Good quotes:
“Greed dies hard, even when the rivers have turned to soot and the tap water catches fire.” – William Rivers Pitt
“How do you poison a cyanide factory [Fox News]?” – Jon Stewart
“If making our economy and democracy work for the many, rather than for a few at the top, is ‘one issue,’ then this one issue is a necessary precondition for achieving anything else worth achieving.” – Robert Reich
“She [Hillary Clinton] is the world heavyweight champion of torquing her comments to please whoever she's talking to.” – William Rivers Pitt
I decided to try to make several political points using humor. The last part of comedian Bill Maher’s weekly HBO show “Real Time” features a segment that Maher calls “New Rules.” In the letter below I emulate, clumsily, his “New Rules” delivery.
***
New rules that Bill Maher has my permission to utilize:
TV political campaign reporters must not use the word “resonate” more than three times in one report.
Fox News must not be allowed to polygraph its political commentators. Doing so would break its budget. At any time it would need at least 100 spare machines. Each week Sean Hannity would blow up half of them.
Chris Matthews needs to stop having man-crushes. First, it was W. in 2003. “He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West.” Then there was GOP primaries presidential candidate Fred Thompson in 2007. “Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Agua Velva, the sort of mature man’s shaving cream … after he shaved?” Barack Obama’s speech-making inspired Chris to say, “My, I felt this thrill going up my leg.” Now Chris is pals with John Kasich.
If Hillary Clinton wants to have Democrats and Independents believe that she is a truthful person, she needs to stop her GOP-style, fact-exaggerated smears of Bernie Sanders, who wants a single-payer medical insurance system. "We had enough of a fight to get to the Affordable Care Act. So I don’t want to rip it up and start over." You don’t have to cancel the ACA, Hillary, before you set about trying to legislate single payer.
Printed February 20, 2016, in the Siuslaw News
***
The Siuslaw News had a new editor, somebody promoted from the ranks of employees. He had changed the wording of my second paragraph, which had been “Any TV political campaign reporter who uses the word “resonate” more than three times in one report must be shot.” I was miffed. I sent this email to him.
***
Siuslaw News Editor:
“Any TV political campaign reporter who uses the word “resonate” more than three times in one report must be shot.” Too strong? Really?
When I write a letter to the editor (I’ve been doing it since 2003), I try to make it interesting. The letter that you printed today was intended to be humorous as well as intended to make two points. Exaggeration is an important element of humor. Surely readers would not have taken “must be shot” seriously. You took the joke right out of that paragraph.
Of course you have the right to edit submitted letters. I used to write quite a few of them, as Bob Serra and Theresa Baer could attest. The last two years I have been less motivated to write. Regardless, when I do write a letter, I want it to be entirely mine, not a collaboration. In the future, if you want to edit anything I submit, don’t print any of it.
He responded February 22.
***
Hi Harold,
I’m sorry you feel that way. After reading your
letter, I felt that part was inappropriate — even as a joke — and
took it out. Obviously, humor is subjective, so we’ll have to agree
to disagree on this issue. But I will take your advice and not print
any more of your letters that I consider unfit for the paper. Below
is a copy of our letters policy as an FYI.
Sincerely,
...
Editor
Siuslaw News
***
I answered.
***
R...,
First, thank you for responding. Second, I do not question your responsibility to choose what to print, edit, or reject. My only thought is that being too circumspect in what you select could lead to a preponderance of dull letters and, eventually, a decline of letters submitted.
***
The year began to wear. Political debate after political debate. I was not pleased with how both parties’ presidential candidate debates were going. I was no fan of Hillary Clinton; I felt the need to communicate that.
***
Watching the Democratic Party Presidential Candidates debate April 14, I finalized several conclusions.
