As Jay mentioned last week, I had pointed out that Walker was being more than a bit hypocritical when he complained about the County Board sending out a mailing regarding the sales tax referendum.
I had received a special request to transcribe the mailing due to the fact that Supervisors Rice, Sanfelippo, Cesarz and Borkowski do not want their constituents to be informed. It is my understanding that the mailing should be available in pdf form in the near future, but it is still important to try to get the information out so that people won't have to rely on the lies of Scott Walker and his squawkers to make a rational decision. I decided to put it on this site since it still gets more hits than my 2.3 readers, and Jay hasn't changed the locks to the place yet.
The mailing reads as follows (emphasis theirs):
Dear Residents of Milwaukee County:
On Election Day, you will have an opportunity to participate in a countywide referendum regarding taxation in Milwaukee County. This is your opportunity to consider a tax shift plan that would lower property taxes while raising the sales tax to support mass transit; park, recreation and culture; and emergency medical services (EMS). We would like to share with you the facts that led us to place this issue on the November 4th ballot:
The referendum is advisory and will not directly result in changes to the sales tax or property tax. It simply asks if you support a one percent sales tax, generating approximately $130 million, to support property tax relief; mass transit; parks, recreation and culture; and EMS (paramedics).
A recent study from the Public Policy Forum shows the Milwaukee County Transit System will face a $20 million shortfall within two years if a dedicated funding source, such as a sales tax, is not identified. Deferred maintenance in the parks now exceeds $300 million. Funding for crucial EMS services can also be stabilized through dedicated funding.
The referendum question asks if you support removing these services from the property tax rolls - currently paid by Milwaukee County property owners - and shifting them to a sales tax, a significant percentage of which is paid by visitors to Milwaukee County and those who do not own property.
The advisory referendum question states property tax relief of at least $67 million. If this policy were in effect in 2008, it would establish a new county tax levy base of approximately $183 million, the lowest level since 1997 and down from the 2008 level of $250 million.
Only the Governor and Legislature can grant Milwaukee County officials the authority to increase the County's sales and use tax, but this is your chance to weigh in.
We encourage your thoughtful consideration and urge you to express your preference in this advisory referendum on November 4th. The yes or no referendum question will read:
"Shall the State of Wisconsin grant Milwaukee County the authority to provide property tax relief of at least sixty-seven million dollars ($67 million) by levying a one percent county use and sales tax to be used to removed the following three items from the property tax levy; parks, recreation and culture; transit; and emergency medical services (EMS)?"
Earlier this year, a super-majority of the County Board voted to place this item on the ballot. We want YOU to have a voice in this discussion, and we encourage you to participate in this important referendum on November 4th.
Sincerely yours,
Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors
On the mailing, there is also a bar graph showing that a home in the City of Milwaukee, worth $150,000, would see a 27% reduction in taxes, going from $631 to $461. The graph further notes that property owners in other communties can expect similar savings. It also notes that savings are higher for property worth more than $150,000.
Now would someone tell me what was inappropriate about this, especially in light of Walker's long history of doing much, much worse on the taxpayer's dime?
For even more information about the tax referendum, click here.
For those of you who get upset about porcine talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, you needn't waste the karma.
The radio clown today in talking about the General Colin Powell endorsement of Barack Obama literally and comically-tragically yelled into the mike about the endorsement, "It was totally about race."
It of course was not what he said, but how he said it. Chris Matthews this afternoon pointed out that perhaps the same thing could said about Limbaugh and McCain. Do ya think?
With that, if the footage gets played in the media, Barack Obama could probably jump up a few points in key states like the gasbag did in 2006 in mocking the Parkinson's disease problems of Michael J. Fox. That helped several US Senate candidates sail to victory that November.
So, next time you get mad at Rush, save it. He's very useful to real Americans.
Conservatives are excellent when it comes to framing. Horrible when it comes to the impact on our lives.
Take their concept "consumer-based health care."
Yes bold men of America. You can bend destiny in your direction and control your health care. You can do it and you should. Take your coverage anywhere, tell medical providers what you will pay and navigate the shoals of almost incomprehensible bills. Never mind your negotiations might have be conducted on your cell phone while the jaws of life pry you out of a wrecked car.
In-house and incessant Journal conservative Patrick McIlheran last week wants the locals to buy into this idea that you too, Mr. Milwaukean, can control your health care.
But, oh darn there is a reality, and that is people are running into problems living real life under high deductible policies that are the cornerstone of consumer-based health care.
The latest issue of the Milwaukee Business Journal runs a story about how the money supposedly being saved using high deductible health insurance -- the kind John McCain wants give you with the $5,000 he will provide families through his socialistic program -- can balloon into big costs. Bear in mind that McCain's gift will fall far short of the $12,000 needed to buy insurance, meaning that the average family at an income of $40,000 will have no insurance at all.
According to the article:
According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, 22 percent of 686 consumers recently polled said they have curtailed doctor visits because of economic conditions. Another 11 percent said they’ve cut back on the number of prescriptions they get filled or they’re taking smaller doses than prescribed to make the drugs last longer.
Although local numbers are hard to quantify, Milwaukee-area health care practitioners say anecdotally they’ve seen a similar trend.
Patients putting off medical care are a mix of self-pay patients, people with government health care coverage such as Medicaid, and people with commercial health insurance, practitioners said. About 90 percent of the people surveyed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said they had health insurance.
Michael Repka, executive director and chief executive of the Independent Physicians Network, which provides services for 1,100 physicians in the Milwaukee area, said he has heard from physicians in his group that office visits are down. The drop in visits is attributed in part to high deductible health insurance plans, Repka said.
There could be millions of hard luck stories as a result of these schemes, especially if McCain has his way and employers abandon their health coverage. From personal experience my grandmother passed away just a year before the advent of Medicare because she tried to save money by cutting her high blood pressure meds in half. A lot of good cost savings did her.
McCain wants to throw people onto the market and it is in this country ladies and gentlemen, very predatory. Look at the lending industry. The airwaves on both radio and the TeeVee are filled will commercials enticing people to wipe their bills with second mortgages, mostly of course to pay off medical bills. Many of the people who were tossed onto subprimes had good credit, but they were not able to understand what they were getting into.
There are some things that people can do, like rewiring a house, and we admire them for that. But it is not smart for most to try.
The idea that people really aren't equipped to cipher their medical bills is no slight to the intelligence of the American people as the right wing would like you to think, but they love to appeal to the public ego. I know someone who is in upper management at a leading university teaching hospital who says even she can't figure out the bills.
Yes, these programs have business implications. If we even hope to have a functioning consumer economy we can't have consumers with zero discretionary income because medical bills have sopped all of that up into an insurance sponge.
Let's just call this "solution" what it is. Cost shifting onto already cash-strapped families.
Americans are finally waking up to the fact that other places around the world can provide public health care programs and actually save money doing. The studies and facts are clear as water. It is time we demand it for ourselves.
November 2004 was not a fun time for me. I remember sometime around 2 AM after the election returns were in sending off money to John Kerry's legal fund to fight whatever challenges he would pursue, I remember knocking out a couple of really bitter posts here, I remember being quite angry that the rest of the country couldn't see what I saw.
Police in Caledonia are investigating the assault of a campaign volunteer as she was canvassing for Senator Barack Obama Saturday afternoon.
In an exclusive interview with 12 News, 58 year-old Nancy Takehara of Chicago says she was going door-to-door when she came across a disgruntled homeowner.
“The next thing I know he’s telling us we’re not his people, we’re probably with ACORN, and he started screaming and raving,” Takehara said. “He grabbed me by the back of the neck. I thought he was going to rip my hair out of my head. He was pounding on my head and screaming. The man terrified me.”
