My two-year term as chair of the Florence Area Democratic Club ended December 31, 2008. I had put a lot of energy into performing the job and fully intended not to continue. Nobody indicated that he or she wanted the job. I urged, I cajoled. Reluctantly, one person relented. Another person, a former chair and good friend, volunteered. So we had two. The co-chairs clashed, and the former chair dropped out. The remaining chair resigned in May. Nobody had taken the job of vice chair. Who then would serve? Keep the club going? I had taken on the job of club treasurer. All right, I thought. I’ll stay on as treasurer and be the chair for the remaining year and a half.
Barack Obama was inaugurated President January 20. His initial executive branch appointments surprised many liberals, who had judged Obama to be as liberal as they. One friend of mine, who had enthusiastically canvassed his neighborhood for Obama’s election, was aghast that the new President had appointed Timothy Geithner his Secretary of the Treasury and Larry Summers as the head of the National Economic Council (NEC).
A December 8, 2008, article in Politico expressed early on my friend’s disillusionment. Here are some excerpts.
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Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.
Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left.
Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.
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Now Obama’s says that on his first day in office he will begin to “design a plan for a responsible drawdown,” as he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Obama has also filled his national security positions with supporters of the Iraq war: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize force in Iraq, as his secretary of state; and President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, continuing in the same role.
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Now it’s Obama’s Cabinet moves that are drawing the most fire. It’s not just that he’s picked Clinton and Gates. It’s that liberal Democrats say they’re hard-pressed to find one of their own on Obama’s team so far – particularly on the economic side, where people like Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers are hardly viewed as pro-labor.
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Obama has told his supporters to look beyond his appointments, that the change he promised will come from him and that when his administration comes together they will be happy.
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New York Times columnist Frank Rich warned that Obama’s economic team of Summers and Geithner reminded him of John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” team, who blundered in Vietnam despite their blue-chip pedigrees.
David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post that he is “not yet reaching for a pitchfork” (Lee and Henderson 1-3).
Work cited:
Lee, Carol E. and Henderson, Nia-Malika. “Liberals Voice Concerns about Obama.” Politico, December 8, 2008. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2008/12/liberals-voice-concerns-about-obama-016292
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For awhile my anger remained directed mostly at Republican politicians and their donors, large corporations.
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“Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s got us dangerously close to the precipice.” – Rush Limbaugh
At the Lane County Board of Directors meeting in Florence Feb. 17, Mayor Brubaker and perennial state legislator-candidate Al Pearn, backed by seated hard case conservatives, blistered the commissioners’ ears about the necessity of jails, prisons, and beefed-up law enforcement. How ironic, our sorry state of economic affairs being the consequence of conservative tax policy, union busting, out-sourcing of jobs, and laissez-faire capitalism.
The Peanut Butter Corp. of America’s processing plant in Georgia sends out self-tested, salmonella-tainted food products to distributors.
A company in Portland dumps chromium in the city sewer system 61 times.
Exxon-Mobil finances pseudo-scientists to muddle our perception of global warming.
Corporate “economic hit men” deliver to leaders of third-world countries having rich natural resources a proposition: accept this massive loan from the World Bank, ostensibly to finance a beneficial infrastructure project but actually to fill the coffers of the U.S. corporate contractor (with a tidy sum siphoned to you and cronies). When your country defaults, we’ll take your oil and/or build a U.S. military base or maybe just extract a political favor. Otherwise, … did you know that presidential planes have been known to fly into mountains?
In this conservative-protected ultra capitalistic country, crimes involving corporate avarice are seldom punished.
Printed February 27, 2009, in the Register-Guard
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Lucius Gent called me to congratulate me shortly after he had read my letter in the paper. The next day an 80-year-old man called from Eugene while I was using the treadmill downstairs. He wanted to know if I was related to a Harold Titus in Marcola. People my generation know what the country was like before Reagan in 1981.
Next, I directed my wrath at Republican tax policy, economic fall out, and how difficult it is to pass a local school district tax levy. A letter written by a local hardliner, James Fox, spurred me to vent.
