Ted Auch

I have known for quite a while now that the vote I cast for you in November of 2008 – my first ever vote for a member of The Big Two – was one that I would not regret, because I am still a huge admirer of your intellect, but would come to view with a great degree of disappointment and anger. Read the rest of this entry »

You would think that any group with a proven track record back to 1970 of fighting against discrimination and for affordable housing, quality education, and adequate social safety-nets for “…low- to moderate-income people across the United States” would be just the type of organization that our “liberal” congressman Peter Welch would go to the wall for regardless of the baseless attacks leveled at such an organization by the bigoted and racist right-wing of the Republican party? WRONG! ACORN is that organization and Mr. Welch decided to vote “Yes” on an amendment – last September 17^th – to the Higher Education Act of 1965, which banned all federal funding to the Washington, DC based association of community organizers. This forced ACORN to end all field operations and close all field offices. This was a proud, vibrant, and relevant group with approximately 500,000 members branching out into foreclosure counseling at a time when minorities and the lower 25^th percentile in the country were getting hammered by variable interest mortgages coming home to roost and declining real-estate valuations due to a variety of external and internal forces. They were influential in upping voter registration and turnout amongst minorities during the 2008 election to levels not seen before, which along with their political mobilization efforts were the reason folks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh lashed out at them so frequently and with such vitriol.

Mr. Welch has always attempted to evince a genuine and holistic concern for the little guy regardless of color, religion, or political preference. This turns out to be nothing more than window dressing given his stance on ACORN. Why am I coming down so hard on Mr. Welch ex post facto? Well it is quite simple really he acted hastily and did not wait for a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released June 14^th, which vindicated ACORN of misusing the $40.4 million in federal grants it received and election fraud. Furthermore, he wasn’t even one of the 23 signatories to a letter requesting the GAO “…provide information on federal funding provided to ACORN and oversight of the use of this funding.” (Note: Neither Vermont Senators signed this letter either!) I have two questions for Congressman Welch: 1) Why vote before you have all the facts? and 2) Why not signed the aforementioned letter? I wonder what the harm is in having the GAO (Run the ever pragmatic and empirical Republican Douglas W. Elmendorf) do a little gumshoing in an effort to get all the facts in a row. When the facts change we are supposed to change our minds and clearly the facts with respect to ACORN have changed and I would hope that Congressman Welch would change his mind and work to overturn last September’s amendment to the HEA. After all this type of haste when in the hands of congress gives the imprimatur to really well thought out and implemented acts like The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (a.k.a., The Bank Bailout) and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Two great ideas that have served this country and the world oh so well! Oh yeah and one more thing the moneys ACORN received during fiscal years 2005 to 2009 amount to about 0.3% of The 2008 Bank Bailout, which begs one more question: Don’t Mr. Welch and the rest of congress have anything better to do than bully and subsequently shutdown an organization like ACORN? I thought we wanted the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Orwell was right Ignorance Is Strength on Capitol Hill.

Thanks to a great article by Nelson D. Schwartz in The New York Times. Can you believe this?

Of course we have been doing the same here in the US since September of 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed. This type of mixing and matching would make even the most devious street hustler blush given the trickle down, up, left, and right of a group of greedy bankers and profligate sovereign governments. The idea that this type of thing couldn’t have been stopped is nonsense and to go one step further the Greenspanian idea that you don’t prick a bubble is pure hubris mixed with a large dose of Cigarette Smoking Man “After all, villains don’t think they are villains”.

What was it that John Maynard Keynes said about capitalism run wild. Oh yeah…“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.“

Well say what you want about Lord Keynes politics and the bastardization of his work and theories by the left and the right, but the fact remains we have never seen a paradigm proved so faulty, so often, in so many disparate economies, and with so many casualties than we have with Capitalism. Don’t even think I am espousing Socialism across the board I am not and would never, but a reexamination of the facts when they change should lead us to change our minds about Capitalism as it’s universal application is clearly misguided and when you wipe away the muck and bombast very dangerous for lots of folks.

