Rep. Jeff Flake Votes Against Recession-Fighting Package, Fails Struggling Middle Class Families Again

No surprise:

Although yesterday the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the economic stimulus package to fight the recession and give American families rebates -- the checks should be in your mailboxes by spring -- Rep. Jeff Flake was one of only 35 members of Congress to vote against the bill crafted by President Bush, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner.

He pretty much opposes any government help to regular people in his district or to regular people in the U.S. or to regular people in the world. He has voted again and again as a member of a tiny minority even in the Republican party against any issue that requires an outlay of government funds. He was one of very few House members of any party to vote against Hurricane Katrina relief and President Bush’s lifesaving emergency AIDS program. He doesn’t believe in Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance or social security.

Rep. Flake is consistent. The voters in the district will overwhelming re-elect him again this fall — I have no illusions about that. But they should never expect him to vote for anything that would expend funds to help struggling middle class families as this stimulus program probably will. It’s not a perfect program and may not do much against this recession, but Rep. Flake is happy to do nothing and let the miracles of the free market work their magic.

As they did with WorldCom, Enron, Countrywide’s mortgages, Societe General’s rogue trader, and in the Great Depression.

Like the overwhelming majority of House members, Republican and Democratic, I would have voted for the stimulus package.

* * * * *

There's an article mentioning me in the Arizona Living section of today's Arizona Republic.

Portrait of the Candidate as a Young Liberal

About ten days ago I posted a couple of reviews of my book, WRITE-IN: Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida's Fourth Congressional District, about my 2004 campaign against Rep. Ander Crenshaw.

I didn't mean to use this site to try to sell my book to anyone. If you're interested in reading it, you can do it for free by seeing it the way it originally appeared, online at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

The only thing that hasn't been online, available for free, was the prologue. You can read it below. Maybe it explains why my view of politics and government is very different from Jeff Flake's and the overwhelming majority of my fellow East Valley voters in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District:

Prologue: Dumping the Hump in Chicago

As a senior at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School in the spring of 1968, I divided my acquaintances as either Gene McCarthy people or Bobby Kennedy people although it was debatable which category I myself fit into. I was registered for Mr. Ilivicky's Social Studies class called Problems in American Democracy, and as part of the course, all the students had to work a couple of hours a week in the Manhattan office of Senator Kennedy.

But like a lot of kids, I came, as Time Magazine would have it, “clean for Gene" when Senator McCarthy announced he would run against President Johnson. Actually, my hair wasn't all that long, and I couldn't grow sideburns or a beard. I barely had any hair on my body. So I didn't have to become "clean." Nobody else besides McCarthy was running as a peace candidate for President.

Two years before, at 15, I worked for one of the first peace candidates to run for Congress, Mel Dubin, who was challenging longtime Brooklyn Representative Abe Multer in the Democratic primary. (There were no Republicans in Brooklyn).

Back in 1966, we had a whole antiwar slate of candidates for all the offices, including one guy who our campaign manager, Steve Solarz – who’d later hold the Congressional seat himself till he was kicked out in the House banking scandal – mistakenly recruited to run for the state senate because the guy shared the same name as the man he was told to recruit, a community leader and chairman of a local B'nai B'rith chapter.

This character always showed up in tattered jeans and a t-shirt with holes under the arms, but by the time we realized we had promised the ballot spot to the wrong person, this guy was our candidate because Steve said it was too late to kick him off the ticket because in politics, your word is your bond.

Mel Dubin lost by a handful of votes, and in 1968 I was as determined as a 104-pound high school student – short, skinny, bookish and bespectacled, I kept hoping to be bitten by a radioactive spider – could be to elect an antiwar President. So when the McCarthy for President headquarters opened on Flatbush Avenue, I signed up.

Most of the other campaign workers were college students or middle-aged Jewish women or elderly ex-radicals from the 1930s. I was sort of their mascot. I did everything from cranking the mimeograph machine to make copies of our newsletter ("You'll actually get biceps from that," one college girl told me) to cleaning the grimy toilet and sink in the back of the store we were renting month by month.

I also liked working in Senator Kennedy's office, reading letters from people who wanted his help with an immigration problem or whatever and sending out thank you notes signed "Robert F. Kennedy" that were actually signed by a machine called the Autopen (which had three different signatures, so they weren't all exactly the same).

But when McCarthy did so well in the New Hampshire primary, and Bobby announced for President a few days later, I couldn't desert my first choice. Like Steve Solarz told me, in politics your word is your bond.

Still, the next few months after Johnson withdrew as a candidate for re-election were kind of hard because all the antiwar people in Brooklyn split between McCarthy and Kennedy. Kennedy won most of the primaries – people flocked to him, even if they were pro-war – but in Oregon, McCarthy scored an upset win. It was the first time a Kennedy had ever lost an election.

My seventeenth birthday was a week later, the day of the California primary. I stayed up long enough to find out that Bobby Kennedy had won, but I had to get up early so I didn't hear his speech – “Now it's on to Chicago and let's win there" – and didn't learn about his assassination till the next morning. I saw it on TV and began screaming, waking up everyone in the house. I couldn't stop crying. My dad said, "This lousy country, we should leave." It was exactly two months after Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed.

But of course we didn't leave. Three weeks later was the final primary, in New York, and many of our McCarthy delegates won. So did some Kennedy delegates. But by late July, it was clear that the nomination was going to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who supported the war in Vietnam.

I so wanted to go to the convention in Chicago. There were going to be the biggest protest demonstrations ever at a political party meeting, and antiwar people from all over the country were converging in Mayor Daley's city the last week in August.

Most of the college kids and older people from the McCarthy HQ on Flatbush Avenue were going, and this older couple, the Hosenbooms, said they would watch out for me.

So I persuaded my parents to let me go. I made a sign for myself to carry. It said DUMP THE HUMP. Deep down, I was sure we could convince the party not to nominate a hawk like Humphrey because most Democrats were against the war.

My mom said I came back from Chicago a different kid.

It was really my first time away from my parents, and I saw stuff that was unimaginable.

I still pride myself on my terrific memory. You can quiz me on all sorts of things, from who was Brooklyn district attorney in 1971 (Aaron Koota) to what was the name of the drink that the teenaged George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? asked for in the bar (bergin), and I'll know it. But Chicago the last week of August 1968 is all a blur.

I can remember thousands of us gathered on Sunday in Lincoln Park in the city where Mayor Daley had ordered cops to “shoot to kill” during the April riots following Dr. King’s assassination. Now he’d called in the National Guard to back up his police force, and the soldiers and cops suddenly told us to evacuate the park.

With tear gas and nightsticks and bayonets, they drove us out, chasing us for miles. Some of us threw rocks and bottles, breaking store windows on the way. The last I saw of Mrs. Hosenboom, her forehead was gushing blood.

Ending up in Grant Park across the street from the Conrad Hilton, where they had the only live TV cameras, we started chanting, “The whole world is watching.”

What we didn’t know was that Sunday night was that it was about to get a lot worse – and that the whole world, or most of it, would think we were about to get what we deserved.

I didn't start Brooklyn College that September like I was supposed to. I pretty much wanted to stay in my room. The truth was, I was afraid to go out. Afraid the world was too much like what I'd seen on the streets of Chicago. Afraid that a cop would beat me senseless the way they had Mrs. Hosenboom and so many others. Afraid that I'd have to run like hell and hide in someone's hotel room listening to the sounds of a riot, smelling the tear gas, watching people with bloody heads and clothes, people who'd just come there like I had, out of a belief that they could change things.

I mostly stayed in my room all fall and winter and early spring. I stirred out in May 1969, after these antidepressants and tranquilizers I'd been prescribed by my psychiatrist a couple of months before started to work. Mayor Lindsay was running for re-election, and they'd opened a campaign headquarters a few blocks from the old McCarthy storefront on Flatbush Avenue.

Lindsay was a liberal Republican when there was such a thing. He was much more liberal than any of the Democratic candidates for mayor with the exception of the writer Norman Mailer, who had no chance. Lindsay’s natural constituency was liberal Democrats like my parents; he was especially loved in the black and Puerto Rican communities. None of these people, however, could vote in the June Republican primary.

Working in that storefront, I learned that there were Republicans in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, most of them hated John Lindsay. The morning after he lost the primary, I came to our headquarters feeling dejected.

When I saw that someone had spray-painted "Nigger Lover" all over our front door, I went to the store's bathroom in the back and cried, then brought out some Ajax and a wet rag and tried to wash the words away.

The next week I started going into Manhattan for the first time in a year. I hung out in Washington Square and even learned about what would become known as the Stonewall riot as it was happening from some lesbians who'd run over to the fountain where a lot of us young people were sitting.

By then my hair was down to my shoulders and I had long sideburns. I'd put on weight – from the antidepressants, I think. That July in Greenwich Village I was offered marijuana for the first time. I was ready for Woodstock in August and college in September. That fall I helped Mayor Lindsay win reelection as the candidate of the Liberal Party.

A few years later, I was cleaning out my closet and under a pile of old record albums and comic books and political posters, I found my DUMP THE HUMP sign.

In the melee – later termed a "police riot" by the Walker Commission – I’d somehow managed to hold onto the poster and bring it home from Chicago.

I didn’t remember how I did it. I couldn't even remember anything about the bus ride from the Loop to downtown Brooklyn.

In the fall of 1995, while working as a staff attorney in social policy at a University of Florida think tank called the Center for Governmental Responsibility, I also had a part-time job teaching a college course called that met on Saturday mornings.

