WHY AMERICA NEEDS TO RE-ELECT OBAMA

In the interest of full disclosure, and for the benefit of those who don’t know, I am a liberal Democrat and have spent most of my adult life in public service and party politics. I usually (though not 100% of the time) vote for the Democratic candidates for office.  I do so based on my interpretation of the history of this nation and the principles that those candidates stand for.

On November 6th this nation faces an election that is much more than just a contest between two candidates or two parties.  It is more than a referendum on an incumbent President.  It is, like some elections in the past, a determinative election that may well decide the future course of this nation for the next quarter century.

In 1800 the election began a quarter century of essentially nonpartisan federal government allowing the new nation to grow and its government develop without partisan rancor.  In 1828 the election began the Jacksonian era which was marked by the growth of white democracy and manifest destiny.  In 1860 the election presaged a civil war that led to the end of slavery in this country and the transformation from states in a federation into one nation.  In 1896 the election determined that the rich business oriented people would rule America basically until 1930.   And, the election of 1932 set the stage for the New Deal which was based on the theory that the federal government could establish level playing fields for all citizens and provide a social safety net so that working people would not fall into the poverty of the Great Depression.  The election of 1964 ratified that consensus approach which lasted until 2000 (the so-called Reagan revolution did not disturb the essential elements of the New Deal and the Great Society; in fact with the Earned Income Credit Reagan recognized the need to help the working poor.)

Now we have the election of 2012:  A clear contest between two attitudes toward the role of government.  The tea party controlled Republican Romney-Ryan approach would privatize every possible feature of the federal government and end the social safety net programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, WIC, and PBS as we know them.  The Democratic Obama-Biden plans call for continuing the federal government’s role in the lives of the citizens of One Nation (not Fifty) working with and supporting both business and labor.

The best example of these differences in the economic sphere is the auto bailout.  While Bush was busy bailing out the Big Banks - Obama’s contribution here was to preserve and restructure the American automobile industry, saving thousands of American jobs and restoring that industry to its international preeminence by loaning money that has since been paid back.  Obama did that without breaking unions or bankrupting investors (in fact Romney made $15 million dollars on investments in a car parts supply business that benefited from the bailout - a company that closed 24 plants and shipped jobs to China).  If there was an inadequacy in Obama’s response to the great recession it was that the stimulus was too small.  Economists and politicians alike know that the federal government cannot create private sector jobs (in fact Republican governors have been busy eliminating public sector jobs at a rate as fast as the private sector can add jobs) it can only create the economic conditions at home and abroad to facilitate and encourage private sector growth.  In the 1930's the New Deal was funded only to levels that allowed it to ease the pain of the people - it was only when World War II caused an astronomical explosion in our expenditures in hiring and producing that the Depression ended.

In the area of foreign policy the difference between these two philosophies is stark.  The tea party Republicans have adopted the neo-con Bush approach to every problem - troops on the ground and dollars for the war machine companies.  Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex; I don’t think he expected it to take over his political party. Obama has followed the path of collective security; working through the United Nations and other international organizations that were founded on American governmental principles.  Unlike the neo-cons who never met a dictator they didn’t like, Obama stood with the people of Libya and helped them overthrow Qaddaffi; he supported the people in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen as they replaced long time corrupt regimes.  He aided the people of South Sudan in there breakaway from the genocidal practicing Sudanese regime.  And, he ordered the strike that killed Osama Bin Laden despite the fact that he was hiding out in the territory of an ostensible ally.

The two Presidential tickets also represent completely different attitudes toward the cultural changes that have occurred in this nation since the 1950's.  Obama worked with Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Obama signed the Ledbetter Act to begin the march to equal pay for equal work for women (Romney is still considering his position on that three year old law).  Obama has exercised the powers of the chief executive of our nation to present automatic deportation of young Latino and other immigrant students brought to this country illegally by their parents who know and love no other country than ours. Obama has stood firm in support of women’s rights to make their own reproductive health choices.   As for Romney-Ryan well you know Father Knows Best - the limited federal government or the fifty state nations should regulate not Wall Street or business but the private lives of its citizens.  The tea party controlled Republican party has become a party of reaction that seeks to end planned parenthood; outlaw all abortions even in the case of rape, incest of the life of the mother; put gays back in the closet; and force all young Latino’s to self-deport. 

The President encapsulated his opponents' philosophy when he declared that the Republicans want to the return to the foreign policy of the 1980's, the social policies of the 1950's and the economic policies of the 1920's. And Vice President Biden summed it up best when he said that because Obama was President “General Motors is Alive and Bin Laden is Dead”.

