MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Presumption

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I have no problem whatsoever with Caroline Kennedy being named to the United States Senate seat from New York that Hillary Clinton will be vacating if she is confirmed as the new Secretary of State. In fact, I could offer a couple of powerful argument why Ms. Kennedy should be named (and I will later in this post) but an artist friend, Zina Saunders, sent me this piece that I could not resist posting:

Her Highn… I Mean, Senator Caroline Kennedy (by Zina Saunders, December 26th, 2008)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Caroline Kennedy’s quest for the Senate seat being left vacant by Hillary Clinton. Questions have been raised about Kennedy’s qualifications and experience and financial entanglements …to read more, go here and here.

Caroline Kennedy’s bid is audacious, sure, and carries a certain presumptuousness that I think Ms. Saunders sought to puncture in this art. I love the piece. It is great, especially her depiction of the putative kingmakers, the Rev. Al and Uncle Moneybags. But her audacity is precisely the reason why I think Ms.Kennedy should be named to this seat. She has the stature to be presumptuous, to expect that the seat would be handed to her.

Yes, some of the people handling Ms. Kennedy’s bid have made missteps, including the efforts to strong-arm some political leaders to jump on-board. They need to show some class. But I blame New York Gov. David Paterson for most of the backlash that is beginning to build against Ms. Kennedy. The governor is outspoken and plainspoken and, often, that is part of his charm. Not in this case. Paterson has appeared, at times, petulant.  with reporters when discussing Ms. Kennedy’s bid. He needs to show some class.

Any of New York’s political class who gets the nod, Andrew Cuomo included, would come into the role with a tremendous status gap that the 51-year-old daughter of a martyred president of the United States has never known since the day she was born and would never suffer from as long as she lives.

Who could better serve the interest of New Yorkers? A woman who comes the closest to being America’s royalty, or some sweaty New York politician? Yeah, Chuck Schumer is great and Al D’Amato was, whatever, but it should not be that hard. I can understand wanting to puncture the kind of presumptuousness that attend to people like Caroline Kennedy, certainly. It can be unbecoming.

But Ms. Kennedy brings to her bid a record of public service equal to, if not better than, that of many who have sought the office.

When our carpet-bagging First Lady, Hillary Clinton, first sought the office, was she really that much more qualified than Caroline Kennedy is now? No. I believe New Yorkers start out way ahead with Caroline as their United States senator.

December 26, 2008
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Illinois Gov. arrested in corruption crime spree

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Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested Tuesday by FBI agents for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a “staggering” level of corruption involving pay-to-play politics in Illinois’ top office.

The predawn rousting of Gov. Rod Blagojevich from his Ravenswood Manor home Tuesday marked a stunning climax to a tale of alleged public corruption unmatched in Illinois’ storied history of elected scoundrels and thrust the state into an unprecedented political crisis.

* Editorial: Gov. Blagojevich, resign

* Blagojevich: Obama Senate seat “a [effing] valuable thing”

FULL COVERAGE IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE Illinoisans awoke to news that their governor had been arrested, handcuffed and hauled before a federal magistrate on sweeping charges he conspired to sell his office many times over–including putting a price on the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Continue . . .

December 9, 2008
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City for $ale*

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Alvaro Diaz-Rubio
I am a big fan of Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice. The past week ended without me hearing much about his piece exposing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the seamy dealings he pulled to get the city’s money and political class to knuckle under and allow him to run for a third term as mayor.

This is the opening paragraph of The Transformation of Mike Bloomberg:
Mike Bloomberg is the best mayor—in fact, the best state or city chief executive—I’ve covered in 31 years at the Voice. He’s also the worst.
The piece then went on to describe how Bloomberg’s money and power has corrupted every institution and seeped into every fabric of city life, to the point where no one, hoping some of his largess would come their way, would dare oppose him on anything. This is how Barrett closed:
I remember in the early Bloomberg days—seizing any opportunity to observe, with pleasure—that his money had bought us a leader that was finally free of the circle of donors, lobbyists, and powerbrokers that consumed earlier mayors and confounded the public good.

