Press Progress

2012 elections, acting on political lessons

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:17:00 +0000

I am surprised when I hear pundits express surprise about A: The absence of top GOP names like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie in the 2012 primary race; and B: The acute rancor of Republican candidates' attacks on one another.

The answer to both seems pretty obvious to me. Republicans are more interested in keeping and extending their power in Congress and weakening President Obama's influence over policy than in gaining the presidency. They've learned from George H.W. Bush's daunting task of economic recovery post Reaganomics and Barack Obama's unprecedented challenges in cleaning up George W. Bush's legacy of near total economic disaster. The cleaning crew that comes in after a parade of elephants gets little credit for holding down the stink. It doesn't matter whether the uniforms are red or blue.

One key to control of Congressional politics, particularly in the House, is to energize as many mini-constituencies as possible. That's more easily accomplished in a mid-term election with no presidential coattails involved for good or ill. In 2010, when Republicans took control of the House, they did so with two million fewer votes than Obama garnered to win the presidency in 2008. To sustain that success, the GOP needs to ensure the Tea Party as well "moderates" go back to the polls in November. Unified allegiance to a presidential candidate is not as likely to accomplish that as is the rough and tumble Republican candidates are now experiencing. None of this means their big money guns won't be trained on Obama or that the GOP wouldn't take a presidential victory, just that faced with a choice, they'll take Congressional might.

Many Democrats secretly breathed a sigh of relief when they lost the presidential race in 1988. Someone was going to have to take the fall for the costs of rescuing the economy from the S&L crisis and other "supply side" economic craziness. That someone was "Read My Lips" George H.W. Bush, who was forced to suck up the blame and approve new taxes to counter recession in the early 1990's.

The Democrats' 1988 primary field ranged from Klansman David Duke to solidly liberal Paul Simon and perennial Democratic nut-case candidate Lyndon Larouche with Michael Dukakis as the eventual nominee. Ted Kennedy and Mario Cuomo, (Sr.), who both gained considerable political coinage after their national convention speeches in 1984, sat out the '88 presidential primary. Notably, so did the party's rising star, Bill Clinton. Thus Clinton avoided a loss to the elder Bush that likely would have significantly weakened the Democrat's chances of claiming victory in 1992. With the fallout of economic decline solidly tagged to a Republican administration, Clinton was able to work with both Democratic and a Republican Congresses to craft an economic recovery complete with tax breaks and eventually, a budget surplus.

Democrats had taken back the Senate in 1986. They already had a significant majority in the House. With such as diverse field of candidates at the top of the ballot, they held, and made small gains in both houses in 1988. And with that power over George H.W. Bush's policy objectives, the Democratic Party was poised to take the whole ball game in 1992.
Defending against a takeover of the Senate and continued GOP power in the House in 2012 will require Democrats to mount a deep, broad and costly campaign in every state. With some of the shine off Obama's message, deserved or not, stimulating the kind of grass-roots, social-media movement for the Democratic message will be much more difficult this time around. Although drawing a well-financed liberal third party opponent could spell disaster for the president, an in-party leftward leaning challenger would help Obama articulate his message. Such a development also would invigorate the national debate over how to proceed with fixing the many things that ail us. Otherwise, we're stuck with a Republican dialog that ranges from radical right to reactionary right vs US.

So, for the time being, the likes of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie are keeping their powder dry, watching the melee, making safe choices and stockpiling their political capital for 2016.

Dear Legislature: Great care needed for budget

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:37:00 +0000

Dear Texas Legislature,

As Texas music icon Stevie Ray Vaughan laid it out, "It's raining down in Texas and all the telephone lines are down." Heck, it's storming; a hurricane's hit; blizzards and ice storms are raging through. The bridges are down; cities and school districts are sinking. We are at the bottom of so many important indexes of civilized society and global competition we have to reach up to touch Mississippi and maybe even Guatemala. We're $16 billion to $27 billion off the budget mark for 2012-2013.

Even the disparity between those two numbers indicates real emergency. The first number maintains spending at the current level and the second maintains services at the current level. Neither includes about $3.3 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year, which must be addressed first, according to Center for Public Policy Priorities' senior fiscal analyst Dick Lavine. He added that the $16 million figure represents spending in 2010 and maintaining that level is just irrelevant in 2012-2013.

It's time to open up the Rainy Day Fund and it's time to raise taxes and fees in addition to making tough decisions on spending. It's time to seek the balanced approach that many organizations, including faith-based groups like Impact Texas and the broad-based coalition Texas Forward are advocating.

It's the economic policy equivalent of lambs lying with lions when F. Scott McCown of CPPP, Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Business and State Sen. Florence Shapiro agree we need to open up the Rainy Day Fund. Trying to meet the state's constitutional mandate to balance its budget with cuts alone -- as Gov. Rick Perry and both your houses have proposed -- likely would collapse the economy. It certainly will cripple human services and education. And let us be clear, it is neither melodramatic nor alarmist to state that such severe cuts would cause great suffering and possibly deaths among the sick, children and the elderly.

State government and public education employees make some of the better middle class salaries in the state. Balancing the budget by cuts alone, what the Legislative Budget Board has planned in both houses' preliminary budgets, means lopping off about 25 percent of spending. To cut that much could mean a loss of nearly 9,000 state workers' jobs and nearly 100,000 public education jobs.

When economic development corporations and other entities project the benefit from creating a job, they attach a "multiplier" to each salary dollar. The estimate takes into account taxes paid, meals bought, housing purchased, all the things a person with a job buys. Multipliers range from about 1.5 to 7.

Any economic evaluation includes the point of diminishing return: That point at which cost begins to exceed benefit. What is the point of diminishing return of cutting 109,000 well-paid jobs with great benefits?

Recently Politifact, a non-partisan, economic-policy agnostic, fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times evaluated Gov. Perry's statement that Texas created more jobs last year than all the other 49 states together. They looked at Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's claim that we lost 300,000 more jobs than we created last year. Both claims rang solid green "true" on Politifact's Truthometer.

Texas also is number one among the states in creating minimum wage jobs and 31st in offering jobs requiring bachelor's degrees. So what are the chances that the jobs we created paid salaries better than the ones we lost?

So please, dear legislators, think twice or 10 times before letting go of all those jobs. If Sherman's economic development guidelines were applied, creators of those 109,000 jobs would qualify for about $436 million in local incentives. Of course, Texas' economic development law doesn't allow investment in many 21st century jobs. We're still betting on 20th century manufacturing jobs and "call centers" (strong lobby?) and that's something you could change. If you truly believe that the private sector can handle all the health, education and human services responsibilities of our communities, then let us local folks decide whether to use our sales tax dollars to entice those jobs.

Hammond, although stating a belief that this budget can be balanced without raising taxes and fees, urges you not to be "penny wise and pound foolish."

Texas economist Ray Perryman, the man on whose opinion most Texas cities relied in getting local voters to pass sales taxes, has even stronger words for the legislators of the 82nd Session. He warned you in the Waco Tribune Monday, "Don't eat your seed corn foolishly." He said his firm has studied both Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, mental health and substance abuse services several times.

"Findings from these analyses have consistently shown that adequate funding can yield savings that are multiples of the state's investment," Perryman wrote.

"For Medicaid and CHIP, we found that cuts to the programs were a very inefficient way to achieve fiscal balance. Such reductions lead to loss of federal funds, higher costs to those who purchase insurance, more uncompensated care for hospitals and clinics, and reduced business activity."

In the past two sessions, you've produced all the "blue smoke and mirrors" budget razzle dazzle possible. And in so doing, you've created what Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and others have called a structural deficit. You created most of the structural deficit when you swapped new business franchise tax dollars for property tax dollars in school funding to make good on your promise to lower property taxes by a third. The franchise tax brings in about $5 billion a year less than property taxes did.

You inappropriately appropriated $14.4 billion in federal stimulus money and about $8.2 billion more of stimulus money has come into the state coffers. Most of this you used to disguise the state's budget deficits in 2009, 2010 and 2011 rather than to stimulate the economy as intended.

Not one Texas Republican in Congress voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Yet Republicans skated on that far-smoother budget picture into total control of Texas governance. Texas is at your mercy. I'm begging you: Please raise my taxes, open up my Rainy Day Fund and cut services and jobs with great care.

KATHY WILLIAMS is co-city editor of the Herald Democrat. E-mail: kwilliams@heralddemocrat.com.

