Citizens United coming home to roost

Well the number one thing we need to do to get this country back on track is to get money out of politics.  Unfortunately, the Citizens United case that was decided by the supreme court did exactly the opposite.  There is some backlash and local and even state governments are trying to pass laws to curb the influence of money in politics, but until we make major changes (perhaps a constitutional amendment saying corporations are not people or that money does not equal free speech) we are in serious trouble of losing our democracy.

Look at the Super Pacs.  Karl Rove with his Crossroads GPS, is said to have as much as half a billion dollars at his disposal to use to influence elections.  These groups can target anyone or any law they want.  Say a congress person decided to vote to take actions to reduce fossil fuel usage.  The fossil fuel industry can spend unlimited money to defeat that person in an election.  No wonder our politicians are affraid to talk about climate change and instead argue over who likes fossil fuels more!

And with many states, like California, turning to propositions to pass laws, corporations and the extremely wealthy can skip influencing politicians through lobbying and go straight to the voters.  11 million dollars was recently donated from we don't know who in Arizona, to defeat Governor Brown's prop 30 in California!  This means wealthy individuals who will not even be effected, are putting funding for California Public schools in danger!  Some of this $11 million is also going to pass prop 32, which is the corporate backed proposition to curb the influence of Unions in elections (which are the only real counter balance to corporate spending).

The city of Richmond, California, has a measure to put a 1 penny per ounce tax on sugary drinks.  This money will go to the community to support programs that help youth stay healthy.  The soda industry has poured over $2 million dollars into the campaign to defeat the measure.  A boon for local media!  In California we have individuals who are spending tens of millions of dollars of their own money to influence elections.  On national level there are individuals spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections.

Of course with hundreds of billions of dollars being spent nation wide on political advertizing, don't expect the corporate media to make this an issue.  They are the ones profiting from it!

As far as this election is concerned, the supreme court will be in play during the next four years.  The conservative judges are the ones who support unlimited money to infuence elections. For this reason alone, everyone needs to get out the vote for Obama!

Hey Kids, this is how Dad washes clean dishes

Well I was looking for tonight's debate on line and I came accross the video of Paul Ryan staging a photo op with his family, uninvited.  And this is a guy who is running on character.  He can't even actually volunteer at a soup kitchen for real, just once?  What I wondered watching the video was what were his kids thinking.  Was it crazy to see their dad pretending to wash dishes?  He even talked about the food as if it was there. 
 Imagine the two lessons he could teach to his kids: that helping those less fortunate is a good thing by taking them to volunteer at a soup kitchen. When the kids actually meet the people they are helping they will learn the more important lesson that they are nice people and are very much like themselves.  No longer the unknown 'other'.  And so what if you are a politician and you don't care about those lessons and just want a good photo op, you would get that too.
  Or you can teach your kids that it is OK to lie and pretend to do something by forcing your way into a soup kitchen after it has been cleaned and closed up to stage a photo op by dressing up your kids and proceeding to scrub clean plates and talk about the food that isn't there.  And, as the kids don't meet anyone, they will learn the much more impactful lesson that the 'others' are to be avoided

the link to the video is: Clean Dishes

Where Mitt is right

Well there is one thing that Mitt Romney says which I think is correct.  He says he has (and would as President) pass bills with bi-partisan support.  He compares this to Obama who has little bi-partisan support for anything he has done.

Where Mitt is wrong (and it kills me that this point is not made by the so called news media that covers the election and politics) is who should get credit or blame for that!

Mitt passed bills with bi-partisan support because Democrats in office work with Republican administrations.  He had no choice as his state legislature was mostly Democratic.  Obama has in fact bent over backwards to be bi-partisan, even keeping many of Bush's folks in his administration.  In fact many Obama supporters were not happy with Obama's propensity to compromise a position before debate even began on a subject.  The democrats went to great lengths to compromise with Republicans on everything, and then in the end, the Republicans would vote pretty much unanimously against anything the Democrats tried to do.

This is infuriating!  It is classic (winning) Republican spin.  They are to blame for something and they manage to spin the conventional wisdom so people blame the Democrats.  It is kinda crazy actually.  During the debates Romney kept saying how he will work together with Democrats and that Obama just pushed through things without Republican support.  And Obama never really rebutted that characterization.  The truth is, Obama got things done, despite extreme Republican obstructionism!  They would fight against things they actually agreed with or previously supported, just to prevent Obama from getting re-elected.

