November 4, 2008 | Posted by Steve
This election cycle I avoided offering NoMoreGreed’s endorsement for any political candidates. In elections past I have offered a slate of candidates who I felt did the best job of at least forstalling the march of greed, if not represent greedlessness in total. The truth is, however, that every candidate these days is a study in compromise. They are human. So as I enter the voting booth I hold my nose at times knowing that I am not necessarily voting for the “best” candidate for a greed-free agenda as much as the “least offensive” candidate.
Today, instead of issuing endorsements, I give you a simple glimpse into the mind of a true independant. These are the candidates I voted for. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what it all means. (If you’re interested in dialoging, drop me a note.)
President: Barack Obama – D
Congress: Jim Gerlach – R
Attorney General – Tom Corbett – R
Auditor General – Jack Wagner – D
State Treasurer – Rob McCord – D
State Senate – Andy Dinniman – D
State Representative – Mike Vereb – R
By the way, as an anti-abortion Christian, I voted for Obama because he is the most visionary candidate on economic development issues, not because he represents the most moral candidate. I also have been appalled by the way in which Bush’s hard-right Supreme Court appointments have undermined basic civil rights and worker’s rights. This was a tough choice for me in some respects, not so much in others. As an enlightened Christian I recognize that sin takes many forms, of which abortion and homosexuality are just two. It is time for us as Christians to take our voice to the streets and work through our representatives to the Congress and Senate to effect the kind of grass roots moral change that it will take to make our country more life-friendly.
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October 30, 2008 | Posted by Steve
Talk radio is a wasteland. There are very few people on the air today who know how to hold a civil conversation without shouting at or talking over their opponent. Fewer still are the people who actually do their homework before conducting an interview. Journalism has taken a back seat to persuasion, “telling” people what to believe rather than dialoging with them to come to mutual understanding.
Some are better than others when it comes to at least pretending to be objective. Glenn Beck and Michael Smirconish are some of the better ones.
But when it comes to the real blow-hards, the ones who couldn’t care less who they offend, names like O’Reilly and Hannity come to mind.
Then there’s Mr. Oxycontin himself, Rush Limbaugh.
Years ago I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I once considered him a credible, thoughtful voice of the conservative right.
Not any longer.
Today Limbaugh left such a stench on my speakers that his last name might as well have been “Limberger.”
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October 30, 2008 | Posted by Steve
I was rummaging through the Gallup Poll web site today and stumbled across the following, new poll.
PRINCETON, NJ — A Gallup update based on more than 21,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Poll Daily tracking in October shows that registered voters’ religious intensity continues to be a powerful predictor of their presidential vote choice. John McCain wins overwhelmingly among non-Hispanic whites who attend church weekly, while Barack Obama dominates among whites who seldom or never attend church.
Can someone please explain to me why Christians insist on walking lock-step with the Republican Party? I honestly don’t understand this situation. Christians believe in the reality of original sin, in freedom from the penalty of that sin through Christ, and that our living example will either affirm or deny the presence of the living Christ in our lives. Republicans, aside from being anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality, clearly deny the notion of the sin nature of humanity in nearly every other facet of the party’s platform.
Don’t believe me?
Consider the following “sin” litmus test.
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October 14, 2008 | Posted by Steve
“He really didn’t just say that, did he?”
In an election in which nothing surprises me, this was a sucker punch I didn’t see coming.
I rewound the YouTube clip and listened again.
“…and Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation because they’re gonna think their god is bigger than you if that happens…”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I went even further back and listened to the whole thing again. “Please, God, tell me I am not taking something out of context,” I prayed.
“…because there are millions of people around this world… praying to their god… whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah… that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons…
Did this guy just imply that Obama is aligned with someone other than Jesus Christ? Did this chuckhead just imply that every non-Christian religion is hoping Obama will win because Obama is not a Christian?
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October 14, 2008 | Posted by Steve
Put the speaker in a pinstripe suit topped by a head covered in Brylcreem and you could imagine the following tough-guy quote coming out of the mouth of The Great Communicator back in the early 80’s.
