The Real Battles Are Between Elections

I find it amazing how much the media, and as a result, the general public, focuses on the Presidential elections to the detriment of other events, and how much issues are defined between elections, as well as by the outcomes of so-called off year elections to the Congress, and in state elections.

We have just had a Presidential election and speculation has already started as to who the candidates for President might be four years hence.

Yet what was noteworthy in the just-concluded Presidential election was the extent to which issues were defined before the campaign started. I don’t want to attempt here to catalogue the issues that were, or were not discussed, but to illustrate the point by mentioning some.

We had three debates between the major candidates, yet neither Global Warming (possibly better called Climate Change) nor the carnage of our youth in our inner cities ever came up.

Climate Change did come to the fore toward the end of the campaign because of the devastation of storm Sandy, and guns came to the public’s consciousness and entered the political lexicon after the election as a result of the wanton killing of 20 children (and seven adults) in a suburban town in Connecticut, but even now the atmosphere that has been created by the very profitable and free-spending gun manufacturers, makes it incumbent for our President and others to proclaim their adherence to, and support of, the second Amendment, and for our President to show how he too loves guns by publishing a photo showing him with a gun.

But what of the second amendment? As recently as 1939 the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision held that restrictions on the possession of certain types of shotguns did not violate the Constitution because it has no “reasonable relationship to any preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.

So how did we get from there to here? It was not as a result of any election, or the debate or discussion during any election. It was through large expenditures in propaganda by the gun manufacturers, who after taking over the NRA, which used to be a non-political sporting association, used it as a front to propagandize the issue and eventually to intimidate law makers by huge expenditures in opposition to those who did not adhere to their agenda. But this was done over many years, in between elections, and in by-elections, until a bare majority of the Supreme Court  (the usual 5 to 4) in the Heller case accepted the position of the gun manufacturers.

At the same time, the media, as is their wont, misrepresented the views of the public by giving the impression that most Americans were rushing out to buy guns, when, in fact, a small minority were buying many guns, or as Reuters reported: 

“Even as gun purchases rise, the share of U.S. households with a gun has been falling for decades, from 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010, according to the University of Chicago's General Social Survey.”

But what else has been going on between elections? One of the things I noticed between elections was that whenever a discussion of increasing inheritance taxes came up, the radio station to which I frequently listened, had a huge up-tick in ads offering counseling for estate planning, which most listeners would not have needed since few had enough assets to be effected by such increases, but which gave the impression that most were likely to be effected. The ads intended to seem non-political, in fact seemed clearly to have that purpose.

And what about the slogans that are so carefully crafted and repeated over and over between elections?

We don’t tax too little; We spend too much.

We want the economy, not the government to grow.

Generational Theft (What greater generational theft can there be then to leave future generations a world of hurricanes, typhoons, rising water levels, forest fires, and tsunamis, or a lack in education, or in infrastructure?)

We are Pro-Life! (Who wouldn’t be) and how does that match up against being “Pro Choice”.

Support the troops!

Cut and run!

Tax and Spend!

These aren’t just slogans during an election. They are repeated over and over again between elections, and they determine how issues are defined and discussed during elections.

In the Presidential “debates” there is an effort to avoid any real discussion. Here is how the Commission on Presidential Debates said the 2012 Presidential debates would be moderated:

“The first debate will focus on domestic policy…The moderator will ask a question, and each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The second presidential debate will be a town-hall style meeting. Voters will be allowed to ask questions directly of each candidate…Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The format for the third presidential debate will be identical to that of the first presidential debate.”

It should be noted that the candidates cannot even decide on the topics they want to address, and does anybody really think that an enlightening answer can be given in two minutes. Is it any wonder that we have the focus on who scowled, who invaded the others space, or who looked at his watch.

And then the media lauds the small state caucuses that are so important in deciding who gets nominated. Not only does this mean that a small percentage of a small population, has an outsize voice, but these people, according to the media, don’t decide whom to vote for until they have shook their hands. Boy, that really tells us what the candidate stands for!!! Or as the website for New Hampshire lauds its state: “Shake hands with as many Presidential Candidates as possible.”

And then there is the argument that the best government is the one closest to the people. That is supposed to mean that the state government is better than the Federal, the town or village government is better than the state, etc. But what it really means is that the smaller the jurisdiction the fewer people vote, the less information on the candidates and the issues is available, and very few even know who represents them. But that according to these avatars of the Right that is what is best for us. Government closest to the people indeed!!

But the fact is that while we are celebrating the re-election of Obama we have already forgotten the shellacking Democrats took only two years ago. To be sure gerrymandering played a role in the fact that even though Democrats won one million more votes than Republicans in the total votes for House seats, an even greater factor was the turnout was far, far smaller in the “off year election” than in the Presidential one, and there is the rub. Unless we can get people to turn out in the off year elections and in the State governors elections and in the state legislative elections, getting the turnout in the Presidential election will never, never be enough.

Finally, we need run off elections. No country in Europe, or in most of the world, would let a candidates win by less than a majority. It is doubtful that Senator Marco Rubio, who is being touted as the Republican savior, (God only knows why) would have won his seat if there had been a run-off. He won with 49% of the vote, with former Gov. Charlie Crist garnering 30% and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek polling 20%. It is highly likely that if there had been a runoff that Meek’s vote would have gone to Crist, and Rubio, who was rated by the Koch Brothers-financed group Americans For Prosperity as the “only perfect senator,” would have lost.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The President’s re-election

I recently had dinner with some good friends and they greeted me with the exclamation: “Aren’t you elated that Obama won.” I looked at them and said: “I am relieved, but not elated.”

