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Obama’s winning plan

Obama’s winning plan

E.J. Dionne Jr. MAY 2

Republicans no longer ahead on foreign policy.

 


"Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere"

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr.


The GOP - Not One of US.


"It's the economy stupid!"

     Gee the DOW is at 13,000.  Happy Days are here again on the Street - the greatest global Ponzi scheme ever. 

     Business in the USA is sitting on $2 trillion dollars refusing to invest their own funds in expanding and hiring workers.  When one adds to this the reserves that banks, equity firms and hedge funds have - the picture is clear - "capitalism in the USA is on strike."  The engine of our economy - the spirit of entrepreneurship is not in evidence today.  So much for business being dynamic and risk taking.  They hire K- Street lobbyists and their ilk at the state level because they are averse to risk taking - pleading for tax breaks, tax credits and endless loopholes.  The "business of business" in America today is not about job creation, it's about wealth hoarding and redistribution from the middle class to the top 10%.  So for those who claim government doesn't create jobs, my response is that business doesn't either until given "corporate welfare" by government.  The fact is that the private and public sector are highly integrated, something the anti-tax, anti-government Tea Party types don't understand.  Job creation requires public/private collaboration.

We need a government for the 99% not the top 1%. 


RAD'S

WEBSITE PICKS: 


 

  • Tony Dondero Patch.com

Shoreline.patch.com

  • A Middle East View      

Rami G. Khouri

  • RealClearPolitics:

Realclearpolitics

  • Jim Hightower:   

Jimhightower.com

  • Robert Reich:

Robert Reich

  • Thomas Friedman: 

Friedman Column

  • Nicholas Kristof: 

Kristof Column


Oregon's Motto: 

She flies with her own wings! 



     Oregon's February Session. 

     I was not very optimistic about the February session being a success story.  I was wrong.  Governor "NO" became Governor "YES" in the final day of the session!  Governor Kitzhaber succeeded in getting his major agenda items passed - health care reform and education reform.  The legislature also succeeded in closing the budget hole of $300 million.  And to my surprise, they passed home foreclosure legislation.  Amazing grace how sweet it it.      

     I opined that - "One can only hope that the adults will prevail in Salem come February." 

     Well the adults did prevail in the Guv's office and in the legislature.  But what was not done was crafting a long term solution to Oregon's unbalanced, one dimensional tax system.  So in a sense what was passed was easy because most of it came without a revenue impact.  In 2013 the heavy lifting will begin - funding all these reforms.  As we know - the devil is in the details.  In 2013 nobody will be able to kick the can... 

    But this his was a very successful session although at times it teetered on the brink of going over a cliff.  However, I still think the education reform bill dealing with K-12 and universities is too top down and will ultimately prove to be a Potemkin village.  I think early childhood education has a better chance of success but libraries must be part of the solution.  The health care reforms put Oregon in a positive place to connect to Obamacare. 

     So the Guv and legislative leadership defied the odds and made things work under the Dome.  Good for them...  Now we head into the fall campaign which will determine the composition of the 2013 legislature.  In a presidential election year, this should be good news for the Dems.  They have a real chance to take back control of the House and keep control of the Senate and with it the responsibility to deal with the "tough" questions! 

     As they say "be careful what you wish for." 

 



A footnote on replacing David Wu. 

    The Suzanne Bonamici only spent $1 million...  not $2...  But her and DNC negative ads soured the whole election for me.  I hope she becomes more than just a place holder.  Given the pabulum she offered up - I'm not terribly optimistic.  She needs to work on her "inner Elizabeth Furse/Les AuCoin" impersonation. 


Hard Times in Oregon: 

Hardtimes

The Oregon story - the rich get richer, the poor and middle class lose ground.  Check this front page Oregonian article out. 

