Political Blogs, News & Views

Specter’s Change and the Next Two Years

Posted by Matthew Avitabile

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Arlen Specter, a well-respected Senator from Pennsylvania, has announced that he is switching parties from a Republican to a Democrat. Specter is someone I like particularly, who has been moderate and willing to support our troops. If I was a Pennsylvania voter, I would probably vote for him, not for his party, but on his record.

However, this is still some bad news for an already reeling Republican party. I, as most did, believed that Jim Tedisco would win the special election in Upstate New York, especially after he took the lead in the vote count. However, he somehow lost. Al Franken is also likely to join the United States Senate from Minnesota, after a fishy ‘victory’ over Senator Norm Coleman.

And now this. The Democrats have large majorities in both houses, as well as the Executive Branch. When Specter switches, and when Franken is seated, then they will have a filibuster-proof majority. Now, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. If any defectors jump ship on an imprtant issue, then the Dems can’t hold the line. However, on a particularly thorny issue, they can pull party politics and push through some of what they please.

But the news isn’t all bad. With 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House, the ball is squarely in the Democrats’ court. With Obama at the helm and Congress a lock, any major issues that happen in the country will land at their feet. If Congress votes itself a payraise, the Republicans can rightly claim that the Democrats had control. If taxes spike, the same thing. If welfare increases, then the Democrats could get the blame.

But in the world of celebrity politics, it might just take Olbermann and Jon Stewart to offer some faux reason why it’s President Bush or Dick Cheney’s fault and everyone will fall in line. Who would want to agree with Dick Cheney, anyway?
originally posted at www.jumpinginpools.blogspot.com

Technorati Tags: Democrats, Obama, Politics, Republicans, Specter

Posted in Near Misses | No Comments »

We Must Send More Troops to Afghanistan

Posted by Matthew Avitabile

There is controversy stirring over a report that the President is considering sending 10,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, along with the 21,000 reinforcements he as already committed and the 38,000 in-country. To all of the detractors, I must clearly state that the idea of sending troops to Afghanistan is the correct one.

Especially in the Pashtun areas of the south, American and ISAF presence is far too limited. About 70% of the population of the country are friendly Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Only in the south of the country, about 20% of the land area of the country is the volatile Pashtun regions. One of the problems is that the Pashtuns in Pakistan, supported by al Qaeda and elements of the Pakistani intelligence services, are supporting the Taliban.

While these extra troops may help the situation, the President and his staff must make sure that they also send a strategy. General David Petraeus is well-known for executing a counter-insurgency effort in Iraq that turned the war around. We must make our focus on protecting the population, not just eliminating the Taliban. We must split the population from al Qaeda and the Taliban and give them reason to side with us. If they want to fight alongside us, that’s great, but we cannot give them weapons in case they plan to use them against us. It was this strategy with the Awakening in Iraq that helped the Iraqi-Coalition forces defeat al Qaeda and their allies.

These 29,000 extra troops, along with a potential of thousands of European forces, could help turn the tide. We must make sure that we do not give up the fight. Out of Afghanistan came the plan to attack the United States. With a power vacuum and the return of the Taliban, al Qaeda will not only come back, but come back with the belief that they have defeated the United States.

Originally posted on Jumping in Pools.

Posted in Policy | No Comments »

Why Do The Poor Overwhelmingly Support Democrats Who Abuse Them?

Posted by Scott Bannon

I believe this is a dynamic which exists–and a question which can be asked–all over the country, and among both major parties as I’ll describe below, but I want to start by localizing it to provide clear examples of what I’m suggesting and asking.

Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the majority of our elected officials at the city, county and state government are always Democrats because democrats vastly outnumber republican voters in this area, I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t a battered-woman-like dynamic helping to keep the party support so high here.

It’s a fact that people who rent rather than own homes, people who frequent bars and people who smoke are all disproportionately poor, undereducated and single.

And at the same time in this region, the poor and undereducated are overwhelmingly registered democrats despite the fact that for years our democratic leaders have passed tax after tax and fee after fee that targets and hurts most… the very people who keep supporting them.

As an example, in the past year our city has begun charging landlords a $12 fee per rental unit they own, a fee that won’t ultimately come from the landlord’s pocket but rather will be passed down to the renters themselves.

Our county has added a 10% drink tax to alcoholic beverages (our normal sales tax on goods is 7%), and our state has increased the “sin tax” on tobacco products which raised prices by up to 25%.

The city justified their landlord registration fee with the argument that it will help to pinpoint and clean up “trouble spots” where landlords aren’t being held accountable for the condition of their properties or the behaviors of their renters.

That may be true to some degree, we won’t know for some time if it works in that way or not. What we do know right now is that it will add to the monthly rent of thousands of people who are fighting to just survive day to day, and it will cause more people with less than perfect credit from moving to, or staying in, the region as landlords feel they must become more strict on who they accept as renters to avoid further persecutions from the city.

In other words, whatever good the fees may do in the long term, there are serious harms that they are doing already. And disproportionately, those harms are visited upon the very same people who most often vote for the party candidates who are beating them over the heads.

