Democracy for Utah - Democracy Begins With You

Does U.S. auto industry regret opposing CAFE standards, universal healthcare?

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:03:04 -0600

As Ford posts yet another crazy-ass quarterly loss ($8.7 billion), it makes one wonder how much better the US auto industry (and its unions) would be doing if they had let the government raise CAFE standards, huh? The government could've bailed them out of this mess.

And it makes one wonder how much better that industry would be doing if they hadn't so viciously opposed Bill and Hillary Clinton's 1993 health care initiative. In 2004, GM spent over $5 billion in health care costs — a number that is likely significantly larger today. That's billions that would be off its balance sheet had they not opposed universal healthcare.

Lots of industries may shoot themselves in the foot, but none more so than the auto industry. It truly deserves the comeuppance it is getting (and it has gotten a healthy assist from its unions). The people who don't deserve it — of course — are its workers, who are getting screwed.

Teamsters withdraws from ANWR coalition, demands long-term energy solutions

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:57:50 -0600

Unlike the Republican Party with its many ideological schisms (neocons vs. isolationists, corporate cons vs. nativists, theocons vs. corporate cons, etc.), there are few ideological divides within the Democratic Party. Mostly, what's good for one Democratic constituency is good for the rest too.

However, there is one area of friction in the Democratic coalition — environmentalists vs. union workers in industries like logging and coal mining. (Remember the spotted owl?) That's why it's great to see the Teamsters union "go green" (teamster.org):

"We are not going to drill our way out of the energy problems we are facing — not here and not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," [Teamsters President Jim] Hoffa told labor and environmental activists at an Oakland, Calif., summit on good jobs and clean air. "We must find a long-term approach that breaks our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the development of alternate energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power."

Hoffa then announced the union's withdrawal from the ANWR coalition, citing the need to build a green economy that fosters the development of alternative energy sources and creates good union jobs — instead of lining the pockets of big oil tycoons.

Hoffa also said that by investing in green energy solutions, the nation will reap the benefits of curbing its dependence on oil through a revitalized economy with the creation of millions of new jobs in a rapidly growing industry.

What happens if Democrats succeed with universal healthcare?

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:31:54 -0600

Kos tells the story of a woman he met in Austin who was convinced that elected officials can't do anything about problems like health care or the mortgage crisis:

[...] Well, I responded, what about health care, are you happy with your health care? She lit up, "I know no one who is happy with their health care!" and then segued into a rant about the disgraceful state of the health care system. Well, I responded, Democrats are working for universal healthcare, but Republicans have gotten in the way. But we'll be able to do it next year.

"Ain't no one who can fix that stuff," she sighed, slumping. That brief expression of fire and brimstone snuffed out in an instant. She was adamant that it was all hopeless. [...]

I had one last argument up my sleeve. Look, I get it, I told her, government hasn't given us many reasons to be confident of late. I can certainly empathize. But can we make a deal? If Democrats push through universal health care in the next four years, will you vote for Barack Obama in 2012?

She looked initially uncomfortable at the thought, but after a pause and a brief internal struggle, she softened and said, "Yeah, I will."

That, in a nutshell, is what Kristol and Ponnuru and Lowry and every conservative in this country fears the most.

TIME: McCain is a 'long shot'

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:42:43 -0600

A rare glimpse of political reality from the corporate media (TIME):

Oh, let's just admit it: John McCain is a long shot. He's got a heroic personal story, and being white has never hurt a presidential candidate, but on paper 2008 just doesn't look like his year. And considering what's happening off paper, it might be time to ask the question the horse-race-loving media are never supposed to ask: Is McCain a no-shot?

Last week, the McCain campaign's case against Barack Obama went something like this: He's irresponsible when it comes to Iraq, naive when it comes to Iran, and a big-government liberal when it comes to the economy. But now Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has more or less endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq, forcing McCain to argue that Maliki didn't really mean it, and even the Bush administration has accepted a "time horizon" for withdrawal, if not a precise "timetable." The Bush administration has also engaged in some diplomatic outreach with Iran, just as Obama has recommended, a severe blow to McCain's efforts to portray Obama's willingness to talk as appeasement. And on the economy, a TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll found that 82% of the country supports

The banks are too big to fail, and the man in the street is too small to bail.

