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Ella Grasso Leadership awards

Monday, September 27, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that my wife, among others, was going to receive an Ella Grasso Leadership award.

The awards breakfast was today, and I had to post something about this lady, who also won an award.


Her name is Anna Harding. She is from Winsted, and here’s the write up about her from the program:

Anna’s dedication to her community goes beyond the political sphere. One of the first women to hold leadership positions and break down barriers from women, Anna served on various commissions and boards working to make her lifelong home a better place to live. Her time spent helping her church, the Catholic Women’s Club, the Democratic Town Committee and the are soup kitchen have made her indispensible to her community. Having recently celebrated her 100th Birthday, Anna hasn’t let anything slow her down; she continues to be active on the Board of Directors for the Open Door Soup Kitchen and the Winsted Area Health Center.

Okay, I didn’t think she looked a day over 80.

Here’s the winners from the second district, my wife, Mary von Dorster, and Shiela Hayes of Norwich.


Numerous politicians were on hand, as you might imagine. I must hand it to Dan Malloy, he can get an audience fired up.

Anyway, that’s it from me for today. I just don’t feel much like ranting lately.

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Friday Night Music-Take Five

Friday, September 24, 2010

Back in the long ago, at least before Bitches Brew came along, if there was one jazz album in what was otherwise a collection of 60s rock, it was likely to be Time Out by Dave Brubeck. The album has certainly passed the test of time. It’s still great. The signature track was Take Five.


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Socialism rears its ugly head

Friday, September 24, 2010

I sure can understand why that Wall Street fellow felt that Obama and his administration were using him and his ilk as pinatas. Just take a look at this morning’s Times:

The initial public stock offering by General Motors will be smaller than previously suggested, and the federal government will most likely sell a relatively small portion of its 61 percent stake in the company, according to people with knowledge of the preparations.

To fetch the highest possible price for the government, G.M. is planning an overall offering of stock valued at $8 billion to $10 billion, which is lower than previous internal targets, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of restrictions on public comments before an offering.

Earlier, there were suggestions the stock offering could rival the largest in United States history, when the credit card giant Visa raised more than $19 billion in 2008. G.M. and its bankers had been pushing for the largest possible offering because that would mean higher fees for the bankers and a larger pool of investors for G.M.

But the Treasury Department has made it clear to G.M. and its underwriters that the government is more interested in setting the highest price possible for the stock rather than maximizing the size of the offering. While both G.M. and the Treasury still hope to reduce the government’s stake in the company to less than 50 percent and rid the company of its Government Motors nickname, that goal may not be met, one of the people said. (Emphasis added)

I’m heartbroken. Those poor pinatas are getting gypped out of yet another chance to loot the taxpayers to inflate their fees and bonuses. And GM is going to be deprived of “a larger pool of investors” which is certainly a higher priority than realizing a top dollar return for the current investors, being as those investors are us scum of the earth taxpayers. Since when has the general interest topped the special interest of the pinatas and the business failures? Sounds like socialism to me.

Speaking of business failures, and I realize this is off the point, but this is my blog so I can opt for stream of consciousness if I want, I must note that Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy this morning. I am far too lazy to prove this by a link, but I take it as gospel that the CEOs running Blockbuster over the past 15 years were highly compensated due to their business acumen and all around John Galt-like irreplaceability. You know- they had the god given right to make more in a year than the rest of us make in a lifetime, because they were so smart and everything. And yet…, Blockbuster apparently failed to foresee the coming demise of the big box video rental model; failed to appreciate the implications of the internet and failed to react quickly enough when the threat to their business became all too clear. Failed, in other words to become Netflix before Netflix had a chance to get going. Now, you and I have an excuse if we missed this coming (and yet, lots of us did see it coming), because you and I weren’t paid millions to see it coming, and we had better things to think about, like getting from paycheck to paycheck, but what’s their excuse? Pity those poor CEOs, who now probably must make do with a few paltry millions a year sitting on the boards of other corporations that are awaiting their turn to be destroyed by these Titans of industry.

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Obama Fatigue?

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

As pretty much all the world knows, a woman named Velma Hart gave voice to what a lot of people feel when she spoke to Obama at a forum:

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I’ve been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet.