This man--a Wisconsin man--allegedly assaulted an Obama volunteer, a fifty-eight-year-old woman. He threw everything at her that the McCain campaign and the righty blogs and the conservative media have been repeating for weeks: Obama's not a real American (she was "not his people"), ACORN is the root cause of everything bad in this country (credit crisis, vote fraud, and so on). This guy is a true believer. And he's the one full of hate.
And it's not just this guy: Smarter people than I have been chronicling the assualts--on individuals as well as reason--happening before, during, and after campaign appearances by John McCain and Sarah Palin. A hundred thousand people turned out to hear Obama in St. Louis yesterday, and no one got hurt.
But remember, we have been told for years--we're still being told now!--that it's Democrats and "lefties" ("libtards," some prefer to call us) who are full of hate. I call that projection, not fact. Look in the mirror, fellas. It's not us.
UPDATE: In comments, John notes that one Racine County conservative blogger has gone into "full hate mode." In fact, that blogger posts this story in response to the news that one of his (ideological and near-geographical) neighbors allegedly attacked a 58-year-old woman:
In 2004, there was a goon here from one of the lefty 527s that tried to force me to take his piece of garbage. When I wouldn’t, he tried to stick it on my door. I followed the bastard down the street and shoved it back in his bag. It took a neighbor who happens to be in law enforcement to separate us.
What's amazing about this is that the blogger in question posts it because he's proud of it. He posts is because he thinks it makes the canvasser look bad, not him. He could have closed the door, he could have balled the flyer up and thrown it in the canvasser's face and then closed the door. He could have called 911 to report a trespasser. But no--he chases the guy down and man-handles him in the street such that a neighbor has to break it up.
Think back in the not too distant past when the McCain ads and his winger Greek chorus were lying (that in the McCain campaign is known as "advertising") about how Barack was going to "raise your taxes."
That assertion got spanked real good in the real media and by other independent sources as an outright lie.
So it was time for Jeffery Dahmer look-alike Rick Davis to retool. True that those under $250,000 a year -- including Sam "Joe" the Plumber -- would be seeing their taxes drop lower under the Obama plan.
So Davis and company had to get people's minds off of that benefit with guess what kids?
A good old fashioned appeal to racism!
Because some folks who pay no taxes would get a tax credit, something once weighed by Richard Nixon as a way to eliminate welfare, average people are made to forget about how they themselves would make out and get resentful about you know who.
"Robbing" from the upper incomes to fund this tax credit is being labelled by the right wing regimented as socialism. Thank God we get to bring that term out of mothballs. For the right wing, the classics never go out of style.
But whoa, wait a minute. Focus for a minute on what McCain is proposing when it comes to health care. Aren't you on the right getting all jiggly about McCain looking to provide everybody in America with a tax credit to get into a private health insurance plan? This would fund the fantasy of "consumer health care."
So if everyone gets this credit, wouldn't that include people who now pay no income tax?
So contestants, what's the difference between the "socialistic" Obama tax plan and the McCain health care plan?
Phil Ball with the Isthmus in an article on the grassroots vitality of the two presidential campaigns invites you to try out their widgets for finding events within a chosen area by plugging in a zip code.
Ball tries a couple of areas to demonstrate that the Obama campaign has a lot more going on than McCain, particularly in Wisconsin.
My mother lives in Destin. It sits on the Emerald Coast on Florida's panhandle, perhaps one of the most conservative coast. I get great amusement reading the out of this world letters to the editor from the wailing residents that see ink in the Fort Walton Beach paper.
So what's happening within a 25 mile radius of 32541?
If you want to take in an event for John McCain there are none. Barack will keep you busier with 12 events going on within an easy drive of Destin.
Will Obama carry Okaloosa County? Highly unlikely.
Will the infrastructure be in place to give trouble to the GOP and grow the grassroots?
Yesterday, I posted about GOPerative Brian Fraley's posting of a Communist party rant and attributing it to Barack Obama. I gave Fraley the benefit of the doubt that he had been duped, though I think we all knew he wasn't. But I gave him an out if he wanted it.
I tried to bait Obama supporters to show their blind allegiance to The One. [. . .] I had even held all comments so that no one could ‘warn’ folks that the quote was indeed from the CUSA site. [. . .] Alas, no takers on the bait.
Yes, how sad for him that Democrats are not as stupid as he thinks we might be.
But Fraley's excuse for his behavior is worse:
Obama’s interaction with Joe the Plumber was quite revealing to many who hadn’t examined the Obama economic plan to date. He believes in establishing a new welfare state, to be ‘fair’ and redistribute wealth (Spread the wealth around), including taking Joe’s would-be income to provide income tax ‘credits’ to those who pay no income taxes.
Each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, right? Fight on Comrades!
The problem, of course, is that Barack Obama said no such thing to Joe the Plumber. The miracle of taking things out of context has provided endless bounty for Republicans during this campaign, and Fraley is its beneficiary now. Hilzoy provides the actual transcript of Obama with our new idol Joe:
My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. If you've got a plumbing business, you're going to be better off if you've got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody, and I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.
Yes, the phrase "spread the wealth around" does appear in what Obama said, but you have to excise the context and twist Obama's meaning to get anything Communist (or communist) out of that. Nowhere does Obama say he will "establish a new welfare state" or do anything to "redistribute wealth." Indeed, it is clear that Obama is supporting the idea of a strong economy for all, not just a strong economy for the wealthy (which is, after all, what we've had for the last 30 years). When more people can afford to hire Joe the Plumber (once he gets that pesky plumbing license), Joe the Plumber will have a better life for himself. That's "spreading the wealth around."
If Fraley has a problem with a strong economy at all levels (or if Fraley has a problem with reading comprehension), then that's his problem, and no amount of trying to "trap" anyone will make up for it.
The Supreme Court sided Friday with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.
The justices overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.
Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.
In a brief unsigned opinion, the justices said they were not commenting on whether Ohio is complying with a provision of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 that lays out requirements for verifying voter eligibility.
Instead, they said they were granting Brunner's request because it appears that the law does not allow private entities, like the Ohio GOP, to file suit to enforce the provision of the law at issue.
That sound you hear is a thousand conservative bloggers' heads exploding in unison.
When last (well, first) we played this game, Brian Fraley, who has had his fingers in all kinds of Wisconsin GOP pies and currently hosts a bunch if WILFs, had mindlessly applied a right-wing forwarded email as a "daily take" of his, seemingly passing it off as his own research.
Today, I was alerted by an astute but pseudonymous tipster that Fraley seems once again to be playing the post-an-email-forward game*. Fraley writes,
Attention Obamaniacs: Please, read this latest Obama missive and tell me that I’m wrong. Because, when I read this I see, not only a socialist, but a Communist.
Laying down the gauntlet, he is, demanding that we pro-Obama forces read and then defend the "latest Obama missive" from charges of Communism.
Now, I'm on the Obama email list, and, while I don't read every single one of those emails all the way through, I have a pretty good sense of both how Obama writes and what kinds of policies Obama supports. And Obama is certainly no Communist. Yet here, in part, is what Fraley attributes to Obama--without a link of any kind, of course:
In the longer term, what is required is a new model of economic governance at the state and corporate level. By that I mean a reconfiguring of the role and functions of government and corporations so that they favor working people, the racially and nationally oppressed, women, youth and other social groupings. [. . .]
In my view, such a model should draw from the New Deal experience, but in the end it has to be shaped in the first place by today’s conditions and requirements for political and economic advance for our nation’s working people and oppressed people, broadly defined. It won’t be socialist, but it would challenge the power and practices of the agents of capitalism, insist on peace and equality, consider public takeover of our energy and financial complex, and de-militarize and green our economy and society.
I have never heard Obama call for a takeover of any "complex" of any kind. Obama does not use rhetoric like "oppressed people" or "agents of capitalism." This smells bad for Fraley.
So I grabbed a sentence from the bit that he posted, and googled it. The first hit? Communist Party USA. Right after the title of the article, "OPINION: Finances and the current crisis: How did we get here and what is the way out? Part 2," there's a byline--"Author: Sam Webb, National Chair."
