PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

its been suggested that we use this blog as a forum for brainstorming the future of progressive democrats of hawaii. seeing as i seem to have an abundance of free time during the evenings these days, i thought i’d start.

first let me tell you about my history with and dedication to PDH.

i happened to come along just as the organization was getting started and it seemed like a great opportunity for me to get involved. i jumped in with both feet, helped draft the organization’s by-laws and ran for the steering committee as soon as i had the chance. i didn’t get elected the first time around, but continued to work. (more…)

in a recent new york times/cbs news poll, reuteres reports, 85% of respondents

wanted major healthcare reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance.

this is HUGE. most people usually respond to the notion of higher taxes with some level of annoyance or anger. but in this case, the opposite seems to be the case. while i don’t know that we have obama to thank for the results of this poll, though. instead, i think people understand, as some fundamental level, that real and major changes are need to fix our health care system. (more…)

i’ve been made aware of an excellent movie premiere here in honolulu on june 26th at the blaisdell concert hall.

i’ll let the preview, which is powerful in its own right, speak for itself. i will suggest, however, that PDH try to get as many people together as possible and go as a group.

I’ve followed the progress of the civil unions bill from the beginning of the session and cannot believe how things ended up! As a resident of the beautiful aloha state, I am ashamed of our state legislature for denying, once again, the rights of a minority class of their constituents.

How cruel, insensitive, cowardly, and short sighted can our state legislators be?

I know many people, gay and straight, old and young, rich and poor, secular and religious, who believe in not only civil unions but full marriage equality. And yes, Representatives and Senators, they vote!

It is my impression that, while House Bill 444, Senate Draft 1 is technically still alive next session, it is effectively dead, because if our Senators couldn’t muster the guts to get it done this year, I find it incredibly hard to believe that they’ll get anywhere near the issue next year, in an election year. Oh yes, heaven forbid our elected officials stand for something important and substantial… I mean other than their own reelection, that is. For shame!

I believe it is important to lay the blame on those most directly responsible for the death of this bill. Some at the Capitol would have you believe the bill died because Senators were working diligently and tirelessly to find a compromise, find a good amended bill that works for both sides. As you might imagine that’s a lie on a number of levels.

First, HB444 WAS a compromise. Only same-sex marriage ensures full equality. Civil Unions is a reasonable compromise as a step toward that full equality. Second, had the Senate leadership been truly intent on proposing an amended bill, they would have. Colleen Hanabusa and Donna Mercado Kim wield an enormous amount of power and if they had put half as much effort into finding good amended language as the put into avoiding a floor vote and killing the bill, they would certainly have gotten it done. Instead, the spent that energy and time obfuscating the truth and breaking arms (not literally, but it sounds like pretty close).

I could go through each and every stupid lie, every careless and nasty step they took during the session, but there’s really just one that I feel needs to be addressed, one that hasn’t, as far as I am aware, that hasn’t been addressed publicly.

And that is Colleen and Donna’s threats to kill Capital Improvement Projects (CIPs) in the districts of those Senators who were inclined to support civil unions and equal rights. Yes, that’s rights. The rights of some of the residents of this state were TRADED for cash! Evidence of this can be found in the timing of the eventual and successful recall motion. Once the deadline for passing those bills had passed, Senate leadership lost its short-term leverage against well-intended Senators.

I was appalled when I heard this, but sadly, not surprised. Politics in this country and in this state is more a game of money and power than it is about truly improving people’s lives. It was clear almost as soon as HB444 stalled in committee that Colleen and her pals would stop at nothing to keep the bill from a floor vote.

I implore those who have better evidence of this than I to go to the papers. This is a story that MUST be told! I don’t believe either Colleen or Donna are up for reelection this year, but the word is that Mrs. Senate President intends to run for higher office, most likely either the U.S. House seat vacated by Congressman Abercrombie, or the Governorship. I call on the residents of this state who are horrified by these tactics to challenge Colleen in whatever race she chooses to run.

We must send a signal to our elected officials that they cannot play politics with people’s lives, with people’s rights. We must find a way to hold Colleen and Donna accountable for their deplorable actions.

