New Haven Independent: Lamont tapped to "Take it Back"

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2006/06/ned_at_atticus.php

he last time New Haven saw Ned Lamont, he was rousing a ballroom of blogheads at the Omni Hotel. In the much quieter setting of a Chapel Street bookstore Wednesday, the candidate for U.S. Senate joined author David Sirota in an effort to take back the word “mainstream” from incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman.

At 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, the Democratic challenger to Lieberman staked out a spot in the children’s section of downtown’s Atticus Bookstore & Café to hear from political strategist David Sirota (pictured below). Sirota, also a regular contributor to The Nation and a twice-a-week guest on The Al Franken Show, is the author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government – And How We Can Take It Back.

That’s not, he told his 30-person audience of Ned fans and Atticus regulars, going to be easy.

The really worrisome corruption isn’t Tom DeLay or the $90,000 in a congressman’s freezer, Sirota said: It’s the mighty, mighty corporations whom our leaders can’t afford to displease. “What’s really corrupt is what’s legal. If we’re wondering why our government no longer solves problems, it’s because it no longer challenges the Big Money interests at the root of those problems.” Sirota gave examples – like Bush’s 2005 “bankruptcy bill” which protects billionaire corporations but not the truly bankruptcy-prone individual with a health problem or death in the family, Sirota said (a Daily Kos blogger agrees), or the tort reform pushed by Republicans to "save the system the cost of frivolous lawsuits” -- aka “limit the legal rights of individuals to fight back in court,” said Sirota. He gives more examples on his "Sirotablog", and more in his book.

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And Lieberman is a major factor in Sirota's book...

But the examples that really interested the Nedheads were the ones that starred Sen. Joe Lieberman as a favorite bedfellow of Big Money. “There’s lots about Lieberman in here,” said Sirota, raising his book (as Ned, who hadn’t yet read it, raised his eyebrows). Lieberman is a special target of Sirotafire for his self-billed “centrism,” his publicized identity as an able consensus-builder with Republicans. For Sirota, a cooperator with the current “corrupt administration” isn’t a “centrist,” but a strategic “hijacker” of that label. “Lieberman decides to be part of a consensus in Washington that pushes the hostile takeover of our government.”

Sirota billed Ned Lamont’s campaign as a strike back – and a timely one. The clock is ticking for the 'Take It Back' piece of his vision, Sirota said. “In ten years, would be called just Hostile Takeover : How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government—Thank you very much.”

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I'm a big fan of David Sirota and I was so glad to meet him last night.

I've seen a picture of Lamont..thanks for this Larkspur.

It's all very exciting for us out here, I can imagine how it must be for Connecticut!

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