No more pork calling

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:22:00 +0000

OK, I've had it up to here (hand extended over head.) No more calling, "Pork!" No more simple-minded characterizations of what various economic recovery proposals will and won't do. No more false distinctions between “jobs” and “work.” If it pays a salary, it’s work. We are way past that now; way, way over the cliff. We're at the point where the balloon above the coyote says, "Uh Oh!" And we all know that's just seconds before a long plunge toward a barely visible point of dirt below. Unlike Wiley, of course, we will not be OK in the next frame, dusting ourselves off and looking for new boxes marked "Acme Economic Disaster Preventer."
It's time to admit A. No one knows exactly what to do or exactly how bad it is or will become. B. Almost any spending has the potential to create jobs in the short run and that's we need: Jobs. C. Delay means disaster. D. There are no good solutions, so anyone who sits back, throws stones and says no, eventually be able to say, "I told you so." We need jobs and guts and patriotism. We need leaders with enough gumption to serve one term and get fileted by the other side for the effort.
No matter what caused it: "It was the derivatives; it was the housing market; it was greed; it was de-regulation," we need jobs. And while all the criticisms of how we got here probably hold some truth, we will have decades to unravel that. But we have days, seriously, days, to begin to dig out of this hole. We have an economy based on consumerism. Jobs, preferably jobs that pay a living wage, but jobs are what we need. People who have jobs buy things. And for there to be things for people to buy, there have to be people working to make things. And, because so many people have lost their jobs, 4 million in a year, we need to help them before we work on all the other stuff so they can afford to stay in their homes, buy food, buy clothes, be consumers. In essence, we need to help those who have most recently lost jobs because they are yet to lose their entire life's provision. We need to help them so we can avoid the enormous costs of rebuilding lives from the ground up. It just costs us less collectively, in money and in pain.
I'm weary of the GOP party line about spending. Why are "Democratic Party Wish List" spending items not stimulative? Building solar batteries is one often cited. What could be a better kind of spending? It would create jobs up and down the educational line. We need some brainiacs to invent and perfect their design. We need even brainier folks to take those ideas and designs and turn them into plans and working models and others, with technical skills to translate the models into actual products. We need people to make all the little parts and put all those together into the finished product. We need people to make the equipment to make the parts and we need people to clean up the shop. All of those people will be making money. They will need to order parts from other people who will then have jobs. See how it works? Jobs are jobs, even government jobs, which actually are a little better because they pay a little better, so they bring about recovery faster.
Take the argument about Pell Grants, if I had a day or two, I could get you precise figures on this one, but we don't have the time to get these precise figures. Austin College is a big employer in a small city. Its payroll "rolls over" in the economy to produce a dollar benefit to other businesses much greater than the size of that payroll. Professors, clerks, janitors, professional staff members, adjuncts, all must buy food, and gasoline and clothes, etc., etc. Some go out to eat; some have pets. All this means dollars helping keep grocery stores, department stores, pet stores, restuarants, etc., in business. Those businesses in turn will be able to keep their doors open and employ people who buy food and clothes and television services. This keeps other people in business and it keeps sales tax dollars flowing to keep city and state services going.
This year, Austin College experienced a shortage of new students and failed to retain as many upperclassmen as it had hoped. Why? I don't know for sure, but part of that has to be that Pell grants top out at a figure much lower than AC's tuition and student loan aid has all but dried up. This year, AC has frozen hiring, cut some jobs and lowered or cut raises. If there's not some serious relief in the form of more Pell Grant money and unfrozen credit, what will get cut next? And how many other Sherman and Grayson County jobs will that affect. Just as the roll over of jobs created at AC is a plus, so the roll back when they lose jobs is a minus.
Ditto the argument about the "socialism" involved in giving income tax money to "those people who don't make enough to pay taxes." I'm betting that those 4 million people who have lost their jobs and the other millions who have either given up, taken low paying jobs, or work part time because of the economy, aren't going to make enough to pay taxes. I'm also betting that any money given to them will be used to buy things, and yes, to pay mortgages and bills. So some of it might not be as stimulative as say a grant to create a solar panel construction business, but it certainly helps.
The upshot of all this is we should not care whether the plan contains pet projects, or "madeup work," what we should care about is that it creates jobs, and by the way, it must create a lot of government jobs, an ahem, bureaucracy, to make sure that we know where every dime goes, and wherever that is, it is used properly. Otherwise it could evaporate as the $350 billion bailout during president #43, the Freddie Mac and Fannin Mae funds, the Iraq war money, the Iraq reconstruction funding has.
What we need are leaders with the intestinal fortitude to take a leap of faith to avoid falling off the cliff.

For the first time, Pride

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:25:00 +0000

Pride. I'm beginning to understand what it means to be truly proud of my nation. Michelle Obama drew the wrath of million when she said — at the time when historic numbers of voters turned out to send the momentum of the presidential election in her husband Barack's direction — for the first time in her life she was really proud of her country.

I defended her at the time because, I thought I understood, that it's hard when you live in a nation that is really two nations, that people of her background have fewer opportunities. I empathized with the notion that too few people exercise their rights and responsibilities to fully realize the vigorous ideal and in peril of Lincoln's warning, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

But there's more to the realization of a full measure of pride in my country. To perfect our union we must work consistently toward the notion that all human beings are created equal. This is larger and grander than the simple fact that today a man of African American descent takes the oath of office. Barack Obama is, after all, exactly as much white Kansan as he is black African. His life past birth place and genetics has gathered knowledge and sensitivities of cultures distant and exotic from most of ours.

Since Nov. 4, I've noticed that I can take a deeper patriotic and human breath. Suddenly I can dare to believe that my children and grandchildren can inherit a world community that has evolved spiritually. In the past few years we've heard over and over that this might be the first generation of Americans that won't hand a better world to their children. Mostly that is meant in the material sense. And that might be the case. But, for the first time in decades I believe that we will be able to pass to them a better world: One in which we believe we share a destiny with other lands; one in which we believe all of our fates are intertwined; one in which we believe that democracy will not continue to exist without each of us working to perfect our union.

What Michelle was expressing, as I understand it now, is that up until this moment, every hope of African Americans had an asterisk by it. Either ascendancy to an office or activity or recognition happened because they were black or didn't happen because they were black. African Americans have lived in a kind of suspension: Their responsibility was to chip away at barriers of thought and spirit: Next time, be patient, work hard, work harder. Today Obama raises his hand, and the asterisk is gone.

I am so proud of this nation. Not because we have conquered racism or partisanship in any sense. (We have yet to elect a woman or a non-Christian.) I'm proud because people of every color, age, creed, party identity, gender, gender identity, religion and philosophy came together under Barack Obama's banner. We each worked hard, then harder. We each invested according to what we had to make this moment possible: Talent and time, money, even begrudging respect. In the end it had less to do with race and party than it did to intelligence, ideas and inspiration.

I am so proud of this nation because what is taking place at this moment in Washington, D.C.: A peaceful transfer of power, the nature of which proves that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was aspiration not fantasy.

My post on Change.gov

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:46:00 +0000

I have yet to see articulated the notion that developing, updating and improving alternative transportation modes are essential to energy independence, slowing global climate change, reinvigorating the economy and enhancing independence for elders.

If we are working on the puzzle of energy independence in transportation focusing on more fuel efficient or alternative fuel passenger and freight vehicles, then we're merely postponing real change. Moving people and goods around in individual pods, even big ones, perpetuates poor practices and planning. It continues the need for ever more miles and lanes of concrete. That requires huge amounts of polluting manufacturing, eats land that could revive the environment and only shifts the discussion of sustainability. It also concentrates economic recovery in one industry, making prospects for sustainable recovery unnecessarily narrow.

The Obama Administration is proposing a huge investment in putting people back to work, establishing energy independence, creating jobs, healing the environment. I believe that those tremendous goals, plus creating more livable communities, can be achieved through investing in building high speed passenger and freight rail. We must build new lines, increase capacity and separate rail and passenger lines for safety and efficiency. We have a 19^th century rail system and a 20^th century highway system. We should think differently and holistically about this. Highly urbanized cities in the north and east have some, antiquated rail systems and some southern cities like Dallas have limited light rail. We should keep, improve and expand what is working. We should create new solutions to what is not working.

