GOP candidate for the Eighth Congressional District John Dennis, Congressman Ron Paul (GOP), former Supervisor Tony Hall and former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez spoke during a non-partisan rally Saturday in San Francisco. Photos by Luke Thomas.
By Luke Thomas
September 5, 2010
Former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, 8th Congressional District candidate John Dennis (GOP) and Congressman Ron Paul (GOP), drew as many as 1500 to an anti-war, anti-Washington and anti-incumbency rally Saturday in San Francisco.
Their message (to paraphrase): It’s time to kick every last member of Congress out of office and start all over again, because let’s face it, Congress and the White House serve interests more powerful than the citizenry our electeds are duty bound to represent and serve.
Ever since 9/11, the nation has been told lie after lie to cover for the Republican Neocons’ dastardly agenda of ruling the world like a cadre of Doctor Evils, hell bent on securing every last drop of peaked oil before anyone else starts meddling with America’s God-given right to resource exploitation. The result? Hundreds of thousands of military and civilian deaths, hatred for America around the world, a flag that flies in disrepute and a nation on its bended economic knees looking down the barrel of financial collapse.
Millions of Americans are now suffering. True unemployment hovers around 20 percent, not the 9.6 percent the government wants you to believe, one in five mortgages are underwater, and the value of the mighty American dollar is on the verge of becoming worth less than the paper it’s printed on.
Congress’ solution? Call up the Federal Reserve, a quasi-private institution no more federal than Federal Express, and have them print more money. If America has an economic hangover, just drink more debt. To hell with the threat of inflation, deflation, hyper-inflation and the threat of a bloody revolution, we’ve got you covered – the best guns, weaponry, warrantless surveillance, Fema “camps” and gated communities fiat currency can buy.
Ok, so they didn’t quite go as far as to say the above, but they came close.
Here’s some excerpts of what they actually said:
Tony Hall:
Tony Hall, an independent, with San Francisco Republican Party Chair Howard Epstein and former SF GOP chair Mike Denunzio.
“In recent months we’ve heard all about the common good and history has shown us that the common good is best served when those individuals that make up the common good, operate under the principles of honesty, integrity, loyalty and pride,” said former Supervisor Tony Hall. “Can’t we ask that of our leaders in Washington? That’s what the common good is all about. The country works better and that’s why you people here today are starting a new trend in San Francisco. This is a new beginning, a new spirit.”
“We have common problems that require common answers,” Hall added.
In introducing Former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, Hall paid tribute to Gonzalez referring to him as his “closest ally” on the Board. “He is a wonderful, wonderful person and we were on the opposite sides of so many issues when we served on the Board together – that was only eclipsed by the issues that serve the individual. This is a gentleman who whose heart is in serving the individual.”
Political BFFs Tony Hall and Matt Gonzalez.
Matt Gonzalez:
Matt Gonzalez
Gonzalez began his 15-minute speech recognizing that most in attendance were “in part here to protest the war.” He called into question the stated motives by the Bush administration for going to war and the rhetoric used by President Obama in continuing and expanding hostilities in Afghanistan.
“I think it’s incredible that anyone would believe this rhetoric,” he said.
“The notion that we would be spending this kind of money in a foreign land for very unclear and obscure objectives wasn’t justified – it couldn’t be justified,” Gonzalez said, adding that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are “draining” municipalities across the country, as much as $600 million per year San Francisco.
In 2005, Gonzalez and Nader hosted speaking tours in California “to get people to think about what we could actually do with that money.”
“And when we don’t have that money, what do we do? The left and the right fight over taxation, they fight over scarce resources. Rather than having plenty, we have very little.”
In 2008, Nader invited Gonzalez to be his running mate on an independent ticket. They quickly encountered third-party ballot access restrictions across the nation, Gonzalez stated.
“We got on about 45, 46 different ballots around the country despite very draconian ballot access laws. During that time, people would say to me, ‘Well, what’s wrong with Barack Obama? He wants to end the war. He’s going to protect our civil liberties,’ and things like that, and yet, when you go down the paces on his record, what do you see: Support for the Patriot Act, support for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, support for the Military Commission Act – you’ve got someone voting for every war appropriation. At some point the rhetoric runs aground.”
Gonzalez called Obama’s rhetoric “good,” but whose actions are “so lousy.”
“Are we going to object to it?” Gonzalez asked.
