Showing posts with label Mike Pence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Pence. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The FL-17 Congressional race the South Florida news media ignores


My comments follow this pointless Jan. 30th, 2010
Beth Reinhard column on Jeb Bush that didn't
need to be written and which, fortuitously, seems
to have been completely ignored by readers.

Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1454784.html
Jeb Bush is back, and some think he's looking presidential
Beth Reinhard
January 30, 2010

MIAMI — When Jeb Bush left office four years ago, his public appearances were as scarce as bi-partisan man hugs.

He didn't want to upstage his successor in the governor's mansion nor his brother in the White House. Instead, he quietly cashed in by joining corporate boards and an elite speakers bureau, penned policy essays and gave infrequent interviews to conservative media.

But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit.

He headlined a fundraiser for Bill McCollum's gubernatorial campaign, starred in a YouTube video touting Jeff Atwater's campaign for state chief financial officer and helped install state Sen. John Thrasher as the state party's heir apparent -- all the while looming on the sidelines of the fierce Republican Senate primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.

The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o'clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC's Today Show. The intensely private Bush's interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.

Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?

"My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,'' said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. "I said, `Who knows? We'll see.' I'm ready to go to Iowa any time he's ready.''

Bush's comments about Crist's support for President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan got the most attention, but his call for Democrats and Republicans to work together was the biggest clue to his national ambitions.

"I think that leaders on both sides of the aisle need to figure out where there is common ground and at least focus on that,'' he said. "It's one thing to give a good speech. The other thing is to invite people that don't agree exactly with your point of view to build consensus.''

This from the governor who presided over some of Florida's most hyper-partisan battles of the last decade? Who helped declare his brother the winner of the 2000 presidential recount, threw out affirmative action with the "One Florida'' program, made the FCAT the end-all be-all of the public schools and insisted on getting in between brain-damaged Terri Schiavo and her husband?

But Bush's front-page days are long gone. Lady Gaga could learn a thing or two from the ex-governor, who has stayed relevant without killing us with overexposure. He picks and chooses candidates to support and the causes that matter most to him. He recently made a rare appearance in the Capitol to promote education reforms and helped launch a national group to elect Republican state lawmakers.

Though he hasn't given an endorsement, Bush has been an undeniable presence in the Crist-Rubio race. Consider: His well-placed compliments for Rubio and subtle digs at Crist. The involvement of his family's longtime fundraiser, Ann Herberger, in the Rubio campaign. The reception co-hosted by sons George P. and Jeb Jr. that raised $100,000 for Rubio.

If the race goes down to the wire, or if Crist launches a full-scale attack against Rubio, some Republicans predict Bush will speak out.

"If Jeb is going to publicly support Marco, it's better to keep the suspense building and do it closer to the election when voters are paying attention,'' said Rubio supporter Ana Navarro.
"Jeb Bush stumping through Florida for a Republican candidate makes a difference. Jeb Bush knows that. Marco Rubio knows that. And I suspect Charlie Crist fears that.''


Presidential?
No sane, well-informed person thinks that

Above, a perfect example of the longstanding

problem at the Miami Herald:
the non-story
that crowds out the more deserving.


It's been an epidemic over there since I first
returned to South Florida from the Washington, D.C.
area in late 2003, after 15 years of reading
at least 5-6 newspapers most days,
plus countless journals and weekly magazines
covering all aspects of public policy.
Not bragging, mind you, just stating the facts
so you know where I'm coming from.

When I first started to write a few quick thoughts
about this particular Beth Reinhard column last
Wednesday night, February 3rd at about 9:35 p.m.,
more than three full days after it was published,
this column had
elicited zero "recommends"
from readers and
zero reader comments.
Like it was never seen... a ghost.
And like a ghost, lighter-than-air.

That's very amusing to me because when I first
saw it
shortly after it was posted online, I was
initially tempted to leave a biting maybe even
snarky comment
about what I thought this
column really shows -contempt for the
diminishing number of Herald readers
.

But since as we all know, the Herald's online
comment site allows readers
less space to
comment than almost any Florida
newspaper
or media site around, and I have an infinite
amount of space here at Home Sweet Blog,
once again I wrote myself a note
about this,
and resolved to return to it a few days later.
In this case, I've waited to see how it all
turned-out.