I have a parallel but almost reverse suggestion for alternative energy. Although we, of course, need an updated electrical grid and renewable source generating plants, (not including poisonous and wildly expensive nuclear power) we also must help individual power users and small groups be able to afford home and neighborhood power creation. And we should help more individuals with energy efficiencies and savings. This means direct subsidies or tax credits that don't require income tax itemization, so they are available to those at the bottom end of the income scale. Again, reliance on huge systems that only get larger brings a wealth of problems. It also increases the incidence of unintended consequences. For example, T. Boone Pickens wind energy farms make a lot of sense, but the other side of that: Converting freight vehicle fleets to natural gas use brings some major problems.

To develop the huge natural gas fields in the Burnet Shale in Texas, which I believe is what he has in mind, requires fracturing. Fracturing uses huge quantities of water, which he most likely plans to get from the Trinity and Woodbine aquifers. Many North Texas communities depend on the aquifers for drinking water. So we will, at some point, suffer unreasonably high water prices. To save water in the fracturing process, the water is mixed with chemicals to bulk it up. This polluted water must then be stored in underground spaces that keep them separate from other ground water.

Thank you for your time in considering these suggestion. I am hopeful of a reply.

Sincerely, Kathy Williams

Musings on economic philosophy

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:20:00 +0000

This piece is in response to a friend's sending me an e-mail discussion among her family members. I will not mention who that is because I haven't asked her permission to do so. I must say the back in forth was vigorous, but respectful. Would it were so that all families and communities could have such debate. As a reader you will be at a disadvantage from not having read the earlier opinions and definitions set out, but I think you can get the gist off it.

This is my reply to her:

If I were responding to your family members, I would say that the U.S. economy does not conform to the definition of capitalism, and has not for at least since the Reagan era. What we have is more of a global oligarchy, or what I would call corporatism or corporate socialism. In the examples of the businesses of human services you cite, a free market because cannot exist because there is no free choice. The buyer cannot beware, for the reasons you cited and because government has established rules for conduct in those markets that preclude competition. Obama is not in philosophy a socialist, however he has been branded. Reading his book, "Audacity of Hope" brings one a much clearer idea of just how much of a free market person he is. Even his health care proposals are market based. As a person who could most accurately described as a Democratic Socialist, I find Obama to the right of my beliefs. He espouses the notion corporations should be allowed profit, but that the value of those on the factory floor should be compensated a little closer (than 1:286) to what those in the board room earn. Such was a proposal in AT&T's stockholder meeting several years ago. The problem is that the way corporations work, and the amazingly entertwined nature of corpoarte boards and officers, preclude sanity and morality arising from individual stockholders. Ever more concentrated ownership of corporations globally move capital and labor in ways that no mere mortals can grasp. Witness the recent $700 billion bailout of an industry with up to $57 trillion in exposure. To the vast majority of us, saying those numbers is like a 3-year-old saying 40-11, nonsensical. Even Greenspan admits to being clueless. Profit in a truly free-market economy rewards risk. Salaries and bonuses reward competence and success. What we have done more and more since the mid-1980s is socialize risk and reward. Now they are both meaningless. We keep hearing that such and such a business is too big to fail. I wonder if they are not too big to succeed. The labor side of the free market equation has held up its side of the bargain: productivity has increased steadily as corporations and other economic entities have become more profitable. However, labor has not shared in this benefit. The disparity between the median salary in corporations and executive compensation has grown, literally, exponentially. Because of the global nature of the economy, we have our best educated workers losing engineering and technology jobs to overseas workers and reduced to selling pizzas or finding telemarketing jobs. To replace the high salaries in fueling the ecomonic engine, we loosened credit, over and over. We produced "commodities" out of air, then traded that air, combined it with other air, and traded that. We know now what happens when that house of cards collapses. We are engaged in the first set of wars, ever, in which we did not raise taxes to pay for our defense. Even in the conduct of this war, we are stoking the coffers of global corporations, paying private contractors' employees 10 times more than our soldiers in combat. Instead of hiring out of work Iraqis or U.S. citizens, those contractors are bringing in workers from Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Phillipines. Lots of government money, our money, goes out to benefit no one here but those who fill the corporate boardrooms. During World War II, Frank Sinatra paid 90 percent of his salary in taxes. He thrived financially, and talked with pride about his support of the war effort (Paying taxes is patriotic.) And I believe he thrived opulently in the years after the war. Because of the corporate and governmental excess and waist, stupidity and greed, failure to refree the game, particularly in the past eight years, we face the future with almost no resources, unthinkable debt and foreign challenges. Why anyone would even want to be president to inherit this mess is beyond me. In probably too simplistic terms: We face a future of either tax and spend or borrow and spend. So when we start tossing around philosophical tags like "socialism" and "capitalism" we need to decide if those are concepts that even apply to today's world. We must figure out how we can capture our brightest minds to invest whatever resources remain to produce a future for ourselves and our children. Who offers that kind of hope?

My Sunday column, extension of Palin blog

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:59:00 +0000

What did Sarah Palin accomplish in VP debate

Exceeded expectations. Really?

Exactly whose expectations for what did Sarah Palin exceed in Thursday night's vice presidential debate?

"She stanched the bleeding of the McCain-Palin ticket," GOP spin meisters said. "She has re-energized the base."

Liberal pundits said she made no huge gaffes, and neither did Joe Biden and gave the win to Biden.

Associated Press presidential campaign correspondent Liz Sidoti wrote in vapid analysis after the debate: "Joe Biden's job was to attack. Sarah Palin's job was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script.

"While both vice presidential candidates succeeded in their only debate of the campaign Thursday night, the stakes were much higher and the bar was much lower for Palin. So, in the contest of low expectations, Palin won."

Really?

Let me get this straight: We are in the middle of a recession, which could turn into a full-blown depression. We just spent $700 billion as a down payment on who knows how much to keep the economy from totally imploding. We are fighting two active wars and are in precarious relationships with Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. We have a nearly $11 trillion national debt.

We face a global hunger crisis; genocidal campaigns in Sudan; insecure relationships with Western Hemisphere democracies many Americans don't like; global climate change; recovery from massive flooding along the Mississippi and three hurricanes; 45 million Americans without health care insurance; no consensus on immigration issues or border control; crumbling and inadequate infrastructure; an energy crises. Need I go on?

Given that five of the last 12 presidents first served as vice president and this will be the only time we see these two candidates together before one becomes a heartbeat away from the presidency, I think the American people had the right to expect more than "a contest of low expectations."

What I saw Palin demonstrate was that she could be on a stage without swooning or throwing up, she can read note cards, memorize some lines and cute (if fakey,) folksy lines, and deliver a stinging, rehearsed jab. And "ya betcha" she can smile, flash her dimples, bat her eyes and wink at every cute line as if it's an inside joke between her and the audience. I guess that is a step up from not knowing the titles of magazines or newspapers she reads or knowing what the Bush Doctrine entails. It beats having to come back later with an answer. But she did not debate.

She learned the tactic from her debate coaches of taking any question she didn't like and turning it to a quote from an earlier sound bite about energy independence or tax cuts. But she couldn't think on her feet, at all. She charged that Obama voted against funding for the troops and that was un-American. Biden came back with his charge that John McCain had voted against $1.6 billion in funding for up-armoring vehicles for the soldiers because McCain said the bill involved a timeline. Perhaps there was an explanation of why McCain voted against troop funding, but she didn't give it.

In his strongest moment of the debate, Biden refuted her charge that for a "change" ticket Obama-Biden certainly looked to the past a lot, talking about the failures of the Bush Administration. "Past is prologue," Biden said, and launched into a series of requests to learn of any plans McCain and she had advanced that differed from the Bush-Cheney line, "I haven't heard anything yet," he said. She flashed that deer-in-the headlights look, paused a long time and waited for Ifill to change the subject.

That brings up another point of reduced expectations for this debate. The trend over the past 12 years has been for more and more scripted debates, with more restricted formats every election cycle. Two days before the debate, McCain charged that Ifill was biased because she has just written a book about Obama. Perhaps she should have recused herself. She had a perfect out because she fell and broke her ankle a day or so before the event. Instead Ifill seemed to bend over backward not to confront Palin on failing to answer questions.

In fact, Palin looked directly into the camera and said that she might not answer questions like the moderator and her opponent wanted, but she would speak directly to the people -- an obvious tactic.

The McCain team has so "worked the refs" during this campaign that they have produced the most insipid and opaque vice presidential run in recent history. First they refuse to allow the press access to her. Then they negotiated the "scripted press conference" style for the vice presidential debate. Then they grant recorded, private interviews with selected commentators.

Fortunately for America, Katie Couric stood her ground and although she was polite and asked questions that any relatively bright high school graduate could have answered, she stumped Palin again and again. Will we ever see an actual press conference in public? We deserve to.

