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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (79426)	1/20/2010 11:42:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Crisis in Haiti: Where Do We Go from Here? The earthquake that rocked Haiti last week has caused unimaginable death and destruction, a reminder that catastrophes are usually unforeseeable and therefore almost impossible to prepare for. Can any country or region of the world, rich or poor, take meaningful steps to avoid the destruction caused by catastrophes ranging from earthquakes and hurricanes to terrorist attacks and pandemics? Knowledge@Wharton asked professors Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem, authors of a new book titled, Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response, and Morris A. Cohen to talk about the situation in Haiti and the challenges of dealing with such crises. *Complete Podcast with Transcript here: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

To: coug who wrote (79426)	1/21/2010 12:21:09 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party's defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we're told, is a blow to Barack Obama's political agenda, and so it is. They say it's a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements. And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for moral, economic and political disaster. It is a gigantic anchor tied around the neck of the Democratic Party, and it will drag the whole lumbering wreck back to the bottom in short order. It also provides a fertile breeding ground for the willful, belligerent ignorance of the Right to thrive. With such an egregiously stupid and destructive agenda at work in the White House, opponents need only say that they are against it, and they are guaranteed a wide following. Who would not be against unwinnable war, unconscionable bailouts and unworkable boondoggles serving rapacious elites? The actual positions held by these opponents – the actual policies they will pursue once in power – are given little scrutiny in such circumstances. The opponent represents change from a hated status quo – and that's enough. Later, when their odious positions come to light, it is too late. Where have we seen this dynamic at work before? Oh yes, it was way back in November 2008. Barack Obama represented change from the hated status quo, from the agenda of the ruling Republican party. And what was that agenda? Why, unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts and the assiduous service of rapacious elites. The actual positions held by Obama – the actual policies that he would pursue once in power – were given little scrutiny. Except by a precious few – such as Arthur Silber, who long ago warned that Obama's election would be ruinous for genuine progressive change, that he would merely put a new gloss on the old corruption while disarming dissent from 'progressives,' who would feel bound to support the president against his rightwing enemies – even if it meant "holding their noses" and supporting bad policies like the health care reform bill or the Afghan surge. chris-floyd.com

To: coug who wrote (79426)	1/21/2010 2:33:16 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

President Obama, Remember Who Your Friends Are truthout.org Wednesday 20 January 2010 by: Staff, t r u t h o u t \| Editorial In the wake of a crushing Democratic defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race, we find ourselves faced with the one-year anniversary of a spirit-changing day in the history of the United States, the inauguration of President Barack Obama. This odd confluence of events provides an opening for a very timely warning: It is time to remember who your friends are, Mr. President. Your friends are not the suits on Wall Street, the same ones who fooled Timothy Geithner for years. Your friends are not the timid centrists, who Rahm Emanuel coddles. Your friends are not the giants of the mortgage industry, who fought you tooth and nail to keep the foreclosure crisis out of the courts. Your friend is not George W. Bush, whose crimes you continue to conceal. Your friends are the progressives across this country, who, when you asked for their faith and inspired them with beautiful words, placed you on their shoulders and carried you to a historic victory. The progressive movement needs results - we're too smart to be placated and spun. We're too cynical - and too determined - to compromise. And, soon, we'll be too jaded to believe that Democrats are anything but limp windsocks, pointing whichever way the wind blows. Some have already walked away, according to a recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, which states that 45 percent of Democrats are not likely to vote in the 2010 election. We know that, in your heart, you're one of us. Your heart is the element you seem to have forgotten, the element we miss. You used to wear it on your sleeve; we could hear it pounding in your chest when you spoke. We heard your heart during your 2002 speech at a Chicago antiwar rally, when you called out the "arm-chair, weekend warriors" in Washington for keeping our soldiers engaged in a "dumb war, a rash war." We heard your heart during your 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic Convention, when you said of the American people, "They know we can do better." We heard it beating loud and clear on New Hampshire Primary Night, when you spoke of true progress, saying, "Whether we are rich or poor; black or white; Latino or Asian; whether we hail from Iowa or New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, we are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction." And upon your inauguration, one year ago today, we dared to believe you when you said, "The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history." The right wing thrives on vitriol, hate and divisiveness. When the bile they spew goes unchallenged, their disease infects the people around them. They will not lie down, Mr. President. You are going to have to put them down - with true progressive action, not the frail rhetoric of appeasement. No one has ever proclaimed a die-hard commitment to centrism. No one has ever held a rally to support bipartisanship. Those are Washington DC catchphrases that mean nothing, serving only as a fog for professional politicians huddling together inside the beltway, too timid and too immersed in campaign logic to stand for anything. Your job is not to get re-elected in 2012, Mr. President. Your job is to fight tomorrow and then fight the next day. If you're constantly looking up at the scoreboard, worrying about the outcome, you're going to trip over your own laces. Watch the shot clock instead, and fire up three-pointers like you know they're going to sink every time. Get in your opponents' faces and make them work for every single point. You have a choice now, Mr. President. With your help, 2010 could usher in a host of substantive policy changes: better health care access for millions of Americans, a strategic path to peace in Iraq and Afghanistan and a resounding series of Democratic victories in the midterm elections. However, if you stand aside and fail to challenge every shot, 2010 could give way to a fractured, crumbling Democratic Party - and the re-emergence of a vicious, feudal corporatism. Choose our better history.

