Read new York Times columnist Frank Rich’s column today.

A teaser

Good thing, too, since our union is not strong. It is paralyzed. Many Americans were more eagerly anticipating Steve Jobs’s address in San Francisco on Wednesday morning than the president’s that night because they have far more confidence in Apple than Washington to produce concrete change. One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. But we do know that no speech can do the job. The president must act. Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.

and the summary

Americans like Obama far more than they like any Congressional leader. They might even like more of his policies if he spelled them out. But none of that matters if no Democrat fears him enough to do any of his bidding and no Republican believes there’s any price to be paid for always saying no.

A year in, we have learned that all the conciliatory rhetoric won’t cut it. But a president with a big megaphone and large legislative majorities has more powerful strings to pull, no matter what happened in one special election in Massachusetts. If he can’t get a working government, at least he can shake things up in November.

All the stuff in the middle in on target.

Welcome to another week that was on Rochesterturning.  We were a little light in the posting department, namely due to me being out for a good chunk of the week with illness.  Still, this was the week of the State of the Union, High Speed Rail awards,  Harold Ford and gut feelings justifying corporation welfare.

What stories did we miss?  Fire away in the comments.

NY-SEN

NY-SEN - Harold Ford v Kirsten Gillibrand.   Well, we are starting write about this and the more we learn about Harold Ford the more we really don’t like him.   Harold Ford stopped in Buffalo and there was this take on his chances.   Still, Bouldin via TAP had a good  story about Harold Ford’s engagement whihc seemed to sum up Mr Ford.  Those who have been engaged, I’m sure remember that special night.  Pop the question, give a ring and call a reporter.   Ah true love  - of the fiancee or himself I’m not sure.

Meanwhile Sen Gillibrand started firing back.   Maybe she can do it on the campaign trail.

Local Scene

Newly elected Irondequoit supervisor D’Aurizio has a gut feeling that everything will be fine with regards to the development of Medley Centre.  yeah Scott Congel still owes $500, 000 with an other large chunk of money due in 10 days but no matter.  In related news,  D’Aurizio will be giving tarot reading at Senior Center.

Our local Congressional delegation delivered $151 million out of an $ 8 billion dollar high speed rail package.  The journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step and we need to figure out how to have a larger stride.

State of the Union

President Obama delivered the State of the Union.  So, How are we doing?  Well, he proposed a spending freeze on a small part of the budget.  I see that akin to corporations at the end of the year stopping employee recognition programs, office supply purchases, and stuff like that.  In the grand scheme of things that isn’t the problem.

He made some baffling comment about being a good one-term president than a mediocre two term president.   WTF?  I’m kinda guessing that if at the end of your term you are defined as a good President you will get reelected.  How do you become considered a good President?  Well, How about just identifying and pushing your agenda.

Finally, the SOTU -What did you think?   Well, I was in a cold medicine induced coma and didn’t watch.

Health Care

Oh, one more thing Health Care is on the back burner - Yeah, can you be more upset at the bungling of the Health Care debate?  A year of effort and we secured exactly one Republican vote- the House Republican from Louisiana.  The bill barely passed the House, a much weaker version won’t pass the Senate.  Neither bill truly reforms Health Care.   Still, during the SOTU, the President asked if there was a better bill.  What is remarkable here is the folks advocating for a single payer system (like Medicare) have not backed off and continue to insert their voice in the debate meaning the debate is pushed to the left where is belongs.   For example, California Legislature recently passed a single payer bill and one of the proposed Senate compromises was extending Medicare to age 55.  More of this please.

Quick Clicks

Wednesday Wingnuts had Rush flip-flop edition

Emotion.  Disasters do bring out the best in us.

Traffic Cams - on the web - very cool

RIP Howard Zinn.  Oh, and check out the youtube version of A People’s History of American Empire.  It’s worth the time.

That’s it - see you next week…

Dr Flowers has been arrested again.  You remember the first time-when she showed up at Max Baucus’ meeting and demanded that single payer advocates be allowed a seat at the table?

This time she was arrested for responding to the presidents request for better ideas.

Yesterday, Dr. Margaret Flowers went to the White House to deliver her letter in response to President Obama’s challenge in his State of the Union address that others come up with a better approach to health care reform than his own. She wanted to let him know about the grassroots movement for improved Medicare for All which would solve the health care crisis, save lives, and save money. She was told the White House doesn’t accept hand-delivered letters.

