite competition--with the self, the course, and the other players. 

another typo - with one acout   s/b - with one about

well, before I zip off for Saturday morning chores in the cold (to get colder) southeastern NE air, I saw this goods news about what China is doing to help Sierra Leone:

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/6341185.html

China, Sierra Leone sign cooperation agreement on economy, technology 11:35, January 19, 2008

China has signed an economic and technological cooperation agreement with Sierra Leone granting interest-free loans to the West African country, according to reports from Sierra Leone' capital of Freetown Friday.

...

It also shows the Chinese government's understanding of and support for Sierra Leone's efforts to vigorously rebuild the country's war-battered economy and society, Chen added.

...

31.

"The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.

"When you had the opportunity to vote a certain way in the Senate and you didn't, and obviously there are times when you make a mistake, the notion that you sort of vote one way when you're playing the game in Washington and another way when you're running for president, there's some of that going on."

And that is one of the big reasons I cannot support Edwards in the primary.

He also has a problem with eye contact that is very noticeable. Honesty is transmitted by eye contact while one is speaking. Edwards tends to twitter the eyes rather than face the listeners.

Just wish he would bow out. He is not going to win anything anywhere. And all of the above would make next November much more difficult even if he were to win.

Rather than drag out the BO thing much more, I'd just like to say two things.

1.  Hillary didn't list Ray-Guns as a favorite -- that was debunked at KOS if anyone cares to know the truth.  We don't need to go all Lee Atwater on our own candidates even if they insist on doing it to themselves.

2.  Matt Stoller speaks for me on the BO/Reagan issue:

A quote from BO's comments:

"I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, ..."

 Matt Stoller's response:

Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement.  The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these 'excesses'.

It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so.  Reagan was not a sunny optimist pushing dynamic entrepreneurship, but a savvy politician using a civil rights backlash to catapult conservatives to power.  Lots of people don't agree with this, of course, since it doesn't fit a coherent narrative of GOP ascendancy.  Masking Reagan's true political underpinning principles is a central goal of the conservative movement, with someone as powerful as Grover Norquist seeking to put Reagan's name on as many monuments as possible and the Republican candidates themselves using Reagan's name instead of George Bush's in GOP debates as a mark of greatness.  Why would the conservative movement create such idolatry around Reagan?  Is is because they just want to honor a great man?  Perhaps that is some of it.  Or are they trying to escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years, as they did after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I?

Matt has more to say on this - click on this link to Open Left to see the rest.

 JudyforDean, thx for taking the time to follow those tracks to the truth on that one.

I've been following your comments on the economy.  I agree--we're in uncharted waters here. 

Clinton Must `Watch Out' on Race Comments, Delegate Norton Says

By Lorraine Woellert

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, warned Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ``watch out'' in her comments on race.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aSBkuaEJUAcE&refer=home

23.  I'm afraid that John Edwards has a chip on his shoulder.  It may stem from growing up in a society where one couldn't be good and just.  To be considered good, one had to be unjust to someone else.  Eventually, there's really only one solution and that is to leave.  Which, of course, isn't a solution, especially not if you're an ambitious person and believe that you ought to be able to make a difference.

45.

It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so. 

But of course, Obama did not say he "admires" Reagan. He gave reasons why Reagan changed  the politicis of Nixon.

46.  I doubt very much that Hillary Clinton knows what that advice means.  She and Bill are both so self-centered that their awareness of other people's sensitivities is virtually nil.

23.

John Edwards would go a long way switching his message to one of love.

Phil,

I hate to be so negative this morning, but do you really believe a message of love, regardless of how sincere or what the issue is, would be a what voters want to here this year?

here = hear

48.  Yes, but the reasons he cites are mythical.  They're not the real thing.

I suggest that we keep reminding everyone that Obama was born in 1961.

He was a mere 19 when Reagan was elected.

That he hasn't learned much since is to be deplored but understandable.

The myth of Reagan is clearly preferable to the reality. 

Joan, if you go to the link and read Matt Stoller's comments you may see that he has a point.  I should also point out that not all liberal are in agreement on this one, lol.