Oregon wage gap widens

Homelessness in Oregon - a call to action

Chuck Currie The crisis of homelessness


      Are we in a race to the top or diving to the bottom?  It's ironic that Oregon lost out in its bid for "race to the top" funding.  We were 7th from the bottom!  In a strange way being #34 out of 41 states who applied was a victory of sorts. 

    Oregon's loss illustrates the failure of leadership under Susan Castillo, Oregon's Superintendent of Public Instruction as, like her predecessors, she builds an educational bridge to nowhere called high stakes testing. 

  To confuse matters more the Oregonian's editorial board pontificates that this was a lost opportunity to get federal funding for innovation.  How firing principals and teachers equals innovation is a mystery to me. 

    The way to reform schools is to reduce class sizes, to encourage teacher collaboration and to support their continued education.  High stakes testing and performance based assessment of teachers are NOT the answer!  

    If you want students to succeed you first have to resolve the issues they confront before they come to school.  Children who face poverty, hunger, homelessness, health care issues and family instability require wrap around services for them and their families, 24/7. 

    Every child needs a safe home of their own and parents who know how to be good parents. 

    There is only one way to address this impending crisis.  Schools must have a stable source of funding.  Until that happens - we will limp from crisis to crisis. 

    Minus such action Oregon's already shaky social safety net will be shredded.  Charity starts at home not in the streets of Kabul or Baghdad.  These never ending wars drain our coffers on the home front!

     Check out a recent Steve Duin column and a review of Diane Ravitch's book critiquing NCLB and the Obama plan in Slate.com  

    From PDX to DC school reform is the rage but it's bogus!   

Steve_Duin Schools_get_the_blame

School Reform/slate.com

 

 

   Garrison Keillor - "...The Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be a fount of wisdom... but when you consider Saxby Chambliss... Jim DeMint, James Inhofe, who look as if they've been banged on the head too many times and... moon-faced Mitch McConnell, your faith in democracy is challenged severely. Any legislative body in which 41 senators from rural states that together represent 10 percent of the population can filibuster you to death is going to be flat-footed, on the verge of paralysis, no matter what. Any time 10 percent of the people can stop 90 percent, it's like driving a bus with a brake pedal for each passenger. That's why Congress has a public approval rating of [18] percent...." 

    


    

    Why does the richest nation in the world have the moral blight of homeless people?

Invisible People

http://www.npr.org


ahomeoftheirown.com/  

    Connecting the dots between homelessness, hunger & health care disparities in Oregon and Washington County: 

Homelessness:  

•    The faces of the homeless are families with children, single men and women, vets, and many who are impaired. It is estimated that in Washington County up to 56% of homelessness occurs to families.

Hunger:

•    Hunger is highest among single mother households (10%) and poor families (15%) as well as renters, unemployed workers and minority households. 

Heath Care Disparities: 

•    Adults in Oregon without insurance represent 22.3% of the state’s population compared to 19.7% of the nation.  In Washington County approximately 

   

    

 

RAD Lines

What they are saying...   

Inequality and GOP ignorance

Barack "How far we've come" 

Ben Unger for Oregon House District 29

 My candidate Katie Riley lost the primary but Ben, a fellow Dem, will help erode the GOP margin in the 30/30 House in Salem.  He's a young energetic candidate who will give incumbert Katie Eyer a run for her money.  Pun intended! 


School Reform - hope or hoax? 

"No school or school district or state anywhere in the nation had ever proved the theory correct. Nowhere was there a real-life demonstration in which a district had identified a top quintile of teachers, assigned low-performing students to their classes, and improved the test-scores of low-performing students so dramatically in three, four or five years that the black-white test score gap closed."

Diane Ravitch on NCLB 


OBAMA


Heath Care Reform at Work

Click link above for info

       For those who want to repeal Obama health care reform because it's "socialistic" explain away these 'facts' about the status quo which the medical industrial complex claims is the best system in the world? 

     50% of all bankruptcies in the USA are related to health care costs and 75% involve people who have health insurance.  Administrative costs make up 31% of all health care spending in the USA compared to 16.7% in Canada. 