I am relieved because while it is true that we would have avoided the fiscal cliff if Mitt Romney had been elected, which was the rationale for the endorsement of Romney by the Des Moines Register, who posed the question as, “Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals?” meaning avoiding the cliff, and concluded: “When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate…”

Of course, for Romney there would have been no need to compromise. He would have embraced the program of the Tea Party, with only a Democratic Senate (which was in doubt until the results came in) standing between him and his cohorts gaining a complete victory.

The likelihood of falling off the cliff has certainly increased as a result of the Presidents re-election. But the result of capitulation, while possibly less frightening in the short run, would have dire consequences in the long run, as I outlined in my blog posting entitled "The Election." The consequences of just the domestic sequester staying in place is ably outlined in an article in the New York Times entitled "White House Details Potential Effects If Automatic Budget Cuts Go Through" which I urge the reader to read.

So we are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Holding firm risks going over the cliff, i.e. if automatic spending cuts go into force and all the Bush-era tax cuts expire, then according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the nation would slip into recession next year and unemployment would rise to 9.1 percent, from October’s rate of 7.9 percent. But simply canceling those deficit-reduction measures would risk a financial crisis that would make matters worse …” according to this watch dog. See here.

And looming just behind the fiscal cliff is the debt ceiling. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the U.S. probably will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by the end of the year, at the same time that Congress will be grappling with the automatic tax hikes and large government spending cuts scheduled to kick in Jan. 1. See here. Republicans, as they did last year, are talking again about refusing to raise it, which would force the US into default and bring into serious question its invaluable credit worthiness. Last time around even the threat of default caused Standard and Poor's to lower the rating for the US from AAA to AA+ See this CNN Money article wherein Standard and Poor's is quoted as giving the reason for the downgrade as: “The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed."

The lower rating fortunately had no effect on the markets, with US securities remaining in large demand and continuing to sell at interest rates at all time lows.

But then there was no default, only the threat of one.

In any case with these frightening potential developments, is it any wonder that I find myself less than elated? I will be elated when the President succeeds in navigating these currents and works out a compromise that very substantially increases revenue, while protecting our safety net, not from some cost saving reforms, which are inevitable, but from having them undermined. I do not find Paul Krugman’s argument as set forth in his November 11 column  persuasive. Krugman says: “Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.”

I take it from this that Krugman would be perfectly happy for taxes not to go up, even on the very rich, as the President wants, because while he doesn’t specifically say so, he argues that the larger the deficit the better. Of course, what he really wants is for there to be no changes in Medicare and Social Security, writing in his column of November 15 entitled: "Life, Death and Deficits":  “… right now the most dangerous zombie is probably the claim that rising life expectancy justifies a rise in both the Social Security retirement age and the age of eligibility for Medicare.” He makes some cogent arguments to support this, but fails to propose any reasonable alternatives, such as having a different retirement age for the relatively affluent and well-educated, and a different one for Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution, who aren’t living much longer. (He doesn’t cite any actuarial tables) and does not even propose closing the Social Security budget gap by raising the Social Security tax ceiling for the affluent.

As for Medicare he argues against raising the eligibility age with which I agree, and argues that the way to control costs is to “… give Medicare the ability to bargain over drug prices. Let the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created as part of Obamacare to help Medicare control costs, do its job instead of crying “death panels.” With which I also agree, but in making these arguments isn’t he implicitly recognizing that we can’t just ignore deficits.

But as can be seen from the above, the re-election of Obama has not magically solved our problems. We have a tendency to think, as we did four years ago, that as long as we elect a good man/woman to the Presidency, we have solved the nation’s problems. That is true only in the fantasy world that so many on the Left in our nation inhabit.

The fact is that in order for the President to be in a strong bargaining position with Republicans, he must signal a willingness to go over the cliff if Republicans are too intransient. Or as John Cassidy writes in the New Yorker: 

“Fiscal discipline, equity, and economic experience all point toward a return to the top tax rates of the Clinton era. In order to get there, though, Obama is going to have to demonstrate that he is willing to leap off the fiscal cliff, and that he isn’t bluffing. Anything short of an ironclad commitment to let all the Bush tax cuts, including the ones that affect the middle class, expire on December 31st if an agreement isn’t reached, will be exploited by the Republicans, who otherwise don’t have many cards to play. 

“Basically, this is an exercise in brinksmanship—the logic of which is well understood. If Obama’s threat is perceived to be credible, he almost certainly won’t have to go through with it. But if the Republicans think he is likely to back down—as he did in 2010, when he initially opposed extending the Bush tax cuts—they will stonewall, figuring that the White House, at the last minute, will offer them a compromise along the lines Boehner is suggesting. Don’t forget, this is a G.O.P. that hasn’t agreed to a rise in tax rates for more than twenty years. In the current House of Representatives, all but six of the two-hundred-and-forty-two Republicans have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge “to oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses.”

Whether the President needs to be that demanding and that uncompromising is open to question, but that he must signal a willingness to take the plunge is an absolute sin qua non to successful negotiations. But that means that we run the danger of, as the CBO has stated, of the nation slipping into recession next year with unemployment rising to 9.1 percent, from October’s rate of 7.9 percent. That is why I am not elated at the outcome of the election. We are far from out of the woods.