45.  The essence of the conservative movement is that somebody else is responsible.

He also has a problem with eye contact that is very noticeable. Honesty is transmitted by eye contact while one is speaking. Edwards tends to twitter the eyes rather than face the listeners

~~~~~~~

as I noted to much sitka trashing I have never found John Edwards to avoid eye contact with anyone, and never me when I have spoken face to face

every town hall meeting where someone asks him a tough question he talks directly to them and looks them in the eye

so you might be onto a rovian trick  ... the media tells him the camera with the light on is live and then uses another angle for the feed much like the scream and the directional mike

I would never be here supporting a "shifty eyed politician" which of course is the meme that attempts to link

and since like Howard, John Edwards is challenging tje media they might just be doing it to him too

"I hate to be so negative this morning, but do you really believe a message of love, regardless of how sincere or what the issue is, would be a what voters want to here this year?"

Well, the question was posed to Phil, but here's my answer.  Our party, I believe, will take back the White House this election, mostly due to the economy.  I think it will be a close race regardless of which Dem, which Repub is running.

The polling data tells us that Americans are more disenchanted today than ever before.  I do not understand why ALL of our 3 major candidates are not GOING BIG this time around. 

BO is recycling, "I'm a uniter".

HC is claiming "experience".

JRE is, to his credit, most accountable in terms of policy-making but this is a first REAL opportunity to GO BIG...we don't have 9/11 and the revenge requirement in the equation, people are truly  demoralized.

I wish I had a better definition of GO BIG but I just mean better, stronger, more detail on HOW they would change the country for the better.  I'd like that from all of them.

53.

cC

I am aware that every libersl will agree with everything ANY candidate says or does.

But in the context of raw politics, I believe what Obama and his campaign have decided is to be all inclusive. That is the essence of their campaign to bring people together. One cannot make this claim if they do not actually present some evidence that this is the way it would be.

Reagan followers, Republican and Democrat alike, will like what they heard from Obama even knowing the downside of Reagan. Every past president has positives and negatives.

IMHO, Edwards and Clinton were one-upped in this regard. Their kneejerk responses were, as usualy, negative. I wonder if they too didn't plan on using something similar in California.

Still, Obama did not in any way say he "admired" Reagan. He simply gave the facts.

[...]

“As the black population declined due to out-migration after World War II, most of those institutions disbanded, and a number of the community's landmarks, including the Bijou Theatre, Union Station, and Penobscot Exchange Hotel, were demolished for urban renewal projects, while the Masonic Hall was destroyed by fire. By 1950, Lee writes, ''the golden age that was Black Bangor" had ended, nevertheless leaving memories of what a small community could produce.” —Boston Globe"

http://tinyurl.com/2o5kxx

[....]

I live 1/4 mi. from Bangor, Mike.

Once passenger trains stopped arriving in Bangor @Union Station (hence, to the wealthy summer estates Down East), and the advent of cheap gas, the automobile, and I-95 (finally) being built by the mid-sixties, the demographics shifted dramatically.

As a kid, traveling Rt. #1 by car was beyond nerve-wracking--it took forever to wend thru small towns up the coast 120 mi. to camp.

Although, if any area is now inhabited w/African Americans, it would be in the greater "urban" Bangor-Brewer-Orono area (U/Maine & various colleges in the vicinity).

"Rusticators" could thereby exploit the white trash locals as their year-round "caretakers" (see Martha Stewart fmi in Seal Harbor). They gentrified the entire coast (purchased hundreds of acres--dirt cheap), which is now hardly working-class waterfront based.

The notorious fire of Bar Harbor (1947) nailed the coffin (before I-95 came into being). Now we have "summah complaints."

http://www.barharborhistorical.org/1947....

It didn't discriminate which mansions were leveled to ashes (primarily filed w/uber-wealthy industrialists--who brought their own African American servants w/them on the steamers).

And it damned near wrecked Acadia Nat'l Park (Rockefeller built the carriage roads off of the backs of low income WPA workers--he didn't want lower classes w/their automobiles mucking up his pristine views of the island).

He certainly didn't build 'em for benevolent reasons (the locals were intended to wait on his ilk hand and foot). Year-round (Euro-white seasonal employment--zero bennies).

Post 1-95, a different "summah complaint" surfaced--the 2-4 week working class tourist (who could built a palatial summer cottage of their own, vs. living in swanky upper SES hotels, such as the Samoset Resort).

Strip malls started to dot ME (off I-95) in the sixties, so what few self-employed African Americans were left in downtown Bangor couldn't compete (nor could the local dept. stores, owned by whites).

Downtown Bangor is still struggling to find its identity (and attract shoppers and merchants)--it's surrounded by small strip malls (and larger big box renditions out near Hogan Rd.).

It's the migrant workers (visas, ala courtesy of the shrub regime) from foreign countries who are exploited nowadays (e.g., hotels/cleaning shit out of toilets & changing beds; kitchen/janitorial; blueberry barren rakers; apple/spud pickers, sea cucumber processing factories, and woods industries). All consist of back-breaking physical labor--totally different, vs. as noted above by Maureen Elgersman Lee.

The Lewiston-Auburn-Lisbon area has treated the Somalian refugees like abject dirt, BTW. Not pretty.

They're the new victims of Maine's racism (primarily systematically-based & institutional in nature).

...with some help from Neo-Nazi skinheads and local rednecks (along w/a smattering of Franco-Americans, who seem to forget what being objectified/subjugated feels like by the KKK in Maine during the early 1900s).

Maine is the "whitest" state in the nation. However, I'd say that overall, we're fairly tolerant (it's that Libertarian New England MYOFB mindset).

We probably resent goddamnedf^cking tourists & "summah complaints" most of all.

They seem to perceive that we're their personal Euro white ^iggers.

Hardly.

I don't know why Obama supporters think that calling Obama a conservative is a flaming attack, he is running as a moderate that wants to reach across the party divides and has done so since day one.

He is a good decent man with an honest heart and a desire to make America a better place.

He thinks Reagan was too. many Americans do (I might even agree, which made him the perfect front man)

I do not think Obama is a front man for anyone, he is a man inspiring hope which should of itself lead to change if he is elected . 

I believe the only reason we are seeing polls that claim Nov. elections will be very close is because those who desperately want it to be close are those in the news (entertainment) business.

There simply is no way to make such predictions at this point in time. It is all about the cable news channels, whose largest income is made from political ads and viewership during an election year. In this case, that election year began the day after the 2006 elections.

MSNBC, CNN intentions are to get us all to Stay Tuned!

Obama is too young to know what the fights of the sixties were all about. that might be what it takes to erase the ugly backlash that became the Republican Party of today, and so may very well find a majority that is inclusive of moderate Republicans.

"electability" is for losers.

If democrats nominate a War Party candidate the pig will get quite a few votes.

59.

Thanks for that interesting post.

In many regards, Florida's recent 75-year history is very similar and the resentment just as great, though it has been lost in the over-bearing agressive crowds.

Obama is too young to know what the fights of the sixties were all about.

It's absurd to say that just because you didn't live through a period of history you can't understand what it was about -- that's what history is for. And it would be just as absurd to say that living througt the same period automatically imparts understanding of what it was about -- some have no clue what goes on all around them.

Obama's a pretty smart and educated person who probably gets it more than many if not most who lived through it.

looking a camera  "in the eye" means you by definition are not looking the person whom you are addressing "in the eye"

if you want to look a camera in the eye talk a Hollywood player into running for office, worked for the Republicans with Reagan

he knew how to look right into the camera   

59.  That was an interesting post, Mainefem.  I know nothing of the history of Maine. Never even been there.  I hear it is quite beautiful, though.

Digby believes that BO's Reagan comments and his message in general, sounds a bit DLC/Third Way:

"...but with all that jargon about government growing and growing without "accountability in terms of how it was operating" and "dynamism" and "entrepreneurship" it sounds an awful lot like DLC boiler plate. They capitulated to the "Reagan Revolution" hype exactly that way in the 1980's and developed an entire political strategy around it"

If democrats nominate a War Party candidate the pig will get quite a few votes.

I thought you're for Edwards? but I admire your frankitude.

PS.....How much did he raise yesterday? Are they still counting the millions? 

I saw JRE work a rope-line at a union protest in front of the Sheraton Palace in San Francisco.  He had no problem with eye contact.

61.

Obama is too young to know what the fights of the sixties were all about.

One could say the same about Edwards. For Obama, it is just another version of "lack of experience" which he has more of than Edwards and Clinton together.

But there are history books and Google and the Internet. You didn't have to be there, especially with one of Obama's intellect.

I was around in the sixties but paid little attention to any fights going on then. I was still living the dream of the 50's.

I don't know why Obama supporters think that calling Obama a conservative is a flaming attack

I don't know why Edwards supporters think that citing his Senate record is a flaming attack

70.

Well, I hope so:))

I was referring to JE's speeches. You can hardly work a line shaking hands with people without looking at them close up.

PS.....How much did he raise yesterday? Are they still counting the millions? 

