AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Posted on Mon, Feb. 14, 2005

Freedom from liberty?

It was an inspiring speech President Bush gave at his inauguration. He mentioned ``freedom'' 27 times and ``liberty'' 17 times, as if the mantralike repetition of the words would work on the minds of Americans and the world like a magic spell. One only need look at our experience of bringing liberty and freedom to the world after World War II to see what special kind of black magic we cast.

In 1952, we liberated Iran from Time magazine's 1951 Man of the Year, democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh, and brought in the Shah and SAVAK. In 1954, we overthrew the Guatemalan, democratically elected Jacob Arbenz and installed our guy, Col. Armas, a right-wing dictator. In 1973, we overthrew Chile's democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and installed the ruthless dictator Augusto Pinochet.

How about CIA involvement in the 1981 crash of democratically elected Ecuadoran President Jaime Roldos, or in the same fate two months later of Omar Torrijos, the popular, democratically elected president of Panama, whom we overthrew for -- guess what -- yes, another dictator.

The United Fruit Co. (one of George H.W. Bush's prime interests), Bechtel, Dick Cheney's Halliburton and others will have their way. Look out, Venezuela is in our sights. So what is this talk about liberty and freedom, when we systematically work to control the resources of other nations?

And now Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction, no link to terrorists. The reason for invasion has morphed into liberty. What freedom is brought to Iraq when we enslave the people in the interests of our corporations, when we carve up the nation's resources like a piece of pie for a corporate dinner?

It is an oily business, literally and figuratively.

Need anyone ask why we are hated in the world? Well, it surely isn't for our freedom and liberty, since those we bring it to are left only a bitter aftertaste. But let us remember in these times, when dissent and self-evaluation are crushed for being reflections of the wishy-washy, we have a proud history. And to say otherwise is un-American and unpatriotic. We, the nation of Manifest Destiny, always have God on our side.

Michael Carano

Tallmadge

Editorial

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Posted on Wed, Feb. 16, 2005

A record of Republican ruin

Who left the cap off the glue? Responding to Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman's announcement for governor, state Republican Chairman Bob Bennett said: ``Any one of our Republican candidates for governor has more statewide leadership experience than the entire team the Democrats will put on the ticket.'' How do you hang your hat on that?

Look what 16 years of GOP leadership experience gets us: Soaring college tuition, a deteriorated public school system, an outdated tax code that spurns economic development and the loss of a quarter-million manufacturing jobs. These are just of few examples of what their experienced leadership has wrought.

How's this for experienced leadership: Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder investigated by the FBI and IRS for pay-to-play campaign practices, the bribery scandal in former Ohio Treasurer Joe Deters' office or chief election official Ken Blackwell asking for illegal corporate campaign contributions in his bid for governor? Where is Attorney General Betty Montgomery in all this? She's busy snooping around Democratic strongholds on behalf of local party bosses.

It will be interesting to watch Ohio Republicans in the coming months attempt to develop their message on leadership, experience and values. I can just hear the Republican rally cry now: ``Look at the positive, fellow Ohioans. When you're at the bottom the only way is up! We're neck and neck with Mississippi but if you give us four more years, we think we can take 'em.''

Here's a little political advice for the Republicans: Keep the message simple, because you have left our schools in such bad shape we can only understand sentences of five words or fewer with no more than three syllables to a word.

Ohioans? Let's do simple math. Failed leadership -- plus zero values -- equals change. Give me one of those old-fashioned paper ballots and a sharp pencil. I want to vote today.

Patrick J. Carano

Tallmadge

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Editorial

Posted on Wed, Aug. 18, 2004

Vouchers are destroying sound public education

Public education has created a large, literate, upwardly mobile middle class providing strength to this nation for generations. But through school vouchers, monied interests have begun siphoning revenue from public schools. Our once-effective system is slowly suffocating. That is their intention.

The recent emphasis on testing is an example of this goal. The identification of success in education is now straightjacketed to one criterion: testing. The intangible of what truly constitutes knowledge -- and more important, the development of wisdom -- is eliminated. Teachers are less able to challenge students to think on their own, because they have to focus their energies on the creation of robots able to regurgitate answers on demand.

Curriculum will be shackled. Monied interests, the same interests now exerting great influence over our Congress, will dumb down textbooks by focusing on passing the test.

The new schools will be beholden to one market principle: profit. The independence that historically has produced a nation of free thinkers will be lost. Not only will school vouchers limit children's exposure to those of diverse backgrounds, it will choke off the hallmark of democratic education, the diversity of opinions. It will destroy the fuel necessary for democracy: a questioning, engaged populace able to sift through and see beyond a world too often drawn in black and white.

The right's unending mantra that public schools squander taxpayers' money, its denunciation of the supposed liberal views of teachers and the unions, its decrying the lack of values and unpatriotic stance of curriculum, its repeated pandering to fundamentalist Christians by rolling out evolution or the right of prayer in schools, and its railing against those who teach unseemly aspects of American history as unpatriotic are attempts to pull the rug out from under education for a larger purpose: an ignorant electorate.

These are not efforts to improve education and have nothing to do with it. The goal is to narrow diversity in our democracy, to limit thoughtful discourse, curiosity, critical thinking skills and the ability to choose among diverse opinions and points of view, and replace them with their view.

As all governments seeking concentration of power in the hands of the few know, you control the populace by controlling what people see, hear and learn -- and (as the secrecy of the Bush administration shows) what they know. Support our schools come November. Our democracy rests upon them.

Michael Carano

Tallmadge

____________________________________

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Editorial

Posted on Wed, Aug. 22, 2004

Fear vs. hope

I watched John Kerry's acceptance speech at a restaurant with 500 hope-filled Americans who recognize the need for change in the direction of our country. The pundits will tell you that Kerry and the policies he proposes for America are not much different than President George W. Bush's policies.

They're wrong.

The differences are as divergent as the black-and-white world this president inescapably lives in. Bush's message to America is one of fear. Kerry's message is, strikingly, one of hope. I choose hope over fear every time.

Lisa Zeno Carano

Tallmadge

The Real Thanksgiving

It was nice to read Dave Garthoff's fairy tail version of the first Thanksgiving Day meal in your paper on Nov. 25. He started out by saying, "This year, let's try to get the Thanksgiving story right". Under Garthoff's version of events, the pilgrims practiced a primitive form of socialism and almost starved to death. Only when the Pilgrims realized they could produce more food by turning to the free market system were they able to enjoy a fruitful bounty, thus producing the first Thanksgiving Day in America.

The truth is the Pilgrims barely would have made it through the year1621 without the first form of public assistance in this country by the Native American Wampanoag tribe. The previous winter had almost eradicated the Pilgrim population. Their own crops were failing miserably. Chief Massasoit bailed out the Pilgrims by bringing most of the food consumed during the three day celebration. I guess you could call the tribal chief a precursor to FDR's social program, the New Deal. Free enterprise? Hardly. If the Pilgrims were a corporation today they would be clamoring for government handouts in the form of corporate welfare.

