Leadership

It takes intelligence, a knowledge of how to move people and to get things done, and a lot of other qualities like stubbornness or determination and energy. Our president, Barack Obama, has shown a lot of those qualities and an amazing patience with the obstructive Republicans who have put politics above the nation's well-being.

Republicans have been pretending for a long time to be more moderate than they actually are. For example, they invented the healthcare reform idea (including the individual mandate) which was implemented in Massachussetts and signed by Governor Mitt Romney and later adopted by Pres. Obama and the Democrats. Yet, Republicans have opposed this law (the PPACA or Obamacare) as vigorously as any I've ever seen. How can it be leadership to create something, argue for it and then oppose it with everything you can?

Pres. Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (in 2009) went ahead because they knew it would benefit millions of people and it would improve health care and it would control costs -- necessary to the long-term continuation of Medicare. That's leadership.

Did you know the Republicans invented the Cap & Trade system meant to fight climate change? They have also voted against it in the U.S. Senate and argued in campaigns for letting the coal plants of America and the world continue to pollute without constraint.

Pres. Obama has used the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate industry to protect the environment despite there being little political support and tremendous opposition. That's leadership.

During the Reagan and Bush years, including when Clinton was president, the Republicans favored deregulation of the financial industry and they pushed and pushed for that until, in 2007 & 2008, the economy fell apart and essentially stopped working. Pres. Obama took office in January of 2009 with unemployment increasing by millions and the economy sinking like a rock. It wasn't a very nice gift from the Bush administration. He and the Federal Reserve did everything possible and necessary to stop the crash and to put the system back onto a solid foundation which would last for many years. Yet the Republicans have argued this wasn't necessary and that it was awful and should be repealed.

Pres. Obama did what was needed to make the economy work and took the slings & arrows from the Republicans and the public in general. That's leadership.

Now when the economy is doing better the Republicans are trying to claim they were somehow responsible for these good things. It is incomprehensible.

Time and time again we see the president and his Democratic supporters in Congress tackling the difficult problems and those who will not follow attacking him. It reflects the old saying, "no good deed goes unpunished".

Recently Pres. Obama has been arguing the immigration system is broken and needs major repair. The Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to pass legislation which would improve things. The Speaker of the House won't bring the bill up for a vote, despite the fact there are probably sufficient votes to pass it. There is little followership to support the president's leadership.

The president went ahead with some new Executive Order regulations to try to improve the immigration system and all he's heard is anger from the Republicans, the media and much of the public. Doing what is useful and good for America isn't always popular. But, it's leadership in action.

For this the president's job approval poll numbers have dropped to only about 42%. It's not easy leading when there isn't both a consensus of what should be done and political support for it. But, leadership does what it must.

Now, if only we could get the Republicans to find some political advantage in agreeing. If they're constantly held back by political concerns they can never go along with the president -- and America is held back.

Interesting Developments

Simon Wiesenthal ADL Jews protected Neo-Nazis in Ukraine?


Three articles on elections & voting:

Emails detail Florida GOP gerrymandering effort

Winning the vote, losing the election, in Michigan

About Touch-Screen Voting


And the public is even more out of touch than politicians:

What's the unemployment rate? 32% according to some people


Solar Power to the rescue!!!

Solar cloth parking lots? What's that?

When will Solar & Wind be price competitive with Coal & other 'traditional' fuels? Now? Really?


The time for tax reform is now!

One reason we definitely need tax reform now

Democratic Problems

Democrats got beat in the mid-terms and the Republicans are now pretending they aren't so radical and they might be interested in legislating. This means they could have been legislating before, but only held off to create a stalemate and to make the president look bad. Now they have power and it's dangerous.

The first issue I've read about is a potentially new position regarding Afghanistan. I don't know that anything has changed to require the president to change his position (leaving Afghanistan completely by the end of the year), but the Republicans win Congress and suddenly there's discussion of leaving some thousand soldiers in Afghanistan for the indefinite future. Is this what the Republican electorate was voting to get? No. The Republicans said they were trying to stop president Obama and the electorate voted for that. But, here we are.

Democrats just got beat and now the president is (supposedly) considering a change of policy on Afghanistan. Isn't it enough we just got beat, but why should we also give the Republicans another big stick to beat us over the head. Why should we make it all so clear to the public that Democrats don't stand for anything for very long? Why should we care if Putin and other world leaders see our president as a vacillating nothing?

If we leave troops in Afghanistan it will only be written in the history books that Democrats don't know how to govern and President Obama was a failure. How else could they write it?

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) Spoke

I had been listening to one political discussion and laid down to take a nap on my couch when I heard Senator Jeff Sessions speaking. Apparently one show ended and another had begun. Usually I might have changed channels or turned off the t.v., but I was nearly asleep and left it going.

Mostly I didn't hear what he had to say, but as I was waking he was nearing the end of his speech. So, I heard him say something most unusual. He said that taking advice from Pres. Hoover, yes Hoover, we should consider limiting all immigration to America to give time for the American wage to rise. He said that incoming people had the effect on the economy of pushing down wages.

Is this really the state of Republican economic analysis today. Is that belief held by others in the Republican party?

To negate the idea that this was something he just mentioned, he went into some detail about statistics, thus showing he had seriously looked at this idea. I wonder if he knows this kind of argument was sometimes used by those in the past who disliked all foreigners and simply disguised that with shallow arguments such as the economic one.

