Weekend Politics

Ok, now to some politics. This Friday I went to an event that was hosted by my stepdaughter, Meredith Bunch of Midstate College. Edwin Eisendrath , is challenging incumbent Rod Blagojevich for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. Eisendrath's biography reads, in part:

Edwin brings to the race a long record of public service. He began his career as a teacher. As a student at Harvard University, Edwin took a year off to work in a school in Appalachia. After graduation, he became a teacher in the Chicago public schools. It was Edwin’s desire to improve our schools that led him into elective office. He spent nearly eight years as a Chicago alderman fighting to improve public education.

While in the City Council, Edwin created a new set of zoning tools and put them to use in order to save manufacturing jobs. This innovative strategy resulted in the creation of what has become the most successful commercial district in the Midwest. The Clybourn Corridor, which Edwin set up, generates so much sales tax revenue it has contributed significantly to holding down property taxes for everyone in the city.

Edwin left the City Council to apply similarly innovative strategies on a much larger scales. President Bill Clinton appointed him to become a Regional Administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban and Development (HUD). While there, Edwin worked to help communities across the State of Illinois.[...]

Edwin returned to the private sector ten years ago. Still looking for innovative solutions to important problems, he set about finding ways to provide people greater access to higher education. At Unext.com, Edwin helped create an online consortium college with The University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Stanford University aimed at providing working adults with access to high quality advanced degrees.

Later, at Kendall College, he helped relocate and revive a troubled college to create a place that prepares young people for careers that are growing in Illinois.

Edwin’s private sector experience as a college administrator and leader makes him uniquely qualified to reverse one of our state’s most disturbing trends: In the past eight years, the average income in Illinois has declined by $6,000. The big exception to this is among people with advanced degrees. Edwin has spent ten years thinking about ways to expand access to higher education. As governor, he will work to find innovative solutions to this problem, as he has done in the areas of elementary and secondary education, job creation and public housing.

He gave a brief presentationion concerning education, and didn't talk all that much about politics, per se. He mentioned that Illinois is 35'th in the nation in job growth (and well behind neighboring states and other states of the same size) and that we are 50'th in the nation in terms of how much of our school funding comes from local property tax.

He points out that this discourages new businesses and industries from opening up here and also points out that areas which have modest houses need to be taxed at a higher rate (percentage) than those areas which have more expensive houses.

I asked him: "if we reduce property taxes, where does the extra revenue come from" and he made an honest reply: there is no way to know as yet, as that will have to be dictated by the economic situation at the time that the governor enters office. He mentioned the income tax, sales tax, and possibly increasing the amount of things subject to sales tax.

In short, his answer was honest, reasonable, and would open him up to get creamed on it, politically. He did say that other states have made such programs work, and he used Virginia as an example. In fact, he used the Virginia example several times.

He also spoke of the need to get the state government away from micromanaging every little situation.

I don't think that he stands a chance, but I am going to back him. I have a sign in my yard.

Now about some articles that I like. Note that the first two come from folks who are associated with, or were associated with, the National Review (Bill Buckley's magazine)

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24795&mode=&order=0

Paul Craig Roberts: 'The right wing press: How conservatives went crazy'
Posted on Friday, February 10 @ 10:02:11 EST
This article has been read 1921 times.

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Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch

What happened to a formerly conservative press to reduce it to political partisanship and warmongering? Specifically, I have in mind National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

When I was associated with National Review, the magazine understood that the US Constitution and civil liberty had to be protected from government. It was not considered unpatriotic to take the side of the Constitution and civil liberty against a sitting government, even if the government were Republican. Some things were still more important than party loyalty.

No more. Consider, for example, Byron York writing in the February 13 issue. York doesn't understand why former US Representative Bob Barr lent his Republican conservative credentials to former Vice President Al Gore's speech against President Bush's transgressions against law and civil liberty, or why Barr is associating with liberals opposing the "Patriot" Act.

Barr is the former Republican member of the House of Representatives who led the impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Barr did so not out of political partisanship. As a former prosecutor, Barr regards lying under oath to be a serious offense. A president who commits that offense must be held accountable. Otherwise, presidents will go on to lie about greater things--such as war.



In opposing Bush's transgressions, Barr is simply being consistent. For Barr, party loyalty takes a backseat to defense of the Constitution, the rule of law, and civil liberty. If the US had more leaders of Barr's caliber, Bush and Cheney would already have been impeached.

York cannot understand this, because he thinks party loyalty and defense against terrorists are the controlling virtues. York scolds Barr for letting himself be used by partisan liberal organizations, but York takes his own partisanship for granted. It is only the other side that is partisan.

When I was on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, the editorials were analytical and reformist. Sometimes we broke news stories. The page's attention to the Soviet Union was based on the rulers' aggressive posture and suppression of civil liberties. Today the editorial page is a fount of neoconservative war propaganda. All intelligence has vanished. Consider the Review & Outlook of February 3, which declares Iran to be "an intolerable threat." Iran is portrayed as a threat because the country's new president has used threatening rhetoric against Israel.
[...]

The US rushed to war in Iraq based on lies. On PBS (Feb. 3) Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that the Iraq speech his boss was forced to give to the UN was "a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council."

