A Little Perspective on #UniteBlue From an Original #ConnecttheLeft-er

As someone who was actually around at the time the #ConnecttheLeft handle was created, I have a couple of things to say about this whole Unite Blue thing, and I hope all 4 of you who might see this will at least consider them.

If you’re in Unite Blue, that’s your decision, and it makes no difference to me. I follow back ALL lefty followers except trolls, bullies and people who retweet canned crap en masse and fill my TL with garbage (oh, that’s right—they call them SPAMMERS). 

As long as you’re none of those (and better still if you’re funny), you’ll never have any problem with me, whether you’re UB or not. So don’t bother trolling me and telling me I hate all UB, because I don’t.  

I know why you joined—it’s the same reason I asked to be added to the Connect the Left lists a few years back: You just want to hook up with others like you. You see, you’re not the first ones to want to come together—this whole thing has been done before. Really.   

To give you some perspective, imagine the following:

You are a full-fledged UB member, you are active and engaged and proud to be known and popular in the community. Not too hard to do, right? Zach has to take some time away for personal reasons, and things are much quieter for a long time. Then, suddenly, you notice the @UniteBlue twitter handle is now @JoinBleu. You eventually find out it was handed off to someone else and was just renamed—nobody told you, there wasn’t a word. All of a sudden, the account you followed is some other account.  WTF?

Then the person who controls @JoinBleu doesn’t answer questions about what happened, deletes web pages, scrubs accounts and attacks you for even asking what the hell happened. AND he used to be paid to work for right wing candidates, by the way.

How would you feel if that happened to Unite Blue? Suspicious? Wary? Questioning?  Doubtful? 

 Is it starting to make a little bit of sense now?

THAT is what is happening, RIGHT NOW. That is what happened with Connect the Left. That group was just as engaged, just as excited and just as happy to be finding each other as you are right now. And then, POOF – it wasn’t there anymore, it had become Unite Blue.

If you are attacking people for asking questions and having doubts, just STOP and put yourself in their shoes for a second, and open your eyes and look at the facts. (And I’m sorry if any of this next part offends, that’s not my intention, but I’m just going to call stuff what it is here. You’re a grown-up and should be able to take it...)

First – You need to put this in perspective. Zach Green is little better than a twitter pimp (albeit one with possible coding and analytical skills), except that instead of sex, it is the attention and tweets of his followers that are his stock-in-trade. He is a paid cheerleader and conversation starter for causes or candidates when it suits him (and if they pay)-- nothing more, and nothing less. Unless I missed the part somewhere that said that because of 140 Elect a candidate got elected, or a ballot measure passed, or a massive protest happened-- that ANYTHING actually happened in real life besides people talking about the latest shiny object-- I'm just not seeing where the claims of wide influence are coming from (other than him), much less what they are based on. He's got more influence than me, and more than some, but that's not really saying much (especially the more than me part).

So tell me-- how can you NOT feel manipulated when you never know whether the thing he’s telling you to tweet about is picking up the tab for his dinner check tonight? Talk about suspension of disbelief. Put away your blinders for a minute and really think about that. My tweets are not for sale, nor is access to my feed. You can sign up for that if you want, but I’ll take a pass.

Second - I, for one, will tweet what I want because I want to, not what somebody tells me to and when, and especially not if that somebody else is Zach Green. The ongoing rockfight among the twitter Lefterati is prima facie evidence that he just doesn’t have any idea what being a twitter progressive is about, much less managing a community of them. Exhibit B is that he hasn’t been able to either satisfy or silence his critics for months, and over time, there is only MORE information coming out that is disturbing, not less. Not exactly Manager of the Year material, and not the guy I’m taking direction from on what I should do to support the causes I care about. Thanks, but no thanks.

Third - Why would I want to join the club of a guy that has poisoned the twitter left as much or more than any troll I have seen in my 3-4 years on here? Whether Zach is being paid by an undisclosed client on the right to destroy the cohesion of left on twitter or not is largely irrelevant at this point, because that’s what he has accomplished regardless. Nice work, Zachhole. We could do with a little less of your brand of unity, thankyouverymuch. If that’s the effect of his efforts to unite us, I’m not sure anyone would hire him for his next gig if they actually look at the kind of results he’s getting.

Actually, from the outside, all of this doesn’t look like it’s really about UNITY at all-- it’s about conformity, obedience and group-think (oh yeah, and money), and anyone who won’t drink the Kool-Aid or who dares to challenge the Almighty Oz gets the shaft, either by him directly or from others on his behalf, apparently with his blessing (or at least not his condemnation). Yes, more please-- THERE’S the kind of guy I want to call my friend every day of my lucky life, I tell you. 

