After a meeting in Chicago today, President-Elect Obama and Senator McCain issued this statement:
At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time. It is in this spirit that we had a productive conversation today about the need to launch a new era of reform where we take on government waste and bitter partisanship in Washington in order to restore trust in government, and bring back prosperity and opportunity for every hardworking (heterosexual) American family. We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy, and protecting our nation's security.
Americans with disabilities constitute the third-largest minority in the United States, and according to the Census Bureau, as of 2004, there were some 32 million disabled adults, plus another 5 million children and youth. That translates into a lot of votes. The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) expects about 20 million voters with disabilities to cast their ballots tomorrow, about a 10 percent increase from recent elections.
No wonder the candidates have been making pitches aimed at people with special needs and/or their families. Which team is the better choice though? Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin? Obama has a separate area devoted to disabilities on his website, along with an eight page pdf file, Barack Obama's Plan to Empower Americans with Disabilities.
McCain has no separate area set aside to discuss his plans or positions, but he did post this one page press release outlining his ideas - on October 24. Obama's plans were posted online before he even won the nomination. You can check out a side-by-side comparison of McCain's and Obama's plans and records here.
There's a lot of information at the links above to read and consider, but what do people in the disability community think about McCain's and Palin's ideas? From what I've gathered, they're not impressed. Consider the following from SpecialNeeds08:
The Palin Factor will definitely have an impact on this election -- but maybe not the type of impact Palin and McCain would like. An article from The Australian leads with the story of a woman who has a child with autism -- she was a strong McCain supporter who has become an Obama backer after examining their positions on special needs.
From Paul K. Longmore, Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University:
Even though 90% of the Americans with disabilities are adults, Palin, John McCain, and the news media have talked almost exclusively about children. And that talk has been mostly about "compassion" not "issues."
Well I'm just sitting here in my pro-American little town, minding my own business, when I get this email from the McCain-Palin campaign:
The email asked that I download this chart and send it to at least 5 voters, but I figure we have at least DOUBLE that number reading BFM! :) Plus, there's always the possibility that Wizardkitten will put it in her Flickr set and it will end up as a tv commercial and a piece of GOP direct mail.
The chart was incomplete when I got it, so I finished it for them by adding a couple of lines at the bottom. I'm feeling extra patriotic today!
So here it is folks, pass this on to your friends. Or, just put it on your websites and caption it. It's just that ridiculous.
The Bush administration ruled out financial assistance for a possible General Motors and Chrysler merger, essentially kicking the problem down the road and making it the next president's problem.
Barack Obama said, "My hope is if I'm elected, that I'm immediately meeting with the heads of the Big Three automakers as well as with the United Auto Workers... And to sit down and craft a strategy that puts us on a path for an auto industry that can compete with anybody in the world."
John McCain said he would do whatever he thinks needs to be done to save it, but said the focus should be on disbursing the $25 billion in loans already authorized by the U.S. Congress to help the auto industry.
Bottom line: If Obama doesn't win the election, the Big Three are toast. McCain is as anti-worker as Bush and the national media is falling in line behind them. The WaPo recently ran an editorial called Welfare for Detroit that argued against a bailout for many reasons. This was one of them:
[T]his bailout taxes the less well-off to protect the relatively privileged. The average individual General Motors production worker, whose job would be saved by the bailout, makes $56,650 per year, according to the Center for Automotive Research, and that doesn't count better-paid, white-collar types. Meanwhile, half of all households-- which typically include more than one earner -- make less than $50,000 per year. Where's the justice in that?
Justice? In case they didn't notice, banks are using government money to make dividend payments to shareholders and pay bonuses to executives on Wall Street. In fact, the WaPo reported yesterday that more than $80 billion from the Treasury Department will be used to pay dividends over the next 3 years. G.M. had reportedly asked for $10 billion in new funding.
Besides, as Dean Baker said, "none of these autoworkers are responsible for wrecking the economy." Very true, and working class Americans aren't responsible for the financial crisis on Wall Street either, but they're being taxed to protect the relatively privileged there.
