Run Jesse Run!

by Rich Broderick

The barely disguised antipathy Minnesota’s corporate news media displayed toward Jesse Ventura during the 1998 election and his subsequent time as governor always had more to do with snobbery and social class than policies or politics.

The shock over his election was rooted in embarrassment at what “they,” meaning the rest of the country (which doesn’t think about us at all), would think of Minnesota for having voted in a man who speaks with a Midwestern equivalent of a “youse guys” Brooklyn accent. It was the kind of vapors my lace-curtain Irish grandma used to succumb to whenever her grandkids behaved in ways that were not “respectable.” What will the neighbors think?!!

Even though Ventura appointed perfectly respectable – and highly competent – commissioners (he never once saddled us with hapless ideologues like Carol Molnau or Cheryl Yecke), his governorship was not a successful one. It fell victim both to his impatience with the often-tedious process of political bargaining and to the determination of the DFL and the GOP (one of the ringleaders: Tim Pawlenty) to sabotage him – and thus the Independence Party – the consequences of which narrow bi-partisanship have left Minnesota reeling financially ever since.

Still, it’s good to have Jesse back in action, hawking his new book and, even more intriguingly, bruiting the possibility of another run for office, this time for the U.S. Senate.

Anyone who caught Jesse’s bravura performance last week on MPR’s mid-day program got a refresher course in what a breath of fresh air the man is in today’s consultant-driven political environment. Not only is he bright and articulate, he also has an extraordinary ability to frame supposedly complex issues in ways that are not only simple to understand but also illuminate otherwise overlooked dimensions of critical importance. My favorite moment during the show was his comment about the proposed 600-mile fence along the U.S. Mexico border. People should remember, he observed, that fences not only keep people out, they can also keep people in – a pithy allusion to the authoritarian streak behind “Homeland Security.”

I don’t know if Ventura could win a Senate seat this year. Conditions are not the same as they were in ’98, and he would face a wave of press hostility that would make his previous tangles with the “media jackals” pale by comparison. But it sure would be fun to hear him debate Norm Coleman, desperately trying to distance himself from the Bush Administration, and Al Franken, the soi-disant wit who is not only witless when it comes to public policy but a major-league carpetbagger as well – the real issue exposed by his recent tax problems. In any public forum matching a clone and a clown like these two, Ventura would shine.

Norm Coleman and Al Franken running for Senate? Now that’s embarrassing

Source

Overlooked family values

Virtually every religious tradition emphasizes paying your debts and caring for your children. Yet America today is failing to fulfill these very basic moral obligations.

By Oliver "Buzz" Thomas

Throw out the turkey carcass, break out the tinsel and batten down the hatches. Election season is upon us. And, if this election is anything like the past two, religion and values will play starring roles in deciding the outcome.

A key economic issue that is starting to gain traction as a result of the falling dollar involves two of religion's most universal teachings and cuts across ideological and party lines. Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Zoroastrian, your tradition has taught you at least this:

* Pay your bills.

* Provide for your children.

I don't know a religion this side of Dante's inferno that would dispute either one.

(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY)

For Christians, the Bible is explicit about our obligations to our children. "Children are not responsible to provide for their parents but parents for their children," wrote St. Paul to the Corinthian Church. He went on to assert that one who fails to provide for his family "has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." (I Timothy 5:8.) The obligation to pay our lawful debts runs even deeper, going all the way back to the Ten Commandments. Defaulting on one's debts is at least lying if not stealing.

Yet, Americans appear to be violating both of these great religious teachings at warp speed.

How are we doing it? By continuing to spend more and pay less with our national government. Specifically, we are $9 trillion in debt, with the figure rising at the rate of about half a billion dollars a day. The interest alone on the national debt amounts to more than $230 billion a year, or 8% of the federal budget.

The moral component

Why is this a moral issue? Because these are real dollars that must eventually be paid back. If not by us, by our children and our grandchildren.

Think about that for a moment. Nine trillion dollars is nearly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That's $120,000 for a family of four. And that's assuming everybody can pay, which they can't. The elderly, the sick and disabled, the young ... these people can't pay. When you boil it all down, the amount our workforce would have to pay if we could freeze the debt at its current level is gargantuan. Still, we keep piling it on.

I understand that debt can be useful during times of recession or national emergency. I remember learning how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used deficit spending to help propel the country out of the Great Depression. But piling up massive amounts of red ink as a matter of ordinary course portends disastrous results. This was a central message of Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign, and one of the reasons we turned our attention to successfully balancing the budget during the '90s.

Here's what's fascinating. I don't have a single friend who would run up his credit card debt by $30,000 and expect his children to pay it off when he died. (Most of my friends live by the biblical adage that "a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.") Yet, none of these friends seems concerned that we're saddling our children with the same amount of debt through our elected officials. Because Congress and the president are the ones using our credit cards, we seem not to mind.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Combat veterans will tell you that it's easier to drop a bomb on hundreds of people from 20,000 feet than it is to kill a single person at arm's length. Up close and personal, moral questions are clear and focused, but between Washington and Waycross, things cloud up.