To: coug who wrote (79426)	1/21/2010 4:05:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Massachusetts and the Populist Imperative by Robert Weissman / Published on Thursday, January 21, 2010 by CommonDreams.org It takes a special skill for a Democrat to lose a federal election in Massachusetts. But whatever the failings of the candidacy and campaign of Martha Coakley, the Democratic senate candidate in Massachusetts, the Democrats' loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for almost half a century by Edward Kennedy, following the party's November loss of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, suggests the need to focus more on the broader context, and less on individual shortcomings. The Democratic Party has squandered the enormous opportunity bequeathed to it by the election of 2008. The party gained overwhelming control of both the legislature and executive in 2008. Yet party leaders somehow failed to recognize the political moment. We live in populist times. Wall Street has crashed the economy. According to the official figures -- which under-report unemployment -- one in six people in the country are out of work or unable to find full-time work. People know who's to blame for the country's deep recession, and they want them held accountable. And they want to see aggressive policies to put people back to work. But we've seen neither populist politics nor policies from the Democrats. Although President Obama on occasion has had harsh words for Wall Street, in general the administration has sought to blunt the public's anger against the banksters. It supported and has continued the Bush administration's bailout plan, a kind of unconditional love for Wall Street. Sure, you could make the case the banks had to be saved in order to rescue the economy; but there is no defense for bailing out the richest of the rich with no strings attached. The administration has put forward a financial regulatory plan with some very useful components. But it has refused to embrace the bold populist policies we need -- breaking up the banks, taxing financial speculation -- to rein in Wall Street. It has also failed to defend the good positions it has advocated with sufficient vigor and high-level involvement. The gentle treatment of Wall Street from the outset of the administration has framed subsequent political developments. To its credit, the administration pushed through a desperately needed economic stimulus plan. But in significant part because the size of the stimulus plan was similar to the amount spent on the Wall Street bailout, and because the administration had embraced both, the stimulus and bailout -- though totally distinct -- became entangled in people's minds. Next came health care. The Democratic Congressional leadership developed a complicated and obtuse health care plan. There was the occasional bluster about how the insurance industry was seeking to undermine the plan, but in fact the insurance and pharmaceutical industries embraced the idea, and will profit enormously from it. Rather than identifying and campaigning against the corporate obstacles to providing affordable access to care for all, the White House cut deals with them. Meanwhile, while the stimulus and Federal Reserve interventions prevented the recession from turning to depression, the unemployment and foreclosure situations grew dire. No post-stimulus jobs initiatives appeared until the end of 2009. And the Congress and White House failed to do anything consequential to keep people in their homes. Along the way, populism did find a partial outlet: in the confused and contradictory tea party movement. Going forward, who grabs the populist reins will significantly determine the 2010 election results. The populist issue of the day is Wall Street's exorbitant bonus payments. Wall Street remains in business only because it has benefited, and continues to benefit, from trillions of dollars in public supports. The billions that Wall Street is now preparing to pay itself in bonuses come, in a very real sense, out of the pockets of We, The People. Neither we nor our elected officials need to stand by and watch this happen. We can take our money back by imposing a windfall bonus tax, as Representative Dennis Kucinich has proposed. You can click here to sign a Public Citizen petition supporting a tax on Wall Street's bonuses. One clear lesson from the last year is that the people cannot count on political leaders to read the tea leaves and go populist -- even if it is in elected officials' narrow self interest. They have to demand it. *Robert Weissman is the president of Public Citizen.