Biden's coaches, too afraid he would offend supporters of the gun-totin', wolf-shootin', Cutie Pie of the North, bound him to smile knowingly when he could have pressed points on which he had an obvious advantage, like how the economy works or the stakes of international diplomacy.

I think their job was to tell us how they would run the country and to explain to us how they would solve our real problems. Silly me, I expected substance.

KATHY WILLIAMS is assistant city editor of the Herald Democrat.

Lame, lame, lame

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:49:00 +0000

I am totally frustrated with the high-sounding analysis of this ridiculous debate. I say ridiculous because it was engineered into pablum by the format and, as was the case with last week's debate, the weak moderators. I really like both Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill, but they seem to have been completely restrained. I don't know if Ifill got threatened because of the way the spin teams struck an offensive blow over a possible conflict of interest with her book, but jeeze, nobody got called on anything.
Why did Ifill not stand up for her questions?
And the talking heads, for the most part actually gave Palin points. With so much on the line with this election — so much that I can't believe anyone really wants to win it — we have a debate between the two seconds that probably drew the largest audience in history — and the big deal among so called journalists (including the AP's presidential campaign reporter Liz Sidoti) is that Palin won or at least didn't lose because she did not fall on her face or cry. Sidoti actually used the phrases "defended McCain's policy" or "drove a wedge between Obama and Biden." That assumes that she was successful. Evidently, it makes no difference that she had no argument, either logical or factual. Others have said that she did what she had to do; she staunched the bleeding; she reassured the right wing of the party. How is this not just the most embarassing prospect that this is the best candidate the Republicans could come up with.
Biden was terrific I thought, if perhaps too laid back. But I thought he gave enough detail to be credible but didn't sound too professorial. I wish there had been someone on the stage with him that he could have laid into a bit.
How has it come to pass that we accept as debate that someone says something; not that they prove it, or present a case for it, just say the words. Incredible. Literally incredible.
This is what I tried to post on Newsvine in response to AP's Liz Sidoti's analysis, but for some reason couldn't get the post buttons to work:
This article purports to be analysis, but there seems to be little understanding of the issues involved. Sarah Palin might have attempted to defend McCain, but she had no facts at her command in order to successfully defend his record. Palin seems to subscribe to the disturbing recent trend among Republican candidates that people should believe what they say just because they say it.
There not only were no details from Palin on any plans that her ticket has to fix any one of the many, complex and horrifying problems the nation faces, she was unable to articulate the issues. She demonstrated a veneer of talking points that obviously had been drilled into her.
This is far too important a moment, this one debate between the vice presidential candidates, to slough off her complete lack of comprehension. She didn't answer questions she didn't want to. She directed everything back to the sound bites and cute, folksy flotsam her trainers have filled her head with. If that didn't work, she bullied the moderator and Biden. They shouldn't have let her, but that was their coaching too, I believe.
I thought Biden, while perhaps not as peppy as Palin, seriously has considered the nightmare that faces whoever wins this election. I do not find it comforting that the person who covers the presidential campaign for the Associated Press, thus most of the newspapers in the United States, has presented us with such a vapid, shallow analysis of this debate. His job was to attack? Her job was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script? Really?
I think their job was to tell us how they would run the country and to explain to us how they would solve these real problems. Silly me, I expect substance out of the vice presidential candidates and the Associated Press.

Debate the debate

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:18:00 +0000

You are invited to a moderated chat forum on the first presidential debate at www.heralddemocrat.com

A little patriotism please

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:17:00 +0000

I just watched John McCain talking before an Irish group in Scranton, Pa., and it occurs to me how transparent is his unseemly use of this crisis for political gain. He should be following Barack Obama's tone in this and supporting a unified solution to this absolutely terrifying economic situation. As Congress is meeting to consider the president's proposal, the four top candidates need to be supplying as much light and as little heat as possible. As the nation's leaders have proven over and over again that they cannot deal with our most difficult problems in sane ways, this moment is essential to come together wisely and not produce the economic equivalent of the Patriot Act.
The bailout brings the possibility of helping the economy or ruining it. It also brings the possibility of creating a monolithic role for the secretary of the treasury with no oversight and no transparency. And there's the little matter of impoverishing 99 percent of the country while enriching the 1 percent that put us in this situation in the first place.
Barack has spoken his mind about how to protect the American pocketbook as much as he can and supported the process of considering how to fix this situation without adding too much heat. That looks pretty presidential to me, and I mean that in the good sense of responding calmly, seeking information and considering a range of ideas before arriving at a solution.
Even a war hero should understand that the highest expression of patriotism is to put your country first, whether it's in economic or foreign policy, and no matter how bad you want to be president.

Pig in a poke

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:58:00 +0000

My grandmother used to say, "I ain't buying no pig in a poke." She had a lot of other colorful expressions that got much more colorful the older she got. The license of age. This one puzzled me because I didn't know what a poke was.

I don't remember who explained to me that a poke is a sack, in this case a burlap bag. You wouldn't want to buy it because you couldn't really tell what you were buying. You could see if it were shaped like a pig and how big it was, but beyond that, your imagination had to fill in the details. I guess you might buy it if you really, really trusted the seller. But in any economy a whole hog has been an expensive investment.

Now, I'm not calling Sarah Palin a pig, but it surely looks like Karl Rove, and the rest of the rogues' gallery that's run the government for the past eight years, are the ones holding the poke. They're keeping that string drawn taut. They've tied all kinds of pretty bows on it and built some really lovely pedestals to set the poke on. They're traveling the country showing off the package. But there's a velvet rope they're calling a media blackout around the pedestal and they aren't letting anyone in to peek at the contents. They aren't even letting anyone but the shills on the payroll ask questions about what's in there.

They've made movies reportedly outlining what's in the poke. They change the ribbons and bows and paint a face on her every day. They put a mike up next to the whole package and it sounds like whatever is inside is speaking. But who can tell?

We can, however, look at where that package has been and what it left in its wake. With Palin, the wake is weak and what is there doesn't look very good and it doesn't match at all the picture that's being painted on the outside of that poke. I hope people in this nation who cast ballots in this race have the good common sense my Nanny had and demand that McCain and crew open up that poke or move on to Barack Obama, the man standing out in the sunshine, dodging the rocks and explaining his plan for the country.

Palin nominated for worst mom

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:43:00 +0000

With all the power vested in me as a political blogger and mother who raised two smart, kind, involved, beautiful daughters in the Great State, the Lone Star State, the Friendship State, the Longhorn or Armadillo State, I do hereby nominate Sarah Palin the worst mother of the latter half of 2008. I would have picked her for the whole year, but there's that mom who microwaved her infant and even Palin isn't THAT bad: She only threw her teen into a whirlwind and under the campaign bus with the whole world watching.

I think, and have lived my whole life with this credo, that women who have children should be with those children, as much and as long as she can. She should be close enough to feed them problems to solve as they gain the skills and information to solve them. For example, at 2, they should be able to choose between two outfits and whether it's OK to wear them inside out. They learn from consequences if they scream and lay on the floor at pre-K because they don't want to wear their coats outside, they get cold on the playground. They learn the stove is hot by a little touch on the outside of the oven. They don't learn to dress warmly by running naked in a blizzard or that fire burns by sticking their hands in the fireplace.

When they mess up, say, get a grasp on the physical principle of gravity by jumping off the porch and spraining an ankle, a mom should be close enough to dry their tears and apply ice and hugs. When they start taking on the bumps and bashes of social interaction, get snubbed by the popular kids or pinched or punched by a bully; when they just give up on ever learning algebra; when she starts her period and needs a change of clothes; when that first crush breaks his heart, Mom needs to be there to listen to those huge problems. And they are huge. They are earth-shattering, because that's all the world they know and that's how they learn to cope with life. That's the second wave of their core concepts of whether the world is a basically good place they can trust or whether life is hard and punishing and its them alone against it all.

All of us mothers in the latter part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st understand the reality that we must work and we are going to miss many of those moments in our children's lives. We have to deal with them when we get home from work. And in this horrible economic time, more and more women are forced into the workplace who would choose to be at home with their kids, a choice less advantaged women have never had.

There are so many wonderful fathers out there; single fathers, we can just plug into those lines above as Dad in place of Mom; so many terrific guys who are choosing to be the primary caregiver to his children to allow his families needs to be met immediately with Mom coming in to reinforce that as soon as she in from work. We have Joe Biden as a role model of how a loving, nurturing father can go to work in a powerful office, with the support of family members and great caregivers, and come home every night and listen to their stories and problems. Biden, however, did not seek the vice presidency, the heart-beat away position, when he was performing the vital role of Mr. Mom.