“You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war. You can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”
Only thing is, it wasn’t Ronald “Dutch” Reagan uttering that quote from atop his stallion on his California ranch. It was Sarah Palin. Yes, the AK-47 toting wunderkind Governor from “less-population-than-metro-Pittsburg” Alaska.
But wait. Before you write this off as the rant of a Democratic Party hack, let me tell you a few things I actually like about Sarah Palin.
For starters, I like her faith. For the first time I think we are actually seeing a REAL, no-holds-barred Christian on the path to the White House. For all George Bush’s platitudes, I never once believed he was serious about some of his alleged “faith” commitment. I don’t doubt he’s “religious.” I just doubt he really understands “faith” in the context of compassion.
The religious right played into Bush’s myth of deep faith and pronounced him God’s chosen leader. I, on the other hand, could never get past that smirking, frat boy grin of his. It told me that he said one thing and often meant another. In unguarded moments we heard a different side of Bush, a condescending, profane side that played right along with Cheyney’s legendary gruff edginess.
Palin, on the other hand, strikes me as a woman who understands that her role as a governing leader does not give her carte blanche to impose her faith on those around her. Neither does she impress me as someone for whom claims of faith are taken lightly. Her “faith” indeed appears solidly grounded on consistently Christian doctrine. Those grainy You-Tube videos of her addressing her congregation back in April only confirm for me that she’s the real deal. Where some Democrats felt squirmingly uncomfortable with the unvarnished and passionate nature of what she said, (“Let’s pray that our troops are carrying out God’s Plan”), I heard a woman speaking a language I understood, affirmed, and agreed with. Whether I agree with the fact that our troops were put there in the first place, I do agree that at this point the Christian in me is praying that they are there fulfilling God’s purpose, even if that purpose is as simple as bringing hope of stability to a country we steamrolled in the first place.
So I admit it; I like Sarah Palin’s faith. I believe she’s serious about it, far more so than anybody else in this race, including Obama and McCain. Biden’s a different cat, but then again Irish Catholics are always a little more emotional and overt about their connections to the church, if not their comfort connecting themselves overtly to the name of Jesus Christ. I’m not saying the other guys in this race don’t believe in God, I’m just saying they need to get a lot more comfortable sharing the depth of their faith in real terms before I will believe them. But then again, who am I to judge? (…And entire section of the audience shouts, “Amen!”)
I also think that Palin is “trying” to be a reformer. On this score, though, I think Palin is more reactionary populist than visionary leader. She smelled the pork-laden winds blowing off the hills of the Ketchikan Peninsula and realized that she had a shot to right some egregious wrongs. Even CNN’s “Palin Revealed” report could find scant evidence that her “reformer” label is mere lip service.
Okay, so the fact that she held onto a couple of hundred million bucks in Federal transportation funds when she turned her back from the “Bridge to Nowhere” doesn’t exactly endear her to those of us for whom “doing the right thing” doesn’t mean “doing the right thing as long as I don’t need to give back the cash.” That smacks of a disingenuous politician caught with her hand in the proverbial earmark cookie jar. (“I was for the earmark before I was against it.” What a nice, Kerry-ian parsing of the truth.)
I also like her decision to carry her Down’s Syndrome baby to term. Tough choice for some, easy choice for Christians.
I like the fact that she has a huge extended family around her to help her with her own kids.
Then again…
If she was a little more focused on her family than on her politics, would her daughter be pregnant? That one is up in the air. Bad things happen to good families all the time. I know. I was one of those “bad kids” whose parents could not possibly have been more engaged in their son’s life. I was an embarrassment but they never stopped loving me or supporting me.
If her daughter’s pregnancy should teach Palin anything it is that abstinence talk alone isn’t enough in today’s complicated world. Faith and commitment to abstinence should be as freely taught as any other sex education topic in today’s schools. But the statistics on teen pregnancy in the Christian community show us to be only marginally better at keeping our kids out of the sack with each other before marriage. So is abstinence-only the “best” approach to sex ed when it means that a kid could come home with the clap or pregnant because they don’t get a more inclusive talk on the topic?
