Bush believes Snow doing a ‘great job‘ at TreasuryOoooo - it's the kiss of death.
"...a leaked memo from the John Kerry campaign to hotel managers, informing them that "JK hates celery".Wow. This one's really a blockbuster. It came one day late to make the April Fool's parade.
It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police. The stories about innocent homeowners and storekeepers who are dragged from their screaming families and killed by those same militias are heartbreaking, as is the thought that the United States, in its hubris, helped bring all this to pass.I apologize ahead of time for having to say something that is rather blunt, but I feel that it's important. When I read this, I immediately thought about Judith Miller and the New York Times' front page stories before the Iraq War. I suspect that hard lessons have been learned. I realize that there has been a mea culpa from the Times and I appreciate that, but I have to say that the United States government wasn't the only institution that has "helped to bring this all to pass."
Not long after Katrina struck, the Census Bureau released figures showing that the poverty rate had climbed for the fourth straight year. More than 37 million Americans live below the federal poverty level (defined as an income of $19,000 for a family of four), including 12 million children.Anyone who thinks alleviating poverty will be easy is deluded, indeed. However, if we stop believing that it can be possible and if we ignore the problem, we will become an America where being a low-wage or unemployed worker will mean an even further decrease in the opportunity for providing a basic and sound existence for many families.
Five million of those children live in families that earn less than half the poverty level.
Jane Knitzer, director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, says it's not so much that Americans don't know that poverty exists. They just don't want to think about it, because it's just too hard.
"Very often people feel that there's no solution to poverty, that's it's intractable," she says. "It's a secret nobody wants to deal with."
News coverage could partly explain the rise in denier and realist views. Some "did not take well to the liberal lesson that they no doubt regarded as foisted upon them," Grusky and Ryo wrote in their report, and so "the `call for action' story ... was countered by the equally powerful lesson that government intervention is all about inefficiency and ineptitude."The mainstream media has become an entertainment tool, which is the opposite of what responsible journalism should be. That said, I think the mainstream did a damned good job on the Katrina coverage. They had tons more information - and much sooner - than the Bush administration did. The media hasn't dropped the ball on Katrina, and no one can deny that there was a poverty we'd not noticed before the hurricane that was exposed by the media after Katrina. If the public doesn't care about the poverty of the people from New Orleans or if they're overwhelmed by the very thought of it, we should give the
This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.If you want to see a political leader who seeks new ideas and solutions to alleviating poverty, I recommend that you take a look at the new John Edwards One America Committee site. Don't miss the new One America blog. I'd love to see the Tar Heelers sign up at the blog and join the conversation. [They were talking about you Tar Heel Taverners on One America just this week!]
Bishop Jakes spoke about the Twin Span Bridge that connects Slidell, Louisiana to New Orleans which was partially submerged by Katrina and will need rebuilding. He called it a symbol of our need to rebuild bridges between our ideas, our perspectives, and our differences - we must build unity. "We can't multiply by dividing and we can't add by subtracting," said Bishop Jakes. If we rebuild that bridge with unity, it could make a real difference, letting go of the divisive illusion that we're black or white; Democrat or Republican; "right" or left." The true vision, he said is "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."The media, who have been really good at hammering away at the Katrina story, would be well-served to have Senator Edwards as a voice on every talk show. Not to pump him for his Presidential aspirations, but to sit down and talk to him about the issue about which he is so passionate - alleviating poverty. People pay attention and develop the political will to see change when a political leader is willing and able to have a rational public conversation about an issue that, whether we realize it or not, affects all of us. I'm sick of seeing the same old faces on the political talk shows. It's no wonder that America is indifferent.
But what's THIS I'm hearing!?! The Washington Post reported Sept. 9 that Treasury Secretary John Snow is once again being shown the door. His rumored replacement is White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who would then be replaced either by Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten. [Washington Times]Card is gone - where in the world is John Snow? Is it possible that Snow, especially after the talk about his part, as a former CSX chief executive officer, in the Dubai Ports World deal, will soon be shown the door? Will Andrew Card take his place and simply be "recycled" rather than shed from the Bush administration?
There was an article in last Sunday's New York Times written by Erik Eckholm about Senator Edwards and his focus on the issue of poverty.
This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.The recent conference titled "Challenging the Two Americas". It was organized by Senator Edwards and sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, an organization that he founded and directs. Mr. Eckholm wrote:
The challenge, Mr. Edwards and other speakers said, is not just to devise better ways to fight poverty but to find strategies with broad appeal.Experts say that the same economic trends that have been rendering the poor more powerless than ever are also creating hardships and economic insecurity for middle-class families. They believe that policies to improve the security of the middle class will also help the poor. Elizabeth Warren, the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has blogged about the conference at TPM Cafe.
