Author: Cheri DelBrocco

THAT WAS THE FILIBUSTER THAT WAS

Step right up folks, the Big Top has come to Washington. Our nation’s capitol has been turned into an arena of absurdity. If you haven’t been watching, you have really missed quite a show. Ring Master Orin Hatch has kicked things off, while one of the best clowns on the floor is our esteemed Senator and Majority Leader Bill Frist. Cotton candy and balloons filled with hot gas should be available for the 30 hour extravaganza between Republicans and Democrats.

I had gotten pumped when hearing that finally, all one hundred Senators were going to get together in one place to discuss and deliberate. That over three million citizens are unemployed, that a majority of seniors can no longer afford their prescription drugs, that workers losing jobs daily to countries overseas, that growing numbers of families cannot survive with two incomes making minimum wage, and that 394 American soldiers have died while 2,298 have been wounded in Iraq surely were some of the subjects the leaders would be talking over.

But had the Senate pulled an all nighter to address any of these critical matters? Nooooo!! It was engaged in a fight over George W. Bush’s stalled judicial nominees. The Republican Senate’s proposterous attitude and inability to accept defeat precipitated a most ridiculous exercise in food fight governance. Grown men and women became ranting brats at the toy store check-out, “ It’s not fair! We want our judicial nominees to be confirmed and we want every single one of them to be confirmed – NOW!”

Republicans are enraged because Democrats this year have sustained filibusters against four of Bush’s most right wing federal court nominees. The other 168 candidates have been approved resulting in a 98 percent rate of confirmation; however, because Democrats have refused to approve four, Republicans have decided to demonstrate a marathon diatribe hissy fit.

The four nominees who have not been confirmed have controversial records on rulings regarding race, guns, and abortion. After long and rancerous deliberation, Democrats are exercising their right to withhold consent under the Constitution’s “advise and consent” clause. They have been advised by Bush but they are not giving consent. Republicans used the same Senatorial power during President Clinton’s tenure to block a total of 63 judicial nominees. After capturing the majority in Congress, they suddenly began to stress stridently that the nation was in a crisis and the need for judges was urgent. Perhaps is was, but they refused to explain which party had created the crisis; now that Democrats have refused to confirm only four nominess out of 168, the Republicans are apoplectic. Talk about rank hypocrisy!

So after all the stunts and flips are orchestrated for FOX news – after all the bellicose carping and whining – after all the angry name calling and arguing is over, what will happen? Republicans will seek a vote on Friday on a proposed rule change to effectively end fillibusters on nominations. Democrats probably have the votes to block it. The bloodshed in Iraq will go on. Millions of jobs will still be gone. Nothing will change.

So turn on C-Span, get out the peanuts and bring in the clowns. The folly has begun. Trust me, you won’t be laughing.

Governor Phil Bredesen, in Memphis for several functions, including fundraisers for both himself and State Senator Jim Kyle, receives token of appreciation from attendees at ceremony honoring Kyle (to Bredesen’s left) at Frayser’s Ed Rice Community Center Wednesday night.

TALENT MAGNET OR BRAIN DRAIN?

why do you live here? Or why don’t you live here?

Good questions, and not just conversation starters. More and more cities Ñ Memphis among them Ñ really want to know.

Because highly skilled, college-educated, mobile, young Americans have a choice. The buzz matters. And a consensus is growing that cities, like college football or basketball programs, can improve themselves and bring in a better recruiting class. They can either be “talent magnets” like Atlanta, Seattle, Austin, and Denver or fall into the dreaded “brain drain” ranks along with Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo.

Last weekend The Washington Post published a long two-part story on all of this. The lead, by writer Blaine Harden, was priceless: “In a Darwinian fight for survival, American cities are scheming to steal each other’s young.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a series on the “quiet crisis,” and The Denver Post did a similar story a week ago. The New York Times has a reporter in Memphis this week looking into the local Talent Magnet project.

Some of this reporting points out the obvious. Is it lost on anyone in the South that Atlanta long ago left Birmingham, Memphis, and Jackson in the dust? Or that Austin, Ann Arbor, and Oxford are above all college towns, and college graduates like college towns? There is more than a whiff of class and race bias when Detroit is compared to Minneapolis or Stockton, California to San Diego.

The underlying premise, however, is that a place’s destiny is not all in the demographic cards. Cities can prosper by reinventing themselves by not only the old method of recruiting industries and companies but by attracting talented people with well-endowed enterprise zones and quality of life features. Artists, writers, techies, musicians, and gays are the new coveted class. Creative people, in turn, will create the new companies and industries.

