Truman, 1952:

The record the Democratic Party has made in the last 20 years is the greatest political asset any party ever had in the history of the world. We would be foolish to throw it away. There is nothing our enemies would like better and nothing that would do more to help them win an election.

I’ve seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn’t believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are–when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people–then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again.

We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform and abandon parts of our program. These, my friends, are Trojan horse suggestions. I have been in politics for over 30 years, and I know what I am talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program. This is so elementary that I suspect the people handing out this advice are not really well-wishers of the Democratic Party.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1296

 

Steve Cohen did the right thing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CohenForCongress2010#p/u/0/IivjyvbQkT0

I’d add: There’s nothing really Trojan about it. It’s overtly a bill to cut Social Security and Medicare via the phase II “supercongress” (aka “Catfood Commission II”).

The people of Memphis did not send Steve Cohen to Washington to repeal the New Deal. And that’s what this bill is. Because this bill passed, Social Security WILL be cut, and Medicare WILL be cut (don’t delude yourselves about the “cuts for providers only” part.  Primary care providers (PCPs) are already operating in the red when they see Medicare patients. They literally already take a loss by seeing Medicare patients. Further cutting their payments only serves to lock the elderly out of any health care whatsoever.  It’s a” hurry up and die” policy.)

Social Security is solvent for the next quarter century.

The leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Out of Poverty Caucus is calling for protests at the White House.

We’ve got to educate the American people at the same time we educate the President of the United States. The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that,” Conyers, who has served in the House since 1965, said. “My response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this,” Conyers said strongly.

 

Really, just surrender the charter

A vast majority of major national school systems are consolidated. Have some courage, MCS board members. You’ll kill your job, but you’ll be heroes. We won’t forget you. For one moment, lay aside your rational self interest; that’s BS anyway – we’re a social species.

Please, please take one for the team, here and now. Be willing to do a Kamikazi on your own job for the sake of Memphis. The Memphis electorate just recently proved to be wise by electing Cohen – please, MSC board, don’t show us that we are, in fact, fools.

Do the right thing. Kamikazi your own jobs in the name of creating tax equity for Memphis families.

 

WTH is wrong with AC Wharton and Kenneth Whalum?

Wharton’s saying that consolidating the schools would overall be bad “downstream”? And Whalum is against it for unknown reasons?

Look, guys: SCS is posturing to engage in another act of (Yeah! I’m going there!) class warfare. I’m familiar with this. My own parents engaged in a similar act (which I now see as legal tax evasion) when I was 6 years old and we moved to Germantown. And yes, they were some racist bastards. My mother, now that she’s divorced from my semi-sociopathic father (and is now poor and living close to me in the inner city) is repentant.

Fuck the white flight Shelby County traitors.

You, in the county…we outnumber you.

Vastly.

Your days of legal tax evasion are numbered.

 

I don’t condone vandalism, but you have to respect the European Spirit.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AN2JG20101124

(France)

The reform raised the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60.

And they RIOT over that. All across Europe, the US-based  (IMF) “austerity” demands, attempting to turn Europe into the US, are sparking RIOTS.

I frown upon the riots, and think they should just use democracy to achieve their ends, but I do admire their aware and awake public.

Riots/protests in Spain:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8032746/Riots-in-Spain-over-austerity-measures.html

Alternative to austerity:

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/spain-2010-07.pdf

 

The civil war within the Republican party

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/tea-party-fail-patriots-conspiracy-theory-leads-to-mass-calling.php

Maybe I’m becoming a firebagger. The Tea Party is officially enemies with “establishment Republicans”. And I genuinely wish them well (as I hope they become a little less crazy over time).

Down with the hypocrites who claim to love “small government” but really want big gov to support their corporate interests at the expense of the working man/woman.

To hell with them.

I think we on the right and on the left share one common problem – our elites lie to us. They say they’re about what we’re about, but it’s a game to them – because they’re mostly all just corporatists.

I really don’t give a shit if I’m called a firebagger. I think the Tea Party is nuts and usually fueled by misinformation, but their calling out “establishment Republicans” for being the hypocrites they are is genuinely awesome. It’s about time that the “common right”  noticed that the “elite, professional right” was all about promoting big gov.

 

And on the Pyramid:

 

(picture shown: not of expected Bass Pro Shop, but rather of the resort city planners neglected.)

I’m as guilty as everyone else. A year or so ago I was a perfect case report of civic apathy.

But if you’ll allow me to push all that to the side, really? Another Bass Pro Shop? Bass Pro shops are proving to be quite the scandal with regard to corporate welfare.

City officials courted/entertained  Bass Pro and them only, it appears. Other deals were ignored.

I don’t know if it’s too late now or not. I hope it’s not.

 

On strategy and presidential elections in 2012

Where are the “moderate/conservative” Democratic voters who are saying Obama’s been “too leftist”? For that matter, where are the independents who voted for Obama but found his actions to be too far to the left?

They don’t exist. Obama’s in hot water because he presented himself as a leftist progressive, but it looks like it was a bait and switch. The right is mad because of what he campaigned upon (remember “spread the wealth around”? wrt progressive taxation?), and no amount of appeasement now will fix that. The left is mad because of the bait and switch.

My god, what a bunch of dupes we all are. I know I’m late to the progressive Obama Haters Party, but I come with great enthusiasm now, at least. And my, uh, alarm clock didn’t go off and I got caught in traffic. Or something.

The establishment corporatists keep winning. Over and over again. Via the democratic party many times.

