Left In Lowell

I’m running around like a nut the last two days getting ready to move my home office into its new space in the new year. I have stuff I want to write about but I will have to fit it in between buying paint, role-playing games, and cleaning the space from the two inches of dust it’s under so I can apply aforementioned paint on walls.

It’s going to be exciting, even if it’s going to be a lot of work next week! Wish me luck.

This is your open thread for the day (or night, too, if’n ya got nothing better to do!)

(Oh yeah! And go register as a Democrat by today if you want to be part of the caucuses for Deval Patrick!)

I meant to point this out earlier, but the holidays interfered. The Lowell Democratic City Committee website has been transformed into blog format (disclosure: I did have a hand in the development of it) with a new look and purpose. It will be kept up-to-date with political events and blog posts about what’s happening in the state and local party. I’d like to welcome the LTCC to the Lowell blogosphere!

I’ve added them to my right hand sidebar, so check them out!

Fellow blog Blue Mass Group gets a mention in a Globe article rather lacking in substance. But hey, any coverage is good coverage!

sco also has a nice critique:

They spent a little too much time, I think, talking about a couple of out-of-state Romney for President blogs. That’s not my real problem with the article, though. The article was headlined “Politicians search for the Web advantage” but very little of it actually focused on what the politicians were doing — there were a couple of paragraphs on the Mass Dems and their Ani-Mitt animations, and the efforts that the state GOP went to earlier this year to snatch up a couple of domain names out from under Attorney General Tom Reilly. The rest of the article focused not on the pols, but on regular people, like the Romney bloggers and the others, who support a particular candidate or political philosophy and want to talk about it. The interesting part of the story was not that politicians are trying to take advantage of the Internet but that concerned citizens are using the web as a way to get involved in the process, completely apart from the political establishments.

Oh yeah. Those little average people out there with something to say. I think the Globe calls those people “uninteresting.”

[Update: Apparently, Beyond 495 and Marry in Massachusetts are also mentioned in another article in the Sentinel & Enterprise. Congrats to them. And thanks to MassMarrier for the flattering picture of my blog…personally, I prefer to stay out of the Lowell Sun…generally speaking. )

Today is Christmas day, and I’m guessing if you looked at American rates of charitable giving throughout the year, you’d see us as most generous in the month of December.

So puzzle me this: why is it we have warm, fuzzy feelings for giving donations to charity but not when our tax dollars are used to help the less fortunate?

With the former, people believe they have done their part in alleviating poverty or helping feed a child and they are lauded. With the latter, I hear the same tired litany about why should their hard-earned money be taken from them and given to some lazy single mother who can’t pull herself up by her own bootstraps?

I spent part of my (secular) celebration of Christmas with my loving but conservative family. With the exception of one uncle, my generally working-class relatives look at taxes in the same way that you might regard a pile of vomit on the floor: something to be avoided at all costs; or if approached, with one’s nose pinched. And one would prefer it to be removed altogether. But ask them how they feel about giving to Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army or any other charity, and they would sing a different tune.

Some may claim that the difference between taxes and charity is that you volunteer to give to charity. Taxes are mandatory, and as such, a burden, with no option not to pay them. This would be a good argument, except for this: depending on charities to deliver services to the poor is only punishing the good guy. Good behavior should be rewarded, not penalized. The selfish guy can get away with benefiting from the positive effects of helping the less fortunate without having donated to its upkeep. What positive effects, you ask? Well, money spent on the poor generally causes ever-increasing upward mobility, so there are more people to buy Mr. Scrooge’s widgets and he makes more money; a lowered rate of crimes of desperation keep his person and his estate safe; and in a million other ways, everyone’s lives are improved.

If we decide that investing in our society is a worthy goal (and you decide that every time you give to a charity) then we must make that investment across the spectrum of people who profit. Only that will yield the sort of stable civilization that fosters a strong economy. It’s no accident that the stock market does better under Democratic presidents - sure, they tax a little more and spend a little more and regulate a little more: but remember, it was a less regulated market in 1929 that crashed. And everyone who benefits - meaning everyone! - ought to participate in donating especially if they are very fortunate. And the more fortunate, the more they should be expected to contribute; because the rich gain the most from a stable, safe economy.

And the next argument you’ll hear against taxes is the waste. $100,000 hammers and all that anecdotal evidence. Well, a good for-instance in the other direction is Medicare (with the exception of the draconian new drug benefit); it is the tightest-run health insurance ship in America right now, with its administrative overhead taking up far less of its expenditure than private insurance. In fact, in dollars spent per person, our private system is the least efficient in the developed world, despite the lies told by conservatives about the universal health care systems in other countries.