Of course, if the House of Representatives had gone Democratic, we would have a totally different landscape, and then I would have been elated. But despite the fact that Democrats “won one million more votes than Republicans” for the House, they did not win a majority due to very effective gerrymandering. This, in my view, represents a clear violation of the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution, which says: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” However the US Supreme Court in 2003 in Vieth v. Pennsylvania upheld by a vote of 4 to 4 a lower court ruling that gerrymandering was not unconstitutional. The four justices holding gerrymandering constitutional were Scalia, Rehnquist, O’Connor, and Thomas. Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed that no justiciable standard existed and affirmed the district court’s opinion, joined in dismissing the claim, but would not go so far as to say all partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg), and John Paul Stevens dissented from the plurality, with each dissent proposing a new test for federal courts to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering.

And so we have the ridiculous situation where Democrats gain more than a million vote majority in the House, but Republicans gain far more seats and we end up with a political crisis.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Nation Escaped a Bullet

It is with a sigh of relief that I celebrate the reelection of Barack Hussein Obama.

However, I must warn my readers not to make the same mistake they made four years ago, when they thought the election of Obama would immediately and irrevocably bring in a new era. That since Obama had spoken of a nation that does not consist of blue states or red states, but only the United States, that he would bring in an era of bi-partisanship.

That since he was the first black American to achieve the Presidency, he represented the beginning of a post-racial era.

That since he had indicated that in the way that Ronald Reagan had been a transformational President, he too hoped to be a transformational President, and bring in a new era of governmental responsibility.

It was not understood that these were aspirational ideas, that might one day be achieved, not promises that would be achieved on day one, or after one year or after one term or maybe not even after a decade.

But I tried to disabuse my readers after the election in 2008 when I wrote my essay with the tongue in cheek heading "Obama Walks on Water." I don’t think many paid attention.

Now as we come into the President’s second term I hope people have more realistic expectations. We are a nation that takes great pride in its checks and balances. We don’t want our President to be a dictator. We want our President to have to look to Congress for legislation, to pass our budget, to confirm appointments, etc. and then when the President is hamstrung by the system and by an opposing party that brooks no compromise, we wring our hands and feel our President has let us down. I have said before and I say again, the President has no magic wand.

It is also a fact that no President should be held responsible for what happens in the first nine month of his Administration. During those nine months the President is working with his predecessor’s budget, with his predecessors appointees, and with the effects of his predecessor’s policies. Thus the campaign attacks, as mirrored by the media, were totally misplaced and unfair. If we look at the graph of job creation which I published in my blog post "We are Americans!" and we delete the job losses of the first nine month of the Obama Administration, the wild number of job losses vs. job creation look quite different, as would figures on how large the deficit was to be attributed to the Obama Administration and how much to the outgoing Bush Administration.

                                   . 

Some may say why dig up old history? But it is not old history in the sense that it illustrates how the media fails to enlighten, and in fact acts as a medium for obfuscation and deception, and those who have been reading my blog post know how upset and angry I am with an institution that has a primary responsibility to elucidate and inform.

Please reread my blog post "The Media in General and the New York Times in Particular" where I refer the reader back to other blog posts criticizing the media and elaborate on recent sins of omission and commission including sources I most respect – PBS Newshour and The New York Times.

But even since then I have watched with dismay as the Romney campaign flagrantly distorted what the President said on job creation. The Romney campaign attacked the President for ostensibly saying: “If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.” (See here for examples of how the Romney campaign extensively distorted this.) The media in their typical attempt to find equivalency in everything equated this so-called faux pas with Romney reference to the 47%. But in fact there was no faux pas on Obama’s part. What Obama had said was: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.”  It was more than obvious that Obama was referring to roads and bridges when he said you didn’t build that. Where was the faux pas? Only in the fact that Obama did not foresee that the statement could be taken out of context. Is that the same as Romney talking with contempt about 47% of the American people? Nothing taken out of context.

For that matter the media also equated the 47% comment by Romney with Obama’s comment about “Guns and Religion” which he made four years ago. For example, Mary Bruce of ABC News asked “How are Romney’s comments any different from what the president said?," ignoring both the time lapse and the fact that Romney was talking about most Americans and his own constituency, while Obama was talking about a much smaller segment and people who hate his guts. But the media is always looking for equivalencies no matter how false.

How did we get here? To be sure, as the media likes to point out in its defense, poor biased reporting was common at the early years of our Republic. But we had a much more responsible press not so long ago, though few would remember it. An Op-Ed article in the New York Times deals with this in part. (Yes, the Times gives us some excellent editorials and excellent columns –its news pages are often lacking) The article correctly points out that, “…In 1985, the conservative organization Fairness in Media, backed by Senator Jesse Helms, tried to arrange a takeover of CBS and “become Dan Rather’s boss.” It failed, but two years later conservatives set the stage for an even bigger triumph. For decades, radio and television broadcasters had been required to present multiple viewpoints on contentious public debates on the grounds that they were stewards of the public airwaves. But in 1987, members appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Communications Commission abolished this ‘fairness doctrine.’ The change facilitated the creation of conservative talk radio and cable outlets to combat perceived liberal bias. Liberals followed suit with programming (albeit less effective) of their own.…most news organizations (with notable exceptions) abandoned their roles as political referees. Many resorted to an atrophied style that resembled stenography more than journalism, presenting all claims as equally valid. Fact checking, once a foundation for all reporting, was now deemed the province of a specialized few.”

