A discussion center for Democrats and their friends and neighbors in Miami-Dade County. Posts and comments may not reflect official thinking of the county Democratic Party. Democratic candidates are encouraged to apply for permission to post on this blog.
There are 14-hour days ahead for thousands of unpaid and lightly paid campaign workers.
Your unpaid blogger will be sitting in front of the computer for 6-8 hours a day pondering stuff and every so often writing, and then going out to meetings, events, canvasses and phone banks – piling on 6-8 hours more.
Those who aren’t bloggers can just figure on 14 hours of canvassing, events and phone banks. Y’all can ponder while waiting for the pizza delivery. If you have a job, try to avoid dismissal. It’s tough out there, baby.
Forget about a day off, mowing the lawn, servicing the car, the doctor or the dentist. This is it!
Voter registration is finally over, and the numbers are awesome, and each of the added individuals is a challenge that will require work to produce a vote.
How many challenges? My neighborhood guru, Dan Jonas, captain of North Beach for Obama, says 40,000 new voters in one day, or 200,000 since Aug. 1, have been added to the number of challenges.
Let’s see: how many volunteers does it take to contact 200,000 newly registered Democrats and ask if they have received their absentee ballots, if they need a ride to the polls, if they know where their early voting site is located? And how’s Aunt Tilly and the kids?
“We need help more than ever.”
That’s the word from Dan Jonas and every neighborhood captain, field organizer, deputy field organizer (Welcome the new hires bearing that title, of whom I met one talented example Monday at the unperformed Jay-Z concert), campaign director and on up to Barack Obama himself.
Now is when we win, with the right performance by all of us. Our candidate is doing splendidly. We have a tremendous role model to emulate.
I’m kicking it off this evening by going to a party, a debate-watching party at the Arsht Center in downtown Miami jointly sponsored by the Miami-Dade Democrats. 8 p.m. Y’all come.
Meanwhile, here is word from the Florida Democratic Party on our surge in voter registrations:
With the voter registration for the 2008 General Election now closed, new voter registration numbers provided by the Department of State show another huge surge of Floridians joining the Democratic Party during the month of September.
During the month of September, 20,119 more newly registered Floridians signed up as Democrats than registered as Republicans. Between the beginning of January and the end of September, 170,341 more newly registered voters joined the Democratic Party than joined the Republican Party.
"Floridians are enthusiastic about change and are excited to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. Residents in every corner of the Sunshine State recognize that Democrats will rebuild our economy, create good jobs, lower homeowners' insurance rates and end our addiction to foreign oil, which is why they are joining the Democratic Party in record numbers," said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman. "Now that our unprecedented voter registration effort has come to an end, we must focus on making sure that every voter in Florida casts their ballot between now and Election Day for Barack Obama and other Democrats. Our tens of thousands of volunteers will be helping their friends and neighbors request absentee ballots, encouraging people to early vote or making sure they get to the polls on Election Day."
According to the Department of State, 72,189 Floridians registered as Democrats while 52,070 people registered as Republicans, during the month of September. Between Jan. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2008, 803,909 people have registered to vote, including 360,478 Democrats, 253,294 Independents and NPAs, and 190,137 Republicans.
Most striking is the net gain numbers, which factor in newly registered voters, party switchers and removes people who are no longer voters in Florida. Since January, the Florida Democratic Party has had a net gain of 415,580 voters, while the Republican Party of Florida has only gained 169,841. This shows that the gap between Democrats and Republicans in Florida has grown by 245,739 voters this year alone.
Here let me stop and repeat the overall lead the Democrats had in Florida in early September:
Democrats 4.4 million
Republicans 3.9 million
Non-party and minor parties 2.3 million.
This should give us ample reason to keep on working, because all those independents are out there waiting for your contact to decide which way they will vote.
Note: in coming days we should hear final numbers of people eligible to vote for president and all else. This will be our final number of challenges to give Barack 27 electoral votes.
The previous post was a photo sent as an email from my iPhone during the concert. Can't make out a thing, you sneer? Well, yes, it's a primitive camera without any zoom capability, but I try it from time to time to approximate live blogging, which requires better typing than I can muster.
But I also took a lot of pix with a better camera and now at home I've picked out five of them and uploaded them to Picasa and am embedding them here for your viewing.
