Time Again For Some Short Thoughts

In the race for the job of Governor of California, Meg Whitman has been blasting her opponent, Jerry Brown as a jobs killer.  If one checks the record, jobs increased in the state of California under Brown.  Alas, Whitman has no political record, including casting a vote, but she was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, EBAY.  During her years at the helm, she successfully cut forty percent of the firm's domestic jobs and sent them overseas.  Plus, she actively engaged in some inside trading with Goldman Sachs (remember them?) allowing her to join the ranks of America's billionaires. Too bad we don't live in Missouri, you know, the "Show Me State."

I am really grateful to Senator Lindsay Graham (R South Carolina) for finally offering a solution to our immigration woes.  You see, all we need to do is repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and all will be well.  After all, who needs due process and equal protection?  His rationale. . . it is just wrong to think that just because one is born in the United States one is entitled to citizenship!  Too bad his forebears didn't set this standard for themselves, as South Carolina would have only Native Americans for citizens  today.  I noticed the two senators from Arizona also jumped on this band wagon last week, but with a sudden drop in the polls, "Maverick" McCain has now backed off from his hasty endorsement of the Graham Manifesto.

Thanks to Maxine Waters and Charley Rangel (Democrats in the House of Representatives) for showing a bipartisan spirit by being charged with corruption by the House Ethics Committee. It is nice to know that Democrats are every bit as capable of being on the take as Republicans.  Now if only one of them would make some inappropriate advances toward a Congressional page or two, or get caught sleeping with a staffer's wife, we could really be on the way to a bi-partisan government.

Did anyone take a close look at the Republican solution to our economic woes?   Cut taxes and cut spending.  Not really clear on which taxes and which spending, but there is at least some real historic evidence of the viability of such a plan in a depressed economy.  This was exactly the plan of the Hoover Administration in 1930 and we all know how well that one worked.  On the other hand Obama and the Congressional Democrats, lacking the courage to stop our recession in its tracks, made the same mistake as did FDR in 1937.  Succumbing to the irrational screams from the right, they offered a half measure of economic stimulus and we are now slipping back into a flat economy.  Do any of these fools read their own country's history?

After years of analysis, the historic consensus is that America's Vietnam War strategy ultimately failed because we supported one corrupt government after another in Saigon.  It was impossible to gain enough support among the population of South Vietnam because the people had so little faith in their own political leaders, who were joined at the hip to their American benefactors.  The same may now be happening in Afghanistan.  From the grassroots to the very top of the Kabul administration of Hamid Karzai, this government is sublimely corrupt. How bad must it be if so many in this war ravaged country will turn to the savagely brutal Taliban as an alternative political solution?  Maybe instead of replacing our top commanders we ought to support a complete overhaul of the Afghan government. Fighting and dying for drug lords and sex traffickers should never be part of our military objectives.  Without a massive change in government, Afghanistan will be lost no matter how long we stay. President Obama, can you say "Lyndon Johnson?"

Who would have ever guessed that a weather disaster could topple a government?  But that may be happening in Pakistan.  Completely overwhelmed by the massive flooding along the Indus River, the Pakistani Government is on the verge of collapse.  Believe it or not, but the two outside agencies delivering the most aid to the flood ravaged peasants are the United States Government and the Taliban! I am pretty sure that our motives are truly humanitarian, but when the Taliban called for local Pashtuns to refuse any American aid, I think it became clear that their motives are less than noble. Ironic, the very societies that set us on the path of global warming have turned this phenomenon into an asset for our worst enemies.

And lastly, now that the lunatic fringe of the political right is suggesting that we get rid of the 14th Amendment, does that mean that they now believe that Barack Obama was actually born in the United States?  Is their new strategy. . . well he may have been born here, but he isn't really worthy of being called a citizen, because, well you know, he is. . . Hawaiian!

Questions to Middle Class Republcians

I was thinking that the quickest way to convert a middle class Republican into a liberal Democrat would be to take away his or her job and health insurance.  I wonder how many people who lost their jobs during this recession voted Republican in the 2008 election?  The longest any state is willing to pay-out unemployment compensation is 26 weeks.  It almost took an act of God to get the Congress to extend payments up to 99 weeks last month.  Senate and House Republicans did everything they could to block this bill's passage, claiming that it had to be fully funded or they could not vote for it.  Hmm, too bad they did not apply those same standards to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and the unfunded trillion and a half dollars appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Same question to Republican voters, now out of work, with no health insurance.  Not one in your party in either House voted for Health Care reform.  They would not even vote to insure that children could not be dropped from coverage!

