Where's the Outrage?

This is the transcript of the speech that I gave on Saturday February 26th here in Asheville, NC.

Good afternoon, I’m Errington Thompson and I’ve been asked to talk a little bit about the state of the middle class and what we need to do. The good news is there is a lot to say. The bad news is that I only have 10 minutes to say it.

I grew up in the 70s. I grew up watching TV, in spite of the fact that my mother monitored our TV time relatively strictly. There were many middle-class role models on TV, from Marcus Welby, Andy Griffith and Ralph Kramden to Hawkeye Pierce and Radar O’Reilly from M*A*S*H. I would like to take a look at what would happen to one of these characters in a world without unions. Let’s look at Andy Griffith from Mayberry RFD and the Andy Griffith show. For those of you, too young to remember, Andy Griffith was the sheriff in a town called Mayberry. This a town where everybody knew everybody. The town was really one big happy family.

Let’s assume that Andy began as sheriff in 1960. He was young man. He was 20 years old. In 1970, he had to go to the City Council and ask for a raise. Andy had no pension. He had no worker’s comp. He basically had no days off. He could stay at home some mornings while Barney handled things (you remember how Barney handled things) but he couldn’t really take a vacation. In 1980, he went back to the City Council and asked for his second raise in 20 years. A modest raise was granted in spite of the fact that inflation of the late 70s caused prices to skyrocket. Andy had to tighten his belt. The Reagan revolution took hold throughout the 80s and the taxpayers of Mayberry “thought” they were paying too much. The City Council and the mayor asked Andy to take a pay cut. Andy Griffith pleaded his case on three separate occasions. He even thought about leaving Mayberry and becoming a sheriff in one of the surrounding towns but there were no job openings. Andy was forced to take a pay cut in spite of the fact that everyone told him that he was doing a great job. Andy was forced to take out a second mortgage on his house. The go-go 1990s brought prosperity to Mayberry. Andy got not one but two pay raises during the decade. Unfortunately, while chasing a drunk driver, he was in a car crash. The small-town only had a meager medical insurance policy. His friends and neighbors were forced to hold bake sales and pass the hat. Andy was in the hospital for over three weeks. He had two major surgeries for a broken pelvis and open compound fracture of his thighbone. The sheriff acquired another eight weeks of rehabilitation. There was some discussion in City Council meetings on whether Andy was becoming “too costly” for the city to afford. It was Barney who shamed the City Council into recognizing the value of Andy Griffith. The fact was that he’d been there for them every day for more than 30 years. The good sheriff was not fired. It took Andy a total of four months to recover. Andy wasn’t one to lay around. As soon as he was able he was back on the job.

It was in 2003 when Andy’s life truly changed. Andy was investigating a possible break-in. It turned out to be two lovers who are just looking for place to be alone. Andy startled the lovers and the man panicked. He grabbed a gun and shot Andy in the belly. Andy was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town. He underwent emergency surgery. He was over 60 years old. The City Council met in emergency session because the hospital bills were piling up. It was clear that Andy’s hospitalization plus rehabilitation was going to cost the city more than $50,000. The City Council decided to fire Andy on the spot. He was still in the hospital.

This is the world without unions. This is the world without strong unions.

• If you want a world in which you can work for a living wage and get adequate time off. You want world with… Strong unions.
• If you want a world where you can work in negotiate your benefits plan. You want a world with… Strong unions.
• If you don’t want your children to work before age 10. You want a world with… Strong unions.
• If you want to get paid overtime for working more than 40 hours a week. You want a world with… Strong unions.
• If you’d like a little bit more safety on your job. You want a world with… Strong unions.
• If you want some job security and a pension. You have to have a world with… Strong Unions.

We have a choice today. We can turn our backs on the unions as we have for the last 40 years. We can hope that the CEOs and executives of this country will look out for the American worker. Or we can stand up and support… Strong unions.

In my mind, the middle class of the United States of America cannot survive and thrive without… Strong unions.

Thank you.

Tags: Civil Rights by ecthompson md
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Governor Scott Walker

The Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker has made a name for himself. He was unknown three weeks ago. Now he is the face of the GOP agenda.

For an excellent update from C&L on the Wisconsin protests – here and here.

From ClimateProgress:

On Friday, Think Progress posted “REPORT: Top 10 Disastrous Policies From The Wisconsin GOP You Haven’t Heard About.”  I’m reposting the whole piece below since four of those disastrous policies would subject Wisconsin families to dirtier air and dirtier water.

As the standoff between the Main Street Movement and Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) continues for the twelfth day, much of the media coverage — and anger — from both sides has focused on Walker’s efforts to strip Wisconsin public workers of their right to collective bargaining. But Walker’s assault on public employees is only one part of a larger political program that aims to give corporations free reign in the state while dismantling the healthcare programs, environmental regulations and good government laws that protect Wisconsin’s middle and working class.