A similar scenario exists with the county’s drink tax, which has been touted as the only alternative to an increase in property taxes for residents. Beyond the fact that it was a false proposition being made, how is it ever fair to target specific groups of people with taxes rather than applying them equally to all people?

The tax isn’t on all alcohol sold in the county, but only on “poured” drinks. Meaning drinks ordered in a bar. And who spends the most time socializing in bars? Young adults and poor people. Again, the very people who vote for them are being targeted with unfair taxes and fees by politicians… yet people keep supporting them over and over.

The state taxes on tobacco products… more of the same. Once again, the people most likely to use tobacco products are living near or below the poverty line, are undereducated, single or under 30 years of age. And in this region, those are all groups that vote heavily towards the democrat party–the very party that keeps targeting and unfairly taxing them further down the economic ladder.

These are only 3 recent instances, there are more which further and unfairly target the poor, undereducated and elderly. I’m not listing all of them because my point isn’t to fight individual taxes or fees, or to argue whether specific revenues are needed or not. Though I will add that I believe any non-blanket tax which targets specific groups seems unconstitutional to me.

But my point, or rather it’s more of a question, is why do the people in my region who are being targeted the most by Democrats in power continue to support and put Democrats in power? I include myself in this.

Is it the same in other regions? Is it unique to Democrats, or do republican heavy regions see a similar beating from the Republicans they continue putting in office as well? My guess is that this isn’t specific to my part of the country, and that it happens across party lines too.

I know at the federal level Republicans had the opportunity to truly advance the conservative and religious right agendas from 2000 through 2006, yet they failed to do anything meaningful with either, so it seems safe to assume both parties are guilty of biting the hands that feed them.

When I reflect on my own voting choices I think there is a combination of factors, from opposing far right ideologies to simply being willing to overlook the continued beatings from my own party that have culminated in my ongoing support for people that I believe unfairly target select groups for oppression.

Every election cycle they apologize for having to “hurt” some people and then they blame the “other side” for blocking them from doing the things that need done or acting in the ways we believe they should, and we accept it.

We take the beatings, then tell ourselves “well, he said he was sorry and that he’s going to change”… and we keep supporting the same people time after time.

Is it a broken system because there aren’t viable alternatives to the 2 major parties in most regions?

Is it fair to be mad at the politicians who keep doing it, or should we be mad at ourselves for letting them get away with it over and over?

Am I the only one who feels like a dog that’s been beat too much?

Image Credit: Source reurinkjan of Flickr

Technorati Tags: Democrats, targeting, taxes

Posted in Political Divide | No Comments »

Coverage of the News

Posted by Scott Bannon

Having been jilted (canceled on) by CNBC’s Rick Santelli who was scheduled to appear as a guest, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took less than 9 minutes of air time to not just mock Santelli and all of CNBC, but he also illustrated a point on what’s wrong with much of the “news media” today.

Trading access for honest reporting

It is an occupational hazard for news gatherers that’s as old as the notion of noting and sharing news itself. News gatherers want access to news makers because it’s the easy path to getting the scoops and quotes that nobody else has.

Unfortunately, sometimes that access comes at the trade-off of candid reporting. Who is going to keep giving you access if you keep making them look foolish?

So, news gatherers with great access to specific news makers can become inclined to ‘pitch them softballs’ rather than ask the more important in-depth questions, or to shape the story when they tell it in a way that won’t offend their news maker, all at the expense of giving the public a candid story.

The good news (pun intended) here is that access is rarely an absolute requirement for solid, in-depth reporting. In fact, with smart research (clue sniffing) and an understanding of the beat they cover a news gatherer can dig deep and drill out the facts to develop a good story with.

That’s exactly what Stewart’s staff at the Daily Show did when compiling this piece. They sifted through hours and hours of video to find numerous instances displaying CNBC talking heads smoozing and softballing with CEO’s (and thieves) rather than drilling for the true stories. That’s what makes the bit funny, but it also shows part of the problem with news coverage today.

The lines between access and enabling are too often blurred. Allowing a CEO to send spin through your media when you know the facts contradict what they’re saying, all so that they’ll continue to appear as guests does not lead to good reporting, and doesn’t benefit the people who are looking to you for the story. It’s not just dishonest journalism, it’s a disservice to your customers–the information consumers who believe in you to tell them the facts and truth.

There is another issue which may even be at the core of trading access as well, and that’s the blurring of lines between factoid reporting and feature story telling in recent years.

Nearly every news gatherer in all mediums today has become a feature story teller and allowed, likely encouraged, to inject interpretive commentary into their reporting.

There used to be a clearer line between factoid and feature reporting. Newspapers and Broadcasts maintained a balance between the two for an even mix.

Perhaps it was seen as providing a better user experience for consumers who can more easily relate to conversational story telling over the raw who, what, where, when, how and why format; but it’s also further slanted coverage along ideological lines and fosters an environment where news gatherers are seeming to give less concern to getting all of the facts out than they are with inserting their personal bias through carefully chosen words and phrases.

