The Debt Impasse by Joyce Wise Dodd

 BY JOYCE WISE DODD
The President has the power of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to issue the command that the full faith and credit of the United States shall not be questioned.

He must not let this country go into default.  He has been too meek and mild in negotiating with Tea Partiers who would rather fight and default.  We are an embarrassment to the world.

Not one person right now should be living in fear of not getting a Social Security check on time, a Medicare bill paid or a Medicaid payment on time.

Would the Executive Order be outrageous?  No.

The Emancipation Proclamation was declared by Executive Order.

The schools were finally integrated by Executive Order.

The armed services were integrated by Executive Order.

Sign the document, President Obama,  and let the nation be free of the alarm and crisis of this moment.
Executive Orders throughout our history were signed because one or both other branches of the government railed and spun and spat and hated.

Signing executive orders is what leaders do when the legislative branch or the courts fail the people, either by fiery insolence or egregious inertia.

Visit Joyce Wise Dodd's  blog at civilwritesus.wordpress.com/

Liberals-The Real Patriots

by Eric Futterman

Are you patriotic? Prove it.

 I’ll bet there are many people who would look at you and render an opinion based on the most superficial of credentials.  For example…

Among the top July 4^th headlines this year was the release of a study that stated what so many people in the United States believe is obvious. Republicans are more likely to participate in Independence Day parades and children who participate in those parades are more likely to become Republican. 

 This study by Harvard researchers follows the conventional wisdom that Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats. 

It is certainly true that Conservatives wrap themselves in the red, white and blue more often than Democrats. You are more likely to see an “America, love it or leave it” style bumper sticker on a Range Rover than, say, a Prius.  

It’s the grand accomplishment of the Conservative movement in the last thirty years. Public Relations and Marketing executives the world over should study the Conservatives’ campaign to paint themselves as the real American Patriots for decades. This campaign has permeated all elements of our society. 

This branding is so successful, the Republican Party has been able to get millions and millions of Americans to vote directly against their own well being and the well being of their families and communities, simply because they think the Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats. In fact they have not only successfully created the Patriotic Republican brand; they have simultaneously created the un-Patriotic Liberal brand. 

In the last ten years, however, we have seen how tragically misleading this branding has been for our great nation. 

First, let’s define Patriotism. Webster states it simply: “Love or devotion to one’s country.”

Devotion. 

True devotion to one’s country or family and friends has an underlying truth that when you devote yourself to a cause or a person, you are willing to endure sacrifice for the well being of that person or cause. 

When you focus on that element of Patriotism and study the last ten years of the Conservative movement, it becomes quite clear; the Patriotic Republican brand is nothing more than an empty shell. And the Progressive focus on real patriotism, real devotion to your country; from its seniors to its soldiers; is a true exemplar of devotion and patriotism. 

First let’s focus on the GOP. Their rejection of true Patriotism hit its peak last December. Two important deadlines were facing our nation. First, the Bush Tax cuts for the top earners—people who have gotten five and six figure tax cuts over the last ten years, was about to expire.

Second, the Democrats had fashioned a bill that would cover the health care bills for the 9-11 Responders; the men and women who ran toward the collapsing buildings. Many of these emergency workers have suffered horribly from inhaling all the toxic chemicals at Ground Zero. From Jet Fuel to asbestos to who knows what else, these people willingly jumped into hell to save their fellow Americans. 

I look to these fine people to define devotion and patriotism. 

The Republicans said, no. 

 They rejected this funding on two counts. First Obama and the Democrats had, up until this point, stayed strong on cutting the deficit by $700 billion by letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Secondly they rejected the deficit neutral funding of the measure. Democrats created three small taxes and fees that affected companies who outsourced American jobs to other nations provide goods and services.

The Republicans made it clear they would let these 9-11 Responders suffer and die until they got their tax cuts for the rich and until they could protect companies who sent American jobs overseas. 

Obama, being the dignified, compassionate and tragically terrible negotiator, caved. It’s hard to argue with Barack Obama’s devotion to the well-being 9-11 Responders. He took the bad deal rather than let them suffer.  He was passionate about getting them the health care they needed after ten long years of suffering and a lifetime of service to their nation. And he wanted to encourage American job creation while adding zero dollars to the deficit. 

The  Republicans said, no. 

