Here are some the key ideas about that “Wall around Washington” that John Edwards has so keenly identified:
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John Edwards:
There’s a wall around Washington and we need to take it down. The American people are on the outside.
And on the other side, on the inside, are the powerful, the well-connected and the very wealthy.
Every single day, working men and women see that wall when they have to split their bills into two piles, pay-now and pay-later;
when they watch the factory door shut for the last time;
when they see the disappointment on their son or daughter’s face when there’s no money to pay for college.
This is not okay. That wall has to come down.
That wall has taken the greatest economy on the planet and put it in jeopardy.
Too many good paying jobs are going to other places instead of your hometown. The tax code rewards wealth and not work.
CEO’s went to work on that wall to protect their huge tax cuts and loopholes and trade deals while the great divides between the haves and everybody else grow wider and wider.
It isn’t class warfare to talk about this — this is the Truth.
America needs a fighter to fix this. America needs a president who will stand up and stand proudly for working people again.
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SO what is this “metaphorical Wall” ?
Is it the insular nature of the “Power Elite” attracted to the city of Washington DC itself?
Is it the Echo Chamber in DC that has no time for outside voices?
Or is it anything that prevents “We the People” from getting “True Representation” out of our Elected Officials?
Friends, things are going to get interesting. Since 9/11 changed everything, the Bush Administration’s approach to congress has been the steamroller/cement mixer/napalm bomb approach. But since last fall’s elections, the Republican Administration has focused on trying to ensure that they are not held accountable for everything they’ve screwed up. Case in point, the retroactive immunity law to give amnesty to the big phone companies who sold all of us out without a warrant. Think about that next time you pay your phone bill.
During the GOP domination years, they would have sold this by calling up their Joe Klein friends and scaring Democrats into support with threats from the “so-called left” voices and yelling that Rush Limbaugh was spot on. But that stunt was cut short when America realized that Social Security is not in crisis (disclosure, I ran the www.ThereIsNoCrisis.com campaign) and Democrats finally realized that solidarity for honesty could make our Party invincible.
While the Nixon “Enemies List” was a badge of honor, I think the Democrats whom are named early on this time-frame will be wearing a different patch.
This will be an amazing insight into the thoughts of the Bush team’s post lame duck status. The early names will be the names of the Democrats the Bush Administration thinks will throw themselves on the sword for big business despite the little detail we call the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. And we get to know it all in a couple of weeks.
Predictions on who was the first call out of the California delegation?
A famous US patriot once said “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the time, he spoke of the events and circumstances surrounding the birth of a nation destined to be defined by the rights and freedoms of the people; a nation led by government of the People, by the People and for the People, where leaders could inspire the People to stand united in spite of differing opinions or particular religious influence.
The advent of the twenty-first century has marked the most severe departure from our founding principles than ever before. We stand on the brink of self-immolation, leaderless and adrift, while selfish, arrogant hypocrites steer our ship of state toward the shoals.
Should we fail now to grow resolute and united in our determination to right this ship, we fail not only ourselves but our children, and their children’s children.
It is time to look to those children for inspiration and a reminder of what we, as adults, are tasked with as parents and guardians: to create and foster an environment where children can grow to adulthood, secure in the knowledge that we have passed along the best models for ethical leadership and responsible stewardship of this nation that we know how.
And a little child shall lead them
On Tuesday, September 6, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an article appeared in the New York Times about a curious band of refugees that walked into a Baton Rouge evacuation point: six children, comprised of five toddlers following a six year old boy carrying a five month old child:
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Leadership, in action, during a time where the adult leadership of the nation was focused on trying not to appear wholly incompetent.
They failed.
In times of crisis, a nation needs to have faith in the capacity of its appointed leaders to step in and guide them safely through. Taken in that context, our “leaders” have not simply failed — they have failed miserably, to the point where we can no longer think of them as “leaders” at all: that was the turning point where a more critical, if jaundiced, eye was cast upon their actions, and their carefully-constructed façade began to crumble to dust around them.
They were brutally upstaged by the simple competence of a small child.1
Those self-same leaders, who proclaim their compassion for fellow citizens and their love for children, ardently oppose abortion rights for women — and equally oppose providing insurance for millions of uninsured children. They claim to support scientific research, but stand firm against fully embracing stem cell research while hypocritically claiming successful justification of their idiocy by pointing at the work of foreign scientists — scientists who are forging ahead in the field, while our own endeavors flounder here at home.2
Where have all the (adult) leaders gone?
