Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #156
Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal
Organizations.
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Our Website Our Editor To Unsubscribe Table of
Contents * Featured
Articles Communication with Our Members Calendars of Events Opportunities and Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Don Smith: Increase Our State and National Gas Tax Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef Obama Has Opportunity to Restore Financial Equality* We Need a Pro-Democracy Reform Agenda* When Should Obama Deal with Social Issues?* State and Local Links to the Beef Lisa Brown: Our State Capital and Operating Budgets* We need Tax Reform Now More Than Ever* Nation and World Links to the Beef Returning to Earn, Conserve and Invest* We’ve Bailed Out Companies for 40 Years* New Economic Roles for Government Fixing Our Economy Requires Fixing World Economy* Some Stimuli Stimulate Much More than Others* Why No CCC/WPA Type Federal Employment Programs? Personal Bankruptcies Are Increasing What Does Israel Hope Invading Gaza Will
Accomplish? Our Liberal Spirit Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes
and Competent Spending ·
Investment
for Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives
oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our American
Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs ·
Federal
Funding for Health and Education ·
Stop Corporate Abuse* · Substitute a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Republican Legislators Quote of the Week When living intensely,
mistakes are inevitable. Paraphrase of Barack Obama statement about misstatements on the campaign
trail
Communication with Our Members
We complete our 3rd year with
this issue – 156 consecutive weekly issues.
Targeting Business Abuses
During 2007, our Puget Sound
Liberals championed public campaign
financing. During 2008, we
championed lowering taxes for 90% of our taxpayers through requiring our high
income and wealthy people to pay their fair share of taxes. We championed doing this through substituting a progressive income tax
for some of our regressive sales, excise and property taxes. We continue to champion these causes. Our emphasis in 2009 will be upon identifying
and targeting business abuses. We hope that others will show up to provide
the leadership for dealing with these issues that Washington State needs.
Calendar of Events
Friday,
January 9 at 6:30 PM coffee and 7 PM at Rainier UU Center (835 Yesler Way Seattle)
– Screening of the documentary The Garden on the Hill — Yesler Terrace, about the first racially integrated U.S. public housing.
Friday,
January 16 at 7 PM at Traditions Café and World Folk (300 – 5th
Avenue, Olympia) – UN
Convention for the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Educational Forum ‘Why You Should Care About “The Women’s Treaty”’, sponsored by Thurston County National
Organization for Women, featuring Leanne Smith and Heidi Evans of Amnesty International.
Monday, January 19 at St. John’s Episcopal Church (114
= 20th Avenue SE, Olympia) at 8:45 AM – People’s Summit for Economic Justice and at 11:30 AM – March on the Capitol, sponsored by our Statewide
Poverty Action Network.
Tuesday, January 20 at 8 PM at Kingston Art Gallery
(corner of highway 104 and West Kingston Road, Kingston) – Kingston Art Gallery Inaugural Celebration. Champaign, dessert, music, art,
festivities. For more information, call
360-297-5513.
Friday, January 23 at 7 PM at King County Library
Services Building (960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah) – American Democracy Movie Night presents ‘I.O.U.S.A.’ Documentary examines our growing national
debt, consequences and solutions.
Opportunities
and Petitions
Opportunities
Learn more
about the Obama-Biden policy agenda and share your ideas.:
For updates
from Obama-Biden Transition Project, including video of Obama’s weekly address.
For news about
Obama-Biden’s preparations to take office.
For news about Barack Obama’s inauguration and ways to participate from home.
Download Sightline Institute’s climate policy primer
‘Cap and Trade 101’. About
Sightline.
Read
Paul Krugman’s commentaries.
Access to jillions of political cartoons.
Useful Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing
tools, and more.
Petitions and Donations
Tell
the Bureau of Land Management to protect wilderness areas in western Colorado.
Tell
your congressional representative to pass Barack Obama’s stimulus package
immediately.
Tell
Barack Obama to reverse President Bush’s regulations which limit reproductive
choice.
Tell
congress to support equal pay for women.
Tell congress to ban
construction of coal fueled energy plants and to phase out existing ones.
Tell
world leaders to focus on micro-finance.
