Jim Johnson's List: Notable Tidbits

• It isn't necessary to demonize anyone here. It is only fair to assume that people who want a child this much are good people with the wherewithal to make dreams come true.

• This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes.
• What's driving these huge income gains at the top? There's intense debate on that point
• I guess I'd note that a large proportion of those super-high incomes come from the financial industry, which is, as you may remember, the industry that taxpayers had to bail out after its looming collapse threatened to take down the whole economy.
• In any case, whatever is causing the growing concentration of income at the top, the effect of that concentration is to undermine all the values that define America.

• that doesn't mean we should give up on smaller steps, initiatives that do at least a bit to level the playing field.

  Take, for example, the proposal by Bill de Blasio, who finished in first place in Tuesday's Democratic primary and is the probable next mayor of New York, to provide universal prekindergarten education, paid for with a small tax surcharge on those with incomes over $500,000.

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• we cannot afford to surrender to cynicism.

   

  I mean, think about the frustrating times of our past where many people should have thrown up their arms, when civil rights legislation kept failing, as lynching in America kept getting worse, where women were denied again and again the right to equal suffrage. You can go through our history, and there's so many times when there was justifiable reasons, even more so than now, for great criticism and frustration.

   

  Our generation who stares at this incredible history of working through frustration to great breakthroughs has no right to indulge in cynicism. We don't. What we have is an obligation to keep working at it, to keep fighting, to never give up. And so Washington has to work for America. Our nation was founded with a bunch of founding legislators who joined together to move our country out of the blocks and get us started and every generation since then has found a way to advance the ball down the field.

• The Plaintiffs' desire to publicly declare their vows of commitment and support to each other is a testament to the strength of marriage in society, not a sign that, by opening its doors to all individuals, it is in danger of collapse
• A marriage license is a civil document and is not, nor can it be, based upon any particular faith. Same-sex couples are a morally disliked minority and the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages is driven by animus rather than a rational basis. This violates the United States Constitution.