The dust-up between Giffords and Weiss at yesterday’s Nucleus Club debate came as a surprise to some, not the least of whom was Patty’s recently hired communications guy who was actually heard to blurt out his surprise that Giffords had defended herself.
What did they expect? Weiss has been piously proclaiming the wickedness of support from special interests and implying that was a brush with which she wasn’t tarred.
Well, you all already know she’s accepted money from these special interests:
United Transportation Union Political Action Committee (utu pac)
American Psychiatric Association Political Action Committee
Add to those:
The CEO of Aetna, our largest HMO provider. (John W. Rowe)
The CEO of JDS Pharmaceuticals, (Phillip Satow)
The Data Port has also learned that she approached the Pfizer PAC for support but was turned down; and finally she asked for (and received…her legal entitlement) a delay in filing the complete financial disclosure required by the House Ethics Committee. We don’t yet know where her personal financial interests may lie.
My guess is that the Weiss holier than thou game is over.
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And a good thing, too, as Francine Shacter observed. (We should all be grateful for Francine, who is acting as the Party’s gad fly.) Francine reminded the gathered throng that we should be careful in our campaigning lest we elect a candidate who is ‘damaged goods’ as the result of primary warfare.
Shacter also offered a perceptive analysis of the Bush regime that went beyond all our particular criticisms to the heart of the damage that Bush has done to the American political system. The government has broken the basic social compact between the government and the governed, which is embodied in the sense of mutual responsibility for the general welfare. When the government treats its critics as traitors the system is on the verge of collapse.
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I was pleased to hear Jeff Latas, who was at his angry man best in the finest tradition of Harry Truman. It’s easy to see why “charismatic” is the adjective used by his supporters to describe him.
Latas pledged to fight oil interests and refused to accept campaign contributions from them. So far none have been offered, but if he wins the primary I hope he takes anything that’s offered. He’s going to need the money and I think he’s quite capable of taking it and still making independent decisions.
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All the candidates were asked to pledge their support for the winner of the primary. All said they would. Can’t wait to see if they do.
11 comments:
Art, I'm normally pretty soft spoken, but I have to speak up as I take great exception to your patronizing comment about Shacter. She is much more than the party's gad fly.
She was in fact the only one calling for solutions to problems and for bringing people together -- not only Democratic people but Republican people -- to solve the country's problems. She is spot on in pointing out the way the current regime has destroyed the trust between the people and government.
I thought Shacter was really on her game last night. Very strong. You might be supporting someone else, but I think she deserves a lot more credit for her performance last night.
This is not a pretty comparison but Latas reminds me of Katherine Harris. Like Harris, Latas gets hot under the collar and doesn't have the ability to edit what he says on the fly. As Shacter rightly pointed out, Latas' statement of bravado of sticking his finger in Rove's chest will do little to advance the agenda of the people of CD8 and America.
As for taking contributions, I noticed that Shacter mentioned she has chosen to run a very frugal primary campaign.
For me, Shacter is the only candidate who understands the problems of this country and who has a proven ability to solve problems. She said we should send a problem solver to Congress and I think she’s the right one to do it!
Dear Sotto Voce,
I thought I was paying Francine an enormous compliment. The most famous gad fly of them all was Socrates, who described himself as just such a stinging insect, whose job it was to prod the sluggish Athenian moral sense.
I thought her comment about "damaged goods" was a wise piece of political advice and I thought she surely put her finger on the real crime of the Bush regime: Breaking the implied contract of trust between government and the governed.
Shacter is a woman of value to all of us, for her wit, wisdom, and good humour. I regret that my post gave anyone the idea that I didn't hold her in the highest regard.
Art
Andrew Myers,
Welcome to The Data Port, and thanks for your comments. What did it feel like writing those remarks? What were the sensations as you sought to explain how what was perfectly legit is being twisted into something malevolent?
You got to have a couple bites of what folks like Roger and Art have been eating for awhile.
How did it taste?
It's very easy to explain a situation when all you have to do is tell the truth.
Have you read the threads of the CD 8 election associated blogs over the past couple months?
Do you have any idea how "all you have to do is tell the truth" lands in the world of those who have seen the truth get told over and over and over, rigorous facts and figures with dates, names, and quotes, and seen it make no difference at all in certain conversations, like pearls before swine?
Seriously, I mean no disrespect, and in case you are a new enough arrival, I have already voiced my full support of Patty if she prevails on 9/12. I hope you can understand the emotion behind my earlier post, and my reaction to your thinking your facts will somehow "part the waters" when many facts posted previously were wasted on deaf ears.
