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LosAngeles.California.CAN

"LosAngeles.California.CAN" is the Los Angeles County Group of the Community Action Network (CAN). All Members of MyBO, who live in Los Angeles County in California are welcome to join. We allow anyone who wants to watch us - to also join, but to please self moderate your writing to the group as this group is for the Citizens of Los Angleles County. Each "County.Calfiornia.CAN" MyBO Group is the County Group of the larger "California.CAN" Statewide Network. We also cooperate with the every other MyBO Groups in the much larger Countrywide "USA.CAN" Network. Each group is autonomous, and works together in cooperation within the MyBO Context. All Community Action Network Groups work to build our future based on Barack Obama's Blueprint for Change in America.

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Paying for Health Care Reform

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Jun 13th, 2009 at 6:57 pm EDT

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$313 Billion in Additional Savings to Create a Deficit Neutral Plan... Read More »

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Health care reform is an economic necessity

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Jun 4th, 2009 at 6:01 pm EDT

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In this excellent op-ed piece, super-economist Christina Romer (one of President Obama's most trusted advisors) makes an impassionate plea for health care reform. She expalins the different options that could lead to the President's goal of universal health care, and helps the reader get a really goodunderstanding of what is really at stake. Too often, we hear that universal health care would be too costly and force the economy to suffer. That is a far right Republican talking point which has been discredited several times over, but which still survives and lives on because of the ignorance of many. This piece by Prof. Romer dispels all misunderstandings and makes the choice clear: health care reform would strengthen America's economy for the future, not hurt it...

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Obama’s Speech on National Security

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 pm EDT

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Following is a text of President Obama’s speech on Thursday on national security issues, as released by the White House.
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David Brooks' "Hare" Raising Spectre

By Stephen Siciliano - May 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm EDT

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If your life is the subject of a book, you may not want to have lived it.

This truth was slow in coming to the highway scribe who spends less time each year on the highway and more time on scribery. The goal is to be an artist known more for his work than his public exploits.

A matter of substance, if you will.

Lives that are worthy of a literary recounting are exceptional things. In rare cases, extraordinary biographies can consist in a litany of experiences kissed by the Gods and sun alike.

But usually, what makes for a good read are those rollercoaster rides spiked with irony, tragedy, movement, and setbacks answered with victories and then succeeded by sudden drops in fortune again.

That's how life is. The more you go for, the more you are subjected to and the vast majority prefer things even-keeled so that their life trajectory rarely becomes the stuff of bestsellers.

"New York Times," columnist David Brooks has scripted "In Praise of Dullness," which posits that the story of American business is not much told, nor well understood, by writers.

The piece focuses on recent studies regarding what makes a good corporate Chief Executive Officer.

The results favored a humdrum personality: "The C.E.O.s that are most likely to succeed are humble, diffident, relentless and a bit unidimensional. They are often not the most exciting people around."

Which is well and good and something we knew thanks to Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare."

It is one reason (the other being money) why highwayscribery spends less time bounding through fits of international adventure and more time eating Orville Redenbacher's "old-fashioned butter" popcorn in front of a Dell.

Providing good information on running a company, should it ever come to that, Brooks runs the boat aground with his subsequent assertion that these Tortoise types demonstrate why, "people in the literary, academic, and media worlds rarely understand business. It is nearly impossible to think of a novel that accurately portrays business success."

highwayscribery would suggest Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" fits the bill, just not in the way a profit-focused guy like Brooks is looking for.

But that's neither here nor there. Our beef is with Brooks' separation of art, literature, market, and business into separate rarified environments.

An artist himself, the columnist reasons that "the market" -- that Gilded God of all pinstriped and serious folk -- demands a tortoise run the business.

What interests writers, on the other hand, is "self-expression and self-exploration."

But these endeavors are personal goals of novelists and not necessarily the subject of their work, which involves a search for, and construction of, the good yarn.

Artists are subject to markets, too. And these markets are more particular, less democratic or meritorious than anything the newly minted MBA will experience upon emerging from the Wall Street subway station

The very nature of their craft condemns writers to the tortoise's way. In a variation on the them Gore Vidal's "Palimpsest" refers to the "bovine" character of the novelist slowly masticating his cud, his subject.