Below, ThinkProgress examines ten of the most disastrous policies the Wisconsin GOP is pursuing:

1. ELIMINATING MEDICAID: The Budget Repair Bill includes a little-known provision that would put complete control of the state’s Medicaid program, known as BadgerCare, in the hands of the state’s ultra-conservative Health and Human Services Secretary Dennis Smith. Smith would have the authority to “to overridestate Medicaid laws as [he] sees fit and institute sweeping changes” includingreducing benefits and limiting eligibility. Ironically, during the 1990s it wasRepublicans, especially former Gov. and Bush HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, who helped develop BadgerCare into one of the country’s most innovative and generous Medicaid programs. A decade later, a new generation of radical Republicans is hoping to destroy one of Wisconsin’s “success stories.”

2. POWER PLANT PRIVATIZATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL NEGLECT: The same budget bill calls for a rapid no-bid “firesale” of all state-owned power plants. One progressive blogger called the proposal “a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism” and suggested that the provision will open the way for large, politically connected corporations, like Koch Industries, to buy up the state’s power plants on the cheap. While it’s unclear whether corporations would be interested in buying the plants, a similar proposal was vetoed six years a go by Gov. Jim Doyle (D), who called the plan fiscally and environmentally irresponsible. Many of Wisconsin’s power plants are in violation of federal clean air regulations and desperately need to be upgraded and cleaned up — not dumped into the private sector.

3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water. Conservatives have said that the clean water rule — which went into effect in December — is simply too expensive. Yet the rule only affects 12 percent of municipalities and the price may be worth it. In 1993, 104 people died and 400,000 fell sick when the Milwaukee water supply became infected. Even two decades later, the Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Board notes that 13 percent of acute gastro-intestinal illnesses in municipalities that don’t disinfect their water supplies are the result of dirty water. Municipalities can keep their water clean for as low as $10,000 per well — but apparently for the Wisconsin GOP that is too high a price to pay to keep citizens safe from deadly microorganisms.

4. DESTROYING WETLANDS: In January, Walker’s proposed regulatory reform bill exempted a parcel of wetland owned by a Republican donor from water quality standards. But the exemption was more than just an embarrassing giveaway to a GOP ally: environmental groups believe the bill’s special provision would actually affect the entire county, eliminating public hearings on proposed wetland development, short-circuiting approval of development projects, and disrupting the region’s water system.

5. FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Walker signed a bill this week requiring a 2/3 supermajority in the legislature to pass any tax increase. Republican lawmakers are now reportedly considering a constitutional amendment that would make the rule permanent. A similar constitutional amendment in California has been called the “source of misery” of that state’s crippling budget crisis and has forced lawmakersto “gut public education, slash social services and health care programs, close prisons, and lay off record numbers of public employees.” While claiming to “make a commitment to the future instead of [choosing] dire consequences for our children” Walker and GOP lawmakers are instead putting generations of Wisconsinites in a “fiscal strait-jacket.” (more…)

Tags: Civil Liberty, Civil Rights, Environment by ecthompson md
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I spoke at our Wisconsin solidarity rally today in Asheville. We had a great crowd. I was/am honored that I had an opportunity to address the crowd. (I’ll have a rough transcript of my speech here later on.)

There was a rally in Raleigh, NC.

From News Observer:

Wisconsin’s battle over collective bargaining rights spilled over into Raleigh’s streets today.

Hundreds of supporters of Wisconsin public employees in their dispute with Gov. Scott Walker waved signs and heard speeches on the south lawn of the Capitol, while a smaller, but loudly outspoken group of opponents shouted their own slogans from the other side of Fayetteville Street.

The pro-union rally was organized by the State Employees Association of North Carolina. SEANC doesn’t have formal negotiating rights, because North Carolina is one of two states that ban collective bargaining for public workers.

From FDL:

In what has been billed the largest rally in the history of Madison, over 100,000 people packed the Capitol Square for a “Rally for Workers’ Rights” to protest the budget repair bill and the proposed stripping of collective bargaining rights from public employees. Madison Police told AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale that they estimated the crowd at 100,000 30 minutes before the 3pm rally. As Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, who graced the stage, said, it’s 40% of the March on Washington, which he attended.

Yarrow told me before going on stage that he was proud to see the spirit of the past resuscitated. “If they persist, they will prevail,” he said.

The peaceful crowd spanned age ranges, comprised of public and private workers, union and non-union, high school and retired. And it included Madison East High School’s Bradley Whitford, also known as White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman of The West Wing. He told the assembled, among other things, that “Wisconsin is a stubborn constituency, we fish through ice!”

Tags: Budget, Civil Rights by ecthompson md
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This is just cool. I love watching the Space Shuttle take off.

