Friday, December 12, 2008

Democracy and the Campaign for America's Future

Like all good Democratic Party hacks, Robert Borosage and his Campaign for America's Future only believes democracy should be extended to those who agree with them... the rest of us get this message when we try to post alternative views after being invited to publish responses to what is written by these muddle-headed middle class intellectuals like Robert Borosage who treat the problems of working people as footnotes and statistics as they peddle high-priced books for labor leaders to carry around their conferences pretending that they can read... here is the message and the cute little icon I get when I try posting in response to Borosage's and his like-minded colleague's ideas:

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Robert Borosage has been a big booster of Barack Obama and Borosage's job is to try to derail any grassroots and rank and file progressive movements arising as a result of activities independent of the Democratic Party where working people bring forward solutions to their problems.

Of course there is never any correction because those who don't buy their books and their worthless ideas don't get any consideration.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

DR Congo's Historic Urgency

Brian McAfee
2838 Mason Blvd
Muskegon Heights
MI 49444 USA
brimac6@hotmail.com

DR Congo's Historic Urgency.

By Brian McAfee

The conditions in the democratic republic of Congo are dire for millions of its people despite the fact that the Congo has more mineral wealth than any other part of the African continent. Over a quarter of a million people are displaced because of the civil war currently raging in the eastern part of the country. Women and children have been primary targets of both sides in the conflict with rape used as a weapon by both sides. The war between the government forces and "the Congress in Defense of the People" has overrun numerous small towns and villages targeting civilians, killing the men, raping the women, and in some cases, forcing the children to become child soldiers.

In the midst of this scenario there are mining encampments extracting cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, silver, and zinc as well as uranium and timber. None of the massive wealth that the "Democratic" Republic of Congo have been allowed to reach the majority of the Congolese population that live in abject poverty. The outside acquisition of Congolese resources, many would say theft of, began in the Belgium colonial period of the Congo from 1885-1960.

In 1961, the Congo upon holding its first free election chose Patrice Lamumba. Lamumba wanted to use the country's resources to improve the lives of the Congolese people and develop relations with other poor people around the world. Shortly after his election as prime minister, Lamumba said "We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese." Within a year, Patrice Lamumba was assassinated and replaced by Mobutu Sese Seko, who acquiesced to U.S. mining and hegemonic interests.

While Mobutu is no longer there, the mining interests are and the humanitarian needs that cry out are not being addressed sufficiently. The U.S. could and should step up to the plate. We owe it to them many times over. The humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam, UNICEF, and DIAKONIE Emergency Aid are having some positive impact, but from the reports coming out of the region, much more is needed and time is a factor.

Why do the majority of people in one of the richest places on earth continue to live in abject poverty?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

In this case Sarah Palin is the target; but, these kinds of people will target anyone in the same way--- to them politics is nothing but a game and sport. The leadership of the Minnesota DFL is great for this kind of crap.

No movements can be built behind anonymity. People simply do not trust the views made by anonymous posters. Where there is no trust you can’t build movements. All ideas need to have someone behind them so the ideas and concepts can be challenged.

Having your ideas challenged is part of movement building… and all challenges coming from named sources need to be answered. Very, very seldom will anyone respond to anonymous postings and writings.

The battle of ideas is a big part of the class struggle.

And the class struggle involves living, breathing human beings.

Those who don’t sign their names and hide behind anonymity and pseudonyms are not reliable partners in the class struggle.

We see groups like “Progressives for Obama” who will only pick and choose what they find convenient to refute… they are not credible with most liberals, progressives and the left.

I have been the target of these anonymous “bloggers” and these people spread lies and deceit to fools and stupid people and people engaged in campaigns of hate… one only needs to look at the way Cliff Kincaid orchestrated his campaign of hate using an entire network of anonymous “bloggers” to spew and spread his anti-communist venom insinuating, knowingly falsely, that Obama was some kind of closet Marxist, socialist or communist and then insinuating that if he was, in some way he wasn’t competent to be president and then going so far to insinuate that if he was a Marxist, socialist or communist he did not have the right to be president.

It is interesting that when I challenged Cliff Kincaid to debate me any time, any place any where as to what he found to be so problematic with Marxism, socialism and communism he chickened out.

Because of articles like the one below is why I put my name to every single thing I write.

Alan L. Maki


A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence


Axel Koester for The New York Times



Dan Mirvish, who with Eitan Gorlin created an elaborate Internet hoax complete with a fake policy institute and a phony adviser to Senator John McCain.

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: November 12, 2008

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Eitan Gorlin as the phony McCain adviser Martin Eisenstadt.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.

(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)

They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.

Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.

Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.

“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.

And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?

Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”





Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Check out my blog:



Thoughts From Podunk



http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Monday, November 10, 2008

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE REAL OBAMA NOW?

This is the very best article I have read about Barack Obama--- several months late; but late is better than never.



I hope this will be circulated very widely in the interest of open dialogue, discussion and debate because we have a very difficult struggle ahead.



This essay deserves widespread distribution and serious discussion and consideration.



I have highlighted some of the things from this essay which I think need to be explored more in-depth.



In my opinion, maybe not to the author, it is very clear who groomed and put Obama where he is today. State-monopoly capitalism needs this flim-flam man, or as Smith calls him, a con-man now that the entire capitalist system and imperialism is falling apart, probably, sending us and the entire world, into many years of economic depression and all the misery this entails for working people--- perhaps over twenty years, if not more--- unless working people take the road to socialism; because capitalism is on a very destructive road to perdition and oblivion.



In my opinion there are only three things missing in this essay:



1. Never mentioned is George Lakoff, the linguist, who has prepped the Democratic for years now on how to achieve victory at the polls under the guise of “progressivism” without providing one single solution to any problem working people are experiencing. Lakoff calls this properly framing issues with progressive policy directives while explicitly stating never, ever put forward a solution to any problem because you will lose support and votes from some constituency group. Lakoff has almost single-handedly made it possible for Democrats to rake in the campaign contributions like never before imagined on the one hand while making these politicians completely lacking in accountability to voters--- especially working class voters. Please, please take the time to read George Lakoff’s little booklet: Don’t Think of An Elephant! I hate to sell his books for him but this one is cheap and it is what the Democratic Party is using to train its politicians and all those they want to keep tethered to this pathetic politics we have become entrapped in as working people. I cannot stress enough the need for you to read this short little book. Please note while reading Lakoff very specifically states Democrats must not bring forward any solutions, rather, the “trick” is to frame issues with a progressive perspective--- and this is why we have been tricked too often by politicians who sound so good.