     Of all Americans getting annual check ups only 60% get what they need.  When's the last time your family doctor checked your eyes, ears, skin et al. 

     Doctors aren't really examining patients thoroughly because the insurance based system forces them to have a high patient turnover each day.  This assembly line medical system is based on speed not quality care. 

     The 2007 Commonwealth Fund ranking of affluent countries health care systems found that the US system ranked "last" or next-to-last in quality, access, efficiency and healthy lives. 

     We spend double on health care per person and as percentage of GDP compared to Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand or the United Kingdom (the latter only has genuine"socialized" medicine). 

     PS:  The US is becoming a "banana republic" with increasing income inequality.  When giving those earning $250K tax cuts is a major political battle - plutocracy is our name! 

 http://www.nytimes/nicholasdkristof


 

Professor Kingfield, from the Paper Chase

   "I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you."

- George Bernard Shaw

  

 

BLOGS:

From the Left Wing:

Paul Krugman

krugmanonline.com

Democracy Now
democracynow.org

The Daily Kos

dailykos.com

Blue Oregon

blueoregon.com


"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." 

Emilie Buchwald 

 


    "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."  

Justice John Paul Stevens in Bush v. Gore, 2001  


    The state of our union - check out the map, it's a reality check for those who can't figure out why people are so ticked off... 

americanobserver


    Here's Garrison Keillor's latest political rap on the rightwingnuts:   

GarrisonKeillor


 

"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war"

John Adams

2nd President of the USA


"Loyalty to country always.  Loyalty to government when it deserves it." 

Mark Twain  


“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” 

George Santayana 

 

"The love of one's country is a natural thing.  But why should love stop at the border?" 

Pablo Casals

 

Deja Vu? 

   

    

The Obama Doctrine:  

    It's clear that President Obama has a different view of foreign policy than his predecessors.  In the past American intervention has been based on territorial acquisition, aka our annexation of Texas and much of the Southwest from Mexico; perennial interference in the internal affairs of Latin America from Cuba to Chile in the interests of narrow economic interests - United Fruit or as a part of the old Cold War mentality; stopping the march of communism in Asia and Africa in places like Vietnam or the Congo.

     Now the Obama narrative is very different.  He is disengaging us slowly but surely from Iraq and Afghanistan wars/occupations based on the new cold war - the war on terrorism begun under Bush II.  Our policy toward the Arab Spring especially in support of the rebels in Libya has been framed in the context of protecting civilian populations from something akin to genocide. 

     Using special forces ops or drones in other global "fire fights" is risky business.  What's the option?  

     Obama is not reinventing the wheel.  In the dark days of the Cold War, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles gave rhetorical support to the freedom movement in Hungary in the 1950s only to see the Eisenhower administration sit by watching it crushed by Soviet tanks.  The same happened in Czechoslovakia. 

     This administration puts its money where its mouth is.  My Canadian Connection feels this is "mission creep" while I argue it is an attempt to learn from the Rwandan genocide.

      Either way the risk of getting into another interventionist quagmire is there. 

     But what is the moral response to the politics of genocide?  A foreign policy based on "human rights" is a better benchmark than one based on economic imperialism and/or geo-political gamesmanship.  But it carries risks too.  But we live in a "global" village and can't stick our heads in the sand as neo-isolationists.   

      For a deeper analysis of past quagmires check out these links from Hayden & Friedman:

Hayden

Friedman

 

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everwhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

William Butler Yeats 


 

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?'

But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" 

George Bernard Shaw,

"Back to Methuselah" (1921)


"...the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society...  The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government..." 

James Madison, Federalist Papers #10


"Why … should we have government? Why not each individual take to himself the whole fruit of his labor, without having any of it taxed away?”  

The legitimate object of government, is to do for the people whatever they need to have done, but which they can not do, at all, or can not do, so well, for themselves – in their separate and individual capacities … There are many such things … roads, bridges and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools … the criminal and civil [justice] departments."

