A Most Unsatisfactory Debate: David Trone vs Angela Alsobrooks for the open MD. Senate Seat - vs Larry Hogan.
My running commentary at the host YouTube website...I do have a "winner" in mind but...I think no endorsements until May.
Update: Monday, April 22, 2024: Trone and Company giving to conservative Republicans? The How and Why of it…
I set out about an hour ago to dig a little further into the matters that the candidates themselves and the reporters asking the questions didn’t clarify: how and why was David Trone contributing to so many Right Wing Republicans, as alleged by Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince Georges County Executive and former Prosecutor. I found part of the answer here at Time magazine: ime.com/6303732/senate-race-maryland-david-trone-abortion/ This was from Aug. 10, 2023 by Eric Cortellessa under the title “The Pro-Choice Senate Candidate Whose Company Donates to Anti-Abortion Republicans.”
Ok, so the reason Ms. Alsobrooks can make this accusation is that Rep. Trone’s mass marketing wine company was very active, in his own words “buying access” with politicians in very conservative states such as Texas, Georgia and S.C. to name some of the most conservative. At times, the “access” contributions were made by Trone directly or by his brother. Therefore, in his eyes, this had nothing to do with abortion directly, the intent was to get access in those conservative states, access to expand his business over the past 20 years to become the nation’s largest wholesaler of beer and wine, and that has involved changing state laws and perhaps even federal regulations aimed at preventing monopolies. For voters, that’s never going to get sorted out in the format of this debate - in one hour with no aggressive reporter follow-up questions.
And this leaves open the question I initially raised, knowing of Trone’s large donor support of AIPAC for a number of years, $100,000 per year. AIPAC is hardly transparent but it is clear they donate to whomever they feel is necessarily important to shoring up support for Israel - and no conditions around that support mind you. Are we to believe that support hasn’t gone to conservative Republicans?
And a new AIPAC PAC is devoted to ousting the most progressive Democrats centered on “the Squad” who have been vocal critics against the current Gaza campaign.
I hope this helps a little bit, but it is not entirely satisfying to me yet either. And the reporting on this debate - post debate, hasn’t helped much. Not only is the active “Ghost” of AIPAC’s stances and political contributions hovering over this campaign, but also, in this writer’s mind, the very important question of major business interests pushing their way into politics, donors to both parties, in ways that make the average citizen feel even more reduced and irrelevant to the heart of the processes is also moving front and center for one of the candidates. Millionares in politics, and billionaires fueling the funding and lobbying PAC’s Thomas Ferguson’s book “Golden Rule” once again, that I refer to in more detail in the previous, main posting.
This doesn’t make my endorsement work any easier, But I hope my readers are learning something as my own digging and weighing proceeds.
And while on my Earth Day “Walk in the Sun” today, over paths through the lands owned by one of Western Maryland former coal barons, that became in part a public landfill after being a surface mine, with about 30-50 years restorative re-growth - all done by Nature itself, no plantings I can detect, I took a phone call from one of the major Democratic candidates in the primary with 16 entrants, to replace David Trone. No commitments given despite the personal call. And over the past two days, I’ve honored my promise to visit the websites for all the 24 competitors for the two parties, looking as well as public databases that the Maryland Election Commission runs, Ballotpedia, and other sources.
Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
As I come up to speed on this important race, I was typing my reactions and criticisms on the “Comments” section online at the sponsors YouTube web site. I also thought I better copy them pronto just in case they get deleted, since some of them refer to Israel, Hamas, Gaza and the Middle East. AIPAC wasn’t mentioned by either candidate: it was like a ghost hovering over their comments, but I sure did mention it in responding.
