We the People Do Not Consent to the Great Depression On Purpose

I just sent this letter via the Coffee Party's letter-writing tool to my two senators, congressman, and the White House via email. I realize my congressman would just as soon go down in flames, but my senators are not quite as ideologically insane.

Stop holding our nation hostage to pander to extremists.

We do not consent to the world's first Great Depression On-Purpose. We demand a balanced approach to solving our fiscal problems that will not put the entire burden on the poor and middle class. We see through the ransom demands from radical extremists and representatives in Congress who have pledged their loyalty to a rigid ideology instead of the American people.

We will not stand by quietly and bear the entire burden of solving problems that were caused by irresponsibility in Washington and on Wall Street. If you ignore our phone calls and emails, expect to see us in your local offices and at your town halls. One way or another we will be heard and our nation's interest will be served, or, you will lose the privilege of representing us.

Click here to send your own letter.

We the People Do Not Consent to the Great Depression On Purpose

We Are Becoming Wylie E. Coyote

John Avlon writes in today's Daily Beast something I've long suspected given that I started working at Barnes and Noble almost immediately after the 2008 presidential election: Anti-Obama screeds fill our shelves in unprecedented numbers.

According to Avlon's article, at this point in Bush's presidency, just five anti-Bush books had hit the shelves. So far the tally for anti-Obama books stands at a whopping 42.

Let that sink in...and think about it. For a country led around by a liberal media, how is this conceivable?

That's not really the point, though...and I'll cop to it being a bit of a cheap shot. Avlon's actual point is that these "fear-mongering" books written for "personal and partisan profit" won't end with this election cycle. He argues that because politics tends to follow "the lines of physics - every action creates an equal an opposite reaction," welcome to the "new normal."

I'm going to take Avlon's argument further than he does, though, especially after viewing the actual book titles he lists. I've shelved them all at the bookstore and watched our conservative readership gobble them up during the past nearly two years, but seeing them listed one after another takes things to an altogether new level of crazy. Because we live in the Information Age, as these (please, please, please follow the money) screeds become the new normal, we risk inciting ourselves out of our "can-do" spirit and into a nation of cartoonish behavior wherein we become the Wylie E. Coyote of the First World, always searching for ways to "get" the metaphorical Roadrunner, but being unable to accomplish that - let alone doing the things that really matter - out of impotence. If you're looking for something to be scared about, I suggest worrying about this instead of a secretly Muslim, socialist president who wants to send our kids to the gulag.

We Are Becoming Wylie E. Coyote

Business as Usual?

In another sign that our nation is veering headlong into corporate facism, both the FCC and Congress are engaging in closed-door meetings with ISP's to re-write telecom law, most likely to limit effects of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality, for those of you who have heard the term but are uncertain as to its meaning, is precisely what it says: that there be no restrictions used by those who provide the "pipes" for the Internet. In other words, An ISP must be neutral in allowing content through its pipes and cannot slow down access to or prevent users from access to online content.

Let me give you some personal, historical perspective. Years ago when AOL was still preeminent, AAR was not available to all of AOL's users. There was nothing as a content provider I could do about it. Indeed, I remember being stunned after speaking with somebody at AOL who told me, "We are not required to provide access to all websites online." Several years later, when a router in the Mid-West broke, AAR became unavailable for a good chunk of the country and the company that provided that router was not required to fix the break. Instead I was forced to pay AAR's host to create a fix around the break, and in the interim weeks, we lost untold thousands of users temporarily...and the number of users who simply thought we'd gone offline permanently remains unknown.

Let's jump to the future now, where Time/Warner exists and NBC and Comcast may be merging. Without Net Neutrality, when owners of the pipes that bring us content also own companies that generate large amounts of content, they can, quite legally, either slow down or stop the competition. In a case brought by Comcast against the FCC earlier this year, a federal appeals court stated that the FCC lacked the authority to require Net Neutrality, leading both the FCC and Congress scrambling to create some level of authority by regulation or law.

As public agencies do when preparing to enact regulatory changes, the FCC asked for public comment regarding Net Neutrality. Although 85% of respondents asked for Net Neutrality, these closed-door meetings signal yet another Obama administration deal limiting real change. Similar opaque, revolving-door meetings on Capital Hill - where nearly 3/4 of telecom lobbyists are former federal employees - are yet another sign of business as usual.

While I understand that changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary, it pains me to say that Barack Obama's efforts to avoid conflict and create compromise too often benefit the industries in need to regulation. It's one thing to hold meetings with telecom companies, but closed-door meetings stink of back-room deals.