That's right: Fraley has attributed an opinion piece written by the national chair of the American Communist Party. No wonder Fraley says he sees a Communist as the author of the piece--the author is a Communist! But the author is not Barack Obama.
No doubt--because I do not believe Brian Fraley is so malicious that he would concoct this lie himself--he got one of those ubiquitous email forwards claiming "OMG! Look what Obama's campaign just mailed to supporters! Obama's a Communist!" And, rather than do the simple work of googling the piece and seeing that, indeed, Obama was not the author, Brian just plows right into the smear on his blog. He demands that someone come in and defend Obama for writing something that Obama did not and would not write.
The best part, of course, is that Fraley ends his post with "Why is my take wrong? [. . .] Your forum. Go for it." It's the best part because, if you leave a comment to tell him why his take is wrong, it goes off into the ether somewhere to await moderation without so much as a notice that moderation is even enabled. "Our forum" seems nothing of the sort.
* NOTE: The post-somebody-else's-work game is not unique to Brian, and it is normally not worth commenting upon, as everyone does it all the time. My complaint here is not that this is what he's done, but rather the laziness or willful ignorance that led him to post the specific content that he did.
OK, let's bite on this one since we will be hearing about Joe ad infinitum for the next few days or so until attendees at Palin rallies who have so little self control they will make the top of the news again.
Let the Joe the Plumber wars begin!
Three points where Joe would do better under an Obama administration:
1) He is clearly under the $250,000 level where he would benefit from McCain's tax program. At less than that income he does better based on Obama's program.
2) He would get a small business health care benefit based on Obama's program.
3) He would get a $3,000 tax credit per each new job based on Obama's tax plan.
And one more:
Since trickle down doesn't work he would have more customers who could afford his services.
Remember, if Barack Obama wins, it could only be because ACORN is rigging the process. Here they've clearly put Frank Luntz and Brit Hume in the tank for Obama to legitimize the thievery!
(hat tip to gnarlytrombone in the comments to an earlier post)
I'm not sure how I missed this story, but Jesse Taylor at Pandagon points to the WaPo and a message from the Wisconsin Republican Party:
Jonathan Waclawski, the party's election day operations, wrote in a Sept. 8 e-mail that he needed contact information for people "who would potentially be willing to volunteer ... at inner city (more intimidating) polling places. Particularly, I am interested in names of Milwaukee area veterans, policemen, security personnel, firefighters etc. ... If you have any connections with such organizations, please pass that information on."
See, to the GOP, black people are scary. (This is another reason why Republicans are whinging about ACORN's success at registering 1.3 million new voters this year--most of those new voters are not white.) What do they think will happen at these places? Riots? (Note: What digby said.) What are GOP poll "watchers" planning to do that they think they might set off riots?
Your modern Republican party, folks! GOPers, stand up and take a bow, why don't you?
Gretchen Schuldt once again gets to the heart of why the state's school finance system is (&*^&%$)*&ed up:
MPS enrollment is higher than expected.
The more students a district has to educate, the more expensive it is. That is pretty intuitive math.
The irony is that the increased enrollment in MPS means the district will be able to raise less revenue. Crazy, but true.
This is as insane as the fact that, because last year we did not tax Milwaukee residents at the maximum level, we are getting less state aid this year. It adds insult to injury to lose millions more in state aid because we have more students than expected. What can MPS do right anymore that won't result in cuts in funding from the state?
I don't have a job that lets me listen to Charlie Sykes in the mornings. I'm not sure, anyway, that after teaching one bunch of adolescents all day I would want to listen to another on the radio anyhow.
But I am glad there are others out there who can keep an ear on Sykes. The Brawler, for example, caught Sykes saying that he believes Democratic "vote fraud" will be the deciding factor in the November election.
(Pause for laughter.)
All of this is hooey, of course; the whinging about ACORN and fraud are all designed to do one thing, which is to delegitimize a Barack Obama presidency. Charlie thinks he can convince himself, and enough of his listeners, that but for the likes of ACORN and "voters" named "Mickey Mouse," John McCain would be our next president--and that would make anything Obama says or does illegitimate despite what may look like a landslide and a mandate.
Has Charlie seen this? That's pollster.com, not ACORN, showing (as I type this) a nine-point composite lead in the polls for Barack Obama. Obama's at a majority, 51.2%, meaning if every undecided voter broke for John McCain in the next two weeks, McCain would still lose by a greater margin that Al Gore and John Kerry combined. pollster.com also estimates that Obama has 320 safe electoral votes right now, 50 more than needed to win the presidency.
How on earth does Charlie Sykes think that ACORN is skewing the polls? Could he really believe that every media organization on the planet is being played by Democratic fraudsters to show an overwhelming Obama lead? Does he think that the polls today are somehow being gamed as cover for the massive fraud that we have planned to execute on election day?
Or, more likely, is he just delusional? Maybe bitter and angry over the fact that this country has clearly left him behind? That Wisconsin will vote more strongly for Obama than for Gore or Kerry?
My vote is the latter--Charlie Sykes is losing it. He is, as a famous man once said, rejecting reality and substituting his own. The polls are meaningless. The truth is meaningless.
Well, here's news for you, Charlie: If that's the way you feel, you're the one who's meaningless.
Classless, tasteless, brainless, witless, more less than meets the eye, the day to day display of Patrick McIlheran in ink and on the web by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel must be a perpetual practical joke on the right wing readers.
They think that the paper is making up for its, in their view, hideously liberal content giving this lone voice in the wilderness a hearing. Never mind that the Journal Company is providing over six hours of in kind donations to the GOP with their line-up of hitters on right wing unreality, led off by the redoubtable Charlie Sykes, spewed throughout the great state of Wisconsin.
For the rest of us, this is burlesque and non-stop inanity.
Witness Paddy Mac's latest offering. Most endearing is his faux populism, which from time to time he proves is phony in this blog post on the closing of the Janesville GM plant, in which he proclaims, "If you hated SUVs, you're happy now, right?"
As with all great events, Paddy leaves out the great men who made things happen. In this case the management of GM who failed to recognize where the price of oil was heading.
The eventual tightening of the oil supply is something that was well known to many industry experts and economists, something that many saw coming.
But why was nothing done? Because in the corporate world those who make quarterly targets are richly rewarded and nobody dares to suggest retooling the product line into something less profitable yet marketable. It was no wonder that the padlocked doors at the Janesville Plant would be the result.
But as usual in Paddy's world the workers get to eat the dirt while those responsible get to bail out with golden parachutes.
And who caused this? Environmentalists. What a beautiful mind.
One more thing. Paddy came out of his elitist closet on Sunday in his column about the Obama tax plan. By the way, if you want to get the number on your savings, click here.
As you all know one of the prime McCain campaign lies was that Obama was going to raise your taxes. Now after countless independent analysis and non-partisan articles have blasted that myth, there is a new attack as laid out in McIlheran's Sunday column.
This champion of the common man wants us to cry bitter tears because "Uncle Sam takes money from someone else and gives it to you." He is now turning the "welfare cheat" charge...on us! Brilliant way to bring together the races.
Things are really getting desperate with right wing because Paddy lives right in the echo chamber, but now he is urging us to deny ourselves the tax cut and feed it into the trickle down machine, which now Americans recognize as being truly on the fritz.
I used to get ticked over McIlheran's columns. Now it is impossible to not feel entertained and, I hate to say it, superior.
The local right--and, by now, the national right is too--is up in arms over an 8th grade literature textbook's inclusion of a speech by Barack Obama in its section on literary speeches. The speech in question, Obama's speech to the 2004 Democratic convention (YouTube link), which is farily non-partisan (for a convention speech), is a master of oratory and rhetoric. If my current crop of 9th-grade students could write half as well as Obama does with that speech, I would quite literally weep for joy.