(Someone finally wrote a comment last

Thursday afternoon on the Herald's site
for the Saturday morning
column
-five long days of invisibility.)


That it was ignored for so long pleases me
to no end, since it only serves to confirm
once again what I've thought for a long time
about the Herald's downward spiral in
quality and sense of purpose.


To illustrate this, let me bring up something
that will be before us for months this year,

Consider the fact that though we've known
since last summer that South Florida's
FL-17 would have a new face come this
November, rather than take advantage
of that and show local readers and viewers
what's going on, the local media's abysmal
coverage of that congressional campaign
thus far has consisted largely of five
sentences
from Beth Reinhard of the
Herald, one of which was a list of candidates
names.
Talk about underwhelming!

The story had all the electricity of a list
of Honorable Mention winners at the
County Youth Fair being read on a
scratchy elementary school PA system.

If you doubt me, here's the proof.
Read it for yourself and try to explain
it away.


Miami Herald
CONGRESS
11 seeking Meek's seat BETH REINHARD
December 2, 2010

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek's campaign for the Senate has unleashed a torrent of candidates vying for his Miami-Dade congressional seat in 2010.

Eleven candidates -- 10 of them Democrats -- are running in the predominantly black district.

Haitian businessman and civic activist Rudy Moise announced he was running in October, held a press conference Tuesday in Liberty City.

The other Democratic candidates are Leroy Adam, Marleine Bastien, former state Rep. Phillip Brutus, state Rep. James Bush III, Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson, state Rep. Yolly Roberson, Roderick Vereen, Miami Gardens Councilman André Williams, and state Sen. Frederica Wilson.

The only Republican candidate is Corey Poitier.

-----

Satisfied?
More than two full months later, that's still
IT.
That's the sum of the Herald's coverage
of FL-17.



So, in a year full of dynamic and interesting
possibilities, where we've already seen the
unexpected occur in Massachusetts, despite
the D.C. and Boston political chattering class
poo-pooh Scott Brown's chances of being
elected to the U.S. Senate, pronouncements
which the people of Massachusetts promptly
and overwhelmingly ignored, rather than
getting pro-actively engaged and follow the
eleven announced candidates themselves
as they to forge coalitions locally and see
how their their opinions and ideas evolve
-or not-on a whole range of issues,
like health care, Cap & Trade, etc.,
what has the Herald and the rest of the
South Florida news media done?

They've chosen to ignore the one new
Congressperson that all of South Florida
knows we'll have, and instead, given much
more political attention to what, exactly?

To Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's phony
anti-democratic Tele-Town Halls, which had
all the excitement of day-old bagels served cold?

No, the Herald and Company completely
downplayed her inability to appear before any
crowd that wasn't pre-selected and staged.

In fact, the Herald's Editorial Board and
the local TV political reporters didn't even feel
the need to go after low-hanging fruit that was
positively begging for some mention.

Even when Town Halls were front page
news stories all over the country, and a small
reminder of what we were all taught was the
cornerstone of participatory democracy,
they resisted the urge to sagely mention that
DWS' aloof, robotic manner and lack of humility
and unwillingness to publicly meet her
constituents -and opponents- when she's
a certified gerrymandered shoo-in, makes it
much harder for labels like DEMAGOGUE
not to stick to her like glue -forever.

Despite all the media kisses and kid-glove
treatment she's received over the years locally,
as well as the likes of MSNBC's Chris Matthews,
and the silly talk of bigger office in store for her,
DEMAGOGUES like her rarely if ever rise in
Washington beyond a certain level.
I saw it on Capitol Hill for myself, year-after-year.

Regardless of how liberal or conservative someone
may be when they vote on Capitol Hill, personality
traits still count for a lot, and Members of Congress
do NOT usually vote for people to fill party leadership
posts who actually irritate or annoy them too much
to be trusted with power.
Nancy Pelosi is the exception to the rule.

It's also why if the GOP ever takes over in the next
few years, it's more likely than not that Mike Pence
of Indiana will be the Speaker of the House, not
current House Minority leader John Boehner,
from Ohio, who rubs a lot of Republican members
the wrong way, and whom many do not personally
find either savvy or trustworthy enough to be Speaker.
(You'll see.)