Tell
congress to support immediate diplomacy to enact a cease fire and humanitarian
reform in Gaza.
Tell new Democratic
National Committee Chair Tim Kane to continue 50-state grassroots strategy.
Tell
congress to enact a variety of safety net measures.
Tell your
congressional members to quickly pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Plan.
Tell
Barack Obama to close our U.S. torture School of the Americas.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Don Smith: Increase Our State and National Gas Tax
Both WA State and the feds
should raise the gas tax! Economists, commissions, and common sense tells us it
should be done, in order to conserve energy, prevent the transfer of funds
overseas, lessen pollution, make the roads less crowded, fight climate change,
raise funds for pressing needs, lessen the need for road and bridge
construction, and encourage the use of public transportation. (See the
article below.)
Is there the political will? The Democrats need to stand up to the
screaming conservatives who have bankrupted our nation and left us with
inadequate funding for necessary services and projects. Even if people drive less and cars become
more efficient, there are still plenty of cars, and the population is
increasing. Too bad, though, that gas
tax revenues can't be applied to public transportation, right? That
should be fixed! Don Smith (PCO, 41st LD, http://truthsite.org)
Liberals
and Democrats
Barack Obama Has Opportunity to Restore Financial
Equality
Our
economic crisis has delegitimized Market Fundamentalism. Providing an opportunity for the restoration
of Liberal values. Our government can
now play a more active role to create a more secure and egalitarian
society. Fair progressive taxation. A safety net, including universal access to
quality health and education. Jobs which
pay a fair amount of their productivity.
Compassionate holistic programs to assist those with more handicaps and
fewer freedoms and opportunities.
Protection of our environment, consumers, workers and others from
corporate abuse. Secure opportunities to
create retirement income. All this and
more is now possible.
Our
emphasis must not just be on restoring our economy. It must be upon creating a fair economy in
which all of us have more freedoms and opportunities. Economic, political and cultural freedoms and
opportunities. We don’t just need more
work and more money. We need more
financial security and more non-work time for ourselves and our families. We need more caretakers. More important than being better workers and
better consumers, is being able to live better lives.
We Need a Pro-Democracy Reform Agenda
During
the early 2000s, conservatives were often successful in restricting of
democratic voting rights and political participation. But various scandals have changed that. In the last several years, Iowa and North
Carolina passed election-day registration.
Florida and Rhode Island restored voting rights to many ex-felons. Minneapolis and Oakland passed in instant
run-off voting. Public campaign
financing is gaining support in Alaska, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, North
Carolina and Washington.
The
Obama administration should promote pro-democracy reforms, including
· Open government
and easily available information about government activities
· Media reform to provide more opportunity for
expressing various viewpoints
· Ballot access by more parties, including fusion voting
· Campaign finance reform
· Active everyday citizen participation and organizing
· Nonpartisan control of campaign and election
procedures
· Civil rights and voting rights
· Redistricting so voters choose their representatives
instead of vice versa
· Banning voter suppression
When Should Obama Deal with Social Issues?
Public
opinion has changed since the culture wars of the 1990s and early 2000s. More of us support GLBT rights, including
allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military and marriage rights. More of us support reproductive rights. More of us support providing freedoms and
opportunities for our poor. While Barack
Obama may delay legislation and executive action on some of these issues, he
should immediately begin building support for such actions. For
more.
Here’s the Beef
See how
much President Bush has cost us.
Aargh. Yuk.
Democrats
seek to deepen and expand their base.
Republicans seek to regain ideological purity.
The
Republican Southern racist strategy has culminated in reduction to a Southern
regional cult.
Will
Republicans, which supported tax cuts for our rich, oppose tax cuts for our
poor?
Roland
Burris should be seated as Illinois senator. Senator Harry Reid creates a
distraction.
Barack
Obama’s Justice Department appointees indicate needed reforms will occur.
Barack
Obama will keep Main Street proponent Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair.
Barack
Obama’s appointees include people who benefited from housing-credit bubble.
Can
Barack Obama reduce speculation with economic appointees who have supported it?
Peter
Orszag, appointed to head Office of Management and Budget may be most
influential appointee.
Barack Obama’s
intelligence appointees indicate a change to transparency and legality.
Using
tax cuts to stimulate economy is both politically and economically sensible.
Will
Republicans try to obstruct the economic stimulus recovery package? For more.
Passing
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan depends upon grassroots lobbying.
Barack
Obama expresses no opposition to Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
State
and Local
Promoting Cap and Trade
Based on our
analysis of media coverage and drawing on public opinion research as well as
Sightline Institute’s extensive research on cap and trade, we’ve developed
talking points for advocates of fair climate policy which emphasize fairness
and economic opportunity and counter the most common oppositional arguments to
auctioned permits and low levels of carbon offsets.
1) People first, not polluters. Low-income families get hit hardest by
volatile fossil fuel prices – and they’re the most vulnerable to climate
impacts. Free permits equate to windfall profits for big polluters at the
expense of consumers.
2) Invest in our communities. Revenues from auctioned pollution permits
allow us to invest our energy dollars here at home, generating our own
renewable energy, increasing efficiency, and building public transportation
near housing and jobs.
3) Stabilize energy costs. Unstable energy prices are whiplashing
family budgets. The revenues from auctioned cap-and-trade permits can go
directly back to families and toward vital investments in efficiency, good green
jobs, and stable, local energy sources.
4) Create good local jobs. The clean energy transition is on its way
and our state can’t afford to wait around. We already have the ingenuity and
the know-how – and a ready workforce. By leading the change, we can attract
good green jobs to our communities.
5) Jump on economic opportunities. Our economy needs
a boost. The growing green economy can deliver tremendous opportunities for the
state. Investing today, we position ourselves to lead as the nation and the
world moves to a clean energy economy
Lisa Brown: Our State Capital and Operating
Budgets
I recently watched an
interview with Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown on our Washington State Public Affairs
Network (TVW). She questioned
whether we could partially address our budget difficulties by classifying some
programs as capital investments which are now classified as operating
expenses. For example, some educational
expenditures which are expected to have a long term payoff. Such reclassification would allow us to
finance them through long term bonds, instead of including them in our balanced
operational budget.
Unfortunately, I can’t find
any transcript of the interview. But I
think this possibility should be explored more fully. Dave Thomas
We need Tax Reform Now More Than Ever
Washington State obviously
doesn’t have enough money, when vital programs which serve our least fortunate
are reduced or eliminated. When people
are forced to alternatives (such as emergency room care for non-emergency
illnesses) that cost us more. When
Governor Gregoire is accused of proposing a Dino Rossi budget.
Obtaining more money
shouldn’t come from raising our sales, excise and property taxes which cost
most taxpayers more than their fair share.
Additional money should come from progressive taxes which recover the
money that our high income and wealthy people are ripping off by not paying to
support our infrastructure which enables their wealth. For
more.
Here’s the Beef
Obtain
Progressive States Networks resources for improving many state government
services.
Policy reform checklist for
state legislators.
Facing deficits, many states are
cutting programs which serve our least fortunate.
Puget
Soundkeeper Alliance sues polluters.
Seattle
City Council could easily release money for affordable housing.
How
will Governor Gregoire’s budget affect our poor, disabled and less advantaged?
Washington State Labor
Council’s 2009 legislative position papers.
[See how they manage to point to tax reform without mentioning a
progressive income tax]
Nation
and World
Returning to Earn, Conserve and Invest
For 25 years following World War II, Americans prospered in an Earn, Conserve and Invest Economy. Then workers’ earnings decreased as a
percentage of production, people began to borrow. Investment declined and consumption and
speculation increased. A series of
bubbles ensued and collapsed: savings and loans, dot.com, and housing.
During the housing bubble, most financial companies purchased
securities based upon inappropriate and often fraudulent mortgages. The collapse of the housing bubble produced
increased mortgage defaults which threatened the solvency of these financial
companies. Arguing that these financial
companies are necessary to providing needed credit, the Bush administration
obtained congressional approval for bailing them out.
It now appears that the decline
in credit is due to declining demand.
Not declining supply. Sufficient
credit is available to people who want and can afford it. Having decreased net worth due to declining housing
and stock values, people are saving instead of borrowing. If so, the bailouts were unnecessary, perhaps
another example of crony capitalism, in which crony financial companies which
were enabled to become large, are now said to be too large to fail.