Native Indian Squantos taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and subsist in their new environment. A similar approach successfully put into place 300 years later by JFK we call the Peace Corps works on the same altruistic principles. Free-market system? Not even close

Garthoff's letter would have you believe that we all can make it in a capitalistic society and those who can't are just lazy. On this post-Thanksgiving day I thank God that our Democracy, built on compassion and charity, is the overriding principle that sets us apart, not the free-enterprise system.

Patrick J. Carano

125 Ernest Drive

Tallmadge, Ohio 44278

The "Right" Wrong

Does the Religious Right not see the conflict between traditional values and the values inherent in run-amok capitalism? The present administration with its Congressional backers pay lip service to the spiritual and to God, but their policies point toward its opposite, the material and its god Mammon. Thus, voters think they vote for one thing while they get another.

This disconnect is readily seen in the recent attempt by Republican Congressman John Boozman of Arkansas to get work rules changed for truckers (Beacon, Business Section, March 9th). Passage of his bill will mean many truckers will work 16-hour days rather than 14. One wonders how many 16-hour days Boozman has worked lately? This bill is being pushed by Wal-Mart, a big money political contributor to our Congressional leaders.

Ask yourself: does this build a more God-like society for these workers and their families? Is the safety of the workers and the public on our highways less important than the money that an exceedingly successful company like Wal-Mart will gain with a change in the law? What kind of life, let alone family life, will an employee who works 16 hour days have, even with a three hour break somewhere in between? In short, is satisfying greed a "family value"?

The Right calls itself the "values" party, all while its powerbrokers give corporations leeway to diminish the quality of ordinary citizens' lives. This plays out in terms of less incentive by corporations to provide living wages, pensions, health care, safer work environments, humane work loads, not to mention weakening corporate liability for our environment and tax base. These quality of life issues are the foundation of a civil society, one based on respect for the each other, or in Christian terms on one's inherent dignity as a child of God.

The sad irony is voters elect people like Rep Boozman because of appeals to family values. Candidates push the "right" buttons to get elected; then big business pushes all their right buttons. In the end, the electorate votes unwittingly against its interests, against what it truly values.

Its time we wake up to the rampant material ethic in the economic policies supported by the Right and how they run counter to its "values" platform. The tail wags the dog. The material ethic shakes the spiritual, and in the process shakes the foundations of a just society.

Michael Carano

Tallmadge

Republican Convention - The Posers

By Patrick Carano (2004)

I watched the Republican Convention and I am sure glad the beauty pageant is over. It was interesting to watch the Republican Party try to put on a pretty face for the American public. The only thing missing from this spectacle was Bert Parks. They started out with brave guy turned girlie-man, Senator John McCain. Now, I used to respect McCain as many Democrats did. But once he finally got his panties unbunched after the 1999 Presidential Race against Rove, er..., I mean Bush, (you remember that illegitimate black baby and his wife on drugs - a typical All-American campaign run by that wussy Karl) I think those panties must of cut the circulation off to his penis and he turned into a "girlie-man". He looked like the beauty pageant entry who didn't want to be there and just wanted to go home. He read his tele-prompted speech like a lobotomized robot. You could tell he wasn't going to win no beauty pageant. The competition was too stiff for John. Something he seems to not have felt for awhile. John was not a good poser and it showed. He hates Bush and that showed too.

The next contestant was the Austrian Oak, Arnold Swartzenagger. Now, here is a guy who knows about beauty pageants! He's been posing all his life in those girlie muscle competitions. Just working out with the boys, looking in mirrors way too much. Checking out his biceps and his tight buttocks. Taking horse pills to make those pecs stand out real good. Boy could he pose! Ask Lou Ferrigno. He knows a poser when he sees one. Of course Lou played pro football - a real sport. Arnold just poses. It's good to turn out the moderate Republicans at beauty pageants like this so you can get more votes. The moderates hide the pimples and the stretch marks of the Neocon Right from the American public. Warts too. He even used the term "girlie-men" in his pose down. Now Arnold IS not perceived as one of those Hollywood types that the Republicans hate. But he is a good poser. Arnold adds muscle to the Republican party. Look at them all and be honest. Do you see much virility in the Republicans? Five Deferment Dick? Tom (can't get) DeLayed? Aschcroft? Rove? The list goes on. Not what I would call macho types. But having good old moderate Arnold posing for the President does more for Arnold's career than it does Bush. In a pose down, you can overlook his group-sex escapades (not important to the Christian right at a religious event like this), his pill-popping, his towel snapping ways - because the important thing is not history - it's to strike that pose for the American Public. On to the next contestant.

Zell Miller. What can you say about Zell. H's been posing as a Democrat for years. He's a pretty good poser. Bert Parks would have been impressed. Oh and that anger. Americans like that anger. They have been raised on violence and reality TV. They just love it when someone gets angry - just like my grandma in the 60's when Haystack Muldoon would get mad and go after the Shiek. It makes those weak sissified rich Republicans sitting in their fancy lounge chairs feel strong and angry. They're thinking, "Boy, if I had muscles like Arnold and anger like Zell I may consider joining the National Guard to show what a man I am". "Or maybe I would go kick sand in the face of some poor low-income democrat and show them how tough I am, especially if he has two legs and an arm missing like Max Cleland, or somebody about that size". They're whispering to themselves as they watch the pageant, "These guys are acting just like I want to act. I've been a sniveling weak wussy all my life and the only thing I got to show for it is all this money". These right-wing rubes are living out their depleted testosterone through these tuff guys, one an actor and the other an angry Democrat. The finale - Zel strikes his final pose, "Let's have a duel, Chris Matthews - boy if I was living in the time of Aaron Burr you'd be a dead man."

Now, we have posing as a sensitive guy, Mr. "Five Deferment Dick" Cheney. Cheney has been setting up for this moment a week before the event. He's got to convince the American Public he's not this dark, twisted, evil, Svengali everyone makes him out to be. Cheney's thinking ,,,, what can I do? He's got it! "I will talk about my homosexual daughter at a rally and let everyone know that even though she is a gay, I still kind of love her". You can't get more moderate than that! "I'll even have my picture taken at some ungodly farm with a stinky horse no less to make it look like I know how to have fun. Then, when I get up to walk on that pageant floor - I'll strike my pose - as a moderate fun-loving, accepting, gay loving guy. The base will understand. We've schooled them well. It is politics for God's sakes!"

By the way, where was his daughter at the convention that night. I thought for sure she was sitting next to Michael Moore when they booed him. Or were they booing her. Next contestant.

Now, comes the biggest poser. You got it! GWB. Now, George is a guy who acts real tuff. Like the kid in school who gives people nicknames, blows up frogs, and picks on people smaller than him. Why? Cuz he hates his dad and he's an underachiever. But, we all know those bullies are all puffery. Remember when the biggest wussy in the class finally can't take enough of the teasing and finally halls off and kicks that bully's ass. Well, that's George getting his ass raked on.

But the Republican base is buying because GWB represents their own false hope of being the bully. Anyway, George strikes the pose, but wait a minute - he's getting all teary-eyed talking about the 1000 American dead in Iraq. My God! Can you believe it! - He's going for the sympathy vote! He is gonna win this damn beauty pageant after all. Rove taught the man well. Behind every good poser there is a teacher and Rove learned his from the best ... good old Lee Atwater (who by the way apologized on his death bead with brain cancer seeking final forgiveness).