Today, Dr. Flowers joined colleague Dr. Carol Paris to try again to get their message to President Obama, but this time by going to the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, where the president was meeting with House Republicans, with a large banner reading, “Letting you know: Medicare for all.”

What?  She took him at his word? She believed him when he said “I’m eager to hear from you.”?

Because they wouldn’t leave the hotel sidewalk and refused to have their message marginalized again, they were both arrested. The two physicians were briefly taken into custody by law enforcement officials, issued a citation and then released.

(Better take the blue pill)

And speaking of American Imperialism, what is the story with Haiti?

Sen Gillibrand fired back at Harold Ford who is thinking about running for Senate from New York State.   (via the D&C)

“I don’t know who Harold Ford thinks I am, but I am not going to be brushed aside because he and a few of his banker buddies think he should be a senator,” Gillibrand said in an interview Tuesday.

“I think his assertion that he is an outsider is a fraud,” she said. “I think it’s outrageous. He is somebody who grew up in Washington, D.C., while his father was a congressman for many, many years. He took the bar and failed. Then he waltzed into his father’s congressional seat.”

Gillibrand characterized the Washington-based Democratic Leadership Council, which Ford chairs, as “one of the biggest insider Democratic groups.”

More of this please.  The article also mentions Jonathan Tasini who has been absent in virtually all other news stories about this race. Gillibrand’s GOP opponent well, you can read the quote from the article

Republicans have begun to rally around Manhattan attorney Bruce Blakeman, who is campaigning as an advocate for the state’s financial services industry, which faces the possibility of stringent new regulations and taxes from Washington.

Heaven forbid those, “too big to fail”,  institutions get any regulation.

That’s my first impression of New York State being awarded approximately 2% of an $8 billion d0llar High Speed Rail initiative.  It isn’t anything to be overjoyed about.    Remodeling the Rochester Train Station into an intermodal system was not approved.  The high point is building an additional track section near Albany that alleviates a significant traffic bottleneck (freight trains have the right of way and passenger trains have to wait up to 30 mins).

So what is happening? (via the D&C)

• Repair and improve the Rochester train station.
• Rehabilitate the Buffalo-Depew station.
• Perform engineering and environmental analysis on development of a third track on an 11-mile stretch between Buffalo and Rochester.
• Improve 12 grade crossings on CSX tracks south of Albany.
• Build a second track between Albany and Schenectady.
• An additional $3 million will be used to build a 2.3-mile third track north of Albany for the Adirondack Express, which serves Montreal, and the Ethan Allen Express, which provides service to Rutland, Vt.
• Finally, $1 million will be used for continued planning for the Empire Corridor between Buffalo and New York City.

One of the complaints is that New York contributes more “tax dollars” and doesn’t get its fair return.  I get that we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and perhaps this is the first step towards a sensible train system still although local leaders have said positve things, “tickled pink” isn’t exactly how I’d describe it.

U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, insisted that the upstate House caucus, which she leads, was not worried that seven states were given more money than New York. “Disappointment is not in the upstate caucus of the House,” Slaughter said. “The competition was fierce for this. To be number eight, I’m tickled pink with that.”

Let’s review - Rochester is represented by4  Representatives and 2 Senators.  I understand that the Reps  Massa, Maffei and Lee are freshman and Sen Gillibrand is slightly senior to Sen Franken but Rep Slaughter and Sen Shumer aren’t and should be considered power players.  Schumer engineering the Dem Senate take over and Slaughter on the Rules committee.   Frankly, this just seems odd.

So, a good start but I expected a bit more.  Perhaps additional grants will come later it the year.

I was able to catch the president’s SOTU address in bits and pieces, streaming it live while I was at work.  Fortunately, I was watching when the president invited anyone with a better health care plan to let him know.

As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed. There’s a reason why many doctors, nurses and health care experts who know our system best consider this approach a vast improvement over the status quo.

But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.

Let me know. Let me know.

I’m eager to see it.

I was watching, and listening and I thought to myself, “Universal Single Payer, HR676.”  Fortunately, the PNHP was listening too and John Nichols, from The Nation has written about it here.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician and congressional fellow for PNHP, went to the White House today to deliver an open letter to the president calling on him to meet with her and other Medicare-for-All advocates.

