http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/community/blog_rss/rodneypunt Politics, Arts and Reflections A very good friend of mine is an expert on governmental practices and an advocate of public financing. He is disappointed that Barack Obama opted to pursue private rather than public financing for the 2008 general election. I support the same public financing goal my friend supports, but do not believe it to be workable in this campaign with the existing rules. Here's why: 1. The stakes for our nation. -- We're not in a normal time. We're in a time of criminal behavior on a massive scale led by the Bush-Cheney administration and the Republicans: war crimes, torture, war profiteering, civil liberties trampled, world health and environment imminently imperiled, economy trashed, international contempt for America. Under these conditions the stakes are too high to focus on tidy process to the potential sacrifice of necessary results. I am reminded of the World War II movie, "The Bridge on the River Kwai", where the allied prisoners are asked to build a bridge that will aid the war efforts of the Japanese. The British colonel (Alec Guinness) is willing to do so as long as the proper protocol is followed, where the American officer (William Holden) sees the bigger picture of disastrous consequences. 2. What's the purpose of public financing? -- It's to counter the influence of the rich and powerful, usually corporate, interests that have co-opted legitimate public priorities in favor of their special interests. Is Obama's form of private financing set up to enable corporate lobbyists? Not at all. Obama's model is a new - and legitimate - form of public financing, overwhelmingly based on small individual contributions. See the following link for further discussion of this issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/obamas-opt-out-of-public_b_108240.html 3. Republican gaming the current public financing system. -- The Republicans have a strategy to have their public financing cake and eat it too. They realize the sentiment has been shifting to public financing and know they have been tainted (under Bush-Cheney, DeLay, Abramoff, et al) with dirty lobbyist money. And as a result, McCain has not had the same pull for donations to his campaign that Obama has. The Republicans have opted for a clever Plan B: starve the McCain campaign from private contributions but collect $84 million in public financing for it, then work to raise massive unregulated bucks for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the "527" special interest groups, using those funds to launch a smear campaign against Obama, his wife, "liberals" in general, etc. Let me share an example from personal experience that will illustrate how the above Republican plan will be manipulated to work for them: In my former career with a local city government, we had a cultural grants program which was always subject to political interference, usually for groups with political ties but lacking artistic merit. In order to counter a potential capitulation to lower quality, I established a panel review process with qualified artistic peers from diverse sectors, the credibility of which was hard to reject by elected representatives. Many of the more ethical politicians were grateful for the deflection of inappropriate lobbying. Some of the more underhanded elected representatives, however, were not. The system worked well for many years, but when the department came under the control an intensely political director, he had the difficult dilemma of wanting to appear to be merit-based while also wanting to enjoy the role of godfather ("decider") with its enhanced power and influence. So he used another "special" fund, initially set up as a small fund for festival management, growing it over time to a comparable funding base to the cultural grants program. This slush fund supported non-peer-reviewed grants and took care of the politically connected as well as other interests. Voila: ethics in one program, perks in the other. Everybody wins, regardless of need or merit. This is the model, on a massive scale, that the Republicans have figured out with their publicly financed cake and their privately financed RNC and "527" meals. Yes, public financing is a great goal when we can put our regulatory arms around it entirely, but as long as the loopholes exist, it is not worth a plug nickel to effectively clean up the election. http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLXY http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLXY/commentary#comments Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:45:23 PDT http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLXY User from Santa Monica, CA User from Santa Monica, CA 0 http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/comment_rss/CLXY/ Have you been reading Maureen Dowd's columns recently? She sounds as bitter as those rural Pennsylvanians who cling to guns and religion. Constantly swiping at Obama, saying he's naïve, a pansy, praising Hillary as a tough fighter. Her latest is kind of schizophrenic, however: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07dowd.html?th&emc=th It's like she's angry at Hillary but has to spend most of the time cutting off Obama's huevos. There's something like Freudian envy going on here, but only her shrink knows for sure. This is the guy, after all, who has just come out on top of a dozen or so grizzled veteran Democratic candidates, slayed the scheming Clintons - both of them, set up a political machine which is consolidating power and raising millions of bucks within the usually chaotic Democratic Party, and will probably flatten McCain in November, even with the all the mud flung on him. Yet Maureen thinks he's a Butterfly because he doesn't scratch and claw. The lady's been brilliant in the recent past, but maybe she's in crisis these days. Maybe she IS Hillary. http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLZr http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLZr/commentary#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 23:57:23 PDT http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/CLZr User from Santa Monica, CA User from Santa Monica, CA 0 http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/comment_rss/CLZr/ Is there any doubt what's happening at this juncture in the Presidential race? We have three main movers in this primary: the Republican Party working in tandem with the McCain campaign, the Obama campaign working within the rules of the Democratic Party, and the Hillary campaign