The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the city of New Orleans for the Saints' stirring Super Bowl victory, and reminds them that the "hair of the dog" trick doesn't really help with the hangover.
While voters in our groups gave the president higher marks on the economy after the speech than before, that was clearly driven by his new priority, jobs, and perhaps a clearer understanding of the difference between Bush era policies and the new one. Still, the president and the Democrats in Congress do not yet have a narrative or a framework to explain their economic policies in a period where the gap grows between macro and micro growth.
To make matters worse, there is the perception by some fairly smart people that there may not be a narrative to be found. We may be living in an America that is ungovernable.
System Failure Toward the end of the decade, as the establishment definitively rebuked Bush and sought to distance itself from his failures, the big-tent center-left coalition took on an influential constituency--the Colin Powells and Warren Buffetts--who didn't want reform so much as they wanted restoration. This was reflected in a strange internal tension in the Obama campaign rhetoric that simultaneously promised both: change you can believe in and, as Obama said at a March 2008 appearance in Pennsylvania, a foreign policy that is "actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father."
If the working hypothesis that bound this unwieldy coalition together--independents, most liberals and the Washington establishment--was that the nation's troubles were chiefly caused by the occupants of the White House, then this past year has served as a kind of natural experiment. We changed the independent variable (the party and people in power) and can observe the results. It is hard, I think, to come to any conclusion but that the former hypothesis was insufficient.
The Teabaggers, Sarah Palin, they are a natural outgrowth of the elemental , gut level perception that things have become fundamentally unhinged. The pain that this movement seems to represent is all to real. The fear that this pain spawns leads them to flail about for reasons, causes, ways out, and heaven help anyone who has the responsibility, the job of trying to fix the mess - which maybe in the short term unfixable.
Here in Texas, the fallout of misgovernance is all around us. Recall our rankings in education, child welfare, prisons, care for the mentally ill, juvenile justice. Don't forget our defective revenue system make worse and worse by the Governor's mindless mantra of cutting taxes.
It seems that the teabaggers, racists and right wing extremists have taken over the Republican Party. Of those polled as self-identified Republicans, 39% believe President Obama should be impeached. 63% think he is a socialist. 42% do not believe the President was born in the United States. 31% believe President Obama hates white people. 23% want their state to secede from the U.S..
The number of students taking Advanced Placement tests hit a record high last year, but the portion who fail the exams - particularly in the South - is rising as well, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
"The standards don't teach themselves," says Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond, a noted teacher-quality expert who says schools shouldn't treat AP as "another silver bullet" that will raise standards and assure academic success.
"You have to build the whole system. You can't just bring in one thing and think that it's going to solve everything," she says.
The newspaper's analysis finds that more than two in five students (41.5%) earned a failing score of 1 or 2, up from 36.5% in 1999. In the South, a Census-defined region that spans from Texas to Delaware, nearly half of all tests - 48.4% - earned a 1 or 2, a failure rate up 7 percentage points from a decade prior and a statistically significant difference from the rest of the country.
Thank Heavens for Mississippi, again. The rest of the article goes on to claw back on the bald claims made by the map, but the outcome, specifically for Texas, can't be gainsaid. It is consistent with the backasswards way in which Rick has funded and supported public education here in the state. Low teacher retention brought on partially by lack of adequate resources brought on by perpetual funding short falls, they all add up. This is simply the canary in the coalmine for the problems of Texas public education.
During elections an enormous amount of money is spent on campaigns, and the dollars spent have been increasing during both Presidential and midterm elections. During the Presidential election in 2000 $3,082,340,937 was spent by presidential candidates, senate and house candidates, political parties and independent interest groups trying to influence federal elections, and that number increased to $5,285,680,883 in 2008. During the last midterm election cycle, in 2006, candidates and others groups spent $2,852,658,140, and if the trend continues even more will be spent this year.
