As I prepare to attend next week’s International Towards Carfree Cities Conference in Portland (from which I’ll be doing daily posts on this blog) — traveling up by train with a big group of bicyclists and alternative transportation activists from San Francisco — the newsgroups and carfree living websites have been abuzz over this simple image:
Why go gaga over a presidential candidate on a bike? After all, John Kerry rode one and President Bush reportedly takes regular mountain bike rides. The difference for those who promote bicycling as a viable urban transportation option is that Obama rode in a big city, in street clothes, on an inexpensive bike, and was even hauling something (probably his daughter, although that isn’t clear). And he chose to spend his downtime cycling through Chicago with his family shortly after saying this in Portland: “If we are going to solve our energy problems we’ve got to think long term. It’s time for us to be serious about investing in alternative energy. It’s time for us to get serious about raising fuel efficiency standards on cars. It’s time that the entire country learn from what’s happening right here in Portland with mass transit and bicycle lanes and funding alternative means of transportation.”
Contrast that with today’s news that Senate Republicans have blocked legislation that would have taxed the obscene profits now been reaped by the five big largest American oil companies, which took in a staggering $36 billion in just the first three months of this year. Just imagine how many bike lanes and transit improvements could be funded with the proposed 25 percent tax on unreasonably high profit levels? Or by getting out of Iraq, with its price tag of more than $250 million per day?
Forget the detailed analysis of their economic plans; the differing visions of these two men couldn’t be more clear. We either keep cooking the planet, fighting the world, and begging the rich for crumbs and spare change, or we try something different.
Republicans
The bicyclist vs. the oil industry’s best friend
Why is PG&E attacking Leno on education?
It’s not like schools are their business – at all. But the $13 billion utility company is the big money behind recent television ads depicting Mark Leno as a foe of children and schools.
“San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno claims that he’s for better schools,” the ad informs, according to a transcript provided by the California Teacher’s Association. “Yet in 2004, it was Leno who joined Republicans, and with one vote to spare, cut $3.1 billion from California schools.”
Actually, said CTA in a news release, “It distorts Leno’s support for a state budget in 2004 that temporarily reduced some funding for schools. The budget was approved by the Legislature with bipartisan support in that financially difficult year for the state.”
CTA, which represents 90 percent of the state’s educators, endorsed Leno in the District 3 State Senate race, and held a rally today in Mill Valley to affirm their support and criticize PG&E.
“Why is PG&E behind this?” CTA’s Mike Myslinski wondered when we spoke to him. “Leno has a strong education record and parents and teachers are very disturbed by this ad.”
The ad was attributed to a political action committee called “Protect Our Kids,” which late independent expenditure filings [PDF] with the CA Secretary of State show is heavily funded by CALIFORNIANS FOR A CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE, A COALITION OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS, TAXPAYERS, AND PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY. [PDF]
Looks like the San Francisco Police Officers Association, as well as a couple of out of state companies, also kicked in to cover the $100,000 in cash that’s been spent on anti-Leno propaganda that has nothing to do with energy – clean or otherwise. But, as CTA points out, “The PG&E-funded ad comes at a time when one of Leno’s opponents in the Senate race, Joe Nation, is being criticized for his huge financial support from business interests. PG&E is a supporter of Nation.”
It wasn’t all that long ago Leno was shaking hands with PG&E over at the LGBT center.
Food and the city
When we talk about "regional" cuisines or cooking, we often find ourselves talking about some quarter of Italy. For centuries, Italy was a politically fragmented land a jigsaw puzzle of kingdoms, duchies, principalities, serene republics, and city-states and did not become a modern nation-state until the 19th century.
Yet what politics could not achieve, food could. As John Dickie demonstrates in his engrossing Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food (Free Press, $26), trade among the peninsula’s cities in the late Middle Ages became the foundation for the distinctive cuisine we know today as Italian. Cooking in the Italian cities was more similar than not, Dickie suggests, and it was immeasurably better than what was to be found in the impoverished countryside, where peasants were practically boiling weeds for soup. In our time, a love of rustic Italian cooking is just one of many food fetishes mostly harmless, but maybe not quite, since under the guise of lauding a rural bounty and style that never really existed, it subtly reinforces an American prejudice against cities. We already have Jeffersonian myths about our own countryside as a redoubt of wisdom, rectitude, health, and happiness that reach back beyond the founding of the republic.
