For the most part the dominant prescription for the dealing with the grassroots movement of the Tea-People and others is not a grassroots movement but it seems money and moderation.  It turns out that when the right is storming the halls of Congress and the White House, it’s an organic apple a day, if you please.   The basic teams in the field still seem to be the Tea-people versus the Me-People, but let’s mark the scorecard.

Yesterday’s news of more players joining as free agents included the Liberals spearheaded by Rob MacKay, who was labeled as a Taco Bell guy, but is better known to many of us over the years as a supporter of serious reform in California on many fronts and more recently as a big whoop with the Democracy Alliance, a Democratic political club of a 100+ rich contributors, and David Brock of Media Matters and its allied organizations.  Brock’s main quotes seem to focus on the fact that he was really good a raising money and that he was confident that he could raise money for whatever the Liberals wanted to do.  Program will follow.

There was also news that Steve Rosenthal, another long time comrade and friend, was convening people in DC to look at moving something forward to save the day.  Given Steve’s long history with CWA, DOL, and then as political director for the AFL-CIO, and then as labor’s point man in a number of efforts around battlegrounds and voter mobilization, it’s fair to believe that Steve would be the point man for Labor.

It’s hard to call the Liberals and Labor parties, because these seem more like party caucuses trying to win the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party.  These are fly traps for money.  If they can get the commitments and dollars, then maybe there is capacity and a program based on a social network model:  come where the big money and big players are and be with us!  The one sure guarantee is that all of this will give the White House heart burn.  Other than that, start marking your scorecard and see who you want for the fantasy team of big donors and operators.

And, then there’s my favorite:  a real party of NO – the No Label Party.  The Wall Street Journal dutifully reported a story on its entry into the field to galvanize moderates.  All of this seems to be a contribution in terms.  What passion would motivate moderates?  I guess it would be who could say “excuse me” louder or something.   It’s hard not to immediately think of Jim Hightower’s famous quote that the only thing in the middle is a yellow line and dead armadillos.

But this is serious and not because from the article’s quotes it seems to be uniting defeated and disgruntled candidates who lost election because they “were too moderate,” but because the Big Bucks of Bloomberg are lurking behind this.   How do we know?  Kevin Skeekey, Bloomberg’s long time deputy mayor and constant political wizard allowed his hand to be seen clearly as putting the organizers together from the Dems and Republicans to organize a big moderate confab in December.  For Kevin to allow his role to be seen so clearly means that this is a neon signal that this is SERIOUS and that the Mayor is making his move, whatever that move might be.

Now why someone as smart and skilled is allowing any nascent effort in the political lists to be called the No Label Party even inadvertently is beyond me.  Sometime it’s just really important when you are trying to actually fire up a grassroots movement or a political prairie fire to actually leave Manhattan and think about how it might all look and sound.  Whatever?  At least they are pretending to be a party caucus and lobby but willing to dive in and swim at the deep end of the pool.

There’s still a lot of room for real people to organize something that’s ours, but the early message being sent and received seems clear.  It’s about the money, honey.  Eventually, people will vote with their feet and we’ll see if we have a real response that resonates with the American people.

In a $40 million dollar program over three years designed to give parents cash money for little things like going to the dentist ($100) and big things like holding down a full-time job ($1800 per year!) and passing the high school competency test ($600!), somehow the people in charge managed to spent more than $10 million on operating costs including their salaries and almost $10 million on research and evaluation, and only managed to get $14 million of the $40 million out to poor families. The “opportunity” seems mainly to have been for the full employment program for the project bureaucrats and researchers and not for poor families at all!

They claimed that 2400 families participated in the program. On the back-of-the-envelope math on $40 million expenditure that would have averaged about $16,667 per family over the period. But in reality barely one-third of the dollars went to the families with an average of $5833 per family. NYC reported that those who “participated earned, on average, more than $6000 a year in the first two years” according to the article in the New York Times, but who knows how the math worked there?

And, typically, besides spending more to figure out how to give it away and to research who got it than they were giving, the City also confessed that the program was way too complicated. According to Linda L. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, “Big lesson for the future? Got make it a lot more simple.” No, duh! She said, “many families had been perplexed by the guidelines that were laid out for them.”

It is not hard to understand from the expenditures and from Ms. Gibbs’ comments what really went on here to subvert a good program and a great idea. At the base clearly the program was premised on a lack of trust for the poor. Once again a citizen wealth program was subverted ideologically because it was assumed the poor would scam and that the big problem would not be modifying behavior but protecting against scams.

This could have and should have worked. The results in Brazil on these Lula-led programs have been outstanding and almost revolutionary!

It could have worked in New York City as well if the bureaucrats had been willing to keep in simple and give more money to the poor and keep less for themselves and their political need to research and study every dollar they gave away.

More money really does reduce poverty. Let’s embrace that ideology rather than any other, and next time, make this work!

New Orleans

• Voter slaps at Corzine and Bloomberg have a populist anti-Wall Street and decidedly, “money-can’t-buy-my-vote” cast to them for two rich guys willing to spend whatever it takes, particularly the record setting $90M outlay by Mayor Bloomberg in his very close race.
• Unions need to listen to their members more and to political pros and consultants less.  It’s embarrassing to know that two huge NYC political players, SEIU and UFT/AFT, took a walk on this election.  Their members didn’t.  Controller Thompson, the challenger, romped with African-Americans and voters making less than $100,000 both of which are heavily represented by those two unions.  Had they not been twiddling thumbs on the sidelines, this race would have been even closer and might have sent a message against big money politics that could reverberate around the country.

• The Working Families Party of New York is once again a HUGE winner this election!  WFP was vocal from the first blush against the 3^rd term effort and said so unabashedly.  They refused Bloomberg access to their line, despite persistent pressure.  Not having the WFP doing turnout hurt the Mayor, and having them do turnout for Thompson dramatically helped him bring the race close.  Big, WOW, here with props for Danny Cantor and all of the WFP team!

• What are the progressive forces going to do without the GOTV and registration work in the community which ACORN has indicated it is unlikely to play in 2010 and beyond?  It was wild to read the pre-election right turnout scare tactics using ACORN as the boogieman.  A DC spokesperson for ACORN said they were not even involved anywhere in this race in New Jersey, and despite all of the strum and dang, ACORN had no base or operations in the NY-23^rd race.  Turnout was low and decidedly down among minorities and youth.  The more one reads and studies this rightwing ideological attack the smarter and more effective it seems, if its main purpose was to help level the playing field by successfully pushing one of the players off the field.

And, yes, none of this was about Obama, but all politics is local and the President will get the message.  According to the New York Times, Bloomberg was effective in putting the President and his people to the sidelines with a head fake and some bluster, and Thompson’s work as the standard bearer for the Democrats could seen a different storyline with real White House help rather the shrinking back, timidity that came with riding the donkey in New York.  What’s up with that?!?

If I were in one of the President’s men, I would be getting an apology together (and maybe offering my resignation!), because this is a huge wakeup call from the base, and it needs to be heard clearly without putting more sugar in this sad cup of coffee.