His message, and it once was true, was that he owed nothing to anybody. He began parceling himself out in the 2005 campaign, when he did five contracts with unions that endorsed him and spent more of our money to re-elect himself than his own. And since his re-election was never in doubt, he dipped into his money and ours, it turned out, for vanity: It merely increased his margin of victory. Imagine how many own a piece of him now.

If you believe it’s worth all of this to get a savvy hand at the tiller in turbulent times, think back to what the Times wrote in 2001 when they endorsed his opponent: “Even within the annals of businessmen-candidates, he is ill-matched to the job he covets. His company has no stockholders and no unions. It is a brand-new business, its corporate culture and decision-making structure devised to suit his character. . . . Many of Mr. Bloomberg’s greatest talents would turn out to be utterly beside the point.” When the bursting collective bargaining, pension, and debt costs of the recent Bloomberg boom years are considered, the Times of old might have had a point. As it also had as recently as June 9, when it warned against a term-limits gambit and urged Bloomberg to seek another office: “We are wary of changing the rules just to suit the ambition of a particular politician.”

Bloomberg is so set on writing his own story that he decided to produce a memoir, set for release just as he left City Hall. He asked Margaret Carlson, who is on Bloomberg L.P.’s payroll, to collaborate on it. But he recently put it off, the Times said, because he was worried about its “boastful tone” possibly turning off voters. The book might have had other, related problems: A tell-all is fine for someone walking away from the game, but not for someone about to begin a new campaign. The claimed successes might have been an irresistible target for reporters, and the petty side of Mike may have led him to dish on people he now needs to seduce one more time. Obviously, most candidates would think that a bestseller in a campaign year, with a 300,000 initial printing, would be an asset. But not Mike, who isn’t ready yet to buy his own history. He’s determined, regardless of the moral costs, to make history instead.

Barrett’s piece is a cautionary tale. It says that whatever good Bloomberg may have meant the city, his money and power has become too corrupting, that the good citizens of Gotham would do well turn their back on their putative savior from financial doom.
November 24, 2008
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An important question

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I will admit that I grew to dislike Hillary Clinton during the year and found how she ran her campaign as well as the contest with Sen. Barack Obama more than disgraceful. I don’t want her as secretary of state. The president-elect is a lot smarter man than I’ll ever be so, if he wants her in this role, more power to him. He was elected to make decisions like this.

The New York Times published an opinion-editorial, What’s So Special About a Team of Rivals?, by JAMES OAKES that I think is important to read.

Oakes’ piece corrects some of the gauzy history around Abraham Lincoln, fostered largely by Pulitzer-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, that this was such a monumentally wise idea.

Rather than it being a stroke of genius, Lincoln’s decision to appoint his main rivals for the Republican nomination into his cabinet was rather routine and mundane:

INSPIRED by the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, President-elect Barack Obama is considering appointing a “team of rivals” to his cabinet — if rumors about the nomination of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state are true. But there’s more mythology than history in the idea that Lincoln showed exceptional political skill in offering cabinet positions to the men he had beaten in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination.

For one thing, there was nothing new in what Lincoln did. By tradition, presidents-elect reserved a cabinet position, often secretary of state, for the leading rival in their party. John Quincy Adams inaugurated the practice by appointing one of his presidential rivals, Henry Clay, to that post. It was a controversial move in 1824; enemies of Adams denounced the appointment as a corrupt bargain.

By the 1850s, the practice had become a tradition. In that decade, Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan installed in their cabinets men who had been major rivals for their party’s nomination. Daniel Webster, who lost the Whig Party nod in 1848, became Fillmore’s secretary of state. William Marcy, after failing to win the 1852 Democratic nomination, took the same position in Pierce’s cabinet. Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee in 1848 and a man whose presidential dreams never diminished, was appointed Buchanan’s secretary of state in 1857. These were not notably successful administrations. Most historians agree that Pierce and Buchanan rank among the worst presidents in American history. There was nothing particularly unusual, or even impressive, when Lincoln followed this well-established practice.