Government, just like private enterprise or non-profit charities, is only as efficient as it is administered to be.

I’m sure if we all think about it, we can detect in our lives the imprint of being on the receiving end of taxation. I was able to go to college because the government redistributed someone else’s income my way. With that B.A. under my belt (never mind the economic uselessness of writing poetry) I could improve my lot in life. And every year, the government makes sure thousand of kids get fed and sheltered, families are kept out of the cold despite a low income (an income that’s stagnated over the last few years) and seniors get a check every month so they can pay their heating bill. How is this different from a charity “hand-out”?

What we need is an attitude shift. Obviously, you do want to know what’s being done with your dollars (and this attitude, by the way, should translate to responsible buying in retail, market investments, and even in choosing your charities). But we need to acknowledge that when we send our tax money to Washington or Beacon Hill, it’s not going to waste. In large part, the government is a charity we all participate in to secure the sort of society we want - for all of us, from the most destitute family, to the very richest Wall Street mogul.

[Crossposted at BOPnews.com]

The ballot initiative signatures from this last fall are public information and get published. Both MassEquality and KnowThyNeighbor have searchable signature lists for the anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative. I looked through the Lowell signatures and found only one sitting City Councilor who signed this anti-equality petition:

Bud Caulfield, 589 Princeton Blvd.

I also found a sitting school committee member (and failed candidate for Council):

Joseph Mendonca, 321 W Meadow Rd

And one failed candidate for City Council was listed:

Sambath Chey Fennell, 258 Butman Rd

Shame on them for being anti-equality! Like two men (or two women) getting married hurts them in any way. Feh. This obviously makes them ineligible for any future endorsements from me. It’s homophobia, plain and simple. I know they would probably dress it up in that lame “marriage is an institution for one man and one woman” and “think of the children!” garbage, but it boils down to homophobia. Fear of homos.

By the way, there was a lot of fraud reported with this signature drive. I recommend you go and look to see if your name is in there, especially if you signed any ballot initiatives; particularly if you thought it was the alcohol-in-groceries initiative you were signing. The (paid-by-signature, from out of state) petitioners reportedly used a couple of fraudulent tactics - one, they made people think they were signing the innocuous “let them have booze in grocery stores!” ballot initiative, but they were actually signing the anti-gay ballot. The second was having people really sign the grocery store initiative then forging that person’s signature on the anti-gay petition without their consent.

Imagine a country with a democracy. It has gone through a war, and after it, a major depression. The people are desperate. No one will help them. A leader emerges, but the checks and balances on his power are strong. Then the country is attacked - internally - with a major government building burnt to the ground. The enemies of the leader are declared responsible, the leader’s party is swept into unchecked power as the people react in fear. The leader then uses ostensibly legal means to enact some of the most horrible crimes on humanity ever yet known in the modern world. He passes law after law in the name of “emergency” that today chill our souls to read aloud.

If you know your history, you know I’m talking about Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Now, before you get all huffy or excited (depending on your political affiliation) that I’m comparing George W. Bush to Hilter, I’m not. At least not directly. But I do want to look at the narrative of the Nazi party and its rise to power to illuminate why it is that true patriots of democracy, glancing around at our own situation today, are convinced that our democracy is at a dangerous crossroads.

People don’t remember that G.W.Bush wasn’t really doing so hot before 9/11/01. He had made so many missteps, his presidency was already being called by some “lame duck.” If he’d continued in that direction, there’s no doubt he would have been overwhelmingly thrown out of office in 2004. But something happened to change all that. We got real scared.

Like the German people in 1933, the attack on our country left us feeling vulnerable. For the Germans, the bogyman was the Communists; the Nazi party used the burning of the Reichstag parliamentary building to claim the Communists were attempting revolution. Having next-door neighbors who did actually have a bloody Red Revolution didn’t help.

In the USA, however, the attack came from outside our borders, committed from within. The growing threat from the extremist Muslims we had formerly trained to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980’s was more than ignored by Bush and his administration; it was shuffled to the backburner all the way up to the very hour that three planes flew into three buildings and a fourth crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

Unlike the Germans, we created our own enemies, over and over again. The Germans made enemies by attempting to build an empire with an army; the US is attempting to build an empire with the excuse that the outside world is a threat already. We constantly interfere with the world and it comes back to bite us in the ass which we then use as reason to attack them.