I frankly don’t give a shit about Zach Green. He is not worthy of all of this. The ISSUES are. All of YOU are. HE is not. We are all just pawns in his business plan.

Use his lists and tools or don’t—that’s up to you. But be aware of the risks and the problems, and leave others who don’t agree with you alone. You don’t need the Twibbon or to join – his lists are free for all to see and follow on their own. Oh, and by the way, there are hundreds of liberal and progressive hashtags in use on twitter-- you can check any of them anytime to find others to connect with.

There are tons of other ways to find awesome left-leaning people on twitter without subjecting yourself (and the rest of us) to Zach Green’s artificial manipulation of twitter trends so that he can make a buck. I hope you’ll consider using one of them.  

I won’t join Unite Blue because I can get what I want without being dependent on someone else, especially someone who wants to make money off of me.

That has to be the direct opposite of empowered, and I am not interested in signing up for that at any price.

More Proof Our Government is Bought

Example #47: Buffett Rule Blocked Even with 72% Public Support

Is "By the People for the People" Now Just a Pipe Dream?

April 16, 2012-- On the same day that a new CNN poll shows that 72% of Americans support  the "Buffett Rule," which would require people earning $1 million a year or more to pay at least 30% in taxes (the same rate working people pay), the "Buffett Rule" fails in the U.S. Senate when 51 Senators vote to proceed with a vote on the measure, and 49 vote against, but because of a(nother) Republican filibuster, 60 votes were needed to get the vote to the Senate floor.

Keeping taxes low on the rich who finance elections and pay for lobbyists trumps the will of a vast majority of the people.  Sooooo NOT supposed to be the American Way.

Image credit: Flickr, Chris Devers

Mark Halperin: Now Polling the Entire Obama Administration's Personal Views on Marriage Equality (Riiiiight)

Today was a tough day on the rock pile.

Some days, all you can do is duck and then throw them back

Not as tough for me as it was for Dick Lugar, but tough nonetheless.  The day was tough personally, at work, but not politically.  There just wasn't any one BIG development today that riled people up-- the mainstream media is, by and large, still on "rehash" regarding Joe Biden's Meet the Press appearance and Mark Halperin's predictably dickish follow-up question with Arne Duncan on Morning Joe.  (Hey, if Halperin can call the President a dick, the least I can do is return the favor.)

What a non-story.

Why was it a non-story, you ask?  Simple-- Vice President Biden made clear in his Meet the Press interview that he doesn't set the agenda, the President does.  And yet somehow, Mark Halperin, in his thirst for knowledge, felt there must be a story here, worthy of investigating further.  And the best next place to dig for the fountain of truth?  Arne Duncan, of course.  I guess it became essential to know how every member of the Obama administration feels on the subject, that's the only reason I can think of that he would ask Duncan that question.

So is he going to be asking that question of every administration official now?  He's probably working his way down the list as we speak, right?

If he wants to maintain any pretense of journalistic integrity, he'll have to.  Otherwise, he'll look at best like a jerk who wanted to interject a shocking question to grab a headline, not someone who can even fake being genuinely interested in pursuing whatever "insight" there is in exploring how the entire administration feels individually about the subject of marriage equality. 

And at worst, he'll look like someone who deliberately asked an irrelevant question to stoke the embers of an emotionally-charged fire, either to extend its shelf-life or the unthinkable, to fan the flames for his own purposes rather than simply reporting on it.

Of every story in the whole universe that he could pursue, every other dark corner he could shed the sunshine of journalism on to disinfect and send corrupt cockroaches scurrying, that's the best he could come up with.  I, for one, am inspired by his curiosity and zeal to get at a truth that will really have a profound impact in the world.

I haven't heard so far that Halperin has asked anyone else in the Obama administration about their personal views on marriage equality-- if I missed something, please, by all means, set me straight in the comments.  Otherwise, I'll be busy nominating him for a Pulitzer if you need me for anything.  And then I'll be in mourning, now that, with Lugar's defeat, another nail has been driven in the coffin of the functional government phenomenon formerly known as "compromise."

Image credit: Flickr, deflam

If Mitt Romney Was a Cross-Dresser...

What would he be like?

He would have a shoe collection that was “just the right height” to make Imelda Marcos drool, stored in a hermetically-sealed, multi-level, climate-controlled, digital polishing and preservation chamber.