To
restore our economy, we need to implement Keynesian measures to increase
earnings and to public and private investment. We need to return from our recent Borrow, Consume and Speculate economy
to our previous Earn, Conserve and
Invest economy. For
more. The declines in borrowing,
consumption and speculation are good, even if painful in the short run. Many businesses which have served our
over-consumption will fail. Others will
emerge serve our investments. Workers
will have to shift from failing businesses to new ones. People will need to pay off their debts. Doing
so is often simple, but painful. We
need to curtail speculation. No business
should be allowed to get so big that we can’t allow it to fail.
Much of our Borrow, Consume and
Speculate economy has been promoted by corporate business interests. David
Korten notes that James Gustave “Speth examines the abuses of corporate
power and endorses calls to revoke the charters of corporations that grossly
violate the public interest, exclude or expel unwanted corporations, roll back
limited liability, eliminate corporate personhood, bar corporations from making
political contributions, and limit corporate lobbying. He recommends a redesign
of "the operating system of capitalism" to support the development of
local economies populated with firms that feature worker and community
ownership and to charter corporations only to serve a public interest.” David Korten’s commentary is long, but is an
excellent overview of our economic crisis, it’s history and solution.
We’ve Bailed Out
Companies for 40 Years
Past Bailouts
Past
$ adjusted for inflation
1970 $3.2 billion Penn
Central Railroad
1971
$1.4 billion Lockheed
1974
$7.8 billion
Franklin National Bank
1975 $9.4 billion New York City
1980 $4.0 billion Chrysler
1984 $9.5 billion Continental Illinois
1989 $293 billion Savings and Loan
2001 $18.6 billion Airline Industry
2008 $30 billion Bear Stearns
2008 $200 billion Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac
2008 $150 billion AIG
2008 $25 billion American Automobile Companies
2008 $350 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (of potentially
$700 billion)
Apparently
American capitalism is becoming subsidized capitalism. Unless we regulate companies so they don’t
get too big to be allowed to fail.
Present Bailouts
Our
government (Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Treasury
Department and Federal Housing Administration) has spent $3.1 trillion and
through guarantees has obligated a total of $8.5 trillion. For our 300 million American people, a
trillion dollars equals 3300 dollars per person. Thus our government have spent $10,230 per
person and obligated itself for a total of #28,050 per person (including the
$10,230). Hopefully, we will not have to
pay the obligated, but unspent part and will even receive back some or all of
the spent part. But we could end up
paying the whole thing.
For
comparison, note that our gross national production is $14 trillion. The capitalization of our stock market (New
York Stock Exchange) has fallen from its high point of $15 trillion. By perhaps $6 trillion. The value of our homes has fallen by additional
trillions, with more to come. So we have
lost more in the value of our speculative assets than we have spent on
bailouts. The point of the bailouts and
especially the upcoming economic stimulus recovery package is to enable us to
maintain our production, instead of losing more in lost production. Hopefully the money we spend on stimulus
(including public investments) will be paid back through maintaining and
increasing our production.
Bailout Commitments and Expenditures
New Economic Roles for Government
Faced
with our present economic collapse, our government is taking on three roles:
(1) public investor (2), patient investor and (3) private sector bench
marker. For
more.
From
before our revolution, our local, state and national governments have invested
in creating and maintaining our infrastructure.
Energy, transportation, public works, communication, health, education
and more. Since our Kennedy presidency
and especially our Reagan presidency, we have underinvested in our
infrastructure. Instead we used the Cold
War to spend on our military. Faced with
a failing infrastructure and the need to create jobs, we are now increasing our investments in maintaining
and enhancing our infrastructure.
More
than other free enterprise systems, our capitalist system rewards impatient
investors at the expense of patient investors.
Few patient private investors can survive in competition with impatient
private investors. So our government is
now assuming the role of patient
investor. Investing in companies
which would fail in the short run, but if given additional assets might succeed
in the long run. It remains to be seen
whether such patient investing will pay off for either the companies or our
government.
