The Locust Fork News and Journal Endorse Obama
February 18th, 2008At the risk of having our house burned down by the East Jefferson County and/or the Blount County Ku Klux Klan, The Locust Fork News and Journal is formally endorsing Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy today for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States.
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| Glynn Wilson |
| Obama in Birmingham last year |
We do not come to this decision easily or lightly. And while we don’t think a detailed explanation is really necessary, we’re offering this one anyway.
Having grown up in Birmingham in the 1960s and coming of age in the early 1970s when old George Corley Wallace had a stranglehold on this state and its people, largely on the basis of race, I remember when the churches and the schools were first integrated. I remember when the Klan used to take up its collection of hate at the traffic light by the Civitan Park in Center Point.
I remember making friends with the first two “colored” girls who came to our school, and I even remember their names: Johnny Jones and Mary Hawkins. I was there by the Erwin High School bandroom in the drum line when the fights broke out between the first black students bused from downtown Birmingham and the rednecks who attacked them with baseball bats and motorcycle chains.
I know people who are still racists in this part of the world, and as hard as it is to believe, I still hear the “N” word uttered here from time to time, most recently this past Saturday night.
But I left Birmingham a number of years ago and attended college at the University of Alabama and got a real education, which will do much to enlighten a person’s mind on these matters. And I have lived in other places, including the diverse New Orleans, where the races had a much longer history of mixing. I even got to play the drums with some of that great city’s best black blues musicians, and came to be friends with a few, including Walter “Wolfman” Washington.
So it gives me no particular pause to endorse a man with black skin for president, especially one as intelligent and unflappable as Mr. Obama. The pundits can’t crack him and Senator John McCain won’t be able to either. Plus, he has demonstrated his ability to run a ground campaign and raise the massive amount of money it takes to run a presidential campaign in this crazy world.
As our regular readers will recall, Mr. Obama was not our first choice in this race.
Since our chief inspiration and one of our primary considerations has to do with our love of nature, and since it is our strongly-held belief that the federal government has an important role to play in regulating corporate pollution, especially green house gases that lead to air pollution, public health problems and yes, global warming and climate change, we would have loved to see Al Gore jump into this race. We thought with his new celebrity status as an Oscar winner and Nobel Peace Prize recipient he could have won this election in a landslide.
But we can’t blame him for deciding to stay out of the political fray and enjoy his life, especially after he spent eight years in public service in the White House as vice president and then had the 2000 election taken away from him by the Supreme Court - after winning a majority of the popular vote.
We had some hope for former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who we believe made a strategic mistake by dropping out of the race a week before Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. It would have been interesting to see how the people of the South actually voted on that day with him still solidly in the race.
But he made his decision, and now we all have to make ours.
It would be interesting to see Hillary Clinton become the first woman president of the U.S., and we think she did a great job as first lady under our favorite president in modern times, Bill Clinton. I had the occasion to tell him that in person in recent months right here in Birmingham. And, the people of New York seem to like her as a Senator.
But as we watched on C-SPAN last week as the vote went down on the bill to extend the executive branch’s powers to spy on innocent American citizens, and to grant the telecom giants retroactive immunity, she was not there to vote. The key amendment, which would have stripped immunity from the bill, came up three votes short.
If she were going to be “ready to lead from day one” as she has said in her campaign, where was she when it came time to do the job she was elected to do by the people of New York?
Senator Barack Obama was there, in spite of the demands of the presidential primary campaign, and he voted the right way. He has also said the fight against global warming will be one of the top priorities in his administration if he is elected.
A majority of Democratic Party voters in Alabama marked their ballots for him in our own primary Feb. 5. He won almost 56 percent of the vote. And former Alabama Lt. Gov. Jere Beasley, someone who we respect, has endorsed Obama as well.
“I am firmly convinced that Sen. Obama is the person needed to bring about the badly needed change in Washington,” Beasley told the Associated Press. He “really honestly gives hope to people and that is so badly needed right now” and he is “a breath of fresh air on the political scene and I am looking forward to his leadership in the nation’s capital.”
In addition, since I worked as a free-lance writer for the Dallas Morning News for almost four years out of New Orleans, I was a bit surprised to see such a conservative paper give its endorsement to Obama in recent days.
“Mr. Obama is our choice because of his consistently solid judgment, poise under pressure and ability to campaign effectively without resorting to the divisive politics of the past,” according to the Dallas Morning News editorial board.
In fact, seven of the largest newspapers in conservative Texas have endorsed Obama, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, the Austin American-Statesman and the El Paso Times.
