John Edwards Only Candidate Who Considers Katrina an Issue

Now here's a reason why Democrats who are true to their liberal principles are putting theirmoney on Edwards. Unlike the other candidates running for the party's nomination, he refuses to measure himself against the Republican standard and focus on everything except what happens inside our own borders to actual Americans. For instance, the devastation that still is New Orleans, two years after Katrina. Which is why he understood why it was so right to support the bid by the city of New Orleans to host one of the Presidential debates next year. After all, what other city so exemplifies the debate over the mission and value of the federal government except New Orleans?

As John Edwards points out though, corporate interests have literally taken over this government, and our political process as well. Not that Edwards needed the Presidential debate to make Katrina a priority for him:

"It saddens me to hear that the Commission on Presidential Debates rejected New Orleans' bid to host a debate in 2008 citing evidence that the city has not recovered enough to host the event. I strongly believe this decision was a mistake and I urge the Commission on Presidential Debates to rethink their decision.

"As a nation, all of us have a responsibility to do everything we can to help rebuild this great city, and holding national events in this city, like a presidential debate, will help New Orleans move forward. I have made rebuilding this city a central part of my presidential campaign because I believe we cannot stand on the sidelines as President Bush continues to fail the people of New Orleans.

"The truth is America is not the country of the Superdome in New Orleans after Katrina. We can prove it by fulfilling our moral responsibility to get New Orleans back on its feet. At a minimum, when I am the Democratic nominee, I will push to make sure we hold a presidential debate in New Orleans. And, as president, I will make sure that our government does everything in its power to help restore the city."

Democrats are making a mistake if they think Katrina's not a big issue.

A number of NOLA bloggers are incensed about this turn of events and rightfully so. If New Orleans is good enough for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists annual meeting, various large medical conferences and can host thousands upon thousands during Carnival season, why not one measly presidential debate? If a debate is not held in the nexus of our unraveling as a nation, the cynosure of the descent, the lens that focuses the knowledge that our government doesn’t have a stitch on, where else?

But then, maybe the mainstream media would have to publish stories likethis?

In late October, the U.S. government, through HUD, gave the go ahead to demolish four of the largest public housing projects in New Orleans. On November 15, a federal judge refused to block the demolitions – clearing the way for the demolition of the BW Cooper, CJ Peete, Lafitte and St Bernard developments.

These projects aren’t just structures. These were people’s communities — where 1000’s of people grew up, met, fell in love and raised families. These buildings suffered less damage than other housing in the floods because of their solid brick construction and could house 4,700 families. But the government plans to demolish them and build “mixed income” housing that will include less than 750 units for people with low incomes.

Much of the Black population of this city has been dispersed throughout the country since Katrina. By March of 2007, it was estimated that 200,000 former residents had still not returned to New Orleans and that more than 150,000 of them are Black. The demolition of public housing is yet another way the government is discouraging and preventing people from coming back to New Orleans. In effect the message is: “You’ll never be able to come back home because there will be nowhere you can live.”

The number of homeless people in New Orleans is double what it was before Katrina. Lafitte, which could house almost 900 families but is now almost empty, sits across the street from a homeless encampment where dozens of people live under a freeway overpass.

New Orleans desperately needs affordable housing. Yet the authorities are determined to destroy 1000’s of housing units that could be made suitable for people to live in. Where’s the logic in this?

To anyone concerned about the needs of the people, this is insane. But the people who run this system operate based on a cold capitalist logic. For them what matters is keeping their system in effect and as lean and mean a profit-making machine as possible. To do this, they will demolish public housing, no matter how this impacts people’s lives. For this system, a disaster that killed 1,800 people and forced 200,000 out of the city is an opportunity to rebuild a New Orleans that’s smaller and whiter and rid of those who the system has no need for.

Why John Edwards Will Work for the American Voter

Now it's official that we can all go insane: one of the radio stations I receive on the way to work when CSPAN bores me played a christmas carol. And it is not even Thanksgiving Day! So if like those radio jocks you need to remember the reason for the season (that comes before the candy canes), John Edwards has a Thanksgiving Day greeting for you. I'd never seen one of their wedding pictures before and they are adorable. Nice to see something wholesome and inspiration up as the Republicans step up their "Swift Kids Against Edwards" campaign, which currently hovers at two or three relinks for the top 20 Google Blog hits for "John Edwards." And there's this nonsense from the "9-11 truth movement" out there, via user laughmore. If not for the user's profile, I'd think it was another smear job from the right, but alas, it's from the extreme left. At least the Freepers now can't complain that John Edwards is loved by those loonies. Going back to the holiday cheer, here's a little thanksgiving for economic populism:

By now most people not living under under a boulder know that John Edwards is considered an "economic populist." Unfortunately, the term is often ill defined, other than a sense of being on the side of working people and vague recollections about a Cross of Gold speech. For Edwards substantively "economic populism" means that he is committed to universal health care, to effectively eliminate poverty in thirty years, and supports Smart trade agreements that benefit workers here and with our trading partners instead of just corporations.