Memphis got into this game early on thanks largely to the efforts of The Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce and its partner Carol Coletta, creator and host of the syndicated public-radio program Smart City. The chamber has budgeted $1 million of its $7 million 2003 budget for its “talent strategy.”

Few cities are better suited to such an experiment than Memphis with its history of entrepreneurial companies, its population ebb and flow from white flight to downtown revival, its competition with Nashville, and especially its racial balance. Those lists of America’s “best cities” often look like America’s whitest cities. What works in Memphis has to be colorblind.

At the local level, it’s plain that some schools and neighborhoods are talent magnets. The county school system as a whole and Memphis optional schools like White Station High School and John P. Freeman Elementary are thriving. The performance gap between them and the have-nots grows wider every few years because under a choice policy many of the best-and-brightest students from all over cluster in the best schools.

The harder question is whether cities or even whole regions, like contestants on Joe Millionaire or Ordinary Joe, can primp and preen and in general make themselves more attractive. In her new book The End of Detroit, author Micheline Maynard (a recent guest on Smart City) describes how Kentucky and Tennessee and, more recently, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi lured American, German, and Japanese car manufacturers with cheaper labor and incentives. But industrial relocation and factory jobs aren’t the focus of the talent magnet and brain drain stories. The new recruiting targets individuals.

The upside is enormous, of course, if the catch is a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Southeastern Asset Management, Saturn or Dell. One Memphis entrepreneur has said that location, weather, airport infrastructure, political support and local ties were the main reasons he chose Memphis over Louisville and Nashville, “but if Nashville had come in and made a big pitch, who knows?” His name: FedEx founder Fred Smith.

The chamber of commerce says by its calculations Nashville is attracting newcomers much more successfully than Memphis. But the grass always looks greener somewhere else. Earlier this year, an editorial entitled “Nashville Population Declining” ran in the weekly Nashville Scene: “If you want something to get really worried about, chew on this: people are fleeing Nashville. . . In a nutshell, we’re losing rich folks and replacing them with smaller numbers of poor folks.”

If you haven’t noticed, reporters and university professors and business researchers get paid to spot trends and will do their damnedest to find them. When a lot of them simultaneously start producing thumbsuckers about a quiet crisis, sprawl without growth, a brain drain, or a talent magnet, it can only mean one thing. They’re on to something or they’re not. I happen to think they are, but then I’m a reporter.

COLOR OF CHOICE

I am blue. According to the ubiquitous map of Election 2000, I am a blue voter living in the land of red. Not just basic red— Crimson red. Blood red. Southern red. To put it mildly, things politically are looking dismal for Democrats living below the Mason-Dixon. Democratic Southern discomfort is at an all time high. But is it?

Okay. First, the reality. Since Senator Bob Graham of Florida won’t be seeking another term, Katherine”Cruella de Ville” Harris might be bankrolled by the Bushies as the next Senator from Florida. Senators Miller, Hollings, and Edwards – all Democratic Sons of the South- won’t be returning for more terms. Miller, the party’s Benedict Arnold, who has endorsed Bush for 2004, would not have made any difference anyway, but it might be close to impossible for Democrats to find replacements in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Haley “Newt-Gingrich-on-steroids” Barbour, the third biggest lobbiest in Washington, won the governorship of Mississippi while Kentuckians decided their governor should be the Republican ordained minister, Ernie Fletcher.

With all that bad news last Tuesday, I decided, by Wednesday, that it was time to do something. It was time to put down my copies of Bushwacked and Hey Dude, Where’s My Country?. It was time to get off the internet, out of the chat rooms, and on the telephone. It was time to stop listening to all the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX who said it appears America, because of the South, is becoming a one party country.. It was time to tune out, turn on, and join up.

I have faith in Americans and most especially, in my fellow Southerners. I refuse to believe everyone who lives in the South supports Bush’s plan of bringing the world war, without end, by calling for a “war on terror”. Southerners know the “war on poverty” and the “war on drugs”have never worked, so why would a “war on terror”? I don’t believe every voter from the South supports giving Bush a blank check for his defense contract buddies to use in Iraq and supports losing an average of three dozen soldiers a week. Many Southerners were sent to Vietnam and know a quagmire when they see one. And it is hard to believe that everyone in the South supports sending all the manufacturing jobs overseas, privatizing Medicare and Social Security, and bankrupting our economy by running up the country’s largest budget deficit. After all, it is the South who has benefitted most from domestic job growth and Federal government programs.