2. No explanation of the kind of “left” movement required (class struggle is not mentioned), although Sam Smith does use the “left” of the thirties as his example of what will be required (I would encourage the reading of Earl Browder’s: The People’s Front--- no use throwing out the baby with the bath water)… but, this is the topic for another essay which hopefully will be forthcoming from Sam Smith and much discussion by all of us. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt for people to do a little reading of the history of the “left” of the thirties which so succesfully pushed Roosevelt, his Administration and the Congress to come through with the New Deal reform package, from which was omitted socialized health care because there wasn’t quite enough strength from the people’s front. Check out William Z. Foster’s: “Twilight of Imperialism” and Gus Hall’s: "Working Class USA"… concluding with a good read of Victor Perlo’s: “Super Profits and Crisis” and Beatrice Lumpkin’s: “Always Bring A Crowd, the story of Frank Lumpkin, steelworker” about the struggle to save Wisconsin Steel in Chicago. Agree with the perspectives put forward in these books, or not; you will thank me for suggesting that you make them part of your arsenal for struggle ahead. For too long we have all been reading the critiques and criticisms of these ideas without going straight to the source and getting our information “straight from the horse’s mouth” so-to-speak; and really, to continue in this way is very dishonest intellectually and shortchanging yourself from having a slightly different view and perspective on things. All these books are available on the Internet quite cheap. Get them, read them. Study them. Keep them handy. I would also encourage people to read up on Frances Perkins who was the first woman cabinet secretary in U.S history, serving as FDR’s Secretary of Labor… if you are not familiar with the life of Frances Perkins, now is the time to find out about this most important woman in American history… you will find out quickly why our children don’t learn about this very concerned and compassionate woman who was in the forefront in making this world a better place for working people to live. I have never had one single person tell me, after reading these books, that they did not appreciate me suggesting they read these books. We have a very difficult struggle ahead and we might as well all get acquainted and understand each other and how we view the world. I look forward to receiving suggestions from you on what you think I might like to read.



3. The only other thing missing from this essay is this pathetically racist stereotype graphic appearing on the “Progressives for Obama” blog--- the same people calling for building a “new ‘New Left’ ”--- as if the old “New Left” was something to be proud of. But, quite ironically, the old “New Left” kicked off with its own version of racism, too, with a pamphlet called “Student as N----r,” so, as this graphic so amply demonstrates--- and I am sure any anthropologist will agree--- some things never change in the world of muddle-headed, middle class intellectualism even though they are conceived as being “new:”







Who is Sam Smith, the writer of this essay:



http://prorev.com/bio.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: WCS-A@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To: WCS-A@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [WCS-A] Can We Talk About the Real Obama Now?



Wednesday, November 5, 2008

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE REAL OBAMA NOW?

Sam Smith

Over the past few weeks I've been a good boy. I've placed everything
having to do with the real Barack Obama into a futures file and spent
my time on the far grimmer matter of the real John McCain and Sarah
Palin.

Now the party is over and it's time for people to put away their
Barack and Michelle dolls and start dealing with what has truly
happened.

This, I admit, is difficult because the real Obama doesn't exist yet.
He follows in the footsteps of our first postmodern president, Bill
Clinton, who observed the principles outlined by scholar Pauline
Marie Rosenau:

Post-modernists recognize an infinite number of interpretations...of
any text are possible because, for the skeptical post-modernists, one
can never say what one intends with language, [thus] ultimately all
textual meaning, all interpretation is undecipherable.... Many
diverse meanings are possible for any symbol, gesture, word...
Language has no direct relationship to the real world; it is, rather,
only symbolic.

As James Krichick wrote in the New Republic, "Obama is, in his own
words, something of a Rorschach test. In his latest book, The
Audacity of Hope, he writes, 'I am new enough on the national
political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of
vastly different political stripes project their own views.'"

This is remarkably similar to Ted Koppel's description of Vanna White
of TV's Wheel of Fortune: "Vanna leaves an intellectual vacuum, which
can be filled by whatever the predisposition of the viewer happens to
be."

Obama has left the same kind of vacuum. His magic, or con, was that
voters could imagine whatever they wanted and he would do nothing to
spoil their reverie. He was a handsome actor playing the part of the
first black president-to-be and, as in films, he was careful not to
muck up the role with real facts or issues that might harm the
fantasy. Hence the enormous emphasis on meaningless phrases like
hope and change.

Of course, in Obama's postmodern society--one that rises above the
purported false teachings of partisanship--we find ourselves with
little to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue
happens to be in power. In this case, we may really only have
progressed from the
ideology of the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say,
from democracy to authoritarianism.

The Obama campaign was driven in no small part by a younger
generation trained to accept brands as a substitute for policies. If
the 1960s had happened like this, the activists would have spent all
their time trying to get Martin Luther King or Joan Baez elected
president rather than pursing ancillary issues like ending
segregation and the war in Vietnam.

Obama himself took his vaunted experience in community organizing and
turned its principles on its head. Instead of empowering the many at
the bottom, he used the techniques to empower one at the top:
himself.

It is historic that a black has been elected president, but we should
remember that Obama was not running against Bull Connor, George
Wallace or Strom Thurmond. Putting Obama in the same class as
earlier black activists discredits the honor of those who died,
suffered physical harm or were repeatedly jailed to achieve equality.
Obama is not a catalyst of change, but rather its belated
beneficiary. The delay, to be sure, is striking; after all, the two
white elite sports of tennis and golf were integrated long before
presidential politics, but Washington-as Phil Hart said of
the Senate-has always been a place that always does things twenty
years after it should have.

There is an informative precedent to Obama's rise. Forty-two years
ago Edward Brooke became the first black senator to be elected with a
majority of white votes. Brooke was chosen from Massachusetts as a
Republican in a state that was 97% white.

Jason Sokol, who teaches history at the University of Pennsylvania,
wrote in History News Network:

"On Election Day, Brooke triumphed with nearly 60 percent of the
vote. Newspapers and magazines hummed with approval. The Boston
Globe invoked a legacy that included the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster,
and Charles Sumner, offering the Bay State as the nation's racial and
political pioneer.

Journalist Carl Rowan was among the unconvinced. For whites, voting
for Brooke became "a much easier way to wipe out guilt feelings about
race than letting a Negro family into the neighborhood or shaking up
a Jim Crow school setup." Polling numbers lent credence to Rowan's
unease. They showed that only 23 percent of Massachusetts residents
approved of a statewide school integration law; just 17 percent
supported open housing."

That's the problem with change coming from the top, as Obama might
have heard when he was involved in real community organizing. It
also helps to explain why there have been no more Catholic presidents
since John Kennedy. Symbolism is not the change we need.

Getting at the reality of Obama is difficult. He performs as the
great black liberal, but since he is one half white and one half
conservative, that doesn't leave him a lot of wiggle room.

To be sure, in the Senate he got good ratings from various liberal
groups, but two things need to be remembered:

First, liberals aren't that liberal any more. Thus getting a 90%
score merely means that you went along with the best that an
extremely conservative Democratic Party was willing to risk. This is
not a party that would, in these times, have passed Social Security,
Medicare or minimum wage. In fact, many liberals aren't much
interested in economic issues at all-especially that portion of the
constituency that controls the money, the media and the message.

Second, politicians reflect their constituency. Obama's constituency
is no longer Illinois. He has a whole new set of folks to pander to.

There is one story from Chicago, however, that remains relevant. A
citizen walks into his alderman's office looking for a job. "Who
sent you?" he asks. "Nobody," he replies. Says the staffer: "We
don't want nobody nobody sent."

Who sent Barack Obama remains a mystery. He has risen from an
unknown state senator to president in exactly four years and that
only happens when somebody sends for you.

The black liberal image falters on a number of other scores including
Obama's affection for extreme right wingers like Chuck Hagel and an
obvious indifference to anybody who votes like, say, a state senator
from Hyde Park.

Think back over the campaign and try to recall a single instance when
Obama reached out to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party or
to the better angels of the Congressional Black Caucus. Instead his
ads attacked as 'extreme' the single payer health insurance backed by
many of his own supporters, he dissed ACORN and Colin Powell was as
radical a black as he wanted to be seen palling around with.