Over at Hullabaloo Digby’s take is that she was giving voice to a feeling engendered by constant right wing attacks on Obama, a feeling characterized as Clinton Fatigue back in the 90s.

And that brings me to the exhaustion part of her statement yesterday. Those of you who went through the 90s will recognize this phenomenon. It’s when the right’s ferocious attacks are so vicious and relentless that they eventually wear down average, common sense people with normal lives to lead — and even scare them a little.

In Clinton’s case it was defending him from the non-stop personal attacks that was so wearying. It took a brave soul with a taste for political combat to keep fighting in the face of that onslaught. It was called Clinton Fatigue, the sense that even people who were sympathetic to the president’s political plight and understood that his enemies were rabid and insane, just wanted it to end.

Of course, I can’t speak for the woman at the forum, but if what Digby says is true, that we are exhausted from having to defend Obama, it’s partly because the Democrats in power don’t defend him or themselves. They walked tall for about a month after the inauguration, and then retreated to the old defensive crouch, afraid to stand up for themselves or for what they believe, always anxious to court approval from the Republicans. This has been the case from the passive Obama on down, and to this day they are more comfortable attacking their own supporters than going after Republicans. The Republican base has their cheerleaders in the ranks of the politicians, but we have to go it alone. The Democrats largely ran away from Clinton during his (self inflicted) troubles, and they’re now running away from Obama and themselves in these (Bush inflicted) troubles.


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A bit more on Himes

Monday, September 20, 2010

Last week I wrote about the coming Democratic cave on the Bush tax cuts, and, among other things, I criticized Jim Himes for coming out in support of maintaining said tax cuts. I actually got a comment, the relevant portion of which reads as follows:

Himes is in a difficult position when you look at his generally wealthy constituency in Fairfield County. Himes has always voted with his constituency and has worked to bring us out of the financial runt Bush left us in… he has supported holding Wall St accountable, making health care affordable and voting for Energy Reform.

This argument has a superficial appeal, but lets examine it a bit. No constituency is monolithic and in virtually every case a representative must choose the portion of his or her constituency with which he will stand. Who has Himes chosen?

First, lets back up and recall that the tax cut in question was designed to disproportionately favor the rich, with a sliver of a tax cut for the rest of us solely to enable the Republicans to implausibly claim that they were delivering a tax cut for everyone. The tax cut was financed by borrowed money; money borrowed from, among other sources, the social security trust fund that we are now told is in such bad condition that we must trim benefits. The tax cut was bad policy when it was passed. It has not, like a good wine, improved with age.

Now, lets take a look at Himes constituency. And bear in mind that Obama’s plan affects only that portion of a taxpayer’s income that is over $250,000.00 a year. Himes represents a diverse constituency. One might say they are more affluent, on average, than the average American, but it’s hard to make the case that they are generally wealthy, if we use the $250,000.00 figure as a benchmark of wealth. The mean income in Himes district is about $80,000.00. That’s better than the national average, but it still means that the 50% of the people in his district below that median figure have no interest in seeing these tax cuts continued. I wasn’t able to find better figures on the distribution by percentiles, but I was able to find this graph, poorly organized as it is:

This is inexact, but I gather from this graph that between 3 and 5 percent of the population of Himes district makes between $200,000 and infinity a year, and I would venture to say that most of those folks are clustered at or below the $250,000.00 point. Maybe not, as this source, which I’ll quote later, says 5% of the Fairfield County population earns more than $850,000.00 a year. So lets put the affected households at 10%, which I’m sure is generous. I would stake my fortune, by the way (not that I have one) that most of those folks vote Republican. In any event, these are the constituents that Himes has chosen to represent, not the remaining 90%+, who will bear the burden of paying the principal and interest on the debt he has chosen to accumulate to continue this giveaway, a form of deficit spending that has no stimulative effect.

This tax policy does more than just prefer the rich, it undermines our democracy by increasing the inequality in this country. A nation with a high degree of economic inequality simply cannot maintain a representative democratic structure. The present tax policy, particularly if one adds the abolition of the estate tax, is designed with the purpose and intent of creating a permanent aristocracy of inherited wealth in this country. One of the main reasons for instituting the estate and income taxes was to control that phenomenon; to make sure that even the descendant of a Rockefeller would have to work for a living, to make good, in other words, on Jefferson’s observation that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God”.

