Ain’t we got fun [in Cleveland!]
Tonight is the [supposed] final debate between the Dem candidates — it will likely focus heavily on job loss, NAFTA and economy, given that Ohio is one of the states that has suffered serious decline in employment [it's a swing state and, as we know, internally and famously corrupt.]
Here are a couple of articles that will give some perspective on the process — the first by David Sirota includes links on what Hil and Barack have said/done previously regarding free trade; people can change their mind, I don’t have issue with that — but we have to use our powers of discernment and observation to decide if the talk is cheap or real. That’s what debates are about, in my mind … understanding the issues and getting a read on what the candidates do, or don’t, say about them [emphasis on the don't.]
The last article amused me, a listing of Right/Left questions [you'll be able to tell which are which] we’d like answered — but it starts out with this statement: is there anything left to ask???
EVERYTHING, you dolts! If I had to define my primary gripe on the debate issue, it would be on the mildness [nay, wimpiness!] of the questions. At least some of them on this list were worthwhile, especially the one on signing statements.
As regards the race itself, the Clinton ‘firewall’ is crumbling and the polls show an even split, with some favoring Obama; meanwhile, Chris Dodd has endorsed him today … the first of the retired candidates to do so. Since Clinton is attacking on a number of issues, this should be an interesting debate and I suspect the gloves will be off. We know Hil’s temper … we haven’t seen much of Obama’s, although they say its there and formidable [Scorpio vs. Leo.]
I could wish [as I have so many times in the last seven years] that we could get past this curve quickly, with so much damage being done. And this very abrasive kind of energy has turned off the public big time this year. I have empathy for Hillary Clinton — she’s spent the last dozen years dreaming of “her turn” … it must be devastating to see it slipping from her grasp. But — every personal tidbit she uses to turn the voters from Obama will be skewed and used by the Righty’s to discredit him AND her. It’s gotten dark out there … prepare for it to become much darker as either gets the nod.
It still remains, as far as I can tell, a matter of style — Hillary’s ‘top down’ micromanaging, triangulating Clintonian’ism or Baracks ‘bottom up’ consensus building and ‘people’ enabling; both candidates appear to be too friendly with AIPAC in my estimation, and while Barack isn’t as corporate-snuggly as Hillary, his coziness with nuclear energy is of concern to me. Do open the two links mid-post to see the arguments. That was the price we paid for neglecting Edwards and Kucinich … and now a vote for Nader will get you a nice but THIN blanket to wrap around your principled shoulders when it gets colder out there in Neverland.
I’ll say this for Obama, though … his machine is beating the snot out of Clintons, the one legendarily touted as unbeatable. That says something about his organizational skills. And by the way — this nonsense about Obama’s not putting his hand over his heart at the Pledge of Allegiance is crap. The picture used as proof, showing Nancy Pelosi with her hand on hers, was taken during the singing of the National Anthem. How many times do YOU cover your heart when you hear a NASCAR version wind up with, “Oh say can you see…”?
Swiftboat stuff … we’ll see more of it, with many eager to believe.
The rest … it’s debatable — tonight at 9 Eastern.
Jude
The Ohio Debate Primer on Trade
David Sirota, OurFuture
February 25th, 2008
On Tuesday night, the Democratic candidates for president will debate in Cleveland just one week before Ohio’s pivotal primary. Most analysts expect America’s lobbyist-written trade policies to take center stage in the Buckeye State — a place hit hard by trade-related job losses and wage cuts.
In the lead-up to this debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been sparring over the North American Free Trade Agreement — a proxy battle over the larger issue of trade. Undoubtedly, this NAFTA argument will bleed into the Tuesday night debate, and so here’s an objective look at the issue of trade and the records of both candidates that you might want to keep next to you as the rhetoric starts to fly (note: Neither the Campaign for America’s Future or me personally have endorsed either candidate — this is a strictly nonpartisan, non-candidate-endorsing review).
NATIONAL POLL NUMBERS: Americans now strongly oppose the NAFTA trade model — the model that includes all sorts of protections for corporate profits (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, etc.) but no similar protections for other priorities (wages, jobs, the environment, human rights, etc.). In October, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found the vast majority of Americans believe our current trade policies are bad for the U.S. economy. That included Republicans by a two-to-one margin. In January, Fortune magazine’s poll showed 68 percent of Americans say our trading partners are benefiting the most from our trade policy. A December 2005 Gallup Poll shows that these numbers are part of a trend: The number of Americans who say our current trade policies are a threat have climbed back to 1992 levels. Finally, a post-election poll in 2006 found that unfair trade deals was listed as the number one concern among Republicans voters who considered supporting a Democratic candidate for Congress.
