Tag Archives: Jon Talton

national news, political news

Let’s de-construct the Sanders ‘revolution’

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I hope my friend Jon Talton has a stout spine, as I want to piggyback on an excellent blog he has written about U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

He poses questions for the man who’s battling Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party nomination. Talton covers a lot of ground, noting that Sanders has lied about Clinton’s alleged statements, oversold his Senate record, has failed to develop any foreign-policy platform.

I want to add another critical point regarding the Sanders candidacy.

Talton compares Sanders to the “gadfly” who gripes at city council meetings. I believe he’s worse than that. His one-note chorus about “income inequality” is bordering on demagoguery.

The dictionary defines a demagogue as one who “obtains power by appealing to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.” That term clearly applies to the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump and to Texas U.S. Sen. Rafael Edward Cruz.

For months on end, Sanders has taken his “message” of income inequality around the country. He lays all the blame for whatever ails the nation on the “top 1 percent” who are acquiring virtually all the nation’s wealth at the expense of the other 99 percent.

The way I see it, Sanders is appealing to people’s “emotions” and “prejudices.”

What’s more, he isn’t offering substantive proposals for how to attack what he says are the nation’s most critical problems. He recently was pressed about how he would close the “big banks.” Sen. Sanders’ mumbled and bumbled his way through a virtually incomprehensible response.

I’m still waiting to hear how he intends to provide free college education for every student in the nation — without bankrupting the federal Treasury. Is there any surprise, then, that Sanders is wiping Clinton out among college-age voters?

One of the more fascinating arguments Talton makes in his blog deals with the reason why Republicans haven’t yet taken aim at him in the primary. It’s because the GOP wants to run against him in the fall. They are expending all their ammo during this primary season trying to take down Clinton.

Suppose lightning strikes and Sanders does win the Democratic nomination … is ol’ Bern ready for the onslaught that is sure to come?

Gosh, and to think I once lamented why only the Republicans were having all the fun during this nominating season. The Democrats have joined them.

I don’t know where to turn.

business news, political news

Government is no business

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I just have to share this tidbit from a friend and fellow blogger.

Jon Talton writes a blog called “The Rogue Columnist.” This is what he said about Carly Fiorina, a recently declared Republican candidate for president of the United States of America.

“So wealthy Republican Cara Carlton Sneed, aka “Carly Fiorina,” is running for president. She represents everything wrong in an America run by oligarchy, including running venerable Hewlett Packard into the ground and laying off tens of thousands of people.

“The two businessmen who became president were Warren G. Harding and George W. Bush. In fact, government can’t and shouldn’t be run like a business. A business, especially a big business today, seeks only its own growth and increasing stock price. Too many of its leaders, Fiorina included, are sociopaths with no notion of the public good. So she’ll fit right with the Republican contenders.

“It tells us something that this supposed titan of technology forgot to register her domain name.”

Here’s the link to Jon’s blog. http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/

President Harding’s administration was tainted by scandal and near-impeachment because of the “business” he conducted while serving as president from 1921 until his death in 1923. Does the name “Teapot Dome” ring a bell?

President Bush? Well, I don’t recall him espousing too loudly his “business acumen” after he was elected in 2000, although he seemed to take his eye off the financial sector as it was lending lots of money to folks who couldn’t repay the loans, which likely contributed to the economic collapse that occurred near the end of his presidency in 2008.

Jon is right about government being run like a business. It can’t be done. Government’s mission is to “serve the people.” The core mission of every business in America — if not the planet — is to make money.

These missions, as near as I can tell, are mutually exclusive.

 

national news, political news

You go, old friend

My former colleague and still-friend Jon Talton has issued a blistering rebuke of the rebuke.

That is he’s taken to task the Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama since Day One of his presidency for the trashing they orchestrated in winning a Senate majority and strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives.

http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2014/11/democrats-are-stupid.html

I cannot really add to his excellent analysis of the current political climate and the context in which it continues to exist — strange as it seems, according to Talton.

I’ll note just a couple of points.

First is that presidents never deserve all the credit they seek nor the blame they receive. We have this element in our government called “balance of power.” We split the power among the three branches — executive, legislative and judicial. Take the federal courts out of this argument and we still have two branches of government with co-equal power.

Last time I checked, governing remains a team sport. So, to whatever extent the president deserves the blame for when things go south, then he should take it. But the Congress is supposed to be a player in this game as well.

Second is that Barack Obama is not radical leftist. As Talton noted: “Obama is … a Jerry Ford. With the ‘center’ pushed so far to the right, he accepted the radical fiscal ‘austerity’ that is such a drag on recovery and average Americans. (Reagan kept spending, and not merely on the military).”

The “new center” now seems to exist somewhere to the right of where traditional conservatives used to navigate. We can thank the tea party caucus for that. What’s more, they’ve done a great job of demonizing the president, ascribing all kinds of evil intent at so many levels I cannot even begin to keep track.

I’ll stop now and refer you to Jon’s essay attached to this blog post.

It’s a good read and worth your time.

 

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Proof of citizenship to vote? Oh, please

My friend and former colleague Jon Talton calls it the Kookocracy that’s run amok in Arizona.

I think he’s on to something.

The Arizona — and now Kansas — kooks have been handed a court victory by a judge who says that, yep, it’s OK for those states to demand voters prove their citizenship if they intend to vote.

http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2014/03/keep-out-the-vote.html

I’ve been voting in every presidential election since 1972, starting in my home state of Oregon and — since 1984 — in Texas. Not one time has an election judge asked me to produce either a birth certificate or a passport to prove I’m a citizen of the U.S. of A. Never has any elections official looked sideways at me — at least none that I’ve ever noticed — and wondered whether I’m a red-blooded American male.

For the record, I am.

Now, though, the fight to make it more difficult for people to vote is heading down a curious path.

The courts — or shall I say those courts presided over by Republican-appointed federal judges — are notching up victories for the GOP-led effort to curb what they call an epidemic of voter fraud by illegal immigrants.

Of course, no such epidemic exists, except in the fanciful minds of those who want to suppress voter participation by those who might be inclined to vote for those nasty Democrats.

As Talton notes in his blog: “Real instances of serious voter fraud are almost nonexistent, and the few recent scandals have involved Republicans. On the other hand, minority and poor citizens are less likely to be able to produce a passport or birth certificate in order to exercise the franchise.”

I want to be clear about one thing. I join my fellow Americans in upholding the sanctity of the vote. We shouldn’t allow non-U.S. citizens to cast ballots in a rite that is reserved only for those who either swear allegiance to the Constitution or those who earned their citizenship by birthright.

These efforts to make it harder for people to vote, though, simply are un-American.