And it is to the pork included in both the Senate and House packages that Charles Krauthammer addressed so well in this article, The Fierce Urgency of Pork. Uh, yes. That certainly seems to be what Obama is peddling. It is HOW he is peddling it that caught Dr. Krauthammer’s attention:

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.”
– President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

Uh, yeah. There again, many of us knew that the Hope-y Change-y Rainbow Unicorn was a crock from the very beginning. I wonder how Oama’s followers felt about him using the word, “catastrophe”??? Oh, they probably found some way to make it okay in their brains that this is a far cry from much of his campaign rhetoric. Whatever. Kind of like they did when it came to many of the people Obama nominated to be in his Administration:

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal, but what’s legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He’d been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he’s not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don’t get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal’s private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he’d come to Washington to upend.

Well, I think that pretty much sums it up. Shrug of the shoulders is about all we’re going to get from those who were SO certain Obama was going to bring real change to Washington, D.C.

How about this, then:

And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It’s not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Anything, Obama followers? Anything?? *Crickets* That’s just sad, really. You bought his stupid message based on NOTHING but a clever marketer, and leave us with this crap:

Not just to abolish but to create something new — a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the “fierce urgency of now” includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

Thanks tons for that.

Krauthammer concludes:

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting “planted” for “ready to market” would mean a windfall garnered from a new “bonus depreciation” incentive.

After Obama’s miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell — and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Well, maybe for some in the media to finally open their eyes, but as long as his followers are content for Nancy Pelosi to concoct a “Stimulus” bill that gives money to every little pet project House members can think of, and as long as they are willing to look the other way when people like Geithner take over the IRS, well, I think it may take longer yet before they wake up fully to reality. But I hope Dr. Krauthammer is right. I hope, too, that our elected officials will cut out the crapola that is in this bill, and do right by US, and not their pet projects or to appease Obama.

All I can say is, I am more than ready for the awakening.

Well, not really all of a sudden, it’s just a few days after the AFL-CIO decided to throw in the towel and endorse Obama over Clinton now that Clinton has put her campaign on ice.  And just a few days before Obama is scheduled to appear before the national conventions of both of the major teachers’ unions.  The AFT has recommended its convention meeting next week in Chicago endorse Obama, as has the National Education Association, before which Obama speaks tomorrow, July 5.

When I pointed out at the Edwize Blog sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, the big New York division of the AFL-CIO affiliated AFT, that Darling-Hammond backs the same key policy proposal (repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color) as Bill Ayers, long-time education advocate and co-worker of Obama, and that Ayers and Obama are far from being “casual acquaintances” as Leo Casey of the AFT had contended, Casey replied with the following false claims on the Democratic Left Yahoo group: 

1) that I had painted an “unrecognizable caricature” of Darling-Hammond;

2) that I had contended that the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Ayers and Obama ran together for five years was a “political front” for Ayers and his politics;

3) that Obama had only a “quite superficial grasp of what [was] going on” at the Annenberg Challenge the board of which he chaired and was not “involve[d] in the nitty-gritty” of the five year long project and that he was only “lending..his name and his ability to make a couple of telephone calls to get things done.”

4) that I contended there was “some sort of sinister hidden connection between Obama and Ayers”

None of this is true and Casey provides no documentation at all for any of his specious contentions.  I wrote the following reply to both Democratic Left and Edwize, but so far neither site has “approved” my posts (pretty remarkable for Democratic Left, a site that considers itself an opponent of authoritarianism in modern political life) so I am putting up a copy here:

Well, at least Leo now seems to be admitting that Ayers and Obama were more than “casual acquaintances” as he asserted on Democratic Left and on Edwize.

So now on to the second line of defense.

Frankly, I am not sure what that is because I only assert two things: Obama and Ayers have a longstanding political relationship – which is clear from the public record; and two, Ayers and Darling-Hammond are now advocating a race-based solution to education – the repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color or, in other words, reparations. Nothing you have said contradicts this.

I did not paint a portrait of Darling-Hammond or caricature her as you have speciously asserted. I only stated the facts as supported by her public record. She and I have exchanged emails on this issue and this is reported on my blog. She herself has never suggested that I have made any factually incorrect statements about her.

I never suggested the Annenberg Challenge which Obama and Ayers ran together, though not alone, was a political front as you, again without substantiation, contend I did. In fact, Ayers was quite open about his political goals and those goals run right through the lengthy grant proposal, the annual reports of the organization and its board minutes, which I have reviewed (though some board minutes were not provided me).

