The Elizabeth NJ school budget was defeated yesterday, Yes 1,607,
No 1,808. More voters turned out in adjacent town Union NJ, which has half the population, & nearly as many in Linden, which has one-third. We had four candidates for three Board of Ed positions. The BoE, though nonpartisan, is in effect controlled by the local opposition to the Elizabeth/Union County regular Democratic organization, which holds city Hall & County government. So one might expect a full slate of alternative candidates & more debate. Instead, we got a mailing from the mayor advising us to vote "no." Beginning a few months ago, we began recieiving a series of slick brochures & flyers from the BoE telling us how good the system is. Certainly, many of the schools look swell. There's a brand new grammar school around the corner constructed at state expense. We have a "Ronald Reagan Academy" & a bunch of other academies. But the test scores & rankings, easily available from several online sources, tell us Elizabeth has a typical urban school system, half as good as the small, no frills system in the town of Roselle Park on the western border, better overall than Newark & probably safer. None of the mailings informed us how many staff positions would be cut or in what areas. In a crucial year, with a budget heavily dependent on state aid, the election here generated little public interest. But we're projected to lose 4.5% in state aid. Union County's suburban towns are taking the biggest hits & facing huge property tax hikes. Chalk it up as a small victory for Mayor J. Christian Bollwage. The disputes between the Mayor & The BoE centered mostly on where our new state-mandated & financed schools would be built, & that of course raised questions of who might profit from the land deals & construction contracts, & such matters generally don't interest me, as I fail to see the point of getting involved in urban politics in Jersey if you're not trying to leverage some advantage, even if it's just a a clerical job for a relative in a cubicle in some obscure city agency.

Oh yeah, we like Ike.

Labels: Election

I knew something like this was coming, but I didn't realize that it would be this big. Rising from the ashes of a mixed mid-term, Ned Lamont has decided to cheer us up a little by announcing that he has formed an exploratory committee to look into a run for the Governor's seat in Connecticut. Yes, my long suffering adopted state is getting another chance at Lamont, and we'd best not screw it up this time around.

Since the 2006 campaign for Senate, I have continued to meet with citizens across our state — as co-chairman of the Obama campaign in Connecticut, founder of a state policy institute at Central Connecticut State University, and as an outspoken advocate for health care reform. I have been constantly reminded during these conversations that Connecticut is not living up to its potential and that too many of our families are still being left behind.

Ned Lamont is a good guy and has some great ideas. The Governor's office, like most of Connecticut's government, is ruled by cronyism and less than legal shenanigans. The incumbent Governor, came into the office on the tails of her predecessor's perp walk and subsequent jail term, and yet she claims that she knew nothing of his deeds.
It seems to me that someone working closely within an office where certain entities are taking payoffs would surely at least know; if not, they were perhaps not paying attention. In any case, the governor's office needs new blood and though it might be an uphill battle, he could just be the man for the job.

At least its an interesting idea, in a year that will hopefully see the "retirement" of Joe Lieberman, the election of Ned Lamont to the governor's office would surely send a message. Of course, it appears that all of that depends more on Obama's behavior and the American People's short memories than anything that might or might not actually happen.

Good luck and Godspeed to Ned Lamont. Hes the kind of guy that we need now more than ever.

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Election, lamonte

Today, as in the past few days, freedom is happening, or trying to happen, in an unfolding outpouring of historic proportions in the streets of Iran. The brave people out there risking life and limb are trying to get a fair election and the leaders that they wanted. Heaven knows that Americans lacked the balls or focus to do the same after not only one, but two stolen elections.

You could say, in fact, that if the Iranian election was stolen, as seems to be the case, the techs who engineered the heist probably learned a thing or two from America's 2000 and 2004 elections. You don't have to go further than our friend Brad's blog to get the lowdown on the fraud in Iran, (and be sure to catch Brad subbing for Mike Malloy this week 6-22 to 6-26, 6PM to 9 PM PT, stations listed here.)Brad is the man when it comes to voting rights and voting fraud, and his piece lays it out very simply; there is no way to trust this result. There was no oversight and there were no checks and balances; paper ballots were taken to be counted in secret by the incumbents staff, with no witnesses from outside....? come on!