In addition, the influential Texas blog Burnt Orange Report threw its endorsement Obama’s way.
And then, in the final analysis, I will throw our support to Obama for one other reason. It will drive the racist Christians in Birmingham absolutely crazy if he is elected. As Charles Barkley called them on CNN from New Orleans the other day, they are “fake Christians” who must believe there is a separate heaven and hell for black and white people.
They are spreading the false rumor in person and on their illegal church e-mail lists that Obama is a Muslim with a secret plan to turn America into a Muslim country. That is so patently absurd it will serve them right to see a black man elected president.
They all hate Hillary Clinton about as much, and would demonize her in the general election campaign as well. But an Obama presidency may just drive them over the edge. I can’t wait to see the day : )
Tags: Elections 2008
February 18th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
And on top of everything Glynn, he CAN win and win big. The contrast between he and John McCain in the debates will be astounding.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
We will see. Looks like the Repugs are expecting a landslide on the level of 1964. I just wish I had more confidence in Obama’s health care plan. That’s one major issue I don’t think we are going to get solved soon, unfortunately.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
There are only a few policy differences between Obama and Clinton, although difference in style is marked. I am not sure either can beat McCain, the apparent Republican nominee. Clinton is certainly more polarizing and many pundits believe more likely to ensure a large Republican turnout. Obama is less so, at the moment, but has not been in the crucible of a national general election campaign against an opponent of another party.
The media so far have been gaga over Obama, and it clearly shows. However, they are also friendly to McCain, which might make for even-handed coverage this fall if the Illinois senator is the Democratic nominee.
Practically, it will make little difference who the next president is, whether it’s Hillary, Barack or John. All are wedded to the Rooseveltian concept of the office as national messiah-national nanny. All accept the premise that the federal government should have wide powers to manage human activities for the “greater good.”
This is in stark contrast to the concept of government as the guarantor of the individual’s right to live life as he or she sees fit, respecting the identical rights of others. This view also deliberately ignores a century or more of constantly-revalidated evidence that government planning and control lead to many small and large disasters almost without fail.
Getting excited about Obama, or Clinton or McCain, is as fanciful as getting excited about Spiderman, Wonder Woman or Captain America.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
You are right in some ways, but I am a bit puzzled by your response since I know your libertarian leanings.
Obama’s position on health care is quite compromising to the private carriers, so he is no threat to capitalism on that front. Either one of these candidates will be quite friendly to the private sector, unlike John Edwards, who would have taken on the bastards.
I know you don’t think the executive is the problem, it’s Congress, right? We should have a parliament? Is that your position?
I would like to see a reversal of this trend toward privatization of government myself. It takes 10 times the tax money to house prisoners or the insane, provide health care or electricity or war zone security, than it would with a government system in which competent people were hired instead of party loyalists and people were held accountable by the PUBLIC!
TVA used to be such a system, until the Republicans started moving it more and more toward a private, corporate model. Some services just do not lend themselves to the profit motive, my friend. Most of the developed world has government health care for its citizens, and it shows. We are the only rich nation without it, and the people here end up costing more in tax money in emergency room visits than they would with a free, government system of preventive medicine.
Did you see the 60 Minutes piece this past week on the Danes? The happiest people on the planet, and they have the biggest nanny government in the world. A 50 percent tax rate would be a small price to pay for free health care and free education all the way through college, with an almost guaranteed system that everyone is able to get the job they want.
So bring on the nanny, baby.
I just had to spend several hours today dealing with simply getting a copy of the tax documents under Bush’s privatized drug benefit program for my 80-year-old mother. If you haven’t had to deal with this bullshit, you don’t know what it’s like. A government agency would have just mailed us a copy. These bastards make it hard on purpose so they can bill the hours, it looks to me like.
When Bill Clinton was president, I could ride my mountain bike to downtown Knoxville and the IRS help center would fill out my tax forms for me and mail them. I didn’t even need a stamp. The government got its money, ran a surplus, and I was so happy I could proudly cheer for Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France wearing that US Postal Service jersey and be proud to be an American.
Now? The world hates us and we are deep in debt.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
The Danes are the “happiest people on Earth” depending on how you measure happiness. And their nanny state has the built-in advantage of being small, relatively culturally homogeneous. There a lot of things not going so well for the Danes right now, including a stagnant economy and a flight of highly-educated young professionals to less-regulated environments in other countries.
I believe that both the executive and Congress are equal parts of the problem. The executive has become the most-powerful branch, which the founders did not intend. They were especially wary of executive power to make war without legislative checks, and executive power to suspend individual rights in the name of war or national emergency.