Where's the sunshine?

Business as Usual?

Thanks to MediaFail

A week or so ago I joined the twitter feed for @mediafail and this morning clicked a link to the NYT, which I browse through daily anyway. The alert was for an article entitled 2010’s Debates Still Trapped in the 1960s, and though I am more a product of the 1970s than the 1960s, I was appalled at the lack of fundamental understanding about history's effects on the present exhibited by this article's author. I don't know how old Matt Bai is, but his argument reminded me of many an argument I've had with women younger than myself about feminism.

To say that race issues are nuanced today obliterates the fact that it was anything but nuanced in the 1960s. Had people not died for civil rights throughout the South in the 1960s, nobody could make the Tiger Woods and/or Barack Obama arguments about nuance that appear in Bai's article. To cavalierly say that times are different now not only fails to recognize the sacrifices made toward equality today, it also fails to paint an accurate picture of the country we would live in had the struggle not taken place.

When businesswomen in their late 20s or early 30s tell me that they are not feminists, I want to call them, as my friend Ellen would, "asshats," but as a civilized Coffee Party member, I'll refrain. I was lucky enough to have joined the professional workforce in the mid-80s, after the first wave of women had paved the way. Even so, I still contended with men who refused to take me seriously. I remember transforming a program at the City of Dallas from what previously had been a clerical dead-end into an extremely successful program that added hundreds of thousands of dollars into the City's coffers (that would otherwise have never been collected), and yet, until I practically threw my master's degree diploma at the face of the City attorney I'd be working with, he thought I was just "another female clerk."

For many the road had not only been paved but re-surfaced by the time they started their career journeys upon it, yet because their path has been smoother, they can't or won't recognize that they are living the lives of feminists, bought and paid for by the women that came before them. Whether it's complacency or they've bought into the "Femi-Nazi" trap, it's worth remembering that women still don't earn as much as men for doing the same job.

So please, Matt Bai, Rand Paul, and all you others who would have us believe that we live in a nuanced world today and need to change our worldviews in acceptance of it, please stop trying to dupe me. The fight by women and African Americans is still being fought. Yes, the world has changed and we no longer deny black men lunch-counter seats or chase women around desks, but the fight must continue. Women still make, on average, 79 cents for each dollar earned, on average, by men, and in the South, 47% of the population does not believe our president was born in the U.S. When that changes, come back to me and we'll have this discussion again.

Thanks to MediaFail

Dallas Coffee Party...a Big, Fat Flop For Me

I joined the Coffee Party nationally and in Dallas earlier this year, and attended the first meetings with high hopes. As I reported on the Dallas Coffee Blog I started earlier this month, it's very easy to click a Facebook button and join a cause. It's a lot more difficult to create something sustainable afterward.

The Dallas Coffee Party kicked off with great fanfare, with local TV and print news coverage of the first meetings, and after the second meeting I volunteered to become an admin for the Facebook page. I was sick for the third meeting, and at the fourth, was one of six who bothered to attend...out of nearly a thousand Facebook members. Of course, that the meeting wasn't properly publicized or added to the national FB page where members looking for meetings could find it didn't help, but as a result of that meeting, I set up a Dallas Coffee Blog and an @dallascoffee twitter feed to gin up interest. I believed - and hoped - that if a local person wrote original content and tweeted other content of interest, more people might feel a connection and an inclination to actively participate.

In the interim, the originator of the DCP quit, and in-fighting broke out between two of the other three admins, leaving me stuck in the middle. Although the Coffee Party is thriving throughout the country, it's dead in the water in Dallas because of a lack of momentum and planning, and because too many of the few grown-ups involved actually decided to behave not as grown-ups but as petulant children. While I don't count myself as one of those pouting tots, it's obvious I've got some anger seeping through here, so I'll simply tell you what I did earlier today: Transferred all the DCP bloggings as a single note to the DCP page on Facebook, and after deleting the @dallascoffee twitter feed, I'll be deleting myself as a DCP admin.

It's true that not much time has lapsed between my first blog and tweet efforts and now, but with a thousand DCP members, and my RT'ing @dallascoffee tweets to the DCP page and linking to all the blog entries, I can't say that the word didn't get out. The word got out, but nobody cared. That's fine. I gave it a shot, and as I wrote on my DCP note, I'd rather write one blog nobody reads than two. Only one local person directly accessed the 28 tweets I've made...the other four are from CP's elsewhere. Almost 400 people subscribe to my @laurie_gold twitter feed and I'll concentrate on them rather than the five (again, including just one local person) who subscribed to @dallascoffee.