So, of course, there is not going to be any winning in this situation. The Ayatollah has told the people to accept it and move on, but how far this thing will go before the uprisings are put down, is anyone's guess. The problem is that unless the government decides to have another vote, this result will never be accepted. Another election will surely prove to be against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is much less popular and very much more like the old time, hard line, conservative voice of the leadership. The people want change and the government does not want to give it to them. This fraud runs deep, because the numbers are so skewed as to be impossible.

America wrote the book on pretending to be a free and open, vote-counting, society; Iran never promised anything of the sort really, and its unlikely that what is happening now will do much more than strengthen the underground movement that will continue boiling along. This is an example of people who feel the urgency of history in their hearts and who are willing to die for the freedom of generations to come. The beauty of this uprising is not only that we are seeing a natural push towards freedom, but it's that we didn't have to bomb them to bring freedom, or any one of a thousand reasons that certain entities, (OK, McCain and his ilk,)gives for wanting to destabilize, install bases, grab oil, and generally mess with the tinderbox that is the Middle East.

President Obama, much to the chagrin of the morning bobble-heads today, isn't getting involved besides a couple of benign statements. People fight for freedom because its part of who they are, not because another regime imposes it on them. We can't tell them to fight on because we are sending in the cavalry, because we aren't. We can be there in spirit with them, but interfering would be another disaster on an already full dance card. Again, I find myself thankful to have Obama as president and not McCain, because I can only just imagine what he would do in this situation!

In Iraq, the "freedom" that we imposed looks pretty much like an ongoing dangerous occupation/war, and when we pull out they can expect some more chaos. I can still hear Rumsfeld's condescension as he told us how messy freedom is. I doubt he'd know, because what they were doing was not spreading the freedom; it was more like a war crime! (...and for some real fun of the vomitous type, check out Rummy in Time. Can someone tell me why these criminals are not being actively investigated right now?)

It occurred to me today that a civilization is truly ready for the revolution when it has embraced some form of Twitter or some level of a face book like popular platform in order to keep people in touch and organized. Even with a government shut down of communications, many Tweeters were changing their time stamps to confuse an already confused government and allow information to be passed around. When movements like this become global projects then anything is possible. The technology isn't the only necessity either; there has to be a movement by the people, not hoisted onto them like an antiquity stolen in all that messy looting.

When Joementum Lieberman looked up at the satellite dishes on the buildings in Iraq's green Zone and declared mission accomplished, his reasoning was that people could talk once again on their cell phones. I believe that it was war correspondent,Mick Ware, who mentioned that they were, in fact, now more fully able to organize to kill us. But regardless of what planet Joementum was on, (soon to be the planet of the unemployed, until the cushy payoff job sets in, I suppose,) those neocons never got the fact that you can't push democracy on a society where the hunger for it has not reached its own crescendo. Hell, it became apparent during that same time that Americans were not even that hungry for all of that freedom and rights crap; not enough to get off the couch and change the channel from the Fox Terra Network, anyway; not enough to have to reason and think about things.

Americans have been the lucky recipients of the sweat and blood of forefathers more high minded than we turned out to be. Their legacy might be that we all got to have a Jennifer Convertible and a flat screen TV for just 1000 easy payments, but somehow I don't think so. They have the record of their intentions set down in history but What they forgot to pass along to us was the lesson about what the first pilgrims fled when they started this crazy experiment. The truth was that the underclass was permanent and that there were no rights. The landed gentry were the elites and there was no way to better your life, much less pick your representation. The American dream was not one of having riches and status, but about having a voice and the ability to do well by your family. That didn't mean to do well at the expense of your countrymen, either, and it also didn't mean to do well outside of your own means gained through hard work and a strong community that cared for every member.

My point is not that what is going on in Iran is not important; It is damned important and its complex, and its also going to lose the attention of the American people as quickly as you can say "Jon and Kate Plus 8 Separate," because its a tiny step in a long process; a process that Bush-Cheney thought they could bulldoze through in some half thunk out disaster that looked good on that Teevee while it was going on, and now, all these years later looks like pathetic liars posturing. Power and oil look pretty sad in the face of just wanting a voice; and whats really sad is the continuing lie that we were trying to help Iraq achieve that voice.

Whats happening in Iran right now is the real thing, and there is much to report, as you can see from HuffPo's great coverage here and it should give us all hope that things like this can happen, and that we don't have to bomb the place to encourage instability and then somehow force our version of elections on them. Its just that the neocons would want to be there to take control from the ashes of this thing, or at least keep a foot in the door, just in case there are weapons of mass destruction or anything. I'm watching with bated breath like the rest of the world, but this is not a cartoon, and those are people with families and full lives who are sacrificing everything just for the chance to have their votes counted.

