Culture

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Hurricane Sandy and poverty

OK.  There is no more marathon.  I always thought that was a little crazy what with Staten Island and parts of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn still with no power.  I’m glad someone got some sense!  But I was struck by two headlines in the New York Times this morning:

In New York’s Public Housing, Fear Creeps in With the Dark

For Some After the Storm, No Work Means No Pay

It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark.

…

Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became menacing, a thing to be feared.

A lack of friends or family in areas with power, or cars or cab fare to get to them, meant there were few ways to escape. Dwindling dollars heightened the pain of throwing out food rotting inside powerless refrigerators, and sharpened the question of where the next meal would come from. Some had not left their apartments since the storm swept in.

I heard a woman being interviewed who lived in public housing, not sure where, who was making her 8th trip of the day up the unlighted stairwell (there are no windows) with water.  She was talking about the generators set up in Central Park for the marathon and wondering why they couldn’t be moved to give her building power.  Remembering this is what made the New York Times headline catch my eye so quickly this morning.

Thousands of public housing residents in New York City defied evacuation orders because they underestimated the ferocity of Hurricane Sandy; now they make up a city within a city, marked by acute need. Any bathtubs filled with water on Monday are empty. Unflushed toilets stink. Elderly people with creaky joints are marooned on upper floors. Batteries are running out.

An estimated 400,000 New Yorkers live in public housing and many of their institutional brown brick buildings hug the waterfront.

On Thursday, 227 of the 2,600 buildings operated by the New York City Housing Authority remained without power, according to an agency spokeswoman, including many in low-lying neighborhoods like Coney Island in Brooklyn, Rockaway Beach in Queens, and Alphabet City in Manhattan, the areas most seriously affected by the storm.

I would imagine that many were afraid to leave for fear their apartments would be looted if they did so.  So there is fear, but there is also community.

On the Lower East Side, at the Baruch Houses, neighbors helped an older woman down flights of stairs because she was feeling ill. An ambulance emergency worker gave the woman oxygen and the neighbors helped her back up to her apartment.

“There’s a sense of community,” said Darryl MacCullum, 24, who lives at the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village, where the tidal surge had, for a time, ringed the buildings like moats. “Neighbors I usually don’t talk to, I talk to now.”

The residents cooked for each other, eager to not waste food that was thawing fast. At the Red Hook Houses on Wednesday night, there was an impromptu outdoor barbecue for 25 people, with hamburgers, frankfurters and ribs sizzling on grills.

And there are muggings in the stairwells as well as fear that they are forgotten.

Darkness enveloped the Jacob Riis Houses.
Then there are the hourly workers who don’t get paid if they can’t get to work or if their place of business is closed.
While salaried employees worked if they could, often from home after Hurricane Sandy, many of the poorest New Yorkers faced the prospect of losing days, even a crucial week, of pay on top of the economic ground they have lost since the recession.Low-wage workers, more likely to be paid hourly and work at the whim of their employers, have fared worse in the recovery than those at the top of the income scale — in New York City the bottom 20 percent lost$463 in annual income from 2010 to 2011, in contrast to a gain of almost $2,000 for the top quintile. And there are an increasing number of part-time and hourly workers, the type that safety net programs like unemployment are not designed to serve. Since 2009, when the recovery began, 86 percent of the jobs added nationally have been hourly. Over all, about 60 percent of the nation’s jobs are hourly.Even as the sluggish economy has accentuated this divide, Hurricane Sandy has acted as a further wedge, threatening to take a far greater toll on the have-littles who live from paycheck to paycheck.On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York City and four suburban counties were eligible for disaster unemployment relief,which covers a broader spectrum of workers than regular unemployment benefits, including the self-employed like taxi drivers and street vendors as well as those who were unable to get to work.

New Jersey has also declared people in 10 counties eligible for disaster unemployment assistance. In Connecticut, residents of four counties and the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Reservation are eligible.

A New York Department of Labor spokesman emphasized that workers who lost wages should call to apply because the program is flexible and many eligibility issues would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Disaster unemployment will help some, but not everyone.