~~~~~~~~~~~

I maxxed out my federal matching funds amount and doubt I was alone.

as I noted to much sitka trashing I have never found John Edwards to avoid eye contact with anyone, and never me when I have spoken face to face

"Ive looked into Edwards' eyes and taken the measure of the man."

<>It wasn't Edwards that made me gag when I read that line a couple of months ago.

<>And remember, Bush too is really big on looking into eyes and measuring the man within.  I prefer judging them by their records.

Good news on our local front, it appears that we will have quite a few youth delegates for our County Convention in March.  I've been on the phone this morning with parents and grandparents asking about how their teenagers can attend the convention.  That is a great thing.  These kids will be our leaders before we know it.

I maxxed out my federal matching funds amount and doubt I was alone.

Good answer to a question that wasn't asked. 

Edwards is out there today calling Obama a "hypocrite"!

Name calling will only bring the party down in November and it will not bring Edwards any more support.

"I was around in the sixties but paid little attention to any fights going on then. I was still living the dream of the 50's."

Well, I'm curious as to what brought you into the fight?  If you care to share.  Understand if you don't. 

Phil:  A wise man knows when he's being baited;)

Joan was the one attacking Edwards for looking at the audience instead of the camera. (which is how one looks directly at a TV audience) and it there is more than one camera the producer makes the decision whether or not he wants Edwards to avoid "direct eye contact"

really, it is a false charge and needs to be debunked

When will the candidates and the people start talking about the 70% COMMON POPULATION, instead of the MINUTE MIDDLE CLASS at the top of the Pyramid Scheme. People, PLEASE draw a pyramid and LOOK. How many people could fit in the MIDDLE OF A PYRAMID below the Elite? The Elite Capitalist Class is at the most 10%. Do not continue to be deceived. Hillary Clinton does not represent YOU. Barak Obama does not represent YOU. John Edwards does not represent YOU. Quit imagining YOU are the MIDDLE CLASS and vote for someone who will ACTUALLY represent the 70% COMMON POPULATION.

Dennis Kucinich does not talk about the 70% COMMON POPULATION, and he should, but Dennis Kucinich is NOT a member of the DLC, which means Dennis Kucinich is interested in ALL of the United States and not only the Elite and MIDDLE CLASS JUST BELOW THE TOP OF THE PYRAMID.

Rahm Emanuel is a member of the DLC and will do as the DLC does.  It should not be surprising.

79.

It is not my original thought Phil.

But when I heard it said several weeks ago, I realized it was not just his fluttering eyeslids, but the avoidance of eye contact and that I was not the only one commenting on it.

Psst, Hillary: Bill Clinton praised Reagan in '91

I asked him whether he believed that Ronald Reagan's security policies — the military build-up, the Reagan Doctrine, the anti-Communist rhetoric — deserved credit for the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

And he said: "I think it had something to do with it … The kind of system they tried to have in Eastern Europe just doesn't work very well in the world we're living in, and as soon as the people found out just how terrible it was and what their alternatives were, it was more or less doomed. But I think precedent to that you had to have the willingness of the Soviet Union to let it happen in Eastern Europe, which I think was at least in part a function of their own internal problems, but those internal problems were certainly aggravated by the enormous stresses we put on them because of the military build-up. They had to match what we did … And also the rhetoric of rolling back Communist regimes, changing the preconceived notion that once you go Communist you can never turn it back, which Reagan had something to do with, played a contributing role … Reagan's policies … certainly accelerated the trend."

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/bellantoni/2008/01/psst_hillary_bill_clinton_prai.html

The Edwards not making eye contact thing is wrong. I found he makes eye contact with people. He looks straight at you when talking. He does look around to see how the words affect others. He is aware of the effect the conversation has on people. Playing everyone like a jury? Is he just curious how people are reacting? Maybe ye or no to either to both but his concern for the least among us is true, and has been so for a long time.

Slam him for casting bad votes which either show a lack of judgement or poor political skills, but he cannot be truthfully slighted for his desire to help poor folks.

As far as supporting Dennis. I really like the guy and he is my number one favorite candidate. I am not happy with his lack of committment to running. He remains a fringe candidate because he wants to be a fringe candidate. He can toss rocks at others but he never took the time or the energy to put together the structure to create a movement. There is more to changing minds and being a camopaign force then having a website and good ideas. I wish it were so, and with public campaign financing, maybe it will be enough one day. But it isn't now and Dennis leaves everyone in a lurch when he doesn't campaign hard for what he wants. He never put the campaign team together to be a viable candidate.

I think Dennis lacks the fire to be the top dog.

A quick though on Obameagan commenting yesterday about Hillarys and JEs answers in the debate about "whats your greatest weakness".............sounds like sout grapes barrack, and you play your audience like a pro..........yep, poke fun at your competiion, even though you wer theone who goofed up the question...................I was impresed with your answer, but this is politics, and you should have known better this type of question comes along........but the next day, to poke fun at the others just signals they handled it better than you.....next time have a better answer, or a staff member nearby with a peice of paper perhaps reminding you not to answer those type of questions so as  a matter of fact..........................

Heres a tip from the past................Barrack, you are Commander in Chief, you go to bed one night after reading the kids a bed time story............all of a sudden, you are paged, phoned, woken up whatever by a military officer claiming that NORAD has detected a missile launch form the soviet union, its only one missile and satellite cannot confirm it.............how would you handle it?   Hint: Dont say, "well, the first thing I would do is say a prayer".................of course,  suppose if you want to pander to the far right some more, that would be the best answer i suppose.