Having said that, we must do all we can to support those senators who voted for both recall motions. We need to thank and shower with praise those senators and represenatives that have supported this bill from the beginning. They absolutely deserve our respect and thanks.

President Obama Today Has Nominated Jesus Christ to the Supreme Court.

Republicans Plan Filibuster

AP Monday, May 4, 2009

President Barack Obama has announced the nomination of Jesus Christ to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

Republicans hastily called a press conference to announce outrage at the selection, and announced a filibuster.
“Some say he talks with prostitutes” said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky.) Newt Gingrich fumed, “He’s from the Middle East and could have some ties with terrorism that we don’t know about”. “I’ve heard he’s a wino and gets a little crazy at weddings”, said Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, adding “he even claims he changes water into wine”.“He probably was drunk as a skunk when he had that delusion”, said guest windbag Ann Coulter. Republican leader Rep. John Boehner said that photos he saw suggest that Mr. Christ is untidy in appearance and apparently goes for weeks without shaving. “Personal hygiene is important, he insisted”. He also noted that the nominee is in his thirties and still single. “It shows a lack of family values. Or perhaps he’s just not interested in women”, Boehner added, with a wink and a nasty sarcastic smile.
Even more troubling is his politics. “Oh, he’s a liberal alright”, said conservative Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “I mean, ……. all this talk about loving thy neighbor and forgiveness. That’s just that kind of sissy talk that will invite another terrorist attack”. “We don’t need another human rights respecting wimp on the high court”, he said. Chairman Michael Steele of the Republican National Committee said that Mr. Christ is nothing but a closeted socialist. It’s reported that Christ told some guy to sell all his things and give all the money to the poor. “Now really”, Steele added, “can you get more red than that?” Perhaps most offensive, the nominee reportedly refused to stone some floozy adulteress, which calls into question his dedication to our beloved death penalty laws, according to Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. “I wouldn’t trust him as a judge in a dog contest, much less for a seat on the Supreme Court”, Cornyn added.

There has been a flood of new information lately on “The Program” of warrantless wiretapping and torture conducted by the Bush administration (see The Torture Document Dump Timeline, by: emptywheel, Saturday April 25, 2009)

Lost in this blizzard of news has been the role played by our own Sen. Inouye. But his role has not escaped the notice of the intrepid Marcy Wheeler (aka “Emptywheel”) in one of her recent diaries, on Pelosi: Of Hidden Memos and Covert Ops Hidden in Supplementals

We know that BushCo briefed Toobz Stevens and Daniel Inouye on the warrantless wiretap program in December 2001. … I wonder if they got more substantive briefings than the Gang of Four?

…And finally, a point klynn and Sara have been making–the guys who did this torture were contractors, not CIA officers. Which means they only had to get Uncle Toobz and his buddy Inouye to approve a contract in an emergency supplemental. And voila! We’ve got state-sanctioned torture!

We need to find out what Sen. Inouye knows about these matters. Did he aid and abet the Bush Administration in what may be war crimes? What was his role?

(Blogger Emptywheel has been on a roll lately, having been cited twice by the New York Times and then by the Washington Post for her work exposing that Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in a month. She has recently been the subject of several online tributes at DailyKos and FireDogLake.)

Bob

Perhaps it’s already a lost cause, but the last I heard there might be another try to pull this out of committee for a full senate vote. I finally got off my lazy, procrastinating fanny and sent e-mails to the 6 senators who voted for this last time (thanks and please do it again), 12 who didn’t vote for it last time (please do it this time) and one to Hanabusa, reasonably politely expressing disappointment at a woman with political power voting against equality and suggesting that if she can’t vote for it, at least don’t sabotage it. Anybody’s guess if any of them will pay attention, or have the opportunity to act, but at least I have some satisfaction (and sore fingers) that I expressed an opinion and a request to the people with the power to do something.