On the war in Afghanistan, Gonzalez recalled how the former Soviet Union suffered a crushing defeat and said he can “assure” the US military “is not going to succeed – even if we were morally justified in being there.”
“In 2008, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, came together on some points of agreement to try to say the left and the right can come together on certain points of agreement,” Gonzalez said.
“I want to suggest that rather than rewarding incumbent politicians that show us they’re not going to defend our rights, that we start engaging in a litmus test that takes these points of agreement and we simply say, ‘If you’re not with us on these, you’re not entitled to our support. You’re not going to get our votes. You’re not going to get our money. We’re going to vote for a candidate elsewhere.’”
Those agreements included ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and returning all US troops based in foreign countries; the protection of privacy and civil liberties; ending torture; ending the erosion of habeas corpus; an end to secret tribunals; to protect future generations from deferred national debt obligations; to end the Federal Reserve’s “cozy relationship with corporate banking and other financial institutions;” opposition to taxpayer bailouts and corporate subsidies; and to “aggressively prosecute corporate crimes and fraud.”
“These are not left or right issues,” Gonzalez said. “These are issues we can work on together.”
John Dennis and Matt Gonzalez working together to create common solutions to common problems.
Gonzalez warned that those on the right of the political spectrum who accuse Obama of being a “socialist” are nullifying the left from critiquing Obama.
“Because some on the right are calling Obama a socialist – a label that doesn’t belong to him – by calling him a socialist, that outrage on the right is containing the outrage on Obama’s left, and it’s causing the left not to see the points of comparison and points of agreement with the right, or with libertarians and others, and I think it’s important that we be careful about that,” Gonzalez stated.
Referring to Obama, Gonzalez said, “It’s not a socialist president who engages in bank bailouts. It’s not a socialist president that has his healthcare that makes you buy private medical insurance. It’s not a socialist president that keeps hundreds of thousands of troops in foreign countries.”
In closing, Gonzalez said, “We need to have a foreign policy that is based on some overriding and guiding principle. This notion that we’re going to prop up foreign governments, that we’re going to invade other countries for some kind of perceived benefit, where we’re going to install somebody that’s going to be supportive of American private and corporate interests, needs to stop.”
“We cannot have a healthy democracy, a healthy republic, if we erode our own constitution and we engage in foreign policy that is contrary to all of the principles that the forefathers had in mind,” Gonzalez said.
John Dennis, GOP candidate for 8th Congressional District:
John Dennis
“My name is John Dennis and I’m running against Nancy Pelosi… But there’s no campaigning here today. We’re here to talk about getting together to stop Washington before they destroy this country.”
Dennis thanked Gonzalez for his appearance saying Gonzalez is a “thoughtful person” who “fundamentally respects people. No matter what political label you prefer, we’re all being bankrupted by Washington and I’m honored that he’s here today.”
“The reason for this rally is simple. The crumbling of our country before our eyes is not caused by the people but by the irresponsible, and sometimes criminal people and politicians running, protecting a growing Washington.”
“Why has Washington become the dominant force in our personal lives, our economy and our future?” Dennis asked.
Though the latest national unemployment figure, as reported by the government, is 9.6 percent, if unemployment was measured as it was during the Great Depression, the real unemployment figure is “closer to 20 percent,” Dennis said.
“Our large corporations are certainly making money, but they’re so unsure of the future, that they will not hire.”
“One in every five homes in America is underwater which means the homeowner owes more than the property is worth.”
“The economy is not growing. We have a large Federal debt which we can never repay.”
Dennis referred to the national debt imposed by Washington on future generations as “fiscal child abuse.”
“Forty percent of all current Federal spending is borrowed money,” Dennis said. “We cannot afford this kind of spending. We must cut government. First and best place to start is with these wars.”
With 50,000 troops still stationed in Iraq, “does anyone really believe we’re ever going to leave Iraq? In Afghanistan, in our other undeclared war, we fight an enemy that never attacked us. Al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. Not even the fiercest hawk would argue that the Taliban had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks.”
“It’s time to bring the troops home.”
“Worse than the economic consequences of war, is the loss of life. When we go to war carelessly without clear objectives and without a declaration, as the constitution requires, it diminishes war’s seriousness, it desensitizes us all to the deadly consequences of military action. That’s why we must never go to war again without Congress declaring it.”
“We should stop nation building around the world and concentrate on rebuilding one nation – our nation.”