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:15:16 -0600

That's a direct quote from John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group mutual funds. (Note: Mr Bogle does not approve of the current state of affairs which has allowed unbridled speculation to threaten our homes and our economic welfare.) The other statement we've been hearing a lot, and that we should ponder, is that the "free-market economy" we've been living in privatizes profit but socializes risk. The same financial institutions who have been demanding lax or no restrictions on their dealing, while happily pocketing the profits on increasingly risky behavior, have suddenly discovered a use for Government as they turn to John & Jane Taxpayer to bail them out from the natural consequences of their risky deals.

Gretchen Morgenson is running a readable, sobering picture of our current Debt Trap in the NYTimes.

McCain receives $1,930 a month from program he calls a 'disgrace'

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:35:47 -0600

San Francisco Business Times:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cashes his monthly Social Security checks despite calling the federal program "a disgrace," the Associated Press reports.

"I'm receiving benefits," McCain told campaign reporters, but added, "the system is broken."

In 2007, he received benefits of $23,157 from Social Security, approximately $1,930 a month. The maximum monthly benefit under Social Security is $2,185. [...]

In 2006, McCain's wife Cindy earned $6 million, and has a net worth of approximately $100 million.

Al Gore on Meet the Press

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:26:08 -0600

Al Gore on Meet the Press with host Tom Brokaw:

MR. BROKAW: This is how The Boston Globe described your audacious plan to change the way that we get electricity in this country: "Gore challenged Americans to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar, and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels."

The reaction was pretty quick and not all of it was favorable, even from those who are aligned with you in thinking that we have to do something about climate change. [...] What you have outlined, in fact, is a goal that may not be achievable.

VICE PRES. GORE: I think it is achievable, and I think it's important that we achieve it, Tom. There were also many other reactions from people who said this is the right goal because we need to reset the bar and change the debate. Our current course is completely unsustainable. We are being told by scientists around the world, particularly the international group that is charged with studying this and reporting to world leaders, that we may have less than 10 years in order to make dramatic changes lest we lose the chance to, to avoid catastrophic results from the climate crisis. We're building up CO₂ so rapidly

Why Obama's win means big trouble for the GOP

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:52:45 -0600

Just go read thereisnospoon at Daily Kos.

In come Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — a black man and a woman vying fiercely for the presidency and making history in the process. Obama triumphs. And looming on the GOP's horizon is its worst nightmare: the possibility that a majority of Americans might vote for an African-American for president. And not just vote for one, but get used to one. Americans might become accustomed to the idea of an African-American family living in the White House and being its public face to the world. That in the process, Americans might actually make leaps and bounds forward on the issue of race and thereby remove the most effective wedge in the Republican toolbox for decades.

And then all Republicans would have left is their deeply unpopular drive to abolish the New Deal. It would, in short, spell utter doom for the Republicans outside of the deep South and certain pockets of the Midwest.

DNC kicks off 50-state voter registration "drive"

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:47:49 -0600

DNC.org:

Governor Howard Dean will lead a national grassroots voter registration effort. The cross-country bus tour, "Register for Change," will build on the overwhelming enthusiasm and voter turnout seen during the primaries as Democrats mobilize and organize voters for the fall election.

The tour kicks off with events in Crawford and Austin, TX, on Thursday, July 17th. Dean will also deliver the Opening Keynote Speech at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin, TX. On Friday, July 18th, and Saturday, July 19th, the tour will continue with events in Hattiesburg and Jackson, Mississippi, and New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

So when's the bus coming to Utah?

Two Americas: U.S. life expectancy varies by 30 years

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:41:09 -0600

The Independent:

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being — more familiar to observers of the Third World — with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners. [...]

"The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said.

The Left's approach to fighting al Qaeda

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:28:19 -0600

Ezra Klein:

A few months back, Mitt Romney, who's now on John McCain's short list for the vice presidency, said, "I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

The Egyptian Brotherhood isn't a terrorist group. Al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group, hates Iran and is rivals with Hezbollah, a Shi'ite extremist sect. This statement, in other words, made no sense. [...]