So we got a $700 billion increase in the debt and the people who have made a million or more in tax cuts in the last ten years cash in. 

I believe the Republicans reached this nadir of inverse patriotism with a heavy lift from the burgeoning Tea Party movement. Like the Reagan-led movement begun in the late 70s and early 80s the Tea Party has worn the cloak of Revolutionary Patriotism to create one the most selfish, unpatriotic and one of the most anti-civil rights movements our nation has seen since the 60s. 

There’s a joke that puts this into near perfect perspective.

A CEO, a Tea Partier and a Teacher are sitting at a table. There are 12 cookies on the table. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies and looks to the Tea Partier and says, “That teacher wants to take your cookie.”

That CEO is close friends with Grover Norquist, possibly one of the most powerful and unpatriotic of American  Citizens. Norquist has convinced just about every Republican in Congress to sign a pledge to never, ever, cross your heart and hope to die, raise a tax or even close a tax loophole. Essentially he has said it is better to throw middle class citizens under the bus, destroy education, allow our infrastructure to crumble and leave millions of families in great heath care peril, so the rich can get even richer and richer. 

And now the Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already)  rank and file believe they are protected from ever having a tax increase by Norquist and his fellow millionaire Republicans. 

TheThe Tea Party rank and file, millions of middle class Americans, has been led to believe they are overtaxed, over regulated and being led by a man who is most likely a Muslim friend of terrorists who probably isn’t even American. 

And what’s worse, they have been told they can pay for wars, roads, highways, bridges, Medicare and Social Security without having to sacrifice for it. They have been told and they are willing to believe, that making a sacrifice for the greater good of the nation is a dangerous form of Socialism or even, dare I say, Communism. In other words, it’s just un-American to sacrifice for the greater good of the country. 

Once you truly believe that, then the Exxons of the world have you right where they want you. Because it’s not middle class Americans who are being asked to sacrifice for the good of the country. It’s the Exxons and the Elites of the world. And they refuse. 

Behind them are the people waving that yellow flag with the snake on it. The Tea Party people who believe the government is out to get them. One can almost see the strings happily being pulled by Wall Street hedge fund managers and Big Insurance executives and middle class Americans, about to be screwed, sing the songs of their puppeteers. 

The great and skilled provocateurs of this most unpatriotic movement; Rush, Sean, Glen, Sarah, Michelle, Rupert….the list is almost endless, reap billions from pulling these strings. 

What so many of the middle class Tea Party rank and file do not know, is that they have benefitted from the most significant middle class tax cuts in American history. 

 All signed into law by none other than Barack Obama. 

They have been given protections for their health care like no other generation of middle class Americans in history. Their children can no longer be rejected for health insurance if they are cancer survivors or born with a heart defect. This same protection will soon apply to adults. 

Small business owners who are sole proprietors can now deduct all of their health insurance costs for the year. 

Many of these middle class Tea Party members have also benefitted from the dreaded Stimulus and the Auto Industry bailouts; both of which stopped the hemorrhaging of 750,000 jobs a month and saved/created, by most economists and the Congressional Budget Office’s estimation, 4 million jobs total. 

Financial Regulatory reform is now in place and will soon be set up to protect small investors; home owners and holders of 401(k)s and other retirement plans, from being gambled away by the same Wall Street brokers who assisted in the collapse of our economy in 2008. 

But here’s the deal folks. The huge corporations; the oil industry, big insurance, and Wall Street do not benefit from these efforts to protect the vast majority of American citizens. 

They do not have the devotion to our great nation that someone like, I don’t know, Barack Obama might have. 

Remember, the Tea Party was originally formed out of a consortium of insurance companies called FreedomWorks. They are the ones who, along with the help of Sarah Palin and others in the Republican Party, lied about Death Panels in Health Care Reform legislation.

Their goal was to make sure they would never be forced to stop ripping off their customers, denying health protection that was part of their contracts and arbitrarily raise rates on innocent Americans who thought they were buying health protection for their families.

Instructions were laid out on blogs and web sites showing how Town Halls could be disrupted. Here’s one quote from an article entitled: A Patriot’s Guide to Disrupting Health Care Townhalls. The article was adorned with a photograph of a person dressed as Hitler in full Nazi solute.