The course was called The Individual and Society.

One morning I showed the class Haskell Wexler's 1969 film Medium Cool. A fictional story about a reporter and an Appalachian woman and her young son during the Chicago convention, the movie also contains real scenes of the demonstrations.

At one point in Medium Cool, a canister of tear gas explodes, and if you listen carefully, you can hear someone in the background shout, "Look out, Haskell, it's real!"

My students could not believe such a thing could ever have happened in their country.

I told them how I knew it had.

I didn't go to Chicago again till 1997, when I had a residency at the Ragdale artists' colony in suburban Lake Forest. I really liked the city. I stopped associating it with what happened in 1968.

The last time I was in Chicago, was in June 2001, when I gave a reading at Quimby's bookstore on North Avenue. The people who listened to my story were very nice and laughed in the right places. To thank me for coming, Quimby's gave me a voucher good to buy something in the store.

I bought two copies of Angry Teen Comics.

Get Republicans to Give Up Earmarks? Forget It, Flake, It's Congresstown.

So you couldn't get your Republican House colleagues to give up earmarks.

We know you'll keep trying.

I understand the appeal of hopeless causes. After all, my silly one-person "campaign" against you is like dusting in a sandstorm.

But maybe you have enough time to do something to help the people of your district?

Like the people Barack Obama spoke about last night:

The mother who can't get Medicaid to cover all the needs of her sick child. She needs us to pass a health care plan that cuts costs and makes health care available and affordable for every single American. That's what she's looking for.

The teacher who works another shift at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet, she needs us to reform our education system so that she gets better pay and more support and her students get the resources that they need to achieve their dreams.

The Maytag worker who's now competing with his own teenager for a $7 an hour job at the local Wal-Mart, because the factory he gave his life to shut its doors, he needs us to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship our jobs overseas and start putting them in the pockets of working Americans who deserve it and put them in the pockets of struggling homeowners who are having a tough time and looking after seniors who should retire with dignity and respect.

That woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breath since the day her nephew left for Iraq or the soldier who doesn't know his child because he's on his third or fourth or even fifth tour of duty, they need us to come together and put an end to a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.

Stopping a $200,000 library in Maine or a $150,000 swimming pool in Kansas isn't doing people in Mesa and Chandler and Gilbert and Queen Creek and Apache Junction any good.

"We are tired of business-as-usual in Washington, we are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again."

Rep. Jeff Flake's Outdated Policies Don't Fit Our New Economy

An article by Christopher Caldwell says some things relevant to the outdated economic policies of Rep. Jeff Flake and his laissez-faire philosophy. While they may have been relevant back in Ronald Reagan's day, this is not 1978 but 2008 and we've long since made the transition from an old industrial economy to a more dynamic information- and communication-based one.

Yet Jeff Flake and his wealthy anti-government friends refuse to accept that things have changed. They're rigid ideologues at a time when pragmatism is needed:

Economic orders have life cycles. Policies designed to “unleash” business in a fledgling economy offer diminishing returns in a developed one. To have overregulated or overtaxed Bill Gates 20 years ago might have killed a goose that still had many golden eggs to lay. But it seems probable that 20 years hence, regardless of tax policy, Microsoft will be intact, thriving, based in the United States and doing roughly what it is doing now.

Yet Republican prescriptions have changed not a whit. Mitt Romney recently attacked the latest federal energy bill, which mandates average fuel-efficiency of 35 miles per gallon, as an impediment to Detroit’s ability to crank out sport-utility vehicles. He is quite right. But does he mean to say we’re going to get out of our economic doldrums by driving 10-mile-a-gallon cars in a world of $100-a-barrel oil?

All Republican candidates want to make President Bush’s deep tax cuts permanent, and even to expand on them. . . But this is yesterday’s policy trying to pass itself off as tomorrow’s. Americans are evenly split on whether taxes ought to be raised back to pre-Bush levels. Large majorities would gladly pay more in taxes for various purposes (notably more access to health care). Voters, it seems, have begun asking of entrepreneurs and their champions what they asked of hippies around 1971: Aren’t you liberated enough already?

Cutting taxes and slashing regulations were appropriate strategies for managing a transitional economy. But we no longer live in such an economy. This does not mean that Republicans need to embrace a single-payer health system or subsidized day care. But neither can they go on automatically favoring the hypothetical needs of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs over the real needs of today’s dental hygienists and landscape gardeners. The future is now, as the late Redskins’ coach George Allen used to say. The promise that prosperity is just one more tax cut or one more rescinded regulation away is a rapidly depreciating rhetorical asset.

Rep. Jeff Flake: A Miserable Failure in Helping His District

Yes, he's in the national news trying to get his fellow Republicans to end the practice of earmarks.

This is all well and good, but Rep. Jeff Flake's fixation with the relatively penny-ante waste of his colleague's efforts to get some pork -- and perhaps some useful projects -- for their districts, um, misses the point. We need real change and Jeff Flake obsesses about chump change.

What's a member of Congress for, anyway?

Isn't it to help his constituents, to use government as a force for good for those in need of help?

And today our struggling middle class families need help.

Jeff Flake's ideology -- that government can never help anyone, that is always better to spend nothing than to make an investment in helping our citizens -- illustrates the disconnect between the debates among Washington politicians and experiences of regular people outside the Beltway.

Many Americans are living a single pink slip away from foreclosure and have virtually no savings to assist them.

In order to maintain the status of richest and most productive nation in the world, we've got to focus on long-term investments in the areas of health care, education, energy, and technology. And that means the government has to spend some money to help our citizens and our country.

But all you'll hear from Jeff Flake is talk about how the government is already doing too much. He even wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare for senior citizens.

Think about it if you live in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District.

Can you name one concrete thing that Rep. Jeff Flake has ever done to help you?

To me, if you can't answer that about your member of Congress, then he's a miserable failure -- no matter his brilliance, his dedication to a cause, or his affability.

Jeff Flake is a very honest, very smart, very nice man who just doesn't care about regular people.

He's not a bad guy but he's missing the ball.

Do-It-Yourself Self-Aggrandizing Jeff Flake Press Release!

For Immmediate [SIC] Release --

Congressman [FLAKE] Spotlights [NEGATIVE ADJECTIVE CONNOTING WASTE, IRRESPONSIBILITY, ANNOYANCE] Earmark of the Week

$[SUM OF MONEY LESS THAN WOULD FUND IRAQ WAR FOR THREE MINUTES] for [PROJECT PROVIDING EMPLOYMENT OR HELP TO RESIDENTS OF SOMEONE ELSE’S DISTRICT] in [CITY, STATE IN A DISTRICT OF SOMEONE JEFF FLAKE DOESN’T LIKE]

Mesa, Arizona, [DATE] - Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today highlighted a pork project contained in the [NAME OF APPROPRIATIONS BILL] for fiscal year [ANY YEAR BETWEEN 2001 AND WHENEVER JEFF FLAKE RETIRES TO RUN FOR HIGHER OFFICE OR TAKE A CUSHY JOB WITH THE CLUB FOR GROWTH OR GOLDWATER INSTITUTE].

This week’s [NEGATIVE ADJECTIVE CONNOTING WASTE, IRRESPONSIBILITY, ANNOYANCE] earmark: $[PIDDLING SUM] for the [PROBABLY WORTHWHILE PROJECT LIKE A LIBRARY, COMMUNITY POOL OR HOSPITAL] in [CITY, STATE IN A DISTRICT REPRESENTED BY A WELL-MEANING HOUSE COLLEAGUE] for [SOMETHING REGULAR PEOPLE CAN BENEFIT FROM].

“This is one earmark that [LAME PUN],” said Flake.

* * * * *

Grow up, Jeff, and do something to help the people you're paid to represent.

Rep. Jeff Flake: Count on Him to Do Nothing to Help the Struggling Middle Class

From a New York Times front page story on American voters' dark mood:

As she considers this campaign, Susan C. Powell, a 47-year-old training consultant who lives in a Kansas City suburb, said that what she feels is not so much hopelessness as doom.

“I know plenty of people who are doing worse than they were,” Ms. Powell said, “and nobody’s helping them out. People’s incomes are not keeping pace with inflation. People can’t afford their homes. People in their 30s and 40s, middle-income, and they don’t have jobs they can count on or access to health care. How can we say that we’re the greatest country on earth and essentially have the walking wounded?”

Rep. Jeff Flake responds:

Mesa, Arizona, Jan 18 - Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today highlighted a pork project contained in the Omnibus Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008.

This week’s egregious earmark: $292,000 for the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, New York for exhibits and educational programs.

“This is one earmark that taxpayers would like to see shot down,” said Flake.

Out of touch.

Out to lunch.

For Jeff Flake, the concerns of regular people like Susan Powell are out of sight, out of mind.

He's in Congress.

Rep. Jeff Flake to Kids (for the zillionth time): Drop Dead

Yet again he stands up for his outworn principles to block help for kids without good health care.

And you, the voters of the Sixth Congressional District, will stand still for this.

The Arizona Daily Star editorialized yesterday:

President Bush has on two occasions vetoed widely supported bipartisan legislation that would have allowed millions of American children living without health insurance a way to get proper medical care. As we have said before, he has chosen ideology over reality. [me: Just like Guess Who?]

The legislation would have expanded coverage for children under the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, the federal program states use to cover children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private health insurance.

The U.S. House is set to try, again, this week to override Bush's veto. It is imperative that Congress succeed.