I just read an article at Project Syndicate by Heizo Takenaka former Minister of Economics, Minister of Financial Reform, and Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications under former LDP Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi; of Japan. Who cares you may ask? And you would be right for asking that….BUT the reason we should care is that if you replaced Japanese people and places with US people and places this article would read like a John Boehner or Mitch McConnell manifesto replete with the privatization, deregulation, reduced government spending, and lower taxes (See Friedman, M) mantra of these 2 esteemed leaders of the Republican party. This would be awesome and totally worth considering if it weren’t for 1 conveniently downplayed FACT….Mr. Takenaka’s party - prior to the current DPJ government that can’t get out of its own way with respect to broken promises - had had complete autonomy in Japan for the better part of 50 years. Likewise Messrs. Boehner and McConnell along with a moderate agenda going back to Gerald Ford have been running the show since the early seventies. Okay I know there was a brief hiccup by the name of Jimmy Carter, who decided the American people needed to hear certain truths that would prove hard to swallow. Well we canned his ass the next chance we got! The point is that these Monday morning quarterbacks are incapable of acknowledging their participation in the games to which they refer. Until they do this their rhetoric and bombastic critiques of current and future regimes will - in my humble but certain opinion - be comedic at best and counterproductive to the point of being obstructionist at worst. Do the current folks in office in Japan and the US and the soon to be Green administration in Columbia have problems? Sure lots of them and their growing by the day, but to say that the trouble a/o irresponsibility starts with them, while simultaneously ignoring their own malfeasance is the reason why I just can’t imagine why anyone would give such biased and myopic voices any type of local or global platform. Enough with the sectarian rhetoric!

I wonder if when Senator Sessions refers to “a nominee…that is so activist like Goodwin Liu…if it’s somebody like that, clearly outside the mainstream…” is he on the same page with a presumed conservative partner-in-arms like Jerry Falwell Jr. who when asked about the objectives of Liberty University School of Law said it is “…to transform legislatures, courts, commerce and civil government at all levels.” (The Times, R. Shorto “How Christians were the founders?”, February 11, 2010)? I would hope not because otherwise this would make for an awkward moment if such a conflict of ideology were brought up by another member of the Judiciary Committee (Hint: Earth to Senator Leahy!).

Whats good for the flock is apparently not good for the herder.

From The Economist January 3oth, 2010

“Thus Thomas Jefferson’s mandate to pursue happiness “falls like kerosene on the torch of liberty”, warming many but “scorching and blinding” countless others.”

From The New York Times:

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

As a murmur swept through a hearing room packed with gay rights leaders, Admiral Mullen said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”

From The Economist January 14th 2010

“Liberal democratic governments can make all manner of blunders, but they are less likely to commit mass murder. Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has famously argued that no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine. And research by those three CFR scholars found that poor autocracies were at least twice as likely as democracies to suffer an economic disaster (defined as a decline of 10% or more in GDP in a year). With no noisy legislatures or robust courts to hold things up, autocracies may be faster and bolder. They are also more accident-prone.”

I wonder how someone who states that “…no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine.” wins a Nobel in anything let alone theology…..I mean economics. This is the argument you attributed to the economist Amartya Sen. Does Mr. Sen and The Economist for that matter not understand the dangers associated with conflating causation and correlation? Large famines are largely functions of climate, external demand, and agricultural subsidies. Are they related to free press? Doubtful if there is a linear connection. Are they related to fair elections? Probably but this is a correlation that I would not get passed peer-review.

Given the recent announcement by President Obama that he will be upping the ante by 30,000 troops in Afghanistan I was left to ponder for what seemed to me a logical question: Mr. President what in your portfolio of beliefs and objectives is worth losing an election for? Do you not have any ideologies that you feel so passionate about that you are willing to sacrifice all or most of your political capital to steward such beliefs across the finish line? I voted for you sir and I am not sure at this point whether you have any convictions you feel so strongly about that you would put your political neck on the line for. That is quite disheartening to me because when I saw you speak on the steps of the Ira Allen Chapel here in Burlington, Vermont in March of 2006 I was convinced that you were a man with a spine, conscience, and an intellect unsurpassed in modern day politics. I still believe that the latter is true but as for your spine and to a lesser degree your conscience I am left wondering what you stand for and what you will fight for to the very end, whether it means political suicide or not.

Show us some fight sir! Show us that the issues you campaigned on are part of your very fiber and not simply the populist rhetoric you knew would get the vote of people like myself. It is beginning to feel like you are ashamed that the left supported you and your “progressive” agenda. That is not the man I saw speak in 2006. That is not the man I promptly told my friend Dennis Ailor would win the presidency in 2008. And that is most assuredly not the man I thought was capable of thinking through some of the most complex issues ever to face an incoming president. Sure you were handed a mess but are you going to continue to compare your administration to the one that preceded you? I would caution against such comparisons given that the bar could not have been set any lower.

Sir you know that the right would gladly fall on their sword for issues like abortion, the sanctity of marriage, gun rights, and the military industrial complex. That is a given and that for better or worse is one thing I respect about the neoclassical and neoconservative movement. When they give speeches in Portland or Corpus Christi you know what you’re gonna get and they make absolutely no apologies for their beliefs. It is time you get a little neocon in you Mr. Obama and by that I mean pick an issue any issue, whether it be health care, climate change, FISA, bank reform, or torture and go to the wall for it. Own the issue sir. Take back any one of these issues from those in your party that are self-hating Democrats. Just like Iraq and Katrina will define George W Bush (and no one else!!) one of these issues will define you and it would be a shame if you let the spineless wing of your party co-opt your presidency.

