TONIGHT: Don't miss annual Chili Supper

  CHILI SUPPER TONIGHT  

The 18^th Annual P.A.W.S Chili Supper is tonight, Tuesday, Nov. 4,

from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 1206 N. Beeline Highway, Payson.

Tickets are $7 for adults and $4 for children (12 and under).  Tickets are

available at the Humane Society of Central Arizona, 605 Wilson Court, the

Humane Society Resale Store and Vintage Boutique, 510 W. Main Street;

and Payson Public Library, 328 N. McLane Road, or at the door.

The following businesses are donating the food: Chili by the Mazatzal

Casino Cedar Ridge Restaurant, Macaroni and Cheese and Rolls by Gerarado’s Firewood Café, Cheese from El Rancho, Salad from Tiny’s Family Restaurant,

Salad Dressings from Fargo’s Steakhouse, and desserts by the Barkery Bakery

volunteers.

Trouble In Paradise will provide music for the evening and The Barkery

Boutique will be open for business.

Adding to the fun will be a silent auction, 50/50 raffle and U-Pic raffles.

Election day ghosts haunt Supreme's Kennedy

Robert Reich. (photo: Getty Images)

An Election Day Carol

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

03 November 14

readersupportednews.org

 
n the early hours of Election Day, before dawn reaches the nation’s capital, Justice Anthony Kennedy is suddenly awakened by someone standing next to his bed.

“Get out of here or I’ll call the cops!” the Justice shouts.

“Don’t get bent out of shape,” says the ghost-like figure.

“Who are you?” demands the Justice.

“I am the ghost of Election Day Past.”

“Heavens!” cries the Justice. “Why are you here?”

The ghost does not answer but beckons the Justice to follow him.

He leads the Justice to Sacramento, California, the city where he grew up. The day is Election Day, 1957, the first time the youthful Anthony has ever voted.

“I look so happy,” the Justice says, his eyes welling up with tears. “Everyone does.”

“It was a time when people were eager to vote, a time when Election Day was a joyful occasion,” says the ghost. “A time before all the corruption.”

“What corruption?” asks the Justice, worriedly.

The ghost glowers at the Justice. “The corruption brought on by your decision in ‘Citizen’s United versus Federal Election Commission,' the ghost snaps. “You wrote the opinion that four of your fellow justices joined. It opened the floodgates to big money in elections.”

“I don’t understand…” the Justice cries.

“You decided that corporations are people under the First Amendment, and that independent campaign expenditures, even when made by giant corporations, don’t give rise to corruption or even the appearance of corruption,” the ghost says. “How could you have been so naïve?”

The ghost suddenly vanishes, and the Justice is back in his bed, trembling. He tries to calm himself. “Just a bad dream,” he says.

Moments later another ghost arrives.

“Who are you?” the Justice pleads.

“I am Election Day Present,” says the apparition, and you must come with me.

The ghost leads the Justice to a television set where he is forced to watch five straight hours of negative political advertising.

“Please stop! I can’t bear it!” cries the Justice. “Who is responsible for this?”

“No one knows. They don’t have to identify themselves,” says the ghost. “You wrote in ‘Citizens United’ that Congress would pass a law requiring disclosure of the sources of all campaign funds. But of course it didn’t.”

“But I … I … thought …” the Justice stammers.

The ghost towers over the Justice. “You should have known!” he shouts, and then vanishes as suddenly as the first ghost, leaving the Justice back in his bed.

“Oh help,” Justice Kennedy groans. “I’m having a very bad night.”

Moments later, two apparitions appear. They are very old and very ugly.

“Who are you?” the Justice cries, pulling his blanket over his head.

“We are Election Day Future,” say the two in unison. “Come with us.”

“Must I?” whispers the Justice.

The ghosts nod their heads, and lead the Justice into a palatial room in which a dozen people are loudly partying.

“Who are these people?” asks the Justice.

“The billionaires who now own America. They make all the decisions.”

“What … happened?” the Justice asks meekly.

“‘Citizen’s United,’ allowed a few giant corporations, Wall Street banks, and very wealthy people to buy American democracy. And once they bought it, there was no longer any need for Election Day. That’s why they party every year on this day.”