We have myths about our cities too, but most are of the if-only variety. Urban utopians the people who think cities would be little paradises if only we could rid them of homeless people or cars or Republicans or loud partiers would do well to consider Dickie’s portraiture of Italy’s cities across eight centuries. Like all cities, always and everywhere, they are full of dirt, noise, and disease as well as cruelty, wealth, vanity, status consumption, insecurity, and vicious politicking. They are nasty and exciting, as we would expect from any sort of social experiment that concentrates large numbers of human beings in a small space.
The lesson of cities, then, is that they are marketplaces not only of goods and services, but of ideas. They are messy with conflict among innumerable worlds and subworlds. And much of that conflict is pointless or even counterproductive but not all of it. Sometimes a random spark will catch and burn brightly, and then we all say huzzah, or buon appetito.
Paul Reidinger
› paulr@sfbg.com
The next ugly high-rise
EDITORIAL The San Francisco Planning Department is preparing for a new set of zoning rules that could allow a 1,200-foot high-rise office building half again the height of the Transamerica Pyramid near First and Mission Streets. It’s part of the devil’s bargain for the new Transbay Terminal, and it badly needs to be reined in.
The proposal for gigantic new towers is the city’s way to finance reconstruction of the terminal, which ought to be the central link in a regional transportation network that combines buses and high speed rail downtown. It’s a worthy project and an expensive one. Estimates for the new terminal run around $1 billion. And neither the city nor the state have that kind of money right now.
There’s a reason for that, of course: Californians have been living for decades in a fantasy world, a place where grand public achievements like a great park system, a great public university system, new trains and roads can be built and maintained without anyone having to pay for them. Once upon a time, tax money built this state’s preeminent public institutions; now even the mention of higher taxes sends Democrats and Republicans alike scurrying for political cover.
So the only way San Francisco officials can see to pay for the monumental new train and bus station a facility, we’re told, that could rival Grand Central Terminal in New York is to sell off the skyline. Gerald Hines, a Texas developer, is prepared to pay $350 million for a single plot of land near the terminal if he can build a massive high-rise there. The same goes for the rest of the public land around the site: the higher the buildings the city will allow, the more cash that comes in for the project. Since this is San Francisco, affordable housing will be part of the payoff.
We support the Transbay Terminal project, and we support more affordable housing but this isn’t a good deal for the city.
For starters, we’re not at all convinced San Francisco needs another giant office tower, much less a complex of giant buildings choking a corner of South of Market. Who are we trying to attract to the city? The giant outfits that can pay the high rents to fill these buildings are not doing much for the local economy. In fact, small, locally-owned businesses create most of the new jobs in this city. And while Dean Macris, the former planning director who is still a development advisor to Mayor Gavin Newsom, loves big high spires, a lot of us find them hideous. That ugly tower on Rincon Hill, which has nothing but housing for the very rich, is a blight on the skyline. Why would we want more of the same?
This week’s presentation will be the beginning of a long process that needs to end with a rational development plan (a transit village with a heavy mix of affordable housing?) that’s driven by the city’s needs. And San Francisco officials need to take a hard look at whether auctioning off the skyline is the only way to fund the Transbay Terminal.
I’m back
After an epic five-week trip to Bolivia and Peru, I’m back manning the news desk here at the Guardian and trying to catch up on what’s happening. And it seems the biggest things that have changed in my absence are my perspective and energy levels.
The Republicans in Sacramento and Mayor Gavin Newsom here in San Francisco are continuing to push draconian cuts to government services rather than having the courage to challenge the mindless “no new taxes” mantra and have the wealthy pay their fair share. And neither the Democrats in Sacramento or Washington D.C., nor the Board of Supervisors here, seem to be doing much to challenge this race to the bottom. It’s not that they don’t understand. In the last two days, we’ve had Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and Assembly member Loni Hancock in for endorsement interviews, and they powerfully sound the message that something needs to change and they’re willing to work for it. But with the labor unions distracted by infighting, Democratic politicians battling one another (such as Carole Migden and Mark Leno, who we have the unfortunate task of deciding between for our endorsements that come out April 30), the mainstream media both smaller and more trivial, and many other factors stacked against our species finally getting wise to the problems we face, it looks like an uphill battle.
