Posts tagged Politics
Billo instructs men on honor and responsibility
Aug 11th
I found this on Huff-Po, and wrote the following response. Because it was Huff-Po I reined in my impulses!
Billo was married and a father at the time he lost his infamous sexual harassment suit to a Fox producer he had been pursuing. In this video segment he presumes to tell other husbands/ consorts/ fathers how a “real man” behaves. Sorry, Billo. You are totally unqualified to preach morality about marriage, fatherhood, or honoring vows and responsibilities.
The one I’m worried about is Margaret Hoover. Much of what she says is intelligent, compassionate, and rational. Most places that would be great. At Fox it has to be career-threatening.
Ms Hoover, you have to learn to play the “Fox Babe” game. Regardless of what the Pox Alpha Male says, bat your eyelashes, resist for a moment if honor demands … but then yield with maidenly lowering of eyes and batting of eyelashes, looking up finally with embarrassment, a flush of surrender suffusing your face.
Save Net Neutrality!
Aug 5th
Open Left have joined with Free Press to produce and distribute a hip, creative video to promote support for net neutrality. (Essentially, that means protecting by law equal access to bandwidth. Preventing big corporations like Comcast, ATT, Verizon, Google, etc. from pricing structure to shut out and potentially shut down ordinary citizens, political and social activists, and small business owners.)
Anyone who knows me or has followed my posts in various places knows that I’m a deep believer in this cause. But I am not a fan of this video. Watch it first, then my comment below will make sense, whether you agree with me or not:
This video is creative and hip. Sheesh, it’s got Mythbuster Adam Savage! How good does it get? So what’s the problem?The video seems aimed at a younger audience, and that’s good. Young people need to be involved. But young people are not the only ones who need to be involved, and I think it does young people themselves an injustice to suggest that the most important projects they create or enjoy are videos of cute cats.
Is this why we need to save the internet? To save cute cat videos? Young people played a key role in the 2008 election, and they did it in significant part via the internet. The internet allows both young and old to become entrepreneurs. It allows young and old to hold politicians accountable for what they say and do. Same for the lying liars on Fox and Hate Talk radio.
Yes, I like cats and cute cat videos. But I like what’s left of American democracy even more. It’s the latter I’m fighting for. And I hope other thoughtful persons will join the contest.
Doing What Works
Aug 5th
The Center for American Progress is pursuing a project called Doing What Works. Here’s a video to show what it’s about. Following the video is a response I sent them:
Re Doing What Works. I watched the videos and kept hearing variations on this theme: we set a goal or objective; we achieve it; the people see we’ve achieved it; the people begin to have more faith in government.
You guys are sophisticated women and men, but that is not a sophisticated position. A single example. Obama said he would lower taxes for the middle class. He did. But a significant number of Americans refuse to believe it, even when they see their pay checks. Why? In part because Fox and Republican congresspersons tell them everyday that Obama has raised their taxes. And faith in Obama goes down instead of up.
The truth does not speak for itself. Factual accuracy does not speak for itself. Merely doing the right thing is not enough.
GOP demands that GOP policies not be adopted. Demand it!!
Aug 4th
This really has to start showing up in Democratic ads!
Base Details
Aug 2nd
The English poet Siegfried Sassoon writes ironically about the eagerness of old men to send young men and women to die in war. Sassoon (English, as I said, despite his German first name) was himself one of those young men, losing his life in the First World War. Hearing the eagerness of old men like McCain and Gingrich to fight yet another war simultaneously, one can see that not much has changed.
Republican seamanship
Aug 1st
In two recent interviews Alan Greenspan—yes! THAT Alan Greenspan!—has said on national television that the Republican plan to continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest fraction of Americans would be “disastrous.”
Sam Stein wrote about it on Huffington-Post :
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the push by congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs elsewhere could end up being “disastrous” for the economy.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Greenspan expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.
“They do not,” said Greenspan.
I couldn’t help thinking of a Stephen Crane poem (as I often do). My apologies for the alterations, Mr. Crane:
The founders of the nation
fashioned the ship of democracy carefully.
With the infinite skill of an All-Master
Made they the hull and the sails,
Held they the rudder
Ready for adjustment.
Erect stood they, scanning their work proudly.
Then — at fateful time — shameful civic discord arose,
And the founders turned, heeding.
Lo, the ship, at this opportunity, slipped slyly,
Making cunning noiseless travel down the ways.
So that, forever rudderless, it went upon the seas
Going ridiculous voyages,
Making quaint progress,
Turning as with serious purpose
Before stupid winds.
Meanwhile Republicans on the ship began to pass the opium pipe.
Heedless of the looming rocks,
they dreamed of free lunch, voodoo economics,
huffing and puffing and seeing our enemies cower.
And there were many among our enemies
Who laughed at this thing.
Gimme, gimme, gimme…
Jul 31st
Deadlines come and go. Some are no doubt important immediately (federal matching fund type stuff). Others are important indirectly: You raise money and meet your goals, then you look viable to the secret donors who control the serious money. Still others are just the meaningless equivalent of a TV spiel: “But wait! If you call right now! within the next 15 minutes! we’ll double the offer.” Total bullshit.
Here are a sample of the email appeals I’ve received just today. One day! A representative sample, mind you, not an exhaustive inventory. Now, anyone even remotely familiar with me or what I do and write will know that I belong to the Democratic Party, and I support strongly liberal/progressive social, economic, and political values. I’m on lots of mailing lists. (Not telephone lists, but I hang up on them.) I’m sure that Republican friends who mirror my profile receive their own inventory of solicitations, each and every day.
Place these individual, “little guy” appeals in the context of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision. Too complicated a phenomenon to be dealt with meaningfully in a short post. Read the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Or, if you prefer documentary films, rent and watch The Corporation, based on/inspired by the book. But if you have a really short attention span, here’s your executive summary:
- Corporations began as associations of persons, chartered for a limited time and for a limited purpose (like building a highway or digging a canal).
- Later (with collusion of conservative “activist judges”) corporations appropriated the right to be treated, not as associations of individually responsible private persons, but as imaginary, abstract “persons” in and of themselves.
- The salient implications? (a) The owners (stockholders) and the managers of these imaginary “persons” risk almost nothing, apart from an obvious fraud like Enron. (b) The corporate (pretend) person is required by its charter to promote private profit above all else. Ethics? Morality? Public interest? National interest? Piffle! If behaving morally and ethically earns you money, then cool. Otherwise? Fuck ‘em!
Remember that these are mostly multi-national corporations who “squat” in whichever nation best protects them from paying fair taxes and accepting legitimate liability. (Check the places where the “players” in the most recent BP environmental rape are chartered. Owners of the lease. Owners of the drilling equipment. Owners of the drilling platform. These are not U.S. corporations. They don’t care Jack Shit about U.S. citizens.)
- Fast forward to the Citizens United decision. Effectively, it means corporate pretend “person,” either international or floating from one temporary legal anchorage to another, as corporate self-interest dictates, are free to buy U.S. elections. Secretly. With no accountability.
Oh, did I mention? The Corporation book and documentary stipulate that a corporation is a “person,” as the SCOTUS insists. Then they measure the behavior of these corporate persons by a standard behavioral checklist: one that determines a person’s sanity. Result? Corporate “persons” are psychopaths. Scary! Still, these psychopaths can contribute as much as they wish toward buying elective office for their political puppets. Anonymously. Either directly or through front groups like the so-called “Freedom Foundation.”
Keep that in mind as you consider the appeals:
