Roldo Bartimole writes:

Are Ohio Republicans in a suicide mode?

The ability of the Republicans to design Congressional districts to benefit its candidates certainly helped them here and elsewhere to retain control of the U. S. Congress.

However, those Congressional districts do not apply to offices of the State of Ohio. You have to run state-wide, not in a district conveniently created for you. A bit harder for statewide candidates. It demands candidates that identify with more than true believers.

And I believe this 2012 election in Ohio did great injury to Republican state office holders.

Ohio Republicans are damaged goods.

They did it to themselves. It’s always bad when you think you’re better than you are.

Treasurer Josh Mandel – despite all the money thrown against Sen. Sherrod Brown – went down in flames. Outside corporate sources spent $31 million added to Mandel’s $12.6 million, say reports. More than $43 million. To do what? To lose.

Mandel didn’t seem to serve but a short time as Ohio Treasurer before wanting another job. Greed is not becoming. Voters remember.

Mandel’s brashness – a quality of these brassy Republicans – made one want to slap him soundly. A wise ass without the standing to justify such behavior.

Secretary of State Jon Husted – despite court rulings telling him to back off – continued to try to deny Ohio voters access to the voting booth. Voter suppression became a futile attempt by Republicans in many states to block those they considered Democratic voters. Voter suppression backfired on Republicans Continue Reading »

We need to abolish poverty and social injustice, and to deal with the problems of global warming and economic recession. But we need to begin with the painful feelings we carry inside us. We have to deal with these things first. If they’re not dealt with, we may inadvertently cause more suffering when we’re trying to relieve it. p. 20

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

One of the most despicable ad campaigns is being waged here by Walmart.

You’ve seen the full-page ads in the Plain Dealer. One ran this week.

Walmart lists a number of grocery items selected by Walmart. It is a full-page ad, hard to miss. The list gives prices on one side of the full-page ad at Walmart. On the other side of the page are the same items listed at Giant Eagle.

Of course, the Walmart list, in larger print by the way, totals less cost than Giant Eagle’s items. By $25.03 on a $181.14 total bill. The ad says, “Same items, 12 percent less!”

Of course, the items are chosen by Walmart. They don’t say anything about specials at either store.

But what it does say to me is that here is a blatant attempt to put someone out of business.

Walmart has started a war with Giant Eagle. Apparently, it sees Giant Eagle as a first easy target. It’s only a start after all.

What grocer will be next? Heinen’s? A local chain. The real target maybe.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

This is really the rush to the bottom style business. It’s destined and designed to damage business in the east side suburbs.

What I’d like to see is when the Walmart opens – having destructively destroyed open land on Warrensville Road – are a thousand vehicles roaming the lot, packing its parking lot and making the experience of shopping there worse than hell.

Walmart so richly deserves constructive anarchy.

It is a diseased company with diseased policies. Its disease is inflicted on people all over the world. It’s called Profit Above All. To hell the cost. To hell the people.

Appearing in my inbox this morning from Bob Manski:

Dear Jeff,

The election season begins today. Will you run for office in 2013? Will you volunteer on a campaign? Will you take advantage of the vibrant energy, the supporter lists, and the clarity of purpose that are our new strengths as Greens?

By tonight’s end, between 750,000 and 1,250,000 people will have cast votes for Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala. Some states will perform better than others. But overall, this is a significant number and an impressive act of ballot box solidarity.

The Green Party is back.

We began the 2012 campaign with 16 states in which we could run candidates on the ballot, and ended it with 38 states.

We qualified for public financing.

Our candidates appeared on national television and in all the national press.

Our message of the need for a new economy and a new democracy was heard and seen everywhere.

Roughly one million Americans voted with us, and millions considered voting Green for the first time.

The Greens are back and in the political mix. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala did that. And you did that.

What will you do next?

We hope you will take this energy and invest it in your community in the coming months. Recruit candidates or recruit yourself to run. Bring together your local Green community and build a local Green Party that makes a difference in your community. Set high ambitions, knowing that you won’t immediately meet your goals.

