Don't Look Now But that Brazen Political Opportunist and Pseudo Progressive Hustler Cory Booker is Now Running For the U.S. Senate

 http://www.salon.com/2013/08/13/dont_vote_for_cory_booker/

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2013

Don’t vote for Cory Booker today

He will be an awful senator

 
BY ALEX PAREENE

SALON

Cory Booker (Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)

Today New Jersey Democrats will decide who will be their nominee for the United States Senate. The winner of today’s primary election will be the heavy favorite in the general election. If any New Jersey voters are reading, and they have not yet voted, consider this a desperate plea: Don’t vote for Cory Booker. He’s going to be a very annoying senator.

It’s fine if you like Booker. He’s personable, charming, really good at Twitter, and he has done lots of stunts designed to make people aware of poverty, or at least to make people aware of Cory Booker’s awareness of poverty. He is a Good Liberal on many issues.

But he’s also an avatar of the wealthy elite, a camera hog, and a political cipher who has never once proposed anything to address the structural causes of the problems he claims to care so deeply about. He represents the interests of both Wall Street and Silicon Valley, two very prosperous industries full of incredibly arrogant rich men who believe that the world’s problems would be solved if arrogant rich men exactly like themselves were given free rein to make as much money as possible by any means necessary. They see, in Booker, a peer — a smart man with the right qualifications and the correct worldview. Booker and his crowd believe that the charity of the benevolent elite — people who know they are rich because of their innate skill, their brilliance, their work ethic, everything besides fundamentally inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities for economic advancement — is the only acceptable and effective means of addressing the needs of the lower orders.

Cory Booker became a millionaire because this is how the economy works for people of his class: Rich people give other rich people money to do nothing, simply because they “deserve” it. He is the worst sort of Democrat, and Democrats should be doing everything in their power to wrest control of the party away from people like him.

But that is why Cory Booker is bad as a phenomenon. What about his fitness for the specific job he is running for? It is, admittedly, probably not the job he was hoping for. Governors get to have more fun. Time’s Jay Newton-Small says Booker would miss retail politics and direct constituent interaction once he’s a senator:

Senators don’t fix potholes. Never mind flaming buildings–they rarely even kiss babies. Senators spend their days in meetings: with lobbyists, with interest groups, with other senators, with the administration, with fundraisers and with their leadership. They’re inside operators.

OK, but how do we actually think Booker spends most of his time? Fixing potholes personally, or attending meetings with rich, influential and important people? (Like Jeff Zucker’s teenage son?)

In many ways, Booker is perfectly suited for the United States Senate. He won’t be expected to accomplish anything. He will have so many more opportunities to spend time with even more rich people with elite backgrounds and worldviews similar to his. He will have much more access to television studios and Sunday shows and cable news cameras.

He will, in short, be the worst kind of senator. The kind that has no power and no real desire to exercise power on behalf of the people the senator ostensibly represents, but the kind that always expresses opinions on television about whatever national issues people on television care about that day. He will be on “Morning Joe” and “Meet the Press” constantly. He has even already said that he might consider Rand Paul and Ted Cruz as models for how a freshman senator might make “big marks.” Not “big marks” in the sense of any sort of lasting legislative legacy, because Ted Cruz does not care about legislation or policy, but “big marks” in terms of media attention and stunts designed to appeal to a core of supporters who prefer their senators brash and loud. Another one of those senators will not help anything.
It’s not like there aren’t any other options. Rush Holt would be a fine senator. He’s an actual physicist, which is neat. He cares very strongly about global warming, which is probably the single most pressing issue of our era. He will probably not use the Senate seat as a stepping stone to the White House, which means he may actually stick around long enough to gain seniority and someday actually achieve things.

So don’t vote for Cory Booker.


Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene



 http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/08/liberals-un-endorse-cory-booker-just-he-becomes-shoo-senate/68278/

Liberals Un-Endorse Cory Booker Just as He Becomes a Shoo-in for Senate
by ELSPETH REEVE
AUGUST 13, 2013
Atlantic Wire

Newark mayor Cory Booker will almost certainly win Tuesday's primary to be the Democratic nominee for Senate in New Jersey (Update: he won), which will make him the overwhelming favorite in October's general election. But despite (or maybe because of) his near-certain imminent transit from city hall to Capitol Hill, a wave of liberals have hit Booker with their un-endorsements. The point doesn't seem to be to stop his election to the Senate — that looks impossible — but to make the case for why he shouldn't climb any higher in Democratic politics, a clear reminder that Democrats do infighting, too.