An executive at G.M. saw the WaPo editorial, came to a similar conclusion and wrote a letter to the editor defending the auto industry and workers.
McCain didn't even try to hide his contempt for the middle-class when CNBC's Maria Bartiromo interviewed him yesterday. When asked about the Employee Free Choice Act, McCain said he would veto it "in a New York minute."
I will do everything in my power to block such legislation. And imagine, Sen. Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid pushing the union agenda, it would be very, very, very unfortunate.
Got that? McCain will do everything in his power to prevent you from having a job with good wages, health care and a retirement plan.
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a large wage and benefit advantage exists for young workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts, and younger workers are earning about 10 percent less than their counterparts did in 1979, despite impressive gains in young workers' educational attainment over the same time period.
The report, "Unions and Upward Mobility for Young Workers," found that young unionized workers - those age 18 to 29 - earned, on average, 12.4 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, young workers in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.
The report, which analyzed data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), found that unionization raises the pay of young workers by about $1.75 per hour. According to the report, young workers in unions were also 17 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 24 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension plan than young workers who were not in unions.
Unionized workers in typically low-wage occupations benefited too.
Among young workers in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members earned 10.2 percent more than those workers who were not in unions. In the same low-wage occupations, unionized young people were 27 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 26 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than their non-union counterparts.
Union jobs provide decent wages, health care and retirement security in return for our hard work. So, who really cares about the middle-class? Barack Obama said he will sign the Employee Free Choice Act. John McCain said he would veto it "in a New York minute." That puts him at odds with the middle-class and those young people struggling to have a decent life. No wonder they're overwhelmingly siding with Barack Obama.
Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.
Since his early acknowledgement that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has stumbled and fumbled badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged. He declared that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" at 9 a.m. one day and by 11 a.m. was describing an economy in crisis. He is both a longtime advocate of less market regulation and a supporter of the huge taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout. His behavior in this crisis -- erratic is a kind description -- shows him to be ill-equipped to lead the essential effort of reining in a runaway financial system and setting an anxious nation on course to economic recovery.
Sen. Obama warned regulators and the nation 19 months ago that the subprime lending crisis was a disaster in the making. [...]
On the most important issue of the day, Sen. Obama is a clear choice. [emphasis added]
New online campaign ad urges young people to talk to their grandparents about politics. I love the part when it says "Your granny may be younger than John McCain..."
The right to choose. The Supreme Court. Equal pay for equal work. Where does McCain stand on issues of importance to women? Find out from Women for McCain.
In talking to friends who formerly voted for Bush but now plan on voting for Obama, one theme continues to come through - Republican hypocrisy. People are finally connecting the dots and beginning to see that Republicans treat other Republicans differently, depending on income.
One recent example is McCain's claim that Obama's plan to cut taxes on the middle class and lower-income families is welfare. They felt that was a bunch of hooey and agreed with Obama's take:
"If John McCain wants to talk about redistributing wealth to those who don't need it and don't deserve it, let's talk about the $700,000 tax cut he wants to give Fortune 500 CEOs, who've been making out like bandits -- some of them literally. Let's talk about the $300 billion he wants to give to the same Wall Street banks that got us into this mess. Let's talk about the $4 billion he wants to give oil companies like Exxon-Mobil or the $200 billion he wants to give the biggest corporations in America. Let's talk about the 100 million middle-class Americans who John McCain doesn't want to give a single dime of tax relief. Don't tell me that CEOs and oil companies deserve a tax break before the men and women who are working overtime day after day and still can't pay the bills. That's not right, and that's not change.
Democrats and Republicans differ on giving people opportunities too. Democrats support expanding Pell Grants and the GI Bill, as well equal pay for equal work and affirmative action. Republicans believe people should succeed on their own merit without a helping hand. At least that's their talking point, but as Alberto Gonzalez, Monica Goodling, Harriet Myers, Brownie and all those no-bid contracts awarded to war contractors showed, who you know still trumps merit among Republicans.