But not only that. The events after 9/11 are more telling than the fateful day itself. We enacted the USA PATRIOT Act (complete with an acronym for a name that would shame the opposition to vote for it despite having no time for them to read its 300+ pages). The media failed (whether by laziness or cowardly retreat) to do due diligence on the intell Bush claimed he had - while many of us out here already knew the intell was false or not vetted (all you had to do was pay attention). We took out a dictator who had tortured his own people, only to become the torturers ourselves. We host secret prisons in foreign countries for the same purpose. We hold our enemies not as POWs or by the Geneva convention, but in legal limbo. We spy on Americans without due cause. We fail to hold our election process up to the same standards we want others to have - with partisan interference keeping thousands of legitimate voters from casting theirs in Florida, Ohio, and other states. We deregulate businesses so they can pollute and produce shoddy products with impunity, but are in danger of having our most intimate lives interfered with (abortion, marriage, end-of-life decisions).

So imagine a country with a democracy. Its military and economic might seems limitless, an ever-expanding sky of opportunity and safety. A leader emerges, having tricked the people into thinking he was a center-right average Joe, and being installed in the end not directly by election, but by the country’s highest court in the land (complete with conflicts of interest). He muddles along, despite his party’s control of the whole government, with hopes and dreams of handing out favors to his rich friends and maybe taking care of that now-impotent dictator in a country where there’s lots of oil and money to be had. Nine months later the country is attacked - internally - with a major government building and two others of economic importance burnt to the ground. The enemies of the country are responsible. The leader declares it his intention to go after them, and sends too few troops to a foreign country most of his people couldn’t place on a map. The perpetrators of the attacks mostly slip away as the leader turns to attacking an unrelated, unarmed, devastated country for falsified reasons. He uses the fear of the people to enact law after law that chills the soul when read aloud. He claims unlimited power to spy on American citizens without due process, he believes torture overseas committed by his government is only “protecting the people from terraists,” and in a time of war and costly military spending, cuts taxes (mostly for the rich) and slashes spending on the poor which no where near makes up for the tax cuts but instead send the government into deficits and debt.

What will history say about the United States in this moment in time?

I know it’s depressing to leave you on this note for the holidays, but seriously, go out, have a great time with your family and friends, and come back refreshed for the fight we have ahead of us.

I’ve had some responses (both in comments and via email) about working the Democratic caucuses for Deval Patrick, which is very encouraging. A few questions keep coming up, so I thought I would address them.

First, if you are unsure if you’re registered to vote where you live, or don’t know if you’re listed as a Democrat, you want to call the Election and Census Commission at Lowell City Hall or go in and visit. Here’s the info:

Election and Census Commission
375 Merrimack Street
Basement, Room 5
Lowell, MA 01852

(978) 970-4046, voice
Office Hours: 8:00 A.M. (EST) - 5:00 P.M. (EST), Monday through Friday
closed on City of Lowell government holidays

Remember: You must be registered as a Democrat by December 30th!
____

In regards to more info about running as a delegate: really, there’s nothing much more to it than ensuring you’re registered as a Democrat at your current residence, finding as many friends and supporters in your ward as you can to come and vote for you and the rest of the people running as Deval delegates, and then showing up in early February at the caucus for your ward (the date as I understand it is TBD, but has to be announced publicly beforehand, and we’ll have all the ward caucus locations for you too). And other people will pitch in on finding registered Dems to vote for you; you won’t have to do that all by your lonesome! Also, if your friends are in another ward, great! We can plug them into their ward’s Deval delegate “slate” (the name for the group of people running as delegates supporting the same candidate).

Next week’s Drinking Liberally is cancelled (might as well make the official announcement now) on account I’ll be recovering from Christmas with the family (as I imagine many of you will, also) so you should come to the next one, January 2nd, 7:30 pm at the Brewery Exchange. We’ll be talking about the candidates for the various races and we can answer any questions you have about the caucuses. (By the way, I recommend getting on the very-low-volume Drinking Liberally Lowell mailing list here; in case winter storms force us to cancel and whatnot.)

If you are interested in becoming a delegate for Deval Patrick at the February caucuses, please email me (lynne -at- leftinlowell.com) with your name, address (and ward if you know it, don’t worry if you don’t!), and phone #, and I will start compiling a list. Don’t worry, your information will remain private and available only to me and maybe a trusted fellow organizer or two.

Quick! It’s almost the new year. Have you registered to vote at your current residence yet?

The deadline to register as a Democrat in order to vote and/or run as a delegate at the Lowell Dem City Committee caucuses in early February is December 31st. If you are interested in the future of the Lowell Democratic party, time to ante up!

