Author: hankkalet

Paul Begala’s recent post to Talking Points Memo is worth checking out. The former Clinton strategist basically turns conventional wisdom on Iraq and the Democrats on its head, making the salient point that unanimity in favor of bad policy may be fatal to the GOP. “Democrats can and will win the Iraq debate,” he says, “if they embrace the fact that they disagree and contrast it with the slavish, mindless rubber-stamp Republicans.”

The only place in the American government where there is an honest and spirited debate over Iraq is within the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are not on the same page – and that’s a good thing. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry disagree. Hooray for that.

If anyone tells you the solution to Iraq is easy or obvious, they’re a liar or a fool (a false choice in the case of our president). So why not feature the debate? At least someone is debating what to do.

The fact is the American people want a new direction in Iraq, and the Democrats offer several. The Republicans, on the other hand, offer nothing more than a four-word strategy: more of the same.

Democrats should seize this moment to attack the rubber-stamp Republicans for their lemming-like devotion to a failed strategy and a set of incompetent and dishonest leaders. Republicans have a faith-based Iraq policy. They have faith in Donald Rumsfeld, they have faith in Dick Cheney, they have faith in George W. Bush. We don’t. They are liars and nincompoops – and the lives of tens of thousands of our best are in their hands.

Every time the GOP says “cut and run,” Democrats should say, “rubber stamp.” Every time they say we’re weak, we should say real strength is standing up to your president and your party when American lives are on the line. When they attack our patriotism, we should challenge them to sign their kids up for the military: “Since when did the sons and daughters of working people corner the market on patriotism, Senator? If this war is so wonderful, so noble, so vital, why the hell is your son throwing up on his date at Ivy League frat parties?”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The latest column from the Progressive Populist.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The Record offers an interesting approach to the sales tax fight: Make the hike temporary and revisit the discussion next year.

If next year at this time, the state’s economy has rebounded, then the tax hike can lapse. If the economy still lags, lawmakers will have had a full year to determine where state government can be most effectively reduced by $1.1 billion. If Trenton can’t come up with the cuts or find new revenue sources by this time next year, then the sales tax hike should stay.

Skeptics raise the legitimate concern that taxes that are pitched as “temporary solutions” invariably end up as permanent, but that’s not necessarily the case. Three years ago, for example, Idaho adopted a one-cent sales-tax increasethat expired — on schedule — in 2005.

We are one of the most fiscally dysfunctional states in the nation. As an editorial in The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, at least 40 states are operating in the black, while only a handful, including “perpetually hapless New Jersey,” still find themselves in budget holes.

Mr. Corzine is trying to finally put this state’s financial house in order. Last-minute, panic-driven “solutions” are the last thing New Jersey needs right now.

We won’t be getting an 11th-hour donation from Warren Buffett. A temporary 1-cent tax increase is the best way to solve the budget impasse.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

This appears to be going down to the wire, with a shutdown looming. Too bad. It is time the state took control of its finances.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

First, the good news: A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have banned desecration of the flag fell one vote short of approval in the U.S. Senate today, preserving for now the right to use the flag to make political statements.

“Our country’s unique because our dissidents have a voice,” said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a World War II veteran who lost an arm in the war and was decorated with the Medal of Honor.

“While I take offense at disrespect to the flag,” he said, “I nonetheless believe it is my continued duty as a veteran, as an American citizen and as a United States senator to defend the constitutional right of protesters to use the flag in nonviolent speech.”

Here is what I wrote about the proposed amendment earlier this year.

The flag amendment is just one in a number of assaults the First Amendment has faced in recent times. The amendment protects five basic — I would argue our most basic — American freedoms: speech, the press, religion, assembly and the right of citizens to redress their government.

Freedom of speech covers the right to decent using words and symbols, like the flag, but also to write and speak out, to sing and to proclaim. The extreme partisans of our times, however, can result in harsh rebukes, verbal assaults, even death threats (ask the Dixie Chicks). Folks like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh question our patriotism, Ann Coulter accuses the left of treason and the administration builds its political base on the wreckage.

Religious groups are making greater and greater inroads into the public square, imposing their beliefs and squeezing out the unbelievers, while the government uas taken control of protest, forcing those critical of the administration into protest pens or turning their protests into crimes.

It is the freedom of the press, however, that is facing the most concerted assault. The latest attack by the Bush administration came this week, when the presidents and his men went after The New York Times for providing the reading public with information on the machinations of its government and another intrusion on our privacy. (The troubling nature of the progam has caused a European human rights group to lodge formal complaints.)

Uncovering the program, the Bushies say, endangers national security (their standard argument whenever anyone calls them on anything) and is tantamount to treason. This is nonsense, of course. The Times was just doing its job — which is to provide the public with information, the lifeblood of democracy.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press