Morning class and yes, it is another Monday–a Blue Monday–and yes–there is a quiz today. With the election approaching I thought I would give a test on past actions by the Congress.
What was the informal cooperation of Repubs and Southern Dems of both houses of Congress, which worked during the adminstrations of Eisenhower, Truman and Kennedy to defeat or water down proposals from Northern Democrats?
The Google button awaits! Have a day and exit the classroom quietly.
07 July
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones begins “The March of the Mill Children”, when, accompanied part of the way by children, she walked from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s home on Long Island to protest the plight of child laborers. One of her demands: reduce the childrens’ work week to 55 hours – 1903
Some 500,000 people participate when a two-day general strike is called in Puerto Rico by more than 60 trade unions and many other organizations. They are protesting privatization of the island’s telephone company – 1998
Just like every other social problem confronting working people—from home foreclosures, to the massive loss of jobs, the growth of social equality and the danger of war—capitalist political parties around the world have no solution for the staggering rise in fuel prices, whether they call themselves, conservative, labor, Green or socialist. Instead, they all agree working people must accept a massive reduction in consumption to pay for the crisis of the world capitalist system.
In the US neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate for president has anything to offer. John McCain has called for a $300 million reward for the design of an electrical car, the suspension of the 18-cent federal gas tax for the summer months and lifting environmental restrictions on offshore drilling.
In an effort to pose as a populist opponent of the oil companies and speculators, Barack Obama has called for energy corporations to pay a windfall profit tax and for the closing of the so-called “Enron Loophole.” This will go nowhere, however, since large sections of Democrats, particularly from oil states, oppose any tax on the energy conglomerates, and Wall Street—which has thrown the bulk of its money behind the Obama campaign—opposes any serious regulation on speculation.
Obama himself has close ties to the bio-fuel industry and counts among his top advisors a former lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute and ex-officials in the Clinton administration officials who played key roles in deregulating the financial markets. In order to win the approval of his corporate and financial paymasters, Obama has repeatedly insisted he will take no measures that undermine their profit interests. The Democratic candidate’s web site declares, “Barack Obama recognizes that it is critical that oil companies and shareholders have strong incentives to run well managed businesses that invest in efficiency and innovation.”
What a crock! Just bite the bullet and nationalize the industry–bet the guys woiuld find ways to bring gas porices down and still have money for development.
Barack Obama and John McCain are proposing sharply different strategies to seize the initiative from a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, positions that underscore the two leading presidential candidates’ competing visions of how to wage the war on terrorism.
If elected, Obama says, he would immediately withdraw thousands of ground troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to help undermanned US forces defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
“It’s time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan,” Obama said in a speech last week. “It is time to go after the Al Qaeda leadership where it actually exists.”
Obama believes that the United States has relied too heavily on forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Europe-based military alliance which has little experience in guerrilla warfare.
However, McCain, a former fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, says Iraq, not Afghanistan, is the “central front” in the war on terrorism. He believes that NATO and Pakistan must do more in Afghanistan until the United States can draw down its commitment in Iraq – a position which tracks Bush administration strategy.
The Arizona senator and his foreign policy team warn that pulling US forces from Iraq would embolden Islamic extremists around the world and strengthen Al Qaeda as a national security threat.
“To somehow think that it’s an either/or situation – either Afghanistan or Iraq – is a fundamental misreading of the situation in the Middle East,” McCain said on June 30. “What happens in Iraq matters in Afghanistan. It matters in Iran. It matters in all the countries in the region.”
According to this report being a pilot and a POW is experience or why would they mention it in this piece?
I found this chart in the Detroit Free Press and wanted to post it to help my readers understand where their candidate may be on the issue energy–at least for now. These two flip and flop more than a fish out of water.
| BARACK OBAMA | ISSUE | JOHN McCAIN |
| Send out stimulus checks of $300 per family
. |
What he’d do now if he were president | Suspend the 18.4-cent a gallon federal gas tax. |
| Opposed to offshore drilling, saying it offers no short-term benefits and doesn’t address energy issues; opposed to drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. | On domestic drilling | Wants to lift ban on domestic offshore drilling to reduce dependence on foreign oil; opposed to drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. |
| Wants more aggressive investigation into speculation and reforms; wants energy traded on regulated markets
. |
On oil speculation | Supports government investigation and punishment for illegal actions; wants reform of oil futures markets. |
| Supports taxing companies selling oil at more than $80 a barrel, with money going to energy programs; wants repeal of tax breaks for oil industry
. |
On taxing windfall profits of oil companies | Opposed, says it hurts domestic production and investment, increasing dependence on foreign oil. |
| Focused on national energy policy aimed at ending dependence on foreign oil but says states should set speed limits. | On reducing speed limits to reduce energy use | Supports exploring all conservation options but says decisions must be made in consultation with states, industry and consumers. |
| Create $150-billion investment fund used in part to advance technology and commercialize plug-in hybrids and produce new biofuels; double fuel standards for vehicles in 18 years; mandate that all new vehicles have flex-fuel capability by 2013. | On autos | Promises up to $5,000 tax credit for purchase of low- to zero-carbon emissions car; promote flex-fuel technology; offer $300-million prize for battery that can make current plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles commercially viable; enforce fuel standards. |
| Create investment fund to reduce oil consumption by 10 million barrels a day by 2030 through technology, including clean coal; favors market-based system to cut pollution; says nuclear plant safety must be addressed. | On what’s next | Commit $2 billion to clean coal technology; push for 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030; use market-based system to cut greenhouse gases; supports research in advanced energy alternatives. |
The “Obamacans” that Sen. Barack Obama used to joke about – Republican apostates who whispered their support for his candidacy – have morphed into a new phenomenon, or syndrome, as detractors like to call it: the Obamacons.
These are conservatives who have publicly endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee, dissidents from the brain trust of think tanks, ex-officials and policy magazines that have fueled the Republican Party since the 1960s. Scratch the surface of this elite, and one finds a profound dismay that is far more damaging to the GOP than the usual 10 percent of registered Republicans expected to switch sides during a presidential election.
Such sentiments reflect a collapse of the “big tent” conservative coalition that Republican President Ronald Reagan forged in 1980, uniting free-market, small-government types, Christian evangelicals, cultural traditionalists and anti-communists, now called neoconservatives. The neoconservatives, whose intellectual leaders include New York Times columnist David Brooks and Weekly Standard publisher Bill Kristol, remain firmly inside the GOP and strongly back McCain, who appeals to their model of “national greatness.” So do mainstream conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, which issues regular attacks against Obama’s economic plans, and the traditionalist magazine National Review.
Could these Conservative traitors be the answer for Obama to sprint past McCain?
Senator John F. Kerry said yesterday that John McCain doesn’t have the judgment to be president.
“John McCain . . . has proven that he has been wrong about every judgment he’s made about the war. Wrong about the Iraqis paying for the reconstruction, wrong about whether or not the oil would pay for it, wrong about Sunni and Shi’ite violence through the years, wrong about the willingness of the Iraqis to stand up for themselves,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Interesting considering that McCain was considered as a running mate for Kerry in 2004. I guess it is a good thing that Kerry did not choose McCain as his Veep or he would not have done so well in the electrion with a man that has little to no good judgement.
WAIT! Kerry lost that election! I guess his judgment was not so good either.