Political Theatre category archive

Dick Polman:

. . . when tea-parters like (Joe of Alaska–ed.) Miller say they want to “take the country back,” what they actually mean is that they want to turn back the clock to the now-distant Darwinian era that predated civil rights laws, child labor laws, retirement security laws, minimum wage laws, labor protection laws, age discrimination laws, and the various other 20th-century pillars of a more egalitarian society. That’s the fundamental truth at the heart of their Constitutional fundamentalism.

For instance, it was hard to miss Miller’s reference to the Tenth Amendment. Nothing new there. Over the years, foes of progress have repeatedly invoked that language about state’s rights, in order to make their obstructionism sound more high-minded.

(snip)

There it is, the logical extension of the current tea-party argument, as articulated yesterday by Miller: If it’s unconstitutional for the feds to provide unemployment benefits, then it’s certainly unconstitutional for the feds to enforce laws that put blacks and whites in the same public accommodations. After all, It’s the same Tenth Amendment principle.

Read the whole thing.

A homeowner has filed suit against a Central Pennsylvania town for making him remove the word crap from two protest signs he posted in mid July.

They read: “$10,000 TO TAKE A CRAP.”

(snip)

About a week later, the township’s code-enforcement agency notified Kliss, who lives at 436 Pheasant Rd., that he was violating a zoning ordinance that “No Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene Advertising matter shall be displayed in any manner.”

The homeowner is protesting being compelled to pay for a sewer connection which he claims will cost him big bucks.

He painted over the word “crap,” leaving the sentence dangling, and is taking the township to court alleging that

• the township’s motive is to silence political speech with which it disagrees, that
• the ordinance does not define “Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene” and is therefore too vague to be enforceable, that
• “crap” is in common usage and therefore isn’t “Loud, Vulgar, Indecent or Obscene” any way.

Speaking from a position of complete ignorance, I suspect he has a case.

Excerpt:

We can see for ourselves how destructive to our democracy this can become. We see it in the flood of deceptive attack ads sponsored by special interests using front groups with misleading names. We don’t know who’s behind these ads or who’s paying for them. Even foreign-controlled corporations seeking to influence our democracy are able to spend freely in order to swing an election toward a candidate they prefer.

We’ve tried to fix this with a new law – one that would simply require that you say who you are and who’s paying for your ad. This way, voters are able to make an informed judgment about a group’s motivations. Anyone running these ads would have to stand by their claims. And foreign-controlled corporations would be restricted from spending money to influence elections, just as they were before the Supreme Court opened up this loophole.

Trudy Rubin, writing at the Philadelphia Inquirer, argues against those who monger the fear of Muslims. A nugget:

I know we’ve had religious prejudice in this country before. But this is something different. In the age of talk radio and the blogosphere, when many Americans are fearful about economic and social changes, receptivity to demagoguery is increasing. When times are tough, it is tempting to seek a scapegoat. Gingrich recognizes that as readily as does Ayatollah Khamenei.

Yet it is vital that Americans distinguish between the real threat – radical Islamic groups and movements in many Muslim countries – and the hyped-up threat promoted here.

For one thing, the fearmongering helps radical Islamists. Gen. David Petraeus just warned that videos of Quran burning could endanger our troops overseas. What would be even more dangerous is if the Islamaphobes provoke a war of civilizations within the United States – the very outcome the jihadists seek.

We are a nation of immigrants, in which Muslims of Arab, South Asian, and African descent have flourished. This is why Muslims in America are so well-integrated, unlike in Europe, where many Muslim immigrants have failed to assimilate.

The right-wing’s politics of hate has nothing to do with security and everything to do with fomenting fear, for they know that fear clouds thought and that thought is inimical to their cause.

Well, not exactly.

The candidates for Virginia Beach City Council forumed participated in a forum on Thursday.

Each candidate had five minutes for an introduction. Then there was time for two questions selected from questions submitted to the moderator via Facebook, one on light rail and one on the City Council’s use of school board funds for the general fund in the current budget.

At the end, each candidate got a minute for a final statement.

I attended primarily to support Andrew Jackson, who made these major points.

He opened by saying that this election should be a defining moment, that Virginia Beach must decide where it wants to go and what it wants to accomplish; only by defining that can the city then decide what it must do to get there. He promised that voters would know him by his actions, “not by advertising,” and committed to represent and work for the people of Virginia Beach.

He pointed out that this is one of the most diverse cities in the Commonwealth and that that diversity should be embraced in unity of purpose for the city as a whole.

(Having spent the last three decades in the Philadephia/Wilmington area and traveled for work throughout the country, I can testify that day-to-day life in Virginia Beach is far more diverse than day-to-day life in a big Northern city.)

