Rants of Rob

Progressive Politics and Culture

Posts Tagged congress

Well, They Certainly Showed Me…

Mar 22

Posted by Rob Field in Politics | No Comments

I owe this President and Congress a sincere apology. They delivered a serviceable bill under the most adverse circumstances imaginable. The most egregious lies were widely peddled and believed. The largest news organization in the world was relentlessly trying to get Americans to believe that passing this bill would spell the end of Western civilization. Lunatics were toting military-style rifles outside town halls next to signs promising bloody revolution. Ordinary people were equating a rather tame package of reform with Socialism, Communism, Nazism.

Ending the practice of working families putting off treatment for serious disease until they reach the point of crisis will save families, employers and government untold billions. Getting and keeping Americans insured will help rein in costs. We will now begin to turn the corner on the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

There is much to regret in the compromises that went into this bill, but its defeat would have spelled the death of reform hopes. Now we need to line up behind Rep. Alan Grayson’s Medicare You Can Buy Into Act. This is not the end, but it is the end of the age when serious reform could be seen as unrealistic. It is for this reason that I am filled with hope.

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Slavin again? (groan)

Dec 1

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 1 Comment

In his incoherent scree …, I mean in his blog: “Clean Up St. Augustine,” shrill noisemaker Slavin returns for more silliness:

Yet ROB FIELDS ululates as only a wannabee apparatchik can, like a hog caught under a gate.

Why do the heathen rage?

Because Faye Armitage is “the real deal” and HEATHER BEAVEN is a fake, just like CLYDE MALLOY before her. Like CLYDE MALLOY, BEAVEN seems like a “Stealth” candidate, with no detectable pre-existing positions that would make one believe she is a Democrat.

Is HEATHER BEAVEN a shameless opportunist?

With some of the same staff (and funders), FIELDS is mistaken to dubBEAVEN “the frontrunner” when no one has ever voted for BEAVEN, and 2008 Democratic nominee Faye Armitage earned nearly 150,000 votes last year against reprobate Representative JOHN LUIGI MICA for the Seventh Congressional District race.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.
Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.
What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.
It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?
Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, clearing the field for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.
Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.

Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.

What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.

It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?

Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, making it more difficult for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.

Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

By the way, my name is “Field,” not “Fields.” It’s written right in the comment field and everything. I already knew you can’t write, but I thought even a disbarred attorney could read.

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The Myth of Bipartisanship

Oct 6

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 2 Comments

225px-Alan_GraysonWe have been assaulted for more than a year with the most extreme claims about the President. He was a secret extremist Muslim, we were told. No, a radical black supremacist Christian, wait, a socialist terror sympathizer. When he won the election last fall, I was stupid enough to believe that the rhetoric had peaked. Hah!

When he proposed the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, he carefully adhered to his campaign pledge of apolitical politics. He sat the “stakeholders” (vested financial interests, not the patients whose lives were at stake) at the table and gave away the winning run before kickoff. Single-payer proposals that would have improved standards of care, controlled costs, and guaranteed universal access were abandoned in favor of a wishy-washy “public option” that would accomplish none of those things. He declared again and again his intention to reach a “bipartisan” deal with Republicans in Congress, bending over backwards to avoid pissing off conservatives.

So, of course, town halls across America were surrounded by gangs of lunatics toting guns, warning of looming totalitarianism, and comparing our soft-spoken moderate President to Hitler. The lunacy was not limited to the parking lots, either. Republican lawmakers were gleefully spreading sleaze about “death panels” and decrying Democrats’ non-existent intention to “pull the plug on Grandma.” So much for the tone.

So, when Congressman Alan Grayson suggested that the Republicans’ Health Care Plan was for sick people to “die quickly,” I was shocked to hear Republicans complain about the incivility of it all. What national debate on health care were they watching? Perhaps they had stepped through an inter-dimensional rift from a parallel Earth where they had not spent the summer inciting domestic terrorists to kill Democratic politicians.

Congressman Grayson’s remark was relatively civil, by the standards of this debate. It was also relatively factual. Although prone to superficial stunts, Mr. Grayson’s commitment to his constituents is undeniable. He is rightly concerned about a monstrously dysfunctional health care system that is simply unsustainable.  The loss of life from our broken system is equivalent to 15 9-11s every year. This is an absurd and intolerable situation, and the Congressman’s edgy rhetoric is more than justified. While the Republicans chase phantom nightmares of totalitarianism, Americans are subjected to a kafkaesque labyrinth of insurance company rules as they watch their husbands and wives, their children and brothers, their fathers, sisters and mothers die when basic medical care could have saved their lives.