Federal labor laws include more protections for salaried workers than hourly workers when a disaster hits. Employers must continue to pay salaries if the worksite is closed for less than a week, even though they are allowed to require employees to use vacation or paid leave for the duration of the closure. Hourly workers, on the other hand, do not have to be paid if the worksite closes. If the workplace is open but salaried workers cannot get there, their pay may be reduced.

So Sandy is not just about not being able to charge your cell phone or laptop.  For many it will be a step backward on the climb out of poverty.

Photograph of Jacob Riis Houses Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times.  Reporting for the NYT by By and  and CARA BUCKLEY and MICHAEL WILSON
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Who is gonna win? Updated

Updated November 3.  There is another informal poll that is going for President Obama – the 7/Eleven poll.  As of this morning the President is ahead 50 to 41.  According to their press release, they have correctly predicted the last three elections.

 

Woke up this morning to see Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight updated just after midnight to give President Obama 299 electoral votes with a 77.4% chance of winning.  We all know that polls are volatile and that will shift, but we now have two non-poll polls that give the race to the President.

Politico reports

A group of people who have accurately predicted the winner of the popular  vote in the last four presidential elections thinks President Barack Obama is headed for a second  term: the American people.

Fifty-four percent of Americans think Obama will win the election, compared  to 32 percent who predict a Romney victory, according to Gallup polling released Wednesday but conducted  before Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast. Eleven percent have no  opinion.

This is down two points from a similar poll taken in May.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday found a similar result:  53 percent of registered voters believed Obama would win, compared to 29 percent  for Romney.

In the 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 election, Americans accurately predicted the  popular vote winner. The gap between Obama and Romney is similar to the gap  between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. Fifty-two percent of registered  voters thought then-Vice President Gore would defeat the Texas governor, while  35 percent thought Bush would win.

We all know that Gore did win the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College by one.

Barack Obama is seen at the White House. |AP Photo

There was a similar non-poll which has been running longer with pretty good accuracy.  I am talking about the Nickelodeon kids poll.  On October 22, the Washington Post reported

Nickelodeon’s Linda Ellerbee said Monday that the president captured 65 percent of the vote to beat Republican Mitt Romney in the network’s “Kids Pick the President” vote. More than 520,000 people cast online ballots through the children’s network’s website over one week earlier this month.

Since it began in 1988, the kids have presaged the adults’ vote all but once, when more youngsters voted for John Kerry over George W. Bush in 2004.Obama answered questions submitted by Nickelodeon viewers for a special earlier this month. Romney didn’t participate.
Does that last tell you anything?  No late night television, no answering questions from kids.  I think Mitt Romney is out of touch and that is going to help cost him both the popular vote – which will be close – and the electoral college.
Photograph from AP
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Race: the elephant in the room

If you look behind the numbers of most polls, President Obama is losing the white male, and to a lesser extent, the white female voter.  Why you may ask yourself are these folks voting against their own self-interest?  There is a fear of change.  Fear of loss of power.  And race is at the core.  If I had any doubts about this, they were ended with the reactions of John McCain and John Sununu about Colin Powell’s endorsement of President Obama yesterday.

John Sununu who is not known for his rationality said in an interview with Piers Morgan

“When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama,” Mr. Sununu said.

Mr. Morgan asked flatly, “What reason would that be?”

Mr. Sununu responded, “Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”

Do you think Sununu has endorsed Mitt Romney because Romney is white?  I don’t think so.

Sununu later released this statement

Colin Powell is a friend and I respect the endorsement decision he made, I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the President’s policies. Piers Morgan’s question was whether Colin Powell should leave the party, and I don’t think he should.

John McCain was not as overt saying

Mr. Powell had “harmed” his legacy by endorsing Mr. Obama a second time. Appearing on Brian Kilmeade’s radio program, Mr.  McCain said “General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime.”