This is not a new problem. Back in 1997, before the Bush giveaway, Connecticut’s comptroller noted that median income in Connecticut was stagnant but:

Despite the poor showing of median income and hourly wages, per capita income in Connecticut increased 5.7 percent between 1994 and 1995, the strongest gain since 1992. The contradictory movement in these income indicators points to increasing income stratification in Connecticut: those at the top are realizing strong income gains, and those at the bottom are losing ground. This income distribution pattern is consistent with a national trend of growing income inequality. It should be noted that Connecticut’s per capita income is the highest in the nation — 33 percent above the national average for 1995.

If I might mangle George Orwell: all places are unequal but some are more unequal than others. Fairfield County is the most unequal of all:

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metro area has the most income inequality of any area in the United States. In this region, the bottom 20 percent of the population earns an average of $17,000. That’s a bit better off than most of the country. Across the United States, the bottom 20 percent of the population earns an average of $12,000. But in Southern Connecticut, the top 5 percent in the area are earning an incredible $823,000 a year, or 49 times as much as their poor neighbors.

It is those poor and middle class people, who must bear the burden of the debt we are accumulating to let those 5% keep their undeserved tax cut. Why isn’t Himes representing them? There are more of them after all, and a greater proportion of them are Democrats-the very people who put him in office.

But, as Paul Krugman points out, these rich people are angry, because the rest of us can’t understand how hard it is to get by on a mere half million or more a year. And they know how to get their way:

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Those are the people that Himes is representing.

But with due respect to Paul, I think John Fogarty made Krugman’s point better, or at least more poetically, more than 30 years ago:

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don’t they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

..

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more!


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Guess I won’t be going

Sunday, September 19, 2010

When the idea first surfaced, heaven only knows its origins, for Stephen Colbert to lead a rally in Washington to “Restore Truthiness” I was intrigued. The idea had a certain Abbie Hoffmanesque flair to it. As I saw it, such a rally in favor of a concept that is almost impossible to define seemed like the perfect counterpoint to the Beck rally in favor of (or against, as the case may be) the voices in the heads of Glenn and his followers. Were a rally for Truthiness, led by the faux Glenn Beck, attended by people whose sole purpose was to mock Beck and his minions-were that rally to outdraw Beck, and I think that it could, it would send a message on a number of levels, particularly to the media which has given so much attention to a group of people who are, by and large, sheep being led to the slaughter.

Unfortunately, John Stewart has chosen to ruin a perfectly good idea, by getting himself involved. What would have worked as satire may not work as serious stuff. We now have a too earnest Stewart announcing a “Million Moderate March” a/k/a March to Restore Sanity, to be answered by a Colbert counter-rally to “restore fear”, which itself hits the wrong note-“Restoring Truthiness” was a far better idea. In addition, we have Stewart at his worst, positing a false equivalency between the left and the right:

The purpose, he said, is to present an alternative to what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the Americans who have dominated the national political discussion with extreme rhetoric. Mr. Stewart tarred both parties with that charge, citing the attacks on the right accusing President Obama of being everything from a socialist to un-American and on the left accusing former President George W. Bush of being a war criminal.

He made the same claim about both extremes dominating the national discourse on his show. The current situation would be improved if that were true, but it’s not, and producing a few pictures of left wingers carrying signs doesn’t make it true. There are whackos on the left, that can’t be denied. But they are not given aid and comfort by the Democratic Party, which is far too busy distancing itself from its normal rank and file to even think about embracing a few extremists. Even when the left turns out hundreds of thousands of perfectly normal people to protest a (yes, it was) criminal war, we are ignored. We dominate nothing, and Stewart has to know that. The Republican Party, on the other hand, has encouraged and embraced the wild eyed rhetoric that gets its followers aroused. The media has given out of proportion coverage to even sparsely attended tea party gatherings, while pretty much ignoring the people who are funding this “movement” from the shadows. There is no right winger so extreme that he or she will not be given a respectful hearing by our punditocracy. Right wing ideas that have been proven wrong over and over ( e.g. tax cuts cure all social ills) are treated with respect. Right wing lies (e.g., social security on the verge of financial collapse) are passed on as gospel.

