Phil Wolff: shrubbery

Who is writing Arnold's lines?

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 03:31:44 GMT

I saw the So,

Arnold doesn't want to raise taxes,
blames bad record keeping for Davis' bad decisions,
but will somehow get us out of debt,
get good information by using an outside auditor (Andersen?),
cut waste but not services,
and will balance the budget.

I'm concerned about what he defines as waste. We're already cutting off clinical services to mental patients.

He will also make decisions. That's what he said. He will listen to everyone then he, and he alone, will make the decision. (Has he ever worked with a legislature?) Schultz then gets up and says, yep, he saw Arnie listen, think, and make decisions.

Arnie also says only millionaires can represent the people, because they don't have to raise campaign money.

Asked what he'll cut, even an example of a program that should be cut, he said that decision will have to wait until after he is governor. After all, he's not a typical politician.Riiiight.

Will Durst joins Correspondences.org.

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 06:19:59 GMT

Funny as hell. Dark as rye. Recalling Slappy. The teflon goose. The Verge of Worst. The Rainbow Menace.

Blackout in New York. Pataki and Bloomberg Recalls Launched.

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 00:00:55 GMT

Just making that up.

[a klog apart]

Nick Denton: How to beat Bush.

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 21:50:34 GMT

via rc3, I agree with Nick Denton's analysis on How to beat Bush:

The Democratic candidate for president should appropriate the traditional Republican values of limited government, individual liberty, and fiscal responsibility.

Should Dean endorse Bustamante for Governor?

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 20:15:01 GMT

The Dean campaign should back Cruz Bustamante for California Governor.

Party solidarity. Supporting the Democratic slate (No Recall + Bustamante) will improve the chances for California to vote blue in 2004. Remember, this is the state that brought you Nixon and Reagan. Defend your strongholds.
Dean has the one team that can deliver. Dean has the only functional democratic grass roots organization in the state. Local groups are already walking precincts to register voters for 2004. But the California race is in 7 weeks, not enough time for Davis or Bustamante to raise their own money or build their own supporters.
It will sharpen the Dean organization. This sprint can be a laboratory for every campaigning idea the Dean team can dream up. Think of it as an out of town tryout, a chance to work out bugs in the system.

When use get power, you get more. I've been going to Dean meetups for a while and this would absolutely galvanize the diehards and rally the undecideds.

Where the Mind is Without Fear

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:15:47 GMT

Poetry for a Monday morn arriving on a sea of public anxiety, despair, frustration and rejection.

Where the Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

— Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Mediacrit writ Nasty.

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 17:59:24 GMT

Media Whores Online. Media criticism with a vigorous, active voice. Left of center.

Recall marketing.

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 18:25:34 GMT

For about $12,000 you can run a 4" x 5" ad in the business section of the San Jose Mercury News every day for a month, reaching about going to 350,000 households each day, perhaps being read by the same 1.3 million people (9.2 cents per thousand). Or, for about $6,500, you can run a larger ad that goes to 20 million households (3.3 cpm). That's right: advertise yourself in the upcoming recall election. Run on the "Better Tantric Sex" slate or the "A vote for me is a vote for the crunchiest chicken wings in Alameda county" platform.

We're talking recall marketing folks. The opportunity of a lifetime. Your name in every registered household. We'll even throw in a head shot. Postage paid.

Just be sure to register Republican. You don't want your brand associate with Davis, after all.

I'll be glad to help you set up your campaign weblog. "Write me" or leave a comment.

Bush responds to Dean with Dubya's Dayly Diary.

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:55:09 GMT

LiveJournal, eat your heart out.

July 22, 2003

Dear Diary -- Good news! Saddam Hussein's evil sons are maybe probably dead. Karl was busy tryin ta create a WMD distraction, but they saved us the trouble.
Everyone's real excited about the new write to President Bush email system. I'm not sure why -- it's not like anyone ever reads that stuff. Public email is almost as boring as intelligence reports.

Strictly parody, by Maeleine Kane. You gotta like your politics left of center to find it funny.

I like the idea of elected officials blogging their days. Even if only to annotate their calendars. Transparency is hard, and mostly sterile. Blogging would open up an elected official's office, values, and issues with a human voice.

What do these facts mean to you? What will you do?

