OT: For U.S. Citizens: Emailing the President

[The Weekenders]

Well, if people want to talk politics, let's talk politics. Re the "civility" of the right vs. the left: has anybody read anything by Ann(e?) Coulter lately? Or listened to Rush Limbaugh?

I don't think you listen to them, Jon M. Rush is much more civil than the callers who challenge him. Ann Coulter does less name-calling if any than other RW demagogues but uses specific examples and quotes to make her point. Even Bill OReilly, who I care not a bit for, doesnt name-call. Coulter is no favorite of mine fwiw. Rush L. has been dragged around the arena as a "big fat idiot" in leftist circles. How about if I write a cute little non-book called "Maya Angelou is a pretentious windbag." Think you'll all chuckle over your coffee and bagels and Sunday NY Times over that?

He has stayed pretty dignified in my opinion and I do listen to him. Most of the opinions I hear expressed about Rush and other right-wingos is similarly put in emotional and inaccurate terms, put up by the DNC and other PACs trying desparately to find the power they have lost. Lots regarding the radio these days and the need for an "alternative voice." Almost as if the underwritten NPR and CPB and such did not already exist, for "thinking" people, of course.

The right wing in America is trying to shut down diversity of opinion in this country by labelling it treasonous: that's not incivil, not snobbish; it's out and out anti-democratic.
As for George Bush, all he did was to lie or, at the very least, severely bend the truth to get Americans to send their kids off to die to head off a threat that seems less and less imminent. All he did was to isolate the country diplomatically in an endeavor which requires all the help we can get.... All he's done is work as hard as he can to grind down the poor while feathering the nests of the rich. And there's lots, lots more. No, he's not a dummy; he's a villain, a heartless, ruthless, self-righteous man lacking all compassion.
Jon Michaels

The only people trying to shut down opinion are those who are trying to revoke the broadcast licenses or change FCC policy to have an enforced balance of opinions. They are on the other end of the political spectrum. Like Susan Sarandon, who started a website to keep Dr. Laura off of NY tv stations. The same Sarandon then bleated along with Tim Robbins that they were being censored because people were upset with their anti-war effort statements.

As for Bush, wow. You must have special knowledge to know that he is ruthless and heartless....Most of the grinding down of the poor is thanks to globalist policies brought to you by BOTH political parties and the corporations who love them. If you wish to use such language, I hope you will give equal scorn to the clowns who pushed GATT and NAFTA down the throats of the citizenry. THose policies have impoverished people in all countries, including the US. Seemingly, only Nader and Pat Buchanan stood up against them, but they are "too extreme" for America, I reckon.

I really think your language regarding Bush makes my points better than anything I can say. Looks like hate speech to me because its a personal attack on his humanity rather than just his policies. That is a main reason that conservatives scorn leftists, for a lack of self-control.

Full circle in one post.

[Jerry Freeman]

*sigh*

I really like everyone here, and I think there's truth in every point of view that's being expressed, even when there's some emotion in the statements made. Thank goodness, we care enough about what happens in the world that we get upset about it.

I'll also say, I think it's extremely useful that there's a setting like this, where people of differing views are talking to each other. I don't go out of my way to find what's being written in publications that differ greatly from my own perspective, so it's helpful to get a bit of an education from my friends here who belong to "the other side" politically.

On some things, I agree strongly, and on some things, I disagree strongly with what's been posted, but I do feel that each point of view is valid, even if different from mine.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Chuck_Clark]

All day I've watched this thread devolve and pretty much stayed out of yet another partisan shootin' match. But after spending the last hour watching the Larry King Show's 'celebration' of Bob Dole's 80th birthday, I'm driven to wonder aloud what has happened to send US politics into what looks like a cataclysmic downhill slide. What happened to the Sam Rayburns, Ev Dirksens and Bob Doles, men whose party loyalty was unquestioned but who had no qualms or difficulty working with the other side when they felt that the needs of the Country came before petty sniping and backstabbing?

The post-Gingrich legacy seems to have substituted mean-spirited partisanship for statesmanship, and party loyalty for real patriotism. I always hope for, but really don't expect to see, the emergence of real leaders. Its pretty sad.