The key issue that has driven Obama throughout his career has been
Obama. He has achieved virtually nothing for any other cause. His
politics reflects whatever elite consensus he gathers around himself.
This is why his "post partisanship" needs to be watched so carefully.
If Bernie Sanders and John Conyers don't get to White House meetings
as often as Chuck Hagel, Obama will glide easily to the right, as
every president has done over the past thirty years. If liberals, as
they did with Clinton, watch without a murmur as their president
redesigns their party to fit his personal ambitions, then the whole
country will continue to move to the right as well.

Since the real Obama doesn't exist yet, it is impossible to predict
with any precision what he will do. But here is some of the evidence
gathered over the past months that should serve both as a warning and
as a prod to progressives not to take today's dreams as a reasonable
facsimile of reality:

Business interests

Advisor Cass Sunstein told Jeffrey Rosen of the NY Times: "I would
be stunned to find an anti-business [Supreme Court] appointee from
either [Clinton or Obama]. There's not a strong interest on the part
of Obama or Clinton in demonizing business, and you wouldn't expect
to see that in
their Supreme Court nominees."

Obama supported making it harder to file class action suits in state
courts. David Sirota in the Nation wrote, "Opposed by most major
civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this big business-backed
legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop 'frivolous'
lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective
was to protect corporate abusers."

He voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill.

He voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards.

He had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the
primaries.

He was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain.

He was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists.

In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one
of its "100 to Watch." After he was criticized in the black media,
Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic
advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative
organization. Writes Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer,
"Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced
the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures."

Added Henwood, "Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a
fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of
Greenwich is backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters
of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they're socially
liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and
think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he
wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth."

Civil liberties

He supports the war on drugs.

He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity.

He supports Real ID.

He supports the PATRIOT Act.

He supports the death penalty.

He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18.

He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on
Americans.

Conservatives

He went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary
against Ned Lamont.

Wrote Paul Street in Z Magazine, "Obama has lent his support to the
aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal
Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to
counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the
Democratic Party... Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian
believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York
Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a
mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS."

Writes the London Times, "Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party
figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator
for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar,
leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war
veteran and one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, was
considered an ideal candidate for defense secretary.

Richard Lugar was rated 0% by SANE...rated 0% by AFL-CIO...rated 0%
BY NARAL...rated 12% by American Public Health Association...rated 0%
by Alliance for Retired Americans...rated 27% by the National
Education Association...rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters...
He voted no on implementing the 9/11 Commission report... Voted
against providing habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners...voted no on
comprehensive test ban treaty...voted against same sex
marriage...strongly anti-abortion...opposed to more federal funding
for healthcare...voted for unconstitutional wiretapping...voted to
increase penalties for drug violations.

Chuck Hagel was rated 0% by NARAL...rated 11% by NAACP...rated 0% by
Human Rights Coalition...rated 100% by Christian Coalition...rated
12% by American Public Health Association...rated 22% by Alliance for
Retired Americans...rated 36% by the National Education
Association...rated 0% by League of Conservation Voters...rated 8% by
AFL-CIO...He is strongly anti-abortion...voted for anti-flag
desecration amendment...voted to increase penalties for drug
violations...favors privatizing Social Security

Ecology

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker
buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

He supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the
ethanol industry.

He led his party's reversal of a 25-year ban on off-shore oil
drilling.

Education

Obama has promised to double funding for private charter schools,
part of a national effort undermining public education.

He supports the No Child Left Behind Act albeit expressing
reservations about its emphasis on testing. Writes Cory Mattson,
"Despite NCLB's loss of credibility among educators and the deadlock
surrounding its attempted reauthorization in 2007, Barack Obama still
offers his support. Even the
two unions representing teachers, both which for years supported
reform of the policy to avoid embarrassing their Democratic Party
'friends,' declared in 2008 that the policy is too fundamentally
flawed to be reformed and should be eliminated."

Fiscal policy

Obama rejected moratoriums on foreclosures and a freeze on rates,
measures supported by his primary opponents John Edwards and Hillary
Clinton.

He was a strong supporter of the $700 billion cash-for-trash banker
bailout plan.

Two of his top advisors are former Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin
and Lawrence Summers. Noted Glen Ford of black Agenda Report, "In
February 1999, Rubin and Summers flanked Fed Chief Alan Greenspan on
the cover of Time magazine, heralded as, 'The Committee to Save the
World'. Summers was then Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton,
having succeeded his mentor, Rubin, in that office. Together with
Greenspan, the trio had in the previous year labored successfully to
safeguard derivatives, the exotic 'ticking time bomb' financial
instruments, from federal regulation."

Robert Scheer notes that "Rubin, who pocketed tens of millions
running Goldman Sachs before becoming treasury secretary, is the man
who got President Clinton to back legislation by then-Sen. Phil
Gramm, R-Texas, to unleash banking greed on an unprecedented scale."

Obama's fund-raising machine has been headed by Penny Prtizker former
chair of the Superior Bank, one of the first to get into subprime
mortgages. While she resigned as chair of the family business in
1994, as late as 2001 she was still on the board and wrote a letter
saying that her family was recapitalizing the bank and pledging to
"once again restore Superior's leadership position in subprime
lending." The bank shut down two months later and the Pritzker
family would pay $460 million in a settlement with the government.

Foreign policy

Obama endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia:
"When I am president, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug
Program."

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won't rule out a
first strike nuclear attack.

He has endorsed bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda in
violation of international law. He has called Pakistan "the right
battlefield...in the war on terrorism".

He supports Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted
previous support for two-state solution to Mid East situation and
refuses to negotiate with Hamas.

He has supported Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, saying "it must
remain undivided."

He favors expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Although he claims to want to get out of Iraq, his top Iraq advisor
wrote that America should keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in
Iraq.

Obama, in his appearances, blurred the difference between combat
soldiers and other troops.

He indicated to Amy Goodman that he would leave 140,000 private
contractors and mercenaries in Iraq because "we don't have the troops
to replace them".

He has called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United
States and urged sanctions against him.

He claimed "one of the things that I think George H. W. Bush doesn't
get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he
helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War.
That cost us $20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was
extremely successful. I
think there were a lot of very wise people."

He has hawkish foreign policy advisors who have been involved in past
US misdeeds and failures. These include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony
Lake, General Merrill McPeak, and Dennis Ross.

It has been reported that he might well retain as secretary of
defense Robert Gates who supports actions in violation of
international law against countries merely suspected of being
unwilling or unable to halt threats by militant groups.

Gays

Obama opposes gay marriage. He wouldn't have photo taken with San
Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported
gay marriage

Health

Obama opposes single payer healthcare or Medicare for all.

Military

Obama would expand the size of the military.

National Service

Obama favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with
one being promoted by a new coalition that would make national
service mandatory by 2020, and with a bill requiring such mandatory
national service introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

He announced in Colorado Springs last July, "We cannot continue to
rely on our military in order to achieve the national security
objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security
force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

On another occasion he said, "It's also important that a president
speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of
many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19
months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the
Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not always the case in other
parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it's
important for the president to say, this is an important obligation.
If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some."

Some have seen this as a call for reviving the draft.

He has attacked the exclusion of ROTC on some college campuses.

Presidential crimes

Obama aggressively opposed impeachment actions against Bush. One of
his key advisors, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law
School, said prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of
criminalizing public service.

