Hoodwinked

There are those who believe that human nature is so twisted that human's cannot be left to decide for themselves what they should do.  They fail to see the logical fallacy of a government run by humans being somehow more suited to making decisions for people.  There are some who feel that the rules of economics are so inviolable that humans should be left to their own devices.  They fail to see that wealth begets wealth and that the cycle ends in bloody revolution if left to run its course unabated.  The system of government in the United States is brilliant in that it is designed to dampen the oscillations between these extreme positions.  The party of the people and the party of the privileged take turns steering the ship to and fro with neither party gaining enough headway to allow complete disaster to ensue. 

What would happen, however, if one segment of society were hoodwinked?  What if the party of the privileged were able to masquerade as the party of the people?  What if the people who only bought Chevy, Ford, or GM were the same people that supported union breaking, outsourcing, and global corporate governance?  What if the people who called themselves Christians stood for governance that was not really all that compassionate?  What if national security meant alienating the rest of the world with unilateral acts of aggression?  If people fell for such schemes and believed them, then the pendulum could stop swinging.  The wealthy would continue to act in their own best interests while the hapless majority would proudly vote for their own oppression.  Unfortunately, the pendulum must swing or the cycle will run the course that Marx projected and history has demonstrated.  If the vicious cycle of the concentration of wealth is allowed to continue too long, it ends in revolution.  The Republican Party in the USA is indeed the party of the privileged and it is perpetuating its rule by masquerading as a party of the people, a masquerade that must be uncovered to avoid an imbalance too extreme to be easily corrected.

While some fly the Confederate flag, some buy only American Made Goods, and others are content to proudly display American flags, most Republicans consider themselves proud Americans.  In the meantime, their party is granting major military contracts to Airbus over Boeing, signing trade agreements that make unregulated jobs overseas much more appealing to employers than creation of US jobs, and doing everything they can to weaken organized labor in the United States.

While the Republicans talk about eliminating dependence on foreign oil, they offer huge incentives to corporations to build new refineries that increase the demand for foreign oil.  While talking about honor and responsibility, they refuse to sign the Kyoto accord, handcuff the EPA, and make only token gestures to encourage renewable energy development while other countries lead the way in those areas.

Claiming that economic development will only occur if corporations are untaxed, the Republicans imply that only the wealthy can create wealth.  Many ideas die idle in the minds of a stifled middle class that the Republican policies would further stifle.  These ideas would create jobs if middle class tax breaks allowed some in the middle class to accumulate enough of a safety net to risk starting a small business.  But while the Republicans claim to represent small businesses, they represent only those who are doing well enough to afford to pay a higher tax bracket.  Those doing this well are not going to throw in the towel because they are taxed on their wealth.  By reducing the burden on those who are not doing as well, however, more will be allowed to get from point A to point B.  This generates jobs and also gets them to the point where they can afford to pay higher taxes.

The Republican Party has a lot of people hoodwinked.  They believe that economic activity is an end rather than a means.  They believe that social injustice is not a moral problem.  They have been convinced that the wealthy will provide opportunity to the commoners out of the goodness of their hearts without the need for government intervention.  People will see; let's hope it doesn't take starvation to open their eyes.  When the pendulum swings, as it will swing, lets hope it swings within the scope of American government rather than swinging as a hammer swung by commoners upon the American nobility.

Excerpt

Regarding Economic Policy

Jim Said:

... When it comes to such matters, few would dispute that by nature of

being advantaged, the advantaged have an advantage.  Their advantage can

be leveraged to increase their advantage.  A free-market governed only by

self-interest will lead to advantage concentrated in the hands of fewer

and fewer individuals.  The greater the advantage of the advantaged

becomes, the greater will be their ability to manipulate events to further

secure their continued and ever-expanding advantage.

However, free-market systems perform valuable administrative and

bureaucratic functions.  They work towards the greater good in terms of

total accumulation, though they have no regard for distribution.

Government’s role should be to steer the function of free-markets towards

a result that, while not guaranteeing an even distribution of wealth,

strives towards an even distribution of opportunity.  Governments should

mitigate the advantage of advantage while minimizing their impedance of

free-market functions.

Governments must ask what behaviors are likely to be encouraged by their

policies.  Policies that encourage decisions contrary to the greater good

are policies that must be revised.  Policies that are cumbersome to

administer are contrary to the greater good.  This leaves governments with

three guiding principles for economic policies; that policies do not

encourage behavior irrational to the greater good; that policies are not

cumbersome to administer, and that policies encourage an even distribution

of opportunity.