Early on, Bernie said that he was doing well because he was telling Americans the truth. One of Hillary’s major weaknesses is the perception shared by many that she is shifty, that like her husband she places expediency above integrity. [Her husband] Bill, a leader of the Democratic Leadership Council of the 1990s, a “new Democratic,” was a friend of large corporations. He vigorously promoted NAFTA. He signed into law the GOP legislative repeal of Glass-Steagall, which separated commercial banks from investment banks. Because a majority of Americans now recognize the great injury done to them by large corporations and because Bernie Sanders is her primary season challenger, Hillary has become suddenly a critic of the TPP trade agreement, the Keystone XL pipeline project, big banks, the fossil fuel industry, and Big Pharma. It was expedient for her both to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and to declare in 2007 that that decision had been a mistake. It is expedient for her now to campaign as a progressive Democrat and to wrap herself around President Obama to curtail Bernie’s criticism of certain policies that she asserts she and the president share.
Needing also to separate herself from Bernie, she portrays herself as a pragmatic doer. She agrees with Bernie’s diagnoses (because she has to), but “his numbers don’t add up.” He makes promises; she delivers! (Read Robert Parry’s article about Hillary’s past decision-making http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35578-is-hillary-clinton-qualified) Her preference of a $12 an hour minimum wage and her declaration that natural gas -- its quantity the result of fracking -- is the bridge to clean energy are examples of Democratic Party incrementalism, a cutting around the edges of a serious problem, for corporations a protective backfire to arrest a raging forest fire. By donating campaign funds and paying speaking fees to Democratic Party enablers, corporations are able to hedge their bets.
Bernie declared that we should be thinking big, not small. His reference to European countries that provide their citizens the health care, work benefits, and education that we do not is a telling indictment of the virulent economic system that controls the levers of American political power. To the argument that Congress would never enact Bernie’s policies, I answer, “They didn’t Obama’s. Why would they Hillary’s?” If we ever break the exploitive stranglehold locked upon us, it will be due to a movement started by a straight-arrow champion of regular people, not by an individual who will do whatever it takes – pander, employ three-quarter falsehood attacks, change policy positions – to win a presidential election.
Printed April 23, 2016, in the Siuslaw News
***
William Rivers Pitt in an article printed April 27 on truthout.com expressed far more eloquently than I the two choices we would have come November.
***
You have the rich braggart with an inferiority complex so large it dwarfs Saturn using racism, sexism, nationalism and a generalized fear of The Other to elbow his way toward the nomination. You have the rich political aristocrat who votes for war, total surveillance and thinks fracking is the greatest thing since glazed donuts trying to pass herself off as some sort of transformative populist while cashing Wall Street checks by the fistful.
It is madness, but it is madness by design. The Republican Party and its media allies have spent several decades fomenting a sense of terror within their voting ranks -- fear of the immigrant, fear of the Black man, fear of a woman's power to choose, fear of the terrorist hiding under the bed. They have diligently trashed the basic functions of government so they can go on the Sunday talk shows and blather about how government doesn't work. The Democrats, for their part, have been in full moral retreat over those same decades, fleeing the legacy of FDR and their own alleged principles to such a vast degree that a candidate who voted like a conservative every time the chips were down is about to grab the brass ring.
This is the best we can do, really? This is what we have become. The only reason people will vote for Trump in the general election is because they have been trained to be afraid. The only reason people will vote for Clinton in the general election is to thwart Comb-Over Mussolini and his dreams of glory; once again, people will be voting against instead of voting for, because "she can win," allegedly.
***
The Presidential candidate of both parties established, I remained silent. Unlike presidential election years past, I was not canvassing door-to-door for anyone, nor was I making political phone calls. I stapled several economic charts on a wall in the FADC’s campaign office in Florence, but that was the entirety of my contributions. Two club members were in the main room of the office when I was leaving, the club’s chair Karin Radtke and a woman probably in her seventies who was forever politically active (Seemed she always had a petition in her purse that she wanted people to sign). As I exited through the threshold of the door, I heard her voice declare: “Isn’t that man going to do anything?!” I heard Karin respond,” He will write letters.” I wrote Karin this letter September 10.