Edwards is, I believe, ten years older than Obama.  Four years younger than Clinton.  Four years can actually make a huge difference.  The freshman class that entered why I was a senior raised questions about rules and regulations that we'd never thought to ask.

12:27 pm est

Great article Sandra. Thank you for bringing up the Rahm subject.

3. Yep, Rahm has been a Clinton henchman for a long time and has deep-six'd many progressive candidates. The fight continues.

30. ♥

I just got one of the Obama smear emails from my Northern College Educated cousin. I replied immediately that it was total BS and she replied that she had forwarded it without even checking it out. I replied back could she please send my emails to her distrib list just in case someone was dumb enuf to believe it.

===========

On an 'arts' note, the Met is replaying an old La Boheme this afternoon with Luciano Pavarotti singing.

Also, I rented Notes on a Scandal the other day and it was a gripping movie. If you want to see Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench in an opportunity to utilize their acting skills, here's a movie for you. I came away feeling a little sorry for myself as an older woman alone, then realized Judi Dench's character wasn't everyone, wasn't a stereotype. But the acting is so good, one of the other of them will likely make you a little squirmy. Just imo.

    By David Bacon
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 23 November 2007

    Oakland, California - In the 2006 elections, aspiring Democrats attacked the Bush administration's free trade policies, and more than 20 new members of Congress were elected, giving the Democratic Party its new majority in the House of Representatives. Yet two weeks ago, Democratic Party leaders urged those same members of Congress to vote for a new free trade agreement with Peru.

    Most rebelled, but enough Democrats voted for the Bush administration proposal, along with every Republican, to push it through the House. The Senate is expected to take up the agreement any day now.

    Why would Democrats support the administration's trade policy, when campaigning against it helped them win in the last election? Try money.

    Fourteen years ago, the promoters of the North American Free Trade Agreement promised that free trade would produce jobs. We hear the same claim today for the agreement with Peru, as well as the other agreements Bush has negotiated with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

    NAFTA certainly produced some winners. Large corporations moved high-paying jobs south of the US/Mexico border to cut their labor costs and increase their profits. Mexico created a new generation of billionaires. But rising profits did not produce jobs.

    By November 2002, the US Department of Labor had certified 507,000 workers for extended unemployment benefits because their employers had moved their jobs south of the border. The Department of Labor stopped counting NAFTA job losses, but the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, estimated that NAFTA had eliminated 879,000 jobs. That was five years ago.

    But US job loss didn't produce job increases in Mexico - it eliminated them there too. In NAFTA's first year, more than a million jobs disappeared in the economic crisis NAFTA caused.

    To attract investment in Mexico, the treaty required privatization of factories, railroads and other large enterprises, leading to more layoffs of Mexican workers.

    On the border, Ford, General Electric and other corporations built factories and moved production from the United States to take advantage of low wages. But more than 400,000 maquiladora workers lost their jobs in 2000-2001 when US consumers cut back spending in the last recession, and companies found even lower wages in other countries, such as El Salvador or China.

    Before NAFTA, US auto plants in Mexico had to buy parts from Mexican factories, which employed thousands of local workers. But NAFTA let the auto giants bring in cheaper parts from their own subsidiaries, so Mexican auto parts workers lost their jobs, too.

    The profits of US grain companies, already subsidized under the US farm bill, went higher when NAFTA allowed them to dump cheap corn on the Mexican market, while at the same time it forced Mexico to cut its agricultural subsidies. As a result, small farmers in Oaxaca and Chiapas couldn't sell corn anymore at a price that would pay the cost of growing it.

    When corn farmers couldn't farm, or auto parts and maquiladora workers were laid off, where did they go? They became migrants.

    The real, dirty secret of trade agreements is displacement. During the years NAFTA has been in effect, more than six million people from Mexico have come to live in the United States. They didn't abandon their homes, families, farms and jobs willingly. They had no other option for survival.

    Farmers and workers throughout Central America, who saw what NAFTA did to Mexicans, have protested, marched and even fought in the streets of El Salvador, Guatemala and most recently Costa Rica, to stop ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Now that rebellion is spreading to Peru.

    No major union or organization of poor farmers wants the trade agreement that the Bush administration negotiated. No wonder. They don't want to say goodbye to their families and start looking for work in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.

    To get the Peru treaty through Congress, its supporters claim it will protect labor rights. Peruvian unions don't believe this promise any more than they believe it will bring them jobs.

    Today a huge mining corporation, Grupo Mexico, has provoked a strike by demanding that miners work 12 hours a day instead of eight in Peru's largest copper mine. The Peruvian government supports the company, because it believes longer hours and lower wages will attract more foreign investment. Since NAFTA passed, the same company has forced strikes and cut thousands of jobs at its Mexican mines to cut labor costs, and the government there has also cooperated.

    NAFTA's toothless labor rights protections never stopped union busting and job elimination in Mexico. They won't in Peru either.

    Those freshmen members of Congress have a better grasp on global reality than their party leaders, who are enthralled by the siren song of big contributions from corporate free traders. But those newly elected Democrats will have a hard time going back to their districts and explaining to constituents why their party allowed the treaty to pass.

    Party strategists think Democrats can accept big contributions to support the Bush free trade program. They calculate that unions, workers, displaced immigrants and those hurt by the treaties have nowhere else to go in 2008. They're wrong. They could stay home - the Democrats certainly won't be giving them much reason to get out and vote.

  -------

 Dennis Kucinich is not for NAFTA, CAFTA or any corporate FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS, neither is Mike Gravel.  DO NOT STAY HOME, vote for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel.  You won't hear about them on "right-wing television", but these two presidential candidates are for the 70% majority population having jobs in all countries, especially the United States.  

DLC, Democratic Leadership Council, Democrats are NOT for the real LEFT, the 70% majority population, in any country.  DLC democrats are a RIGHT WING EXTREME sabotage camouflaged  in Democrat clothing ONLY. DLC members are for corporate free trade and NO JOBS for the greater population majority -- VOTE OUT ALL DLC MEMBERS you possibly can every time you can.

90. One of the other of them s/b one or the other of them

89.

Martha Miller
Sat, 01/19/08

Don't we have Clinton to thank for a lot of that?

Hey, Thankful.

