Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #215
Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.
Our vision is hundreds of thousands of well-informed
Our Website Our Editor To Unsubscribe Table of
Contents * Featured Articles Calendars of Events Communication with Our Members More on Reactions to Summit Next Week Opportunities Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Anonymous: I’ve switched from the Democratic Party to the
Tea Party* Amelia Kroeger: Conservatives Oppose Wealth
Redistribution and Reduced Military Spending* Ray
Mc Bain: Economic Elite Threaten Existence of Middle Class* Don Smith:
Democrats Play into Republican Hands* Tom Cramer: Dave Reichert Is Too Extremist* Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef Fiscal Responsibility Commission State and Local Links
to the Beef Where are Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell? Does Dave Reichert Reject Jobs Resulting from Stimulus? Nation and World Links to the Beef Featured Advocacy Group: Progressive Change Campaign
Committee Our Liberal Spirit Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our
American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week Hope begins in the dark,
the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. Anne Lamott
Calendar of Events
Saturday, February 20 at 5:30 PM - 7:30 (Family
Session), 8:00 - 10:00 and 10:30 - 12:30
AM at West Seattle Bowl (4505
39th Avenue, SW, Seattle) - Human Rights Campaign food and bowling. Cost:
$35. To register.
Thursday, March 4 at 7 PM at Labor Temple (2800 - 1st Avenue,
Seattle) - Campaign to Legalize
Democracy’s Forum to present constitutional amendment to strip
Corporation’s ability to claim to be persons with persons’ civil rights.
Thursday, March 4 at 7 PM at Town Hall (8th
and Seneca, Seattle) - League of Women Voters Monthly Forum
(Call to Action concerning Women and Climate Change. For
more.
Communication
with Our Members
More on Reactions to Summit Next Week
Next week’s newsletter will present more
information about the public’s reaction to the health care reform summit. And there may finally be more information about
the use of reconciliation procedures to pass health care reform.
Opportunities
Useful
Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing tools, and more.
Obtain
a free ‘Corporations Are Not People’ bumper sticker.
Petitions
Tell
Senator Chris Dodd to propose strong regulations upon large Wall Street
financial companies.
Petition
to amend constitution to exclude corporations from having civil rights granted
to people.
Tell congress
to support health care reform now.
Tell
your senators to support solar roofs to produce as much electricity as 30
nuclear plants.
Tell
the U.S. Forest Service to eliminate oil and gas leases in the Yellowstone
eco-system.
Tell
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to protect the Arctic from oil drilling.
Tell your
senators to support elimination of nuclear weapons.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Anonymous: I’ve switched
from the Democratic Party to the Tea Party.
Dave, after
reading your newsletter I fully understand why my family and friends have
switched from the Democratic Party to the Tea Party.
Thank You. Anonymous
I
replied to Anonymous as follows:
I will publish your commentary in our next
newsletter. But I would appreciate it if you would send me a longer
commentary, in which you indicate which of these five points you agree with and
which you disagree with. Thanks. Dave Thomas.
1.
Like the Tea Party, I agree that Main Street should be favored over Wall
Street. And I agree that there should be fiscal responsibility, which
includes not creating large deficit spending. I even advocate no deficit
spending at all.
2.
I believe that Republicans favor Wall Street over Main Street and are
fiscally irresponsible, opposing measures that will regulate Wall Street and
opposing measures to reduce our deficits.
3.
I believe that the Obama Administration have also often favored Wall
Street over Main Street and have not proposed sufficient measures to reduce our
deficits, even though they have adopted PAYGO.
4.
Thus I believe the Tea Party should be opposed to both the Republican
and Democratic failures with respect to their demands for favoring Main Street
over Wall Street and for fiscal responsibility.
5.
If the Tea Party hurts the Democrats
this fall, they will deserve it for not behaving sufficiently different from
Republicans.
