Friday, August 08, 2003

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (left) says the "liberal" label doesn't stick to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (right). Dennis Kucinich: Howard Dean is a poser Dennis Kucinich, who is a darling among lefties but who has a snowball's chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, says that Howard Dean isn't liberal enough. The Associated Press story, in full, is as follows: Democrat Dennis Kucinich is challenging the positions of his presidential rivals, beginning with the candidate he considers the front-runner — Howard Dean. The Ohio congressman said Thursday that Dean has been labeled a liberal, a perception he dismisses. Both Dean and Kucinich entered the race as underdogs and have been outspoken opponents of the U.S.-led war with Iraq, but while Kucinich remains a long shot in the field of nine, Dean has become a leading contender. "His economics are anything but progressive," Kucinich said of Dean in a telephone interview. "So the question is: What constituency will he be representing in the White House?" Dean's insurgency has made him the object of increasing criticism. Moderate Joe Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut, said Monday that Dean's opposition to the war and his call to repeal President Bush's tax cuts are "a ticket to nowhere." Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright said if Lieberman is attacking Dean from the right and Kucinich from the left, "You know what that means — the American people think he's just right." Kucinich took his first shot at Dean in Tuesday night's presidential forum hosted by the AFL-CIO. Kucinich said the age to receive full Social Security benefits should return to 65, but pointed out that Dean has suggested raising the age to 70 or 68 in the past to help balance the budget. Dean says he no longer thinks an increase is necessary. He still wants to work toward a balanced budget, but says it can be done without raising the age or cutting defense spending if the economy improves. But Kucinich said if Dean wants to balance the budget without reducing the Pentagon's funding, he must take money from social programs. "If someone wants to be a fiscal conservative, a good place to start is the Pentagon budget and he's already taken it off the table," Kucinich said. "How in the world can you be for peace when you won't touch a Pentagon budget that needs war to expand, that needs war in order to justify itself?" Kucinich also took aim at rival, Dick Gephardt, issuing a statement criticizing the Missouri congressman for refusing to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement or the World Trade Organization. "If Democratic candidates will not commit to withdrawing from the fundamentally flawed NAFTA and WTO agreements, then who will protect workers and the environment?" Kucinich said. Gephardt spokeswoman Kim Molstre dismissed Kucinich's criticism. "I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that Dick Gephardt has always been an advocate and fighter for working families," she said. I'm not sure whether Kucinich has not voiced any criticisms of John Kerry or if the AP story just didn't include any such criticisms. In the online pre-Democratic primary conducted by the progressive Internet organization moveon.org in June, Dean was the winner, with almost 44 percent of the vote. Kucinich was No. 2, with almost 24 percent, and Kerry was No. 3, with almost 16 percent. The rest of the Democratic contenders got only single digits. In a poll of Salon bloggers I conducted last month, Dean was No. 1 at just over 40 percent, Kerry was No. 2 at just over 19 percent, and Kucinich came in at third place, with just over 11 percent. The rest of the contenders garnered only single digits. 4:40:31 PM    Comments []

Al Gore addresses about 600 people at New York University in a speech sponsored by moveon.org on Aug. 7. Quote unquote "...Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth. "The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas. "There are at least a couple of problems with this approach: "First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.... "Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.... "Here is the pattern that I see: the president's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals. "In each case, the president seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances. "The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle. "For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.... "And speaking of the Patriot Act, the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights that twice have been documented by his own inspector general. And while he's at it, he needs to reign in Donald Rumsfeld and get rid of that DoD 'Total Information Awareness' program that's right out of George Orwell's 1984.... "For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.... "I am proud that my party has candidates for president committed to those values. I admire the effort and skill they are putting into their campaigns. I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them, because I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions." -- Al Gore, Aug. 7, 2003 3:23:59 PM    Comments []