And after he: 

• Bought this season’s most chic new shoe releases,
• Bet you $10,000 his new shoes were better than yours,
• Dumped last season’s leftovers on a second-hand seller,
• Took a fat tax break for having made a donation,
• And spent your $10,000 on a new shoe storage chamber (after you lost the bet because his shoes actually WERE better than yours)…

 …he would talk about how he is a job creator.  (Building a shoe storage chamber is a job, my friend...)

And then he would say barefoot was the new black and footwear is a socialist tactic to regulate the expansion of, and limit the freedom of, feet.

His slogan? (of course)-- Mitt Romney:  He Knows a Quality Flip-Flop When He Sees One.

Image credit: Flickr, sta.helena

Don't Pass the Buck Back to Mommy & Daddy-- Mommy & Daddy are Broke!

All Mommy and Daddy have left... if they're lucky

Has it ever occurred to anyone else that the ability for young adults to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26 under Obamacare is just one more example of passing the buck?

Giving students the ability to borrow to pay for their educations, once heralded as a godsend for the middle class, did nothing to help control the growth of the cost of higher education and has now mired those it was intended to help in decades of debt.  What was once the prime years for laying a financial foundation for the future are now years spent slaving to dig out of student debt, if they're even able to make any progress.

By the same token, the ability to be covered on their parents' insurance does nothing to keep the cost of insurance from increasing exponentially over the years-- it merely disguises the burden of the cost as an "opportunity" and shifts the responsibility to parents.  The insurance companies still get paid, they've just been kind enough to let someone else pay the bill.  So generous of them.

It's very similar to the way the HSA was supposed to help families save to cover medical expenses.  Insurance companies got to shift costs to insureds in the form of higher deductibles, and the government gave up revenue to give people a tax break as an incentive to save.  Guess they never even considered that many people don't have any extra money TO save, or that insurance companies don't have any incentive to contain costs.  The insurance lobby won again, and Americans were left holding the bag on a larger share of their medical expenses while insurance companies continue to squeeze more profit from already-strapped consumers.

Has no one else even considered that caring for their own parents, caring for themselves (since their 20s and 30s were spent buried in debt, they're lucky to have much if anything saved) and having cared for their now-grown children may have exhausted the parents' resources?

With the cooperation of the government, greedy corporations can keep trying to pass the buck back to Mommy and Daddy instead of addressing the underlying problem of the uncontrolled escalation of healthcare costs, but they'd better not count on parents being able to pay the bill-- sooner or later (and for some, it's ALREADY), Mommy and Daddy will be broke.

Image credit: Flickr, puuikibeach

Before You Vote: 3 Critical Questions to Ask

After a contentious campaign on all sides, it is finally time for U.S. citizens to cast their votes and make their decisions on who will run the country for the next two years.  But before you vote, make sure to carefully consider the 3 critical questions below.

What are you voting FOR?

No vote is just against an incumbent—whenever you vote, you are also giving someone your endorsement to act on your behalf.  So what does your candidate of choice stand for and what do they plan to pursue while in office?  What you think is just a vote against someone else will be interpreted by your candidate as support for their agenda if they win, so make sure you know what you are voting FOR and are confident they represent your wishes.

What does your candidate’s RECORD show?

In a representative government, you cannot judge all candidates solely on the final outcome of a presidential or legislative term.  It often happens that in spite of one person’s best efforts, others block their initiatives so they aren’t able to win in the end, but that does not negate what they stood for and what they fought for.  The best indicator of what your candidate will do in the future is what they have done in the past, so make sure you know how they voted on the issues you care about.

Take the time to find out what they really stand for, not just what the sound bites and ads backed by their opposition say.  To view your legislator’s record, visit http://www.senate.gov/index.htm (for Senators) or http://www.house.gov/ (for Representatives) and look at what legislation they introduced, what they co-sponsored, what they ultimately voted for and against, and view their official government website.  If your candidate has not held federal office before, similar information is available on their votes and views if they served as state legislators, or on their official campaign website.

Does your candidate support the issues that are in YOUR best interests?

It never ceases to amaze me how many people support issues and agendas that ultimately are not in their own best interests.  If you are among the 98% of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year, for example, then supporting a candidate that wants to abolish or privatize social security, or that doesn’t support unemployment benefits or tax policies that benefit the middle class is NOT in your best interests.

While we all hope to someday be in the top 2% of earners who don’t need those benefits, it may not be realistic to believe you will ever get there, so consider carefully whether the policies and candidates you support will support your reality.

Regardless of where you fall along the political spectrum, make sure to vote so your opinion counts.  In my opinion, if you don’t vote, you forfeit the right to complain about what happens, so vote for that reason, if for no other.  JUST VOTE!