The barely visible war on a button

Today 125 people were killed by a suicide bomb in Iraq. Even CNN, ABC News, CBS News and friends reported it. It was that bad. Otherwise, the war has been barely visible to the general public...

...the administration wants it that way...

...and the American people tacitly agree.

Political buttons have been quite the rage in Northern Illinois from before the election and even this many months after. Candidate buttons have just been replaced by issue buttons. We have one in the Illinois Tenth now quoting Obama, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states". The "He's Not My President" one is around too. People like to look at the buttons and talk about them. They like cute or funny ones.

I've been wearing my "No War" button that I got when I marched in the January Peace Rally in Chicago.

Now, when I wore my "Women for Kerry for Women", or my "Real Deal", or the famous Kerry/Obama button, or my No W Texas longhorn pooping button I got some smiles and nods. When I wear my "No War" button, I get scowls or people turn away. People don't want to discuss it, don't want to see it. They hear the few headlines when something really bad happens and know its there, but I think they are mostly happy that they are not watching this war on television like we did with Vietnam.

If people were seeing it, seeing drapped flag caskets, seeing bodies on the ground, seeing children with missing limbs, seeing hospitals and schools reduced to rubble, seeing all that every morning with their Post Toasties or Irish Oats or 24 stips of bacon (those low carb people!) and every evening with their Lean Cuisine or Ramen noodles or White Castles, they'd have to do something about it. They'd have to make calls, look up events on the internet, find rallies, make signs, shout chants, risk arrest. It's easier not to see it.

We have to do what the press won't. Wear an anti-war button. Your children and their children will thank you one day.

Homelessness, Republicans and Kings and Faith Based Initiatives

Sharon Cohen's article on a day in the life of a homeless family is disturbing in and of itself. It is more disturbing when you factor in Republican arrogance against workers, minorities, the elderly and the poor. It is even more disturbing when you factor in their whole concept of Faith Based Initiatives.

Faith Based Initiatives are programs that take taxpayer money away from governmental programs and send it to religious organizations that agree to provide social programs. The religious organizations then control how these resources are allocated. There are provisions against discrimination in distributing aid, but it is easy enough to make someone so uncomfortable that they truly believe the aid is unavailable to them. These organizations can require attendance at a service or consultation with a priest or minister or lay church official. Just entering a place of worship can be uncomfortable for some people. Then, there are provisions allowing discrimination in hiring, despite the inflow of federal money into the organization. So, a Christian church paying its employees with taxpayer money can reject a Jewish or Muslim candidate with impunity.

These programs not only control the allocation of social services, they also remove scarce resources from federal programs upon which many people rely on for life itself. They do not add to the system of aid to the poor, sick and elderly because the money is just taken out of the government's pocket and given to religious organizations. No new money is found; no new methods of allocation are created and no new access accomplished.

Also, when our tax dollars flow out of the government and into religious organizations, it increases the incentive for leaders of those organizations to preach in favor of those who started the flow of money to them. Teaching worshipers that their salvation is based upon their vote for a particular political doctrine or candidate is the worst use of religion a preacher, pastor, priest or president can make.

Finally, the accountability required of any organization that receives federal funding creates a means of control by the government over religious organizations. The churches gain control over the people and the government gains control over the churches. This harkens back to the days of old Europe when kings and bishops made the rules together and religious minorities were severly persecuted. People took long, dangerous boat rides west from Europe to the new world to avoid this. Where are we going to go now?

This funneling of federal taxpayer money into religious organizations is nothing less than the unconstitutional establishment of religion for the most defenseless members of our society. It is no wonder that this was accomplished not through legislation, but through executive order.

Bean Speaks to the Lake County Democratic Women

The Lake County Democratic Women held their third annual luncheon this afternoon in Mundelein, IL. The keynote speaker was newly elected 8th District Representative Melissa Bean. Bean talked about her new position, being a woman in Congress, getting important legislation passed in a republican Congress and described her days in Washington. She made a brief speech, then opened up the discussion to attendees.

