Category: politics

(meme) My Liberal Identity

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Quiz: What Kind of Liberal Are You?

My Liberal Identity

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

Related to this: Here’s a great article, which I’ve already linked on Facebook: New Civil War erupts, led by super rich, GOP (Paul Farrell, CBS Marketwatch). Want more proof? Here’s an interesting anti-union piece by Karl Rove, regarding what’s happened in Ohio, under the radar.

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Nothing Else To Complain About?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

In its never ending quest for truth, justice, and the American way (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), Fox News is complaining that Wonder Woman’s new costume isn’t patriotic enough. What new costume, you ask? Well, David E. Kelly is doing a new version of the Wonder Woman TV series, and has released pictures of Adrianne Palicki in the new costume.

So what do you think? The picture below shows the new costume on the left, and Lynda Carter, the 1970s TV Wonder Woman on the right.

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Shared Sacrifices

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

While sitting here eating my lunch, I’ve been thinking about today’s election in Los Angeles and a wonderful opinion piece in the LA Times regarding the disfunctional California Legislature. That opinion piece has it right: government—at the local, state and federal levels—are just rearranging the deck chair. They are focusing on small saving areas that earn them political points while ignoring the elephants in the room: entitlements, government disfunction, and big business excesses. They think a close election win means they have a mandate of all the people to enforce their narrow views, and their intransigence is just making things worse.

A quick first and foremost: I think the Republican legislators in California should stop thinking they know better than the people. Put the tax extension on the ballot. If the people don’t want it, they won’t vote for it. You’ll either give the Governor the tools he needs to try to steady the California economy, or you’ll have a clear statement on taxes. But you’re disenfranchising them by not giving them the opportunity!

Sorry for the digression. My lunchtime thinking quickly turned to the lack of shared sacrifice. In WWII, FDR mobilized the population through shared sacrifice. Everyone was subject to rationing. Everyone turned in scrap and did without to help the common cause. Where is that today? We see legislators attacking the pensions of hardworking teachers… without doing anything about the pensions of government officeholders at the state and local level, which are often much more egregious. We see fees being raised on students and services cut, while we lower taxes on big business and allow them to have record profits and pay record bonuses to a few select individuals. We see continual efforts to take away from those that barely have, while seemingly enriching the pockets of those that already have more.

This is wrong. If the way to right our economic ship is by cutting, then let’s make the sacrifices across the board.

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March 8 Election Analysis – City of Los Angeles

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Although many folks don’t realize it, we have an election coming up in the City of Los Angeles. It covers about half of the council districts, some community college positions, and a number of city measures significant for financial purposes. I took a few minutes this morning to go over my sample ballot. Here’s my current thinking—as always, you are free to convince me otherwise:

Read More …

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What Do You Mean There’s An Election Today?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

There’s an election today in my home state senate district. The election is to replace our state senator, George Runner (R), recently appointed to the Board of Equilization by the Governator as he left office. The two candidates are Runer’s wife, Sharon Runner (R) and Darren Parker (D). This is a district that has been gerrymandered to be reliably Republican: it contains portions of Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, and Palmdale/Lancaster… as well as a little sliver of Northridge to provide a few Democrats for balance. Thus, even though there are a few of us that will be voting for the Democrats, it is pretty clear who is going to win. Hopefully we’ll have better balance under the new redistricting commission, but I digress.

Now, living in the district, you wouldn’t really know there was an election going on (unless, like me, your spouse is a precinct worker). We did get a sample ballot… the same day the ballot came for the March election. There has been one mailer from Runner, and a few calls and emails from Parker. That’s it. I’m expecting a low turnout.

This gets me angry. We’re hearing all these reports about budget problems at the city, county, and state level… and face it: elections cost these entities a lot of money. We have another election in March (LA City Council), and there will likely be yet another special election at the state level in June. Why these couldn’t have been combined into a single election is beyond me. I’d be perfectly happy with the governor appointing someone for two-three months to serve until the next scheduled Primary or General election. The overall savings would be well worth it.

P. S.: Yes, I didn’t post yesterday. I did two big reviews on Sunday, so I figured I was covered. Yesterday was a busy day.

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Interesting Proposals

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I’d like to take some time, over lunch, to share with you some interesting proposals I’ve seen while skimming the papers. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I did find them thought provoking:

  • The Size of the House. An article from Streetsblog about why Republicans tend to oppose transit funding, whereas Democrats support it triggered some thinking this morning. It posited the notion that Republican congress critters tend to be from less urban areas, and Democrats from more urban areas. This made me think back to an interesting Op-Ed piece in the NY Times that said we need to expand the House of Representatives. The premise was that the founders intended the House to be representative, with a concern about having too few representatives, not too many. Originally, the House was one representative for 60,000; we’re now up to one representative for 700,000. The op-ed argues that we should expand the House. This would make it more representative, and reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests. It would make running for office affordable, and might provide enough eyes that bills would get sufficient review. Of course, there are drawbacks the article doesn’t mention, such as the increased amounts for salaries required (and salaries for staff), the increased demand for facilities and meeting space, and the increased election costs. Still, the notion is intriguing.
  • Health Care. I’m sure we’re all aware of the various dichotomies on the Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare. Democrats want to keep it; Republicans want to repeal the entire thing. However, the public seems to want to fix it, not toss it. So how would one fix it? The problem for most people is the mandate that everyone buy health care. That mandate is there, however, so enough healthy people pay into the system to cover those with pre-existing conditions. Get rid of that mandate, and you can’t get the pre-existing coverage. A proposal by Jonathan Chait in New Republic attempts to address this issue. As opposed to letting individuals with preexisting conditions purchase coverage at anytime (pre-existing conditions aren’t an issue for employer-provided coverage), it would provide limited open-enrollment windows for such purchases. I’m not sure that would solve the problem (and I could see new problems introduced for the recently laid off), but it is an intriguing attempt to address the balance.
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Learning from the Constitution

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I’ve been thinking this morning about the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, and the discussion it has started about the hatred and vitriol in politics today. This is a good and necessary discussion, and I sincerely hope it moves us towards working together to make this country better.

While my mind was musing on the subject, it wandered over to the reading of the Constitution earlier this week. One of the things they did when reading it was to omit the parts of the Constitution that had been superseded or were no longer applicable. That was a big mistake, for in many ways those are the most important parts of the constituion.

Let me explain. Take the slavery provisions. Those provisions demonstrate that the founders were of divided mind: Some wanted to prohibit slavery completely; some wanted it full and unfettered. But they were able to achieve a compromise that moved the country forward. Eventually more was learned, and the constitution was modified to correct the errors. There are important lessons there: sometimes compromise is necessary for forward motion, and that sometimes something distasteful comes along with something good. It also demonstrates that as time goes on we learn.

Another example is the 19th amendment. Prohibition. An amendment passed and then later revoked. Again, this is a demonstration that it acceptable to say: we made a mistake, we learned, and we’ll undo it.

It seems that today we’re unwilling to compromise, to work with the other side. We’re unwilling to admit our mistakes. This unbending creates problems (I’m thinking right now to the Mens Club Shabbat service yesterday morning where we read Parshat Bo, and saw where Pharoah’s unbending and hardened heart got him). We need to learn to work together, without hatred.

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