Today is A Beautiful Day!

Good morning, family. Today is a beautiful day. Yesterday, New Jersey elected its first African American U.S. Senator and the federal government is open for business. As reported in the Star Ledger,

Cory Booker’s star-quality and his skill at surviving the roughhouse politics of New Jersey’s biggest city took him from the mayor’s office to the U.S. Senate today in a hard-fought victory over Republican iconoclast Steve Lonegan.   

With his special-election win, Booker will become the first African-American to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, and is the first Newark mayor to win higher office in more than a century. He also extended the Democratic Party’s U.S. Senate race winning streak to 14 elections in New Jersey, dating back to 1976.   

The Newark mayor will serve the remaining 15 months of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s term after a two-month campaign marked by bizarre turns, wild accusations, erratic polling numbers and blistering attacks.   

Booker won by double digits, but it wasn’t the landslide many had predicted at the beginning of the campaign. With 94 percent of the precincts reporting, he had about 55 percent of the vote to Lonegan’s 44 percent.  

From the outset, the 44-year-old, two-term mayor had one advantage his conservative firebrand opponent could never hope to match: name recognition. From city hall to the morning talk shows, Booker’s good looks, big smile and his championing of his beleaguered city won him plenty of big name fans — and evidently the approval of Jersey voters who elected him in a rare October election with light turnout.

Hopefully, Cory Booker's election is a sign that new possibilities are on the horizon for African Americans. I hope that the people are not simply pacified by the power of symbolism. We must be agenda focused and results oriented. As black politicians rise, we must ensure that our agenda and interests are not marginalized.

Speaking of being marginalized, President Obama and the Democrats soundly defeated the idiotic Tea Party fanatics in the U.S. House of Representatives, at least for now. As reported in the Washington Post,

Federal agencies, parks, museums and monuments began to reopen Thursday morning, after a chastened Congress ended a bitter funding standoff that triggered a 16-day government closure and drove the nation toward the brink of default.   

The agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) funds agencies through mid-January, calls hundreds of thousands of civil servants back to work and raises the $16.7 trillion debt limit...   

The bill passed late Wednesday ended a stalemate created last month, when hard-line conservatives pushed Republican leaders to use the threat of shutdown to block a landmark expansion of federally funded health coverage.   

That campaign, however, succeeded mainly in undermining popular support for the Republican Party. By the end, dozens of anxious GOP lawmakers were ready to give Obama almost exactly what he requested months ago: a bill to fund the government and increase the Treasury Department’s borrowing power with no strings attached.   

The Senate overwhelmingly ratified the deal Wednesday evening, 81 to 18, with more than half of Senate Republicans voting yes. A few hours later, the House followed suit, approving the measure 285 to 144. Eighty-seven Republicans joined a united Democratic caucus in approving the measure, allowing Congress to meet a critical Treasury Department deadline with one day to spare.    

Obama signed the measure into law shortly after midnight,reopening parks and monuments across the nation, restoring government services and putting furloughed federal employees back on the job, many of them in the Washington region.  

The measure guarantees those workers back pay for time spent at home, aid flood-ravaged Colorado and provide extra cash for fighting wildfires out West. And it would grant the D.C. government, which relies on Congress to approve its budget, authority to manage its own affairs through the 2014 fiscal year.

I commend the President and the Democrats for standing up to those no good, hostage takers. President Obama must continue to stand strong. No surrender on entitlements!

The Fight is Not Over!

“The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto



As reported in the Washington Post,

“President Obama signed the compromise deal to raise the debt ceiling and take the first steps toward deficit reduction after the Senate passed the measure Tuesday morning. As Paul Kane, Lori Montgomery and William Branigin reported:

The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a plan to raise the federal debt limit and cut government spending, ending a bitter partisan stalemate that had threatened to plunge the nation into default and destabilize the world economy.

One day after a climactic vote in the House, the Senate easily approved the measure, 74 to 26, with significant majorities of both parties supporting it. President Obama promptly signed the bill and submitted a formal request to Congress to lift the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, instantly giving Treasury $400 billion in additional borrowing power.

With the immediate crisis averted, Obama and congressional leaders quickly turned their attention to the next front in the war over the federal budget: a new legislative committee that will have the job of developing a broader plan to control the government’s debt.

The bipartisan panel, to be named this month, is likely to confront the same ideological divide that caused an almost crippling impasse in the debt-limit debate. Republican leaders are warning that they will not include anyone on the panel who is willing to raise taxes, prompting Democrats to threaten a hard line against cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.”

CBS News summarized the compromise as follows:

“The compromise allows debt ceiling increase by as much as $2.4 trillion dollars in total. Included is an immediate increase of $400 billion dollars. President Obama would be permitted to request another $500 billion increase in the coming months, which Congress could vote to disallow by a veto proof two-thirds margin. A further increase of between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion would be available after a special committee identifies matching levels of additional spending cuts.

The agreement calls for cuts of more than $900 billion over ten years in spending from programs, agencies and day-to-day spending. It would include security-related and non-security-related cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, "discretionary" spending would be decreased by $21 billion in 2012 and $42 billion in 2013.

The agreement creates a 12-person House and Senate special committee to identify further spending cuts. The committee must complete its work by Thanksgiving - November 23 - and Congress must hold an up or down vote on the committee recommendations by December 23. The committee could overhaul the tax code or find savings in benefit programs like Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security. Congress could not modify the committee's recommendation.

Should the special committee deadlock or should Congress reject the committee's recommendations, then automatic across the board spending cuts of at least $1.2 trillion would go into effect.

The agreement requires that the House of Representatives and the Senate vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, although its passage is not guaranteed.

The deal also includes changes to Pell Grants and student loan programs. Pell Grants will receive a $17 billion increase for low-income college students, which will be financed by the elimination of subsidized student loans for most graduate students.

The compromise does not include any immediate revenue additions or tax increases.”

When I first read about this big compromise, I was ready to criticize the President for surrendering to the demands of the hostage takers also known as Republicans. Clearly, the President and the Democrats have poor negotiating skills. Instead, I will focus on the primary source of the problem, the Republicans.



The Republicans are slaves of the rich power elite. In order to protect the record profits of Wall Street, the Republicans were prepared to commit treason by forcing this nation to default on its debt obligations. The Republican Party is simply “a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” They are devoted to preserving tax breaks and tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans by any means necessary.

Yet, they do not give a damn about the rest of us. The Republicans are ready to cut life lines to the poor, working class and middle class. The GOP is eager to place vital social programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block. If the Republicans have their way, the poor and elderly will be deprived of health care and forced to fend for themselves in this bad economy.

How many poor and elderly people will forced to choose between buying groceries and buying medicine? In one of the world's wealthiest nations, no one should be forced to make such an outrageous decision. How many students will not be able to pursue higher education as result of these Republican budget cuts?

Instead merely complaining about this ridiculous compromise, we must prepare for the next phase of the struggle. We must strongly lobby the White House and Congress to ensure that the special committee includes members who will fight for average Americans. We need people on that committee who will vigorously defend Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other crucial social programs. We must make sure that the President fulfills his campaign theme of hope and change. The fight is NOT over! Stand up people!

This article is cross-posted on Jack and Jill Politics.