Some in Chicago shared those goals. Some understood the background of his views and others did not. I view the local schools councils as an attempt to create a new center of power that was aimed at the power of the teachers’ union. They were set up in the wake of an unpopular teachers strike in 1987. Obama and Ayers were active in the lobbying effort for that “radical” reform, as Ayers called it in his proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

I do not consider such local councils a democratic step forward for school progress, but rather as a potential base of power for those with a different kind of agenda, based on racial politics and “social justice” teaching. A genuine democratic alternative would be built, as Dorothy Shipps has written, in district wide assemblies elected by the public that are transparent and accountable.

I have not imputed any particular agenda to Ayers, Obama or Darling-Hammond, other than to note that Ayers and Darling-Hammond support repayment of the education debt as a top priority. Obama has not stated what his views are on this very clearly though he indicated sympathy for the idea while campaigning in South Carolina. 

Given the long and close ties between Ayers and Obama and the professional ties among education debt repayment advocates Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings, it is reasonable to ask if this kind of race-based approach to educational problems is going to be part of the Obama presidency.

Obama was not as you contend an elected official when he first worked on school reform with Ayers in the late 80s, nor was he even yet a candidate when he became Chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge in 1995. He was a relative unknown and quite a junior person at that point, just two years out of law school when Ayers submitted the grant proposal, with only a voter registration drive to his credit since leaving Harvard.

Thus, I think it is a fair question to ask why Obama would have been chosen to head up such a prestigious effort as the $110 million Annenberg Challenge. I think Ayers backed him because he knew he could rely on Obama to support Ayers’ agenda of propping up the troubling and troubled local schools councils.

And, in fact, the record of the Challenge – its annual reports, mid term reports and board minutes – indicate that that is precisely what happened. Even when concerns were raised by a business sector representative on the board that the councils represented a potential “political threat” to school principals (and unions??) Obama backed Ayers in pushing money into the school council election process.

Finally, when you suggest that Obama played no significant role in directing the Challenge, are you suggesting that as chairman of the board of a major non profit corporation in the state of Illinois, that Obama had a hands-off attitude? That he was NOT aware that the Challenge was signing off on, for example, a $175,000 grant to Ayers buddy Mike Klonsky, as they did in 1995 for the Small Schools Workshop Klonsky was recruited to head up by Ayers? That suggests to me a problem of fiduciary duty. Quite unlikely for a Harvard Law School graduate – and frankly, more worrying for me about Obama if true.

No, I think Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he voted as a board member to approve the disbursement of millions of dollars in order to intervene in the Chicago school wars. And so did Ayers. They were using each other for advancement of their careers and their shared political perspective on education policy. 

The Challenge ended in 2001. It is certainly reasonable for voters to ask seven years later for Obama to explain the relationship and Ayers’ influence on his approach to education policy.



While no one could, or should, impute to Obama any support for the terroristic activity of Ayers, Dohrn and others, there is an important connection between Ayers’ politics then and his approach to education policy today: Ayers and the Weather Underground promoted a politics built around the absurd idea of “white supremacy,” which Ayers calls even today the “monster in the room” at the heart of American life. 

This was linked to another idea that was widely held among the maoist elements that took hold in the early 70s in the US: that American workers and their unions were part of a giant labor aristocracy that exploited workers of the south, the so-called Third World. Inside the US, the Weather Underground argued that global form of “unequal exchange” was reproduced in the relationship between white and black workers.

Thus, when an idea like repayment of centuries of accumulated “education debt” is proposed as the top priority of the next federal government as it has been by Darling-Hammond, Ladson-Billings and Bill Ayers, all of whom have links to Obama it is reasonable to ask what Obama’s view are on such a critical issue. The presumptive nominee has yet to explain how it is that his education advisor can promote such an idea and yet he remains silent on it.

I would think the members of America’s teachers’ unions would like to know the answers to such questions as well before they decide how to approach the upcoming elections.

::::::

My most recent previous article here: “How is it under that bus, Comrade Klonsky?”

Read my other posts here at No Quarter.

About me: I am a law professor and political scientist on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. I teach courses on the global capital markets, the international economy, corporate governance and international labor and human rights. Prior to joining the faculty I was in private legal practice in New York and in Palo Alto. I also have an extensive background in the labor movement and advise a wide range of unions, workers and institutional investors on financial and legal issues. This website is an independent project and hence is my responsibility and it is not affiliated in any other way with the law school or Santa Clara University.

