Howie Klein grew up in a working class family in Brooklyn. After college, he went to Europe for the summer and stayed away for nearly 7 years, 2 of them driving across Asia and living in places like Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal and India. When he returned to the U.S. he was a radio dj on the first punk rock radio show in America and then co-founded an indie record label, 415 Records. Eventually he went to work at Warner Bros Records where he was general manager of Sire Records and then president of Reprise Records. He retired from the increasingly corporatized, artist-unfriendly record business about 3 years ago. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at McGill University in Montreal, serves on the Board of People For the American Way and blogs under the nom de guerre "Down With Tyranny." He likes Green Day, Howard Dean, raw food, swimming and grassroots activism. He hates fascism.

Blog Entries by Howie Klein

Blue America's First Endorsement For 2010

Posted November 27, 2009 | 02:27 PM (EST)



Blue America decided to lead off our endorsements for 2010 with a vote from people who have been donating to our PAC and our candidates for the past four...

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Patti Smith, A Guest Post By Sandy Pearlman

4 Comments | Posted November 26, 2009 | 05:57 PM (EST)


photo by Jean Baptiste Mondino, 2009

The Museum of the City Of New York just put out a compendium of the 400 most essential people in NYC's 400 year...

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Send a Coat Hanger to an Anti-Choice Democrat

Posted November 13, 2009 | 05:18 PM (EST)



Blue America is teaming up with Working Assets, the folks behind CREDO Mobile and CREDO Action in a project we think you'll like. We're urging you to sign a...

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Regina Thomas Throws Her Hat Into The Ring-- John Barrow First Blue Dog To Vote Against Health Care AND Choice To Get A Primary

Posted November 12, 2009 | 01:16 PM (EST)



Yesterday Regina Thomas made it official and is now campaigning for the Democratic nomination against reactionary Blue Dog John Barrow. For many in GA-12, his dual votes against Choice and...

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Can We Afford to Let Blanche Lincoln Stop Health Care Reform Dead in Its Tracks?

12 Comments | Posted November 10, 2009 | 11:07 AM (EST)



You can rail all you want at Joe Lieberman -- we all do -- but it's like feeding a troll; he loves the attention and the sense of martyrdom. And...

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Rep. Ken Calvert Is an Embarrassment to California -- Should He Step Down?

4 Comments | Posted October 20, 2009 | 05:06 PM (EST)



Ken Calvert, who represents a suburban Inland Empire district in southern Orange County and western Riverside County (CA-44), has been on our radar for a very long...

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Voting For Marriage Equality Starts Today In Maine

1 Comments | Posted October 15, 2009 | 08:46 AM (EST)


The Blue America PAC hasn't officially endorsed any candidates this year. We have a whole bunch we want to endorse but we're concentrating on Maine's No on 1 campaign for now. As of last night,...

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Alan Grayson On Afghanistan: "Just Leave People Alone"

13 Comments | Posted October 9, 2009 | 09:40 AM (EST)


If you follow my seriousish blog at DownWithTyranny with any regularity you probably also know that as a hobby I run a fun travel blog on the side. I ran away from home when I was 13 -- hitchhiked to Florida (though I only got as far as...

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How Obama Plans to Keep Funding a Senseless Afghanistan War

10 Comments | Posted October 7, 2009 | 09:17 AM (EST)


Late yesterday President Obama met with a gaggle of legislators -- most of them clueless pro-war types -- to tell them he has no intention of ending the disastrous and pointless occupation of Afghanistan. No one watching the cable news shows afterwards would ever have guessed that Ike Skelton,...

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Senate Passes Amendment To Prevent KBR and Halliburton From Getting Away With Raping Employees (Literally)

305 Comments | Posted October 6, 2009 | 08:42 PM (EST)


Today the Senate "debated" the Department of Defense appropriations bill passed by the House (H.R. 3326) for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010. Republicans added frivolous amendments all day, that were defeated one after the other. The amendment du jour, however, came from Al Franken D-MN.

And...

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Alan Grayson's Candor and Honesty Irks GOP Obstructionists... Again

114 Comments | Posted September 30, 2009 | 02:22 PM (EST)


I know the difference between angry and mad. And when it comes to outspoken Orlando freshman Alan Grayson, Republicans are both. He's been the bane of their -- and their big donors'-- existence on the House Financial Services Committee, where he's been working effectively to put a crimp in a...

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Should Michael Moore Give Up That $10,000 Fact Checker Check To Chris Dodd's Campaign?

3 Comments | Posted September 21, 2009 | 10:14 AM (EST)



Like I said after a screening on Wednesday here in L.A., Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story is awesome and I want to recommend it (again) to everyone-- except for one part. As soon as Moore dealt with Chris Dodd I turned to my friends...

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Rock Music Legend Sandy Pearlman On The Passing Of Feminine Culture Power Source, Ellie Greenwich

4 Comments | Posted September 6, 2009 | 02:50 PM (EST)


On my first day of college freshman orientation I met the president of the student body, Sandy Pearlman. He had long hair and I figured I could get pot from him. He turned out to be virtually the only non-pot smoker that I ever met at college. But he taught...

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Real Democrats Standing Strong for American Working Families

2 Comments | Posted August 24, 2009 | 10:52 AM (EST)


One week ago we started a Netroots-wide action at Blue America, inspired by Darcy Burner's closing keynote speech at Netroots Nation, thanking the 65 stalwart progressives who have promised...

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Donna Edwards On Health Care Reform

2 Comments | Posted August 21, 2009 | 03:59 PM (EST)


We have quite a few progressives in Congress supporting the same efforts that we're supporting: getting real health care reform for ordinary working families. George Lakoff put it succinctly and elegantly yesterday:

The narrative is simple: Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. They profit from...
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Public Option Rides Again -- $100,000 In 24 Hours

6 Comments | Posted August 19, 2009 | 09:44 AM (EST)


Goal Thermometer

Yesterday we launched a campaign to thank the 65 Democrats who are standing up for working families -- standing up despite Big Insurance's big bucks; standing up despite a campaign of Republican lies and thuggery; standing up even despite corporate shills in their own party,...

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Saying Thanks To The Democrats Who Won't Give Up On Hope

10 Comments | Posted August 18, 2009 | 01:18 PM (EST)


Goal Thermometer

Last night Rachel Maddow kicked off her show with a talk about the collapse of ambition -- the Obama Administration and corporate Democrats throwing in the towel on health care reform. The video -- after the first minute or so -- is incredibly compelling and...

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Help Stop Ohio's Sarah Palin!

4 Comments | Posted August 13, 2009 | 09:55 AM (EST)


You may remember a clueless reactionary by the name of Ken Blackwell. He was the Secretary of State in Ohio during the 2004 election, meaning that much like his more infamous Florida counterpart, Katherine Harris, he was a corrupt partisan in control of the voting process during a national election.

...
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Are Republican Elected Officials Backing the Violent Thugs?

5 Comments | Posted August 8, 2009 | 02:11 PM (EST)


Early on August 5th, as the corporate-funded, Limbaugh/Beck incited violence was just starting to roll, John McCain sent out a tweet: "Town hall meetings are an American tradition -- we should allow everyone to express their views without disruption -- even if we disagree!" He led; few in his...

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Is the Republican Jihad Making the Party More Popular and Electable?

2 Comments | Posted August 6, 2009 | 03:04 PM (EST)


The Republican playbook on disinformation, obstruction and disruption hasn't been working. In fact, the newest biannual national-wide, state by state polling data from Gallup, shows it's been backfiring. I wonder if the Republicans will change their strategy from "stand up and shout to rattle the Democrat whose town hall meeting...

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