Tag: Democrats
Labor Day Special: Reagan Had It Right the First Time
Enjoy this audio of Ronald Reagan from 1948, when he was still married to Jane Wyman, president of the Screen Actors Guild who defended against the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, and a Democrat.
Florida Democrats’ Long Nightmare Ends Today
It’s finally primary day in Florida, which means, if you’re a Democrat, you can stop screening your calls. The battle between U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek and billionaire jet setter Jeff Greene ends today, not a minute too soon. And while the postal service will miss the business, those of us on the receiving end of the deluge of mailers won’t.
For all I know, Republicans are going through the same thing in the contest for governor between disgraced HCA Columbia CEO Rick Scott and state Attorney General Bill McCollum. I’m hoping Scott will prevail in that match-up, because a general election campaign between Florida CFO Alex Sink on the Democratic side and McCollum on the GOP will make paint drying seem like the next Harry Potter movie. In 3-D.
Meek and Greene are staying true to type on election day. Here are the two men’s schedules, according to Tampa’s Creative Loafing:
Kendrick Meek
4:30 a.m., AFSCME Member Bus Terminal Stop-in, 16150 Northwest 42nd Avenue, Miami.
6:15 a.m., Breakfast at Jimmy’s Place, 11901 NW 7 Ave., North Miami.
7:15 a.m., Polling site stop, South Kendall Community Church, 16550 SW 147 Ave., Miami.
8:45 a.m., Polling site stop, Palm Beach Co. Fire and Rescue No. 42,. 14276 Hagen Ranch Rd., Delray Beach.
5 p.m., Sign waving, N. University Dr. and Sunrise Blvd., Plantation.
5:45 p.m.,. Polling site stop, Hollywood Hills High School, 5400 Stirling Rd., Hollywood.
Evening, Watching election returns, Westin Diplomat Hotel, 3555 S. Ocean Dr., Hollywood.
Wow, 4:30 a.m., huh? Meek is working it. Wonder what Greene will be doing to ensure every vote he can get.
Jeff Greene
9 a.m., Voting, Palm Beach Fire Station #3, 2185 S. Ocean Blvd., Palm Beach.
7 p.m., Watching returns, Marriott Hotel, 1001 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach.
All righty then.
If you live in Florida and didn’t vote early, please do so today. These races will be decided by a relatively small number of voters, but we’ll all be stuck with the choices for a long time. Go vote!
Democrat for Florida Governor Sums Up the State of Republican Opponents
According to polls, Democratic Florida Governor candidate Alex Sink is benefitting from the hatchet jobs her Republican opponents are doing on one another. In a debate summed up as a “race to the bottom” in Florida newspapers, Attorney General Bill McCollum and disgraced CEO Rick Scott got personal, but said very little about…what is it candidates are supposed to address? Oh yeah, how to fix the state. In this video, Sink continues to point out that Republicans offer pretty much nothing in the way of ideas.
GOP ‘Party of No’ Gambit Backfires — Voter Approval of Republicans at an All-Time Low
From the moment Pres. Obama took office, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the rest of the GOP leadership in Congress have engaged in a high-risk, gridlock-on-steroids strategy — a level of obstructionism that is unparalleled in U.S. history, particularly including a record-breaking number of filibusters in the Senate.
How bad is it for congressional Republicans? They’re even lagging behind Sarah Palin, whose approval rate is just 29 percent.
Their “party of no” strategy has been effective in two ways. First, they have used obstructionism to weaken legislation to protect the profits of their corporate donors. They have done this by sucker-punching the president and the Democrats on every major bill — first by threatening to vote no unless the particulars of the legislation were changed to benefit corporations and then by voting resoundingly against the bill anyway, despite getting everything they demanded.
That second part — the lockstep voting, gridlock-on-steroids tactic — was intended to slow things down unnecessarily as a way to frustrate voters who, more than anything, wanted to see progress in solving the multiple crises the country is facing. This was an especially neat trick because attentive voters were surely aware that the crises were caused by these same Republican senators and House members rubberstamping the Bush anti-regulatory, anti middle-class agenda when they controlled Congress the last time.
Frustrating voters with gridlock is a tried-and-true tactic the party out of power can use to drive up the negatives of the party in power. It has always worked as a zero-sum game in our calcified two-party system. When voters’ approval of one party goes down, approval of the other party goes up.
But it hasn’t worked out that way this time. While the Republicans’ “party of no” strategy has been effective in poisoning the well — the Democrats’ negatives are way up — according to the new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll, the GOP’s uber-obstructionism appears to have backfired. Big time:
With New Senator, Unemployment Bill Should Pass on Tuesday
Manchin plans to assume the seat himself in November, and appointed his former legal counsel as a place-holder until the voters can choose. Let’s hope Manchin has better luck with that than Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. When Crist picked his most trusted counsel, George LeMieux, to fill the seat vacated by former Sen. Mel Martinez last year, LeMieux looked like a safe and loyal pick. But after Crist left the Republican party to run for the Senate with no party affiliation, LeMieux — seen by many as having further political ambitions — abandoned his former boss and friend and announced he was supporting Republican/Tea Party candidate Marco Rubio.
Goodwin, whose wife Rochelle is state director for West Virginia’s other senator, Jay Rockefeller, has also been described as a “rising star” in party circles. As Manchin’s general counsel, he helped craft new regulations in response to West Virginia coal mining disasters in 2006. At the same time, he opposes limiting carbon emissions in proposed cap and trade legislation, because he says it threatens old technology energy jobs.
For the present, his vote on the unemployment compensation extension will be party-line. With Goodwin, 59 Democrats are expected to vote in favor of the bill, with only Nebraska’s Ben Nelson opposing. All Republicans except possibly Maine’s Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, are expected to vote against it.
Obama Grilled by 11-Year-Old Reporter
Gotta love it. Student reporter and South Florida’s own Damon Weaver lands his dream interview with the president. Weaver did an amazing job, as did Obama. Damon’s take-away: Pres. Obama is very tall and nice.
Note for non-basketball fans: Dwayne Wade is a guard for the Miami Heat.
The Beer Summit — and a Party Crasher
Joe Biden just can’t help himself. And we just can’t help but like him anyway. (Official White House photo)
For the record:
The president was drinking Bud Light, Biden was drinking Buckler (a nonalcoholic beer), Gates was drinking Samuel Adams Light and Crowley was drinking Blue Moon.
Pre-Existing Condition: Healthcare Reform Hits a Wall
Not again.The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein has it exactly right about health care. We can’t let things keep going as they are.
Among the range of options for health-care reform, there’s one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.
That’s the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.
So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee’s coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that’s compared with what?
We got scared and backed off health insurance reform in the ’90s when Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to tackle the problem, and we all know where that’s led us.
I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.
What bothers me most, however, about the plan the Democrats have been kicking around is that it is still tied to employment. Having a job and having a need for health care are totally unrelated. Even if you don’t have a traditional employer (maybe, like me, you are your own employer), you still need health care. How did we ever come to expect that the boss would be responsible for making sure our medical procedures and dental appointments are paid for? I won’t even bother mentioning that no other modern government puts this expectation on its business sector. Whoops, I just did.
Health care reform is shelved until after Congress’s August recess. The insurance companies and big pharma won round one (or two, if you count the Clinton loss). We have to make sure they don’t continue winning, because as Pearlstein says, that’s the one sure way the rest of us lose.