I could also do with far less of her condescension about Obama being a “community organizer,” as if being the Mayor of Wasilla and the Governor of Alaska is any more qualification than coming up through the rough-n-tumble politics of the south side of Chicago. Last time I checked Alaska’s total population ranked right up there with the south side of Chicago. I’d call that one a wash.
But that’s quibbling. Obama and Biden have done their best in return to minimize Palin’s street cred when Obama knows full well that as the guy at the top of the ticket he’s open to similar charges of newbie-ness.
So up to this point, Palin is no more thrilling or less thrilling to me than any other candidate. On the one hand I feel more comfortable with her when it comes to hearing the voice of a woman I’d probably bump into at my local church. On the other I feel less comfortable with her because she sounds like just another power-hungry politician.
At the end of the day there are just a couple of things that scare me about Sarah Palin. The things that scare me, though, are show-stoppers.
A penchant for avoidance of “blinking” is one of them.
Sarah Palin’s portrayal of “blinking” as a sign of weakness is the icing on a very rancid cake. It’s the exclamation point on a strident, inflexible sentence that leaves me drawing a long pause.
For a second, let’s jump back to fundamentals.
You want to know what started scaring me about Palin, long before the Gibson interview? “MOTS” Syndrome. Palin’s acceptance speech sounded like so much, “More of the Same.” No new ideas, just the same repetition of old, stale ideas that have long since been exposed as failures.
Anyone who thinks Trickle Down Economics works (tax relief for the rich lets the elite wealthy create jobs for the too-stupid poor) is smoking dope. I’d use the words, “Anyone who thinks Trickle Down Economics works is just plain stupid or greedy,” but that would sound harsh. No, we’ll just leave it at, “smoking dope.” Palin’s penchant for falling lock-step in line with the Bush
“rob from the poor and their miserable entitlements, give to the rich so they can load up on BMWs” tax cutting style is just spouting MOTS.
Anyone who thinks that there is no difference between the need (or desire) for guns in the Alaskan frontier versus the desire (or need) for guns in downtown Philly is just out of touch with reality. Again, I’d like to use stronger language like, “You gotta be high if you think protecting the right to shoot elk is akin to protecting the right to cap your home boy,” but I won’t go there. It’s one thing to defend the right to bear arms in Alaska. It’s entirely another to turn on the nightly news to hear of yet another child gunned down on a Philly street corner knowing that we MUST do something different to stop the scourge of guns in our major cities.
Anyone who thinks that “Drill here, Drill Now, Pay Less” is really going to break America from its dependence on oil is either in the pocket of big oil or just plain naïve. (Or is it greed?) For starters, the amount of effort involved in conducting the environmental impact studies alone make the word “now” mean “10-years-from-now”. Plus, if by “pay less” we mean that those nice oil companies are going to reduce their per-barrel cost just ‘cuz they get more domestic supplies, well, I’d beg to differ. We have more corn than we know what to do with here in the USA, but global food prices are going through the roof because we don’t have the self-restraint to use our land to grow food, not ethanol.
The capper, though, and the reason why this self-professed evangelical looks at Palin and says, “No way!”, is simple.
Palin is nothing more than Clint Eastwood in Versace and Gucci.
Palin’s penchant for knee-jerk, overly simplistic solutions to complex, globally-intricate problems is a nightmarish flashback to previous Republican administrations for whom the solutions were as easy as “Read my lips” and “WMD.”
I look at Sarah Palin and hear Dirty Harry’s words coming out of her mouth. “Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
Why am I so worried? After all, we’re not voting for Palin. Even if Sarah Palin is a little quick on the trigger, she’s not the Presidential candidate.
We are voting for McCain, aren’t we?