And this isn’t just a CNBC problem, I haven’t been able to take FOX News nor half of what I hear from CNN and MSNBC seriously in years either. As for Newspapers, I’ve all but given up on the brand publishers and go straight to the wire services for my news. It’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry better and wastes less of my time reading fluff and self-serving pieces.

Feature stories are fine when used in addition to factoid reporting, but we don’t need them on every story.

If a car bomb blows up a Coffee Shop in the Middle East, tell me that. Tell me the who, what, where, when, why and how–and leave your commentary on what this may or may not mean to the latest round of peace talks between So-And-So and What’s-His-Name for your 20 minute round table discussion over at Meet The Press on Sunday. I don’t need it to understand every news story.

It slants the news coverage and wastes my time. If I want personal commentary on every topic, I’ll go to the blogosphere and get it from my peers on a format where I can rebut or discuss the opinions being shared. That’s what the blogging medium excels at.

It shouldn’t be a question of blogs vs. newspapers

This argument has been brewing for quite a while now and some respected journalists have even weighed in with commentary online, but it’s a pointless debate.

Bloggers, even those ambitious enough to enroll in Citizen Journalism classes and workshops aren’t the threat to good investigative journalists. They’re a threat to feature story tellers who fail to go deep enough into the stories they’re covering to make their product better or more vital than perspectives from blogs.

The average blogger has a job and it isn’t blogging. Blogging is what they do in their limited free time. They get their information from the wire services, news sites, other blogs and Press Release distribution outlets and then blog about their interpretations and opinions based on the minimal amount of information they’ve received. They rarely go any further to gather facts because that’s not what they need or want to do as bloggers.

However, journalists for the most part, have the training, experience and resources to report the news far better than almost any blog writer can. Their job is getting the story right and relaying it to the public. They have the resources and time to go deeper into it so that their final product isn’t opinion based on minimal information.

But, why should the public pay attention if they fail to go deeper into the story and create a better product than blog writers are able to?

Access alone doesn’t equal news-worthy. Being employed by a news production company isn’t itself attention-worthy.

Getting to the bottom of stories and providing all the facts, or as many as can be found, in a understandable and unbiased fashion is news reporting and what should be separating more journalists from bloggers.

Anyone can watch the wire services, other web sites or Press Release distributions for information to regurgitate. Educated research and the resources for  follow-ups and fact digging is where journalists have the advantage, if more of them were using it wisely maybe more of us would still be paying attention.

I’ll end this here because The Daily Show is about to start…

Technorati Tags: daily show, journalism, news, reporting

Posted in On The Home Front | 2 Comments »

Is Merit Pay Anti-Union?

Posted by Scott Bannon

President Obama seemed to embrace merit pay for teachers today while speaking on his vision of education and already pundits are claiming this to be a move sure to alienate his union supporters.

I would completely disagree with that assumption.

Having spent years in a union position myself while working for the USPS. I can’t think of a single reason why unions wouldn’t also support a merit based pay scale that is fair to labor and management.

Despite the opinions of many, unions aren’t designed to simply “get everything they can” from management. Unions exist to protect workers from exploitations, period.

Have there been abuses by various union leaders over the years? Absolutely. Like any organization run by people, unions are susceptible to being mislead by the greed and even malicious human faults of their leadership.

However, that doesn’t mean that every union leader or local is under such negative influence.

A merit based pay system which doesn’t rely on artificial testing scores–which are bad for our children–nor unobtainable objectives–which would be unfair to the teachers; seems on the surface to be something that teachers’ unions could accept and quality teachers could excel with.

Having belonged to one of the largest and strongest unions in the nation while at the USPS, I never witnessed anything that made me think the union was acting against management or efficiency reforms.

In fact, of the few instances where an employee acted out-of-line and I wrongly expected the union to circle the wagons to protect them, what I actually saw was the union ensure the employee received proper representations and that any disciplinary actions were within the parameters clearly spelled out in the labor agreement that both the union and management had accepted.

In other words, the union acted to protect the employee from exploitations, but not from deserved disciplinary actions. It did what it was supposed to, but no more.

I saw first-hand during my time with the USPS that unions can and do perform a vital function in the workplace, but that isn’t to block management just for the sake of blocking management as many people wrongly believe.

As the President talked today of rewarding teachers who excelled I didn’t hear anything that I felt a union would necessarily oppose provided those rewards weren’t created in such a manner as could be used to exploit teachers who didn’t always excel.

That’s the balancing act that must be performed with a rewards system for fairness. It’s perfectly acceptable to reward the best, provided you don’t also punish the average.

It isn’t about protecting bad teachers or blocking the rewards of top teachers. What the unions should be concerned with is simply protecting the majority of teachers who are going to fall into the “come to work and do their job” category. Those who neither excel nor under-perform, but do what they’re supposed to every day.

As long as that protection is included in any reward or reform systems going forward I don’t see the teachers’ unions objecting too loudly to them.

Technorati Tags: merit pay, Obama, teachers

Posted in Policy | No Comments »