I think the candidates need to focus on the economy...before we can blink an eye the Repubs will hijack, "it's the economy, stupid".  Whether you like or don't like Bill  Clinton's stewardship of the economy, he ran on it and won.

The economy is the issue, imo.

More tonight.

See you later this evening, folks.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston joins us to talk about his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill).” He is also author of the bestselling book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else. Johnston reveals how government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

JUAN GONZALEZ: As voters head to the polls in Nevada and South Carolina Saturday, the economy remains one of the top issues for voters across party lines. Today, we’re going to spend the rest of the hour examining the growing income gap in the United States.

Economic figures show that in 2005, the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the country’s population had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the lower economic half of the country. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top ten percent got 48.5 cents, the highest percentage since 1929, just before the Great Depression.

AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston has been closely tracking the nation’s income gap in the pages of the New York Times. In 2004, he published the bestselling book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else. David Cay has just published a new book. It’s called Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill). He joins us now from the PBS station WXXI in Rochester.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, David.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Thank you for having me, Amy and Juan.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the wealth transfer.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I was struck, listening to the program from Kenya, where they talked about the president and his power to give money to people, give land, and that’s why many people identify with it. We have created in the United States, largely in the last thirty years, a whole series of programs—a few of them explicit, many of them deeply hidden—that take money from the pockets of the poor and the middle class and upper middle class and funnel it to the wealthiest people in America. And among the biggest recipients of these subsidies are the wealthiest family America, the Waltons; George Steinbrenner; Donald Trump; a whole host of healthcare billionaires. And these are policies that either have not been reported on or the news reporting on them generally has not informed people about what they really are.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I was struck—you have numerous chapters in the book on the various aspects of this transfer, but I was especially struck by your material on the New York Yankees and Steinbrenner and Joyce Hogi, who you mention in the book, who I know well, and this whole issue of sports teams across America and how the public is subsidizing them. Could you elaborate on that part of it?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Sure. George Steinbrenner is getting over $600 million for the new Yankee Stadium in New York. The New York Mets are getting over $600 million. In fact, the City of New York gave them money to lobby against the taxpayers to get more money. Rudy Giuliani gave $50 million to the two teams for that purpose.

The new owners of the Washington Nationals baseball team in Washington, D.C., paid $450 million for the team. But, in fact, they got the team for free, because the subsidy they’re getting for the new stadium is worth $611 million. We actually paid these people to buy the team.

Now, in this country right now, we are spending $2 billion a year subsidizing the big four sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It accounts for all of the profits of that industry and more. Now, there may be individual teams that make money, but the industry as a whole is not profitable. And that’s astonishing because the big four leagues are exempt from the laws of competition. By the way, irony is not dead, because here are people who are in the business of competition on the field who are exempted by law from the rules of economic competition.

If you go to England and you want to start a soccer team, they have to let you join the soccer league. There are thirteen commercial soccer teams in the London area. New York City, the biggest city in the country, there are two baseball teams, because there’s no free entry into the market. In Los Angeles, there’s no football team. And the owners use this power to prevent others from owning teams, to prevent municipal governments from owning teams, to prevent nonprofits from owning teams, to extract money from the taxpayers to build them new stadiums.

At the same time that we’re doing this, we are starving our public parks for money. And I show in Free Lunch how the rise of urban gangs and now suburban gangs is connected to this. We used to have all sorts of programs in this country after World War II for young men and young women on Saturdays and during the summer and school holidays, where even if you didn’t have any money—didn’t matter that your parents didn’t have any money, because—and I know this because I did it as a child—you could go to any one of a half-dozen different places, and there were organized activities to keep you out of trouble. After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop is not exactly a radical new idea. Well, we’ve cut and cut and cut those programs to fund two different subsidies: one to sports teams’ owners, one that goes to Tyco, General Electric, Honeywell and some other big companies. And, lo and behold, we’ve had a big rise in urban violence because of the vacuum being filled by young people who no longer have these organized activities.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of sports teams, talk about President Bush and where you believe, really, ultimately, he got his wealth.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, it isn’t a function of belief, Amy. I’ve got the documents. President Bush, who will go down in history as the great tax cutter, owes almost all of his fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket. What happened is, an oil man named Eddie Chiles wanted to sell his money-losing Texas Rangers baseball team. They played in a little stadium, smaller than the one we have here in Rochester, New York, and of course couldn’t make any money. So George Bush put together a group of very wealthy investors to buy the team. He put up himself $600,000 of borrowed money. The partners then gave him a 10 percent stake as the managing partner. That’s a very common arrangement in business. Then they held a special election in January of the year in question to increase the sales tax in the town of Arlington, Texas, by one half-cent. That money was used to build a new baseball stadium. It’s an incredibly nice baseball stadium.

Then the power of government to seize land by eminent domain—and I go back to what was talked about in Kenya, the leader there can give you land, he can presumably therefore also take it away—the government used its power of eminent domain to seize land from people, not for a public purpose—not for a military base, for a school, for a highway, for a sewer plant—but because it was coveted by President Bush and his friends, and they were unwilling to go into the market and buy it through market economics. So the government seized this land. People were paid far less than they were owed, and we know that because one family fought back, and a jury, after being out just a matter of minutes, awarded them about six times what they had been offered by the government of Arlington.

The value of this subsidy, according to Ray Hutchison, who is the husband of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, is a prominent Republican insider in Texas and is the leading authority on municipal bond finance in Texas, was $202.5 million. The profit that President Bush and his partners made when they sold the team was $164 million. What does that tell you? Every single penny of additional money President Bush got from that investment, his gain, came from the taxpayers. He did not add one cent to the value of that team through his skill as an MBA manager. This gets repeated all over the country.