But do you think for a moment those tears could be real? Maybe he realizes he sent our men and women over there without the proper armor, equipment, and a plan to win the peace after the "mission was accomplished". Just maybe, he is feeling remorse for acting like a Commander when he bailed out of Viet Nam and headed for the Alabama National Guard, maybe in a moment of sheer metonoia - he realizes that the mothers of those young men and women have lost something more precious than all the oil in Iraq. Could those tears possibly be real? The crowd is on the edge of their seat.

Bush gathers himself and starts talking about walkin' like a Texan and chopping wood, farting, and playing the part of a real man (Gawd! Sheer Posetry!) and the white well-connected crowd cheers. "That's the good old George we know. The posing tough guy. The talker of three syllable sentences. The compassionately conservative for the rich...Ahhhh he was just fooling us....., Good ol' George. He couldn't give a damn about those service men and women...., "cuz we gotta pertect our country". We got oil fields now and that's the beauty of his secret energy policy the VP put together for him.

Burt Parks hands George the bouquet and crown and the crowd erupts. Bush won, Bush won! He's our King George! Bush and the Neocon Right have really won.

But in the end..., we all lose.

Somewhere, far from the beauty pageant lights sits a man in a dimly lit room with a tear in his eye murmuring to himself about a broken jar. The silhouette appears to be none other than Colin Powell.

_________________

" An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." - Plutarc

Rip Van Winkle - Our Sleeping Democratic Leadership

By Patrick Carano (2004)

What has happened to the Democratic Party? Are we all in a fast sleep? Have we all turned into Washington Irving's hen-pecked Rip Van Winkle, idle and whistling away life while avoiding the reality before our eyes. Has meekness and passivity overtaken us to the point of inaction? Capitalism, and with it, corporate greed, has replaced our democracy and we, the people, or at least the party who at one time represented "the people" do nothing.

In a reversal of Irving's whimsical tale, Democrats have awoken to find our democracy replaced by George the Third and a Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) leadership unable to stand up to a would be king and unwilling to heed or understand its own political base - the base that made the November election turn on a little over 100,000 votes in Ohio. Democracy is in peril and we sleep.

How many of us felt like Van Winkles' nagging demanding wife kicking and screaming for John Kerry and the so-called Democratic Leadership Committee political gurus, running what turned out to be another failed campaign, to clarify a message based on real democratic values that all Americans can relate to and understand? How is it that a president pushing anti-environmental, anti-collective bargaining, anti-civil liberties, anti-anything that benefits 90% of the American people still win a little over 50% of the vote?

We needed the John Kerry of 1972. What we got was a man so stifled (and yes, waffled) by his political experts (and whatever the polling produced that day) that even we couldn't comprehend Kerry's message. Who thinks up hunting trips in camos, dropping the "g" off the end of his words, like huntin' and fishin' so Kerry can couch his east coast upbringing? Windsurfing, in what I guess was to turn out, well, the windsurfers vote? I could go on about what was so frustrating about this campaign but what good does it do.. We don't need to get better at the "nuances" of an election. We don't need to fool the public to get their vote. We need to get better at delivering our message. A message that clearly resonates to all Americans. Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming Kerry. He is a good man and he was a good enough candidate. But, how far to the middle can you move before you just don't represent your political base anymore?

The DLC is already talking about what it will take to win, and the talk is - move more to the middle The "New" Democrats, as they are called, only represent moderate Republicans and we're not going to get their vote in any great numbers. Democrats represent the "liberal" vote. Being a liberal doesn't mean we are a wild-eyed card-carrying communists! We have to fight back to make clear what it means to be liberal. The Republicans have successfully redefined the term and it is high time Democrats take the "L" word back. Like Van Winkle, our current expert DLC leadership makes me want to go to sleep for twenty years!

We lost. It's time to move on. Let's talk Ohio in 2006. Can we make a dent in the Republican controlled Statehouse or will we lose again? Ohioans know that our once great State is starting to look a lot like one of those States we use to snicker at. You know what States I am talking about. I am quite afraid they and forty other states have surpassed us in the last twenty years of Republican control. I didn't take much comfort in former Ohio Chairman David Leland throwing his hat in the ring for the DNC leadership chair. His claim to fame is he has been a successful fundraiser. Well, the question needs to be asked; "Dear Mr. Leland …, you served four terms as the full-time chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. Why is it that after having served in the position of chair for the Ohio Democratic Party, and not having a single Democrat elected to the Statehouse during the years you served, what qualifications and winning strategy will you bring to Democratic National Committee?"

The grassroots efforts to get Kerry elected did a tremendous job which was evident in record fundraising for the Democratic Party It was the Democratic Leadership who dropped the ball. Bruce Cole, a grassroots activist in Maine, said it best in an article for Truthout.org. Cole states, "The reason I know that the Democratic Party is standing on the brink of self-annihilation right now is because it is about to alienate the very people who can save it. I am just one of tens of millions of such people. We stood in the breach the last four years and we fought tooth and nail to defeat the most heinous government this country has ever produced, and the irony is, just as the evidence showed four years ago, we apparently succeeded. Only our leadership failed us, and it may be about to do so once again".

Here is a perfect example of lack of leadership in our Party. Take Social Security. Why aren't the Democrats banding together to fight the privatization of Social Security? This, a successful program started under the Father of Modern Democratic principles - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Where is the unified Democratic voice fighting the charge? It takes Paul Krugman, economist and journalist for the New York Times to lead the charge. Krugman is writing a series of articles to expose the failure of Bush's "Ownership Society". In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine Krugman was asked why aren't the Democrats speaking out more clearly and forcefully on the falsehood of Bush's proposals on Social Security. Krugman responded, "There's a lot of timidity. They're desperately afraid of seeming like "Oh, well -- we have our heads in the sand, and we're not active." I would like to see them (Democrats) step up to the plate and say that these claims .., that we're going to have a crisis sometime in the next fifteen years is just garbage. Bush is handing them an opportunity by making this the centerpiece of his agenda. Democrats should treat privatizing Social Security the way Republicans treated Clinton's health-care plan -- they should say, "This is a disaster, and we will stand against it." Social Security is simply not the biggest problem facing the government today".

How long can we play the part of Van Winkle's faithful dog Wolf, following the DNC leadership wherever they choose, and with no real message to deliver. We can't wait on our meek Party leadership to go onto the attack. We have to do it ourselves. We must unify the many progressive grassroots movements emerging throughout the country and rebuild the Party and its lost ideals from the bottom up.

Like Rip Van Winkle, it's time the leadership of our Party wakes up! Your irritated and nagging wife, being we, the grassroots Democrats, want our Party back.

"The Right Wing Editorial posted in the Beacon"

Kerry's French connection

Stop me if I'm wrong, but it appears that candidate John Kerry is a Francophile. He lived in France, speaks French and married a brash French woman from the former French colony of Mozambique. In addition, his French cousin ran for president of France, and even his children spend time there.

After the French were driven out of Vietnam, Kerry joined the Navy as an officer, came back, and with the liberals' help, went before Congress (wearing Army fatigues) and bashed his comrades, the military and the U.S. government. I was in the military long before him, before it was fashionable to damage one's country for one's personal gains -- as he continues to do today.

