Progressive Democrat Issue 127: THOUGHTS

Well, I am back from vacation and still catching up.

One thing struck me while on vacation. Southern California, including Los Angeles, had hardly any smog during the entire 3 weeks we were there. Summer is a peak time for smog in Los Angeles, and to have such perfect conditions for such a long period during summer is astonishing. The air quality was worse in NYC when we left than it was in Los Angeles the whole trip.

I talked to lots of people about this on the trip. They all said my impression was right: smog is way down in Los Angeles. Some even said straight out that Los Angeles has beaten the smog problem. I bet that is an exaggeration, but something amazing has happened. It took decades, but Los Angeles has cleaned up its air a great deal.

What has changed? Well, government regulation has been a large part. Smog control devices and emissions standards have been a large part of the solution. It takes time for such things to work as old cars have to be replaced with new cars covered by the new laws. I also notice that there are more and more hybrid cars on the road in Southern California than I have ever seen before...and fewer SUVs, though there are still plenty of those. The busses in Los Angeles have also largely been replaced with clean air busses (bio fuels, CNG, etc.). All of this adds up to a much cleaner, more pleasant city!

As to the newsletter, I am thinking of dropping it, or at least putting it out less often. It will remain sort of minimalist...which might please some, others might miss the local detail. But I hope it remains useful.

Anyway, here is this week's newsletter.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

DAILY KOS vs. FOX NEWS

FOCUS ON MISSISSIPPI: Insurance After Katrina

REPUBLICAN CHICKENHAWKS

Daily Kos vs. Fox News

Bill O'Reilly has started a campaign targeting sponsors and advertisers of Daily Kos. O'Reilly had the nerve to call Daily Kos a "hate site" filled with "hate speech" (one wonders if he was looking into a mirror when he thought he was looking at Daily Kos).

Remember that Bill O'Reilly has advocated a terrorist bombing of San Francisco, advocates violence against American citizens, and tells Jewish callers to move to Israel if they support separation of church and state. And Remember that Fox News in general has MANY people who advocate violence, intolerance and anti-Semitism.

Jet Blue, originally a sponsor of Yearly Kos, has bowed to O'Reilly's lies and is slinking out of its public sponsorship of Kos. This has led many at Daily Kos to decide Jet Blue is too quick to bow to the right wing. I should remind people that Jet Blue was the first airline to start giving the Federal government all info it had on its passengers. Later the Bush administration got all airlines doing this, but Jet Blue did so eagerly and immediately, in the eyes of many violating passenger privacy. Some are suggesting Southwest as an alternative. I can vouch of Southwest. They are cheap and so minimalist in terms of what you get. But we have liked them and found them nice and reliable.

For those who want to contact Jet Blue, here's their email: corporatecommunications@jetblue.com

This conflict is escalating into a full scale consumer war between Daily Kos and Fox News. Remember that Fox News started this.

Now it is becoming a contest between Lowe's and Home Depot. Lowe's has decided that it can't take Fox News intolerance, so it has pulled its advertising from Fox. You can thank Lowe's through these email addresses:

Ron Jarvis, Vice President of Environmental Innovation
ron_jarvis@homedepot.com

Frank Blake, Chief Executive Officer
francis_blake@homedepot.com

Carol Tome, Chief Financial Officer
carol_tome@homedepot.com

Home Depot, on the other hand, is siding with Fox. This is not surprising given that Home Depot Executive Vice President Francis Blake served for 10 months as George W. Bush’s deputy energy secretary in 2001 before accepting his current position with Home Depot. And Karen Knutson, wife of the primary in-house lobbyist for Home Depot, was formerly a top aid to Dick Cheney.

So, if you want to contact Home Depot and tell them what you think, here are some email addresses:
ron_jarvis@homedepot.com, francis_blake@homedepot.com, carol_tome@homedepot.com

Using your power as an investor and a consumer can have a huge impact. Sometimes it only takes a handful of emails, phone calls or letters to sway a company. If you are interested in a comprehensive list of Fox advertisers, please go here. I wrote several other advertisers.

Focus on Mississippi: Katrina, Insurance and Racial Equality

When Katrina hit, we all watched the Bush Administration celebrate McCain's birthday party, Condaleeza Rice shop for shoes in NYC, and, of course, New Orleans flood in a comlpetely avoidable disaster that happened as a direct result of Republican "Drown Government in a Bathtub" policy.

But what most people missed is that Mississippi got hard hit as well. Back then, one of my coworkers had grown up in Mississippi and her family is still in rural Mississippi. She didn't talk about Katrina much, but once I asked her and the devastation to her family, financially, emotionally and psychologically, had been enormous. And the insurance companies were dicking everyone around, refusing payouts if people had gotten a single cent of help from the government.

Americans died needlessly and the survivors are now being screwed by the same right wing extremist policies that let the disaster happen in the first place.

Democracy for America, one of the more effective progressive organizations around, is eyeing the election for Mississippi Insurance Commissioner to get someone on the ground in Mississippi who might actually HELP people rather than hurt them. From DFA:

The fight to bring health care to every American is not just a national issue. It is a local one too. Governors, state legislators, and insurance commissioners are taking the lead on health care, often making a difference when no one else will.