Anonymous
replied that he didn’t want his commentary included in our newsletter. So I have included it without his name. Dave
Thomas
Amelia Kroeger:
Conservatives Oppose Wealth Redistribution
and
Reducing Military Spending
Redistribution of wealth: I'm afraid the Right
has already set forth attacking that 'necessity', and very
effectively. They appear to have a majority of Independents
& Reps, and surprisingly a good number of Dems, convinced 'if you work hard
you, too, will get rich, and besides the wealthy are being punished
for having made it.'
And don't even think about touching military
spending in any significant way!!! The Right uses the Preamble to our
Constitution very effectively on defense, yet sees no contradiction in watering
down promoting the general welfare. Amelia
Kroeger
Ray McBain: Economic
Elite Threaten Existence of Middle Class
Our
economic elite threaten existence of our middle class. But it's a losing war. I.e., the elite will
lose the war by winning it. By eliminating the middle class and reducing them
to poverty, they lose a substantial source of revenue (IRS, take note) and make
the newly poverty-stricken more militant. When people have had a decent life
and are pushed down into the dirt, they feel the loss and look around to blame
someone. This makes them ripe for revolution. One can only hope that they choose
an intelligent path, rather than anger at those who did not hurt them. Ray McBain
Don Smith: Democrats Play into Republican Hands
Published
by Bellevue Reporter on 2/24/2010
John Carlson's recent op-ed piece, "Why people
don't trust government" overlooks an essential point: conservatives have
arranged for government to fail. By the end of the Bush Administration, the
nation was on the brink of disaster. The GOP had turned Clinton's multi-billion
dollar surpluses into record red ink. Reckless deregulation, war-mongering, and
corruption led to the subprime crash and the worst recession in 70 years.
Thanks to expensive government bailouts - initiated by President Bush - the
nation avoided a full-fledged depression.
The Republicans nevertheless may win. The recession
decimated tax revenues, leading to unemployment and devastating deficits both
nationally and in the states. There is no choice but to cut government services
- just what the Republicans wanted! Their plan to drown government in a bathtub
of debt and mistrust is almost complete. Having intentionally bankrupted,
mismanaged and corrupted government, conservatives benefit when government
performs poorly and serves special interests, for then people view the
government as part of the problem - which it needn't be. Scandinavian countries
have high taxation, universal health care and the highest standards of living
and well-being in the world.
Carlson criticizes plans to exempt union members from
a 40 percent tax on high-end insurance plans.
How odd to hear a conservative opposing tax breaks.
Why was there no such opposition during the Reagan and Bush years, when rich
folks got hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, despite multi-trillion
dollar government debt and our outrageously unequal distribution of wealth? Carlson
engages in populist rhetoric. He says, "Tukwila used the threat of eminent
domain to force the owners of a car wash and a parking lot to sell to private
developers to 'maximize opportunity for private enterprise'" and "The
Rail and the Main Street Pub, were forced to close to make room for upscale
development about three years ago.” So Republicans are now marketing themselves
as populist saviors of the middle class, willing to protect hard-working
Americans from the evils of taxation and government.
Don't believe it! Republicans have consistently
opposed regulations on banks, Wall Street and polluters and have been friends
of insurance companies, the super-rich and groups such as the BIAW.
Unfortunately, President Obama has done little to
discourage conservative rhetoric. He has foolishly tried to be
"bipartisan" with Republicans. He failed to hold Bush Administration
officials responsible for their many misdeeds. Obama's naive idealism led to
the loss of Ted Kennedy's senate seat to a tea bagger. Secondly, and despite
conservative accusations that Obama is socialist, Obama has been centrist to a
fault: he's surrounded himself with military and economic advisers held-over
from the Bush Administration. His bailouts and the escalation in Afghanistan
are continuation of Bush's policies. Under pressure from Republicans and Blue
Dog Democrats, and due to his lack of leadership, Obama's health care reform
bill is largely a gift to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Until Obama and
Democrats nationwide turn decisively against conservative rhetoric and
policies, the people will continue to get the short end of the stick. Don
Smith
Tom Cramer: Dave Reichert is Too Extreme
Right-Wing
for Washington's 8th
Congressional District
Dave
Reichert voted 84.2% with the Republican minority in the last year. He voted
for the drug companies and against seniors on Medicare. He voted for extending
the War in Iraq even when the public wanted to bring the troops home. He also
voted to double foreign worker importation in the form of H-1B visas, while
voting for funds in free trade agreements and the provisions to increase
immigration and the importation of foreign workers.