Yes, I have many questions. Among these would be why Americans should even care what France and Germany think. We surely can remember the Germany of two world wars and how France surrendered every time Paris was threatened. We are doing fine without them.

John J. Hromyak

Ravenna

THE REBUTTAL

"A Progressive Democratic Response to Hromyak's letter"

Posted on Tue, Sep. 14, 2004

`Shallow talk' about Kerry

I couldn't stop shaking my head at John Hromyak's Aug. 20 letter headlined ``Kerry's French connection.'' Hromyak started out by saying: ``Stop me if I am wrong, but it appears Kerry is a Francophile,'' and proceeded to blast John Kerry because he is fluent in French, married a ``brash'' woman from the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, and his family spent time in France. Any American with French in his or her blood or travels abroad better duck for cover. Hromyak went on to condemn the Germans for two world wars.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but our nation is composed of millions of citizens who fought to defend America, many of them of French and German ancestry. I am a proud American with Irish and Italian heritage. Does my heritage make me anti-American? Should Kerry's heritage strike fear in us?

The same day Hromyak's letter appeared, an article about U.S. Conference of Mayors President Don Plusquellic addressing the Akron City Club was in the local section (``Plusquellic tired of shallow talk''). The mayor alluded to the ``shallow talk'' in this presidential campaign and how it does nothing to move America forward in resolving the real issues of America.

Hromyak's letter is a microcosm of the underside of the Bush administration's orchestrated campaign to use fear as a wedge issue to denigrate Kerry while failing to address real issues. Strong international relationships are critical in rooting out terrorist cells throughout the world. Playing on any American's patriotism because of one's heritage is, quite simply, gutter politics.

But stop me if I am wrong.

Patrick J. Carano

Tallmadge

Keeping the Cat in the Bag

So Yusef Islam, aka Cat Stevens, was barred from entering the United States. U.S. officials tell us Mr. Islam was on the security watch list because of suspicion he was associated with potential terrorists. Could it be Cat Stevens' guitar is a "Weapon of Mass Demonstration" causing revolution in the streets? Does Attorney General John Ashcroft fear peace songs are subversive and thwart this Administration's pre-emptive war in Iraq and planned continual wars laid out by The Project for a New American Century if Bush is re-elected?

Maybe Cat's lyrics are deemed heretical by the fundamentally religious Ashcroft who is doing his best to criminalize dissent and hold American citizens without due process. This is the same man who paid $6,000 of our tax dollars to cover a nude statue which can only be construed two ways - he is not an art lover, or he is protecting us from subliminal activity in the form of breasts.

Let's analyze Cat's lyrics from his subliminally titled song, "Peace Train".

Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come

And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one

And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come

Now I've been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is

Why must we go on hating, why can't we live in bliss

Because out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train

Oh Peace train take this country, come take me home again

Orange alert! Call in Tom Ridge! That peace stuff is scaring me!

The bumbling Ashcroft has failed to arrest a single terrorist and make it stick so now he is going after a big name Muslim to scare the electorate into voting for the his Christian crusade against Islam on November 2nd. Cat Stevens will not cause havoc in the streets or undermine our war on terrorism! His words may only cause us to go out and hug our neighbor.

Sorry Yusef Islam. America is to dwell on the negative side of humanity under this Administration. Pack your bags, and take your hopeful message back to Europe where it belongs.

Patrick Carano

Tallmadge

Editorial

Posted on Fri, Oct. 22, 2004

Akron Beacon Journal

Ignorance is no excuse

The dreaded ``L word'' came up in the final debate between President Bush and Sen. Kerry on Oct. 13: ``lesbian.'' Moderator Bob Schieffer asked each candidate whether homosexuality is a choice.

Kerry, with carefully chosen words, talked about homosexuality in an intelligent, thoughtful and compassionate way. He was being honest when he said:

``We are all God's children. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she will tell you she is being who she was.'' Kerry tried to affirm Mary Cheney and to humanize her, not demonize homosexuality as the religious right -- Bush's base -- loves to do.

The vice president's wife went on the attack and said Kerry ``is not a good man.'' She's wrong. Kerry can talk openly about homosexuality and not feel as if the subject should be swept under the rug. If I were Lynne Cheney, I'd be more concerned about the president's response to the question.

George W. Bush still doesn't quite understand that homosexuality is not a choice but a predisposition from birth.

When asked the same question by Schieffer, Bush responded, ``I don't know,'' and then went back on message, not wanting to shake the foundation of his political base.

These two candidates offer two very different forms of Christianity to guide our pluralistic society over the next four years. One is based on compassion and understanding, the other on fear.

Kerry removed the fear in the ``L word'' by speaking truthfully. The alternative is Bush, playing to a theologically black-and-white base, wanting to impose their ``Christian'' view on all of us, regardless of America's vast spectrum of beliefs.

This final debate said more about what is really at stake in this election, as nuanced as it may have been.

This election is about the right to live as we choose, the right to believe or not to, the right to fall in love with whatever race we choose, whatever partner we wish to share our love with, and most of all, the responsibility of all Americans to take great care in not imposing our values and our religious beliefs on our fellow citizens.

``I don't know'' is just not a good-enough answer for me in 2004.

Lisa Zeno Carano

Tallmadge

Editorial

Akron Beacon Journal

Posted on Thu, Dec. 02, 2004

Ownership Society?

Here is what to expect in the next four years: The Bush administration will purport government the enemy through the new initiative called ``the Ownership Society,'' whereby Americans should rely on the private sector and the stock market to secure their retirement.

The top percentage who already own most of this country stand to benefit from your investments, not the lower- and middle-class Americans who need the critical financial safety net of Medicare and Social Security to subsist in their old age.

Don't be misled. Bankruptcies are at an all-time high. Medicare costs are going through the roof. The failed prescription drug plan, which does not allow the government to negotiate for a lower price, and stagnant and falling wages are strapping Americans so tightly that paying bills week to week is a challenge, even for the middle class.

Where are Americans going to get the extra income to invest? Should we borrow the money in hopes we can get a better interest rate on our investment than on our loan? Should we invest in the Enrons of the world and let Wall Street watch our investment for us? Can the working poor afford to invest the little income they make? Get real.

This ownership hogwash is just another way for Bush & Co. to dismantle programs most of our seniors rely on to keep their home, put a little food on the table and cover their increasing health care costs and utility bills.

America has benefited from real ownership and the expansion of opportunities to move up the economic ladder when progressive policies are at the forefront.

Think back to Teddy Roosevelt breaking up the greedy robber barons. Remember unionization of the work force, which brought us the benefits we now enjoy due to collective bargaining: a 40-hour work week, vacation time with our families, retirement benefits and safety in the workplace.

Have we forgotten Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which put America back to work, expanded economic growth and grew a burgeoning middle class? Did not the civil rights movement of the 1960s open the door for more Americans to partake in a piece of the ownership pie? We, at the bottom throughout history, have created our own ownership of America.

Honestly, do you really expect the pampered 1 percent of our society, well-represented by this administration, to even fathom what it is like to wait on a measly Social Security check each month in order to live out their twilight years with a little dignity? For many, that check is their American dream -- and all they own.