Millions of American children who live without health insurance — kids who can't go to the doctor when they get sick — are depending on their elected representatives to do what is right. We hope our Arizona delegation will understand how critical it is to expand SCHIP coverage.

The SCHIP legislation would continue coverage for about 6 million kids now enrolled in SCHIP programs, and extend it to nearly 4 million more, by allocating $35 billion more over five years. This would allow states to increase the income limit to qualify and cover more kids in that limbo of their families earning too much, but not enough.

In Arizona, roughly 250,000 children do not have health coverage. Nationally, the figure is about 8 million children.

Common sense tells us that these figures will only increase as the economy worsens. Housing starts are down significantly, the housing slump has spread into related industries such as lending, construction and retail, and companies are laying off workers. About two-thirds of employers offered some kind of health benefits to their workers in 2006, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. The link between having a job and health insurance is real.

"With job loss, they're going to lose health insurance," said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Southern Arizona Democrat, in an interview about SCHIP last week. "It's all tied together."

Giffords said that half of all Americans have their health insurance through their employer. Families lose much more than an income when mom or dad loses a job.
Bush and his Republican supporters — although significant backing for expanding SCHIP has come from Republicans who understand its necessity — contend that expanding SCHIP is a step toward federalized health care. The argument belies the economic reality many families face. Bush's proposal would result in kids being dropped from the rolls because, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will take $14 billion over the next five years on top of existing funding to continue SCHIP coverage as it is today.

Concern about the economy is so great that the White House last week announced its stimulus package to help boost spending and spur the economy. Details must still be hashed out with Congress but it's at least an acknowledgement that families are hurting.

The understanding stops, however, when it bumps into ideology. Bush continues to say that the focus should be on getting uninsured kids into private coverage instead of government coverage. That may work in theory, but in reality families are being priced out of private coverage.

A recent study from the nonprofit Families USA organization found that 1.4 million Arizonans under 65 — those not eligible for Medicare — this year will pay more than 10 percent of their pre-tax income on medical bills. Of those, half are in families making $35,000 to $70,000 per year and about 80 percent have health insurance.

The study also found that premiums almost doubled from 2000 to 2007, from $6,300 to $12,000 and the average worker's share increased from $1,600 to $3,281.

Costs for services increased, too, by 64 percent from 2000 to a projected $6,600 in 2008.

Half of all bankruptcies are prompted in part, the study found, by inability to pay medical bills.

American children and their families need help. We call on our Arizona delegation to vote for children and help override the veto on SCHIP.

You can call on Jeff Flake to help kids, but you should count on this heartless ideologue to tell them to drop dead.

Grayson for Congress AZ-06's Latest Celebrity Endorsements

We've got a few more celebrity endorsements. I'm really grateful to these fine human beings:

Kazu Makino

Chris Carrabba

Tunde Adebimpe

Ada and Ivan

ありがとうそんなに。私はすべて愛する。

Rep. Jeff Flake Doesn't Play Well With Others. Maybe That's Why His Colleagues Dislike Him?

Okay, so all the fanatical extreme conservative bloggers are posting right and far right for their scheme to Make It Flake!

But in today's Capitol Briefing in the Washington Post, Ben Pershing offers a dose of reality:

Every so often, the liberal or conservative blogospheres will get excited and mobilized to make something happen that probably never will. Such is the case with the growing movement to get Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake (R) onto the House Appropriations Committee.


Flake -- the House's best known scourge of spending earmarks and the Appropriations panel in general -- is making a play to get onto the committee, hoping to take the slot vacated recently when Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was appointed to fill Trent Lott's (R) Senate seat.

Flake's bid has stirred up significant support on conservative blogs like Captain's Quarters, Townhall.com and PoliPundit. There's a Facebook page devoted to his candidacy, and this site hatched by the conservative group FreedomWorks specifically to promote his effort.

There's just one problem: Flake's chances are very, very slim, no matter how many bloggers he has in his corner.

For all of Flake's popularity at the GOP grass-roots level and his close identification with the fiscal conservative cause, Capitol Briefing has heard repeatedly over the years from members and staff alike that Flake has a significant number of fellow House Republicans who simply don't like him...

[I]t's not just appropriators and other big spenders who have had their problems with Flake over the years. GOP leaders, even conservative ones, have grumbled that Flake enjoys criticizing his own party and attracting the media limelight too much. And members who have had their projects targeted by Flake before as part of the Arizonan's "Egregious Earmark of the Week" series probably haven't forgotten.

Staffers on Capitol Hill have voted Jeff Flake one of the three "worst followers" and one of the three top "show horses."

To be fair, the same staffers voted Jeff Flake the "gutsiest" (most gutsy?) House member, but I guess it takes a lot of chutzpah to alienate your colleagues so thoroughly.

In the one-in-a-gazillion chance that I get elected to Congress, I'll be more polite, friendly and collegial than Jeff Flake. And nicer to Republicans, too.

So if you want your Congressman to be more of a work horse and less of a show horse, this November vote for Flake's low-key opponent, what's-his-name.


* * * * *
Many thanks to Larry & Debby Kline for their kind permission to use their "Be Nice" headstones to illustrate this post. To purchase these limited edition hand-carved granite tablets or any of their other incredible artworks, go here.

Rep. Jeff Flake's Obsession With Earmarks Hurts Our District's Middle Class Families

According to today's New York Times article, "Earmarks Seen Likely to Continue," we see that Rep. Jeff Flake's obsession with earmarks -- he is to earmarks what Captain Ahab is to the white whale except our congressman still has both his legs if not all his common sense -- is going nowhere:

President Bush is unlikely to defy Congress on spending billions of dollars earmarked for pet projects...

Lawmakers, including the House Republican whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri, have cautioned the White House that a furor over earmarks could upend Mr. Bush’s hopes for cooperation with Congress on other issues, including efforts to revive the economy.

Moreover, Republicans shudder at the possibility that a Democratic president might reject all their earmarks...

A band of Republican lawmakers led by Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona and Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina has attacked earmarks, saying they waste money and corrupt the legislative process. But a larger number of lawmakers avidly seek them and boast of success in securing money for constituents. Republicans received about 40 percent of the earmarks in the spending bills for 2008.

I would be one of the vast majority of House members, Republican and Democratic, who help their districts by seeking funding for responsible projects that will make life better for people in the East Valley.

What Jeff Flake doesn't seem to understand is that our district's middle class families are struggling to make ends meet. They need help from their government, not some airy-fairy obsession with a fanatical philosophy.

If you want our district to continue to be a neglected stepchild in Washington, you should re-elect Jeff Flake.

But if you want our district to receive just as much funding as others across the nation, you should vote for the alternative.

Until someone better decides to run -- and I'm still hoping -- that's me.

Happy MLK Day

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I idolized Martin Luther King Jr. Here's a pic of me with a drawing I made of Dr. King:
I published a nonfiction piece called "The Boy Who Could Draw Dr. King" in the summer 2004 issue of FRiGG Magazine. My story begins:

The summer I was 14, I used to go to work with my grandfather at The Slack Bar, a sliver of a store on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, just a block from the Abraham & Straus and E.J. Korvette department stores.

The store was owned by my Uncle Matty, Grandpa Herb’s son, but it was bankrolled by Matty’s rich father-in-law. It sold nothing but dress pants, including those manufactured by my father and my other grandfather. The Slack Bar did free alterations, and Grandpa Herb and Carlos were the tailors who sat at sewing machines in the back of the little store. They spent most of the day arguing about baseball and the relative merits of the Jewish and Puerto Rican peoples.

The manager of the store, a white guy named Marty, had a connection at the main Brooklyn post office, who would, for a price, pass onto Marty pieces of mail sent out by First National City Bank (later Citibank) that contained BankAmericards (later Visa credit cards). In those days the bank sent people credit cards, with hundreds of dollars of available credit, even though they hadn’t applied for them.

Marty and the assistant manager, Joe, a young black guy, used the stolen credit cards to buy stuff at stores up and down Fulton Street. Once, when I walked through the main floor of A&S with Joe, all the sales clerks were greeting him by saying, “Hello, Mr. Goldberg,” sometimes with a smirk. The credit card Joe had been using that week had the name Bernard Goldberg on it. (This was years before Whoopi.)

My grandfather, who was counting the months before reaching his 62nd birthday so he could start collecting early social security and work off the books, did not participate in the stolen credit card scam. Neither did Carlos. Both of them also warned me not to get too friendly with “hopheads” and made sure I didn’t go down to the basement storeroom lest I get a contact high from the marijuana smoke that Joe and Marty left there. I think they liked going down there themselves, actually.

Most of our customers were black men, and we would do a tremendous amount of business on Friday because, Marty explained to me, that was when the customers got their paychecks and they wouldn’t be holding onto the money too much longer.

A lot of the rest of the week was quiet, especially the mornings, and I would sit on a tall stool by the cash register with my sketch pad and my India ink, drawing portraits of movie comedians like Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp and W.C. Fields holding a deck of cards and Laurel and Hardy glaring at each other.

I was a terrible artist. Nobody could recognize the subjects I was drawing. Marty looked at my Laurel and Hardy drawing and said, “Who’s that, your grandfather and Carlos?”

One day I brought in a Time magazine from a few months earlier. It had a pen-and-ink drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. by Ben Shahn. Somehow I managed to copy it just right on my sketchpad. It was the best drawing I had ever made. It basically was a fluke.

A man in his fifties came to the cash register to pay for a pair of sharkskin slacks and noticed my drawing when I put down my sketchpad and the copy of Time on the counter to take his money.