A
true extremist, he voted against bringing the troops home from Iraq. He voted
no on HR2956, a bill to bring troops home. He also voted yes on HR2206, a bill
to fund troops without a withdrawal deadline. In both cases, Democrats voted
for bringing the troops home.
On
the other hand, he voted against seniors and for drug company profits. On HR4
he voted against legislation to help seniors on Medicare with lower
prescription drug costs. The bill would have allowed the government to
negotiate lower prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare. Almost all
Democrats and even 24 Republicans voted for the bill, but not Dave Reichert.
Finally,
when Main Street middle class Americans badly need jobs in the worst recession
in 76 years, Dave Reichert has supported legislation to import cheaper foreign
labor for high tech jobs. He co-sponsored HR1930 which would vastly raise the
cap on foreign workers and make their employment permanent. In addition, he
supported using American dollars in free trade agreements used to import
foreign workers. He voted against the free trade amendment that would have
prohibited the use of funds and the increased immigration of foreign workers.
Dave
Reichert is an extremist supporting big business and Wall Street against the
needs of normal Main Street middle class Americans. Let's stop this extremist
and help me to fight for Main Street.
Tom Cramer, Candidate for Washington's 8th District,
US House of Representatives
Liberals
and Democrats
Read
a commentary
concerning how Democrats can avoid congressional losses this fall by forcing
Republicans to cooperate on a jobs bill or be seen as siding with Wall Street. Some
Republicans are cooperating. Voters
must be convinced that our economy and health care will worsen if
Republicans gain control. For all his
difficulties with economic and health care reforms, President Obama is producing
education reforms.
Health Care Reform
President
Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi all support using budget reconciliation
procedures. 23 Senators have agreed to
include a public option in a reconciliation bill. At least 27 more are needed. Most
Americans believe health care reform is needed. For
more. For
more. Public
option is popular among voters. MoveOn
pushes for including public option in reconciliation measure.
In
advance of a health care reform summit with Democratic and Republican leaders,
President Obama has presented his health care
reform proposal: Over the
past year the House and the Senate have been working on an effort to provide
health insurance reform that lowers costs, guarantees choices, and enhances
quality health care for all Americans. Building on that year-long effort, the
President has now put forth a proposal that incorporates the work the House and
the Senate have done and adds additional ideas from Republican members of
Congress. The President has long said he is open to any good ideas for
reforming our health care system, and he looks forward to discussing ideas for
further improvements from Republicans and Democrats at an open, bipartisan
meeting on Thursday.
The proposal will
make health care more affordable, make health insurers more accountable, expand
health coverage to all Americans, and make the health system sustainable,
stabilizing family budgets, the Federal budget, and the economy:
·
It makes insurance more affordable by
providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing
premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who
are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans
afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable
for many more.
·
It sets up a new competitive health
insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact
same insurance choices that members of Congress will have.
·
It brings greater accountability to
health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down
and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
·
It will end discrimination against
Americans with pre-existing conditions.
·
It puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by
reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years – and about $1
trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and
reining in waste, fraud and abuse.
The President’s
Proposal builds off of the legislation that passed the Senate and improves on
it by bridging key differences between the House and the Senate as well as by
incorporating Republican provisions that strengthen the proposal.
One key improvement, for example,
is eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant
additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid.