Right now, I’m leaning towards just two endorsements, as candidate brochures reach me by U.S. Mail out here in the frontier mountain section of Western Maryland. The endorsements would be in this Senate race, and the very competitive races in both parties for the right to face off for David Trone’s seat in our 6th Congressional District. That may sound like a writer’s cop-out, but please, there are 16 Dems running in the primary, and 8 Repubs, and I would like to, at minimum, read each of their online bio’s and for the main contenders, dig a bit deeper. The sociologist in me is curious to get at least a glimmer of who these 24 souls are who want David Trone’s seat. I have left at least one comment at a Republican contender, whose very brief bio intro at YouTube, highlighting his professional military career in Afghan and Iraq, led me to ask about his judgements on those wars, long and very expensive wars, which many consider to be the greatest American FP tragedies in addition to Vietnam…and for heaven sake’s he’s running for a congressional seat where he will be making just such judgements in the future, so telling me you served is fine…what’s your call on the results of the nation’s actions? (And this at a time when the FP issues of Israel/Iran and Ukraine and Taiwan are front burner, consuming Washington insider politics.)
If I made this just a “grunt” journalist’s task within the system without my occasional glances outside of it, I would truly be depressed. More so than after checking in again to the Grand Hotel Abyss to ponder the considerable work of the infamous Frankfurt School; I’m re-reading it now because it’s impressive enough to deserve a second savoring. A warning: it can supply insights but no solutions, just as the scholars covered could not but be helpless bystanders watching the destruction of the Weimar Republic in Germany, 1919-1932. Their critics said they were all “theory, and no praxis” and that’s a valid jibe, but as we look at a potential American re-run of Weimar, and the rotten fruit harvest from our Mass Culture “industry” in one Donald, Herr Trump, don’t you think we can use a few theories - since we don’t seem to have come up with solutions to our nation’s citizens’ stated vast “unhappiness.” (It was the worst of Mass Culture fanning and feeding the worst of racial and economic grievances which drove Germany into barbarism. The book takes us to the fate of the working class under Marx’s theories, and the school’s great disappointment in them, and to all the disputes in the newly emerging world of psychology, courtesy of Messrs. Freud and Fromm, who introduced a Matriarchal challenge…) Ms. Hannah Arendt has her own complex diagnoses in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” which I am re-reading and pondering daily for its vast learning, and it was written in the still smoldering ruins of Europe, 1950-1951, where one of the great unsolved issues post WWII was…drumroll: the homeless displaced refugees…with no status and no state…more than ten million…of course no relevance whatsoever for today! And thinking of those immediate post-war years, 1945-1952 or so, who cannot help but think of the ruins of the German, French and Polish cities, Russian too, Berlin, Caen, Warsaw, Stalingrad, and today Gaza itself to match some of the worst, and remember Mariupol by the end of May, 2022, which the American left seems to have dropped off its maps of Russian “achievement.” )
And I only heard a few stabs at them, our American troubles, from David Trone, not much from County Executive Alsobrooks. Trone has some “cures” for the symptoms of our deep troubles, without ever getting at the deeper roots of them: drug treatment, jobs for those coming out of Mass Incarceration…housing? Did anyone mention housing? No. Let me know what you thought of the closing statements on federal debt, how to pay for new programs by raising taxes on the wealthy or by canceling Trump’s tax cuts…but no real numbers…not to face the foreign policy issues, the housing issues and the little dent we’ve made in climate chaos with the hourglass running out. Or run out. And oh, by the way, didn’t the Maryland legislature just adjurn with once again, postponing the great financial question of how to pay for for its ambitous educational goals?
And money, money, money haunts the races as you will see in my comments. And we forget that whomever wins the Dem nomination will face a “successful” Republican businessman, Larry Hogan, who in my way of thinking at least, is more conservative about the big issues than he wants to present himself as…a “non-partisan”…but on the issue of taxes, the regulatory state, public spending, is he really a “moderate?” Only by the standards of the times, and they are not Bernie Sanders’s standards, are they?