“That’s Dr. King,” he said to me.

I nodded, pleased that I’d finally drawn a person that someone could recognize.

“I’ll give you ten dollars for it if you make him black,” the man said. He meant that he wanted me to darken his skin with the charcoal, like in Ben Shahn’s drawing.

“I can do that,” I said, praying that when I used the charcoal it wouldn’t be so dark that it would obliterate Dr. King’s features and make my drawing worthless.

After Grandpa Herb took me back to our summer bungalow in Rockaway that night, I carefully used my charcoal to darken the picture. I managed not to spoil it.

But the customer who liked my drawing didn’t show up the next day. Crestfallen, I turned the page of my sketchpad and started a new drawing of Martin Luther King. Just before we closed, a woman who was buying pants for her two young sons saw what I was doing and offered me ten dollars for the portrait.

I showed her the better drawing, the one with the charcoaled skin, and she said she’d take that one instead. She gave me two five-dollar bills.

That was my first sale.

The next day, the customer who had originally asked for the drawing came back into the Slack Bar and bought the second picture.

Suddenly I started to feel like a real artist.

To read the rest, go here.

* * * * *

Last term I taught Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in five of my composition classes. I've read it probably a hundred times and it never ceases to energize and inspire me. Here's an excerpt from his response to the moderate white clergymen who, though sympathetic to King's goal of ending segregation, condemned his activism in Birmingham:

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best- known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black- nationalist ideologies, a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides - and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. We be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Kirkus Discoveries Reviews WRITE-IN, A Diary of My 2004 Congressional Campaign

Today Kirkus Discoveries reviewed my book WRITE-IN: Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida's Fourth Congressional District:

WRITE-IN
Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida's Fourth Congressional District

Author: Grayson, Richard

Review Date: JANUARY 18, 2008
Publisher:Dumbo Books
Pages: 128
Price (paperback): $9.95
Publication Date: February 22, 2007
ISBN (paperback): 978-0-6151-4111-4
Category: AUTHORS
Classification: NONFICTION

A witty campaign diary by a wannabe Congressman far too clever to ever be elected.

In the spring of 2004, Grayson announced (mainly to himself) his bid to unseat the firmly entrenched Republican incumbent in Florida’s fourth Congressional district. Grayson’s long-shot run was made even longer by a number of factors: First, a South Floridian, Grayson had neither the time nor the money to travel to the Florida fourth, located on the Georgia border. Second, unable to afford the $9,000 filing fee, he could only run as a write-in candidate. Third, he was a gay, pro-choice, anti-war, anti-death-penalty liberal running for office in the state’s most conservative district. These insurmountable challenges—and the biting humor with which Grayson faced them—led one sympathetic journalist to call him “every seasoned politician’s worst fear: a verbose, unknown, unrestrained, write-in mock-challenger.” Grayson chronicled his efforts as a “mock-challenger” in a series of postings on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency website, and here he collects these postings in a slim, delectable volume.

The author’s wry deadpan punctuates almost every entry, and his commentary is equal parts funny, sad and true. He benefits as much from his own droll intelligence as from the fact that American politics seem to have devolved into a theatre of the absurd; some of the best laughs come from Grayson’s merely transcribing passages from election questionnaires, publicity packets and political journalism that he encounters during his “campaign.” Nonetheless, the critique of election politics that his run represents is as hilarious as it is completely legitimate; gerrymandering and the incredible advantages of incumbency have resulted in a system where challengers for U.S. House seats—both “mock” and real—are defeated the vast majority of the time. And after reading this, one is left with the sinking feeling that even a thousand Graysons might never change this broken system.

Funny and devastatingly incisive.

* * * * *

Also online today is an interview with me at the Florida Book Review. An excerpt:

FBR: Throughout Write-In you admit that your chances of winning are slim and none. Your chances against Flake are equally bad. Why invest so much time, money and energy toward running in unwinnable races?

RG: For the same reason I write books of short stories that are unwinnable in the marketplace, I guess. Because I enjoy doing it.

But I really believe that contested elections are important in a democracy. One of the reasons we tend to have a partisan war with hysterics on both sides in Congress is that the vast majority of districts are safe seats. I testified at the state commission that did the redistricting in 1991, following the 1990 census, when they met in Gainesville. Karen Thurman, the current Democratic party state chair, was on that commission, and surprise, one of the districts created was one that centered around her state senate district and she got elected to Congress (a seat she lost after the 2000 redistricting).

The Ocala Star-Banner, Orlando Sentinel and Gainesville Sun ran stories on my testimony. I showed some drawings I'd made of my proposed districts. For the Orlando area, I'd created a Congressional district in the shape of Mickey Mouse ears. For Brevard County and the Space Coast, my district was shaped like a rocket ship. I had a gator-shaped district centered around Gainesville and a palm-tree-shaped district in Palm Beach County.

I was in my first semester of law school, and one of the members of the redistricting commission, former House speaker Jon Mills, director of UF Law's Center for Governmental Responsibility, asked for my drawings so that they could have them for the official record. Three years later, Jon became my boss when I went to work as a staff attorney at CGR, but he made sure he kept me out of any work we did on the electoral process!

John Anderson, whom I voted for in the November 1980 election for President—the only time since 1972 I didn't vote for a Democrat—and whom I mention in my book, is now a Nova Southeastern law professor whom I got to know during my four years as an administrator at the law school John has studied the issue with colleagues, and they've done some brilliant scholarly writing on the problem of the gerrymandering that has turned the vast majority of U.S. House seats "unwinnable," as you say, for one party or the other. He's also proposed several innovative solutions that work in other nations, such as multi-member districts (which we used to have in the Florida legislature when I moved to the state in 1980) and preference voting.

It annoyed me that so many Florida incumbents in Congress were "elected" on that day in May when they filed for reelection and no one bothered to oppose them. In 2002, living in Davie, I got a ballot I had gotten several times in the past: there's not even a spot for the U.S. House race. You'd think at least you could vote for the incumbent or not vote for him or her. But Florida doesn't do that, and I find it sad.

As a hopeless candidate, I don't have to worry about fundraising, currying favor with anyone or avoiding saying what I think for fear of losing votes. It's an ideal situation in many ways.

Heartless Cheapskate Ideologue Jeff Flake Votes Against Hope

Yesterday in a post titled "Three Amigos Vote Against HOPE," the very thoughtful blogger Random Musings noted that Rep. Jeff Flake, along with two Republican House colleagues from Arizona, Trent Franks (AZ-02) and John Shadegg (AZ-03) voted against H.R. 3524, the HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2008, which authorizes grants to housing agencies to "revitalize severely distressed public housing developments."

The HOPE VI program,

originally known as the Urban Revitalization Demonstration (URD), was developed as a result of recommendations by the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing...The Commission recommended revitalization in three general areas: physical improvements, management improvements, social and community services to address resident needs. As a result, HOPE VI was created by the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 1993 (Pub.L. 102-389), approved on October 6, 1992.

By 2000, HOPE VI had been honored by the Innovations in American Government Program, one of the nation's most prestigious public service awards programs. HOPE VI was recognized for its Mixed-Finance Public Housing program, "an innovative approach that is transforming some of the nation's most severely distressed public housing from sources of urban blight to engines of neighborhood renewal."

Here's Random Musings on Jeff Flake and his ideological extremist colleagues again:

Before voting against HOPE, the three amigos supported four failed amendments that would have gutted or at least weakened the impact of the underlying bill. They voted for -

...the Neugebauer Amendment, which would have change the requirement that housing units demolished under a HOPE grant be replaced on a one for one basis to requiring the one-for-one match only if the units were occupied immediately prior to demolition. This is important in places like New Orleans where there are efforts to condemn public housing facilities and replace them with fewer, but larger, for-profit units. With a single stroke, this plan both inhibits the return to N.O. of poor black residents and generates greater profits for developer. (failed 181 - 227)

...the Sessions Amendment, which would have maintained HUD's authority to issue "demolition only" grants. Hmm..."demolition only"...that's an interesting concept for a bill that is supposed to be about renewing and revitalizing public housing. (Failed 186 - 221)

...the King Amendment, which would have barred using HOPE funds to pay for wages mandated by the Davis-Bacon Act (aka - prevailing wage.) I suppose this could be something of an improvement for Rep. King (R-IA). Normally, he spends his time railing about foreign immigrants. It seems that he is setting his sights a little higher now - the American skilled worker. (Failed 136 - 268)

...and the Capito Amendment, which would have removed the mandatory 'green' building standards and made them optional. (Failed 169 - 240)

Yesterday's bill was officially an amendment to the United States Housing Act of 1937, passed by Congress in the darkest days of the Great Depression, when one-third of a nation was, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's words from his second inaugural address earlier that year, "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."

I'm sure Jeff Flake would have opposed any help for those in need had he been in Congress back then. He hates the New Deal -- social security, unemployment compensation, securities regulation, the whole enchilada -- and wants to repeal any help it gave to struggling American families.

Growing up in Brooklyn, I had many friends living in "the projects." As a teacher in New York and South Florida, I had many students who lived in public housing. My Grandma Ethel and Grandma Herb, who had a modest income, lived in one of New York's Mitchell-Lama housing developments for the middle class: a clean, neat 12-story building facing the beach in Rockaway, Queens. For a while, when I was in my late thirties, I moved in with my grandmother to help her out. Without the help of government housing, I don't know what kind of place Grandma Ethel would have ended up in.

Jeff Flake doesn't care about people like my grandmother.