___________________________________________________

Chris said:

If government were able to set objective statements outside of the acting

persons guiding said government, I’d be very closely aligned with your

view. I do completely agree, however, that equality of ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />OPPORTUNITY should

be the goal of government, not of RESULTS as many on the left aim for.

Before I can get too far into it, however, I feel obliged to explain my

view on the free market vs. protectionism. In _theory_ (and, it can be

argued, almost exclusively therein) protectionism serves to protect the

’less advantaged’ from the more advantaged. We have to understand what

this truly means though, and whether there is actually a "greater good"

component to protecting the "less advantaged" from competition.

There is little doubt that Pittsburgh’s steelworkers are benefitted by

protectionist policies aimed at protecting--you guessed it--them. The

question ought to arise though, why are we protecting them? Who is more

advantaged, relative to, say, US Steel? Well, much of the current policies

(as I understnad them) are aimed at protecting the steelworkers from

competition from Japan. We place a tariff on Japanese imports of steel,

thus raising the price of Japanese steel such that it is at best on par

with American steel, which, as we know by now, has a higher price and is

thus less competitive. As Steel mills grow ever more bureaucratic and

unionized, prices rise which means, naturally, that tariffs rise. The

steel mills have operated within a system for a long, long time now where

they do not truly ever have to compete, due to anti-competitive tariffs,

import quotas, etc etc. So, who wins and who loses?

The easy answer is: the steelworkers and their immediate families win.

Every other American consumer loses. By "protecting" the inefficiency of

the steel mills, we have placed the costs of their inefficiency not on

them but on the common person’s wallet. If the free market were in control

of things (which it never has been in the United States, including during

the "Gilded Age"), US Steel would have gone out of business decades ago.

That seems like a bad thing, doesn’t it? I argue that it would be a good

thing. It would be unfortunate, in the short-run for the families of those

affected by layoffs and certainly for the businessmen who couldn’t

efficiently produce their wares, but in the medium and long-runs, we see

all those workers re-employed in more productive capacities. How do we

know they are more productive? Because they can exist without the crutches

of government. There is no shortage of innovation in America, but

protectionism can squash it by lowering or eliminating the costs of

competition. Do you have any doubt that if US Steel were to go out of

business within months there would be another steel company, having likely

purchased the bulk of US Steel’s land and equipment, would start another

steel company? In reality, there would be a relative blossoming of the

steel industry -- three, four, five entrepreneurs see an opening in the

market and feel that they can improve on the processes of US Steel, but

hey, screw that, we can beat JAPAN too.

This goes back one of your issues raised... the advantaged tend to stay

advantaged, and when opportunities arise, they are best able to grasp for

it. You are correct. But it ignores the single most important strength of

the United States populace. Whats that? Income mobility. How many people

are in the bottom 20%? What about the top 20%? Sounds like, I dunno...

20%? Thats the point. It sounds like that, but its not true. The

"quintile" system of incomes measure precisely that -- income, not people.

Less than 10% are in the bottom 20% of incomes, with the bulk being in the

3rd and 4th quintile. The most remarkable thing, however, is the mobility.

The measured the income quintile stuff in 1990 and again 2000. What did

they find? Of the people in the bottom two quintiles, about 2/3rds rose to

the next or higher. About 10% moved into the top quintile. Of those in the

top quintile, about 50% dropped out of that quintile into one of the other

80%. Those numbers are intentionally obfuscated, but its quite remarkable

when you look at it.

In my view, a free market system in which individuals act in their

self-interest does not lead inevitably to fewer and fewer people with more

and more power. In fact, it is the governmental intervention that leads to

that... the regulations, barriers to entry in industry, government work

contracts, amongst many other means... that allow the government --

elected _people_ who will act in their _self-interest_ in any system, free

market, command or something in the middle--to pick and choose the

businesses that rise to power.

Self-interest, recall, is not selfishness. It is acting towards what one

values. The axiom of human action (Ludwig von Mises) states simply that

every action made by a human will be made with the goal being to increase

their happiness. For example, Mother Teresa acted in her own

self-interest, not because she was forced. It is in the self-interest of

the business owner to make her product available to as many people as

possible so long as it is profitable. It is in her self-interest to have

the best people available working under her, whatever the cost (look at

Henry Ford, who paid well above the market wage knowing that he could

attract the best and the brightest, which he did). This is not always the

case, of course. Sometimes, like in Walmart’s case, it is often wise to

attract as many employees as economically feasible, to do relatively

unskilled labor, with the possibility of internal training and ascension.