And then when President Bush filed his tax return, he should have reported that the 10 percent share he had, the one that was given to him as compensation for being general manager, was wage income. And, of course, we tax wages at a higher rate than we do capital income, like capital gains. President Bush therefore shorted the government $3.4 million. Under our system, you sign your tax return subject to audit. If you’re not audited and you don’t pay the government the right amount, if it’s too much, the government keeps it, if it’s too little, you short the government, but nothing happens to you.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. His new book is called Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). We’ll come back to David Cay Johnston in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, has written the book Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, David Cay Johnston, the American home subprime crisis has been much in the news and the enormous impact it’s having on the economy. You’ve got a few chapters here where you talk about the home and home robbery, and you even delve on an issue that very few people have ever talked about: title insurance companies and the enormous wealth transfer that have gone on there. Could you talk about that?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, sure. You know, when you buy a home—and I remember the first time I did it as a young man—you have this enormous sense of accomplishment, and you sit down in a room, and they throw all these papers at you—“Sign this, sign this, initial this page, OK, sign this.” So when you’re all done, you get a little sheet listing all the costs you have, and you get dinged for $15 here and $25 there. But there’s one big item called land title insurance. If you buy a $200,000 house, it will probably cost you close to $1,000. Well, it turns out that ninety cents out of every dollar you are forced to pay for this goes to pay commercial bribes. And this goes on all throughout the industry all across the United States, and nobody is prosecuted for it.

And here’s what happens. Well, you wrote the check for the $1,000, the land title insurance companies, who are insuring the risk that someone will come along and say, “That’s really my piece of land,” or “I have the right to put an oil well in your backyard. Here’s this document from 1848,” or your new outbuilding encroaches one inch onto the neighbor’s land, supposedly. That’s what you are insuring against. These companies’ real customers are the real-estate agent that you thought was representing you or the lawyer you paid to represent you or the mortgage broker who arranged to get you the mortgage, because they steer you to the title company. And in return, they get kickbacks.

The state insurance commissioners of California and Washington wrote very detailed reports about this, because one of the land title companies tried to spear the insurance commissioner of Colorado. And there’s emails and tape-recorded conversations about a very Machiavellian plot to use the news media to a plant a question that would smear this woman. And what did the insurance commissioners say should be done after they found that 90 percent of this money is paid in kickbacks? And by the way, one of the big title companies, in its report to shareholders, says that its customers aren’t you and me, when we buy a house; it says its customers are the bankers and the brokers and the lawyers. Well, the insurance commissioners said what we need is an education program. We need to make sure that the land title companies know that they can’t pay these kickbacks and referral fees, as they’re politely called. Well, if the education program worked, the cost of land title insurance would have dropped 90 percent. It hasn’t. So it’s another example of the kind of institutionalized corruption that I write about in Free Lunch that takes money from the many and concentrates it in the hands of the politically connected few.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Barack Obama’s comments, David Cay Johnston, who praised—

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, one thing, Amy, I don’t do, Amy, I don’t talk about the presidential campaign, because—

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, you don’t have to—you don’t have to talk about them—

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: —but just the substance of what he had to say, which was very interesting, as he talked about former President Ronald Reagan. He was in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, appearing to express admiration for what he called Reagan’s “clarity” and “optimism” and overcoming “excesses” of the ’60s and ’70s. This is what he said.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path, because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the ’60s and ’70s and, you know, government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. And I think people just tapped in—he tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.

AMY GOODMAN: In response, rival candidate John Edwards said Reagan “did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day.” He said, “I can promise you [this: I will] never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.” So, David Cay Johnston, without getting into presidential politics, you write extensively about Ronald Reagan in this book.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. Well, Ronald Reagan, whether you love Ronald Reagan or you hate Ronald Reagan, was a great leader. He did, in fact, dramatically change the country.

Between 1945 and the election of Ronald Reagan, we had a government that was focused on creating and nurturing the middle class. When I was a young man, I was able to go to college only because it was free. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any money—my dad was a 100 percent disabled veteran, and I went to work when I was ten years old and full time since I was thirteen—because it was free.

Today, the cost of a college education, a state college education, is about $10,000 a year. The average income of the bottom half of taxpayers—that’s not families, that’s taxpayers—is about $15,000. Think you can go to college if two-thirds of your income would have to go to college? I don’t think so.

Well, Mr.—what Mr. Reagan did in 1980 was he asked a question that had a very powerful effect. He said, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” And Americans said no, they weren’t. And they elected him to office, and they set in motion a major change in government policy, a change that I think has been perverted. I do not believe Reagan intended all of the things that have been done since he started this happening.

But I’m asking the question in Free Lunch: Are you better off than you were in 1980? And on the surface, America is much better off. The country is more than twice as wealthy in real terms as it was in 1980. Per person, adjusted for inflation, the economy now puts out $1.70 for every dollar that it put out in 1980. Those are absolutely tremendous economic numbers.

So how come we’re not all really well-off? Why is it one-in-seven families has filed bankruptcy in the last twenty-five years? Why is it people are so mired in debt that television ads are just full of debt relief and take on more debt ads, sometimes at 99 percent interest? Why is it that so many people don’t have health insurance and so many people no longer have a retirement plan?

And by the way, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans, what I call the vast majority, is smaller today than it was in 1980. And since the year 2000, when we really got serious about this tax cut business, the average income of Americans every year—2001, ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05—has been smaller than it was in 2000. There have been some gains in 2004 and ’05, but they haven’t gotten up to equal 2000. And of those gains in the year 2000—it’s either ’05 over ’04 or ’04 over ’03—half went to people who make over a million dollars a year. What’s happened is—

AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t that wealth transfer massively begin—I mean, accelerate with Reagan?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, yes. No, that’s—I’m sorry, that’s exactly my point, Amy, is that what happened is that we put in place all sorts of new programs, many of which were never written about in the news media, that got no attention whatsoever. We created healthcare billionaires while making healthcare unavailable to one-in-seven Americans. And we did this with government money. We allowed people to buy public assets for, in some cases, a fraction of a penny on the dollar and then poured government money into them.

And, you know, our national myth that Ronald Reagan ran for office on was that there were all these welfare queen Cadillacs—welfare queens driving Cadillacs out there. I think there was, in fact, one scam artist who went to prison. But what’s really going on is welfare at the top, and way beyond what’s been reported in the news media as corporate welfare. We have built into the scaffolding of the new economy rules that funnel money to the top.

And that this has happened really shouldn’t surprise us, because under our campaign finance system, which has gotten worse and worse and worse with campaign finance reform that hasn’t worked, politicians running for high office spend a great deal of their time talking not to you and me and school teachers and police officers and firefighters and factory workers, but to rich people and their paid representatives. And they hear about their concerns and what they say they need to make things fair.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You also delve into this whole phenomena across America of the big box stores, the Targets and the Wal-Marts and the Kmarts. And obviously they’ve—to some, they at least offer cheaper goods, cheaper consumer goods. Your analysis of their impact?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, first of all, they say they offer cheaper goods. I don’t accept that that’s necessarily true.

