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American workers have a chance to be heard.
by JIM WEBB The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives
November 14th, 2006
To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,
I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.
Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.
Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:
Dear Conservatives and Republicans,
I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:
1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.
2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.
3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.
4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.
5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.
6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.
7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.
8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.
9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.
10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.
11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.
12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.
I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.
Signed,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
(Click here to sign the pledge)
www.michaelmoore.com
P.S. Please feel free to pass this on.
Baltimore could get the Forrestal and use it as a great tourist attraction at the foot of the former Allied Signal area which is being prepared for development by the Struever Bros. development company.
It could also be used as a landing field for helicopter tours and perhaps even small private planes (Cessnas and the like), giving the harbor a huge attraction for pilots all along the East Coast of the US.
Baltimore needs a major attraction to get put on the map. A combination of great architecture at the Allied Signal 85 acre lot and the Forrestal may achieve such attraction.
Something to consider. Thanks to Larry Montgomery for thinking out of the box.
Paul Waldman in the Baltimore Sun has an excellent analysis of what's happening now:
"When Democrats win, we're told it was a matter of circumstance or an unusually skillful candidate. When Republicans win, we're told it was because Americans are becoming more conservative. Why? Because many members of the media have internalized the attacks conservatives have made on them for decades and come to adopt the complimentary conservative picture of what America is all about."
But his take on this election is actually correct:
"The fact is that nearly all the movement in American public opinion in recent decades has been in one direction: to the left. This evolution is precisely why conservatives have grown so angry about the "culture wars" - because they're losing." [more]
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E-mail This StoryTURN ON A TELEVISION anywhere in America last month, and you were sure to come across a campaign ad talking tough about immigration. Democrats and Republicans, in border states and deep in the heartland: Everybody was doing it, and the spots were among the harshest of the campaign season. The A-word--amnesty--was a staple. So were calls for cracking down on the border. And there could be no mistaking the mood, or rather the two parties' shared assumption about the public's mood. The only question was whether Republicans would succeed in riding that anger to victory on Election Day--whether immigration would indeed be the wedge issue of the 2006 midterms.
No one knows how much money was spent on these ads or the websites and mailers that went with them. But the candidates might as well have poured their dollars down a drain. Long before the votes were counted, tracking polls showed that the issue wasn't "working"--wasn't energizing voters or closing the gap between Democratic frontrunners and their GOP opponents. [more]
I'm watching CNN's Combat Hospital and I'm riveted, sickened, and infuriated. Have we learned nothing from Vietnam? This is what the American public needs to see to understand the horrendous pain and suffering we are inflicting in that country and in our soldiers.
Thank you, CNN for this special. I hope parts of it show up in YouTube for all to see
El muro de Bush
El presidente Bush se pronunció en su día contra la construcción de un muro para blindar a la inmigración ilegal, sobre todo la mexicana, la frontera sur de EE UU. Pero los tiempos cambian y las circunstancias también. Y lo que pareció en su momento un proyecto descabellado de los republicanos ultraconservadores ha ido adquiriendo lustre político a medida que han aumentado las dificultades para el inquilino de la Casa Blanca y se aproximan las cruciales elecciones legislativas del 7 de noviembre. Así que Bush, que ahora considera la obra una cuestión de seguridad nacional, ha estampado su firma sobre la ley que autoriza la construcción de 1.125 kilómetros de valla (no se sabe si metálica, de alta tecnología informática o abrumadoramente hormigonada) a lo largo de cuatro Estados sureños para impedir el paso a cerca de medio millón de inmigrantes que lo intentan cada año, algunos al precio de su propia vida.
Quizá el muro de 2.000 millones de dólares no llegue a alzarse nunca, a la vista de la oleada de reclamaciones judiciales y políticas que se anuncia, dentro y fuera de EE UU. La decisión de construirlo ha provocado ya una avalancha de condenas de organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos y de gobiernos iberoamericanos, comenzando por el de México, el más afectado.