I’m deeply saddened that we “can’t” afford to build another updated Shuttle. If we quit giving tax breaks to the wealthy we could afford a few things around here.

From MSNBC:

Space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, making its final visit before being parked at a museum.

“What took you guys so long?” asked the space station’s commander, Scott Kelly.

Discovery should have come and gone last November, but was grounded by fuel tank cracks. It blasted off Thursday with just two seconds to spare after being held up by a balky ground computer.

“Yeah, I don’t know, we kind of waited until like the last two seconds,” said shuttle commander Steven Lindsey.
The linkup occurred 220 miles above Australia.

Tags: NASA by ecthompson md
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Tags: General by Neil Aquino
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February is Black History Month. For all black authors, there is some sort of unwritten rule that it is blasphemy not to comment on Black History in February. Well, I will not commit blasphemy this month.

In many schools, history is taught as a bunch of isolated facts that are seldom related to reality. Students are forced to digest facts like…

• In 1885, Sarah E. Goode invented a bed that folded into a cabinet. She was the second black woman to receive a patent.
• Garrett Augustus Morgan created a gas mask.
• Thomas J. Martin patented the fire extinguisher in 1872.
• George T. Sampson invented a clothes dryer in 1892 that used heat from the stove.
• Although Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb it would have been nothing without the carbon filament. The process for creating a carbon filament which burned in hours instead of minutes was figured out by Lewis Latimer.
• Granville T. Woods invented the multiplex telegraph in 1887. He invented air brakes for trains. He also invented a device that picked up electricity from the “third rail” which made electric powered transit systems possible.
• And Dr. George Franklin Grant invented the world’s first golf tee, which was patented in 1899. He was also the first Black professor at Harvard.

But even lumped together all these individual achievements don’t tell the story of Black History. They don’t tell the story of how many minorities in America thrived despite oppression. Henry Blair, for example, never learned to read or write, yet he invented a corn seed planter in 1834 and signed his patent with an X. Martin Luther King wrote some of his most eloquent essays from a Birmingham Jail.

The story of Black History, then, is the story of overcoming obstacles, of excelling in spite of squalid conditions. As we sit back today and see the people of Egypt taking to the streets and asking for basic human rights, such as fair wages and equal treatment from the government, it is hard not to remember and reflect upon the civil rights movement.

Remember, first, that the civil rights movement did not happen one day in 1963 when the Reverend Dr. King stood before a crowd of hundreds of thousands and declared, “I Have a Dream.” It started after World War II, when our brave black soldiers came back from honorable, heroic service overseas and were then treated as second class citizens, again. The integration of the armed forces in 1948 really started the civil rights ball rolling. The NAACP saw enormous growth in the late 1940s, and its president Roy Wilkins, along with Thurgood Marshall, carefully planned a series of legal battles that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, KS) in 1954. It was hundreds of thousands of thoughtful, hard-working blacks and whites who made up the civil rights movement that grew into a powerful force that lasted more than 20 years.

Freedom, liberty, and civil rights do not come easy. They did not come easy in America and they will not come easy in Egypt. We must remember that Dr. King, who was devoted to nonviolent change, led a series of marches. It is important that we do not forget people like Huey P. Newton (founder of the Black Panthers) and Malcolm X, who proposed using “any means necessary” to achieve the goal of civil rights for all, were a significant counterbalance to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

All these people came together and demonstrated, and challenged, and marched, and fought to bestow on people like you and me the freedoms that we enjoy today. In Egypt, too, the people are going to have to fight for change on all fronts. They’ll have to continue with nonviolent demonstrations in the streets. They’re going to have to fight in the courts. They’re going to have to fight in their legislature. When I look at Egypt, I can see just how far we’ve come. When I look at the latest job numbers (unemployment rate of 9%, 8.7 million Americans having lost their jobs since December of 2007), I can see we have a long way to go.

Black History is more than a series of names and events. Black History is an American story of triumph and tribulation. It is a story of a very long struggle which should have meaning for all Americans.

Tags: Foreign Affairs, Newsletter, Race by ecthompson md
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• The Economic Policy Institute has completed their evaluation of President Obama’s new budget. As with all budgets, there are good things and bad things. Cuts to programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program are indefensible in my book. At all costs, no matter what our financial situation, we need to help and protect the poor. I really have a problem understanding how we can afford tax cuts for the rich, which do not create jobs, and we can’t afford to help the poor get through the winter. Read more of their analysis here and here.
• Representative Paul Broun of Georgia (Republican) held a town hall event this week in which one of his constituents asked “who is going to shoot President Obama?” The congressman ignored the question and moved on but is that enough? Later, the congressman’s office got in touch with the “appropriate authorities.” I’m still not sure that that’s enough. That man needed to be denounced right there, right then. Suppose it was 2003 and President Bush was in office. The amount of scorn that would’ve been heaped on this man for suggesting that President Bush should be assassinated would have been overwhelming. Security would’ve had to escort the man out of the room because the crowd would have tried to physically harm him. I’m sorry, but the congressman’s response was weak, tepid and unpatriotic. This is the president of the United States. Whether the congressman agrees with him or not, threats against our president’s life should not be tolerated!