“It’s time to get beyond the left and the right fight. Washington encourages us to get involved in the left/right fight, and why not. While we fight, Washington’s power expands and it always expands at the expense of our civil liberties.”
“While there are significant differences between the left and the right, we have far more common ground.”
“For those who think the left/right battle is real, ask yourself this, what major changes in policies have changed with the change of power? The Democrats are in power and they continue the wars and policies like warrantless wiretapping and the Patriot Act. When the Republicans were in power, spending exploded including unfunded liabilities like the prescription drug program. No matter who is in charge, the spending continues… the printing and the borrowing continue… the wars continue… the invasion of privacy continues. We have to understand that the battle is not between the left and the right. The battle is between Washington and us.”
“While dark days may lie ahead, there is also the awakening in this country and around the world. Can we feel it? Can you feel the change coming? The revolution marches on.”
“Today was about getting beyond the left/right fight and trying to find solutions that are hopefully going to save the Republic,” Dennis told FCJ following the rally. “Washington is out of control. It’s gone way beyond its constitutional limits and we’re suffering for it.”
GOP Congressman Ron Paul:
Ron Paul
On foreign policy, Paul said, “We should mind our own business. The constitution gives us no authority to go around the world and police the world.”
That sentiment is why Paul supported then governor George W. Bush for President in 2000. “That’s what they say to appease the people, but once they get in, they do something else.”
Paul said the fights between Democrats and Republicans are “real fights over power. Not over your liberties over principle because if you get a Democrat in or a Republican in at the administrative level, they generally endorse with vengeance, the Federal Reserve system, the tax system and the foreign wars. That’s what we have to put a brake on. Break that up.”
“We have 13,000 special ops people. You know what their job is? Assassination. I mean this is despicable.”
Referring to the Muslim community center in New York City, Paul said, “If they could prevent it, that means Islam is guilty. That was the goal, is to say Islam is guilty, because if they don’t have enough hatred in this country built up to have an enemy, they can’t justify these wars.”
“They have to have an enemy. They have to have a Hitler to attack so that’s why I thought it was so important to point out that Islam has very, very, very little to do with 9/11. Al Qaeda had a lot to do with it and our foreign policy had a lot to do with it as well.”
On the economy, Paul said poor people suffer the most when the currency becomes inflated. “We run up the spending. We borrow a bunch. If we still don’t have enough, the Fed prints some money, devalues the currency… It’s all artificial. It’s all based on debt. It’s all a fallacy and when the bubble bursts, who gets hurt? It’s the poor people that they pretended they wanted to help.”
“It doesn’t help at all, but who gets bailed out? Republican or Democratic administration, the rich get bailed out, the military industrial complex, the bankers get bailed out.”
Paul said the US recession was caused in large part by the Federal Reserve, a quasi-private institution created in secrecy by a consortium of bankers in 1913. He referred to the bailouts as an example of “crony capitalism.”
Paul essentially believes the Federal Reserve is a corrupt institution, and it would be hard not to disagree considering three years ago it printed $3.7 trillion approved by Congress, money that Paul said went “out the window” and into the hands of “bankers and corporate giants, the internationalists – and the people didn’t get anything.”
“That has to stop or the people are going to eventually get very angry about what’s happening,” Paul said.
If the government continues to print money, “they are practically guaranteeing our dollar is going stop functioning.”
“Eventually paper money will fail. The bubble is bigger than ever. It’s worldwide. It’s based on the dollar. There’s a delusion about our strength which is fast disappearing, but they still trust us as an economic power and a military power – and that all conveys trust in the currency.”
Using an analogy, Paul warned the government would continue to exacerbate economic collapse via more spending, like an alcoholic needs a drink to cure a hangover.
Paul, who is expected to run for president in 2012, wants to abolish income tax and appears to support a monetary system based on the gold standard, a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold.
Paul said he would cut spending to the military which spends over $1 trillion a year.
He supports the legalization of marijuana and said Americans abuse legal prescription drugs more than illegal drugs.
“We demand that we legalize freedom,” Paul said.
Correction, 9/7: FCJ incorrectly stated former Supervisor Tony Hall is a Republican. Hall said he is an independent and has never registered as a Republican. FCJ regrets the error.
More Photos
Candidate for District 6 Supervisor h. Brown.
Very few people of color attended the rally.