In fact, while reading Lawyers, Guns and Money, I was surprised to find that Bill Kristol and right wing journalists benefit from the same connections. [emphasis added]
Right wing journalism/punditry is absurdly nepotistic, and not just in the sense that many of the major pundit/journalists are second generation. Everything depends on relationships; this is of course true in every community of this sort, but the importance of relationships is more pronounced in the world of conservative punditry than in liberal or mainstream. Every conservative writer of note has a portfolio of these relationships, which allows said writer to place articles, give talks, find jobs, get invited on junkets, and even find the best parties. [...] These relationships are the grease that makes the world of conservative journalism run; it's mildly absurd that a community whose ideological focus rests so firmly on conceptions of "merit" depends almost entirely on relationships, but nevertheless.
But surely Bill Kristol, the godfather of conservative journalists, earned his position entirely on his own merits, right? Not according to a comment left by Harry Hopkins at Lawyers, Guns and Money:
I remember back in the late '90s when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture to an economic philosophy class I was taking. [...] Anyhow, Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol back either during the first Bush administration. The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at The White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at UPenn and the Kennedy School of Government. With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. "I oppose it", Irving replied. "It subverts meritocracy."
That's affirmative action Republican-style and the voters are not amused. They're finally beginning to realize that the torchbearers for the Republican Party have defrauded them.
The man McCain earlier this year referred to as "a man who I admire as much as any man in the world, person in the world," just endorsed Barack Obama for president. On "Meet the Press" this morning, Colin Powell called him "the president we need now" based on his "ability to inspire, the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America."
Powell didn't mince words in his criticism of McCain and the GOP either. Watch the video below. His endorsement was eloquent, thoughtful and insightful, and it will definitely deliver a blow to the McCain campaign which has been trying to connect Obama to terrorists. As Jon Stoltz at VetVoice noted on Friday:
For all the smears being hurled about "palling around with terrorists" and "white flag of retreat," nothing can counter that like a Republican former 4-star coming out and saying "This guy loves America as much as me."
I thought I'd pass along a few newsworthy items about the election. From Bloomberg:
Barack Obama is running even with or ahead of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in support by white voters. If those numbers hold, with a changing electorate, pollsters say Obama will win on Nov. 4.
Barack Obama has shown the character, intelligence and judgment to be president. He is the better candidate for the White House
I wonder what Bill O'Reilly and Fox News think about that?
Finally, the Washington Post endorsed Obama for president. [all emphasis added]
THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.
The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. [...]
Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.
The paper touched on energy, the Supreme Court, education and other areas, but I thought this point was worth noting.
A McCain presidency would not equal four more years [of Bush], but outside of his inner circle, Mr. McCain would draw on many of the same policymakers who have brought us to our current state. We believe they have richly earned, and might even benefit from, some years in the political wilderness.
And finally, in endorsing Obama, the WaPo recognizes that inequality is a problem that only Obama can address.
OF COURSE, Mr. Obama offers a great deal more than being not a Republican. There are two sets of issues that matter most in judging these candidacies. The first has to do with restoring and promoting prosperity and sharing its fruits more evenly in a globalizing era that has suppressed wages and heightened inequality. Here the choice is not a close call. Mr. McCain has little interest in economics and no apparent feel for the topic. His principal proposal, doubling down on the Bush tax cuts, would exacerbate the fiscal wreckage and the inequality simultaneously.
Bottom line:
We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.
Things I learned about Joe the plumber following last night's debate:
According to the New York Times, Mr. Wurzelbacher says that he is planning to buy a plumbing business that has profits of between $250,000 and $280,000 a year.
While this income would put Mr. Wurzelbacher above the threshold where he could expect to pay higher taxes under Senator Obama's tax plan, the increase in his tax bill would be relatively modest. Under Senator Obama's plan, the tax on income above $250,000 would increase by 3 percentage points from 33 percent to 36 percent. This means that Mr. Wurzelbacher could expect to see his tax bill rise by between $0-$900, assuming that this plumbing business would be his entire taxable income. [emphasis added]
Citizens for Tax Justice estimates only 2.3 percent of taxpayers will be above the $250,000/200,000 AGI threshold this year. Joe would find himself among top earners - an elite demographic - for only $900 more in taxes!
