RUSSDONDEROWEB.COM

RAD: 

SB 246 TESTIMONY/

TALKING POINTS

-------------------------

Carla Axman,

Blue Oregon

Facts not fiction on universal gun background checks

------------------------

Sneaker Politics

Kitzhaber and legislators got rolled by Nike. 

More

 

"Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere"

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The GOP - Not One of US.

Wall Street, our new criminal class...  

     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 1%.  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: 

 

• 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 2013 Session Gears Up -

     I was not very optimistic about the February 2012 session being a success story.  I was wrong. 

     Governor "NO" became Governor "YES" in the final days 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 is.  Will the newly begun session build on the "mo" from 2012?       

     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 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...  

     Now that the 2013 session has begun we face major issues - PERS reform, funding the CRC bridge over I-5, funding K-12 and higher ed above the current budget.  If we remain on the track to "doing more with less" we will get less in services for kids and the vulnerable in Oregon.  And when one adds cuts in programs from "sequestration" the risk of doing harm rises.  And if tax reform is delayed until 2014 the damage done will be very heavy. 

     While Gov K has a solid majority in the House [36-24 Ds/Rs] and in the Senate a [16-14 ratio) there is no guarantee everyone will line up with Kitzhaber.  Public employee unions will opposed PERS reforms and without them, there will be no extra money in the till for K-12 or state matching funds for health care reform.  Again, the low hanging fruit was picked in the last session.  Now the hard work begins!  

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

 

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...  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 [11] 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 

   

    

 

HB 2417 helps vets get a home of their own.  Support it by signing this petition.

From Columbine to Newtown - when will the killing stop? 

It's time to say "NO" to the NRA's assault weapons fetish! 

 

We don't live in the Wild, Wild West anymore! 

 

Ya wanna hug a gun, buy a cap pistol, they are not hazardous to your loved ones! 

 

Watch the President's statement on the shooting in Connecticut. 

Is the US #1? 

Rediscovering Government

Roosevelt Institute

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.   

 

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 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