Abraham Lincoln


Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

 

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates, but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole..."

Edmund Burke 

 

“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.  These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions.” 

Jonathan Swift

 

" Every satirist who drew breath has flung pots of ink at this parade of tooting lummoxes and here it is come round again, marching down Main Street, rallying to the cause of William McKinley, hail, hail, the gang’s all here, ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay."

Garrison Keillor

  

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments." 

James Madison


"Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways. The point is, however, to change it."

Karl Marx 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

  

 


  

 

Thursday
May172012

POST MORTEM ON OREGON PRIMARY

     It was comforting to see that Eileen Brady, the reputed co-founder of New Seasons, couldn't buy her way into the November run off for mayor of Portlandia. 

     I love New Seasons, it's my favorite local grocery chain.  But Brady doesn't have any government experience aside from being on a blue ribbon governor panel on health care reform while her two winning opponents Charlie Hales, a former city commissioner, and Jefferson Smith, a legislator, do have such experience.  While Hales bested Smith by 10% in a low turnout election (40%), next November in a high turnout presidential election his margin will shrink.  I wouldn't take any bets now on who might win but clearly Hales is the favorite.  But this May not November! 

     The most interesting results for me were the victories in Metro races by Sam Chase and Bob Stacey.  Both have indicated support for building more affordable housing.  Stacey was quoted in the Oregonian that "We're not creating enough housing that's affordable to all households.  You can't consign low-income (residents) to the least convenient, most distant parts of the metro-area."  Right on Bob.  I take some credit for this comment since last fall when Stacy ran unsuccessfully against Tom Hughes for Metro's president, I called them on OPB's Think Out Loud program advocating affordable housing.  Stacey had no record on that issue but did the better job of answering my question which caused me to to endorse him on my blog after having endorsed Hughes at first. 

     Since Metro is tasked with designing the 3 county metro area using land use principles based on Oregon's famous and unique land use planning regime inherited from the McCall era (Senate Bill 100) the influence of Stacey and Chase, who has an excellent affordable housing pedigree based on being former Portlandia city commissioners and housing advocate Eric Sten's chief of staff, this is promising news.  Stacey is correct low income housing should not be confined to the margins of the east side of Portland or out in Washington County's rural west side.  We need to have a regional strategy which locates housing near places of work which will create more livable and sustainable communities. 

     Stacey and Chase will have to contend with former Mayor of Hillsboro Hughes, a long time acquaintance of mine as a former Aloha social studies teacher and OEA activist, who has become the witting tool of the big box industry on the West side aka the hi tech biggies - Intel, Tectronics et al...   They will have their work cut out for them as members of the 7 member Metro council whose bias tilts to creating green spaces not jobs or housing.  Good luck gentlemen.  Any such work will require the legislature's help.  Given the election results the line up of the next session is murky.  Most pundits predict a similar line up in January 2013 to the current 30/30 and 16/14 ratio in the House and Senate respectively. 

Tuesday
May152012

OREGON'S PERS SCAM?

     As a former adjunct professor at Portland State University, 2005-2009, I wasn't eligible for the Oregon public employees retirement plan (PERS).  But I got a notice yesterday from the PERS system saying I wasn't getting any benefits despite my former employment, gee was I surprised.  In reading the fine print I noticed that if one is in the PERS system one's benefits are based on 1.5% times your final annual salary averaged.  It's all gobbly gook to me but I sure wish my TIAA/CREF pension plan, which is very good, gave me the equivalent of 1.5% times my monthly salary when I retired from Pacific! 

     I could use that extra .5% for my golf fees and model train habit.  Heck, just give me a modest cut of former UO head football coach Mike Belotti's PERS benefits! 