• Governor Scott Walker is been in the news for the past 10 days. He is by far the most prominent Republican at this point in time. He stood strong against the unions. He’s been publicly humiliated by giving an interview to someone he thought was David Koch. Last night, the Wisconsin State assembly passed Scott Walker’s draconian budget bill in a surprise vote but the Senate does not have a quorum so it’s unclear what this means.
• Is Scott Walker is standing against jobs? It appears that he is. He shutting down several clean energy initiatives which would add hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in the state of Wisconsin.
• Are the state union workers overpaid as Fox news and Scott Walker said they were? Sure doesn’t appear to be that way.
• The state of the health care reform law seems to have confused Americans. Yet another federal judge has declared it constitutional. With the daily back-and-forth, Americans have become confused. A new poll suggests a fifth of Americans believe that the healthcare law has been repealed. It hasn’t. HCR is still alive…at least for now.

Click to Enlarge

• The NFL owners in the NFL Players Association continue to head down the wrong road. For the most part, I hate when millionaires are arguing with millionaires. As far as I’m concerned, this is not about the high-paid football players. Instead, it’s about those guys who play football for a couple of years and are then discarded like a used handkerchief. They are 24 years old. Yes, they’ve made over half a million bucks over the last several years, but now they’re flat broke. In my mind, the negotiations are about these guys. The game of football will be hurt if there is a work stoppage.
• China has dropped the death penalty for some economic crimes.
• Unrest in the Middle East continues. No one’s quite sure who’s in charge of Libya. Oil prices are rising because of the uncertainty of Libya’s oil. My good friend, Brian Katulis, from the Center for American Progress, has written an excellent summary of what’s going on in the Middle East. President Obama and his administration have to perform a balancing act. We need to support the protesters, the people, and stay vigilant against possible terrorist threats. This is an outstanding article.

Tags: Budget, Civil Liberty, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Mess O'Potamia (Iraq/Iran/Israel/Palestine), Obama administration by ecthompson md
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A 20-year-old Saudi man was arrested on Thursday. He was plotting to blow up multiple targets in the United States. This guy seems to have, “I’m an obvious terrorist” written all over his dossier. He is young. He comes from the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. He doesn’t make friends and United States. He writes a blog with extremist statements. This guy seems to be a no-brainer. My question is how to we detect those that aren’t so obvious? How do we detect those terrorist that do fit into society? How do we detect those terrorist that don’t come from Saudi Arabia but instead come from somewhere like London or Paris or Germany? How do we detect terrorist that don’t send up these multiple red flags?

From TPM:

A 20-year-old Saudi man living in Texas was arrested Wednesday and charged with the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in connection with his alleged purchase of chemicals and equipment used to make an improvised explosive device (IED).

Federal authorities say that Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari wrote an e-mail to himself listing the Dallas address of former President George W. Bush as the “Tyrant’s House” and considered used infant dolls to conceal explosives and targeting of a nightclub with an explosive device concealed in a backpack.

We’ve posted the criminal complaint here.

Late Update: We’ve got more on this story here.

Tags: Al Qaeda, Terrorism by ecthompson md
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Linda Monk is a constitutional scholar and friend. She just posted this powerful piece on HuffPo:

In rallies much like those currently being held in Wisconsin, and across the nation in state capitals this Saturday, workers during America’s first Gilded Age fought back against the forces of corporate greed that ground them to the bone.

In those days, the Supreme Court believed that the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, only applied to the federal government, not the states and the local governments. So any governor, or mayor, or town boss was free to put you in jail or kick you out of town for saying something they didn’t like — union organizing usually being at the top of the list. But union supporters didn’t take that lying down — they flooded towns with speakers who violated local laws that limited free speech.

One of those early union leaders in the fight for free speech was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the “Rebel Girl” of martyr Joe Hill’s famous song. Flynn worked for the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, who organized miners and migrant workers in the western states in the early 1900s. These workers had little political clout because they moved from job to job and weren’t registered to vote. Presaging the civil rights movement, their principal recourse was a mass protest.

Flynn helped lead one of those “free speech fights” in Missoula, Montana, in 1908. Here’s how she described it:

We sent out a call to all ‘footloose rebels to come at once — to defend the Bill of Rights.’ A steady stream of I.W.W. members began to flock in by freight cars… As soon as one speaker was arrested, another took his place. The jail was soon filled.

These mass protests in favor of free speech definitely had an effect. In 1925, the Supreme Court finally ruled that the First Amendment did apply to state and local governments, nationalizing the protection of free speech. Without the concerted action of union supporters, that victory would not have been possible.