Patrick J. Carano

Tallmadge

A People's Petition for an Iraq Peace Process

We call for the American people to wake up to the Bush Administration agenda in Iraq. The Bush Administration has no comprehensive plan to win the peace-and more importantly, no intention to leave Iraq. Under the hubris of bringing our troops home only "when the job is done" it appears this never-ending war on terrorism will mean they never can come home. Our young men and women will hopscotch across the globe to wherever our war president sees fit. Today, Iraq and Afghanistan, and tomorrow who knows: Iran, Uzbekistan, maybe even Venezuela.

The Saudi terrorists and perpetrators of the terrible 9/11 attack on America, along with the now seemingly forgotten Osama Bin Laden, unequivocally state their primary reason for the 9/11 attack on the United Sates was the presence of permanent American bases on their soil. Having lost confidence in our Saudi allies to stem the growing discontent within their country and to protect and pump oil for us well into the future, the Bush administration is building permanent bases in the next best place-Iraq.

Sadly, the fractured Democratic Party itself offers no viable alternative to the airy prognostications of our president. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) with its vanguard of Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and Joe Biden, timidly follow the President's lead in hopes that Democrats will appear strong on defense and therefore more acceptable to the voting populace. For them the question of whether the war was a valid one is of no interest. This important oversight exhibits not strength but weakness. Republican-lite is not a choice to the majority of the Democratic base, and that base is growing larger and more vocally insistent daily.

The Democrats will make no headway with an electorate whose understanding of the damage our floundering president has done to our country by his ill-planned domestic and foreign policies. The fact is falling poll numbers for our war president have not translated to a commensurate rise for what should be the "opposition" party.

Thus, the Democrats, with the exception of a few congressional leaders who exhibit backbone, such as Senator Russ Feingold-WI, Congressman John Conyers-MI, offer no alternative to Bush's failed, preemptive war upon Iraq.

Winning the initial war was easy. Why should it have been otherwise? The wealthiest, most powerful military force on the planet attacked a small, hemmed-in and already defeated nation. Our able generals had a plan. Thus, our war president could stand on the deck of a carrier in the aptly named Pacific Ocean, posturing with bravado and state, "mission accomplished."

But, what was accomplished? An introduction to a book is no book. The president's plans included no other chapters. And why should it? As Vice-president Cheney said about their war, we would be "greeted with flowers" by the Iraqi people. We imagine all they thought they needed were vases, doilies, and the parlor tables upon which to set them.

The Neo-con impulse was to seize the day and act quickly on the heels of 9/11, intentionally blend 9/11 with the war on terror with Iraq, and implement the dusty plan of a New American Century-preemptive war and U.S hegemony. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. A nation's great sorrow, fuelled with words to create fear from the uppermost levels of our government, was used for their benefit without scruples. Act now, worry about consequences later.

Our country now has close to 1900 consequences besides the well over 100,000 consequences of the Iraqi people. More so, we have alienated ourselves from the world community, a place we preeminently lead since World War II. We have squandered our resources, money needed at home particularly in a time of exorbitant tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that has emptied our coffers. We have misused our National Guard, as shown by administration's inept scramble to correct the terrible aftermath of Katrina.

The requirements of nation building, of staving off an Islamic insurgency migrating through its porous borders to fight the invading imperialists, or even the fulfilling of the simple requirements of a oil-rich but poor nation in need of rebuilding our initial onslaught plus the thirteen plus years of embargo and isolation: these require strategic and long term planning. The Bush Administration has failed our nation. By his brash rush to war, he also daily fails the men and women of our armed services, and will do so well into a hazy future, by offering them up as targets to an enemy that balks at our economic, imperialistic expansionism, a people who sees more behind the motives of Bush & Co, than we good-hearted but rather naïve Americans see.

The death toll mounts, our soldiers sent as fodder by those with an impulsive ineptitude who have no clear-cut path. Uncountable Iraqi men, women and children die daily. Explosions, fighting, death can break out anywhere at anytime. There is no safe haven, and even the green zone runs red with blood. Civil war among the factions is held in check by a tenuous thread pointing to an "iffy" constitution where women and even democracy itself may be the loser. There is a great chance religious extremism may be the winner. The lot of this battered and impoverished Iraqi people devolves downward by the tactics of an insurgency fueled mainly by our presence.

The simple question: Why are we there? The ever changing response, a litany: WMD's, overthrowing Sadaam, the evil tyrant once our ally, yellow-cake from Nigeria, the threat of a "mushroom cloud" over our cities, "we are fighting over there so we don't have to fight them here," we are bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, etc, ad nauseum. Let us just once and for all drop the cloud of the administration's illusion and break through the cloud of our own delusion and simply state the truth: oil. That is the reason. If Halliburton or a Brown and Root make countless millions in the process, well that's just icing on the cake.

It is time to speak truth. We are bogged down in what the ideological, right wing contingent of Bush Administration said would be a "cake walk". The Bush playbook is empty. The question is no longer whether we should get out of Iraq. The question is how? It is time to shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model aimed at a peace process and negotiated political settlement. It is time for a plan.

The Progressive Democrats of America, (PDA) have a blueprint for peace. This plan needs serious consideration from both sides of the political spectrum. It is a starting point to win the peace. It is one that will be respectful of the integrity of the Iraqi people, one that stems any U.S. hopes of building a puppet regime or client state for its purposes. Thus. we propose the following principles as essential to ending the war in Iraq:

First, as a confidence-building measure, the U.S. government must declare that it has no interest in permanent military bases or the control of Iraqi oil or other resources.

Second, as a further confidence-building measure, the U.S. government must set goals for ending the occupation and bringing all our troops home - in months, not years, beginning with an initial withdrawal of troops by the end of this year.

Third, the U.S. government must request that the United Nations monitor the process of military disengagement and de-escalation, and organize a peaceful reconstruction effort. The U.S. must accept its obligation to fairly compensate Iraqis for damages, assist Iraqi reconstruction, cease the imposition of privatization schemes, and end the dominance of U.S. contractors in the bidding process.

Fourth, the U.S. government should appoint a peace envoy independent of the occupation authorities to underscore its commitment to an entirely different mission, that of a peace process ending the occupation and returning our soldiers home.

Fifth, the peace envoy should encourage and cooperate in talks with Iraqi groups opposed to the occupation, including insurgents, to explore a political settlement. The settlement must include representation of opposition forces and parties, and power-sharing and the protection of women's rights as core principles of governance and economic and energy development. We believe such an initiative will reduce, though not eliminate, violence by lessening any rationale for Jihadist or sectarian conflict.

We offer the Bush Administration and the Democratic leadership the opportunity to embrace this plan and bring peace and stability to Iraq. It is time to set a new direction. We believe this plan is a start to resolution and peace and to bringing our brave men and women home to their families and loved ones.

Patrick and Michael Carano

Ohio PDA State Coordinators

Arctic drilling just a band-aid

April 29, 2005

Joseph Lorkowski's letter to the editor (April 29, 2005) entitled, " Beware of liberal spin on Arctic refuge drilling", rebutting a previous letter writer (Susan Bailey-Pruc, March 10) on the issue of drilling the Arctic wildlife region only proves the disconnect between the progressive and conservative approach to a sound energy policy for our country.