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:04:22 GMT

Professor Elizabeth Lane Lawley's mamamusings:

Twenty-two percent of children in the United States live in poverty.

The top 20% income bracket in the US makes 49.6% of the total income, while the bottom 20% makes 3.6% of the total income.

Fewer than 6% of the RIT freshman class are women.

These are hard numbers.

To me, they tell a story of a nation that is unfair. 1 in 5 children are going to bed hungry, arriving at school hungry. If there is a class war, the poor are losing. And the only legal path to upward economic mobility, education, is failing more people.

The American Dream, hope itself, denied.

So I'm sad. Frustrated. And angry.

I want my President to share my feelings. I want all my elected officials to know and understand the reality behind those numbers. I want them to sweat bullets every day that these numbers don't improve.

Argue over methods. But I'm pretty sure more tax breaks for the richest, public school funding cuts, teaching to the test, increased censorship, and prison build-outs are not part of the solution.

John Edwards for the middle class.

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 03:02:29 GMT

John Edwards gives great speeches. Like this one on how Shrub is the anti-Robin Hood, robbing the working poor. Facts, figures, and and emotional appeals to boot.

[aka shrubbery]

Blogging as Free Speech.

Wed, 02 Jul 2003 03:30:20 GMT

The first freedom, the one that ensures others, is speech.

Tolerance of the contrary voice, of dissent from within.

Knowing you can speak your mind without repercussion, however distasteful to others, lets you censor yourself less.

The soap box. The broad sheet. The pamphlet. Weblogs are in this tradition.

The power of the press has never been more available to the citizens of any nation. For the past 500 years, if you wanted to spread your ideas beyond the reach of your voice, you needed serious money. Capital to commission the construction of a printing press, to buy paper, to pay type setters, to pay for distribution. Blogging collapses all of that, putting the power of personal publishing within reach of the poor, the homeless, and the ordinary netizen. If you are connected to the Internet, blogging is nearly free.

This is not universal. Anonymity is popular among Persian bloggers. The People's Republic of China blocked Blogspot. Industry critics use pseudonyms. Offline consequences are real.

Yet people write to the web as citizens. Citizens of the world. Of their nations. Of their neighborhoods.

So, let me ask you...

Of what do you blog?

Do you comment on your elected officials' behavior? On your civil servants'?

Do you point to injustice and call for reform?

Do you cite abuse of power, and call for redress?

Do you witness calamities, small or large, and mobilize help?

Do you organize your neighbors to participate in local government?

Do you rally behind a political candidate?

Do you learn about issues from people close to the ground?

Do you find yourself thinking like a journalist, protecting sources, checking your facts, putting yourself where you can report to your readers?

The Fourth Estate, a free press, gets that name as the fourth institution in the balance of government powers. As the tools of reportage become democratized, a Fifth Estate has emerged. Letters to the Editor run wild. Citizen journalists. The peoples' voices.

One of the things I value as an American citizen is that free speech, constitutionally protected, enables change. We occassionally run off course as a nation, but discourse, frank and uncomfortable, lets us find out way home.

[a klog apart public policy]

Tue, 18 Feb 2003 06:51:35 GMT

Welfare Legislation Approved by House.

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:36:47 GMT

The House approved Republican welfare legislation today requiring more single mothers to work and providing hundreds of millions of dollars to promote marriage. Take mothers from their children, don't fund day care, defund training and education for social mobility. And assume bad times only strike once in a life time.

The radical right continues to get paid. More "shrubbery".

[via Headlines From The NY Times]

Jobless man: 9-11 was our 1929.

Tue, 04 Feb 2003 10:07:45 GMT

Sandwiched between a rock and a hard place
Jobless man sees plight as sign of the times
San Francisco Chronicle
Feb 2 2003 5:52AM ET

"I really believe we're heading into another worldwide Great Depression, and I don't see anything being done to change that direction," says Weiss. "Sept. 11 was our 1929."
"When I was a kid, the old-timers said they survived because people helped each other. We're going to have to learn to do that again."

The Bush Depression.

Bush quashing unpleasant employment stats.

Sat, 01 Feb 2003 08:45:55 GMT

From Business Week, February 10, 2003 issue :

BUSH LEAGUE
Stats: Now You See 'em...