But there is even more to the story. While Jesse Helms failed in 1985, eventually the networks were taken over by large multi-national corporations, e.g. NBC is owned by General Electric. CBS is owned by Westinghouse Electric, which has renamed itself CBS. ABC is owned by Walt Disney Company, and of course Fox is a new huge conglomerate.

What does this mean for news coverage? Most importantly the old networks used their news division as loss leaders. News divisions were not expected to make a profit. Their new owners demanded that all divisions make a profit. This meant two things. The news operations had to seek the largest audience possible which led to yellow journalism, and they had to keep expenses as low as possible which led to inadequate resources. But that was fine with Jesse Helms and his Right wing cohorts.

Finally, in 2007 a Bush revamped FCC (Federal Communication Commission) “lift(ed) a 35-year-old ban on companies owning both TV stations and a local newspaper in the country's top 20 markets, saying it was no longer needed… Looser cross-ownership rules would benefit companies such as News Corp. NWSA +1.61% and Tribune Co., which already own newspapers and TV stations in certain big markets and have long operated with waivers of the cross-ownership ban. News Corp., for instance, owns the New York Post and two TV stations in the New York market. (News Corp also owns The Wall Street Journal.)”  The results of this has resulted in a concentration of the industry as summarized by Common Cause in a paper entitled: “Facts on Media in America: Did you know?” which I urge the reader to read here.

But to return to the campaign! As the campaign wound down some voices seemed to think that who wins wouldn’t make much difference, e.g. here is a quote from a Letter to the Editor of my local newspaper: 

“Nationally, I know one thing: If Barack Obama wins re-election, I will get up at 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 7, get my kids ready for school and go to work. If Mitt Romney should win the day, I will get up at 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 7, get my kids ready to go to school and head to work. Nothing will change that. It's fun to debate national elections, or even state elections, but much of what transpires afterwards does not help or hurt us too badly. Our success and failure is not reliant on public policy. Never has been. Will never be. Our nation generally speaking, survives and thrives because of the people, and in spite of the government, not because of it."

And the Des Moines Register, a paper that has consistently endorsed Democrats endorsed Romney because they felt he had a better chance to reach consensus with the intransient House Republicans, than Obama would, without examining what such a consensus would mean for future seniors, its health care system, its educational system, the rights of women and minorities, etc. and the country’s future. 

But the fact is that while the country has dodged a bullet we are still faced with what has come to be known as the economic cliff, with a Republican majority in the House pledged not to raise revenues to meet the nations needs and its looming deficit, and willing to force the nation into default and/or shut down the government unless it gets its way, regardless of the election.

Our President has his work cut out in meeting this challenge, which at this moment seems insolvable. A media that truly informs would be of immense help. But the signs don’t augur well. The last time around the can was kicked down the road with a sequester that called for reductions in discretionary defense spending to be cut by 9.4% and nondefense programs to be cut by 8.2%. The idea was that the prospect of this would cause the “super-committee” to work out a more practicable compromise. This failed because without additional revenues the choice became and becomes between such draconian cuts and not dealing with the looming deficit. 

Now with the looming crisis once again upon us they have already begun to demagogue the issue, demanding that the portion relating to the military must be repealed, without offering any means for offsetting this spending cut. Of course the equally draconian cut in domestic spending, which in the compromise was supposed to make the cuts balanced, they want retained, and possibly increased to make up for the elimination of the military cuts.

But again where is the media? They report extensively on the Republican demands and what the cuts would mean for our defensive capability but fail to mention what the domestic cuts would entail, though the White House has released detailed itemization of the consequences. For those who are interested enough, or masochistic enough, to want to read the full 394 page report it can be found here. But that is what we supposedly have media for. To read and summarize such reports. How many have seen such summaries in our media, whether in print, on TV or even in its electronic form. Oh yes, The New York Times gave us the information. But where was information of such great import? Was it on page one where it belonged? No, it was on page 17 under the heading: “White House Details Potential Effects If Automatic Budget Cuts Go Through.” This is worth reading and rather than being 394 pages long it is only two pages long. See here.

But in the final analysis what does the media give us front and center. They tell us about campaign tactics; who’s ahead, whose behind. They turn it into a sporting event. And worse, as the highly respected The Economist magazine tells us: 

The media, meanwhile, and this can't be repeated often enough, is overwhelmingly biased towards producing exciting political races. Horse-race reporting gives the media the collective ability to shape the kind of narrative it needs in order to report excitingly.

We deserve and should demand better!!!

Alas, Poor Romney* or another of his "oops" moments**

From the BBC:

This summer, a Cuban-American radio presenter in Florida asked Mitt Romney what his favourite types of fruit are. 

 "I am a big fan of mango, papaya, and guava," Mr. Romney replied. 

The hosts could not suppress their laughter.
  

It may not strike you as particularly funny that Mr. Romney said he liked papaya, but "papaya" is Cuban slang for vagina.
  

Now, come on. Let's be mature and fair here.
  

Who, besides a Cuban or Cuban-American, would know that?
  

But that was not Mr. Romney's only Spanish slip-up.
  

His most notorious came five years ago during an impassioned anti-Castro speech in Miami, Florida.
  

"At the end of speech, Mr. Romney had the crowd fired up," recalls Joe Garcia, a Cuban-American Democrat in Miami.
  

"And he ended, 'Patria o Muerte, Venceremos — the nation or death we shall win,' which is the closing line of all of Fidel Castro's speeches.
  

"It's a great line. Unfortunately for Romney it was the wrong line in this crowd."