Progressives

Unlike his deferential treatment of right wing conservatives, Obama's
treatment of the left has been dismissive to insulting. He dissed
Nader for daring to run for president again. And he called the late
Paul Wellstone "something of a gadfly".

Public Campaign Financing

Obama's retreat from public campaign financing has endangered the
whole concept.

Social welfare

Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy
social welfare.

Social Security

Early in the campaign, Obama said, "everything is on the table" with
Social Security.

....................

As things now stand, the election primarily represents the extremist
center seizing power back from the extremist right. We have moved
from the prospect of disasters to the relative comfort of mere crises.

Using the word 'extreme' alongside the term 'center' is no
exaggeration. Nearly all major damage to the United States in recent
years-a rare exception being 9/11-has been the result of decisions
made not by right or left but by the post partisan middle: Vietnam,
Iraq, the assault on constitutional liberties, the huge damage to the
environment, and the collapse of the economy-to name a few. Go back
further in history and you'll find, for example, the KKK riddled with
members of the establishment including-in Colorado-a future governor,
senator and mayor after whom Denver's airport is named. The center,
to which Obama pays such homage, has always been where most of the
trouble lies.

The only thing that will make Obama the president pictured in the
campaign fantasy is unapologetic, unswerving and unendingly pressure
on him in a progressive and moral direction, for he will not go there
on his own. But what, say, gave the New Deal its progressive nature
was pressure from the left of a sort that simply doesn't exist today.

Above are listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or
opposes with which no good liberal or progressive would agree.
Unfortunately, what's out there now, however, looks more like a rock
concert crowd or evangelical tent meeting than a determined and
directed political constituency. Which isn't so surprising given how
successful our system has been at getting people to accept sights,
sounds, symbols and semiotics as substitutes for reality. Once
again, it looks like we'll have to learn the hard way.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Pakistan Earthquake Response

Pakistan Earthquake Response

By Brian McAfee
Muskegon, Michigan


Contact: Brian McAfee [brimac6@hotmail.com]

With now over 300 reported deaths, 500 injured and thousands rendered homeless as a result of the October 29 earthquake that struck Baluchistan in southwest Pakistan a new need for humanitarian assistance presents itself. Many in the area have left their homes because of fear that their homes will collapse due to structural damage from the initial earthquake or the numerous aftershocks that continue to occur.

UNICEF reports that over 70,00o people, 30,000 of them children have been left homeless. Numerous aid organizations as well as the Pakistani military have entered the area to give assistance. Winter is already setting in in the region that is at an elevation of about 5500 feet. The cold weather requires the need for an influx of cold weather clothes, tents and shoes, among other things. One of the district health officers in the area, Ayub Kakar, says that "due to the cold hundreds of children are being treated for pneumonia, abdominal diseases, diarrhea and chest problems". Women, according to a AFP report in Khaleej Times "were not getting medical treatment because of deeply conservative traditions and the fact that hospitals were also hit"

Because of the remoteness of the region some of the outlying areas are accessible only by helicopter so a full assessment of the damage and need was/is not immediately knowable. Pakistan was hit by an earthquake in 2005 in which 81,000 perished. The Pakistani government and numerous aid organizations that dealt with that experience are now faced with it again. The 2005 earthquake was predated by the pre-partition Indian earthquake of 1935 in which 35,000 died. Given the fault lines that permeate the Himalayas the inevitability of continued earthquakes is a reality that requires grater scrutiny. An International plan of action, similar to that that has been developed after the 2004 tsunami, should be implemented.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Make way for the working class to have a say…

This enormous economic mess we are now experiencing, along with the heavy debt the bankers and the politicians of both major political parties have saddled us with, can be summed up very simply: The capitalists have taken all the profits and left the working class with all the problems.

There are only two sources of wealth: Labor and Mother Nature.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that if you allow labor to be continually exploited and Mother Nature to be repeatedly abused and raped there will be severe consequences.

We are now reaping the consequences for allowing this parasitical monster of state-monopoly capitalism to have spun its web of corruption in the form of a cannibalistic military-financial-industrial complex which now threatens to consume and destroy our families, our communities, our State and our Nation while wreaking havoc in other lands.

Enough!

The time has come to put the needs of people before corporate profits.

There is only one alternative; for working people to come together to build a new society on the foundation created by the socialists of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.

We need to fight and struggle to re-establish the liberal, democratic and progressive socialist traditions for which Minnesota is known around the world.

We have complex problems before us… but, any country which can spend trillions of dollars on wars to steal the oil of other nations, and trillions of dollars bailing out corporations and bankers looking for using socialism to solve the problems of their own creation as they have sought to prop up their rotten capitalist system--- which they have touted to the world as being the best--- at our expense… This Nation can now come up with the resources to use socialism to solve the problems for the rest of us, too.

What is good for the goose is, in this case, is even better for the gander.

Let Barack Obama and John McCain volunteer to go off exploring the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for Osama Bin Laden; we have better things to do.

Our first priority is to end these dirty wars for oil and redeploy those funds--- as we bring home the troops--- to creating a world class socialized health care system which will create millions of new jobs; five messes the money-grubbing Wall Street coupon clippers and their bought and paid for politicians created, all solved at the same time by ending these dirty imperialist wars for oil and regional domination--- we get health care not warfare, and we begin to solve the problem of unemployment--- and when we put people to work in this way we begin to create a new--- functioning--- people oriented, cooperative, socialist economy where democracy will flourish because it will require the full participation and involvement of all people working together in order to succeed.

Second, without further delay, we need to establish the State Bank of Minnesota to accomplish for our State what the State Bank of North Dakota was set up, by workers and farmers, to do--- fund enterprises to keep people working.

Third, we need a minimum wage which is a real living wage arrived at by the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development--- based upon the real figures relating to the real cost of living and this minimum wage should be required by legislation to be updated quarterly right along with the release of all economic indicators to assure a quality life and decent standard of living for all working people and their families.

We have finally come to the point where even the parasitic bankers and the exploiting industrialists now concede that only socialism can bail them out of this horrible mess and solve their problems... capitalism has reached the end of the line and the only thing now to be had from the system is unending human misery.

At the point where society has to pay to clean up the corrupt mess these parasitic predatory lenders and financial institutions have created, this is the time to say:

Enough!

What tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own.

If Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs do not like these terms, these greedy pigs should make the trip to their off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands and make withdrawals from their accounts to pay to solve their own problems.

The time has come to roll up our sleeves, come together, and get to work quickly before this entire rotten system collapses---like the I35-W Bridge--- and crushes us all while leaving our children and grandchildren with the clean-up and the bills.

I firmly believe working people can run our country and our state better than any of the big-business politicians being funded by the corporate lobbyists.

Effectively using the tools of public ownership and nationalization combined with modern, scientific planning for the common good, we can put people to work in decent jobs at real living wages... we hear it all the time just before Election Day: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs... but we never see the jobs, and if we do, these jobs are poverty wage jobs no one can live on.

I intend to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.

I invite all working people who think that it is possible to create something better than the mess we are now in, to come together and work from where socialist Governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson left off in trying to create a just and decent society where people live and work in harmony with Mother Nature, to join with me, in establishing the Minnesota Party to give the bankers, the mining, forestry and power generating industries along with the industrialists and big-agribusiness a real run for their money.

Let’s run these parasites that have been living off of our labor and destroying Mother Nature right out of our state. We can get along just fine--- even better--- without them.