All we’ve heard from the chattering class is “team of rivals”, “team of rivals”, “team of rivals” since news first came out (leaked by the Clintons) that HRC is under consideration by Obama.

The Clintons, Bill and Hillary, are a special dose of poison. They suck up so much of the oxygen in the room whenever they’re involved in anything that, I think, it is best to leave them aside if you do not have to deal with them. I think this is such a time.

The president-elect will have many opportunities to make mistakes. Does he have to start with this one?

November 20, 2008
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On “60 Minutes”

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(CBS) Since Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States 12 days ago, he has largely remained out of sight, getting high-level government briefings and conferring with his transition team. But he surfaced on Friday afternoon in Chicago, alongside his wife Michelle to give 60 Minutes his first post-election interview.

It covers a wide range of subjects including the economy, the ailing automobile industry, the government’s $700 billion bailout program, their visit to the White House, the emotions of election night and the quest for a family dog. You’ll hear all of it. But we begin with the president-elect and his thoughts about the new job.

Steve Kroft: So here we are.

President-elect Barack Obama: Here we are.

Kroft: How’s your life changed in the last ten days?

Mr. Obama: Well, I tell you what, there seem to be more people hovering around me. That’s for sure. And, on the other hand, I’m sleeping in my own bed over the last ten days, which is quite a treat. Michelle always wakes up earlier than I do. So listen to her roaming around and having the girls come in and, you know, jump in your bed. It’s a great feeling. Yeah.

Kroft: Has this been easier than the campaign trail?

Mr. Obama: Well, it’s different. I think that during the campaign it is just a constant frenetic, forward momentum. Here, I’m stationary. But the issues come to you. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of problems, a lot of big challenges.

Kroft: Have there been moments when you’ve said, ‘What did I get myself into?’

Mr. Obama: Surprisingly enough, I feel right now that I’m doing what I should be doing. That gives me a certain sense of calm. I will say that the challenges that we’re confronting are enormous. And they’re multiple. And so there are times during the course of a given a day where you think, ‘Where do I start?’
Read More

November 17, 2008
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March of history

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I found this story, From slave cabin to White House, a family rooted in black America, published by the Times of London, over the weekend and could not get over it.

As an immigrant to this country, I cannot claim to know what African-Americans who have slaves for ancestors must feel at this barrier-shattering historic moment. I know how I feel and the hope it gives me about the future of my children in particular, about our society in general, and especially the world.

I have been trying to collect my thoughts on all that, which I’ll share in a future post.

Meanwhile, it is interesting that the Times, a British newspaper, published this story about Michelle Obama’s family. I have not a read a comparable piece of journalism in an American newspaper.

Over almost four centuries, countless Africans were chained in slave ships for the dreaded “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Although there is no definitive total, Unesco estimates that 14,270,000 Africans were sold into slavery in the New World. By the time of the American Revolution, one out of five people in the Colonies was a slave, and the majority of people in South Carolina were black (African-Americans now make up about an eighth of the US population). So many slaves were shipped to South Carolina’s Lowcountry that the region is sometimes described as the Ellis Island of African-Americans – a reference to the immigration station in New York harbour that processed tens of millions of new arrivals from Europe – and that Mrs Obama can trace her family back to this area shows the extent of her African-American roots. Her husband has called her “the most quintessentially American woman I know” and her lineage could displace that of Alex Haley, the author of Roots, as the model of the African-American experience.