OHIO POLL NUMBERS: For the two Democratic candidates, the issue could not be more politically significant in Ohio. Back in 2004, exit polls from Ohio’s Democratic primary found seven in 10 Democratic voters blamed foreign trade for taking away jobs. Two years later, Sherrod Brown crushed his Republican opponent in Ohio’s 2006 U.S. Senate race on a campaign promising to fight lobbyist-written trade policies. A Rasmussen Poll just out today finds “just 16% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters believe the North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—is good for America.” Fifty-five percent “say the trade agreement negotiated by the Clinton Administration is bad for the nation.”
Additionally, “By a 53% to 14% margin, voters believe that Obama opposes NAFTA while there are mixed perceptions on where Clinton stands.” In all, “35% believe she favors NAFTA, 31% believe she opposes it and 34% are not sure. This issue is critical in a state that has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs.”
CANDIDATES’ PUBLIC STATEMENTS: Both Clinton and Obama have pledged to amend NAFTA-style trade deals, add tougher labor and environmental standards, and better enforce trade laws on the books. On the specific issue of NAFTA, over the last week, Clinton has been denying she ever supported that 1993 trade agreement. Here is a look at her public statements about NAFTA in the past. Obama, meanwhile, has been attacking Clinton for publicly supporting NAFTA up until 2004. And though Obama has never endorsed or bragged about NAFTA as Clinton did, he has made statements suggesting he at one point supported the NAFTA model. You can see some of those statements here, courtesy of a Clinton mailer.
CANDIDATES’ VOTING RECORD: Both Clinton and Obama voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement — a bill that expanded the NAFTA model. Both also voted for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, whose labor and environmental standards were mildly stronger than NAFTA’s, but whose overall structure was still the destructive NAFTA model. ++
How swing state Ohio got nuked
Harvey Wasserman
February 25, 2008
Ohio is poised to do its thing as the ultimate swing state. On March 4 it may, along with Texas, choose the Democratic presidential nominee.
Tragically, the candidates will campaign in a state whose economic future has been nuked.
Once a great industrial heartland, Ohio’s rust belt status has been solidified by billions in excess electric rates driven by four nuclear reactors, and by the state government’s inability to make way for a green-powered future.
On Friday, February 22, a powerful group of international steel investors announced they were pulling Ohio out of the running for a new high-tech production plant. Some 500 jobs will now go elsewhere. The investors blamed unstable power prices. “If you had to rank from clarity on the utility situation, Ohio would not rank very high,” said one.
The state suffers some of the nation’s highest and most unpredictable electric costs for four simple reasons: the Davis-Besse, Perry, Zimmer and Beaver Valley 2 nuclear plants.
Davis-Besse, near Toledo, is world-famous for a leak of boric acid that ate through a six-inch stainless steel reactor pressure vessel, bringing northern Ohio to the brink of a Chernobyl-scale catastrophe. Perry, east of Cleveland, suffered billions in construction cost over-runs, and is the only US nuke to have been damaged by an earthquake. Zimmer, on the Ohio River, was allegedly more than 95% complete when massive design and construction flaws forced its hugely expensive 1980s conversion to coal. Beaver Valley 2, near Pittsburgh, has run up even more in overages.
To recoup their radioactive losses, Ohio utilities rammed a 1999 “deregulation” bill through the legislature that has thus far cost ratepayers at least $10 billion, and counting. The vast bulk of the money has gone to repay “stranded costs,” corporate code for sunk debt reactor owners don’t want to eat. Had that money gone to increased efficiency and renewable technologies, Ohio’s economy would be on a very different footing.
The bill was largely guided by the Akron-based FirstEnergy, whose Anthony Alexander has been a major Bush-Cheney donor. FirstEnergy makes very large campaign donations, mostly to Republican legislators in Ohio and nationwide. Forbes Magazine estimated Alexander’s 2005 salary at more than $6 million.
As part of the dereg scam, the utilities promised an “open market” for electricity once the nukes were paid off. But instead of competition, Ohio is getting unregulated monopolies that are neither clean nor reliable. It was FirstEnergy’s shaky grid that helped black out 50 million people in the northeastern US and Canada in 2003. Small wonder investors are skittish.