Beyond the specific policies John Edwards's value system is one that comes unapologetically from his small town working class background. But, mill working fathers and passionate speeches aside, what is too often missed about the John Edwards brand of populism, is his insistence on the marriage of economic and political empowerment.

The way Edwards combines promoting a fair economic shake for everyone with de-rigging the political system has appealed to me since he started doing it during his last run. Now, after eight years of top down politics and top down economics from the Bush administration, John Edwards's brand of small "d" democratic Populism is exactly what is needed.

...In a way that no other politician seems to, Edwards gets that the unfairness of our political system is linked to the unfairness of our economic system. In a way that no other politician seems to, Edwards is committed and prepared to change both. And it is that combination of economic Populism with democratic Populism is what makes Edwards such a potentially transformational leader.

A darling blogger in Nevada solicited from John Edwards better questions than the ones asked by the moderators at the Nevada Democratic debate. Here is one which I've snerched:

Q: Sen. Harry Reid has vowed he will do all he can to stop the construction of three major coal power plants in Nevada. Do you agree with Sen. Reid?

A: In March, I was the first candidate to call for a ban of coal-fired power plants that cannot capture and eventually store their carbon emissions... To encourage consumers to use less energy and to use energy when it can be generated less expensively, I will expand the use of smart energy meters, which display energy
use and price at the same time. I will also reverse Bush's budget cuts to the Department of Energy home weatherization program and expand it to $500 million a year.

What am I thankful for? That I live in America, in a country that has a tradition of being a liberal democracy, where people believe that if they dedicate their lives to making the world a better place, they will succeed. We are told all the time by the Republicans that the marketplace is the best way to solve the real needs of the country, and then you go out and look at the skyline of your city, or the declining marine harvests in your estuaries, and you know what they really mean. The market will take care of the needs of the people who dine with silver spoons. Nothing explains the fundamental value of government like the pollution in our cities, like problems of over-fishing, like declining drinking water resources, like the rising cost of heating your home, like the rising cost of milk. For those of us who eat lunch with a plastic spoon instead of a silver one, you know the money being made at the cost of our environment and our local economies is going to buy silver spoons for someone else. We could give in to the Republican mantra. Or be brave enough to refuse.

Hillary wanted a conversation. Barak wanted a picnic. John wanted sacrafice and commitment. How well we remember the heady days after 9-11 when we were ready to come together and show the world the enduring nature of what it meant to be American, land of the free and home of the brave. And George just asked us to take our credit cards to the mall, and spread democracy in the world by increasing the corporate profits of his campaign contributors. Americans know that's not what economic prosperity and good fortune should entail. John wants to ask Americans to do something else, wants a Presidency for Americans that will lead our country towards an open and better future. Where a hard days work puts nutritious food on the table and fills the prescription the doctor wrote. Instead of waiting around for the corporations of the world to save us, for Wal-Mart to cure breast cancer and for Haliburton to end global warming and for Blackwater to ensure fair trade, we American citizens are perfectly capable and morally responsible to do these things. Through diplomacy, through leadership, through millions of choices and opportunities to -gasp- do good. Tomorrow begins today.

Giving Thanks This Year for the Soup Kitchens

Now this year marks the first one that yours truly won't be stuffing a bird for Thanksgiving. Instead, travel out of state looms to visit an ailing grandmother and see my mother's family in a very cold place up north. In between rounding up wool socks, I thought through some of my own money numbers over food. In honor of the holiday, we have a very interesting commentary onfood bank culture in America. And a link to data showing household food insecurity state by state, for a total of 11% of Americans. After the last of the gravy is gone, 35 million Americans will take their place on the breadlines of our country, and mothers from coast to coast will return to the cruelty of trying to feed their families on the $3 per person per day that the government allots them. Our bleeding heart:

My experience of 25 years in food banking has led me to conclude that co-dependency within the system is multifaceted and frankly troubling. As a system that depends on donated goods, it must curry favor with the nation's food industry, which often regards food banks as a waste-management tool. As an operation that must sort through billions of pounds of damaged and partially salvageable food, it requires an army of volunteers who themselves are dependent on the carefully nurtured belief that they are "doing good" by "feeding the hungry." And as a charity that lives from one multimillion-dollar capital campaign to the next (most recently, the Hartford food bank raised $4.5 million), it must maintain a ready supply of well-heeled philanthropists and captains of industry to raise the dollars and public awareness necessary to make the next warehouse expansion possible.

Food banks are a dominant institution in this country, and they assert their power at the local and state levels by commanding the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. Their ability to attract volunteers and to raise money approaches that of major hospitals and universities. While none of this is inherently wrong, it does distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.