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“Once more, we will hear the pathetic cry, ‘We must educate our children.’
“This isn’t about education. It’s about continuing to provide extravagant salary and fringe benefit packages to government employees that far exceed what private sector workers will ever see.” -- M. James Fox (Letters, March 4)
Conservatives like Mr. Fox wrapped in the ideology of “individual responsibility” and “government is the enemy” have cost this community, county, state, and nation dearly.
Our local school levy was defeated last November not because citizens disbelieved that our schools were in dire straits but because they determined they were too poor to share what never should have become their burden.
Conservative tax policy, federal and state; the outsourcing of good-paying jobs; union busting; and laissez-faire capitalism have impoverished us.
Consider our unfair state tax system. Our school districts are funded mostly by personal income tax revenue taken from the General Fund. We who work standing up pay the same marginal tax rate (9%) as millionaire Throckmorton T. Pennington, Esq., Dunes City
Corporations pay next to nothing (16% of all state income tax revenue thirty years ago; 6% now). Two-thirds of C-corporations pay the paltry $10 corporate minimum.
Years ago conservative legislators and a deluded public, persuaded that liberals were out to empty all wallets, put into the state constitution the stipulation that tax increases must attain at least a 60% House majority – a nearly impossible hurdle.
Empathy. Social responsibility. Becoming more than the sum of our parts. Yes, “We must educate our children,” despite the diatribes of conspicuous moat-around-the-castle scrooges.
Printed March 11, 2009, in the Siuslaw News
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The following letter brought up the tired GOP talking point that people in poverty have only themselves to blame for their sorry state of existence.
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Congratulations to Phil Weaver, Carol Van Houten, et al. (letters, April 7) for identifying yet another group of victims in America – poor people who have no option except to serve in our voluntary military – and at the same time insulting everyone who has served honorably or is proudly serving in the U.S. military.
If some young men and women feel they are forced to consider this option because of the lack of jobs, it is largely their fault. Perhaps they should have taken school more seriously, set some goals, made better choices, taken advantage of mentoring opportunities or made an effort to acquire skills that would have secured them a decent job.
People in this country are entitled to an opportunity. They are not entitled to results. Results come from planning, hard work, dedication, tenacity, good decisions and, dare I suggest, the disappearing concept of delayed gratification. Actually, this can be stated very simply – you reap what you sow.
Unless we stamp out this victim entitlement mentality that is becoming so pervasive in our country and rewarded by many groups, our culture will continue to self-destruct. Additionally, the U.S. military happens to provide excellent training for many who may have missed or ignored opportunities earlier in their lives.
Karen Bednarski
Printed April 14, 2009, in the Register-Guard
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Here was my response.
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Karen Bednarski’s defense (letters, April 14) of Rush Limbaugh’s “victim entitlement mentality” hogwash is offensive.
She and I agree on one statement only: “People in this country are entitled to an opportunity.” Thereafter, we swiftly separate.
Given today’s economy, saying, “You reap what you sow” is simplicity personified. North Carolina laid-off textile mill workers/parents take note: “If some young men and women … are forced to” join the military “because of the lack of jobs, it is largely their fault.” Ergo, high school student, apply yourself. Jobless civil engineers have got Home Depot covered. Competition for that Dairy Queen job will be tough.
Veterans and active duty service people, we, like the letter writer, value your honorable, brave accomplishments. We who have not experienced combat cannot fathom the responsibility or circumstance. That said, let’s be frank. The armed services must train our young men and women to be killers. When and why they are utilized, therefore, is critical! Using them to start and sustain empire wars, wars of aggression, is tragic. Back-door drafting jobless youths to volunteer to fight such wars is despicable.
Greed and aggrandizement of power generate victims. Ronald Reagan popularized the doctrine of “individual responsibility,” a dressed-up cover of: “I’ve got mine. Go Cheney yourself.” Have we finally learned our lesson?
Printed April 22, 2009, in the Register-Guard
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