Wednesday, February 16, 2005
If you want a real ownership society, vote Democratic. There is a long but important article by William Greider over at The Nation that explains (among otherthings) why Phil Angelides is a heroic reformer. From The New Colossus
- "Angelides, for instance, articulates--actually resurrects--old wisdom about the nature of economic development. Public investment and private enterprise are not at war with each other, as the right has taught people to believe. They are mutually reinforcing and the key to insuring equitable opportunities for all (if you doubt this, check out the history of the world's sixth-largest economy--California).
Saturday, February 12, 2005
As expected, Howard Dean was elected chair of the Democratic Party today at the winter meeting in Washington, D.C. - approximately two years to the day after giving his "what I want to know" speech. Amazing stuff. ActBlue has made it incredibly easy to donate - you can do it from right here, even:
Monday, February 07, 2005
Democracy Is No Polite Tea Party:
- "At Cambridge I was taught a laudable method of argument: You never personalize, but you have absolutely no respect for people's opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks."
Also, an early morning, pre-rail forum shout-out to my buddy Greg Gandrud, R-extremist from Carpinteria, who announced his suppport for "privatizing roads" this morning in the paper. Here's why this is a stupid idea: it's not like companies can compete for owning a road beyond their initial bid, so if you did this, you're basically granting a monopoloy to one company to gouge people for driving on the thing. Adding a profit margin to the cost structure isn't going to save anyone any money - although it would probably serve to make a few Republican donor types filthy rich. If the state wants people to pay tolls for driving that's fine, but that money needs to go into public transit and/or building housing near jobs, not into the pockets of the beneficiaries of yet another privatization scam.
Just for the record... There's a letter in today's News-Press that claims that "liberal Democrats on the county's South Coast" don't acknowledge the loss of middle-class folks from the city of Santa Barbara. Just for the record, I'm a South Coast liberal Democrat who recently has been spending just about every waking moment working on this problem, and I am most certainly not alone. Defending the existence of the middle class is a high priority for many local elected Democrats, as well. Mr. Esparanza, if you happen to come across this - I urge you to get involved here locally during the upcoming political season. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
"So what?" My letter to Dan Walters about this:
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So, three of the Gov's top contributing industries are financial services, real estate developers, and big pharmaceutical companies. Then in the State of the State address, he proposes a pension privatization scheme that would just so happen be a
massive windfall for the financial services industry, housing deregulation that would
just so happen to be a massive windfall for developers, and some kind of drug card
thing that would just so happen to be a massive windfall to big pharma.
How is that not quid pro quo? I may have just fallen off the turnip truck, but even I can connect *those* dots.
Dan Ancona
Santa Barbara, CA
