Essays for Analysis

GROUP ONE

A Scrubbed Toe in the Race

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 6, 2010

Between bites of an egg-white garden omelet at a bistro in his Union Square neighborhood, Harold Ford Jr. defended himself on pedicures and flip-flops.
?I either run or try to play basketball every day,? he said. ?I have severe athlete?s foot ? feet. I get a foot scrub out of respect for my wife because getting into bed with what I have when I take my socks off isn?t respectful to anybody.?
Ford had worked out at Equinox and was dressed in a University of Michigan baseball cap and T-shirt, J. Crew sweatshirt, Adidas striped pants and Nike tennis shoes.
The New York transplant with the Tennessee driver?s license who was raised in Washington, D.C., is the darling of what he calls the ?Manhattan social philanthropic crowd.?
As the former Tennessee congressman and Merrill Lynch rainmaker told The Times?s Michael Barbaro in an interview about his flirtation with a Senate run, he gets pedicures and has breakfast at the Regency on Park Avenue (where Rielle Hunter famously picked up John Edwards by calling him ?so hot?). He often gets chauffeured by MSNBC to his gigs on ?Morning Joe? and has flown to the boroughs in a helicopter.
The chopper trip was part of a fundraising drive by the New York City Police Foundation.
He said he and his brothers were not spoiled growing up. ?My grandmother beat the [expletive] out of us with an electric cord,? he said.
?Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand and some others want to create this notion that I moved to New York with the intention of running for office and I live this unbelievably luxurious life,? he said, his green eyes earnest. ?I?m blessed, and I work extremely hard, and I?m able to pay my bills. I love New York. I love the smell of the city. I love the subways. As I learn more and more, I love every part of the state. It?s so unfair how it?s been characterized. I eat at places like the Coffee Shop more than I eat uptown.?
We had stopped in the Coffee Shop before deciding that, despite its greasy-spoon name, it was a hub of hip, too noisy for an interview.
Ford said he and his pretty blond wife, Emily, a marketing expert, were married in 2008 after his racially charged run for the Senate in Tennessee. They have made her apartment their official home.
?My wife decided after the ?08 election,? he said. ?There was so much bad racial stuff out of Tennessee on Obama. I?m in an interracial marriage. I don?t want to subject my wife to this, and I want to start a family. I think my marriage is more accepted here than it would be in Tennessee. I started paying closer attention to New York politics, and I was pleasantly ? not pleasantly ? but I was surprised by how serious the New York political class were in their opposition to Senator Gillibrand.?
Being a Wall Street bonus baby is not a plus. ?I?m not running from the fact that I worked at a bank and brought in clients,? he said. ?Am I proud of everything that went on? Of course not.?
But Ford was helped by Gillibrand Svengali Schumer and the White House ? the ?political bosses,? as he calls them ? shoving him away from the race. He also sees Scott Brown as a happy harbinger that 2010 is going to be, in the words of an Obama adviser, ?a rancid year for incumbents.?
?I?m not comparing myself to Bobby Kennedy by any stretch, but he was opposed by the liberal establishment, too,? Ford said. ?Eleanor Roosevelt was the biggest opponent to him running.?
He argues that politicians should not have ?static positions? but should ?allow new information and cultural norms to affect them.? They should not, he said, be punished for ?thoughtfulness.?
On his embrace of gay marriage, he observed: ?There were pastors in my Tennessee district who said you can minister to someone and change their sexual orientation. I just never accepted that. I?m a heterosexual. I don?t know what anyone can say to me to make me sexually be with a man.?
There are top Democrats who find Ford too slick. ?He could sell a snowball in a blizzard,? said one.
But he has a buttery way that suits brash New York. He charms everyone, from waiters who drop cutlery to customers who drop into his conversation.
?People walk right over and grab your hand, and they never say, ?Pardon me,? which I love,? he said. ?My dad was a congressman, and he taught me at a very early age, ?They voted for me, they view me as theirs, and I am.? Our family?s phone in Memphis was always listed. It rang all day and all night.?
The guy at the next table was staring at Ford?s plate. ?The garden omelet,? Ford said, with a grin.