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, Donald L. Luskin reports the following:

Would it help Social Security’s financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. One of his senior economic advisers admitted to me that no one on the campaign has run any detailed models or performed any rigorous analysis. When one proposes an enormous tax increase, shouldn’t there at least be a spreadsheet somewhere?

Ya think? Nah, not for The One. He just knows. Trust him.

In a nutshell, Obama says he’ll fix Social Security’s projected deficit by “taxing The Rich”, those rascally, mythical rich (who are looking a lot more like YOU and ME by the minute). In another one of his pretzel proposals, Obama wants to have his payroll cap and eat it, too.

Here’s the deal. If you earn a living, you pay payroll taxes. Your employer matches your taxes dollar for dollar so any increase in payroll taxes is also a business tax. That translates into lost jobs and higher prices. (Yo, Senator Obama, we’re in a recession, so this won’t help.)

The government uses the money to pay for Social Security. Well, that’s the theory. It’s actually a government Ponzi scheme, but that’s beside the point. In general, you pay in during your working life and you draw a check after you retire. That was FDR’s plan.

Now, we Americans are skeptical of The Rich. So, we only pay them Social Security benefits up to a certain amount, no matter how much a person actually earned. Benefits are capped. And, in return, being the fair people we are, we cap Social Security taxes. Whether you make $102,000 or $120 million, you pay the same amount in taxes – because your retirement check will be the same amount.

Here’s an example using this year’s earnings cap of $102,000 in annual wages:

Keep in mind that The Rich won’t get bigger Social Security checks. That’s why their taxes are capped.

But, this is too simple for Obama. Without doing any research, any financial modeling, any economic impact studies, by fiat he has come up with A Plan to Tax The Rich. He wants to leave the cap, currently at $102,000, not tax earnings between $102,001 and $250,000, and tax earnings over $250,000. Got that? That thunderclap was the collective head slap of payroll managers and CPAs across the country.

Why is Obama taxing wages over $250,000? Well, why not? If you’re going to pull numbers out of your ass, it’s as good as any. The problem is this. He’s not going to pay additional benefits to The Rich. Nope. Uh uh. Nosiree.

Now, I’m not arguing that The Rich can’t afford the extra taxes. They probably can. But, we Americans fought a little war over arbitrary taxes being levied for the sake of it. And, that’s the problem. The Rich won’t get an extra dime. As Luskin explains:

Throughout the history of the Social Security program, there has always been a connection between what you contribute in taxes and what you get back in benefits. If Mr. Obama uncaps the wages subject to tax, but doesn’t uncap benefits, then he has severed the link between them. Social Security would stand revealed not as a work-related contributory retirement system, but simply as a tax-funded welfare and income-redistribution program.

And for all that, Mr. Obama’s proposal won’t help Social Security’s long-run solvency problems.

According to the Social Security Administration actuaries, uncapping all wages subject to the payroll tax (not just those above $250,000) doesn’t make much difference to the system’s long-run solvency. If the increased payroll tax payments earn increased benefits, then only about one third of the system’s 75-year shortfall is addressed. Even if there is no corresponding benefit increase, only about half the shortfall is addressed.

Remember, that inadequate result is what you get when all wages are subject to payroll taxes. Mr. Obama’s plan – even with his household definition of $250,000 income – would collect far less than that. No wonder Mr. Obama’s economic advisers aren’t interested in doing any detailed analysis.

NO DETAILED ANALYSIS? AND, IT WON”T EVEN WORK?

Change You Can Believe In. What’s left of your paycheck. If you still have one.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

On June 21, I published “Why the Polls Are Skewed Towards Obama” here at No Quarter.

“I have always opposed NAFTA.”

“I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America – and I never have.”

“Ten years after NAFTA passed, Senator Clinton said it was good for America. … Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America – and I never have.” –Senator Barack Obama in Toledo, Ohio on February 24, 2008

Now in an interview with Fortune magazine out on Monday June 23, 2008, the very junior Senator from Illinois wants us to believe that was just rhetoric. He really didn’t mean what he said.

“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” –Senator Barack Obama in a Fortune magazine interview to be published Monday June 23, 2008

Never mind the heat of battle rhetoric, how about the more reflective printed word?

In his own flyer, Obama is quoted as saying that “one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio.” But those figures come from an anti-NAFTA source, the Economic Policy Institute written by Robert Schott. Other economists have criticized that report’s methodology and its conclusions as having overstated the impact of NAFTA, rather they point to a lax enforcement of regulations that have permitted an exodus of American manufacturing jobs and primarily to China, Korea and other East Asian countries not to Mexico or Canada. Other economic studies have concluded the trade deal resulted in much smaller job losses or even a small net gain. Here’s what the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has to say on NAFTA’s effects on American jobs:

NAFTA’s net effect on jobs in the United States has been minuscule, given the size of the U.S. economy and the importance of other trading partners.

