Not Quite Center

This is the first of a series of posts I will write on this general issue.

Campaign Finance
As I request and accept contributions toward my presidential campaign, I do so humbly, recognizing that the people who contribute are putting their faith in me because they like me, my politics, my tone, my vision. They see contributions as an investment in the future of our country. However, to those who view their contributions as pre-payment for favors, access, or influence I decline their funds. And anyone who, after I am elected, tries to bring up a campaign contribution as a chip to be cashed in for influence will be run out of my office faster than he can say quid pro quo.

Political Rhetoric
In order to facilitate political functioning and effectiveness, we must change the rhetoric. We must repudiate the professional political polarizers like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh. We must acknowledge that those on the other side of the issue are as reasonable and intelligent as we, and that they hold their views for some personal justification, even if we don’t agree with it. We must get away from the idea that opposing views are somehow alien, subhuman, or foolish. This will allow us to benefit from all points of view, no matter how far from the middle; after all, abolition of slavery, suffrage for women, and much of the rest of the best legislation of this country was once considered extreme. By toning down our political discussions, we can reintroduce respect into politics, and, although I’m not a fan of Reaganomics, hope that it trickles down into our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and homes.

Immigration Policy
We must face the fact that our legislative idealism is out of whack with our economic reality. The country’s economy needs immigrant labor. And yet we issue only 5,000 unskilled workers visas per year, a mere drop in the bucket of what the economy requires. A comprehensive immigration system would supply the workers the economy demands, and, just as important, allow registration and tracking of immigrant workers so that:
1) Laws are kept.
2) Taxes are paid.
3) Dangerous persons like drug traffickers and terrorists are isolated, caught, and brought to justice.
4) Immigrants face less danger on making the crossing to the U.S.
5) The extremely dangerous and exploitative business of human trafficking is nullified.
6) Immigrants who are in the country legally integrate more fully and participate in law enforcement and other civic duties.
7) When the time comes for guest workers to return to their countries of origin, the process is possible.

From Barak Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope
“The Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal.”

I like this guy. He’s not just pointing the finger at Republicans, but at his own party. He acknowledges the fact that every issue has two sides (crazy thought, eh?). He is for turning down the volume and rhetoric to make it more productive and less divisive.

OBAMA ’08!

Madeleine Albright’s The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflection on America, God, and World Affairs is an exploration of the interplay of religion and politics and how, as much as anyone may try to prevent or deny it, they are inextricably linked. She tells of how at the end of the Cold War, many in the field of international relations (herself included) thought things were going to get a lot easier. However, they did not recognize the patterns emerging in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Chechnya, Latin America and the U.S. of religious revival, tension, and strife. The 9/11 attacks in the U.S., killings in Madrid, London, Amman, and in retrospect, Srebrenica, Addis Ababa, and a dozen other cities, have brought the reality of the religious aspects of politics into stark relief and have given us a pessimistic view of the future. (more…)

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, America wanted justice. And the pursuit of justice began quickly with U.S. troops going into Afghanistan, with wide international support, to find Osama bin Laden and remove the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had facilitated bin Laden’s movement. Things were going well in the “war on terrorism.” However, Bush began to divert the attention of the nation in 2002. Talk of an “axis of evil” began overriding talk of destroying al-Qaeda. In the State of the Union speech of January 2003, Bush mentioned Saddam Hussein 18 times, and Osama bin Laden not once.

Now, just as the war in Iraq seems absolutely hopeless, Bush is starting to turn his rhetoric to another member of the “axis of evil”—Iran. (more…)

The day after seeing Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, I was talking to a friend about it. He countered with Michael Crichton’s recent book, The State of Fear, a work of fiction that puts forth the assertion that global warming is a farce being played on the public by environmental extremists, and my friend was pretty convinced by this book. My question for him was, “Are we going to wait until global warming is proved true to try to stop it?” It seems to have a very long braking distance; if we ignore the brake lights and wait until we see the wreck to begin slowing down, we’re going to be in a mess. (more…)

The Bush administration has done a lot of damage to America in general, from peeling back our Constitutional rights either in secret or in unconstitutional “signing statements” to making the world a more dangerous place through its ineptitude in the war in Iraq. But there seems to be an especially concerted effort on the part of the administration to target and ruin the American middle class. (more…)

In Bush’s speech last night, he mentioned “freedom” six times and “liberty” three times. He referred to “advancing liberty across a troubled region.” He mentioned “democracy” or “democratic” six times in relation to Iraq. My question is, in his exporting these fine values from the U.S., are we left with less of them?

What about the democracy, liberty and freedom for Americans? This is a “troubled region” too. We are less free and are under a less democratic government now than we were before Bush started his campaign to liberate and democratize the Middle East. We have lost freedom of privacy in library records, phone calls, mail, money transfers, etc. And democracy has been lessened as the Bush administration has decreased access of the people (the “demos”) and their popularly elected representatives to the actions of the government. Having secret programs known only to a handful of sworn-to-secrecy Congress-people is not democratic. Tony Snow, the White House Press Secretary, said January 9, 2006, “The President will not shape policy according to public opinion.” In other words, “America, here’s your democracy!” followed by a bird flying by.

In a televised speech on the “new direction” in Iraq, President George W. Bush simply tried to feed us more of the same tripe we’ve been refusing for years. The “new direction” is, essentially, stay the course, only with 21,500 more soldiers with targets on their backs. The most frightening thing is he doesn’t see that he is the best recruiting tool Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have. (more…)

Several recent reports by educational organizations, groups, think tanks, etc. have been released recently either praising or condemning the No Child Left Behind Act. (more…)