Because I'm proud of the blog entries I wrote for DCP, I'm going to insert them here onto my Toe in the Water blog...later today, after I've done so, I'll come back in here and provide links to any who are interested. And, as I wrote on the DCP page, I look forward to somebody with vision, patience, and a game-plan to reinvent the Dallas Coffee Party so that I can rejoin. In the interim, I'll look for another group to hook up with, possibly one in Ft. Worth. Sad that in one of the largest cities in the U.S. we were unable to sustain things here, but it's time to move on. My experiment failed.

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BLOG ENTRIES ADDED TO TOE IN THE WATER FROM SHORT-LIVED DCP BLOG:

Financial Reform...It's Complicated

Stand Up...Or Stand Down

What If You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came?

Corporate Fascism?

An Experiment

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And, in case anyone's interested in links to articles from the @dallascoffee twitter feed...

Lost Decade Looming? (Paul Krugman NYT)

More on TX text book fight

New project of freepress.com invites us to keep media on its toes by submitting biased and or overblown reporting.

A nun is "automatically excommunicated" after sitting on hosp comm that agreed to perform abortion to save mom's life.

NYT: A generation gap on immigration

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the...

Coffee Party USA is launching Coffee with Main Street campaign from now throughout the month of June.

Million-Dollar Ad Blitz to Kill Net Neutrality

The Senate approved a provision putting space between bond issuers & rating agencies

NYT: U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits

NYT: Senate Beats Back Efforts to Ease Regulation Bill

Commentary on Findlaw about First Amendment

Newsweek article on Walt Whitman important for us to consider

Huffpost - Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, USA TODAY found.

Rabbit hole of corporate spending on campaigns.

Tom Friedman in today's NYT

Dallas Coffee Party...a Big, Fat Flop For Me

A Rant of Major Proportions

My husband graduated UT with an honor's degree in government. My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in political science. He has a law degree from SMU, which is where I earned my master's degree in public administration. Needless to say, we are both too knowledgeable for our own good when it comes to the world of politics and government, and when the Tea Party started becoming popular, it prompted a series of "what if?" conversations at our dinner table. They always become undone, however, by my need to erase history versus his insistence that we begin in the here and now and move forward. Let me explain.

My argument derives from the fact that for many a Tea Partier, our government should never have grown or changed since it began. Okay...I actually "give" them the first ten amendments to our Constitution, then stop. He doesn't. He doesn't believe we need to remove the Civil War or woman's suffrage and instead can defeat them simply if we start from 2010 and move forward, mostly because none of us are used to paying the true price for anything, be it milk or gasoline, and that if the federal government wasn't providing those subsidies, we'd experience such a lowering to our standard of living that either we'd be begging for increased federal input or the Tea Partiers would next set their sights on their individual state governments, which would have had to have increased taxes to make up the losses.

If the argument is that the federal government exists solely to provide for the public defense, they get a "gimme" in the national highway system; the impetus President Eisenhower gave for their creation of our interstates is the movement of troops. Of course, given the post WW-II migration from urban areas to the suburbs, that wasn't his only reason, but I'm feeling generous this afternoon.

That's because I have the New Deal on my side. I know it's become fashionable on the far right to decry FDR's New Deal as a bad thing, and, yes, I realize that it was a combination of the New Deal and WWII that lifted us out of the Great Depression, but even forgetting such New Deal creations as the FDIC, which today we hold as sacrosanct and which equally obviously does not contribute to our nation's defense, what about WWII itself? In my view, we would have entered into a war with Japan after Pearl Harbor, but would not have joined the Allies in Europe. And had we not stormed Normandy and taken part in battles across Europe, the Germans probably would have won, and as a Jew, I might not actually be alive today to blog about this.

I could go on and on...our dinner table discussions do, after all, but my point, and there is one, is that recent statements by Rand Paul, along with the Texas Board of Education's attempts to rewrite history through textbook changes, allow me to focus my ire. On the one hand, Rand Paul states that he likes the Civil Rights Act. And yet he then makes a statement that the federal government has overreached. How does somebody argue both and disconnect them as he attempts to do? Without federal involvement the South would not have been forced to desegregate as those at the forefront of maintaining the status quo - of segregated drinking fountains, lunch counters, and Jim Crow laws in general - were elected state and local officials. Of course, if there were no 14th Amendment to the Constitution, there would be no equal protection clause, and no reason to undo a century of "separate but equal." So is it the 14th Amendment or the CRA that featured federal overreaching?