GROUP TWO

FRIDAY, FEB 5, 2010 20:20 EST
When communities “choose life”
Oregon rejected the anti-tax zealots and voted for tax increases. Colorado Springs wasn’t so lucky
BY DAVID SIROTA
Judging by Tim Tebow?s much-hyped Super Bowl ad, “choose life” remains conservatives’ favorite abortion shibboleth. But really, the phrase better captures the stakes in the Great Budget Wars of 2010.

Plagued by deficits, communities everywhere must now decide between tax reform and public spending cuts — between economic life and death. And thanks to two Western bellwether states, we know what each choice means.

Choosing death means mimicking Colorado Springs — a Republican red tattoo on Colorado’s purple heart.

As a venue for political experiments, the sprawly GOP enclave is as pristine a conservative laboratory as you’ll find in America. If the city has garnered contemporary notoriety at all, it has achieved infamy for domiciling right-wing groups like Focus on the Family and infecting the world with viruses like Douglas Bruce — the father of draconian initiatives that seek to prohibit governments from raising levies.

When the tea party movement?s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like the Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice — and the view isn’t pretty.

Thanks to the city’s rejection of tax increases — and, thus, depleted municipal revenues — the Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead … recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools (and) museums will close for good; Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; (and) the city won’t pay for any street paving.”

Meanwhile, even with the Colorado Springs Gazette uncovering tent ghettos of newly homeless residents, the city’s social services are being reduced — all as fat cats aim to punish what remains of a middle class. As just one example, rather than initiating a tax discussion, the CEO of the Springs’ most lavish luxury hotel is pushing city leaders to cut public employee salaries to the $24,000-a-year level he pays his own workforce — a level approaching Colorado’s official poverty line for a family of four.

This is what Reaganites have always meant when they’ve talked of a “shining city on a hill.” They envision a dystopia whose anti-tax fires incinerate social fabric faster than James Dobson can say “family values” — a place like Colorado Springs that is starting to reek of economic death.

Choosing life, by contrast, means doing what Colorado’s governor and state Legislature are doing by temporarily suspending corporate tax exemptions and raising revenue for job-sustaining schools and infrastructure. Even more dramatically, it means doing what voters in Oregon did last week.

As deficits threatened their education and public health systems, Oregonians confronted two ballot initiatives — one modestly raising taxes on annual income above $250,000, another hiking the state’s $10 minimum corporate income tax.

Despite these measures’ exempting 97 percent of taxpayers, conservatives waged a vicious opposition campaign, trotting out billionaire Nike CEO Phil Knight as their celebrity spokesperson. But this time, the right’s greed-is-good mantra failed. In a swing state that had killed every similar initiative since the 1930s, voters backed the tax increases — and chose economic life.

No matter where we live, this same choice will soon face us all in some form. It is a choice embodied in President Obama’s pragmatic initiative to end his predecessor’s high-income tax breaks, a choice for which future local and federal elections will serve as proxies.

Inevitably, anti-tax zealots will attempt to obscure what this choice is about — but the choice is now crystal clear.

Tax reform or draconian cuts, life or death — the decision is ours.

GROUP THREE

Who’s killing financial reform?
Call me old-fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street
BY ROBERT REICH

Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending ?an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms? needed by the public. ?The fact is,? Dodd said, ?I am frustrated, and so are the American people.? He charged that Wall Street?s intransigence was the reason for Congress?s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. ?The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.?

In other words, it isn?t Congress?s fault. It isn?t the Senate Banking Committee?s fault. It certainly isn?t Dodd?s fault. The reason more than a year has passed since the biggest bailout in the history of the world and nothing has been done to prevent a repeat performance — even as the biggest banks are doling out more than $30 billion of bonuses, even as Goldman Sachs is awarding its big traders $16 billion in bonuses (more than the $13 billion Goldman collected from taxpayers via the bailout of AIG), even as AIG itself is handing out bonuses — the reason is ? what, exactly, Senator? Because the Street has sent an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill?