Does all this make me want to flee back to South America? No, it makes me want to renew the fight for truth and justice. How about you?
Dems running out of ballots in Texas
*UPDATE: It’s happening in Ohio, too.
Below is a quick post from the Austin American-Statesman. Does the shortage of ballots in some states foreshadow the Dems taking on traditionally Republican sections of the country?
Williamson Democratic ballots running low
By Andrea Lorenz | Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 01:44 PM
So many Democrats have voted in Republican stronghold Williamson County that ballots are already running low in some precincts.
“I have a little bit of concern that (the Democrats) didn’t order enough ballots,” Elections Administrator Rick Barron said.
Democratic election workers in some Williamson County precincts have called the county elections office today to say they’re already halfway through their ballots, and the afternoon and early evening heavy traffic has yet to happen.
The Democrats ordered about 50,000 paper ballots, Barron said, and the Republicans ordered 57,000. Each Williamson County polling location has one electronic voting machine. If precincts run out of paper ballots completely, voters will be directed to the machines, Barron said, which could mean long lines later today.
The location most in danger is Precinct 382 at Cactus Ranch Elementary School in Round Rock. Richard Torres, the chair of the Williamson County Democratic Party, said two more electronic machines are being delivered to Cactus Ranch to make up for it.
Torres said his party ordered 4.5 times as many ballots as the Secretary of State recommended, according to the state formula of how many people to expect to vote.
“People are just coming out all over the place,” Torres said.
Barron also clarified that the problems with the Williamson County election site did not cause a crash of the system, but the site was only allowing 150 people on the site at one time. This created a system down notice to the other people trying to access the site. The problem has been fixed, he said, by allowing more users to visit the site.
“Never surrender!” Romney surrenders
Welp, the boardroom Mormon is out, and now it’s up to Bridge Over River McCain and Huckabee Hound to feast on his Republican delegates’ innards. (I think. These caucus rules are so twisted I’m sometimes wishing we were back before the days of Hubert Humphrey McGee.)
I must say I rejoiced when Giulievil bit it, even though I wanted him in as a spoiler. There must be a lot of backroom arm twisting (waterboarding?) among the Reps right now to get Huck out of the race as well, before the rest of the religious unright leap right into his sweaty drag queen man hands.
A side note: has anyone else noticed how much Romney and McCain both look like waxen marionette creations from Thunderbirds?
Eeeeery
Anyway, Romney said “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” according to the AP.
He also said he had to step aside “Because I love America in this time of war …”
I think that says it all for the Republicans in general, no?
Bring back the car tax
EDITORIAL Assemblymember Mark Leno has shared with us some numbers from the legislature’s budget office, and they’re pretty compelling. Of the $14.5 billion shortfall the governor says we’ll see in the next 18 months, a full $9.36 billion 65 percent comes from exactly one source. That’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political decision to get rid of the state’s motor vehicle license fee. He calls it the car tax.
It’s crazy: for years the people of California paid the fee, which used to be 2 percent of the car’s value, to register their cars. It’s not a perfect tax, but it’s not a terrible one people with expensive cars pay more and it brought in a huge amount of money. When Schwarzenegger ran for office he promised to get rid of it, and that’s one of the first things he did after he was elected but he never explained how the state was going to cover the cost.
California hasn’t been overspending on education and parks. It hasn’t been wasting huge amounts of money on social services or sending too much to cities. The state was already living on a rather modest budget. And then along came the recession, the huge interest payments ($2 billion) on the governor’s recent bail-out bonds, and the elimination of the vehicle license fee, and suddenly, there’s a massive budget shortfall.
The legislature’s pretty hamstrung here: Leno and some others will try, and try mightily, to bring in some new money, but it takes two-thirds of the State Assembly and the State Senate to pass a budget, and the Republicans, who have sworn on Ronald Reagan’s grave never to raise taxes, control more than a third of each house. And everyone, even the liberal Democrats, agrees that if you take a poll, the vast majority of Californians will oppose reinstating the dreaded "car tax."