This is a social good, just like Henry Ford’s was. If it wasn’t, then

3000-6000 people wouldn’t regularly apply for Wal-Mart jobs open store

openings, as they did at recent openings in Chicago and outside NYC. There

is no free market "concern" for distribution, but there doesn’t need to

be. The free market, like the government, cannot be concerned with

anything because it is mindless. The government is made up of free-willed

persons, just as the free market it, and they do not necessarily have

different objectives in being there...

I could go on, but I think I’m rambling. haha. sorry for the long rant.

While I tend to disagree with what you wrote, I like it quite a bit. I

think the only real disagreements are rooted in our different conceptions

of government and market forces, though I imagine if we shared those

conceptions, we’d be pretty much in line with eachothers thoughts.

______________________________________________________

Jim Said:

By no means do I consider the example of the US Steel Industry to be an

example of good government intervention.  My inspiration was Hamilton’s

encouragement of tariffs in early America to get the American

Manufacturing Industries off the ground.  Clearly the American Steel

industry has not sufferred from a paucity of opportunity or a head-start

that was given to the Japanese.  I don’t believe Hamilton thought tariffs

would or should continue indefinately, rather they would be phased out

over time once US industries became competitive.

Hamilton’s America is to a poor adult with no connections as today’s

America is to a lazy rich kid.  The former may warrant a Pell grant

(protecionist policy), the latter does not.  Again, I think the US is good

at providing an even distribution of opportunity.  My concern is that we

could evolve into a place where this is not the case.  I did not mean to

imply that the US government is doing a poor job of formulating economic

policies; though it is of course imperfect.  I merely meant to state what

I felt should be guiding principles.

I appreciate the distinction you made between self-interest and

selfishness.  In fact, the oscillation between mercantilism and liberalism

(in the classical economic sense) seems to parallel the internal struggles

many individuals have between their self interest in the greater good and

their self interest in their own power / wealth.  I find it interesting

that Jesus said, "...no one takes it from me, but I lay it down."  In the

same way, the powerful and the wealthy have to take interest in an even

distribution of opportunity in order to prevent what I consider the risk

of an increasingly uneven distribution of wealth.  I am happy to live in a

country where the income mobility is as you describe it; but I think I

think the risk for wealth spiraling into an ever tightening circle of the

priviliged few still exists.

A More Perfect Union

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/ "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild." That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities. A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny. Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley." "I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. -----

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh is right about a couple of things.  Republicans who have supported Clinton have prolonged the Demoocratic nomination process, and maybe they think they have done themselves a favor.  But is it worth the risk?  Obama as president would at least work with Republicans, Hillary is "my way or the highway," and with the prospect of a Democratic House and Senate likely, she may just get her way.

True, Hillary would be easier to defeat.  However she's already proven that she has political resilience and that she'll do whatever it takes to win.  The democratic base is in love with the Clintons.  The nation at large is sick of Republicans.  Is it worth risking a Hillary presidency to get an "easier" oppenent?

Republicans who, as I do, distrust and loathe Hillary have actually done the Republican party a great dis-service.  By guaranteeing a brokered convention, Obama may be forced to give Hillary a VP nod she doesn't deserve to resolve the fact that he won't have 2025 delegates (though he'll have a lead).  True, this makes the election easier for McCain to win.  But again, is it worth the risk?  Obama / Clinton still may win, even though they lose both the racists and the mysogynists.  If they do, Hillary will only be 68 in 2016.  Is it worth the risk?

I say no.  True, Obama's positions are apalling to most Republicans, but he is trustworthy.  His intentions are good.  He will compromise, which Hillary will not.  A 70% chance of Obama is better than a 50% chance of Hillary.  That Republicans would waste their precious time supporting someone as loathsome as Hillary is a case of Rush Limbaugh leading lambs to the slaughter.  If Republicans want to undue the damage they did in handing Hillary Texas and Ohio, they'll back Obama in Pennsylvania so that Obama doesn't have to give her a VP nod that she clearly doesn't deserve.

Jim

PS - by the way, people say Republicans didn't support Clinton, but its clear they did.  Obama's take on Republicans and Independents fell from 75% to 55% based on exit polls.  In addition, people can lie in exit polls and would be more likely to say they supported Obama if they were a Limbaugh Clinton supporter.  They don't want Democrats knowing they affected the result, or else the Democratic superdelegates will rally behind Obama to thwart the Republicans.