Congress, for its part, long ago abdicated responsibility for legislating and has delegated most of its legislative powers to a horde of federal agencies which issue regulations having the force of law. Congress has in particular abdicated its authority to declare war - no war has been officially declared since December 8, 1941. Instead, they have passed blanket resolutions like Tonkin, the first Gulf War, and the present Iraq War, effectively allowing the president to determine if, when and where to take us into war. The tragedy of Vietnam that hit my generation, and the current tragedy of Iraq, are the direct result of supine Congressional abdication of this power.
Unlike Republicans, libertarians do not want government subsidizing favored corporate interests, nor running large-scale enterprises of any kind that the market will provide to meet consumer demand. For instance, even in the nanny states of Europe, postal services have been de-monopolized and private companies allowed to compete, resulting in overall lower first class rates than apply in the United States.
Health care is already socialized in the United States. It began when the AMA deliberately create public hysteria for state medical licensing laws a century ago, with the real goal to run homeopaths and chiropractors out of business. They claimed, of course, their goal was to protect the public. Any wonder that the licensing boards are made up of AMA doctors. Only the chiropractors survived. They ultimately won a billion dollar lawsuit against the AMA in the late 1980s, news that barely made it onto the back pages of major papers, much less to broadcast news.
Until that a century ago, health was a competitive profession. Since then all manner of government regulations, subsidies, mandates, etc., have been piled onto the health care system so that it is all but impossible to know what a market system would look like, since we’ve not had one since our grandparents were children. But time after time, when a particular industry is left relatively free of government interference, the prices come down and quality and quantity increase.
Computers come to mind immediately in that regard. Thirty years ago computers were huge mainframe jobs that cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Today, we have more powerful PCs in millions of homes and offices that cost under $500. This is how the market works.
While you state that some services do not lend themselves to a profit model, you offer no proof of that. My thought is that this “conventional wisdom” comes from never experiencing certain services offered in any other way but through government.
A few decades ago, the Dutch government discussed closing its state-owned shoe factories. Sure enough, there was an outcry from the Dutch public, who were used to government-manufactured shoes, wondering who would make their shoes.
The parts of the rural South that got electricity through TVA would have gotten it anyway through private investment, likely not many years later. Meantime, the entire American tax-paying public paid the bill to build TVA and subsidized electricity for a selected region of the rural South. TVA is still run pretty much like other government agencies and, so far as I know, other power companies cannot compete with them in their service area. This kind of pork barrel subsidization is, of course, now part and parcel of Congressional doings, ranging from roads to nowhere that Robert Byrd has had built in West Virginia to million dollar bridges for a few hundred folks in Alaska, courtesy Ted Stevens, to a vast array of corporate and agribusiness pork delivered by dozens of members of Congress and of course folks like Dick Cheney.
Bush’s drug benefits plan is a sham, but not because it is “privatized.” They have to buy the drugs from private companies, Glynn, that’s who makes them. It’s a sham because it creates trillions of dollars in new liabilities and arguably drives up the cost of drugs above true market rates. And, most of the major drug companies will either give your grandmother those drugs for free, or next to nothing, if she qualifies. Wal-Mart is doing prescriptions for a couple of bucks now for most pharmaceuticals on the same basis.
Last, but not least, what makes you believe that any U.S. administration is going to appoint “competent” people to key administrative and policy positions? When has that happened? Don’t say under Clinton, because he had his full share of screw-ups including folks like Janet Reno.
More to the point, the federal bureaucracy is not really run by the policy-makers at the top but by some 4 million career civil servants who, competent or not, dedicated to mission or not, qualified for their jobs or not, are usually in their jobs for as long as they want to be. They are virtually impossible to dismiss. As long as they meet the minimum requirements set by official guidelines and regs, they continue in their jobs.
If a President Obama came into office saying he was going to clean house and make sure competent people were running things, he might be able to do that with the politically-appointed positions. But if he went after the civil service, his proposals would be dead-before-arrival in Congress. Same for any other president.
In other words, expecting competency, efficiency and respect for individuals from a bureaucracy like this is not intuitive. They have power, they have virtually guaranteed-for-life jobs, and they are not going to do anything, or let anyone else do anything, to threaten that.
There are exceptions to that, of course. And I tend to believe your experience with the IRS in East Tennessee had more to do with Tennessee than with the IRS.
Last, but not least, the government ran a surplus under Clinton because of the blessed gridlock caused by dillution of power. A Democrat in the White House, with Republicans controlling Congress. Compromise, and caution, were the order of the day, which among other things prevented runaway spending on new domestic programs and worldwide military adventurism.