BUT, Sarah Palin's story is vastly different from any of that. She has five children, one going off to war, a young teenager, one who looks about 8, a special needs infant and a teenager who is about to become a mother herself. I don't know much about Mr. Palin, but he doesn't appear to be much of a Mr. Mom. I don't think he stayed home from his commercial fishing business to take care of the newborn baby with Down Syndrome when Sarah Palin went back to work three days after the baby's birth. And in the tragic case that she does become president, she could be locked in a war room for days at a time; in her office conferring with economic advisors past their bedtime and too late for talking for weeks at a time.

So here are the wherefores I would attach to my nomination:

-- Whereas Sarah Palin knowingly brought her daughter and her daughter's baby daddy into a political maelstrom at the most painful, scary and stressful time of their lives;

-- Whereas Bristol and Levi, living in that fishbowl, must make decisions that they and their baby will have to live with the rest of their lives;

-- Whereas she has three other children who, if she should get her wish to be vice president and becomes president, will know for the remainder of the next four years that they come second to every other person in America;

--- Whereas they will have no Mom there -- to dry their eyes, dream of their futures, put it all in perspective, tell them to get over it, look at their great art and put it on the refrigerator, help them to learn from their mistakes without being crushed -- until after all the people's work is done in war and in peace;

-- Whereas Bristol will pretty much be on her own to plan her wedding, learn how to be a Mother and wife and deal with the public stress (oh, Bristol, here carry Trig in front of your belly and spread the blanket out so no one can see that pooch you got going. Stop whining, that baby's going to be the first grandbaby of the first Republican woman nominated vice president)

-- Whereas Mr. Palin is not Michelle Obama, who is willing and able to be the primary parent 25 hours a day;

-- And Whereas Sarah Palin will be spending much of her first year in office learning to define the borders of Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq (special tutors must be employed because her boss doesn't know it) and studying what this economics thing is about in a country that is not oil rich and has more than 600,000 people within its borders;

I do hereby nominate Sarah Palin the worst mother of the last half of 2008 and, in an unimaginable nightmare, the next four years.

You can cast your vote here or e-mail me at kismetacres@hotmail.com

The tardy blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:31:00 +0000

OK, It's been more than a month since I've filled this space. But when the juiciest stuff happens to detail here, the workload at the HD escalates as well. And to get anything in for the general public, I have to cover it, which leaves me with little time to blog.

Obama's speech was magnificent. I can't remember a better political and cultural speech, and I saw Dr. King speak in person in 1967. So that's quite an endorsement.

Case in point of the speeded up nature of life, I just learned we are opening the comfort station for hurricane evacuees today and not tomorrow and we are opening the shelter today and not Wednesday or Thursday. We already have 25 people who need shelter in Whitewright.

So, off I go to find people to do activities with the kids and sign poles for directions to lead people to the shelters and respite care.

One parting shot at all of our "good friend." McCain, you have watched "Gypsy" far too many times. Remember the scene where the strippers are giving Momma advice? "You Gotta have a Gimmick" is the song. Well, that seems to be advice that Rove and the rat f^*&^* Republican machine evidently gave McCain. Palin is a gimmick, looks like family values on the outside. I'm betting she's all Alaskan hillbilly on the inside. Oh, and did anyone catch that they're crediting her with something like 15 years political experience. That would seem to count her PTA creds. If that's experience that qualifies for the highest office in the land, my Mom could be Empress of the Milky Way. She has five kids and about 20 years in PTA.

Case in point with this post. I began it Sunday and now I'm posting it on Wednesday. Many people helped by our Disaster Relief Group.

T. Boone Pickens and the Barnett Shale

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:44:00 +0000

Well dog my cat. There he was: T. Boone Pickens, legendary oil man robber baron, right there on the television, telling us the current gasoline crisis is not something we can drill our way out of. Not only was he saying something that might seem contrary to his personal interest, he reportedly was spending $10 million on the advertisements encouraging U.S. policymakers and general folks to invest in wind and solar.

Can an old cur really learn such new, forward-thinking and selfless tricks? Polyanna that I am, I was ready to believe it. Now I knew Pickens had been building some of the biggest wind farms on the planet in West Texas and that some arm of the Texas government had just agreed to wire that farm into the ERCOT, Texas' independent energy grid. That can only be a good thing, right? I mean, how can a green hearted, left slanted person such as myself dis a broad advance in renewable energy?

Mind you, I've been just vaguely watching this, letting it creep into my consciousness as I spend professional time examining school funding and tax rollback elections, the city of Sherman's dismantling its day care program and privately working on shoring up North Texas Youth Connections push toward providing transitional living programs for youth aging out of CPS. But somewhere last week, I saw a headline questioning T. Boone's motives, with a subhead about water. I mentally filed that brief. Then I saw another Pickens' ad showing solar panels, more good news; broader approach to renewables. That matches my thinking pretty well. And then I saw another on the use of natural gas in vehicles, an early 1990s solution championed by then Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro. The trend died down.

Saturday, I caught part of a rerun of Pickens' testimony Tuesday before the U.S. Senate's Energy Committee. He was fleshing out his proposal on renewable energy. Replace 22 percent of the nation's natural gas-fired electricity with power produced from solar and wind. (Note to check Pickens' investments in solar tech). Then, accelerate the production of natural gas powered heavy duty trucks and other vehicles.

Wouldn't that raise the price of natural gas, queried Sen. Pete Dominici. Why yes of course, Pickens replied. The market is the market. But, we reached the half-way mark in the planets two trillion barrel supply of oil a couple of years ago, no matter how you go about separating it from the earth. Now natural gas is a different story altogether. It's a domestic product and, because of new natural gas extraction methods, we can cheaply produce as much of that product as we need, here in the United States. There are fields all over the place, a huge one called Barnett Shale.

Comes the dawn! That's Pickens' angle. Given, in my Polyanna way, that I believe he could still have some positive motives in turning the nation's attention toward renewables, I nonetheless see great danger in his proposal. I haven't done the research yet, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that T. Boone owns a hefty chunk of Barnett and the other East Texas shale fields. Not only that, but I bet his fingerprints are all over the legislation and regulatory paper that is forcing groundwater rules and regulation, because that's what he meant by the technology to extract gas from shale. You fracture shale with water; unthinkably massive amounts of water.

In Texas, for the past at least 40 years, we've talked about water being the next "gold". Some areas, like the Hill Country, already highly regulate groundwater, both that in aquifers and that in other sub-surface structures. The Legislature is forcing counties into groundwater districts. Grayson, Fannin and Cooke counties are fighting now to keep from being lumped in with larger counties to the south, in groundwater districts. Guess where Barnett Shale is? You got it: Tarrant, Parker, Denton, Wise and about seven other counties to the south and west of us. And, it also lines up neatly with the Woodbine and Trinity aquifers, subject of said groundwater districts. We've been building surface water sources to keep from draining the groundwater sources, but most small towns in this area and most rural areas rely on wells for drinking water and irrigation for agriculture.

Here's where my pinko background comes into the picture. Do you remember Barry Commoner? He's 90 something now and can rightly be called the founding father or the environmental movement. A cellular biologist, he gets his reasoning from the bottom up. Commoner ran for president in 1980 on the Citizen's Party ticket. He's written several books "The Poverty of Power" being the one that originally caught my attention. I would like to apply several of Commoner's key concepts to this discussion.

"The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else." "No action is without its side effects." and "Nothing ever goes away."

Take, for example, the beating plowshares into gasoline philosophy of ethanol, brought to you by Big Corn, also known as Archer-Daniels-Midland and other agri-giants. Grand idea, use a renewable product to
replace oil and boost the humble farmers income at the same time. After giving ADM and other giant, global corporations billions in subsidies, we've learned that it takes more energy to produce it than it delivers; it corrodes auto parts; and poor people in Central and South America no longer can afford to eat tortillas, their dietary staple. Right wing governments with whom we have "free trade agreements" are pushing poor people off land to grow more corn and are creating ever more poor people who cannot sustain their own lives because of the monoculture. The need to produce huge amounts of corn is bringing about ever more genetically engineered corn, which has infected domestic food crops and makes growing traditional, nutritional corn more challenging if not impossible. And, genetically engineered crops are one of the suspects in the disappearance of bees, a trend that endangers the entire world food supply.