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street.

Dodd left out the most telling detail, of course. Wall Street is where the campaign money is. Dodd of all people knows that. He?s been on the receiving end of lots of it over the years.

Wall Street firms and their executives have been uniquely generous to both political parties, emerging recently as one of the largest benefactors of the Democratic Party. Between November 2008 and November 2009, Wall Street firms and executives handed out $42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders. During the 2008 elections, Wall Street showered Democratic candidates with well over $88 million and Republicans with over $67 million, putting the Street right up there with the insurance industry as among the nation?s largest equal-opportunity donors.

Some Democrats are quietly grumbling that all the tough talk emanating from the White House in recent weeks — the President calling the Street?s denizens ?fat cats? and threatening them with limits on their size and the risks they can take, even waiving a watered-down version of Glass-Steagall in their faces — is making it harder to collect money from the Street this mid-term election year. And the Street is quietly threatening that it may well give Republicans more, if the saber-rattling doesn?t stop.

Congress isn?t doing a thing about Wall Street because it?s in the pocket of Wall Street. Dodd?s outburst at the Street is like the alcoholic who screams at a bartender ?how dare you give me another drink when all I?ve done is pleaded with you for one!?

Dodd is right about one thing. The American people are frustrated, and the failure of Congress to pass real financial reform is insulting. But in trying to place responsibility for this appalling failure on Wall Street, Dodd insults us even more.

GROUP FOUR

America Is a Great Power, What’s Wrong With That?

By Bradley Blakeman

– FOXNews.com

The United States of America has nothing to apologize for. Why is this administration so embarrassed by America?s greatness?

In 2009 President Obama began his term in office by apologizing to the world for past-perceived U.S. transgressions of arrogance and heavy-handedness.

The president appeared to believe that if he just changed the tone he could unilaterally disarm our enemies and win back our allies.

The fact is, since Obama took office, the world is a much more dangerous place and America has been benefited from his weak of leadership and resolve.

Let?s look at the state of the world with Obama in charge:

– North Korea: The Obama administration has had NO effect on North Korea?s continued march toward maintaining and increasing their nuclear arms threat to the region and the world;
– Venezuela: Obama has become the new ?Satan? according to Chavez. Our president had NO effect on better relations with a leader he criticized George Bush for isolating;
– China: Obama treats the PRC with kid gloves. Why? Because he?s afraid to offend the largest of America?s creditors. As a result China has not been helpful with North Korea, environmental responsibility or trade equality;
– The Middle East: No progress has been attempted or made with regard to real efforts to engage the parties on a lasting and sustained peace;
– Europe: The president spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth to Europe in his first year. But he came away with next to nothing to show for it. From apologizing, to pandering, picking up an undeserved medal and lobbying for the Olympics, (an effort that was doomed before he even took off from Washington), the president has come up empty handed;
– Russia: Obama surrendered our national security interests in Europe when he knuckled into Russia?s demand for America not to place missile defense systems in former USSR satellites with nothing in return to show for it.

The United States of America has nothing to apologize for. Why is this administration so embarrassed by America?s greatness?

Our nation is the freest, most generous nation on Earth. We have a long history of sticking up for and fighting for the oppressed and helping those in need. We have crossed oceans to free nations. We are willing to sacrifice our treasure and our people for a greater good and we are the first to send humanitarian and financial aid to countries hit by disaster, natural or otherwise.

Look no further than America?s response to the earthquake in Haiti, as a prime example of our power and compassion used for good. Our government and our people have offered humanitarian, military and financial aid at great sacrifice to our country at a time of deep recession.

When the chips are down to whom does the world turn to for leadership and action? The world turns to America, each and every time.