Not those facts seem to matter anymore, particularly with the present oil-friendly Administration in power, Oil is a finite commodity. Verified by the experts, we are just starting to descend the bell curve of "peak oil" in the world, known as "Hubbert's Peak," named for the Shell geologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert. He correctly predicted the year of peak oil production 50 years ago, and our economic slide as we continue to exhaust this valuable resource. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the world's oil reserve has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to rise. So don't expect the price of oil to drop - ever again.

When analyzing the facts, Iraq with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world appears a corporate and administration strategy to position our country for short-term economic health. WMD's and spreading democracy? Who are we kidding?. The truth is unless we convert to alternative energy sources soon and seriously invest in new technologies to run our economy, the future of America, and the high standard of living we enjoy mirrors the inevitable downward slope on that same bell curve.

Aesop's fable of the short-term thinking grasshopper and the future-thinking ant comes to mind when I think of Lorkowski's rebuttal. Lorkowski says that alternative energy will not be enough to fuel our economy. Let's hope the record profits oil companies are presently reaping are being invested in alternative energy research and development and not something petty as outright greed.

Patrick Carano

125 Ernest Drive

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

EDITORIAL

Posted on Wed, Oct. 05, 2005

Not a very good year for Arshinkoff

The Beacon Journal editorial board has been a little too harsh on Alex Arshinkoff of late. Give the guy a break. It has been a rough year for the head of the Summit County Republican Party.

First, in order to protect his free speech, something he has never been short of, Arshinkoff called upon the American Civil Liberties Union to protect his right to post an ungodly-size Bush sign in his Hudson front yard during the 2004 presidential campaign.

It must have been gnawing enough for the GOP boss to ask the liberal ACLU to defend his actions, like a kid being forced to eat his broccoli -- it leaves a bad taste in your mouth even though you know it's good for you.

Recently, he chastised his own Republican elections board appointment, Bryan Williams, for -- in Arshinkoff's mind -- ``fixing'' a ticket for a Democratic board employee. And now, three judges -- two Republicans and a Democrat -- have claimed Arshinkoff interfered in their judicial duties.

The Beacon Journal should be easy on the man. Arshinkoff is under much duress. His hold on the GOP in Summit County is crumbling before his eyes, and he can't do anything to stop it.

To top it off, state Republicans are awash in corruption probes, from Gov. Taft on down. Please exhibit at least a little compassion and understanding. If I were party chair, I'd be edgy, too.

That's not all. On the national level, it's even worse for the Grand Old Party. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Michael Brown, Karl Rove, ``Scooter'' Libby, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and many other Republican politicians, lobbyists, corporate bosses and strategists have shown how true it is that absolute power corrupts.

What is Arshinkoff to do but fight the self-induced windmills he and his own party have created? This is just too much for any man to take.

The residents of Akron should take up a collection for Arshinkoff, just like those big political fund-raisers he likes to hold, and send him on a six-month Caribbean cruise to relax. They do have morning meditation classes on those cruises, you know: Breathe in, breathe out, and find your center.

Arshinkoff will be better for it, his party will be better for it, and so will the citizens of Summit County.

Patrick Carano

Tallmadge

Beating Truth into the Ground

As events unfold surrounding the White House leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, and after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson publicly shredded President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq, I ask a simple question. Who gave right-wing ideologues a green light on quieting, and then destroying their detractors and anyone in America whose views are in opposition to their own?

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it appears more possible, each day in this Administration's reign, that a nation built on diversity of thought and opinion is quickly leaving the room for a 1935 style fascism, where silence becomes the voice of complicity with even detractors in Democratic ranks unable to muster the courage to speak out against this bizzarre world-view held by a small few.

All you have to do is read the op/ed in this newspaper daily and see the trail of respected military officials, economists, scientists, physicians, and government officials beaten to the ground because they spoke the truth. Keeping to the bounds of the editorial page I will list only a few; General Eric Shinseki forced into retirement for telling the truth about needing more troops in Iraq, Army Secretary Tom White fired for agreeing with Shinseki, 39 year veteran General John Riggs demoted for telling the truth about the lack of troops to do the job, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill fired for disagreeing with Bush on tax cuts, Bush's top economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, fired when he told a newspaper the Iaq war would cost $200 billion, General Anthony Zinni, not reinstated as Mideast mediator for suggesting there could be a prolonged, difficult aftermath to the war, Jeffrey Kofman ABC News correspondent writing on plummeting troop morale and a White House operative alerts cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to the fact that Kofman is gay, Professor Elizabeth Balckburn replaced on the Council of Bioethics because of her views on stem cell research, and actuary Richard Foster threatened with being fired if he told the public the real cost of the Medicare Bill and to withhold internal audit estimates from Congress. The list goes on. Time has proven them correct and the Bush Administration wrong. They stood up to the falsities and the lies and paid a price.

Our press is doing a barely adequate job of exposing what has occurred - but don't blame them. It is a dispassionate electorate that sits on its hands afraid to delve deeper into what is in front of them, and the courage to raise their voices and challenge the status quo.

And it's not about being a Republican or Democrat. It is about the Truth and seeing this Administration for what it really is - destructive to our democracy.

Patrick J. Carano

Tallmadge

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Editorial (Rebbutting the letter from McNary -below)

Posted on Thu, Jun. 30, 2005

Can we survive the new Christianity?

Mixing environmental policy, or lack thereof, and one's personal interpretation of Scripture, Steve McNary's letter to VOP on June 1, was a real awakening for liberal-thinking Americans like me. I didn't know Jesus was a conservative, a capitalist, and also an anti-environmentalist. And I, and many liberal Christians, thought Jesus came for the voiceless, the powerless, and the poor. No reason to quote the wealth of Scripture, chapter and verse, describing the Jesus of love and compassion. Daily, we are fed the new and improved Jesus who could care less about peace and agape love.

McNary, acting as sole interpreter of God's message, describes a "Rambo" Jesus, wanting us to believe we have no obligation to the less fortunate and the environment. A Jesus cloaked in capitalism is the answer to all of our ills. McNary's diatribe calls environmental protection a "hustle". Liberals know who is hustling who. Elmer Gantry is alive and well in the Bush Administration.

Relaxing environmental policies, while cutting what McNary describes as anti-Christian social programs like Medicare, Social Security, Community Development Block Grants, and the most egregious - medical benefits to our men and women fighting in Iraq is the new, repackaged religion of the Christian right.

I checked Webster's dictionary. The words democracy and capitalism do have different definitions - and there was no mention of Jesus in either one.

Sorry, I just can't buy McNary's brand of Christianity with Jesus in a business suit, silk tie, burgundy wing-tips and a leather briefcase.

Patrick Carano

125 Ernest Drive

Tallmadge, Ohio 44278

Earth will even survive assault by liberalism

One can stand only so much liberal banter in the letters columns. A few words from the other side:

First, Jesus was no liberal. Jesus taught personal responsibility: ``Go and sin no more'' is no liberal idea. Jesus wouldn't tear families apart by promoting premarital sex and abortion, and even deny responsible parents the knowledge of their pregnant child's burdensome decision to kill her baby.