But I know a whole lot of people don’t understand how this whole caucus-convention-primary system works; up until a month ago, neither did I. I’ve spent a lot of my time as an active progressive being non-electorally involved. Sure, I have friends in this town and others who have encouraged me to join my local Dem Town (or in Lowell’s case, City) Committee. I even made a half-hearted attempt to contact a LDCC member or two a while back (with no response). It seemed like a lot of work - first researching how things work here in our local Dem party, then getting myself to meetings and ingratiating myself with the city party members - who would very likely view me as some sort of threat, seeing as I’m interested in opening up the process; hence my authoring this post to tell you what you won’t hear anywhere else.

There are a couple things at work in regards to the lack of information about the LDCC (Lowell Dem City Committee) and local party apparatus. First, there’s the time-honored tradition of apathy and lack of interest. In this, we are all guilty, both insiders and outsiders alike. Second, there is a pull to keep the information within a small number of apparatchiks; the fewer hands, the more access for each. This is how people like Meehan and Panagiotakos keep getting elected unchallenged - apathy and insider politics go hand in hand.

So, I decided to do my best to explain the process, and generate interest for opening up the system and letting that light in. It’s up to you all to heed the call and do the very little it would take to actually create amazing change in the Lowell Democratic party.

The Democratic caucuses (coming up in February) are when local Town/City Committees get together to vote on delegates to go to the State Convention (in June 2006, in Worcester). Every statewide candidate, from governor on down, needs to get a minimum of 15% of the state’s Democratic delegates voting for him in order to get on the ballot for next September’s primary. This is presumably to knock off any unserious candidates. There’s a couple of caveats - first, any candidate which can get 50% or more of the delegate votes will be officially “endorsed” by the party and it will say so on the ballot (making it really tough for the challenger). This endorsement is something that we’re most eager to deny Reilly (good lord, the man isn’t even showing up to most events, why should he get party endorsement??) Second, the rules for delegate voting have been changed, so there is one shot and one shot only. It used to be that candidates had three opportunities to get their 15%, and a lot of delegate-shuffling happened at these conventions, but for better or worse there’s only one vote taken now.

What does this have to do with you, a Patrick-supporting Lowell Democrat (or even “unenrolled” who wants to participate as a Dem this time around)? Well, we need you at the caucuses in February, at least as a voter if not running as a delegate! For the caucuses, we put together “slates” - groups of people running as delegates for the same candidate - and each person running as delegate brings as many people as they can get with them to vote for them and to vote for the rest of the slate as well. Let’s say Jane is running as delegate; she’s running on the Patrick slate with Jim and Becky. Jane brings five friends with her who will vote for her, and Jane instructs them to vote for Jim and Becky too. And both Jim and Becky each bring five friends themselves and do the same. That means you suddenly have fifteen votes for the Patrick slate. If enough people show up to vote for the slate, then you could easily be sending all open delegate seats in a ward - or even the whole city - to Patrick come June.

There’s a few more things to know. First, Lowell has eleven wards. Each ward sends delegates to the convention. The Ward Chair is automatically a delegate, and the rest of the seats are considered open (though often the same people are sent time and again to the Convention - this needs to change!). If I recall, there’s 3 or 4 open seats per ward. That’s upwards of 40 delegate seats open.

I promise, if you get yourself registered as a Dem (if you aren’t already) by December 31, the rest is cakewalk. And don’t worry - if you decide to run as a delegate in Ward 10 and your friend, a fellow Patrick supporter, is in Ward 5 - we’ll plug them in, and get you people to vote for you as a delegate. Need to know what Ward you live in? Here’s a handy map [warning, large PDF]. Keep in mind that being a delegate will cost you $75.00 to go to the convention in June - please don’t let that stop you from running, we’ll raise the money for you if needed.

One last thing: still sitting on the fence about Deval? Not sure you want to support him yet? Well, make sure you’re registered as a Dem by December 31st, and come and meet him in Lowell on January 8! I’m not kidding, we’re working on getting him up here from 5-6:15pm on that Sunday. What’s the worse that happens, you register to vote and then decide not to go to the caucus after all? There are worse things in life!

I know it’s the holidays (I’m busy too) but seriously, this is such an easy thing to do. If you’re tired of apathy and insularity in Lowell politics, we can turn it around quick: all it takes is critical mass. We’ll do the rest.

To review: your homework is to ensure you are registered as a Democrat at your current place of residence, then to start talking to your friends who might support Patrick and get them to do so as well. Think about keeping January 8th from 5 to 6:15 open so you can meet Deval. And keep an eye here on this blog for the next steps. If you’re interested in helping coordinate, please email me at Lynne at leftinlowell.com.

I take a break for one weekend from blogging and news, and the bombshell of bombshells hits the press.