Unions have contributed remarkable things to the American way of life: the growth of the middle class; expansion of health care and social security; paid vacations and paid sick leave; a work week that leaves time for families to enjoy each other. None of these things were possible in Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s day. As she said in 1962: “We never heard of vacations, let alone vacations with pay.”

Make no mistake: What is at risk in Wisconsin, and every state in America, is the quality of life that American workers have fought — and died — for during the past century. When plutocrats like the Koch brothers tell the governor of an American state to roll back the clock on public employees, they are seeking to end protections for all workers. The Kochs are part of an ideological movement that hopes to end all legislation controlling wages, hours, and workplace safety — returning America to a “Social Darwinism” that ensures survival of the fittest (read: richest). This is the constitutional theory that prevailed before the New Deal. To these extremists, Ayn Rand is on par with James Madison.

We must never forget that the most important achievement of the union movement was the protection of the right that makes all other rights possible — freedom of speech. The First Amendment comes with a union label.

Tags: Civil Liberty, Legal, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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Tags: Books, General by Neil Aquino
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Originally, more than a week ago, it was unclear exactly what was going on in Wisconsin. A new Republican governor, a tea party candidate, was trying to extract concessions from a union. No surprises here. Everyone assumed that Wisconsin, like all other states, was in financial peril. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter fact, Wisconsin’s budget was just fine before the governor started giving away tax cuts to businesses. Let’s be clear, business tax cuts do not stimulate the local economy. Business tax cuts make business leaders happy. States hope that happy business leaders will expand their businesses within the state and hire more employees. Past experience has shown us that this is not necessarily the case.

I’ve edited a couple of Rachel Maddow shows to hone down to the crux of the problem. The problem is that unions support Democratic candidates. That’s the problem. If you’re able to break the union, you’re able to break the funding mechanism of Democratic candidates. This is what the crisis/showdown in Wisconsin is all about. Watch the video:

One of the talking points that the right-wing has used during this crisis in Wisconsin was that the union workers were paying almost nothing into their pensions and paying almost nothing for healthcare. That was their argument. They didn’t go the extra step and find out that union workers in Wisconsin get paid less. It would be completely different if union workers in Wisconsin got paid at the same rate as nonunion workers. This would make their total compensation much higher than their private-sector colleagues. Reality tells us that the union workers are receiving less in salary and less in total compensation. So this government giveaway that Republicans are pushing is a crock.

Tags: Business, Living wage, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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• For the most part, I really enjoy going to work. I enjoy what I do. There’s only been one other time when I felt like I needed to be glued to the TV because there’s so much going on in the world. That was back on 9/11. We’ve got change and upheaval going on in the Middle East. Egypt is still a big question mark. Who knows what’s going on in Tanzania? Muammar Qaddafi, the long-standing leader (brutal dictator), looks like he needs to break out his escape plan. Morocco does not look all that stable. Bahrain has decided to stop shooting its own citizens but the “monarchy” is not talking with the opposition. I didn’t even know that Yemen had a president. Who knew?

• In Wisconsin, unions are finally standing up. I know there are those in the United States who truly hate unions. They have one or two union stories which have colored their judgment. The reason that you and I don’t work to exhaustion every single day, seven days a week, is because of unions. These are rights which were fought for. Let’s be honest with each other. There are the workers and then there are the executives. The executives give up nothing for free. Workers have to come together in order to bargain with management. If you bargain with management as an individual, most likely, you’ll be fired. Management can get five or 10 more just like you without lifting a finger. So, the only time the management listens to labor is when labor threatens to shut down operations. Unions have fought and won against child labor. Our country is better off because children are in school and not working 12-hour shifts on assembly lines. This wasn’t because of some great president who had some idea. Instead, the child labor laws came about because of unions. The reason we work 40 hours a week is because unions stood up against management. Everyone, in the United States, has benefited from unions standing together. So, I want to be in Madison, Wisconsin with American workers fighting for right that they earned more than 60 years ago, to collective bargaining.

• Sometimes, I find it truly amazing that politicians ever get out of their house. It seems like they’re just too in love with themselves to leave the mirror. They believe their yes-men. Remember Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who thought he could run for president? He could not even win reelection in his own state. Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, is one of these egotistical nut jobs. I’m not sure who told him that he was made of presidential stuff, but he has started to believe this. Mississippi is in the bottom five of almost every meaningful category there is. This is what Haley Barbour’s going to run on? Now, let’s not forget that he supported, to be more correct – strongly supported, these Citizen Councils, pro-segregation watchdog groups, vigilante groups which roamed South during the middle part of the last century. Mississippi is coming up with a license plate top honor Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. If ever you wanted to make a statement that would separate Mississippi from its racist past, this would be the time. Haley Barbour has said nothing. He’s been given opportunities on national stages to stand up and oppose the founder of the Ku Klux Klan on the Mississippi license plate, but no. Haley Barbour may be a brilliant political mind. He may be the Einstein of politics, but I just don’t see it. He reminds me of the Giuliani of politics. Remember when Rudy Giuliani decided he was going to skip Iowa, South Carolina and then sort of run in Florida? Remember when the pundits were saying how he was gonna save all this money and build up his warchest? How did that work out for Rudy Giuliani? Right now, and I’ll happy to say that I’m wrong if I’m wrong, Haley Barbour looks like a buffoon.