That's why I wrote years ago on my blog that unlike
was often the case with congressmen who have
represented me over the years, like Dante Fascell,
Frank McCloskey and Lee Hamilton,
two of whom I saw on a weekly basis for years
while I lived in the Washington area, no Member
of Congress would ever think to ask DWS what
she thinks in order to help them make up their
mind on a tough approaching vote.
DWS
is a cog in a machine, like The Borg.

Free will does not compute with her.

Her use of pre-selected crowds at her Tele-Town
Halls, in a district where she is guaranteed
re-election, is but the latest and most obvious
proof of that.
I almost feel sorry for her, except for the fact
that she has consciously chosen to go the route
she's gone, so whatever happens to her,
it's her own fault.

Now, with an election to decide the FL-17 seat
in less than nine months, in a year when the
GOP could/may take back 40 House seats,
NONE of the announced candidates has publicly
campaigned in the Broward County portion
of this district, which as it happens, includes
my own part of Hallandale Beach.

Personally, I've never voted for someone
for Congress whom I have not met or
spoken to.

I'm not about to start.

So here's a question.
What would happen if an articulate, well-informed
moderate Anglo candidate were to jump into the
FL-17 congressional race against what is now an
all African-American, all Miami-Dade County group
that doesn't or won't campaign in Broward County?

Would it take something like that for the South Florida
news media to finally pay attention to the campaign
race?

Perhaps not, but at least then some real issues
would finally be raised and discussed publicly,
and the self-evident weaknesses of so many
of the announced candidates could be properly
exposed to voter's scrutiny, and a well-qualified
candidate could actually emerge who represents
the WHOLE congressional district, not just part
of it.

That is NOT happening now.

Something to think about.

In future posts here, I'll have some good
probing questions for you to ask FL-17
candidates, especially if they want to get
votes from the well-informed people I know
and speak to regularly.






Broward County Ethics Committee meets on
Wednesday mrning at County HQ
on Andrews
Avenue, Room 430, 8:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.


See my previous article on South Florida news
media ignoring the FL-17 race, here. from
Sunday, November 8, 2009
South Florida media blows easy lay-up on health care reform -what else is new?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/south-florida-media-blows-easy-lay-up.html

Monday, March 30, 2009

GOP House budget "blueprint" alternatives; GOP rising stars need a mutiny now!

Stayed up late to watch the tape I'd made earlier Sunday
of the first two hours of Little Dorrit on PBS' Masterpiece
Theatre while I was watching some things on C-SPAN,
and am now so wide awake, I thought that I'd try to
finish this so you can think about some of this Monday
morning.
The miniseries is fantastic, as this LA Times review
makes clear!

If the Herald or Sun-Sentinel were in the top rank of daily
newspapers, and actually had political writers who knew
anything about either economics or markets, or consumer
psychology for that matter, they'd have figured out some
way to make sure that some version of this very important
bit of news from Politico.com about Congressman Paul
Ryan actually made it into their print version.
Or, had actually ever mentioned Ryan before in a serious
and meaningful story.

I've checked their archives and -shocker!- they haven't.
There's no reason to imagine that's going to change
anytime soon, much less, before both papers are
kaput next year, as I fully expect, before July 4th,
2010.

Ryan and some colleagues -whose names you have
never read about in either paper or ever see on
network TV- did all the hard work in crafting together
an alternative budget to the White House plan.
Before they could polish it and release it, though,
someone else in the GOP House leadership panicked,
deciding that the GOP had to ignore what was actually
being worked on, and instead, responded to media criticism,
thereby releasing something this week just to meet some
sort of imaginary deadline in order to respond to Obama's
numbers.

(It's sort of like someone who sends an accusative
email when they're mad late at night, rather than
in writing it all out, but saving it to Draft so you
can look at it again the next morning when you've
presumably calmed down.
You know, like Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper
really should've done last summer, when she sent
HB civic activist Michael Butler and myself a crazy
rant full of mis-placed pique, mis-spellings and 'straw
men,' just because I'd sent him an email earlier asking
him to consider meeting me -and perhaps some
other HB residents- over the weekend at Starbucks
or Denny's, to talk about some of the problems in
the city we rightly attribute to her poor and faulty
leadership.
Someone -I have my strong suspicion!- forwarded
the letter to Cooper and then she sent her wacky
response out after midnight, usually NOT a good
idea!)