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

and

Candidate for Governor of Minnesota

Former member: Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

PRISONERS OF WAR

PRISONERS OF WAR



By Robert Borosage

Campaign for America’s Future STAFF

September 30th, 2008 - 10:27am ET



On September 29, Congress revolted against the $700 billion price tag of the proposed bailout of Wall Street. The day before, that same Congress passed without murmur—unanimously in the Senate—a $700 billion budget for the Pentagon in 2009. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has shattered the conservative illusions about deregulation and market fundamentalism. But the equally costly illusions about America’s role as an “indispensable nation” policing the globe go without challenge. We remain prisoners of war.

Most Americans have no sense of the cost and scope of America’s role as globocop. We sustain what Chalmers Johnson calls an “empire of bases” across the globe – over 700 active bases in more than 30 countries. Our navy polices the world’s oceans. We task our military to maintain “dominance” not only in our own hemisphere, but in Europe, the Persian Gulf and Asia. Our intelligence “plumbing in place” engages in covert activities throughout the globe. We are the only nation with the capacity to airlift expeditionary forces rapidly and in large numbers across the globe. We are now devoting some $12 billion a month to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

President Bush has declared a “Global War on Terror,” a so-called “long war,” without limits or exits. Our Defense Secretary complains that the military is displacing the desiccated State Department as America’s representatives across the world.

The cost of sustaining this commitment is staggering. The Pentagon’s budget itself represents more than half of all discretionary spending—everything the government does, outside of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and interest on the national debt. At $700 billion, it is about equal to that spent by the rest of the world combined on the military. But the actual cost of our military is strewn throughout the budget. Add in the cost of our veterans, the arms aid in the State Department budget, Homeland Security, and more—and actual spending climbs over $1 trillion a year.

Our military has no rival, but we grow ever less secure. There are three fundamental reasons for this.

As carpenters know, if you only carry a hammer, lots of things start looking like a nail. Maintain a global military constantly engaged across the world, and it will find things to do. As one conservative Southern Senator once said, “the greater ability we have to go places and do things, the more likely we are to go there and do them.” Neo-conservatives dream of the military remaking the Middle East. Humanitarians demand that it act to stop genocide or atrocities from Rwanda to Darfur. Global corporations insist that it challenge pirates and rogue states that are posing an increasing nuisance to shipping.

Thus, the fanatics that launched the airplanes against the World Trade Towers are turned into warriors; the very real threat they pose transformed into a Global War on Terror. This not only helps justify the “war of choice” against Iraq, surely the most costly national security debacle since Vietnam. It also distracts us from a sensible strategy against al Qaeda and its allies. As http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP168.pdf “>the Pentagon’s own think tank, the Rand Corporation concluded in a recent study, the very concept of a “war on terror” isn’t only a distraction; it is detraction from a sensible strategy. By elevating al Qaeda into global warriors, it inflates their importance, and aids their ability to recruit. At the same time, it scorns the real measures needed to counter al Qaeda—intelligence cooperation, financial constraints, and alert and aggressive policing. Worse, it undermines the broad challenge that must be made to engage Islam, to rally the forces of moderation, and to isolate the extremists.

The second problem is the obverse: things that don’t look like nails get ignored. America’s priorities are badly distorted. Abroad, as Defense Secretary Gates acknowledged, generals and admirals displace our diplomats. Arms sales dominate our foreign assistance programs. At home, our country is literally falling apart from lack of investment in a modern, energy efficient infrastructure. We spend tens of billions each year to project our military power into the Persian Gulf, but fail to invest in the renewable energy and conservation at home that could reduce our dependence on foreign oil, generate jobs here in the U.S., and help capture the green markets that will be the growth markets of the future. We are a wealthy country, so in fact, we probably could afford to sustain military spending at current levels. But we can’t do so, and slash taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, without starving basic investments here at home, even as we rack up record deficits.

Worse, the military has no answer to the major threats to our security: a growing global indebtedness that can’t be sustained, the rise of India and China as economic powerhouses, catastrophic climate change and the growing resource struggles that will be far more destabilizing than Islamic terrorists, an integrated global economy of ever greater instability. Worse, the attention devoted to military misadventures like Iraq gets in the way of addressing these looming threats.

The third problem is the contrast between the Republic we are trying to secure and the national security state that has been built to police the globe. War augments the power of the executive. War and military threat justify secrecy, covert operations, disdain for constitutional limits and checks and balances. President Bush claims the right to launch preventive war on any nation in the world, to wiretap Americans without warrant, to designate them an enemy combatant and arrest them without reasonable cause, to hold them without review. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition and torture have shamed America during the Bush years. But the lawlessness of the national security state – and the trampling of our own liberties in the name of security – did not begin in 2000. Bush has merely taken to the extreme prerogatives claimed by presidents over the last decades.

But the myths that sustain our military—and the lobbies that promote military spending—are politically unassailable. Both major party presidential candidates pledge to increase the size of the military and project higher military spending in the future. Both support an increased military occupation in Afghanistan, ignoring the history of fierce Afghani resistance to foreign occupation that confounded Britain at the height of its empire, and the Soviet Union right off its borders. The financial crisis and coming recession is forcing a great reckoning in America. But to date, there is no serious challenge to our priorities, or to America’s commitment to policing the globe. The presidential debate on foreign policy featured disputes about Iraq, about Georgia, about Afghanistan, about the economic crisis. But our basic global strategy, our spending priorities went without question or comment.

Economic crisis, like hanging, has a way of concentrating the mind. The financial crisis and the harsh recession likely to follow will spark a fundamental debate about America’s economy. But the debacle in Iraq has not had the same effect on the foreign policy debate. A challenge to America’s global strategy will not come from Washington. It won’t come from the national security managers of either party. It can only come if citizens build a democratic movement willing and able to demand the debate that we need.



Join the discussion below



Militarism and the economy


By Alan Maki | September 30th, 2008 - 2:54pm GMT

The presidential "race" is a one-sided fiasco... Barack Obama is the "chosen one" by the military-financial-industrial complex of Wall Street coupon clippers.

Obama has of late been showing his true allegiances to Wall Street--- even disregarding the fact that Warren Buffett and Goldman-Sachs are his best "bundlers"--- Obama simultaneously calls for increasing military expenditures and "belt-tightening." Obama has done all but call for reinstatement of the draft which won't endear him to his young constituency who will be marching off to war rather than going to college.

You talk about a recession. Capitalism is going to fall, and this baby is going to fall hard. It is going to come crashing down in the worst economic depression in human history... the writing is clearly on the wall.

You seem eager to offer advice on saving this rotten system which has brought humanity so much misery.

Rather than worrying about saving this system we should only be worried about bringing about the needed reforms to help working people sustain and main their livelihoods and the best standard of living as capitalism leaves the stage.

There is no way to have "guns and butter" as they say.

You and John Sweeney along with other progressives signed a statement concerning this crisis... now, what resources are you going to make available for working people to launch the necessary struggles where they work and in the communities where they live to fight for the reforms you outline?

John Sweeney has stated on numerous occasions his intent is to save capitalism... it makes little sense to try to save a system in which these kinds of economic crisis are an inherent and inseparable part of the system where these kinds of problems, and worse, are only going to be replicated time and time again.

Our message to the Wall Street coupon clippers should be: Take care of your own mess, it is your system not ours; you and the generals should go hold baked-good sales to finance the solution to problems of your own making.