Tags: Foreign Affairs, Mess O'Potamia (Iraq/Iran/Israel/Palestine), Party Politics, Race by ecthompson md
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This is simply a game to these guys (CNN). The game goes like this – let’s invite somebody big on the show like Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney or former president George W. Bush. The guys at CNN have read their books. We know they are completely unapologetic for a war which was started on false pretenses. We know, from reading their books, that not one of them significantly questioned the intelligence. (There were several books which clearly revealed that the White House was pumping up the intelligence [read the book Hubris for an excellent read].) Instead, they pushed the intelligence. It was Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby who went down to CIA headquarters and personally sifted through raw intelligence. They would find raw snippets of intelligence and then ask the CIA why this or that was not in the official report. We knew Curveball was fabricating at the time. The Germans didn’t trust him or believe him. This is fact. For Donald Rumsfeld to weasel around and say anything different is simply nauseating. But this is the game. The announcer, Candy Crowley in this case, it really doesn’t matter who, will ask the question in multiple different ways trying to “get at the truth.” Yet, we would all have to be born yesterday to think that Donald Rumsfeld did not know the questions beforehand. Donald Rumsfeld is as skilled as anybody at this word game. CNN knows this. Yet, they want to get “great ratings.” So, they book Donald Rumsfeld. They (CNN) get increased ratings. Donald Rumsfeld sells more books and we, the American people, get the shaft. We get absolutely no meaningful information from this interview.

The whole thing is a charade. It is a waste of our time. Why isn’t this guy in jail somewhere?

Tags: Bush Administration, Iraq by ecthompson md
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President’s Day is upon us.

Above you see George Washington and Abe Lincoln hugging in the afterlife.

Where can you learn more about the Presidents?

I have four suggestions. Two of these resources are books and the other two can be found online.

The book The American Presidency–The Authoritative Reference is very useful.

Edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, American Presidency is a collection of essays about each President up until George W. Bush.

The book offers up a small measure of biography and a larger portion of analysis. With the essays running between 10 and 20 pages, this book is a good path to a reasonably complex understanding of the Presidents in a manageable amount of time.

A great deal of information about the Presidents can be found in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents by William Degregoiro.

I’m not sure that any book has more facts about our Presidents than Complete Book. Here you’ll learn not just about the Presidents and their terms of office, but also about their cabinets, spouses and children, and various love affairs. It is one of the most enjoyable books I know.

The best online resource I’m aware of about the Presidents can be found at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. There you’ll find biographical information, essays and  a multimedia gallery. It is very well done.

Finally, C-Span offers the excellent American Presidents website. There are broadcasts you can watch showing where the Presidents lived, as well as programs where experts talk about the Presidents and take phone calls from viewers.

It is fine entertainment.

Make use of these top-notch resources, and you’ll know plenty about the Presidents and the impact they had on American history.

Even better, you can make use of these resources as a springboard to your additional studies of our Presidents and of our American political history.

The decision to learn more and understand more is up to you.

Ed. Note:

A great book on George Washington – His Excellency: George Washington

Another great read is American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

Both of these books are by Joseph Ellis. He is one of the best historians of our time.

Tags: Books, Other Political Thoughts by Neil Aquino
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The world we live in is so crazy and unpredictable. You really truly never know what’s going happen next. A couple of weeks ago, my sister told me that I needed to follow MC Hammer on twitter. Being a great brother, I signed up to follow the star rapper. I hved been on and off of twitter several times today. Most of the tweets I was reading had to do with the massive protests that continue in Wisconsin. I even helped Karoli trace some of the funding of a Right-wing group who is trying to sabotage union workers. A couple hours later, I got back to twitter and found this tweet from MC Hammer –

Improve the quality of your life !!! Listen to Jessica Jackley !!! .. Amazing Woman !!! #Seeherface http://j.mp/hSYvA3

So, I followed the link to an amazing video. I don’t know who started TED. But whoever started it is a true genius. Jessica Jackley seems to be the kind of person we all want to be, someone who loves and cares for and about their fellow man. She has separated herself from us by doing more than simply caring. She’s done something to help our fellow men/women. Please watch this amazing video.