I may, if I continue to write about the Maryland races, have something mildly controversial to say about Hogan’s famous decision to ban “fracking” from the state of Maryland (March 17, 2017). I tried my analysis out when I gave a guest lecture at the invitation of Rep. Jamie Raskin in August of 2019 to his Democracy Summer interns, and I could tell from the looks on the faces of the young idealists that my hardball, cynical and “Golden Rule” interpretation of that event was trying their conventional progressive wisdoms. That Golden Rule comes from Thomas Ferguson’s well done but not often quoted book from the Roaring 1990’s (1995), “Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems.” It was praised on its back cover by the likes of William Greider, Walter Dean Burnham, Theodore Lowi and one other economist. I haven’t heard any national Democrat mention it in the intervening 30 years. You’ll see why in my running comments below why it may still have some relevance. And here is that commentary. A little clean up was necessary to meet the conventions of grammar and so forth…they appear in reverse order of them being posted during the debate…
My Comments online:
In "conclusion..." It's “grew up on a failed farm with an alcoholic father” versus “working class family all the way”...On the climate "crisis": both referenced Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act, but the heart of that, the transition to electric vehicles is not going well: too few taking the $$$ incentives which still is not making them affordable for failing farmers and working class families...there is no breakthrough on prices as there was with H. Ford's pioneering mass production models...and there was no planning in the IRA for coordinating the new grid; everything, the remedies of the Greens and I am one of them, requires much more power but there is no federal coordination nor planning entity to say who pays for the new wires and infrastrure among generators (costs in the high billions if not low trillions) distributors and retailers of big E; oh yes, and the energy speculators in the spot Market. Reforms of FERC? No mention of who runs our power grid in our DMC area: its PJM which runs three speculative energy markets. Yup, bidding and the higher price gets to set the price for the other bidders. Oh well...they only had an hour.
A little bit of inconsistency on $$$ in politcs via Rep.Trone, asserting his influence over colleagues, Dems via his $20 millions spending on their behalf, but that doesn′t make him a "career politician " he′s a public servant purchasing Iguess all“conscience votes on true blue issues”....was there the inference that his $ to Larry Hogan was just an example of his ability to work "across the isle?"
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@williamneil8862
1 second ago
Once again, $$$ in politics. Alsobrooks charges Trone gave to Larry Hogan. How much and under what circumstances...was it a snub to Ben Jealous, or again, via the mechanism I'm not going to mention again, a broad conduit that has its own distribution patterns, which may or may not be independent of even $100,000 donors wishes. Boy, no cross examination pit bulls in this debate.
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@williamneil8862
2 minutes ago (edited)
Once again, on the fraught issue of money in politics, Ms. Alsobrooks tosses out the "indictment" of Rep. Trone supporting Republican Radical Right candidates on issues like abortion...Once again I ask...is this the $100,000 which the Congressman gives annually to AIPAC which then gets redistriputed via their priorities, which this year, by a special PAC sub group is going after left leaning Dems who don't toe the AIPAC line on Israel? The Congressman once again declines to give acknowledgement or rebuttal. Neither get passing grades on that issue.
To be fair, Rep. Trone is alleging that the County Exec from PG County takes money from Cigna, Pfizer and Exxon if I heard correctly...all of whom will have some large say on crucial issues of health care and national environmental issues, won't they?
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@williamneil8862
0 seconds ago
Rep. Trone on those Abraham Caucus meetings pointing towards the Abraham accords: B to B, connecting Arab citizens (the street?) with Israeli citizens, all fine and well; however, this initiative, esp. in the Arab capitals participating, "just" forgot one very important thing: the fate of the Palestinian people not only in Gaza but in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers are pushing out Arab families. And that's the polite term for what is happening. While everyone deplores what happened on Oct. 7 and terrorism and such pogrom-like actions are never acceptable in the modern world...it also was a signal that those who represent Gaza are not going to be pushed off the face of the earth, go silently. We all want Palestinians who will negotiate in good faith and not call for the obliteration of Israel, but so far, none has emerged and when one did, you mentioned Mr. Afrafat, what happened to him: isolated in a Bunker at the point of Israeli guns. And outflanked by Hamas, which is the history of the dynamics in colonial situations between moderates and radicals. The radicals seem to have the upper hand. Rather than continue this chirpy cliche ridden analysis by the two candidates, let me recommend reading about the tribulations in the Algernian war with France, 1954-1962- with terrorism on all sides, all parties...and a very unhappy independence by Algeria.