Remarks like these from leaders of the Republican party help to fuel the ugly streak we see in the election.  The billboards in minority communities telling people voter fraud is a crime, the t-shirts with the logo “put the white back in the White House”, and the persistent view that the President is not a citizen and certainly not Christian.  David Sirota wrote a piece titled “5 Signs Racism Still Rules Politics”  which is quite instructive.

1. Joe Biden Is almost never called a socialist or a Marxist. Despite a Senate voting record and presidential policymaking record that align him with moderate Republicans from a mere decade ago, Obama is regularly derided as a socialist, a communist or a Marxist. By contrast, Obama’s own white running mate, Joe Biden, has as liberal — or at times even more liberal — a voting record as Obama, but (save for the occasional Newt Gingrich  outburst) is almost never referred to in such inflammatory terms.

2. Romneycare is Obamacare, yet the latter is criticized. It’s a well-known, undisputed fact that Romneycare was a conservative health insurance model constructed by the right-wing  Heritage Foundation , and that it was Massachusetts’ state-level  model for the federal healthcare bill ultimately championed by President Obama. Nonetheless, under the first African-American president, the very same healthcare model the GOP championed is now being held up by the GOP as a redistributionist boondoggle

3. A white president would never be criticized for these statements about Trayvon Martin. No white president has ever been blamed for the varied and disparate transgressions committed by white folk.

What the President said was

“When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids, and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together.”

4. America would neither ignore nor laugh off a young black male relative of Obama publicly fantasizing about violence against a presidential candidate. As I reported last week, Romney’s son, Tagg Romney, cheerily riffed on his fantasies about committing an act of violence against a sitting president of the United States.

5. If one of Obama’s teenage daughters was unmarried and pregnant, it wouldn’t be considered a “private” matter.When Sarah Palin was put on the Republican ticket in 2008, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy did not initiate a national discussion about the issue of teen pregnancy, unprotected sex or promiscuous fornication outside of wedlock.

Pictures show the difference between the crowds at rallies.  You rarely see any brown or black faces at Romney rallies.  His crowds tend to be older and whiter.

Mitt Romney arrives to campaign at Worthington Industries, a metal processing company, in Worthington, Ohio, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012. | AP Photo

Let me end with some observations from Eugene Robinson.

This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men.
It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.
Robinson concludes

Issues may explain our sharp political divisions, but they can’t be the cause of our demographic polarization. White men need medical care, too. African Americans and Latinos understand the need to get our fiscal house in order. The recession and the slow recovery have taken a toll across the board.

Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.

I can’t help but feel that if President Obama wins a second term we will have turned a corner –  whether the Republicans can accept it or not.  If the country is not to continue on this divided path the Republicans deal the elephant of race.

UPDATE:

Charles Blow has an interesting chart in Saturday’s New York Times.

Both photographs by AP.

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Chris Kluwe and Gay Marriage

If you don’t follow football, aren’t from Minnesota, and didn’t read the New York Times article you probably don’t know who Chris Kluwe is and why his support of gay marriage is such a big deal.  Chris Kluwe is a punter for the Minnesota Viking professional football team.  Professional sports are one of the last bastions of closeted men and women (although maybe less so for women since Martina Navratilova came out all those many years ago).  But I don’t know of any man with an active career who has come out.  And given that about 10% of the population is thought to be gay, about 10% of male professional athletes are likely to be gay.  There is still a stigma.

Let Kluwe explain how he first voiced support for gay marriage.

In late August, the Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. wrote to the Baltimore Ravens’ owner, Steve Bisciotti, urging him to silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo. Ayanbadejo had been supporting the state’s Civil Marriage Protection Act, which will allow gay couples to obtain a civil marriage license beginning Jan. 1 if it passes a Nov. 6 referendum. Burns asked Bisciotti to “inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions.”

“I know of no other N.F.L. player who has done what Mr. Ayambadejo is doing,” Burns wrote, misspelling Ayanbadejo’s surname.

