Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 146 of 177)

Here at Better Donkey. Ironic writing about Tigers at a Donkey blog, but they’re all donkey blogs.

Well, they don’t like government. So, why would they associate with it?

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for awhile now, told someone I’d right over a week ago (Emmett, Emmett, Emmett), and have now just been reminded to get on the stick.

So, Jack says:

Mark posts a comment in his own blog that spells out exactly why I’d rather be a “little l” libertarian than be a Libertarian party member. Quoted in its entirety, Mark said:

I don’t agree with Free Libertarian that the “true home” for libertarians is the Libertarian Party. Most people seem to think that the only way to change society is through political means, i.e., through party politics. That only shows that most of us are addicted to politics. What is needed for a free society is the elimination of political influences on our lives. Politicization of decision-making in all areas of life is the collectivist way of running a society.

Joining the Libertarian Party is joining the political process. As in all parties, the end result will be political careerism and political deal-making. Capital-L Libertarians are not necessarily different from any other political operatives. They are subject to (and many will acquiesce in) the pressures on all politicians to keep their jobs and take money for favors.

Relying on the political process to free us from the corrupting and anti-liberty consequences of the political process is a fundamental mistake and a contradiction of libertarian principles.

I’m still learning my way through all this nonsense, but I can always count on Mark to codify something that I’ve been thinking about. Now he just needs to post about the meaning of life and I’ll be set.

So, here’s the conundrum: for all libertarians (and some Libertarians) and some Republicans (the kind that are sort of like libertarians), if you think you can’t trust government, what are you doing getting involved with a political party? Of course, I come from a civic baphilosophicallysophicaly, so I think “getting involved” is the only path to really good government, so I’m coming to this question from a different path.

While I don’t like “political careerism and political deal-making” any more than the original blogger, I think about them as perversions (at least in perception) of the real civic deal: constant citizen engagement (whether or not you get paid) and really listening to other people. It seems that libertarians have the same aversions to government that many of us have, including a lot of Democrats. We don’t like government becrottens wrotten, there seems to be a lot of self serving people running for office under many different party banners and no one really believes in anything.

But, to believe that these are fatal flaws of our system of government is short sighted and is seeing the perversion of the system as the system itself.

I’d like to see a world though where people get involved and stay involved and where people hold core beliefs, but are also willing to see the world through the eyes of someone else if that means something gets done.

Eric has a great post article in the Oregonian on 933. I like this point the best:

I-933 would short-circuit community. Despite deceptive language to the contrary, I-933 jeopardizes common-sense laws that are decades old. For example, in order to qualify for flood insurance, communities often must prohibit development in flood plains. But under I-933, communities that need insurance may be forced to pay property owners not to build in known flood zones.

Also, if you want to learn how to be an advocate for the good side No on 933 is holding a “Speakers Training and Day of Action” in several places around the state.

Seattle PI:

Bernard Friedman spent part of his career as a risk manager for the Department of Social and Health Services, trying to improve one of the most controversial state agencies. Those who knew him say he was tough, straightforward, got the job done and was not afraid to take unpopular positions.

But Friedman was also a big man with a big heart, the liveliest man at stuffy law functions and a proud Duke Blue Devil.

He died from a heart attack Aug. 3 in Olympia. He was 63.

My best memory of Bernie Friedman was back in 2000 when he was the first person to use the Washington News Council to challenge a newspaper. He had run for Olympia City Council the year before against Mark Foutch, and the Olympian wrote a misleading (even according to Foutch) editorial endorsing Foutch. In it they said that Friedman had been distruptive during a city council meeting, even to the point that a police officer had to be called.

The actual exchange was more like:

Bernie: I would like to talk about this.

Council person: Oh, we’re going to talk about that later.

Bernie: Can I still say what I want to say now?

Council person: Maybe later?

Bernie: How later?

Council person: Uhmm… half hour or so?

Bernie: Okie Dokie.

And, there just happened to be a police officer in the room. Or, as Bernie described it:

In the fall of 1999, I was a candidate for Olympia City Council. During the campaign, The Olympian published an editorial about me that was factually inaccurate and woefully misleading concerning an incident involving me that had happened two months prior to the editorial at an Olympia City Council meeting. That incident was so insignificant the reporter for The Olympian, who was at the meeting, and her editor, did not see fit to print a news story about it. Yet the subsequent editorial purported to describe the incident, described it inaccurately, and concluded from it I lacked the “civic deportment” to qualify me for office. As the election transpired, a swing of 700 votes would have won it for me. It seems likely the unfair editorial could have accounted for that many votes.

Blue Tiger Dems have it right. More right than anyone else:

Democratic organizations, particularly in urban areas, have a rich history of Civic Engagement. Unfortunately, a great deal of this history has been forgotten by the Party and it has shed its Civic Engagement mission.

Democrats must go back to the future. Consider getting involved, helping your community and contributing to civic engagement projects.

With $1.6 billion spent on political ads during the 2004 presidential election and very little money devoted to support civic engagement projects to aid individuals in their communities, it is no wonder that we have begun to lose our connection with individuals at the local level.