Unfortunately Mitt is right when he says if he becomes President he will get things done with bi-partisan support.  We know that the Democrats will go along with what the Republicans want (in fear of being labeled obstructionist by the media which seems to only echo that word when it is leveled against the Democrats).  The lack of backbone that Democrats have to stand up to the Republicans is another reason liberals are often disappointed in them.   What I worry about is what are the things he will get done.

And of course this is all evidence of how terrible out two party system is.  The party who is not in power has no reason to help improve the state of the nation.  If they do, then the party in power gets the credit.  If Republicans had helped to get the economy back on track, Obama would easily get re-elected.  What we need is a Parliamentary system where all parties - Green, Libertarian, Tea Party, etc, can be represented.  Like they do in most democracies - if the Green Party gets 10% of the vote, they get 10% of the seats in Parliament.  This means no party can get anything done without forming an alliance.  It takes away the incentive to be obstructionist, as any party can join forces to pass bills that will be popular and they can take credit for. And no party will win by default.  Right now, the economy stinks, so people are likely to want to vote for change.  This means Republican.  If there were many parties then people could have a choice in which change they would like to see and each party would be judged by what they did.

Plus this would open up the political discourse to a much more representative range of perpectives in issues.  If we had a viable multi-party system we would be hearing about things like climate change in the debates.  We would actually hear a debate about the effectiveness of drones in combatting terrorism. 

If I could as a question to the candidates

So tonight is the town hall style debate with "swing" voters.  First of all, I think it is strange that we give undecided voters any publicity by asking them things like "who won the debate?"  If you are undecided at this point you are not paying attention and too uninformed to have any credibility.  In fact, in my opinion, if after 8 years of Bush and 4 years of an obstructionist Republican party hell bent on preventing the Dems from solving any of our nations problems, if after all that you would even consider voting for a Republican, then I believe you have no credibility.  I know there are lots of intelligent people who vote Republican, but the Republican party of today is vastly different than it was even 30 years ago. 

OK, so if I could ask one question, this would be it:  "Climate Change is both an economic issue (look at American farmers right now) and an issue of national security (this according to the Pentagon).  What is your opinion about this and what would your administration do or not do with regards to this issue.  I would like you to touch on fossil fuels like coal, the Xcel Pipeline, green energy, oil subsidies, and international climate treaties. "

Why I am excited to vote...

 I can't believe this race is even close!  I wrote this blog a few weeks ago and of course there is more to rant about now, but I think I will post this and then save my rant for new blog...

They say this presidential election will be decided by turn out.  Most people seem to vote for their 'team' no matter what.  And the conventional wisdom is that the turn out that got Obama elected is not likely to repeat itself.  I hear many people saying they are not going to vote for Obama because he disappointed them.  Let me explain why I, as someone who identifies with the Green Party, despite all the disagreements I have with Obama, am excited to vote for him and why I think it is ESSENTIAL that everyone else gets out and votes for him as well.

 First and foremost: the supreme court.   The next president may appoint two supreme court justices who will be deciding things like the role of money in politics, womens' reproductive rights, gay rights, worker rights, immigration laws and minority rights, ...  Obama has and will appoint moderate justices who are somewhere in the middle, in fact experts say Obama is conservative when it comes to the supreme court.  The experts also say the Republicans are nominating extreme right activist judges who want to overturn 100 years of rulings to give corporations more power. 

Next is the economy.  Let's remember that the Republicans crashed our economy with massive tax breaks for the wealthy, unpaid for wars, and deregulation (Clinton also did this).  Then they did everything they could to prevent Obama from fixing the economy, now they blame him and promise they will solve the problem with even more extreme tax cuts for the wealthy, further deregulation, and a foreign policy of 'shaping' the middle east (read 'war with Iran').   We need a party that is willing to invest in this country by creating jobs in education, green technology, infrastructure, etc.  The Democrats try to do this.  The Republicans, on the other hand, want to shift the incredible wealth that exists in this country further and further into the hands of the already ultra rich.  They are all about cutting as many government jobs as they can under the guise of 'balancing the budget'.  With their vows to never increase taxes at all and their love of military spending, we cannot take this excuse seriously.  Ideologically, they seem to want private companies to do everything for profit.  This means getting rid of public education, the post office, social security, etc.  Of course when private companies take over, equal access is lost, and we further entrench a society of haves and haves nots.  Romney, himself, said that he is so against raising taxes that he would not support a budget that had $10 in spending cuts to every $1 in tax increases!!