In the year 2007, that question has been asked repeatedly, with growing emphasis. An eighty-two years old businessman by the name of Lee Iacocca even wrote a book with a very similar title: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?3 In order to find out where to look for leadership, and how to recognize it, we should take a peek inside the cover. The opening passages of the book alone should have sounded a clarion call to the would-be and wanna-be leaders of today:
I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.
Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.
Iacocca shouts out that he’d love to sit back and let the youth lead the charge against the encroaching apathy and ongoing destruction of our nation, but the youth is currently distracted and disillusioned. Our children and our young adults — by far one of the bigger factions of the public — don’t trust our politicians to represent their interests; he doesn’t blame them for this, but wants them to wake up and realize that only by standing up and participating in the system can they hope to change it for the better. He laments that we have created “a hell of a mess” and must all pitch in to clean it up.
So here’s where we stand. We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: “Where have all the leaders gone?” Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense?
Those people are the ones who appear to be missing in action. Our Congress holds the responsibility to bring oversight and accountability to the workings of the government, particularly the Executive Branch;
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don’t you guys show some spine for a change?
[…snip…]
You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it’s building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play.
We all have a role to play. We need our Congress to play its role and to actively put the wayward Executive Branch back on track. We ourselves need to drop the veil of false civility and inject the righteous anger and frustration of our national plight into the public discourse — it is no longer time for political correctness, it’s time for political correction.
A Child’s Lead and a Childish Leader: Political Correction vs. “Politically Correct”
The legacy of the Republican Party of this day and age can be summed up in the person of their de facto creation: George W. Bush, and the malAdministration that he leads. Juxtaposed against pretty words carefully calculated to say one thing while supporting the opposite, the legacy of Bush Republicans is one of malignant deceit. They claim support of science, yet undermine any research that doesn’t support their politics in spite of the harm to the public or to national security. They claim to be strong on national security, yet gut the programs that would most help the nation and provide true security in order to prop up failed adventures as “successful” — all the while causing more harm than good. They loudly insist that they have created a better, stronger system for education while creating a system where states and schools are practically encouraged to misreport statistics in order to continue receiving funds. Is are children learning became a national embarrassment, along with the memorable phrase Childrens do learn,4 both brought to the forefront of national discourse by the ignoble head of the Republican Party and purported “leader” of the free world. Bush Republicans also support and extol the virtues of misnamed national policies like The Clean Air Act or Healthy Forests. These morally bankrupt hypocrites claim their support of severe restrictions on embryonic stem cell research helps children and credit research by others in another nation as evidence of their argument, and they aggressively push for war in the name of peace.5
It is a legacy of deceit, denial and dissembly.
It’s time we stood tall and dropped the false cover that political correctness provides to those who excel in prevarication. We need to be direct. We need to be forceful. We need to be blunt.
The child appeared to be imitating something she had seen — probably more than once — when associated with the man standing in front of her. But unlike the parent who quickly and gently hid her action from view, the child’s gesture demonstrated exactly the type of blunt, direct and peaceful confrontation that our adult selves have been sorely deficient in. Fortunately, it is a deficiency that is not complete.
Indeed, some Americans have already figured out that the best way to confront the hypocrisy is to visibly challenge those most responsible for it. In this clip, Richard “Dick” Cheney has his own words from the Senate floor (June 25, 2004) quoted back to him in the aftermath of Katrina, when the Bush officials finally decided it was safe to attempt a few photo ops:
Another adult who stood up to the Bush Administration, directly confronting Bush with dignity and grace, was Harry Taylor, a man who is now running for Congress:
These occurrences are, however, too few and far between. In the interest of our national well-being and the future of both the nation and the children who have lent us the temporary custody of it, we have to do better. Congress has to do better. Our next President has to do better. The current crop of ethically challenged and fiscally irresponsible Republicans know that if they are confronted — if the people begin to stand up and demand answers, criticizing the constant stream of noxious nonsense that is being spread thickly over the landscape — then they will lose their grip on power. They know they will likely lose billions in ill-gotten gains. And some of them, if we are truly diligent in our pursuit of truth and justice, may just end up in jail. They know this, and they are striving to push back against it. They have stooped so low as to repeat and augment the Nixon-era’s challenge that “if the President does it, it’s legal” — they even attempt to quiet dissent by challenging it with the language of treason, while in actuality it is their own actions that betray the nation and her people.
We, the People of the United States of America, need to ensure that this happens. If not for ourselves, then do it for the children. They’re watching us, and will learn from our mistakes as well as our successes — but shouldn’t we try to demonstrate how much better it is to chalk up successes in the fight for freedom and democracy?
Set an example; throw the bums out, try them in accordance with the law, not in a kangaroo court, and when they are justly convicted ensure that they are justly imprisoned.