This isn’t just to brag about what a good little campaigner I am, since I obviously am not. It’s a plea to others to do the same. This particular issue isn’t the kind of complicated thing Obama’s dealing with, with valid arguments for one side or the other or maybe 17 different sides. It’s a simple question of fairness and equality. The ‘agin’ side hasn’t, as far as I’ve heard, one scintilla of right, logic, common sense or practicality going for it, and some of the nonsense they’re spouting is just plain stomach-turning. Blocking legislation like this is simply codifying discrimination and bigotry and setting the law against people who have done nothing but be born with genetics different from the mainstream. Their orientation and lives in no way harm any of us in the mainstream; why are we so hysterical about this issue?

Women, people of color and many other sections of humanity have made great strides toward equality in American society. It’s long past time that we stop discriminating against sexual orientation, too.

Did any of you read the column in the Star Bulletin last Sunday by the Rev. Bob Nakata ?  He used to be in the Hawaii State Senate.  Now he is a pastor on the windward side of Oahu.  He said some thing you rarely hear any Hawaii pol say.  Such as the fact that we pay too LITTLE taxes.  He points out that earlier generations paid  more, a LOT more.  He notes that in hard economic times, the need for social services is often greater.  How can the government provide those services without enough money.  He makes the suggestion that hard times might be the most appropriate time of all to raise taxes.

He notes that our parents and grandparents endured much higher income tax rates in the 1960’s and 1970’s , rates that were in the 60% range, not the current 35% range of today’s workers.  Also, people from the so called “greatest generation”, who worked during the Depression and World War II era and it’s immediate aftermath paid income tax rates that could be 90% or more.  After WW II,  the U.S. had enormous debts to pay off from the sale of a huge amount of war bonds to finance the war.  And those Depression era make-work programs (WPA) had cost a lot of money to operate.

Sure the present low rates put a lot of money in circulation and generated jobs.  But we are now trillions in debts.  And we were trillions in debt ALREADY before all the recent spending.  We counted on future economy growth to lift us out of red ink. 

 But it didn’t work out that way, did it ?

Why is it that some other countries, like the Scandanavian countries, are not in such dire straits ?  Maybe it’s because they understood that if you want a country with a big social safety net, you have to tax appropriately.

Nakata suggests raising the federal income tax percentage rate to somewhere in the low forties from the present top rate of thirty five percent. He also suggests raising the sales tax here in Hawaii.  It hasn’t  been substantially raised in the 30 years that I have lived here.  The only exception was the raise to fund rail.  And even that was rather minor, just half a  percent, considering that other places pay a lot higher sales taxes.  New York City residents now pay over 8%.  I believe New Jersey residents are now paying 7%.  Maybe California wouldn’t be in such financial dire straights if it’s legislature had raised that  state ’s income tax rates, at least on the residents making over fifty or sixty thousand annually.

Will our elected officials ever muster the strength to tax appropriately ?

Only if we shame them into it.  And maybe not even then.

For those of you working on –or reflecting upon– the effort to pass HB444, and establish Civil Unions for same gender couples, here is powerful testimony in a speech given by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond at the Human Rights Campaign’s Gala Dinner this past Saturday, March 14, in Los Angeles.

Note: the speech is 25 minutes, but listen to the first several minutes and see if you are able turn away from this timely message.

This video should be required viewing for every senator wrestling over how to vote when a motion is made to pull the bill from committee for a vote by the entire Senate. Attempts to justify opposition to the bill based upon “procedural concerns” will stand exposed as just that, “excuses” for not doing what is just, what is “pono” and what is long overdue.

Senators, do the right thing. You will feel better about yourselves and your job.

The “A” in the PDH S.H.A.P.E.S. platform stands for Accountability and Justice for the Bush and Cheney administration. The national Progressive Democrats of America considers this part of their “Stop the War” priority, since most of the Constitutional excesses of the Bush & Cheney regime are related to the so-called “Global War on Terrorism.” That first priority begins:

End the War, Redirect Funding

PDA wants all troops withdrawn promptly, and war funds redirected toward social needs at home and humanitarian aid in Iraq. Toward that end, we call on the Democratic-led Congress to use its powers to 1) cut off funding that prolongs the military occupation of Iraq, and 2) fully investigate false White House claims justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If such investigations lead to moves toward impeachment, so be it.

(emphasis added.)

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