“Oh, no,” says the Justice, and he begins to weep.

“By the way,” say the ghosts in unison, “let us introduce ourselves. Charles and David Koch.” They shake the Justice’s hand, and then vanish.

Justice Kennedy is back in his bed, just as the morning light is beginning to peep through the curtains.

It’s Election Day, 2014. The Justice is overwhelmed with joy. He puts on his best suit, and goes to vote.

“Hello!” he happily shouts to everyone he sees at the polling place. “Isn’t Election Day wonderful?”

Then Justice Kennedy hurries to his office in the Supreme Court building where he meets with his law clerks.

“I’ve made a very important decision,” he says. “I’m going to join with the four dissenters to ‘Citizens United’, and we’re going to reverse that horrific case. ”

His clerks have never seen the Justice so overjoyed.

“I want each of you to take the rest of the day off, and be sure to vote!” he beams. Then he heads for the door and clicks his heels, before leaving for home. “Happy Election Day!” he shouts.

Vote and then go to the Chili Supper Tuesday

The 18^th Annual Chili Supper, sponsored by P.A.W.S. (Payson Area Woofers Society) is from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov.4, at the Payson Elks Lodge, 1206 N. Beeline Hwy.  For just $7 for adults and $4 for children under 12, will enjoy a tasty meal of Chili by the Mazatzal Casino, Macaroni and Cheese, and rolls from Gerardo’s Firewood Café, Salad by Tiny’s Family Restaurant, Cheese from El Rancho, dressing by Fargo’s, and homemade bars and drinks.  Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Humane Society of Central Arizona, 605 W. Wilson Court; the Humane Society Resale Store and Vintage Boutique at 510 W. Main St.; Payson Public Library, 328 N. McLane Rd., or at the door.

Trouble in Paradise will provide the evening’s music.  The Barkery Boutique will be opened for business, along with the 50/50 and U-Pic Raffles and a Silent Auction. This year P.A.W.S. will be raising funds for the Second Chance Fund and future Low/Cost, No/Cost Spay and Neuter Clinics to benefit Pets and People in the Rim Country.

Votes aren't in, but the lessons are

Clear Lessons from Tuesday’s Election Muddle

November 3, 2014

Robert Borosage

Campaign for America's Future

ourfuture.org 

Even on election eve, campaign 2014 is too close to call. Control of the U.S. Senate may not be determined until run-offs are held in January. Conservative Republican governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker are in frenzied, pitched battles to survive. Millions in last-minute “dark money” is flooding contested races, as much designed to drive voters away as to rouse them to vote.
 

The key races are so close and turnout patterns so uncertain that predictions reflect assumptions as much as data. The growing chorus suggesting that Republicans will gain control of the Senate comes not from sweeping changes in the polls but from hardening of conventional wisdom: Late-deciding voters generally break against incumbents; the older, whiter, more male voters in an off-year favor Republicans; the president’s approval is in the pits, etc. All true, but the races still are up for grabs.

Yet, even before the final votes are cast and counted, some lessons are clear in the muddle of 2014.

There is no swing to the right.
  

If Republicans manage to win majority control in the Senate. add seats in the House, and save endangered governors, they’ll claim a mandate for conservative principles. 

Nonsense. What is striking about this election is not how well but how poorly Republicans have fared. Everything was in line for Republicans – a discontented electorate, a red-state playing field, a bi-election in a president’s sixth year, a chaotic world, the Democratic base struggling in this economy, a flood of dark money, electoral suppression reforms in place. 

But despite this and more, Republicans couldn’t close the deal. They sought no mandate other than to be “not Obama,” but the Republican Party and Republican Congress are less popular than the president. People ready to vote the bums out were unconvinced that Republican challengers were better bums. 

And, of course, conservative governors found themselves at risk from Florida to Kansas to Alaska, as voters revolted against tax cuts that didn’t produce jobs, but forced cutbacks in schools. Voters don’t trust government to do much of anything, but that doesn’t translate into support for the conservative gospel. 

Social issues are now a liberal wedge. 