Instead of listening to what Rep. Paul Ryan and Minority
Whip Eric Cantor were saying, the GOP got spooked
and panicked, releasing a 19-page pamphlet that was
rightly mocked as a joke on the various cablenets and
by the Beltway press because it was, in fact, a joke.

(On weekends, I used to spend lots of time with friends
driving around Cantor's congressional district, which
includes large parts of the beautiful Virginia countryside
southwest of Arlington County and northwest of Richmond,
especially Culpepper and Spotsylvania.)

Why do the House GOP leaders keep engaging in
malignant self-destruction?
Why not actually let one of the the smart persons actually
doing the heavy-lifting, whom everyone respects -i.e. Ryan-
actually be the point person to release the GOP House
budget alternative, and answer the media's questions?
Because, call me crazy, it might actually turn out to be
a good idea to let the person who actually knows what's
what, answer the questions that House Minority Leader
John Boehner can't possibly know

The problem described in the Politico article is exactly
the sort of dysfunctional problem that will continue to
fester as long as someone with a such a bland personality
like John Boehner remains in charge of the GOP House.
He's like a TV weatherman, in that in the 15 years I was
in DC and on Capitol Hill, despite numerous opportunities,
he never once impressed me with his insight or originality.
Not once.

Instead, he always said exactly what you expect,
just like our TV weatherman:
"Warm with a chance of rain in the afternoon."

He's someone who never met an opportunity knocking
on the door that he didn't foolishly ignore.
Sometimes you actually have to open the door,
you know?

Boehner is the sort of person you'd actually want
running the Chamber of Commerce from a mid-size
Midwestern city with ambitions, or even a place like
Greater Fort Lauderdale for that matter.
The guy who everyone respects, who has professional
connections and who is always open to helping the
community, whether that's running the foundation
that helps gives underprivilged kids toys, money for
college, whatever.
What he isn't, though, is someone who should
ever be in front of TV cameras, talking policy!

When he walks into a hardware store, the brand
new tools in their shrink-wrapped packaging
even become DULLER!

As many of you may know from conversations with me,
I like Mike Pence -and not just because he's from
Indiana- but he is not without some major form/function
problems, too, and has really blown some opportunities
as well over the past few years, when he's either said
what I thought was the wrong thing at the wrong time,
or allowed a situation to roil by failing to respond quickly
enoughthe wrio.
I wonder if part of the problem is that for him to actually
succeed, they have to throw Boehner overboard, and
it's just not in his personality to do that.
The result is the House GOP drifts along like shipwrecked
passengers on a dinghy, trying desperately to figure out
which direction to row towards when there is not a spit
of land in sight.

Meanwhile, when the country really needs smart and
well-thought out alternatives to many of what I believe
are the Obama administration's very bad ideas and
policy prescriptions, they keep rowing in circles,
not willing to say aloud that the airline pilot may know
a lot about flying, but doesn't know a damn about
navigation from the perspective of the dinghy in the water.

As a moderate DLC Democrat, I don't think it does the
country any good for there not to be a reasonable check
and pushback on Obama's bad ideas and policies,
but I think those alternatives need to offer real solutions,
not simply be slogans for future congressional campaigns.

Republicans who care really ought to be calling for a
(Caine) Mutiny before they wind-up like Gilligans Island!
Stuck!

After reading the Politico article below, go to

House Republicans Unveil FY 2010 Budget Alternative

House Min. Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was joined
by several of his Republican colleagues at a press conference
on Capitol Hill during which they unveiled their alternative
to President Obama's FY 2010 budget.
Washington, DC : 15 min.

After that, watch the 15-minute segment I watched on
C-SPAN Sunday with Rep. Paul Ryan so you can see
how clearly and articulately he is in comparison.

Today's Highlights

Newsmakers

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Outlines the GOP Alternative Budget

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Outlines the GOP Alternative Budget

Sunday

Our guest on Newmakers is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who discusses the Republican alternative to the FY 2010 Budget. The top Republican on the House Budget Cmte., Rep. Ryan outlines a “pro-growth” plan that limits borrowing and reduces the Federal debt. The alternative will be debated on the House Floor this week.