But if you asked the question right "Would you pay $200 per year to save public education, parks, and health services in California?" you might get a better answer. This needs to be a massive, statewide campaign and education program because unless we can turn around sentiment on the vehicle license fee, the next few years are going to be very, very ugly
Reviving Reagan: A burst of Durst
B3 campaign note: Durst is right: there are no real Republican candidates and there is no president for them to fall back on except Reagan. I think the Republicans made a terrible mistake when they left Cheney on the ticket, probably the worst vice president since Aaron Burr, and the kind of bull who carries his own china closet around with him. They should have kicked him off the ticket four years ago and put in the most electable candidate they could find to run as vice president and emerging presidential candidate. Those mistakes are fatal in politics. Thank God the Republicans are making them, one after another.
By the way, I miss Will on the old Will and Willie show on the Air America/Quake radio via Clear Channel. He did a “burst of Durst” on every show, which was always a clever and biting commentary on the day’s news.
Quite a performance. I can almost hear him doing his “burst” as I read his latest column. Willie was of course ex-Mayor Willie Brown. Will and Willie were an excellent show, getting better all the time, and giving San Francisco
a marvelous showcase on Air America radio. Now there are only shows centered from God knows where.
However, John Scott is holding down the 4 to 6 p.m. slot with a creditable left-leaning news program on 960 the Quake. B3
Life of the party
› amanda@sfbg.com
GREEN CITY Amid the much-hyped speculation about whom Democratic and Republican party voters will choose as their respective presidential nominees this year, California members of the Green Party will vote for their representative Feb. 5.
Candidates Jared Ball, Kent Hesplay, Jesse Johnson Jr., Cynthia McKinney, and Kat Swift met for their only planned debate Jan. 13 at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, addressing a near-capacity crowd and laying out platforms that are decidedly more aggressive in tackling environmental and social problems than any proposed by the major-party candidates.
The candidates echoed one another on plans for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and shifting funding from the Pentagon into domestic programs for education, health care, and jobs. All professed grave concern about the environment, with Johnson calling the coal-mining method of mountaintop removal "ground zero for climate change."
By the end of the debate, Ball, a Baltimore hip-hop artist and professor in communications studies, fully endorsed McKinney, a former Democratic congressperson from Georgia. He emphasized that his greatest desire was for a strong national movement of people of all races, places, and income levels to continue what he called "incomplete revolutions" in the civil, labor, and women’s rights movements.
McKinney received the longest, most sustained standing ovation of the evening when she said, "Please unite the party. We can’t do it divided." She said the Greens represent the best hope of bringing together the large percentage of the country that’s spurned membership in both the Democratic and Republican parties. "I’ve never seen anything like I’ve seen in the Green Party," she said. "Please come together."
Also on hand not participating in the debate but taking questions afterward was Ralph Nader, a presidential candidate in 1996, 2000, and 2004, who hasn’t yet ruled out another run this year. Some Greens and other high-profile figures are urging him not to run and expressing concern that he’s become a polarizing figure who could hurt the party. Nader addressed the issue of party unity by saying, "I have very little to offer about how to unite the Green Party internally."
But he told the Guardian that if powerful institutional forces collude to limit his or the Green Party nominee’s access to the ballot, as he charges they did in 2004, he might run to highlight the need for greater political participation, saying, "I’ll be deciding within the next month." Nader has sued the Democratic Party, the John KerryJohn Edwards campaign, the Service Employees International Union, and a number of law firms and political action committees for allegedly conspiring to prevent him from running for president in 2004.
"Ballot access is a major civil liberties issue," Nader said. "Without voters’ rights, candidates’ rights don’t mean anything."
Yet the five announced candidates and Green Party activists on hand all seemed ready to rally around a new nominee for 2008, even as questions remain about whether the party should pool its energy and resources for national races or focus on state and municipal elections. Greens represent less than 3 percent of San Francisco’s registered voters and are outnumbered by Republicans four to one. Statewide, Greens amount to less than 1 percent. However, nearly 20 percent of California voters and 30 percent in San Francisco decline to state any party affiliation.
"I’m not sure yet that running a presidential candidate helps to grow the party, based on the experiences of the last several presidential attempts, especially in contrast to us focusing on races that can be won locally," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, a Green who helped found the party in California, told the Guardian outside the debate. When asked if a national Green Party candidate trickles down attention and funding to the grassroots races, he said, "The theory is that it does. There isn’t any concrete evidence that it has coattails."