***
Karin,
I feel I need to write this letter to clarify my limited involvement in this political campaign. I would not communicate this to any other person. I do so because of my respect for you and my realization of the burden of responsibility that you bare.
I decided after I stepped down as chair that I would no longer canvas or make telephone calls. I had done more than enough, especially in 2008, 2010, and January 2011 (Measures 66 and 68). I did it out of a sense of responsibility. It does not matter whether the calls are easy ones or calls to non-affiliated or Republican spouses of listed Democrats. I won’t do them. Opinionated, judgmental individuals like … [my critic] “Is that man going to do anything?!” … can complain all they want.
Besides not wanting to, I won’t because making calls, etc. would take away time I need to write. I am 82. I have been researching and writing a novel [my second] since 2013. I am 28 chapters into the first draft, approximately 400 pages. I am getting near the end of it. Then I will need at least a year to prepare it for publication. This project is particularly important to me.
I am amazed how my scheduled writing time gets co-opted by other things. Ideally, I would write between noon and 2 pm and between 4 and 6 daily. Going to the store, meeting medical appointments, writing and posting something on my blog site, doing household chores (I have 9 windows I have to wash before October), doing other things not foreseen but that matter continually interfere. I had planned to write a 15 page chapter by the end of this week. As I write this letter, I have written only 2 pages.
I regret not being of much help. I will try to write two or three letters others can claim. Having been in your place, I know the displeasure of having to recruit people to do unpleasant work. I also know that it is human nature to believe that those who take on unusual responsibility love doing it and should continue to do it until they drop. I am certain you feel the pressure from Eugene and elsewhere that you must continue to produce results. Most unfair!
Please know that I appreciate immensely what you have done and what you continue to do. When you finally decide to stop doing this, do not be surprised that nobody will volunteer to replace you. I cannot blame them. They had better recognize fully, however, your service.
***
Did I not have the right to determine how I used my time and energy. Who was this woman to determine what I should do? I did write a letter, the one below, Mitch McConnell in particular the target of my wrath.
***
We have been hearing a lot recently about politicians lying. One lie dwarfs all.
“It’s Obama’s economy,” we hear Republican flaks repeat. “He’s botched it. We will create jobs, grow the economy!” They count on our lack of attention to or memory of important political/economic events of the past decade.
How many of you actually recall the major 2008 GOP-induced economic meltdown and, afterward, how the GOP obstructed the President’s and the Democratic House and Senate’s attempts to stimulate the economy?
The first two years of Obama’s presidency Mitch McConnell repeatedly used the Senate rule that a minimum of 60 votes were required to defeat the filibuster of any bill brought to the Senate floor for a vote. During most of those two years the Senate consisted of 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and two independents. Several of those 58 Democratic senators voted consistently with the Republicans. To reach the 60 vote threshold, Democrats had to gain the support of the two independents (one of them Democrat turncoat Joe Lieberman) and at least two or three “moderate” Republicans. The Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”), the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “stimulus package”), and the Wall Street Reform Act (which included the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) managed to slip through after Democrats made bill-weakening concessions. Virtually everything else passed by the Democratic Party-controlled House was successfully filibustered. By the end of 2014, the GOP Senate had used the filibuster rule over 500 times.
Here are a few of the bills – all of which would have benefited working class Americans -- that McConnell’s minions stopped. Infrastructure building; equal pay for women; an increased minimum wage; stoppage of corporate tax breaks for moving jobs and production facilities out of the country; a rehiring of 400,000 teachers, firefighters, paramedics and police officers; student loan reform; an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed; legislation to help working people join labor unions; the requirement that millionaires pay a comparable tax rate to middle-class Americans, the repeal of Big Oil tax subsidies.