I and many like me – and I would hasten to guess those on the right – are anxiously or should I say nervously waiting and wondering if you will ever stand up and be accounted for with respect to some of the aforementioned issues. I would suggest firing Geithner, Summers, et al as a start. The left rightly sees them as an extension of the Greenspan-Rubin virus that has infected the nation’s financial services regulations for far too long now and the right won’t support them because….well who cares they just won’t because you do and that is reason enough for them.

Apologizing for our hegemonic history and bowing to Emperor Akihito shows that you are sensitive to our fragile status as a global power and more importantly the proper way in which you interact with others when on their turf. However, tacitly apologizing for being liberal or in any way concerned with the appalling trend in wealth, health, and education distribution in this country makes those of us on the left wonder if we were sold a bill of goods and those on the right question your leadership capabilities, both from a foreign and domestic perspective.

You may be wondering at this point why we don’t have your back on some of these crucial issues? Well all is not lost and believe me if we see fight emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue we will most assuredly get in the ring with you but until then you’ll have to rely on the likes of the Blue Dog Democrats. BTW how’s that working out so far?

The amazingly phony nature of the tribute to Ted Kennedy in the media and New England writ large. If you or I had been in his position we would be in jail for Chappaquiddick. I wonder how Mary Jo Kopechne’s family feels about the ‘Lion of the Senate? I can only guess their opinion of the man is diametrically opposed to that presented by the talking heads on network television and unfortunately my beloved NPR.

Also his family’s opposition to Cape Wind is indicative of the phony liberalism of the New England I love so much? We proselytize on our Green Soap Box, but as soon as we are asked to do more than talk and actually do we hide behind our NIMBY bullshit! Kennedy and his kind are the neoliberals Naomi Klein so effectively and efficiently exposed.

Very simply as it relates to mushroom clouds, ticking time bomb scenarios, the war on terror, what is and is not torture, the definition of the word implement (Seriously check this one out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw), semantics associated with legal definitions of cruel and unusual punishment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B5BNeWNShs), enhanced interrogation techniques, actionable information, blah blah blah blah we could shut up for at least 5minutes hopefully forever Fatso and Slickster very easily.

All we have to do is acknowledge that Nancy Pelosi and former Florida Senator and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair (2001-2003) Bob Graham were informed on some level of enhanced interrogation techniques being used and that waterboarding while not being used at least came up in conversation. In acknowledging this we would bring them forward along with their respective counterparts at the time Porter Goss and Richard Shelby. This aquiescing to the Bush administration was clearly a bipartisan effort as is evidence in the words of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy when asked by Jonathan Mahler about his arrival in DC as a “Watergate Baby”

“There was a sense inside the Senate among both Republicans and Democrats that the government had gotten off course and that we had a responsibility to find out what happened” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09power-t.html?sq=John%20Warner%20Leahy%20Specter&st=cse&scp=4&pagewanted=all)

We have reached a similar crossroads here in the US resulting from the irresponsible, cruel, and myopic Bush administration policies. Yet, they could not have accomplished what they did without the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the Democrats. We must reverse course immediately or we will be going at it alone on all fronts in the future. The only way to guarantee credibility and more importantly shut-up the neocons and idealogues on the way right is if we treat all that knew about the clandestine operations of the CIA, special ops, and to a lesser degree the FBI equally. I mean give me a break Ms. Pelosi sent a staff member to these meetings with the folks at the CIA? A STAFF MEMBER!? Seems like whether or not we are torturing captives is something she should want to hear with her own ears.

Ms. Pelosi and Senator Graham were privy to the same information as Mr. Goss and Mr. Shelby. If it smelled, looked, and felt like torture it probably was torture. Yet, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Graham fearing being portrayed as soft betrayed their senses and in my opinion, while not as guilty as Cheney et al, deserve to be reprimanded. This is not the common view of many in the MIC including almost everyone at MSNBC and The Times, but it is the only way an inquiry into torture will be seen as credible, both on the right and the left. No one is above reproach in the real world and no one should be above reproach in DC. That includes Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Graham. Their rhetoric carries no weight unless they acknowledge their own responsibility. Democrats try to come across as “Of The People By The People”, but a similar brush to that used for Republicans could be used to paint their portraits. There is a way to change that but it will involve a very harsh and large mirror!