When you think of how we sat through 8 years of Bush and Cheney lying and cheating, and setting us up to lose everything we've worked for, in a stupor of fast food and reality TV, so long as our kid wasn't the one over there, its pretty eye opening to watch the real thing unfolding. When you think of how easy it seems to be for some people, our President included, to move forward and not look at the mistakes of the past, thereby letting criminals go unpunished, its a little embarrassing in the face of what is real bravery by people who are not only going against their government but also in many cases against their God, who supposedly speaks through the Ayatollah.
Its bravery, plain and simple. The world needs to watch what the government, such as it is, will do with those in custody.

With much of the media banned or shut down, the unfolding story is being told largely by citizen journalists at YouTube.




RIP Coco

Labels: Election, Iran, lies

Yesterday I ran across what I thought was an extraordinary article by Ashok Mitra from The Telegraph out of Calcutta, India, "Agonies of Connection - How a New Government in the US May Affect India."

I often read online Indian newspaper articles because I often find out more about a story than what is being told to us in the States. (For example, details about the Chrysler-Tata deals.) What I found fascinating about this story was what I thought was the depth of analysis about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, particularly concerning the outsourcing of American jobs to India. (Note: Mitra has some intelligent commentary about the war in Iraq, which really deserves its own post.)

I thought Mitra really hit the nail on the head when he talked about the challenges of using campaign rhetoric in order to be elected, coupled with the challenges of being held accountable for that same rhetoric after being elected into office.

Here are a few choice tidbits regarding outsourcing:

It is not altogether inconceivable that the resolve once expressed by a past chairman of the Federal Reserve Board — he would bring the prime rate down to the level of zero if that would save the American economy — might well be rendered real by his present successor. Even that most extreme measure could be of little avail. For meanwhile, business process outsourcing has cast a shadow across the nation’s landscape. [Emphasis mine]. If to the American entrepreneur an open economic system offered the opportunity to outsource work whereby costs could be markedly pared down, the crisis in employment would persist irrespective of whatever happened to the interest rate structure. Low interest rates will encourage the induction of relatively more capital-intensive technology, while the supply of trained personnel to operate such technology could be ensured by persuading the authorities to issue generous H1B visas. The thrust of the presidential poll campaign has been directed against both BPO and H1B visas, with politicians crying hoarse for a return to a non-liberal regime; leaders of the badly scarred American working class have been shouting the most. Not surprisingly, proposals about how to restore for domestic workers the estimated three million jobs the Bush administration has exported out of the country have held centrestage in the campaign debates.

It's amazing how the Bush administration is reluctant to even admit that there is even a problem, while an Indian newspaper is stating all of the above as fact! Mitra says a little later on:

All the greater reason to expect that greater attention will be riveted on the pre-poll commitments on economic issues. The cry of saving the jobs of American youth will grow shriller. Pressure will intensify to close loopholes in trade laws to prevent placement of orders on foreign firms on work that could be as competently done at home [emphasis mine] never mind if at higher costs. In case necessary, some tax relief may be considered for firms offering extra consideration to domestic workers. Penalty for breach of legislation enjoining preference to domesticemployees, could be stiffened too. There could also be a drastic reduction in the number of H1B visas issued each year.

I'm fascinated by this analysis. From where I'm sitting, I can't possibly see any of the above ever happening, even if a Democrat is elected President. The lure of corporate money flowing into campaign funds is just too difficult to resist. Loopholes could be closed, but other loopholes could be opened just as quickly. Companies would find more ways to send profits to offshore pirate coves (as Elaine Meinel Supkis would say), or, companies could simply just close shop here and move overseas. However, in India, they have reason to monitor the situation very closely, and they are worried.

How will all this affect India? The fastest growing among our industries is the information technology-related services. Many of them depend for as much as 90 per cent or more of their activities on orders flowing in from the US. A substantial part of India’s high rate of growth of GDP, touching more recently almost 9 per cent per annum, has a strong link with the high rate of growth in IT services. Suppose a severe contraction occurs in the activities in the IT sector following the ushering in of the new administration in the US next year. The spin-off could be a major setback for our GDP growth too. Whether such a possibility would turn into a probability can only be speculated on at this moment. What is however obvious is that an interdependent global system has its positive as well as flip sides. Foreigners can offer us bliss; excessive attachment of foreigners can also bring problems in its train.