From what I understand, the textbook also includes no discussion of Republicans v. Democrats, and Obama's speech itself is quite post-partisan. He talks about service as duty and how being a good person is not dependent on your Red or Blue status. I suppose conservatives and Republicans might take issue with such a hopeful, post-partisan message, but personally I think teaching children the value of self-worth outside of labels is not a bad thing. (And, as I said, teaching them to write as well as Obama would be an awesome thing.)
When building the non-fiction section of a literature textbook, particularly when you start thinking about speeches, any attempt to be contemporary is inevitably going to raise a question. Is the Kennedy speech in the texts I have sitting in my classroom at school partisan and political? Would a speech by King be? Probably not, you would say, likely because those are all 40 years old. But what about a speech by Reagan or Clinton (who, like Obama, both gave good speech)? Is the mere fact that Obama is a contemporary politician enough to disqualify him from inclusion in literature texts? And if there were a contemporary Republican (certainly neither Bush nor McCain fits this bill) as gifted as a writer and speaker, would her inclusion also be automatically disallowed because her words might similarly be too relevant to students' lives?
And how do the complaining conservatives think those 8th-graders are going to affect the vote?
In the end, perhaps the publishers should have considered that Obama's career was not over and there was a strong chance that he would be a national figure in coming years. But taking a fairly non-partisan speech by a contemporary figure (one with, as it turns out, about a 2/3 approval rating from the public at large) and using it to teach students how to craft their own writing is not a crime, not a give-away to a political party. Turning your 8th-grader and his textbook into a headline to benefit your candidate, on the other hand ...
Leaders from a diverse array of sectors will hold a rally in Miami on Thursday, February 23, 2006, in support of comprehensive immigration reform in an effort to keep immigration reform at the forefront of the public debate. Leaders from both political parties, immigrant communities, labor, business, and religious organizations will gather to call on Washington to enact workable reform.
The rally will feature Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as the headline speaker along with elected officials, immigrants and key local and national leaders. Sen. McCain is one of the chief sponsors of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act; bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform legislation introduced last Congress and scheduled for consideration by the Senate in the coming weeks. A similar rally with Sen. McCain is planned for New York City on February 27. [. . .]
The rally in Miami is being sponsored by the New American Opportunity campaign (NAOC) in partnership with ACORN, Catholic Legal Services - Archdiocese of Miami, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Miami Dade College, People for the American Way/Mi Familia Vota en Acción, Service Employees International Union, and UNITE HERE
As Bart Simpson would say, the ironing is delicious.
In honor of Paul Krugman being named Nobel laureate in economics today, I put up on YouTube the video I shot at the Big Tent Event in Denver during the week of the Democratic Convention.
Krugman talks about how the election will unfold, what will happen after the election, what should happen after the election in terms of health care reform and about the progressive political majority in the US.
Reporters are supposed to report facts, yes? And when someone gives you statements that don't square with reality, it's your responsibility as a reporter to point that out, right?
For Sensenbrenner [the current economic crisis] dates back to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that required banks to offer credit in every market they served. The act forced banks to lend to “those who lack the ability to pay,” Sensenbrenner says.
The problems created by the law were exacerbated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Sensenbrenner says. The private mortgage companies, which were recently taken over by the government, were able to borrow money at low rates thanks to the government’s implicit financial backing. Critics say they took too many risks with borrowers and grew too big, holding or backing about half the mortgages in the United States.
“I thought the agencies were out of control and the crisis proves it,” Sensenbrenner said, referring to some of the loans being given out by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other lenders as “NINJA” mortgages, as in no income, no jobs, no assets. “Giving mortgages to those types of people was a recipe for disaster,” Sensenbrenner says.
Later in the story, Marrero offers a half-hearted "depends on who you ask" excuse for not calling Sensenbrenner on these falsehoods, given that lots of Republicans and Republican sympathizers have internalized the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac/ CRA line of crap as the truth. The problem is, that line of crap is in fact a line of crap. More responsible news organizations have done the research to lay that myth conclusively to rest:
Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis. [. . .] Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market. [. . .]
Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods. [. . .] What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
There's plenty more where that came from--including the fact that Fannie and Freddie make no loans to borrowers at all. If Sensebrenner truly told her that there were "loans being given out by Fannie Mae [and] Freddie Mac," than he was lying through his teeth. If he didn't say that, and Marrero just slipped it in herself, then she has done a poor job researching the question and is perhaps the wrong person to be writing about Congress and the financial crisis.
In addition, the funniest blog on the planet points to a study of CRA loans, and found that CRA loans constituted only 23% of all loans and 9.2% of high-cost loans; were twice as likely to be retained in the originating bank’s portfolio than loans made by other institutions; and were less likely to be foreclosed upon than other loans. That does not suggest to me that the CRA or Fannie and Freddie were at the root of this crisis--which is the result of bad loans, sold off like hot potatoes, that eventually go south. The data show CRA loans just don't fit that profile.
Marrero's job is to find those same studies and apply the facts to Sensenbrenner's baseless lies. It is not merely to reprint what he says with a weak he said-he said defense of blatant falsehoods. Sensenbrenner may be a biggity-wiggity in local politics. But a liar is a liar--and needs to be called one by the reporters who cover him.
If John McCain wants a source for political advice, he could do no better than the crowd in Waukesha. McCain should run with the tip from such insightful politicos as James T. Harris who speaks for all people of color, "I am begging you, sir. I am begging you. Take it to him."
Do it John. Show That One his place.
Real charming was the seething sullen guy who brought his bar talk to the rally and was bellowing about socialism. You all did us proud.
In other words, in the next debate lay wood on Barack Obama. We're quite sure the Democratic nominee will have nothing to say. And it is probably best if he didn't, but just kept on talking about the economy.
The media creation McCain has fiddled with stories about questionable "pals" while our economic Rome burns.
The problem McCain has is the typical shiny objects the GOP used in elections past are not providing the necessary distraction and the only way out is to steal votes or yank people's franchise.
The real advice McCain should follow is from Joe Klein in Time magazine.
(I)t would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower.
You are watching losing, and losing it, in action.
It seems that once again, involved and discerning parents demanded the highest academic standards from a school in the Milwaukee Parental Choice (voucher) Program--and when they didn't get that quality, they shut the school down:
A high school that joined the city's voucher program this year has been removed from the program by state officials because of building code violations that render it unsafe for students.
Wait! I must be reading that wrong. Voucher proponents assure us that parents will vote with their shoe leather and close down these sorts of bogus operations. Clearly it's not the state at work here, but the market forces. Let's try that again:
R&B Academy, 5150 N. 32nd St., is the third publicly funded private school to be launched by Ricardo Brooks and subsequently shut down by the state Department of Public Instruction because of problems.
No, no, no, no! That's not right! It's the demands of the market that shut down this bad apple, not the state. It must be. Just like restaurants that lose customers when the food poison people or recent TV shows by Stephen J Cannell. Once more:
At issue is whether this mid-semester closure will force the DPI to reconsider what's known as the "bad actor" rule. The state agency had kept a list of people banned from being involved in a voucher school for seven years, and Brooks was placed on that list after two voucher schools he started, Academic Solutions and Northside High School, were forced out of the program because of questions about their academic viability and safety. [. . .] The absence of such a rule infuriates Anthony Shunkwiler, who taught at Brooks' Northwest High School for four months before it was closed by the state in 2006. Shunkwiler, who now lives in Texas, said Thursday that he was never paid for the time he worked there.
He described Northwest as a chaotic place where students rolled marijuana cigarettes in class and brought firearms to school without fear of punishment. Classrooms lacked textbooks and Brooks was primarily concerned about maintaining a flow of cash from the state, Shunkwiler said.
Well, shut my mouth. I guess this really was the state, and not the market. I don't understand how that could be; the great promise of "choice" was that parents would lead, not the state. Oh, well. There's a lot I don't understand anymore, I guess.