Booker is famous for sort of opposite things: an avid social media maven, he's known for helping the little guys, like the time he saved someone from a burning building; as a politician, he's supported some very big guys, like the time during the 2012 presidential campaign he defended the financial sector from Democratic attacks. And that is the core of the problem Salon's Alex Pareene (and others) have with him. Pareene writes on Tuesday that Booker is "an avatar of the wealthy elite, a camera-hog, and a political cipher who has never once proposed anything to address to the structural causes of the problems he claims to care so deeply about." He seems like a smug, self-dealing rich dude. Pareene writes:

"Booker and his crowd believe that the charity of the benevolent elite — people who know they are rich because of their innate skill, their brilliance, their work ethic, everything besides fundamentally inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities for economic advancement — is the only acceptable and effective means of addressing the needs of the lower orders."

Will this stop Booker from winning the primary? Very unlikely! Even Pareene does not think so. But his praise for another candidate gives some indication of the long-term importance of the case against Booker. Democratic rival Rush Holt, Pareene says, "will probably not use the Senate seat as a stepping stone to the White House." Booker recently announced he won't run for president — in 2016, but he didn't rule out 2020 and beyond, and that's exactly what Pareene seems worried about: "He is the worst sort of Democrat, and Democrats should be doing everything in their power to wrest control of the party away from people like him."

For the Booker un-endorsers, what's at stake in the New Jersey special election is the idea of who the Democratic standard-bearer will be after President Obama. And, while Booker talks a good game about fighting for poor people, they say, he works to protect the interests of his peers: wealthy people with allegiances to elite institutions. It's worth noting that Booker, the son of IBM executives who went to Stanford, Oxford, and Yale, is probably not all that rich himself. He's recently found himself in trouble over a web video curation company, Waywire, that he convinced people like Oprah and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt to invest in. Booker's shares in the company, The New York Times reported, are worth $1 million to $5 million, according to his financial disclosures. But that could be very be wishful thinking: at its tiny larval startup stage, Waywire, as we discussed previously, might be worth as much as $10 million or as little as $0. The Internet is a hard game!

Still, Booker has defended the kind of elites who invest in Waywire and Booker's career. Pareen's colleague at Salon, David Sirota, is appalled that Booker's cultivation of that crowd is seen as political savvy, not corruption. Sirota writes:

"... Booker did not just raise massive amounts of campaign money from the thieves on Wall Street and then attack President Obama on behalf of those thieves. He did not just orchestrate a secret $100 million deal with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the Washington Post notes was designed to help those donors circumvent the public and "remake (Newark) public schools in the way they want to." On top of all that, he also leveraged his municipal office to personally pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate speaking fees... Booker convinced his tech-industry backers to bequeath him an entire company – and then tried to prevent the multi-million-dollar gift from showing up in campaign disclosure reports."

The guys at Salon are not alone: "I don't trust the man," Crooks and Liars' Susie Madrak wrote on Monday. Voting for him risks selecting "a Manchurian candidate who, while running as a nominal Democrat, is and has been deeply entrenched with the vulture capitalists and their disaster capitalism education 'reform...'" Esquire's Charles Pierce is also creeped out by Booker's connections, writing on Tuesday, "Why I Wouldn't Vote for Cory Booker." He notes that Booker said on Meet the Press in 2012 that attacking Mitt Romney for Bain Capital is "nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright." It's a sign that Booker can't see the difference between the financial crisis and a preacher who says unpleasant things, Pierce writes:

"I've forgotten, how many houses did Jeremiah Wright steal out from under their owners? How many toxic mortgages did he foist off on unsuspecting customers while getting rich betting against the same investments? How many pensions did he loot? How close did Jeremiah Wright come to wrecking the entire world economy?
 