Brooks, who works in Washington D.C., notes how monotone business leaders don't fare well in a place where political leaders brandish their "charisma, charm, personal skills."

But business is the story of American politics as this piece on the Employee Free Choice Act's dwindling chances, in spite of a Democratic president and majority, will attest.

Brooks' earlier March 16 piece "The Commercial Republic" suggests much the same.

For every Obama or Reagan that struts his term upon the national stage, there remains behind a Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) or a Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), humble (maybe not so much), anonymous, and busy as bees.

The columnist perceives the Obama administration's "interposing" of artistic temperaments upon industrial management culture and fears it is unleashing "a revolution in values" damaging to American business.

But Brooks is interposing a "hare" mythology onto noncorporate types that doesn't fit well.

Every endeavor cultivates its slow-pokes, passionate in their pursuit of incremental progress, and committed to the long haul in a way Wall Street has rarely been in recent years.

So we should be alright.

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Rush Limbaugh was the 20th Hijacker on 9-11 (Wanda Sikes)

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 10th, 2009 at 5:07 am EDT

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What a funny way to tell the truth. Except it's so true it's no longer funny... Read More »

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President Obama's Job Training Plan for the Unemployed

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 9th, 2009 at 10:21 pm EDT

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President Obama is doing the right thing to take care of people who have lost their jobs and still need an opportunity to update their skills for the new economy. Education and appropriate job training are essential elements of the future modern, global economy which we must embrace. The President's plan makes dreams possible for many Americans and their families... Read More »

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Obama: The First 106 Days

By Stephen Siciliano - May 6th, 2009 at 4:13 am EDT

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It's a good thing that, as a blogging outfit, highwayscribery decided to stay clear of the "first 100 days" traffic and waited patiently for the no less important FIRST 106 DAYS milepost.

On top of highwayscribery's little peep being overwhelmed by the roar of outlets both mega and minor, President Obama's ensuing stand against offshore tax havens and unequivocal nod to industrial syndicalism might have gone unremarked.

Offshore tax havens are the things that people who don't get 10-99 or 1040 forms at the end of year use to avoid paying taxes the people who get 10-99 or 1040 forms can't use to avoid the annual tithe.

Like, say, Warren Buffet.

When the Oracle of Omaha was asked by "New York Times," business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, why his empire was structured as a conglomerate when he advised other investors to "keep it simple," Buffet responded, "We've got this ability in terms of moving money around into various opportunities without tax consequences."

Get it. WITHOUT TAX CONSEQUENCES.

Jackie Calmes and Edmund Andrews at the "New York Times," (NYT) reported that Obama's is a move which, "appeals to growing populist anger among taxpayers but that is likely to open an epic battle with some major powers in American commerce."

To quote a very unpopular former president, "Bring it on."

The new President, you see, is fulfilling a campaign promise to end tax breaks for American companies that send American jobs overseas.

John Castellani of the Business Roundtable gave the reporters a canned reaction: "This plan will reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in foreign markets, which will also crip

ple economic growth here in the U.S."

The obvious question is what is it that makes these countries "American"? You also have to wonder if other companies in other countries pay taxes and, if they do, how they compete.

Finally, while blessed with all these neat tools for avoiding taxes, why has economic growth been crippled anyway?

If the NYT reporters are to be taken at their word, Obama merely wants to fix provisions that no longer serve the original purpose of protecting multinational corporations from being taxed twice: once overseas and once by the Internal Revenue Service.

But according to the same article, in 2004, the last year for which there are figures, corporations deferred reporting earnings and wracked up tax credits that led to a paltry 2.3 percent contribution on what is supposed to be a 35 percent tax rate.

In short, they didn't come even close to paying their fair share.

the highway scribe, by the way, is still being forced to pay his.

The Obama plan has left open one big, fat loophole, according to Lynnley Browning, also of the "New York Times" (which should give you an idea of what political blogging's future will look like when all these "real" newspapers go under).

The Obama plan, apparently, doesn't do away with "transfer pricing," a concept we feel no need to explain since most of you aren't going to need it and because the outcome is essentially the same, where multinationals and taxes are concerned.