Local residents have donated over $118,000 to political candidates and campaign during the current election cycle, and over half of those donations originated from two different zip codes. The largest amount of donations came from south College Station, a total of $39,295 in political donations originated from the 77845 zip code. The second largest amount of donations came from eastern Bryan, at total of $23,741 originated from the 77802 zip code. Residents of College Station have donated $63,429 to political campaigns, while residents of Bryan have donated $54,835.
In local Brazos County campaigns County Commissioner Duane Peters, who is a Republican primary candidate for County Judge, has spent $12,451, the most out of any other candidate. Representative Fred Brown has spent the most out of local Texas legislature candidates, spending $9,404 during the current reporting period. In the local congressional district, Congressman Edwards has already spent more than all of the Republican candidates involved in the primary combined; all five Republican primary candidates have spent a total $268,481 during the current election cycle while Edwards has spent $308,832.
A former U.S. Attorney, Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove and alumnus of the Rovian wing of the Luntz-Rove Nixonian Training Institute for Republican Dirty Tricksters, Political Pimps and Partisan Thugs has decided to run for a U.S. House seat in Arkansas.
Griffin graduated with the highest honors, summa cum laude, from the Institute whose sole mission is to dismantle the basic tenets of a democratic Republic. One of the first means by which to accomplish this goal is to ensure that those who are not registered Republicans, especially minorities, do not have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.
What is it like to be gay in Aggieland? Much of how that question is answered depends on your perspective. After interviewing several undergraduate and graduate students that either identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, I found that there where shared experiences but different opinions on being a member of the GLBT community at Texas A&M. I interviewed several people from across the spectrum of the GLBT community.
Texas A&M University is known as being one of the most conservative universities in the country, and it is also known as one of the least tolerant universities of alternative lifestyles. In the Princeton Review's most recent college rankings Texas A&M ranked as the campus with the most conservative students and the fifteen least accepting of alternative lifestyles. Although, over the last three decades Texas A&M has made strides in becoming a campus more accepting of alternative lifestyles. Some of the most important improvements have been made in the resources available to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) students.
I sat down with one of the most active members of the Texas A&M GLBT community and discussed his experiences. Lowell Kane has been the program coordinator of the GLBT Resource Center since it opened in September of 2007 and is one of the advisors for the student organization GLBT Aggies (GLBTA). One of the most knowledgeable people not just about the current GLBT community, but also the history of the GLBT community at Texas A&M, he provided me with a wealth of knowledge and perspective about being gay in Aggieland. Kane came to Texas A&M for graduate school in 2005, and described his experience as a member of the GLBT community in Aggieland as "a mixed bag."
I honestly do not know why the President would even bother to waste his precious, non-existent time (considering what he has been saddled with by the reckless, incompetent and irresponsible, if not criminal, W. Administration and its rubber stamping Congress) with the Republican Party whose only goal is to destroy him. Indeed, the Republican far right, led by Rush Limbaugh, has even far more sinister plans for our President.
The President Obama ran on a platform of change and bi-partisanship. He won the 2008 election hands down. He speaks to Democratic conservatives, moderates, centrists, progressives and Independents. I guess he is also attempting to reach out to a bunch of corrupted, lying crooks and political thugs, too.
On Friday, two days after the State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama, an invited guest, spoke to the House Republicans at their annual retreat meeting in Baltimore.
The President's address, followed by an extensive question and answer period, sharply focused on the difference between the hard work of legislating policy and the easy, self-serving and lazy paths of over the top scorched earth rhetoric and beyond the pale cheap shots.
The President reminded Republicans that they have boxed themselves into a very narrow place by failing to communicate honestly and openly with their constituents. The Party's over the top rhetoric has its dire consequences that are far from helpful as far as finding solutions to the problems that challenge us.
The President also honed in on the difference between real math that would grow our economy while bringing down the deficit vs. the politically expedient rhetoric of voodoo math, i.e. sticking two wars, deep tax cuts for the rich and a huge federal entitlement program on the federal credit card.
Weaving between pleas for bipartisanship and direct criticism of GOP politicking, the president took Republicans to task for voting against last year's stimulus package and then attending "ribbon cuttings" for projects funded by it.