Obama has been an incredible President.  As President he is leading all Americans.  Us liberals and progressives wish for things like universal health care, the end to all bombing of foreign countries, a massive investment in renewable energy and job creation.  But there are forces that don't want these things.  Obama has led from a very moderate place.  While not answering our dreams, he has improved environmental regulations and strengthened the EPA, improved women's rights, improved the situation for many immigrants, improved regulation of banks, improved our health care system, improved our economy, improved our international relations, improved our investment in renewable energy, and the list goes on.

Now what is important to realize is that the Republicans have fought against all these improvements.  In fact many of the 'broken promises' of Obama are things he tried to do but was prevented from doing by the Republicans.  And if the Republicans gain control of the federal government again, they have promised to UNDO all these improvements!  They want to repeal the health care law, cut funding for the social safety net, disband the EPA altogether and decrease regulation of oil companies, banks, etc.

The Republicans said out loud that their number one job in congress was to make Obama a one term President.  During our country's worst economic disaster since the great depression, while we were fighting two wars, the Republicans fought everything the Democrats tried to do.  They were blocking dozens of federal appoinments (appointments they agreed with) just to prevent the government from functioning!  The health care law was the law the Republicans supported, it was their answer to "Hilary-care" and yet they are now against it because the Dems passed it.  This is their story over and over again.  In Ryan's budget he suggested $700 billion is savings in Medicare. Obama passed the SAME SAVINGS and now the Republicans say they will repeal the savings and they attack Obama for doing it.  Ryan voted against the deficit commission's plan (he was on the commission) and then attacked Obama for not implementing the plan (even though Obama tried to implement a plan but congress blocked it).  The Republicans are not interested in making government work for anyone but the corporate elite and while the Democrats are VERY friendly to the corporate elite, at least they try to make government work!!!

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.  We hear this all the time coming out of politicians mouths.  Truth be told neither party is great here, but the Democrats have always been better.  The fact is, the Republican strategy of lower taxes for the rich and deregulation has always hindered job growth.  Why reinvest in your company when you can take the money out with little tax burden and put it in an offshore bank account?  During periods of higher taxes, job rates increased because it made more sense for companies to put the money back into their companies than to pay their CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars.  While Obama has fought for jobs in green energy the Republicans have fought them.  Just one example: The fed government currently gives a tax credit to companies involved in wind production.  This tax credit has made wind power competitive with fossil feuls (which has benefited from a century of government subsidies) and allowed the hiring of a hundred thousand jobs.  Romney opposed the renewing of the credit and says if he wins the election he will not renew it.  This uncertainty has already caused the industry to scale back, laying off 30,000 employees.  When this happened Romney came out and said that these layoffs are proof the 'Obama Economy' sucks and that if he wins the election he will create tons of jobs in the wind industry!

They say Romney's business experience is his plus.  He was the kind of corporate business guy who made crazy amounts of money by sending American Jobs oversees, by off-shoring companies' profits to avoid paying taxes, by laying off workers while taking millions out of companies for himself (a term he called 'harvesting').  This is OK for a corporate business guy.  What he cares most about is making a ton of money.  What does Obama's record suggest he cares about?  Well he was a community organizer.  He cares about people.  He is VERY business friendly of course - super corporate (far from the socialist the Republicans label him as).

And of course this blog would not be complete without mentioning Climate Change - arguably the biggest issue of all.  In the first debate Romney said "I LOVE COAL".  I should need to say no more.  But there is one more thing: Tar Sands.  Now Obama needs a lot of pressure on this issue, but a Romney/Ryan administration will mean for certain we will have oil from Tar Sands being piped across out country.  Experts warn that if we burn the oil from the Tar Sands (the dirtiest oil on Earth) it will be GAME OVER as far as climate change goes.  This is a weapon of mass destruction like the Earth has not seen (since perhaps the extinction of the Dinosaurs).  We simply cannot afford to let this happen.