The anti-Booker sentiment has been brewing among liberals for some time. But it was less intense when Booker was less close to becoming one of 100 senators, instead of a Twitter celebrity and mayor of a city of 277,000. In June, DailyKos diarist RVKU wrote, "I Can't Vote for Cory Booker in a Primary." The blogger wasn't quite so tough on Booker, calling him intelligent and charismatic, with a "bright future in national politics" and "redeemable qualities." (RVKU lamented the same set of issues as the other un-endorsers.) Back in February, Sen. Frank Lautenberg — who died in June, and whose seat Booker is seeking to replace — compared Booker to a child who needs a spanking.

Gawker's John Cook wrote in December 2012, "Let the Booker Backlash begin." The prematurity of the declaration is evident by the update at the bottom of the post: "This post initially featured an exclamation point, rather than a period, at the end of its first sentence. Gawker regrets the error."

Correction: This post originally said the general election for Senate was in November. In fact, Gov. Chris Christie scheduled a special election for October.

(Photos by Associated Press.)


http://politix.topix.com/news/7477-cory-booker-hammered-by-liberals-after-winning-nj-primary

DEMS IN DISARRAY

Cory Booker Hammered by Liberals After Winning NJ Primary

Left-leaning pundits have slammed him as a false progressive

by Mary Noble
Senior Editor

Politix



Cory Booker speaks after winning the NJ Democratic primary • AP
Cory Booker, famed for rescuing women from a burning buildings and being Newark mayor as his day job, has won the Democratic nomination for NJ senate with a superman-like 40 point lead over the runner-up.

Just as Booker was poised to win the nomination, some liberal pundits turned on him. Booker is "an avatar of the wealthy elite," writes Salon's Alex Pareene. He's also "a camera hog, and a political cipher who has never once proposed anything to address the structural causes of the problems he claims to care so deeply about. He represents the interests of both Wall Street and Silicon Valley, two very prosperous industries full of incredibly arrogant rich men."

The British Guardian, another bastion of liberalism, calls Booker "the hedge fund guys' favorite politician" and a "neoliberal egomaniac" who "turns self-promotion into an art form. His corporate-friendly policies are not so pretty."

Coming to Booker's defense, Slate's Matt Yglesias praises his ideas for addressing poverty, especially a 15-page paper on child poverty penned by Booker. Yglesias also points out that Booker has a very similar voting record to the ultra-liberals preferred NJ senate candidate, Rush Holt.

In a much lower-turnout primary, NJ Republicans nominated Steve Lonegan, former mayor of Bogota, NJ.

Lonegan and Booker will face off against each other in November.



Begin forwarded message:

From: Kofi Natambu
Date: August 14, 2013
To:  Amiri Baraka

Subject: Fwd: Breaking News: Cory Booker Wins N.J. Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate Seat, The A.P. Projects
Hey Amiri,

This is really depressing news. How did this openly brazen neoliberal opportunist CLOWN and PHONY ever get to this point in American politics? It's obviously a rhetorical question....

Kofi

From: NYTimes.com News Alert
Date: August 13, 2013
Subject: Breaking News: Cory Booker Wins N.J. Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate Seat, The A.P. Projects

BREAKING NEWS Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Cory Booker Wins N.J. Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate Seat, The A.P. Projects

Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, captured the Democractic nomination for New Jersey’s vacant United States Senate seat, the Associated Press projected based on early returns.

Local election officials in the state’s 21 counties are still tallying the results of Tuesday’s primary election. The A.P. also projected that Steven M. Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, N.J., won the Republican primary.

The death of Frank R. Lautenberg, the long-time Democratic senator, in June led to an accelerated campaign, with the primary coming when many families are on summer vacation and a special election to be held just weeks later. As challengers scrambled to garner attention, much of the focus was on the Democratic side of the ballot and on Mr. Booker, who has held a commanding lead in pre-election polls and fund-raising.

READ MORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/nyregion/new-jersey-senateprimary.html?emc=edit_na_20130813

Henry Louis Gates Caves In and Goes To the White House to 'Have Beer' with Cop

Librado Romero/The New York Times
Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Manhattan apartment.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/henry-louis-gates-deja-vu-all-over-again/

Ray,

Stanley Fish does right by Skip and expresses genuine respect, support, and compassion for him and his work in a virulently racist society. It's too bad that Gates doesn't have the guts and integrity to do the same on his own behalf. He would rather go to the White House and hobnob with the President and the racist cop who humiliated him while at the same time pretending that he's actually concerned with seriously addressing the issues of racial profiling and police abuse against people of color. How can one possibly respect and support a man who doesn't have the independent will or ethical clarity to choose Justice over Celebrity?

