Do we really need to arm the Statue of Liberty? It’s no secret that there is an immigration crisis in this country. Since Biden became President, more than three million migrants have crossed the border, and an estimated 1.7 million more have snuck in or overstayed their visas. The influx is now a problem for …
Tag: Mitch McConnell
Charlie Baker – big mistake with Collins endorsement?
No, Charlie, we do not need more Senators like Maine's Susan Collins. We don't even need Susan Collins. What we do need is to flip the Senate and deal responsibly with Covid-19 impacts, revitalize environmental standards to halt climate change, launch an infrastructure jobs bill, reform voting laws, redress economic inequities, protect the Affordable Care …
Continue reading Charlie Baker – big mistake with Collins endorsement?
News of RBG death hits hard
News of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death Friday hit hard, but it did not come as a surprise. She had been diagnosed with cancer five times since 1999 and fought back fiercely. When she succumbed, at the age of 87, she left hundreds of millions of people indebted to her for her lifelong battle for …
Headlines to look for in 2020
2020 vision gives us clarity to see the world around us. 2020 hindsight is a way of understanding where we got it wrong in the past. Today, my New Year's gift to you is a list of headlines I hope to see in 2020. Some are the triumph of hope over experience. Some are aspirational …
Getting beyond the wall
It's motif #1, the President bragging about having the biggest, being the smartest, (“I alone can fix it,”), master negotiator and uber deal maker. We can dispute his hyperbolic claims, but we all can agree that under his leadership Americans now have the longest-lasting (partial) government shutdown in our nation's history. 800,000 government workers and …
Return to checks and balances brings hope
I have to post quickly before events reactivate the despair and cynicism of the last two years. I felt a smile emerge when watching the swearing-in of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Imagine the pleasure of hearing about Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, establishing the Congress as a coequal branch …
Will the Senate nuke itself?
Once upon a time, when students learned civics in high school, we were taught that one of the inspired decisions of our Founding Fathers was the creation of a bicameral Congress with different yet complementary roles. The House was closer to the people, its members serving two-year terms. It was the "cup," containing the passions and …
Election 2014 – is consensus as remote as ever?
Tip O'Neill famously said all politics is local. Yesterday, Republicans won big by turning that adage on its head. They nationalized state races and turned President Obama's unpopularity and his administration's failures into anvils around the necks of Democratic candidates. Even states that Obama carried turned against him. A happy exception to that trend was …
Continue reading Election 2014 – is consensus as remote as ever?
Washington artful dodgers postpone responsibility
Don’t believe the hype: Ted Cruz and Tea Partiers weren’t big losers. Most other people were. The recent partial shut-down and near default of the US government led by rogue deficit hawks cost American taxpayers at least $24 billion (according to Standard & Poor's), paid furloughed workers not to work, cut economic growth and, as …
Continue reading Washington artful dodgers postpone responsibility
Final Debate – six days left to election
Last night's Senate debate between Democrat Ed Markey and Republican Gabriel Gomez was a schoolyard scramble to see who could make the "old and stale" label stick. Gomez says it's Markey who's old and stale because he's been in Congress for 37 years. Markey says it's Gomez, because he's touting old and stale Republican ideas, like opposition to assault …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 