Where a calamity of Biblical proportions hit Haiti where was the rest of the world? Where was Cuba? Where was Venezuela? Where was Russia? Where was Iran? Where was North Korea? Many of the same countries that either consistently bash us or have the resources to robustly respond don?t.

When those folks attack America for its greatness and standing in the world, we should remind them that when Americans died on foreign soil standing up for their freedom, the only land we took for our own was only that which was necessary to bury our fallen.

America is a great power and for the sake of a more peaceful world we had better stay that way. Without the United States and our beliefs in freedom, liberty, humanity and justice, this world would be uninhabitable.

GROUP FIVE

Hey tea partyers, wake up and smell the coffee

Garrison Keillor

The tea partyers are enjoying their day in the sun, but coffee is the beverage preferred by most Americans, and we don’t have time to gang up and holler and wave our arms ? we prefer to sit quietly with coffee in hand and read a reliable newspaper and try to figure out what’s going on in the world. Great heaps of dead bodies are moved by front-loaders and dumped, uncounted, unidentified, into open pits in a stricken country while people feast and walk treadmills on enormous cruise ships sailing a hundred miles off the coast en route to the Bahamas and Jamaica. That’s the real world, not the paranoid hallucinations of the right.

The problem for Democrats right now is that nobody can explain health care reform in plain English, 50 words or less. It’s all too murky. The price of constructing this intricate web of compromises for the benefit of Republican senators (who then decided to quit the game and sit on their thumbs) is a bill with strange hair and ill-fitting clothes that you hesitate to bring home to Mother. Like all murky stuff, it is liable to strike people as dangerous or unreliable. And demagogues thrive in dim light.

The basic question is simple: Should health care be a basic right or is it a privilege for those who can afford it? Rush Limbaugh says it’s a privilege ? pay or die ? but most Americans agree that health care is basic, like education or decent roads or clean water. Holy Scripture would seem to point us in that direction. And yet the churches, so far as I can see, have chosen to stay aloof from this issue. Churches that feed the hungry and house the homeless dare not offend the conservatives in their midst by suggesting that we also tend the sick. And the opposition has beaten on garbage cans and whooped and yelled and alarmed the populace, which they’re quite good at. These people look at a clear blue sky and see a conspiracy.

Arousing alarm is easy, teaching is tough. It takes patience and discipline to teach; any bozo can drop a book on the floor and make people jump. This is true even in Massachusetts. And in Nevada, where Sen. Harry Reid is facing a tough challenge in the fall.

Reid is the gentlest and most patient soul in the U.S. Senate and his presence there in a colony of bull walruses is a tribute to Nevada. He’s a soft-spoken man from hardscrabble roots in the mining town of Searchlight who possesses Western honesty and openness and a degree of modesty startling for a senator, and if he goes down to defeat to some big bass drum, the Republic will be the poorer for it.

Sometimes you despair of common sense when you see an empty helmet like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani strutting up to the podium, or hear the Rev. Pat Robertson opine on the earthquake in Haiti, or the lunatic congressman from Michigan who intimated that the president is somehow responsible for the Fort Hood massacre ? you just roll your eyes and hope these guys have friends who will take away the car keys.

Paranoia sells better in January than in November, however. And Sarah Palin was not elected vice president, and she is not in the West Wing advising President John McCain on foreign policy. It didn’t happen. She is investing her windfall profits from the book about how the Eastern media beat up on her, but we the people decided she was not vice presidential material. We don’t choose our family doctor based on his ability to yodel, and we don’t elect a woman vice president because she’s perky.

And your high school civics teacher would not have given you a high mark for saying, as the Rev. Robertson did, that the earthquake in Haiti was God’s judgment on Vodou. God has tolerated Vodou in Washington for years and not seen fit to shake the city yet. Priests and mojo men dance around the Capitol every day, waving skulls on sticks, scattering their magic powders, trying to stop progress with a hex, and God is content to observe them. So do we coffee drinkers. Government is in the hands of realists and in the end we shall prevail.