Mitra practically admits that India's economic success can be greatly attributed to the offshoring of American jobs to their country. Contrast India's growth of GDP with research by economist Susan Houseman, where she states that costs savings from outsourcing and offshoring is incorrectly being applied to U.S. GDP. Ironically, jobs pouring into India is helping their GDP, while these same jobs pouring out of the U.S. is also helping our GDP.

Even in a world ruled by neo-liberal ideology, economics does not decide everything. Just because in an international framework of costs and returns, our software industry has proved to be a world-beater, we cannot expect the Americans to favour us perpetually, if to do so would hurt the interests of their own workers. Economic calculations cannot afford to ignore the desideratum of national interests. [Emphasis mine.]

See that? Even Indians recognize the importance of national interests over pure money-making economics. Do you think they'd ever treat their citizens this way? Mitra finishes up by saying:

Should not we at least prepare ourselves for the contingency of a sudden shrinkage in the demand from the US for our IT-related services? If we have to maintain the momentum of our GDP growth, we need to look for a substitute commodity or service to fill the space the IT sector would be forced to vacate. Do we have the faintest notion where to look for it? In case we have not a clue in that regard, we would have to fall back on growth induced by demand germinating within the domestic economy [emphasis mine]. That would however call for a drastic restructuring of income and assets distribution, including widespread land reforms. This is where China has scored over us. China’s export boom is pivoted on exports of commodities, not so much on outsourcing. That apart, it accomplished one of the most thoroughgoing programmes of land reforms the world has ever seen before it set on the road to export-led growth. It did not put the cart before the horse; we did.

Imagine that! Redistributing assets so that economic growth would depend on increased demand within a country's borders! Do you think we could ever come up with anything so radical? The Indians are looking ahead to what will happen if the influx of IT jobs into their country all of a sudden comes to a halt or even reverses. Mitra does not claim something ridiculous like 4.5 to 7 jobs will magically appear every time they lose a job in the IT sector, or that Indians will move on to higher and better careers in a "new economy", or even that the inevitable "green technology" bubble will transform the entire subcontinent. Mitra and others realize that their nation needs to look ahead and do some serious planning for the future.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: Election, H-1Bs, India, offshoring, outsourcing

How about one that's happening tomorrow?

Tomorrow Jamaicans will go to the polls to decide whether to keep the government of the People's National Party or turn over control to the Jamaica Labor Party.

If this all sounds a bit like this to you...



...it's probably useful to go back in time a bit, back to when the U.S.-allied Edward Seaga headed the "conservative" JLP and Michael Manley headed the PNP. Seaga was closely allied with Ronald Reagan in the 1980's, and Manley gave the U.S. fits for a time with his admiration of Fidel Castro, though he later on became less socialist in his political leanings. These two traded off heading up Jamaica for years until Manley died. After Manley's death, the PNP kept control with P.J. Patterson as Prime Minister, and now with Portia Simpson-Miller, who is up for re-election tomorrow against JLP head Bruce Golding.

Of course this is a ridiculous oversimplification of four decades of Jamaican history. But to listen to the radio spots for the two parties, it's difficult to tell which is the conservative party. The "conservative" JLP is promising free education and free health care, and the PNP is asking who's going to pay for it all. Check out these radio spots from both parties, recorded from radio while we were in Jamaica last month.

JLP:


PNP:


The other interesting aspect to this election is the role gender plays. The PNP is touting the benefits that Ms. Simpson-Miller's term has had for women, while the JLP is running some TV and radio ads that show the current Prime Minister as a shrieking harpy:



And taking a page from the 1988 U.S. election, the JLP is throwing the folly of "stay the course" back at the PNP:


At least as of mid-August, the JLP was running its ads in heavy rotation, and it seems to be working. Going into tomorrow's election, the JLP has a whopping nine-point lead:

According to the pollsters, 40 per cent of those surveyed said they would be voting for the JLP at the next elections, compared to 31 per cent who said the PNP. Those who were undecided or said they were not voting amounted to 29 per cent.