The tax cuts passed by President Bush and the Republican Congress in 2001 only worsened our economic woes. Projected surpluses never materialized in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but our deeply convicted, if not stubborn, president plowed full-speed ahead with his plan to give the surplus back to the American people. Meanwhile, government spending continued to soar. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were like pouring gasoline on the fire. Congress began the dangerous practice of adopting federal budgets without reliable figures for war-related expenditures. Then came Pell grants, Homeland Security, farm subsidies, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, Medicare, foreign aid and all the rest. All good stuff, but the point is this: Somewhere it has to stop.

As the Hebrew Scriptures put it, men die for lack of discipline. We have only two choices really. Cut spending, or pay more into the system.

'Supply side' fallacy

I realize that Republican politicians beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1981 convinced us that you could balance the budget simply by slashing taxes on the wealthy and holding the line on spending. "Supply-side economics," they called it. The well-off would be able to invest more, thereby expanding our economy and growing additional tax revenues to balance the budget.

It didn't work. In the wake of the Reagan tax cuts, federal budget deficits ballooned to record amounts. The Great Communicator, a pragmatist at heart, responded in the only responsible way. He raised taxes.

Here we are 25 years later in the same fix but, alas, without a Ross Perot. To their credit, Congressional Democrats have adopted a "pay as you go" approach to budgeting, but even they appear unwilling to tackle the harsh reality of our collective debt. They have neither cut spending nor seriously moved to repeal Bush's tax cuts.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidates are busily proposing ways to spend money while Republican candidates continue preaching tax cuts. They all appear oblivious to the lessons of the '80s or to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's 2005 study showing that such tax cuts routinely fall short of their billing and increase the federal deficit. No wonder George Bush the elder once called it "voodoo economics."

As a minister, I'm going to call it something else: Sin. That's not a word that gets used a lot in our politically correct culture, but spending money that we don't have and leaving the bills for the grandkids isn't going to earn us one of God's gold stars.

As "values voters" parse the politicians, I'd like them to remember this. Paying our debts is a family value.

Oliver "Buzz" Thomas is a minister, lawyer and author of 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).

Source: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/11/overlooked-fami.html#more

Minnesota Green Party Response to I-35W Bridge Tragedy

The Green Party of Minnesota offers its condolences and shares in the grief of the many personally affected by the I-35W bridge collapse tragedy on August 1st. We are especially grateful for the heroic efforts made by fellow citizens and rescue workers who assisted those directly affected.

It is unfortunate that it takes a tragedy such as this to generate a reaction to our failing infrastructure in this country. Ralph Nader, the 2000 presidential candidate for the Green Party, has been addressing this concern for more than a decade. On July 27, 1999 he wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "Perspective on Federal Spending." In it he stated: "The debate over how to allocate funds must include how best to improve our great shared assets." His proactive opinions on protecting our country and its infrastructure along with our democracy have continuously been shut out from the mainstream debate, while the majority of our federal taxes are spent on an illegal and severely destructive war.

Hopefully, out of the tears and grief will come the appropriate investigations and necessary funds to prevent future infrastructure tragedies. We also hope that replacement, where needed, will include building along more environmentally friendly lines.

Dane Smith and Charlie Quimby: The good life, as begotten by good government

In the propaganda of profligacy, tax money is always wasted. But statistics suggest that it generates wealth we can spend on ourselves.

Dane Smith and Charlie Quimby

f we've heard it once, we've heard the antitax zinger a zillion times: "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."

The premise, of course, is that government is wasteful and profligate, while you are prudent and frugal.

Now comes a July 14 Star Tribune report with some fun facts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Twin Cities households ranked first among 24 metropolitan areas in household spending on home furnishings and entertainment, third in eating out, third in alcohol consumption, and sixth in personal-care items. One retailer in the article observed that upscale consumers are increasingly demanding not just premium vodka, but "super ultra premium vodka."

Let's just quickly review and compare how state and local governments have been squandering "your" money. Almost all public-sector spending goes for these frivolities: public schools and colleges, health care for the elderly and for poor families with children, roads and mass transit, libraries, environmental protection, parks, police and fire protection, courts and corrections. (Some might argue that government officials and the Legislature do provide entertainment, but this is basically a free sideshow, not a budget line item.)

Earlier this summer, we learned from another federal report that Minnesota had sunk to a modern-era low, 23rd among the states, in state and local government taxes as a percent of income, and to 31st in government expenditures as a percent of income. By these measures, our government is significantly smaller than in the mid-1990s, before some of the largest state income tax cuts in the nation were pushed through in 1999 and 2002. (Advocates of those cuts said they would spur economic growth.)

Next comes a troubling report in the July 18 Star Tribune: "Since 2004, Minnesota's growth in jobs, per-capita personal income and output of goods and services has risen at a lower pace than the national average."

High consumer spending on luxuries, proportionately less government spending and slower-than-average overall economic growth. Could there be a connection?

As pointed out in the July 14 story, our high rankings on nearly every consumer-spending category are explained in large part by the fact that our incomes were third-highest of the 24 metropolitan areas. But the dramatic growth in Minnesota's wealth and income over the past three decades actually occurred when taxes were higher than they are now and when "we" were spending more on "us." And our economy has stagnated since we cut government and taxes, giving "you" more money to spend on "you."

