Politics
Entries related to things political.
DemocracyFest: John Edwards
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/10/2007 - 13:19DemocracyFest has brought together a large gathering of progressive activists in New Hampshire, and as such, draws the attention of many of the Presidential campaigns. The first to speak was Sen. Edwards. He arrived around half an hour late and delivered what I thought was a very good speech. I must admit, that I’m an Edwards supporter and am biased. Jim Dean introduced Sen. Edwards and spoke about Edwards visiting Vermont in 2005 to talk with political leaders about addressing issues of poverty. He spoke about Sen. Edwards recognizing that Washington DC is no longer the center of the universe.
Sen. Edwards picked up this theme and said, “We will never bring about the bold change we need in this country, unless we do it from the ground up.” He went on to acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do.
He started off by talking about the war. We spoke about the Democrats taking back congress as a mandate to end the war and echoed the frustration that many have about Democrats in Congress caving to President Bush. He said congress should not submit any funding bill to the president that doesn’t have a withdrawal schedule. He acknowledged voting for the war and admitted he was wrong for that.
He went on to talk about poverty and health care. He gave some details of his healthcare plan, claiming it is the only truly universal plan that any of the candidates have presented. Anyone will be able to get ‘Medicare Plus’, but people will still be able to get traditional plans if they so chose. If the Medicare Plus plan is as good as Sen. Edwards believes it will be, then most Americans will opt for it and will move us towards a true single payer plan.
He spoke about treating mental health equally with physical health, making sure that people are not denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions and mandating electronic record keeping. The medical plan would cost between $90 and $120 billion and would be paid for by getting rid of President Bush’s tax breaks for the extremely wealthy.
He went talk briefly about energy prices. He spoke about the need America to get off our addition to oil. He spoke about the need for big changes, including that we should stop subsidizing large oil companies to the tune of $3 billion a year.
His final point was about the need for ‘College for Everyone’, and described how it is working in North Carolina.
During the questions and answers, he kept returning to the issues of poverty, “I want to say a word about this issue of poverty….It says something about the character of America…America is better than this…And we have a responsibility to do something about this… I think what has happened in New Orleans is a national embarssment…
”
He spoke about the New York Times Magazine which should have a front page article about fighting poverty today. He spoke about the importance of a livable wage and the role of unions in fighting poverty in America
When asked about the push back that insurance and pharmaceutical companies are bound to give if he gets a chance to push for his healthcare reform, he said,
“Every time you see an ad on television, I want you to ask, who’s paying for this?”
That’s a good idea for whatever ads we see.
As to addressing voting issues, he said, “If you love this country, if you love democracy, don’t you want to make sure that your votes are counted?”
I was already an Edwards supporter and it didn’t change my mind. I don’t know what others where thinking, but his speech was well received.
DemocracyFest, Part 1
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/09/2007 - 16:05Today, I am attending DemocracyFest in Bedford, NH, just outside of Manchester. The morning started off with a breakfast where I ran into a lot of old friends. In breakfast room, the WiFi was fairly weak, so I could only get on briefly. However, this afternoon, I’ve found a room with good connectivity.
We had the standard round of opening comments, which included the reading of a proclamation by Gov. John Lynch about DemocracyFest. One of the phrases that jumped out at me was ‘Potluck Politics’, which sums up, fairly nicely what I like about Democracy for America and DemocracyFest.
We also had a rousing sing along by Jean Sara Rohe.
The first speaker was Jim Dean, talking about DFA. He made very comments like, “The highest office in this land is the office of citizen, but in order for this to work, we need to help people become more involved” and “show me someone who says their getting their information from the last two weeks of television ads in a campaign, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t voting”.
He talked about the 28,000 who registered to vote as Democrats in during the 2006 U.S. Senate primary. He then noted that Joe Courtney ended up winning by less than 100 votes. During the Q&A later on, someone asked about the 2008 Presidential Primary and Jim commented about how he thought a horserace was a good thing. It empowers and encourages voters. I think the Connecticut U.S. Senate primary was a good example of this. This was also further illustrated in a subsequent session by a couple people that had run for State Representative in New Hampshire. One of them commented about folks coming back to school in New Hampshire energized after having helped with primaries in Massachusetts or Connecticut.
Jim also told the story of Keith Crane, joining the local DTC, and getting Ed Meyer to run for State Senate. After Ed defeated the ranking Republican State Senator, he went on to be a key force in helping get campaign finance reform passed in Connecticut.
Jim talked a bit about the DFA Trainings that DFA does around the country. There was a question about whether or not these trainings were good for candidates, and Jim talked about the person who went on to become Mayor of Saratoga Springs deciding to run at a DFA training, as well as a DFA Training in Mississippi that included thirteen State Rep candidates.
There are DFA Trainings going on throughout DemocracyFest and this Jim’s comments provide a great backdrop for DemocracyFest.
The content of their character
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/08/2007 - 14:41Last night, I went to the 8th Grade dinner at King Low Heywood Thomas School in Stamford. It is a private school where my ex-wife teaches and where Miranda has been attending for the past three years. They showed pictures of the students doing the things that they enjoy which made me stop and think for a moment.
By most standards, we are fairly wealthy. You have to be fairly wealthy even to own a house in Stamford, CT, and our house is particularly nice. In large part due to Amy teaching at KLHT, we’ve managed to afford to send Miranda to a nice private school. Sure, we’ve been struggling to get by financially as I spend more time working with political campaigns and non-profit organizations. Neither of which pay the good old Wall Street salaries that I got for so long.