The centers of finance want to use socialism to bail them out of their problems; well, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. As long as it is now widely recognized that socialism is the only solution to problems, it is time to demand socialized health care as an immediate reform--- this will be good for the health of all people and it will free up trillions of dollars to begin building a people centered green, peaceful, cooperative socialist economy as an alternative to this profit driven, dog-eat-dog, war and poverty economy of capitalism.

I would suggest that you add socialism to your otherwise very good list of needed reforms which will help working people through this mess.

With socialized heath care together with your call for moratoriums on foreclosures/evictions and restructuring the mortgages, this will free up enormous resources and funds for all the social programs we need.

I like your idea about insisting on tax-payers getting equity in any bailout too--- what tax-payers finance, tax-payers should own. Getting equity and ownership in industries and mines, mills and factories should be seen as part of the process of socialization which needs to take place... this is a good place to start.

People can get along just fine without Wall Street.

My question remains, what resources is the Campaign for America's Future, the AFL-CIO, Change To Win and these other organizations willing to make availbable to create the kind of organized rank and file/grassroots upsurge that it will take to win these kinds of reforms? Certainly your organizations should be able to pony up at least as much as is being pumped into supporting Barack Obama... let Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs take care of funding their own candidate... we need to prepare to do battle with the Obama Administration.

If I were you, I would put a lot more emphasis on ending these dirty oil wars and the need to cut military spending while transferring this wealth towards social programs.
Pumping all this money into war and militarism is like taking money from your billfold and tossing it into the ocean. Those bankers, financiers and Wall Street coupon clippers who reaped massive profits from militarism are the same ones who now cry to tax-payers for help; they ironically created a big part of their own mess largely because they fed like pigs at the trough of militarization.

You might want to consider forgiveness of all student loans, too... this would have the effect of getting billions of dollars back into the economy. Maybe suggest that these student loans be paid back at fifty-cents on the dollar without interest into some kind of "green economic development fund."

Here is what you called for. These aren't the kind of demands a group of thirty-five people just sign their names to and mail to Congress expecting a bunch of millionaires working for billionaires to implement; these are fighting words requiring a real struggle if you are serious about winning such reforms:

We urge the Congress to insist on some basic conditions
for any bailout.

1. Public Oversight. This kind of power can never be
centralized in a single individual - much less one who
did not even stand for election. Any funds must be
controlled by an independent entity, with consumers and
workers given seats on its board. Congress should be
empowered to name independent monitors and to approve
all board members.

2. Protect the Taxpayer. The Treasury bill would have
taxpayers buying paper that nobody else wants at prices
far above its current value. If a firm wants to auction
off its toxic paper to the US Government, taxpayers
should get equity in that firm equal to any amount paid
in excess of the paper's value. This will deter
profitable firms from using the government as a dumpster
for their toxic paper. And it will insure that if the
bailout works and the firms become profitable,
taxpayers, not simply bankers, benefit from the upside.

3. Curb the casino. This crisis was caused because
sensible regulations of the banking system that worked
for dozens of years were dismantled or went unenforced.
No bailout can go forward without requiring the
necessary regulation to insure this does not happen
again. Any institution, which receives assistance,
should agree to come under a microscope going forward in
terms of disclosure requirements, and it should have
stringent capital requirement imposed upon it.

4. Invest in the real economy. Ending the bankers strike
is not sufficient enough to avoid the recession into
which we have been driven. Major public investment in
new energy and conservation, rebuilding schools and
infrastructure, extending unemployment and food stamps,
helping states avoid crippling cuts in police and health
services - is vital to get the real economy moving and
put people back to work. No bailout should proceed
without being linked to support for a major public
investment plan to get the economy going.

5. Hold CEOs and Boards of Directors Accountable. Wall
Street CEOs shouldn't be pocketing millions while
taxpayers are forced to bail them out. Any firm that
applies for relief must agree to cancel all stock option
programs and CEOs should have stringent limits placed on
their compensation until the Company has repaid all
taxpayer assistance.

6. Aid the victims, not just the predators. Both bankers
and home owners made foolish bets that home prices would
keep rising. Many homeowners, however, were misled by
predatory lenders into taking mortgages that they didn't
understand and couldn't afford. It would be simply
obscene to help the predators and not those that they
preyed upon. No bail out of the banks should take place
without measures to help people in trouble stay in their
homes. Explicit provisions should ensure use of the full
array of financial and legal tools available to the
government to stop foreclosures and restructure home
mortgage loans for ordinary Americans, including
amending the bankruptcy code to allow judges to modify
mortgages. Where workouts are not feasible, people
should be allowed to stay in their homes as renters.

 Robert Borosage, co-director, Campaign for America's
Future

 John Sweeney, president, AFL-CIO


 Andy Stern, president, Service Employees
International Union (SEIU)

 Gerald McEntee, president, Am. Fed. of State, County
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

 Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of
Teachers (AFT)

 Larry Cohen, president, Communications Workers of
America (CWA)

 Dennis Van Roekel, president, National Education
Association (NEA)

 Leo Gerard, president, United Steelworkers (USW)

 Maude Hurd, national president, ACORN

 Nan Aron, president, Alliance for Justice

 Amy Issacs, national director, Americans for
Democratic Action

 Kevin Zeese, executive director, Campaign for Fresh
Air & Clean Politics

 John Podesta, president, Center for American Progress
Action Fund

 Deepak Bhargava, president, Center for Community
Change

 Deborah Weinstein, executive director, Coalition for
Human Needs

 Donald Mathis, president, Community Action
Partnership

 Jane Hamsher, firedoglake.com

 James D. Weill, president, Food Research & Action
Center (FRAC)

 Brent Blackwelder, president, Friends of the Earth

 John Cavanagh, director, Institute for Policy Studies

 Sarita Gupta, executive director, Jobs with Justice

 Wade Henderson, president, Leadership Conference on
Civil Rights

 Carissa Picard, esq., president, Military Spouses for
Change

 Sally Greenberg, executive director, National
Consumers League

 Christine L. Owens, executive director, National
Employment Law Project

 Gary Bass, executive director, OMB Watch

 Adam Lioz, program director, Progressive Future

 Joanne Carter, executive director, RESULTS

 William McNary, president, USAction

 Paula Brantner, executive director, Workplace
Fairness

 Dan Cantor, executive director, Working Families
Party

 Mark Lotwis, executive director, 21st Century
Democrats

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Phone: 218-386-2432

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net


P.S.--- I have written my Blue Dog Congressman Collin Petersen and my Senator, Amy "Republican Lite" Klobuchar telling them I have added my name to this impressive list of endorsers along with the demand for socialized health care and raising the minimum wage to a real living wage and raising Social Security payments because the more wealth we can pry away from the bankers and Wall Street coupon clippers and put into the pockets of working people who will spend, spend, spend, the better things will be all the way around... the quicker this can be done the better; plus the less money Democrats will have to spend trying to fix this mess :)


Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Check out my blog:

Thoughts From Podunk

http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Running While Black

Whether or not one supports Barack Obama, this piece by Bob Herbert in the New York Times points out the dangerous influences of racism in this presidential election.

Unfortunately, Bob Herbert and the other columnists who have had the courage to speak out against the racism being promoted by John McCain and the Republican Party still haven't mustered the courage to speak out against racism's twin evil--- anti-communism and its kissing cousin, anti-Semitism.