You got to feel sorry (I think I can) for the GOP this year. Not only did they have a crop of candidates who, to quote Howard Dean, reminded you of something out the 1950's, but the creme that rose to the crop was a media created fraud.
Think about all the cheap shots and dubious constructions that worked for the Republicans in campaigns past. They became so addicted to them that the apparatchiks formerly employed by Darth Rove felt a content free campaign could win this thing.
But now that the poll numbers for McCain are sagging, the campaign is turning to the McCarthyite guilt by association William Ayers attacks on Barack Obama.
But the irony is the blind ideology of the GOP brought to you by that past electoral success has led to this toxic economy so bad that now most voters are not susceptible to these siren songs. Even the racism that worked in years past may look like a costly luxury.
Savor this fine six minutes as Obama Communications Director Robert Gibbs lets the air out of gas bag Sean Hannity following the debates last night.
Gibbs; in his typical affable, next door neighbor style; blasts the guilt by William Ayers association desperado tactic of the McCain by pointing out that Hannity had a whole show featuring the anti-Semite Andy Martin.
Worse for Hannity, his long-suffering foil Alan Colmes adds a dollop of Cool Whip on the topic by going into depth about the board that Obama and Ayers served on, talking about the other members who made up the board (funded by former Reagan supporter Walter H. Annenberg), blasting the McCartyite tactics. This "issue" will be something our own local Charlie McCarthyite will be using ad infinitum as the smell of dead horse drives people away.
Don't think Gibbs will asked be on Hannity's show any time soon.
The right is in high dudgeon again because of ACORN, the community organizers who, as part of their mission, identify non-voters and register them so that those traditionally voiceless in the electoral process might find a voice--the vote being guaranteed in the Constitution and whatnot.
Most recently, there's the raid of an ACORN office in Nevada by state officials looking for evidence of fraud. Problem is, ACORN had been sending state officials evidence of fraud--no search warrant needed!--for months and officials ignored it:
As part of our nonpartisan voter registration program, we have reviewed all the applications submitted by our canvassers. When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials. We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations.
For the past 10 months, any time ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application into election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual.
Election officials routinely ignored this information and failed to act. In early July, ACORN asked to meet with election officials to express our concerns that they were not acting on information ACORN had presented to them. ACORN met with Clark County elections officials and a representative of the Secretary of State on July 17th. ACORN pleaded with them to take our concerns about fraudulent applications seriously. One week later, elections officials asked us to provide them with a second copy of what we had previously provided to them. ACORN responded by giving election officials copies of 46 "problem application packages," which involved 33 former canvassers.
On September 23, ACORN had received a subpoena dated September 19th requesting information on 15 employees, all of whom had been included in the packages we had previously submitted to election officials. ACORN provided our personnel records on these 15 employees on September 29.
Got that? Nevada officials have known for months that some ACORN workers had been turning in forms for, to name one example, the Dallas Cowboys. Nevada officials knew this because ACORN told them about it. And yet the Secretary of State there (a Democrat, no less) waited until a month before the election to stage a high profile media stunt and to accuse ACORN of engaging in fraud when, in reality, it was ACORN who tried to stop the fraud in the first place.
More locally, we have Republicans freaking out that ACORN used former felons in its voter registration drives, despite a ruling by the Government Accountability Board in April that such people were ineligible to act as registrars. Did you hear about that ruling in April? Neither did I, and neither, apparently, did the City of Milwaukee, whose job it was to deputize the registrars. They were going by the text of the law which says (.pdf) that "[a] qualified elector of the state may apply to any municipal clerk or board of election commissioners to be appointed as a special registration deputy for the purpose of registering electors of the municipality prior to the close of registration" (6.26(2)a). Since former felons may vote in this state (they are "qualified electors"), the statute clearly permits former felons to be special registration deputies, something the GAB apparently changed without legislative approval and without making sure that every municipality--like Milwaukee--knew.
So once again, ACORN is trying to follow the law both here and in Nevada, and trying to cooperate and coordinate with state and local officials to make sure the law is being followed and that anyone breaking the law is punished for doing so. And yet the right sees ACORN as the bad guys. I don't understand why; it seems like merely attempting to give minorities and the poor a greater say in the election is enough to earn a group like ACORN constant and undeserved scorn.
Charlie's blog posts should come with a laugh track.
Here's one of many, this one over how McCain should for the debates ah, "take off the gloves:"
This is the hour of reckoning. Can this country afford a 4-year Socialist knocking America down to the same economic and political level as every country in the world just to prove to everyone else that we're no better. It's like giving trophies to everybody just because they played rather than being the champions. We must defend that status of most envied nation in order to give others hope that there is a champion that will defend them against tyranny. It's time. Give 'em hell, John!
Hard to believe that there are not only thoughts like this, but that someone is even trotting these out in public.
The big question is when will McCain start talking about an issue in his commercials?
Keep goading him on Charlie. A second performance like the last debate should be good for knocking off another 2 or three percentage points.
Pallin' around with terrorists? That's the best this pitbull with lipstick can do?
On the one hand I can see why McCain strategists and their servile pundits are playing up the Bill Ayers connection with Barack Obama. Palin carried that message yesterday. Ayers, who said in 2001 he opposes the "indiscriminate killing of human beings by either fanaticism or official policy", was nonetheless a member of the most notoriously militant anti-war radical group of the 1960s, the Weather Underground.
This group's use of bombs, which in one case killed a police officer, was wrong and contemptible.
Almost all anti-war activists and politicians of the time would also agree, which is why this splinter group earned the acrimony of just about everyone else at the time. Yet all that matters is the perceptions of voters today, and strategists think they can wound the Obama campaign with someone else's old splinter.
On the other hand, I don't see this working for a lot of people. Is our collective perception of the Vietnam Era -- what historians call our public memory --that mangled and highly selective? Did the 1960s gives us just one bad guy: the dirty hippies?
I am obviously not the base that this talking point is aiming to energize. And that's not because I was a hippie; like Obama I was still a little boy in the 1960s. I just don't get why he the wayward militants were the only domestic terrorists of the day.
Take Henry Kissinger, for example. While I don't admire Ayers, I am way more troubled by Sarah Palin's link with Kissinger, from whom she sought to learn about world affairs two weeks ago. Kissinger is a war criminal with blood on his hands shed during the Vietnam War period. Why Ayers bad, Kissinger not so much?
This is the period that also gave us National Guard soldiers at Kent State University in 1970. Chicago police officers who laid open the heads of young women in Chicago in 1968, and Milwaukee had those young guys waiting at the south end of the viaduct with two-by-fours and tire irons for the open housing marchers to arrive.
If I try to take it all in, some wistful sadness comes but not much selective outrage anymore. According to the New York Times, Chicago Mayor Richard Daleyviews the actions of a young Ayers 40 years ago "in the context of a polarized and turbulent era."
Sarah Palin and theMcCain campaign think a majority of voters aren't wise enough to do the same.
As I said to Jane Hampden on "Lake Effect" back when she was doing that "Wisconsin Bloggers" series, every time I think about quitting this gam, there's always one more election on the horizon that I want to be in mix of. This spring, there's two (statewide; there's a school board race here in town). First, Wisconsin State Supreme Court, and now State Superintendent:
Elizabeth Burmaster, state superintendent of public instruction since 2001, said Monday that she will not seek a third term as the state’s highest ranking kindergarten-through-12th grade education official.
Tony Evers, Burmaster’s deputy since she first took office, said he will run in the election in spring, and Burmaster threw her support behind him.
I'm very curious to see who else lines up in this race. I anticipate the race will be about just one or two things--with some variation depending on how quickly the Obama administration makes adjustments to No Child Left Behind. One will be the state funding formula for public schools. There are enough districts (MPS is hardly the only one) for whom adequate funding is no longer a given in any particular year. The second will undoubtedly be MPS itself.