The risk is that the multibillion-dollar system of food banking has become such a pervasive force in the anti-hunger world, and so tied to its donors and its volunteers, that it cannot step back and ask if this is the best way to end hunger, food insecurity and their root cause, poverty.

I rounded up my own receipts for food over the past month, and coffee to paper products, dawn to dusk, my expenses as a consumer of organic foods runs at $8.71 a day. The sniffs I hear already. Of course, non-organic and pesticide ridden, antibiotic dripping foods are about 30% cheaper... but that's only because you aren't calculating in the costs of chemotherapy. While cancer fatality rates are plummeting for breast cancer, they are accelerating for just about every other body part. So many of my fellow coworkers comment often on my organic lifestyle with the view that they could never afford it. So I took a little survey. The average cost of a McDonald's breakfast order among them? $6.87. Coffee. Juice. Sandwitch. Hashbrown. At the rate most of them eat, turning to the staple lure of the poor working class (fast food) for three meals a day would cost $21.00 a day before taxes or 4 to 5 servings of fruits and vegetables. All with a side order of heart disease and diabetes.

Leaving work today I passed a local Methodist church, and outside their walls stood a mingling crowd. Not for sunday school or services, but in lines for their own bags of food. In this roaring economy that we have. Demographically they were either elderly couples or young women. Yes, young women between the ages of 15-25 standing around in a line waiting for a cheap loaf of white bread and a few cans of soup. Even during the three months I ended up out of work due to a job injury last year, when I took one month's emergency assistance to avoid eviction, when I was down to my last three cans of soup, I couldn't take food from a food bank. I was lucky enough to get help from my mother, but not everyone ends up adult with a family left. I looked into their blank faces as I drove past, and tried to imagine what they stood their thinking in silence, neither looking to the right or to the left, each one as expressionless as the next. That's what I noticed, the lack of frenzy, the lack of consuming need, the lack of any feeling at all. I don't think they can imagine a way out of that food line, and I can only imagine the ends they'd choose if this last shred of respectability came to an end. Yet that glimpse is all the world gets to see of their plight, however horrible, however desperate, however needless.

I hold a high regard for the marketplace and hard work, but let's be real for a moment about the ability of capitalism to raise people up out of poverty and hunger. Most economists tell you that over the past 50 years, that the per captia income has risen "this much" and so life is better than it was before. Yes, the lives of the exceedingly wealthy and the lives of the working poor, canceled out against itself is the measure of economic growth. So no matter how many more people become more poor, as long as a few people become astronomically wealthy, "we all is doing better." We define as the unfettering of competition the fact that the minimum wage fell about 29 percent in real terms between 1979 and 2003, and ignore that it's highest purchasing power existed in 1968 at $1.60 an hour, or the equivalent of $9.12. I worked at Target in 2005, and the highest merit-based wage increase possible under corporate rules I could receive (and did) was .50 cents. Which translates into $20 more a paycheck, or $480 dollars a year. But gasoline increased $1 per gallon from 2004 to 2005, and organic milk increased $1.30 per gallon. Inflation left me paying $7-9 more a paycheck, almost having my merit raise. And there was no cost-of-living adjustment. But there's no calculation for this sort of economic stress, except the expectation that people should degrade their standard of living to the point where they eat $3 a day. We need a better way to fight poverty than the idea that corporate profits will end hunger and send us all to college.

What Cowards Call Anger, Liberals Call Hope

How did Katrina make you feel? Turn the channel and people call you reasonable. Get involved, get motivated, feel anything at all and all you get to be called is "angry." Well, so be it then. We are angry, and also filled with the brilliance of hope and the strength to raise our country up and build our cities anew. And oh yeah, "more beer!"

John Edwards, Me, And Lunch with a Plastic Spoon.

Now there's so much that draws me to the the campaign of a mill worker's son. I read yesterday that his father had to borrow $50 dollars to pay the medical bills after he was born, so he and his wife could take their son home from the hospital. That is something that really speaks to me, staring at a medical bill for stitches I received for an on-the-job injury as a federal employee that worker's comp is steadfastedly ignorning. Work should work for the people who work, for the people who go to work with a bagged lunch and a plastic spoon, for the people like me, who get up to go to work before public transportation even starts. Work should work.

Conservative smear bloggers are crowing the loudest about Hillary being inevitable as the Democratic nominee, but all of us should take heart considering how late-deciders are so very important as voters. In Iowa and everywhere. Attack blogs are in spasms over Edwards' ideas for paid family leave is an astounding and courageous plan: 8 weeks of paid leave for new parents and that we should expand leave options to 13 million more works. Edwards truely is the pro-family candidate in this campaign. But conservatives don't want parents who are up all night feeding the newborn to get a break- hey it would only corrupt them and give the runt the idea that no one ever has to go back to work. And yeah, that is the line out there they are shrilling to the skies. Good to see conservatives showing their true colors.