Yet last night, as I looked at all the activities of these kids; ski trips out west, sailing, scuba diving, horseback riding and so on, I saw a lifestyle very different from my own. Sure, we’ve done a little bit of this over the past several years, but not on the scale or with the style shown in these pictures. I felt a little remorseful, a little regretful that I couldn’t provide all the opportunities to my kids that many of these kids have had.
Yet I’m also proud of what they have done. Miranda won the eight-grade class prize at KLHT. In announcing the award, Mr. Lewis said, "She understands it is alright to be different whether in dress or philosophy and as such she is very accepting to those around here. Her message of inclusivity is inspiring. This thoughtful dedication to classmates, teammates, KLHT and the greater community is exceptional.”
This message of inclusivity is in stark contrast to what we see so much of in politics today. The poor don’t trust the rich. The rich don’t trust the poor. Journalists question whether a candidate that has a nice haircut or a large house can care for the poor. I got into a discussion about that at a dinner the other day, and I asserted that those who repeat suggestions that reach people cannot care for poor people are doing our country a grave disservice.
The children at KLHT, many of whom come from much more fortunate families than mine understand that. They have been exemplars in community service. They have written letters to soldiers in Iraq. They have explored what they can do to help address the atrocities in Darfur.
If anything, they understand that the status symbols that matter are not what you wear or what your hair looks like but the content of their character. We can learn a lot from these wonderful kids.
New Bedford ICE Raid Redux
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/06/2007 - 22:53WTNH in New Haven, CT is reporting Illegal immigrants arrested two days after ID proposal passes
Federal agents storm through New Haven rounding-up illegal immigrants in sweeping raids just two days after the city approved I.D. cards for un-documented residents.
Mayor John DeStefano, (D), said the timing is certainly curious. The board of aldermen passed the bill on Monday and on Wednesday morning, agents carried out sweeping raids in the city. The city said it is something that has never happened before.
A dawn raid and at least 29 undocumented workers are arrested by federal agents, using what the DeStefano describes as questionable tactics.
"ICE entered the home with no warrants, they searched every room in the house, they had all the occupants, including the children, gather in the living room, they separated the men from the women and even had the children on the floor," said DeStefano.
Sound familiar? On March 6th, ICE staged a similar early morning attack in New Bedford, MA.
In the early morning hours of March 6th, hundreds of Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents raided a leather factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. 361 employees, most of whom were women, were arrested in the sweep. The majority of those arrested were expeditiously booked and flown to detention facilities in Texas. Immigration rights activists have condemned the March 6th ICE raids saying that it has triggered a humanitarian crisis. Immigrant families were ripped apart by the raids as hundreds of children, many of whom are U.S. citizens, became separated from their primary caregivers. The raid has also economically devastated families that depended on the income of workers arrested and detained. Humanitarian relief efforts in New Bedford, Massachusetts have been hampered by the widespread fears that have spread since the raid. Outrage over the immigration sweep has even reached Congress as Senator Kennedy criticized the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by saying they, “performed disgracefully.”
Tearing apart families of legal U.S. Citizens is the latest of example of ‘Family Values’ that the Bush administration values so highly.
Over at CT Local Poltics, Gabe reports, “Boston-area spokesman for ICE, Paula Grenier ... indicated, as reported in the Independent linked below, that these raids are happening all over the country, all the time”
She is right. To use the words of Sen. Kennedy, ICE is performing disgracefully in New Bedford, MA, New Haven, CT, and around the country.
(Cross posted at BlueMassGroup)
Network Neutrality and Special Agreements
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 14:47It was a year ago, this coming Friday, that Senator Barack Obama put up a podcast about Network Neutrality.
It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge.
But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it. They say that they want to create high speed lanes on the Internet and strike exclusive contractual agreements with Internet content providers for access to those high speed lanes.
I applaud him for those comments. However, an entry on techPresident, Did Facebook Play Favorites with Obama? raises some interesting questions.
While the Internet itself is a neutral platform, some sites can be much more important in getting your message out than others. Facebook is a good example of such a site. The techPresident article raises an important question of whether or not Facebook provided an unfair advantage to the Obama campaign. Where there ethical lapses or FEC violations?
I don’t know the details of what happened and I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t touch the FEC question. However, if the Obama team did have access to privileged information it raises some interesting questions about how it should have been handled.
During Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid, I worked with a bunch of volunteer programmers. We started off calling ourselves Hack4Dean, and later changed it to DeanSpace. We were working with Open Source software, in particular, Drupal. We had lively discussions about how widely or tightly controlled our developments should be shared. Many argued that the software could give Gov. Dean a competitive advantage and should not be made available to others. Hypotheticals were presented about whether or not people would feel comfortable with Republicans using the software.
I was always the idealist. Open software should be open. What matters isn’t the software, but what you do with it, and for that matter, what your choices about software say about you. I still have these arguments today and I can well see the other side.
If there was some sort of special agreement between Facebook and the Obama campaign, what does it say about Obama’s commitment to keeping the Internet a neutral platform? What does it say about his commitment to the ideals of Network Neutrality?
Perhaps nothing. I’m sure that is what the more fervent Obama supporters will say. Perhaps they are right. Yet the old idealist in me still feels a little uncomfortable.
(Cross posted at MyDD)