I know it sounds trite, but this whole spying-illegally-on-Americans thing doesn’t surprise me. This is the government that put United for Justice with Peace (with which GLPJ is affiliated) on the terrorist watch list. There is NO REASON to waste time putting UJP on the terrorist watch list! These are peace activists and pacifists for heaven’s sake!

Now, Bush just had a press conference wherein he told us it’s un-American to question the Dear Leader’s illegal domestic spy programs.

They didn’t even use the FISA court, which is where the Justice Dept and others go for all their spying wire-tap warrant needs (and which is questionably constitutional itself) - they just, um, spied on Americans. Maybe this blogger? Maybe other bloggers? On journalists? Peace groups? How does this keep us safe from terrorists???

Here’s a couple of quotes from your President. He’s not my president, anyway.

“So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.”

Remember that Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights? “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” It doesn’t say, “Unless the President decides otherwise.” Here’s another quote from Bush:

“My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war,” Bush said. “The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.”

So, it’s anti-American for the free fracking press to write about possibly Constitutional violations from the President now? In what universe? What the hell?

I would rather help the enemy than lose the America that our founding fathers created and that we have since improved upon and strengthened. I would rather have an open society and face the danger that comes with that than become the U.S.S.R. What the hell have we come to? We are further down the path of fascism than we ever thought. My eyes are filled with tears writing this. The Greatest Experiment - the United States of America - is in danger of self-immolation. Maybe you think I’m prone to exaggeration. I advise you to add 1 plus 1 and figure it out for yourself.

It isn’t much of a leap from spying on Americans without a warrant, to fixing elections. Not much at all.

It’s not surprising, but it’s a fight that’s coming soon:

The Internet has always been a model of freedom. Today the Web is flourishing because anyone can click to any site or download any service they want on an open network. But now the phone and cable companies that operate broadband networks have a different vision. If they get their way, today’s Information Highway could be laden with tollgates, express lanes, and traffic tie-ups — all designed to make money for the network companies.
…
INTERNET FIEFDOMS? Most phone and cable companies are no longer content just to sell Web access to consumers. After investing in high-speed pipes, they also want to peddle more lucrative products, such as Internet-delivered TV programs, movies, and phone calls. “Building these networks is expensive,” says Link Hoewing, vice-president for Internet policy at Verizon Communications (VZ). “If I can find new ways to pay for this network, it’s gravy for everyone.”

But selling those extras puts the phone and cable companies in competition with Web services big and small. The network operators could block consumers from popular sites such as Google, Amazon, or Yahoo! (YHOO) in favor of their own. Or they could degrade delivery of Web pages whose providers don’t pay extra. Google’s home page, for instance, might load at a creep, while a search engine backed by the network company would zip along.

“This new view of the world will break apart the Internet and turn it into small fiefdoms” divided between the network providers’ friends and foes, says Vonage Chief Executive Jeffrey Citron.

LOBBYING HEFT. That’s just crying wolf, retort the Bell and cable operators. The Web companies’ push for rules requiring “network neutrality is a solution in search of a problem,” says Daniel Brenner, senior vice-president for regulatory policy at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn.

But recent court and regulatory rulings have given the carriers more room to discriminate. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cable broadband services were almost free of regulation. Two months later, the FCC granted the same liberty to the Bells’ broadband services. The FCC made two newly merged megaphone companies — created from AT&T (T) and SBC Communications and Verizon and MCI (MCIP) — vow to keep their Internet lines open to all for the next two years. But FCC Chairman Kevin Martin favors a light regulatory touch until he sees widespread abuse by the networks.

Lawmakers updating the telecom laws are more likely to act. The House Commerce Committee will probably vote early next year on whether to require Net neutrality. And while Google and its Internet brethren are the darlings of Wall Street and a Web-wild public, these New Economy powerhouses could find themselves outgunned in Washington. After decades as regulated carriers, the Old Tech phone and cable companies employ legions of lobbyists and funnel hefty checks into Congress’s campaign coffers. Google, by contrast, just hired Davidson, its first lobbyist, in June.
…
WINNERS AND LOSERS? But express lanes for certain bits could give network providers a chance to shunt other services into the slow lane, unless they pay up. A phone company could tell Google or another independent Web service that it must pay extra to ensure speedy, reliable service.

That could result in an Internet of haves, who can afford to pay the network operators more to ensure smooth service, and have-nots. Trouble is, those have-nots may include the Next Big Thing — whether it be mom-and-pop podcasting or video blogging. The fewer innovative services on the Net, the less reason Web users have to want broadband. Both the network operators and the Internet could lose out in the end.

We have all got to keep our eyes on this.