Will your community be the next to elect a Green majority in local government?

This campaign will work with the Green Party of the United States to ensure that we make the most of the opportunities Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala have given us. They put themselves on the line. They went to jail for justice. They braved the media. So can you.

I personally want to make sure that every one of us understands what we have achieved this year. Winning nearly a million votes doesn’t happen often for independent parties. We’ve done five times better than in the previous election cycle. We are moving in a good direction. I feel good, and hopeful, and I hope you do too.

You will hear directly from Jill and Cheri in the coming hours and days, and from the campaign and the national party in the coming weeks and months. If the election is still contested tomorrow, we will be in touch with you tomorrow as well.

In Solidarity,

Ben Manski
Campaign Manager

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how inventive politicians can be to support the unsupportable.

Long-time Councilman Joe Cimperman’s quote in the Plain Dealer supporting bridges over streets that debase historic buildings downtown is a model of deceit. Then Joe always was putty in the hands of downtown developers. Joe is so self-serving. Don’t think he can even recognize it anymore. Sad.

Here’s what the PD says Cimperman said about two over-the-street bridges that would connect downtown structures:

“We are talking about projects that yield jobs.” And, “Historic preservation, at its heart, is still about economic development.”

No and no.

In fact, bridges could mean fewer jobs as suburbanites drive into downtown Cleveland, visit their destination and NEVER step foot on the streets of Cleveland. They are spared the contamination of walking the city’s streets. Thanks Joe.

Secondly, historic preservation is about preserving our history not making room for some profit-making venture. Must everything in life require a profit? It seems so with these people.

Cimperman – to help his business friends – will be inventive and creative, even if unreasonable. After all, they are his contributors.

Joe has spent so much time and effort serving downtown interests that he no longer remembers why he first ran for City Council. The long-ago youth of idealism and compassion. It so quickly disappeared. It so decisively vanished.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

This, to me, has always been the most uniquely pernicious aspect of the War on Terror civil liberties assaults of the last decade: they will not end when the “war” does because the “war” will have no end. Each new power is embedded permanently into the political framework, incrementally transforming the political culture and the species of government itself.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

A Jewish view of hurricanes

[Updated on 8 November.]

Mano Singham writes:

Dana Millbank reports on what he saw during the debates. He said that the reporters were not in the auditorium but were in a separate room in which the debate was shown on a large screen. But the reporters were also glued to their laptop screens reading other people’s Tweets, especially those of media bigwigs, about what they saw. And so you would find people’s views of the debate being rapidly shaped by other people’s views, sometimes of fairly trivial things, and even before the debate ended, a consensus had emerged which was then widely broadcast.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Via The Root…

Matt Taibbi writes:

In the abstract, most Americans want a smaller and less intrusive government. In reality, what Americans really want is a government that spends less money on other people.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Robert Reich writes:

It’s time for a final summary of the worldview of Mitt Romney. Despite its contradictions and ellipses, Romneyism, as this creed might be called, has an internal coherence. Here are its ten core principles:

1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices.

2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job.

3. All factors of production – capital, physical plant and equipment, workers – are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant.

4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation.

5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority.

6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid, or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy.

7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible.

8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. Any means used to win the game is legitimate even if it involves lying and cheating, as long as it gains more supporters than it loses.

9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. The rich must therefore do whatever is necessary to prevent the majority from exercising its will, including spending large sums of money on lobbyists and political campaigns. The most virtuous among the rich will go a step further and run for president.

10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money. Patriotism is a matter of guarding our economy from unfair traders and undocumented immigrants, rather than joining together for the common good. We owe nothing to one another as citizens of the same society.

