My old friend and former Oswego Mayor John Sullivan has penned an op/ed in the TU...First congrats are in order.
Sullivan, who also lived in Sackets Harbor when he worked as an Assistant AG in Watertown, decries the extremes in the current two party duopoly that rules the country. John longs for the days of Everett Dirksen, Gerry Ford and Tip O'Neill. Affable, willing to compromise, respectful of the office they hold.
Now John opines politics is too polarized and raucous. John wants publicly financed campaigns and a return of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting to prevent the proliferation of Limbaughs. In other words, let's reign in all that free speech we have right now.
It's true that cable, talk radio and social media tend to turbocharge passions and lead to some really off-color attacks that make people shy away from public involvement and discourse.
The old days of select media gatekeepers and no ubiquitous 24 hour news cycle do seem charming, but if that were the norm, I would have never read John's piece which he trumpeted on, of all places, Facebook.
While John is musing about Senator Dirksen and watching the Honeymooners, I wonder if he longs for a return of Senator McCarthy or Father Coughlin. I am not so sure the clock can be turned back to a simpler time just by bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
Trying to to be that retro is a little like our friend Sisyphus and the rock.
Two-party system more like two extremes - Times Union
15 comments:
Tip O'Neill was not affable, willing to compromise, nor respectful of the office he held. And he DID NOT respect Ronald Reagan.
How did he view Reagan? Here he is in his own words:
"O’NEILL: I think that he thinks he’s in a grade B movie fighting the Indians or something. I really get frightened about it! I don’t believe he does his homework. I don’t believe that he does his study. I don’t believe that he puts the time in on it. I know his working habits such that, uh, I don’t believe he works over three-and-a-half hours a day. He works off three-by-five cards at all times. You take him away from them and he really, duhhh… He can’t discuss the issue that you’re talking about."
the totalitarian leftist keep repeating the same lie. There is a middle ground right now but it is referred to by the MSM and leftists as extremist or right wing. The Tea Party is the middle.
rest assured that John's piece would have been in the paper yesteryear and you would have read it just the same. That is why we are in this boat today...the MSM and public schools have been pushing for progressive liberalism for decades and that is what influenced the half of today's voters that did not come to their senses and vote conservative.
There was a time when a public safety net was considered liberal. Today, even when the state and fed are money strapped we are giving free air conditioners to low income families:
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8265486
This goes way beyond a safety net. Air conditioners are a luxury that even well to do people do not spend money on.
Yet when the Tea Party bulks against this kind of spending nonsense they are labeled as extreme. And a compromise would mean we just cut back some on the free air conditioners.
I don't like liberals and am going to continue to fight them with vitriol.
I bet you cannot name a single thing Sullivan did on behalf of the AG that was worth while and a genuine help to consumers.The only thing we can be sure of, is, thanks to Sullivan, next time we have an ice storm, people will think twice before buying generators and bringing them up to us to sell at a profit...so we will not have enough generators.
Your old friend is all wet.
There is not a two-party system.
There exists two wings of one bird of prey.
“The Tea Party is the middle.”
Bwaaahahahaha…this is without a doubt the funniest thing I’ve seen on this blog.
You should seriously consider a career in comedy, bwaaahahaha…too funny.
ChiefKujo you never get it right, Tip O'Neill and President Reagan had the most affalable relationshipa anyone could imagine between the Majority leaderof Congress and a President. So much so that they often agree to have cocktails together at the end of the day no matter hw hot the debate became between the Whitehouse and Congress. Get your facts straight please and stop propagandizing the blog
When Bush was in office he was a murderer, a war criminal, a killer of innocent children. Now we have a fool who screws the future of our kids. That's deemed to be unacceptable verbage and a sign we need fairness doctrines. BS. I didn't hear any of this crap when the Elephants were in office. John is a party hack, just cloaking it with a nice guy image. Where were you 5 years ago, Johnny Boy? Was civility not an issue back then?
So we can assume he wouldn't have called Palin a slut?
There's no two party system just one And it's The incumbant party.
Those affable compromisers have to share a lot of the blame for the situation this country is in. They let all this tax and spend BS get started because they didn't have the stinkin' backbone to stop it. They were the camel's nose under the tent, so to speak. If we had had a few less Gerry Fords' and Bob Doles' back then and a few more Bob Dornans' and Rand Pauls', maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in right now. And as far as Tip O'Neil is concerned, anyone who thinks he was affable or respectful of anything except his own position on anything is too young to have been around at the time and is reading someone else's Kool-aid stained version of history.
The Fairness Doctrine is the same thing as the Campaign Finance Reform was. A thinly disguised attempt to limit the First Amendment. Both are blatant violations of the First Amendment.
Where Does The U.S. Rank Among Heavily-Taxed Countries?
“... The actual percentage paid out by corporations appears to be substantially lower though, considering that even though the country's listed federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, it only takes in roughly 23 percent.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/tax-highest-most-us-switzerland_n_919805.html
It gets worse...because what the article fails to point out is that in most of the European nations listed, capital gains have to be taxed at the full maximum income tax rate. However, in the United States, the rich enjoy additional tax-discounts, through offshore tax havens.
So, a marginal income tax rate of 42% means nothing for billionaires and the Wall Street big wigs that receive most of their income through stock-ownership and pay $0.00 income tax...but rather they pay a flat tax rate of 15% on their capital gains. After all the legal write offs... it is, in most cases not even 15% any more for most them.
Conversely, a family man making around 80k a year pays around 25% federal income tax, plus almost 7% social security tax and 1.45% Medicare tax.
The Bush tax cuts were and are one of the biggest SCAMS the middle and working class in this country has ever been subjected to.
But the Gary types in this country want you to believe that the rich should be left out of the equation...that somehow their favorable and disproportionate treatment will magically “trickle down.”
They want you to believe that our economic woes will be solved...if only we can stop that undeserving lady in the grocery line from buying that damn bag of chips with her food stamps.
They are, of course, doing the bidding of their corporate puppet masters.
And Kathy again quotes the Huffington Post as if it is a source of information, not propaganda. It is difficult to counter the fact that half the country pays no income taxes at all. It is also difficult to counter the fact that taxing the entire income of the wealthy, no matter how defined, will give The Great One only a small amount of money he would need to continue this economic foolishness. We have a spending problem, not a taxation problem. But I expect Dannie and Katharina to continue to tell stories, all backed up by that pillar of truth, the Huffington Post. Such fun.
1:12, have you considered that you belive a canard, that corporations - & basically all businesses - pay no taxes anyway, that the cost of taxation is a cost of doing business and is passed onto the consumer?
and when you attack "the rich", what you fail to consider is the criticisms you make could only exist because of political actions allowing such conditions?
That the biggest SCAM Americans have ever been subjected to is housed in The National Cathedral - The Pentagon?
The average American actually pays out 70% of their income to all the multitudinous taxes levied by The Ruling Class.
LOL the former NY Dem party chaiman once called a rube by the downstate media is crying about Politics. John T was and it one of the politcal People I have known, his issue is HE has become a hasbeen.
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