Howard Dean Brunching for $$$ In Montclair

1. Howard Dean is my hero. Every thing he said (and was criticized for) has proven true. Sure, he shoots from the hip sometimes, but he has never sprayed a lawyer with birdshot. I wish I were able to afford the ticket to meet this man!

2. I’ll be there with check book in hand.

3. These Dems are certainly munching and brunching their way through New Jersey like fat caterpillars on an oak tree.

4. Funny, though, when Dem leaders show up, the candidates don’t feel the need to run and hide.
   As one of the nation’s wealthiest states, and among the most securely “blue” it is no surprise the national organization’s chief fundraiser would appear, seeking contributions. In most election years, New Jersey can afford to be a net exporter of contributions, and activists.
   Sweet home, New Jersey.

5. principles?

6. Hey, better my money than money from Exxon/Mobile.
   Republican principles – see Tom Delay.

7. Log Cabin Republican principles?

8. Sylvia! Sylvia! where are you? You can bet that the group meeting with Dean are not going to discuss how to lower taxes in Montclair!

9. you know, Josephine, Howard Dean is my hero too!

10. But Corzine promised lower property taxes. Remember his slogan? “Real Property Tax Reform”.
    Well…?

11. howard dean is an intelligent principled man. i was disappointed that he wasn’t shown more support by leadership in the democratic party during the last primary.

12. Priorities, he needs to balance the budget first. That’s a Democratic value.

13. howard dean is an intelligent principled man. i was disappointed that he wasn’t shown more support by leadership in the democratic party during the last primary.

14. Laser,
    Did the budget crisis suddenly appear when Corzine took office? Can we blame him for this sudden crisis needing fixing or shall we blame him for lying to us about property tax reform knowing full well it would never happen?
    (just like his $19 per person “plan” to provide healthcare for 750,000)

15. Jon Corzine is working to fix the budget today and you slight him. I support a balanced budget.
    I support medicaid and medicare. The alternative would be to let the poor and old die. That would be immoral in the richest country in the world.

16. I don’t often agree with him, but I believe Dr Dean is a highly principled, deeply caring person. With a strong sense of right and wrong.

17. ROC – Maybe not in NJ but the US budget crisis did definitely show up when Bush took office. How you go from a record budget surplus to a record deficit in a matter of a few short years is truly astonishing.
    Never again with a straight face, will the repub’s be able to claim their title as being the fiscally responsible (let alone conservative) party!

18. Laser,
    we’ve already heard from ROC on this. let the poor and old die and support the rights of the unborn

19. “howard dean is an intelligent principled man”…that statement is an insult to all intelligent principled men.

20. Who spilled the bottle of “Civility Tonic” on our usual suspects? I fully expected this thread to be laced with the normal mouth-frothing political diatribes. Well, that is a refreshing change.
    But no one picked up on the fact that by seeing Dean, you save $1975. Enough for a shopping spree (moderate) at Whole Foods, Hip Chic, and the Colander Store …

21. the day is young yet conan. i’m sure that we’ll see the usual vitrole

22. laser must have the ‘civility filter’ working…r u listening to my phone calls again.

23. I’d rather have the boiled sangria… 🙂

24. “Howard Dean is my hero. Every thing he said (and was criticized for) has proven true”…josephine, are u drinking the boiled sangria?

25. Hiding: You’re not giving me much to go on here.
    Is is that you are saying I am obviously sober in my judgment (boiled sangria a nonintoxicating drink)? If so, I agree.
    If you wished to make another point, I apologize, but I failed to detect it.

26. I think all of you are missing the elephant in the room-that is, the massive redundancy in local governments. 566 municipalities in the third smallest state? Does anyone see a problem here? You wonder why your property taxes are so high? Many of these towns are too small to be self-sustaining without outrageously high taxes or very high average incomes. This is all good and well for a place like Essex Fells, but a place like Irvington (which used to be a well-heeled suburb) are now on perpetual life support. And all the while, the selfish mayors and councils divide and rule by baiting the suburbs against the cities.
    New Jersey could easily be split into less than 50 economically rational metropolitan regions. It’s not as though the powers that be haven’t figured it out. Why else do you think that silly secession talk comes up every few years? With regionalization, hundreds of local officials of both parties would lose their jobs. And they deserve it.
    And the Abbott debacle is simply the state’s botched way of trying to achieve what could have been much more easily done with county-wide districts. Why on earth do we have more districts than municipalities in this state? The sooner we cull the ranks of educrats, and IMHO, end elected school boards, the better.
    P.S. I know than many people who run for school board are genuinely concerned with the welfare of the children. However, enough are simply power-hungry, micromanaging parents to make me rather cynical. And good intentions are no substitute for educational credentials.