The Friendfield Plantation dates to 1733 when John Ouldfield received a 630-acre land grant along the Sampit River. James Withers, a wealthy brickmaker, indigo planter and rice farmer from Charleston, bought the property the following year and it remained in his family until 1879. Before the civil war, rice cultivation in South Carolina made plantation owners immensely rich – the port of Georgetown even shipped its “Carolina Gold” to China – and the convention is that slaves provided only labour, but recent academic research has revised this view. In her book Black Rice, Professor Judith Carney argues that slaves from the “Rice Coast” of West Africa taught their owners much of how to grow the crop. An early newspaper advertisement in Charleston, for example, offered for sale 250 slaves “from the Windward and Rice Coast, valued for their knowledge of rice culture”.

History does not record how Jim Robinson arrived on the Friendfield Plantation. Research by The Washington Post shows that he was born in about 1850 and suggests that he lived on the plantation as a slave until the civil war. The 1880 census describes him living near the plantation’s white owners as an illiterate farmhand with a three-year-old son, Gabriel. A second son, Fraser, Mrs Obama’s great-grandfather, was born in 1884.

I won’t talk here about the role of the British in the slave trade. Instead, I want us, as we reckon with this historic moment, to recognize where this march of history has brought Michelle Obama, her children, her us, and our nation.

November 17, 2008
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Ayers again

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The remarkable thing here is that Bill Ayers was utterly reasonable in the interview while his questioner, Chris Cuomo, seemed desperate.

First Hillary Clinton, then John McCain and Sarah Palin went out of their way to destroy William Ayers. Anyone who has gone through this kind of crucible has every right to be hurt, angry and bitter. Ayers, other than pointing out that the political community is being dishonest in trying to damage President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign through guilt-by-association, was anything but.

I know Mr. Ayers, who has maintained his dignity throughout all this, has a book to sell, but it’s really time to let well enough alone. Obama is nobody’s terrorist. Let’s get down to discuss problems facing the nation.

November 14, 2008
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Debate Reaction

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This was by far the worst debate performance for each candidate.

Senator Obama was flat and professorial for most of the night. He was clearly in run-out-the-clock mode, wanting to stay cool and avoid any game-changing mistakes. That’s fine as a strategy, but he faltered on execution. Defense does not mean giving long-winded, professorial answers. Even though playing it safe, Obama should have been more focused in his answers, emphasizing values rather than the intellectual underpinnings of his ten-point policy programs. Obama sounded underprepared to me.

On the plus side, Obama worked the camera extremely well. He spoke directly to the people and, at his best, came across as sincere. When Senator McCain spoke, Obama kept his expressions respectful and calm. It was a huge improvement over some of the final primary debates, when Obama looked annoyed when Senator Clinton spoke. Obama also scored a few points with well timed colloquialisms. I particularly liked “use ’em or lose ’em.”

Senator McCain, on the other hand, was a train wreck. Visually, the format could not have been worse for him. It was painful to watch a man so uncomfortable and so openly contemptuous of his opponent. The blinking and rolling of his eyes, the darting of his tongue, and his clear agitation in the seat are not going to serve him well at all. The more people see of McCain up close, the less presidential he looks.

But the more serious problem for McCain was the one that Nate Silver captures here. McCain lost all credibility when he first accused Obama of running the more negative campaign — something that polls say the voters clearly don’t believe — then launched an attack about William Ayers, and then claim that his campaign is all about the economy. It was ridiculous. Undecided voters in TIME’s focus group were laughing at him. Also ridiculous was McCain’s assertion that “of course” he will balance the budget in 4 years. Doesanybody believe that? It was moment of clear desperation.

On the plus side for McCain was his economic argument in the first 20 minutes of the debate. Even after all these years, the Reagan message on taxes and trickle-down economics still resonates. McCain also got off the best soundbite of the night (“I’m not George Bush…”), but even that struck me as not particularly credible coming so late in the game. Obama has already defined McCain with the voters as having supported Bush 90% of the time.

Even though I give a thumbs down to both candidates, Obama was the clear winner because he was much less awful than McCain on visuals alone, and he succeeded in avoiding any game-changing mistakes.

With only 19 days remaining, the dynamics of this race have ossified. I’d expect the RNC to give McCain one last chance to shake things up. If the race doesn’t show signs of changing dramatically in a week or so, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the RNC pull its efforts on the presidential race and focus on saving the Senate seats in Kentucky and Georgia.