To see the photos full-size, click on the lower right corner of the photo and then click again on the little icon under the corner. Then click on the album name, and you can see more of the lightshow.
Some out there have laughed at my toe-dip into the hip hop world. I can only assert that I've been into music since kindergarten, and in the '60s I had an LP with the Last Poets on it -- a forerunner of hip hop. Saw some lightshows, too. The smoke Sunday night in Bayfront smelled familiar from all those events of a half-century ago, but the lightshow was beyond amazing. I hope these photos suggest what it was like.
Bravo, Jay-Z! And the opening act was Wyclef Jean, who also was terrific.
Oh, and of course the idea was to promote registering to vote and to vote for Barack Obama. There will be another free concert at midday Monday, same place, same theme.
I did it. I'm going to pass it around, too. The prospect of having a pretty good president come November but a Congress full of Liebermans and Hoyers is keeping me awake at night.
Along comes Matt Stoller on his blog, Open Left, with a timely idea to help me sleep better. And he has allies in the blogosphere.
The idea is to have lots of people sign a pledge to demand bold progressive policies from the next U.S. government. Here's the link to the pledge.
I'm going to pop this up on the Florida Progressive Coalition blog, too, if it's not up already, and maneuver it onto Facebook, as suggested on Open Left.
There's a little box at the bottom of the pledge-signing form that asks the signer to say what progressive means. My comment was that it would probably mean fighting Obama over Afghanistan. Which is fit to become another occupation.
Here's the NY Times take on Florida a month before the election.
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. — Jim Piccillo lost his job as a bank vice president in August, applied for food stamps to support his two young daughters and swore off a life of loyalty to the Republican Party. He now volunteers here in Pasco County for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
That's not the entire story, of course. The questions are many. The watchword is -- what else? -- Turnout!
Email inbox reports that Miami police did a motorcycle box around the Bush Legacy Tour yesterday, and here’s the video from Channel 4.
Funny, the guy in the beard looks familiar.
Here’s some text from the email, sent by Julie Blust of the Bush Legacy Tour, sponsored by Americans United for Change, which was formed in 2005 to oppose privatization of Social Security.
You need to hear about the Bush Legacy Tour's stop near Miami yesterday. The local AFL-CIO set us up with space a few doors down from their office, which happened to be in front of McCain/Palin headquarters.
Before we arrived, though, the Miami police were out in force. But so were dozens of supporters. The police wouldn't let the bus stop. They surrounded us on motorcycles and prevented us from turning in to the parking lot.
Instead, we did a few laps around the strip mall, with the crowd of supporters going wild each time we did. Fortunately there were news crews already there and they captured the whole thing.
We eventually tried to park in the AFL-CIO parking lot nearby, but it was a tight turn, so we needed to swing wide and turn from the middle lane to do it. The amazing guys from the local came out and helped safely block traffic so we could finally get off the road and allow the large crowd on to see the exhibits.
Well, the police didn't like that and tried to ticket our driver!
A lot of truckers drove by during the course of all this and many of them honked to show their support, but some of them got ticketed.
If there's been one consistent theme as this bus has crossed the country, it's that everywhere we go, we draw attention to the Bush legacy. Protesters, supporters, reporters, and everyone in between -- when the Bush Legacy Bus pulls into your town, you can't help but look.
Because of the last twenty-six years of insane economic policy, rightfully known as Reaganomics, the worst crisis in the financial markets since the Great Depression is now upon us. The Bush plan, as expressed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, seemed to be the knee-jerk reaction of an administration now wholly owned by corporate interest; give $700 billion of taxpayer dollars, (borrowed money of course) to the billionaire Wall Street fat cats with no congressional oversight, and do it now. Surprisingly, it appears that the Republicans in Congress were as disturbed as the Democrats were by this proposal, resulting in what seems to be a bipartisan consensus. Both sides apparently agree that any transfer of the people’s money to Wall Street should include stringent oversight and should include middle class America. However, any bailout, if indeed one is actually necessary (an argument not discussed here), should not just include Middle America, it should heavily favor middle class working Americans. As of yet, it does not appear that either side has gone far enough in demanding protection for average Americans who are also in crisis. The justification for a bailout of the American Middle Class over that of the corporatists on Wall Street can be found in history.