When the Republicans won control of the House in 2010, President Obama’s hopes for improving the lot of ordinary Americans were dashed. Everything the GOP-controlled House thereafter passed was designed either to profit large corporations and the super wealthy or weaken the support system for destitute Americans. Additionally, GOP House and Senate leaders sought to acquire what they wanted by shutting down once and later threatening to shut down the operations of the government.
For seven and a half years the Republican Party has sabotaged the national economy all the while presuming that it could win national elections by pinning the blame for stunted recovery on Congressional Democrats and our President. Liars.
Printed September 10, 2016 in the Siuslaw News
***
The following letter, written September 16, never got printed.
***
Are we going to elect again the worst the Republican Party has to offer?
We had eight years of George W. Bush. Wars in the Middle East that continue unabated. Significant tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Substantial deficit spending. Whatever corporate America wants it gets leads to 2008’s Great Recession. Destruction of the environment. Insufficient revenue, the slashing of social programs and economic aid benefits for the underclass but pork for the military/industrial complex. Leave No Child Behind. The death of class action law suits and labor unions. Bankruptcy protection for corporations but not students. No-bid contracts. Privatize, privatize. “Mushroom clouds,” frighten, lie. Rig elections. Show the world we are quite willing to elect an ignoramus. "Rarely is the question asked: ‘Is our children learning?’”
Now, Trump. Bellicose. Selfish. Dishonest. Disgusting. A “liar, liar, pants on fire” just about every sentence. Racist, sexist, fear-inducer, inciter of hate. Egotist. Uninformed. Unstable. Manifestly dangerous. Heading the party that Harry Truman called the Guardians of Privilege. Therefore, a Geo. W. redo. This time, show the world we are quite willing to elect a fascist.
***
At our club’s October meeting my critic, seated across the room from me, everybody attending, complimented my September 10 letter. I took it as an apology.
***
How did I feel about Trump’s victory? I wrote the following, not to be sent to any newspaper but to document my opinions.
***
Banjo-strumming ignoramuses crawled out from under their back-woods and back-fields rocks to be the difference in electing as our President the most noxious, dishonest, selfish, despicable public figure imaginable.
The Republican Party’s strategy of obstructing every Congressional Democratic Party legislative attempt the past eight years to improve the lives of all Americans (including the ignoramuses) and of blaming the lack of such improvement on Obama and Hillary Clinton’s supposed “status-quo” agenda worked fantastically! Selfishness, dishonesty, callousness, vindictiveness, ignorance – Fox News well knows -- are formidable allies.
But Trump?!
The elites and financial backers of the mainstream Democratic Party must also be blamed. “Yes, let’s bring back the 1990s” when Bill Clinton helped create the corporate-friendly New Democrats. We got from them NAFTA, the end of traditional welfare, cops on every corner, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Clinton’s presidency looked good because the existing technology bubble was generating better jobs, increased tax revenue, and a deficit surplus. Those better years were illusory. Everybody who has bothered to read knows that Hillary has had ties with Wall Street. Bill and Hillary have profited handsomely from Bill’s presidency and concomitant connections and Hillary’s anticipated ascendancy. The Republicans hammered Hillary about this and her apparent lack of trustworthiness -- they the epitome of corporate-bought subservience! Would she have quelled the doubts of liberals like me? She might indeed have tried to accomplish all that she had promised. We will never know. Would Bernie Sanders have been a better candidate? Yes! His genuineness was palpable. He did not have heavy baggage burdening him. His adamant message of large-scale, constructive, principled change appealed to the disaffected.
Now we may see Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie Attorney General and Newt Gingrich Secretary of State and heaven knows what additional stupidity, cruelty, and vindictiveness that could result. Trump has brought out of a majority of the electorate the worst of human fallibilities. We must fight this fiercely the next four years hoping all the while that the Democratic Party, or an alternative party, produces an excellent candidate that can win and that corporate dominance will subsequently be destroyed.
No comments:
Post a Comment