Courageous Progressives like Mr. Grayson are to be congratulated, but more importantly, they need our support. Please make sure the Republicans can’t knock him off next year by donating today.

Forget bipartisanship. To steal from Aaron Sorkin, our job is not to end the fight. It’s to win it. Hundreds of thousands of lives are in the balance, as is the economic security of our nation.

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Seventh District Candidates’ Forum

Aug 5

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 4 Comments

Tonight, in Daytona Beach, the three Democratic candidates for Congress in Florida’s Seventh District spoke to a handful of Progressive Democrats. Well, two of them did.

Stephen Bacon entered the venue seemingly confused by the existence of other candidates for the nomination and it went downhill from there. Before the candidates were scheduled to speak, he was trying to speak over the PDA organizer who was running the meeting. He was asked to yield the floor and advised that he would have a chance to address the meeting along with the other candidates. Instead of ceding the point, he chose to argue. When the organizer’s father confronted him for his rudeness, he chose to leave. “Bacon fried himself tonight,” said Lisa Walker, Beaven’s campaign manager.

First to speak was Heather Beaven, the Palm Coast education activist. She spoke for five minutes, covering her biography and making the case that her bio gave her a better grasp of the issues than the out-of-touch Washington crowd. She fielded questions about single-payer health care (she’s for it) and tax policy (she has no litmus test for tax reform, but she’s pro-unfunded-mandate reform and concerned that PAYGO could be abused by conservatives) She was coherent and concise.

Next to speak was Faye Armitage, the 2008 nominee for the Seventh District seat. Her message was more fragmented, blending a laundry list of policies with a half-formed argument that her background as an economist presented an alternative to the out-of-touch Washington crowd. (See a pattern?) Still, this was a clear improvement over her performances in the 2008 cycle, and her more Progressive issue positions were a better fit for the room than the somewhat more centrist Mrs. Beaven.

The room was well to the left of the majority of Primary voters, however, and the evening did nothing to reverse my impression that Beaven is the more likely choice to beat John Mica in 2010.

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Just In Case You Thought I Was Being Unfair To Stephen Bacon …

Jul 8

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 1 Comment

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Party at Flagler Airport! Woot! Woot!

Jul 7

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

Heather Beaven at Announcement SpeechOn Tuesday night, Heather Beaven had her announcement event at Flagler County Airport for the Seventh District House seat. The unfulfilled threat of rain moved the venue from the steps of the Flagler Courthouse to a bar on the edge of the airport. About a score of supporters showed up, sprinkled with seven staffers and volunteers. The candidate’s husband introduced the first speaker, the chairman of Beaven’s thesis committee, Henry Thomas.

Dr. Thomas praised Ms. Beaven’s intelligence, tenacity and integrity, then Mrs. Beaven spoke. She has an unusual style of combining soft Midwestern tones with chopped, two-step cadences. Her speech was a mixture of folksy idealism and polished rhetoric. She is an appealing person, coming off as relaxed and warm among the small cluster of supporters and friends. It’ll be interesting to see if more challenging circumstances bring out her harder side.

Speech over, the serious business of the evening commenced. Beaven’s campaign manager, Lisa Walker, hit up her supporters for contributions. Her supporters accepted the contribution envelopes noncommittally. Mario Piscatella, a between-jobs politico described by Beaven as “not really” staff and “not exactly” a volunteer seemed to be more-or-less running the event’s set-up, but after the speech focused on networking, eager to speak with a potential seeker for state-wide office. Beaven’s Stetson interns were there in force.

Beaven’s campaign is strong by recent standards in the Seventh. Ms. Walker has kept her Stetson crew in place while recruiting other young politically active people like Mr. Piscatella and Frank Karbassis. Beaven definitely has the beginnings of a campaign here. If she begins to raise money aggressively, she could do the impossible and send John Mica to K Street where he belongs. The evening, while not earth-shattering by any means, was very different from the stealth campaigns of Silva and Armitage and the strange ego trip of Stephen Bacon.