I’m a bit peeved that I learned about Blue Tiger Democrats from Joho the Blog, not from the tens of Democrat/Liberal blogs I read, but in a way it makes sense. What Blue Tigers are talking about is more interesting to someone who writes about social technology than folks who write about elections.

Ken has a great post on what has been so good about the Open Mike! tour:

1. Mike! is open to a $28 million golden parachute/ campaign contribution from his former employer Safeco (which is now getting him sued).

2. Mike! is open to selling out to Ted Stevens and Big Oil to drill in ANWR.That’s the same Ted Stevens who wants to send supertankers into Puget Sound to affect my quality of life.

3. Mike! is open to giving people like Paris Hilton a financial break, while sticking it to working men and women, and to making Bush’s tax cuts for the richest 1% permanent.

4. Mike! is open to teaching intelligent design in our schools. (Shouldn’t he be running for Senator in Kansas?)

5. Mike! is open to staying the course in Iraq (which is working so well), with no timetable for bringing our troops home.

6. Mike! is open to gutting the Endangered Species Act.

7. Mike! is open to privatizing higher education (specifically UW & WSU). Note to Mike!: In Washington, we already have SPU, UPS, Gonzaga, Walla Walla, Whitman and PLU, so there is a choice for students among private colleges and universities.

8. Mike! does his best to portray a nice-guy, moderate image (much like that wolf in sheep’s clothing Dino Rossi) but Mike! is open to the right-wing agenda, particularly when the righties get people to open their wallets for him.

Netroots as a word doesn’t imply liberal, progressive or big D Democratic. As a word outside any context it means “wired grassroots.” It could imply any type of political affiliation from socialist to anarchist. But in the past year or so it has shed any non-partisan meaning it have once held and attached itself firmly to folks promoting Democrats.

Eric’s post at Soundpolitics and the conversation following it got me going on this subject. I’ve been wondering about it for awhile though, why Republicans have so quickly rejected the term as a self identifier, and have started making fun of the “nutroots,” as an ineffective wing of the Democratic Party. Most of the people who throw around the term netroots are themselves bloggers, so its hard for me to understand why they would mock a term that technically (at least) included them as well.

This is so much so that ABC PAC has launched an effort called “Right Roots,” an effort to seemingly counter the work on the lefty netroots to promote a list of candidates and raise money for them over the internet. Rightroots though, doesn’t really mean anything.

It means the same thing as “Right-wing grassroots,” and aside from sounding like “netroots,” doesn’t imply any sort of internet component to it at all.

I think a better reaction to the lefty dominance of the term “netroots,” would be a right-wing reclamation of the term. Sort of like telling us that we don’t own the word (not that I’ve ever claimed ownership of it), and that it should cover any online political engagement, not just those coming from the left.

In attacking Maria Cantwell on her vote yesterday on the bait and switch minimum wage vote, Mike! McGavick referenced a letter from the Department of Labor:

Contrary to Sen. Cantwell’s claim, the bill would not lower the wages of employees receiving tips below Washington state’’s minimum wage of $7.63 an hour. In response to Democrat claims, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a letter stating that the department interprets the bill as protecting the current minimum wage in Washington state.

I guess this is a matter of who you believe. Two letters, with two very different meanings, were written on the minimum wage/tips topic.

The DOL letter was written by former GOP congressional staffer Victoria Lipnic to Senate Leader Bill Frist, MD. It essentially said that while the bill wasn’t very specific, for now they’d interprit it one way. But, really, we should tighten up that language since someone could easily see it another way. Seattle Times:

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a Labor Department official said the department would interpret the bill’s language as protecting current wages for tipped employees in the seven states. Victoria Lipnic, assistant secretary of labor for employment standards, offered in the letter to work with lawmakers to clarify the intent of the legislation — something that several Republican senators, including Norm Coleman of Minnesota, said Wednesday they intended to do.

The other letter, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, says the opposite:

…a memo by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service on Wednesday backed up the Democrats’ position. Under the bill’s language, the seven affected states “would seem to be prohibited from enforcing the minimum-wage rate provisions of their laws with respect to a tipped employee,” the memo said.

So, do you believe a political appointee or a non-partisan research office?

Well, because you can’t talk about female politicians without being the least bit sexist (or just a bit insulting), to start off:

…you can probably look for these two to respond with the intelligence of hung over sorority girls faking being awake at an 8:00 am history class without having read the assigned chapters.

But, you could always just be wrong. Basically, Andy, in Washington State we passed an initiative to pin the minimum wage to inflation and protect tip-earning baristas and doormen. Sorry, if Maria Cantwell and Patty Murry (Pati-cakes? Come on Andy…) don’t let the DC GOP run over our state on this one.

Oh, yeah, 3.5: If you really do want to comment on one of Andy’s posts, since he doesn’t let people post over the TP, he sometimes cross posts over at the Sound Politics Public Blog. For example, this post about Mark Shattuck being the dark horse in the 35th.

I happen to agree with Andy on this one, I’ve always been surprised that the Mason Co. GOP couldn’t get their act together enough to put a real horse in those races. Maybe if Mark raises enough money, he might have a change. Though in all of his other races, he never raised (or at least never claimed he raised, according to the PDC) a red cent. The 35th LD GOP better hope its not a vanity race.