obama – Sandy Rosenberg

President Obama had lunch at Charmington’s in Remington yesterday.

It’s too hipster for my tastes. The kind of place where you can order alfalfa sprouts on mashed yeast.

The President wasn’t there for the cuisine, however. He made the case for requiring paid sick leave for workers in companies with at least 15 employees. The staff at Charmington’s has that benefit.

To provide balance, the Sun article quoted Sen. Lamar Alexander, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which will consider the President’s legislation.

Americans already have “great freedom” when it comes to work, said the Tennessee Republican, who also said that workers have latitude to choose a career and negotiate for the benefits that matter most to them.

Perhaps the Senator’s contributors and social friends can do that but not the average working man or woman.

That’s what unions are for.

An op-ed and a tweet prompted me to put fingers to keyboard this week.

Former Governor Ehrlich’s weekly column in the Sun was about how President Obama would do in the Jewish community this November.

Here’s my letter to the editor:

Relations between the United States and Israel remain “as strong as they ever have been.”

That’s not a Democratic talking point.

That’s the view of the Israeli Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

He expressed it Sunday morning before the weekly Cabinet meeting.

His words echo those of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who have all stated that the security relationship between Israel and U.S. has never been closer.

Former Governor Ehrlich offered a far different and misleading view of that relationship in his op-ed this past Sunday.

He did not acknowledge that the Obama administration has blocked every U.N. Security Council resolution that criticizes Israel. He did not recognize the unprecedented American support for Israel’s defense through funding of the Iron Dome anti-missile system and joint military exercises. He did not mention that the President is committed to preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons, rejecting containment after the fact.

On the domestic front, Governor Ehrlich is far more perceptive. Jewish Americans, he wrote, have “a distrust of conservative Republicans on a wide variety of social issues, including abortion, school prayer, social welfare and gun control.”

The operating budget is a government’s principal policy document. Leaders of many faiths have condemned the budget authored by Congressman Paul Ryan and praised as “bold and exciting” and “marvelous” by Mr. Romney.

“Justice for the poor and economic fairness are core elements of our church’s social teaching,” declared Father Thomas Kelly, a Catholic priest and constituent of Rep. Paul Ryan.

“We should not balance the federal budget on the backs of the most vulnerable; instead, we should be offering them support to help them get back on their feet and get our economy back on track,” echoed Rabbi Steve Gutow, President of The Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Governor Romney is a flip-flopper, transforming himself from a candidate to the left of Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1994 to a candidate whose party platform would outlaw abortion in any circumstance.

The Romney/Ryan ticket can try to run from their records on the issues, but they cannot hide from the truth.

People of all faiths can agree on that.

My letter was published.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-israel-20120906,0,915339.story

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I didn’t make it home from the Orioles game in time to hear the President’s acceptance speech. But I did hear former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt say that the Charlotte convention was a home run for the Democrats.

This morning, I read a tweet from David Nitkin, a top aide to Howard County Executive Ken Ullman. “Asking for your [support] was a classy, important touch, and felt necessary. You gotta ask. Rule 1 in elections.”

I responded, “I’ve done it as well when knocking on doors. ‘I’m here to ask for your vote.’ A very powerful statement about democracy.”