“The lobbying groups Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity who organized the highly successful tea party protests have issued suggestions on the best ways to infiltrating town halls and harass Democratic members of Congress to show opposition to health care reform and clean energy. No less than Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) has endorsed this strategy for letting our voices be heard and shutting up our opponents. Sessions said, ‘The days of civil town halls are over.’”

Thus far I’m not feeling that patriotic devotion to our fellow citizens. 

But here’s the kicker. Among the instructions for ending civilized debate on Health Care Reform:

·         Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half.

·         Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation,

·         Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate:

Iraq and Patriotism

On the 5^th anniversary of the September 11^th attacks, then President George W. Bush declared the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be as important as World War II.  "The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation, ” he said.

Yet neither Bush, nor Cheney nor any of the leadership of the Republicans who dominated the Federal Government at the time asked anyone but the soldiers who fought those wars and their families to make a sacrifice for the sake of our civilization.

The Conservatives in government and in the radio and TV mediums, decided early on that Americans who were making the most money should be asked to make least amount of sacrifice in support of our soldiers and their families.   

Removing the tax cuts for the wealthy would have allowed us to fight these wars, pay for them and come out of the wars with a fairly stable budget. Instead they kept cutting; the first time in American history taxes were cut while we were ensconced in an international conflict. 

They waved the flags loudly, they made those of us who were against the Iraq war look as if we were cowards with no sense of Patriotic duty. 

But as our soldiers suffered through bloody battles, land mines and terror attacks, only to return for three, four and five tours, they came home to find the big flag wavers in the White House had more or less abandoned them. 

These physically and often emotionally paralyzed soldiers were treated as if they were parasites trying to suck off the American teat. The Republicans in the White House and in Congress rejected efforts to aid these soldiers and their families as they tried to heal their wounds and find work. 

The list is as shameful as it is reflective of the depth of selfishness exhibited by those who gave themselves five and six figure yearly tax cuts. 

·         The Republicans consistently voted against funding for everything from new body armor to Mine Resistant Vehicles. 

• ·         The Republicans consistently voted against funding for everything from new body armor to Mine Resistant Vehicles. 
• They voted against stop loss payments for soldiers who fought, came home and fought again.
• ·         They voted against military pay raises and extra duty pay. 
• ·         They voted against extending the new GI Bill college benefits to all children of soldiers who died in the battles that followed 9-11.
• ·         They voted against tax breaks for businesses who hired unemployed veterans.
• ·         They voted against giving 2 million disabled vets a one time payment of $250.
• ·         They voted against tax cuts for businesses who kept National Guard Reservists on the payroll while they were in action overseas.
• ·         They voted against offering emergency mortgage relief for members of the armed services..
• ·         Republicans voted on a budget bill that slashed $75 million to fund housing vouchers for homeless veterans.

All of these votes to cut benefits, funding and support for our soldiers came as the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress were voting to slash taxes for the wealthiest business owners, biggest corporations, investors and individuals. 

This also occurred while the administration continued to allow Halliburton, a company Harry Truman would have destroyed in his famous World War II Senate hearings on War Profiteering, to literally steal money from taxpayers by overcharging the United States. 

This is only a partial list but the point is clear. When given a choice of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of Wall Street, Big Insurance and Big Oil, and lifting the middle class and our soldiers who risked everything for the benefit of our civilization, Movement Conservatives may waive the biggest and brightest flags on July 4^th,  but their devotion to our country; their patriotism is tragically absent. 

The “Don’t Tread on Me” snake flag that is so prevalent in the Tea Party culture has nothing do to with Americans’ rights being violated. It has everything to do with abandoning true patriotism and true devotion and sacrifice for our country.

 © EAF Custom Communication

The Jewish American Divide by Eric Futterman

There’s an old joke in the Jewish cultural world. Put two Jews in a room and you get six opinions.

The joke is a result of the centuries of a powerful tradition in Jewish culture; the tradition of scholarship. The differences in Jewish faith and culture within the religion are significant but the one commonality is the tradition of scholarship. Jews want to be educated. The Jewish people have taken the commandment proclaimed in Deuteronomy to “…teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. “

So naturally getting two Jews or even an entire population of Jews who have taken it upon themselves to be as educated as possible to find different opinions, on the arts, Jewish law, tradition and life is pretty typical in Jewish culture. 

Then there’s politics.   