Nine days later, at 11:30 p.m. in the master bedroom of the modest Savage, Minn., home that Kluwe shares with his wife, Isabel, and daughters, Olivia, 4, and Remy, 2, Kluwe came across Burns’s dispatch while surfing the Web.

“So I’m lying in bed, and I keep thinking over and over about this letter, and I’m like, ‘I can’t fall asleep,’ ” he recalled. “I have to write something.”

So he pulled off the covers, turned on his MacBook Pro and spent less than an hour composing a response to Burns that was published on Deadspin.com and lifted Kluwe off the sports pages and into the national conversation about the rights of same-sex couples.

…

“This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom?” he wrote. “Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different than you, or act different than you? How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life?”

The letter is a profanity-laden rant, as well as a multilayered, point-by-point decimation of Burns’s argument, so insidiously thorough that Burns waved the white flag two days later in an interview with The Baltimore Sun in which he said, in effect, “Never mind.”

You should click the link and read the letter.

Kluwe is a man who described himself to the Times by saying “Football is what I do for a living, but it’s not even remotely who I am.”  As the Times article points out he is smart, articulate and extremely well read.

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe practicing music with his band. (Photograph:  Stephen Maturen for The New York Times)

But his letter about the Maryland marriage equality referendum is not his only support for gay marriage.

What added to Kluwe’s angst that night in his bedroom was the proposed amendmentto the Minnesota Constitution known as Recognition of Marriage Solely Between One Man and One Woman, which is on the Nov. 6 ballot.

“There are only 4 percent of Minnesotans undecided on this question,” says Richard Carlbom, the campaign manager of the coalition Minnesotans United for All Families, an umbrella organization for more than 600 groups working to defeat the amendment. “Right now it’s a dead heat.”

Kluwe lent his brash voice against the amendment, appearing in radio advertisements and writing a letter on behalf of Minnesotans for Equality, a fund-raising arm of Minnesotans United for All Families. He recently began selling T-shirts printed with two of the more colorful terms from his letter to Burns. Proceeds will be split between Kluwe’s charity, Kick for a Cure, which benefits children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and Minnesotans for Equality.

So what has been the reaction of the NFL and his teammates?

Handling such politically delicate matters is new territory for the N.F.L., which has recently been assaulted by concussion issues, player bounties and inept replacement referees. When asked to comment about the Ayanbadejo situation during a Politico forumin September, Commissioner Roger Goodell said: “Listen, I think in this day and age, people are going to speak up about what they think is important. They speak as individuals, and I think that’s an important part of our democracy.”

Paul Tagliabue, the previous N.F.L. commissioner, said he planned to donate $100,000 to support same-sex marriage in Maryland.

Despite the league’s macho culture, Kluwe said: “I had quite a few teammates come up to me and say: ‘We appreciate you speaking out in support of Brendon. We may not agree with you on that marriage issue, but at the same time everybody has got the right to speak.’ And then I’ve had a couple teammates come up and say, ‘We agree with you, we think you did the right thing, and that was a great letter you wrote.’ ”

Chris Kluwe is unique.  He not only wants to speak out but he has the ability to do so and for that supporters of marriage equality should be grateful to him –  and to Brendon Ayanbadejo.

NFL player Brendon Ayanbadejo at the 2007 Pro ...

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Monty gets political

The comic strip, Monty, by Jim Meddick is not one of my favorites.  The main character is Monty a loser who has never really grown up.  He and his pal Moondog with assorted robots, a hairless cat and a parrot have various adventures mostly to do with trying to pick up women.  Anyway it runs in the Boston Globe so I generally glance at it to see what the new storyline is.  I guess it is a guy thing because my husband likes it. (And this post is for him.)

One of the recurring characters is Sedgwick Nuttingham IV who is the spoiled rich kid who lives somewhere near Monty.  Sedgwick is always accompanied by his butler, Jarvis.  Sedgewick is often cruel and always has to win.  You always knew he was the spoiled rich kid, but he and the strip were never political.  Until now.  Monty and his pals are clearly part of the 47%.