Commoner's basic tenet is that the only way to control technology is at its source, to control the way it is produced. His credo is that the lowest technology is the best technology. The poverty of power comes from the nation's policy of investing in giving private corporations the opportunity to produce ever more profit from every unit of energy. The solution lies not in finding the best two or three big technologies that a handful of companies can replicate in scattered giant sites that make power and transmit it over huge distances to a multitude of customers. The answers lie in creating individual and small group generators that use a wide variety of sources. This would mean investing in tax credits or grants for neighborhoods to put arrays of solar panels or shingles on their rooftops and a windmill or two, to generate power for themselves, and the ability to feed the excess on the big grid to share with other neighborhoods. It means helping small communities in West Texas harness the power of cow manure. It means co-generatios among closely situated industries. It means communities getting together to use the methane their landfills and water treatment plans produce.

So T. Boone Pickens, thanks for the push toward renewables. It's certainly a direction we need to be looking. But Congress, recognize the self interest that lies behind that testimony and look for the lower technology, the greater good of common interest because "everything is related to everything else."

Texas looks at expanding disastrous TIERS program

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:23:00 +0000

This is a response to an Austin American-Statesman article Tuesday on the state administrator of the TIERS system to expand its used. TIERS (the automated registrations system for food stamps and other public assistance and health care) has not worked, suffers from being able to attract and train workers and from bugs in its programing. I posted this response to the AAS Web site:

Many of us in Texas believe that our tax dollars should be used as a collective expression of our values. Ever more often that means ensuring that all Texans have access to adequate food, shelter and health care. TIERS is an effort by the Republican Legislature and administration of the state to reduce the care we offer to individuals so they can continue their personal slush funds to deliver cash to private entities, foreign and domestic (economic development incentives, privatization and toll road contracts to name three vehicles). In the name of updating our technology and being more efficient, we have created the TIERS system to frustrate those applying for help so that more and more just give up or do without for months. How much money has the state "saved" and then delivered to private contractors hands in the name of this efficiency and how many Texans have suffered? To expand this program before the bugs are worked out simply extends the cold shoulder we started in 2003 giving Texans who need help with drastic budget cuts. It is unconscionable to expand implementation of this system before we can make it work for those it should serve.

What's up with this Barack?

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Last night I sent a request to the Obama campaign for an interview to ask the senator about his change from vowing to filibuster against new FISA legislation to voting in favor of it Wednesday.

Some of his strongest supporters during the nomination campaign are dismayed about this vote, not just that it prevents us from having a day in court to challenge the erosion of our Constitutional rights. So far many of us are not satisfied with his statements and assurances. From what I understand at this point, the legislation was not necessary for national security reasons. We have operated without it for many years before the attack on 911 and for several years after it. A lack of the kind of information that can be obtained under the FISA law was not the reason the Bush Administration was caught unaware on 911. And the new law will give the government the right to listen or look in on any communication I might have with my children who travel widely around the world or that I might have with people here in the U.S when I travel outside the country and what previously has been confidential correspondence I might have had as a journalist with sources I have developed in other countries.

Last night Sen. Russ Feingold, who led the fight against the bill, said that although he was not happy with the result, it will not be so bad when Obama is president because he can lead the fight to change it. Well, what happens if Obama loses? Then we have a senile old guy, probably with an enthusiastic, far more conservative younger guy with all the tools he needs to complete the work begun during the Reagan era to establish an unstoppable, all powerful executive. And with the corrupting power of power, there certainly are no guarantees that Obama won't be seduced himself.

This simply is not acceptable and I hope Sen. Obama can offer a more satisfactory explanation of his change in policy. It's too late to change back on this issue, but some concrete assurances that his change philosophy has not been absorbed into the Beltway Borg are necessary for him to keep the kind of enthusiastic support he has enjoyed for more than a year.

The biggest flip flop

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:59:00 +0000

After building its third cycle case for continuing the war in Iraq on the premise of democracy building and nurturing the spirit of Iraq' sovereignty, the Bush Administration and its heir apparent in the Republican Party, John McCain, now are pooh-poohing Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki statement that there needs to be a time table for withdrawing foreign troops. The matter came up as Maliki was working with U.S. to decide the rules of how the two countries will divide power there once the U.N. resolution that currently (ostensibly) governs the relationship ends Dec. 31.

The New York Times carried a report from the pool reporter of McCain's response to Maliqi's statement, "Mr. McCain said it was the same as when Iraqi officials said recently that they doubted an agreement with the United States could be struck over the status of American forces. “Prime Minister Malki, is, has got his, he is a leader of a country,’’ Mr. McCain said, according to a pool report. “And I am confident that he will act, as the president and foreign minister have both told me in the last several days, that it will be directly related to the situation on the ground, just as they have always said. And since we are succeeding and then I am convinced, as I have said before, we can withdraw and withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable. And I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about since he has told me that for the many meetings we have had.”

What an outrageous comment to continue to trumpet his experience over Obama in visiting with the Iraq leaders, and then whittling statements to peg them into his stance. McCain faces the prospect of flipping for a third or forth time on why we are in Iraq and why he supports a war against the Iraqi people or flopping over his insistence that he will react to the "situation on the ground." That by the way is my favorite silly expression that has come out of the war debate "Troops on the ground; commanders on the ground; conditions on the ground." Where else would they be?

The scariest part of this most recent exchange is that McCain once again, even as he is twisting agonizingly in the air, is promising by his actions to be another leader who cannot bring himself to say that he makes mistakes or finds new facts to change his view.

This reluctance is partially our fault in the media because we are so punishing when we discover someone has changed his or her mind. And we do not discriminate between changing a stance based on new evidence or reformed thinking versus shifting and flipping for political expediency.

Voters and the media that serve them must all do a better job of educating ourselves on the difference between rethinking or better explaining old positions in the face of new information and morphing ever more often to capture a few extra votes.

Hersh busts Cheney and Co., again

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:25:00 +0000

Seymour Hersh, whose dispassionate, perfectly sourced stories have been exposing U.S. administrations' covert and corrupt activities since My Lai, has again pushed back the curtain to reveal President Bush and Vice President Cheney maneuvering the country into war. And he has exposed Congress' weak-kneed, lily-livered attitude toward oversight in matters most vital to the nation's security and interests of peace.

It probably comes as little surprise to those who read this blog that Cheney and Bush would be finagling a way to involve the U.S. in a shooting war with Iran. And it's not even past belief that some on the blue side of the aisle would be complicit in an election year. Most disappointing is that Democrats at the top, those assured of being re-elected, not only have reneged on promises to end the war in Iraq, but refused to close the door on what surely will be an even more tragic showdown with Iran. Hersh points out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi single-handedly ended a previous attempt by refusing to agree to funding a secret war appropriations request.

Can we believe in the possibility that the Democrats in Congress will grow a spine? In the past weeks, they have agreed to hold telecoms blameless for spying on us and to funding, without conditions, the war they promised to end. And they have taken impeachment of Bush off the table. Perhaps they should stay out of session until after the election. Haven't any of them learned a thing from the Iraq mire? Why are they not falling over each other to block funding for anything that contains the words "regime change" and "fatal defensive tactic?"

McCain is moving ever toward Bush-Cheney, keeping his ties to the Ollie North-reminiscent National Endowment for Democracy, bringing on Phil Gramm as his economic guru. It should send a shiver up all our spines that Democrats, whose ability to lose elections can't be exaggerated, could open a door through which McCain could follow Cheney and Bush, dragging us all into disaster.

Presidential war strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:52:00 +0000

Barack Obama and John McCain each are engaged in a charge of the light brigade. Cannons to the left of the Cannons to the right, volley and thunder.

In predictable moves, both are maneuvering toward the middle. If both are successful, McCain will win the war of the General Election ballot box.

Obama's phenomenal success in the Democratic Primary was due to two factors: First, his ability to uplift the hearts and spirits of old political soldiers grown weary of the same old same old. They were profoundly disillusioned that Bill Clinton had spent their political capital to pass George H.W. Bush's political agenda of NAFTA and welfare reform without bothering to reinforce the social safety net. They were disgusted by Gore's twisting like a tortured wonk on lances of coziness with Chinese bankrollers and political consultants' admonitions to stop debating like Gore. And John Kerry knocked the rest of us out after he became John Kerry v.2004 when it came to everything progressives considered important and not the Kerry v. 1969, railing against the war in which he had been some heavy dues.