Bean is concerned about education and the problems left behind by No Child Left Behind. She was also concerned about the environmental legislation before Congress, but said that she felt that the environment was a non-partisan issue because all mothers and fathers want clean air and water for their children. I think that while it should be, it is not currently a non-partisan issue as republican mothers and fathers seem to be willing to increase polutants allowed into our air to keep the republican status quo otherwise.

Bean spent her brief recess having a town meeting in Schaumburg listening to her constituents, while our Tenth District representative Mark Kirk has been Where's Waldo-ing about Europe and Persia. He hasn't been seen in Vernon Hills, Highland Park or Northbrook lately.

When asked what we grassroots Democrats can do to help Democrats in Congress, Bean replied by continuing to contribute to Democratic Candidates and by talking to our friends and neighbors about issues that are important to us. I totally agree with Bean on this count and will add that we should continue writing letters to the editor of our local papers and should continue to sport issue oriented buttons and bumber stickers.

I am going to declare for the Tenth District that March will be Wear a Political Issue Button Month. It may not seem like a big deal, but wearing a button about issues such as the environment or social security can be an ice breaker at the train station on the way to work or while waiting in line at the grocery store.

Tenth Dems has a large selection of buttons and will be adding new issue buttons soon. If you are interested in buttons or how to do a button campaign in your area, contact me and I can hook you up with our button guru.

Eliot Spitzer's favorite phrases

I went to the AJC dinner on Wednesday. Eliot Spitzer was the keynote speaker. He talked about his two favorite words "fiduciary duty". I share those favorites and his concern that few care about their duties to society these days. On that line, Spitzer talked about his investigations into the investment banking and pharmaceutical industry. He observed that widespread corporate corruption was like street crime; if you don't enforce against small crime, it becomes that much easier for people to take the next step to larger crime.

Going down the slipery slope of greed and arrogance, many corporate leaders simply no long see any boundaries of behavior or even think about who gets hurt, Enron employees forced to keep their 401K stock during a freeze period while executives were dumping theirs with insider knowledge, neighborhoods losing property value to fraudulent flips and predatory lending practices.

Spitzer also mentioned his favorite T-shirt slogan, "Hubris is Terminal". I like that one too, but I call it the rule of Star Trek. The rule of Star Trek is that the bad guys are always defeated in the end because their arrogance exceeds their ability to cover their tracks and protect themselves. People get sloppy when they become arrogant. Khan was stopped in the End by Kirk (Captain, not Mark) when he became arrogant. The Borg thought the humans were so insignificant that they could ignore them and were ultimately defeated by a small nanovirus created by the Federation. The Ferengi were the ultimate in arrogant humanoids and were always defeated by their lust for profit (huh, sounds familiar, doesn't it?)

I had an incident proving the Rule of Star Trek at work this past week. A man started forging lien releases and passing them around title companies to obtain clear title and bond money. He thought he'd pocket the closing proceeds and walk away. It did not occur to him that someone would check one of those releases, but we did.

I enjoyed hearing Spitzer's stories because I do a fair amount of fraud investigation in my job. My friend Margie did not enjoy the speech because she felt he was telling stories more to show his good works than to prove the point about business ethics. I thought that was a fair comment because he talked about himself a lot. The next day I discussed the speech with my collegue Barry. Barry knows a lot about Spitzer and said that Spitzer was an opportunist because he used these cases to advance his political career. We discussed his comment for a while and in the end Barry changed his mind concluding that there has to be an incentive for someone to make the investigations and do the hard work of challenging the rich and powerful particularly in an environment where they know they will get away with bad acts for the most part. I see Margie's point, but agree with Barry's conclusion. We need someone like Spitzer to prosecute the cases when we have a justice department willing to turn a blind eye to torture, manipulation of the energy industry causing extreme hardship in several states, gender and racial discrimination in the workplace, lying about side effects of drugs, lying about a war killing hundreds of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraquis and who knows what else.

One point Spitzer made with which I had to disagree was about TR. He lauded TR as the great trust buster with benevolence in his heart. I see TR as not only a political opportunist, but protector and apologist for the robber barons of his day. Things were so bad in his day for labor, that some reforms had to be made to prevent a socialist explosion. However, the ultimate reforms were so mild that they leave the door wide open for the abuses we see today. Maybe Spitzer appreciates TR because he left the door wide open for Spitzer to do the work he does by providing both the robber barons of industry and the ideas for chasing after them.