Today there is a burgeoning divide among Jews in America. And it’s a split that could very well create a chasm of negativity; hurting relationships and preventing Jews from uniting against the common enemy of antisemitism

Until recently Jews in America have been solidly Liberal; siding with Democrats and their policies throughout the 2oth century. There’s good reason for this. In the run up to World War II Jews in America were understandably concerned about the rise of Nazism and the destruction of Jewish rights and property in Germany and throughout Europe. At the time leading Republicans did not share these views.  One of the most prominent heroes of American culture at the time, Charles Lindbergh, spoke often in admiration of Hitler, Mussolini and fascism. Many Republicans in Congress railed against President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to support Hitler’s enemies in Europe, with the Lend Lease program to Great Britain and other efforts to stem the rising tide of Fascism.

Roosevelt’s all out effort to destroy the Nazi’s in Germany created a solid friendship between Jews and Democrats as they watched American forces destroy Hitler’s powerful army and free Jews from Concentration Camps. 

 As the children and brethren of oppressed populations throughout the world, Jews in America also found common ground with oppressed and impoverished populations in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan was the common enemy of African Americans and Jews alike. With the Holocaust fresh in their minds, Jews stood side by side with blacks in America throughout the civil rights movement that led to the 1965-68 Civil Rights Acts signed into law by Lyndon Johnson.  These laws were opposed by leading Republicans at the time; including Conservative pioneer Barry Goldwater and future GOP icon Ronald Reagan.

Polls at the time showed overwhelming Jewish support for Liberalism as a philosophy and Democrats as a party. 

Today things are quite different. 

Throughout the world of Facebook political debates, I have found that many of my fellow Jews, including those with whom I grew up in my hometown of Norfolk, are tossing out much vitriol toward President Obama; oftentimes accusing him of being ‘anti-Israel’ and anti-Semitic.

At the same time, many of my Liberal friends have been accusing Israel of being an oppressive nation toward innocent Palestinians. They are saying that Israel is illegally holding on to territory in the West Bank and on the borders won in the 1967 War. 

As a frequent participant in political Facebook debates I have found these discussions to be nothing less than head-turning. Arguing with fellow Liberals in defense of Israel while arguing with Conservative friends on Obama’s Israel policies have certainly turned political discourse upside down.

At the same time polls are showing Jews are becoming more and more aligned with Conservative politics and even the political evangelical right. J-Street, a pro-Israel Liberal lobbying group, conducted a poll during the 2010 mid-term elections and found that 66% of Jews supported Democrats. That’s a significant drop from the more than 80% who supported Barack Obama and Democrats in the ’06 and ’08 elections. 

And of course there is Eric Cantor. A Jewish member of Congress who is part of my generation of sub baby boomers, Cantor has clearly broken free of the Liberal Jewish tradition by identifying with some of the most Conservative causes and philosophies of the modern Republican party. During the 2008 election Cantor even accused Obama of calling Israel “a sore on  America.” This was a misquote from an interview Obama gave with Atlantic magazine calling the never ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict “a sore on America and a danger to Israel’s security.”

This move toward Jewish conservatism has its roots in the rise of Reagan conservatism in the 1980s. As Jews shook off their early 20^th century poverty and the anti-Semitism that was prevalent up until the 1960s, becoming prosperous and influential in the process, the idea of lower taxes for top earners started to become more and more appealing to American Jews. While many of these Jews greatly appreciated Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s extraordinary accomplishment in negotiating a peace between Israel and Egypt (a peace that continues to this day) Carter’s later assertions that Israel was becoming too strident in its relationship with Palestinians and his use of the word Apartheid, alienated Jews from Carter and from Democrats who agreed with the former President. 

And then the ‘politics create strange bedfellows’ phenomenon took place. Evangelical Christians, the most powerful religious force in politics over the last three decades, started becoming aggressively supportive of Israel as, not just the Jewish homeland but the Christian homeland. These Evangelicals share the fundamentalist belief that when Christ returns for the much anticipated Resurrection, Israel will then be in the hands of Jesus' followers as Jews and Muslims turn to dust. This the foundation of their support.

I remember one prominent Jew telling me, that he’ll take any support he can get for Israel.

That support has come from the many pilgrimages Evangelical Christians take to Israel in a powerful boost to the Jewish state’s economy. It’s also created an all or nothing political support of Israel, especially in the post-9-11 era. 