Jesus taught personal sacrifice: ``Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' Our soldiers and contractors, who lay down their lives for the brutalized Iraqis and Afghans, are certainly not driven by modern liberalism.

Second, liberals measure progress against poverty by how much of our tax money is given to the poor. Inevitably, this serves only to increase poverty by making the poor dependent on our tax dollars for their miniscule handouts. The liberal answer: Give more handouts, further entrenching the government dependency. On the other hand, conservatives measure progress on poverty by how many able-bodied poor people still need our tax money. Effective education, job training and equal opportunity replace wealth redistribution as the fundamental solutions to poverty.

Third, capitalism wins. Look around the world: Socialism has failed or is failing everywhere it has been tried since Karl Marx foolishly proposed it. Even in America, the socialist Great Society programs have run their course and failed. It is America's capitalism, despite our socialism, that makes our system work better than all others.

Where there is American-style capitalism, there is real cleanliness, wealth, food, clothing, happiness and immigration. Conversely, socialism breeds poverty, despair, disease, hopelessness and, ultimately, flight.

As liberals move forward with nothing but new names for their old socialist agenda, it is they who move backward in America.

Finally, since liberals have failed to turn our religious faith against us, failed to bring us down by wealth redistribution through guilt and failed to turn us into the former Soviet Union (and now France), they seek to weaken America through environmental laws and regulations.

The Earth was here long before environmentalists arrived and will remain intact and unmolested long after the liberal bleating has ceased. It has endured cataclysms thousands of times more powerful and threatening than anything man could ever create. As long as common sense exists, liberal environmental-protection hustles will be scrutinized and exposed.

Steve McNary

Cuyahoga Falls

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Posted on Fri, Feb. 10, 2006

Chill factor

With all the spin of late regarding National Security Agency spying on American citizens -- or as the Bush administration puts it, supposedly targeted conversations from terrorists overseas -- it is easy to forget the original story that broke in late December, which focused on surveillance of a peaceful Quaker group in Florida.

Public opinion regarding the NSA wiretapping understandably sways in support of this practice, especially if it truly is targeted at terrorists, as we're being led to believe. But the issue of surveillance of groups within this country is another story, and one hardly confined to one group in Florida. In fact, an eight-page sampling of a 400-page TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice) report identified two such surveillance activities against the American Friends Service Committee in Akron and the Northeast Ohio Antiwar Coalition in Cleveland.

Whether or not one agrees with our position, every American should be outraged at the chilling trend in our government to single out anyone who may not agree with its policies. Those of us who have the ``audacity'' to exercise our constitutional right to question the decisions and actions of our public servants are seen as threats. While the designation ``threat'' may seem ridiculous to those of us who have participated in peaceful demonstrations, it is hardly a laughing matter.

Provisions of the USA Patriot Act may even allow the government to categorize those of us who are not card-carrying supporters of this administration as ``disrupters'' subject to felony charges if we dare show our faces at presidential or national events. In short, ``Anyone who does not agree with us is not invited to participate.''

When we allow our government, unchecked, to chisel away at our civil liberties for any reason, we are all at risk. And it is we -- all of us -- who must stand collectively against this outrage.

Apathy, going shopping and leaving the ``hard work'' of governing our nation to an elite gaggle of politicians out of touch with the mainstream, is not what our founders intended. A government ``by the people, for the people'' is an ideal we seem to have lost in this age of terror and fear.

When the president stated shortly after 9/11 that ``you are either with us or you are against us,'' I don't think many of us realized that he was referring not only to the terrorists outside but also to those of us who might question some of his dubious decisions within. I sincerely hope that the people of this nation wake up and realize that the president is supposed to work for us, not against us or in spite of us.

Kathleen Myrman

American Friends Service Committee

Akron

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

EDITORIAL

Posted on Wed, Oct. 26, 2005

Issue 3: An improvement

The democratic litmus test in measuring any campaign finance proposal is whether it (a) provides people without huge bank accounts more opportunities to be heard by political candidates, and (b) allows candidates without huge bank accounts a better chance to be elected. On both counts, state Issue 3 is an improvement to current Ohio law.

Current campaign finance laws, it should be remembered, reflect several horrific provisions passed by the lame-duck legislature in December in a special session, including quadrupling campaign contribution limits from $2,500 to $10,000 and legalizing direct corporate contributions for the first time in more than 90 years.

How exactly are the rights and interests of people without huge bank accounts better served by wealthy people able to contribute four times as much as before? Or by corporations given political rights to contribute in ways they before could not?

And what about candidates without huge bank accounts? I've not noticed a stampede of low- or moderate-income people declare their candidacy for statewide office, confident that corporations with new authority to politically invest or the wealthy able to invest $10,000 per candidate per election will be knocking at their doors.

As for the assertion made by the Beacon Journal and other opponents to Issue 3 that reducing limits would drive contributions out of the limelight, where at least voters can see them on reports, into the shadowy world of ``independent interest groups'': Why don't the big-money interests do that now? There's nothing to stop them. Their actions speak to their overall preference to donate or invest directly rather than through pass-through groups.

The other provision of Issue 3 of concern to some is creation of the small-donor action committee, a political fund set up to collect $50 contributions, which -- the charge goes -- favors labor unions. On its face, the concerns seem relatively minor. Why are $10,000 contributions from the wealthy and corporations just fine but $50 contributions from working people not?

Nothing is perfect, including Issue 3. Nothing is ever final, either. Problems that arise can be changed. That's what public officials and voters do. For now, why not err on the side of people without big bank accounts rather than on that of the wealthy and corporations?

Greg Coleridge

Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee

Akron

Dear Mr. President:

I hope you enjoyed your five-week vacation in Crawford, Texas. Sorry it was cut short a couple of days due to the flooding of half the State of Louisiana. I hear Crawford gets awful hot this time of summer. Your ranch probably could have used some of that rainfall from that category five just one State over. I was proud of you for staying the course and not canceling your Social Security gig in San Diego the day after the flood hit. I admire your resolve.

I hope you are well rested. I almost took a two week vacation this year but I felt bad because my job is hard work and I felt obligated to not miss that many days in a row. You know about hard work. I have often heard you on TV say that being President is hard work. It must have been difficult getting any R&R with all that ruckus caused by that woman camped out next door. You know, that woman who lost her son in Iraq, Maybe she should be President for a day and see how hard it is. Then maybe she would understand.

Good luck with the rest of your term, Mr. President. Don't worry too much about that Downing Street memo, or that genius Karl Rove leaking Valerie Plame's name to the media. The truth will come out and everything will be just fine. Remember, I, and many other red-blooded Americans have been praying hard for you just like you ask us to do.

Before I go, I had an idea how to help the thousands of people in Louisiana who have lost their homes. This plan will win the hearts and minds of the American people for you. We just need to figure a way to come up with 200 billion dollars to help those poor souls. Maybe we can send some National Guard troops to assist in the effort. When I come up with a plan. I will let you know. Stay the course, Mr. President.

Patrick Carano

Tallmadge

Letter to Democratic Party

A lifelong Democrat, I was highly disappointed at the hatchet job done to Howard Dean, not only by the media, but unfortunately also by the DNC and its representatives, such as Joe Lieberman. Dean spoke the truth in a forthright manner, and the media and the reactionary members of the Party snuffed him out.