27. You know, I might actually scrape together the $125 and do this…wow, I have never gone to one of these before…
    Might be an interesting experience!

28. where’s ‘guido santa’ been…he’s an articulate advocate of the liberal causes and it would be nice to have his voice back in the discussions.

29. I’ve never understood this whole “Dean as a Liberal” means of attack.
    I thought that Dean balanced his state’s budget without raising taxes. I was a Republican, when Republican’s stood for fiscal sanity.
    I thought Dean brought some measure of healthcare to his state when he was governor, see above about taxes. I expect this to become a conservative cause as health care becomes a crippling cost to our competitiveness on the world market.
    I thought Dean supported Domestic Partnerships for Gay couples. It has always seemed to me that this type of personal freedom of choice ought to be a hallmark of conservatism.

30. While I may be living in a fantasy thinking that we should care for each other regardless of beliefs, it is not fantasy that NJ can thank a Republican directly for its present budget woes. When Whitman didn’t raise the taxes here and instead borrowed, she mortgaged everyone’s future. That being said, when Florio came along and shoved taxes down everyone’s throats, he was the bad guy.
    Florio was the honest guy, and he got hammered for it. Now Corzine is trying to be an honest man, and he will get hammered for it. Whitman helped put NJ in this hole, and she’s still the darling of the party. Bush gives out tax cuts like breath mints to the rich, while the federal government is swimming in debt, not 6 years after bi-partisan work had almost eliminated the largest debt in the history of mankind brought about by Reagan, another tax cutting borrower. Let’s face it, this method of tricking the simple minded is killing us financially.
    One thing about Dean… he hasn’t been critical enough of Republican irresponsibility. And I still like him. Another poster beat me to it, but I’ll repeat it: at least he doesn’t go around shooting people in the face. And that guy was one of Cheney’s friends! It’s obvious what he does to his enemies… just take a look around and witness the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. IT”S STILL THERE!

31. I’d vote for that.

32. Not raising taxes is the best thing to do, but you’ve gotta have the ‘nads to rein in government growth.
    No state has ever taxed itself into prosperity. The states with the lowest per capita tax burdens end up with skyrocketing economic growth rates.

33. Ooops, I was commenting on Kevin’s post, not Lee Blair’s.

34. I’d appreciate anyone of you ‘dems’ to explain how and what ‘tax breaks for the rich’ have hurt the economic growth of America.

35. Mr. Iceman (CoW)
    nice to see that you’re changing your signature periodically
    your friend

36. Mr. Iceman (CoW)
    nice to see that you’re changing your signature periodically
    your friend

37. Common Tax Argument:
    The rich are the engines that drive the economy so when they do well, we all do well. If we tax the rich too much, we’ll hurt the economy. We’ll all be worse off if we kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
    The short answer:
    If we’re all better off when the rich are better off, then:
    Why did the wealth of the bottom 40 percent go down 76 percent from 1983 to 2000 while the wealth of the richest 1 percent increased 42 percent?
    Why did the income of the bottom 40 percent only go up 7 percent from 1979 to 2000 while the income of the wealthiest 5 percent went up 81 percent?
    Why did the top 5 percent of Americans gain 70 percent of all the new wealth created from 1983 to 1998 while the bottom 80 percent of the American people got only 9 percent of the new wealth?
    And why did the longest sustained period of economic growth and shared prosperity occur when the CEOs of large corporations earned 41 times as much as an average worker, as compared to the economic boom of the 1990s when CEO salaries skyrocketed to 531 times an average worker’s salary and brought enormous wealth to only a small sliver of very rich people?
    Clearly, the theory of trickle-down has not been a success for anyone but the very wealthy. Or, in other words, supply-side economics works great…if you’re on the supply-side.
    Trickle-down theory is good conservative ideology but it’s bad economics and bad history. There is no real-world evidence that tax giveaways for corporations and the rich prevent recessions, stimulate economic growth, or create good jobs. History shows that large tax giveaways for the rich and extreme inequality of wealth are followed by weak economic growth and job loss.
    Strong economic growth and job creation have come during times of greater economic equality, effective social investment in infrastructure, and fair taxes that provide adequate funding for vital public services. In the real world, rather than the world of conservative ideology, fair taxes and relative economic equality correlate to strong economic growth and high employment.

38. “Many of these towns are too small to be self-sustaining without outrageously high taxes or very high average incomes.”
    That’s a canard. The fact is the small N.J. towns are quite self sufficient and have lower taxes. Only larger towns and cities that must support multiple county and local social programs have confiscatory tax rates.