And from Charles M. Blow's column in the New York Times summarizing the Romney campaign:

A strategy that assumed that an empty suit could make empty promises and that an electorate full of voters consumed by anger at the president wouldn’t notice. 

  

A candidate who keeps his foot so deep in his mouth that his toes can tickle his cerebellum. 

  

A nominating convention that fell flat.

*A paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

** A paraphrase from the primary campaign of Rick Perry.

I am an American

I recently submitted the following Letter to the Editor to my local newspaper the Fort Lee Suburbanite. I would like to share it with my readers. The letter follows:

I live in the Colony in Fort Lee. The other day a woman asked me in the elevator whom I planned to vote for. I responded Obama, and asked and you? She said, “I don’t know – I didn’t like Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu.” Then we parted.

Here is my response to this woman and others who may have similar doubts.

As an American, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, A Zionist descended from Zionists, but above all an American, I do not believe that the head of any country has the right to summon the President of the United States. He can petition the President for a meeting, and if it fits into the President's schedule, and it is in the mutual interests of the parties, a meeting can be arranged. That applies to all foreign heads of state. The Prime Minister of Israel is not, nor should he be, an exception.

But Netanyahu has gone out of his way to violate every rule of diplomatic behavior. In my view he has been a disaster for Israel. Since any Letter to the Editor has to be short I commend readers to "Peter Beinart on Netanyahu’s Bullying Act" from The Daily Beast.

That article relates in some detail Netanyahu’s long history of meddling in American politics, so much so that the Republican Secretary of State James Baker briefly had him banned from the State Department. But beyond that, and I quote from the article, “Netanyahu has been brazenly intervening in American politics—often with an eye to screwing Democratic presidents.”

But let us also not forget Netanyahu’s role in inciting so vehemently against the sainted assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, that many accused him of responsibility for that assassination.

But now he has the gall to come to the US and use our airwaves to try to dictate American foreign policy. Appearing on US Television, Netanyahu declared: “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” I agree with the Prime Minster that no one has a right to place a “Red Light” before Israel. But, in fact no one has!!!

Israel’s Defense Minster, Ehud Barak has said: "Israel retains its right to make sovereign decisions and the United States respects that."

The opposition comes from within Israel where Meir Dagan, former Mossad Chief, said on 60 Minutes that an “Attack On Iran is the 'Stupidest Idea' He's Ever Heard.”

The attempt by any country to dictate American policy, particularly on issues of war and peace must be rejected by all Americans.

Note: Links to URLs were not part of the Letter to the Editor.

It is necessary to add that according to Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, the Obama White House has been the most supportive administration throughout the two countries' diplomatic relations on matters of Israeli security. See here, here and here.

Bill Clinton tells us what the media should have!

I listened to Bill Clinton last night. Parts of the speech were partisan but most of it was the most effective presentation that could have been made: The truth!!!

I always thought that this was the responsibility of the media, but they have abdicated that responsibility. Their fear of being called partisan is such that if the facts favor one party over another, or are made controversial by the denial of the truth by one, the media retreats into obfuscation and declines to report the facts.

Clinton hit the nail on the head because he laid out the truth and it certainly needed telling.

Below is the video of Clinton’s speech for those who missed it or those who may want to hear it again:

Below that is the transcript for those who would rather read the speech:

We're here to nominate a president, and I've got one in mind.

I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. A man who ran for president to change the course of an already weak economy and then just six weeks before the election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse since the Great Depression. A man who stopped the slide into depression and put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that no matter how many jobs were created and saved, there were still millions more waiting, trying to feed their children and keep their hopes alive.

I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the inside. A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.

I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States and I proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

In Tampa, we heard a lot of talk about how the president and the Democrats don't believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we want everyone to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for the economy.

The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain't so.

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

Who's right? Well, since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million.

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats. After all, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High and built the interstate highway system. And as governor, I worked with President Reagan on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Through my foundation, in America and around the world, I work with Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are focused on solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other.

When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. All of us are destined to live our lives between those two extremes. Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is the enemy, and compromise is weakness.

One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in 2008, and trusted him to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden did a great job with both. He appointed Cabinet members who supported Hillary in the primaries. Heck, he even appointed Hillary. I'm so proud of her and grateful to our entire national security team for all they've done to make us safer and stronger and to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I'm also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country in the military and to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for supporting military families when their loved ones are overseas and for helping our veterans, when they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with education, housing, and jobs.

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

He also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and jobs, but that didn't work out so well. Probably because, as the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years before the election, their No. 1 priority was not to put America back to work, but to put President Obama out of work.

Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job.

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.

In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they couldn't say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years. You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high income Americans even more than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase defense spending $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor kids. As another president once said— there they go again.

I like the argument for President Obama's re-election a lot better. He inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for the innovators.

Are we where we want to be? No. Is the president satisfied? No. Are we better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall, losing 750,000 jobs a month. The answer is yes.

I understand the challenge we face. I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don't feel it.

I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working and the economy was growing but most people didn't feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history.

President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president— not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you'll renew the President's contract you will feel it.

I believe that with all my heart.

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities.

So back to the story. In 2010, as the president's recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around.

The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the president's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, congressional Republicans zero.

Over that same period, more than more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama— the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.

The auto industry restructuring worked. It saved more than a million jobs, not just at GM, Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country. That's why even auto-makers that weren't part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the suppliers too. Like I said, we're all in this together.

Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured. Gov. Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama 250,000, Romney, zero.