Then there is the mortgage bubble.  The Bush White House and Congressional Republicans had no second thoughts about de regulating the entire banking system, opening the door for bundled mortgage securities and bogus sub-prime loans.  But when the bubble burst, these same GOP members of Congress voted almost unanimously against any mortgage relief to strapped consumers who had lost their jobs and their homes.  Again, I wonder how many of the recently homeless voted Republican in 2008?

And where were all these debt conscious Republicans in the run-up to the 08 election?  Isn't it funny how none of them were worried about unfunded spending until they were out of office? Hey, I get the politics of this election cycle, which is no different than any election cycle.  No matter what your history might be, once your opponent is in office attack everything that he does.  What I don't understand is why so many people buy into this nonsense when the party out of power stands for nothing that will benefit middle class Americans.  Is it all the race bating in the immigration issue that has your attention?  Are so many working class people willing to sacrifice their economic well being so that gays don't get married and they can still buy AK 47s at their local sporting goods store?

It cannot be the deficit, because the only way to pay that down is to increase taxes for quite a few years.  Unless we eliminate defense spending, Medicare, and Social Security it is fiscally impossible to cut the debt by cutting spending.  Hey there is an idea, get all those pro military Republicans together with all the retired Republicans and propose an actual spending cut that will work.  That would definitely be a day that the Democratic Party would expand by millions.  I remember when Arnold became governor of California and he promised the voter that he could eliminate the state's nine billion dollar deficit by cutting spending and taxes.  Six years later we have a 29 billion dollar debt, the highest ever for any state in the union, but no new taxes.  The state is on the verge of bankruptcy as revenues plummet, but no new taxes.  Way to go Governator.  Looks like you won't be back any time soon.  But then there is the new Republican standard bearer, Meg 'Big Bucks' Whitman.  What is her plan for fiscal salvation in California?  Easy, see the Republican play book for everything. . . lower taxes!  Now that is a good idea for all billionaire California voters, but it is utter nonsense for the rest of us.  I wonder if Meg Whitman is finally going to register to vote this time?

The Tea Party and the Constitution

For some time now I have been watching this semi-populist movement, the Tea Party, gain traction among the right wing of the Republican Party (is that redundant?).  Beginning during the summer of the Healthcare Bill debate, what looked like working class white men and their Medicare receiving parents, became militant activists for just about everything un-Obama.  Leaving out the significant number of people in this movement who are there because of race, that still leaves a great many who now claim that they are Tea party adherents to protect and preserve the Constitution.  Their argument is that the US Constitution has been subverted by latter day revisionists (you know, us liberals) and that it is time to return to its original intent.  OK then, let's take a look at the hallowed document and see if they are correct.

First, and maybe finally, the Patriots who wrote the document included seven articles in the original text.  Seven, not six! So one must assume that the "original intent" of the august body that penned our Constitution was to include everything therein.  Take a look at Article V.  The Framers spent an entire article on the concept of revision.  With all due respect to the numbskulls screaming about intent, the wise men who wrote the document understood that from time to time revisions would have to be made if the Constitution was going to be relevant far into the future.  Thus, the very authors of the Constitution were themselves revisionists. . . uh, liberals. The silly idea that there was ever a constitutionally pristine period where the true essence of the sacred text was in full flower is absurd.

From the beginning our Constitution has been a work in progress.  After all, these very same Framers radically changed the original document in 1791 by adding the first ten amendments, you know, the Bill of Rights. Further, if any of these zealots actually took the time to read the Constitution, they would find that it is riddled with generalities and vague language.  All the way back to the summer of 1787, the attendees at the Philadelphia Convention understood that much of the detail of the new government they were creating would have to be worked out by the people themselves.  So, when it says in Article One Section One, "All legislative power herein granted. . . " we discover that they never precisely define what they mean by the term "legislative power." Again, their goal was to allow each generation to define and apply the text to a new set of issues and problems facing the country, rather than demanding that it always be seen within the context of a fixed place and time.  Think not Tea Partiers?  Then the creation of the United States Air Force is unconstitutional.  Following your logic of strict construction, Congress was given the specific powers, in Article One Section Eight, to "raise and support armies," and to "provide and maintain a Navy."  Nothing there about an air force, let alone Space vehicles!