[snip]

Pointing out that the findings were based on a 71 per cent turnout, Wignall said a further look at the undecided indicates that five percentage points comprise likely voters with "lukewarm PNP characteristics".

"If these likely voters are sufficiently convinced by the PNP that that party is going to win, the PNP may be able to add 5 per cent to its tally of 31 per cent, making it a much closer fight.

"If, however, the turnout rises significantly higher than 71 per cent, the overall gain will be to the JLP's advantage and its lead should increase even further," he added.

Imagine that: a 71 percent turnout. When was the last time three out of four Americans turned out at the polls during a major election? In 2004, only 55.3 percent of the voting age population turned out at the polls. Jamaicans are far more engaged in the political process than are Americans, and it's not because Americans are fatigued of the media saturation coverage, because if you listen to Jamaican radio these days, there are political ads running during every commercial break. Given Jamaica's history, and the promises made by both parties, one would expect Jamaicans to be as cynical as Americans are about their electoral process -- and yet they're not.

Labels: Election, Jamaica

That she's correct about what she said doesn't change the fact that it sounds appallingly opportunistic:

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be "the height of irresponsibility" to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

"This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy," the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

"We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office" in January 2009, the former first lady said.

The White House condemned Clinton's comments as a partisan attack that undermines U.S. soldiers

Let's ignore the whiny-ass titty baby kvetching of an administration that has claimed that every criticism of anything it does "emboldens the enemy." Let's look instead at what Hillary is saying. She's absolutely right, of course, that the Bush strategy of running out the clock and continuing the Crawford Caligula's pattern of screwing up everything he touches and then leaving the mess for someone else to clean up is appalling. However, if she thinks that demanding a timetable for withdrawal by the end of the current administration somehow negates her vote for the war, she'd better guess again, as far as I'm concerned. Let's not be blinded by this and think that this is a change in her "invading Iraq was the right thing to do, it was just planned and executed badly" viewpoint. Do not be fooled. She is still a war hawk, and these times demand more courage than the kind of triangulation that may have worked well enough during the 1990's indicates.

The situation can change radically by November 2008, but right now she is well-positioned to take the Democratic nomination, whether a majority of Americans would vote for her in a general election or not. And this is NOT what I want to hear from the party's likely nominee.

John Aravosis disagrees:

My initial reaction is: smart move. The overwhelming majority of Americans have had it with this war. They want us out - just not yet. Yes, it's a contradiction, I get it, but they don't, and it's where they are. People want the war over "soon." And Hillary just gave the public a timeline that meets what their gut is telling them.

It also puts Bush on notice that the clock is ticking. He no longer gets to pull the old "this war will have to be settled by the next president." Hillary's message for the next two years is going to be "are we there yet?" And it's a smart message for the Democrats as well. It permits them to keep running against Bush even as the elections approach for the post-Bush.

The only danger with this strategy is were it morphed into a "Bush has two more years to fix things, so let's just escalate and see what happens." No one is for that, and that's not what Hillary is saying, in any case. She's saying that even she, Democrat who has often been a pain in the butt (to us) as it concerns her views on the war, has a limit.

Here's the problem with Hillary's so-called "timetable": It essentially asks for the war to be ended in time for her to presumably take office -- but does not take into account a temporary escalation and the lives of the thousands more American soldiers that will be lost while we wait for Bush to clean up the mess. Whom does waiting benefit, other than the next president? It certainly doesn't benefit the American people, who are going to pay for another year and a half of war profiteering on the part of Bush and Cheney's friends and cronies. It doesn't benefit the troops who will be at risk for loss of life or limb for another year and a half. And it doesn't seem to benefit the so-called Iraqi military, who somehow miraculously, after foundering for four years, got its act together at least for a day right when George W. Bush needed them to most.

Hillary Clinton's call for an end to our presence in Iraq not now, but before SHE can take office, is exactly the kind of policy position, driven not by the pulse of the American people who marched on Washington on Saturday and the many others who weren't there but were in solidarity, but by the Washington consultant corps -- the Bob Shrums and Al Froms and craven "centrist" Democrats like Chuck "Let's try to do it halfway" Schumer, that is the LAST thing we need. The next president is going to have to have one hell of a mess to deal with -- and this sort of blithe willingness to sacrifice more Americans in a lost cause is disturbing on a potential nominee who is supposed to represent an alternative.

Labels: Chuck Schumer, Election, Hillary Clinton, Iraq