And how about those textbook changes...wasn't it bad enough that the Virginia Governor "forgot" to include a mention of slavery in his Civil War proclamation? Should our textbooks be changed so that the Slave Trade becomes the "Atlantic Triangular Trade?" Should students study Jefferson Davis's inaugural as President of the Confederate States of America because they already study Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural? The board member who fought that argument won, and if the changes go through, you can look for Davis highlights in the future.

Did Phyllis Schlafly impact the U.S. as much or more so than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom the same board member wanted excised from textbooks altogether? That last one gets my dander up because I once actually heard Schlafly speak in person and my impression was that she only became as famous as she did because of the old "dancing dog" syndrome. In other words, because she was a woman with beliefs vastly different than other famous women, she was trotted out to dance. One could easily argue - and easily win, I think - that without Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Singer, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinham, and Bella Abzug, there would have been no Phyllis Schlafly, that without radical women forcing progress, women like Schlafly would never have been allowed to vote, let alone earned the chance to attend law school and become a darling of the right. Of course, if we took it back to the beginning, there would have been no 19th Amendment, and Barbara Cargill would likely not be sitting on the Texas Board of Education at all.

IIRC, no historians make up the elected Texas Board of Education, which meets today for a final vote on the proposed changes. Will this be yet another embarrassment for those of us who are thinking citizens of the state of Texas? And will Rand Paul's GOP nomination implode because logic demands it?

A Rant of Major Proportions

Financial Reform...It's Complicated (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

The national Coffee Party page on Facebook this morning reports on an amendment Senator Christopher Dodd is trying to attach to the Financial Regulation bill that would remove the derivatives spin-off portion requiring that the largest banks spin off their derivatives desks into regulated entities not guaranteed by taxpayers. He proposes to instead have the issue studied by a group of regulators whose members have "serious reservations about such a dramatic measure," and may try to kill it.

According to The Washington Post, it isn't just banks who are against the derivatives spin-off; regulators and officials in the Obama administration believe it "could drive the business into the shadows." Is this spin from Wallmerica or are those in agreement with Dodd's amendment correct in their assertion that the spin-off "would harm U.S. competitiveness or lead to less regulation of the derivatives market, valued at half a quadrillion dollars"?

The Coffee Party has taken a stand against the Dodd amendment and asks that you consider using a letter from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) that you'll find below as a template for those interested in writing your senators. If instead of a letter or email you wish to call your senator, please consider using the bullet points contained in the following when contacting the U.S. Capital Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Given that we live in a global economy, I thought I'd share what the European Union is doing about derivatives. According to an AP article on Yahoo News, new rules will increase oversight and set fines for manipulating trades. The European market for "largely unregulated" derivatives is worth $600 trillion. Key to the new rules is the registration of "all products and trading" so that regulators can access the derivatives...and the investors behind them because, "These people don't like coming out in the light so we are going to flood them with light," said EU Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier.

But back to the American market for the moment, and the AFR letter...

Dear Senator,

The over 250 consumer, employee, investor, community and civil rights groups who are members of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) write to express strong support for Section 716 (“Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities”) and our opposition to the new Amendment #4110 to replace the provision with a study. The study would put the final decision over implementing this important new structural reform in the hands of regulators who have already publicly expressed their opposition to it.

The following are rebuttals to the primary arguments that have been advanced against Sec. 716:

Swaps Desks will Remain within the Bank Holding Company: Sen. Lincoln has clarified that the amendment would only separate derivatives desks from the core bank within the bank holding company – that is, the insured depository institution that has access to the Federal Reserve window. Moving these operations outside of the federally-protected core of the bank will only reduce the risk of future bailouts, still enabling the holding company to benefit from this lucrative business.

716 Will Not Lead to Weaker Regulation or Flight Overseas: Americans for Financial Reform is committed to bringing derivatives out of the shadows; we would not support a provision that weakened oversight of derivatives dealers. Under the derivatives title, any major swap participant will be subject to oversight and safeguards for capital adequacy, transparency, anti-fraud and anti-manipulation. In addition, the claim that the market will migrate overseas ignores the economic turmoil in Europe that was in large part exacerbated by unregulated derivatives activities.

Derivatives Dealing is Not the Usual Course of Banking: Some have argued that derivatives selling should remain within the core depository institutions because it is part of the “usual business of banking”. If that were the case, then why do only 5 out of America’s over 8,000 banks – the Wall Street banks JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – account for over 90 percent of this market? The “usual” banking businesses in the U.S., represented by the Independent Community Bankers Association of America, support Sec. 716.

Banks Can Still Use Derivatives to Hedge Their Risk Under 716: Separating swap dealing operations from the business of banking does not mean that banks will be unable to hedge their banking risks. They will be customers and trade on open exchanges and clearinghouses.