Then there are some specific political positions that Tea Party enthusiasts have been supporting over the past few weeks and months.  These folks become apoplectic when talking about the native born children of aliens being true American citizens and the establishment of Islamic mosques in New York City and other places around the country.  The cry of protest heard most often about these issues is that they are "un-American."  Oh really? Let's examine these claims in reverse order.  Again, let me quote from the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  It does not say, "excepting Islam."  Thus, in order to carry forth an exclusion of a particular religion from Constitutional protection, the Tea Party is arguing for revision and radical reinterpretation.  Which is exactly what they accuse their opponents of doing.  One would think that if they were actually sincere in their desire to preserve the original intent of the Constitution,  this Sarah Palin led crowd would be taking to the streets to insist that all Mosque construction proceed uninhibited.

And as to the citizenship argument, the Fourteenth Amendment is quite clear too.  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States. . . are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." There does not seem to be any exceptions here either. So what is really going on here. Once we debunk this absurd argument that the Tea Party movement is about preserving the US Constitution, the real objectives of these people become pretty clear.  The Tea Party is little more than a reinvention of a long standing American political tradition, nativism.  The founders of this movement know that there has always been a segment of our population that fears and mistrusts anyone who does not look and speak like them.

They have been with us since before the Constitution was written and they are still with us today.  In the 1850s, they called themselves the Know Nothings.  At the turn of the 20th century they were alive and well within the Populist Party as well as in the Progressive movement. President Woodrow Wilson sung the praises of Nathan Bedford Forest and the racist organization he founded, the Ku Klux Klan, as depicted in the 1914 Hollywood blockbuster, "Birth of a Nation."  In the early 1920s, the Republican Party and our most repressive attorney general ever,  A. Mitchell Palmer, fanned the fires of nativism by tagging Southern and Eastern European immigrants as Bolsheviks.  In 1948, Strom Thurmond and his fellow southern white delegates stormed out of the Democratic National Convention because it opened its doors to African Americans.  Many of these very same white Southerners finally abandoned the Democratic Party when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1968, the infamous segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace formed the American Independent party and ran for the presidency.  Wallace openly condemned the "pointy-headed liberal elite and their mongrel supporters" for ruining the United States. Now what do you suppose he meant by the term "mongrel?"

In closing, I guess my real problem with the Tea Party is that it is openly opposed to the US Constitution, rather than its most ardent supporters.  I just wish they would have the courage of their convictions and stand up for what they truly believe in.  But then, these people never do.

Why I am a Progressive Democrat

Let me begin by saying that I could easily have been a progressive Republican. Don't laugh my neo-liberal friends, but at the turn of the last century, I would have been an enthusiastic follower of Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive agenda called the Square Deal.  A few years later I might have been a Wilson Democrat in 1912, but his adherence to a "whites only" style of progressivism would have been problematic for me. But by 1920, the GOP was once again firmly in the hands of the Wall Street Plutocrats, where it has remained ever since.   But let me give credit where credit is due, at its very inception the Republican Party in the run-up to the Civil War was a political association I would have eagerly joined.  Without a doubt, I would have jumped at the chance to join Lincoln, Seward, and Chase in the party founded to end slavery in this country once and for all.  For you non-history buffs, it was the Radical Republican controlled Congress between 1865 and 1868 that proposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Then in late 1868, over the threatened veto of the Democratic President, Andrew Johnson, Congressional Republicans passed America's first Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing basic freedoms to recently freed slaves throughout the country. Unfortunately, as during the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, the Party of Lincoln was hijacked by the bankers and industrialists of the Bobber Baron Era, and became the promoter and protector of the interests of the upper class. Seems to be a common theme here.

As far as the modern Republican Party goes, if I were a Wall Street investment banker, a hedge fund manager, a corporate CEO, or a lucky inheritor of millions of dollars, I would probably be a latter day Republican. I might also be a member of the GOP were I an evangelical or born again Protestant, as almost all of the white adherents to these religious agendas became steadfast Republicans after the 1973 Roe v Wade decision of the Supreme Court. In other words, since I am not a wealthy white Anglo-Saxon (born-again) Protestant, there is nothing within the confines of this party that speaks to me.