The article also drops this out of nowhere: "There has been some speculation that Burmaster wanted to run for governor in 2010 if Gov. Jim Doyle does not seek re-election." Perhaps I do not mingle in the right Democratic circles, but of all the names I've heard, Burmaster's is not among them. If Doyle is offered an takes a position in an Obama administration, there will be a primary in 2010, and Burmaster's hardly the frontrunner for that job right now.
I thought I would do my best to render you all speechless, too. This (fourth comment down) is my new most favorite comment ever:
Wrong again, Eugene. Ifill was a joke. Every question was framed to the advantage of Biden and she gave him the last word by a 3-1 margin. That is not balanced, that is being "in the tank." As I predicted, Ifill asked ZERO of the questions I told you she would avoid (Ayres, Wright, Rezko, killing born alive babies, Black Liberation Theology, etc.....). Ifill is part of the criminal effort on the part of the MSM to shield Obama from having the truth about him exposed to public. She did her job last night.....Your comment that Biden was the more polished debator is ridiculous. Sarah wiped the floor with him last night. Biden is a blowhard, self agrandizer, and wrong on most issues, however, I do not think he is a bad person. Sadly, he has clearly sold his soul to be on the ticket with a lowlife like Obama. John McCain and Sarah Palin are true American patriots who have served our country with honor and dignity. Obama represents every filthy segment of our population and world....criminals, terrorist sympathizers, reverse racists, shiftless lazy people, abortion doctors, crooked politicians, illegal aliens, anti-Christian bigots, Hollywood and Ivy league elitists, and people who practice acts of moral deviancy. McCain and Palin represent real Americans and the best ideals of our country. We all need to decide which side we are on.
I don't know about you, but I'm on the side this guy's not on.
I had vaguely considered laying down some sort of silly bet against Atrios--mostly because I'm a traffic whore--but I didn't have a whole lot of hope that I would actually win any cheesesteak. Anyway, congrats to the Brewers for a fine season, even if it ended today.
I have written before about An American Carol, the right-wing send-up of liberals based (loosely, I assume) on the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, in which the "Ghost of America Present" is a General Patton, guy who's been dead for more than 60 years.
It opened this weekend (I did not go see it). So did Bill Maher's new film, a documentary called Religulous--its title is a mashup of "religion" and "ridiculous," which should give you an idea what it's about (I did not go see it, either). Maher's film, on 1/3 as many screens as the right-wing Carol, earned almost exactly as much this weekend, with a per-screen take triple that of the winger film.
Of course, I don't think the biggest goal of either film is to make money; both clearly have an ideology to promote (I happen to be more likely to agree with Maher's than Carol's). But the box office is a good indication of just which film is doing a better job of promoting its ideology--or of which ideology is more popular. Gives one pause, doesn't it?
EDIT: gnarlytrombone's comment below reminds me of something I wanted to say in this post but forgot initially. Duane Dudek actually blogged about the coincidence of these two films' opening on the same weekend, and he included this line: "An American Carol was not made available for advance screening." When a studio won't make a film available for critics before its release, it suggests that the studio does not have a high opinion of the film's quality. A mess of bad reviews on opening weekend would be deadly, so better to avoid that altogether. As gt implies, the low box office may be for a reason other than ideology.
I have said before that I do not envy Rick Esenberg. I like him and have enjoyed every conversation we've ever had together. He is a smart guy--I wouldn't want to go up against him when death is on the line, let's say--and an honest conservative. However, he's also the guy the less honest or smart turn to when they need to legitimize their fetishes or polish their turds.
We saw it, for example, with the Gableman-Butler Wisconsin Supreme Court race. No doubt Esenberg agreed more in philosophy with the general lean of Mike Gableman, but Gableman proved to be at best a mediocre jurist and ran a campaign of outright lies and borderline racist attacks on Justice Louis Butler. As the lawyers on the Butler side of the blogosphere showed, repeatedly, Gableman's record and his seeming knowledge of Constitutional issues was wafer-thin against what proved to be Butler's complex and thoughtful record on a wide variety of cases. But law-prof Esenberg polished the Gableman turd week after week, day after day. It was painful to watch from here.
And we're seeing it now with Sarah Palin. In this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Esenberg offers "How Palin reassures, challenges the right," an op-ed that bears little relationship to objective reality. The title of the piece suggests to me, if it is not a serious warning flag to everyone else--that the op-ed is directed at readers on the right and is not intended for moderate-to-left consumption. Even so, what Esenberg is telling his fellow conservatives needs a significant unpacking, and so I offer one here. It is long, but the payoff at the end is worth the reading, trust me--stick around.
He begins simply enough:
If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon candidate, Sarah Palin is the mirrored nominee. As a Democratic friend recently suggested, the Republicans could not have invented a better foil for Barack Obama.
I am not sure who his Democratic friend is, but this suggestion--as I read it and as I understand the definition of foil here--should not reassure anyone, let alone the right. Barack Obama has proved to be the calm, bold, and, dare I say it, presidential candidate in this race. His politics are moderate (as much center as left) and policy proposals are detailed and thoughtful. Obama's risen to the challenge of every situation life has offered him, and he's overcome those challenges with aplomb. If Palin here is his foil, that suggests she's hard-right, an inch-deep, likely to go-off half-cocked, and a relative failure at everything she tries.
As it turns out, that's a fairly accurate description of Palin--but that's not where Esenberg goes with all of this. Let's see some specifics:
Although a good deal of the enthusiasm generated by her nomination was lost in the wake of the financial meltdown and her unimpressive performance in an interview with Katie Couric, her strong showing in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate reinvigorates Palin as a factor in this election and in the future of the Republican party.
I suppose that by the Courickian standard, Palin's performance on Thursday was "strong." By, say, any other objective standard ever devised, her performance was not. Snap polls suggested a solid win from Joe Biden, and further polls have also shown that the debate pushed independents more toward the Democratic ticket than toward McCain-Palin. Neither Palin nor Biden was perfect in that debate, but Palin's performance was embarrassing. When she lacked a real answer on any topic, she pivoted to one of three things: discredited attacks on Obama's character and record; the word "maverick"; or her own supposed "record" on energy. Is the topic health care? Let's talk energy. Is the topic my greatest weakness? Did you know John McCain's a maverick? You want me to answer the questions? Screw you, buddy, I'm gonna talk straight to the 'merican people.
Let’s start with November’s election. For months, Obama has struggled against the criticism that a first-term senator who was, just a few years ago, an unknown and rather undistinguished state legislator is unqualified to be president. To now attack Palin as unqualified is to go after the bottom of the GOP ticket at the expense of the top of the Democratic slate. To draw attention to her lack of foreign policy experience is to underscore the same gap in Obama’s résumé. If she couldn’t guess what Charles Gibson meant (incorrectly, as it turns out) by the Bush doctrine, Obama did not understand that Russia holds a veto on the United Nations Security Council, making the latter a rather poor forum to address the invasion of Georgia.
There is little question that on paper, Obama's resumé is not as extensive as, say Biden's, or even Hillary Clinton's. (Although based on the propaganda launched from the right during the primaries, "experience" was also going to be a prime issue had Clinton won the nomination.) Comparing Obama's experience to Palin's might prove a wash (sure, she held executive office, but how many colleges did she have to transfer to to finally get that degree?), but more important, I think, is how they have applied that experience to their current positions as candidates. Obama has turned his brief career in elected office into the de facto leadership of his party; even four years ago, before he held federal office, he was so widely recognized by the party for his leadership potential that he was offered the keynote at the convention that nominated John Kerry. Four years ago, Sarah Palin was a small-town mayor that no one in Republican Party outside of Alaska had likely ever heard of. She was able to capitalize on Alaskans' distaste with Frank Murkowski--he appointed his daughter to replace him in the Senate!--and a divided opposition including a strong independent candidate to win the governor's race with a plurality, not a majority, of votes. And in the current race, Obama has risen to every standard expected of candidates for national office, while Palin has failed most of them. Even the supposed gaffe Esenberg notes--Obama's suggesting the UN Security Council engage the problem of a Russia-Georgia conflict--is not a gaffe; if it is, then John McCain is guilty of it too:
McCain, a Republican from Arizona, called directly on Russia to "cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from the sovereign Georgian territory." He said the United States should convene an emergency session with the U.N. Security Council "to call on Russia to reverse course" and gather the North Atlantic Council to review Georgia's security and measures NATO should take.