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Giving Up Before The Ball Is Snapped

Jun 30

Posted by Rob Field in Politics | No Comments

Here we go again

used with permission of the artist, "Tom Tomorrow"

America is facing a health care crisis, and Democratic leaders seem aware of it, but have decided that conceding every policy point to the Republicans before the legislative process begins is the best approach for achieving meaningful reform. That way, when Blue Dogs and the GOP push back, Congress can produce a meaningless, watered-down placebo perfect for giving the appearance of action while 22,000 continue to die unnecessarily every year. It makes me proud to be an American.

It started when our post-political President developed the framework of reform by inviting the insurance companies to hand over their wish list: mandates for coverage, no restrictions on anti-competitive business practices, and the ability to cherry-pick young healthy people out of the system while dumping everyone else into a public program that will eventually have to shut down for lack of funds. Congressional leaders then showed remarkable courage by placing the most meaningful reform option off the table: no nasty single-payer system. After all, a policy supported by only 59 percent of Americans absent any positive propaganda whatsoever is clearly a pie-in-the sky political non-starter. How dare 300 million mere citizens and taxpayers think that their lives and health are more important than the profits of tens of thousands of shareholders (i.e., people who matter)? The nerve of this rabble!

So instead of stupidly solving the problem of preventable disease, spiraling costs, 50 million uninsured, and about 75 million more insured in name only by risk-pooling and lifetime coverage, our paladins of Change are wisely choosing to construct another giant giveaway to industry sure to move this nation’s insolvency date just a little closer. Boy, I sure am glad none of those unrealistic nut-jobs were able to derail this sober political process!

After all, it worked for Global Warming!

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Back For Another Round?

Jun 29

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 2 Comments

Former Stem-Cell Activist and 2008 US House nominee Faye Armitage

Faye Armitage, the 2008 Democratic US House nominee who raised $32,929 and suffered a twenty-four point defeat to Seventh District Congressman  and all-around parasite John Mica, told me tonight that she is still “testing the waters” and that her decision would hinge on how successful her fund-raising efforts were. She did not choose to quantify her money test, nor to comment on the persistent rumors about her decision to drop out of the race.

No Democrat, however well-funded, has made a dent in John Mica since 1992, so Ms. Armitage is not to blame for the size of her defeat, but I fail to see what has changed since 2008 to change her fund-raising chances. John Mica will run a campaign specifically designed to deny an opponent the chance to confront him in public. He has the backing of the business community and of his Party and will point to the truckloads of pork he has shipped into the District. In the lower-turnout race likely to happen in 2010, there will be only a small number of votes on the table and DPI will be under 40%.

When the Florida Legislature redraws District boundaries for the 2012 cycle, Mica, if still in office, will have an opportunity to retire gracefully and hand a safe seat to another right-wing water-carrier for business interests. This is probably the best chance for a Democrat to poach the seat before 2016 or 2018. If Armitage can build a fund-raising and message team capable of closing the name-recognition, culture and ideological gaps that stand between her and the District’s swing voters, then I wish her well. But not yet seeing a difference in tactics between cycles, I’ll suspend judgment.

None of the Democrats that have run against Mica since 2002 have had any record of elected office, so they faced a name-recognition and credibility gap that made the already-difficult task of knocking off an incumbent almost impossible. We all want to see an insurgent, small-donor campaign beat a troglodyte like Mica, but a Party hack who’s paid her dues would have a real shot and not simply be fighting the good fight.

The one veteran politican to come anywhere this race was four-term former State Rep. Joyce Cusack, who rumor has it, had contemplated a run. I suspect that if the DCCC targets the seat for its Red-to-Blue project to flip poachable Republican seats, Cusack and other candidates would enter the race. Or maybe it would be the other way around.

There are, of course, three other Democrats running for the seat, two announced and filed and one testing the waters. But Peter Silva, Stephen Bacon and Heather Beaven are all political newcomers. Beaven seems most able to sell a compelling narrative, but even she could do everything right, get every available dollar, and still be defeated by low DPI, low turnout, the name recognition gap, a free-media drought, and good old-fashioned public apathy and ignorance. Meanwhile, of course, many local Republican State Legislators are going unopposed.