Our
government has only occasionally played the role of bench marker. Our
TVA provides a public benchmark with which private utilities can be
compared. Our government may purchase
the right to run enterprises in other markets in competition with privately
owned enterprises. One very important
possibility is that private health insurers will be forced to compete with
public health insurance, such as Medicare.
Fixing Our Economy Requires Fixing World Economy
One
of the factors contributing to our 1930s depression was the increase in tariff
barriers to trade. Since then, our
economy has become much more dependent upon and influenced by foreign
economies. Our foreign trade has grown
five times in relation to the size of our economy. Imports are competing with domestic
production to keep consumer prices down.
Exports (including subsidized exports) provide domestic jobs while
harming jobs elsewhere.
Advances
in communications have enabled the export of jobs to other countries where
production is cheaper. Due partially to
lower environmental and worker protection standards. Crony capitalism has enabled American
companies to register themselves or their subsidiaries in tax havens and manage
the pricing of internal transactions to avoid paying their fair share of U.S.
taxes.
To
fix our economy, we must also fix the world economy and the relations of our
economy to other national economies. We
need global governance which will regulate multinational corporations and
provide global environmental and worker protection regulations. We need to stop American companies from
unfairly avoiding taxes by registering abroad and finagling the pricing of
internal transactions.
More
generally, we need to assist less economically developed countries to develop,
so they can become better economic partners, both supplying us and purchasing
from us. There are many economic issues
which will require our State Department and Commerce and other domestic
economic agencies to cooperate. For
more.
Some Stimuli Stimulate Much More than Others
What
a dollar of stimulus puts back into the economy when spent on:
$1.73 food stamps
$1.64 extending unemployment benefits
$1.59 infrastructure
$1.36
aid to states
$1.29 payroll tax holiday
$1.26 refundable tax rebate
$1.03 across the board tax cut
$1.02 nonrefundable tax cut
$0.48 extending alternative
minimum tax patch
$0.37 making dividend and
capital gains tax cuts permanent
$0.30 corporate tax cut
$0.29 making Bush income tax
cuts permanent
$0.27 accelerated depreciation
Clearly, extending help to our poor has the greatest stimulus value,
because it is all spent immediately.
Investing in infrastructure produces fairly quick stimulus and lasting
returns by making our economy more efficient.
Aid to the states is likely a mixture of aid to the poor and
investment. The payroll tax holiday and
refundable tax rebate also gives money to the poor, but includes middle income
people. The remaining alternatives have
negative benefits. Our weak recovery
from the dot.com bubble crash was harmed by President Bush’s tax cuts oriented
to our high income people. Our increased
military spending may have also helped the recovery, but not as much as the
high benefit stimuli indicated above.
Why No CCC/WPA Type Federal Employment Programs?
From 1933 through 1942, the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) provided employment working on conservation projects. At its peak in August 1935, 500,000 were
employed in 2650 camps working under the supervision of a variety of government
agencies. Between 1935 and 1943, the
Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Works Project
Administration (WPA) employed almost 8 million people to build public buildings,
projects and roads; operate large arts, drama, media and literacy projects; and
provide food, clothing and housing to children and their families. Since 1993, we have much smaller AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and
Learn and Serve America programs, which are viewed as volunteer service instead
of employment relief programs.
We have no such employment relief programs now and none are proposed as
part of our economic stimulus recovery package.
Alternatively, infrastructure and conservation projects will mostly be
managed by state and local governments (but some by our federal government)
with much of the work contracted out to private businesses. This reflects our increased preference for
private instead of public employment.
But would public employment programs (including ones oriented to
caretaking and artistry) offer some advantages, especially for training young
workers? Why has there been no
discussion of the possibility of CCC/WPA type programs, which are remembered so
fondly for both their employment and their products? Dave Thomas
Personal Bankruptcies Are Increasing
Two million bankruptcies occurred in 2005. Then a law made it more difficult to declare
bankruptcy. 2006 bankruptcies totaled
573,000. These increased 40% in 2007 to
800,000 and 35% more in 2008 to over 1 million. These bankruptcies and mortgage defaults may
result from job loss, health costs, divorce or other factors. For
more.
What Does Israel Hope to Accomplish
by Invading Gaza?
