I wrote a few diaries several months ago about a Democratic newcomer in Kentucky politics when John Waltz announced his run here, here, and here. While I very much liked what Waltz was saying, I wondered about his ability to mount a race as a newcomer and in Kentucky's Fourth Congressional District. However, as this race is progressing John Waltz is proving to be an extremely viable candidate as well as being a real fighting Democrat. Now, Waltz's campaign is picking up steam and with our help could mount a real challenge to put Republicans on defense this fall in at least one previously secure district.
Some of the most frustrated folks in America right now are the leaders of America's labor movement. They have good reason to be, as an all-out war has been waged basically by both parties upon them in the last several decades. After the last election, when they used so much energy and support working Americans won the White House and a huge majority in both chambers of Congress they had really hoped that the plight of working Americans would be addressed through healthcare, wages, an end to outsourcing and the Employee Free Choice Act.
I think everyone agrees that America needs to be creating jobs. Although they do not agree how, it seems that some sort of legislation to create jobs is favored by both parties. However, as always with the Democrats they seem to be taking something that could be good and turning into a very different animal. You see, in all his "wisdom" Harry Reid has decided to add a re-authorization of the Patriot Act into the Jobs Bill.
In a long overdue move that is sure to upset the Senator from Communist China, Mitch McConnell the Obama Administration is starting to push back against China as tensions mount between the countries. It all started with Obama's first visit there when he was chided about the state of the American economy and his visits were staged while the Chinese refused to concede anything on climate change, human rights and would not join in demands for tough security sanctions against Iran.
I keep hearing from the President and other party leaders how our country needs to get past "partisanship". Well, sometimes it is a very good thing to work together and try to agree but the times we live in do not call for that particular solution. Yes folks, what we need right now is a good round of ugly, nasty, bitter partisanship to achieve progress for the working class.
With the current setbacks in election results President Obama is trying to retool his message and offer measures to give relief to the middle-class. While some of it sounds good, to me it seems as if it will fall short in really helping some middle-class folks. Another huge problem is it seems to not address the real underlying problem, the RE-BUILDING of our middle-class which has been disappearing.
On New Year's Eve we will be ushering in not only a new year, but another new decade. The twenty-teens will be upon us and looking both backwards and forwards one can only wonder if it would be possible for the next decade to be nearly as bad as the last. From the promise of the 1990s, we took so many steps backwards in so many regards one would hope that the new decade can only bring improvements.
One thing that Democrats have always proclaimed about our party is that we have a "big tent". Within this big tent we have always excepted many different people from different walks of life. However, recent developments should show us all that sometimes a "big tent" is not the greatest thing in the world, especially in the world of politics. Perhaps we should consider the fact that quite possibly our "big tent" has outgrown itself.
Today President Obama came up with a proposal to create jobs and deal with his Achilles heel among Republicans, unemployment. Of course these same hypocritical Republicans seem to forget it was their policies and President that caused the hemmoraging of jobs in the first place, and America has a short memory.
One thing that has been lost in the shuffle through decades of free trade zealously is the simple fact that it matters where things are made. With the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the closures of hundreds of thousands of factories the ability of our country to innovate and to make the products we consume has been greatly diminished. This in turn has shrunken our middle-class to disasterous levels.
Well, the Senate Finance Committee has voted to pass the junk reforms of Max Baucus. In a way this may be good, because now that Baucus has his Corporate Welfare bill through his committee, maybe the reconciliation process can bring about something that more resembles real reform. While I still honestly believe that single-payer is the only thing that will deliver the reform to our system we need, I am hoping the Senate Finance version gets a serious facelift in reconciliation. Anything that mandates coverage for Americans without a strong, viable, robust, or whatever you want to call it public option is political suicide for the Democratic Party. Of course if they are that stupid, they deserve the defeat they will get for acting like watered-down Republicans.
Sorry for the lack of posts, I have taken up a second job and time is limited. Today, there was a lot of news on the Healthcare front. It seems as if everyone is having some kind of problem or another with the way things are going. We have Corporate Democrats and Republicans who seemingly want no reform and are stalling for time, we have others calling for the states to take responsibility for a public option, and we have union middle-class workers crying foul for being expected to sacrifice even more as the drama rolls on.
When Max Baucus released his "compromise" bill it seemed to finally reach some bi-partisanship. For the first time in a long time Progressives and Conservatives seemed to agree on something. They both hated the bill, albeit for different reasons. For Conservatives, they hate anything that is called Healthcare reform, and Progressives hated the fact that the bill reeked of something we have seen far too much of in the last several decades, Corporate Welfare.
One thing that most Americans have always agreed on is that they hope their children will have more opportunities and will not have to work as hard as they did. For many generations of Americans they could rest assured that this would happen and each new generation found more opportunity and built more wealth than the one before. However, starting in the 80s with the disaster of "Reaganomics" and culminating in the George W. Bush years, young and middle-aged folks of these generations are almost assured of ending that trend. New reports are showing that they are losing wealth at an alarming rate and their wages and incomes have dropped dramatically.
Boy, to hear many Republicans tell it they have been the watchdogs of fiscal responsibility. They have recently begun squawking about deficits and spending. They try to say our country is spending too much and we cannot afford Universal Healthcare. Of course, they conviently leave out the facts about why our deficit is where it is right now.
I flip over and listen to the Right-Wing radio in my area from time to time. They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Today I caught about fifteen minutes of the musings of one Sean Hannity, who needs no introduction. One was struck by how he believes that the whole middle-class should just get off their lazy butts and work harder, and quit trying to re-distribute the wealth from the rich who are working so hard and paying for your laziness.