Obama or Clinton with a Democratically-controlled Congress will be as big a disaster as Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress. It will virtually guarantee that either Obama or Clinton will be a one-term president - spending will go out of control, taxes will be hiked, and in all likelihood we’ll still be in Iraq by 2012 no matter what Obama says on the campaign trail.
LBJ, you may remember, won the 1964 election in part by painting Barry Goldwater as a warmonger who’d lead us into nuclear conflict. As soon as the election was over — December 1964 — we got the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and Vietnam, courtesy the “peace candidate” LBJ. Nixon promised to end Vietnam when elected in 1968. He left office, in disgrace of course, and we were still there.
You may have watched too many episodes of West Wing, where nice, moral, ethical liberal Democrats solved all the country’s problems with a wide array of social spending and fuzzy goodness. West Wing ignored, of course, a lot of history including the actual in-office records of “liberal Democrats” such as FDR and LBJ.
But it did show the ongoing fascination of the left to achieve its goals through use of government coercion. The bottom line is coercion if its government being used to achieve social and economic goals - no matter if those goals are ones favored by “liberal” Democrats or “conservative” Republicans. It amounts to giving someone else the power to manage my life, and ultimately coerce me if I don’t want to be managed.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
All good theoretical arguments, but there is one major thing missing. As I told a newspaper editor in Montgomery the other day about our exchanges and we talked about privatization, he said something prescient. Under privatization, the poor folks would get nothing. And if the poor folks get nothing, they revolt. A national safety net is critical for stability of the economy.
My experience reading about TVA does not back up what you say about it. The reason TVA was created was to provide power to the poor people of Appalachia number one, who were not and never would have been serviced by private companies because they could not create an economy of scale out in the middle of nowhere for poor people. The second reason was to create jobs for those same poor people in the transition from the agricultural to the industrial economy - and so they could pay those incredibly low power bills back in those days.
There are numerous examples we could talk about where privatization creates inequities - and instability - as it regards providing economic services to the rich vs. the poor. Take bank loans and the recent subprime mortgage controversy. Leave it to the private banks and the poor black folks in east Birmingham had to take out high interest balloon notes to buy suburban homes because they did not have high enough credit ratings to get better interest rates. They had to move somewhere, because the city closed down the old “projects” downtown. So they got subsidized loans on the front end to move to the suburbs. But when the credit crunch came, you can drive around right here in the neighborhood where I am forced to live right now and see moving trucks on every block and empty houses for street after street. These poor people have now had to default on those loans, totally screwing up what little credit they had, and move into these large suburban government subsidized apartment complexes, which are becoming the new ghettos. And guess what? Crime is rampant and the white folks just keep moving further and further out in the country toward Blount and St. Clair Counties, creating even more suburban sprawl and inefficiency in the local economy - not to mention all the environmental problems.
I know you don’t believe in global warming, and I’m sure you can come up with an argument that the private sector could fix it if left alone. But with profit their only consideration, they will not take it on.
Now, let’s look at the newspaper business. It is widely known that newspapers already red line certain neighborhoods and will not serve the poor, less educated audience. So the cycle of disinformation and superstition continues in the poor, minority neighborhoods, leading to all kinds of problems, including health problems that cost all the taxpayers - and the crime and instability mentioned before.
I would like to see how the Cato Institute deals with the stability issue. As I remember from studying economics as an undergrad - a long time ago - a long period of sustained stability is critical for any economy to function.
How would your theoretical Constitutional changes to the American model of Democracy take that into account? How would you solve that problem, other than saying the poor dumbasses should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (Reagan’s position)?
February 21st, 2008 at 7:04 am
You made the comment about hearing the “N” word recently. I hear it all the time and mostly by the black race. It is used more by them than any other race. That is a shame. They want to put it to rest and they are digging it back up.
I enjoy your articles. This is a very informative newspaper. Thank you for publishing the LFJ.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
Hey, it’s their word, they can use it. I’m talking about routine use by Alabama rednecks. The people in New York and California and Oregon and other places who read this Website don’t believe it, because they don’t see it. In fact, I doubt if the Birmingham News staff believes it, since they don’t ever get out of the office.
Because of my mom’s situation, I now live in what used to be white flight land. But the out migration from Birmingham has headed this way. It makes for an interesting sociological study in human behavior to see it up close.
You don’t have to go far from here to hear rednecks bashing black people and using the “N” word routinely, in a way that sounds and is meant in exactly the same way it was said and meant in 1962, when George Wallace was first elected governor with his racist campaign. In some corners of the world, attitudes have still not changed. Believe it? Or not…