"A lot of you have gone to ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against," Obama said. "I say all this not to re-litigate the past, but it's simply to state, the component parts of the recovery act are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do."
Obama touched repeatedly on the theme that, in opposing his policies, Republicans at times oppose things that are in line with their ideology. Among those things, Obama argued, are his proposed fee on banks and a freeze on discretionary spending.
Part I
Part I: Q&A.
No one can say the President has not extended a huge olive branch to the Republicans, especially those on the far right. Let's see how the Republicans respond. Will they slap it away, yet again? Or will some Republicans have the integrity to stand up and start doing the work of the people?
From what we hear from Fox "News," reporters in the mainstream media and from numerous cable TV pundits, one would think the Democratic Party is solely responsible for racking up monumental deficits since Ronald Reagan.
As we have learned over the years since the W. Administration, when Republicans and their partisan go to hacks in the media scream, rant, rave and throw tantrums about something, it means:
1. They've already done it themselves.
2. They are in the act of doing it.
3. They intend to do it in the near future.
Who would have thought? St. Ronnie is the one who is responsible for a deficit of epic proportions.
So said President Barack Hussein Obama at the State of the Union Address on Wednesday night. And, as one can see from the poll cited below, most Americans agree with the President.
You were sent to Washington to serve the people, not your personal ambitions.
Most unfortunately for Texans, Texas Republicans did not get the message. Senator John Cornyn, in a typical act of cowardice, attempted to wash his hands of the economic and financial carnage he and the Bush Administration visited upon us. According to Cornyn, in an appalling act of sheer cowardice, President Obama owns the entire financial debacle b/c, after all, Mr. Obama has been office for one year.
Earth to the spineless, irresponsible John Cornyn: It took you and W. 8 years to drive our economy into the ditch.
You and W. own this depression, aka "recession." Stand up, be a man, if you can, and take responsibility for the horribly poor choices and decisions you made.
John Cornyn and Texas Republicans are obviously confined within a very narrow mid 20th century mind lock that is completely out of synch with 21st century realities.
Fast forward to January 27, 2010. The American people have spoken. Texas Republicans seemed to have forgotten that the American people have elected President Obama by an overwhelming majority.
Texas Republicans may also like to know that a poll reveals 83% of Americans approve the President's State of the Union Address. 70% believe the President shares the same priorities for the country that they do.
If the GOP does not share the same priorities as 70% of the American people, I'd say the Party has a serious problem with everyday people and their realities.
James O'Keefe, a conservative activist who had posed as a pimp in order to set up ACORN has been arrested by the FBI for having attempted to commit a felony. O'Keefe and two others, wearing telephone company uniforms, were busted last night for allegedly wiretapping the phones in Senator Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office.
Landrieu said: "This is a very unusual situation and somewhat unsettling for me and my staff. The individuals responsible have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony. I am as interested as everyone else about their motives and purpose, which I hope will become clear as the investigation moves forward."
Brace yourselves folks as the list of Texas Republicans who honored James O'Keefe is quite long. My U.S. House Rep. John Culberson is on the list. Is your representative? See the list below the fold.
Corporations are persons. Fox News is the most trusted news source. Democrats cannot hold Ted Kennedy's senate seat. Obama seems to be trying the Clinton triangular strategy. The list goes on.
I am finding it hard to keep my hopes up. Between the bad economy, the spineless Dems in Congress, the real threat of an energized Republican party , the wild card of right wing Teabagging populism, what's not to worry about?
I hope writing about it will help. I don't know if it will....
I can't fix Washington, I can't undo Massachusetts. What I can do is what I have been doing. Blogging here, training others in how to talk politics with the undecided and the hostile.
I can be the voice of reason among my friends and colleagues.
These are dark times, and not because they bode badly for the goals and objectives I hold dear. It is not about me really, it is about our community, our state , our nation.