Namaste.
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Notes and Additional Video Support:
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1. Children have made headlines even more recently as enfants provocateurs (h/t Reason Online via Dawg’sBlog). From News24, an African online news source, comes this story on June 21, 2007:
Cops charge 3-year-old ‘rioter’
21/06/2007 13:44 – (SA)
Patna, India – Police in India have charged a three-year-old boy for allegedly leading a group of rioters and firing at security personnel, the toddler’s uncle said on Thursday.
[…snip…]
This news, of course, comes on the heels of a story from the previous month, detailing that charges were dropped against a six year old boy who was accused of molesting and assaulting a woman in her thirties, again in India.
Those kids in India…gotta watch ’em every minute. ;P
Mr. Spinmeister neglected to mention a few key facts in his apologetic zeal to lay the wreath of discovery at the feet of George Bush. To make a a skin cell behave like an embryonic stem cell, a couple of things go without saying: you’d have to know what an embryonic stem cell does. It would be damn helpful to have worked with human cells, particularly skin cells and embryonic stem cells. And that might be an obstacle if you happened to live in a country where having the latter is an expensive, over regulated pain in the ass specifically because of the unpopular policy of a certain unpopular President. Which may explain in part why this breakthrough occurred in Japan.
3. Iacocca, Lee and Catherine Whitney. Where Have All the Leaders Gone?; New York: Scribner, 2007. ISBN 1-416-53247-1. Citations and initial link in the piece above via Snopes.
4. This DailyKos diary by buffalo provided a most excellent and relevant YouTube video containing two key clips of education-related Bush malapropisms: George W. Bush: Childrens do learn!, posted 28 September 2007:
5. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Etc., etc. From Always Tell the Truth, posted by TileNut on April 16, 2006.
Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.
Mary Bozo…er…Bono, Sometimes Congresswoman in the CA-45, has apparently missed some more votes on the floor of the House of Representatives. Guess that she was too busy getting support from Connie Mack, R-FL, to vote on these important bills.\
I just received this summary from Jim Reynolds, political activist involved in the Desert Stonewall Democrats. The information that Jim provided is originally from The Nation.
On Wednesday the House passed this $51.2 billion bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development for the 2008 fiscal year.
The House approved legislation to grant the Department of Defense four months’ worth of emergency funding for the War in Iraq, under the condition that troop redeployment begins 30 days following the bill’s enactment.
The San Diego Union Tribune’s blog is reporting that Duke Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes has been found guilt on all 13 of the charges that were brought against him. Reporter Greg Morgan has more details in this article.
Wilkes faces at least 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors contended that from 1997 to 2004 he showered Cunningham with gifts small and large. In all, they alleged, he leveraged $625,000 in cash bribes and tens of thousands more in gifts ranging from meals to computers in exchange for Cunningham’s influence in appropriating money and pressuring bureaucrats to award contracts to ADCS Inc., Wilkes’ company.
And I love this assertion:
Wilkes forcefully denied bribing Cunningham. He testified that his interactions with the congressman were legitimate and legal, and his activity was simply “business as usual” in the lobbying and appropriations culture in Washington, D.C.
Really? Were they? Maybe he’d like to spend some time telling prosecutors more about these practices.
The Employee Retiree Income Securtity Act of of 1974 means that only Hawaii can legislate employer mandates (10 steps down from Single Payer). Hawaii is unique for a whole bunch of reasons, but they have done better for decades than the rest of the states due to their excemption.
When the Fed didn’t step up, Hawaii did. Now that the California has yet to step, San Francisco is trying (can’t wait to see the author — Tom Ammiano — in the Assembly). Yet the same old ERISA complaint.
And the Consolidated Omnibus Income Security Act of 1985 pretty much means health care will suck (despite out of the best intentions) until we get real primary care.
ERISA did a lot of great things, but it should be amended. Of minimum, common sense revision would still not bring about single payer, but it would give local governments some parlay room.
The House just took another stab at S-CHIP legislation, and passed it out with 265 votes. The veto override got 273, so that sounds like a step backwards. I don’t think so. Ten Democrats didn’t vote, and all of them can be expected to vote yes. 43 Republicans voted with the Democrats, which is I think one more than before. The point is the cosmetic changes to the bill did little to get Republicans on board. But they had to vote against kids’ health care, again, and take a stand on an issue where Democrats are favored by a 2:1 margin.
Democratic ideas for fixing the healthcare system to cover the uninsured enjoy more support among Americans than proposals coming from Republicans, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows […]
Two of the main proposals advanced by Democrats received majority support in the poll.
