from E.J. Dionne, Jr.'s column yesterday in the WashPost and elsewhere. Pertinent to several threads up now--Genghis' "Obama's Budget Speech: Live Stream and Peanut Gallery", Ramona's "The People's Budget: Yes Virginia, There Are Decent Democrats", and David Coates' "The Danger of Losing the Plot So Early in the Play".
Ari Berman, reporting in the April 18, 2011 issue of The Nation, on Jim Messina, described by an associate as the most powerful person in Washington you've never heard of, and who will play a key role in Obama's re-election campaign.
Truth be told, some Democrats, too, including a lawyer friend of mine who worked for one of the agencies abolished by Dodd-Frank. When I saw him recently, after hearing him on the subject of Elizabeth Warren and the consumer ideologues he believes have been brought in to staff the agency she is presently de facto running in the absence of a confirmed head, I told him I'd love to get he and Warren in a room together and listen to the two of them...discuss. Elizabeth Warren may be the closest we have to someone fighting City Hall in this country who City Hall is actually slightly scared the
Having made an offhand remark in another thread (indicating that if the Virginia primary were held today and it was Obama and Sanders on the Democratic side, I'd vote for Sanders--still true as of today, BTW) I want to elaborate a bit, partly so as to do what I can to avoid being misunderstood.
There are others here who could write this post a lot better than I could. If I had the elementary technical skills to do so I'd paste in one of the iconic photographs of African American citizens being "pacified" or whatever Bull Connor thought he was doing with those fire hoses and police dogs. If I were a cartoonist I'd figure out a way to substitute in for the folks on the receiving end of those assaults on their dignity and humanity any of the many subgroups of middle-class, or once middle-class, and poor fellow citizens who are getting hammered--impersonally, usually, but no less me
The author, Diane Ravitch, is a noted historian of American education, was an Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush Administration, and is the author of a bestselling book on education reform, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (which I highly recommend, btw).