For America’s seniors, the proposal completely closes the Medicare prescription
drug “donut hole” coverage gap. It strengthens the Senate bill’s
provisions that make insurance affordable for individuals and families,
while also strengthening the provisions to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in
Medicare and Medicaid to save taxpayer dollars. The threshold for the
excise tax on the most expensive health plans will be raised from $23,000 for a
family plan to $27,500 and will start in 2018 for all such plans. And
another important idea included is improving insurance protections for
consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to review and rein
in unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans. See what this health care
reform proposal will mean for you.
President
Obama’s proposal doesn’t include a public option, but Harry
Reid may put a public option in a reconciliation bill. In his Saturday
address, President Obama noted that private insurers are increasing their
rates by 20, 30 and more percent, something that none of the Republican
proposals address. The summit
may well trap Republicans who can’t easily argue that health care reform
isn’t needed.
The Summit
The
summit including President Obama and both Republican and Democratic
congressional leaders has just concluded.
It clarified various health care reform issues upon which Democrats and
Republicans agree and those upon which they disagree. Major differences are that Democratic Party
proposals will provide coverage to many more people; they will guarantee that obtaining
insurance coverage across state lines will not produce a race to the bottom of
poor health care coverage; and they will minimize the creation of separate high
risk pools. It is unclear whether the
American public will understand all of these differences, but they may
understand that Democratic proposals will provide health care coverage to many
more people. I suspect that this summit
meeting has helped Democrats more than Republicans. With more information available, we will report
more on the public’s reaction to the summit in next week’s newsletter.
Job Creation
Through
offering several jobs bills, Democrats have finally confronted Republicans with
a choice of voting for or against job creation.
In one case, 5
Republican senators and in the other 13
Republican senators voted with Democrats for the bills, instead of being
willing to be seen as anti-jobs. We can
expect more such job creation bills with similar results.
Fiscal Responsibility Commission
President
Obama created a bipartisan
commission to reduce deficits.
Republicans and Democrats will each choose 6 members and President Obama
will choose 2 Republicans and 4 Democrats.
So the commission
will contain 8 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Democrats want to increase taxes on wealthy
and reduce wasteful spending.
Republicans want to reduce entitlement benefits. For
more. AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka says creating
jobs is best way to eliminate deficits, not reducing entitlement benefits.
Since
the bipartisan commission will require 14 votes to make a recommendation, it
may not produce one. And since it won’t
report until after this fall’s election when conditions may have changed, it’s
recommendations may be irrelevant.
Regulating Wall Street
Talking
about large Wall Street incomes, President Obama says he doesn’t begrudge
success or wealth, but what if it is obtained through wrongdoing. While he is failing to side clearly with
Main Street against Wall Street, Maria Cantwell has made various proposals
to limit Wall Street speculation.
Credit Card Regulations
The new credit card law creates the following
consumer protections:
·
Limited
credit to young adults
·
Limits
on over-the-limit fees
Main Street Casualties
Our Economic Elite and Its Political
Power
Our Economic
Elite spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the
success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the
part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and
unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.
It has now become evident to a critical mass that the
Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our
government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are
tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US
population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government
and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.
Current statistical societal indicators clearly
demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of
current governmental policies proves that conditions for 99% of Americans will
continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup
and have brought war to our doorstep. They have launched a war to eliminate the
US middle class.
Poverty
America
is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in
the industrialized world with an unprecedented number of Americans living in
dire straits and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty. The government has come up with clever ways to
downplay all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to
use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50% of US children will use a food stamp to eat at some
point in their childhood. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every
day. In 2009, one out of five US households didn’t have enough money to
buy food. In households with children, this
number rose to 24%, as the hunger rate among US citizens has now reached an all time high.
Health Care
We
also currently have over 50 million US citizens without healthcare. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32%
increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies
are responsible for over 60% of them, and over 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have
healthcare insurance. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the
world, we are forced to pay twice
as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return ranks
37th in the world.