In an October 8, 1931 article in the New York Times, titled “Real Estate Men on Hoover Plan,” the proposal to bail out the markets and to “liquidate frozen bank assets” was discussed. Real estate investor Joseph P. Day, while cheerleading for the Hoover plan, said, “President Hoover’s financial plan is a step in the right direction towards making real estate investment more liquid.” These are the exact arguments made by Paulson last week when he said, “The credit and capital markets are frozen up,” and, “the market’s liquidity is all clogged up.” Hoover also said, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” Sound familiar? Hoover’s bailout of Wall Street did not work. Banks continued to fail as the mega-wealthy of the day, largely responsible for the crisis, walked away unscathed.
We saw a bailout of commercial banks in the early 1980’s that was a result of banks, awash in petro-dollar revenues, packaging those revenues into often risky loans to emerging economies in Latin America. With inflation and interest rates of the period on the rise, borrowers began to default creating a crisis.[1]
On October 19, 1987, Alan Greenspan had to inject huge amounts of cash, (liquidity) into the Stock Market to prevent a crash.[2]
Then there was the Savings and Loan crisis in the 80’s that was the result of the deregulation and merger madness at the beginning of the “Reagan Revolution.” The cost was $250 billion.
In 1991, Citibank was in crisis, again because of the deregulation allowing banks to get into the “gambling” business on Wall Street, this time speculating in junk bonds. With the stock hovering at $2 a share, Greenspan eventually arranged a deal with Saudi billionaires to keep Citibank liquid because “they were too big to fail.” As a result, the Saudi’s ended up owning almost 10% of this American institution.[3]
In 1995, there was the bailout of the Mexican Peso to backstop US bond holders who bought Mexican high-yield debt after Mexico deregulated their financial system when they signed on to NAFTA. Once again, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin would arrange a bailout with $50 billion in treasury funds.[4]
In 1998, it was the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) bailout to prevent the collapse of the hedge fund, a favorite investment vehicle for the mega-wealthy.[5] The bailout bought the wealthy, connected, investors the time needed to get out with favorable terms.
The common denominator of all these bailouts, and the reason they are temporary fixes, is that there is nothing structural, legislatively, that changes the behavior of these financial institutions, and nothing in it for the most adversely affected; the middle class. This is a demonstration of the political power these corporations hold over our government that has created an entitlement mentality on Wall Street. They want deregulated free-for-all capitalism while they are looting our treasury, and corporate welfare when they collapse, at the same time denying average Americans any protections or help that they routinely get, calling that Socialism. It’s the reason that these corporate bailouts will continually fail. We have seen a dozen bailouts of Wall Street corporations in the last twenty years alone. Until regulation such as the Glass-Stiegel Act (that was dismantled by John McCain’s chief financial advisor, Phil Gramm, when he was in the Senate)[6], is reinstated these bailouts will continue, and become more and more costly. Glass-Stiegel provided a wall between commercial banks and Wall Street and was enacted because of the horrors of the Great Depression.
Two very good plans on structural changes in regulation that should be included in the bailout bill, which would prevent perpetual bailouts in the future, have been put forth by:
Economist, Dr. Dean Baker, “Progressive Conditions for a Bailout,”[7] and
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, “What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get A Blank Check From Taxpayers.”[8]
The Political Calculus for 08
Since the American memory span is a short one, at least politically, the current financial crisis will dominate the remaining five weeks of the presidential race at the near total exclusion of the disastrous prior eight years. It is looking like the GOP does not want the White House and are in fact willing to give it to Barack Obama. This is not a prediction, but rather an observation of what their current thinking may be, based on current events. The Wall Street bailout plan, at least in its original form as it was rolled out last week, seems to be an attempt by the Bush administration to simply “buy” six weeks of time. They have to know that even if it works, which is unlikely based on history, the cost will take a terrible toll on the economy for the foreseeable future. In addition, they certainly do not want the house of cards that is our current economy, which they created over the past two decades, to completely unravel in the last couple of months of a two-term Republican president. Since this is going to be a massive problem for the next president, they are undoubtedly asking themselves if putting a Democrat in the White House is the worst thing that could happen for them. I submit that they are concluding it is not.