But here’s what happens. And this is a good example of where the news media hasn’t done a good job. I have tons of news clips that say, oh, this new shopping mall is coming or a new Wal-Mart or a new Cabela’s store, and thanks to tax increment financing, this store is going to be built. Well, what is tax increment financing? I’ll tell you what it is. You go to the store with your goods, you pay for it at Wal-Mart, and there’s a very good chance that that store has made a deal with the government that the sales taxes you are required to pay, that government requires you to pay, never go to the government. Instead, those sales taxes are kept by Wal-Mart and used to pay the cost of the store. And typically in those deals, the store is tax exempt, just like a church.

Now, there are two ways that it’s important to think about this. One is, that means your kid’s schools, your police department, your library, your parks are not getting that money. And you’ll notice we keep saying we’re starved for money. We’re twice as wealthy as we were in 1980, but we’ve got to close hospitals, and we’ve got to close schools, and we don’t have money for all sorts of things like after-school programs, even though we’re twice as wealthy. The second thing to think about is, imagine that you own Amy Goodman’s or Juan’s department store across the street. You suddenly have to compete with people whom the government is giving a huge leg up on. You think you would go broke after a while? Well, in fact, you will.

And I tell about a man named Jim Weaknecht who owned a little store in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. He sold fishing tackle, hunting gear, stuff like that. And the way he made his living in his little tiny store, enough that he was able to have his wife stay at home and raise their three kids full time, was by charging less than a company called Cabela’s. Well, then Cabela’s came to town. This little city of 4,000 people made a deal to give Cabela’s $36 million to build a store. That’s more than the city budget for that town for ten years. It’s $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in that town to have this store. And even though he charged lower prices, he was pretty quickly run out of business.

That’s not market capitalism, which is what Ronald Reagan said he was going to bring us. He said, you know, government’s the problem, we need markets as a solution. Well, that’s not the market. That’s corporate socialism. And what we’ve gotten is corporate socialism for the politically connected rich—not all the rich, the politically connected rich—and market capitalism for everybody else.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, many of those folks need lobbyists to be able to get these kinds of breaks from the government, and you talk about the explosion of lobbyists and their influence on government.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: There are twice as many registered lobbyists in Washington today as there were in 1980. If the lobbying community had grown in revenues since the ’70s at the same rate as the economy, there would be one-tenth as many lobbyists in Washington. And those people are not there doing the good of the public. You know, the Constitution’s Preamble talks about the—

JUAN GONZALEZ: They’re not just in Washington, right? They’re not just in Washington. They’re also at the state level.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: No, no, they’re in all the state capitals, they’re in city halls, they’re all over the country. The lobbying business is one of the fastest-growing businesses in America, because—you know why? It’s easier to mine gold from the government’s treasury than from the side of a mountain. Why wouldn’t you go do that if you could get the government to give you money? And Donald Trump—a tax that’s supposed to serve the poor, his company got $89 million for a tax designated for the poor. Somehow, Mr. Trump’s public image suggests to me that he does not think of himself as a poor person.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston—we’ll leave it there—Free Lunch is his book, How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill), speaking to us from the PBS station WXXI in Rochester, New York.

***********************************************

Sooner or later, people are going to have to realize we have Corporate Communism in the United States. I hope it's sooner instead of later.

If COMMUNISM bad for the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION, why does the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION allow the 10% MINORITY AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY to use CORPORATE COMMUNISM to rob the resources of the COMMON POPULATION for the benefit of commercial interests and the interests of capital?

Think about this. Is this FREE AND EQUAL, or what? Aren't we supposed to be protecting our people and and our country from all threats both domestic and foreign??????

The 60's...I look at that time with joy and sadness.
I marched in civil rights and anti-war marches in Chicago and Madison. What great times and great energy and great committment.
After VN and rehab, back to marching against the VN war as a jaded vet. There was nothing romantic or a feeling of committment to others; it was fear that others may have my experiences.
So here we are in another time with another illegal war. The protests are minimal. Maybe because there is no draft, there is no sense of sharing in this conflict. Less then 1% of the population suffers. The rest of us will accept being bought with our own money and buy more crap from China; making the folks at WalMart happier and wealthier.

Hint: Dont say, "well, the first thing I would do is say a prayer".................

+++

Yep, slam people who pray --

-- I guess it's hard to see Michael when your yourself are "blind in in one eye" (sorry for the plagarism, Sitka\; your words I thought fit best in responding to the blogger who keeps hanging around on a blog he said over a week ago, was about to meet it's demise as a blog)

89.

Martha Miller
Sat, 01/19/08

Don't we have Clinton to thank for a lot of that?

+++

Annilow -

I hope MM's response to you is shorter than her posts, lol.

Boy I thought Daniel Rooney had long posts, MM really tips the bandwidth scale !

Good news on our local front, it appears that we will have quite a few youth delegates for our County Convention in March.  I've been on the phone this morning with parents and grandparents asking about how their teenagers can attend the convention.  That is a great thing.  These kids will be our leaders before we know it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a HOWARDLY activity

I don't want to be dramitic but a lot of us prayed before every mission. It was to come back well, for others to come back well, and to do our duty bravely. Fear of being a coward was in our minds at first, then we forgot about it. It was just be smart and get everyone back in one piece still breathing.

78.

Well, I'm curious as to what brought you into the fight?  If you care to share.

cC

I hope you don't want my life's history:))

I was born in a Chicago hospital where they brand all newborns' butts with a big "D"! When I moved to Florida I registered to vote Democrat along with other legal things necessary here, but my family life was my #1 priority.

I vote Dem consistently (except local elections). What brought us into the fight was George W. Bush! I became a precinct captain and member of our DEC after Dean told me I have the power. Been here every since, fighting for democracy.

101.

dog soldier -

Nice comment about prayer.