Ron Paul
True to Paul’s mantras, his devotees carry signs indicating their positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ending the Federal Reserve, and expressing their opposition to socialism.
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement were in attendance.
Freedom apparently comes with a price.
Inter-galactic messenger Frank Chu with a new message for Earthlings.
Frank Chu speaks to Ron Paul.
Kisses!!
John Dennis media coordinator Arthur Bruzzone interviews SF GOP Chair Howard Epstein.
Howard Epstein and John Dennis.
h. Brown and Matt Gonzalez
John Dennis, Ron Paul, Tony Hall and Matt Gonzalez.
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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September 15, 2010 at 5:52 pm
What about Ron Paul’s “opposition” to the war?
‘”Paul’s criticisms of the Iraq War and the Bush administration are entirely tactical and stem from his ultra-nationalist and isolationist outlook, not any principled opposition to American imperialism.
This is demonstrated by reviewing his record. During the debate on the floor of the House of Representatives in October 2002 Paul, a former Air Force officer and senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, rose to speak against the resolution authorizing Bush to launch war against Iraq.
His chief criticism was that ceding Congress’ power to declare war to the president ran the danger of giving ultimate authority over US foreign interventions to the United Nations, whose resolutions Bush had cited to prepare war against Iraq.
Rather than UN resolutions, Paul said, “I happen to like it more when the president speaks about unilateralism and national security interests” to declare war. When the US “depends on the UN for our instructions,” he insisted, “we end up in no-win wars.” The first President Bush “didn’t go all the way” in the first Gulf War, Paul complained, because G.H.W. Bush said “the UN did not give him permission to.” When you go “through the backdoor” with UN-declared wars, Paul said, “wars last longer and you do not have a completion, like we had in Korea and Vietnam.”
A month after the US invasion of Iraq, Paul took the floor of Congress to promote his “American Sovereignty Restoration Act” to end US participation in the United Nations. He said Bush deserved some credit for “ultimately upholding the principle that American national security is not a matter of international consensus, and that we don’t need UN authorization to act.” He warned if the US did not leave the UN, its “global planners” would establish a “true world government” that would “interfere not only in our nation’s foreign policy matters, but in our domestic policies as well” and “America as we know it will cease to exist.”
Paul voted to authorize the war against Afghanistan. His criticisms of the Iraq War are conditional and tactical, chiefly centering on the complaint that it is undermining “national defense” by overstretching US military forces and its high cost is creating ever-greater economic dependence on foreign powers and potential enemies like “Communist China.”’
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/paul-j22.shtml
September 15, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Now that Harold is duking it out with David at Daly’s Dive, perhaps I can get this in. (I didn’t write it.) People really should know who Ron Paul is.
‘The political hallmark of Paul is a combination of populist and even left-sounding rhetoric and the most right-wing positions. This is especially apparent in his economic policies. Paul often denounces “corporate welfare” and the influence that large corporations have within government. He also voices opposition to an inflationary monetary policy on the grounds that the real wages of workers are being eroded.
His actual policy proposals, however, are based entirely on removing any restrictions on corporations and wealthy individuals to amass more wealth and exploit workers even more brutally. In this area, Paul is farther to the right than any other Republican seeking the nomination.
He wishes to eliminate income taxes completely by abolishing virtually every federal department and domestic program. Paul advocates the elimination of the Department of Education, Social Security, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and virtually every other gain won by the struggle of previous generations of workers.
Paul blames “illegal immigration” for a whole host of social ills, from the spread of disease, to crime, to the lowering of workers’ wages. He has also proposed amending the Constitution to remove birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, writing in 2006: “The recent immigration protests in Los Angeles have brought the issue to the forefront, provoking strong reactions from millions of Americans. The protesters’ cause of open borders is not well served when they drape themselves in Mexican flags and chant slogans in Spanish . . . We must reject amnesty for illegal immigrants in any form. We cannot continue to reward lawbreakers and expect things to get better. . . . Birthright citizenship similarly rewards lawbreaking, and must be stopped. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the perverse incentive to sneak into this country remains strong.”