Cross-posted from Facebook.

October 16, 2008
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It would be Nice if the Final Debate was a True Debate

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sent us this message:

As someone who had the pleasure of coaching and judging competitive debate and forensics, let me begin by saying the previous forums for both presidential and vice presidential debates have been very loose on the rules. It would be so nice if the debate format for the final debate October 15th was followed correctly.

We the audience would then have the opportunity to hear an organized point-counterpoint presentation of the issues within a predetermined time limit free of fluff and confusion.

My wish list is pretty basic and includes:

-Answer the question asked 

-Allow opponent equal time for rebuttal

-Stick to the issues

-Stay in time and don’t ramble

-Shake hands before and after(maintain decorum)

-Stay in one place, look presidential please, (this is a job interview)

Click on this article for more insight: 

How Bob Schieffer can make this year’s final debate interesting. – By Jeff Greenfield – Slate Magazine

The DAVISReport

POSTED BY WWW.EILEENDAVIS.BLOGSPOT.COM THE DAVIS REPORT – THE VOICE OF CENTRAL VIRGINIA AND THE CAPITAL CITY.

October 15, 2008
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Update: Trumka’s transcript

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This is a transcript of my post a week ago on AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka speech on Racism and Obama.

“You see brothers and sisters, there’s not a single good reason for any worker — especially any union member — to vote against Barack Obama.

There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not white.

And I want to talk about that because I saw that for myself during the Pennsylvania primary.

I went back home to vote in Nemacolin and I ran into a woman I’d known for years. She was active in Democratic politics when I was still in grade school.

We got to talking and I asked if she’d made up her mind who she was supporting and she said: ‘Oh absolutely, I’m voting for Hillary, there’s no way I’d ever vote for Obama.’

Well, why’s that? ‘Because he’s a Muslim.’

I told her, ‘That’s not true — he’s as much a Christian as you and me, so what if he’s muslim.’

Then she shook her head and said, ‘He won’t wear an American flag pin.’

I don’t have one on and neither do you.

But, ‘C’mon, he wears one plenty of times. He just says it takes more than wearing a flag pin to be patriotic.’

‘Well, I just don’t trust him.’

Why is that?

Her voice dropped just a bit: ‘Because he’s black.’

I said, ‘Look around. Nemacolin’s a dying town. There’re no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there’s no future here. And here’s a man, Barack Obama, who’s going to fight for people like us and you won’t vote for him because of the color of his skin.’

Brothers and sisters, we can’t tap dance around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman.

A lot of them are good union people; they just can’t get past this idea that there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can’t afford to look the other way.

I’m not one for quoting dead philosophers, but back in the 1700s, Edmund Burke said: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Well, there’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.

We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker — how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table and how we all end up losing.

But we’ve seen something else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together no one can keep us down.

That’s why the CIO was created. That’s why industrial unions were the first to stand up against lynching and segregation. People need to know that it was the Steel Workers Organizing Committee — this union — that was founded on the principal of organizing all workers without regard to race. That’s why the labor movement — imperfect as we are — is the most integrated institution in American life.

I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples’ faces and calling them racist; instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding on to their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes — if they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers — there’s only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on their side… only one candidate who’s going to stand up for their families… only one candidate who’s earned their votes… and his name is Barack Obama!

And come November we are going to elect him president.

And after he’s elected we are going to hit the ground running so that, years from now, we’re going to be able to tell our grandchildren that 2008 was the year this country finally turned its back on men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain.

We’re going to be able to say that 2008 was the year we started ending the war in Iraq so we could use that money to create new jobs building wind generators, solar collectors, clean coal technology and retrofitting millions of buildings all across this country

We’re going to be able to look back and say that 2008 was the year the tide began to turn against the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Ann Coulters and the right wing hate machine.”

 

October 10, 2008
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