CAROLINE FOR PRINCESS OF NY!
Re: Daniel J. Flynn’s Birthright Senator:
Has the American Senate had unqualified senators seated in it illustrious past? Certainly it has, but those senators were elected, and when properly elected, the American people got the government they deserved. But New York foisting a Kennedy on the public is simply shafting the entire country.
— Ira M. Kessel
Hmm…another Kennedy in the Senate? The current Senator Kennedy is the one the Washingtonians like to call the Lion of the Senate. He’s the one who swam away from a drowning girl. I call him the Cowardly Lion (with apologies to Frank Baum).
Now Caroline Kennedy has asked to be nominated to the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodman Clinton.
And, it’s being whispered in Illinois that Chris Kennedy might be appointed to the seat vacated by Barack Hussein Obama.
Haven’t we had enough of the Kennedys? No more Kennedys!
For that matter: No more Bushes!
— Jack Hughes
Chicago, Illinois
If it wasn’t so pathetic, the possible appointment of an airhead like Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg as U.S. senator from New York would be a downright hoot.
But this is no laughing matter. Such a move would have a deleterious affect on our democracy, and not because of what Schlossberg might or might not do in office. After all, look who she would be replacing. Rather, such an appointment would send yet another a message that are ruled by an insensitive elite that appoints its own to high positions regardless of qualifications or lack thereof.
This can only increase the public’s cynicism, which is already gnawing away at our political foundation, and fuel the disconnect that is rapidly separating the American people and its government.
Something as absurd as Princess Caroline in the U.S. Senate might not be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back. But then again, it could be.
— Peter Skurkiss
Stow, Ohio
I demur. Caroline Kennedy is the perfect senator for New York. Having been represented in the U.S. Senate by the Upchucker Schumer and a woman whose only qualification was that she was once the only female in the White House not currently sleeping with the boy president, I can’t think of a person on the planet who would fit in better than Caroline.
From her grandfather, stock swindler Joe, to her father to her two uncles and all her siblings, no one in the family is worth the powder it would take to blow them to perdition. No, I think she’s perfect. The people of New York richly deserve her.
— Keith Kunzler
DEMOCRATS: INNOVATING FAILURE FOR KIDS
Re: RiShawn Biddle’s No Democrat Left Behind:
Am I the only one who remembers the Democrats’ past “new, innovative and experimental ideas for education?” One of my favorites was the open classroom. That’s where you build warehouse space, call it an elementary school, and put 500 hundred small children, bursting with energy, in a single echo-chamber space. No walls, no sound deadening materials, and expect teachers to teach and children to somehow learn over the din.
Another great “innovative” idea was to lower standards to protect the egos of children. If a child couldn’t pass a test, well then, just lower the passing grade! This saved the delicate egos of, primarily, parents and assured a nation that can’t read, write, add, subtract and multiply. (Or as one the graduates of the successful and “innovative” era might write: redd, rit, ad, suhtrac, mupeye.)
The next really good idea was to do away with standards almost entirely for minority students. This served two important functions for Democratic Party visionaries. First, it created the illusion that their innovative, and experimental ideas were working because suddenly all minority students were being promoted grade by grade. Second, it insured that many more minorities would be unable to function in any meaningful way in a competitive job market because they had virtually no education (See the video: “I don’t have to worry about my mortgage, my food , my car or my gas…”) This catastrophe called success guarantees there will be plenty of welfare recipients going forward and they vote in lockstep so they don’t have to worry about the above stated items the few, the tired, the taxpayers, among us work so hard to get and maintain.
Surely we will be coming into the Golden Age of American Education where a student can start kindergarten as a blank slate and leave the public education system 12 years later exactly the way he or she entered: uneducated, incurious and ignorant, that blank slate entirely undisturbed.
— Jay Molyneaux
North Carolina
MORE PRESENTS FOR CAROL
Re: The Prowler’s Merry Christmas, Carol:
Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner is the only pertinent part of the story you should have covered.
Look up the No FEAR Act of 2002 and see how it mandates that all Federal employees receive training in No FEAR law, because of the miserable record Ms. Browner left at EPA. The American public needs to know that a woman who publicly defended racism, retaliation, and denial of her employee’s civil rights is now the official choice for Energy Czar.
See: Time magazine reported that Carol M. Browner’s nomination Monday for the newly-created Energy Czar position raises embarrassing questions in the Environmental Protection Agency’s employee relations history due to Ms. Browner’s conviction in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner on charges of discriminating against employees based on sex and race, as well retaliating against whistleblowers and denying them their civil rights. The announcement was particularly ill-timed, as only 2 weeks ago the successful plaintiff in the case, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo was illegally fired by one of Ms. Browner’s holdovers at EPA.