Since the Nader runs, Greens are wary of being tagged as presidential spoilers, but when that question was posed to this year’s prospects, they denied that it accurately portrays the voting landscape. As McKinney said, "When you’ve got a million black people who go to the polls … and nobody counts their votes … then don’t you dare call the Green Party spoilers."
Editors note: An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that Ralph Nader was the Green Party candidate for president in 2004. Nader ran as an independent. The Greens nominated David Cobb.
George McGovern: Impeach Bush & Cheney!
B3 note: Good for George McGovern. Good for the Washington Post for running this important timely commentary
in its Sunday edition. Question: how many other papers will run it?
The McGovern piece reminds me of a major political point: that a big reason the Pelosi Democrats in
Washington have so cravenly caved in to the Bush initiatives, on the war and much else, is because Pelosi wrongheadly pulled the impeachment issue off the table before the last election. This meant, among other things, that the Democrats at the first bugle lost their most important bit of muscle and leverage. The result has been disastrous and the war is now surging.
It’s good that Cindy Sheehan is running against Pelosi and will force these issues into the public arena. Maybe, just maybe, Pelosi will be forced to debate Sheehan and will be forced in the November election to conduct a real campaign for the first time in her home territory to keep her Speaker of the House post.
Personal note about McGovern: he comes from South Dakota, a state so conservative that it has outlawed abortions. Its eastern border is l7 miles or so from my northwestern Iowa hometown of Rock Rapids. I have followed him closely through the years. I still marvel that a liberal of his force and eloquence could represent South Dakota for so many years in Congress. Imagine if he were the Speaker of the House.
Why I Believe Bush Must Go
By George McGovern
The Washington Post
Sunday 06 January 2008
Nixon was bad. These guys are worse.
As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have
belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is
to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach
President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign.
I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an
expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
Today I have made a different choice.
Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment.
The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial
partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and
statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the
chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.
But what are the facts?
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses.
They have repeatedly violated the Constitution.
They have transgressed national and international law.
They have lied to the American people time after time.
Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country
to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world.
These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional
standard.
From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team’s assumption of power was the
product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially
challenged – perhaps even by a congressional investigation.
In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed
throughout the Bush-Cheney regime.
The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous,
illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq.
That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many
times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an
estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from
the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their
country.
The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is
expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed
from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9
trillion – by far the highest in our national history.
All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that
the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in
violation of international law.
This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional
law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic
torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon
administration.
But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the
case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election.
The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon
presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national
history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?
How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of
killing, immorality and lawlessness?
It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived
Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had
nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an “imminent
threat” to the United States.
The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in
the 9/11 attacks – another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I
have recalled Jefferson’s observation: “Indeed I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just.”
The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of
fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the
invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the
illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents.
The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative
members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and
Muslim world – more than a billion people.
Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off
the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries
without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August
that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to
the country and the world.
This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the
Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran.
I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush
invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S.
influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.
Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of
their administration, their policies – especially the war in Iraq – have
increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States.
Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush
and those of his son.
When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George
H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United
Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel
Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost.
Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration
established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international
arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions.
Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten
others.
Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military
occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil
strife.
It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James
A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all
opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral
responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the
Hurricane Katrina catastrophe.
The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: “I
have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this
situation in New Orleans.”
Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the
collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst
natural disaster in U.S. history.
Impeachment is unlikely, of course.
But we must still urge Congress to act.
Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution
to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land.
It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some
of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to
support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray.
This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the
Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, “it wasn’t until the
most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of
hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – and argued that, as Commander in
Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override
our country’s laws – that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as
I did during Watergate…
A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law – and
repeatedly violates the law – thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.”
I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in
the opening decade of the 21st century.
This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a
series of rational presidents and Congresses.
At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult
rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long
enough to see the healing begin.
There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have
sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as
the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II.
We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic
blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.
Newsom taps law-and-order Republican
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to hire former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan to head the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice speaks volumes about his administration’s philosophy and priorities.
