Tag: New York

Cross-posted at Progressive Blue and several other places.

Actually the list of ways to kill off competition from Parties that represent the people is endless. When it comes to getting things done, taking out Third Parties has been one place where the two power parties has always preformed to the utmost of their ability and this is just one New York story.

Some states have evolved Fusion Parties in an attempt to get out from under the scrutiny of these power happy keepers of the plutocracy. One of these upstanding parties is The Working Families Party that has some presence in New York State. They stand for progressive values and labor union rights but this party has endorsed Andrew Cuomo. Reading Cuomo Vows Offensive Against Labor Unions it seems mysterious that the Working Families Party would place Cuomo on the ticket.

Andrew M. Cuomo  will mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state’s weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.

By following the explanation of Celeste Katz who writes The Daily Politic at the New York Daily News the mystery is solved. Did you know that the Working Families Party has to receive 50,000 votes in the governors race this year to be on the ticket in 2010? Not getting those 50,000 (and it was because of Andrew Cuomo) was how the Liberal Party lost a column in New York State and later withered and died.  

The short version is that Andrew Cuomo used that 50,000 hurdle to blackmail the Working Families Party but below the fold I’ll follow the full explanation by Celeste Katz to understand how a union hating gubernatorial candidate got the endorsement of a party that is suppose to represent labor.

Note: from Progressive Blue and cross-posted at DailyKos.

In the quest to maintain a Democrat majority it seems easy to overlook the race for New York State Attorney General. Considering a powerful social and economic justice policy position where the jurisdiction includes Wall Street and the traditional influence this office has had over media and talk shows it’s not about majority but justice vs. injustice.

Now Eric Schneiderman who is committed to “protecting homeowners and consumers from bad actors on Wall Street” faces a Republican who has suggested that he would “de-emphasize the high-profile securities fraud cases that defined the tenures of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer.” In a nation where the banking lobbyist induced false claim that “sound economics means hands off Wall St.” is too often heard, think back the early 1990’s when nobody seemed interested in the big money crimes and Eliot Spitzer did much to change the national focus.

But Senator Schneiderman represents so much more that that. Not just a politician but a public servant with the energy and willpower to fight for the people. Looking at what this man has to offer in this high profile office with the power to steer the national debate, it seems obvious that a NY loss would be a setback for all Americans.

cross-posted from Sum of Change

We have already posted several telling interviews from our filming at Glenn Beck’s 828 Restoring Honor Rally, but we haven’t yet posted our most emotional, interactive, and intense experiences.  Towards the end of our day downtown, we stopped to chat with some folks from the crowd- as we did throughout the day.  When we began our interview with Madonna from Indiana, we were in the exact center of a circular cement area that is the entrance way to the World War II Memorial.  Our conversation started with Madonna, the only person in her group of 5 or so who decided to stop and chat with us.  Quickly, however, not only did several of her friends decide to join our discussion, but several onlookers decided that they belonged in our conversation as well.  Before we knew it, we were encircled by 30 or so rally goers who decided to engage us (verbally) in an effort to try and convert us to Glen Beck’s White Christian Civil Rights Utopia.  Below is the majority of the half hour experience in 6 parts and at the very bottom is all 30 minutes of our discussions unedited.

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 Well.  I was planning to do a pretty cool essay about the Big World Economic News today, to wit:  that China’s now passed Japan as the world’s second largest economy.  That’ll have to wait a day or three.  I don’t think that either China or Japan are going anywhere.  If you’re dying for a taste of that, though, earlier this afternoon I did work-up a Front Page post over at my blog, LetsJapan.Wordpress.Com on this:  China’s Econ Passes Japan’s. Let’s All Take a Deep Breath, Shall We?‘

                                                                        .   .   .

^.

  What pushed that timely Essay/Post aside was this headline:

 “Reid Against Plan to Build Mosque at Ground Zero.”

  Continued below the fold…

Every once in a while, something happens that is so completely wrong, so inexplicably confused, that it makes you shake your head in utter  disbelief.  Today was one of those days.  The Anti Defamation League  (ADL), an organization that has been in the forefront of the battle for religious tolerance for decades, announced that it opposed the building of a mosque near the former World Trade Center site.  I find this almost impossible to believe.

The New York Times reports:

The nation’s leading Jewish civil rights group has come out against the planned mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero, saying more information is needed about funding for the project and the location is ”counterproductive to the healing process.”

The Anti-Defamation League said it rejects any opposition to the center based on bigotry and acknowledged that the group behind the plan, the Cordoba Initiative, has the legal right to build at the site. But the ADL said ”some legitimate questions have been raised” about funding and possible ties with ”groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.”

”Ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right,” the ADL said in a statement. ”In our judgment, building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right.”

Please read this carefully.  The Cordoba Initiative has an unquestionable legal right to build at the site.  But apparently, that’s not the end of the discussion.  The right to build the mosque is not in question.  No. Something trumps that.  ADL tells us that they have questions about funding, as if that were ADL’s business, and then there’s this magnificent urban planning point.  Apparently, there is theoretical penumbra around former World Trade Center site in which all of the construction should not be “counterproductive to the healing process.”  If the mosque were further away, say 2 more blocks, maybe it wouldn’t impinge on the theoretical penumbra, but as it is now, it’s too close for comfort.  What shameful rubbish.

The big question is what the construction of a mosque has to do with 9/11.  On any level.  Islam is a religion of peace. The people who brought down the World Trade Towers were fundamentalist lunatics.  Nobody is saying that the proposed mosque has anything at al to do with those people.  Or their views.  Or supported the events.  Or is subversive.  No.  There is no arguable connection.  The connection, if you want to call it that, is just this: the hijackers were muslim, and the mosque is muslim.  You see how that prevents healing?  I don’t.  You can put all of the whip cream you want on that steaming pile, and it will never, never, never be a dessert.

The Cordoba Institute says it will be transparent and will deal with the Attorney General’s Charity Bureau about its funding.  Great. That ought to be the end of that thread of the argument. We can expecct the Attorney General to check the funding. What remains, I am saddened to say, is the bigotry.

And whenever there is collossal bigotry,  people line up to justify it.  The  Community Board, the Mayor, and many others recognize that there is no legal, justifiable basis in a city to say that the Mosque that can legally be built on this site shouldn’t be built.  It has a right to be built.  Who can abrogate that right?  Nobody.  And whose against it?  Can you guess?  Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and a caterwauling mass of rightwing nut jobs. And joining them, to my shock and my great horror, ADL.

ADL’s position has horrified others as well:

The ADL, one of the most prominent groups in American Jewish life, is known for its advocacy of religious freedom and interfaith harmony. Its position on the mosque was met with shock and condemnation by several groups.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of J Street, the dovish, pro-Israel group, said he would hope ADL would be at the forefront in defending the freedom of a religious minority, ”rather than casting aspersions on its funders and giving in to the fear-mongerers.”

The Rev. Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington advocacy group, said he read the ADL statement ”with a great deal of sorrow.”

”As an organization that for nearly 100 years has helped set the standard for fighting defamation and securing justice and fair treatment for all, it is disappointing to see the ADL arrived at this conclusion,” Gaddy said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations urged ADL to retract its statement.

You can add my voice to those.  The ADL is seriously and embarrassingly off course here.  It needs to retract its statements.  But that doesn’t matter to ADL’s National Director:

Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, defended his position.

In a phone interview, he compared the idea of a mosque near ground zero to the Roman Catholic Carmelite nuns who had a convent at the Auschwitz death camp. In 1993, Pope John Paul II responded to Jewish protests by ordering the nuns to move.

”We’re saying if your purpose is to heal differences, it’s the wrong place,” Foxman said of the mosque. ”Don’t do it. The symbolism is wrong.”

Read that again.  It makes no sense whatsoever.  If your purpose is to heal differences, you don’t jump into disputes on the wrong side, when religious freedom is at stake, and you don’t attempt to justify your position by incendiarily invoking the Nazis.  That is just entirely too much.  And it show how terribly wrong ADL’s position is.

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simulposted at The Dream Antilles and The Stars Hollow Gazette and dailyKos

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is an article that was originally posted on my blog a few days ago. I’m posting it here at DD as a followup to my previous diary about the need for ballot access reform.

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A few days ago, I discussed the need for ballot access reform as a crucial first step in opening up the American political system and removing the shackles placed upon it by the Republican and Democratic parties. Today, I’d like to discuss another equally important element of political reform which I believe is a necessary co-requisite to ballot access liberalization: electoral fusion.

Fusion balloting, which is also referred to as cross-endorsement or open ballot voting, refers to the practice of allowing multiple political parties to nominate the same candidate for the same office. This cross-endorsement can open up several possibilities for minor parties operating within the constraints of a political system like ours here in America, in which two parties are dominant: these minor parties might, for example, choose to cross-endorse candidates nominated by one of the two major parties, or to cross-nominate each other’s candidates, or to run their own candidates without any cross-endorsements, depending on what their political and strategic priorities are. At present, fusion balloting doesn’t affect most voters because it’s only allowed in eight states: Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Oregon South Carolina, and Vermont.