There's a pattern developing with the president, who seems to throw big punches, but them dance off into a corner when battling the big boys.

Robert Reich at Salon.com thinks the president throws a lot of stuff out there, and keeps some close to his chest, because he's trying to affect great changes in American society. More often than not, Reich believes, he will run into the same people at the negotiating table and all of these plans and provisions will serve as so many bargaining chips on its coffee-stained surface.

For example, when the American car industry started going belly-up, there were complaints from people the scribe has coffee with that the bankers were bailed out, while unions were being required to eat their contracts in most usual and inequitable fashion.

But lo-and-behold, at Chrysler Obama practically went syndicalist, which is a philosophy that believes unions, workers councils, and others cooperative labor groups are best-suited to running industrial entities.

On May Day itself, "NYT" subscribers awoke to a headline that claimed "Chrysler Files for Bankruptcy, UAW and Fiat Take Control."

True, it's not the revolutionary syndicalism preached by Pierre Prodhoun, but it's still United Auto Workers control with $8 billion in g

overnment grease for the wheels.

Or as Jim Rutenberg and Bill Vlasic, again, of "The Times" noted, "It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times..."

Micheline Maynard, of (yes) "The Times," penned "In Chrysler Deal, Union Takes Rare Front Seat," and observed that Chrysler's Chapter 11 could end up being the "Cadillac" of bankruptcies for the United Auto Workers.

Apparently Chrysler didn't have a luxury model that could make the analogy workable.

Quoted in the piece was an expert in bankruptcy restructuring of Washington-based Arent Fox saying, "This is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. I never would have thought a year ago that this would occur. These are truly unusual times."

Change indeed.

Maynard noted that the United Auto Workers is not just any union thanks to its heavy political contributions, but that's a narrow conclusion that lacks a back story.

Which is why you come to highwayscribery.

The UAW is the holy grail of democratic trade unionism in this country with a not inconsiderable reputation around the world as well. The union's dramatic history is woven into labor lore. The auto workers have cut a noble and progressive profile in countless fights since their formation by the Reuther brothers in the 1930s.

In 1986, when the highway scribe was a cub reporter, he was assigned to cover the union's national convention in Anaheim, Calif.

Now reporters are a pretty jaded lot. We've got to sift through a lot of buffalo chips to get at the truth and many events we cover are shows concocted especially for our delectation and/or distraction.

But the sight of 5,000 UAW delegates, sitting at long tables across the sprawling convention floor, rising to their feet and singing "Solidarity Forever" stamped a memory in the scribe's mind that 23 years have barely dimmed.

And that's part of what is behind this move. A progressive president standing by a blue chip labor union and assuring its members get a fighting chance rather, rather than sacrificing them to the cold and heartless logic of the marketplace.

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Obama's First Business Report Card

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Apr 29th, 2009 at 3:26 pm EDT

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President Obama gets a passing grade for his handling of the economy in his first 100 days... Read More »

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Credit Crookery Redux

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 29th, 2009 at 1:03 am EDT

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Today Mrs. Scribe took to the phone in search of a reason for $70 worth of charges on a credit card she does not use.

The phone people, of course, had a very good reason for that debt in spite of the fact no purchase had ever triggered it.

Mrs. Scribe persisted. The phone attendant insisted she had no authority to wave the fees and said a supervisor would attend to Mrs. Scribe's grievance. The gentleman, naturally, had no intention of using the authority his predecessor did not possess to cancel any of the late fees or penalties on the never-accrued debt.

But while the phone transfer was occurring, the highway scribe told his wife to bring up the meeting at the White House last week and drop in a few comments about egregious charges being targeted by Congress.

Although it didn't come out quite that way, Mrs. Scribe's assertion that "this is why Barack Obama had you people up to the White House," did the trick.

Angrily, the supervisor agreed to wave the mystery fees.

Credit card companies are under pressure and it is up to average Americans being squeezed by them to push back and make clear they're aware of the rare and powerful friend they have living on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tomorrow, the Mrs. Scribe returns to do battle with Chase, which just bought WaMu and raised her interest rate from 9 percent to 28 percent.

These people just don't get it.