However you feel about health care, surely you want your fellow citizens to have access to it. This has to get done, no matter how imperfectly IMHO, or we wait another generation.
I goggled Child Labor Laws. The first one (1916) only said that you could not transmit goods made in violation of child labor rules across state lines, it as declared unconstitutional , twice.
Irresponsible leadership by George W. Bush and Congressional enablers left Americans on the brink of complete economic meltdown and we are far from out of the woods on that score. Why adopt the failures of the minority party, or pretend to for political cover? There is a very small window of opportunity before voters decide whether to let Democrats keep their majorities. Time to turn on the gas, not put on the freeze.
That's my contribution to this just released statement:
Texas Progressive Bloggers Withdraw Support from Proposed Spending Freeze
TEXAS - January 27, 2010: Top progressive bloggers from across Texas issued a statement today in advance of President Obama's State of the Union address cautioning the President to avoid calling for a spending freeze. While these bloggers maintain their support of their President and their Democratic candidates, they reject the notion that a spending freeze is a valid solution for working Americans in this time of economic crisis.
Will the Gentleman from News Corp, the Distinguished Senator from Saudi Arabia please yield to the Gentle Lady from Citigroup, the Senator from Russia? The Gentleman from Goldman Sachs, the Distinguished Senator from the great land of Dubai may have ten minutes.
By the way, Prince Al-Waleed, a grandson of the King of Saudi Arabia and the largest individual shareholder in Citigroup and second biggest shareholder in News Corp (Murdock's FOX "News") doesn't like Obama's tax on the banks. Nor does he think much of health care reform or the movie Avatar. Of course Saudi Arabia, a highly repressive country, is one comprised of the very rich and the very poor. For every Prince Al-Waleed there are thousands of impoverished Saudis. The King may wish to ask himself why terrorism has become a successful means of employment in his country.
Apparently Senator John Cornyn and Rick Perry have absolutely no problem with the recent SOTUS decision in which corporations can contribute unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. In an interview with FOX "News" yesterday, Senator Cornyn said everyone is making too big a deal about this decision.
WALLACE: And finally - and we've only got about 30 seconds left - what's the practical effect of the Supreme Court ruling this week saying that corporations can now openly support and spend money, openly supporting or opposing candidates? Do you expect a rush of corporate cash into the campaign?
CORNYN: No, I don't. I think it's been overstated, the impact. Frankly, there's been an explosion of money into federal races for public office since - well, in the last 10 years, since campaign finance reform.
It hadn't done anything to stop the flow of money in. What it's done is make it less transparent and less accountable. President Obama spent more money in his campaign in 2008 than Senator Kerry and President Bush did in 2004 combined.
So what we need is transparency. We need contemporaneous reporting on the Internet. I think that's the kind of accountability that we need.
WALLACE: Senator Cornyn, thank you. Thanks for coming in today. And it's always a pleasure to see you, sir.
CORNYN: Thanks, Chris.
Overstated? I guess the Senator forgot that most of our corporations are multi-national now and thereby include hundreds if not thousands of foreign shareholders who have a lot of financial clout. Foreign investors like Prince Al-Waleed could very likely donate unimaginable amounts of cash through the back door, i.e. through the armies of lobbying firms that are already crawling all over Washington D.C. In fact, lobbying firms will very likely now become the biggest employer in the Washington, D.C. area, after the federal government.
Senator Cornyn also needs to be reminded that President Obama's ability to raise extraordinary amounts of cash is in no small part due to an immensely effective and powerful electronic grass roots fund raising tool. Through this mechanism the Obama campaign could easily raise vasts amounts from tiny donations ranging from $5.00 to $50.00. There were no small number of "money bombs" raised over at Daily Kos when progressive bloggers would feel the need to show then candidate Obama support especially through the media circuses of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers. In fact, when progressive grass roots bloggers and activists would get fed up with media bias, John McCain or Sarah Palin we would implement electronic fund raising drives.