Kofi





JULY 24, 2009
Henry Louis Gates: Déjà Vu All Over Again
Stanley Fish
Opinion Page
New York Times


I’m Skip Gates’s friend, too. That’s probably the only thing I share with President Obama, so when he ended his press conference last Wednesday by answering a question about Gates’s arrest after he was seen trying to get into his own house, my ears perked up.

As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.

The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?

At the university (which in a past not distant at all did not admit African-Americans ), Gates’s reception was in some ways no different. Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called “genius award.”) There were wild speculations (again in print) about his salary, which in fact was quite respectable but not inordinate; when a list of the highest-paid members of the Duke faculty was published, he was nowhere on it.

The Associated Press Henry Louis Gates, Jr., during a book signing in 2006.
The unkindest cut of all was delivered by some members of the black faculty who had made their peace with Duke traditions and did not want an over-visible newcomer and upstart to trouble waters that had long been still. (The great historian John Hope Franklin was an exception.) When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

Now, in 2009, it’s a version of the same story. Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black.

He isn’t the only one thought to be guilty of that crime. TV commentators, laboring to explain the unusual candor and vigor of Obama’s initial comments on the Gates incident, speculated that he had probably been the victim of racial profiling himself. Speculation was unnecessary, for they didn’t have to look any further than the story they were reporting in another segment, the story of the “birthers” — the “wing-nuts,” in Chris Matthews’s phrase — who insist that Obama was born in Kenya and cite as “proof” his failure to come up with an authenticated birth certificate. For several nights running, Matthews displayed a copy of the birth certificate and asked, What do you guys want? How can you keep saying these things in the face of all evidence?

He missed the point. No evidence would be sufficient, just as no evidence would have convinced some of my Duke colleagues that Gates was anything but a charlatan and a fraud. It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House. Just as some in Durham and Cambridge couldn’t believe that Gates belonged in the neighborhood, so does a vocal minority find it hard to believe that an African-American could possibly be the real president of the United States.Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, "Save the World On Your Own Time," has just been published.

http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/why-henry-louis-gates-should-sue/

All,

Of course Gates should sue! And if he had any guts or personal integrity he would. The evidence is overwhelming that the cop Crowley clearly lied in his police report. The 911 tape and the public testimony of the woman who called the police indicates conclusively that she didn't identify the race of the men she said were at the door of Gates's home and she also mentioned in her call (which has been publically released) that she couldn't tell if the people on Gates's porch were strangers or actually lived at the house and that she saw two suitcases on the porch which she (correctly) surmised might be evidence that at least one of the two men she saw lived there.

It's also important to note that Gates has made a number of forceful comments in high profile TV and print media interviews since the incident that he firmly believed he was not only a victim of racial profiling but was harassed by the police--even going so far as to call Crowley a "rouge cop". In addition it's very clear that the President was absolutely correct initially in criticizing the idiotic and racist arrest as "stupid". Obama subsequently defended his remarks the following day only to go back on those same remarks and dishonestly claim that he didn't mean to impugn the police just one day after he had defended his initial comments.

Thus all the infantile and frankly insulting/ condescending spin by the white media as well as Obama and Gates both that this episode affords us all a "teachable moment" fails to reveal the obvious fact that if they only stood their ground and refuse to cave in the public pressure of the many American racists who hate and will continue to despise them no matter what they say and do that they could have used this episode to "teach us" that racial profiling and racist police abuse of African American citizens would not be tolerated under any circumstances. As it stands however this ridiculous "beer sip" meeting of Gates, Obama, and Crowley at the White House only serves to obscure, distort, and cover up the true meaning of what this heinous incident (and the ongoing thousands of such cases taking place every single day in black communities throughout this country) actually reveals about racism and the notorious criminal justice system in the U.S.