Let me ask you a question. Do you really think McCain’s health is going to hold up for eight years in the Presidency, let alone four? As Harrison Ford once put it in the first Indiana Jones movie, “It’s not the age, honey, it’s the mileage.” Take one look at McCain these days and you can see the mileage taking its accumulated toll. He can’t type because of his war injuries. He can barely lift his arms to wave to the (now diminishing) crowds that come out to see him. He has had enough cancer scares to warn off anyone who knows anything about melanoma. Forget the fact that his mother is 96 and spry, she never spent 5 years in the Hanoi Hilton.
So if you’re voting for McCain, you really need to think long and hard about that whole “heartbeat away from the Presidency” thing. It’s not just lip service. Palin would be the heartbeat away and McCain is at an age that makes him closer to his last heartbeat than his first, more so than any prior president.
When I heard Palin utter her now famous, “You can’t blink” comment I winced. “Oh no, not again!” were the first words that came to mind. The reason we are mired in Iraq is because we had a President who failed to “blink.” Further, he was backed up by a complicit, spineless Congress. Perhaps had George, the former governor with the virtually zero international experience, spent more time traveling abroad during his first eight months in office than vacationing at his ranch in Crawford (where he spent a record, month-long vacation after only 7 months in office) he might have been a little more ready to “blink” when the intelligence estimate crossed his desk with the words “Weapons of Mass Destruction” etched in non-redacted black. Perhaps had George been a little more inquisitive and a little less knee-jerk he might have thrown it back in someone’s face and said, “This feels thin. I want more concrete proof before we go spilling young American’s lives for some vague escapade.”
Palin’s unwillingness to “blink” exposes her Achilles heel. She lacks thoughtful depth and reminds me of George W. Bush. She is ready to swing the bazooka over her shoulder faster than she is ready to ask tough questions and dig deeply to unearth answers she may not like.
Palin also perpetuates a myth of American strength that must someday come to an end. You would think, after Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns, Tyco, Enron, and God knows how many other failures before them that Palin would slow down and take stock of America’s balance sheet. We simply aren’t financially or militarily in a position to do anything BUT blink these days. We got to the point where we are because we handed a blank check over to a guy who refused to “blink.” We wanted a guy who wouldn’t “flip flop” and what we got was John Wayne without an intellectual pedigree.
So if there is one thing I’d like to offer Sarah Palin as she fumbles her way along her quest for her next job it’s this; Visine. Once Sarah starts blinking again she’s going to need something to lubricate those eyeballs. Perhaps once she starts blinking again she’ll start to realize that the picture isn’t quite so rosy or easy as it looked like when she pulled the trigger on her candidacy.
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September 3, 2008 | Posted by Steve
Here’s one of those things that makes you scratch your head and go, “Hmmm…”
Today I heard women interviewed about their attitudes toward Sarah Palin’s selection as the VP candidate for the Republican party. One of them said, with obvious glee, “She’s just like one of us. She’s got a pregnant teen and a Downs Syndrome boy.” The fact that she decided to deliver her baby and her daughter is going to deliver hers is thrilling the Christian Right. I agree. I would have been disappointed if she had chosen the less-responsible alternative.
So why am I just slightly disturbed that she would be ready to be the Vice President of the US when she has a five month old with Downs Syndrome? Forget the whole, disingenous, notion that a “working mom” can handle a child with Downs Syndrome. Anyone who has had a Downs Syndrome child, or who knows someone who has a Downs Syndrome child knows that it is in itself a full-time job. Depending upon the profoundness of the child’s disability it can leave a devestating impact on a family.
Raising the Downs Syndrome child is a labor of love.
The Vice Presidency is its own labor of love.
I am stunned that Sarah Palin believes she can do both jobs equally well.
It’s one thing to be pro-life and carry a child to term.
It’s entirely another to take the follow-on responsiblity seriously.
And one other note…
Who’s going to help her 17-year-old daughter cope with the trauma of her own teen pregnancy? Dad?
Some things are best handled by a mom.
I don’t get this whole Sarah Palin mystique. I don’t get why we Christians are so eager to get a pro-life candidate in the White House that we would switch off our brain pans when it comes to wrestling with the deeper issues of caring for the children we save.