But I sucked it up for the Party and the Kerry campaign to help get George Bush out of office. He and his extremists in his Republican Party are a great danger to America, and even though that can be shown example after example, we couldn't beat him. Why? Not only do they stay on message, more importantly, they have a message.

It may not be a message that speaks the truth as to what they are really doing in handing over the power of the "people" to empower corporate interests and likewise set up a corporate hegemony over the world for the simple pursuit of their rampant greed, but they fooled enough people while my Party wishy-washed, stuttered and hiccupped in their inept attempt at finding a message.

Well, the reason Dean resonated with many voters, and subsequently energized the Party in many ways, is that he spoke a message, and most importantly, didn't second-guess and wring his hands while doing it. The truth is, Democrats have a message--and it is the Progressive ideals that bring all Americans along for the benefits of this great country. It is a message that sees that that our military is not an arm of corporate interests, but serves solely to protect us, and when needs be protects true democracy (not puppet regimes, not business backed governments--but people backed governments, no matter what choice those people make--even if it a socialist government like Allende offered his people before we subverted his efforts and put in our little dictator).

It is a message that sees our foreign policy as one that doesn't paint the world in black and white corners, but one that works to make the world a better place regardless of our business "interests". The message sees others in this world as having rights, rights that we will not suppress while kow-towing to corporate influence.

It is a message that sees good public education as a priority for our nation's longevity and health, and works and pays the money necessary to make it work.

It is a message that sees worker rights, the right to organize, the right to a decent standard of living, the right for an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, as something it will support, even in the face of losing moneyed interest's offerings.

It is a message that sees legislation, and the transparency with the way it is enacted, that is meant to serve the nation, not solely business interests who have bought influence.

It is a message that recognizes the facts that Science has gathered, and follows up on those facts to protect the environment for future generations regardless of what the corporate interests do to dissuade our elected officials from those goals.

It is a message that needs gutsy, no-nonsense, honest talking people to present it, people who are more worried about the direction of our nation than their next election. Let's face it, with the endless things that were bad about Bush and what he was doing to this country, the Party couldn't even beat Bush and the destructive agenda of his Neocons, his assault on our civil liberties, his senseless attack on working people, his emptying of our coffers and putting us in debt, his secretive and not transparent running of our country, his lies, endless lies and his stupid war that has made us a pariah and less safe in the world. I fear you will not be able to muster enough gumption to turn back the coming assault on Social Security and his "tort" reform agenda, which in the end will leave corporations with all the cards and the people with nothing.

The Party needs to get back to its Progressive roots, a party by the people, of the people, and for the people. I am tired of the Democrats acting like little Republicans, tired of their fearfulness, tired of their inability to see who it is they stand with. This Progressive movement within is one that will win back the strength of the Party, but it will not be a quick thing since those in the Party who have forgotten what the Party is about, entrenched in their fear, and forgotten just who it is they are voted on to fight for. As one group I have read about within the party says:

It only takes the vision to make it happen, and unfortunately I do not see "vision" in the Democratic Party as it now stands. After all, you are the Party that gave overwhelming approval to the Bush War, the Party that is consistently backing down and not fighting to stop him while he slides us down the slippery slope toward fascism.

"We believe that the greatest need of our nation is to redirect the resources of our government from destruction to creation, from war to peace, from military spending to social spending, from sickness to health, from selfish desires to universal needs. The future of humanity and our planet are at stake.

The question is, "What is the most effective strategy for wresting control of the government of the United States of America from the moneyed interests, the corporations, and the military industrial complex that now effectively control it?"

The answer is NOT leaving the country.

The answer is NOT the Republican Party.

The answer is NOT a progressive third party, because such a party is too divisive at this time and will only serve to leave control of our government in the hands of the Republicans.

And the answer is NOT the Democratic Party as it is now organized and controlled."

That message resonates with me. And, it all seems readily apparent to me, a person in a Red state, if in fact we are one. In short, we need take the Party back before we can ever take America back. We need a party with backbone. We need to clean house, and though I worked hard for Kerry, his inability to find a message that resonated with the American people in the face of all that is wrong with our direction is emblematic of the problem. Many times I winced as he talked fearful of offending any group when all he had to do was speak the message. The choices are much easier and apparent than those reactionary Dems who are running the party would like us to believe.

Michael Carano

Tallmadge

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

Editorial

Posted on Sun, Oct. 23, 2005

A statement for freedom

In her Wednesday letter headlined ``War protesters better get with the program,'' Ruth Morrison wrote that participants in last month's march on Washington looked like ``a bunch of young people who never contributed anything to this country but have been given everything and are spoiled rotten.'' As someone who was there and witnessed a sea of people as far as the the eye could see, I can attest to the fact that there were more than 300,000 patriotic Americans who love their country so much that they were willing to risk everything to stop the coming storm of the New World Order.

Besides that bunch of ``spoiled rotten'' young people marching for peace, there were thousands and thousands of middle-aged mothers and fathers like my husband and I, elderly grandparents and great-grandparents, and the very young -- not to mention young and old veterans in uniform from every war since World War II, some in wheelchairs and some on steel legs.

I am sure when their lives are examined, each and every one has contributed something worthwhile and lasting to this country, just as Morrison probably thinks she has. We've worked hard all our lives, raised our children to be productive citizens, paid our taxes and hoped for an old age with a pension.

I, and the 300,000-plus who gave their time and money to make a statement for freedom, weep at the way Americans have been misled and subverted by our own government by believing every right-wing Sadducee and Pharisee who repeats the Bush talking points. Sadly, Morrison and many of the elderly who remember the patriotism of World War II honestly believe it really is now about terrorism and abortion and homosexuals.

As the coming storm continues to blow upon the land, she and her peers will understand why we stand for freedom for her and all Americans.

As Joseph Goebbels so succinctly said: ``If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.''

Mary L. Tabatcher

Mogadore

Thank the French for CAFTA

It is time to apologize to the Republicans who attacked anything French during the build up to the war in Iraq. I didn't agree at the time with Rumsfield when he said, "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe". Or when Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq when France pressed the United Nations to give weapons inspectors more time in Iraq. Maybe Republicans were right. You just can't trust anything remotely French.

Which brings me to Steve LaTourette. if I am not mistaken, LaTourette's last name appears to be French and therefore, as Republicans tell us, anything French cannot be trusted. LaTourette told his constituents he would vote against CAFTA in order to support American jobs and then proceeded to change his vote the last minute with a lame excuse that proved to be false.. Gee, Steve, when you flip make sure you do your homework so the flop is at least believable. Time will prove CAFTA having the same negative affect on American jobs as its sister trade bill NAFTA has shown.

We elect representatives to Congress to go to Washington to fight for the people of their districts, not representatives who "oui oui" to politcal pressure from the Beltway. LaTourette did not make Northeast Ohio proud and voters should make a little mark in their book when election time rolls around and say, "Que Sera, Sera".

Let's work on a name change or pseudonym for LaTourette that will stick like "freedom fries". I am asking Plain Dealer readers to help me come up with a new name for LaTourette that reflects his backstabbing representation of the NE Ohio working class. How do you say "final term" in French?

Patrick Carano

Tallmadge