It’s seeming increasingly likely that they’ve taken over both the repubs and the dems. We folks who believe that the government should function to help MOST of the citizens (as opposed to gov’s primary purpose being to redistribute wealth upward to the elite) face a binary decision:

0) take back the democratic party

or…

1) organize elsewhere.

I don’t know. Tough call.

 

And my hypothesis on what went wrong for the Dems in 2010:

In the wake of 1) an oppressive abomination of healthcare “reform”, and 2) nothing positive coming from the dems otherwise, the mood among the swing and leftist voters was grim, and they stayed home.

The concensus was very Arnaud Amalric:

“Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

The interesting question is if the present soup of politicians will repeal the mandate.

The insurance industry has an opinion:

Even insurers, which were vilified by Democrats in passing the reforms, said they don’t want a repeal, even as they push for clarity on forthcoming rules and seek additional changes.

Cigna Corp CEO David Cordani and Aetna Inc President Mark Bertolini both urged the nation to move forward on the overhaul.

 

I feel like an ass, because I knew from the beginning that Obama was courting the insurance industry (and pharma) . I assumed he was going to do the right thing in the end, and I guess I was wrong. I knew the insurance industry willingly accepted their role as “bad guys” and pretended to protest reform, and then massively spiked thier rates in several stated to get the bill passed.

Read this. Please. Please.

http://covertrationingblog.com/weird-fact-about-insurance-companies/how-the-health-insurance-industry-saved-obamacare

I think he’s right, and I don’t care that the author is a rightwinger. EVERYTHING playing out now fits his hypothesis perfectly.

If the Republicans manage to repeal the mandate in spite of the corporate interests, I’ll shit a brick. Furthermore, I’ll re-think which party is comprised of more corporate whores. If the Dems turn out to be more anti-working class, more pro-corporate than the Repubs, then…well, I don’t know what to think. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

But I doubt they will make a serious effort to do so.

 

Blasts from the past

http://www.thenation.com/article/bushs-house-cards

This was written in 2004:

The crash of the housing market will not be pretty. It is virtually certain to lead to a second dip to the recession. Even worse, millions of families will see the bulk of their savings disappear as homes in some of the bubble areas lose 30 percent, or more, of their value. Foreclosures, which are already at near record highs, will almost certainly soar to new peaks. This has happened before in regional markets that had severe housing bubbles, most notably in Colorado and Texas after the collapse of oil prices in the early eighties. However, this time the bubble markets are more the rule than the exception, infecting most of real estate markets on both coasts, as well as many local markets in the center of the country.

In this context, it’s especially disturbing that the Bush administration has announced that it is cutting back Section 8 housing vouchers, which provide rental assistance to low income families, while easing restrictions on mortgage loans. Low-income families will now be able to get subsidized mortgage loans through the Federal Housing Administration that are equal to 103 percent of the purchase price of a home. Home ownership can sometimes be a ticket to the middle class, but buying homes at bubble-inflated prices may saddle hundreds of thousands of poor families with an unmanageable debt burden.

As with the stock bubble, the big question in the housing bubble is when it will burst. No one can give a definitive answer to that one, but Alan Greenspan seems determined to ensure that it will be after November. Instead of warning prospective homebuyers of the risk of buying housing in a bubble-inflated market, Greenspan gave Congressional testimony in the summer of 2002 arguing that there is no such bubble.

The author has since written a free ebook that can be found here:

http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.html

And now, another writer who was one of the first on the scene to have nearly telepathic fortune-telling insight:

http://www.taylormarsh.com/2007/05/14/obamas-kumbaya/

All of this coming after an election that had more Democratic veterans running and winning elected office than ever before, as we reassert our FDR-Truman-Kennedy national security legacy. But Mr. Obama hints that he will employ his “capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other” in his potential presidency. Fine. Groovy. Let’s all join hands. But is it too much to ask that we do it while also asserting, even stressing that the Democratic Party has the policy answers that those other people should get used to? Because when we take the White House back and have a majority in both houses of Congress we’re going to put into action Democratic Party principles and the policies that follow, because our principles and policies are way better than what those other guys have to offer.

But not once in the Stephanopoulos let’s-all-get-along interview did I get the feeling that Barack Obama wants to be president to install the beliefs of the Democratic Party, or that we even had the ideas that will take this country where we need to go after the most disastrous presidency in modern times. Or that Obama wants to take advantage of the Republican collapse to drive a stake through conservatism’s very heart. Instead I got the distinct “capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other” impression. I don’t want any Democratic leader, especially a Democratic president, seeing conservatism in themselves.

Again, I’m all for getting along to get things done. However, when Democrats are in charge the Republicans need to know it. Otherwise, why get elected in the first place? With George Will actually saying that there’s something Reaganesque about Obama’s sunny disposition and lack of vitriol, excuse me, but can anyone argue this wouldn’t be a gift to conservatives? Or maybe the torch is going to be passed to a different kind of politician ushering in a new kind of politics to America. Someone that brings consensus and kumbaya to the White House so Democrats and Republicans can join hands and finally walk side by side, with deals made so everyone is happy. If that’s the case there will be one outcome. The Republican Party will get up off the mat, dust themselves off and then the conservatives will stab us in the back with a smile on their faces, and this once in a generation opportunity to finish off the wingnuts so they’ll truly have to start a twenty year rebuilding process will pass us by. If Obama is president when it happens it’s likely he won’t know what hit him until it’s too late for us all.

Tell me how a Candidate Kumbaya would be good for Democrats, because right now I’m just not seeing it at all.