Deep down, Minnesotans know that the good life is not all fine wine and skin-care products. Sure enough, digging into the BLS data, we found that the Twin Cities also rank second in consumer spending on health care and cash donations and sixth in education. Throw in our seventh-place spending on reading, and our priorities as consumers start to align more closely with our public spending.

Let's acknowledge that government can waste money, spend inefficiently and make mistakes, just as individual consumers do. But Minnesota, widely admired as a relatively efficient, clean, good-government state, has spent your money pretty well, too.

A truly healthy state economy depends both on spending by individuals, making considered judgments about their families' needs, and on pooled investment that reflects our common wisdom, values and hopes for the future. Instead of viewing government spending as somehow inferior to or more frivolous than individual, consumer-driven decisions, we should insist that the money be invested as wisely and cost-effectively as possible.

If Minnesota's total investment in the public sector increased by just 1 percentage point as a share of personal income, state and local governments would have $2 billion more per year to improve schools and graduation rates, catch up on a long-neglected transportation system, and restore health care to the thousands who have lost it as a result of a gradual disinvestment in the public sector.

Restoring tax fairness, with income tax rates at the top tier that are closer to the rates high earners paid in the roaring 1990s, would go a long way toward restoring the public investment that Minnesota needs to help maintain its lofty position in the consumer-spending rankings and support broad-based economic growth.

And not to worry, there would be plenty left over for "super ultra premium" vodka, as well as all the other spending that you can do better than the government can.

Dane Smith is president and Charlie Quimby is a communications fellow at Growth & Justice, a nonpartisan economic think tank based in St. Paul.

Cynthia McKinney Victory Speech: "It's a New Day"

Click here for webcast of speech.

Good evening.

It's a new day, ya'll!

And the evidence is a clear and convincing victory handed to us by the people of the Fourth Congressional District.

Twelve years ago, Georgia's History Train pulled off from the Georgia Legislature, rolling down the tracks to the United States Congress.

And for 10 years, The History Train gathered momentum.

We rode that train: through poverty and plenty; picking up warriors for justice all over America.

The History Train chugged along with full faith and confidence in the American dream.

Tonight signifies that the History Train is once again gathering steam, but it's also clear that the History Train is changing tracks: taking a new path for community and country.

Sending a strong message that a new way of thinking for ourselves and our future is taking hold.

Ten years ago, the History Train took us through Georgia towns big and small, like Washington, Georgia, the hometown of the most recently fallen Georgia hero in Iraq.

Sadly, now, another Georgia family must feel the pain of George Bush's war machine.

Tonight I say, "Bring our sons and daughters home now" and commend to you this beautiful watercolor expressing what I've been saying for the past year.

I predict that the American people will send a resounding message tonight that the war machine--must stop now.

But there's another kind of machine of which we must beware that lurks among us: and that's the corporate propaganda machine.

Leaders who dare go against, or merely even question, the policies being polished by a slick media machine can get sucked up, chewed up, eaten up, devoured.

Or in a familiar set of words more famous than my own: "expose, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" such leadership. "To pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them." These words are straight from the FBI during its program to counter dissent in this country.

And as we have seen in the cases of both, these immensely powerful and monied machines take their aim directly at the people.

Breaking free of the influence of both these machines heralds a new way of thinking. And that's what this campaign was all about.

We really believe:

that a multitude of people can outweigh any special interest every time; that media magic has little persuasion over an informed people; that we as a people are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other; and that we can embrace the human rainbow, celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together, tear down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.

Evidence of the power of this new way of thinking is here tonight in this room and in our election numbers.

And so commanding is our presence, and significant is our mission that what we have now accomplished in Georgia's Fourth Congressional District, is being broadcast by the best of America's corporate media: Who said the revolution wasn't going to be televised?

This campaign represents a movement to bring America together: Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos; together; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu; together; Those who still hum Dinah Washington tunes, together with those singing Tupac.

What we represent is the future of America: a first step in taking our country back, freeing ourselves so we can liberate others.

It's a new day, and it belongs to us. Now is our time, and seize it we must.

In 1901, George White, the last remaining black Member of Congress during Reconstruction addressed the United States House of Representatives. Black Members of Congress had been sent home after Jim Crow laws gathered steam across the South. When he, too, had been affected, George White had this to say:

This is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress. But phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people--full of potential force."

People across the Fourth District and across our country bind together: outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but also full of potential force. Many among us have been knocked down, but not a one of us is too wounded to not get back up again.

Tonight is a victory for the people of the Fourth Congressional District and for a new way of thinking.

We celebrate that the History Train rides again.

And invite onboard all who share our values and still believe that America can be a force for good at home and in the world.

Thank you to the voters who came out in record numbers and gave their vote of confidence.

Thank you to all the volunteers (from far and near) who worked day in and day out to make this victory possible;

Thank you to the alternative media who kept our story relevant and thank you to all of you.

Thank you and good night.