{"id":637,"date":"2010-04-30T09:11:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T09:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html"},"modified":"2010-04-30T09:11:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T09:11:10","slug":"i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html","title":{"rendered":"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s something strange going on…<\/p>\n

Recall that at the height of the health reform fight, after Senator Brown was elected in MA and the Democrats looked like they were on the verge of total failure. It looked like Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement would indeed be his Waterloo… and then, Anthem Blue Cross raised rates by 40%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the verge of the financial reform fight, Goldman Sachs was sued by the FEC and grilled mercilessly by a bipartisan Senate committee<\/a> for it’s shenanigans of knowingly selling “sh$%ty” securities to customers and profiting from their failure.<\/p>\n

The next big fight is immigration reform, and Arizona passes a draconian law essentially legalizing racial profiling<\/a> of its Hispanic population – soon to be a majority. (It also revealed the Tea Party to be hypocrites when it comes to big government and Constitutional fidelity).<\/p>\n

And of course, with the climate bill coming down the line, we have a gargantuan oil spill in the Gulf<\/a> of Mexico that is shaping up to be the worst environmental disaster since the Exxon Valdez. (UPDATE: Obama just banned all further offshore drilling<\/a> until an investigation concludes)<\/p>\n

Let’s even throw in the observation that President Obama is about to select a new justice for the Supreme Court – mere months after the universally reviled Citizens United<\/em> case<\/a> opened the floodgates to infinite corporate money over our elections.<\/p>\n

Notice any pattern?<\/p>\n

If I were Glenn Beck, these dots would now duly be connected by a conspiracy theory line of outlandish proportion. But I think that it’s really more likely that the convergence of reality with policy and reform is a “happy” coincidence – though of course these disasters all have real tragic consequences for ordinary people caught in the middle of them. It would be better if these tragic events could have been prevented, but by occurring, they demonstrate the lack of any preventative mechanism. And thus make the case for the reforms in President Obama’s domestic agenda far more forcefully than any speech or campaign ad.<\/p>\n

Let’s just hope that the pattern doesn’t hold when it’s time to ratify the new START treaty<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s something strange going on… Recall that at the height of the health reform fight, after Senator Brown was elected in MA and the Democrats looked like they were on the verge of total failure. It looked like Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement would indeed be his Waterloo… and then, Anthem Blue Cross raised rates…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[94,192,320,339,25,26,292],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nation-building","category-purple-politics","tag-economics","tag-environmentalism","tag-health-reform","tag-immigrants","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nI am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s something strange going on… Recall that at the height of the health reform fight, after Senator Brown was elected in MA and the Democrats looked like they were on the verge of total failure. It looked like Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement would indeed be his Waterloo… and then, Anthem Blue Cross raised rates…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-30T09:11:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern - City of Brass","og_description":"There’s something strange going on… Recall that at the height of the health reform fight, after Senator Brown was elected in MA and the Democrats looked like they were on the verge of total failure. It looked like Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement would indeed be his Waterloo… and then, Anthem Blue Cross raised rates…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html","og_site_name":"City of Brass","article_published_time":"2010-04-30T09:11:10+00:00","author":"Aziz Poonawalla","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html","name":"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern - City of Brass","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-30T09:11:10+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-30T09:11:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/04\/i-am-beginning-to-notice-a-dis.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I am beginning to notice a disturbing pattern"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/","name":"City of Brass","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}