But back to Esenberg's polish of the Palin moose patty:
Is Palin just a tad outré? Can she be labeled a “backwoods hick” whose voice reminds us of Frances McDormand in “Fargo”? We certainly heard some of that in Thursday’s debate. “Oh, yeah,” she said with a smile and a shake of her head, “it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate. Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war.” You betcha. But to dismiss her in this way recalls the suspicion that Obama is a bit of elitist who, notwithstanding his “Grapes of Wrath” rhetoric, looks down with a mixture of sympathy and disdain on those God- and gun-clinging unfortunates who undoubtedly live in subdivisions on wheels.
It's not that she has a grating voice that bothers me. It's that she's playing up the "backwards hick" when she is not, in fact, a backwards hick. We saw Palin at the convention deliver a (pre-scripted, mostly written for someone else) speech read from teleprompters. When she was doing that, she lacked the folksy, hicksy charm. Instead, she was dead serious and her delivery, while Fargo-y, was not peppered with youbetchas and donchanos. She only turned that on during the debate. You can compare the two here yourself.
I guess the question that I keep coming back to when I hear praise for her folksy speaking style, her "joesixpackhockeymom (wink) youbetchas," I can't help but wonder what the pundit world would think were Barack Obama to swap out his standard diction (Esenberg implies this is an element of Obama's "elitist" persona) to drop into something more like the Black English Vernacular and make references familiar to black popular culture. Oh, wait, I don't have to wonder--I can just go back to the harsh criticism Obama took when he let a little Jay-Z into his campaign last April. Some of the local righties even considered that the disqualifying moment of his campaign. When Obama turns on the "black," he gets hit hard. But when Palin turns on the "backwards hick," it is a sign she's not an elitist.
From there, Esenberg directs the rest of the piece to conservatives, though he still manages to mangle some facts:
Apart from the political dynamic, there is a substantive element to the Palin nomination as well with a significance that may well extend beyond November. Her selection sends two distinct messages: one that reassures the traditional Republican base and another that challenges it.
By selecting a staunch social conservative who has reduced both spending and taxes, John McCain signaled that he had no intention of abandoning the conservative movement and remaking the party. [. . .] The Palin nomination also challenged the complacency of a conservative movement that has had a difficult time moving beyond its successes. McCain may not want to remake the party, but he certainly intends to redirect it. Notwithstanding the fact that Palin initially supported an impossibly expensive bridge to connect Ketchikan to its airport, she did, in the end, kill it and directed that a more “fiscally responsible” alternative be found. Although she did not completely abandon Alaska’s requests for earmarked federal money, she substantially reduced them and warned her constituents that the state must push away from the federal trough. This reinforces McCain’s message of reform.
So much wrong in so few paragraphs! Palin may have cut some taxes, as mayor, but she raised others and raised spending by even more, leaving Wasilla, Alaska, in debt to the tune of $3000 per resident--that's not "fiscally responsible." The earmark for the "Bridge to Nowhere" was removed by Congress in 2005, long before Palin was sworn in. She won her race in part by promising to get that money and spend it for the bridge--and only when confronted with the reality that America generally would not tolerate such spending, she spent every single one of the potential bridge dollarson other projects, including on a road to the bridge that is not being built. That's not "fiscally responsible." Palin also pushed through a windfall profits tax on oil companies--something our own governor tried to do and which Rick Esenberg himself said "strikes me as political pandering." I am not sure how Esenberg can reconcile "political pandering" with "fiscally responsible."
But there is more. Palin is not, like Obama, an unreconstructed class warrior. But she, like McCain, takes seriously the obligation to ensure that the benefits of capitalism are widely enjoyed. The free market is the presumptive means to good ends, but not an end in itself. During Thursday’s debate, in response to a question about the financial crisis, she adopted a populist tone, “Darn right it was the predator lenders who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house.” While there is far more to the financial meltdown than this, her tone is a departure from doctrinaire laissez-faire economics.
This is my second-favorite paragraph in all of Esenberg's essay, because as I read through the various "live blogs" and reactions to the debate among local conservatives, to a one, almost, they recoiled in horror at this "populist" moment. Owen Robinson, for one, wrote, "Palin hitting corruption on Wall Street again. I hate that." I am not sure how Palin is supposed to be the link between social conservatives (the right-to-life crowd) and fiscal conservatives (the club for growth crowd) when she won't toe both lines.
Esenberg then talks class warfare for a moment, and delivers this:
Concern for those who are less fortunate is essential, but it is not measured by support for the compelled redistribution of income. Government cannot save you. It won’t pay your bills, and its job is not to take from Peter to pay Paul. But it can contribute to a set of circumstances in which Paul can help himself.
And that, my friends, was my favorite paragraph. Why? Because as much as Esenberg may well believe that government shouldn't pay your bills, Sarah Palin does. For what did she do with the results of the windfall profits tax on oil companies I noted earlier? This (my bold):
Alaska collected an estimated $6 billion from the new tax during the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. That helped push the state's total oil revenue--from new and existing taxes, as well as royalties--to more than $10 billion, double the amount received last year. [. . .] Some of that new cash will end up in the wallets of Alaska's residents. Palin's administration last week gained legislative approval for a special $1,200 payment to every Alaskan to help cope with gas prices, which are among the highest in the country. That check will come on top of the annual dividend of about $2,000 that each resident could receive this year from an oil-wealth savings account.
Got that? Sarah Palin taxed oil companies and sent Alaskans a check to help pay their bills--exactly what Esenberg suggests Palin challenges conservatives not to do, not to engage in income redistribution or to tell Americans that their government will save you. She robbed Peter, paid Paul, and then bragged that Paul gave her an 80% approval rating.
There is little doubt that John McCain had an uphill battle against Barack Obama. The cards were all stacked against him and the current polls (Obama is over 50% in the pollster.com composite as I write this, 8.5 points above McCain, much worse for McCain than it was before Palin's debate with Biden) suggest that McCain has but the longest of shots to win. Palin may have re-invigorated the social conservative base that was tepid on McCain in the first place, I'll give you that. But whatever Palin may do for conservatives--and I submit to you that she does not do what Esenberg says she does--she clearly does not do for the American people. If this is the future of conservatism, conservatives will be in the minority for a long, long time.
Milwaukee Ald. Bob Donovan has declared his home as the city's first official Operation Safe Haven spot, part of a three-month pilot program that will designate homes and businesses as refuges for postal carriers who are the victims of physical or verbal assaults during their rounds.
Donovan will discuss the initiative during a Monday news conference.
Look, I certainly do not wish harm upon any mail carriers, and I know that here in the big city carriers walk the vast majority of their routes and cannot make a hasty getaway in those little jeeps. But there has not been an epidemic of violence against postal workers, or at least not one that has been publicized. Some pretty serious googling behind me--I don't want to be a complete jerk if there's something real going on--shows only that, in fact, postal workers are less likely to be injured on the job than the average worker.
Mostly, this just fits Bob Donovan's pattern of never-ending self promotion as a lawnorder tuffguy. Mail carriers face danger, he says, and then offers his own home as protection from the evildewers that are hiding behind every lamp post in town. We see it time and time again, from his demanding that the National Guard patrol the streets of Milwaukee to demanding the power to appoint a schools czar to clamp down on things, Donovan is never far away from his fax machine and a boorish idea.