Here’s the letter:

January 28, 2010President Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address last night:

“But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”

My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.

More is explained in this letter to the president, and I hope you will link to it and read the article in it’s entirety.

We all want health care reform, Mr President, but we want real reform that works.

Here’s the solution.

Possible side effects of this combination include, but are not limited to (according to SwingStateProject):

• NY-Sen-B: One other Research 2000 poll to talk about: they looked at the Democratic primary in New York, and find about what everyone else has found. Kirsten Gillibrand leads ex-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. by a 41-27 margin (with 3 for Jonathan Tasini), looking solid but still with a ton of undecideds. This also exists merely at the level of rumor, but with the potential presence of Ford scrambling things for the ever-so-briefly-thought-to-be-safe Gillibrand, sources say that Democratic Rep. Steve Israel (who got dissuaded from a primary challenge) and Republican ex-Gov. George Pataki (who hasn’t sounded interested until now) are both giving the race a little more consideration.

As Adrain pointed out in the comments to my last post, Ford cannot present as a populist, but George Pataki sure could.  This bears being watched closely.

The Observer followed Harold Ford throughout his day, on his first stop in Buffalo, Sunday.  I don’t think that anyone believes that he is not running against Senator Gillibrand , but he has yet to announce.  He’s making the rounds, stopping in the “Mom and Pop” places with a gold buffalo lapel pin, trying to look like “one of the guys”

… with appointed incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand stuck in the polls and seemingly unable to do anything about it, Mr. Ford’s early maneuvering has been taken very seriously by a number of high-profile donors and party officials and, perhaps most crucially, the press. And so here he was in Buffalo, embarking on a listening tour.

Maybe, not too excited about the Observer’s presence, this interchange was noted:

Waiting for his ride in the concourse, Mr. Ford told The Observer he had been to Buffalo before, and met the mayor, but this was just a first stop like any other.

“There was no conspiracy behind it, where to start,” he said.

“They drove up yesterday, from New York City,” Mr. Goldin told his boss of The Observer. “Six hours.”

“I know how long it is,” Mr. Ford quickly replied.

To be perfectly blunt, I don’t like him running.  We’ve got wayyyy too many Blue Dogs in the Senate already.  Although I agree with Stlo7 who says primaries are good for the party, as it forces issues that might not ordinarily make it to the table to be discussed and debated-this guy is far too smooth.  I don’t believe he can win in New York State, but I wouldn’t have believed that Scott Brown could have won in Massachusetts.

Though Mr. Ford is winning the daily news cycle—and, perhaps, doing real damage to Ms. Gillibrand—he has a long way to go before establishing himself with New York’s voters in his own right. In the week before his Buffalo trip, two polls had him trailing Ms. Gillibrand by 20 points. So while the sitting senator’s approval rating remains at an enticingly low 31 percent, the bad news for Mr. Ford is that he’s still more effective as a troublemaker than as a candidate, and that he’s more likely to cost Ms. Gillibrand the seat than he is to win it himself. One gets the feeling that if he so much as fails to be in the press for a couple of days, the ground could shift under his feet, and that someone else—maybe one of the Democrats who had previously taken a pass on the race—might find it too tempting not to take advantage of the cover now provided by Mr. Ford to declare his or her own challenge to Ms. Gillibrand. Mr. Ford’s very presence, if he sticks around for a bit, could also entice new Republicans into the race, too, throwing the general election into doubt for whichever Democrat emerges. It will be easier for him to turn her into Martha Coakley than to transform himself into Scott Brown.

The message here is for Kirsten: Run as if your life depended on it.  Talk to your liberal base.  Let them know that you will represent them and then continue to follow through with those commitments.  Don’t vacation while on the campaign trail.  Don’t cloister yourself.  Make the people your priority and that means Universal Health Care.

Yes, you have Schumer as your protector, but that is no longer enough.

I remember reading Howard Zinn, right along side of Molly Ivins in The Progressive before the Internet became my major source of news and commentary.  Now, Howard’s voice, along with Molly’s has been silenced and the progressive community is worse for wear.  Like our “Liberal Lion of the Senate”,  they just don’t build them like that anymore.

As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (1994), “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it.

Thank you Howard Zinn.

So, what did you think?  Me, I fell asleep.  Of course the very nasty cold/flu/post-Christmas “Rochester crud” I’ve been battling all week coupled with the cold medicine I’ve been taking was the reason. I’ll read the full text later.