In response to the question about light rail, all the candidates referred to a study that is due next year. Some complained that light rail would require subsidies; several supported putting light rail to referendum once again. No one supported it outright.*

Andrew pointed out that one thing is definitely true: The area needs improved transportation infrastructure and that any transportation improvements would have to be subsidized in some way. The issue is not subsidies; the issue is the most effective use of the subsidy dollars in terms of the big picture.

As regard the school budget issue, most of the candidates, except the incumbents who voted for moving school board reserves into the city general funds, expressed concerns about the level of communication and cooperation between the school board and city council.

I’m no expert at estimating crowds, but I would guess that between 100 and 150 persons were present. It’s the first event of this nature that I have attended anywhere, but I was told that it was a pretty good turnout for this type of event for a local election.

_________________

*Having lived in and visited metropolitan areas with adequate public transportation, I’ve seen how important it can be to an area.

I support public transportation outright.

At the same time, the management of this project so far seems to have left a lot to be desired. But I haven’t stopped liking baseball because Roger Clemens might be a jerk.

An earlier version of this post was published here.

Dick Polman explores the expulsion of moderate Republicans from the Republican Party, tracing it back to the Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy. A nugget:

Some conservative commentators have been smart enough to spot the absurdity of weeding out the impure; after all, politics is about the art of the possible, and it’s tough to get anything done if everybody is hunkered in an ideological bunker. Nearly a year ago, for instance, the columnist Kathleen Parker (no friend of the Obama administration) argued that the right-wing purists were “pandering to America’s inner simpleton,” that Republican politicians should have the right to take nuanced positions and engage in nuanced thought. Indeed, she wondered, “When did thinking go out of style?”

The title of the piece is

Demise of the Republican dodo

In counterpoint, one Delaware resident I know referred to teabagger favorite Christine O’Donnell as Christine O’Dodo.

Wankery, that is.

Paul Jablow, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, remembers:

The conservative candidate, backed by large corporate donations and a powerful television network, was favored to win the election. The issue was his opponent’s supposed tolerance of a politically weak minority group. The place was North Carolina, and the year was 1964.

Which all goes to show how little changed between the death throes of the segregationist South and today’s Mosque Madness.

Read the whole thing and contemn the demagogues.

Or we all shall be ruled by whackadoodles.

Helen Philpott wants to know:

There is just one thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet. How many more groups of people does the Republican Party have to hate before its members finally call for a new platform? Those signs they carry at their rallies are getting pretty full. The print will have to be pretty small at the next Beck rally to fit God Hates Gays, Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Clinton (him and her), the Liberal Media, Obama, Pelosi, French Fries, Activists Judges, Environmentalists, Feminists, Mexicans, and small puppies. Maybe they can just print up a sign that simply says God Hates Everyone Who Isn’t Like Me.

Read the whole thing.

This reminds me why I read newspaper columns.

Glenn Beck channels Father Coughlin:

Beck and (Martin Luther, Jr.) King, the erudite civil-rights legend, share little in common. Beck and Coughlin share a great deal: as mesmerizing broadcasters able to articulate the anger and frustration of a flock frightened by economic hard times.

“There are a lot of parallels between Coughlin and Beck,” says Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington who wrote a book about American populism of the left and right, including a section on the Catholic priest. “They both speak the language of rebellion against the establishment and to bring America back to God, citing a golden era of the past.”

Beck, 46, dismisses these comparisons, citing their differences. Yet substitute Coughlin’s animus for Jews, communists and Franklin Roosevelt for Beck’s toward Muslims, socialists and Barack Obama and the similarities seem greater.

See also.

Zandar points out the mask covering the hate sometimes slips.

. . . to press conferences.

Excerpt:

So this Labor Day, we should recommit ourselves to our time-honored values and to this fundamental truth: to heal our economy, we need more than a healthy stock market; we need bustling main streets and a growing, thriving middle class. That’s why I will keep working day-by-day to restore opportunity, economic security, and that basic American Dream for our families and future generations.

About 24 minutes into this show, the Wall Street Journal guy claims that, last year, Barack Obama never even reached out to Republicans over last year’s stimulus package.

And no one called him on it.

I guess by “reached out,” he meant “gave in.”

The Seattle Times:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. spend $1.58 million in the second quarter to lobby the federal government on issues related to the financial regulatory overhaul that President Obama signed in July.

That’s more than double the $630,000 the investment bank spent in last year’s second quarter. For the first six months of the year, Goldman Sachs spent $2.77 million on lobbying as Wall Street regulations came to the forefront of the national agenda.

Read the tally.