Day: September 4, 2010

Female Vs. Female Political Races And More Women Running Against Men: A Record Breaking Year?

Ronald Leave a comment

A fascinating part of the 2010 election cycle is the fact that there will be more female vs. female races than we have seen before in American history!

For the Senate, the only such race will be Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer against former Hewlett Packard CEO and Republican Carly Fiorina in California!

For the office of Governor, there will be two all female races–in New Mexico, where Republican Susana Martinez will run against Democrat Diane Denish; and Oklahoma, where Democrat Jari Askins will compete against Republican Mary Fallin! Both Democrats, by the way, have been Lieutenant Governor of their states and still are!

In Congressional races, the most notable is Republican Congresswomen Michele Bachmann of Minnesota against Democratic state legislator Tarryl Clark!

But also running in South Dakota for the state wide Congressional seat are Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin against Republican state representative Kristi Noem!

Of course, there are other women running for high office, but against men! Among them are gubernatorial candidates in California (Republican Meg Whitman), South Carolina (Republican Nikki Haley), and Florida (Democrat Alex Sink). For the Senate, we see Sharron Angle (Republican of Nevada) and Linda McMahon (Republican of Connecticut). Additionally, there are numerous Congresswomen running for reelection, and many women who are opposing men in and outside of the House of Representatives for House seats.

Will this be a major “Year of the Woman” in American politics? Maybe it will not be a record breaker, but certainly women are playing a growing role in American politics, and of course we are not talking here about the numerous women who sit in state legislatures, city councils, boards of education, and other elected bodies, or who are running to be part of these government structures!

Are The American People “Spoiled Brats?” Unfortunately, YES!

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Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote a column yesterday that is bound to cause controversy!

He stated that the American electorate are acting as “spoiled brats”!

Wow, what a charge! Is there any justification to this accusation? Obviously, Robinson says YES, and the author would tend to agree with him, which requires explanation!

Robinson says that we want quick easy solutions to complex problems that have been built up over many years, and cannot be resolved in any one presidential term or one two year congressional term! He is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in that assertion!

We have so many problems, as Robinson points out, including:

1. Restructuring of the economy which has been outsourced over the past thirty years (since Ronald Reagan), and with manufacturing having disappeared because we all want cheap Walmart CHINA goods, and don’t want to support American made labor goods!

2. We have an infrastructure which needs a major investment, including the rebuilding of roads, bridges, canals, and other public works, but don’t want to make the investment because it might cause taxes to go up, which we hate as a concept, expecting everything to be done without paying for it!

3. We need to recognize the importance of reforming entitlements, but even to suggest it is to cause hysteria and panic and anger, as again the thought is that we don’t want to sacrifice, but make sure you don’t cut anyone’s future expectations of gaining benefits without paying appropriate level of taxes!

4. We need to plan a 21st century economy based on weaning ourselves off foreign oil, and must face the fact that fossil fuels are not the long term answer, but corporations and politicians continue to promote an outdated idea of how our future energy needs can be met!

5. After years of paying very low or no taxes, the wealthy keep on complaining about paying more taxes, even though there is no way to maintain enough revenue without their participation in the tax structure, but the attitude is “NOT ME!”, and selfishness and greed rule! When one percent of the population earns 23 percent of the income, to say they should not pay more taxes means no solution in the future to solving our economic problems is possible, and instead it forces bigger and bigger budget deficits which can lead us to losing our status as a world leader, which is already under attack as it is!

6.We need to develop an education system to sustain the future, but have failed to keep pace, and again it requires willingness to sacrifice, which no one wants to do!

7. We need to realize that immigration is part of a plan for an economic future, but instead we just make immigrants and people who have different cultural backgrounds seem to be the enemy and a threat to the future of the country!

8. The country has an unsustainable burden overseas, trying to be the world’s policeman, and therefore, we need to redefine our role in world affairs in such a way to make it manageable, as now our defense requirements are overwhelming our ability to sustain it financially!

As Robinson says, we want quick and easy solutions without pain and suffering, and so we are ready to “throw out the rascals” and try the other party in power, but not understanding that the GOP has no solutions either, and that likely, after they have a try at power, they will be thrown out in 2012!

So we are acting like “spoiled brats”, like children who have a “temper tantrum”, and take irrational steps that will do nothing to deal with the reality of the future!

That reality is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any magical solutions, and we are going to suffer through five to ten years of trouble to undo the damage done in the past 30 years, all of it except the BIll Clinton years, under Republican Presidents who made life better for the wealthy, and miserable for the middle class and the poor!

So it is time for the American people to “grow up” and stop expecting quick, easy solutions, as they are not going to come, whether or not one party or the other controls the White House and the Congress!

We are, unfortunately, in for the toughest decade we have suffered through since the 1930s! To believe anything else is to believe in the “tooth fairy” and “Santa Claus”! 🙁

The Contradiction Of Joe Miller: The “Anti Ted Stevens” For Alaska!

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Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska served longer in the upper chamber than any Republican Senator in history, and when he died last month in a plane accident, he was deeply mourned by most Alaskans as the man who had done more for Alaska than any other political figure in its half century history as a state!

Alaska was the beneficiary of more federal largesse (money and public works projects) than any other state, and Alaska then and now desperately needed such funding, as it is a state which even today has very few roads and bridges and other public projects, making travel and access through much of the state extremely difficult!

Juneau, the capital in southeast Alaska, cannot be reached by land, for instance, and much of the state is isolated and poor! So Stevens was good for Alaska, but so were Senator Frank Murkowski and his daughter, Senator Lisa Murkowski, who recently lost a close renomination contest to Joe Miller!

Of course, Sarah Palin was a critic of all of these political figures, but never did anything to deal with the realities of backwardness and poverty in much of Alaska in her BRIEF time in public office! She, however, has been very effective in improving her own economic conditions, while advocating the nomination of Joe Miller, a person who shares her vision of a “new” Alaska without federal intervention! 🙁

Joe Miller portrays himself as the opponent of federal largesse, of “earmarks”, and therefore is the “anti Ted Stevens”! He was able to defeat Lisa Murkowski by a razor thin margin on this basis!

It is amazing how in one month, Alaskans can mourn “Uncle Ted”, who brought his state so many benefits by doing what all members of Congress are expected to do, make life better for their constituents; and then have the dominant party in the state reject that approach and nominate a Tea Party favorite, who defies the history of the American political system!

If Alaska does indeed proceed to elect Joe Miller over Democratic opponent Scott McAdams, will they have “buyer’s remorse”, when they realize they are putting into a position of power an individual who has no interest in benefiting the state, modernizing it, bringing it into the future, but would rather quote the Founding Fathers in a narrow, restrictive manner, evoking the states rights argument of the Civil War Era of the 19th century in the 21st century?

Joe Miller, like most conservatives and Republicans, distorts the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, failing to understand that the document they created was purposely left vague and broad, as they could not possibly predict the long term future, and so left it open to modern interpretation by Congress and the courts!

The Founding Fathers did not intend a “strait jacket” Constitution, but if Joe Miller in office follows it in that manner, Alaska will suffer, and remain a backward state without a modern public works system and large levels of poverty! Somehow, the feeling arises that Joe Miller would end up contradicting himself once in office, and therefore would have to be seen as a hypocrite who exploited the general discontent that exists, with rhetoric that is false and manipulative! 🙁