Tags: General by ecthompson md
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I’m going to try and do a better job and post more information on climate change. (I’m going to use the term climate change instead of global warming. For me, climate change will be shorthand for climate change secondary to human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels.) I have found a new blog called Climate Progress. This blog has done a wonderful job of finding scientific articles and explaining those articles and what they mean to our climate. I will be borrowing heavily from this eco-blog.

From Climate Progress:

One of the single greatest concerns of climate scientists is that human-caused warming will cause amplifying feedbacks in the carbon-cycle.  Such positive feedbacks, whereby an initial warming releases carbon into the air that causes more warming, would increase both the speed and scale of climate change, greatly complicating both mitigation and adaptation.

The most worrisome amplifying feedback is the defrosting of the tundra.  Another major, related feedback now appears to be soil respiration, whereby plants and microbes in the soil give off more carbon dioxide as the planet warms.

As Nature reports (article here, study here, subs. req’d), a review of 439 studies around the world — including 306 performed from 1989 to 2008 — found “soil respiration had increased by about 0.1% per year between 1989 and 2008, the span when soil measurement techniques had become standardized.”  Physorg.com interviewed the lead author, who said bluntly:

“There’s a big pulse of carbon dioxide coming off of the surface of the soil everywhere in the world,” said ecologist Ben Bond-Lamberty of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “We weren’t sure if we’d be able to measure it going into this analysis, but we did find a response to temperature.”

The increase in carbon dioxide given off by soils — about 0.1 petagram (100 million metric tons) per year since 1989 — won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect unless it comes from carbon that had been locked away out of the system for a long time, such as in Arctic tundra. This analysis could not distinguish whether the carbon was coming from old stores or from vegetation growing faster due to a warmer climate. But other lines of evidence suggest warming is unlocking old carbon, said Bond-Lamberty, so it will be important to determine the sources of extra carbon.

Indeed the study itself concludes:

The available data are, however, consistent with an acceleration of the terrestrial carbon cycle in response to global climate change.

One of the other gases, maybe not talked about quite as much as carbon dioxide, is methane. Methane, like carbon dioxide, will trap heat in our atmosphere. It appears that there are huge quantities of methane trapped in the Siberian tundra. As temperatures warm, that methane is released into the atmosphere.

From Climate Progress:

Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane.  Methane is  is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!

The carbon is locked in a freezer in the part of the planet warming up the fastest (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).  Half the land-based permafrost would vanish by mid-century on our current emissions path (see “Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return” and below).  No climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra.

The new Science study, led by University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Centre and the Russian Academy of Sciences, is “Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf” (subs. req’d).  The must-read National Science Foundation press release (click here), warns “Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”  The NSF is normally a very staid organization.  If they are worried, everybody should be.

It is increasingly clear that if the world strays significantly above 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide for any length of time, we will find it unimaginably difficult to stop short of 800 to 1000 ppm.

Tags: Environment by ecthompson md
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For about two years, there was nothing bigger than Arsenio Hall. He had a talk show that was the bomb. He had a movie thing going with Eddie Murphy. He also had a music thing going with a funk group called Cameo. They made an album that was pretty good. It was Cameo when Cameo was hot.

Artist: Chunky A (Arsenio Hall)
Tune: Owwww!

Tags: Music by ecthompson md
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Let’s go back in history. Let’s go back to those dark days of 2001 and 2002. These were days after an airliner crashed in Pennsylvania, an airliner crashed into the Pentagon and, of course, the twin towers fell. America wanted revenge. We wanted blood. Sure, the attacks were launched from Afghanistan but as Donald Rumsfeld said, there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. So, the administration decided to go after a long-time nemesis, Iraq. The administration decided that we needed overwhelming evidence that Iraq was not only a threat to its neighbors but a threat to us, here in America. They need to convince us that Iraq was an immediate threat. The Bush administration went after us in a multiple different ways in a coordinated media blitz. First of all, and most scary, they needed a nuclear threat. Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger. Secondly, and this dovetails into the uranium story, Iraq was buying these high-grade aluminum tubes which “could only be used to centrifuge high-grade uranium.” Thirdly, an Iraqi official met with Al Qaeda in Prague. This was the Al Qaeda connection. This connected Iraq to our source of rage, the attacks on September 11th. Finally, we had the mobile biological labs. These were all lies, but that’s the beauty of the Bush administration. It wasn’t just one lie, but several lies, which took us years to unravel.

This brings us to Curveball. The first time I remember reading about Curveball was in Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies. Richard Clarke described curveball as a pathological liar. He was an Iraqi citizen in German custody. The Germans didn’t trust his information. The Americans did not have the ability to directly question Curveball. Yet, somehow, this guy’s wild fantasies were uttered as fact by the Bush administration. It appears that Curveball has surfaced. He has admitted, his lies but it is too late now. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people have died. We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars and have really nothing to show for it. Saddam Hussein is dead. The sons of Saddam Hussein are also dead. Now, all of this destruction isn’t Curveball’s fault. The Bush administration is to blame for ginned up lies. If it hadn’t been Curveball they would have found someone else’s lies to push onto a gullible American public.