I’m continually amazed that anyone chooses to run in this kind of race, and I’ve been right there with a few insurgent candidates myself. I admire them, but I wish I could inject some of my hard-nosed perspective into their decision to run and for which office. I wish they could understand, as I do, that these races are less tests of ideology and character than numbers games.

Of course, if everybody were Party hacks, I wouldn’t be in the Party …

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Retire John Mica

Jun 27

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

Some of the finest folks I’ve met are lobbyists.

-John Mica

Our Representative in Congress!John Mica, one of the most retrograde of the pay-to-play brigade, is running for reelection again. This is a man who believes that women should die rather than receiving abortions that could save their life. He pushed to get pork for his campaign contributors into the stimulus bill, then voted against it. He wants to cut taxes across the board and increase spending, as if we weren’t bleeding red ink catastrophically. He wants to increase the maximum allowable contribution to federal candidates in an age when working Americans can’t even get in the door to the legislative process. This oligarch is a living insult to the tens of millions of Americans struggling to survive in the wreckage of an economy rigged in favor of the special interests Mica loves so dearly.

Yet, inexplicably, in every one of the four campaigns I have worked on to defeat this man, multiple people have pulled me aside to explain in  hushed tones, “you realize that Mica is unbeatable, right?” He is accorded magical properties. I’ve seen enough politics to know that it contains no magic. A strong candidate with a coherent and resonant message can beat this man. Barack Obama may have lost the district (by three points, a rain shower would have tipped it in his favor), but people are frightened now in a way in which most of them have never been scared before. The American way of life seems to be collapsing around our heads, and John Mica continues to whistle a happy tune.

The good news is that, unlike in 2004, Mica is not running unopposed. (Amended 6/29: Faye Armitage, the 2008 Democratic US House nominee who raised $32,929 and suffered a twenty-four point defeat to … Mica, told me tonight that she is still “testing the waters” and that her decision would hinge on how successful her fund-raising efforts were. She did not choose to quantify her money test, nor to comment on the persistent rumors about her decision to drop out of the race.)

Three declared and two filed candidates have come forward, all Democrats. Stephen Bacon, an accountant, originally filed as an Independent before amending his Statement of Candidacy to change his party affiliation to Democrat. His issue is education, an idiosyncratic choice for a Congresional candidate. He has done little or nothing to campaign. I breathe Seventh District Democratic politics, and I’ve never met the man. Not a good sign. (I met Stephen today at the Volusia County Women’s Democratic Club Picnic and he was not education-focused, instead offering a complex policy proposal involving accounting rules and a “For the People” tagline)

Peter Silva, a retail bank branch manager, is somewhat more promising. A former vice-chair of the St. Johns DEC, he has been knocking on doors in St. Johns County, trying to close off the home territory of Faye Armitage, 2008’s sacrificial lamb. He is intelligent and dedicated, but plodding, a poor quality for this race. He has yet to build a team, and his de facto campaign manager, formerly briefly of the Armitage campaign, lives in California. He is hesitant on personnel matters, which is a particular problem when viewed in light of the next candidate.

Set to file on July 1 and to announce on July 7, Heather Beaven is a non-profit CEO and Navy veteran who has made an interesting choice for her campaign manager.

(full disclosure: Beaven’s campaign manger is my girlfriend, but the candidate and I are not friendly at the moment, my having left her campaign.)

Lisa Walker is running the Beaven campaign after cutting her teeth on the grassroots Obama movement. In the course of that effort and her successful bid as an Obama delegate to the DNC last August, she built an extensive network of contacts throughout the district which she has plundered shamelessly for her candidate’s benefit. She has ransacked local schools, Stetson University in particular, for interns. Any candidate trying to build street teams is going to find the cupboard bare and a friendly note from Lisa. Fund-raising is going to be the rub as always, but this campaign will do better than the other two. If the campaign can build a coherent and appealing message, Beaven stands the best chance among the current candidates. She has an appealing personal story and an engaging retail style. She is energetic and dedicated.

The X factor is the body of persistent rumors concerning Joyce Cusack, the termed-out former 27th District State Rep. She would almost certainly win the nomination if she ran, but the demographics of the district do not favor her for the General. She seems more likely, absent an open seat, to run for State Senate.

I urge Progressives to support one of these candidates. Don’t send your money out of the district this cycle, folks. Mica needs to go down, and this our last crack before they re-Gerrymander the District.

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