As Obama says, one of the clear distinctions between the Left's approach to terrorism and the Right's approach to terrorism is that the Left wants to limit the scope of the conflict, while the Right wants to expand it. [...] Rather than this being an effort to hunt down al Qaeda, it becomes a war to hunt down al Qaeda, destroy Hezbollah, eradicate Hamas, overthrow Saddam Hussein, change the regime in Tehran, crush the Muslim Brotherhood, confront Syria, and whatever else Bill Kristol thought of while eating his Cheerios that week. It is an incredibly dangerous and incoherent approach. And it marks a genuine difference between Obama and McCain.

Responses to the New Yorker's "satirical" anti-Obama cover

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:37:56 -0600

BagNewsNotes:

Tom Toles of the Washington Post:

David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"The Conscience of a Liberal": The Buzzflash interview with Paul Krugman

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:20:55 -0600

I finally got around to reading Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, and it's just as excellent as you'd expect. The following excerpts are from an interview Krugman did with Buzzflash about the book:

Paul Krugman: The reason that Bush is so opposed to SCHIP is the same reason he was so determined to privatize Social Security, which is that they're both programs that work. You have to understand, that is the point of view of somebody who really wants to undo the New Deal — and if possible — I quote Grover Norquist in the book — get things back to the way they were before Teddy Roosevelt and the "Socialists" came in. The worst thing is a government program that actually does help people. So the SCHIP is a really bad thing, from Bush's point of view, because it works so well. It might lead people to say, well, if we can do this for lower-income children, why can't we do it for lots of other people who need guaranteed health care? So it's the determination, on his part, to do this veto, even though there's a short-term political cost, because they're deathly afraid that people will look at SCHIP and say, gee, actually the government can do some good. [...]

BuzzFlash: We want to challenge you a little on some language. […] You used the word "conservatism," though you switch and say

WALL-E for president

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:43:18 -0600

NYTimes columnist Frank Rich from last Sunday:

As it happened, "Wall-E" opened the same summer weekend as the hot-button movie of the 2004 campaign year, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Ah, the good old days. Oil was $38 a barrel, our fatalities in Iraq had not hit 900, and only 57 percent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. (Now more than 80 percent do.) "Wall-E," a fictional film playing to a far larger audience, may touch a more universal chord in this far gloomier time.

Indeed, sitting among rapt children mostly under 12, I felt as if I'd stepped through a looking glass. This movie seemed more realistically in touch with what troubles America this year than either the substance or the players of the political food fight beyond the multiplex's walls. [...]

Mr. McCain should be required to see "Wall-E" to learn just how far adrift he is from an America whose economic fears cannot be remedied by his flip-flop embrace of the Bush tax cuts (for the wealthy) and his sham gas-tax holiday (for everyone else). Mr. Obama should see it to be reminded of just how bold his vision of change had been before he settled into a front-runner's complacency. Americans should see it to appreciate just how much things are out of joint on an Independence Day when a cartoon robot evokes America's patriotic ideals with more conviction than either of the men who would be president.

Obama campaign focusing on congressional seats, not just the White House

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:06:45 -0600

Politico from June 25:

[Deputy campaign manager Steve] Hildebrand's plans underscore the unusual scope and ambition of Obama's campaign, which can relatively cheaply extend its massive volunteer and technological resources into states which won't necessarily produce electoral votes.

In Texas, for instance, Obama's three dozen offices were overrun with volunteers during the primary; the campaign's challenge is, in part, to find something useful to do with all that free labor. But, while Hildebrand said Obama is unlikely to pay for television advertising outside a core of about 15 states the candidate thinks he can win, he will spend some money on staff. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, reportedly told donors in Houston that he would send 15 staffers to Texas, and the campaign has committed to having some staff on the ground in all 50 states. [...]

A "new president alone isn't enough," Obama wrote in a message sent to the DSCC's e-mail list. "I've served long enough in the U.S. Senate to know that Washington must change, and I also know that big changes don't happen without big Senate majorities — and right now, Democrats occupy only 49 seats."