Thirty years ago, the New Democrats warned that Democrats had to distance themselves from liberal social movements like choice, gay rights and civil rights. Now the movements represent the emerging majority. The Republican assault on women, immigrants, voting rights and gay rights benefits Democrats – even in purple states like Colorado and Iowa. Republicans now must scramble to distance themselves from the hard-line views of their base. 

Money and technique talk but don’t decide. 

Win or lose, Democratic political operatives will boast about their sophisticated targeting and turnout techniques, and the need to consolidate their edge. Republican political operatives will call for catching up with Democrats. The money spent will exceed any previous bi-election. This will fuel the arms race for more money and better targeting next time. 

In fact, vision, agenda, passion and movement matter. Better technique and more money can make a difference, but they don’t substitute for a passionate and mobilized base, a compelling message and an inspiring candidate. 

Republican obstruction offers at most Pyrrhic victory. 

Republicans voted in virtual lock-step to obstruct everything the President sought. The economic recovery is weaker and its benefits less widely spread as a result. Voters grew sensibly disgusted with gridlocked, corrupted Washington that produced a “recovery” in which only the richest few capture all the rewards of growth. They tend to blame the party that holds the White House. Opponents of the president are emboldened; supporters discouraged. 

But Republican obstruction offends more than it attracts. Republicans blocked a hike in the minimum wage, paid family leave, fairer taxes on the rich and corporations. They stopped funds to rebuild America and put people to work. They torpedoed investment in universal pre-kindergarten. They scorned immigration reform. Their policies in the world would have us even more enmeshed in conflicts from Afghanistan to Syria to Libya to the Ukraine. Voting for them is like protesting the spread of forest fires by embracing those lighting the matches. Obstruction helped them this time in red states against weak Democratic incumbents. It is likely to be costly in the future. 

Both parties lack the courage of their convictions, or lack the convictions to be courageous. 

Republicans repeat, but no longer believe, their own gospel. They rail against Obamacare, but end the campaign no longer promising its repeal. They believe in tax breaks for the rich and corporations, but find them ever harder to defend when the 1 percent and corporate profits pocket record percentages of national income, and the middle class still sinks. They believe in markets, but don’t want to break up or police too-big-to-fail banks. They condemn big government, but are afraid to tell us what they would cut. They deny the reality of climate change, even as billions are needed to keep the Naval Academy from sinking beneath the waves. They continue the war on workers, even as the middle class continues to sink. They are fevered patriots who defend turncoat global corporations, outsourcing and trade policies that rack up record deficits with China. They rail against crony capitalism, while defending subsidies to Big Oil, the wealthiest corporations in history. 

Democrats are better fit for the times, but can’t quite believe it. Americans strongly want the rich and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, but Democrats are reluctant to call for tax hikes. Democrats get that Americans want a better deal – a higher minimum wage, guaranteed paid vacations, paid sick days and paid family leave, affordable college, good schools, a secure retirement – but they worry about supporting big government. 

Americans now are increasingly skeptical about our corrupted government being able to do anything well. So Democrats hesitate to make the necessary argument for putting people to work by rebuilding the country’s aged infrastructure and investing in the green industrial revolution that will sweep the world. Their timidity leads them to single out issues rather than offer Americans a clear vision of the way forward. Speaking the truth risks offending their donors. 

The Elizabethan Era
Senator Elizabeth Warren will do her country and party a great service by teaching Democrats how to argue the case. She knows the threat: working families that cannot afford even the basics of middle-class life. She names the enemy: the entrenched interests and big money that rig the rules. She lays out a common-sense agenda, grounded on basic values. And she forces the choice: This can’t be done unless you fight to take back government from the interests that corrupt it.

Whether she chooses to run for president in 2016 or not, we live in an Elizabethan era. To get a hearing, Democrats will have to be populist enough to describe why this economy doesn’t work for most people. Pollsters and pundits will conclude that this election shows voters are looking for competence. But even Hillary Clinton, a potential candidate with the most extensive resume in memory, will be unconvincing running on “competence.” She’ll perfect a more populist voice or face a more perilous path. 

Occupy a Stacked Deck
Election 2014 has been remarkably tawdry. Dark money flooded the airwaves with negative ads. Candidates assailed their opponents, detailing what they opposed without saying much about what they were for. Fears were thundered; hopes whispered. The ersatz vied with the timorous.