Since President Bush took office two years ago, the economy has lost some 1.7 million jobs, making job creation a sore point around the White House. Now, either by coincidence or by design, two agencies have taken actions that make the Administration's unremarkable record on jobs a little harder to spot.

The President's own Council of Economic Advisers has yanked off its Web site a study predicting mediocre job growth from Bush's proposed $674 billion economic stimulus plan. The study forecast a modest 170,000 more jobs than would otherwise be created--0.1% of the workforce--every year through 2007, on average. The study was pulled within two days of Bush's Jan. 7 speech. In spite of its action, the council says it stands behind the numbers.

And on Christmas Eve, the Bureau of Labor Statistics quietly announced that it would no longer publish the mass-layoff statistics it had been putting out since 1994. The stats used to be used by states to help determine where to spend on job-retraining programs. "We're losing information we really need," complains Henry Jackson, director of Illinois' Division of Economic Information & Analysis. Labor officials say that the resulting savings of $6.6 million annually will be diverted directly to states for job training.
By Peter Coy and Laura Cohn

Something like $60 billion a year is spent by companies and workers making the labor markets work. $6.6m is a rounding error. Government stats are some of the cheapest planning tools you can trust. Government neutrality, longevity, and transparency make the data valuable. This kind of expense, centralized, creates value; spread among 50+ state agencies: paperclips.

Shortsighted.

Can you imagine any non-political reason for supressing the truth? Perhaps terrorists are involved?

Just shrubbery.

Lowering Taxis is Hazardous.

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 02:12:31 GMT

All this talk by President Bush of lowering taxis is bad news. We should fight this.

It is dangerous. Lowered taxis means worse visibility by taxi drivers. It makes it harder for other drivers to see taxis too.
It is a local matter. The Federal government shouldn't interfere with state regulation.
It is expensive. Auto mechanics have enough to do without adjusting thousands of perfectly working suspensions.
It is an unfunded mandate. Taxi companies must pay for the retrofit.

He says this is an economic stimulant. Lower taxis won't boost ridership, certainly not enough to create new jobs. On the other hand, it will shorten taxi cab life, boosting car sales.

Another Republican cover up? Something's going on...

Bush Urges Extension of Unemployment Benefits

Wed, 18 Dec 2002 21:39:10 GMT

Bush Urges Extension of Unemployment Benefits (New York Times Dec 15 2002)

Nice to see Shrub listening to Democrats after 40,000 workers lost their meager benefits every week this year. Am I cynical when I ask:

Why did it have to wait until after the election?
What programs or services will Shrub propose congress cut to pay for the benefit extension? Or a tax to pay for the new service?
Is Bush being true to his hands-off-business policy?

Technical difficulties can be so embarassing.

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 17:36:32 GMT

A message to all the United States' friends: please stand by.

[aka shrubbery]

Bush slashes civilian comp plan; making Federal workforce less competitive.

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 04:00:04 GMT

Bush transfers regional cost-of-living pay differentials to defense budget. So the FBI agent forking over $3000 a month for a Manhattan studio will get paid the same as her counterpart paying $500/month for a two bedroom in Iowa. Accomodate regional differences if you want a flexible work force.

Mr. Bush, know that the federal workforce is telling the millions of people they serve that you just put your political expediency (tax cuts for the richest Americans and companies) ahead of your workforce's bread and butter needs.

Just more shrubbery.

Bush administration to outsource half the federal government.

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 08:32:16 GMT

The White House's Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-76 (Revised), will be published on Friday in the Federal Register. This will open 850,000 federal government jobs to private sector competition. This means firing half the federal workforce. This includes all government work deemed a "commercial activity," from secretarial duties to building and grounds maintenance.

This is no ordinary outsourcing. The institutional values of public service are fundamentally different than business. Fairness, integrity, patriotism, accountability and the public trust inform day-to-day behavior. Affect how we feel about government workers.

Privatizing is an end run against work rules. Rules that protect these values and our workers. We've learned from a history of bribery, cover ups, shredding, abuses of power, kickbacks, nepotism, political bias, corruption, punitive personnel actions, incompetence, hazardous work places, unpaid overtime, compromised quality, sexual harrassment, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, monopoly. Bush considers the rules that protect the American people and the federal workforce "bureaucratic," an interference in absolute executive power.