In case link above is messed up, it's at



March 26, 2009
Categories: House Republicans

Sources: GOP leaders split on budget "blueprint"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0309/Aides_Cantor_Ryan_objected_to_GOPs_budget_blueprint.html

----------------------------------------------------------
In case you missed it the first time, this George Will
column from October speaks volumes.

A Vote Against Rashness

By George F, Will, georgewill@washpost.com
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was 46 years old now, in April 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.

-- Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

We are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public.

Concerning which, a timeless political trope is: Government should budget the way households supposedly do, conforming outlays to income. But the crisis came partly because so many households decided that it would be jolly fun to budget the way government does, hitching outlays to appetites.

Beneath Americans' perfunctory disapproval of government deficits lurks an inconvenient truth: They enjoy deficits, by which they are charged less than a dollar for a dollar's worth of government. Conservatives participate in this, even though deficits fuel government's growth by obscuring its cost.

The people can emulate the government because credit has been democratized. Democratization of everything is supposedly an unquestionable good, but a blizzard of credit cards (1.5 billion of them, nine per cardholder), subsidized loans and cheap money has separated the pleasure of purchasing from the pain of paying. Furthermore, the entitlement mentality fostered by the welfare state includes a felt entitlement to a standard of living untethered from savings.

Populism flatters the people, contrasting their virtue with the alleged vices of some minority -- in other times, Jews or railroad owners or hard money advocates; today, the villain is "Wall Street greed," which is contrasted with the supposed sobriety of "Main Street." When people on Main Street misbehave by, say, buying houses for more than they can afford to pay, they blame the wily knaves who made them do it, such as the "nimble" Babbitt.

Knowing that heat breeds haste, errors and unintended consequences, George Washington praised the Senate as the saucer into which legislation is poured to cool. In this crisis, however, the House of Representatives has performed that function. Republicans, especially, slowed a Gadarene rush to ratify the deeply flawed original bailout legislation.

Voting against the bill -- against putting taxpayers' money at risk in order to clean up a mess that some people got rich by making -- was easy, but not necessarily wrong. The $700 billion figure exaggerated the plan's probable cost, but accurately measured something worse -- the enormous enlargement of government's power.

So the joint declaration by John McCain and Barack Obama that Congress should "rise above politics" was mere gas. The legislation touched elemental questions -- the meaning of justice, the parameters of freedom and the proper functions of government. Democrats charge that the crisis is market failure arising from an insufficiency of government, in the form of regulation. Well.

Suppose that in 1979 the government had not engineered the first bailout of Chrysler (it, Ford and GM are about to get $25 billion in subsidized loans). Might there have been a more sober approach to risk throughout corporate America?

Suppose there had never been implicit government backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Better yet, suppose those two had never existed -- there was homeownership before them, just not at a level that the government thought proper. Absent Fannie and Freddie -- absent government manipulation of the housing market -- would there have developed the excessive diversion of capital into the housing stock?

No presidential authority

The rising generation of thoughtful Republicans was represented on both sides of Monday's vote. Virginia's Eric Cantor, 45, and Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, 38, supported the legislation because they had helped to achieve substantial improvements in it, such as requiring financial institutions to help finance their bailout, giving the Treasury potentially valuable equity in firms revived by public funds and eliminating a slush fund for Democratic activists. Texas' Jeb Hensarling, 51, and Indiana's Mike Pence, 49, voted against what they considered a rescue model fundamentally flawed because (in Hensarling's words) it "could permanently and fundamentally change the role of government."

It is potentially catastrophic that this crisis comes in the context of a closely contested election and a collapse of presidential authority. Congress should disconnect from a public that cannot be blamed for being more furious about than comprehending of this opaque debacle. The public wanted catharsis, and respect for its center-right principles, and got both with Monday's House vote. It still needs protection against obliteration of the financial system.

See also:
Eric Cantor's congressional website: http://cantor.house.gov/index.htm
Eric Cantor's Whip Office website: http://www.republicanwhip.house.gov/

Paul Ryan's congressional website: http://www.house.gov/ryan/
His district includes Janesville, home of L.L. Bean,
as well as Racine, home of Johnson Wax, and Kenosha,
home of Snap-on and an important Chrysler engine plant,
which is currently laying-off employees for obvious reasons.