President Bush's 2006 budget proposal served to scrap the existing federal community economic development system and replace it with an almost entirely unfunded shell, and his 2007 budget proposal is not any more promising. We can do better than that. We need a stronger America right here at home, and that will require new strategies for alleviating poverty. Republicans have worked hard these past five years - for only the few. They have put the big corporations and CEOs first and the majority of the American people last. When Senator Edwards says that America should work for everyone, it means that he puts the American people first.
Senator Edwards has worked tirelessly to find solutions to the alleviation of poverty and helping Americans find a way to create opportunities for themselves. We are a government of the people and it is an invaluable asset for the people to have a political leader who takes a genuine interest in empowering them in their respective communities in order to achieve a greater measure of social justice and make our democracy strong.
On November 9, 2005, there was a "Summit on Poverty: New Frontiers in Poverty Research and Policy" held at the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC. There is a video available for each panel session, and I wanted to share some information from part of that Conference that I found to be true not only in North Carolina, but in my own state of New York - and probably in most American communities across America. Anita Brown-Graham is a Professor at the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill where she specializes in affordable housing, economic and community development, and public liability. Professor Brown-Graham offered what I found to be great insight into the problems we face today - especially in the new globalized economy. [Video segment here]
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ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
With new economic and political realities, we need a 21st century version of community development. Opportunities are being created by Senator Edwards and the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC to rethink community development models and how they can play out successfully for the benefit of the most people. Federal government should concentrate on outcomes more than processes. Communities need to better deliver services to people with he development of new and improved strategies. We can become involved ourselves. Becoming well acquainted with the issues, we can be Community Organizers ourselves.
We can start by better understanding the way community development has worked in the past. There has been a cooperation and collaboration between the private sector, the public sector, and the not-for-profit organizations that has changed with globalization and has presented a need for new and creative strategy-making with the intent to alleviate poverty. The state of community economic development is currently at a crossroads. There are fault lines in the old strategies for successful economic development. Because of political changes, community developers are seeing economic, physical and social conditions in the community that have led them to realize that there is failure where there once was success. The new community development revitalization strategies required must encompass knowledge about the different kinds of poverty that exist in each respective community. Poverty is not necessarily just the poverty of income or assets. There are dimensions to our communities that also reflect a poverty of opportunity, a poverty of potential (as we see in human and physical capital deficiencies in poorer communities), and especially the poverty of powerlessness. Communities must be made to see the power they can possess in order to change their own circumstances. Whether we realize it or not, we all have the power. We simply require the will to make a social and political change and the tools for success.
New initiatives often come to the table after all other means have failed. Community organizing and development tends to be focused on areas of private market failures. When much of the investment from the private sector has little to show in our communities, not-for-profit organizations with limited resources are left alone to help - especially where 'big government' has fallen away. (And for all of President Bush's BIG spending, he and the rubber-stamp Republicans have virtually forgotten our communities).
Not-for-profits are run by well-meaning people with a lot of hope and effort driving them to do what they do, but when they are told that, where 'big government' has failed that they must succeed, it is rarely a realistic or winning strategy.
The "Fault Lines"
Here is Professor Anita Brown-Graham's description of three fault lines in Community Development today:
* The first fault line relates to the challenges that not-for-profit organizations face in our communities. Professor Brown-Graham commented that, after ten years of interaction with not-for-profits, their unofficial motto of "keep on keeping on" has unfortunately only kept their communities in a state of continued persistent poverty because they lack the ability to craft and articulate a meaningful vision of economic change for their communities and they lack the capacity to formulate strategies associated with that necessary change. They also lack the capital necessary to make it happen. Good intentions, in and of them selves, do not alleviation of poverty make.
* The second fault line - In the last twenty years there has been change in the context in which community development and social service initiatives must operate. The first change involves the public sector. The federal government has significantly retrenched from its position of dominance in funding and directing community development activities. In North Carolina, while the state has tried to pick up its fair share, the Professor said that it would be a lie to say that the state has picked up all the responsibility that the federal government has abdicated. What this means is that it is left to local governments to develop, implement, and fund comprehensive measures such as Housing, Water and Sewer, Education, Telecommunications, and all other initiatives required to make a competitive community. Local governments have limited resources, and to believe that the resources that are currently available to them will help them to create a truly competitive community is just something that's not realistic. In the area where Professor Brown-Graham teaches and works, local government is spending 70% of its tax base making its Medicare match. This leaves very little for progressive community development.