The best models to date suggest that NAFTA has caused either no net change in employment or a very small net gain of jobs.

And that’s now after seven years of the Bush Administration failing to enforce regulations that shed American jobs. Under President Clinton, it was a far different story. Here’s Professor of Economics Brad Delong (an Obama supporter, I might add) of the University of California at Berkeley writing in July 2000:

It is time to conclude that NAFTA–the North American Free Trade Agreement–is a success.

His article largely is about the impact of NAFTA on Mexico but he finds that economic benefits accrued to all members of the trade pact. However, he does note the following:

Far from shrinking, employment in autos and auto parts in America has grown by more than twenty percent since the beginning of NAFTA. Far from falling, hourly earnings of U.S. automotive workers have risen since the beginning of NAFTA.

Even as recently as February 2008, just about the time Obama was making his comments in Toledo on how he had always opposed NAFTA, Professor Delong was writing that NAFTA was not the cause of Ohio’s woes.

And, of course, if we go back to his Senate campaign of 2004, Obama said this:

“The United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO and NAFTA.” quoted in an article by Ron Ingram, Obama, Keyes Court Farmers, Decatur Herald & Review, on September 9, 2004. Source: Lexis/Nexis.

So he was for it before he was against before he was for it. Sound familiar? And so much for the “I never have” part of his argument.

And one more point, I may not remember what I had for lunch earlier this week, but I do remember what I have said over the years, maybe because I have core convictions and that is just it with Senator Obama, he has no core convictions. It’s always what is politically expedient for him at the time.

More on this topic and perhaps others once the full interview is out. He can excuse his “rhetoric” as a slip of the tongue but the printed word is a little harder to dismiss.

_________

From my blog, By The Fault.

Evidently, Obama has hijacked the DNC and moved it lock, stock, and barrel to CHICAGO!!! WOWIE ZOWIE!! How do the OTHER 57 states feel that the DNC has now become the BONC? Holy freakin’ Toledo.

This is really hard to fathom. Obama is a JUNIOR Senator. Hell, he has barely been there for his first term, and certainly has done very little real work since he has been so busy stealing – um, I mean – campaigning – for votes.

As we all know by now, he could not even chair his own subcommittee on piddly matters like AFGHANISTAN and NATO because he was busy running around the country on his Unity Unicorn. And now, and NOW – he has essentially taken over the ENTIRE DNC.

How does this happen, I ask you? Is it that people have HANDED over that much power to him, and if so, WHY? Why would they give a junior senator who has essentially ZERO experience, the reins to the WHOLE enchilada??? If I were still a Democrat, I’d be mighty upset by this.

Even still, I have never, in my entire 50 years on this planet, EVER heard of a presidential candidate having THIS much power over the organization, never mind one who had so little experience. Oh, wait – there hasn’t BEEN a presidential candidate with so little experience before – maybe THAT’S the issue!!

If we only had people who had relationships with nefarious people, some flat-out criminal, and NO real Congressional experience, maybe THEY would have hijacked their entire political organization, too!!! Who knew?!

Well, good luck with all of that. As Texas Darlin’ has already pointed out at NoQuarter, Obama and the DNC are having a hard time raising money.

Wow – what a surprise, NOT!!! See, evidently, none of the muckety mucks at the DNC bothered to read all of our emails telling them we would not give them one more NICKEL if they kept shoving the least experienced, most poorly prepared, candidate down our throats. And, they must have hit the Spam button when we kept telling them we would NOT support their pick over the most QUALIFIED candidate, who was heads and shoulders above her competition. Maybe they thought we would all fall in line after all, being the good little women (and men who support a qualified woman) we were, and toe the line after all, hanging the specter of John McCain over our heads. Oooohhhh, scary!!! (Seriously – I am not voting for McCain, but he cannot be anywhere NEAR as bad as Bush, could he?)

Surprise!!!! We were all telling the truth!! We WILL NOT VOTE FOR OBAMA PERIOD!! We will NOT support their mind-boggling choice to be the DNC nominee. Nope – not when we have seen the one whom we COULD have had!!

Why in the HELL would we want someone who really DOES flip flop around on every single issue and answer, someone who makes OUTRAGEOUS claims like NO ONE has done more for the LGBT community, or for women, or for Israel, or just NAME a group, than Obama has.