On Tuesday America will decide whether these ten ideas should be the guiding principles of the nation.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Chris Mooney wrote in 2007:

Even as we act immediately to curtail short term vulnerability, every exposed coastal city needs a risk assessment that takes global warming scenarios into account…Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have been studying that city’s vulnerability to hurricane impacts in a changing world, and calculated that with 1.5 feet of sea level rise, a worst-case-scenario Category 3 hurricane could submerge “the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.” (Pause and think about that for a second.)

Five years later, Mooney follows-up:

We knew well ahead of time that this could happen, and we knew global warming was already making it worse. We knew, but we did virtually nothing. (Well, New York did empanel a sea level rise task force, which put out a report—and you can see how that turned out.)

But it’s not just about what we knew—it’s also what we know going forward. We know that if you think this is bad, well, global warming will make it still worse in the future.

Americans have learned little from the years (decades, really) of marketing lies bought and paid for by the tobacco industry in the attempt to stave off regulation and losses of profits from the general realization that their product, when used properly, kills people.

How many decades will we tolerate the same marketing lies, bought and paid for by the fossil fuels industry for the same reasons, that will continue to cost Americans billions and billions of dollars each and ever year?

Katrina was the wake up call, but she happened to mostly poor black folks in Louisana. Hurrican Sandy hit our Center of the Universe and will cost the 1 Percent much more than they want to pay. Will Sandy make a difference?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The column began with this sentence:

The lead story on the front page Wednesday dealt with Mitt Romney’s assertion – secretly taped – that many Americans have a sense of entitlement.

Amen Brother Mitt.

Then he went on to talk about entitlement, as you’ll see.

It was a column from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Bill McClellan, saved for me by my 98-year old mother-in-law. She said she’d thought I’d be interested.

Not only did I like it but it made me wonder (once again) why I never read a Plain Dealer columnist take on big shots as McClellan does. Why are PD columnists so feeble, so unwilling to take on obvious big targets? They ignore the obvious with regularity. As if they’re told, “Leave those guys alone.”

McClellan takes on the present owner of the St. Louis Rams. Another billionaire, of course. NFL owner Stan Kroenke seeks the same public welfare Browns’ owner Jimmy Haslam wants here. Kroenke is on Forbes magazine’s richest Continue Reading »

[Update: 30 October at 0446 Education Standards Divided by Race (story first published at 1011 on 24 October.]

David Rothkopf writes:

Sandy also will batter the other elements of the region’s infrastructure, in which America has failed to invest for the past half century or so. She will destroy weakened roadways and bridges and breakwaters. She will lash ancient port facilities. She will paralyze an air-traffic control system and railway systems that lag behind the world in their use of modern technologies. She will say, “Why aren’t you spending your precious resources to protect your people and your economy? Why are you frittering away money building roads and airfields on the other side of the world when you should be taking care of business at home?”

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

Tim Russo writes:

I used to get mocked by my friends for having any faith at all in the American electorate. Most of my political colleagues over my 24 year history in Ohio and international politics think the American voter, and particularly the independent undecided American voter, is just a total moron. I’d always argue that point.

Now, though, I’ve begun to agree with The Moron Theory of Politics. Can Hurricane Sandy change that?

How desperately some people are willing to be sold down the river, after bending over for a hot poker shoved up the ass, precisely what Mitt Romney did to them in that first debate. They really enjoy being taken for fools, seem to relish falling prey to this latest, most skilled purveyor of snake oil to the suckers born every minute who populate conservatism these days, shivering orgasmically as they lap it up. Just as long as they get to beat the black guy; is that grotesque truth really in question anymore?

Never thought American voters were this ignorant. I’ve long predicted an Obama landslide in a week. Now, I don’t know anymore. I didn’t think the president did all that bad in the first debate, and frankly was shocked at the precipitous movement in the polls toward Romney after such a transparently charlatan performance. The landslide was there for Obama’s taking, and he didn’t take it, that’s true. Missed opportunity, for sure. I think a landslide is still there, and incredibly, it may be Hurricane Sandy that does it.

No one has uttered a word about climate change this presidential year, and now here it is, impossible to ignore, right where Continue Reading »