What else did I learn about Joe? I found out he isn't licensed and he doesn't belong to the union. Union Gal checked with Tim Burga, Chief of Staff of the Ohio AFL-CIO, who had this to say:
"Joe is not a plumber he's a businessman. If we don't elect Barack Obama, the plumbing business and working families dreams will go down the drain."
Maybe Joe could ask a family member to help him out with that tax lien. According to Martin Eisenstadt:
Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who's Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating's son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years. [emphasis added]
Hmm...Keating did write McCain in 1986 and say, "You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I'm yours till death do us part." Maybe Charles asked his relative Joe to do a favor for his old buddy McCain? It does seem odd that the company Joe is thinking about buying has earnings right around that $250,000 threshold of Obama's plan. We'll probably never know if there's a connection or not, but desperate campaigns will try anything to stay in the race - and the McCain campaign is desperate.
So, overall, I have to admit that Joe was a folksy diversion, but with the economy in shambles and people worried about paying their mortgages, I doubt people will waste much time worrying about an unlicensed plumber who someday might own a business.
McCain flip-flopped back and forth last weekend about a new economic proposal before finally settling on The Pension and Family Security Plan. Part of his plan proposes cutting the tax rate on long term capital gains and dividends to 7.5 percent in 2009 and 2010. The current tax rate for these capital gains is 15 percent.
Who benefits the most from his plan? Wealthy millionaires like buddies Dick DeVos and George Bush. From the Wonk Room:
Today, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) released an analysis showing who would benefit from this cut. Like the rest of McCain's tax cuts, this one overwhelmingly aids the wealthy, with two-thirds of the benefit going to those making over $1 million:
In 2009, under a plan that lowers taxes on both gains and dividends, those making $1 million or more would get two-thirds of the benefit, and an average tax cut of more than $72,000. Those making less than $50,000 would get, on average, nothing. [emphasis mine]
The average tax savings for the top 0.1%--income above $3 mil--is $244,000.
Besides, in what world is John McCain living? In case he hasn't noticed, the stock market has been losing value, and losses are already deductible from our taxes.
Jared Bernstein summed it up best: "This isn't a recipe for helping families hurt by the financial crisis and recession. It's a recipe for more income inequality."
Steve Benen has the best rebuttal to McCain's latest line of attack: "Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist, or had a convicted felon help them buy their house." He turns McCain's finger around and points it back at himself.
Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever befriended a convicted felon who advised his supporters on how best to shoot federal officials in the head. John McCain has.
Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever used the money of a convicted criminal to help them buy their house. John McCain has.
Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever befriended a radical televangelist who has lashed out at the Roman Catholic Church, calling it, among other things, "the great whore" and "a false cult system." John McCain has.
Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever sought economic advice from a far-right former lawmaker who "has diminished American solvency and power beyond the wildest dreams of anti-American terrorists." John McCain has.
Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever befriended a radical televangelist who blamed the attacks of Sept. 11 on Americans. John McCain has.
You know, I felt sorry for McCain when the Bush campaign slimed him the last time he ran for president, but the more I learn about him, the more I feel we dodged a bullet when he lost the nomination. Bush is an (cough-cough) improvement over McCain.
McCain is in no position to be throwing around "guilt by association" accusations. Didn't he ever hear that old adage, "When you point your finger at another person, three more point back at you." Did McCain forget about his involvement with the Keating Five scandal? From the LA Times:
Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.
That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan.
The rest is history. Lincoln and hundreds of other S&L's went belly up, the government spent $125 billion in taxpayer dollars bailing them out, and customers lost their savings.
One other thing, McCain was found guilty of public misconduct. He also claimed he learned his lesson about pressuring regulators at Keating's behest and would change his ways and become a reformer, although he changed his tune today and now claims the Keating Five investigation was a setup. Regardless of what McCain says today, the truth is that he has always supported fiscal deregulation and relaxed accounting, policies that are partly responsible for our current economic meltdown.