In case anyone is interested,
Info on Bill Johnson.
x4mr...
Thanks for the link.
Art
You're most welcome. A similar effort in Alabama (described at the link) actually almost won.
Obviously this guy stands no chance against the likes of Giffords or Weiss, but I think it's important for people to know this for what it is.
Andrew Myers,
Your comments here are interesting in one respect. That is, that politicians and those who manage them think that their actions can always be "explained" and the electorate will understand and suck it up because you went to the trouble to give an explanation.
So much for "citizen" candidates, huh? This is pure political hogwash. No one else here seems to want to say this to you because these guys dissect everything and they love explanations. However, I've yet to see one of them do an about face.
Back in the real world the average Joe Blow voter (who even bothers to vote) does not really care why your candidate accepted donations from CEO's of both an HMO and a pharmaceutical company. In fact, if the average voter even hears about it, that is likely to be all he hears.
Do you think everyone is sitting around at Starbucks under the misters discussing this stuff? Actually, they are not. What they might hear is that Giffords never ran as a clean elections candidate and that Weiss has accepted contributions from special interests. They spend zero time looking for an explanation as to why the candidate's actions were not really hypocritical.
Here's the bottom line. If you want to hawk your candidate as one who does not accept money from special interests, then don't accept money from special interests. You can try to explain it away until it snows in Del Rio, but people really don't care for one simple reason. And that is that POLITICIANS ALWAYS HAVE AN EXPLANATION. Explanations are like white noise to voters.
The same goes for Giffords and clean elections. She didn't run as a clean elections candidate and she can't explain it away. People just don't care.
Bravo, Liza!
And it might be to the point for us all to recall that Howard Dean turned down federal financing for his presidential run.
He said he approved of fed finance but in the real world he simply needed to raise a bigger war chest.
Did we accuse him of "hypocrisy?" No. we accused him of realism.
Best,
Art
cc burro,
My point is that the average voter is not interested in a politician's "explanation" after he/she gets caught talking out of both sides of his/her mouth. In this case, we were talking about Weiss accepting special interest money but the "explanation" is that these were special cases and not really special interests and blah, blah, blah. This is white noise to voters. Who listens to these explanations and who cares? That's all I was saying.
I think that a lot of voters do care about the fact that special interests are bankrolling politicians and nowhere is that so obvious as in the current Bush Administration. People are concerned about it, but like everything else, they feel there is very little they can do about it. This is a representative democracy and all we have is the right to vote for representatives. Of course, with election fraud, even that is endangered.
We live in serious times, don't we?
Andrew, I have posted on this elsewhere and no one seems to be able to say anything except that what Patty says on her website is not her real position on universal health care. No one seems to know what her real position is, or why she put something else on her website.
While Patty and her supporters have been making a huge deal about their support for healthcare, via their unfair attacks on Giffords for her "Wal-Mart" vote, Patty's plan is the most regressive I have ever seen.
Here is what her website says: "America is the only industrialized nation that does not offer health care to its citizens. That’s why we need a national healthcare system. A single public insurance agency can provide basic health insurance, with premiums deducted from Social Security, paychecks or welfare. Individuals could supplement basic coverage with private insurance. And when Americans change jobs, they won’t lose coverage. Their health insurance follows them."
To avoid accusations of "selecting" portions, that is a full paragraph. Certainly fair. Now, according to this quote, the only way one can reasonably read it, retired people, people on disability, and people on welfare would start to have to pick up the costs of their health care. They do not pay it now. And most everyone with a small clue would say that they cannot.
Patty says nothing about what would happen when most or all of these people were unable to pay their premiums.
And then it seems to say that there would be health care choice for wealthy people, those who "supplement" their coverage, but not for the rest of us.
This plan of Patty's is effectively a huge cut to Social Security and welfare. Nowhere are the wealthy asked to help pay for this program. Patty goes on and on about the need to force Wal-Mart to pay...and in her own plan the only people paying more are the poorest and oldest and sickest.
I would like an explanation of what her "real" plan is, if I misunderstand it, and also why her "real" plan is not on her website. I also would like to hear how she is a viable candidate after a Republican plasters that quote all over the TV. What LIZA has described goes all the more for this. Voters will easily agree that she plans to cut welfare and Social Security drastically, and limit health care choice to the wealthy. I doubt any explanations will be of any utility.
I have tried and I just see no other way to interpret what Patty says, and no way her chances of winning realistically survive her having said it. She might as well run an add of herself screaming, "Yeaaaaargh!"
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