* The third and last fault line discussed by Professor Brown-Graham is the one she says is closest to the heart of poverty alleviation. The private sector in our new global market is disconnected from American communities. In a recent article about Senator Edwards' fight against Poverty and the shrinking Middle class, it said:
Globalization gets the blame for moving jobs in manufacturing, service, even medicine offshore and pushing U.S. workers into unemployment. A panel discussion involving Edwards and economists argued that while globalization can't be fought, its disrupting force can be eased.Not-for-profits need the private sector to support them and their efforts. The problem is that there is no private sector leadership in the particular community that Professor Graham-Brown has been working with. There is a "disconnect" because of globalization. There must be collaboration between public, private and not-for-profits in order to effect successful change. Because of globalization, there is no reason for any limited private sector involvement to have any particular civic connection to the community. Unfortunately, local communities are forced to look inward for development strategy solutions because the private sector no longer respects national boundaries, much less local boundaries.
We must think differently about how our communities connect to the new global world order. I recently read an article about business and how they must be convinced to change to meet the needs of the people they serve in the global economy. There must be a new overall understanding of how global issues such as poverty and globalization affect individual companies and the private sector, along with understanding the significance of these signals to search for business opportunities that help to address them. [See this article]
There are certain communities that are remote - - unseen, many of them rural, and the interventions that may work for most communities in need will not work for them. Some of these communities are typically found in rural America, certain communities in the rural Southern Belt, in pockets along the Mexico/US border, and in some Native American communities. Hurricane Katrina pulled away the curtain on one of those once-"invisible" communities.
For those certain communities, redistribution must be seen as an issue of fairness, justice, and necessity. There will be people in these remote and impoverished communities that will require subsidization for some time to come. Public policy has been based on the fallacy that we can walk away from these places after a certain amount of time has passed is unrealistic. It's natural for people to become frustrated when they're told that redistribution will solve the problem of poverty in a certain time frame and it doesn't happen. Tax-paying citizens need to understand that it will take a very long time for redistribution to make any difference and political leaders need to honestly speak about and to convince the public of the need for this type of solution in certain communities.
Thinking about how academic work can serve as a new social architecture for community development that will alleviate poverty in the 21st century will be a great challenge. Political leaders can have an effect on the political/public will to eradicate poverty for many people who are visibly suffering in our communities. We citizens can also have an effect on our communities by becoming involved.
The alleviation of poverty and the success of economic community development will not only rely on academic contributions. It will take all of us to understand what must be done and to learn how to talk to our neighbors in our own communities about alleviating poverty. Conferences held in our own communities may be helpful. So will letters to your newspapers' editors. Teaching ourselves to talk about alleviating poverty can make the difference between politically alienating those who misunderstand poverty and succeeding to brighten the corners of our own cities, towns, and villages with the light of knowledge and inspiration. Most Americans in the middle class are already feeling less secure and we should be appealing to their hope and their shared sense of fairness in order to build a grassroots foundation from the new social architecture aimed toward ending poverty through effective community development. With the collaboration of the private and public sectors, along with not-for-profits, we can help people to help themselves.
As always, thanks to Senator Edwards for leading the way.
Reference and Examples of Community Organization: Organizing Today: Ten Reasons to Cheer! by Dave Beckwith
Democracy promotion should remain an integral part of American foreign policy, but it should not be seen as a principal means of fighting terrorism. We should stigmatize and fight radical Islamism as if the social and political dysfunction of the Arab world did not exist, and we should shrewdly, quietly, patiently and with as many allies as possible promote the amelioration of that dysfunction as if the terrorist problem did not exist. It is when we mix these two issues together that we muddle our understanding of both, with the result that we neither defeat terrorism nor promote democracy but rather the reverse. - WSJ, Fukuyama/GarfinkleStygius has some interesting commentary on yesterday's Wall Street Journal column by Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle.
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who also attended the White House meeting, said after his weekend visit to Iraq he does not believe there is a civil war, but that U.S. troops should not withdraw at this time.The biggest mistake Senator McCain can see is having a friggen CALENDAR?!? Dear God, where is the sanity? Where is the practicality? Why would Senator McCain fail to heed the warnings of those who have learned the lesson already: that the war in Iraq is not now and has never been a war where a "victory" can be quantified to make one more American death worth the result? Afghanistan is still resorting to medieval law in order to persecute Christians. There is a well-documented resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan That is not a victory. The people of Iraq are forming a government that has a Shi'ite majority who is leaning toward the influence of Iran and a theocratic form of government that will enable the men to keep the women down for decades to come. That, to a free woman who appreciates what we have here in the States, is not "a victory."