(Editors Note: Again, finished reading Martin Evans “Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, 1954-1962” which came out in 2012. No happy endings and the French eventually had to deal with the FLN, who used terror and assassinations inside and outside their movement to come to power. That’s a historical fact readers, not an endorsement of tactics, I better declare that if I don’t want the college president treatment. By the way, this Editor’s note is for my Substack print, it was not an online comment.)
Will you "Destroy" the rest of Hamas if it means, by proportion, 90,000 dead Gazians and 270,000 injured, the equation I gave to Senator Schumer's office the night before his speech. And what did either of you think of the speech? And by the way, pretty lame questions so far.
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@williamneil8862
0 seconds ago
On the Gaza-Hamas-Palistinian-Israeli conflict, I'm afraid that both candidates sound like "innocents abroad." Neither seems to see a conflict in ideas between mutual wanting "to destroy Hamas" and the 33,000 dead - a majority women and children and 70,000 wounded in Gaza, yes some Hamas in those totals, but the means of Israeli "wiping out Hamas" meant, right from week one and the outrageous analogies put forth by Netanyahu and some members of his cabinet - to Old Testament "smiting" of entire peoples, the mass civilian bombings by the Allies of WWII...completely unacceptable to the rest of the civilized world as the demonstrations by so many Congressional staffers, US foreign policy staff, and millions in the streets. If this is the price of wiping out Hamas, it is the policy that has to change...it's no accident those casualties, nor the wiping out of hospitals, journalists by the scores, schools mosques and libraries...read this list of destruction again: it's no fog of war...it is a deliberately obscured policy. Disappointed in the mechanical answers with so little thought.
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@williamneil8862
59 seconds ago (edited)
Very interesting comment by Ms. Alsobrooks at around 21:52: the hundreds of thousands of dollars Cong. Trone has given to Radical republicans she says. Huh? How so, via what mechanism...she says also personally, implying two types of giving. Personal and "through his company." Please name the how of the giving...getting to very conservative Texas R's. Does she mean the $100,000 that he has given to AIPAC...that goes to both sides of the aisle I believe. If that's what she is referring to, say so...AIPAC. Unless she is afraid, as so many are to confirm the unparalleled influence AIPAC has over both our parties.
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Best to all my readers
William R. Neil
Frostburg, MD, Allegany County
Bill, maybe the shorter way if not better to answer Hedges and Leopold is by just citing Brinkley's "The End of Reform" - the eulogy for a whole range of federal interventions on behalf of labor, full employment, regional suffering and the whole slew of troubles from the collapse of capitalism, let me be blunt, between 1929-1932. Brinkley died in 2019. The New Deal died with Bill Clinton's 1996 pronouncement on "Big Government."
The West democracies have had a long and varied list of interventions to get at what Heges and Leopold are talking about. The more ambitious interventions all got fierce resistance even after the collapse of capitalism and we've had nothing like that since then, not 2008-2009 nor 2020 with Covid coming close in the sense that the Federal Reserve stepped in to save the financial system and the top 10%... There are ideological tides Bill, despite what Lenin demanded, and they limit what can be done if the advocates have the burden of winning a majority of voters for policy changes. Sanders movement never gained the full voice needed in mass culture to create the tide he was hoping for. And key members of the Democratic constituency in SC under James Clyburn - the older church going black ladies who are very conservative vis a vis Sanders talking points - helped do him in. As did the young protestesters who stormed his campaign platform that one day where i think he was too accomodating. I see no wave of concentrated left ideology built around labor reform and the environment capable of overcoming all the other fracture lines in the society. And the very division of labor which grows every decades under modern capitalism mean more and more people have no idea what others experience at work or in their neighborhoods. If rallying around the environment's destruction couldn't do it, nothing else in the short run can short of another economic collapse and even there as in Germany it may be the Right this time which can take advantage of it.
Right now among dems the most unifying force is the fear of Trump. That doesn't take them much beyond the election.
Bill - did we hear anything along the lines of this analysis by Les Leopold?
Wall Street's War On Workers
https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/08/the-chris-hedges-report-billionaires-are-striking-back-against-workers/