He knows he can get away with votes like this because he's assured of re-election. HOPE prevailed yesterday, no thanks to Jeff Flake.

It's so depressing that I'll call here on my trusted adviser Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Rep. Jeff Flake is without feathers. Or a heart.

Rep. Jeff Flake to Capitalism's Losers: No Soup for You

I found a great quote in The New Republic review by economist Robert Solow of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Advenstures in a New World, that applies to laissez-faire free-market extremist Rep. Jeff Flake's view of capitalism:

[Greenspan] is much taken with Joseph Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction"; it is almost Greenspan's leitmotif. Schumpeter's idea was that the mainspring of economic growth is innovation, the risky introduction into economic life of new goods and services, new methods of production, new organizational principles, new ideas generally. Innovation brings about economic advance, but it also diminishes or destroys the value of assets associated with earlier innovations. Among these doomed assets are factories and equipment, skills, jobs, knowledge, even reputations. Creative destruction is a price we pay for progress. Greenspan embraces this concept with enthusiasm.

The process described by Schumpeter and endorsed by Greenspan pretty clearly benefits "society as a whole" in a meaningful sense. But there are always losers as well as winners. And innocent losers at that: innocent in the sense that they could not possibly have evaluated the odds and adapted to them in advance. (Classic example: the town long supported by a factory that has now become irrecoverably obsolete.) Creative destruction causes what we have learned to call collateral damage. Greenspan exhibits no sympathy at all for losers. This absence of fellow feeling for innocent losers is common among libertarian Republicans [emphasis mine]; and it strikes me as characteristically Randian.

Does it matter? It would certainly matter less if it were just an attitude. But it is an ideological axiom that affects policy decisions. The practical policy question is whether anything ought to be done by the government to cushion the costs of progress to the losers, at least to the innocent losers. George W. Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative." He lied. The argument against doing anything for losers is that the policies actually proposed would often throttle the golden goose by getting in the way of the processes of innovation and creative destruction themselves, thus losing the economic growth from which they are inseparable. Attempts to preserve obsolete jobs are a standard example: if they succeed, they discourage the new thing. This argument is valid as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Not all social policy has to follow that pattern. There are ways to protect the worker, if not the job. Finding and elaborating such efficient policies would be a worthwhile agenda for economic engineering. One would like to have seen more of that in Greenspan's reflections. I betray my age by remembering Tom Lehrer's words: "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."

Jeff Flake's extremist ideology, like that of his former bailiwick, the anti-family Goldwater Institute, and his political sponsors in the Club for Growth (a.k.a. the Club for Greed), offers nothing for those who are temporarily victims of a changing economy.

But people need help. Jeff Flake offers struggling middle class families nothing but tax cuts for multinational corporations and the super-wealthy, things that do not help regular people like you and me, people worried about debt, medical care, the high cost of education...

Jeff Flake tells us: No soup for you.


In the fantasy world of his extremist ideology, the free market can never fail. According to Jeff Flake, in the long run, whatever bad that's happening to individuals is good for society.

But as John Maynard Keynes said, "The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

I think middle class Americans, as well as the poor, need help while they're still alive. I think government needs to offer people a helping hand in turbulent times.

Jeff Flake is against helping regular people. Don't expect any chicken soup from him.

For Congresspedia: Duh, I'm Richard Grayson and I Approved This Mess

Yesterday I heard from the managing editor of Congresspedia, a wiki covering Congress, its members and candidates for the House and Senate.

Last week they sent me a way to create my profile on Congresspedia. After a few bugs in their system (mosquitos, mostly) prevented me from doing so, I finally managed to put in some info and get it up on the site.

Anyway, here's what the managing editor wrote:

Thanks for your additions to your candidate profile. I did a little cleaning up on your positions and, most importantly, added a link back to your campaign website as a source for your position on expanding Medicare to all. As you can imagine, trying to keep all the material people add to Congresspedia factual can be quite a task, so one thing we require is an external source for every assertion.

Do you think you could add a link back to appropriate pages on your own campaign website for the rest of your positions, just so we can "prove" that those actually are your positions? One thing you could also do is simply to put up a post on your site laying out all your positions and then just add links back to that one post.

* * * * *

So I think I'll just copy the positions on the Congresspedia profile here, my so-called official campaign website or whatever:

Health care: Grayson favors universal health care in the form of Medicare for all Americans.

Iraq: Grayson supports immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Economy: Grayson supports a stimulus package to relieve the economic pressures of the current recession. He favors bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements that provide protections for workers in all nations. Grayson believes in responsible regulation of corporations and the financial industry.

Civil liberties: Grayson is opposed to the Patriot Act and other recent curtailments of civil liberties.

Abortion: Grayson supports abortion rights.

Labor: Grayson supports mandatory sick days for workers.

Education: Grayson supports increased funding for student grants.

Gay rights: Grayson supports gay rights including marriage equality.

Gun control: Grayson supports gun control.

Energy and environment: Grayson has proposed a dollar-a-gallon tax on gasoline to help achieve energy independence and fight climate change. He also supports other measures to protect the environment.

Foreign policy and national security: A supporter of the United Nations and other multilateral organizations, Grayson seeks funding to modernize the armed forces and to increase services for veterans.

Taxes: Grayson favors increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and an increase in the earned income tax credit for less fortunate families.

I, Richard Grayson, do solemnly swear, affirm, confess, admit and own up to the fact that these indeed are my positions. (Other positions include downward-facing dog, the cobra, and numerous others I learned on KAET/Channel 8's Lilias! yoga program at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays).

Cross my heart and hope to die.

So I hope that's official enough for the Congresspedia folks.

* * * * *

Oh, yeah, the Congresspedia editor ended by saying:

One thing you may also consider doing is adding the information you have obviously already gathered about why you think Flake et al. are making bad votes in DC to their Congresspedia profiles. If you google "Jeff Flake", Congresspedia pops up as number 4 or 5, and thousands of people have already read it, so you have a real opportunity here to educate people about his voting record.

I don't think I'll do that. It seems OK for me to criticize Jeff Flake here, on my blog, but I'd feel creepy writing something bad about him on his own Congresspedia profile. It's sort of like going to a guy's house and criticizing the decor.

On the other hand, if anyone else wants to go to Congresspedia and write stuff about me on my profile, I don't mind. I'm just subletting there.

Many thanks to Congresspedia. If you're not in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, use Congresspedia to check out the district where you do vote.

Want This Recession to Last? Make It Flake!

Numerous right-wing laissez-faire bloggers who hate government aid for working families are smoking up the blogosphere with their exciting campaign to urge Republican House leaders to appoint Rep. Jeff Flake to the House Appropriations Committee. Check out a Google blog search for the terms "appropriations" and "Jeff Flake" and you'll see how popular this movement is.

There's even a great new website, "Make It Flake," that shows people how to badger the Republican House leadership on Jeff Flake's behalf.

Everyone who wants our current dire economic situation to continue should support this effort.

Rep. Jeff Flake, as I've shown in previous posts, has to be the number-one enemy of the federal government spending any money to help middle class families and working people.

He will make sure that this recession lasts a long, long time.

Jeff Flake is best known for his campaign against earmarks. He hates earmarks so much you can practically steam coming out of his ears when he talks about them. (Of course no marks come out of his ears.)

Unfortunately, as this New Republic article on Mitt Romney's resurgent campaign amid the economic disaster that is the state of Michigan notes:

[Like Rep. Jeff Flake, Sen. John] McCain is a famous critic of earmarks--the targeted spending items that members of Congress quietly attach to bills, in order to finance projects back home. And in his speech at the summit, he boasts that he's never once sponsored such a measure himself. It's a noble stand. But earmarks also represent money flowing from Washington to the rest of the country--which, frankly, is precisely what should be happening in a recession. They often mean jobs, too, no small thing to the people who don't have them--plenty of whom live in Michigan. Among the recent earmarks, for example, was a $4 million contract for a defense contractor here and another half-million for a group of hospitals.

If you want to make sure no money is appropriated to help regular people during this recession, Make It Flake!

Rep. Jeff Flake's Response to Hurricane Katrina: A Correction and an Apology

Last Friday I posted a comment noting that Rep. Jeff Flake's only response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was to be one of only eleven (11) members of Congress to vote against the relief package to aid hurricane victims and rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Someone emailed me, saying that I was wrongly suggesting that Rep. Flake did nothing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and noted that our district's Congressman did take the initiative in at least one Katrina-based initiative. In fact, he was the first member of Congress to do so.

So I apologize for the implication and hereby correct my oversight:

Within just a few days after the magnitude of the devastation and human suffering became apparent, Rep. Jeff Flake spearheaded the efforts to lower wages for construction workers by suspending the Davis-Bacon Act for the Katrina recovery effort.

The Davis-Bacon Act requires federal contractors on federally funded construction contracts to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. As Edward Sullivan, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department said at the time:

Suspending Davis-Bacon protections for financially distressed workers in the Gulf states amounts to legalized looting of these workers who will be cleaning up toxic sites and struggling to rebuild their communities while favored contractors rake in huge profits from FEMA reconstruction contracts.

Laborers President Terence O’Sullivan said that Jeff Flake's proposal, enacted by President Bush by executive order, "dash[ed] the hope and opportunity of everyday working people, those who have built this great nation and those who work to rebuild in the aftermath of disaster.”

When President Bush finally restored the Davis-Bacon Act in the Katrina reconstruction, Jeff Flake wrote a letter to the President protesting this action.