     No wonder Oregon has a budget problem with less and less going into K-12, human resources and higher education.  I'd feel differently about this if my public employee spouse was in the PERS system but the City of Forest Grove denied her any pension plan and only gave her partial health care coverage late in her 30 plus year career.  So she still trots of the the "salt mines" every morning as my Marion the Librarian.  According to my pension plan forecast she has to work until she's 95 to keep me in the income bracket I've become accomstomed to.  Now where's that walker I bought for her on Mother's Day?  

     I'm revising my view of the 1% to include not only hedge fund managers (aka ass holes), CEOs (aka jerks) of banks that are too big to fail et al. but to also include retired double and triple dippers like members of Congress (aka vultures of the public purse).     

     Some of my friends might be surprised about my anti-PERS spin.  But over the years I've watched PERS increasingely get out of control, suffer mismanagement by mostly Democratic administrations and be influenced by public employee unions as their fiefdom.  When there is no accountability and no transparency, which there isn't even now with PERS, you get what one might expect, decisions made by political cronies who think anyone who critiques public pension systems is anti-union.  My problem is that unions like corporations play an insider trading game at the taxpayer's expense!  

Saturday
May122012

THE OLD DOMINO THEORY GAME

     "Were American presidential candidates serious about discussing what really matters in the world, they would be arguing about how best to support the Arab quest for dignity and democratic freedoms, and how to end the American and other Western legacies of double standards that speak of freedom but continue to support autocrats. Some things have changed in the past year, and others have not." 

- Rami G. Khouri

     Last week NPR interviewed a British foreign policy guru talking about the unintended consequences of US/NATO policy in Libya  The basic line was that removing Gadaffi had created a political vacuum within Libya and much of Central Africa.  It reminded me of the argument during the Vietnam War that losing Vietnam would create a "domino effect" wherein other nations in Southeast Asia from Vietnam to Burma would fall into the Commie orbit. 

     While we should be concerned that the internal political dynamics in Libya are unsettled given regional and tribal conflicts endemic to Libya, to argue that chaos will be unleashed on Sub-Saharan Africa from the Sudan to Nigeria is a bit much.  Not that Central Africa is a bastion of political stability, it clearly is not.  Given the legacy of European Colonialism, Central Africa has been a mess since the 1950s. 

     The historic legacy of colonialism is exemplified by British "divide and rule" tactics used in India based on religious loyalties which pitted Hindus and Muslims against each other resulting in partition.  The Brits, the French and the Portuguese carved up their empires for purposes of administrative control not in recognition of the history and geography of tribe, clan or religion.  So we are now faced with this bitter harvest. 

     Sadly the USA under Pax Americana all too often mimiced 19th century colonialism in the 20th century and into the 21st century regardless of who is POTUS or which party is in power.  We don't have colonies in the old fashioned sense but geo-poltiical alliances which amount to the same thing.  As the only super power, one means of ending American neo-colonialism is to quit being the world's policeman and the #1 arms merchant in the world.  Only then will our diplomacy be credible. 

     What worries me is that is Libya a new Afghanistan?  After 9/11 we responded by attacking al Qaeda in Afghanistan, then ousted the Taliban at which point we turned our attention away to Iraq.  Are we doing the same thing in Libya today?  I don't know.  Yemen not Libya is the new training ground for al Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula.  But with another failed state in the wings, Libya, will the jihadists find another home base there too along with Somalia? 

     I wondered what the analyst would say about contemporary Russia.  Would he prefer a Stalinist system in place of the Putin regime?  Sometimes we look at the good old days through rose colored glasses because they were relatively stable, each side of the Cold War knew the rules and played by them in the era of MAD.  But the price paid by the captive people of Eastern Europe was a pretty high price to say nothing of the costs of the economy of permanent war in USA and her allies.

     Here's a link to a very sober analysis my CC sent to me today which is worth a read.  There's nothing new here that a person familiar with the writings of C.Wright Mills, William Appleman Williams, Michael Parenti or Noam Chomsky has not read from the early '60s.  But most of these names are unknown to the current generation so this article is a nice refresher course on the implications of global politics, the national security state and the consequences of permanent war.

