West Virginia Blue
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This is a reality I'd like to see more candidates and politicans acknowledge.
We are facing major problems in this country that need major solutions. Major change is incredibly difficult. Powerful forces are aligned against it. We, the people, must work hard to make that change happen. We need to understand what those forces are aligned against that change.
We need universal healthcare in the country. We need to take dramatic action to reduce our impact on global climate change. We need to start preparing now for a post-carbon-based economy.
Oil companies, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are extremely power forces. They are the very largest corporations in the world and make up a significant percentage of our existing unsustainable economy.
No matter how slick their corporate propaganda, they are not allies in the struggle to make the dramatic, necessary changes ahead. They will not give up power willingly. We the people gave them power, we can take it back.
I know we often make fun of lawyers in this country ("What do you call a smiling, sober, courteous person at a bar association convention? The caterer."). On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for the value of training in law for political leadership.
The Clintons (Bill, Yale; Hillary, Yale), Barack Obama (Harvard), John Edwards (UNC), Harry Reid (George Washington U.), and Alan Mollohan (WVU) all have law degrees.
Then we have our Republican mis-leadership. There's George Bush with an Master's in Business Administration. That's the same degree that Duke Cunningham and Jeff Skilling have. There's Rep. Shelley Moore Capito with a Master's in Career Counseling. That's the same degree as... well, actually, no one comes to mind.
Bush and Capito share a mis-understanding of the law, too. Whereas Bush missed the week in high school civics class about constitutional checks and balances, after six years in Congress Rep. Capito still hasn't figured out the basic mechanics of when a law is needed.
West Virginia Democrats had no problem getting it right (emphasis mine):
West Virginia’s other two congressmen—Alan Mollohan and Nick Rahall—voted against the measure. Rahall says he opposed the amendment because the program already includes ID requirements and toughening up the standard would be burdensome to many rural and elderly citizens and raise privacy concerns. Mollohan’s office said the amendment was "nothing but political chicanery."
You know, it's hard to counter the negative stereotypes the rest of the country has of West Virginia. Rep. Capito isn't helping any. They noticed up in New York, too: Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens) said "It's all demagoguery." As Albor Ruiz of the New York Daily News put it:
While the fate of 12 million people, thousands of families and the future of the nation's economy wait for Congress to do its job on immigration reform, some of its members would rather play games.
[snip]
"Loopholes in current law, like this housing assistance loophole for illegal immigrants, act as a magnet and invite people to enter our country illegally," Capito is quoted as saying. "We should not be rewarding those who have come here illegally by awarding them taxpayer-funded services intended for law-abiding citizens."
Wow! Is she tough! She's cracking down and closing loopholes! No "illegal" will take advantage of taxpayers on her watch!
Not to rain on her party, but there is one small problem: What loophole is she talking about? Undocumented immigrants already are ineligible for housing vouchers. Under current law, all recipients of assistance are required to be citizens or to prove their lawful immigration status.
Capito can do all the chest-thumping she wants, but there is nothing to crack down on.
Here in West Virginia, the coverage is a mixed bag. Tom Searls article reads like a Capito press release. Yet, he did prominently mention his inability to get a quote from Rahall or Mollohan. Loopy Kercheval's opinion piece does include quotes from Rahall and Mollohan but it distorts the issue even worse than Capito did.
Capito should be called out for immigration race-baiting and class warfare. Her arguments are full of lies and distortion. Here's a just a few ways her actions are deceitful:
With a solid majority of the country crying out for change, the Republican power elite are holding on tight to their reins of power. With each step that the Democrats take to provide meaningful oversight (see: Walt starr, "Conyers raises possibility of inherent contempt"), President Bush invents new ways to defy Congress (TPM, "Rogue Presidency")--practically begging for impeachment.
Unfortunately, we're still losing the bigger battle for reality-based political coverage. In a rare moment of candor, a political report admits that, yes, the press dislikes John Edwards and is trying to knock him out of contention with a bogus story (dday, "The Media Tips Its Hand re: John Edwards UPDATED"). It's no wonder our West Virginia Press is stuck in a middle school mentality of political coverage--they're just taking cues from national coverage.
Finally, there are small--yet quite encouraging--steps towards ending our occupation of Iraq. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid did us proud this week (Phoenix Woman, Harry Reid Cuts Off The GOP's Escape Routes"). Who knows if Reid had the interrogation technique of sleep-deprivation in mind when he scheduled an all-night debate. Late Tuesday night one Senator confessed what many of us have long suspected: we are in Iraq because that's where the oil is (mcjoan, "ID-Sen: Craig says it's all about the oil").