"I think the biggest mistake we could make is having a calendar dictate the troop strengths over there," he said to reporters at the White House, echoing President George W. Bush's repeated assertion.
"I am confident that we can, and will, and must win because the consequences of failure are catastrophic," McCain said.
"After 2,300 Americans have been killed, 106 from Ohio, and so many Iraqis, we must say that when you go to war, whether you go to war, and
whether you tell the truth about going to war is a moral values issue, too."
- Sojourners' Jim Wallis, at a town hall meeting yesterday in Columbus, Ohio
Their visit came as more violence was reported across Iraq, including a terrifying incident earlier in the week in the western city of Ramadi. On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital.At a press conference in Iraq, Russ Feingold said he believed "a large [U.S.] troop presence has a tendency to fuel the insurgency because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that the U.S. is here to occupy the country."
One teacher, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared retaliation from insurgents, said that most students ran from the classroom but that some stayed to watch. Many stopped coming to school after the incident, he said. Another teacher, who said he moved his mathematics class to his home to accommodate frightened students, said Mihallawi had earlier been threatened because he worked as a translator for U.S. forces in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency.
Mihallawi "looked at us just like he was telling us that we do not have to be scared. Even as we were running out of the door, his looks were still telling us that nothing will happen and we do not have to be scared," said a student, whose father asked that his name not be used. "I heard him screaming for a few seconds, then stop screaming."
The father said his son has had trouble sleeping since the incident. "He always has nightmares and he always wakes up screaming and shaking, talking in his dreams," he said.
"I think that it's very possible that the sectarian differences are inflamed by the fact that U.S. troops are here," he continued, adding that their long-term presence "may well be destabilizing, not stabilizing."John McCain put in his two cents worth:
"I believe that premature troop withdrawal is not in consonance with what's going on the ground."I am of the opinion that McCain's statement was not in consonance with reality. Americans are tiring of politicians who won't talk about the realities that everyone can clearly see. It reminds me of Bush scolding the press for reporting the truth when we all know that over 100 journalists who have wandered around sniffing for "good news" have been kidnapped, shot, or beheaded.
In January, 2004, when the Des Moines Register made an unexpected endorsement of John Edwards as the best presidential pick for participants in Iowa's Democratic Caucuses, it was national news. The Register, an extremely influential newspaper because of its wide circulation in a relatively small state, shook up the Democratic dance card. The Register's editors found themselves being interviewed on national television and radio programs, as political writers for daily newspapers across the country stumbled over themselves to assess the significance of this particularly influential newspaper's endorsement of a still relatively unknown senator. As it turned out, the attention to the endorsement was merited, as Edwards himself acknowledged that his strong second place finish in the caucuses owed much to the boost he got from one of Middle America's most historically powerful and respected publications.
So what would happen if the same newspaper were to come out this year with a strong editorial calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq? And what if that editorial represented a reversal of the newspaper's previous "stay-the-course position?
Would that be news?
The world marked the third anniversary this week of the US's invasion of Iraq and the day columns of tanks entered Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
But once triumphed as the beginning of a new world order, the invasion may have had the opposite effect, former senior Israeli officials said Monday.
Backing Dayan's concern regarding America's ability to act against Iran while stuck in Iraqi mud, Prof. Uzi Arad - a former Mossad official and the founding head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya - said Israel was also at fault for the US's wrong list of priorities.
While America originally thought the war in Iraq would empower it to deal with Iran, it in fact had the opposite effect, Arad said. Israel, he added, also had high hopes for the war in Iraq but all of those had similarly disappeared.
"Israel hoped Iraq would turn pro-Western, would prosper and would become another country that supported peace with Israel," said Arad, who also served as foreign policy adviser to former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. "We thought it [the war] would be able to serve as an example of what democratization can do in the Middle East."
Israel and the US, Arad said, were "caught up in a wrong set of priorities" and instead of invading Iraq and disengaging from the Gaza Strip, the countries should have invested their efforts in curbing Iran's race for nuclear power.
"There is no reason why Iran could not have been referred to the United Nations Security Council a year or two ago before it was at the stage of enriching its uranium like it is now," he said