Day: June 27, 2017

by William Skink

When I said posting would be light at RD I didn’t give a reason why, but that didn’t stop the self-appointed ratings analyst of the MT blogosphere, Greg Strandberg, from assuming it’s because there’s nothing to write about:

I can’t think of anything to blog about.

I’m not alone.

“Posting at RD will be light for the next month or two,” another MT blogger is saying today.

Again, I think it’s because there’s not much going on.

Nope, there are at least a half-dozen posts I want to write, but, unlike Greg Strandberg, I have a full time job and not enough time to do everything I want to do.

Speaking of jobs, despite one blogger’s claim they aren’t out there for him, there is apparently a workforce shortage in Missoula. I assume Greg Strandberg knows this since he reads and comments on nearly everything Missoula Current puts out. Maybe those kind of jobs are just beneath the talents of Greg Strandberg.

One talent Greg Strandberg has is getting other people to write about him, which this post is evidence of. So that’s annoying because I know no matter what this post says about Greg Strandberg, its existence is what Greg Strandberg wants.

Another thing Greg Strandberg wants is to be a politician. He’s certainly got the part-time work ethic and full-time self-promotion thing going, so eventually he’ll probably win something. Add to that his shameless attention-getting tactics with fat-bashing the Mayor, and one wonders if the sky is the limit for this aspiring council person.

Since Greg Strandberg wants a political job so bad, I offered my assistance with this glowing endorsement, but since then I have had to entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Greg Strandberg is a populist fraud looking for any foothold into drawing benefits and achieving a platform where people actually have to take him seriously.

My ability to take Greg Strandberg’s strain of populism seriously was greatly diminished last summer when he wrote an ignorant letter to the editor crediting the building of the new Poverello Center with the perennial transient problem downtown.  I tried correcting his ignorance with a post titled Self-Promoter and Wannabe Politician Greg Strandberg Doesn’t Know Squat About Homelessness, but despite my best efforts I wasn’t able to change this very wrong assessment:

We created that problem by building the newfangled homeless shelter, prominently placed on Broadway. My how it draws in the young transients that choose a rag-tag existence of handouts as opposed to hard work!

I reread the comment thread of that post the other day because I was thinking of writing something about the Reserve Street camps and the fact they are flourishing this year worse than I’ve seen since I helped coordinate the volunteer cleanups three years ago. When I read Greg Strandberg’s responses to my attempts to set him straight, what I saw was a complete inability of this politician wannabe to give any ground, despite someone with actual direct experience countering his ignorant and easily disprovable assertions.

I have to admit, part of me is disappointed in myself for writing this post because it feeds Greg Strandberg. But another part of me, the part that won out, feels compelled to use Greg Strandberg as anecdotal evidence of the direction this type of hollow populism is taking us.

Greg Strandberg, imho, is nothing more than a shameless opportunist trying to scheme his way into a government job with benefits. Ignorantly bashing a homeless shelter and calling the Mayor fat and stupid are just the means to the end goal of getting elected.

If knocking on doors for one of his opponents will help keep Greg Strandberg from obtaining that coveted government paycheck, I may have to carve out some time in my busy schedule to keep this type of person from succeeding.

by William Skink

Posting at RD will be light for the next month or two. That said, there will still be opportunities to point out how duplicitous Democrats are.

Health care is getting lots of attention right now because Republicans are positioned to do some serious harm to this country’s most vulnerable people. This effort is, of course, disgusting and it’s made even more disgusting by the cowardliness of these Republicans to face the people they are going to screw over.

The problem with only focusing on what Republicans are doing is that their legislative effort is only half the story. The other half of the story I’ll frame as a question: will Democrats do everything in their power to advocate for a single payer approach to health care?

In California the answer is a very discouraging no:

Nothing better illustrates the political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party—for all progressive intents and purposes—than California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s announcement on Friday afternoon that he was going to put a “hold” on the single-payer health care bill (SB 562) for the state, effectively killing its passage for at least the year.

The Democratic Party finds itself in a bind in California. They hold the governorship and a supermajority in both houses of the legislature, so they can pass any bill they want. SB 562 had passed the Senate 23-14.

There was enormous enthusiasm among California progressive activists, who, with organizations like Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC,) and the National Nurses United (NNU,) and the California Nurses Association (CNA) were working tirelessly, and hopeful of success. After all, Bernie’s people were taking over the California party from the bottom since the election. I recall a night of drinking last year with an old friend who has been spearheading that effort, as he rebuffed my skepticism, and insisted that this time there would be a really progressive takeover of the California party, and single-payer would prove it. After all, once enough progressive pressure was been put on the legislators, the bill would be going to super-progressive Democratic Governor, Jerry Brown, who had made advocacy of single-payer a centerpiece of his run for President in 1992, saying: “We treat health care not as a commodity to be played with for profit but rather the right of every American citizen when they’re born.” Bernie foretold.

Unfortunately, today that Governor is, according to Paul Song, co-chair of the CHC, “doing everything he can to make sure this never gets on his desk.” And it won’t. Unfortunately, all the Democrats like Rendon, who “claims to be a personal supporter of single-payer,” will make sure that their most progressive governor is not put in the embarrassing position of having to reject what he’s been ostensibly arguing for for twenty-five years, of demonstrating so blatantly what a fraud his, and his party’s, progressive pretensions are.

Thus unfolds the typical Democratic strategy: Make all kinds of progressive noises and cast all kinds of progressive votes, while carefully managing the process so that the legislation the putatively progressives putatively support never gets enacted. Usually, they blame Republican obstructionism, and there certainly is enough of that, and where there is, it provides a convenient way for Democrat legislator to “support” legislation they know will be blocked and wouldn’t really enact themselves if they could.

Progressives take note, Republicans aren’t the only ones you are going to have to fight if you want to get progressive policies moving forward.