Pensions
In
total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the
economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first
full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 - 60, who have worked
for 20 - 29 years, have lost an average of 25% off their 401k. “Personal debt has risen from 65% of
income in 1980 to 125% today.”
Homes
Over
five million US families have already lost their homes, in
total 13 million US families are expected to lose their home by
2014, with 25% of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even
grimmer prediction: “The percentage of ‘underwater’ loans may rise to 48
percent, or 25 million homes.” Every day 10,000 US homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an
increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are
now over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest growing
segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.
Prison
One
place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison
population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated
than any other nation in the world - the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens.
In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi
Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major
growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate
titled “Incarceration Nation” revealed that “a new prison opens
every week somewhere in America.”
Unemployment
The government unemployment rate is deceptive on several levels. It doesn’t count people who
are “involuntary part-time workers,” meaning workers who are working part-time
but want to find full-time work. It also doesn’t count “discouraged workers,”
meaning long-term unemployed people who lost hope and don’t consistently look
for work. As time goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for
work and are discounted from the unemployment figure. For instance, in
January, 1.1 million workers were eliminated from the unemployment
total because they were “officially” labeled “discouraged workers.” So instead
of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment
leveling off.
On
top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000
job losses were never accounted for due to a “modeling error” in their data. Even in their initial
January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report
saying the economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has
consistently provided more accurate data, “estimated that the U.S. economy shed
104,000 jobs in January.”
When
you factor in all these uncounted workers — “involuntary part-time” and
“discouraged workers” — the unemployment rate rises from 9.7% to over 20%.
In total, we now have over
30 million US citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. The rarely
cited “employment-participation” rate, which reveals the percentage of the
population that is currently in the workforce, has now fallen to 64%.
Even
based on the “official” unemployment rate, just to get back to the unemployment
level of 4.6% that we had in 2007, we need to create over 10 million new jobs, and most every serious economist
will tell you that these jobs are not coming back. In fact, we are still
consistently shedding jobs, on just one day, January 27th, several companies
announced new cuts of more than 60,000 jobs.
Due
to the length of this crisis already, millions of Americans are reaching a
point where the unemployment benefits that they have been surviving off of are
coming to an end. More workers have already been out of work longer than at any
point since statistics have been recorded, with over
six million now unemployed for over six months. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance
benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also
expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke.
Most
economists believe that the unemployment rate will remain high for the
foreseeable future. What will happen when we have millions of laid-off workers
without any unemployment benefits to save them?
Working More for Less
The
millions struggling to find work are just part of the story. Due to the fact
that we now have a record high six people for every one job opening, companies have been
able to further increase the workload on their remaining employees. They have
been able to increase the amount of hours Americans are working, reduce wages and
drastically cut back on benefits. Even though Americans were already the most productive workers in the world before the economic
crisis, in the third quarter of 2009, average worker productivity increased by
an annualized rate of 9.5%, at the same time unit labor cost decreased by 5.2%. This has led to record profits for many
companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported
fourth-quarter results thus far, 78% of them had “better-than-expected profits”
with earnings 17% above expectations, “the highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters began
tracking data.”
According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was only $32,390 per
year in 2008, and median household income fell by 3.6% while the unemployment rate was 5.8%. With the
unemployment rate now at 10%, median income has been falling at a 5% rate and is expected to continue its
decline. Not surprisingly, Americans’ job satisfaction level is now at an all time low.
There
are also a growing number of employed people who, despite having a job, are
still living in poverty. There are at least 15 million workers who now fall into this rapidly
growing category. $32,390 a year is not going to get you far in today’s
economy, and half of the country is making less than that. This is why
many Americans are now forced to work two jobs to provide for their family to hopefully
make ends meet.