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Credit Crookery

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 27th, 2009 at 5:12 pm EDT

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The voice at the other end of the phone, representing Bank of America's credit card division, had just gotten an earful and then unburdened herself by a simple tilting of the head.

What spilled from that empty vessel were suggestions from highwayscribery that she, in no uncertain terms, visit Hell in the not-so-distant future.

The basic outlines of our discussion involved- and this probably will sound familiar - a rather arbitrary and dramatic annual rate interest increase from 1.zero percent to 28.something percent.

Having paid the BofA Visa credit card through the BofA online banking system on the due date, the financial giant and recipient of highwayscribery's tax money, applied a cutoff date based on Eastern Standard Time when the scribe lives in a place that starts and finishes three hours later.

The upshot was a bank determination that the scribe had been late on two different occasions and was therefore worthy of a "default" interest rate of 28.something.

The Random House College Dictionary entry for the word reads thusly: de.fault n. 1. failure to act; neglect 2. failure to meet financial obligations.

highwayscribery told the absolutely useless woman that his situation certainly did not meet the first criteria, while any claim he fell short of the second represented something of a stretch and did not merit a 27.something interest rate hike.

the scribe pointed to the meaty sums he'd contributed in recent months to paying down his debt. He further argued that to stain such a sterling record with a pair of time difference discrepancies - "isn't electronic transfer immediate?" - was punitive and unfair.

Her response, though not in so many words, was that life is unfair and Bank of America punitive.

Finally, in a fit of ridiculousness, the scribe added how he was going to contact the White House in the hopes President Obama went after the company's greedy rear-ends.

He never believed it was actually going to happen, and yet, on Friday, there was the man himself, having exercised the enormous power of his office on behalf of people being screwed by banks everywhere, "jawboning" credit card executives at the Big House.

The "New York Times," April 24, ran the adjoining photograph of President Obama sitting with these crooks and apprising them of coming changes to their profit margin based on new legislation in Congress that would put an end to the shenanigans that daily enrich them while impoverishing the rest of us.

Most of these people run companies awash in taxpayer money and are reporting tentative profits after having single-handedly wrecked the world economy with their high-flying financial fakery.

Stephen Labaton reported that the Federal Reserve Bank has already approved some reforms that will kick-in next year, and that the President told the moneychangers, "I know you feel that anything beyond what the Fed has done would be overkill. I just disagree."

Now that's what the scribe calls having a friend in the White House and he's rather shocked to find that friend. All his scribbled ministrations on behalf of the candidate Obama not withstanding.

When one spends 20 or 30 years preaching that government should serve as a countervailing force against the most powerful national interests, and favor the less fortunate, it becomes a kind of pie-in-the-sky sermon conjuring up some revolutionary rapture that would yield the milk-and-honey land.

But here it is thanks to the 2008 election when a majority of the American people woke up to the fact they'd been being screwed all these years and cathartically rejected the Republican dogma of individual freedom for the red herring it is.

And so, The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 (H.R. 627), sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) would, among other things:

- require your credit card company to let you know in advance of its plans to increase your interest rate;
- ban "retroactive" interest rate increases on existing balances unless you're more than 30 days late on a payment, which is something closer to "default" than some time-zone infraction;

These are in the Federal Reserve Banks new regulation, but, The Times reports, "the industry strongly opposes the bill because it believes the law would be harder to overturn than a regulation."

Hmmm.

Sounds like we need the law.

the scribe and Mrs. Scribe saw Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) who is one of the many nondescript pitchers pulled from the GOP bullpen of late. He talked a good game about a party worrying over those Americans sitting around the kitchen table trying to make ends meet, which, although he didn't see it, include inequitable credit card charges.

But according to the "Times," editorial department, The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 is facing "fierce," opposition from Republicans in Congress.

Americans now know, and expect, the party's pro-corporate postures, whereas before they weren't so sure and which is why the Democrats hold the keys to the kingdom these days.

If this keeps up, a recent letter by the scribe to his Blue Cross administrator, praying that Obama sets up a socialized health care system and puts predatory health care insurers out of business, may be more than idle dreaming.