This isn’t likely to change without a popular mobilization that forces politicians to respond. Occupy Wall Street was scorned for lacking leadership or agenda. But its critique was clear, its passion and commitment stunning. And politicians scrambled to adjust.

The next Occupy may well focus less on the crimes of the 1 percent and more on the outrage of working people. More than one-half of Americans earn less than $30,000 a year. More and more can’t afford the basics of a decent life – dentists, vacations, retirement, college and more. More and more work in short-term, part-time, contract or other forms of contingent employment where they aren’t even told their schedules from week to week.

The next Occupy may well be driven by working women struggling to work and raise a child. It may come from the eruption of people of color locked in despair, sparked by the Ferguson outrages that occur across the country. Surely the young, their futures blighted by debt, lousy jobs and a catastrophic climate changes, will be at its center. The target may well be more focused on government inaction and corruption, rather than Wall Street abuses. It may well get in the face of politicians rather than in the face of banks.

All that is mere speculation. But the need for Occupy II is clear. This election won’t solve gridlock, and it won’t create a government remotely able to address the challenges we face. Change won’t be forged by politicians spending hours each day raising dough for negative ads to win elections. In this populist era, change will wait on the people to mobilize, protest the stacked deck, and force politicians to respond.

Liz Warren masters the stump speech

Senator Elizabeth Warren is perfecting the art of the stump speech. (photo: People Magazine)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Teacher, Reminds Democrats That 'Rally' Is a Verb

By David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post

01 November 14

readersupportednews.org

lizabeth Warren usually opens with a joke. It is not that funny. Funny is not the point. “Can y’all hear me in the back row?” she said here on Saturday morning, looking out from the lectern at a rally for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “You can always tell a schoolteacher. I will be keeping an eye on those of you in the back row. You may be called on at some point during this. I know why you’re in the back row.”

At this rally, the joke didn’t even make a lot of sense. It is a gag written for big rooms — for the college lecture halls that Warren has been filling as a guest speaker for Democratic candidates this year. But on this day in New Hampshire, the crowd was small. The “back row” was only about 20 feet away. They could definitely hear her.

Warren used the joke anyway. The point is not the joke — the point is the word “schoolteacher.”

Every bit of Warren’s 17-minute stump speech is designed to do a job, and the job of this section is — in speechwriter lingo — to “establish bio.” It reminds people that once (actually, about 43 years ago), Warren worked with children at an elementary school. With that word, she locates herself inside the middle-class audience she intends to persuade.

Warren — a second-year senator from Massachusetts who is not up for reelection — might be one of the few Democrats in the nation who are enjoying 2014. She has been invited to rallies for candidates in six states, even in conservative places such as Kentucky, where on Tuesday night she campaigned with Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

One secret of Warren’s success has been her mastery of an old political art: the stump speech. Other Senate Democrats, after years on the defensive, have been trained to give mumbly attack speeches focusing mainly on what their opponents get wrong. Warren, by contrast, uses old rhetorical tricks to sweep her audience into a celebration of what she says Democrats get right.

Warren’s speech might not win any elections this year, but it certainly seems more fun for people in the back row.

“So, this is a rally? Let’s rally for a minute. Let’s remind ourselves what we get out there and fight for,” she told the small crowd in New Hampshire. And she started in with a kind of credo, reciting the things they all believed together. “We believe we need more restraints on Wall Street.”

“Woo!” said the crowd.

“Yeah!” said the senator from Massachusetts. “Woo!”

Warren, 65, grew up in small-town Oklahoma, and became a Harvard law professor studying bankruptcy and why so many Americans fall into it. That work drove her to become an activist, trying to protect people from predatory practices at big banks. That activism eventually made her famous, as a tough-talking founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

At Warren events, there are often groups of “Ready for Warren” supporters, who want her to run for president in 2016. She has not publicly indicated an interest.

But Warren has been a politician only since 2011, when she began her campaign to unseat Scott Brown (R). At times, it still appears that she’s adjusting to the task of visiting strange states and haranguing strangers about how to vote.