A Crime against Humanity
The
mainstream news media will numb us to this horrifying reality by endlessly
talking about the latest numbers, but they never piece them together to show
you the whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the immense individual suffering behind them. This is how they
“normalize the unthinkable” and make us become passive in the face of such a
high casualty count.
Behind
each of these numbers, is a tremendous amount of misery, the physical toll is
only outdone by the severe psychological toll. Anyone who has had to put off
medical care, or who couldn’t get medical care for one of their family
members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the psychological
toll that is on top of the physical suffering. Anyone who has felt the stress
of wondering how they were going to get their child’s next meal or their own,
or the stress of not knowing how you are going to pay
the mortgage, rent, electricity or heat bill, let alone the car payment,
gas, phone, cable or internet bill. There are now well over 150 million
Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis.
Over 60% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.
These
are all basic things that every person should be able to easily
afford in a technologically advanced society such as ours. The reason why we
struggle with these things is because the Economic Elite have robbed us all.
This amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime
against humanity. For
more.
Here’s the Beef
Whether
religious or secular, spiritual values must inform our political choices.
Afraid
of charges that they are Liberal, our media fails to correct Conservative
misinformation.
Our
present messes were not caused by Liberals.
They were caused by so-called moderates.
Our
commercial media are portraying the Tea Party movement as larger than it is.
The
Tea Party movement is often wrongly portrayed.
The
Tea Party is likely to fade, partly due to internal disagreement making for
unclarity.
Glenn
Beck attacks both Democrats and Republicans for fiscal irresponsibility.
There
is a rift among Tea Baggers between Libertarian and Social Conservatives.
Unemployment
may drop by 0.7 to 1.8% this year.
Is this enough to reassure voters?
Most
Green Stimulus Funds haven’t been spent yet.
Republicans
who voted against the stimulus-recovery package take credit for the projects it
funds.
A
union for our unemployed to promote job creation is growing rapidly.
President Obama wants
to double American exports over the next 5 years, including sale of weapons.
Scam
artists rip off recipients of Earned Income Tax Credit.
State and
Local
Where are Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell?
19 senators have
endorsed including a public option in a reconciliation bill. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell have not
endorsed this, just as they were latecomers to earlier health care reform
efforts.
However, Maria
Cantwell has proposed needed restrictions on Wall Street, including
restrictions on derivatives and with Senator John McCain, separation of
commercial and investment banks. She has
criticized Timothy Geithner for not regulating Wall Street and voted against
reappointment of Ben Bernanke. She is
presenting her proposals in spite of not being a member of either the Banking
or Agriculture subcommittees which deal with such matters. Her proposals are being attacked by
Conservatives, who side with Wall Street against Main Street. For
more.
Does Dave Reichert Reject Jobs Resulting from
Stimulus?
Conservative
Republican Dave Reichert voted against the stimulus-recovery package twice (Roll Call Vote #46;
Roll Call Vote #70). It is now producing jobs in Washington
State. In many states, Republicans who voted against the stimulus-recovery
package are trying to take credit for the jobs it is producing.
The Boston Globe reported: “Dave Reichert
acknowledges that the stimulus bill will deliver tangible good news to his
constituents… ‘I feel a responsibility at this point to make this still work.’” A day earlier, Reichert met a
couple forced to close a 25-year old millwork business and lay off 170 workers.
Together they went through the stimulus bill to see if it offered any aid.
Often these days, Reichert has one staff member uncovering new outrages in the
1,071-page legislation as another pores over it hoping to find help for
besieged constituents. And earlier, he placed earmarks to obtain Federal
money for jobs in the 8th Congressional District.
Here’s the Beef
Economic
Opportunity Institute proposes $2.2 Billion increased revenues.
$7
million has been spent to turn 13 Seattle and Bellevue office buildings green.
Cleaning
up Puget Sound requires increasing pollution taxes.
Only 51 Democratic Washington
state house members voted to suspend Initiative 960.
