- 'An End to the Southern Strategy, But No Post-Racial America' says David Love
- "A Question of Place": An essay on the power of community
- Just Equally Speaking….
- Eagles owe Philadelphia the 8 million it needs to keep libraries open
- who would like to see Verizon offer cable TV in Phila?
- Council Committee Passed the Freeze
- Carol Campbell Passes Away
- My first trip to the public library
- Fight digital exclusion
- What if half of Philadelphia didn't have roads?
Headlines!
Submitted by jennifer on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 9:19am.
1. The AP reports that three high school football players will stand trial in the beating death of an illegal immigrant man in central Pennsylvania. Helen Gym wrote last month about the shameful delay in bringing those charges, even though there was an eyewitness to the crime.
2. New day, old ways: the Daily News says that the Obama campaign will hand out street money for Election Day, unlike in the May primary. I like this part of the article:
"They told me there are going to be resources here," Brady said. "That's what we do in Philadelphia; we pay people to work. They understand that."
Craig Schirmer, Pennsylvania director for the Obama campaign, would not talk about street money. But he did say that the campaign would be working closely with the local Democratic apparatus.
"As a campaign, we really are enjoying working with Congressman Brady and Mayor Nutter and Congressman Fattah," he said.
3. I won't link anything that will ruin the result, but you can watch Jose Garces (chef-owner of Amada and the brand-new crazy-fantasy-land Distrito) face off with maybe the most annoying man ever, Bobby Flay, again on Thursday, August 21, at 9pm on the Food Network.
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Correction!
The Obama story was by Catherine Lucey of the Daily News, not the Inquirer as I originally, mistakenly, wrote. I should have been tipped off by the fact that the story was local AND substantive.
Street Money
Maybe I missed it, but, is the money going onto the streets through the traditional methods, or is it coming straight from the Obama campaign?
Ask Brady?
I hope Obama just gives the money to the Ward Leaders
and maybe has his local people work to make sure no Ward Leaders withhold $$$ from working Committeepeople.
Here's why
a) there are NOT purely good people and purely bad people in the Democratic Party, especially on General Election Day; there are many many shades of gray, ALL of whom will be preferable to our Republican counterparts on that first Tuesday of November; in other words we want EVERYONE--all of the Ds working polls--happy, not just the eager young Obama vols we may or may not identify with
b) in case you haven't heard, he's not hurting for money
c) while I am ALL for reforming the admittedly broken system of paying Committeepeople through Ward Leaders--really we should professionalize that role more and require commonsense things like canvassing the neighborhood in the weeks before the election--we should not expect a presidential campaign to fix that system for us, especially one whose candidate may already face reluctance from certain party officials in certain neighborhoods, given the--lest we forget--historical nature of his candidacy
d) your comfortable middle-class-or-above bias is showing if you think everybody should be a volunteer on e-day; not everybody has an easy time getting off on a Tuesday, and certainly many Committeepeople are either killing a sick day or foregoing a day's wages; oh, and by the way, rewarding fair work with fair pay ought to be a fairly unbendable Progressive ideal
Believe me, the current Ward/Committee system is a boat that deserves to get rocked, and I'd like to rock it. But winning the presidency from 2009-2013 is WAY more important than fixing that system, and unless Obama chooses Hillary, messing around with alternative turnout or even payment strategies in Philadelphia--and risk alienating vital members of the Party's traditional GOTV structure--could cost Philly turnout and thus cost a big swing state and thus cost the race.
Seems like you are creating strawmen
If Obama says he will directly pay the committee people himself, then I think the overwhelming majority of people working the streets would be just as happy.
I am not sure anyone said he was.
I don't expect him to fix the system, and I wont be especially pissed if he is just doing the same old. It is what it is. But, considering what he said in the primary, it seems reasonable to just pay people directly. So, I don't get why you actually hope he does the same old. Understand why? Maybe. But hope? I don't get it.
Some people have the ability to volunteer, others do not. I have no problem with people being compensated for that, and haven't seen someone argue the opposite.
Who said winning the presidency is not more important? I just don't get where the either/or thing comes in. Maybe he is risking alienating some people, but I doubt it would have much of an effect. If Obama is paying each Committeeperson, you would have to convince me that a ward leader being a little pissed off might actually hurt GOTV in a high visibility election like this, despite all his or her committee people getting paid, and a highly motivated electorate. I have not seen any evidence of this.
Here is the reality as I see it: 1)In a very high turnout election, the current structure does an OK job at getting voters out of their home. 2)There is zero effective persuasion, because 99.9 percent of people will have made up their mind well before election day. So, the effect of randomly pulling people from their homes in more McCain friendly wards is pretty unknown anyway.
So basically, it seems to me that your argument boils down to this: you are worried Obama might piss off a few white ward leaders by not giving them cash. It just doesn't hold a lot of sway for me.