If Israel hopes to end Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of
Palestine, Israel’s invasion will fail. [What is the difference between an incursion
and an invasion? Have you noticed that
our commercial media almost always unquestioningly adopts Conservative framing?] During the last 50 years, no occupied people
have failed to protest violently.
Expecting to punish Palestinians into submission is like telling
employees, the beatings will stop when moral improves. Or telling a spouse, the beatings will stop
when you love me. There is only one way
for Israel to stop Palestinian violence.
That is to quit occupying Palestine.
Why has Israel not tried this alternative? It is obviously not just because Palestinians
might continue their violence. It is
because Israel desires Palestinian land and water resources, which Israel is
appropriating in violation of international law. With continuing U.S. support, Israel will
continue its occupation. For more. Both Israel and Palestine will continue their
violence. Only United Nations
Intervention will produce a solution. For more. For more. For more. For more. For
more.
Barack Obama and Harry Reid have asked how Americans would react if
rockets were fired at our civilians. We
might ask, “How would Americans react if Israel occupied our country and
treated us the way they do Palestinians?”
Would we passively accept such treatment? I don’t think so. Dave
Thomas
Here’s the Beef
Our media are
not competent to discuss health care issues.
Lots of reasons why
private health insurance can’t provide universal coverage.
Pay now with stimulus
package or pay later with unemployment and lack of investment.
4.5 million
Americans now collect unemployment benefits, highest since Reagan-Volker
recession.
Stimulus
package will include extended unemployment and health coverage benefits.
$187
billion bailout capital investments isn’t producing more loans.
Will
financial company officers be prosecuted for fraud and other crimes?
It’s not more or less
regulation. It’s what kind of
regulation.
Six
reasons that nuclear power won’t work.
Energy conservation
should be priority for reducing global warming.
We need to make
non-carbon based energy cheaper. Not
make carbon based energy more expensive.
Military
Secretary Robert Gates says $136 billion to be spent on Iraq and Afghanistan
wars in 2009.
Diplomacy can resolve
all issues between our United States and Iran.
Kenyan Equity Bank
succeeds through serving the poor.
Try
to stop global warming, but be ready to adapt to any global warming that
occurs.
Israel’s
indiscriminate bombing in Gaza hits U.N.and medical facilities.
U.S. Senate expresses
unqualified support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
China
is spending more money on its own stimulus, instead of funding our debts.
Our
Liberal Spirit
Accepting Our Past
John
McCain’s campaign jealously accused Barack Obama of being a celebrity. Since being elected president, he is a global
celebrity. McCain’s campaign argued that
we didn’t know Obama. But through his two
autobiographical books and the interviews with both Barack and Michelle Obama that
have continuously appeared on CNN, we know more about Obama than any other
president was known by his contemporaries.
What
is clear is that Obama is comfortable with his past. He easily admits to his difficulties and
mistakes. He accepts what he has done
and what others have done to harm him as the ways things are. Stuff happens. He argues that when living intensely,
mistakes are inevitable. His books
describe his experiences and what he learned.
He
refers to his own experiences and reflections, but doesn’t suggest that these
would apply to others. Unlike Benjamin
Franklin, he offers no simple list of principles for living or self
improvement. His books are not self-help
books. One must compare his experiences
with one’s own to decide if they are relevant.
His modesty protects him from the charges of hypocrisy which have been
aimed at more preachy presidents, such as Jimmy Carter.
I
don’t think Barack Obama will be primarily known for his social style as John
Kennedy was known for Camelot. He will more
likely be known for his character and especially his family values. Our largest disillusionment would occur if he
committed unfaithful acts as John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and John
Edwards did.
Although
Barack Obama has the humility to avoid suggesting that we should copy his ways,
we can use him as a role model. Like
him, we can attempt to accept that stuff happens. And has happened as in the mistakes that we
and our rivals and enemies have made. We
can instead focus upon the present and what we need to do to create the future
we envision. We can learn from the past,
but not be distracted by it from dealing with our present.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Senator Byron Dorgan, 2006, Take This Job and Ship It, How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics
Are Selling Out America
This book treats many
issues in which our United States economy relates to other economies. See also the books on in the Globalization
category of our book list.
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