You don’t have to like Obama or dislike Romney to make your choice on November 6th.  You have to ask what kind of America you want to see in twenty five years and vote accordingly.  If you want an America were all feel that they have a shot at the American Dream; where children can get the education that their ability entitles them to; where men and women can get decent paying jobs; where seniors don’t have to worry about the cost of their health care and whether the stock market has decimated their private pension funds because they have social security insurance; and where this country enters a century of peace because it leads by the rightness of its values not the might of its weaponry; then your choice is clear - VOTE OBAMA-BIDEN.  Reject the Republican Romney-Ryan Radical Reactionaries - Embrace the Positive Changes for Equality Occurring in America - VOTE FOR THE FUTURE.

30 October 2012

 

2012 - The Issues, the Choice as Clear as Black or White

American politicians particularly since the 1970's have argued that our electoral issues are matters the solutions to which are permeated with nuances.  Compromises are needed to resolve disputes.  There is good and bad in every idea and there is an equality of sincerity and honestly and even duplicity in the rival parties and candidates.  The problem is the voters don't see it that way.  They form opinions, sometimes not based on facts, and they form impressions of candidates.  Those opinions and impressions determine how they vote.  And most voters don't vote because of nuances.

The conventions are over - the debates yet to come.  And for all the rhetoric on both sides the election of 2012 comes down to a clear choice and frankly it’s a matter of Black or White.

I am a liberal progressive Democrat.  But I have never seen every issue in terms of race.  It is clear to me that since President Obama’s inauguration the radical right wing tea party Republicans have viewed him not as the American President but as a Black President.  And they don’t like the color they see occupying the White House.  He is not representative of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (now read Christian) America that they believe this nation was founded to be and should be. Despite his Horatio Alger like story of rising from near poverty, raised by a single Mom, he is derided as someone who does not believe in American exceptionalism.  And yet he personifies the very exceptionalism they claim to honor.  It is America’s historic ability to assimilate immigrants, albeit with a problem in accepting forced immigrants like the African-Americans and now accepting immigrants of another language, Spanish, or another religion, i.e. Muslim.    Only if America continues to be a “melting pot” can our country survive as the greatest nation on the planet and symbol of democracy to the world.  And Obama represents the success of that “melting”.  He is the descendant of 17th century settlers in the colonies who later fought for our nation's independence.  But he is not American enough for the radical right wing tea party Republicans.  Why?  Because he is Black and his father was African.

I believe if Obama were white there would have been the same massive reaction to his health care reform proposals since that reaction was financed and stirred up by health care business interests. I believe opposition to his appointments and his other proposals would have been just as strong.  And in fact when Bill Clinton proposed many of the same things he was met with vociferous opposition and stalling of nominations etc. and he was white.  Since Newt Gingrich the Republicans have been a party of rule or ruin.    However the unified lock step knee jerk reaction to anything the President says and does is more than party difference it is due to his embodiment of the cultural changes that the nation underwent in the 60's and 70's.  It is because Barack Obama represents the success of the struggle for equality of the African-American community that began with Brown v. Bd. of Education in 1954.  His support of the Dream Act and his opposition to DOMA, followed by his support of same-sex marriage, has furthered his image as the representative of the New America.  And, the radical right wing tea party Republicans want to return to a mythical Old America - one that was White, Male dominated,  Anglo-Saxon in its heritage and language, and Christian (they’d prefer Protestant but realize the need for support from conservative White Catholics).

My ethnic background is white, Anglo Saxon.  My father’s ancestors came to these shores  in 1607.  My mother was born in Germany and on her side I am first generation American.  So in a way I represent the white melting pot.  But I do not share the view of these radical right wingers that blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and gays should either have no place in our society or should know their place and stay in it. That was a weakness of my ancestors (many of whom opposed those views); and, a majority of that population of America rejected that old notion in the 1960's when White America, or at least a majority, made efforts to undo the decades of discrimination.   Nixon called those who were in the minority in the white community the “silent majority”.  Well today the tables are turned the silent majority are those White Americans, many of 20th century immigrant ancestry, who are being intimidated and silenced by the roarings of the tea party radicals and depressed by our nations' economic collapse.

This election is all about Black and White.  And about the future and whether or not we can end this culture of the color line or we simply try to whitewash it.  My grandchildren don’t seem to recognize that line.  Once when playing in an indoor playground my granddaughter came to me to complain about one of the other children playing with her.  I asked her which one and she said “the Black one”.  I looked in and pointed to the African American child in the playground. .  She looked at me like I was stupid and said “not him the one over there” and pointed to a little boy wearing a black shirt.  Call me a dreamer but that is the America I want.