Gary Anderson is taking the lead in his state. That's why he's our candidate for Mississippi Insurance Commissioner.

Contribute $20.07 today to put Gary over the top:

www.democracyforamerica.com/anderson

As you might imagine, insurance is a big deal in Mississippi. Almost two years after Katrina, many residents are still waiting for insurance payments to begin rebuilding their lives.

As a key member of the State Health Insurance Board and the sole insurance rate-setting authority in the state, Gary will find ways to help pay for annual physical exams, periodic screenings, and preventative education and care.

When we win, Gary will be the first African American elected to statewide office in Mississippi in over a hundred years. Gary's victory on August 7th will prove a Democrat can win in the Deep South and set the national stage for Democrats to win so-called red states across the country. Please contribute $20.07 and help Gary make history:

www.democracyforamerica.com/anderson

Democracy for America is not waiting for 2008 to make change happen. Gary's race is happening right now; victory in 2007 is ours to win!

Thank you for moving America forward.

Sincerely,

Jim Dean
Chair

I gave $25 and I hope that you will join me in supporting Gary, even if it is only $10.

Not only is this election, which is happening now, important because of the need for a fair and progressive Insurance Commissioner in Mississippi, but did you notice that part that says if Gary Anderson wins, he will be the first black to win a statewide office in Mississippi in more than 100 years...that means since Reconstruction. Well, with a good, progressive candidate running for this important office, maybe it's time for a black to be elected to a statewide office in Mississippi again.

Republican Chickenhawks

Well, we already know that Rudy Giuliani screwed New York's firefighters and bears some responsibility for the deaths of so many brave firefighters on 9/11 and the poisoning of many others in the weeks afterwards.

We already know that Mitt Romney is a flip flopping opportunist who openly supports torture.

But both Rudy and Mitt are also chickenhawks in the shameful tradition of Bush, Cheney and the vast majority of hawkish Republicans. McCain, though his record on Veterans issues sucks, is certainly exempt from the "chickenhawk" accusation. But Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are cowards who evaded service every way they could, but demand that others serve...and are willing to insult real Veterans in the process.

Chickenhawk: A politician whose hawkishness and willingness to put soldiers' lives on the line is matched only by their desperation to avoid military service themselves.

This was covered in Salon.com last week, but only now getting around to covering it.



(image and quote below from Salon.com)

Consider Giuliani...He never hesitates to suggest that politicians with differing opinions simply lack guts. When he spoke at the 2004 Republican convention, he gleefully insinuated that Democratic nominee John Kerry lacked the fortitude to combat terrorism. Now he denigrates the supposedly spineless Democrats running for president in 2008.

But he has always confined his enthusiasm for war to podium speeches and position papers. Born in 1944, young Rudy was highly eligible for military service when he reached his 20s during the Vietnam War. He did not volunteer for combat -- as Kerry did -- and instead found a highly creative way to dodge the draft.

...the desperate Giuliani prevailed upon his boss to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an "essential" civilian employee. As the great tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin noted 20 years later, during the former prosecutor's first campaign for mayor: "Giuliani did not attend the war in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon [sic] wrote a letter to the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for MacMahon, who at the time was hearing Selective Service cases. MacMahon's letter to Giuliani's draft board stated that Giuliani was so necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in Vietnam."

...

Like Giuliani and millions of other young American men at the time, Romney started out with student deferments. But he left Stanford after only two semesters in 1966 and would have become eligible for the draft -- except that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Michigan, his home state, provided him with a fresh deferment as a missionary. According to an excellent investigative series that appeared last month in the Boston Globe, that deferment, which described Romney as a "minister of religion or divinity student," protected him from the draft between July 1966 and February 1969, when he enrolled in Brigham Young University to complete his undergraduate degree...Coincidentally, or possibly not, Mitt's father, George W. Romney, was governor of Michigan at the time.)

...the Mormons didn't send him to proselytize in the slums of the Philippines, Guatemala or Kenya.

They sent him to France.

I will add at this point, that any of our readers who complain about the media but aren't subscribers to Salon.com, should subscribe now. It is really a good, solid source of AP newswire stories and excellent, intelligent columns.

Now, I want to add that I don't necessarily blame Mitt and Rudy for not serving. They are not alone in avoiding serving their nation. But they should NOT have the sleazy gall to accuse others of weakness or disloyalty, particularly those, like John Kerry, who DID volunteer for service. So many Republicans are cowards who want to force others to put their lives on the line in wars of dubious value to America. Two thirds of Americans want us to get out of this useless, ill conceived war based on lies, but Rudy and Mitt want more Americans to die...but they could never face the music themselves.

Disgusting hypocricy. But that is what I have come to expect from most Republicans.

McCain is an extremist who has rolled over for Bush and most directly continues Bush's failed legacy. But at least the man served his nation bravely in war and knows what he is subjecting others to. Giuliani and Romney have no clue what they are sending men into and they don't have the guts that they expect others to have.