From TPM:

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed “Curveball” by German and American intelligence officials, now admits he made up tales of mobile biological weapons trucks and clandestine weapons factories in Iraq, information that was used by the Bush White House to press the case for war. He also says he’d do it again.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” Janabi told The Guardian. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

In a series of meetings with the Guardian in Germany where he has been granted asylum, he said he had told a German official, who he identified as Dr Paul, about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000. He said the BND had identified him as a Baghdad-trained chemical engineer and approached him shortly after 13 March of that year, looking for inside information about Saddam’s Iraq.”I had a problem with the Saddam regime,” he said. “I wanted to get rid of him and now I had this chance.”

In his crucial speech to the U.N. in the run-up to the war in 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell quoted intelligence information supplied by Janabi as justification for the Bush administration’s case against Iraq. Years later, reports would show that many within the CIA were expressing serious doubts about Curveball’s credibility at the time.

Tags: 9-11, Bush Administration, Iraq by ecthompson md
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I’m ecstatic to see the events in Wisconsin unfolding. Ever since the Reagan administration, the middle class, American workers, have been under siege. The exact struggle has been somewhat nebulous. We haven’t been able to put a face on who we’ve been fighting. Our enemy has been amorphous. Instead of fighting one dictator or one CEO, it’s been an ideology. Jobs have been shipped overseas in the name of profits. These workers have been forced to find new jobs at lower wages. This has gone on over and over, tens of thousands of times, across America. It has pushed down our median wage.

Workers have been asked to do more and get less. Workers have been asked to work harder with longer hours and less vacation time. At the same time, management have been screaming about having to pay pension costs and health care costs. So, workers have come away with less. This has been the trend across the country for the past 30 years. Americans are wondering why they’re working harder and getting less. It is because of this trend. Nothing else has destroyed the lifestyle of the American middle class more than business forcing labor to take home less.

From The Nation:

Today, another governor, Scott Walker, will attempt to strip state, county and municipal employees of their collective bargaining rights. It is an assault not just on workers, but on a Wisconsin tradition of respecting unions in the state where forerunner union of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees was founded in 1932. AFSCME Intyernational President Gerald McEntee called Wisconsin “ground zero” for the fight to preserve the basic rights of public employee to organize — a fight that is already spreading to other states.

Yesterday,30,000 teachers, state, county and municipal employees, small business owners, students and their allies rallied at noon outside the Capitol to chant: “Kill the Bill!” Last night, 20,000 teachers and their backers rallies and the filled the Capitol with shouts of “What’s disgusting! Union busting!” Demonstrations and protests have spread across the state.

Also check out this great article entitled, “The Betrayal of Poblic Worker.”

If we’re going to restore America, we have to fix the middle class. This means that the middle class has to get higher wages. This means collective bargaining.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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Many Republicans are serious politicians who understand how the government process works. Several Republicans aren’t serious politicians and just want to make political hay. I guess that there are people back home who are cheering a government shutdown. This is the problem with the way that many Republicans are elected. They are completely supported by single issue folks. These single issue folks may have no other interests or thoughts except deep cuts in government spending. They can’t see the bigger picture because their rage is stoked by what they see is the root of all evil – the government.

From Political Animal:

The problem, of course, is that some lawmakers appear a little too eager to score political points, and deliberately avoid being practical.

Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, led a budget seminar for nearly 40 House freshmen before the start of the new Congress.

She believes freshman conservatives are itching to make a dramatic statement by shutting down the government.

“It was clear there was a group of new members who in my mind were more concerned with making statements than working with their own leadership to solve the nation’s problems,” said Bilmes. “Nothing I’ve seen in the last week changes my mind.

“There are certainly some elements within the Tea Party group that are looking to make a dramatic statement.”

Just so we’re clear, this is a sentiment that suggests Republicans would shut down the government, not just as a result of an irreconcilable dispute with the White House, but because GOP lawmakerswant to shut down the government.

On a related note, House Republicans had to know this was coming, but the White House went ahead and made the threat formal today — President Obama would have no choice but to veto the GOP’s proposed cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year, if they reached the Oval Office.

“If the president is presented with a bill that undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks, or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficits, the president will veto the bill,” the White House said in a statement. It added that while the administration supports reducing spending to cut the deficit, “the administration does not support deep cuts that will undermine our ability to out-educate, out-build, and out-innovate the rest of the world.”

Just as a reminder, something has to do be done by March 4 — 16 days from today — or the shutdown will begin.

Tags: Budget, Obama administration, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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