[Jon-M]

Well, having started things up a bit with my incendiary language, I guess I should clarify a few things. First of all, yes indeed, Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, but also, yes indeed, his lie was far less serious than Bush's distortions inasmuch as human lives and America's credibility in the world were not involved. Also, Clinton is no hero of mine though he looks quite good next to the present administration.
However, the biggest problem with this Republican administration lies in a far deeper level of dishonesty. Bush pushed his "compassionate conservative line", but in truth Republicans have been against the entire legacy of the New Deal and Great Society including Social Security, Medicare and all the other programs that serve ordinary folks from the get-go. Supply side or trickle down economics didn't work under Reagan and it won't work under Bush: okay, that could be excused as a mistake. However, David Stockman, Reagan's budget director, admitted to Washington Post editor William Greider that the underlying purpose of the huge budget deficits was to undermine entitlements: the government would simply be too poor to fund them. The combination of social-spending cuts and a massively regressive tax bill supported by too many abject Democrats produced a huge upward distribtion of American income. Between 1983 and 85 the income of households making less thatn $20,00 was reduced overall by $20 billion while that of households with incomes making more than $80,000 increased by $35 billion. For those making less than $10,000/year, these policies produced an average loss of $1,100 over 1983-85 while for those making more than $200,000 the average gain was $60,000. This is all more or less quoted from Ferguson and Rogers' "Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics."
What I object to about so many Republican politicians, then, is not the political views to which they have a perfect right, but the fact that they lie and dissemble about those views. Try to get elected saying, "I'd like to make the rich richer and everybody else poorer!" No, they try to persuade us that giving more money to the indecently rich and a pittance to everyone else will create jobs: but, as I said, we've already been down that path, and not that long ago. It didn't work then and it won't work now. The reason I don't believe that they intend it to work is a lot of these guys were in that administration. Well, this message is too long, and I'm sorry about that. However, I believe that what's at stake is much more than civility. That was left behind years ago when liberals were smeared as "pinkos" or "reds" and liberal was called the "L word" by Reagan as though it were an obscenity (he only seemed to be joking).
Best wishes to all, conservative Republicans included.
Jon Michaels

[jim stone]

Yes, there's something to be said for people who
come up through the senate--but oh my
Bob Dole ran an awful campaign. It's interesting
that the people who seem best at
working with the other side seem less
good at campaigning. Bush Sr. compromised
with the Dems on taxes, and ran an abysmal
campaign against Clinton. People who really
know government and are good at crafting
laws, and making deals, may not be such
good politicians. Mondale. Though Lyndon Johnson is
a counter-instance.

Governors make kind of odd presidents,
cause they know little about foreign policy;
and they're not deal makers, and may be
more ideological and less pragmatic,
but Clinton and Bush and Reagan
ran terrific campaigns.

For a Republican to win the White House, he
has to have with him the Conservative wing
of the party--which is what Dole failed to
secure. And a Democrat is going to have to
secure the liberal wing. And they really are
different, so a pragmatic centrist executive is hard
to come by.

On the other hand maybe a time of competing domestic
ideologies isn't so bad. There really is a philosophical
difference between people who see government
as the principal engine of social progress and those
who want to err steeply on the side of leaving
things to the people. It's a question of what
America is about.

I think the Court has been divisive in taking
issues out of the hands of the people.
Where the people decide the issues in
a democratic fashion, with pushing and tugging
and discussions and debate, we tend to come
out together. Everybody gets to put their
two cents in. When a decision is imposed on
the nation by a handful of people about an issue
about which people feel passionately it can be
divisive, especially when it's widely believed
by jurists of all political persuasions that there is
no basis for it in the law. People feel
disenfranchised. Then you get scrimmaging
for justices on the Court, and deeper ideological
fissions.

[Jerry Freeman]

On the other hand maybe a time of competing domestic ideologies isn't so bad. There really is a philosophical
difference between people who see government
as the principal engine of social progress and those
who want to err steeply on the side of leaving
things to the people. It's a question of what
America is about.

To me, either approach sounds reasonable enough if the participants act in good faith. But I have some doubts about whether anyone is really on the side of leaving things to the people. The power of corporations is so great in the political world, it looks to me like the people take a back seat.

It's an odd arrangement, sort of like the days when someone's right to vote was based on how much land he owned. Corporations aren't people, but they are allowed to lobby, and make huge monetary contributions to influence the government. Corporations are incredibly powerful, they have a life of their own, and their interests aren't necessarily the interests of "the people" outside of a small, privileged group who benefit directly from the corporations' power.