The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is another good deal: it will cut your gas bill in half, make us more energy independent, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs.

President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan is helping too— the boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near 20 year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.

We do need more new jobs, lots of them, but there are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the applicants don't have the required skills. We have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are being created in a world fueled by new technology. That's why investments in our people are more important than ever. The president has supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open jobs in their communities. And, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that we've fallen to 16th in the world in the percentage of our young adults with college degrees, his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, gives students the right to repay the loans as a fixed percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. That means no one will have to drop-out of college for fear they can't repay their debt, and no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments. This will change the future for young Americans.

I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions.

That brings me to health care.

The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it's a government takeover of health care that they'll repeal. Are they right? Let's look at what's happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80 percent to 85 pecent of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits or promotion. Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the requirement. More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast cancer screenings and tests for heart problems. Soon the insurance companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions. And for the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4 pecent, for the first time in 50 years.

So are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed it? You bet we are.

There were two other attacks on the president in Tampa that deserve an answer. Both Gov. Romney and congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion. Here's what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the president did was save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier. He used the saving to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It's now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened it.

When congressman Ryan looked into the TV camera and attacked President Obama's "biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. You see, that $716 billion is exactly the same amount of Medicare savings congressman Ryan had in his own budget.

At least on this one, Gov. Romney's been consistent. He wants to repeal the savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and reduce the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. So now if he's elected and does what he promised Medicare will go broke by 2016. If that happens, you won't have to wait until their voucher program to begins in 2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it.

But it gets worse. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but that's not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Down syndrome or autism. I don't know how those families are going to deal with it. We can't let it happen

Now let's look at the Republican charge that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work.

Here's what happened. When some Republican governors asked to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama administration said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent. You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. But they keep running ads on it. As their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Now that is true. I couldn't have said it better myself— I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.

Let's talk about the debt. We have to deal with it or it will deal with us. President Obama has offered a plan with $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for every $1 of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

I think the president's plan is better than the Romney plan, because the Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don't add up.

It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with $5 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. They say they'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When you ask "which loopholes and how much?" they say, "See me after the election on that."

People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets. What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a $5 trillion tax cut in a debt reduction plan— the— arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen:

1) they'll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up $2,000 year while people making over $3 million a year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut; or

2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical research; or

3) they'll do what they've been doing for thirty plus years now— cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to double-down on trickle-down.

President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for our children, our families and our nation.

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities— a "we're all in it together" society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every American to vote and you think it's wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. If you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.

I love our country— and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come out stronger than we went in. And we will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor— to form a more perfect union.

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama.

God bless you — God bless America.

The Election (Discussion)

I published "The Election" on August 30, 2012 and was gratified at the fact that I received comments from 18 people.

I was deeply disappointed, however, by the fact that except for Janet Cooke of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania none responded to my plea at the end of my post:

That means contributing money till it hurts. It means joining phone banks. It means doing all that is within our power to forestall the tragedy that looms for our country and posterity.

Janet simply wrote "I'll be volunteering for Obama."

I don’t believe it is enough to express concern about the looming catastrophe. In the end what counts is what we do to forestall it and while the fact that it isn’t mentioned doesn’t mean that my respondents are not doing anything, I fear that this may be so.

As for me, I do put my money where my mouth is. Since January, I authorized monthly charges to my credit card to Obama for America. On August 12, I made an additional contribution of $50 and on August 29 I decided I had better become serious and contributed $1,000 to the campaign. I expect to max out my contributions before November at $2,500.

In addition I have been contributing to the DemocraticNational Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and liberal organization like People for the American Way, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood and countless others. All of these can be accessed by clicking on their name.

I do not expect my readers to match my zeal, but if you care about our country, you ought to do more than nod your head and say the right things.

Now here are a selection of exchanges that I had with my readers, starting with Herb Reiner of Cedar Grove, NJ:

While you and I have had some serious disagreements about Obama’s failings, I can only concur that your parade of potential horrors of a Romney-Ryan administration is no exaggeration. Republican legislatures in key states have passed laws that disenfranchise potential Democratic voters and the Republican Party of Texas openly opposes the teaching of “critical thinking”  -- a quality that is so essential to an electorate in a democracy. Then there’s the jingoism: Never hint of apologizing for America (Presumably we’re always right about everything) and you can never tout American exceptionalism enough. It scares me – but maybe another warlike authoritarian plutocracy is just what the world needs! 

From Nancy Vieira, of Bethesda Md:

HEAR! HEAR! SO glad to hear from you again! And, with such a power message, one that I share! I look forward to your formal post at your web site and I will forward the link to family and friends to get the message out! 

Thanks for picking up the pen again! Indeed, scary times are ahead if the Republicans win this election.

From Janet Wood of Toronto, Canada an expatriate from the US:

I have been watching from afar with dismay and wondering what you were thinking. I think you nailed it and I hope people respond. In general, Canadians are aghast at the criticism of Obama, which comes from all sides, and the inability of Americans to see the reality of the world as it is, including their own country, instead of how they think it should be.

Which led to this exchange:

From me:

I think you hit the nail on the head when you write about: "the inability of Americans to see the reality of the world as it is" and that is often true for the Left as much as for the Right. But on the Right there is a total disconnect and a refusal to even consider real facts as opposed to fantasy. Do you still vote in American elections?