Washington tiene derecho a asegurar sus fronteras e impedir que sean un coladero, pero la experiencia muestra hasta la saciedad que los muros no son el mejor modo de hacerlo. El fenómeno inmigratorio no es una guerra, aunque electoralmente sea rentable considerarlo como tal. Y no hay valla ni mar capaz de detener la desesperación de millones de personas decididas a encontrar un lugar en el mundo.
Immigration issue doomed GOP
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
ATLANTA -- Hispanics said ''adiós'' to President Bush's Republican Party in Tuesday's midterm elections, voting in much greater numbers than expected for Democratic candidates in an apparent rejection of the ruling party's efforts to blame much of the nation's problems on undocumented migrants.
Contrary to experts' predictions that Hispanics would not turn out massively on Tuesday, exit polls show that Hispanics accounted for 8 percent of the total vote. That is about equal to the Hispanic vote's record turnout in the 2004 presidential election, and much more than its turnout in previous mid-term elections.
What's more, 73 percent of Hispanics voted for the Democratic Party on Tuesday, while only 26 percent voted for Republican candidates, CNN exit poll shows. In the 2004 presidential elections, 55 percent of Hispanics voted Democrat and about 42 percent voted Republican.
Many experts had predicted that Hispanics would not turn out in big numbers on Tuesday, in part because most of the hottest races took place in states with no major Hispanic presence. Also, experts said that it would take until the 2008 elections for the largely Hispanic ''today we march, tomorrow we vote'' protests of earlier this year to translate into the naturalization and registration of large numbers of foreign-born Latino voters.
But the anti-immigration hysteria spearheaded by Republicans in the House -- and by cable television fear mongers such as Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs -- irked many U.S.-born Hispanics who normally don't care much about immigration.
Republican sponsorship of a law to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border and Republican House members' efforts to pass a bill that would have turned millions of undocumented workers into felons fueled a climate that many Hispanics saw as veiled racism.
THEY WENT TOO FAR
Sure, Republican anti-immigration crusaders said they are only against ''illegal'' immigration, and that they have nothing against Hispanics.
But when they accused Hispanic immigrants of draining Social Security coffers, clogging schools and hospitals, being potential terrorists and bringing infectious diseases into the United States -- I'm not making this up -- millions of Hispanic-heritage U.S. citizens felt insulted. It was as if all Hispanics were suddenly cast as potential national security threats.
If the Republican effort to put immigration at the center stage of the political agenda was aimed at drawing national attention away from Iraq, or to mobilize their constituencies to get out and vote on Tuesday, it didn't work with the general public either.
Exit polls show that when asked which issues were extremely important to them, 42 percent of all voters on Tuesday said corruption and ethics, 40 percent said terrorism, 39 percent mentioned the economy, 37 percent said Iraq, 36 percent said values and 29 percent said illegal immigration.
And many candidates who campaigned on get-tough-against-illegal-immigrants were defeated. Randy Graf, an Arizona Republican who centered his campaign on immigrant bashing and supported the Minuteman vigilante group, was among the many defeated anti-immigration candidates.
Of 15 races where immigration was the center of the debate, tracked by immigration2006.org, 12 were won by immigration moderates and only two by hard-line anti-immigration activists.
Even some Democrats who embraced the anti-immigration cause, such as Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, who accused his Republican rival of having hired illegal immigrants, were defeated.
My opinion: Great! The Republican strategy of blaming undocumented workers for many of the country's ills backfired. Now, with luck, candidates for the 2008 presidential election will abandon the populist enforcement-centered political deceptions of anti-immigration crusaders and seek serious solutions to stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. borders.
INCOME GAP
Instead of backing a useless 700-mile fence, which will only push migrants to enter the United States elsewhere along the 2,000-mile border, they should look into ways of helping reduce the income gap between the United States, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
As long as the United States' per capita income of $42,000 a year continues to be as far ahead of Mexico's $10,000 a year, or Nicaragua's $2,900 a year, there will be no fences high or wide enough to stop the flow of migrants.
As the European example shows, the only way to reduce migration will be greater economic integration, including offers of aid conditioned to responsible economic policies. Hopefully, both parties will hear this message from Tuesday's vote and turn their backs to the deceptive enforcement-only remedies offered by anti-immigration fear mongers in recent months.
