Progressive Media Advocates
Rev. Jim Nelson: It is okay for faith traditions to discriminate and believe what they want, but not to insist that their beliefs be public policy. The case against same sex marriage is prejudice pure and simple and that has no place in our civil and social society.
John Peeler: At some point in the evening, I hope you’ll do as I intend to do: have a stiff drink and go to bed. And then get up in the wee hours to check the results.
Sheila Kuehl:Prop 31 was designed to find ways to make government more efficient and responsive. Several critics have opined that Prop 31 doesn’t really accomplish the goal, but simply recycles a number of ideas that have been floated through the years without a good deal of empirical evidence on whether or not they accomplish their stated goals.
Claude Fischer: Whatever the facts may be, the charge that huge numbers of shiftless moochers live off hard-working taxpayers feels true to many Americans – and has felt true to many Americans for centuries.
Ted Vaill: Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ default choice for President no one really likes, deserves to be asked the hard questions such as those directed by Jeff Daniels to the panel of GOP candidates in Adam Sorkin’s “Newsroom”,
Bob Letcher: A citizenry cannot claim at once BOTH to value having each other’s back, figuratively, AND to oppose sharing the cost of caring for each other’s back, literally.
Worrying about government debt is like worrying about the monster under the bed. The issue isn’t debt, it’s power.
Denis Campbell: Liberals in Egypt are up against a party that spent 83 years in hiding as an illegal entity, yet remained, quietly, very well organized.
Carl Bloice: The average period of unemployment now exceeds 26 weeks, well above the previous peak in July 1983 of just 21.2 weeks. This is critical because the longer that people of any age are out of work, the less likely they are to find another job.
Joseph Palermo: Douthat practices the weird tactic, common among contemporary right-wingers, of criticizing whatever Democrat or “liberal” who is in their crosshairs from both the right and the left at the same time.
Tom Degan: You know your candidacy is pretty much blued, screwed, and tattooed, when a certified headcase like Herman Cain is leading you in every poll.
Randy Shaw: With the President still ignoring cries from his base for confrontational and dramatic action, did anyone really expect those Brooklyn Democrats to be highly motivated to get to the polls?
Mariah Adin: Let this serve as a warning: of the danger of creating a class of young people who have no stake in society, and thereby have nothing to lose by destroying it.
Carl Bloice: Why is it that the richest and most powerful nation on earth cannot provide adequately for both its students and its retirees?
Anthony Samad: America’s Negrophobia pushed Obama to act out its Islamophobia. It’s an unavoidable collision course that Obama will have to navigate very delicately, lest he crashes and burns.
Joyce Appleby: More than 300 historians, political scientists, and law profs from colleges and universities throughout the country have signed a petition calling upon their Senators “to restore majority rule to the United States Senate by revising the rules that now require the concurrence of 60 members before legislation can be brought to the floor.”
Steve Hill: the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel not only pursued different economic policies than the Obama administration, but Germany also has a greater degree of economic democracy than the U.S.
Steven Conn: The great historian Richard Hofstadter, writing about the Populists, described third party political movements in this country as bees: They sting one of the two major parties. Then they die.
Robert Reich: Republicans are cynical about politics from the jump. Political cynicism fuels them. Democrats are idealistic about politics. When they become cynical they tend to drop out.
Peter Dreier: Lots of reporters and pundits-all of whom have good, employer-provided health insurance plans-now say that Obama invested too much capital getting the Affordable Care Act through Congress when he should have been concentrating on the economy.
Randy Shaw: Numerous experts argue that the global “race to the bottom” is inevitable and beyond the power of activists to change. Fortunately, student anti-sweatshop activists ignored these claims, and have now defied the conventional wisdom.
Michele Waslin: Immigrant advocates will be asking themselves what role immigration played in the primaries. The fact is that the immigration issue probably plays a small role, if any. Quite frankly, Members don’t have much of a record on the issue for voters to base their votes on because Congress has been too scared to take on the issue and see what their constituents say about it. But the sentiments behind the immigration debate echo what we saw in the polls—the public has grown tired with inaction.
Jim Fuller: Obviously, the peddling of weapons to Mexican drug gangs is highly profitable. Remember, 40,000 recovered weapons in 2008 alone, and nobody knows how many still in the hands of gangsters, but certainly many times that 40,000 figure. And there are thousands of sales to drug peddlers every day along the border. Money, money, money. America’s gun makers are going to protect that highly profitable business every way they can, and that inevitably means stirring up the knuckle draggers who front for them in every battle in the stupidly mistaken belief that they are “protecting our Second Amendment rights.”
Carl Bloice: The “moderate Republican” has gone the way of the typewriter. As the tea party people and their ilk become more racist and reactionary – and their rhetoric more incendiary, each day – the GOP encourages them and endeavors to pull them into its embrace. Meanwhile the “bluedog Democrats” become increasingly irrelevant with each passing day, their bark more in evidence than their bite.
Carl Bloice: For anti-war activists in the Democratic Party, Emanuel is probably best known for his role after 2004 as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In primary races around the country he raised cash and secured endorsements for opponents of anti-war candidates.
Joseph Palermo: With the hoopla at the CPAC convention and the hyperventilating on FOX News you’d think the Republicans are worried about something. With Citizens United and the Supreme Court in their pocket, and with the billionaires’ club and corporate America backing them, they’ll be back in power faster than you can say the words “President Marco Rubio.” That’s why the Democrats can’t afford to fail now.
Victoria Defrancesco Soto: The issue trifecta of Benghazi, the IRS audits, and the AP investigations has resuscitated the near moribund Tea Party. While each of these issues deals with different agencies and actors they share the common denominator of heightening distrust in the government.
RJ Eskow: Dimon isn’t the cause of our economic problems. He’s merely a symptom. He’s no more responsible for the wreckage he leaves behind than a surfer is responsible for the undertow of the wave he’s riding. Dimon may lack moral sensitivity, but then, that’s the character that got him where he is today.
Randy Shaw: Garcetti kept the progressive base he earned from this City Council record and combined it with conservative San Fernando Valley voters angry at the Valley-based Greuel for her campaign receiving million of dollars from unions representing Department of Water and Power workers.
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How Keeping Bain Capital and Romney’s Tax Returns in the Public Eye Can Win the Election for Democrats
Dotty LeMieux: Either the Mittster was up to his eyeballs in Bain management and had an active role in decision-making during that period, or he is a clueless wonder who can’t keep track of the boards he sits on and shouldn’t be trusted with a child’s piggy bank, let alone the finances of a major company or the United States Treasury.