The Obama campaign put together a 13 minute video on McCain and the Keating Five scandal that explains everything. Take the time to watch it here and then pass it along because the issue really is the economy, and McCain is part of the problem.
UPDATE: I've experienced problems trying to watch the video at the link above. It's been reported that traffic is heavy, so that could be the problem. I also noticed that KeatingEconomics allows you to download the video in movie form if that helps.
In the meantime, here are some links where you can read about John McCain and the Keating Five scandal:
Did our Congress over react with the financial bailout?
Did we add to the rushed vote by our own concerns raised to our Congressional delegation?
The world markets seem to be continuing to collapse.
If that happens will we regret the bailout?
Will the biggest financial crisis of our lifetime be compounded by the worst legislation passed by Congress in our life time?
Its amazing how much power was given to treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Do we have accountability provisions in place to monitor his activity?
The free market does not work in America, once again we have been forced to suffer the bad decisions of the nations financial managers.
Yet something has to be done, we just cannot stand by and watch the nation collapse.
We are facing our worst recession in the last 50 years and the world markets are reacting in a similar manner, payrolls plunge, credit markets freezing.
One Congressman said, which I agree with "Just throwing money at the government and allowing the government to hand it out'' won't fix the credit crisis."
Some Democrats had demanded that bankruptcy judges would have the right to reduce the principle on mortgages, this failed , it would have helped a lot of families. In the end as another said ``The risk of not acting is much bigger than the risk in acting,'' We could not afford to let the credit crisis stop the country economically.
But now what?
This plan was to restore our confidence in the American financial markets. We are paying for this. Now is the time for our congressional delegation to tell us what happened, is the crisis continuing, what will be the oversight of the bail out and what changes will congress make to stabilize us economically?
As for the Presidental hopefuls McCain appears to be out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time. We will look to Obama.
John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.
McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.
I hope he takes his lying ads with him.
(Note to Cordelia: "A McCain event planned for next week in Plymouth, Michiigan, has been canceled." I know that must make you sad.)
Brandon Friedman of VoteVets compiled a master list showing McCain's non-support for troops and veterans, and it was precipitated by this statement McCain made during last Friday's debate.
"I know the veterans, I know them well, and I know that they know that I'll take care of them, and I have been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans, and I love them, and I'll take care of them, and they know that I'll take care of them."
According to Friedman, this statement "immediately infuriated veterans across America and overseas. In fact, Senator John McCain has a very clear, long, and illustrious history of not supporting troops and veterans one bit."
Friedman channeled that anger into action and compiled a list of McCain's non-support into a single document - complete with links, quotes, and video clips. The list is quite lengthy, but these are some of the points he touched on.
Veterans Groups Give McCain Failing Grades.
McCain Voted At Least 28 Times Against Veterans' Benefits, Including Healthcare.
McCain Opposed $500 Million for Counseling Services for Veterans with Mental Disorders.
McCain Voted Against Providing Automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustments to Veterans.
McCain Supported Outsourcing VA Jobs, many held by blue-collar veterans
Senator McCain opposed efforts to end the overextension of the military--a policy that is having a devastating impact on our troops.
There's more, much more at the link above. Pass it along and help expose John McCain's abysmal record of not supporting our troops and veterans.
Here's a new ad from the Obama campaign that turns the tables on McCain who tried to paint Obama as a big tax-and-spender during last Friday's debate. McCain is the real big spender...here a trillion, there a trillion, everywhere a trillion.
Script courtesy of Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly:
The new ad, which is scheduled to reach airwaves today, shows McCain telling a crowd, presumably about Sarah Palin, "I can't wait to introduce her to the big spenders in Washington." The voice-over says, "Big spenders, like John McCain. McCain's tax plan means another $3 trillion in debt. His plan to privatize Social Security -- another trillion. Tax credits sent to insurance companies, yet another trillion. So as we borrow from China to fund his spending spree, ask yourself: can we afford John McCain?"