Also consider that if they can keep the Democratic advantage in Congress within a reasonable number, they can continue to thwart any meaningful change the Democrats attempt. Since the Democrats took control in January of 2007, after 14 years of Republican control, we have seen the Republicans in the 110th Congress filibuster more legislation in the Senate than any other session in modern history. To get legislation to the floor, if a senator filibusters, requires 60 votes to end a filibuster; therefore, the Republicans only need 41 votes in the Senate to block legislation. As the economy continues to go south, and if they can attach the Democrats to a bailout that turns out to be nothing more than a band-aid, they can run in 2010, and 2012, against the “Democrat Great Depression of 09,” or at the very least, a poor economic outlook blamed on the Democrats.
There is also a better than even chance that tin here will be a push to return Jeb Bush to Florida politics in 2010, setting up a presidential run 2012. (As De Niro said in “Goodfellas,” “I heard some things,” and I’ll leave it at that). This is all just speculation of course. Anything can happen between now and November, and trying to predict 2010, or 2012 is next to impossible. Having said that, I am of the belief that the GOP does not want the presidency this time because they expect that the economy, as bad as its been the last eight years, is entering into an extreme downward spiral, which may be unstoppable, and will accelerate throughout 2009, and they may very well be right. Especially if this bailout of Wall Street is nothing more than a temporary placebo as was the case in 1931, as well as the other bailouts discussed above. For that reason the fight will not end when Obama is sworn in on January 20th; the real fight will be just beginning.
David Cooper is the author of “Absolute Despotism: How the Bush Administration’s False Realities Led to the Dismantling of Civil Liberties, the Destruction of Democracy, and Perpetual War.” Now available at: www.AbsoluteDespotism.com Contact at: AbsoluteDespotism@bellsouth.net
Here's an item from today's NY Times (or the blog, anyway): New Jersey regulators approve building a big offshore wind-power generating field. Not oil field. Wind field.
A few weekends back the NY Times Sunday magazine had an article on how Delaware is going full-blast into electricity from wind. So is Rhode Island, according to the Times.
If this is a time of change, what about Florida and its pretty beach views? Are we going to be picky about what we can see from our sandy shores? Or might we accept something standing out there and producing energy?
Your blogger is in the minority in the Sunshine State. Hardly anyone is willing to risk oil drilling off our beaches. To me, the burgeoning world population is going to suck every drop of oil out of the earth, either quickly or slowly, and we should figure out how to do it -- clean and safe. If there's oil off our shores, exploiting it should be part of our spectrum of how to deal with the energy future. Sticking our heads in the beach sand is not a wise tactic.
Your blogger would welcome a strategy of placing oil fields and wind fields in a checkerboard along our beaches. If there's no oil, fine. There will be wind, and there's also the Gulf Stream kicking along at 3-5 knots bearing north. Could it turn turbines and make electricity? Maybe. If not, I read in Wikipedia that the Gulf Stream "transports about 1.4 petawatts of heat, equivalent to 100 times the world energy demand." Well, there's a statistic. What's a petawatt? It's a watt times 10 to the 15th power. Beyond mega-, giga-, and tera- lies the peta-. A truly big number. We oughta get at it.
Voter registration should get another boost from the news that Jay Z is adding a show in downtown Miami. That's free, to see the top of the hip hop artists of today.
This one on DailyKos slipped by the other day, so some of you may already have memorized this good news. It was referred to in yesterday’s post here about the two races that Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez are mounting against the Diaz-Balart rubber-stamp brothers.
Kos himself looks at the polling for FL-25 and called it “awesome numbers” for Garcia – awesome in that Mario Diaz-Balart is well under 50 percent. He’s polling 45 to Garcia’s 41, which means stepping on the gas for these final five weeks, right, Joe?.
A key factor, Kos says, is that Barack Obama’s campaign is accelerating, too, and while the Democratic presidential candidate may be well behind in the congressional district, he has surged to a 22-point lead in Southeast Florida, from 12 points up in an earlier poll.
Some of the details are available on the Survey USA website, for those who want to know how Aunt Augusta responded.
Alex Sink @ Fundraiser in Little Havana (click on photo to get slide show)
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