At one campaign event with Shaheen, the stage was hung with two New Hampshire flags. The opening act was a local hip-hop trio, who rapped a near-endless song about . . . New Hampshire (“You can drive Mount Washington/ hike up Mount Monadnock./In 1787, we invented the alarm clock”).

Then Warren came out and forgot what state she was in.

“The people of Massachusetts are not taking Scott Brown!” she told the crowd. Shaheen is running against the very same Scott Brown, who has relocated to his vacation home in the Granite State. “They’re taking Jeanne Shaheen.”

There was some awkward clapping.

“Massachusetts didn’t want him,” Shaheen said, saving the moment. “And we don’t want him either.” (Warren flubbed a New Hampshire reference again Tuesday, saying during an appearance on “The View” that Shaheen is “out there working for the people of Vermont.”)

But on most days, Warren’s stump speech is one of the best in the Democratic Party. Aides say she has honed it and memorized it over the course of three years, adding and refining its main pieces. One of the oldest pieces is the schoolteacher joke, which dates to her campaign against Brown.

One of the newer pieces is the disclaimer, which Warren has used in her swings through conservative-leaning states this year.

“Look, Jeanne and I don’t agree on every issue,” Warren said in New Hampshire.

“I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again: Alison and I don’t agree on everything,” Warren said in Louisville on Tuesday night.

The idea is to reassure voters that these Democrats aren’t Massachusetts Democrats and that they might not share Warren’s more liberal views on guns and climate change. Then, most of the time, Warren quickly shifts back to something that she and these other Democrats do share: their enemies.

“Mitch McConnell is here to work for the millionaires and billionaires. . . . This is right in line with the Republican philosophy across the board, because their view is the most important thing government can do is protect the tender fannies of the rich and powerful,” Warren said Tuesday in Kentucky. McConnell (R-Ky.) is the Senate minority leader, and the incumbent that Grimes is trying to unseat. “Let’s be clear about this: The game is rigged, and Mitch McConnell wants to keep it rigged.”

This, of course, is a not a new idea. Labeling your opponents as tools of nameless Wall Street fat cats has been a tactic of American politics for more than a century, and a tool of Democrats since FDR.

The next part of her standard speech is an emotional buildup using an audience call-and­response that she has employed for about a year. On the day she campaigned in New Hampshire, the difference with other Democrats was obvious. Shaheen, speaking first, had used her own call-and­-response, but only to hammer her opponent. The responses also didn’t seem to be as loud as she wanted.

“Do you think Scott Brown cares about New Hampshire?” she said.

“No!” the crowd said.

“Louder!” Shaheen said. “LOUDER!”

“NO!” the crowd said.

Warren’s call-and-response, by contrast, is a recitation of things that she says Democrats believe. For the audience, it does not sound like a story about Brown — it sounds like a story about them and about things they and Warren want to do together.

“Nobody should work full time and still live in poverty,” Warren said. She was drowned out by cheers.

“Everyone is entitled to get an education without being crushed by student-loan debt,” she said. Cheers again. “Woo!” Warren said. Then she turned to students waving signs on the stage behind her. “Woo!”

Warren shouted other beliefs: that Social Security and Medicare should be preserved, that women deserve equal pay for equal work. These were well-worn Democratic policy ideas, repackaged as the bylaws of a movement.

Then the big one, the line that usually draws the loudest applause in the speech.:

“Corporations are not people,” Warren shouted.

At this high point, 76-year-old Christina Angell turned to her companion in the back row. “She’s a lot better than Obama,” she said.

Warren’s speech ends, as most good speeches do, with a view of the apocalypse. For the past few years, Republican candidates have won votes by sketching doomsday scenarios where freedom itself is lost, to debt or dictatorship. Warren warns her audience that democracy itself might be lost — buried under the big money of conservative billionaires — if they don’t help elect Democrats right now.

“It comes to you, to tell us how democracy really works,” she said in one New Hampshire speech. “Is democracy all about those who can drop a half a million bucks — millions of dollars — can pump in money to buy an election? Or is it about people?”

Here, her cadence slowed down, to emphasize every clause: “Is it about who you trust. To work. For the people. Of Massachusetts?”

“New Hampshire!” the crowd interrupted.

“Did I do that again?” Warren said. “Damn.”