Purely speculative financial derivatives now represent $78 for every $1 in true hedging by businesses and farmers. By quarantining highly risky swaps trading from banking altogether, federally insured deposits will not be put at risk by toxic swaps transactions. Moreover, banks will be forced to behave like banks, focusing on extending credit in a manner that builds economic strength as opposed to fostering worldwide economic instability.

For these reasons, Americans for Financial Reform urges you to oppose Amendment #4110. Please contact Lisa Lindsley, Director, Capital Strategies, AFSCME, for more information.

Sincerely,
Americans for Financial Reform

~Laurie G

Financial Reform...It's Complicated (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

The rallying cry for the Coffee Party is "Wake Up and Stand Up. Yet there is so much negative hateful rhetoric floating around these days that otherwise intelligent people are afraid. Afraid that by standing up, we will incite the fringe folk into doing dangerous things. So afraid, in fact, that they believe we must instead stand down, and further, pull the covers over our heads.

Obviously this is not a view to which I subscribe. Appeasement is never the answer. It failed when the Europeans tried it in the 1930s, and can you imagine what this country would have looked like had Abraham Lincoln appeased the South...or allowed secession rather than standing up for our Constitution?

We live in a polarizing time, with two entrenched sides who often cede control to the fringes rather than creating a larger, more inclusive tent in the middle. And so at times we have left-wing Democrats who are willing to cut their noses off to spite their own faces, refusing to settle for incremental changes while at the same time right-wing Republicans turn obstructionist, resulting in grid-lock that causes them to move ever-farther to the right.

Judging by his actions, Barack Obama is a moderate president. And yet he provokes even more anti-government rhetoric than Bill Clinton - another moderate president - did. Many of Obama's stances were once also taken by Republican presidents Reagan, Nixon, or Bush (take your pick as to I or II).

Whenever I can't use logic to figure something out, I remember something I learned in graduate school: Follow the money. And that's where I think much of the dissension lies. The billions spent by the health care industry to prevent health care reform, the millions the financial industry is spending to prevent reform, and the money just pledged by AT&T to gain a stronger foothold in the fight against Net Neutrality...what do each of these three things have in common? The bottom line is the bottom line. Lots and lots of people and companies became very, very wealthy during the Clinton and Bush II years, and as time went on, most of the money rose to the top and consolidated among fewer and fewer.

Since Barack Obama won the presidential election of 2008 and the birthers started yammering, I began to well and truly believe that among those who have accumulated the greatest wealth are those who would do just about anything to keep it. It is in their interest to distract us, to make and keep us angry. The middle class may indeed be disappearing, but when considering the cause, ask yourself, who has the most to lose? If you have difficulty answering this question, consider that the top 1% own 42% of wealth in the U.S. The next 19% own an additional 50%, leaving the remaining 80% of us owning less than 10%. Even more astonishingly, of all the new financial wealth created since the Reagan presidency, nearly half of it went to the top 1%...nearly 95% went to the top 20%.

If you come to the same conclusion that I have - that money funds anti-reform movements as well as obsfucating the truth from those ignorant enough to search for it themselves - you will undoubtedly conclude that now is the precisely the time for us not to stand down. Now is the time for us to stand up, to make the voice of reason rise above the voices of anger and ignorance.

~Laurie G

Stand Up...Or Stand Down (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

What if You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came? (Transferred from Short-Lived DCP blog)

Yes...I'm impatient. And because there are multiple admins on the Join the Coffee Party Movement, Dallas page on Facebook, as well as members posting, it's difficult for members to find some of what I'd like them to find. Namely, this blog and the @dallascoffee twitter feed I set up earlier in the week. Because right now I feel like I'm giving a coffee party by myself.

This morning I decided to get pro-active about it...even more proactive than actually setting up the blog, twitter feed, writing up blog entries and finding articles of interest to forward via the twitter feed. So I searched twitter using @coffeeparty as my search item and clicked the "follow" button for other Coffee Party feeds, and, in addition, some feeds that look like they focus -on the Coffee Party.

Here's problem one: When you follow another feed, all their tweets show up on it, which is why although @laurie_gold follows @dallascoffee, @dallascoffee does not follow @laurie_gold. If, in fact, the feeds I selected focus almost exclusively on Coffee Party matters, everything will be copesetic. If not, though, if there are as many non-topic tweets that exist in my personal feed, I'll need to unfollow, putting me back at square one. Unless, of course, the feeds I've picked up pick me up in return, which has happened...just once...today. Meaning that I am no longer the sole follower of @dallascoffee.