I am happy to correct my erroneous implication that Rep. Flake did nothing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This brilliant intellectual ideologue had the foresight to see the disaster as, in the words of the blogger Working Life, "a way to screw workers."

The Time for Rep. Jeff Flake's Laissez-Faire Do-Nothing Ideology Is Past

Yesterday, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, had a guest column in The Financial Times that I totally agree with. It explains why Rep. Jeff Flake's extremist laissez-faire philosophy is a thing of the past. Some excerpts:

As we prepare for this autumn’s election, the results are in on America’s 30-year experiment with radical economic deregulation. Income inequality has risen to levels not seen since the 1920s and the collapse of the unregulated portion of the mortgage and secondary markets threatens the health of the overall economy.

These two economic failures will be major issues in the forthcoming presidential election, and, importantly, there is an emerging Democratic consensus standing in sharp contrast to the laisser faire Republican approach.

There are two central elements of this consensus. Democrats believe that government’s role as regulator is essential in maintaining confidence in the integrity and fairness of markets, and we believe that economic growth alone is not enough to reverse unacceptable levels of income inequality. In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, credit markets round the world contracted sharply in response to concerns among market participants about the value of exotic and opaque securities being offered in largely unregulated secondary markets. This staggering implosion and its damaging and widespread reverberations make it clear that a mature capitalist economy is as likely to suffer from too little regulation as from too much.

With respect to income inequality, since the end of the last recession – a period of steady economic growth – average earnings for the vast majority of workers have fallen in real terms. During this period, after-tax incomes of the top 1 per cent nearly doubled.

Whether because of globalisation, technology or other factors, it is clear that market forces have produced too much inequality and government has not adequately used its capacity to mitigate the impact of these forces.

Conservatives have long argued that government efforts to address these issues would damage the economy. They are, of course, the same people who predicted that there would be an economic disaster after Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress raised marginal tax rates in 1993, and who opposed other tax increases on upper-income people. Economic growth in the ensuing years was among the strongest in the postwar era. It is now clear that growth in the private sector is consistent with a far greater variation in many aspects of public policy – including taxation and regulation – than conservatives claim. In fact, appropriate intervention with respect to prudential market regulation is necessary to promote growth, and its absence – as we have learned – can retard it.

In response to the current crisis, it appears that the regulatory tide may, at long last, be turning. . .

In 1994 a Democratic Congress – the last before the Republican takeover marked the arrival of the deregulators – passed the homeowners equity protection act, giving the Federal Reserve the power to regulate all home mortgage loans. The avatar of deregulation, Alan Greenspan, then Fed chairman, flatly refused to use any of that authority.

In contrast, today’s Fed will soon issue rules using that authority. That represents a significant repudiation of the previous view. While the proposals made by the Democratic presidential candidates differ in detail, they are to a substantial extent consistent with the argument I have made here. Their Republican counterparts continue to advocate the hands-off approach pursued by the Bush administration. As a result, we are likely to have a healthy debate about the role of government in supporting a robust capitalist economy in the 21st century. It is important to note that this debate is not about policy details but represents fundamentally different views about the nature of our modern economy.

I believe the American people will decide that we should enact policies that seek to curb growing inequality and provide some check on market excesses.

There is a clear difference between Rep. Jeff Flake's philosophy towards regulation -- that of the anti-family Goldwater Institute that he once headed and the chardonnay-sipping millionaires of the Club for Growth (or, as Gov. Mike Huckabee calls them, the Club for Greed) -- and mine.

For example, here's what Jeff Flake's own website says about a Republican-led Congress's reaction to scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other crazed-by-greed corporations:

In 2002, Congressman Flake was one of just three Members of Congress to vote against the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Congress’ attempt to improve corporate governance. . .
Congressman Flake has offered legislation that would make section 404, the most cumbersome portion of the bill, subject to shareholder votes rather than being made compulsory by government regulators.

So if you want more of the same corporate greed and irresponsible business policies which led to the Enron debacle and our current mortgage and credit crisis, then laissez-faire extremist Rep. Jeff Flake is your man.

But if you are more inclined to favor responsible regulation of corporations and agree with Rep. Barney Frank, then I hope you will consider voting for me.

Why Rep. Jeff Flake Is Wrong for America: Just a Few Examples

The Problem: Struggling middle class families can't afford the soaring cost of higher education.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Cut funding for student loans. If families can't afford college tuition on their own, higher education probably isn't for them.

The Problem: Struggling middle class families can't afford the soaring cost of medical care.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid so that elderly and poor people have the same problem and middle class families won't feel so bad.

The Problem: Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Be only one of 11 members of Congress to vote against the relief package. These families should instead rely on their own initiative and the free market to recover their lives, according to the Congressman.

The Problem: Some Americans are having trouble feeding their families due to high food costs.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Eliminate food stamps and other nutrition programs. Hunger will motivate parents to work harder and make more money.

The Problem: The AIDS epidemic has created millions of young orphans in the developing world with no means of support.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Be one of only 9 House members to vote against the Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act of 2005. Let the free market do its magic and take care of these parentless kids.

The Problem: Young Americans and displaced workers must acquire the technical skills for today's jobs.

Jeff Flake's Solution: On a 399-1 roll call vote, oppose legislation giving states and school districts funding for work-related classes, programs, equipment, and training. There's no need for the government to be involved in helping people retrain.

The Problem: The federal government's emergency communications system is broken and in dire need of a technical update to serve Americans during disasters.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Be one of only 2 House members to vote against the 21st Century Emergency Communications Act. As with Katrina, let citizens do this on their own, through private enterprise.

The Problem: The high cost of oil is crippling our economy and bankrupting our country. We need to at least explore alternative fuels.

Jeff Flake's Solution: Be one of only 9 House members to vote against a program taking money collected from violations of the corporate average fuel economy program and use them to increase the availability of alternative fuels. The free market, of course, will take care of this.

I could go on and on. Jeff Flake has compiled a shameful record over seven years in office. These are simply a few well-documented instances.

Rep. Jeff Flake is an extremist even in a highly conservative Republican party. Time and again, when overwhelming numbers of House members from both sides of the aisle support some funding for a program to help people, Jeff Flake is one of a itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny minority who vote no.

He's an anti-government fanatic in a time when more Americans, including Republican conservatives, realize that the free market sometimes fails us and struggling American families need some help from its representatives in Washington.

Jeff Flake is a man of his word and a man of principles.

Re-elect him if you want nothing done to help you and your neighbors.

Common Sense on Immigration Reform: Rep. Jeff Flake and I Agree

Driving along the 202 early this morning and listening to Green Day's best-selling CD, I found myself unaccountably thinking of the ghetto-fabulous State Rep. Russell Pearce.

His withdrawal from the Republican primary race against U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District is a good thing -- even from my perspective as the only Democrat currently running for that seat.

I may disagree with Jeff Flake on many issues and believe that his allegiance to an outworn ideology is heartless and counterproductive in practice, but he is certainly not going to embarrass Arizona as our representative in Congress. He is a principled, educated, intelligent and often thoughtful legislator -- unlike his erstwhile opponent.

The 202 freeway isn't quite complete yet, so along with everyone else, I had to get off at University Drive and take the streets to approach the next open stretch of highway on the 202. At 80th Street, I stopped to fill up my gas tank at the Chevron service station.

Then I walked a few feet over to pay my respects, as I always do, to Balbir Singh Sodhi, at the little memorial for him.

I was staying at the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow in the small Ozarks town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, from August to October 2001, the time when the 9/11 attack occurred. (That morning I heard a DJ on the country music station mourn, "They was Yankees, but they was our Yankees.")

Those of us in the Valley received a second shock when Balbir was murdered. For those of you unfamiliar with Balbir's tragic death, here's Wikpedia:

Born in Punjab, India, he was a member of the Sikh religion. He moved to Los Angeles in 1989, where he worked as a taxi driver. He later relocated to San Francisco, where he continued to work in that capacity. He saved enough money to buy a gas station in [Mesa], and then he moved there.

On September 15, 2001, he was shot five times by a gunman and died instantly. Apparently, he had been confused with a person of Middle Eastern ethnicity because of the clothes he wore, his turban, and his beard. Within 25 minutes of his death, the Phoenix police reported four further attacks on people who either were Middle Easterners or who dressed with clothes thought to be worn by Middle Easterners.

I knew Balbir from the gas station and as a member of the Sikh community who worshipped at the same Phoenix gurdwara as my oldest, closest friend in the Valley, who grew up across the street from my grandparents' apartment in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and who was my friend throughout our undergraduate days at Brooklyn College in the early 1970s and has been ever since.

I've spent time at the gurdwara, going to several Thanksgiving dinners there and to other celebrations, and I'm involved with SALDEF, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which provides legal assistance, educational outreach, legislative advocacy, and media relations for American Sikhs.

Rep. Jeff Flake, like Sen. John McCain, has proven to be a true statesman on the volatile issue of immigration. I admire how he has taken a principled position that has caused him to be vilified by the ignorant nativist know-nothings in his own party.

Along with Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Rep. Flake has introduced the STRIVE Act (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy Act).

Although I do not necessarily agree with all the provisions of the STRIVE Act bill, like Rep. Flake, I favor the passage of common-sense comprehensive immigration reform.

I grew up in Brooklyn in a city of immigrants. Around the borough and in my friends' homes, as a kid I heard Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, Creole, Polish, Cantonese and Ladino from their older relatives. After the welcome 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act introduced in the House by my then-Congressman Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (who served half a century in Congress), I got used to seeing signs in Korean, Bengali, Russian, Mandarin and Arabic, sometimes one next to the other.