17 September 2012

Pulverize the Poor -- Minimize the Middle -- Voucherize and Privatize - the Republican Plan for the Future.

We were a nation that was the strongest in the world because it had the largest and strongest middle class and therefore no class warfare leading to violence.  We were a nation that declared war on poverty in 1965 and within fifteen years had reduced the number of children living in poverty by half.  We were a nation that measured its middle class in three sub-classes: upper, middle and lower. We have become a nation of the poor (including working poor) and the rich (including super rich).  There is now a smaller middle class that struggles to send their children to college and keep up with the Joneses in such a way that many have drifted into the working poor.  They work and earn a salary so they don’t qualify for the revised social safety net programs that the Republicans in the past quarter century have left in place. But their wages which did not increase in real dollars in those same years are insufficient to make ends meet.

Now the radical right wing tea party Republicans in the name of Hooverian individualism would create a two class society of the super rich and everyone else.  They would voucherize Medicare - a successful national health insurance policy for the elderly. They would privatize social security so our senior citizens would be dependent totally upon 401K’s and other private pensions (with public employee pensions further restricted and private pensions unregulated). They would  in effect pulverize the poor whose numbers would increase and we would surrender in the war against poverty condemning generations of young people yet unborn to the lowly peasant like status that was their lot in the 19th century world. The radical right wing tea party republican ideas would minimize further the size of the middle class.  I cannot predict whether we’re looking at ultimately a 10% middle class but likely not larger.  And that middle class would really be working poor holding their heads above water.  They would be trapped in houses if they were lucky enough to own them - trapped because there would be no buyers and the dollars they could get for those properties would be insufficient for them to buy anything else.  So we can expect a poor and a middle class of renters.  Of course that’s fine by the right wing radical tea party republicans who represent the corporate landlords.

The liberal progressive idea was to lift the poor (like boats) as the tide of prosperity rose.  Even the great conservative President  of the twentieth century Ronald Reagan, a child of the lower middle class, saw that when he introduced the earned income credit which gave money to the working poor to help them maintain a lower middle class life style. The consensus reached in America by the 1980's was that the government would provide health insurance and social security and disability insurance and unemployment insurance and the working people of America would contribute into those programs from their paychecks in some cases matched by their employers.  Now that thoughtful and successful approach, which also allowed the reach to invest and make money (they’ve certainly done well in the past quarter century) is under attack by a bevy of right wing fanatics who spout outmoded clichés from Adam Smith (18th century) and Herbert Hoover and advocate the long discredited “trickle down theory”. 

America veered off the right track toward the future when the republican dominated Supreme Court helped George Bush steal the Presidential election in 2000 (remember by the way he was not the choice of the  American voters).  And now they cry that we are on the wrong track.  Yet their approach since President Obama was elected is better we should crash and jump the track than we should resume our journey toward a land of progress.  And while most of their leaders have benefited personally from federal government programs and largesse now they would balance the federal budgets on the backs of those who still need those programs.

The poor may always be with us.  But so will there be those who believe that it is the obligation of others in society to feed the hungry, cloth the naked and tend the sick. And there will be those who strive to build an America where the top 5% are balanced by a bottom 5% with the 90% in between in a successful middle class, assisted when assistance is needed, insured when insurance is needed.

The Republicans call for a second great American century.  Let it be a century that restores the middle class and rebuilds an America for all.  Not a second century where the few enjoy the luxuries and live off the labor of the many.

30 August 2012

The American War Between the Centuries: the 19th versus the 20th.

The election of 2012 presents yet another battle in the great American culture war.  This one takes place on the Presidential campaign grounds.  It is in fact a battle of the centuries.  A contest between the America of the 19th century and that of the 20th. 

The 19th century was one of progress in economic and geographic terms:  Manifest Destiny, the conquering of the West and the growth of an industrial nation.  In the middle of the century a horrific Civil War ended the question of whether one nation or a few would be built out of the America that became free of its colonial parent in the 18th century.  And it ostensibly settled the question of whether all Americans would be free.  No longer a house divided against itself now one nation it would become a nation of the very rich and everyone else.  The immigrants providing cheap labor while the robber barons controlled industries and through bribery the government.