Although I've used twitter for quite a while now, tagging is new to me. My @laurie_gold tweets are meant for family, friends, acquaintances, and those involved with books, publishing, and the like. Today I realized if I find a way to condense my tweets even more so that I can fit in "#coffeeparty" within the allotted 140 characters, my @dallascoffee tweets will get picked up and read by others searching for tweets on the Coffee Party, which is what happened earlier when I tweeted a link to the NYT on financial reform.

Now, back to the Facebook page for a moment...and the multiple admins. As it stands, there is no distinguishing which admin posted to the page - until now. In learning how to handle my new Droid phone, I've gone back and forth between using Facebook's "full site" in non-mobile mode and the mobile app because I'm still learning the ins and outs of copying and pasting on various apps. Today I discovered that when I post to the Dallas Facebook page for the Coffee Party using the full-site method, my icon is the generic cup of coffee. But, when I post using the Droid app, my personal icon is what appears after I hit the "share" button.

That still leaves one issue hanging out there - the ability to change the default on the Dallas Coffee Party Facebook page so that the "Info" page rather than "Wall" is where visitors land. It seems to me that if we want to actually use the twitter feed and this blog to their utmost, we need to direct people here.

For instance, I'd love to properly publicize the showing at the Angelika on the 28th of the documentary film release Captain Jack and the United States of Money, to direct readers to the Facebook RSVP page. I'd love to use this blog not only to publicize events and meetings, but to use it as a forum to talk about issues in a unique way to promote discussion.

I'd like to continue posting articles like the two I wrote earlier in the week. I believe that by making connections others may not necessarily leap to, I can educate and inform without being pedantic or partisan. But if nobody's here to read the content, what, really, is the point? It becomes nothing but mental masturbation.

Facebook is a terrific and easy way to introduce a concept, but as a way to motivate and mobilize, so far I've been unable to tap its potential. If you can help me figure it out, please do, either by commenting here, or through an email up at Facebook. In the interim, for those looking for something substantive and tangible, here is an urgent notice from the national Coffee Party page on Facebook, followed by local Event Listings, their links, and some detail:

Join the Coffee Party Movement
URGENT: We have at least one more day to convince our senators to support the Merkley-Levin Amendment. Lobbying from the Big Banks are at a fever pitch in DC right now because this amendment spells real reform. It would ensure that American tax payers don't guarantee Wall St banks' risky bets and would stop banks from engaging in Goldman-Sachs-style bets against their own clients. Let's put (202) 224-3121 on speed dial and call: Klobuchar-MN, Nelson-NE, Brown-MA, Landrieu-LA, Lugar-IN, Corker-TN, Alexander-TN, Bayh-IN, Lugar-IN, Snowe-ME, Collins-ME, Hagan-NC, Warner-VA, Schumer-NY, Gillibrand-NY #coffeeparty

Captain Jack & the United States of Money A documentary about Jack Abramoff	5321 Mockingbird Ln. Dallas, TX 75206 Friday, May 28th from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Leadership Training For those interesting in hosting a Coffee Party event	Fish City on Henderson, Dallas, TX Saturday, May 22nd from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm

Help spread the word about these pertinent events and notices, make plans to participate somehow, and forward the link for this blog entry to other Dallas Coffee Party members.

~Laurie G

What if You Gave a Coffee Party and Nobody Came? (Transferred from Short-Lived DCP blog)

What Lies Beneath? (Posted on Toe in the Water & short-lived DCP blog)

Today I read on the Huffington Post that according to USA TODAY, "Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency." Further, the newspaper reports that while personal income fell 2%, paid taxes dropped 23%, excluding Social Security. While it's true that spending has increased in order to help the country climb out of the recession, it's also true that among those polled by Gallup last month, those who believe taxes are too high are the same taxpayers whose taxes remain "near a 50-year low."

What lies beneath that sort of disconnect? Yesterday a YouTube video posted last September enjoyed a resurgence. The video, which features two candidates for Texas governor who belong to the secessionist movement, seem to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Indeed, what stuck in my mind as I watched it [again] was hearing Debra Medina announce, in response to shouts of "We hate the United States," that, "We are aware that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." Hearing Thomas Jefferson's words come out of this woman's mouth sickened me.

It was my daughter who actually alerted me to the video. She very much objected to the video's title at YouTube - Texas Filled With Insane Christian Republican Terrorists - particularly because the link was provided by one of the the other Dallas Coffee Party Movement admins on our Facebook page, and a core value of the Coffee Party Movement is to eliminate the name-calling that passes for political discourse these days.