Second, Obama excited a tidal wave of fresh recruits who not only enjoined the battle of the Internet but actually showed up at the polls and beat the masters of insider politics in the caucus battles. This is a test run for them. They likely won't stay around to be fooled a second time if they feel their trust is wasted.

Ralph Nader's once again crowding the Democratic candidate on the left, might prove a plus for Obama and he should take advantage of that. He can push back without adopting any stances he hasn't already announced and still look more centrists. If Obama does in fact reach further right to emphasize the difference, again he will deflate support he already has won.

McCain must satisfy party die-hard social conservative that he is better than the alternatives (Barack and Libertarian Bob Barr.) And he must reach out to grab some of the so-called Reagan Democrats. That might be a reach, but Republicans have humongous financial resources, are practical, and most likely will show up to vote even if they have to hold their noses. And he doesn't have the kind of following that will be disheartened if he turns out to be just like other Republican candidates of years past, they've served the party interests pretty darned well. The religious right might abandon him, unsure of his commitment to their dearest principles. However, he retains that club of Supreme Court justice appointments to hold over them, a weapon they're not likely to beat into plowshares for the culture wars.

So all in all, Obama better stay audacious and lead a brave-hearted charge that moves boldly straight ahead without testing political winds.

The oil crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:08:00 +0000

The national conversation we are having 35 years after the Arab Oil Embargo is disappointingly shallow and limited on all sides. Why is it not apparent that the solutionto the energy crisis must include a totally different concept of how people move around their neighborhoods, cities and states and how we build communities? Much like the corporate "solution" to long lines at the gas pump in the 1970s being to build bigger gas tanks on cars instead of cars that used dramatically less gasoline, the current thinking of drilling our way out of the high cost of gasoline or finding a silver bullet crop to produce ethanol only delays the solution and increases the repercussions. Other "fuels" have trade-offs as well.

No matter how we power cars, they are still capsules containing one or two people. And no matter what the power source, they will require ever-increasing miles of roadway. That roadway requires all manner of natural and financial resources to build and maintain. And the problem gets greater all the time. By looking only at greater production and alternative fuels, we continue to encourage urban sprawl and discourage lifestyle changes that would make our world a more pleasant place to live. We can cover the earth with pavement and send connecting ramps high into the sky. We can put so many holes in the earth, the whole world looks likeKilgore in the 1950s. But none of this deals with the problems of huge costs to the economy, the disparities in income, and the damage to the environment inherent in our current thinking about transportation.

We must develop communities that connect nearly self-sustaining neighborhoods with each other. Neighborhoods must be designed so residents can get to schools, stores, church, restaurants and jobs by walking, biking or using, non-polluting vehicles. We must connect those neighborhoods with convenient, safe and welcoming public transit. We must connect cities with high-speed, affordable mass transit. That all will involve a lot of planning and will not come quickly. So far, no one has really proposed any solutions that will fix anything quickly, and arguably nothing that addresses the problems of the way we think about getting from one point to another.

Democrats in the U.S. House did appropriate $1.7 billion for grants to cities to expand public transit and decrease fares. That's a baby step in the right direction. But that isn't even enough to help cities with the kind of planning necessary to devise alternate transportation let alone implement it.

Blogging v column writing, a demonstration

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:33:00 +0000

For any who might be interested in an example of the off-the-cuff, freewheeling type of writing that goes into a blog versus that which is constrained by necessities of a newspaper column, here is a second version of earlier commentary. The constraints are more in the nature of space and a general audience. The advantage of writing to fit a space is that working the writing probably improves it. However, my daughter Laurel said of the blog that it was nice to read my writing that was more conversational than usual.

Sometimes a single, extraordinary experience gives us a new lens through which to view the realities of our lives.
On a recent trip to Haiti, our lenses captured life in cities built to contain a tenth of the population they now hold. Day and night people crowded onto narrow streets, mostly dirt, few named or addressed. Joining pedestrians were scooters and small motorcycles with whole families aboard, bicycles, delivery trucks, buses and tap-taps filled to overflowing with people and livestock covering the roofs, cars, trucks, pickups and UN military vehicles.
Roadsides brought more culture shock. Trash piled in every space between houses. People combed through the mess, looking for bits of metal to turn into art for the now infrequent tourists. Atop mounds of trash, tethered pigs and chickens picked at bits of food and I shudder to imagine what else. Beside the streets, between houses, ran concrete gutters or dirt trenches. They flowed into the bays or just disappeared into the streets. This, I realized, was the sewer “system.” Running water connected to wealthy homes and some businesses. Even in those places, we could not drink the water or bathe with mouth or eyes open.
In every possible space, men and women crouch beside tiny markets selling items like fake Crocs, stale cheese and crackers, cookies and water packets. Some set up little shops to crack open motors, extract the tiniest pieces of wire. Others spend the day hammering out bent bicycle rims and chains and selling them. Haitians personify industriousness; movement everywhere; use, reuse everything.
Traffic kicks dust into houses built right up to the edges of streets. Women fight an endless battle of sweeping it back into the street. Many have precious little than roof and broom, and we heard true horror stories behind the snapshots of life we could see.
The dust that came off the tires of trucks, off the feet of livestock living on trash heaps, mixed with soot from charcoal fires and the overflowing sewers became “food” for human beings. Kneaded with sugar and oil and baked, dust became cookies to staunch the burning hunger in their children’s bellies.
As the images settled into my brain, I realized I was looking at a preview of our future if we don’t make big changes fast. Two qualities missing from Haiti are rapidly declining here: Infrastructure and a middle class. And the reasons for the destruction in Haiti and the decline here are the same: United States’ policy and the homage it pays to the interests of mega corporations.
Fifty or more years of meddling in Haitian politics and imposing our markets on them have made them dependent on others for almost everything. Once cheap American food came into their country, farmers could not compete. They left their farms for the city where they found no work. Now there are not enough farmers left to feed the people of Haiti.
A small island, Haiti doesn’t have raw materials to produce consumer goods. European colonials clear-cut Haiti’s great mahogany forests. Having no fossil fuels on the island, Haitians have nearly completed the deforestation to make charcoal for their traditional cook stoves.
Corrupt governments have left streets, water and sewer treatment to fall into ruin. Each failing resource makes recovery from another less likely.
They must import everything. Thus, as soon as world fuel prices soared, the cost of almost everything zoomed out of Haitians’ reach. Even the wealthy found depleted choices because retailers couldn’t afford to restock.
Isn’t that a complete metaphor for the position we find ourselves in today? We no longer make things, we import them. Subsidized industrial giants have forced out family farmers and replaced food crops with fuel crops. We are spoiling our environment to cook our food and heat our homes. Our infrastructure is falling into ruin — bridges, roads, levees, rail beds no longer are serviceable. Our people, no longer employed to make things, fall ever more often into low-paying service and retail work.
Our common investment through tax dollars does not address these issues. So far, the political conversations only graze issues of the urgent need to strengthen the middle class and the infrastructure that made this country the mightiest on earth. Our so-called solutions are pitifully shallow, narrow, short-ranged and insufficient.
In the upcoming elections, we should demand candidates at all levels detail plans to solve complex problems. We should let them know we will not vote for anyone who cannot articulate a plan for alternative transportation, not just alternative energy. We must require plans to put Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure; developing green technology; making things ourselves.
We must challenge the notion that public works projects are welfare. And we must reject as ridiculous the idea that tax cuts are patriotic, realistic or acceptable. The next few years will bring gigantic economic and social challenges and we are trillions of dollars in debt.
We must elect and then support people at all levels of government willing to make hard and necessary choices. We must get beyond the reality game show we have made of politics, and seriously assess how we direct common resources for the common good. Otherwise, we will live as Haitians, struggling to stay alive.

Moon Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:12:00 +0000

From my sister Susie Fowler, shadetreepotter.com, with her permission and blessing. The picture is Susie beach combing at dawn in Port Aransas June 11.

Moon Prayer

Awake at 3am,
the full moon is a spotlight,
me the deer,
frozen
in that column of light.

Alone, in my bed,
my troubled dreaming
ceases
and I look
towards the deep space
around the white orb
and find
that we are all
waiting together
for a new day,
when peace calms our hears
and people share their talents
to cure the earth
so all can breathe
a long sigh
of relief.

May the moon
illuminate our souls
and encourage us
to look within
and find the heart
that connects us all
under the great white light.

May we come to feel
the connection,
the one pulse which
unites all living beings
and creates an ever widening
circle of understanding.