This is where I wonder about the sincerity of the conservatives' claims that they want to get government out of the lives of ordinary people. It appears to me that they want to get government out of the way of corporations or even use government to systematically pave the way for corporations to do whatever they like, regardless of the impact on ordinary people. That, to me, appears exploitive and self-serving, and not sincerely in the best interests of the people.

To claim that what's good for corporations is automatically good for the people seems to me like saying it's OK to set up a privileged, ruling class with special access to the levers of government, even though this is supposed to be an egalitarian system, and that whatever is good for that ruling class is good for all by some process of osmosis.

It is true that for the welfare of all, corporations must be allowed and encouraged to prosper, but it seems to me, they have far too central a role in the political power structure.

[Bloomfield]

There really is a philosophical
difference between people who see government
as the principal engine of social progress and those
who want to err steeply on the side of leaving
things to the people. It's a question of what
America is about.

That strikes me as a very loaded and even skewed way of phrasing it.

[jim stone]

Why loaded or skewed? Didn't mean it to be exhaustive of the differences
between the parties. Certainly didn't mean that
one side was right. The best liberals I've known felt
that the power of the state should be used actively
to promote social change and end ills, e.g. affirmative
action, educational standards set in Washington, welfare,
national health care
an activist Court creating nationwide policy on abortion,
on euthanasia, and so on. I don't share the idea that
conservatives have a covert agenda; certainly some
of them maintain that issues in education, welfare,
should be decided locally, decentralized to the states wherever
possible, there should be market forces on public
schools, school choice, issues decided by the Court are often better
left to the democratic process, that the federal government is unwieldy
and inneffective and squanders money.

As to Big Business, the Republican party has
always been the party of Big Business, the argument
being that it is what feeds us, employs us, and
that over-regulation in behalf of this or that
social agenda destroys its capacity to do so and
can thwart the national interest. So Republicans
are wanting to allow drilling for oil on public lands
that Democrats tend to place aboslutely off limits,
so as to reduce dependence on foreign oil,
and Bush sr. earned the ire of enviromentalists
by relaxing pollution standards to help bring the
country out of recession. Republicans tend to
more enthusiastic about capitalism and market
forces and want to extend them further, eg.
into education, as mentioned.
I think business ought to be able to lobby government
for its concerns, arguably that's a necessary condition
of capitalism working and a thriving economy.
Similarly I think labor unions should be
able to make campaign contributions.
It would be a mistake to make that the only
input, but elections are a very powerful
counterbalance. I appreciate, of course, that
many people think business should be controlled more
than it is, that otherwise corporations will ride roughshod
over people, etc. And some on the left want
some businesses socialized, e.g. medical care.
I take this to be another difference
in philosophy, as it were. I don't see either side
as having a corner on the truth and I certainly wouldn't
want to let business rip. Republicans want to
cap malpractice suits for physicians, because
physicians are driven out of business by malpractice
insurance--but from what I've seen of medical
practice I think consumers need that protection.

I was, you know, trying to step outside of partisanship,
and express what I take to be underlying trends
in political thinking; even supposing that we take
some of these people at their word. Best

[Jerry Freeman]

My greatest concern about the relationship between government and big business is the damage being done to the environment.

I believe global warming is real and could bring a disaster every bit as devastating to humanity as a nuclear war. The unwillingness of the U.S. to accept responsibility for what it's doing to the environment the rest of humanity must share with us is one of the sources of anti-American resentment around the world. I believe that resentment is fully justified.

The argument that what's good for business is good for everyone won't seem so attractive if there's a global environmental disaster. My greatest concern is that it's already too late, and a global environmental disaster is already unavoidable. I pray it isn't too late.

I consider this to be a much greater threat than Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Ladin, and it's a threat that comes directly from the administration's own policies. To me, it appears duplistic in the extreme for Mr. Bush to present himself as the protector of our safety and security while he does everything in his power to prevent the implementation of a strategy to deal with global warming and other environmental concerns.

[littlejohngael]

Some of us would do well to remember that it was a somewhat conservative Republican who introduced S 571: The Millennium Challenge Act of 2003 to "establish the Millennium Challenge Account and the Millennium Challenge Corporation in order to reduce global poverty through increased economic growth by supporting a new compact for global development."

For those unfamiliar with the bill, I would call your attention to SEC. 205 "PERSONNEL AND ADMINISTRATIVE AUTHORITIES," of the aforementioned bill which states in subsection A, point 1,

(1) Any system established under this subsection shall not waive, modify, or otherwise affect ...