In the end, I conclude that every state needs an Eliot Spitzer as states must do the job the federal justice department won't. However, due to an experience my mom recently had with a complaint and my own experience with my own complaint to our Illinois Attorney General, I am concerned that Lisa Madigan's office has not been given adequate funding to do the job that Spitzer is doing in New York and that is an issue that will have to be discussed in the Statehouse this year.

The American press does not do their job, so we have to look elsewhere

Another large protest against Bush, this time in Germany, is not being reported in the conventional media. It's an anti-war protest focusing on prisoner abuse with about 5000 people. The only thing I saw in the conventional media today was an article about how Bush and was making nice with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who would back him regarding Iran. Does that mean Germany is onboard for Iran? Some sort of make up gift for not sharing in Iraq?

Very little otherwise is showing up on google searches. A protest against Bush in Belgium http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-02-22-voa60.cfm. None of this on CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABCNews.com and CBSNews.com. Bless their hearts in Austrialia. They are reporting it: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/
story_page/0,5744,12355254%255E1702,00.html.

Of course, we did learn today that the Queen of England won't attend Charles and Camilla's wedding, the jury was selected in the Michael Jackson case, that Terry Schiavo is still being kept alive with a feeding tube in Florida, and that Howard Hughes, now known as Leonardo DiCaprio, had an affair with Katharine Hepburn (both dead, not Leo of course). That's certainly enough news for me.

Never mind Jefferson:
"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

The City of Chicago is trying to shut down an anti-war protest. Tell them what you think on the Tribune poll: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/poll/chi-050222protest-poll.poll.

I never thought we have to go to the world press to get our news. We need a Voice for America. America has lost its own voice.

Kerry Backs Bush's $81.9 Bln War Spending Plan

OK, John, tell me this:

How do you ask a person (now that women are in the armed services) to be the last person to die for a mistake IN IRAQ?

Congratulations to Howard Dean, Chairman of the DNC

Chairman Howard Dean's DNC Plan:

1. Show up! Democrats should never concede a single state, a single district, or a single voter to the Republicans. We must be active and compete in all 50 states and work with the state parties to build a true national party.

2. The success of the national party depends directly on the success of the state parties — we must better integrate our operations by:

Having the DNC pay the salary of each state party executive director to help ensure that the state parties have adequate funds.

Collectively building and sharing supporter lists between the national and state parties.

Recruiting, training, and encouraging candidates to run for office at every level — building tomorrow's farm team from the ground up.

Actively grow local Democratic committees and communities by working with neighborhood activists who can reach out in their communities and enable the grassroots to support state and local candidates.

Maintaining a permanent campaign in every state. We need to establish an ongoing, active presence, which does not have to be recreated every four years for four months.

3. Set core principles that define the Democratic Party and what we stand for and take a bottom-up approach to the development of the Party's message;

4. Use cutting-edge Internet and other technologies to fundraise, organize, and communicate with our supporters;

5. Strengthen our political institutions and leadership institutes to promote our leaders and our ideas — these organizations must work together in a coordinated and integrated fashion to elect Democrats at every level, so that we can take this country back.

Dean hits it right on with his plan. "Show up!" I am proud to say that the 10th has indeed shown up. Our February steering committee meeting was standing room only and folks came with ideas and ready to work.

Dean wants to teach democrats how to work together. I think that is important because I have seen a lot of factioning in the party. Chicago vs. Downstate vs. the suburbs and Grassroots vs. Offical Party Organizations. The Illinois Kerry Campaign was a perfect example of factioning and it often seemed that no two groups were really working for the same candidate or the same principles. There is also factioning among Grassroots workers, some believing that the best way to win is to become as centrist as possible and others wanting to stick to their Democratic Values. One reason I am glad that Dean won the Chairmanship is because he does not believe that Democrats have to become republicans to win and that we can stick to our values.

