This opinion piece from the Financial Times sums up my thoughts almost perfectly. It’s written by Edward Luce, the FT’s Washington editor, about whom I know almost nothing, except that I agree with his analysis that Obama’s failed attempt at “bipartisanship” may have cost America deeply. At the heart of it:

Mr Obama’s bipartisan instincts arguably contributed to the parlous state of healthcare reform today. The most serious blow to the bill came last summer when Mr Obama allowed a small group of centrist Democratic and Republican senators to negotiate on a compromise.

The exercise robbed Mr Obama of three valuable months and ceded the initiative to people who had no prior record of fighting for healthcare reform. It also created the space for the demagogic “townhall” meetings in which the bill was depicted as a Trojan horse for socialism, euthanasia and an all-seeing federal bureaucracy. The net result? No Republican votes.

Read the rest on the Financial Times site.

A group of reactionary ex-Guiliani staffers had filed a campaign finance suit, not because they had a rightful claim, but to undercut the WFP’s power. In truth, the suit was as much a compliment as anything. It recognized that the party has gained tremendous power in Albany in the past few years. This has NYC’s corporate and real estate interests understandably worried. And when the powerful are threatened, they take steps to defend their power — in this case, attacking the populist WFP.

Tuesday’s decision puts this threat to an end. It surely won’t be the last attack the WFP endures, though. Hopefully in the future, those attacks will be called out as phony political theater they surely will be.

Check out the segment on YouTube:

Tides is now accepting nominations for the $10,000 Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest, an award that honors open source software developers who add significant value to the nonprofit sector and ongoing efforts for positive social change.

Nominations for the prize, the largest annual award in public interest computing, will be accepted through February 1, 2010, and the winner – the fourth to be selected – will be announced at NTEN’s 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference in April.

Complete application information for the Pizzigati Prize is online at www.pizzigatiprize.org.

Folks following my life know that I’ve visited Haiti a few times to support an organization called the Haitian People’s Support Project. They operate an orphanage, worker collectives, educational institutions and do direct relief work for earthquake and hurricane victims. “They” is essentially one brilliant, fearless man — Pierre LeRoy — who splits his time between Haiti, the Dominican Republic and my hometown of Woodstock, NY.

I haven’t heard from Pierre this morning yet, but I’m sure he is already flooded with calls for help. Hundreds of Haitians depend on him, for life and death aid. If your heart is torn by this massive humanitarian disaster and you want to help, please donate to HPSP, at www.haitiansupportproject.org. It’s not a fancy, slick operation like the Red Cross or UNICEF. But unlike those bloated bureaucracies, every penny to HPSP goes directly to Haitians in need. It will save lives.

And pray to whatever God will listen for the people of Port-au-Prince.

For months, I’ve been struggling with TateHausman.com. Someone (or more likely, some bot) hacked into my code and planted something ugly there. I couldn’t find it. And it started spewing out all sorts of nonsense — I think it was trying to sell Viagra to eastern Europeans. Or maybe Turks. I don’t know. As a result, Google dropped TateHausman.com from its rankings.

This was all pretty annoying, but not annoying enough that I did anything about it. Until my friend Roy came over. Roy is a computer systems professional. Unlike yours truly, he actually knows his way around code, instead of just pretend- pseudo- kinda-hacking like me.

Within 20 minutes, Roy had found the problem, (in the htaccess file, btw), isolated it, and fixed it. Within 2 days, Google had re-indexed the site. And now, finally, TateHausman.com is once again the top hit when you search for my name.

Thanks, Roy! For your genius detective work, I hereby reward you with a link to your clever but incomprehensible blog, forexroy.blogspot.com, about the ups and downs of foreign exchange currency trading. You helped me with the Google; here’s backatcha!

It’s a clever name, and changing it is long overdue. The organization’s strategy had outgrown its brand. ONE/Northwest was an acronym, “Online Networking for the Environment.” Very techy; too techy. As their Executive Director Gideon Rosenblatt explained to me over beers once, “We started as the guys who crawl under desks. We graduated to websites. Then we graduated again to organizing strategy.” I’ve heard them describe that final piece as “engagement consulting” — a philosophy of deploying technology in ways that maps to best organizing practices, and even pushes those practices further.

Anyway, I could go on about how great they are, and smart, and productive, but you can visit their new site and see it all for yourselves.

Oh, and the pretty design was provided by Free Range, my former employer. Good work all around!

http://www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

Here’s the straight explanation about it, including Beck’s attempt to silence the site in an international governing body (the type he’s railed against in the past). Great stuff.

In 2008, a couple pro-Obama organizers founded TravelforChange.org, a simple website that connected Obama volunteers with airline miles donors. The idea was to get as many volunteers to swing states as possible. The PAC that I ran, Vote Today Ohio, got three or four volunteers to Ohio on Travel for Change miles.

Most of these small operations fizzled out after Obama won. Hell, even some of the biggest operations fizzled! But Travel for Change has been reborn, with a crisp new focus — defeating Maine’s anti-marriage Prop 1. Travel for Change sent out an email yesterday inviting volunteers and miles donors to get back in the game; I’ve posted the email here.

For folks who participate in the cyclical world of political organizing, the “off season” can be a boring, low-energy time. Not that important elections aren’t happening in the off season; indeed, my friend Mark Winston Griffith is barnstorming Brooklyn to win a hotly contested City Council race here in New York. But for those who only get excited by national issues, there’s very little outlet for their energy.

If it sticks around, Travel for Change may help to change that, by allowing nationally focused activists to plug into state-wide or local issue campaigns. I certainly hope it succeeds. Kudos to Alisa Whitfield, Jay Cash and all the Travel for Change donors and volunteers for keeping the momentum going!