12:46 pm est

74. Awesome Kevin!

94. Hi Martha. Links please :-)

97. Hmmm, I caught no slam at people who pray.

12:51 pm est

100. ROFL ~ I was born in a Chicago hospital where they brand all newborns' butts with a big "D"! Yep, that branding iron works as well as the mythical smack on the bottom.

Little did they know the D would be for Dean

Howard Empowered

Phil Specht
Sat, 01/19/08

a HOWARDLY activity

_________

The HOWARDLY activity should go to those youth that get involved.   

New thread

75.

Joan

Edwards is out there today calling Obama a "hypocrite"!

Name calling will only bring the party down in November and it will not bring Edwards any more support.

He's showing desperation.

91.

Annilow

I just got one of the Obama smear emails from my Northern College Educated cousin. I replied immediately that it was total BS and she replied that she had forwarded it without even checking it out.

I hate it when people automatically hit the forward button without even thinking twice.

btw, New Thread!

Karen
Sat, 01/19/08
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Agreed karen, the poor choice or words and actions by all of these candidates is pretty poor........

* rdorgan
Sat, 01/19/08

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A little less prayer and more action thank you...............no wonder the world loks at our leaders and scratch their heads.............

31.

Tom Bearse
Sat, 01/19/08


Well, at least one isn't according to Sen. Feingold, who in an interview told the Appleton Post-Cresent that:

"The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.


"When you had the opportunity to vote a certain way in the Senate and you didn't, and obviously there are times when you make a mistake, the notion that you sort of vote one way when you're playing the game in Washington and another way when you're running for president, there's some of that going on."

_____________________-

Even worse, Senator Obama's short 2 years in the Senate, after campaigning for his US Senate Seat, voted to keep the war going, not even supporting Senator Feingolds Bill to end our occupation.

In this time period, after campaigning against the Patriot Act, Senator Obama managed to vote for Patriot Act 2, the Reauthorization.

Senator Obama also is for Free Trade and supported adding Peru to the Free Trade agreement.

Senator Obama also did not support the citizens over Financial institutions, when Bankruptcy amendment to cap interest rate to a maximum 30 percent, he did not vote to support that.

He also supported Cheneys 2005 Oil Industry and Nuke Plant loaded Energy Bill, even though he said he only supports Nuclear plants if we find a way to store the waste.

Senat Obama also pushed the Lobbyist backed Liquified Coal Bill, for a 2nd time, even though it would have added so much CO2 to the environment, it would have been like replacing every car with a Hummer, and use our tax dollars to fund it.

...that's just a sample in his short 2 years.

Yes, Clinton and the DLC are the cause of all the woes the United States faces today, starting with N.A.F.T.A.  When people aren't allowed any real progressives to vote for, then choosing between what seems to be the best of the DLCers is all one can do.  It isn't democracy.

It is sad that DLC Republican cooperating Hillary Clinton won Nevada, as the lives of the 70% majority common population have nearly all been cooperated away by her, her husband and their DLC bunch.   

With forced auto insurance - the common population uses their money to insure the other person's car with their only insurance being the uninsured motorist, so when the DLC clones dole out health insurance the same way auto insurance is done, it will be the same, you will have to pay for someone else, but you will never be the one that gets the benefit from what you pay and be no better off.  It will only make it more difficult for the 70% majority common population to survive and be tooted as health insurance for all by the DLC Republican Lite clones.

The challenges is that many who think that they are progressive sometimes opt for change without examining a candidate's past.  I don't know what is going on with Rahm, but there is no effective bridge, so there is no bipartisanship.  This means until those who have ideas can evaluate and listen, both parties will be 'taking at' each other, not 'with' each other.  If you advocate, you need to get someone on the other side to listen.  In addition, you have to listen and answer in some way other than circular reasoning.  If there is a proposal, then it needs to be based upon a reasonable foundation with rational rhetoric.  Otherwise, there will be gridlock.

There have been quite a few masters of circular reasoning in Congress.  People have also gotten mean spirited about politics.  I think that you have to accept lose with grace.  You also have to hope that an appreciation of ethics exists irregardless of your politics.  If you shout people down, you don't hear what they have to say.  If you don't want to listen, then don't show up.  However, if you do listen, then pay attention to "non-responsive" answers.  Non-responsive answers fail to address specific concerns with reasonable detail.  A politician must be prepared to defend their answers and must not merely be a friend for endorsement. 

 If a politician replies with words to the effect of "does so" to a query of "how can you do x with y" or insists that something is going to happen that common sense suggests the opposite, then where do you go?  I have heard statements to the effect that I go to x with them and to y with them.  You can support a politician for one position, but vehementally oppose him if you think that he or she foolishly ran for another.  Others may agree to disagree, but others owe it to themselves to investigate before simply towing the DFA party line. 

Endorsements are challenge, because they can prove divisive and shortsighted due to the desire to garner someone's favor.  I fear that there is a desire for change, but sometimes change may be taking place and it may not be good.  Devine took an incredible risk.  I think that he wanted to be States Attorney, but he was close to retirement.  I am unsure whether he was convinced that he would beat Jack O'Malley.  However, voters felt uncomfortable with O'Malley in the way that he handled police brutality.  Also, the Brown's Chicken Massacre remained unsolved even though law enforcement inventoried nearly every relevant item possible including the discarded chicken bones.

 There is so much that goes on in Cook County that efforts were left undone, because some may be looking for employment from politicians or endorsement to run for office.  Also, people may feel that the ballot box is private.  If DFA wants to make an endorsement, then that does not stop me from doing my due diligence before the SAO election.  People can comment on the candidates to see whether anyone can challenge research undertaken as well as what is really going on.  Again, it is one thing to appreciate a politician's work in a particular position, but quite another to give that politician carte blanche endorsement for any office without reasonably examining his or her platform for flaws and inconsistencies.

A person can actually support everything that the candidate wants to do, yet conclude that the platform is not feasible and look to the primary responsibilities of the position.  I enjoy reading some of the blogs.  Sometimes words can be misinterpreted anger.  Often, opinions can be based upon well meaning speculation based upon past background.  However, a voter should not vote someone into office simply because they seem like the nicest person.  The issue is how effective you think that they will be in the position.  Some will overlook experience and others will overlook minor differences in maturity.

The ultimate concern is whether the Party is overlooking how well a person will fit within an organization and whether they will be a capable administrator in office.