A much-touted energy bill passed by the state Senate in October mandates that Ohio utilities generate 25% of their electricity with “advanced energy” by 2020.
About two dozen other states have similar provisions. But Ohio’s has become a national joke by including “clean coal” and nuke power in the mix. The Senate bill says half of that quota—12.5%— must come from renewables such as wind, solar and bio-fuels. But the other 12.5% can come from still more nuke and fossil fuels.
Because of this and disputes over regulation, the bill has languished in the Ohio House. Republican Speaker Jon Husted is reportedly considering removing the coal/nuke concession. But Democratic Governor Ted Strickland has long-standing ties to the coal and uranium enrichment industries, which are deeply rooted in his native southern Ohio.
In the meantime, electric prices and green energy are in deep in limbo, and have dragged down any hope of an economic revival. Except for municipal utilities like Cleveland and Bowling Green, northern Ohio endures some of the nation’s highest electric rates.
The region does not lack green visionaries—or resources. Bowling Green owns four extremely successful wind turbines, and may build more. The Cleveland Foundation and others are pushing hard for a renewable energy infrastructure along the lakefront to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and fuel cells. The Museum of Science hosts the only utility-scale windmill in a US downtown.
The Great Lakes region boasts some of the world’s most powerful wind resources. But a sustainable green harvest must somehow blow by Ohio’s continued corporate commitment to nuke power.
The Senators campaigning here for the presidency had best look closely at the $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for new reactor construction that were written into the Congressional Appropriations Bill passed in 2007. They might also do something about the Lieberman-Warner Global Warming Bill, soon to be debated on the Senate floor, which may contain significant handouts to build still more atomic reactors.
Above all, as the campaign rolls through swing state Ohio, those who would be president should make note of what a mess nuke power has made of this state’s economy. ++
Will Ohio be left behind by the green energy revolution?
Harvey Wasserman, FreePress
January 31, 2008
vs.
The Nuclear Industry’s Golden Child
That Obama Glow
JOSHUA FRANK, CounterPunch
Is That Your Final Question?
New York Times Op-Ed Contributors
February 26, 2008
Tonight, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will debate in Ohio. It will be the 20th debate, and possibly the last, of the Democratic presidential campaign. Is there anything left to ask? The Opinion section asked five experts to pose the questions that they feel have not been answered over the course of more than a year of campaigning. Here’s what they would ask the candidates if they were moderating tonight’s debate.
1. Responding to a questionnaire from The Boston Globe on presidential power, you both criticized President Bush’s use of signing statements, with which he has asserted a constitutional right to bypass more than 1,000 sections of bills that he has signed into law. You both also said you would continue using signing statements, though in a less aggressive way.
But the American Bar Association has called for an end to this practice, and Senator John McCain says he will never issue a signing statement. Why are they wrong?
2. Both of you have said the Constitution does not allow a president to detain a citizen without charges as an enemy combatant. But President Bush won court rulings upholding the indefinite detention of two Americans as enemy combatants. Were the courts wrong?
Does a president have the authority to interpret the Constitution differently from the judiciary? Would you ever use the court-approved authority to hold a citizen indefinitely as an enemy combatant?
3. Both of you have said that President Bush cannot attack Iran without first obtaining Congressional authorization for the use of military force. But two Democratic presidents, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, ordered American forces into extended armed conflicts without Congressional authorization. Did the Korean and Kosovo wars violate the Constitution? Would an attack on Iran be legally different, and if so, how?
4. Are there any circumstances — including in matters of detention, surveillance, interrogation and troop deployments — under which you believe that presidents have the constitutional power as commander in chief to bypass laws in order to take an action they think is necessary to protect national security?
5. Proponents of the so-called unitary executive theory argue that the Constitution does not allow Congress to enact statutes that place the actions of executive-branch officials beyond the president’s control, such as by giving independent decision-making authority to the head of a regulatory agency. Do you agree?
— CHARLIE SAVAGE, a reporter for The Boston Globe and the author of “Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.”
1. Social Security will go into a cash deficit during the next president’s prospective second term. Therefore, if elected, you will: a) do nothing and leave growing deficits to your successor; b) cut benefits, eligibility or both, as President Bush tried; c) raise the payroll tax; or d) there is no d. Those are the only options.