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President Obama's EARTH DAY PROCLAMATION

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Apr 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm EDT

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Let's support the President in his struggle to save our planet. Read More »

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The View From Abroad

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 21st, 2009 at 3:31 pm EDT

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With Dick Cheney roaring the benefits of torturing foreign citizens and right-wingers upset with President Obama's projection of American power abroad, it's a good time to see how things are playing overseas.

To that end, highwayscribery is going to translate an article penned by Jorge Ramos Avalos from today's "Diario San Diego."

Ramos, for those of you not versed in Latin American culture, is a Mexican journalist of enormous prestige whose reputation is derived from his objectivity, lack of ideological prerogatives, breadth of culture and coverage in the southern hemisphere.

That's him next to Ana de la Reguera, about whom we know little other than that her image is worthy of reproduction.

In "The End of Big Brother," Ramos writes that Obama's appearance at the recent confab of Latin American leaders in Trinidad and Tobago, "broke prejudices and schemes that, in some cases, took decades to construct."

On that trip, Ramos observes, Obama agreed to deal with the Cuban dictatorship, a novelty not witnessed in 50 years. He shook the hand of Hugo Chavez in spite of prior insults directed at him and in contrast to his predecessor who "hid" from the Venezuelan.

Obama, he continues, treated Mexico as an equal, jettisoning an era of U.S. congressional "certifications' of that country's efforts to deal with its [our] drug problem.

"He promised change and that's what we're seeing," Ramos wrote. "In just two days time, Obama launched a completely new policy toward Latin America."

Of course, this is what has the right-wingers so upset. Great fans of the "global" economy, their understanding is that all its participants be subservient to U.S. interests. When flashpoints arise from the hatred this unilateralism breeds, the redneck analysis is that they "hate freedom."

What they hate is something quite the opposite.

Ramos views Obama's perspective as one of give and take: That the U.S. won't stick its nose in the affairs of Latin America, but will not accept the blame for all its ills.

The prior approach, still a favorite at FOX News, was to interfere and deny the effects of that interference.

In Cuba, Obama is trying something different than his 10 predecessors, all of whom failed in their efforts to dislodge the Castro regime from power.

In an interview with Ramos, the president said, "During the past 50 years the status quo has failed to promote liberty or democracy in Cuba and I'm ready to try some new things in an effort to break up the old bosses."

Unwilling or, as we know from this side of the border, unable to renew a ban on the assault weapons causinng Mexican law enforcement so much trouble, Ramos noted that Obama has proposed to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, "a relationship of mutual responsibility, of partners in a process."

The "Univision" tele-journalist said Obama reasserted his position that "round-ups" of illegal immigrants in the U.S. solve nothing and that he has communicated this sentiment to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"I can't promise immigration reform," the president told Ramos, "because the outcome is not mine alone to determine, but it is mine to initiate a process and that I promise to do."

These items are music to the ears of our southern neighbors. Our own southerners, clumped into the Republican Party as the are, have long viewed foreign agreement with our international policy as evidence of failure, but Obama has a different understanding of the way it should work.

Ramos sees this in Obama's familiarity with soccer, which he played during that part of his childhood lived in Indonesia, and his desire to prod a return of the World Cup to the U.S. in 2018 or 2020.

"Obama no longer wants the U.S. to be the hemisphere's big brother," observes Ramos,
''except when it comes to soccer, which he wants to invite everyone to his house to play."

For conservatives who feel their world overrun by federal takeovers of financial institutions and the imagined avalanche of gay marriages eroding our nation's moral fiber, Ramos' conclusion should serve as salve:

"In spite of Obama's best intentions, it will be hard to forget that, in may ways, the United States still owns the soccer ball."

And that should make for a Happy Hannity.

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Prayers for the Obama Family - Please, Join Us!

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Apr 21st, 2009 at 2:32 pm EDT

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Please, join us to pray for the Obama Family; Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia need our prayers... Read More »

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Fatal Handshakes?

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 20th, 2009 at 11:04 pm EDT

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In Newt Gingrich's diplomacy can the roots of his disastrous marriages be discerned.

The former House Speaker from a zillion years ago thinks President Obama talking with Hugo Chavez is a sign of "weakness."

highwayscribery does not watch the morning shows, but according to "Politico," Gingrich showed up on a bunch of them today (April 20) in another effort to revive his career.