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September 3, 2008 | Posted by Steve
It’s amazing how homogeneous the Republican party has become these days. All you need to do is take a gander across the crowds at the convention. Suits. Ties. Specifically, gray suits and red ties. The women are perfectly coiffed, their dresses looking as if they are prepared to go to a dinner party at La Bec Fin. Even the guys wearing cowboy hats or baseball caps had suits on from the neck down. It would have been laughable if it were not so darned flabbergasting.
Contrast McCain’s convention to Obama’s. There were some rough-edged folks on the floor of the Democratic convention. Truckers. Waitresses. Union types. Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Whites. There were some suits, to be sure, but not nearly as many as at the Republican convention.
The Republican convention looks a lot like a reception at a whites-only country club.
The Democratic convention looked like a beer bash at the town park.
When Giuliani got up and gave his venom-laden, lie-riven, Rovian-quality introduction for Sarah Palin, you could see the true colors of the party come out. He had the audacity to denigrate Obama’s community activism service and claim (falsly) that Obama had sponsored no legislation during his time in the US Senate. He claimed Obama had no leadership experience. He even made the comment, “Sarah Palin has more experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined!”
Uhhh… Lemme see. Joe Biden has 30 years in the Senate. John McCain has 27. I guess that means that even the second guy on the Democratic ticket is more qualified than the first guy on the Republican ticket.
Wait a minute… Does that also mean Sarah Palin is more qualified than John McCain?
There’s a fine line between fire in the belly and venom on the lips.
Giuliani crossed that line.
Where Obama’s multi-ethnic, multi-class convention paid appropriate respect to McCain, McCain’s homogeneous, upper-crust convention has let the attack dogs loose on Obama with the worst kind of condescension and hate.
In years past I endorsed, but did not boost, Democratic candidates for President even as I endorsed, but did not boost, Republicans for local office and congress. Gore was good, but did not thrill. Kerry was smart, but failed to inspire confidence. Either would have been better than “W.”
Even though Obama is not what I would call an ideal candidate, and I wish he had more experience, I have had ENOUGH of the bitter, rancorous Republican lie machine. I am sick and tired of listening to the Republicans get away with hatred veiled as patriotism. I am sick and tired of hearing them play to people’s fears instead of their highest hopes.
Before Sarah Palin even took the stage I had already had enough. Saint Rudy had poured enough poison down my gullet to last me a lifetime. After Sarah Palin took the stage and, as did Rudy, condescended again to Obama’s legacy of community service (as if community service organization in Chicago is a cake walk compared to being mayor of a 9000 person town in Alaska) I wanted to click off the TV.
The Republican convention offers no new ideas, only bitter old attacks.
And, judging by the polls, Americans are bellying up to the same old bar and swilling down the same old crap.
My friends, if you vote for John McCain after watching Fred Thompson’s sick, twisted attacks (most of which FactCheck.org debunked), Rudy Giuliani’s outright fabrications and condescension, or Sarah Palin’s vapid insistence that she’s somehow qualified to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, you have lost your mind.
I couldn’t care less whether John McCain was the “old” John McCain of 2000, for whom I actually WANTED to vote. It is time to throw these bums out. I am tired of the sham they are attempting to perpetrate, portraying themselves as “average” folk, when both their rhetoric and their appearance betray their upper-crust, government-hating, tax-slashing, war-mongering, venom-spewing behavior.
GONE. Get them out. Throw them out on the street! Enough is enough!
I’ve had enough of rich, angry white guys (and gals) in suits defining what is “American” or “Patriotic.” To me the definition of patriotism extends all the way down to those “community activists” that Rudy Giuliani so disdainfully dismissed. It’s the “community activists,” like Obama, who FIX what’s wrong with this country and REALLY watch out for the “little guy.”
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August 29, 2008 | Posted by Steve
Rapt, unwavering attention gripped me as I watched the CNN feed. It took mere seconds into Barack Obama’s acceptance speech for me to zone in, lock in, and buy in.