I lived much of my adult life in South Florida and worked in Miami, a place dominated by immigrants. Despite getting a 97 on the June 1967 New York State Three-Year Spanish Regents Exam, my conversational skills en español are poor, yet I never had trouble understanding others or making myself understood as I made my way around Miami-Dade County, working as a teacher trainer in computer education in the public schools, and I grew comfortable in a majority-Latino culture.

As a teacher at numerous community colleges, universities and law schools, I've worked with students from scores of nations around the globe. Just in the past year, I've taught immigrants from Montenegro, Belize, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Palestine and numerous other countires, including Mexico. All of the students in my English classes are striving very hard to master the English language.

I've taught courses in immigrant American literature, focusing on the work of such exciting contemporary writers as Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Gish Jen, Chang-Rae Lee, Cristina Garcia and Bharati Mukherjee. I've written about Brooklyn's diversity here and here.

So I have a problem understanding the current hysteria involving undocumented immigrants in Arizona. Obviously, steps need to be taken to secure our borders, but I think all the hard-working people who've made the effort to come here and play by the rules deserve a path to citizenship. If you want to say I support amnesty for them, that's OK with me.

Anyway, I'm glad there will be no Republican primary against Rep. Flake fought largely over this divisive issue. I hope Rep. Flake's common-sense approach to immigration will prevail this year or during his next term after he defeats me in November.

I Will Lose to Heartless Jeff Flake, But Invisible Americans Must Have Hope

"I've met families in this state and all over our country who have lost their homes to foreclosures. Men and women who work day and night but can't pay the bills and hope they don't get sick because they can't afford health insurance. Young people who can't afford to go to college to pursue their dreams...Too many have been invisible for too long."

I like all of our Democratic presidential candidates and will happily vote for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards or Bill Richardson next November.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, voters say they want change -- change from the failed policies of the last seven years, the years Jeff Flake has been representing Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Since his victory over my symbolic DIY campaign effort is assured, why do I even bother?

Because Jeff Flake doesn't care about struggling normal people, the families worried about the high cost of higher education, the workers with two jobs and no health insurance, the homeless veterans, the families whose homes are being foreclosed, the working men and women managing to do it all without a safety net...

To Jeff Flake, these people are invisible.

Jeff Flake is more interested in intellectual theories about the infallability of the free market, about the evil nature of any government aid for families -- the theories that reinforce his outworns beliefs. He thinks it's still 1978, not 2008.

I am not naive. Jeff Flake will be overwhelmingly re-elected next November despite my paltry and unfunded efforts.

But invisible people must be made manifest, and attention must be paid.

Luckily there is hope outside Arizona's Sixth Congressional District. A minority of us here in the East Valley believe in and want to be a part of what's happening, this movement for change.

Because something is happening here. But you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Flake?

Rep. Jeff Flake: I Will Stop Any Help for Struggling Middle Class Families in This Recession

Now that his $750,000 in fat-cat campaign contributions has scared off a Republican primary challenger, Rep. Jeff Flake is assured of re-election and so has turned his attention to making sure the government will not help struggling middle class families in the current recession.

Rep. Flake has written to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner asking to be placed in a Republican vacancy on the House Appropriations Committee, according to The Wall Street Journal, which noted:

In four terms in Congress, Mr. Flake has never sought a special bridge, courthouse, parking lot, or teapot museum for his district. Republican leaders were so incensed at his role in exposing GOP earmarks in 2006 that they booted him off the Judiciary Committee.

Unfortunately, not only is Jeff Flake opposed to wasteful pork, he's also opposed to any government spending to help the struggling middle class.

Jeff Flake is a laissez-faire free-market extremist whose idol is Herbert Hoover, the President who did nothing in the face of the Great Depression. Jeff Flake mourns the day in 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Hoover and ushered in the New Deal.

So if Jeff Flake is on the Appropriations Committee, it's a sure bet he'll be opposing any government spending to help middle class Americans during this recession.

Jeff Flake will make sure we don't increase or extend unemployment benefits for laid-off workers.

Jeff Flake will make sure we don't provide job-training assistance or food stamps to Americans living on the edge.

Jeff Flake will make sure we don't spend any money to fix our decaying bridges, roads, airports and other public infrastructure.

Jeff Flake will make sure we don't spend a dime to help workers in factories that close down because of foreign competition.

Jeff Flake will make sure the government does absolutely nothing to help those struggling with the high cost of fuel, the slumping value of their homes, and rising unemployment.

That's because Jeff Flake believes the free market is infallable. Recessions are necessary and even helpful, according to Jeff Flake. In Jeff Flake's view, the only thing the government needs to do is provide more tax breaks for millionaires and multinational corporations.

Congratulations on your renomination, Rep. Flake. My pathetic, non-professional, unfunded DIY campaign is just a symbolic form of opposition, and you and everyone else know that. I guess that despite being your only opponent, I should already congratulate you on your re-election in November.

Too bad I can't congratulate the people of Arizona and the United States.

Ghetto-Fabulous Russell Pearce Out of Congressional Race in AZ-06

The provocative insider Republican blog Seeing Red AZ reports that term-limited State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-National Alliance) has abandoned his exploration of a candidacy in the primary against U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District. This anti-governmnent activist, of course, will be running for a different public office rather than moving to honest work in the private sector that right-wingers adore.

So right now nothing stands between Jeff Flake and yet another term of do-nothing showboating on behalf of his extreme laissez-faire anti-middle-class philosophy but me.

Scary, huh?

But there are rumors that things might change soon. Stay tuned.

Two Medical Studies Show Why We Need Medicare for All

As widely reported, the Journal of the American Medical Association's December 26 issue published a Harvard Medical School study that showed that uninsured people 55 and older, particularly those with diabetes and cardiovascular disease, significantly reduce their risk of declining health after they enroll in Medicare at 65.

According to the New York Times:

Researchers tracked the health and insurance status of 7,233 people ages 55 to 72, about 31 percent of them uninsured before becoming eligible for Medicare. Based on various measures of general health and physical functioning, each participant was assigned a summary health score, from 0 for the worst health to 30 for the best.

Scores for all elderly participants decreased over time, but for each year before 65 the scores of the insured declined more slowly than those of the uninsured. After 65, the uninsured began to catch up. By 70, the gap in scores was 50 percent of that expected if they had not gained Medicare coverage. Uninsured people with heart disease and diabetes radically cut their expected rate of decline, to a point where they were almost as healthy at 72 as they were at 65.

“Our findings provide some of the strongest evidence yet that expanding health coverage to the uninsured improves their health,” said Dr. J. Michael McWilliams, the paper’s lead author and a research associate at Harvard, particularly older people with “conditions like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, for which there are effective therapies.”

A second study, in the January-February 2008 issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, noted that ACS researchers found substantial evidence that lack of adequate health insurance coverage was associated with less access to care and poorer outcomes for cancer patients. The uninsured were less likely to receive recommended cancer screening tests and more likely to have their cancers diagnosed at a later stage, when they are less curable. They had lower survival rates than those with private insurance for several cancers for which there are screening tests and effective treatments, including breast and colorectal cancer.

Our current system, driven by the insurance companies' need for profits, is broken.

I understand that Rep. Jeff Flake is philosophically opposed to Medicare even for our older citizens. He believes the free market should control outcomes in health care. Not coincidentally, his hugest campaign contributions come from the insurance industry.

Had Jeff Flake been in Congress in 1965, he would have voted against establishing Medicare. Even now, this rigid laissez-faire would like to repeal the law and returning our oldest Americans to the vagaries of private health insurance and the charity of hospitals and doctors.

However, his extreme anti-government philosophy has blinded Jeff Flake to reality.

Experience and common sense tells normal people that Medicare works for Americans 65 and over.

It's age discrimination to withhold it from younger people.

Medicare should be available to all Americans, regardless of age.

President Bush's Greatest Legacy Opposed by Rigid Anti-Family Ideologue Jeff Flake

As -- much to the relief of many of us -- President Bush heads into his final year in office, it's been clear for a while that his most substantial accomplishment has been his leadership in the worldwide battle against HIV/AIDS.

His program is flawed -- the insistence that monies be squandered in a futile, moralistic form of abstinence education, which works even less well in Africa and Asia than it does among American teenagers is one example -- but in 2003, President Bush was at his finest when he proposed Pepfar, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief.

The New York Times today has a long front-page story declaring Pepfar to be President Bush's greatest legacy:

So far, roughly 1.4 million AIDS patients have received lifesaving medicine paid for with American dollars, up from 50,000 before the initiative. Even Mr. Bush’s most ardent foes, among them Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, his 2004 Democratic challenger, find it difficult to argue with the numbers.

“It’s a good thing that he wanted to spend the money,” said Mr. Kerry, an early proponent of legislation similar to the plan Mr. Bush adopted. “I think it represents a tremendous accomplishment for the country.”

Announced in the 2003 State of the Union address, the plan called for $15 billion for AIDS prevention, treatment and care, concentrating on 15 hard-hit nations in Africa and the Caribbean. An enthusiastic Congress has already approved $19 billion.

Mr. Bush is pressing for a new five-year commitment of $30 billion. He will travel to Africa in February to make his case — and, the White House hopes, burnish the compassionate conservative side of his legacy.

Read the rest of the Times article, and even if you are a liberal Democrat like me, you will be proud of what President Bush has accomplished in the fight against AIDS -- more than any other U.S. president of either party.