2. Domestic gun owners kill more Americans each year than terrorists have in total since 2000 (even if you define all American fatalities in Iraq as related to terrorism). Can the homeland be secure when our schools are not? If your answer is no, will you take on the National Rifle Association and work for a gun law with teeth?
3. Senator Obama, virtually all economists say trade is good for growth, but you have blamed trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement for the loss of American jobs. Do you really think building an economic wall along the Rio Grande will promote a stronger, more resilient American economy, and if so why?
4. Senator Clinton, will you take on your Wall Street friends and raise the effective income tax on private-equity fund managers and hedge fund managers, who are now taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent? Please explain why the richest Americans should pay the lowest taxes.
5. Senator Obama, you rail against the oil companies, but under the American system of free enterprise, aren’t companies supposed to earn a profit — and even to charge what the market will bear?
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a president you both have evoked, said Americans need fear only fear itself. Under President Bush, Americans have been told to so fear terrorism that the executive branch has been permitted to snoop on citizens, hijack the powers of Congress and torture foreigners. Do you agree that fear of terrorism has been pushed too far, and if so, what measures would you adopt to return the United States to a more normal civilian life?
— ROGER LOWENSTEIN, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of the forthcoming “While America Aged.”
1. Both of you have argued for more widespread access to the Internet in schools. Given the recent “To Read or Not to Read” report from the National Endowment for the Arts, which revealed a steep decline in reading among young people, and the lack of evidence that computers in the classroom help students learn, wouldn’t federal funds be better spent on projects that encourage reading and engagement with the arts?
2. The Internet is often praised as a liberating force in American culture, but it has also drawn comparisons to an unruly mob. Would you support a federally financed, long-term study of how our use of this technology is changing our behavior, for good and for ill?
3. You have both admitted to being BlackBerry addicts. How has this desire for constant connection and endless information changed your personal relationships and how has it transformed political culture?
— CHRISTINE ROSEN, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.
The long advocacy for universal health-care coverage by Democrats has earned a base of public support, but it has also provided an easy focus for political attacks. Although universal coverage will protect businesses and families from unmanageable costs, it will also increase government spending considerably and increase government involvement in health care.
The strategy you have adopted as candidates is the same one that Democrats have used for decades without success (including in 1993, when I was a health policy adviser in the first Clinton administration). You have both designed plans that aim to minimize government costs and to minimize changes for Americans with good health coverage, while still constructing a safety net of coverage for the growing millions without insurance.
This approach, however, inevitably increases the complexity of our Rube Goldberg health system. It has made your policies difficult to explain. It has failed to prevent charges that you are promoting “socialized medicine.” And it has cost you the enthusiasm of Americans who want a simpler, tax-based, Medicare-for-all system.
How do you persuade supporters of single-payer health care that your proposals are worth fighting for? And how can you assure the rest of us that the costs and complexities of your plans are actually manageable?
— ATUL GAWANDE, a general surgeon, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.”
1. Senator Obama, as commander in chief an American president must understand the sense of honor that motivates his armed forces. Last September, MoveOn.org ran an advertisement in The Times that mocked Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, as “General Betray Us.” You chose not to vote on the Senate resolution that condemned the advertisement. Would you still characterize the Senate vote as a “stunt” and “empty politics”?
2. Samantha Power, one of Senator Obama’s chief foreign policy advisers, strongly criticized the United States in her book “A Problem From Hell” for failing to intervene in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and for the three-year delay in intervening in the Bosnian war, until the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
Saddam Hussein also committed genocide by killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons in the late 1980s and massacring thousands of Shiite marsh dwellers in southern Iraq after the first gulf war. How could we have left Mr. Hussein in power? How can Senator Obama say that removing a genocidal killer was a “dumb” war?
3. Senator Clinton, you have stated that American troop withdrawals from Iraq will begin as soon as you take office as president. But you also note on your campaign Web site that you will order “narrow and targeted operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region.”
Isn’t that what the surge is about? The United States and local leaders have allied to drive out members of Al Qaeda from Baghdad and other areas. How is your policy any different from the policy of President Bush?
4. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution bars any former president from election to a third term. Is it truly consistent with the spirit of the Constitution to have the same professional couple occupying the White House for 12 years? Isn’t this all the more true when Bill Clinton promised that voters would receive, during his first term, “two for the price of one”?
— RUTH WEDGWOOD, a professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins, was an adviser to the Rudolph Giuliani campaign. ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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