Hatred toward Muslims in general for the actions of a small percentage of the most fundamentalist of Muslims, have united religious Jews and fundamentalist Christians in ways never before imagined. Even though these Christians believe all Jews, even Holocaust survivors, will burn in hell forever, the two groups have found a common kinship in their support of their religious homeland and their common hatred toward Islam.

This has led to statements on Facebook debates like: “Everyone knows Obama hates Israel.”  One time  a fellow Jew called me a “one of those self-hating Jews.” 

On the other hand, for Liberals who are supporting the Palestinian people as an oppressed population fail to recognize that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that provides full rights toward women, full rights toward free speech and allows Muslims and Christians to practice their faith peacefully within its borders. No other Arab state can make that claim. 

If the Arab world truly wanted the Palestinians to be free and have their own homeland, economy and borders that would have happened long ago. The Arab world has shamelessly used the Palestinian people as a wedge against Israel and they have been successful at it for more than half a century. 

American journalism has also helped in creating this false stereotype of Israel as a quasi-apartheid nation. Oftentimes Israel’s retaliation for terrorist attacks has gotten more publicity than the attacks that started the fight. This was most notable during the last skirmish when hundreds of rockets were launched into Israel from the Palestinian territory before Israel responded with significant force. 

I am concerned that this overreaching sympathy for the Palestinian people will create a new form of anti-Semitism among Liberals. And just like Conservatives who stereotype Barack Obama as someone who must be anti-Israel, we are letting our fears and prejudices get in the way of real solutions and real justice.

This readiness by Conservative Jews to label Obama as anti-Israel is easy to understand considering the falsehoods that have been spread about our President since he started running in 2008. Many people have accused him of being a closet Muslim, a friend of terrorists (I don’t think the bin Laden family would think so) and of course being a non-citizen. This ties very easily into that narrative. 

 This concerns me on two fronts. First I never like seeing anyone from the Jewish faith and culture revert to the kind of bigotry that has victimized our people for centuries. Making assumptions about Obama because of his middle name and because of false allegations about him falls in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion category.  It’s an easy thing to do. The fact is Obama stood up to the Arab world on many occasions in defending Israel most notably in the Cairo speech he made shortly after taking office. 

Never has an American president stood before an Arab audience and uttered words like this:

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.  Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich.  Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.  Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.  Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

The other disturbing aspect in this new Jewish Conservative rise is the association with the political evangelical right. This is a group of people who have constantly opposed American democracy and freedom of every religion but their own. They clearly believe all Jews are going to burn in hell forever, even, as I mentioned earlier, Holocaust survivors. 

And finally this new trend tells me many American Jews are distancing themselves from our association with the poor and downtrodden in society. Many Jews have taken on the Movement Conservative mantra that poor people must have done something to deserve their poverty and therefore we have the moral responsibility to essentially leave them in the dust. 

Eric Cantor has personified this new generation of Conservative Jews by embracing massive tax cuts for the wealthy while voting to cut funding for impoverished seniors and children, Veterans health care, food assistance programs and of course Medicare. 

The big difference between Judaism and Christianity comes in the law each religion follows. Christian law lays down the foundation of a personal relationship with God and Christ. Jewish laws, all 613 of them, are all about how we deal with each other; with our communities and with our families. 

We must never forget that the vast majority of Jewish Americans descend from impoverished and persecuted immigrants. We must never forget that the persecution of our people is based on the same types of false stereotypes now being thrown down on President Obama. Even if many of us disagree with his Israel strategy we must remember it is essentially the same strategy as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton applied to beginning negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Calling him anti-Israel without calling either of his predecessor’s anti-Israel is nothing short of bigotry. 

For Liberals who want the Palestinians to be free of violence they must remember that their violent leader, Yasser Arafat, died as a very wealthy man; worth billions according to some estimates. He ordered the slaughter of thousands of innocent Jews, many of them children. How did the money he received from Arab support end up in his pockets and not in the creation of a burgeoning Palestinian economy?  

Israel has been surrounded by enemies its entire existence. Jews have lived in Israel for hundreds of years, not just a few generations. And in fact Jews and Palestinians lived side by side peacefully all the way up to World War II. 

There are no easy answers to these dilemmas. The land is small and vengeful hatred has an inertia that seems unstoppable. When Liberals and Conservatives resort to old prejudices in trying to find solutions to these problems then we move further and further away from achieving the ultimate goal: 

Peace.