Well, I guess those days are over since the SCOTUS threw we little ol' grass roots activists and average Janes and Joes of America into a tank pervaded with with gigantic flesh eating sharks. Big John will tell us this is just fine and we should not worry.
I guess the Senator would love nothing better than to let Goldman-Sachs retaliate against President Obama's efforts to tax the banks, or for health insurance companies to crush the President in 2012 if he should sign the health care reform bill.
Imagine how many congressmen Goldman Sachs could make quake if it quietly let it be known it had decided to divert just 10 percent of the $16.2 billion in employee bonuses it has budgeted this year to retaliate against any of them who supported Obama's proposed reforms.
The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the city of New Orleans for its first Super Bowl as it provides an instant replay of its blog highlights for the week.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme sympathizes with Lamar Smith's constituents who were told they must contact Smith's office if they want him to stop illegally calling their cellphones. Smith's breaking the law and his solution is to make his constituents ask him to stop.
Bummed out by the Massachusetts election? Pissed off the Brain Dead 5 Supremes ? Well , Massachusetts was not our fight, and we can't immediately revise the court's dismal take that Corporations have free speech rights.
But there is something you can do. Prepare yourself to make a difference in the midterm elections. Democracy for Houston, my main activist base, is having a training day on Saturday, January 30th at the CW Union Hall here in Houston. Check out the agenda on the flip side....
Will the Senator from Wal-Mart please yield to the Senator from Halliburton? The Congressman from Black Water has 5 minutes remaining before the Congresswoman from United Health may speak.
Mark your calendars, folks. January 21, 2010 is the day the radical and activist Supreme Court of the United States delivered the U.S. Democracy into the hands of the corporate sector and special interests groups. According to an article in the New York Times corporations, lobbyists and unions can now legally purchase their candidates of choice.
"We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you - whichever one you want,' " a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence M. Noble, a lawyer at Skadden Arps in Washington and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
The decision yesterday will usher in unimaginable numbers of Swift Boat attack ads. Corporate fat cats can now threaten and bully politicians to do their bidding or else.
"It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns," Mr. Ginsberg said. "Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities."
"Parties will sort of shrink in the relative importance of things," he added, "and outside groups will take over more of the functions - advertising support, get out the vote - that parties do now."
In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.
Many of those commenting on the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have focused on the power-grab part. I agree with them. It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.
"If it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more," a wise judge once wrote. That was Chief Justice John G. Roberts -- back when -- and dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens rightly turned that line against him.
The Bush Administration's enabled and unregulated, unfettered banks, aka gambling casinos, are responsible for the increasing impoverishment of the middle class.
According to a recent editorial in the New York Times David Stockman argues that to ensure a healthy recovery the economy could use a less bloated, unproductive and parasitic banking system. Stockman formerly served in the Reagan Administration as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. As we may recall, while serving in the Reagan Administration Stockman admitted that trickle down economics is a Trojan Horse.
Below is a blast from the past from the dark days when Reagan sought rationales for his tax cuts to the wealthy.
The hard part of the supply-side tax cut is dropping the top rate from 70 to 50 percent -- the rest of it is a secondary matter," Stockman explained. "The original argument was that the top bracket was too high, and that's having the most devastating effect on the economy. Then, the general argument was that, in order to make this palatable as a political matter, you had to bring down all the brackets. But, I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."
A Trojan horse? This seemed a cynical concession for Stockman to make in private conversation while the Reagan Administration was still selling the supply-side doctrine to Congress. Yet he was conceding what the liberal Keynesian critics had argued from the outset -- the supply-side theory was not a new economic theory at all but only new language and argument to conceal a hoary old Republican doctrine: give the tax cuts to the top brackets, the wealthiest individuals and largest enterprises, and let the good effects "trickle down" through the economy to reach everyone else. Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy. "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,'" he explained, "so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."
We are all obviously painfully aware of the impact of Trojan Horse economics. Today we are living this nightmare after 8 years of the Bush Administration and the devastation of its economic policies whether it is called trojan horse, trickle down, or supply side economics.