This thinly veiled racist demagogy has earned Paul the praise of reactionaries such as CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and the support of extreme right elements, from members of the Minutemen Project to Don Black, founder of the white supremacist group Stormfront, who donated $500 to Paul’s campaign.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/paul-j22.shtml
via Robert Livingston…thank you, Robert! The article is worth reading in its entirety
September 9, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Harold,
Sorry, I don’t do sound bites, hombre. But hey, that’s a brilliant idea of yours! Why don’t you run for office, Harold? Ya got my vote. Hell, I could slum it on Jeff Adachi’s salary, easy! Then I could afford the sin tax at Daly’s Dive…make mine a mojito 😉
l.
September 9, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Lisa,
Only someone related to you or with the names ‘Marc’ or ‘Arthur’ will read posts that long. Get to the point, girl.
I think we can bring prosperity to the U.S. by confiscating every dime of estates worth over 100 million. Could you live on 100 million?
That would free up 30 billion dollars in SF alone.
h.
September 8, 2010 at 4:48 pm
A specter is haunting America — the specter of Capitalism. All the powers of the libertarian right and the “progressive” left have entered into a holy alliance to exercise (sic) this specter: R. Paul and Obama, Moritz and Gonzalez, American “radicals” and shills for the corporate agenda.
Just thought I’d have bit of fun. Alas, the specter isn’t communism this time around (not that I’m a commie). Nor is it the Obama brand of “socialism” that sends the tea partiers into a tizzy. Rather, it is the steady erosion of workers’ rights, wages and benefits in the final capitulation to the corporate agenda. And it is the war on the marginalized: people of color, immigrants and workers. The war at home – you know, the one no one’s talking about.
Although the “socialist” specter posed by Obama exists only in the skittish imagination of the Tea Partiers, the corporate agenda is real enough. As journalist Shamus Cooke describes it,
“The corporate establishment has made it clear that a ‘strong recovery’ depends on U.S. workers making ‘great sacrifices’ in the areas of wages, health care, pensions, and more ominously, reductions in so-called ‘entitlement programs’ – Social Security, Medicare, and other social services. […] These plans have been discussed at length in corporate think tanks for years, and only recently has the mainstream media begun a coordinated attack to convince American workers of the ‘necessity’ of adopting these policies.”
http://www.truth-out.org/labor-fights-back-living-wages-and-jobs-for-all61653
Now, this was *not* an “anti-war” demonstration or however it was billed. Let’s be clear: this was about John Dennis’ campaign to unseat Pelosi. But who is John Dennis? He says he’s against the war (who isn’t?), but what does he stand for? He says he believes in “letting the free market do its job” and it seems that he’s an investment capitalist himself. So, he’s in synch with the corporate agenda delineated by Shamus, particularly when he talks about privatizing Social Security and Medicare. And he’d like to cut government spending to the bone (that is, social services and jobs). In fact, he wants to abolish the income tax altogether, which would effectively put the government out of business. And what about Ron Paul? Same brand of tea, but I’ll have to reserve another comment for that.
Now, it appears that there was more than one man on that stage who is positioning himself to run for the office next year. And this may be the opening salvo in his campaign for mayor or DA of SF. And what do you know, but he has joined the hate fest against public workers. Well, what can I tell you? They are an easy target and it plays well politically…and well, he’s a politician. And I’m sure that his backers have already done that poll that shows that this issue is a slam dunk with the voters (I just saw one poll by Rasmussen recently). So, that’s what this rally was really about, in my opinion. It’s politics as usual, folks.
Now, I understand that we all have a need for heroes. We all want to believe that there’s some savior out there, not realizing that it’s really about us, collectively. Yet, we persist in the illusion that some knight in shining armor – a noble and principled pol this time – is going to ride in and single-handedly rescue us from the bad guys, whether Gavin Newsom, Obama or Glen Beck.
Ah, come on, admit it…you know it’s true. We’ve all seen the movie, whether it’s about the scrappy street lawyer going to bat for the “little guy” or the maverick riding in on his white horse to save the town. But may I suggest that this is the wrong attitude to take when you’re dealing with politicians. In a democracy, it is up to the electorate to question their leaders and demand transparency and honesty. So, I suggest that you treat these pols just as skeptically as you would any other politician.
The reason I say this is that I can be just as big a dupe as the next person.
And the specter of a corporate agenda behind all this feel-good rhetoric (“John Dennis and Matt Gonzalez working together to create common solutions to common problems.” Ha!) If you follow the money flowing into the Prop B campaign, and ask yourself where it’s coming from and what’s the quid pro quo here, you’ll be more on the right track. Just saying.