Nation
and World
Featured Advocacy Group
----------------------- Progressive Change Campaign
Committee -----------------
The Progressive
Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) works to elect bold progressive candidates
to federal office and to help those candidates and their campaigns save money,
work smarter, and win more often. It
also advocates for bold leadership on the most important and pressing causes.
Read about its recent issue
campaigns.
In 2008, one first-time progressive candidate in a key
congressional district went through four campaign managers before losing. Another spent $47,000 to retain a media firm
that never produced a single TV ad. Another spent $40,000 on field consultants
– enough to pay 10 field staffers for two months, but which only bought a few
hand-holding consultant calls. And others wasted thousands of dollars and weeks
of staff time designing C-rate websites.
Every election cycle, inexperienced candidates who run on bold
progressive ideas – candidates who political insiders predict “can't win” –
come within a few points of victory. But too many lose winnable races due to
the mistakes and inefficiencies of their campaigns.
Who is getting the backs of these progressive
candidates? Who is helping them run competent, efficient campaigns so they can
win? Until now, nobody. Progressive
Majority provides support to progressives on the state level, but not federal.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) helps some congressional
candidates, but many progressives with a real chance to win don't make the
DCCC's target list or make it way too late.
Even then, the DCCC's strength is not modern, people-powered campaigning
or connecting candidates to the broader progressive movement. And progressives
running in open-seat primaries won't get any help from the DCCC because the
DCCC doesn't prioritize progressive Democrats any higher than conservative
Democrats.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is filling
this void – providing needed infrastructure and strategic advice early to
progressive candidates so they can run first-class campaigns and win. And when
PCCC-endorsed candidates get elected by working hand-in-hand with the
progressive movement, they'll trust the political instincts of progressives and
be sturdy allies as we work with them to pass a bold progressive agenda.
In an effort to get liberal candidates the best bang
for their buck, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has launched an
online network of potential staffers willing to supply campaigns with labor
cheaper than what political consultants typically charge. Perhaps best
known for its adamant support of the public insurance option in the recent
health care debate...now they’re taking on the political consulting class with
the aim of undercutting the costs of typical political consultants with a
network of “regular people” talent on the Internet.
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Here’s the Beef
Four
Klamath River dams will be removed to help preserve salmon runs.
Like
Timothy McVey’s bombing, Texas suicide flier acted due to resentment of
government. An extreme Tea Bagger?
Afghan Marja offensive
will be followed by similar offensives near Kandahar.
Our Liberal
Spirit
Waiting and Watching
Lots are going on. Attempts are being made to create a passable
reconciliation measure. Attempts are
being made to pass job stimulation measures.
But much of this sausage making is being conducted by privately by
Democrats to avoid more obstruction by Republicans. Thus we the public are left with waiting for
glimpses of what may be happening. With
so many freedoms and opportunities at stake, the waiting without knowing what’s
happening can be agonizing.
But we can express to our
congressional members what we want. My
strong preference is for a reconciliation measure which produces enough health
care reform that the public will have a favorable view of it. Hopefully it will include a public
option. Hopefully we will know more soon
after the summit between President Obama and various Democratic and
Republicans.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Robert Kuttner, 2008, The Squandering of America. How
the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity.
Although Robert
Kuttner’s book was written just as the housing-credit bubble was bursting, he
presents much of the same information and analysis as Dean Baker did in his
book (False Profits. Recovering from the Bubble Economy) which
was recommended last week. He gives less
emphasis than Dean Baker to the failure of economists, government officials and
politicians to recognize the bubble and its route to collapse.
Robert Kuttner
doesn’t comment, as Dean Baker did, concerning how the bailout should have been
handled, since the collapse and bailout hadn’t happened when he wrote the
book. Robert Kuttner’s emphasis, as it
was in several previous books, is upon the market fundamentalist ideology
advanced by special interest lobbyists to blind Democrats as well as
Republicans to the need to restrict Wall Street speculation through government
regulation.