He told FOX & Friends (he's one of the friends) "Frankly, this does look a lot like Jimmy Carter."

He was being "frank," and not calculating or compulsively negative like the FOX he's friends with.

"Carter tried weakness, and the world got tougher and tougher, because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators - when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead."

Carter, you see, got together with people like Cyrus Vance and Zbignew Brezinski circa 1976 and said, "let's try a foreign policy rooted in weakness."

Tarring the Democratic Party with the Nobel Peace prize winner's presidency used to be a potent firearm in the Republican arsenal, but now gains no more traction than calling Obama a socialist does.

And that's because after eight years of Republican misrule, Carter doesn't look so bad...and neither does socialism.

Now let us be, er um, "frank" here. highwayscribery has very little use for Hugo Chavez. We think he is a bully and wrong to keep amending the Venezuelan constitution so that he can continue running for president.

Much the same way we think the Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg is wrong for amending voter-imposed term limits to suit his own purposes.

But we weren't talking about New York, we were talking about Chavez whom we think is undemocratic and unfair to the Venezuelan opposition.

We think he gives socialism a bad name and has not demonstrated much breadth of intellect by repeating errors of socialist governments past, rather than manifesting an accumulated acumen from lessons learned.

But we don't think talking to him at a diplomatic event is a sign of weakness. We think it is diplomatic.

Because highwayscribery has an international perspective, we are comprehending of the Latin American viewpoint, which sees that continent as something of plantation for American corporate interests.

We're also familiar with the author of the book outlining this position Chavez gave Obama. Eduardo Galeano is a serious and respected man of letters in the Spanish-speaking world who would probably have little use for the Venezuelan strongman.

The Republican Party in its current state of ineptitude lacks a response to the health care crisis or any of the daily problems it created and which the president must now spend his days trying to fix.

Piling on with their "ideas man" Gingrich were senators John Ensign of Nevada and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

Gregg, you'll remember, agreed to be Obama's commerce secretary, but then backed down in the purest example of his party's inability to govern and preference for obstruction.

We don't know anything about Ensign, but what little he said justifies our lack of curiosity:

"I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez. When you're talking about the prestige of the United States and the presidency of the United States, you have to be careful who you're seen joking around with."

Ensign doesn't seem to think the prestige is very sturdy if a smiley photo-op can undermine it.

Back in the days when the mainstream media used to amplify, without comment, anything the Bush administration sought to convey, bloggers had a real purpose, but President Obama's response to the manufactured hoopla over his Chavez handshake moment is better than anything we might come up with:

"We had this debate throughout the campaign, and the whole notion was, is that somehow if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness - the American people didn't buy it. And there's a good reason the American people didn't buy it - because it doesn't make sense.

Obama noted that Venezuela's military outlays are one/six-hundreth or one six/thousandth (not sure which, but it doesn't matter) of the U.S. budget and added that, "It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States."

Quite the opposite.

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Under Attack

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 10th, 2009 at 1:00 pm EDT

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Right wingers are swinging like monkeys from one extreme political label to another in an effort to bring our president down.

None of it is working, according to Jack Glaser, a Berkeley professor who told the
"San Francisco Chronicle," that this political apoplexy, or "Obama Derangement Syndrome," comes from the Democratic President's high approval ratings.

"They can't get anything to stick to him," he explained.

A cast of crazies including Glenn Beck, David Limbaugh, and the "American Spectator" have all blatantly asserted that Obama is a "fascist," according to the article by Carla Marinucci, and Joe Garafoli.

This comes on the wings of the "socialist" tag, which was big during the fall campaign and turned out to be true, not only about Obama, but a good portion of the beleaguered American electorate.

There's an old axiom that says people have the politics they can afford.

Now, just a few days ago, highwayscribery criticized Obama for his stance on the domestic spying program initiated by the Bush administration.

But we did so not because we want Obama to fail, but because we think a rigorous challenge will keep him from adopting certain repressive policies conservative pundits are eerily quiet about largely because they support them.

Nonetheless, Sean Hannity of FOX has repeatedly promised to fight Obama-inspired "tyranny." America's most important journalist, Jon Stewart, says the wing-nuts are confusing tyranny with "losing."

How sweet it is.