After I picked myself up off the floor laughing myself silly on THOSE stupid comments, you have this guy saying he NEVER said he would pull the troops out of Iraq. WHAAA??? Is Obama REALLY so naive as to think we don’t have VIDEO TAPE?!?!?!? Really?? He said it over and over and OVER again in every single one of those debates.

Now, I thought HIS people were supposed to be all of the edumacated (!) ones, but thank HEAVENS I had a good Logic professor while pursuing my undergrad degree in Philosophy, and a good ethics professor for my Master’s of Divinity, concentrating in Ethics, ’cause I detect not only some logical fallacies here, but some downright LIES.

This man’s lack of an ethical base is but ONE of the MANY reasons I will never vote for him. I have seen the alternative, and having seen her, someone who really HAS done a lot for the LGBT community, for women, for the working poor, for veterans, and I could go on and on, cannot, absolutely WILL not, support this sham of a candidate who has hijacked the entire party. Like I said, Good luck to ‘em all!

I guess THIS will learn me to take a vacation during a presidential election cycle!! Sheesh.

::::::

From my blog, Rabble Rouser Ruminations.

Special thanks to V for spotting this video.

V also sets up and creates the videos on the No Quarter channel at YouTube — it’s fascinating to browse through the videos at this blog’s channel.

V also has his own channel: V4Hill.

Via Ben Smith at Politico:

In a major shakeup at the Democratic National Committee — and a departure from tradition — large parts of the committee’s operations are relocating to Chicago to be fully integrated with the Obama campaign.

The DNC’s political department, housed in Washington, D.C., will be dramatically rebuilt, with staffers offered a choice of moving to Chicago, joining state operations, or staying in Washington, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

But the power will clearly be shifting to a centralized Chicago hub.

The DNC’s key role in coordinating political operations with state parties is expected to largely be taken over and overseen by Obama’s senior staff in Chicago, state party officials said.

“This is part of the implementation of the plans Paul [Tewes] discussed last week with the state party chairs,” Finney said. “As part of the efforts to fully integrate DNC operations with the Obama campaign here in Washington, in Chicago and in the states, political, field and constituency operations are moving to Chicago to work in the Obama headquarters. The goal is to consolidate these efforts into one operation and effectively drive one national strategy.”

People familiar with the plan said that state party staffers paid for under Howard Dean’s 50 State Program would be shifted to working for the presidential campaign, at least in targeted battleground states.

The move reflects Obama’s desire to maintain an unusually streamlined campaign, as well as his swift and complete takeover of a Democratic Party that isn’t always known for its unity. The move may also save the campaign money, as the Obama campaign can use DNC salaries and staff to pay for elements of its organizing campaign and avoid some of the duplication that has often dogged presidential efforts.

Such a centralization of the Party’s apparatus is an inherent danger to the big tent character of the Democratic Party. Obama is seeking to personify the Democratic Party. No one person personifies the Democratic Party. This is an internal coup following on the heels of the May 31st Rules and By-Laws Committee that was anything but democratic, the Democratic Party is now a Bolshevik party. Political parties in Western democracies are governed by consensus, not by fiat. There is no place for a Politburo or a Central Committee that dictates commands. Such an apparatus is inherently anti-democratic and against the long-standing principles of the US Democratic Party, we were a party of inclusion, not exclusion. The more you tighten the screws, the more we shall resist you.

Obama and his cohorts need to be reminded of Barbara Jordan’s Keynote Address at the Democratic Convention in 1976:

We are a party — We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future. We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.

This, my friends is the bedrock of our concept of governing. This is a part of the reason why Americans have turned to the Democratic Party. These are the foundations upon which a national community can be built. Let all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals, and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

As a first step — As a first step, we must restore our belief in ourselves. We are a generous people, so why can’t we be generous with each other? We need to take to heart the words spoken by Thomas Jefferson:

Let us restore the social intercourse — “Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and that affection without which liberty and even life are but dreary things.”

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good. A government is invigorated when each one of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation. In this election year, we must define the “common good” and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

To listen to her full speech, please visit American Rhetoric.

The essence of a party is a diversity of opinion, a plurality of views. One person does not personify a party for the concept of party is, ipso facto, more than one. And I must ask this question, if this had been Senator Clinton moving the DNC to New York, can you imagine the outrage and indignation that would have resulted?

As Barbara Jordan put it, there is no executive order.

:::::::

From my blog, By The Fault.