This guy, my friends, is the proverbial “real deal.” Pass me some of that Kool Aid, Mamma, ‘cuz sonny boy wants to take a long, cool drink.
I have been wavering on Obama for a long time. I started out liking Obama, then switched to Clinton, and then switch back to Obama about two months before Clinton dropped out of the race. There was just something much nastier about Clinton’s race that I couldn’t stomach. There was something about Obama that made me suspect, secretly, that he really wasn’t ready for the challenge.
I am now convinced that this guy is up for any challenge that comes his way.
In 2000, if you had asked me who I was planning to vote for, John McCain was high on my list. I wasn’t particularly keen on Al Gore and Joe Lieberman from a pure leadership perspective. At the time, McCain really was the one “Maverick” in the race. McCain brought bi-partisan sensibilities and a healthy respect for the constitutional boundaries of the Presidency that I just didn’t hear coming from Bush. More than that, I just didn’t think Bush was intellectually curious enough for the challenge. (Yes, you can infer from that statement that I thought Bush was a little, “Dumb.”)
Eight years proved me right on both assessments.
Then in 2004, Kerry proved he was a smart guy with a hyper-intellectual, weak-kneed style of campaigning. The guy couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. He explained everything in minute, plodding, stentorian, policy-wonk style. Kerry was as passionate and articulate as a dishrag. When Kerry lost I wasn’t surprised. I was almost relieved.
As I predicted at the time to my wife, the best thing the Democrats could wish for would be four more years of “W.” “Why,” she asked? Because leaving Bush in the White House was almost guaranteed to screw things up even more than they already were. As I think I said at the time, “Bush will drive this country so far down the toilet the next Democrat will have to win.”
Thank you, “W,” for being everything for which I had hoped.
As I exercised on my treadmill last evening I tuned into Obama’s speech hoping to hear something truly special.
“Special” is the kind of speech you get out of other politicians.
“Mesmerizing” is what you get from Barack Obama.
Obama “gets” leadership. As I hear that man speak I hear him hit on my own passions for a truly bi-partisan spirit whereby we both know we walk into the room wanting things we both know we can’t have in totality. I hear him empathize with an America long-since forgotten by the Bush administration and the former Republican congress that handed him so many slash-n-burn tax cuts designed to boost the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class.
The disparity of equity in our country proves that we are at our best when the wealthiest Americans quit whining about not having enough and thank God they have as much as they have. Obama articulates that message in a sublime, profound way that leaves me steeped in hope that one day the wealth divide will once again narrow.
Obama’s message was the best I have heard in 30 years, dating all the way back to the first convention speech I listened to when Jimmy Carter accepted the nomination for his Presidency in 1976. Nobody, not even the venerable Bill Clinton, has managed to articulate in such a rich, passionate way, the reason why America must once again become a ship on which all comers are truly treated equally and why when America steams ahead with all hands at the ready it is equal to the task of meeting any challenge it encounters along the way.
Obama has my endorsement with unequivocal strength and in a way that I have never done for any single candidate in my adult, voting life. He has inspired me to once again hope that this country can become much more than red and blue, but will once again be red, white, and blue.
When Obama put the punctuation mark into his message with his resounding line-in-the-sand outburst, “Enough!”, he accentuated a pivotal moment for me along my journey with him.
The Republican platform this year is so much more dogs returning to their own vomit.
- Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. It broadens the disparity of wealth and tilts the playing field to the privileged.
- The images of the octogenarian in the TV add with the ominous words chiming behind, “Barack Obama wants to raise your taxes” has more to fear from the Republican tax-cutting machine, further impoverishing her future, than Obama’s tax-leveling machine.
- The old, tired, “Drill here, drill now, pay less” line rings hollow when it says nothing of the hard labor and NASA-esque efforts it will take to truly free ourselves from dependence on oil and the Middle East.
- The old argument of “compassionate conservatism” is lost on a generation wondering where the compassion is for their out-of-work, unemployed, health-care-challenged, family.
- The predictable fear mongering that somehow Democrats are weak on national security was put to rest when Obama reminded America that its GREATEST challenges, both when to deploy and when to restrain military might, were faced by men such as Roosevelt and Kennedy.