A series about Sedgewick and his love of Mitt Romney has been running for a few days.  Here is a sample.

Monty

Monty

Monty

Monty

Monty

Another sign we are in a tight race and the election is close.

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Cartoons, Women and Mitt

I’m not sure why any women would vote for Mitt Romney.  His positions are flipping all over the place.  It is not clear he is for equal pay and his position on the right to choose is also changing daily.  Despite the liberal/progressive mocking of  “binders full of women”, I don’t think a lot of women get it.  The bottom line:  if Mitt Romney is elected you can kiss Roe v. Wade good-bye.  Don’t forget that Mitt has said that he believes that life begins a conception.  Will the Republicans in Congress let him support abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and to save the life the women?  I doubt it.  I hope most women continue to get it and that women who are wavering waver back toward President Obama.  I don’t understand it and I’m getting anxious since women are a big key to the election.

So to cheer us up, here is some election humor.

Nick Anderson on the Multiple Mitts.

Nick Anderson's Editorial Cartoons 10/18

Mike Luckovich Binders.

And Matt Wueker

Matt Wuerker

You have to keep laughing.

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Binders Full of Women

The President nailed it tonight!  I’m sure I will write more tomorrow, but I wanted to write about Romney’s “binders of women” comment.

As you may remember when Mitt Romney was first elected Governor of Massachusetts he ran as a moderate Republican.  And he did want to take affirmative action in having some women in his cabinet.  The call did go out to various women’s groups, including some I was involved with,  and we did provide him with resumes of qualified women for cabinet posts.  I guess someone put the resumes in a binder for him.

So Romney said at least one true thing tonight:  He got binders of women when he was governor.

But referring to binders of women is probably a natural figure of speech for Romney even if anyone else would call them resumes. His history shows that he doesn’t much like women who have any power.  After all, he bullied Jane Swift who was acting governor into deciding she wasn’t going to run after all.  (Swift denies the bullying, but she had already picked a running mate and one day, the truth will come out.)  He also tried to bully Candy Crowley tonight.  I think this is all part of his general lack of respect for women along with our needing flexible hours so we can go home and cook dinner!

Photograph:  Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Boomers and the job numbers

What does the retirement of the baby boom generation have to do with the job numbers you might ask.  I never thought of my retirement impacting the unemployment rate but reading Paul Krugman in the New York Times this morning, I realize that in a strange way I am helping the economy.  Yes, I’ve read all  the stories about how we didn’t save enough, how our homes (the big retirement plan for many) have lost value, how interest rates are hurting retirees, how the numbers are going to make Medicare and Social Security go broke and on and on.  But it never occurred to me that maybe the estimated 10.000 people a day who retire might actually be good for the economy.  Think about it.  Each person who retires has the potential to open up a job for someone else.  The bottom line is there is still work that needs to be done and at some point someone will be hired to do it.

 

AARP Social Security for Dummies Book Jacket

 

Krugman writes

 …the methods the bureau uses are public — and anyone familiar with the data understands that they are “noisy,” that especially good (or bad) months will be reported now and then as a simple consequence of statistical randomness. And that in turn means that you shouldn’t put much weight on any one month’s report.

In that case, however, what is the somewhat longer-term trend? Is the U.S. employment picture getting better? Yes, it is.

Some background: the monthly employment report is based on two surveys. One asks a random sample of employers how many people are on their payroll. The other asks a random sample of households whether their members are working or looking for work. And if you look at the trend over the past year or so, both surveys suggest a labor market that is gradually on the mend, with job creation consistently exceeding growth in the working-age population.

On the employer side, the current numbers say that over the past year the economy added 150,000 jobs a month, and revisions will probably push that number up significantly. That’s well above the 90,000 or so added jobs per month that we need to keep up with population. (This number used to be higher, but underlying work force growth has dropped off sharply now that many baby boomers are reaching retirement age.)

Meanwhile, the household survey produces estimates of both the number of Americans employed and the number unemployed, defined as people who are seeking work but don’t currently have a job. The eye-popping number from Friday’s report was a sudden drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, but as I said, you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on one month’s number. The more important point is that unemployment has been on a sustained downward trend.

