Black Point Man for the Right: Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.

[Q]

The Black Commentator
January 6, 2005
Issue 120

Black Point Man for the Right: Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.

"You have to understand people like George Bush. He's a nice guy. We need to learn from him. Remember what Bill Clinton did: He figured out what Republicans were doing well, and instead of complaining about it, he figured out a way to do it better." – Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN)

The Black body politic has been invaded by corporate money, which seeks through its media arms to select a “new” Black leadership from among a small group of compliant and corrupt Democrats. Memphis Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. is a principal vector of the disease, an eager acolyte of the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and now the point man among Black Democrats in the Republican mission to destroy Social Security.

Ford should also be known as the “Black Man Who Dances With Blue Dogs” – one of only two Black congressional members of the Blue Dog Democratic Coalition (the other Black and Blue Dog is Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop). C-span congressional scholar Ilona Nickles aptly describes the Blue Dogs as “closer in purpose to a former coalition of southern Members of the House known as the ‘Boll Weevils,’ whose heyday was in the early 1980's. These Members defected as a group from the Democratic party to vote with Congressional Republicans on budgetary and tax bills.”

Harold Ford is preparing to defect from the Democratic and Congressional Black caucuses in service to George Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme, which he has embraced in principle. Blue Dog and DLC congresspersons form the core of the Democrats that Ford hopes will join Republicans, like South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, “to create an ownership society in a variety of creative ways, and move away from ‘if you’re for privatization, you’re with the Republicans’ and ‘if you’re against it, you’re with the Democrats,’” in Ford’s words.

“Ownership society” is, of course, the slogan George Bush has deployed in his campaign to transfer trillions of Social Security dollars to Wall Street. White House guru Karl Rove must be giving Harold Ford copies of Bush’s scripts. The 34-year-old congressman has been mimicking Bush on Social Security since at least April of last year, when Ford addressed a forum organized by Centrists.Org, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at the New America Foundation, and the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. The latter is a front set up by the National Association of Manufacturers specifically to undermine Social Security. Centrists.Org is the Blue Dog Coalition’s think tank, the Concord Coalition opposes “entitlements” of all kinds and spreads hysteria about the coming “bankruptcy” of Social Security, while the New America Foundation’s Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is a public policy factory for a mix of DLC Democrats and “moderate” Republicans. All are slaves of corporate funding.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/120/120_cover_harold_ford.html

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What are “Blue Dog” Democrats? Are they any relation to “Yellow Dog” Democrats? Chelmsford, MA - 11/16/00

In the 106th Congress, the Blue Dogs are 30 fiscally conservative House Democrats who tend to vote together as a coalition on budgetary and economic issues. Their stated goal is to bring their own party back to the center of the ideological spectrum, and to forge good working relationships with moderate Republicans to help move that party more toward a centrist agenda.

They have been most influential since their creation in the 104th Congress because of the leverage they exert as a unified voting bloc. The Republican leadership, with 223 Members on its side of the aisle, has only 5 votes to spare to meet the minimum 218 required to pass legislation If more than 5 Republican Members stray from the fold on any given vote, the leadership often turns to the Blue Dogs on the Democratic side of the aisle to gain their bloc vote in exchange for negotiated changes in legislative language.

--- http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly55.htm

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This is how the Bushie Right will push Social Security privatization into law. They will use 'point men' from the DLC, 'Blue Dogs' and other conservative coalitions within the Democratic party to overwhelm any minority party opposition.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Kick

[IrateCitizen]

2. I'm the furthest thing from a fan of Harold Ford, Jr....

... but this article is inaccurate in portraying him as a proponent of Bush's SS privatization scam. Ford, grudgingly to his credit, came out publicly AGAINST the WH proposed plan to drastically change the SS system.

[cestpaspossible]

3. The article is not accurate

Ford has come out against Bush's "plan".