working for itself. The Democratic Party should be a player, but Howard Dean has kept party headquarters quiet, though an ad exposing some McCain weaknesses has just been released. Dean will let the chips fall where they may between Hillary and Obama and then hope to unify the party in time for the general election. So who's gunning for whom? It's obvious that Hillary and the Republicans have struck a Faustian bargain to play "Let's get Obama." It's not a signed but clearly an implied contract between two weak camps to kill the campaign of the popular choice for the Democrats and probably of all America. Then Hillary and McCain can live on to kill one or the other in the general election. In her desperate bid to take down her rival, Hillary wants to change the Democratic Party rules she signed and even helped shape. Never mind that Obama has virtually won the Democratic nomination. With breathtaking audacity, Hillary now claims she has the majority of the Democratic voters. This convoluted calculus is derived by adding in to the official tally the disqualified votes from Michigan and Florida. Remember, Obama had either not run or not campaigned in those states. He follows rules. Hillary and her handlers, mostly old-time Demo pols who are thirsting for power and perks, have also decided on a scorched earth approach to destroy Obama's credibility. With an alligator grin her handlers like Terry McAuliffe claim this will help both her and Obama toughen up. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sure. But Hillary aims to kill not toughen, so the point is moot. The Republicans can't believe their luck. McCain gets to take the high road and denounce twisted ads by his cohorts who are out for Obama. Shrewd Republican lizards like Rupert Murdoch cozy up to Hillary, knowing she will use them just as they use her to achieve their ends, both thinking they can outsmart the other. Hillary will take any backers because, as she has all but lost, she has nothing further to lose in her desperate gamble to win against the odds. Meanwhile increasing numbers of American people get what's going on. But they may not be able to decide the future of our country in the gang warfare of American politics. Before the general election their champion could be ground into dust. The situation is not helped at this moment in the campaign with a recent interview of Obama's now retired and aging preacher, Jeremiah Wright, who thwarts his most promising former congregant with ill-chosen words in defense of his own ego. Obama, who grew out of the black Christian church movement of empowerment, important for its time, has transcended his roots with a positive message for a new unity of purpose and principle in America. Hillary, who has ridden the perks of fame from First Lady to Senator and newly acquired wealth, has just poisoned her roots and her future. Let us hope she and the Republicans don't poison the future of a troubled America. http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtN http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtN/commentary#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:02:42 PDT http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtN User from Santa Monica, CA User from Santa Monica, CA 1 http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/comment_rss/BtN/ Mayhill Fowler. The name sounds like a character from a Jane Austen novel. And in fact the budding blogger even acts like one. Remember Austen's Emma Woodhouse? With too much time on her hands, the vain and affluent resident of Highbury meddles in the lives of her friends, thinking she can improve them. But her careless manipulations end up creating only havoc and misery. Mayhill Fowler wants to be a player in the current political struggle for the future of our troubled nation. So she landed herself a position as a contributor to the Huffington Post. As reported in that blog, she is also a haphazard donor to wildly divergent candidates in our high-stakes presidential primaries. She has contributed not only to Obama and Hillary, but also to arch conservative Fred Thompson, in her words "as a show of solidarity for a fellow Tennessean." Say again? As donor to Barack Obama's campaign, Ms. Mayhill was granted admission to a private fundraiser not open to the press. But between the salad and the main course, as it were, she changed hats into a cub reporter looking for a first scoop. As luck would have it, a killer story fell into her lap. Obama answered a question about his campaign chances with working class people in Pennsylvania. His quick answer was that years of lost jobs have caused many of these folks to be bitter and cling to their guns and religion. Let's get real, he was not criticizing guns and religion, but pointing out in short-hand that Republican claims on them are used as hot-button issues against Democrats. This provided an opportunity for mischief. Mayhill Fowler faced an ethical choice: Should she keep the comments private, owing allegiance to her role as an Obama supporter, or should she publish and criticize them in her blog as an ambitious cub reporter? As the incident is now known as "Bittergate", we know she published them. Ms. Fowler and her defenders say she was all along motivated by good intentions. Hmm… Mr. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he can articulate the aspirations and frustrations of the average citizen. But he's not perfect and he's certainly not Superman. His inelegant but truthful "gaffe" has been distorted and fully exploited by the Hillary and McCain camps. Gaffes are a dime a dozen in public utterances by Hillary and McCain, and Obama will certainly overcome this moment and probably still gain the Democratic presidential nomination. But, thanks to Mayhill Mayhem - or was it Foul-up Fowler? - Obama faces an even more hellish and perilous road to the presidency. The media have made much of the art, or artlessness, of reporting in the new political blogosphere. But it's also a story of the eternally conflicting motivations and ethical choices of human behavior. Will McCain slay McAbel in November? Who knows, but if he does, Jane Austen told us a long time ago just how it could happen. http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtV http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtV/commentary#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:00:12 PDT http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/post/rodneypunt/BtV User from Santa Monica, CA User from Santa Monica, CA 0 http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/comment_rss/BtV/