Media Matters, a watchdog says that, since the president's inauguration. there have been over 3,000 references to socialism, communism, or fascism, which, anybody who lived through the 1930s can tell you, are very different things.

"Defenders of Limbaugh and other conservative pundits argue that the use of such loaded criticism is hardly unique in American politics," the article said. "They note that during the previous presidential administration, pundits on the left didn't pull any punches on President George W. Bush and often resorted to equally aggressive language - though not so early in his administration."

Well, that's because, as the conservative pundits would tell you, we're "elites," with enough education to know that the Bush regime, which meticulously meshed the projects of government and big industry, demonstrated high indices of fascistic policy.

The critique was not invented to bring him down, rather an assertion that instead of serving as counterweight to corporate power, the U.S. government had become its wing man.

The conservative ranters, by contrast, "obviously have no understanding of the history of the world, of national socialism or of fascism," Cal State Sacramento poli-scientist Michael Semler told the "Chronicle."

Semler went on to say the pundits are firing blanks, but the administration seems to think differently. Or at least is wise enough not dismiss a rain of charges merely because they have no basis in reason or reality.

Yesterday the sent out an e-mail requesting money to fight their antagonists. They're asking for $25, but will take $5 or $10.

We don't know what they plan to do with the money given that they already occupy the ultimate seat of power, but they've been wise with it before

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The Message, Not the Messenger

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm EDT

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The messenger is beloved when the message is peace, freedom, equality, rights, and other byproducts of the American and French revolutions.

A lot, but not everything, that President Barack Obama does passes muster with the highwayscribery editorial board.

Take, for example, the Obama Department of Justice brief in Jewel v. National Security Agency.

For nitty gritties we suggest you visit Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon, where he applies an unrelenting commitment to civil rights with a constitutional lawyer's training.

In broad strokes, the lawsuit represents a legal challenge to the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping policy.

By way of recap, last year Obama and other Democrats joined Republicans in passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This nefarious piece of legislation granted immunity to telecommunications companies that had complied with Bush administration requests to spy on their customers.

This provoked a howl of protest from civil libertarians. Congressional Democrats responded that the government, in spite of the FISA bill, could still be sued for its transgressions upon our rights.

Jewel put that promise to the test.

An unfortunate byproduct of our country's majestic process for transferring power is that new administrations get saddled with their predecessor's sins, and the Obama administration necessarily became the defendant in Jewel.

But rather than fold the government's defense and bless the claims of citizens legitimately asserting their constitutional right to privacy, Attorney General Eric Holder has done just the opposite...if not worse.

In requesting the lawsuit's dismissal, Holder asserts the state's "secret privilege" doctrine and attempts to repress evidence that might add meat to the plaintiff's boney claims.

It is identical to the Bush administration's posture which said: "We can't play ball in this court, because its rules require the exposure of information that threatens our national security...

..."trust us."

Holder then argues the doctrine of "sovereign immunity," which leans upon the loathsome Patriot Act and says you can't sue the government on illegal spying unless the pilfered information is made public.

Or, you can't sue the government for spying on you, unless it lets everyone know it has been spying on you.

Worse, it serves the double purpose of letting all Bush administration officials off-the-hook on these crucial constitutional questions.

Howard Fineman of "Newsweek" told Keith Olberman of "Countdown" that the Obama administration was engaged in a political calculus pitting its earliest and core supporters against the "intelligence community" in Washington.

Obama is an "outsider," Fineman explained, who needs the support of the intelligence community in waging the war on terror.

Being commander-in-chief is, apparently, not enough to get them to do their jobs.

highwayscribery does not know much about intelligence types since they sit on the other side of a deep cultural, political, and philosophical divide.

And highwayscribery can say it has about as much use for this particular "community" as it has for highwayscribery's civil rights.

That President Obama would expect anything from them by acquiescing to age-old tropisms evident in our political fabric suggests he may be as naive as some right-wingers insist.

The government could lose. The last administration did not fair well even in a federal judiciary system largely appointed by presidents named Bush, so that losing the case would also mean losing face, with Obama having sold-out his principals for no good reason.

As for the "earliest and core supporters," the scribe can claim initial membership and long-time relations in and with that particular army.