There’s nothing new about any of this. The effort to delegitimize Obama, for example, is just a racially charged re-enactment of what they did to Clinton.

Sometimes it gets a bit out of hand, as Lisa Murkowski and Karl Rove have just learned in different ways, but the Republicans have not distanced themselves from the extreme, they have embraced it at every opportunity. They consider Murkowski and Bennett to be victims of friendly fire, regrettable, but expendable, casualties.

Speaking of delegitimizing presidents, was there any concerted movement on the visible left to delegitimize Bush? Recall, that he was illegitimate, given that his cronies on the Supreme Court stole the election for him. Few people were even aware that there was a sizable demonstration at his inauguration protesting his selection, because the media chose to ignore it. In the mainstream, including the entire Beltway Democratic party, it was considered impolite to mention that he had lost the election. Far easier to make Al Gore into a clown, which is what they proceeded to do.

Did any Democrat of national stature give aid and comfort to the few conspiracy theorists who felt that Bush knew in advance about 9-11? This is an example of left sided craziness that Stewart mentioned. Compare the number of prominent Democrats (zero, equal to the number of minutes the media spent talking about it) that took up that cause to the dozens of Republicans holding high office who have thrown raw meat to the birthers, with Newt Gingrich being but the latest example. Any Democrat that pandered to a paranoid fringe would pretty quickly be drummed out of the party, and if not, he or she would certainly not be given respectful hearings on television networks, even networks with names that don’t begin with “F”. Our very few paranoids are not in the discourse, their quite numerous paranoids have their own television shows and are quite definitely part of the discourse. Do any Democrats dance to the allegedly far left, unhinged Rachel Maddow (yes, I know she’s nothing if not reasonable, but we must be even handed, mustn’t we) the way the Republicans march to the beat of Limbaugh’s drum?

There is simply nothing equivalent on the left to what the right has been doing, and it is intellectually dishonest for Stewart to say that there is.

Over the course of the last 40 years the “left”, to the extent it can be called that, has busied itself trying to preserve the institutions created by the New Deal, not to mention taking on the burden of preserving our constitutional rights against a hostile judiciary, as opposed to a right wing that insists on adherence to the Constitution at all times, except when it happens to advantage blacks, liberals, Muslims, or any other group not composed of angry white people and their corporate puppeteers. Much of what we are advocating was considered mainstream in the pre-Reagan era. In any rational society, the left in this country would be considered “conservative”, since we fit the dictionary definition of that term, but this is not a rational society, and it is the right that has got us there. There are, in fact, no more “conservatives” in our national life, they have been replaced by reactionaries.

One more thing. Lets not forget that, while Obama is definitely not Hitler-like (if he were, the people saying so would be in concentration camps), Bush was a war criminal, by his own admission. Cheney was too, by his own admission. The lack of a conviction doesn’t change that fact. There is such a thing as truth, and speaking the truth, however uncomfortable that truth may be, should not be considered a sign of extremism.

So, unfortunately, I guess I won’t be going to DC, though when I first heard the idea for the Restore Truthiness rally, I started making plans. Despite all of the above, I might still have considered going, because after all is said and done, since he’s doing it, it’s important that a lot of people go, if for no other reason than to deprive Glenn Beck of bragging rights. I won’t be going because I’ll be doing what Stewart will be preventing all those demonstrators from doing: working on the weekend before the election to restore sanity to our national discourse by doing what I can to prevent a right wing takeover.


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Try and Watch

Saturday, September 18, 2010

I must apologize for failing to put this on my normal Friday Night Music Video. The Peckinpaugh campaign actually put out a press release and encouraged people to watch it, but quickly took it down after people actually did. My wife watched it just before they took it down, and, among others perhaps, alerted CTBlogger, who quickly put things to rights.