Science Produces, Wall St. and Politicians Not So Much

In today's post I'm going to provide URL links to some very interesting developments. The first are scientific or technological developments which can benefit mankind tremendously. The others are indications of how the rest of the world fights over crumbs.


First, science produces:

Perhaps the biggest story about energy in our lifetimes!

Solar Power To Go

More Ethanol Bio-Fuels

Lower-Energy LED Lightbulbs!

Water From The AIR -- Imagine That

Discovered: Genes Associated With Violent Behavior

A Hospital That Produces More Energy Than It Uses -- How?

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Minestrone Soup for the Soul

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Second, other human endeavors:

Markets Rigged ?????

Lawsuit Over Rigged Markets

Income Inequality Hurts Business !!!

Programmer Says Electronic Voting Can Be Rigged...Easily

Does Our Election System Really Work?

Who Won the Civil War?

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert Mumbles

Hastert was interviewed on a morning C-SPAN program and among other things he said:

The Hastert Rule isn't really a rule at all. It just means that if there are 218 House members who will support a bill you bring it up for a vote AND that any Speaker who doesn't ensure a majority of his caucus can support a bill he probably won't be Speaker very long. Naturally these two ideas are contradictory. The way current Speaker of the House John Boehner has been operating (his version of the Hastert Rule) is that he ONLY brings a bill up for a vote if the majority of the Republican caucus will support it. That, naturally, divides the House by denying Democrats any chance whatsoever to find coalitions across the aisle on any bill. It's the most divisive behavior (in my memory) of any House Speaker...ever. I don't know that he does it of his own accord. It's probably forced on him by his caucus and the TEA party Republicans. Is it any wonder Boehner can't pass bills which are also brought up for a vote in the Senate. They're so partisan no Democrats in the Senate will touch them. Even Dennis Hastert's House (ending in 2006) did better than that.

He also said, "You either pay interest on the debt or on the inflation." Bizzare. Sure sure, the government pays interest on the debt and inflation implies higher costs for people. But, when there is debt it means we didn't raise enough taxes to pay our bills and the rich are the ones most likely to lend to the government and to receive back their principal and interest. So, it's a kind of welfare program for tax cheats (if you will). On the other hand, inflation hits everyone who consumes things. In a sense, like a consumption tax, that's regressive since the poor spend every penny they've got and the rich only spend part of their income. So, if we would just tax the rich, so goes Hastert's theory, and pay down the debt, the economy would boom and raise inflation and hurt the poor. But, isn't it still better to have a working work-force rather than have a bad economy requiring bigger government safety net spending to help the unemployed? His implication that you have to have either debt or inflation is also probably not to be believed. Underlying a complicated argument with one big lie or mistake isn't helpful.

Republicans are very confused.

It's About Time

Recently one of my nieces was married and at the wedding and the after-party everyone was saying "It's about time" because they had been engaged a long time. I think the president and Congress have had a similar kind of relationship: the Republicans didn't want to give the president any legislative victories, but now the Republicans have gained leadership positions and can take some of the credit for achievements. The Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) in particular, say they are now ready to find agreements and move the country forward. Hallelujah.

Now is the time for President Obama to show his great leadership and begin pushing the legislation of most importance to the country.

There are of course, some Liberal issues (if there is such a thing) which Republicans won't touch, so those will have to wait. But, on issues where Republicans have their own ideas there has to be room for progress.


Areas which may be of common or overlapping interest:

budget & appropriations, immigration reform (possibly without any citizenship possibilities), tax reform (probably takes far too long to get done soon), infrastructure spending, agreements on presidential action to destroy ISIL, campaign contribution transparency to end "dark" money which may come from foreign sources we don't want in American politics, raising the taxable-income cap to raise more money for Social Security and international trade (TPP)

This is a moment when the president's sense of "the urgency of now" can be shown most clearly!

2014 Elections

I won't pretend I know the cause of everything which has and is happening in the elections, but one particular bit of information was very telling: that this electorate is much older than in the 2012 election where Pres. Obama was re-elected with over 50% support. Also, it was not as young. This may sound redundant, but it isn't. More older voters turned out, making it older AND many fewer younger voters turned out, making it older. This is particularly surprising since the Democrats knew the turnout of young voters was crucial. And, how the Republicans got the older voters to turn out against Pres. Obama has to be studied.

A lot of discussion among Democrats recently has been about the odd fact that Republican voters often vote against their own natural interests. In this election it's strange to see the older voters supporting Republicans who have discussed eliminating Medicare and Social Security. For those voters to have supported Republicans despite those policy positions is stunning. On the flip side is the question of why younger voters didn't vote, despite Democrat efforts to get them to the polling places.

The consequences of Republicans taking control of the Senate will obviously be significant and obviously an increase in the power of Republicans to oppose the president. If voters were angry about the inability of Democrats & Republicans to work together to get things done they didn't solve that by splitting power this way. Is it possible (again) they're voting against their own interests? The electorate isn't always easy to understand.

For those who think each election of this kind is the beginning of a huge trend I would remind them there were more Democratic incumbents up for reelection this time. In two years that will reverse and there will be even more Republican incumbents up for reelection.