As the "September deadline" approaches to judge the failure of the January troop surge we find the White House is not just working the refs, but trying also trying to rewrite the rule book (BarbinMD, "White House Moves the September Report Goalposts"). Our country would be in far better shape if this Republican administration paid more attention to effective governance instead of putting their energy into political smears (mcjoan, Pentagon Attacks Sen. Clinton).
If you watched the highlight video of the overnight Senate debate you caught a question about what level of support "the troops" have for Iraq war policy. Here's one measure: do they support presidential candidates who want to continue the occupation of Iraq or presidential candidates who say its time to get out? No surprise... jfern has the answer, 70.6% of money from the troops was to anti-war candidates.
This just in from Jamison Foser, Managing Director. Media Matters for America, on an attack on john Edwards, who has spoken out against CLT:
This spring, NBC chief Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski took $30,000 from the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce to address its Business EXPO 2007. During his talk, Miklaszewski attacked a prominent presidential candidate.
As Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz pointed out in 2002, professional journalists accepting fees for speaking engagements is widely frowned upon by the media and a "number of news organizations including, ABC and NBC, [have] banned the practice."
That's why I want to talk to you today about just one of the ways I will take up the fight against climate change as president. Coal is the dominant source of electricity in America and it will be for decades to come, but we need to find a way to use it without heating the planet.
"So as president, I will stop big coal from building a single new power plant in America that doesn't have the technology to capture their carbon emissions.
"The government reports that the coal industry and their financial backers on Wall Street are planning to build around 150 new coal-fired power plants to meet rising energy demand in the next few decades. That would add more than 800 million metric tons of CO2 to our environment a year. That's 40 percent more than we're emitting now. That's when we know we need to go in exactly the opposite direction. And an estimated 30,000 Americans die every year from diseases linked to pollution from coal-fired plants.
"This is not something they are talking about in Washington. In the energy bill debate two weeks ago, some people actually tried to wrap increased pollution in the flag, saying that investing in more traditional coal-fired plants - or even worse, new fuels made out of liquid coal, which is a terrible idea - is the patriotic thing to do for America because coal is abundant here at home.
"Here's what I say to this: it's not moral leadership if we reduce imports of oil but increase our exports of carbon pollution. We're already 4 percent of the world's population emitting 25% of its greenhouse gases.
"That's not the America we want to be. As president, I will take back our democracy from these powerful interests so that regular people can change this country.
"Not only am I going to stop coal-fired power plants from adding to our pollution problems, but I will reduce our emissions, doing what the global community asked America to do at the recent G8 summit: cut the world's carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050.
"It's time for the President of the United States to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.
snip
"Utilities that today profit by selling more and more polluting energy will have to help customers save electricity, and open up their grids to power produced locally, with rooftop solar panels and local wind turbines.
"Automakers that are squeezing profits out of high-polluting SUVs will have to develop the cars of the future with a 40 miles-per-gallon fuel economy standard.
"None of this is going happen unless we demand it. The oil companies won't do it. The utilities won't do it. The coal companies won't do it. And as we saw with the energy bill, Washington won't do it. Our generation has to do it - we cannot wait for somebody else to take responsibility"
John Edwards is also urging others to join him in supporting the Live Earth Pledge and "asking supporters to raise our voice and roll up our sleeves to solve the global climate crises."
In the aftermath of the recent Supreme Court ruling gutting affirmative action to deal with the historical impact of racial discrimination, I propose that Democratic political figures should push for new laws promoting affirmative action on behalf of poor Americans of all races. Unequal educational opportunities are an important factor contributing to pockets of entrenched poverty.
We need to deal with entrenched poverty in America. Racial and ethnic minorities are often victims of this poverty in numbers much greater than their share of the general population as a result of past discrimination. However, rural white Americans are in much the same situation in many parts of this nation. They suffer from disproportionate poverty along with Native Americans, Afro-Americans and Hispanics.
I think that when people like Ann Coulter -- and it's not just her, unfortunately, it's her and people just like her, Karl Rove and all those people. I mean, when they engage us in this kind of hatemongering, you have to stand up to them. You have to stand up to them. They start this fight, but we have to be willing to be strong and to fight back. Because if we don't, Chris, what happens is all the important things: men and women dying in Iraq, those who don't have health insurance, et cetera, their issues don't get heard.
Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have been the Republican presidential hopefuls most favored by West Virginia donors, but Democrat John Edwards has raised more in the Mountain State than all other declared 2008 presidential candidates combined.
Edwards, the 2004 running mate of John Kerry, collected $72,100 from West Virginia contributors as of March 31, the latest Federal Election Commission filings show.
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