39. Democratic philosphy is to a great extent founded on the unexpressed assumption that all income belongs to the government and so if the government does not tax it away it is providing welfare to the income producer.
    It is a fact that tax reduction favor taxpayers and does not favor non tax payers. That does not consitute welfare for the rich.
    I suspect that to some extent the statistics that show the poor are getting relatively poorer are skewed by the fact that we have more than 10 million aliens in the population and that their incomes, if reported, are lower but in many cases may not even be reported.

40. “YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!”

41. Howard Dean is so intelligent and principled he lied repeatedly (most recently on the 700 Club – how much lower can you go?) about his party’s position on gay marriage to win over a few fundies. When an activist called him on it, he fired his partner, who happened to work for him. Classy. Message to the dems: None of you slimeballs are getting my vote or my money this year. We may be expendable, but our checks aren’t.

42. I just love the way the lefty moonbat loons in this town hurrah taxes on the rich in a pseudo class warfare frenzy and yet complain about property taxes. The way the Dems/Dean/IRS/gov’t stats define rich is 2 middle class wage earners. Maybe in Missoula that’s rich but in this blue state paradise of high expenses/taxes such people do not live high off the hog. So that makes the majority of Montclair residents the very rich these marching morons demonize.

43. theproblem: wha?
    I get the feeling you skipped the boiling step for your sangria.

44. theproblem: problem is when you speak of lefty moonbat loons you make blindingly clear your Righty Moonbat Loony Leanings! 🙂 I guess in your righty rightous world repubs = good , dems = bad. It’s all dem conspiracy! Why those wacko dems are hardly human! If only they’d shut up and go away then America would be good again…right righty?

45. Hey rm, Crediting dem conspracies is too much credit. The simplistic equation you make …qed
    If only they would shut up, think and then talk America would be good as it was when Democrats were not yet devolved into mindless radlibs.

46. I thought you were supposed to lie on the 700 club. Can’t be a good televangelist unless you can sling the BS with the best of them. Same for being a politician, I suspect.

47. “Prosperity by higher taxes” One can only hope this is the Democrat’s clarion call in 06 or 08.
    (Good luck)

48. Bill the Cat,
    Regarding the 700 club and Dean’s “clarification”. I think Dean did give voice to the central plank of the Democratic Party:
    Tell them what they want to hear…

49. True conservative values regarding gay marriage.
    I wholeheartedly agree with this.

50. (I also like how un-Deany-wishy-washy” the statement is)

51. ROC,
    I wholeheartedly agree. We don’t need the Feds to get involved in this issue. Let the States make their laws. I love this quote from the article:
    “Whatever one thinks of same-sex marriage as a matter of policy, no person who cares about our Constitution and public policy should support this unnecessary, radical, unprecedented, and overly broad departure from the nation’s traditions and history.

52. Want to get scared? Imagine this nutjob’s could have been carrying around the football. Fallout shelters anyone?

53. Why isn’t ROC asking for a source on the 700 Club story?
    Well, I’m asking. Gimme some truth.

54. Because ROC is an advid 700 club watcher and doesn’t want to know.
    If you want truth call on superman!

55. Just came from seeing Governor Dean once again present credibility, honesty and directness (although how he could allow Menendez to lurk behing him like a latter-day Nixon is beyond me) and want to say how refreshing it is to see that man present the truth. This morning Al Gore spoke briefly on Stephanopoulos about what might have been different if he had succeeded in winning the presidency in 2000. If only. And here in Montclair was a look at what might have been if things had gone otherwise among Democrats in 2003-2004. A man who is educated, knows something about national and global affairs without talking points written by someone else, has had real experience earned on merit and ability, and actually traveled internationallyout of native curiosity and worldliness (prior to ascending to leader of the free world), is principled and intelligent and direct. If only.

56. As “Mims the word” neglects to mention above, Howard Dean is also a creature of so little real conviction that, by his own recounting, he changed his religious denomination once because his local church was involved in some petty land dispute.
    This is hardly a man to place alongside St. Thomas More, Spinoza, Luther or Knox, in other words. So much for his commitment to “principle.” Nor is it quite accurate to say Dean “knows something about national and global affairs.” Dean at his most squid-like, for example, has more than once made vague but nasty-sounding pubic speculation that Bush may have known “something” about 9/11 before the atrocity actually occurred. This may appeal to the frothing fringe embodied by lasermikey (whom I assume from one of his postings furiously and eagerly waved his checkbook at Dean), but it is hardly evidence of sobersided, statesmanlike conduct and probity.

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