It’s bad enough that Ryan is a Republican (Newsom has appointed several Republicans to important positions, including his disgraced former OES director AnnaMarie Conroy and Planning Commissioner Michael Antonini, but never any Greens). But Ryan is a right wing ideologue and Bush loyalist who incompetently ran the U.S. Attorney’s Office here into the ground and wrongfully imprisoned citizen journalist Josh Wolfe. This is the guy who will handle law enforcement policy in progressive San Francisco? Did Newsom know this stuff? Did he care? As the mayor begins his second term with nary a signal as to his intentions, Newsom isn’t offering much hope that he knows what he’s doing or that he plans to act in the best interests of all San Franciscans.
Hurray! The Iowans did it!
B3 note: The Iowans did it. They sent out last night from their caucuses a clear and unambigous message: they demand change, they anointed the first real black candidate for president as their change agent, they don’t see the Clintons as change agents, they want populism, they are suspicious of big money and attack ads, they don’t want another Bush in the White House, they facilitated the passing of the torch to the next generation, they provided a public laboratory in democracy for the world to see. And it was all a wonderful show. Here is the final summing up from Carolyn Schmidt, our now veteran citizen journalist operating out of of the real grassroots in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and an Obama caucus in a neighborhood elementary school cafeteria.
By Carolyn Schmidt
Cedar Rapids, Iowa–Some of us Iowans just follow our heart, I guess. We just LIKE Obama and the things he helps us dream about–not very practical, perhaps. Edwards did well too, though. The fact that he slipped past Hillary means big money isn’t everything, and I think the Romney defeat carries that message too. Iowans resent all that extravagant spending. And even many of the Republicans were turned off by Romney’s unrelenting, repetitive attack ads. Hillary was appealing to many, but when it got right down to it, they saw her as part of the same old Washington game-playing.
Edwards’ ads about “looking our children in the eye” and telling them that we sold out their future are very powerful. I trust he’ll continue with those across the country.
I was sorry Biden and Dodd didn’t do better, because they certainly both have impressive international knowledge and experience, but in the caucus system their supporters had to have large enough numbers in a given precinct to be viable. In our precinct, we had a record-setting 239 people crammed into an elementary school cafeferia (compared to 104 in 2006). Candidates had to have 51 voters/supporters to be considered viable. Obama drew 164 of those votes in the end, up from an initial 134 by the addition of Richardson and Biden supporters who switched to Obama when their count came out short of the viable number.
We had more black people there than I knew lived in our precinct and lots of young people–students 18 and 19, and young couples in their early 20s. The younger folks were nearly all enthusiastic Obama supporters. Even though extra long benches had been brought in in anticipation of an extra large turnout, probably 50 people or so spent the full two and a half hours standing or switching places with kind souls who took pity on them.
Iowa: who is “reasonable” back there?
B3 note: I asked Carolyn Schmidt, our ace citizen journalist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to check out the column of Peggy Noonan, the former Republican speech writer, in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal.
I enjoy Noonan, a rock-ribbed Republican, but an intelligent and witty one, who is covering the race from afar.
She is looking for a “reasonable” candidate, finds Joe Biden and Tom Dodd “reasonable,” finds John Edwards”unreasonable,” finds Obama is not “on fire,” and doesn’t like Hillary Clinton much at all on much of anything. Here is Carolyn’s response, filed Sunday, Dec. 30, from the heart of the Iowa campaign. Much more to come, stay tuned.
By Carolyn Schmidt
Cedar Rapids, Iowa–I checked out Peggy Noonan’s column. I think she’s picking the candidates the Republicans would like to compete with. Of course I disagree with her choice of Romney as “reasonable” and Hillary as “unreasonable” and having a “command and control” mentality. To me, Romney comes across a controller and an opportunist, who will say what he thinks voters will go for but will do as he pleases in the White House. Hillary, as a U.S. Senator and as a former first lady, has had considerably more exposure to foreign policy issues than Romney, as a former state governor and businessman. It’s clear that Noonan just doesn’t like Hillary personally, in fact I think Hillary is the candidate the Republicans fear most as an opponent in this race. Maybe that’s as good a reason as any to nominate her.
And Noonan’s comment about Obama not being “on fire” is of course dead wrong–though I agree that he’s not likely to go for the theatrics she’s afraid of. At least in person, Obama is the most energized of the bunch. That’s why he’s so appealing to young people as well as to us older folks. She seems to like much about Obama in spite of her remarks about his age and experience. His good judgment, intelligence, skills as a speaker, and his demonstrated concern for the powerless and the abused or ignored are compelling.