I agree that the video's title was unnecessarily incendiary; its contents make the case without resorting to name-calling. That said, those heard on the video are actively shouting their hatred of the United States, bastardized the words of the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence, and by doing so advocated the violent overthrow of our government.

When George Bush took office, the projected 10-year budget surplus he inherited became a deficit that ballooned as a result of tax cuts combined with increased spending, as well as two unfunded wars, one of which was supposed to pay for itself. Interestingly, the same individuals now calling for the blood of tyrants and patriots to water the tree of freedom, were not doing so until Barack Obama was elected president.

It seems to me that the vehemence directed against Obama's "socialist" government grew out of proposed health care reform. In March on my personal blog, I wrote that in the rest of the developed world, citizens share health care while in the U.S. it's something we horde. They see it as a basic human right while we see it as a privilege, even though nearly 2/3 of personal bankruptcies, historically, are a result of medical bills. Could it be that all the money the health care industry spent lobbying Congress and with advertising aimed at the public against reform were successful in convincing the same people who believe their taxes are too high that, as reported in Salon, "healthcare reform helped 'other people' and not themselves"?

I can't help but wonder whether "other" is coded language that feeds into the worst impulses of a certain segment of Americans, perhaps those who preach that "others" don't have "small-town values." Is what lies beneath...black?

If you feel so inclined as to comment, please do so on the Coffee Party Blog...I'm hoping somebody will actually visit. It's very, very lonely!

What Lies Beneath? (Posted on Toe in the Water & short-lived DCP blog)

Corporate Fascism? (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

Earlier today a headline caught my eye on Larry Hardy's Facebook page. The summary read: As a nation, we have officially ventured down the rabbit hole of big corporate spending in political campaigns, as a Texas company recently placed the first campaign ad paid for solely by corporate profits. I clicked the link and read the full article at The Wonk Room.

Because blogs often mix opinion with straight reporting, I did a Google search to find additional reporting from newspapers and news magazines. There wasn't any that I could find. The second page of results that included blogs large and small, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and Newser, among others, I found a link to a transcript from CNN dated April 26th; further investigation into the owner of the Texas company revealed a link to The Houston Chronicle.

Details from both cable network's transcripts and the Houston newspaper match what The Wonk Room blogger wrote about, which is that for the first time, a company's profits were used to pay for political ads - in this case, against incumbent Chuck Hopson, who holds the East Texas 11th seat in the State Legislature. The company, KDR, is a real estate business whose owner, Larry Durrett, also owns a franchise restaurant business. In 2006 Durrett ran, unsuccessfully, against Hopson.

Prior to the Supreme Court's January ruling in the Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission case, which overthrew a 63-year-old precedent, this would not have been allowed under Texas law. After the Court's 5-4 ruling in favor of Citizen's United, the Texas Election Commission sanctioned unlimited political spending by corporations...and unions. A March 27th editorial in the Chronicle indicates that such spending can't be coordinated with candidate campaigns, although "joint efforts would be difficult to prove." Further, the editorial noted that "The content of Durrett's ads are notably similar to campaign pieces by Hopson's opponents."

Although in this instance Hopson defeated Durrett, many legal scholars and political scientists are convinced that corporate influence, most often felt these days through lobbyists (a substantial chunk of the $3.47 billion spent lobbying Congress last year was against health care), will grow even stronger. According to the editorial, "In the brave new world of post-Citizens United, multi-million-dollar corporate media blitzes directed against opponents for either personal or political reasons could become the norm." What the Court decided in January moves us one step closer to what I consider corporate fascism. Mussolini's definition of fascism, FWIW, is a merger of State and corporate power. What do you think?

In response to the January decision, Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen, joined by Republican Mike Castle, introduced a bill that would, among other things, require CEO's to appear in political ads, and to inform company shareholders about political spending. If I've read correctly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes the Congressmen are over-reacting. What say you?

~Laurie G

Corporate Fascism? (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

Confusion Reigns

I joined the Coffee Party Movement in March, as did thousands of other people. It's easy, really...you press a button on Facebook and, voilà, you're a member. How to translate that membership into something substantial is a lot more difficult, for a variety of reasons: 1) The mission is amorphous (how does one translate "good government" into action?); 2) Grassroots organizations require more effort from the bottom; and 3) The original head of the movement for Dallas became overwhelmed by the enormity of her commitment, dropped out without asking for help, and left everyone floundering and trying to pick up the pieces. As a result, after ten or twelve local meetings in March and April, there was just one in May. Instead of fifteen to forty in attendance at each of those meetings, there were just six of us - including my now-adult daughter - at lunch yesterday.