I know there were watch parties and was invited to this one but will have to settle for reading about it in the D&C.

It wasn’t exactly a lovefest for the president they had gathered to see.

“We would like to see more bold leadership,” said Robin Wilt, who, along with her husband, Nicholas, hosted about 40 people in their Brighton home on Wednesday night to watch President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

Their backgrounds were different, but all progressive — from the Democratic National Committee staff member who heads up Obama’s local political organization to single-payer health care advocates to Obama campaign volunteers looking for a reunion.

Their reactions to the president’s first year were hardly unanimous, but many said they wished Obama had been more assertive.

More assertive. Yep.

Comment away

Two House members have stood up to gather signatures,in order to make reconciliation with a public option a possibility, Jared Polis and Chellie Pingree.  DFA has given us a tool to reach out to our Representatives, and Nancy Pelosi,  asking them to sign on.

So, while you’re waiting to hear the State of the Union Address,today, make a couple of calls.

Got to love this - The Town of Irondequoit, specifically the newly elected Republican Town Supervisor just announced that the plans for the revamping of the Medley Centre is on track. She is “hopeful” and “has a gut feeling” because apparently “on track” doesn’t definition of when the back payment of $500,000 will be delivered.  via the D&C

D’Aurizio said she met with project developers for several hours last week, including Scott Congel, the main developer involved, and has said she is hopeful that “significant movement” will occur by May 1. But, she said, that was just a “gut feeling,” and said people need to be patient.

A Supervisor meets with a developer and comes out with a gut feeling?  Seems the Town of Irondequoit needs something more concrete.

Sirota, I just love this guy.  Check out yesterday’s piece at OpenLeft.

Sometimes I get emails that really reinforce just how totally ignorant and uninformed a huge swath of America really is. These can be jarring, demoralizing and depressing all at the same time. But they are good reminders of exactly what we are dealing with in mass politics today.

[snip]

Is this willful ignorance or inadvertent stupidity? Hard to say as the lines are blurry. Most likely it’s a mixture of both. The right-wing mediasphere provides a hermetically sealed environment that completely insulates rank-and-file conservatives from basic reality, and so when confronted with that reality, they simply cannot see it.

Sure, many of these rank-and-file conservatives have willfully and consciously chosen to enter that echo chamber, but many have done so inadvertently, because that echo chamber is now so ubiquitous as to be invisible. It’s sorta like the Matrix - they can’t see it because it’s everywhere.

If you remember back to the posts, this summer about the Massa townhall meetings, you will see this ignorance in action.

Tonight, President Obama will deliver his “State of the Union” address.  Yesterday, Stlo7 wrote about the president’s “spending freeze”.  Now, President Obama has made the comment that he would…,

“rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

Really?  If that were true, why would he be tucking his tail between his legs and creating policy to appease the Right?  If that were true, why would he not put his foot down and firmly take a stand on maybe, just one of his campaign promises?  We lost one seat in Massachusetts, and that wasn’t because Obama lost the Republicans-he never had them in the first place.  It was because he’s lost his base, the progressives who elected him.

Joe Conason writes about this situation in the New York Observer:

The most troubling example yet is his sudden turn toward a spending freeze, which appears to be nothing more than pandering to the angry right.

[snip]

Reducing deficits is sound policy, of course, in times of steady growth. But as Mr. Obama’s own economic team understands—or at least seemed to understand last year—the “common sense” that urges us to balance the budget every year like any household actually makes no sense for government at all. Historically, America has won wars, built the nation and spread prosperity through deficit spending—and then returned to balanced budgets when deficits were no longer required to stimulate growth. Both the debt and the deficit following World War II were much higher than today in real terms, and were drastically reduced by growth rather than austerity.

If you really didn’t care about being re-elected, Mr President, then, why are you throwing this useless bone to the Republicans? You’re already performing right of center, do you think that moving more right is the appropriate direction?  Are you really ready to throw in the towel?  One year?  What are you so scared of?

As Mr Conason writes:

There is no such thing as “a really good one-term president.” A really good president sticks to principle, fights for progressive policy, improves people’s lives and wins reelection. After one year, that is what Americans still expect of Mr. Obama. He has no right to disappoint them.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what tonight’s speech brings, but I won’t be holding my breath-I’m already blue.