The consequences have been disastrous. The US invasion force is tied down by a few thousand insurgents drawn from a Sunni population of merely 5 million people, and Iraq has become, according to the CIA, a recruiting and training ground for terrorists. The invasion has ruined America's reputation and expanded the popularity of al Qaeda, which has assumed the stand-up role against the hegemonic Great Satan. It is the untutored belligerence of the neoconservative Jacobins that is likely to send the Middle East up in smoke. The instability that Bush is creating serves al Qaeda's interest, not our own.

[...]
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.

Interesting. We now turn to a good column by Bill Buckley, the founder of the National Review.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucwb/20060211/cm_ucwb/stewardsofnature

William F. Buckley Jr. Sat Feb 11, 2:03 PM ET

We hear now (in full-page ads) from the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Their summons, signed by 80-odd evangelical leaders, is to address the global-warming crisis. The opening statement declares that "as evangelical Christians, we believe we're called to be stewards of God's creation."

That isn't an inflated claim; ministers of the Gospel are expected to address common concerns. This time we are advised that "global warming can and must be solved. It is no small problem. Pollution from vehicles, power plants and industry is having a dramatic effect on the Earth's climate. Left unchecked, global warming will lead to drier droughts, more intense hurricanes and more devastating floods, resulting in millions of deaths in this century."

The premise is that the planet is suffering from rising levels of greenhouse gasses, which are bringing on increasingly sharp climate changes. As Anthony McMichael of the Australian National University in Canberra has articulated the problem, climate change would lead to "an increase in death rates from heat waves, infectious diseases, allergies, cholera as well as starvation due to failing crops."

Two questions arise. The first, and most obvious, is: Is the information we are receiving reliable? There is a certain lure to apocalyptic renderings of modern existence. [...]

The environmentalist alarum is strongly backed by evidence, but there are scientists who believe that the data of the last few years, indeed of the last century, attest to cyclical variations that make their way irrespective of the increase in fossil-fuel consumption. Professor Robert Jastrow, a distinguished astrophysicist, is skeptical in the matter. Yet recent reports of measurements done in the Antarctic have not been fully absorbed by the non-believers, and they aren't likely to ignore as simply inconsequential the increase in greenhouse gases, whatever dispute there may be about their exact effect.

There is no disputing that, over the recent period, temperature changes have been in an upward direction. The latest figure is one degree in the last generation. The nation's temperatures this January were the warmest on record, and NASA scientists have informed us that 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded worldwide.

The issue of Kyoto divides the world. The protocols agreed upon there were affirmed by President Clinton, but were rejected by the Senate. The grounds for doing so were that unrealistic demands were being made on the developed nations, without realistic attention to what the less-developed countries were prepared to do in the way of reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. China, for instance, would simply refuse to abide by schedules that failed to take into account its spectacular demands as a country moving to western levels of consumption at singular speed.

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman have endorsed a bill that would set for the United States a goal, by the year 2010, of a reduction in emissions to the level of 2000.

President Bush

President Bush has refused to sign on to any schedule whatever that would mandate national goals, or would restrict normal impulses.

The pressure of the environmentalists has combined with a more direct pressure, which is the scarcity of those fuels that do the most damage. There are visions knocking on the door, of fuels without the heavy carbon-dioxide emissions. But mostly there is a recognition that economic and environmental concerns might combine to discourage profligate consumption of the toxic stuff.

One way to go would be a surtax on gasoline. Another, a heightening of federal requirements in the matter of energy-efficient automobiles; these began many decades back, when the impulse to formalize our concern for nature began to take concrete legislative form. Add now the moral concern. We are indeed stewards of nature, and calls to conjoin our concern with a sense of Christian mission are noteworthy.

Next, more stuff from the Smirking Chimp; here it is pointed out that the radical right wing pundits routinely spout out violent comments:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24793&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0


R.J. Eskow, The Huffington Post

It's striking, isn't it? American conservatives are so like the radical Muslims taking to the streets this week. Both claim moral superiority based on religion. Both use the language of hatred as political speech. Both advocate violence against those with whom they disagree. And they both despise the concept of a free press.

Lest we forget, here are a few choice quotes to remind the Bill Bennetts of this world just what they and their friends really stand for:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter "
And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it ... You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." Bill O'Reilly

"I have to say I'm all for public flogging." Ann Coulter "

(On torture at Abu Ghraib): I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?" Rush Limbaugh "

If [Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." Pat Robertson "

(on the kidnapping of peace activists in Iraq): "I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this." Rush Limbaugh

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself." Glenn Beck

"It would be a much better country if women did not vote." Ann Coulter

"[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bill Bennett

President Bush said of the Muslim cartoon riots, ""We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press." If he means it, he can finally call Ann Coulter to task for saying "my only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." Until then, let all these fanatics (and the politicians like Cheney who appear on their programs) be branded as the hypocrites they are. Muslim extremists and American conservatives: they're soul mates.
A Night Light

Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC

Finally, at the Daily Kos, we had some interesting discussions. Darksyde (who writes cool science blogs) interviewed Carl Zimmer, who has an excellent science blog.
We also had a spirited discussion on the Vagina Monologue at Yellow Dog Dem Woman's diary.
I made a few comments (and avoided getting troll rated!), one of which is here. I also have a blog entry on this subject.