Category: Howard Sosbee’s posts

Attention members of Congress: the TPP is being written and no one is at the table to represent the interests of the American public. The multinationals are there, the same folks who brought us NAFTA. They are there with their lawyers, but you are not. You have no way of knowing what kinds of goodies they are cooking up because everything is being done in secret, behind closed doors. There is a reason for this secrecy. If its provisions were made public in advance, no one who pays attention would ever allow America to be saddled with another NAFTA-type agreement, and this one is likely to be even worse. Do we want multinational corporations to be above national laws and immune from any regulation that might diminish their gross profit? The degradation already caused by the extraction industries (such as Occidental petroleum in Ecuador, oil and gas companies all over the world, even the proposed Keystone XL pipeline) and the economic damage to small farmers and businesses will pale compared to what has already resulted from NAFTA. Congress will have no opportunity even to review the agreement in its final form until it is presented to the President for signature. And the only way you can prevent America from being obligated under the agreement is to deny the President the Fast Track authority he wants. So, step up! Vote Fast Track down and give TPP a thorough congressional analysis, debate, and vote.

Apparently the compulsion to disrespect Obama is so ingrained in the Republican consciousness they need to continuously make up things so there will always be some mud to throw. For example, the Iran nuclear talks, (although they involve several sovereign nations besides America,) are currently providing plenty of red meat for the mud-throwers, such as the attempt by two recent letter writers to characterize Obama as another Neville Chamberlain following the latter’s Munich meeting with Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Such a comparison only indicates a profound ignorance of history. Iran today cannot in any way be compared to prewar Germany. And the nations negotiating with Iran are hardly equivalent to a weak and unprepared Great Britain standing alone against Hitler in 1939. But that doesn’t matter. Republicans will throw anything they can get their hands on at Obama if for no other purpose than to continue the flow of insults. Even if they don’t make sense.

“Religious freedom” is the sheep’s clothing. Anti-gay bigotry is the wolf within.

Now that Hillary Clinton has sucked all the oxygen out of the Democratic Party (meaning that the party has neglected to develop an alternative candidate), who will the Democrats get to debate her? Why not set up a debate schedule and invite all political parties to send delegates?. The goal would be to find out, once and for all, where Clinton stands on the fundamental issues and what she would do about the many problems facing America right now, not the least of which is the extreme inequality caused by corporate control of the government. Possible debaters would be the Green party, Independent party, Socialist Alternative party, and hopefully some leading Democrat who, if not for their own benefit as a candidate, would debate on behalf of the Democratic Party itself. Is anyone putting together any debate schedule at all? Without them, we may never know, until too late, where Hillary is coming from.

Proponents of the Bearcat purchase describe situations in which the vehicle would save lives. The problem is: not one of the situations they describe is of a nature where the police would know in advance that an armored vehicle would be needed, not one, not the two murdered officers, the mad woman with a knife, nor any other hypothetical situation that Santa Cruz is ever likely to encounter. If the police department had an armored vehicle on standby, when would they take it out, under what conditions? Would it ever be out on patrol? In what part of town? If the city ever does acquired this thing, it should definitely be painted white, as in elephant.

Forget emails. Forget Benghazi. What we need to know about Hillary Clinton is what she would do as president. Just being a woman hardly justifies anyone for national office, especially president. For example: what would Clinton do as president to reduce the income and wealth gap that has caused so much misery in America? How should we deal with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, China, the other Americas, especially on trade policy, and, while we are at it, how would she neutralize the war mongers? What about the war on drugs. What to do about politicized Supreme Court? How would she repair the relationship between the White House and Congress? What to do about race in America? And climate change? Who would she pick for a cabinet? Many other questions would likely be aired if there were realistic debates between legitimate candidates. But where are the candidates, who is asking the questions, and will a somnolent media report the answers? We really need to know, and now, before we get beyond the point of no return with Hillary Clinton. Someone should ask: “what do you want to feature on the Democratic Party platform for 2016?

When Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform of “government is evil, taxes too high, and regulations too strict,” it was hailed as the beginning of the “Republican Revolution”. Economic damage started almost immediately. Reagan instructed the FSL I C to ease up on the inspection and grading of assets of the S&L industry, and guess what? The bank examiners did just that: they backed off on examinations, and when it became known that “anything goes” in the home loan biz, the crooks took over and literally wiped out the savings and loan industry, costing taxpayers $250 billion or so. Similarly, the law that kept commercial banking honest was soon repealed, paving the way for the housing bubble and resulting in the great recession we are still suffering. Every day, the Reagan/ Bush tax cuts take their toll on America: school closings, municipal bankruptcies, funds slashed for social programs in education and anti-poverty. And all the while, the cream of American productivity continues to be skimmed off by the wealthiest few, and middle-class income actually declines. Republicans seem perfectly happy with this situation, after all, it is Democratic voters (mostly minorities and the poor) that are getting skewered by conservative austerity. Until we restore a progressive tax system, there is no way we can go back to an America like we had in the 1970s.Those were the good old days.

Now that an official government agency has investigated, researched, and studied the situation; written a report; and most important, made that report public for all to see, we can no longer respond to institutional racism with a shrug. The “struggle” was dramatized 50 years ago by a March across a bridge in Selma, Alabama. That struggle has not simply faded from memory with the passage of time, and that is what is remarkable. Fifty years ago, the Department of Justice report on the Ferguson police department would have figuratively and literally been swept under the rug and never seen the light of day. Think about that!

On one hand, there are “lone wolf” jihadists living here and there throughout the world, including the US. On the other hand, untold millions of guns of all kinds are freely available to anyone with the money to buy them. Now you cannot necessarily tell a jihadist or a mental case, for that matter, just by looking at them, but you can easily spot an AK-47, and as long as we live with these two conditions, we are going to experience tragedies right here at home. We cannot eliminate the jihadists or the mental cases, but we could outlaw the murder weapons if only we had the will to do so.

That guy who draws the “Mallard Fillmore” cartoon strip, Bruce Tinsley, seems determined to paint Pres. Obama as anti-Christian. He repeated that insinuation on February 25. By now, the “Hate Obama” campaign should be winding down, shouldn’t it? And why would any respectable newspaper, such as the Mercury News publish such defamatory and blatantly political trash?