The 20th century began with Theodore Roosevelt’s assertion of world leadership and his use of the bully pulpit of the Presidency to challenge the power of the control of the industrial magnates.  In 1912, only one hundred years ago, the American voters faced three progressive candidates.  Roosevelt may have been more progressive on social issues and Taft a bit more cautious on economic while the winner Woodrow Wilson ultimately adopted all the visionary planks of the Progressive platform - women’s suffrage, world organization for peace, restrictions on large corporations and government ownership of the railroads.  From 1932 to 1980 there developed in America a consensus, ratified in the election of 1964, that the federal government of this one nation would now pursue policies that would enable the vast majority of people to be in a well off and productive Middle Class.  There would still be the rich (only a few very rich) and of course the poor we would always have with us.  In 1965 believing that the society had coalesced around the progressive ideal the President declared war on poverty and determined to end the permanence of the lower class.  Even as Reagan and Bush 1 followed by Clinton pursued changes they reformed the various New Deal programs they did not gut nor repeal them.

Then came Newt Gingrich followed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and they began to fight for that old time religion - less government and more of everyone out for them self.  Now the Republican party and the ticket of Romney and Ryan personifies that 19th century view, using the rhetoric of the 18th century and the founding fathers they call for the return to a two class America: the rich (and by that I mean the very rich) and the poor - room for only a small middle class which will be mostly upper lower not lower upper.  Let those who can afford it receive education at secondary and college levels; let families take care of their own elderly so they have to choose between feeding their children or getting medicine for their parents.  On the international scene let America practice a weird combination of neo-isolationism which means we only get involved where Americans can make a dollar and a unilateralism that says we will lead other nations and if they don’t want to follow we go it alone.  We will replace the Rockefellers and the JP Morgans with the Koch brothers and the super rich Wall Street financiers.

Obama and Biden and the Democratic Party carry the banner of the 20th century and the Progressive polices that built the great middle class.  They herald the belief that government was instituted by the governed to secure the rights that yes came from nature and natures’ God.  They support a government that has the dual Lincolnian tasks of helping those who need help and releasing the better angels of men’s nature.  They favor a society where higher education and quality health care are available to all; where men and women will be judged not by the color of their skin, nor the contents of their wallet or stock portfolio but by the nature of their character.  And, they see an America that will lead the democratic and freedom yearning nations of the world into a century of peace and respect for human rights.  Those human rights that include the right of women to make their own reproductive choices and for people of both genders to decide their personal lifestyle and find love and companionship without government imposed restrictions.  It is an even older time religion one that calls for tolerance of all beliefs and restrictions on no one's actions unless those actions harm or threaten others.

So the culture war becomes the focus of the battle of the American centuries.  Will this country continue on the road of the progressive 20th century or veer in another direction as Bush-Cheney tired to shift us until we fell into the ditch of economic depression.  The Obama-Biden administration has lifted this country out of the ditch -- now Romney-Ryan would push most of us off a cliff.

This will likely not be the last battle of the war between the centuries.  On the political front it will be replayed in 2016 and perhaps even in 2020.  In both previous centuries it took the first quarter of the century to settle the direction of the next half.  But this is a significant battle in the culture war.  Presidential elections have often symbolized the countries direction, e.g. Jackson, with an interruption with Lincoln, and the return to 19th century normalcy with Cleveland.  In the twentieth century the delaying of Wilsonian progressivism by Harding/Coolidge, the great victories of FDR, the acceptance of  the New Deal by Eisenhower and the fulfillment of that agenda by LBJ, ratified by the Nixon/Carter years.

At some point in the next decade there will arise in our country someone who can speak to the proponents of one century with credibility and perspicacity and lead them into a consensus with the proponents of the other century.  At the end of the 19th century McKinley actually convinced the urban poor and immigrants to accept the values of that century.  But I would prefer if we had another leader like the aristocrat who in his wheel chair lifted America off its’ knees and saved capitalism in this country and democracy in the world.  Or, perhaps the southerner, who in unmistakable southern accent, forged a consensus to bring our nation into the sunshine of civil rights for black and white.  Whenever this nation has needed such a unifying leader one has emerged even if only for a brief time and like a good pilot set the course of the ship of state aright.

It may not happen in this election nor in the next few years.  But that it will happen I have no doubt.  It is as certain as that the sun rises that this nation will yet have its finest hour.   And, that will be when America leads the world into a future of multicultural toleration and global peace. 

24 August 2012

SEVEN WAYS TO STEAL AN ELECTION - IN 2012 REPUBLICANS ARE USING THEM ALL

So a Republican judge refuses to enjoin the PA voter ID law.  Big Surprise!  The Republicans across the country: governors, legislators, congress people and judges are united in their determination to defeat President Obama and the Democrats seeking re-election.  Since the 1994 Contract for America Newt Gingrich triumph the Republican Party has become a monolithic group of political power seekers now masquerading behind the false image of deficit hawks to appeal to and co-opt the Tea party.  They are social issue right wing religious radicals whose economic policies seek to protect the very wealthy. 