I remember when I was a kid I often had trouble watching I Love Lucy, because she got herself into such embarrassing situations it would make me squirm with discomfort. This video brings back that feeling. I confess I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the whole thing. I’ve never liked Simmons, but he is a fellow human being, and it’s hard to watch him make a total ass of himself, even though he does appear to enjoy doing it. See if you can sit through it without squirming:


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Friday Night Music

Friday, September 17, 2010

A few weeks ago, on my Labor Day Special, I posted an audio of Paul Robeson, but reserved the right to revisit him, since there was no video with the song I posted. So, that’s what I’m doing tonight.

According to the liner notes of my set of Show Boat CDs (the John McGlinn reconstruction):

Of all places, Show Boat was born in a hotel room in New London, Connecticut on Wednesday, August 20, 1924, around midnight. Edna Ferber had just witnessed the dismally unsuccessful pre-Broadway debut of her new play, Old Man Minick, in New London’s ancient Lyceum Theatre.

So, there’s a local connection to this great American musical. Robeson was not the first to sing Old Man River, but it appears that he made the song his own. This version is, unfortunately, marred by a voice over pointing out the obvious:

What a voice the man had.


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Am I Wrong Yet?

Friday, September 17, 2010

A few months ago I wrote the following about how the Democrats would blow the great tax cut debate:

Here is what will happen. The Blue Dog Democrats, among whom are many recruited by Rahm Emanuel, will undermine the narrative in the House, and join a unanimous Republican caucus to extend the tax breaks, assuming Nancy Pelosi doesn’t pull an embarrassing about face and pull it from the floor. But she won’t do that, because the Republicans, without a hint of embarrassment, aided and abetted by the media that has never had a problem with Republican obstruction, will demand an up or down vote, because that’s the democratic way.

After the tax cut passes the House, it must pass the Senate, where, surely, one would think, even if it gets to the floor, there would at least be 41 Democrats with spine enough to filibuster it. But no, the Republicans, without a hint of embarrassment, aided and abetted by the media that has never had a problem with Republican obstruction, will demand an up or down vote, because that’s the democratic way.

The Democrats will cave, and the Republicans will get their tax break for the rich. Perhaps Obama will veto it, but don’t bet on it. Remember, this is the Bush tax cut for the rich, which will expire if Congress does nothing, which is precisely what Congress will not do. The Democrats will allow themselves to be manipulated into making this massive transfer from the middle class to the rich permanent.

Fondly did I hope, fervently did I pray, that I would be proven wrong, but so far, no such luck. I’m probably wrong on some of the process specifics, but on the larger picture, unfortunately, I’m spot on so far.

Republicans are honing their unified message that will, no doubt, unopposed as it will be, persuade a confused nation of the necessity of a plan that is now politically unpopular and will forever be economically disastrous.

Meanwhile, Democrats such as Connecticut’s own Jim Himes are trampling all over what should be a winning narrative for Democrats . Himes, like many of his Democratic compadres, is simply lying when he asserts that a broad swath of economists feel the tax cuts for the rich should be continued. Thus does he add insult to the folks who put him there while he injures just about everybody. But, of course, he’s a dedicated progressive next to the Blue Dogs who are trying to one up the Republicans by giving the rich tax breaks even the Republicans aren’t requesting.

The only question that remains: Will Obama stick to his recently announced position (so far he is, but we’ve heard that before), or “compromise” by giving the Republicans everything they want?

Stay tuned, but I predict it won’t be pretty.


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An American Hero Dude

Thursday, September 16, 2010

It’s folks like this who make you think there might still be hope:

Jacob Isom—the rattail-coiffed hero who swiped a Koran from right-wing fanatics and ran—has a dream. “I want to be inHigh Times,” he told me by telephone. Then he showed me a t-shirt screenprinted with his face.

After swiping Christian demagogue David Grisham’s kerosene-soaked Koran from a public park in Amarillo, Texas, Jacob gave an interview to a local news crew. Footlong rattail flying in the wind, he announced, “I was like, ‘Dude, you have no Koran!”

If High Times hasn’t picked him up yet, they’re way behind the curve, because he’s everywhere else. While we’re at it, lets lift a glass (or, in Jacob’s case, light a joint) to the people of Amarillo, Texas who swiftly organized a peaceful demonstration to show their disgust at the local man of god that was trying to stir up hate:

As an added bonus, here’s the Autotune version:

You can get your Jacob Isom T-Shirts here.


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