Categories: Abuse of Power, ethics
On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin!
![[mail]](img/envelope.gif){kind=small}
| Categories: Abuse of Power, Economics, Education Funding, state government, Domestic Policy, Governor Scott Walker What has been happening in Madison, Wisconsin, should cheer anyone who has lost hope in American democracy. It is even balm for the despair many of us feel about the often passive Democratic Party.
While the Democratic state senators Governor Scott Walker needs to kill collective bargaining remain holed up in an Illinois motel, thousands of protestors—public workers and their supporters— fill the public spaces of the Wisconsin’s rococo capitol building. Many of them have brought their sleeping bags to the rotunda.
This should not surprise us.
Before We Forget
| Categories: liberals, Abuse of Power, Charles Rangel, healthcare policy, ethics During the run-up to the 2002 Congressional election, I was traveling in South Georgia. One ad, run repeatedly, caught my attention, because it featured candid shots of New York Congressman Charles Rangel whose wavy silver locks brushed the collar of his custom shirt in a style that was more New Orleans than Savannah.
Although race was never mentioned, the voiceover proclaimed that if Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, voters could look forward to the ascension of this obviously dark-skinned man to the Ways and Means Committee chair.
Awe and Relief
| Categories: Barack Obama, John McCain, CBS, Abuse of Power, Sarah Palin, George McGovern, fascism, Pennsylvania, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Unitary Executive Tuesday’s election still fills me with awe, and not just for Barack Obama. The American electorate is wiser than I dared hope. Even John McCain, who ran a shoddy campaign, delivered a concession speech that was generous and inspiring. Sarah Palin has flown back to Alaska with new respect, I would hope, for the power of community organizing.
I spent the week prior to the election in a place I’d never known existed—Northeast Philadelphia—with a marvelous group of people, most of whom were volunteers.
What's on the Table Now
| Categories: Barack Obama, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Abuse of Power, Sarah Palin John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, as his running mate makes indelibly clear the Democratic error in not exposing the Republican abuse of power that has flowered since the attacks of 2001. The opportunity for someone as inexperienced and volatile as Palin to exploit these newly assumed powers is all too real. George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney’s quest for the “unitary executive” has lead them to trample on Constitutional protections Richard Nixon only dreamed of violating. And no matter what his claims of being a maverick, McCain has yet to assert that his view of power and how to yield it differs from theirs.
Summarizing reporting by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, and Barton Gellman and Jo Becker of the Washington Post, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote back in the July 9, 2007, New Yorker: “... it is now, so to speak, official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called ‘the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived,’ has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign.
XML Feeds