     It reminds one of the saying - "be careful what you wish for, you might get it." 

Saturday
May122012

THE COAL TRAIN HOAX

Coal trains headed for Spokane     EDITOR'S NOTE:  Last Monday there was a rally in Pioneer Square to stop the shipping by rail of coal from Wyoming to ports in Oregon or SW Washington.   First we had the LNG battle over importing natural gas and now exporting it.  Now Big Coal wants to use the Pacific Northwest as ports of exit for coal shipped to China.  None of this makes sense from an environmental point of view. 

     Don't believe me - check out Robert Kennedy Jr's speech at Pioneer Square last week.  I brought RFK, Jr. here in the 1997 edition of the Tom McCall Forum to debate former VP Dan Quayle.  It was not a fair fight.  Kennedy is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met and the most articulate of the Kennedy clan.  His speech last week only hints at his acumen given as raspy voice. 

   What bothers me is the local media downplaying the rally saying only several hundred attended the rally.  Even the organizers lowballed it at 600.  Well the pictures of Pioneer Square show many more people than several hundred.  I've been in Pioneer Square for political rallies of upwards of 5000-10,000 people.  Look at the pictures and decide for yourself.  Looks like a full Pioneer Square audience to me. 

     What is also interesting from a political point of view is that none of the 3 Portlandia mayor candidates were there only Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogan was.  None of our Oregon congressional delegation was there nor legislators or Guv K who is opposed to coal trains.  And the organizers were the environmental community NOT the folks from Occupy Wall Street PDX.  Interesting! 


Check out photos from the rally: 

Facebook

Riverkeeper Flickr Stream

 

Check out video footage from the rally: 

Power Past Coal Rally Videos 5/7

Riverkeeper YouTube Page

 

Check out media coverage of rally: 

Kennedy, activists rally in Portland against exporting coal from Northwest ports, The Oregonian

Coal Exports From Pacific Northwest Could 'Poison' People from Wyoming to China, Warn Opponents, The Huffington Post

RFK Jr. calls coal 'corrupting' at Portland rally, Associated Press

Hundreds Protest Coal Exporting at Rally with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Ecowatch

More @ Riverkeeper In the News


Organizations who helped put on this rally:

Columbia Riverkeeper . Sierra Club . Climate Solutions . Washington Envrionmental Council . Oregon Environmental Council . Greenpeace USA . Friends of the Columbia Gorge . Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility . 350.org . CREDO . Puget Soundkeeper Alliance . North Sound Baykeeper . Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper . Coos Waterkeeper . Western Organization of Resource Councils . National Wildlife Federatiom . Waterkeeper Alliance

 

 

Waterkeeper Alliance

columbia riverkeeper  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday
May112012

MITT THE BULLY

     NPR had a story this morning on how Mitt Romney as a prep school student of privilege was also a bully leader of his "gang."  Can poor little rich white kids have gangs? 

     The incident related was Mitt and his friends bullied a young fellow with long died blond hair who they assumed was gay.  They tackled him and Mitt personally cut his hair.  A same sex sort of Samson and Delilah moment?  Granted boys (and girls) will do dumb things as teenagers, even as college students.  It seems that acting stupidly is a right of passage in one's youth.  It must be part of God's plan for we sinful mortals. 

     However, Romney doesn't remember this singular moment in the victim's life.  He admits having been a prankster.  This goes way beyond good clean fun, it's the stuff of being a predator not a fun loving kid.  But how can Romney not remember the incident?  I suspect he does, but prefers to lie or deny it.  One suspects that Mr. Bain Capital also feels that way about the companies and workers he eliminated in his days of being a "creative" destroyer. 

     Again, it's not the incident itself that tells the whole story although gays might disagree, it's the denial that tells the tale.  What other skeletons are in Mitt's closet?