And this qualifies him to observe how people who never gave a hoot about politics came out of their ghettoes, border shacks, and coffee shops to rap, sing, write musical anthems, and put their street cred on the line for the president.

They did not prevail in the administration's formula on this issue, and they can hardly be expected to view this kind of expediency as some new politics fashioned by a unique leader for their own benefit.

Losing their energy and belief would be a real tragedy to the Obama narrative.

Of course, it was always going to be difficult conducting a "new" politics. Obama has been a doctrinaire liberal in many of his first steps and this has pleased the doctrinaire liberals among us, although it is new only to the extent such politics have been out of fashion for so long.

To date his politics have been to the left of President Bill Clinton's, but that is a product of the present political climate.

President Obama has been no more willing than Clinton to engage the right wing in a full-throated battle over a nominee or a law that is important to his supporters, always fearful of losing just one Republican Senate vote he rarely possesses in the first place.

Barack Obama seems a very successful politician, but his triumphs are in the old-style politics.

We see it in his financial plans, which not only leave the old order in place, but reward them with our money for the misery they've inflicted upon us.

We see it in the signing statement he made reserving the right to silence government whistleblowers not explicit in the legislation sent to him.

Of course, when he wins as an orthodox liberal we are glad, but the horse-trading and calculation represent a dark side to his old-school tics and the high price we pay for his doctrinaire leftism.

Perhaps this was inevitable, but the President was hired to do a special job on behalf of wronged, but hopeful, people the world over who look to him in a way they have looked to no other U.S. leader.

And this cannot be what they had in mind.

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A Letter to the Iranian Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Mar 26th, 2009 at 4:27 pm EDT

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March 26, 2009
Los Angeles, California

The Iranian Ambassador to the United States of America
2209 Wisconsin Ave. N.W.
Washington D.C. 20007

Dear Sir,

I’m writing after reading a brief news report on the uncertain fate of the journalist Roxana Saberi in the March 25 edition of the“New York Times.”

The piece reports that your government, after promising to release the woman, now may keep her in custody for months “or even years.”

I’m ignorant of the tenets governing Islamic law, but less so when it comes to the rights of human beings, and especially journalists, confronting the overwhelming power of the state.

I urge you to release Ms. Saberi. Journalism is a crucial function in the Western democracies. It permits a fully informed populace to make educated decisions about their own government and those of others with whom their countries interact in an interdependent world.

I understand that whatever medieval code you’ve decided to run your own country by probably does not extend the same courtesy to information-seekers, but it is incumbent upon me to inform you of your presence amidst other states and other peoples who conduct themselves more openly and fairly.

Who are you, in the end, to curtail the movements and box in the body and spirit of another human being? Is this something Allah desires? I should think not. What your detention of this journalist demonstrates, dear sir, is that you are running a dictatorship fearful that its own citizens, and those beyond your borders, would be repulsed if fully informed as to its actions.

The only government worth preserving is one that lives in truth. Not one that would jail it.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Text of President Obama's News Conference - March 24th, 2009

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Mar 25th, 2009 at 5:17 pm EDT

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Text of President Barack Obama's news conference (Tuesday, March 24, 2009) at the White House, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions: Read More »

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This Weekend - How to Help President Obama Pass his Recovery Plan

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Mar 16th, 2009 at 4:50 pm EDT

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IF YOU WERE A MEMBER OF THE "OBAMA FOR AMERICA" GROUP THAT HELPED WIN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN NOV 2008, OUR MISSION IS NOT OVER. NOW, WE HAVE TO HELP OUR PRESIDENT IMPLEMENT HIS RECOVERY PLAN - THE PLAN WE CHOSE WHEN WE VOTED FOR HIM... Read More »

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The Whole Truth: Obama's Tax Rate Much Lower than Reagan's

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Mar 13th, 2009 at 9:47 pm EDT

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DISCLAIMER: Organizing for America does not work with, nor has endorsed the political activities of, MoveOn.org. The following post is an individual initiative to share with my readers a message from MoveOn that I personally believe is very much in line with the efforts by Organizing for America and the original memebers of Obama for America to help President Obama solve our nation's economic problems and set us back on the path to prosperity. Read More »

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