Joseph Stalin is reported to have said it doesn't matter who votes what matters is who counts the votes.  And the Republican party in 1876 and 2000 proved that true by controlling the vote counting in Florida and the “re-counting” by Congress and even using the Supreme Court as they had (often overlooked) in 1876 to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to their stolen elections.

Now the Republicans are concerned that stealing the election through Election Day shenanigans, like machine tampering or false counting, won’t do the job.  So in 2012 they seek to steal the election by suppressing the vote of Democratic voters and in effect stealing the election at the polls.

There are a number of ways to suppress the vote and steal an election and the Republicans are using all of them although not all in all states.

1.      The unnecessary voter photo ID laws (replacing the more rational simple id) is the most widespread and will probably be the most effective.  Many senior citizens do not have birth certificates and if they no longer drive they do not have drivers' licenses.  Without their birth certificates they can’t get non-driver ID cards.  Before Paul Ryan the suppression of senior citizens was seen as a gamble by Republicans; now it may seem a necessity. Seniors students and the poor don’t have the type of photo id the states are requiring (only certain types of state issued photo id with expiration dates).  A photo id from your employer or your church not good enough   People with the best voting records in their precincts are going to find their identity questioned.  Many states have various laws and procedure to prevent identity stealing on Election Day and those methods have worked so well that no one can find the abuse that this so called needed photo id prevents.

            2.   Changing polling place locations as close to the election has possible is known to reduce the turnout at those polls.  This was done extensively                 in Ohio in ‘08 and can be expected to be used focusing on heavily Democratic voting polls in the last week in October.

            3.  Combining polling place locations and reducing the number of polling places. In the name of fiscal efficiency will also suppress the vote as the          further the poll is form a voters house the less likely the voter is travel to o vote.

            4.  Those states that enacted early voting to increase the voter turnout are now restricting early voting   in ways to suppress Democrat and minority                 vote. Ending early voting a week before the election, the week with the greatest voter interest, will reduce the turnout of those least likely to

                  vote. In Ohio they blatantly reduced the number of hours of early voting in heavily Democratic counties and increased them in Republican

                  counties -   then responding to public outrage they decided to reduce them in all counties - the Republican version of being fair.

            5.  Purging voters from the rolls based on unchecked assumptions and sometimes incomplete data will also lower the voter turnout.  Florida has             done that by claiming they can identify probable non- citizens on the voter rolls and they purge them unless they re-register. The evidence

                shows that a large majority of these purged voters are citizens duly registered and past voters.  The time to prevent a false registration is before

                that   registration is accepted and the registrant is allowed to vote.  After that purging should be done on a case by case basis.  The federally

                allowed (under the Bush HAVA law) purge of those who fail to vote in two Presidential elections thus leaving the presumption that they had

                moved - is usually checked by a mailing.

            6 Making the use of provisional ballots more complicated so the counting of those ballots will be minimal.  A provisional ballot was to be given to         voters who were not on the voter lists.  You will see some states printing voter lists as early as they can so the newest voters will not be on them         and then in voter ID states the provisional ballot voters will have a few days to get photo id into the county courthouse in order to have their               paper ballot counted. Of course if he election officials print only a minimal number of provisional ballots not all those eligible to use them will be         able to do so.

            7. The catch-all way to steal an election is to change as many of the particular details of how the election is conducted from the last election so as        to confuse and discourage voters from participating.  In Pennsylvania, for example, online application for voter registration and for absentee              ballots has been stopped and new voters and absentee voters need to go back to the old way of filling out applications with ink and paper and                mailing or bringing them in to county election board offices. These steps had been allowed online.  Other changes that could be imposed with        varying excuses are to change precinct boundary lines which move some voters to new polling places without changing the polling place.  Also

                by merging precincts and precinct election boards and shifting personnel around you can confuse voters who have voted often before.  Voters

                who vote are creatures of habit any change will throw them and all surveys show that Democrats for some reason are less cognizant of changes

                before Election Day and therefore more thrown.

So we have reached a point in America where parties in control of enough of the election machinery can now blatantly seek to steal elections not by rigging the voting equipment nor fixing the count but, as occurred in the South after Reconstruction, by preventing large numbers of voters from voting.  So we face a plutocracy of super rich oligarchs in power by preventing the people from defeating them.  Only the outrage of those who still can vote and whatever sense of justice they have can end this by defeating these anti-democracy forces in this election and making their efforts futile.

18 August 2012