Claims of racial epithets and gay-bashing have diffused the impact of the crowds that descended on the Capitol last weekend. The images on TV of citizens rallying by the thousands were amazing; the allegations that some of those citizens used ugly, personal, and unintelligent attacks.
Democrats have used the alleged incidents to criticize tea partiers – and it certainly gives them a convenient way to shift the debate away from the massive amounts of people who showed up to oppose a government-mandated reorganization of the health care system.
Far be it from me to say that Democrats are trying to use race to scare people out of siding with their opposition. But it wouldn’t be the first time.
The real problem here isn’t what racial epithets may or may not have been used. Anyone who has worked in legitimate Republican and conservative circles knows that racists tend to be booted out as soon as they are discovered. The racial arsonists of the left start enough fires on their own, they don’t need any kerosene.
With the government health care overhaul being made official tonight, the next big thing will be the financial reform bill, as Democrats try to get back on the American peoples’ good side. How will they do it? Maybe by creating a giant (and, in many ways, redundant) oversight agency to police the financial markets. Sure, it speaks to a problem that happened two years ago, but Wall Street is an easy straw man.
Funny or Die does a good job acting as the White House’s comedy video department – they stick to the message and, frankly, produce hilarious videos. Here, they use the ghosts of Saturday Night Live presidential impersonators past (with Jim Carrey filling in for the late Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan) to plug the next overreaching government program.
The younger is eight years old today: the YES Network, or Yankees Entertainment and Sports (which has an excellent website in addition to an excellent television network). YES was born because the New York Yankees were unsatisfied with annual $70 million payments for their television rights from Madison Square Garden Network, another New York City-based regional sports network (or RSN). The Yankees figured they could do better, and built their own television network to play their games and satisfy the content needs of rabid Yankee fans, who would actually watch the Yankeeography of Danny Tartabull.
When you’re the most famous sports franchise in the world, building your own media empire is much easier than if you’re a grassroots activist organization. But the principal is the same whether you’re launching a YouTube channel or a cable channel: the Yankees knew their audience was out there, and they found their own path to that audience.
Democrats like to throw it back in Scott Brown’s face that he voted for the Massachusetts health bill back in 2006. Mitt Romney gets it thrown back in his face a lot, too. That bill was the Mogwai to the current Gremlin of a proposal that Congress is trying to pass-without-passing.
Those critics don’t like to mention the problems Massachusetts is having now. And Romney and Brown aren’t about to issue the mea culpa the country needs to hear now.
“This has been tried, and it failed,” Romney or Brown could plead of the current incarnation. “In Massachusetts, we tried this. It cost the state more, it cost patients more, and though there were more people insured they got less care for their money.” They might even quote Franklin Roosevelt: “It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.”
While catching up on my reading, I ran across a TechPresident post on how left-wing groups may be funded in the future through small donations just as ActBlue has helped fund left-wing politicians. One quote stood out:
It would, in theory, also work on the right side of the spectrum, though there’s no ActBlue equivalent in conservative circles.
Six years later, there isn’t an ActRed, and with good reason. Campaigns have become sufficiently sophisticated that there’s no mystery to internet fundraising. (There are also lots of good consultants ready to help.) While internet fundraising in 2004 was like the railroad system, internet fundraising in 2010 is more like the interstate system, with individuals controlling their own destination more directly.
In Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont — states in which fewer than half of fourth-graders are proficient at reading or math — the average school district did not remove a single tenured teacher in 2007-08. It’s no wonder: Dismissing one teacher can cost upwards of $100,000, and the legal struggle can drag on for years.
The tragedy, of course, is the creation of a system which rewards bad teachers and fails to reward the best teachers. But then again, for teachers unions, is education really the point?
“I file cloture” — the motion to end a filibuster — “to move to discuss the bill on Monday,” Reid explained. “That takes two days to ripen. We don’t have a vote till Wednesday. Once that’s done, Republicans have 30 hours to do nothing. After the 30 hours is up, you’re on the bill. If there’s no amendment offered” — remember, amendments can be filibustered, too — “you file cloture to move to the vote. It takes two days and then another 30 hours. So that’s 60 hours plus four days to vote on the bill. That happened 67 times last year.” You do the math.
One way to make the lawmaking process more efficient would be to reduce the number of people in the legislature, or to merge lawmaking authority with the executive branch. Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, North Korea, Germany, France, and others enacted similar systems at various times in history… though it hasn’t gone well.
Otherwise, we all may have to accept that our legislature’s inefficiency is by design. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course.
The filibuster exists to maintain the Senate’s deliberative nature, so the best reform might be to force actual filibusters. Senators who want to extend debate should actually have to talk.
When Republicans made the same grumblings years ago, they missed an opportunity to demonstrate Democratic obstructionism on judicial nominees. The GOP could have made political hay out of CSPAN clips of Democrats talking endlessly or reading the phone book to keep debate going. Republican parties in the home states of the filibuster-ers could have organized “Save the Judicial Branch” rallies to protest their talkative Senators.
The problem for Democrats now is that the filibuster is blocking an unpopular piece of legislation. If I were a Senate Republican, I would welcome the chance to speak on national TV about the future of health care, about federal spending, about the risks of government running anything, and the bribes Democrats are using to win support. And even the bill’s passage may be a losing proposition.
At the very least, we should all agree that the filibuster should be maintained so that the eventual remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington makes sense. All in favor… say die:
His campaign slogan for next week’s special election is “Yes We Can,” and his paraphernalia features the Obama ’08 logo prominently. The DNC has told him to knock it off, but it’s not clear if there’s really anything they can do – at least, not in time for the election. (And if they do, they better get their arms over their faces quick, Monserrate reportedly likes to get stabby with broken glass.)
One can either accept that there are crazy people in both parties or we can take the extremists on both ends as the norm, but certainly neither side has a monopoly. Despite best efforts by either side to brand opponents by the lunatic fringe, crazy may be the only place to find true bipartisanship.
There’s nothing in the presentation that wouldn’t be found in most lectures or lessons on how to raise money – though the RNC could have chosen the word “urgency” over “fear.” Though embarrassing, the story will likely not affect many voters in November.
Yet this story matters to RNC donors.
The RNC is getting a bad reputation for its fundraising (or lack thereof). Michael Steele has been under fire for the amounts of money both coming in and going out. A frequent criticism is that Steele does not schmooze the big-dollar donors. This leaked presentation has hit the national media, but it’s only the latest in a series of stories in the inside the beltway trade press that hammers Steele – and donors who write big checks read those media outlets.
These stories will have no effect if the RNC is in front of its donors, keeping them updated on the organization’s plans and making sure that, no matter what Politico says, they are valued members of the team. If the RNC isn’t defining their donor relationships, Politico will do it for them.
Jim Eltringham 