Joyce Parker Productions, an occasional Saturday music series in Bay View, is hosting 2/3 of the Portage Road Songwriters Guild this weekend on Saturday, October 4. Come see me, Chris Straw (with Jon Pagenkopf), Chris Head, and Mark Plotkin. The show is free and goes from 3 to 4 PM. The venue's on KK between Lenox and Russell--2685 S. Kinnickinnic Avenue.
For years, the NRA has multi-tasked as a supporter of gun worshippers and a front group for the GOP.
But when the NRA came to Blacksville, WV to interview miners about the election, turns out nobody was interested in the casting call:
More than 440 workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America took what's called a Memorial Day instead of going to work.
Union officials say they took the day to protest after a film crew from the National Rifle Assocation showed up at the Consol mine last week to interview union workers.
They say the crew tried to get union coal miners to speak out against Barak Obama.
The UMWA has endorsed the democratic presidential nominee.
"This was a surprise visit," explained VP Local 1702, Safety Chairman Eric Greathouse, "and a lot of the miners felt this was a direct slap in the face of the union because they were trying to coerce our people into saying things against Barck Obama."
"Consol doesn't let anybody on their property - never," said Safety Committee Member Mark Dorsey, "And for them to let the NRA come on the property and solicit our membership was totally uncalled for. We made our endorsement to our political process and we didn't bother them and they shouldn't be harassing our membership over this."
It comes down to this.
The NRA is ostensibly about hunting. To the surprise of one dimensional conservatives, I spent many cherished times walking the fields of Ozaukee county hunting pheasant, back when those fields were available.
But like all good GOP organizations, the NRA likes to stroke fear, fear that jack-booted thugs will take away people's weapons.
Gradually people are coming around to the notion that under a Republican administration there is a greater likelihood of loosing their job than loosing their gun under a Democrat. Call it the price of success on the part of the NRA. In their single-mindedness they have done a masterful job of bullying to sleep any common sense ideas about managing the proliferation of guns in our streets, bars, homes and universities.
What the heck. Unions themselves suffered that price of success. As their members became better off, they thought they were Republicans. For many the gun issue sealed the deal. The only difference is that while unions protect their members' self-interest, the NRA insists their one issue stands supreme.
Try imaging some guy telling his family that their future has to be on shaky ground because he enjoys his hobby. But that is the size of it.
And there is evidence that the economy is depressing the number of people who can even be hunters. I'c be curious to see the numbers here in Wisconsin.
In short, you can't buy shells and pay for the trip away on $10 an hour pay, or for that matter even find the time to go hunting if that pay means having to work two jobs to keep your family together.
Sure Obama has a long way to go to win West Virginia and he probably won't. But it is a hopeful sign that these workers in Blacksville -- miners in this case -- know what is at stake and recognize that their families come before fake fears over their gun rights, or better yet over the fact that Obama is black.
Several weeks ago, I questioned Walker's move to place a crony from his campaign to a public liaison position in his administration. It was the third time that Walker's hired this guy, Tim Russell, to his administration, between his campaigns for governor county executive, governor, and governor county executive again.
A frequent commenter, Andy, argued that perhaps, Mr. Russell was suited for his position, as well as the other two jobs he filled in Walker's administration.
Today's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel belies Andy's position in defending Walker's cronyism. In a story on how Walker is basically trying to dismantle a whole section of county government, probably so he can continue to do his behind the scene, no bid contracting and sell-offs, we find that Mr. Russell and another Walker crony, Bob Dennik, weren't so qualified after all (emphasis mine):
Walker’s last two choices to lead the county economic development office, Bob Dennik and Tim Russell, came from his campaign and lacked depth in the development business, Clark said. Dennik left the post this week to become an executive with a Pewaukee construction company. Russell is now Walker’s community relations director.
“Walker chooses folks who don’t have (the necessary) experience,” she said. Dennik came under repeated fire from the board the last two years over disappointing land sales results that put the county budget in a jam. He didn’t return several phone calls seeking comment.
Only about $226,000 of the $7.2 million in budgeted land sales revenue for this year has materialized, contributing to a projected multimillion-dollar, year-end deficit. The land-sales budgets have been off $1 million or more in four of the last seven years, county figures show.
Between this and the fact that he is ticking off a lot of elderly folks, and he is giving his people a lot of big raises while trying to shove a decrepit hospital on the tax payers of the county, I don't really see how Walker thinks this is going to help his perpetual run for governor.
More on this is coming up, but will probably be on (shameless plug time) my other home, Cognitive Dissidence.
My reward is not in my wallet or my bank account, either, for that matter. But one of the lines from Sarah Palin in last night's debate that rankled me the most was her "compliment" of Jill Biden's career as an educator. "Her reward's in Heaven, right?" she asked of Joe Biden.
McCain-Palin was not likely to win the teacher vote, but Palin may well have cost the ticket some of the fence-sitters in my profession, and the result may now be overwhelming as opposed to simply massive support for Obama-Biden from teachers. Among the things that we hate in education is mock pity and forced empathy, and that "your reward's in Heaven" line is a classic kiss-off.
My reward is in the classroom, in what I do every day. If you value what I do, then support me in my efforts instead of insisting that I and my colleagues in the public schools are at fault. Forgive me if I do not trust the top of the GOP ticket when the local Republicans and conservatives who have more direct influence over where and how I work seem more interested in making public schools and public school teachers irrelevant and the least important thing about education in Milwaukee.
I'm watching the debate tonight. But since I neither drink nor enjoy liveblogging, I have no idea what to do. Ack!
UPDATE: Okay, I'm not really going to be able to do this all night, but I just heard Sarah Palin say that she was the first governor to set up a panel to deal with climate change. Look, I have no idea which was actually the first state to do it, but Governor Jim Doyle and the State of Wisconsin beat Alaska by five solid months.
MORE: Listening to Palin is like reading local righty bloggers and commenters--the lines she delivers with most gusto are the recirculated talking points that have been disproven over and over. She even used the "for it before you were against it" trope. Make. Brain. Hurt.
ALSO: What exactly is that Joe Biden does at Home Depot that he spends a lot of time there? Is he an itinerant day laborer when the Senate's out of session?
"WHAT KIND OF TREE WOULD YOU BE" WATCH: Apparently, Sarah Palin has never been asked the "What's your greatest weakness?" question before. Hasn't everybody? I mean, come on.
One man with a briefcase can steal more money than a hundred men with guns.
Don Corleone in The Godfather
Now that the Senate has done what it had to do -- no matter how disgusting it is -- and pass the bailout plan, and it looks likely that the House will have to do something similar. What next?
That is the question. Do we follow the same philosophical fantasies that got us into this mess in the first place? And no, it was not the minorities that led to this crisis.
Or do we trash the nonsense that gave us a Hershey economic high, that is a big boost and then crashing let down?
It is clear the leadership we need from the McCain campaign. Is K-Street crowd that comprises his "StraightTalk Express" is mainly trying to get him elected so we can pick up where we left off.
Obama, on the other hand, has real economists on staff and not corporate enablers.
What we need going forward are real investment reforms that not only clean things up on Wall Street, but a commitment that these regulations will morph as those on the Street figure to climb over the rules.
Also tasty is the idea from Jim Cramer of Mad Money that we have "show trials." There were many who lied on their financial statements and that has to be punished.
Out of McCain we will continue to have the inane focus on that minutia known as pork barrel spending. As he says, when it comes to pork barrel spenders, thanks to him "you will know their names."
GOP tragedy Michele Backmann, member of Congress from Minnesota, resorts to the usual and blames minorities for the market meltdown.
Apparently Cong. Bachmann equates lack of money with power. Of course in her mind, red-lining and other discriminatory practices that kept minorities away from the American dream only existed in Hollywood movies.
There are of course a lot of other reasons why we are trouble and why Wall Street holds a collective gun to our heads, but the mentally unbalanced fear people of color.