After experiencing a short lived depression, it was time to get with others in this community that know the Bush administration is taking the country down the wrong path. As a daughter of Dixie, it was time to restore my trust and optimism.

Good news! Hope for Democrats is so alive and well in Memphis, it is infectious. And I got a big whopping dose at the Dean for Memphis meet-up on Wednesday night. If you come to one of these grass-roots sessions, prepare to be taken out of your “I live in the South and it is a lost cause to Democrats” funk.

I attended the gathering after watching the CNN Rock-the-Vote debate that the media built into the “Dean debacle”. It was obvious to most that Howard Dean was saying Democrats need to become the party for everyone, especially Southerners, and most especially, Southerners who have been divided by Republicans on race, gun, and God issues. One might be led to think Dean would have lost his entire local group of support after the drubbing he received regarding his comments, but not only did Dean not fail to lose local support, at least 20 new devotees showed up. The students, teachers, homemakers, doctors, business-owners, lawyers, and FedEx workers I met that night understood exactly what Howard Dean meant. The African-American Ole Miss grad, who knows something about Confederate flag waving, and was new to the group, clearly agreed with what Dr. Dean was suggesting. Plans for victory were flying all over the place. Efforts for organizing were energetically and enthusiatically discussed. Passion was electric. Hope sprung eternal.

Historians tell us that political change never comes from the top down. It always comes from the ground up. The coming of a change like bermuda grass in a Memphis summer was being planned at the Dean for America meet-up. And hundreds of these meetings occur every first Wednesday of the month. I learned there is even a Dean for America group in Oxford, Mississippi. Now, that is inspiring!

Howard Dean says it is time to take our country back. He says it is time to take back America from political and corporate greed. It is time to take action in our neighborhoods, schools, and businesses. We have been lied to. We have been terrorized but we are also terrorizing. It is time to act, not just on hope, but on what we know to be true – that the direction we are going is the wrong one.

Senator John Edwards scolded Howard Dean about his comment regarding voters in the South.

He told him the last thing Southerners need is someone coming from somewhere else telling them what to do. Maybe so. But maybe what we really need is hope for change, some fire in the belly, and the desire to be blue.

A Response to Ed Weathers’ “The Relevant Quagmire:

There are a couple of problems with the column:

1. Fundamentally, the entire premise if flawed. In his article, Mr. Weathers contends that the same scenarios and circumstances that doomed the Soviets in Afghanistan will doom the United States in Iraq. The fundamental problem with his argument is that if that is true, why didn’t it work out that way when the United States invaded Afghanistan? The U.S. invaded the same place against the same fundamentalist group and took the place down in less than two months with less than 50 combat casualties. If Mr. Weather’s theory were true, it wouldn’t have happened that way. Some other thoughts:

2. Not only was the US and Britain just “involved” in the mujahadeen resistance, it provided tons of money, technology, weapons, and “advisors.” Without that support from major superpowers, the mujahadeen could not have fought the war for so long. This is exactly the same thing that happened in Viet Nam, except it was the Soviets that were underwriting the Viet Cong and NVA. There are no superpowers bankrolling this “resistance.” In fact, it’s not even a grass-roots Iraqi movement that is causing the problems. Thirty percent of the captured enemy combatants are mercenary Muslims from other parts of the world coming in to cause trouble. The remainder are former Baathists and Sadaamites. Furthermore, 70 percent of Iraq (northern and southern parts) of Iraq are stable functioning. It’s only 30% in the Sunni Triangle that is causing problems.

3. Russia was in Afghanistan for trumped up reasons. It hadn’t had a 9-11 a precursor going in. As long as the administration (any administration) can rationally tie in what they are doing to the elimination of state sponsored terrorism, it is going to have public support.

4. Both the Russian and American (in Vietnam) military was conscripted, which means that moms and dads were sending 18-19 year olds out of high school to fight a war they knew nothing about. Here, the entire military is made of 100% volunteers and those who are doing most of the actual fighting are actually two and three time volunteers (1. to join, 2. to be in a combat role (eg. infantry), 3. to be in an elite unit (eg. SEALs, Spec. Forces, Recon. etc.) Not only is this military volunteer, but they aren’t coming home and protesting the US involvement in the war. The people I have personally spoken with in the military, some of whom have recently returned from Iraq, indicate that everyone they served with understands the reasons they are there, and more importantly, agrees with it. The reason is that everyone experienced September 11, and they understand what it is we’re doing.