But isn’t that just because people have given up looking for work, and hence no longer count as unemployed? Actually, no. It’s true that the employment-population ratio — the percentage of adults with jobs — has been more or less flat for the past year. But remember those aging baby boomers: the fraction of American adults who are in their prime working years is falling fast. Once you take the effects of an aging population into account, the numbers show a substantial improvement in the employment picture since the summer of 2011.

unemployment

unemployment (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

 

So the job growth and unemployment figures are slowly improving.  The overall trend is up for growth and down for unemployment.  I think one of the most shocking reactions to the numbers was the notion that they were somehow being manipulated and the things were actually much worse.  Do some like Jack Welsh actually want things to either get worse or at least to stay bad?  They just can’t bring themselves to admit that President Obama may be succeeding – despite Congress and the Republicans and turning things around.  Do they really need to win that badly?

Krugman says it better

…The U.S. economy is still far short of where it should be, and the job market has a long way to go before it makes up the ground lost in the Great Recession. But the employment data do suggest an economy that is slowly healing, an economy in which declining consumer debt burdens and a housing revival have finally put us on the road back to full employment.

And that’s the truth that the right can’t handle. The furor over Friday’s report revealed a political movement that is rooting for American failure, so obsessed with taking down Mr. Obama that good news for the nation’s long-suffering workers drives its members into a blind rage. It also revealed a movement that lives in an intellectual bubble, dealing with uncomfortable reality — whether that reality involves polls or economic data — not just by denying the facts, but by spinning wild conspiracy theories.

It is, quite simply, frightening to think that a movement this deranged wields so much political power.

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More on race in Massachusetts

Yesterday we heard from the Cherokee Nation.  Principle Chief Bill John Baker didn’t endorse either candidate but he issued this statement.

The Cherokee Nation is disappointed in and denounces the disrespectful actions  of staffers and supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. The conduct of  these individuals goes far beyond what is appropriate and proper in political  discourse. The use of stereotypical “war whoop chants” and “tomahawk chops” are  offensive and downright racist. It is those types of actions that perpetuate  negative stereotypes and continue to minimize and degrade all native peoples.

The individuals involved  in this unfortunate incident are high ranking staffers in both the senate office  and the Brown campaign. A campaign that would allow and condone such offensive  and racist behavior must be called to task for their actions.

The Cherokee Nation is a  modern, productive society, and I am blessed to be their chief. I will not be  silent when individuals mock and insult our people and our great nation.

We need individuals in the  United States Senate who respect Native Americans and have an understanding of  tribal issues. For that reason, I call upon Sen. Brown to apologize for the  offensive actions of his staff and their uneducated, unenlightened and racist  portrayal of native peoples.

Of course Scott Brown has not apologized and his staff has not apologized.  I gather he put them all on “double secret probation.”*

And since Bill John Baker was a delegate to the Democratic Convention why would any Republican pay any attention to him.  According to the CherokeePhoenix

Not all Democrats get to attend the Democratic Nation Convention to nominate the party’s presidential candidate. Even fewer get to announce his or state’s delegates vote during the convention’s roll call. However, Principal Chief Bill John Baker got to do both during this year’s DNC held Sept. 4-6 in Charlotte, N.C.

Baker said he represented the Cherokee Nation in his official capacity and that during the vote to re-nominate President Barack Obama for president, he announced Oklahoma’s vote.

“I was honored to attend the convention as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and on behalf of the Cherokee Nation’s federal interests,” Baker said. “To stand on a national stage as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and cast my delegate vote for President Obama on behalf of the state of Oklahoma helped shine the national spotlight on the Cherokee Nation.”

The final reason Scott Brown and the Republicans need to pay no attention to the Chief is that he is probably not really Native American.  Scott can tell just by looking at him.

Notice anything, Scott

*Double Secret Probation” is a quote from the movie Animal House.