(A) the public employment principles of merit and fitness set forth in section 2301 of title 5, including the principles of hiring based on merit, fair treatment without regard to political affiliation or other non-merit considerations, equal pay for equal work, and protection of employees against reprisal for whistle blowing ...

And there you have it. A Republican doing more to protect your right to play tin whistle at work than any other member of Congress.


Little John

[Lorenzo]

There's a much broader and accurate picture that should be presented by those concerned with the causes and effects of "global warming," or "global cooling," depending on your fear.

Anyone who has followed the results of the ice core drilling in Greenland, and in the Antartic, knows that the studies reveal startling facts about the rapid climate changes in this earth's history, and their causes.

I believe that the average rise in temperature, over the last one hundred years, has been less than one degree. There was a period in earth's history when the average surface temperature of the earth was 1.5 deg. C greater than it is today. If I recall the studies correctly, that was about 7,000 years ago. Also of interest, is the fact that there was a period in earth's history when the average temperature rose 7 deg. in less than 50 years.

In studying glacial period cycles, substantial changes occur about every 10,000-12,000 years. Right now, we're on the edge of entering another glacial period. The aggression and onset of these periods come on much faster than they go away. It would probably take less than a few hundred years for all of Canada and the northern parts of the US to be completely snowed under to the point that the population mass would probably migrate, and be concentrated, more towards the equator.

Happy camping.

[jim stone]

For the administration's position on global warming,
www.epa.gov/globalwarming or do a search on
EPA Global warming. According to the administration
global warming is real, the USA is contributing significantly
to the problem, and is implementing a strategy
(domestically and internationally) to deal with it.

[Jon-M]

There really is a philosophical
difference between people who see government
as the principal engine of social progress and those
who want to err steeply on the side of leaving
things to the people. It's a question of what
America is about.

The reason it's skewed (pardon me please, Bloomfield, for presuming to speak for you) is that phrasing it that way means accepting the divide between "the government" and "the people" that conservatives postulate and work so hard to indoctrinate us with. That conveniently makes "the people" us and "the government" them, a crucial manipulation. However, it is possible to see a government of our elected representatives as a modality of "the people" in which we work collectively on collectively desired goals. Isn't that the real meaning government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? Where is the "them" in that?
In other words, the government could be seen as "us" doing things as a group (like building highways, creating parks, taking care of each other's basic educational and health needs, especially our children's (after all, we're all Americans and as patriotic people, we love Americans and want their welfare, don't we? Otherwise, what does it mean to be patriotic? What does a patriot love if he or she doesn't love his/her fellow Americans?). Certainly during the national crisis of the Great Depression many people saw their government that way.
So, when Republicans say, "You deserve to have your taxes returned to you, after all, it's your money, isn't it?", I would counter, "No, it's not your money any more; it's all of our money that we all contributed to the common American cause so that we could accomplish certain goals such as taking care of our roads, our elderly, our children, our environment that we as Americans collectively agree need to be accomplished."
Rhetoric matters.
With good wishes and faith in the good hearts of all on this board, whatever their political party,
Jon Michaels

[jim stone]

Sorry, I meant this as in no way prejudicial to liberals.
If 'the government' and 'the people' is too charged,
substitute 'the private sector' (or perhaps 'local
government') for 'the people.'
The idea of using centralized government as a principal means of
solving social and political problems strikes me as not
at all silly and, on its face, what is most attractive
about liberalism (as in federal civil rights legislation,
medicare, social security, school integration). I think some issues
shouldn't be left to the people.

On the other hand
government, especially when it's centralized,
can be bureaucratic, innefficient,
intrusive, badly informed, removed from
the difficulties, unresponsive,
and hard to call to account. For me an argument against
socialism is that when business is run by government,
business is run like government.
In India one of the impediments to economic
growth was that if you wanted to hire more
people, you had to get permission from
the government (or, if you prefer, a particularly
silly, innefficient and smothering modality of the people).

I certainly didn't mean 'government' as a dirty word,
nor do liberals. If you read the thread it was genuinely
non-partisan. I was presenting both sides
of what strikes me as a legitimate difference
in their own terms. If I unintentionally said something incendiary,
please just forget it.

[littlejohngael]

Isn't that the real meaning government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? Where is the "them" in that?

Move to D.C., Jon. You'll get an education.

All the best,

Little John