But I have little hope that rigid laissez-faire ideologue Rep. Jeff Flake will support the President's pleas for renewed funding for Pepfar.

You see, Jeff Flake believes that government can do little to help the lives of people, whether they are American children without adequate health care or millions in the Third World dying of a plague.

Jeff Flake would rather propose another tax cut to help out his chardonnay-sipping millionaire friends in the Club for Growth and Greed.

The legislation that established and funded Pepfar is The United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003. Its main sponsor in the House was the legendary Illinois Republican Henry J. Hyde, who recently passed away. Two of his co-sponsors were liberal Democrats from California; the other two were Republicans Jim Leach of Iowa and Dave Weldon of Florida.

On May 1, 2003, the House passed H.R. 1298 by a vote of 375-41.

All but one Democrat voted for President Bush's global AIDS initiative.

The bill also got the support of 183 Republican House members. Only 40 GOP legislators voted against it.

One of the nay-sayers was Arizona's Rep. Jeff Flake.

I can't imagine what Jeff Flake thinks when he votes against important programs like Pepfar -- or against children's health, benefits for veterans, relief for victims of terrorism, all kinds of government programs that would benefit America's forgotten and beleaguered middle class.

Please write or call Rep. Jeff Flake and urge him to support the renewal of funding of President Bush's greatest legacy.

As the New York Times article noted:

...even critics like Mr. Zeitz concede that Mr. Bush spawned a philosophical revolution. In one striking step, he put to rest the notion that because patients were poor or uneducated they did not deserve, or could not be taught to use, medicine that could mean the difference between life and death.

In Haiti, about 13,000 patients are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs. That is only half the estimated 26,000 who need them, but far more than the 100 being treated five years ago. “A huge success story,” Dr. Pape says, “beyond my imagination.”

In Uganda, a country already far along on its own AIDS initiative when Mr. Bush began his, 110,000 people are under treatment, and 2 million have H.I.V. tests each year, up from 10,000 treated and 400,000 tested before, according to Dr. Alex Coutinho, a top AIDS expert there. The money comes mostly from Pepfar, but also from a United Nations fund to which the United States contributes.

Dr. Coutinho said Ugandans were terrified that when Mr. Bush left office, “the Bush fund,” as they call it, would go with him. “When I’ve traveled in the U.S., I’m amazed at how little people know about what Pepfar stands for,” he said. “Just because it has been done under Bush, it is not something the country should not be proud of.”

Let's not let our President's greatest legacy end abruptly. All Americans should be proud of Mr. Bush's leadership in the battle to eradicate HIV/AIDS.

It would be nice to have a Congressman whose leadership we could be proud of too.

Iowa Caucuses Show Jeff Flake and Russell Pearce Are History

"We are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come."

The Iowa caucus results in both parties show that the outworn ideologies of conservatives like Jeff Flake and Russell Pearce are history. They represent slightly different strands of an ideology rejected by 2008 voters.

The Republican caucuses were won by Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has rightly called Jeff Flake's main sponsor, the Club for Growth "the Club for Greed." Huckabee rails against Wall Street, the conservative establishment (Rush Limbaugh has said Huckabee is "not a conservative" and Richard Vigurie has called him "a Christian socialist"), and those who think government's role is to do nothing in the face of a shrinking and beleaguered middle class.

As for my party, the Democrats, we are looking toward the future. Young people not only support us in overwhelming numbers, but they turned out last night for their preferred candidate, Barack Obama.

We Democrats have three great candidates, any one of whom would make a great nominee and a President who will change this country for the better. Of course, all our candidates represent a rejection of the laissez-faire anti-government philosophy of Jeff Flake and the Goldwater Institute on the one hand and the hateful know-nothingism of Russell Pearce and the Minutemen on the other.

Let's get a strong Democrat candidate for Congress in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District who will be a part of the amazing changes that are coming in 2008. I will happily (well, sort of happily) represent our party in the East Valley if no one else will step forward, but I believe we can do better.

However, if I have to, I will do the best I can. Jeff Flake and Russell Pearce, your time is past.

A Plea to the Arizona Democratic Party: Find a Better Candidate in AZ-06

The New Year's Day column by conservative David Brooks mostly concerned Mitt Romney's presidential campaign but went on to make more general remarks about the political situation we are facing in 2008:

As Walter Mondale was the last gasp of the fading New Deal coalition, Romney has turned himself into the last gasp of the Reagan coalition.

That coalition had its day, but it is shrinking now. The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy and Iraq by double-digit margins. Republicans’ losses have come across the board, but the G.O.P. has been hemorrhaging support among independent voters. Surveys from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University show that independents are moving away from the G.O.P. on social issues, globalization and the roles of religion and government.

Since I filed to run as a candidate for the Democratic nomination in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District last May, I have not heard from anyone in the state Democratic party. For that matter, I haven't heard from a single Democratic voter in AZ-06.

I originally filed to run because I believe in contested elections and because I was frustrated that Sixth Congressional District Democrats like myself did not have a candidate to vote for in November 2006, when our party won back the U.S. House, or in November 2004, in a crucial election that got many Democrats energized.

All along, I have said I would happily step aside if a more credible Democrat would just step forward and run. That remains true.

Look, I know I am a horrible candidate for our party. I am no politician. Anyone glancing at the posts on this blog can see that. I am running only because no one else will.

I completely understand why state and national Democrats have little interest in AZ-06. It has the lowest percentage of registered Democrats of any congressional district in the Cactus State.

Our party needs to ensure that Rep. Harry Mitchell in AZ-05 and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in AZ-08 win their first re-election campaigns; their victories in 2006 brought Democrats 4-4 parity in the state's U.S. House delegation.

In 2008, we have an excellent chance of picking up the Republican seat in AZ-01 where an unpopular incumbent is retiring. We also have a very good chance to pick off another of Arizona's conservative Republican congressmen in AZ-03, where Bob Lord is a terrific candidate for our party.

Arizona's Sixth Congressional District should and must take a back seat to these eminently winnable races. But the national and state Democratic party should not abandon us.

I believe 2008 is the year, as Brooks said, the Reagan conservative coalition has come apart. The impending Republican primary fight between Rep. Jeff Flake and Russell Pearce in AZ-06 is a sign of this, as is the chaos in the GOP presidential race.

In my posts over the past few months I've tried to show that Rep. Flake is vulnerable to attack as a rigid right-wing laissez-faire ideologue at a time when this ideology is being rejected by many voters -- including those who have long voted Republican. If Russell Pearce somehow upsets the incumbent in next September's GOP primary, many more Republicans will join AZ-06 Democrats in seeking an alternative.

Please, leaders and members of the Arizona Democratic Party, let's build for the future in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, the fastest-growing district in the entire nation.

Find a better candidate than Richard Grayson.

One who doesn't talk about himself in the third person would be a good start.

[campaigning children in the photo at top are supporting their father, Democratic candidate Alan Grayson in FL-08]

Even Cheapskate Rep. Jeff Flake Should Heed Chief Justice Roberts on Raising Judges' Pay

Since 1989, Congress has withheld from federal judges the cost-of-living adjustments that other federal employees have received. Rep. Jeff Flake, with his extremist anti-government spending philosophy, undoubtedly approves of this neglect.

For many years, Chief Justice Rehnquist, in his annual reports, called for salary increases for federal judges. He died without any action by Congress. Yesterday Chief Justice Roberts, in his third annual report on the judiciary, repeated his plea from the year before for an increase in judges' pay.

Although his previous report spoke of a crisis, yesterday the Chief Justice “I simply ask once again for a moment’s reflection on how America would look in the absence of a skilled and independent judiciary.”

Last year, Justice Anthony Kennedy, testifying before Congress, gave many examples of judges who had left the bench in search of better-paying employment. In 2005, nine federal judges resigned or retired — the most in any single year. Four went to work for JAMS, a for-profit arbitration and mediation firm where, as Justice Kennedy noted, “they have the potential to earn the equivalent of a district judge’s salary in a matter of months.”

The $165,200 a year earned by a federal district court judge sounds like a lot. But I've worked as an administrator and faculty member at two law schools, and in the upper ranks of the legal world, from which the federal judiciary should be able to recruit new members, it's laughable.

A federal district court judge’s salary is about half of what the deans at my law schools make and doesn't even match the pay of a newbie just-passed-the-bar-exam associate at a top New York law firm.

Since 1969, the real pay of federal district court judges has fallen by about 25 percent, while the real pay of average American workers rose 18 percent. If judges’ pay had risen at the rate of the average worker, the $165,200 salary would now be $261,000.

On December 12, the House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 28 to 5, gave its approval to a 31 percent increase, designed to make up for the missing cost-of-living adjustments. It won't do the whole job, but Chief Justice Roberts praised the bill as a “reasonable compromise.”

The salary for federal district judges would rise to $218,000 from $165,200, with corresponding increases for appellate judges and Supreme Court justices. The Senate will resume work on its version of the bill in the new year.

I urge Rep. Jeff Flake to set aside his rabid no-spending anti-government philosophy and do the right thing. Please, Jeff, vote to increase judges' pay.

As a New York Times editorial explained, "One way the Constitution protects the independence of federal judges is by providing that — no matter whom the judges anger or disappoint — their compensation 'shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.' But that independence is eroded when inflation erodes salaries and judges must go to Congress with hats in hand."

In many ways, Jeff Flake has been a penny-wise, pound-foolish legislator. I hope he will do better in the coming year and vote for a judicial pay raise -- as well as one for himself and his fellow members of Congress.