From Janet:

You are right about the right. I confess I do not understand the "left.” They are holding Obama to a standard, which does not exist and makes no sense. They seem to feel he could execute his vision in the midst of a global financial crisis--and a US situation, which is not over yet. They also refuse to credit anything of substance. It is Yes, but... It's hard to believe, but they do not seem to understand the danger of the alternative...

Mike Cerrato Esq. of Westville, New Jersey chimed in with:

YES! As usual, you have succinctly (and brilliantly) put what is going through so many of our minds into words. For those of us who really missed your insights, our sincere thanks. And rest assured, I do forward your comments to as many people as I believe will appreciate them. And a few who I know won't, just to really stick it to them in return for ruining so many otherwise pleasant social occasions! Again, thank you.

Mike then added:

One thing I have been mulling over. Do you think it is going too far to accuse the Republicans of treason? I know it doesn't fit the legal definition, but the obstructionism of the last 4 years just to be able to lambaste the President for not fixing the mess they created sure seems to be a ploy to worsen and use the nations' problems for political gain. (And who can say this wasn't an economic war being waged against the country?) Sad to say, I am starting to believe the only way to win this election is to get as obnoxious as the other side has been since President Obama has been in office. 

Also, one other thing I feel needs to be pointed out to counter the notion that Obama had a two year "free pass" before the 2010 debacle. Let's not forget that when he was elected, the country was screaming for "bipartisanship." One of the most frustrating things for me to see was how far the President went to offer olive branch after olive branch to the other side, only to have them reject EVERY overture (including, thank God, some which gave away even more than they could have ever hoped to achieve on their own!) Now they want to crucify him for that as well? Just seems more than a little unfair. Curious to get your opinion on whether you think either of these positions has any merit.

To which I replied:

I can understand your anger and your feeling that what they have been doing is nothing short of treason. I never comment on campaign tactics because if there is one thing I don't pretend to understand is what motivates an ignorant electorate. However, I will say that for some reason Democrats have always been held to a much higher standard than Republicans. You will remember Joe McCarthy's charge during the Truman Administration of "twenty years of treason." What was worse is that when the Democratic led Tydings Committee "concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program" and "labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax". Republicans responded in kind, with William E. Jenner stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history.” The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.”

But that is not even ancient history. Ann Coulter, a darling of Republicans recently, wrote: "Twenty years of treason hasn't slowed them down." and charged "50 years of treason.” 

Nixon running for Congress smeared his opponent as the "pink lady.”

But the media, which will denounce Democrats for any excess, always gives Republicans a free ride, so much so that Republicans have declared that they care little about the facts: "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," said Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster." 

Compare that to the smear directed against Al Gore by the New York Times and the Washington Post - See my post "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore" which you can access by clicking or double-clicking on the title and which I urge you to read, particularly since the Times as recently as today repeated the smear, ironically in an article entitled: "Facts Take A Beating in Acceptance Speeches" where the article asserted: 

"...falsehoods...hampered Vice President Al Gore during his run for president in 2000, when his misstatements on the campaign trail were used to stoke the perception that he could not be trusted in general." And in typical media attempt to seem even handed wrote: "The growing number of misrepresentations appear to reflect a calculation in both parties (emphasis added) that shame is overrated..."

Frankly I do think there have been some instances of treason on the part of Republicans, but it is not kosher for them to be accused of such things. Christopher Hitchens, not a partisan wrote:

“In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon and some of his emissaries and underlings set out to sabotage the Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam. The means they chose were simple: they privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut ... the talks...”

I think to undercut an Administration's peace negotiations is treason.

I also think the Reagan Administration committed treason on the subject of the hostages in Iran. I can't prove it, though I think the media, if they had investigated, could have. Iran refused to release the hostages until right after the election. Why? I am convinced that Reagan emissaries offered them inducements not to. Had Iran released the hostages before the election, Carter, quite possibly, would have won.

But no, I don't think the present outrageous behavior, can by any stretch of the imagination, be considered treason.

Sally Share of Fort Lee, NJ expressed this view:

I agree with you 100%. It is so distressing. I don't understand how a nation can be persuaded to vote for a party that does not have it's best interests at heart. It is so Orwellian. Are we a nation of fools? Downloaded your posting. Would it be OK if I forward it to a few of my friends?

To which I readily assented and encouraged.

Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ questioned one of my assertions with:

A small point is that supply-side economics may not be touted in “textbooks of the Chicago school.” I don’t know either way. For a long discussion of supply-side economics, go here:

To which I replied:

I don't know whether the Chicago school still teaches Supply Side economics, but the article to which you refer me, mentions the Chicago School and Milton Friedman as, at least, one of its main sources.

Barbara Valentino Crowley Baptiste Moreus of Port St. Lucie, Florida expressed herself as follows:

This election is really p*ssing me off because I have an awful feeling that there is a very good chance they will get in (hate to even mention the party or names) .... I find it absolutely amazing....as their platform alienates:  Teachers, Women, Gays, Seniors, Hispanics...and, multi-cultural America on a whole....as evidenced by one look at the hundreds of faces in the audience filled, save for a few token ethnic "individuals," strategically placed! Great show for WHITE SUPREMACY rally! And, btw, I doubt of the milk toast Puritan Tea Partiers included Eastern Europeans...just the Western European roots of our founding fathers... OK Leaving the soap box.... Thank you for writing.

Eric Offner of Manhasset Hills, NY of set forth his view on this and I believe all elections with:

I really appreciate your view. I agree with your analysis. It is interesting that I reach a different conclusion for my vote. I will be told I am wasting my vote. The opposite is true.