Sixty-two percent said they supported requiring large employers to help pay for coverage whereas 31% opposed it. And 51% said they favored a mandate that individuals purchase health insurance, much as drivers are required to carry auto coverage; 39% disagreed.
Tax breaks to make insurance more affordable — a leading Republican idea — more closely divided the public, with 44% backing that approach and 45% opposing it.
In one of the most politically significant results, the poll finds that independents and moderates were generally lining up with Democrats in the healthcare debate.
A lot of California Republicans didn’t vote today, as many were back home in their districts surveying fire damage. If they bothered to talk to anyone in the state, they would know that the Healthy Families program (as S-CHIP is known in California) is about to go broke and requires “emergency measures” to stay afloat. On November 17, the money will dry up, and the options are severely limited. As many as 830,000 kids could become disenrolled if the program is forced to shut down.
That’s what’s really at stake in this debate. It’s a political issue, but a personal one as well. More often than not, the political IS personal. What our representatives decide has a major impact on how we live. They need to do right by children.
As many of you may know, just over six years ago I cast the lone vote against giving George Bush an unchecked authority to wage an undefined war against an undefined enemy for an unspecified period of time, an authority his administration has invoked in going into Iraq, in the establishment of military tribunals, even in conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Thankfully, today I am no longer a lone voice, as evidenced in no small part by vibrant communities like this one. The majority of Americans want to end the occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home, but despite the fact that George Bush refuses to change course in Iraq, Congress has not taken the necessary steps to end his administration’s failed policy.
So how do we change this?
With the emergency supplemental debate looming (the precise date is still unclear), it is critical that we lay the groundwork beforehand to ensure our momentum heading into the debate.
To that end, I have joined with my fellow co-chairs of the Out-of-Iraq caucus, Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters, in writing to President Bush to tell him that when Congress takes up the next emergency supplemental for Iraq, we will not provide another dime for his failed policy. Our letter makes it clear that the only funding that we would vote for is funding to protect our troops and contractors and bring them home, and 77 other Representatives have already joined us in signing this letter.
This is what we call “Fully Funding Redeployment,” and while we’re off to a strong start with 80 signers, we are trying to reach 100 by the end of the month to put us on strong footing for the coming debate.
The coming debate on the emergency supplemental promises to be among the most important we’ve seen in Congress in decades, and I can’t thank you enough for the amazing effort you are putting in towards ending President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq — both here, on your own blogs, and in your own communities.
On September 12, John Boehner said that the cost of the Iraq War has been “a small price to pay.”
…We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.
Meanwhile, nearly 4000 Americans have died, and tens of thousands more have had their lives drastically changed. Not to mention the trillion or so dollars so far.
So which part of that is a “small price.”? John Boehner is the Minority Leader in the House. Republican Representatives have a duty to disclaim this terrible insult to our troops. So, we have 22 of them here in California…time to speak up folks.
The 26th District in California has historically been composed of slightly more Republicans than Democrats. Therefore, David Dreier, Republican House Rep for the district, has continually won reelection in the district since his first victory in 1981. However, the tide is changing, voters are fed up with the republican agenda and ready to usher in an era of Democratic leadership. We will be able to witness this change in the congressional race in the CA 26th District, as a democratic candidate will have the opportunity to end Dreier’s 27 year reign over the district.
Hoyt Hilsman will be the perfect candidate to oust Dreier. He is a director at the Hope Street Group, a bipartisan think tank of professionals who are committed to the equality of opportunity and economic growth. He is also a respected community volunteer. He has taught creative writing classes in public schools, volunteered at Union Station (a homeless shelter) and become an active member of the Writer’s Guild.
Hoyt Hilsman was raised in Washington DC. His father was Assistant Secretary of State during the Kennedy Administration. Hilsman attended Columbia University and then went on to Columbia Law School. During this time he worked with some prominent leaders of our time, such as Bill Clinton.
After finishing law school Hilsman began working at the Federal Legal Services Program with the poor, unemployed and disabled at a state prison. However, eventually Hilsman left the legal field behind and began making a name for himself as an award winning writer. He has been a contributor to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. In addition, he has written several plays that have been produced throughout the US as well as other countries and written screenplays for major movie studios and television networks.
Hoyt Hilsman has followed in his father’s civic footsteps by becoming a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He has also been a key advisor to many candidates during their campaigns.
What makes Hilsman attractive is that he is not a career politician, like David Dreier who has held the 26th District’s House seat since 1981. He is a democratic candidate who is an “author and educator”, as the New York Times points out in an article that highlights certain congressional candidates in key districts. He is an active community member who is unbiased. Congress needs more members like Hilsman!