Obama has articulated precisely why it is HIS time for a shot at straightening out the mess that has become America. Obama laid out a fiery, feisty counter-attack to the Rove-ian, Republican attack-dog machine and did so with a conviction unseen out of any candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992.
It is time for America, not just Democrats, but Republicans alike, to throw the bums out of the White House. Cheney and Bush have brought this country to the point where we owe more to China than to our children. It is time for everyone to tell John McCain that his ideas are just too weary to be considered and give Obama a shot at fixing what ails us.
After all, how much worse could Obama possibly do than McCain would in perpetuating Bush’s policies, as it appears he is poised to do?
I refuse to be the dog too stupid to realize that what lies before him on the ground is a festering pile of bile. John McCain the one-time Maverick is now just a shadow of his former self, deeply in the pocket of financial interests who have less to do with Christian Conservatism than narcissistic greed.
I endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States.
(NOTE: I still endorse Jim Gerlach for Congress, but we’ll get to that in another posting.)
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July 18, 2008 | Posted by Steve
Some TV show titles are enough to set you up for a case of instant heartburn. This one was a sure bet to make me run screaming for the Tums.
“Untold Wealth: The Rise of the Super Rich.”
It was like sitting on the street corner watching an accident unfold before your eyes. I was riveted and nauseated at the same time.
I found myself glued to the TV as I heard the stories of entrepreneurs who had risen from humble beginnings to uber-wealth by sheer pluck and will power. For example, there was the story of one man with a 30,000 square foot mansion, a yacht he uses 3 times a year, and a two story garage filled with every conceivable antique car. At one point he admitted, with not a tinge of shame in his voice, “Once you pass a billion it’s all just about keeping score.”
Are you kidding me? “Once you pass a billion it’s all just about keeping score”?
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July 2, 2008 | Posted by Steve
What in the world…? Is it true? Is Mr. NoMoreGreed actually endorsing and boosting a – GASP! – Republican?
You betcha! When that Republican happens to be one of the truly good people in politics they are going to get my endorsement. If you know anything about me by now you know my annual endorsements have always run 3 to 1 toward Republicans even though my party affiliation is Democratic. Mike Vereb is one of those guys who gives me hope for the future of politics. Let me tell you why…
Vereb is an old-fashioned politician. He is highly engaged in the community and fosters a sense of collective engagement that is refreshingly steeped in the 50s, when people actually knew their neighbors and cared about what happened to them. I don’t know if he planned it this way or if he just does it because he’s a former cop. Whatever it is, this guy understands the old adage, “We’re all on this ride together.”
Vereb’s office recently sponsored a fantastic “community day” over at the local fun emporium, “The Collegeville Pit Stop.” The county rolled out the SWAT tank for the kids to look at and local fire companies rolled out the big gear. Local vendors sponsored free car rides on the go-cart track and free snacks in the snack bar.
The turnout was robust and the lines were long.
Now Vereb is sponsoring a Military Family Support event where military families in the region can come and hear the latest news about how to survive life on the homefront before, during, and after a deployment in-country.
I keep a close eye on Vereb’s voting record and I see the marks of a guy who understands the delicate balance between fiscal responsibility and support for necessary services. I can’t say that he won’t ever succumb to the classic “cut taxes” mantra of the Republican party, undermining vital services without alternative funding sources lined up first, but so far the signs are good.
Once upon a time on the pages of this site I slammed Vereb for being just another hack who threw boilerplate, venomous, party-line e-Mails out to his constituents. Those days are long gone. He got the message and he took a clue from those of us who complained. Responsiveness like that might be considered “populist” by some. By me it is a sign of refreshing engagement with constituents.
Mike Vereb is truly one of the good guys in politics. I can’t say that he and I will always see eye to eye on every issue. What I can tell you is that this life-long Democrat is proud to say Mike Vereb is my State Representative. He seems to represent what is good and right about politics and we need more people like him serving the public interest.
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