DaytonOS Scheduled To Interview Joe Lacey

DaytonOS is scheduled to interview Joe Lacey this Saturday, October 27. Our intention is to make a video of the interview and then to post the video here, the DaytonOS web-site.

One of the goals of DaytonOS is to provide for the Miami Valley an alternative to the main stream media. We feel that video is often the type of media that is most effective and, therefore, DaytonOS wants to help individuals in the Dayton area, who have a message to deliver, to produce videos. Our interview with Mr. Lacey will be our first video production.

Mr. Lacey is a current member of The Dayton Board of Education and, in this year’s Dayton Board election, Lacey is actively working for the election of a slate of three board candidates. Lacey, along with the School Board candidates he is advocating, has been the very harshly criticized by The Dayton Daily News.

Ellen Belcher wrote:

  • Lacey wants to expand his influence, and is trying to help Taylor, Crisp and Nerny get elected. As a majority and a team, they’d be a disaster.
  • It’s going to be a long, embarrassing four years if the wrong people win.
  • School board contests could be debacle

The the newspaper’s editorial, “Dayton school board: Keep incumbents Gallin, Massoud, Mims, Thompson on board,” wrote:

  • Seeing an opportunity, Joe Lacey, a disruptive school board member who isn’t up for re-election, is working to elect three people who conceivably would support his meddling.
  • Mr. Lacey cannot be allowed to succeed. Some people can still remember when Dayton’s school board was an utter embarrassment and had competing factions that sucked energy out of the good people in leadership jobs. In recent memory, the board has had at least a majority of earnest members who cared foremost about Dayton’s children.
  • If Mr. Lacey’s choices win, the community — not just Dayton — could take a huge step backward. Dayton’s schools have plenty of problems; the city and community don’t need to be defined by a board that’s taking its cues from Mr. Lacey. He is thoroughly political, he doesn’t work well with others and he goes off on tangents that are meaningless or unimportant.
  • The election of Ms. Gallin, Ms. Massoud and Mr. Mims is critically important. Without them — and if Mr. Lacey’s influence is expanded — a struggling district likely will have even more struggles.
  • Ms. Crisp, who was recruited to run by another board member, Joe Lacey, is extremely critical of the school district. She opposed the May levy, she is against year-round school, and she particularly objects to tearing down Wilbur Wright Middle School near her home.
Posted in Local/Metro | Leave a comment

Montgomery County Democrats Scheduled To Meet

The monthly meeting of the Montgomery County Democratic Party is this evening, Thursday, October 25, at Party Headquarters. The Executive Meeting starts at 7:00 PM and the Central Committee Meeting starts at 7:30 PM.

Because I am an elected Democratic Party Kettering Ward Leader, I am a member of both committees. I have e-mailed all Central Committee members a copy of my opinion article posted on DaytonOS entitled, “The Big Problems Facing Our Democracy Are Too Important For Political Parties To Decide,” and, in that e-mail, I also indicated that at the meeting, I will make the following motion:

Prior to the deadline for the filing of candidate’s petitions, January 4, 2008, the Montgomery County Democratic Party shall make no official recommendations / endorsements concerning primary candidates for the offices of State Representative or State Senator.

Posted in Local/Metro | 2 Comments

The Fear That Keeps The Democratic Congress Firmly Stuck In The Iraq Quagmire

After the 2006 elections, voters expected that the Democratic majority in Congress would take actions that would change the course of the Iraq War. But this hasn’t happened, and the course of the Iraq War, regardless that Democrats control Congress, has continued pretty much as if the 2006 elections had never even happened at all.

What makes Democrats stuck in the Iraq War quagmire is fear. Democrats in Congress evidently feel that they must give Bush / Cheney everything they request as a means to support the Iraq War, because they fear that to do otherwise would open them to severe criticism. Democrats in Congress evidently think that the question, “Who lost Iraq?”, is likely to haunt political discourse for years to come.

But if Democrats in Congress feel they will get any credit, any thanks, from Bush cheerleaders for their long-suffering support of Bush’s Iraq War, they are fooling themselves. Cal Thomas, the syndicated columnist, explains the right wing political strategy concerning Iraq pretty clearly in his Tuesday’s column, “No News is Bad News For the Democrats,” printed in The Dayton Daily News. Thomas, in his column, is nearly salivating at the prospect of Republican vindication concerning the Iraq War. He says, “The evidence of improvement in Iraq is coming with greater frequency and credibility. A trickle of good news is becoming a stream.” He says that this is “very good news for Iraq and for America.” But, he says, it is very bad news for the leadership of the Democratic Party, because of its, “investment in defeat.” He quotes an editorial from The Weekly Standard that asks, “Are the American people likely to elect the candidate of a party that has tried its best to lose a winnable war?”

Thomas writes that since the Democratic Party is so vested in defeat, any good news from Iraq, to Democrats, is “the worst possible news, because it threatens to undermine the Democrats’ political objective: the defeat of Republicans in the next election, even at the cost of losing a war.”

So, there you have it, according to Thomas, any good news from Iraq is “the worst possible news” to Democrats. What a lot of B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Regardless that the Democratic Congress has completely capitulated to Bush’s demands concerning how to conduct the Iraq War, the right wing is determined to twist the truth, and willing to make the outrageous charge that Democrats actually want the US to experience massive failure in Iraq. This charge is very looney and very contrary to the facts. But such a charge is revealing because it helps explain why the Democratic Congress refuses to follow the mandate given to it by voters in the 2006 election. It’s all about fear.

The gall of Cal Thomas’s hateful column, his willingness to make outrageous and baseless condemnation, gives some insight into the fear that keeps the Democratic Congress firmly stuck in the Iraq quagmire.

Posted in Opinion | Leave a comment