My extended family, probably like most of yours, was rescued from economic oblivion by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.  The New Deal and its introduction of the modern welfare state in the United States opened the door to the Middle Class for millions of Americans who knew little else other than the drudgery  of being wage-slaves in the industrial Northeast, or tenant farmers in the South and West.  For the first time in American history, the national government took an aggressive stand on the side of America's working class by establishing minimum wage laws, regulating big industrial and financial institutions, and creating an economic safety net to insure a dignified life style for elderly Americans.  For the first time in American history, the federal government did not sit on its legislative hands during an economic depression, but adopted the Keynesian economic policies that laid the groundwork for the greatest economic recovery in the history of the world.

No, I am not a Republican, nor am I a conservative "Blue Dog" Democrat. I am a different kind of hyphenated Democrat, I am a progressive Democrat, you know, a liberal. I am a progressive because it was my wing of the party that was attempting to rally the American people to the impending nightmare of national Socialism during the Depression years. Throughout the 1930s, staunch Republicans, like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were singing the praises of Nazi Germany and preaching isolationism as the appropriate response for the United States, while Europe was disintegrating into a dictatorial hell.  It was the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that muscled the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (otherwise known as the GI Bill) through Congress in 1945, which enabled millions of veterans to go to college, buy a home, and utilize the medical services of the newly established Veterans Department.  Not only did the GI Bill open opportunities for entry into the middle class for millions of American families, it generated enough economic wealth to pay for itself four times over and allow for the modernization of the country's entire infrastructure.

I am a progressive Democrat because one of my few political icons,  President Harry Truman ended the embarrassing policy of racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.  I am a progressive Democrat because President Lyndon Johnson and progressive Democrats in the Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act over the stern objections of Dixiecrats in the South and chamber of commerce Republicans in the north and west, finally bringing the era of Jim Crow to an end in the South.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party went to war on poverty in 1965 and established Medicare that same year. I am a progressive Democrat because my party waved goodbye to the Yellow Dog segregationist Southern Democrats like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and John Stennis who were then eagerly recruited by Nixon Republicans in 1968.

I am a progressive Democrat because my political leaders have been leading the fight in national and state legislatures to clean up our environment, make the food we eat and the water we drink safe, protect us from bogus pharmaceuticals and quack medical practices,  insure the safety of consumer goods, and move our country away from the burning of fossil fuels.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party continues to fight for higher wages, and improved working conditions for the weakest among us. I am a progressive Democrat because my party has pushed the Civil Rights agenda in 1968 to protect the social and economic rights of women in the United States.  I am a progressive Democrat because my daughter was not hindered as a consequence of her gender in her education and later in her professional life. I am a progressive Democrat because the Republican Party fought against every one of these reforms.

I am a progressive Democrat because my wing of the party continues to lead the way in even further expansions of Civil Rights for disabled Americans, farm workers, children,  and now for gay and lesbian Americans. I am a progressive Democrat because my party continues to fight to reign in the abuses of unbridled capitalism in our society which enriches the few at the expense of the many.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party refuses to succumb to the bigoted nativism now permeating our culture in the guise of immigration reform.

And finally, I am a progressive Democrat because my party has been fighting against the imperialist and jingoistic elements within our foreign and military policies since the early 1950s.  Remember, it was a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned the American people about the dangers of the military-industrial complex back in 1960, even though his party continues its love affair with huge military budgets and massive subsidies to defense contractors. I would like to say that I am an unmodified Democrat, but it is in the area of American foreign policy that I must vigorously employ the qualifier "progressive" as an adjective before the noun "Democrat."  I am not a conservative or "Blue Dog" Democrat.  I am not interested reaching an accommodation with conservatives on the other side who watered down the Health Care Bill, the Financial Reform Bill, the Energy Bill, and failed to enact a comprehensive and compassionate immigration bill.  Thus, I am a hyphenated Democrat, proud to be progressive, proud to be liberal.

And what about you?  Can you define yourself in terms of real social,economic, and political policies. If you can, you are a thinking American, exactly what the Founding Fathers were hoping for when they created our democratic institutions back in 1787.  If, on the other hand you identify with a political label without being able to articulate a set of principles and beliefs for which that label stands, other than vague platitudes and empty slogans, well then it may be time for you to figure out just who you are!

Let me know what you discover.