And Sonya Leopold of San Augustine, Texas chimed in with:

So good to hear from you again and to read your intelligent, impassioned report on the state of affairs in this election period where you lay out so clearly what the real issues are. Thank you, again!!!

A contributor who wishes to remain anonymous wrote:

You have written an excellent well researched commentary on the election and I agree with your views almost 100%. Please keep up your good work at least until the election, and you can then go back to your personal tasks in November, December and in 2013. Probably the reason that Romney will not release his tax returns is because his evangelical supporters, many of whom believe that Mormonism is a cult, may be offended and turned off by the huge donations he has probably made to the Mormon Church.   

Here in Connecticut a Republican woman named Linda McMahon is running for the US Senate and she has no qualifications other than having been a founder of the World Wrestling Federation. However I am afraid that she has a good chance of winning because her Democratic opponent, Congressman Chris Murphy seems to be bored with the campaign, and is hardly visible. He has not even solicited a donation from me. I am hopeful, but not confident, that the Presidential debates will tip the election in Obama's favor.

Finally Leonard Levenson of Manhattan, NY wrote a long exposition of his views as follows:

I was moved by you recent letter about this election. I agree with you that this election is about the creation of an emerging Oligarchy in the US. The disparity between rich and poor in the US today is greater than at any time since the roaring 20's and far greater than the days of the war on poverty under Johnson. It is not an accident that the greatest jump in the stock market since WWII occurred in the 60's under Kennedy and Johnson and under Clinton in the 90s. We did well under Eisenhower but that was probably caused by the spending spree following the end of the war. 

The present Republican Party seems intent on limiting the vote of minorities by discouraging immigration, by passing burdensome laws dealing with voter registration and by excluding Felons from voting (in some states for life) no matter how minor the crime. The worldview of the present Republican Party harks back to meanest period of economic and social life in our history. It glorifies the Laissez Faire Capitalism of the Robber Baron era of the 1890s and the small mindedness of Victorian England. It begrudges aid to the poor even though all Federal and State aid for food stamps and welfare did not exceed $100 billion dollars last year in a Federal budget in excess of 1 trillion dollars and State budgets of an equal amount.  

Unfortunately, I have been discouraged by the lack of firm and vigorous leadership of Obama and blue dog Democrats. If Obama were Lyndon Johnson or TIP O’Neal or FDR, I believe the Senate would not have been able to block meaningful legislation by a small minority of senators. Obama's record on Civil rights has not been good and he has cow-towed to republican objections to closing Guantanamo. He has been responsible for vigorously deporting large numbers of illegal immigrants until just recently and has not used the "bully pulpit" effectively to push his program. However, these failings are as nothing compared to the disaster that would befall this country with a Romney win.   

I am chilled by the prospects of a Supreme Court made up of a majority of Alitos', Thomas' and Roberts' for the rest of my lifetime. I am depressed by the prospect of a cruel and insensitive Government which believes the answer to crime is more and harsher punishment; that the answer to poverty is for the poor to work longer and harder for less pay and the answer for the sick who cannot afford medical care is to die.  

However, in my more optimistic moments I think of other periods in our history when hysteria and hatred have taken over until the American people came to their senses. I think of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1802, of the "know nothings" and anti immigration movements of the 1840s, of slavery from the early 17th century to 1865, of the robber barons of the post Civil War, of Jim Crow for 100 years, of the Palmer raids of the 1919-1920 period, of McCarthyism, of Vietnam and of Bush era politics. I think of Lincoln and his hope that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time". We survived all of these calamitous periods and I hope that we could survive a Romney Presidency if that disaster should befall us.

This required a response and accordingly, I wrote:

Good to hear from you, and I appreciate the contents of your remarks in most of what you say.

                       

However, I must take exception to your third and fifth paragraphs.

                       

As to the third paragraph, we have been over this in previous discussions and I am surprised and disappointed that you raise this again now.

           

I guess once a mindset gets set, it is hard to let it go. But rather than repeat all that has been said in the past, I refer you to my posts "The Trojan Horse - Comments," "The Trojan Horse – Comments II", and "The Trojan Horse – Comments II (continued)" where you graciously conceded, "You may have a point when you suggest that my anger at Obama is really disappointment at the lack of progress that I hoped for. Perhaps no Democrat could have made any substantial progress against the know nothing Republicans. I think I would have preferred a battle royale (even a losing one) than accepting a weakened Health Care Bill, an inadequate deficit reduction bill and the many other compromises, which Obama probably was forced to make."

                            

The problem of course is, and has always been the totally unreasonable expectations that the election of Obama aroused. I anticipated this and warned against it, when I posted my commentary "Obama Walks on Water"

I might add that even as early in the President's term as August of 2011 I wrote of his long list of accomplishments. Please see "The Achievements of Barack Obama."

But this is in particular bad taste when the point that I made in my last post is that this election is not about Obama. It is about the future of America and posterity.

Which brings me to the last paragraph of your comment. Yes the US survived other terrible periods in its history. But that totally misses the point. It is like saying that the Jews, as a people survived the Holocaust, or that African-Americans survived slavery and Jim Crow. Yes, the nation and the world go on, but the tens of thousands who die for lack of health care do not. Those who are denied an education are not only set back, but so are their children and often it is multigenerational. What counts is people, as people, as individuals and as groups. They suffer, even if the nation and they survive, and to make light of such suffering is unbecoming.

Even Syria will survive. But at what cost?