As anyone surfing the Internet can readily find, the right-wing is hard at work using Obama's association with Frank Marshall Davis--- the writer, journalist, poet and member of the Communist Party USA--- to whip narrow-minded bigots into a frenzy using racism and anti-communism.

Unless the reality of this racist and anti-communist attack is confronted by columnists like Bob Herbert, their anti-racist education will be for naught because anti-communism creates fertile soil for racism to fester and grow.

Of course, Obama choosing to be the standard-bearer for the neoliberals' big-business, pro-war, reactionary agenda fosters both racism and anti-communism; only a real progressive agenda where solutions to problems are brought forward in a way designed to make life better for all people will counter the racist and anti-communist campaign now growing in our country without opposition on the Internet which will soon become menacing in our communities... we have seen some of how this bigotry raises its ugly head in local communities around the Kosher meat plant in Iowa where anti-Semitism has raised its ugly head instead of clearly articulated calls for justice for working people.

On the one hand, clearly articulated solutions to problems working people are experiencing is the only real antidote to racism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism; while on the other hand, those big-business forces supporting Obama need racism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism to keep working people divided--- all presenting Obama with a very complex set of circumstances as he tries to juggle it all hoping he doesn't drop one of the balls before Election Day.

The longer Obama and his working class supporters remain silent in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism raising their ugly heads the more deep-seated the problem will become. Obama seems to be banking on thinking he can get through the election before this campaign of hate and bigotry explodes.

Obama and his surrogates are playing a very dangerous game which could prove to be deadly; not only for his own campaign, but for the entire country--- as past history has proven.

Alan Maki



From the New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist

Running While Black


By BOB HERBERT

Published: August 2, 2008

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he’s not some kind of unpatriotic ogre.

Mr. Obama told them: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation.

Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Circus in the Cities and its counterpart in Washington D.C.

Google and Microsoft have the ability to wage a major political fight, the kind appreciated in Washington for the money it generates in lobbyist fees and political donations for lawmakers. Both companies began their Washington operations as one-man bands but now have large presences.


To understand the quote from the New York Times above, read on---


Many people look at the Circus in the Cities which tries to package itself as an expression of democracy and they wonder why, and how it is, that these clowns making a pretense of being democratically elected politicians can spend so much time on seemingly petty issues and they can't manage the time of day to resolve the our problems of everyday living over which they have control.

Things like health care and the minimum wage never surface and we are told, "Wait until after Election Day and we will take care of you...

Well, in the case of single-payer universal health care only sixty Election Days have come and gone.

And what do we have? One big expensive mess where we can't afford to stay well and we can't afford to die.

Lot's of progressives are enamored with John Conyers and his House Resolution 676... Conyers and his mesmerized progressive friends are telling us, "Wait until after Election Day."

What is there to wait for. H.R. 676 isn't going to be brought forward by Conyers anymore than his promises of impeachment proceedings against the most corrupt President and Administration in U.S. history.

Supporters of H.R. 676 point to a pile of resolutions in support of H.R. 676 by labor unions which mean absolutely nothing because the labor bureaucracy providing the endless trail of resolutions supporting H.R. 676 state before the resolutions are even passed that they will be looking at other health care reforms.

The American people, and especially Minnesotans, when asked what kind of health care system they want point north across the border towards Canada and say, "We want the same thing the Canadians have."

The Canadians do not have anything like the phony health care proposal Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party Senator John Marty is proposing with huge, un-affordable premiums... and people know H.R. 676 isn't going to fly any better than the flying saucers Dennis Kucinich has seen.

Minnesotans have good reason to say they want what the Canadians have because Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson came up with the idea in the first place and Tommy Douglas and Dr. Norman Bethune put single-payer universal health care on the agenda in Canada as a first step towards socialized health care where all the for-profit motives are finally removed from the health care system and keeping people well and treating their illnesses when sick is the only concern... not how much some Wall Street coupon clipper is going to be making off his pharmaceutical, health management, insurance or hospital stocks.

So, why is it we can't even get a hearing on the issues involving health care when everyone in this country knows that there is a serious problem here needing immediate attention?

It is all about lobbying and the money associated with lobbying.

Politicians, including that darling of the limousine liberal crowd--- John Conyers, all they care about are issues that have well-heeled lobbyists on both sides of the issues.

The Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition can't afford to pay for office space, let alone to purchase the services of high-end lobbyists.

If we had big-money lobbyists willing to bribe their way through the capitol building and house office building we would see action real fast.

Don't believe me?

Well, consider this article from the New York Times and note what I have put in bold type:


Any antitrust inquiry in an acquisition of Yahoo is likely to be complex and last months, at least.




By STEPHEN LABATON and MIGUEL HELFT
Published: February 5, 2008
WASHINGTON — It could be payback time.


Related stories:

Google Works to Torpedo Microsoft Bid for Yahoo (February 4, 2008)

Google Assails Microsoft’s Bid for Yahoo (February 3, 2008)

Yahoo Offer Is Strategy Shift for Microsoft (February 2, 2008)

Eyes on Google, Microsoft Bids $44 Billion for Yahoo (February 2, 2008)

Microsoft's Yahoo Bid
Full coverage of Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo, who is advising, who else might be in play and where the bid goes from here.



Dennis Brack/Bloomberg News

Senator Herb Kohl and Representative John Conyers indicated willingness to hold hearings on the proposed deal.


An expensive legal and political campaign last year by Microsoft helped delay completion of Google’s $3.1 billion bid for the online advertising company DoubleClick. Microsoft filed briefs against the deal in the United States and abroad, testified against it in Congress, and worked with a public relations firm to generate opposition.

Now Google is preparing to strike back.

With Microsoft bidding nearly $45 billion to buy Yahoo, Google has begun to lay the groundwork to try to delay, and possibly derail, any deal. Google executives have asked company lobbyists to develop a political strategy to challenge the acquisition, which could threaten Google’s dominance of Internet advertising. Google’s top legal officer posted a statement Sunday that criticized the proposed deal.

Spokesmen for the two companies in Washington declined to comment Monday about a looming legal and political battle, which has yet to fully emerge and is likely to stay below the radar at least until the control of Yahoo seems clear.

Moreover, some antitrust specialists and government officials said Google might tread carefully in opposing any deal since it could backfire.

Google dominates the market for Internet advertising, and to the extent it portrays the deal as encroaching on that dominance, it could help make Microsoft’s case that its acquisition of Yahoo would create a more competitive marketplace.

Lawmakers are responding to the takeover attempt. Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he would hold hearings to examine any proposed deal.

And Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, who leads an important antitrust subcommittee, said he was interested in the proposed acquisition. “Should Yahoo accept Microsoft’s offer,” he said, “the subcommittee expects to hold hearings to explore the competitive and privacy implications of the deal.”

Google and Microsoft have the ability to wage a major political fight, the kind appreciated in Washington for the money it generates in lobbyist fees and political donations for lawmakers. Both companies began their Washington operations as one-man bands but now have large presences.

Microsoft enlarged its Washington staff in the late 1990s after it came under antitrust assault in the Clinton administration. Its lobbying shop is considered among the most effective in the capital, and it has retained more than 20 law firms, lobbying companies and press relations operations for an array of political and regulatory issues.

Google’s Washington office is less than three years old and has been steadily growing. In fall 2006, it established a political action committee and has since used Democrats from the Podesta Group lobbyists, two former Republican senators — Connie Mack and Dan Coats at the law firm of King & Spalding, and the law firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Google recently moved to larger quarters, with 27,000 square feet of space including a game room, open work areas, free lunches and environmentally friendly features like recycled rainwater — a smaller version of its Silicon Valley headquarters.