Time quotes Coleman-Adebayo as saying Administrator Browner “…wasn’t at all sympathetic to complaints about civil rights abuses. We were treated like Negroes, to use a polite term. We were put in our place.” — Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a former EPA employee whose complaints of a “racially toxic” environment there led to the signing of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2001. (Time, February 23, 2001)
— Kevin
QUALIFY THIS
Re: James Gavin’s letter (under “Lingering Feelings”) in Reader Mail’s Look for the Union Label:
James Gavin wonders how Sarah Palin could possibly think she was qualified to be vice president. Just what does Mr.Gavin think the job entails? According to the Constitution (remember that?), the vice president presides over the Senate and casts tie-breaking votes in that body; he is also first in line of succession should the president die or become incapacitated. Period. End of Discussion.
By tradition, he also represents the president at state functions the president chooses not to attend (e.g. funerals, dedications of new bridges, etc.). The president can choose to give more authority to the vice president (he cannot cede his constitutional powers, however), but most presidents have chosen not to do this. Barack Obama seems to view the vice presidency more traditionally than George Bush, and so soon the loquacious Joe Biden will discover what James Nance Garner meant when he said “The Vice Presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.”
Could Sarah Palin do the job of vice president? She can fog a mirror, she can do the job. As compared to dozens of VPs whose names are lost to history, she is vastly over — qualified, certainly more so than the hair-plugged gas bag who will hold that office as of 20 January.
To compare Sarah Palin to Rod Blagojevich is the mark of an undisciplined mind unable to discriminate between legitimate and honorable ambition on the one hand, and unbridled megalomania on the other. If Mr. Gavin gives some thought to the matter, he would have to concede that George Washington (a colonel of the Virginia Militia with no formal military training) was totally unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. So by what right did he ware his militia uniform to every session of the Continental Congress and not-so-subtly lobby for the job? Then there is Abraham Lincoln: how could a one-term state legislator and country lawyer possibly be qualified for the Presidency? And unlike Barack Obama, he couldn’t even win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Gavin strikes me as the type of person overly impressed by credentials. The Founders were not so interested in ephemeral like that. Rather, they looked to the character of a man, and they would certainly have seen right through a charlatan like Rod Blagojevich — or Joe Biden and Barack Obama, for that matter. That would how they judged “qualification for office,” and by that standard, how would Sarah Palin rate? Mr. Gavin seems uninterested, or at least, not to care.
— Stuart Koehl
Falls Church, Virginia
HEARD IT A MILLION TIMES BEFORE
As the incoming administration of Mr. Obama introduces its chosen members, I yawn while the talking heads of both parties explain first: what’s so good about them, and then why they’re no good.
What can you learn by listening to one side claim that they’ve found seasoned, experienced public servants? To the other party, that’s political-opponent-dialect for “Washington insiders.”
But when you introduce the less seasoned employees, they don’t get much credit for being clean, fresh, idealists. Instead, they’re berated as bumbling neophytes who don’t know how to get things done.
If I correctly interpret what they speak, it translates to “politics as usual.”
— James Gavin
Orefield, Pennsylvania
MANAGEMENT 101
I am not sure about the rest of you, but I am finally fed up with bailouts. We all know what will happen in the end don’t we? Yes. There will be conditions, maybe even regulations, but money will be given nonetheless. Though this tiny voice is just a drop in the bucket, allow me to offer this insight of a simple American about to become fifty.
The practice of business today is far different than what I was taught. Here we have these poor multimillionaires waiting in line, asking our government for a handout because they do not know how to run a business. To use a business term, that is the bottom line. The question no one is asking is what are they contributing? I thought businesses were supposed to invest in themselves. You would think that if a business were experiencing a slow period, the first action would be cutting the profit margin, not cutting jobs.
Why? Because it would be the right thing to do. I believe this is the reason American citizens are so against any bailout, in spite of the political scare tactics used to convince us otherwise. Perhaps if the beggars of our tax dollars were to put a little of their own into the pot, then maybe the average American citizen would be more cooperative. How about selling off those private jets, a few of those homes, several cars out of your collections? Why are corporations suddenly excused from this fundamental business requirement?
Consider if these CEOs were to sell off their assets in order to raise capital, maybe even give themselves a pay cut. How much money do you actually need? Especially when seen through an average citizen’s eyes? Think of it this way: there is even the possibility of selling a car or a jet to a Middle Eastern millionaire, thereby bringing back American dollars into our country’s economy in a non-aggressive manner. How patriotic is that? Perhaps if the CEOs were to act as loyal American citizens in times of hardships, adjusting their profit margin in order to help our country, instead of threatening job cuts, then maybe we would be persuaded.
Not that this really matters, because you will get what you want, and we will pay the taxes to cover it. Why should you have to forfeit anything? Just keep in mind that our perspective of you has changed. In the 1800’s the railroad companies were economic kings. The average citizen, whose lives they affected, used to call them ‘robber barons.’ I suggest we update this title for the millennium. Let’s call them the robber executives.
— Rudy C. Granados
Los Lunas, New Mexico