As the Obama administration has demonstrated, “progressives” cannot adopt reactionary rhetoric as a political tactic and expect anything other than reactionary social results.
The Gonzo craze, count me out!
September 7, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Thanks Pat,
I don’t mind being insulted by ignorant people but when they won’t ID themselves properly they’re just cowards
This piece is by far the best account of the rally which really was a first for putting together at least a few stripes in the rainbow flag of the common cause cross politics unity on a few items and most importantly, the wars.
Go Gigantes!
h.
September 7, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Matt Gonzalez said that the war costs the San Francisco City and County budget alone $500-$600 million a year, and leaves the City and County Board of Supervisors constantly fighting over what’s left.
He’s right, or that sounds right to me. I’d like to know how he calculated it, but the horror of the war(s) has become so much like the wallpaper, to those of us who still pay any attention at all, that that’s about the only argument that I can imagine an anti-war movement being revived on now.
September 6, 2010 at 10:02 pm
So this was just a big Libertarian hoo hah, no big tent, multipartisan anti war focus by the lily white crowd.
Ron Paul serves the same role in the Republican Party that Dennis Kucinich serves for the Democrats, only competent at moving his Libertarian agenda.
Both Kucinich and Paul herd wayward extremists towards the center into the captivity of a party orbit Only the Democrat Party kicks Kucinich in the teeth for his efforts while Paul organizes to work his will on the GOP.
Libertarian capitalism had its best chance with Greenspan’s run. Like Stalin, he had all of the cards and still lost the hand. Post-Greenspan Libertarians are free marketeer Trotskyites, those who claim ties to the Original Doctrine and would do correctly that Greenspan blew.
There are those who say that it is okay that the right wing win, because things will get so bad that we will eventually see a swing left in ’12 or ’14. Aside from the fact that eventualities will not conform to such a timeline, such thinking dominated in the SPD before the 1933 elections, and that worked out well.
Given the dominance of Libertarian Capitalism within the GOP and Obama’s eagerness to make nice with his mortal enemies, we can count on more neoliberal brutality to be coming our way. With the kind of economic dislocation looming, we will probably see much social unrest and Obama and the GOP will probably unite to put progressives in camps if things get uppity.
Progressive ideas won two federal elections in a row. The Democrats have adopted 80% of McCain’s policies and mixed in 20% patronage to their base.
After Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993, Speaker Foley was picked off in 1994. Sixteen years later, after Obama signed the Health Insurer Corporate Welfare and Bonanza to Big Pharma Act of 2010, we will see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid similarly picked off by a wing nut.
This is metronome, kabuki politics. The Democrats are ringers, pure and simple. After Citizens United, Obama is trying to set a precedent that government can command people to purchase a product from a private corporation under penalty of a tax penalty, as in raising taxes on the middle class. Let’s hope that the GOP state electeds’ lawsuit prevails on this so that the door is closed on corporations buying elections in order to force people to buy their crap.
When conservatives win elections they get more than 90% of what they want. When progressives win elections, we get 20% of what we want, kinda sorta. Why would any progressive ever vote again?
-marc
September 6, 2010 at 7:34 pm
@justpassingby
your ‘disguise and reluctance to identify yourself’ is, unfortunately, all too common, but the mask you chose was appropriate. If you had ANY familiarity with SF politics you would know that “h.Brown”, while he may be ‘wacky’, and proud of the description, is one of the most informed and erudite repositories of sf political wit, wisdom and wacking at windmills. Maybe Luke should have been more explicit and said ‘people of darkie color’.
Preserve BVHP.
Fuck Lennar.
CONGRATULATIONS TO LIBERTY BUILDERS.
Right On Willie.
September 6, 2010 at 7:15 pm
http://tinyurl.com/24za7zj
September 6, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I thought your article was nicely written but that there was definitely an element of negative smearing to the event found in the photography section: you make explicit reference to the attendance of Frank Chu and 9/11 Truthers despite their appearance at almost all SF political events, you make sure to show pictures of random, whacky candidates like “h. Brown” with the speakers, and then you even input a photo with a caption stating that “very few people of color attended the event”. I found that last caption to be not only misleading as the rally was VERY diverse, but also ironic as the picture was of me and my 2 friends: the guy on the left is Iranian, I’m Mexican and only our friend on the right is Caucasian. I understand journalistic integrity is a bit of an oxymoron these days, but just try to report honestly. Thanks 🙂