While Microsoft and Google have been occasional allies in Washington — they have worked together on intellectual property legislation and issues of open access — they clashed last year on legal and regulatory fronts.

In addition to the fight over DoubleClick, Google lodged a complaint in antitrust proceedings against plans for Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system. Google said these were anticompetitive because they unfairly discouraged the use of Google’s desktop search program. By lobbying in state capitals, Google persuaded prosecutors to intervene on its behalf. Ultimately, Microsoft agreed to modify the operating system to make it easier for users to decide which search application they wanted.

As they are gearing up now, a legal fight, if at all, is months away. Federal regulators will not begin to consider any deal until it is completed and formally presented. It is not certain whether the deal would be considered by the Justice Department, which has overseen previous antitrust proceedings against Microsoft, or the Federal Trade Commission, which reviewed and approved Google’s purchase of DoubleClick. (That transaction has not closed as European regulators continue to review it.)

Moreover, the size and complexity of a Microsoft-Yahoo deal is such that a government review is unlikely to be completed quickly, particularly in an election year, and may not be final before a new administration takes office in 2009.

Should Yahoo finally agree to be acquired by Microsoft, a focus of the political and legal debate will be the products and markets that could be affected. Microsoft has said the acquisition would increase competition in two related and large markets: Internet search and online advertising. Many ad industry executives, who have watched Google’s rise with some trepidation, agree.

But Google wants the focus of any antitrust debate to shift to issues other than search and advertising. In a statement posted on his company’s blog Sunday, David Drummond, Google’s general counsel, noted that a combined Microsoft and Yahoo would have an “overwhelming share” of the instant messaging and Web e-mail markets, and that the two companies run some of the most trafficked portals on the Web.

“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ e-mail, I.M., and Web-based services?” Mr. Drummond asked.

It is not hard to see why Google wants to shift the focus. In the search market, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have about 33 percent of the market, still trailing Google’s 58 percent, according to comScore.

But in Web-based e-mail, comScore ranks Yahoo, with 256 million visitors worldwide in December, and Microsoft, with 255 million, as the top two providers. While there is bound to be overlap among users of the companies’ e-mail services, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would command a much larger share than Google, which comScore ranks in third place with 90 million visitors in December.

Yahoo and Microsoft also rank No. 1 and 2 in financial news, and No. 2 and No. 1 in instant messaging, according to comScore.


Stephen Labaton reported from Washington and Miguel Helft from San Francisco.



You see, we have a Circus in the Cities and an even more fabulous and spectacular show under-the-big-top in Washington D.C. because of this:

Google and Microsoft have the ability to wage a major political fight, the kind appreciated in Washington for the money it generates in lobbyist fees and political donations for lawmakers. Both companies began their Washington operations as one-man bands but now have large presences.


Until working people can move beyond being manipulated and played for suckers and fools by politicians who always have their hands open behind their backs we aren't going to see a resolution to this health care mess it is as simple as that.

Organizations like the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition and others seeking real health care reform are going to have to understand that without the big money to turn over to the lobbyists to put into the pockets of politicians there just isn't going to be any legislative action in the form of H.R. 676 or the Marty proposal here in Minnesota and John Conyers and John Marty know that all too well as this one little paragraph of truth from the New York Times points out:

Google and Microsoft have the ability to wage a major political fight, the kind appreciated in Washington for the money it generates in lobbyist fees and political donations for lawmakers. Both companies began their Washington operations as one-man bands but now have large presences.


You know, I have been searching for one little kernel of truth from the New York Times for years... and this is the first time I ever found it... now, to get the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition to believe it, this is another matter.

Without having the money to turn over to the lobbyists to bribe politicians just to start the debate, we need to consider what we do have and how to use what we have to generate the real debate to win the change we need--- single-payer universal health care as a step towards socialized health care.

What do we have? We have ourselves. Alone we don't amount to anything as far as getting anything from politicians in the way of health care reform... what the heck, our annual pay-checks wouldn't cover walking into one legislators office with a decent bribe.

So, we have to educate our friends, neighbors and fellow workers; we have to organize; we have to begin sending the clowns in the Cities and in Washington D.C. that we aren't buying their line of, "wait until after Election Day" because we now understand the game.

Besides, with the price of gas we probably won't be able to afford the trip to the polls on Election Day... Barack Obama might want to think on that.

I certainly won't waste a penny on gas to drive five miles to vote for a guy who lacks the political and moral courage to turn to the north... smile... point his finger towards Canada... and say: That is what you will get when I enter the White House if you vote for me on Election Day.

We don't need this crap, "But, look at what we will get if we don't vote for Obama." We certainly don't need "Vote Democrat, impeach Bush" John Conyers lecturing us, "We are going to look after you if you put a Democrat in the White House.

This Election kind of reminds me of a friend who recently got a new job. The employer made all these promises that she was going to get this and going to get that if she would agree to work for substantially less than what she thought the job should pay. The other day I asked her how the new job was going, and she said to me, "Well, I should have got all those promises my boss made to me in writing; I am getting the lower pay, but none of the promises."

Something to think about as you are sitting around the kitchen table.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Desolation in Myanmar

Desolation in Myanmar

By Brian McAfee--- Muskegon, Michigan

In the aftermath of a major natural disaster, the ongoing tragedy that is playing out in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) is unnecessary and criminal in nature. The military junta, that had initially withheld relief aid from reaching the majority of the population most negatively impacted by the May 2-3 cyclone, have reportedly stolen much of the goods and have blocked some people's access to them.

Even today, a month after the cyclone struck, over two million are still homeless and hundreds of children have become orphans without steady caretakers. Early on, a peculiar relationship between the junta, U.S. political figures and business interests became quickly evident. Most notably Senator John McCain's political adviser, Douglas Goodyear, and Doug Davenport, another lobbyist linked to McCain and Myanmar, have played major roles in seedy dealings.

Another disturbing connection to the regime is UnoCal, representing another outrageous wrong wherein human rights and social justice represent secondary concerns relative to wealth extraction, civilian exploitation and overall profit motives. Yet, few people outside of Myanmar seem aware of this association and the general populous in the country dares not contest the arrangement for fear of backlash.

Meanwhile food, drinkable water, clothing and shelter remain acutely needed, along with medicine and health care provision. All considered, the Buddhist's have been doing their best under extremely difficult conditions involving desperate people and a paucity of lifesaving supplies. However, their attempts are being greatly curbed by the junta, which just this past weekend forced large numbers out of the refugee camps. These inhumane and imprudent maneuvers display an extreme disregard for humanity and in its stead a total indifference towards ethics even at a most basic level.

At the same time, U.S. ties to the military junta in Myanmar have gone mostly unreported or underreported by global mainstream media. In a similar vein, another "popular culture" icon has emerged to further blur fact from fiction and this is compliments of Hollywood. As such, a totally fictionalized version of this little ravaged country emerges in which "Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" depicts Harrison Ford saving the land from a supposed Soviet threat.

As far as any Russian derived menace existing, we need to look no further than the North American continent and the capitalistic adventurism provided by such interlopers as Unocal, Douglas Goodyear, and Doug Davenport if we want to cite real dangers posed to the country by treacherous outsiders. All considered, the real "saviors" of Burma have yet to emerge.