While at the meeting I realized if I wanted the Coffee Party Movement in Dallas to succeed, I'd actually need to get off my ass and do something. The Coffee Party is thriving throughout all of Texas...but not in Dallas. So I decided to use my skill set as a writer and Internet guru by creating a new blog and setting up a[nother] Twitter account, specifically to communicate with the hundreds of people who have clicked that Dallas Coffee Party Facebook button.

After leaving lunch yesterday, I was supposed to have come home and read a rush book to review for PW by Monday (it arrived at my house on Friday). I didn't. Instead, I set up the bones of the new blog - Dallas Coffee Party - and wrote the first post. Then I left for work, and in the ten minutes before starting my shift, I set up the new Twitter account - @dallascoffee. It quickly became confusing. I'd thought if I input my @laurie_gold user name and password for one of my Droid's Twitter apps, and my info for the @dallascoffee using another, I could just click whichever app I needed depending on which account I was going to tweet from...so far I've not been able to get that to work. Equally confusing regards actual content for each blog - and what to tweet to each of the Twitter accounts as well. I'll be working with various Coffee Party members to suss out what to post on the other blog, but does that mean I should stop posting anything political here? The Coffee Party strives to be political but not partisan, and because most of my political tweets are simply links to newspaper articles, they can be tweeted from one and retweeted to the other, but other than that, I'm feeling more than a little Sybil right now.

As I wrote in my initial post to the Dallas Coffee Party blog yesterday, it's going to be an experiment, and the experiment will spill over onto Toe in the Water. Please be patient as I muddle through.

Confusion Reigns

An Experiment (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)

In March, I did something I'd not done since the late 1980s...got off my rear and decided to do more than give money to causes I believed in. As an individual with an advanced degree in public administration whose first career was in municipal management, I'm a strong believer that government is not evil. It's not the problem. It's part of the solution, and we are government - or should be. Tired of all the yelling that passes for political discourse these days, I decided to join the Coffee Party Movement. That was the easy part.

It's incredibly easy to press a Facebook button and join a cause, be part of a movement, or proclaim your allegiance to something or somebody. It's a lot more time-consuming - and frustrating - to accomplish something. And with a mandate as amorphous as cooperation and participation in government so that it expresses our collective will and addresses our challenges in a civil and positive manner, it's all the more difficult. How to translate a wish for "good government" into action?

I attended a planning meeting in March, then one of the hundreds of local meetings held throughout the country. The planning meeting made the local news and another of the local meetings did as well. Though attendance at the first meeting was high, and even higher for the second, for today's meeting there were a grand total of six of us in attendance...and as far as I know it was the only group to meet in Dallas county. While the movement remains strong and vital as near as Fort Worth, it's died in Dallas, and I'm one of those committed to reviving it. I decided my skill set would be best used in communicating with Dallas area members via this blog and through a Twitter account I've yet to set up.

This will be an experiment, for me, and for those of you who decide to participate by reading this blog, posting to the local or national Facebook page, or deciding to attend or even lead a local meeting in the future. I've included the movement's official mission statement, a link for those who'd like to sign the civility pledge (it's a jump link because the pledge is hosted on the national site...click it and a new browser window will open, allowing you to toggle back and forth), and activated sharing and subscribing abilities for those who are interested. Next will come links, and then the blog structure should be complete, and the real hard work of communicating will begin.

That's where you come in. As a grassroots organization, we are all responsible for determining our direction, but at the same time, many policy issues are time-sensitive, which means that among movement members locally and nation-wide, we need coordination. I'll be up front and share that the topic of most interest to me is campaign finance reform in light of the January's Supreme Court decision that under the First Amendment, Congress may not bar corporations and unions from using their own money to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates for office. But right now banking reform is number one on the to-do list because of on-going congressional hearings. In fact, there's a documentary film showing at the Angelika Mockingbird in the very near future that we hope you'll consider attending.

Look forward to more from me on that in upcoming days, but please, please, please, share your interests as well. Comment at will. I've blogged, run discussion lists, forums, and websites since the mid-1990s and feel well able to keep my ego in check. I plan to be a two-way conduit of information more than anything else, and that won't work without your participation.

~Laurie G

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Sunday, May 9: @dallascoffee set up and Twitter widget added to the right column of this page. Please spread the word about the blog and the Twitter feed...feel free to use the "share this" links following each entry and the right column. Look for some substance Tuesday.

~Laurie G

An Experiment (Transferred from short-lived DCP blog)