Replies to post #64390 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[SiouxPal]

Obama Should (Still) Be Standing With Feingold
by John Nichols


Before the February 19 Wisconsin primary, which confirmed his front-runner status in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Senator Barack Obama went out of his way to associate his candidacy with the name of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.

It wasn’t just about winning Wisconsin, although that undoubtedly was part of the calculus.

Obama wanted to secure the support of the substantial portion of Democrats nationally who, in polls conducted in 2006, indicated that they would back Feingold if he entered the presidential race. Internal polls by the various campaigns indicated that Feingold drew as much as 15 percent of the vote in a number of key states, coming mostly from anti-war and pro-civil liberties progressives.

Obama knew he needed the support of those highly engaged party activists. And so, in early February, he embraced an issue that mattered a lot to them: the defense of civil liberties.

Obama, Feingold and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd did not want Congress to support the Bush administration’s efforts to block civil suits against telecommunications firms for spying on customers.

“I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grass-roots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty,” declared Obama, who indicated that he would support efforts to filibuster any attack on the ability of citizens to use the courts to defend their privacy rights.

Obama’s stance helped him. It was cited in endorsements by prominent progressives and newspapers in Wisconsin and other later primary states. No doubt, it contributed to his landslide victory in the Badger State, where the Illinoisan won a vote from Feingold himself.

Yet, now that he is the presumptive nominee, Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush and the special interests Obama once denounced. He says he’ll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite — which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week — in opposition to the position taken by civil liberties groups, legal scholars on the left and right and, of course, Russ Feingold.

That’s bad — not just because Obama is putting politics ahead of principle, but because he’s calculating the politics wrong. As Feingold proved when he was overwhelmingly re-elected in a swing state in 2004, after casting the sole vote against the Patriot Act, standing strong for the Bill of Rights attracts rather than sacrifices votes.

Even worse is the deceptive claim that the “compromise” on FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) reached by the Bush administration and congressional leaders allows for meaningful scrutiny.

As Feingold says, “The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the president’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity.”

Despite what some apologists for this sellout by Democratic leaders might suggest, it is comic to claim that multinational corporations given civil immunity might still face criminal charges.

Citizens have always been in the forefront of tackling corporate crime. At best, prosecutors play catch-up. Providing telecommunications corporations with immunity from civil suits gives them blanket immunity. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a fantasy that would make America less free and less safe.

Russ Feingold knows that. So does Barack Obama.

It is unfortunate that they are not standing together on the right side of history — and the Constitution.

Published on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 by The Nation

[F6]

McCain surrogate Fiorina's campaign gaffes drawing criticism


Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina autographs copies of her book, "Tough Choices", after her speech at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference last month in San Francisco.
Photo by Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

(07-09) 17:15 PDT -- Carly Fiorina has headed a major Silicon Valley corporation, ascended to the rank of America's top female business icon, authored a book - and now is on the short list of possible GOP vice presidential candidates.

But now the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard has a new challenge: As a leader of Republican National Committee's 2008 "Victory" drive and a chief adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, she's being buffeted by intense criticism that, as a star campaign surrogate, she is playing fast and loose with the facts.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation's leading abortion and reproductive rights group, told The Chronicle that she sent Fiorina a copy of McCain's voting record on women's health issues this week after Fiorina publicly misrepresented McCain's positions.

Fiorina made the comments - reported by the Washington Post - during a speech about women and health insurance, in which she argued that "many health insurance plans cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."

Keenan said a McCain presidency would offer women no such choice. "Obviously, she doesn't know his record," she said. "He really did vote against a proposal that would have required insurance companies" to cover prescription contraception in the same way they pay for Viagra.

It wasn't the first such slip-up, Keenan said. Fiorina's public reassurance to a group of former Hillary Clinton supporters in Columbus, Ohio, raised hackles after she said the Arizona senator "has never signed on to efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade."

But McCain has repeatedly underscored his opposition to abortion and has said on the campaign trail that the landmark law that protects a woman's right to abortion procedures "should be overturned."

On economic issues, Fiorina also was lambasted by Democratic leaders - and Time Magazine's Swampland blog - after she said that if the Bush tax cuts are repealed, as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has proposed, "23 million small businesses will see their taxes raised."

That's because "23 million small businesses file their income tax as individuals. And so, when Barack Obama blithely says only the wealthiest are going to be taxed, he is ignoring the fact that 23 million small businesses file as individuals," she said.

Swampland writer Jay Newton-Small called the statement "terribly misleading."

"In fact, 94.5% of all "flow-through" (or self-employed) entities ... had receipts under $100,000 in 2007," he wrote. "When running HP, did 23 million equal a few hundred thousand? No wonder she got fired."

With the campaigns of both McCain and Obama in high gear, the critiques underscore how Fiorina's high-profile role could get increasing attention - and raise more questions about her business history.

Fiorina, Democrats note, had a controversial leadership at Lucent Technologies before she went to the Palo Alto tech giant. At HP, she oversaw the controversial merger of HP and Compaq that resulted in thousands of layoffs, stagnant earnings and the flight of leading HP talent. She was fired and walked out with a $21 million severance package.

Years later, the debate continues about whether Fiorina should actually get credit for the company's eventual resurgence - and Fiorina herself says that a pioneer businesswoman, she was subject to harsher treatment and a firing that males might not have faced.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera says Fiorina's record speaks volumes to voters.

"Carly Fiorina has talked about outsourcing and defined it as 'rightsourcing,' " he said. And Fiorina, who laid off 18,000 HP workers during the company "restructuring," once noted that her big mistake was that she didn't lay some off fast enough, he said.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker dismissed efforts to jab at Fiorina as "the total distortions that you would expect" in partisan politics.

On the issue of choice, she said, "Carly was describing McCain's vision ... to open insurance markets for greater variety and competition, which would allow women to choose policies to fit their needs."

McCain's camp acknowledges that only individual small business owners making more than $250,000 would pay higher taxes in an Obama plan - but it insists those businesses will be hurt by the Democrat's proposals.

"Barack Obama's plan for costly health care mandates saddles small businesses with a burden that would discourage job creation at a time when America's economy needs it most," said spokesman Taylor Griffin.

Bill Whalen, a GOP strategist and research fellow with the Hoover Institution, says Fiorina has been "a fresh face" and a plus for McCain.

"She's someone from the new economy," he said. "She's very articulate ... she does a good job at engaging in combat - better than most CEOs."

But Wade Randlett, a Silicon Valley insider and fundraiser for Obama, said her record and work for the McCain campaign is "emblematic of the two different approaches to party politics."

"You can take two big companies that aren't doing as well as they might, squish them together and fire a bunch of people," he said. Democrats, he said, prefer business leadership of vision and change, like Bill Hewlett and David Packard, the legendary co-founders of the HP firm who "started out in a garage - and grew a great company."

E-mail Carla Marinucci at [e-mail].

© 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/09/MN8D11M9QC.DTL