This is a Republican attack on these values and these lessons. An attack on civil service. An attack on worker rights. An attack on unions. An attack on the people served. How we deliver services can be as important as what we deliver.

It can be OK to outsource. But slashing budgets and low-cost bids don't assure service innovation, service quality, service delivery, and service fairness.

Dubya and Cheney are abdicating management responsibility. If you have a problem, don't pass the buck. Fix it.

Madeleine Begun Kane:

"Privatize This!" A good friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous, has come up with a fun, clever challenge he/she calls "Privatize This." It relates to the Bush Administration's latest union-busting effort -- its plan to privatize about half of the federal workforce by "contracting out" 850,000 jobs.

Here's my friend's challenge:

As good Americans, we can help this effort by proposing private firms that might perform various public functions. Here are my public/private suggestions:

EPA's hazardous waste cleanup could be contracted to Proctor & Gamble, maker of Bounty, the "Quicker Picker Upper"

IRS tax collection work could be performed by The Mob

The staff of the White House could be replaced by the cast of NBC's West Wing

Let's have your suggestions ... if the Administration is taking comments, I'll submit our collective suggestions as a comment on this privatization proposal (as my own private citizen comment, without identifying individual submitters).

Why am I telling you this? So you can rise to the challenge, of course. Please email me your creative suggestions. I'll send them on to my friend to use anonymously, as indicated, and I'll also post the best ones here. Please send them to me at madkane@madkane.com with "Privatize This" in the subject line. And let me know if/how you'd like to be credited on my site (with your name and/or website link, etc.) I can't wait to read your suggestions!

How much of this is pushing retirement obligations from the government to the privatized workers? Getting obligations off the books?

This changes the federal government's competition for workers with the private sector. As boomers retire in the next five years, many of these jobs will be filled indirectly (via contractors) instead of as direct hires. I'm not yet sure of the long term consequences.

[a klog apart Shrubbery]

Who advised Dubya to squash the S.E.C. budget?

Sun, 20 Oct 2002 06:47:57 GMT

Bush is going back on his promise to make the markets safer, to make corporations more accountable, and accounting more trustworthy. He wants to jeopardize our retirement funds and working capital to pay for the war in Iraq and to beef up homeland defense. His words, not mine. Congress budgeted $776 million for the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the White House only wants to spend $568, more than a third less.

Which clowns told the President to do this? It's bad politics and bad economics.

Of course Shrub could have paid for it if he hadn't insisted on his $trillion tax cut for the rich.

Or if he was willing to tax public companies or exchanges enough to cover effective regulation, supervision, and compliance.

Such shrubbery.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 02:24:12 GMT

This is my new blogchalk:
United States, California, Oakland, Adams Point, English, Phil, Male, 41-45. :)

Shrub won't let me die.

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 17:05:26 GMT

CNN.com - U.S. appeals Oregon suicide law ruling - Sep. 23, 2002

This move:

Pays tribute to the administration's Christian right supporters (elections are coming up)
Punishes political opposition (Oregon went for Gore)
Reinforces the administration's centralization of power instead of a Federalist balance with the states
Smells just like the DEA's prosecution of medical marijuana

I have a right to die. This means that, so long as I'm in my right mind, I should be making any choices about how and when to die. This includes getting help in planning or performing related tasks.

The state's role? Assure that others don't abuse my right: murder, manslaughter, negligence, accident. Be sure I'm in my right mind. That's how Oregonians defined it. I agree.

If I'm ready for my doctor to end my pain, that should be my right and no penalties should attach to me or anyone associated with the coup de grace. I don't know why the Federal Government should have a right to interfere in a personal matter or a personal crime, normally regulated by states. Where is the precedent for their legal standing?

n. pl. coups de grâce

A deathblow delivered to end the misery of a mortally wounded victim.
A finishing stroke or decisive event.

From the French : coup, stroke + de, of + grâce, mercy.]

p.s. not that I have any plans.

[aka shrubbery]

Presidential poetry reveals the man inside.

Sun, 08 Sep 2002 14:13:44 GMT

Tom Matrullo introduces this classic shrubbery.

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked,
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope,
where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!

Make the pie higher!
I say.
Make the pie higher!

via Wood s lot, which says this poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush and arranged for aesthetic presentation by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.