Kofi



July 27, 2009

Should Henry Louis Gates Sip or Sue?
By RANDY COHEN
New York Times



The Issue

Last week in Cambridge, Mass., Sgt. James Crowley arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard, for disorderly conduct while responding to a reported break-in at Gates’s home. The charges were subsequently dropped, and the city of Cambridge expressed regret, but Gates holds out the possibility of suing Crowley, the city or its Police Department. President Obama has urged calm and conciliation, and invited Gates and Crowley to have a beer and a chat at the White House. Should Gates sip or sue?



The Argument

Gates should enjoy a cool one and then file suit, assuming he has legal grounds to do so. We Americans are often mocked for being overly litigious, but we are not nearly litigious enough. In the right circumstances, filing suit can be a way to pursue social justice, and that makes it thoroughly ethical.

I am not encouraging frivolous lawsuits or those inspired by TV pitchmen who use the words “slip and fall” as if invoking El Dorado. Rather, I refer to suits filed to oppose systemic injustice, for the benefit of the larger community, often at some personal risk and expense. This is not opportunism; it’s altruism, not self-interest but civic virtue. A lawsuit by Gates could lead to a formal examination of the troubled history of police interactions with African-Americans and hence would meet this standard.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, an organization that has sued the New York Police Department many times on behalf of individuals and groups, told me that lawsuits can be “an important tool for reform when coupled with advocacy and public education efforts and when the circumstances are conducive to change.”

Such laudable results can flow not only from great historic decisions — Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade — but from local actions, like the N.Y.C.L.U.’s suits over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies and its handling of demonstrators during the 2004 Republican convention. Simply participating in such a suit can be regarded as the crowning achievement of a lifetime. When the pediatrician Howard Engle died last week, the headline of his obituary in The New York Times was “H. A. Engle, Tobacco Plaintiff, Dies at 89.”

Indeed, our popular culture lionizes those who sue righteously. Paul Newman wins a medical malpractice case in “The Verdict.” Julia Roberts takes on a polluting power company in “Erin Brockovich.” John Travolta sues a company dumping toxic waste in “A Civil Action.” (And these last two movies were based on actual people and cases.)

Even a losing lawsuit can compel a powerful institution — government agency or corporation — to disclose its policies and practices during legal proceedings. A lawsuit can provide a public forum to examine a significant issue, guided by a dispassionate judge. What could be more virtuous?

There are arguments against going to law. For Gates in particular, using the courts is hardly the only way to be heard. He has been widely interviewed about the arrest; even his daughter has spoken about it on television. (Crowley first told his side of the story on a local sports talk-radio show.) So prominent is Gates that a reporter at a White House press conference asked the president about the arrest. Gates could write a book about it, lecture about it at Harvard or explore it in a television series. (He was returning from shooting one in China the day of the incident.)

Nor is he ethically obligated to sue. Doing so is supererogatory, above and beyond the call of duty. Only he can decide if he has the stomach for a struggle and the resources — financial, psychological — to proceed.

And if he does, there is no guarantee that he would initiate real social change. David Feige, the former trial chief of the Bronx Defenders, public defenders in, well, yes, the Bronx, told me: “There is a fairly equivocal record in forcing reforms through individual lawsuits. Class-action suits have been more effective — those brought to improve prison conditions, for example. So what we really need is more broad, social-justice class-action suits.”

These arguments notwithstanding, Gates should sue. Social change proceeds through the combination of many forces — legislation, litigation and public discourse among them. For Gates to contribute to this effort would be laudable. (And given the high — and disheartening — number of African-American men who, since Gates arrest, have described their own similar encounters with the police, the class-action suit Feige calls for might be sadly possible.)

The president has softened his initial response to this affair, withdrawing his remark at the press conference that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly.” He now suggests that both Gates and Crowley “overreacted.” Quite likely. But if Gates overreacted, he did so only as an individual, an outburst that might be obnoxious but is not criminal. There is no law against Contempt of Cop. If Crowley overreacted, he erred as a professional, perhaps abusing his office in a manner that is particularly fraught, given the history of African-Americans and the police. That’s what should be examined in court.

Both Crowley and Gates have accepted Obama’s invitation. Courteous conversation is a fine thing; beer is a fine thing. But not even White House brew can resolve this conflict the way a trial can. Gates and Crowley should drink heartily, speak civilly and eventually reconvene in a courtroom.