5. What’s with the quagmire talk? Is Weathers complaining that after all of seven months since the start of hostilities that we’ve only captured or killed 45 of the 52 Iraqi figures on the deck of “Wanted” playing cards, secured more than 13,000 forces from 19 nations to provide peacekeeping, trained and armed more than 50,000 Iraqis for new police and civil-defense forces and began shifting security roles to them in 58 of Iraq’s 89 cities, set up an interim parliament, established a timeline for Iraq to come up with a constitution and establish a budget, set up more than 6,000 Iraqi civil affairs units– local governments –, introduced a new currency, reopened hospitals, set up a court system, and obtained recognition of the interim government from the Arab League (which the UN has yet to do). Gosh (he says sarcastically) what the HECK is taking so long?

In context, although declaring independence in 1776, the present-day constitution wasn’t drafted until 1787, and although WWII “major combat operations” ended in 1945, West Germany did not have federal elections until 1949 and the peace treaty with Japan was not signed until 1951. This doesn’t include the still unresolved quagmires of the Korean conflict (50 years), Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” (40 years), or affirmative action (25 years).

6. All we hear about is how much of a mess it is because we are averaging 1 U.S. combat a day. That’s 365 per year in a WAR ZONE. While every soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice is a hero, the fact remains that there were more casualties in a week in Viet Nam then there have been in two years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. That’s close to the average number of casualties per day in World War II. Similarly, the Soviets suffered 10 times more casualties per day in Afghanistan than we currently are in Iraq. Also, here’s the number of law enforcement officers that have been killed in the United States in the past 5 years: 2003: 117, 2002: 153, 2001: 237, 2000: 161, 1999: 151, 1998: 175. I don’t recall newspaper articles or columnist hacks writing about the “quagmire” we’re in right at home.

Rex Randall Erickson

San Diego, California

WHERE’S THE COMPASSION?

After watching the second anniversary tribute to the victims of 9/11, we finally have a demonstration of “compassionate conservatism” in action. As the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and friends read the list of those lost on that horrible day, the impact was overwhelming.

Bells, tears, and prayers brought back all the emotions, pity, and sympathy we share for the victims and their families. And our “compassionate conservative” President was too tired from fundraising to be in attendance at Ground Zero.

Even after two years, commemoration requires courage. It also requires humility and honesty. But more than anything, it requires compassion.

When the memorial was over, many of the relatives, especially the widows, appeared on television networks. Their comments and questions gave clues to their growing frustration with and suspicion of the President and his administration. Widow Lorie van Auken, when reflecting on that tragic day, said, “I couldn’t stop watching the president sitting there, listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building.”

No explanation has ever been given to families as to why Bush continued reading a story to Florida elementary students for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack in America’s history. Where is the courage and humility to provide the families an answer? Where is the honesty? Where is the compassion?

Lots of other answers are needed in order to understand what happened to our country on that fateful day, only nine months after Junior Bush came to power. Why did John Ashcroft and Pentagon officials cancel their personal commerical airline flights the day before the attacks? Now that the FBI has changed its story, what really happened when Flight 93 crashed in western Pennsylvania? Where are the “indestructible” black boxes from the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center?

Where were the jet fighters that were supposed to protect the air space that morning? Who mailed anthrax that killed five Americans? Why are 28 pages in the Congressional September 11 report blacked out? Where is Osama bin Laden? Why was his family whisked out of the country when it took government approval for anyone to fly? Why did this administration so quickly link Saddam Hussein to the attacks? Why has the White House fought against a comprehensive Congressional investigation? Where are the answers? Where is the compassion?

Although Bush attended several fundraisers in several states in days just prior to the tribute, he curiously was unable to make the forty five minute plane ride to New York. Instead, he chose to attend a service at a church across the street from the White House. In his brief television interview, he piously quoted the Bible while speaking of the nation’s remembrance of “a sad and terrible day.”

It seems odd that a man who has so cavalierly and repetitiously alluded to his deep and abiding religious faith, would fail to show up to speak, hug, weep, and comfort the families of 9/11 – especially when it happened on his watch.

Does the passing of only two years now mean we can only expect sanctimonious lipservice from this President? After all, this is the worst act of terror to ever happen on American soil. We hear a lot of talk from Bush about winning at war. As a matter of fact, the word “war” seems to be his favorite word. When it comes to answering the questions of the victims of war, there are no answers. Where is the compassion?

The 9/11 families, as well as the rest of the nation, are owed answers by George W. Bush. Those answers should provide information with honesty and humility. Unfortunately, Junior Bush has acted with cowardice and callousness, not compassion.