Dean also seeks to integrate the state and national parties to increase effectiveness on the ground where it matters, person by person, vote by vote. In the Illinois Tenth, we started with the principle: "We are the Party and everything the Party does is what we do. There is no 'them' to take care of everything. 'Them' is us."

Core principles to define ourselves will help us become a group with which people can identify. Lakoff says that people do not vote their interest, they vote their identity. We need to have principles and stick with them, no fear, no equivocating. That was Kerry's problem. He had principles, but he was afraid to stick by them when under fire. He left his courage at the Vietnam hearings and never lived up to his finest hour again.

Internet technology will help organize inexperienced grassroots workers with minimal outlay of funds. Anyone can set up a yahoo group, meetup, website or blog. It can be difficult getting a snail mail group on email and yahoo groups or a list serve. In the Tenth, our demographics are such that a lot of folks have computers, but they were not used to organizing on the internet. To their credit, they are working hard and making great progress. Problem is determining what you don't want to post on the web.

The DNC should exist to promote our leaders and our values. Too often Democrat and progressive organizations have spent time playing politics with each other and not engaging the republicans. After the November election, the old Chicago Kerry group was still fighting the Dean vs. Kerry fight on their yahoo group. No wonder Bush slipped by them. AGain, would be funny if not so sad. Democrats, stop your bloody infighting, hand wringing and soul searching and decide what you are about and promote it!

Well, this old Kerry supporter is delighted that Dean has become DNC chair. I think it is a job for which he is well suited. His energy and enthusiasm for grassroots political work is exactly what the Democrats need now in the stuggle against, not only the republicans, but the facism into which we are sinking deeper every day.

More History--The Progressive Era

During the height of the so-called Progressive era, Teddy Roosevelt supported reform legislation and demanded steel, railroad and banking industry buy in because he was sure that minor reform would be the only way to stop major reform and redistribution of wealth. At the time, labor and socialist leaders were making great headway with workers and farmers and there had been a lot of labor action and violence. Remember, those were the days of eight year olds toiling away 12 hour per day in sweat shops.

In a letter to Henry Cabot Lodge in which he sought railroad lobby support for the Hepburn Act regulating the railroads, Roosevelt wrote:

I think they are very short-sighted not to understand that to beat it means to increase the movement for government ownership of the railroads

Now, the GOP isn't worried about peasant revolt and redistribution of wealth because they have been so successful preventing even a whimper of outcry with easy and subtle means. Religion is a great way of convincing the underclass that everything is as it is meant to be. The Romans used bread and circuses and we have a version of that in SUVs, cell phones, iPods, Tivo and instant credit. What a great way to keep folks working hard! Get everyone over their head in debt so they fear losing their jobs, unaffordable and overpriced luxury autos and homes and electronic toys.

From my friend Keith

Keith sent this to me after a party we attended. Yesterday afternoon he told me he wanted me to post it to my blog, so here it is:

Hi Ellen, I loved engaging you in a lively discussion on a wide range of political topics last night! I've already scanned your site...your pieces are well written. For my part, I firmly believe that for the most part no political party or politician is always right or always wrong, completely evil or completely good. Like life itself, nothing is ever as good, or as bad, as clear or as confusing, as it first appears. It is allright, for good people to disagree, and the person with whom you disagree is neither a worse person then you or a better person. I think that I have come to realize that when someone advocates a position contrary to your own, he or she is not so advocating it knowing it to be wrong, but rather they are doing so truely believing it to be correct. And lastly, though I still very often do so I am attempting to not criticize someone because their views or positions are different then mine, and to accept the fact that even I can't be right all of the time.

Having said all of this, I remain frustrated that the world is not perfect, that evil seems to often triumph over good and that human life seems to be so universally disregarded whether in the streets of our inner cities, the villages of Africa or Kurdistan, or the polling places in Iraq. Keith.

My favorite part of Keith's comment is the part where he says that no one is completely evil or completely good because that is in disagreement with the Bush view of the world where he and his neocons are always right and everyone else is evil, the evil axis, the UN, European leaders who disagree with the Iraq war and the democrats from his own country.