As the moon
reflects the sun's rays
so can your heart shine light
for those
who are only now awakening
to the power we can learn from
the eternal communion
of sun and moon.

with love and summer dreams,
susie

Harbingers — a long commentary

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:35:00 +0000

Sometimes a single experience can produce a cluster of realizations.

On a recent trip to Haiti, in Cap Haitien and Port-au-Prince, I witnessed people constantly in motion. Narrow streets, mostly dirt, only one marked in a city of two million, all impossibly crowded with traffic. How anyone navigated and survived a venture into those streets confounded me. Children darted in and out of a flow of pedestrians who filled what might have been shoulders if roads there had such. Into that same space crowded scooters and small motorcycles with whole families aboard, bicycles, delivery trucks, buses filled to overflowing with people and livestock covering the roofs, tap-taps also brimming with life, cars, trucks, pickups, white UN military vehicles. Only one traffic law seemed to apply: When someone honks, pay attention.

The sides of the road brought more culture shock. Trash was piled everywhere space existed between houses. People combed through the mess, looking for bits of metal. Atop the mounds of trash, pigs and chickens were tethered, picking away at bits of food and I shudder to imagine what else they found there to eat. Alongside the streets, between houses, ran concrete gutters or trenches dug into the dirt. They flowed into the bays or just disappeared into the streets. This I realized was the sewer "system." I never saw what passed for a water system, but there might have been such, at least something that connected to businesses and wealthy homes. Even in those places, we could not drink the water and I had to think hard about bathing in it, remembering to keep my eyes and mouth closed.

Along sidewalks and what would have been sidewalks if they had been there, were vendors and even industry. Those who had gleaned metal or wire sold it from the side of the road. There they set up little shops to crack open motors, extract the tiniest pieces of wire and splice them together to make coils. Next door, others spent the day hammering out bent bicycle rims and chains and selling them. With so much traffic and so few consumer goods, there's a big market in bicycle and other vehicle repair. These people are industrious to the max. In every possible space, men and women crouch beside tiny markets selling items like fake Crocs, stale cheese and crackers, cookies and water packets. Movement everywhere. Use, reuse everything.

Dust traffic kicks up traveled into houses built right up to the edges of streets. A peek into doorways brought views of women fighting the endless battle of sweeping the dust back into the street. Those with homes to sweep out had precious little else, and hearing the stories behind the snapshots of life we could see revealed some true horrors. That dust, that dust that came off the tires of trucks, off the feet of livestock living on trash heaps, that mixed with soot from ever-present charcoal fires and the overflowing sewers became "food" for human beings at the bottom of the heap. The women who swept the dust from their homes resorted to mixing it with sugar and oil and baking it into cookies to staunch the burning hunger in their children's bellies.

As the meaning of what I was seeing settled into my brain, I realized I was looking at a preview of our future if we don't' make some big changes fast. Two qualities missing from Haiti are rapidly declining here: Infrastructure and a middle class.

United States' policy and industry are largely responsible for what exists and does not exist in Haiti. Fifty or more years of meddling in their politics and imposing our markets on them have made them dependent on others for everything new and extra in their lives, and most of the basics. Once cheap American food came into their country, the farmers could not compete and left their farms for the city where they found no work. Now there are not enough farmers left to grow sufficient food to feed the people of Haiti and they must buy everything imported. A small island, they don't have raw materials to produce many consumer goods, so all those things are imported as well. European colonials clear-cut their great mahogany forests. Having no fossil fuels on the island, the people have nearly completed the deforestation to make charcoal for their traditional cook stoves. Corrupt governments have left the streets, water and sewer treatment to fall into ruin. Each failing resource makes recovery from another less likely. And as soon as world fuel prices soared, the cost of almost everything zoomed out of the reach of almost everyone in Haiti, including the few wealthy because the retailers couldn't afford to buy their supplies.

Isn't that a complete metaphor for the position we find ourselves in today in these United States? We no longer make things, we import them. Industrial giants have forced out the family farmers and replaced food crops with fuel crops. We are spoiling our environment to cook our food and heat our homes. Our infrastructure is falling into ruin — bridges, roads, levees, rail beds no longer are serviceable. Our people, no longer employed to make things, fall ever more often into low-paying service and retail work. Our common investment through tax dollars does not address these issues. So far, the political conversations only touch on the urgent need to attend to maintaining a middle class and the infrastructure that made this country the mightiest on earth. Our so-called solutions are pitifully shallow, narrow, shortranged and insufficient.

So think about that as your considering whom to vote for in the upcoming elections. Is there a vision and an action plan to create a future for America that strengthens the systems that are vital to our independence and our common well-being? Barack Obama is beginning to outline such a plan. But he needs support from a broad spectrum of folks to enlarge that vision. And he needs people elected at all levels of government who care more about making hard choices and honestly communicating what kinds of sacrifices we need to make now to ensure the future than they are in re-election. We really must get beyond the reality show mentality, the game that we have made of politics and seriously assess how we direct our common resources for the common good. Otherwise, we will be engaged in that daily struggle Haitians live to just stay alive.

Retro blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:21:00 +0000

This is a little odd, coming as it is from a blog that calls itself progressive, but I must regress a bit to explain the sharp end to convention coverage and the long silence since.
It's easy to explain, I went on vacation. And I had little access to Internet services at Port Aransas to finish the stories I had started during the convention.
So here's kind of a rapid-fire wrap-up. And I hope to follow it with a longer discussion in the Herald Democrat Sunday, and more updates as time goes on.
Congrats to the three local folks who will be going to the National Convention. I will print your names as soon as I unpack my notebooks at home. And I'd like to talk to each of you right before the convention so we can set something up during the convention to let your home peeps know what's happening.
Also, to our great superdelegate and DNC Committeemember Bob Slagle, who also served as parliamentarian of the state convention.
Boyd Richie survived the challenge by David Van Os and Texas Democratic Party Vice Chair Roy Laverne Brooks.
The Resolutions, Platform, Rules and Nominations Committees survived, after many, many hours of debate in the grandest Democratic style and eventually all reported to the convention. After many challenges, points of order, roll call votes (all involving much higher math than many of us were comfortable with) the convention concluded with a truly wonderful platform and many fine delegates headed for Denver. The biggest accomplishments, from my perspective, was a nearly unified convention and the drawing together of 15,000 Democrats who wanted to be there badly enough to fight for their right to be seated. And bonus points to the Texas Democratic Party whose conventioneers appeared to be about 90 percent newbies and even more diversified than in former years.
I hope when Democrats meet Tuesday in Denison they will form a circle, raise their right hands and pat each other on the back. Then, stop gloating and get on to the hard and costly work of winning this nation back.

Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Press Progress) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:07:00 +0000

Bob Slagle from Sherman, former chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, won election as the state's at-large delegate to the Democratic National Committee, during the non-contentious part of the Nomination's Committee Report.
The big story was the fight for chairmanship of the party. Two candidates challenged incumbent Boyd Richie. In the last few minutes before the Nominations Committee reported to the convention, members of the state staff hurriedly cranked out former Dallas Mayor and Austin College graduate Ron Kirk's speech in support of Richie, the speechwriter saying out loud as he typed the words into a laptop computer, "Ah, something like, this election is all about change and that's what Boyd Richie has been doing since he became chairman of the Texas Democratic Party... OK, this is going to have to be it. I understand what he's (Kirk's ) saying, I understand his concern. If we make any more changes they're going to have to be written on the hard copy.
At the same time, floor whips for Progressive Populists Co-Founder David Van Os and those for Roy Laverne Brooks, current vice chair of the party, worked the crowd, handing out stickers and talking up their candidates. The nominations made, Convention Chairman Kirk Watson announced the vote would be by Senate District delegation and would be a roll call vote, and thus would be delayed until a vote on the non-contested portion of the slate of statewide officers was complete.
Another challenge to the Nominations Committee came up for National Delegate.
Sue Lozell, the Nominations Committee's selection, and Rosalyn Shorter, of District 25, faced off for one of the female positions for at large member of the Democratic National Committee. The crowd got a little rowdy when Watson declared Lozell had won the voice vote and someone shouted "Division!" from the floor. Watson banged his gavel and tried to soothe the crowd in his characteristically jovial manner. However,
Here's what has been agreed to: Three candidates for Party chair; David Van Os, Roy Laverne Brooks and Boyd Richie. They will each have 10 minutes. They can split it up however they want to, with seconding speeches or speaking themselves.