Politics Archives - Page 24 of 32

Corporate politic$ in America

I think the Tea Party and the ACLU (or other odd bedfellows of your choice) should get together and think of some strategy to address this issue. It may have to be outrageous.

Folks in America like to think that our elected officials are beholden to Us, The People. We have spirited elections, and if we don’t like Candidate X, we can vote for Candidate Y. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about it.

Then why does the FAA have a “no-fly zone” over Mayflower, Arkansas being overseen by Exxon Mobil? “In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.” I don’t recall anyone electing Exxon as overseer of our skies. And a technicality has spared Exxon from having to pay any money into the fund that will be covering most of the clean-up costs.

How does Congress quietly pass, unbeknownst to most, even those who voted on it, a secret provision to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 which protects the manufacturers of genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health concerns, such as inflammatory bowel diseases? And check out the waiver Monsanto makes farmers sign.

Most observers believe Monsanto is likely to win a Supreme Court case which one must read to believe; that Justice Thomas, former Monsanto lawyer, doesn’t recuse himself is typical Clarence behavior. Now, if Vermont’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act passes the state legislature, requiring manufacturers to label modified food products as such, Monsanto has threatened to sue the state. Meanwhile, food safety advocates have called out President Obama over his broken promise to label GMOs.

Or, as I mentioned before, how do copyright holders give quasi-governmental powers to cut off Internet services?

The answer, my friend, is money. Money in politics. The ‘Revolving Door’ lobbyists have helped create the corporate betrayal of America. Check out The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secret website. So that is how one could have an anonymous! member of Congress slip something into a bill that protects the corporations.

None of this is news, exactly – see the FDR quote – but seems to have become both more pervasive and more perverse. So what are we going to do about it? I was watching this TED talk on Arthur’s blog, and it got me to think that there are many people on the political left and the political right who have a common agenda: a sense of fairness. Money trumps fairness, inherently.

I think the Tea Party and the ACLU (or other odd bedfellows of your choice) should get together and think of some strategy to address this issue. It may have to be outrageous.

Let’s face it: governments chug along doing the things they do, often in a self-serving manner, until the people get a bit uppity and sit at a lunch counter where they are unwelcome or refuse to sit in the back of the bus. Not sure what action it is should be yet, but as they say, it could be epic…

As my friend, Dan wrote, in response to the post cited above: “No corporation… has any right to enforce anything. If our government leaders give them that kind of power then we the people have every right to defy their bogus powers…”
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“For someone the right wing press likes to call a socialist,” Obama’s regressive record makes Nixon look like Che.

If nominated, I will not run

The intrepid Chris asked: If you could start a political party, what would be its planks?

Let me first make it quite clear that I have zero interest in actually running for political office.

When I was in high school, I was president of student government. Someone wrote in my yearbook that I was a great President, and she was looking forward to when I was President of the United States! [Her exclamation point.] THAT’S not going to happen.

It’s odd that being a political science major has made me LESS likely to seek elective office. Meanwhile, one of my classmates at New Paltz, Kevin Cahill, has been in the NYS Assembly for a number of years, and doing a fine job, it appears.

Anyway, I started writing down my values and positions, but discovered that it was TOO HARD for writing a blog post. Coming up with the right verbiage was WORK. So I’m cheating.

I looked up the platform of that political party named after me, the Green Party. I found the 2012 platform, and found that much of it I agree with. This begs the question, why am I a Democrat, rather than a Green? Because the way the system is shaped, a Green can’t win very often. Indeed, that is one of the issues.

I’m going to excerpt parts of the Green platform. My non-inclusion of other parts doesn’t mean I necessarily DISAGREE, but that it wasn’t a primary issue for me in the time I was compiling my positions.

Democracy: Our citizens must not permit usurpation of their authority by acts of individuals and government agencies that isolate or insulate government from their oversight and control. Citizens of a democracy must have the information and ability to determine the actions of their government. Vast concentrations of wealth and power that have occurred in recent years are inherently undemocratic. The deregulation of corporate activity and the decentralization and underfunding of the regulatory structures that remain – accompanied by the centralizing of big money – has been a disaster for our country. The true owners of the public lands, pension funds, and the public airwaves are the American people, who today have little or no control over their pooled assets or their commonwealth.

A. Political Reform:
*Comprehensive campaign finance reform, including caps on spending and contributions, at the national and state level; and / or full public financing of elections to remove undue influence in political campaigns.
*A rejection the present method of election without a majority. Accordingly, we call for the use of Instant Runoff Voting where voters can rank their favorite candidates (1,2,3, etc.) to guarantee that the winner has majority support and that voters are not relegated to choosing between the lesser of two evils.
B. Political Participation
*A call for citizen control of redistricting processes and moving the “backroom” apportionment process into the public light. Give the 10-year redistricting process to the Census Bureau or an independent agency.
*All persons convicted of felonies shall regain full citizenship rights upon completion of their sentence.
*To protect against fraud, previously proprietary voting machine source code must be open for public inspection and verification before and after an election.
C. Community
*Support for Head Start and Pre- and neo-natal programs
*Seek opportunities for citizens to serve their communities through non-military community service, such as a Civilian Conservation Corps
D. Free Speech and Media Reform
*Provide broadband internet access for all residents of this country, so that access to information is a right, not a commodity.
*Ensure net neutrality, so that Internet users can access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet service provider.
*Ensure free and equal airtime for all ballot-qualified political candidates and parties on radio and television networks and stations.
*Provide generous public funding for Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television and National Public Radio (NPR) to ensure high-quality news and cultural programming with the widest possible range of viewpoints.
E. Foreign Policy
*Our government does not have the right to justify pre-emptive invasion of another country on the grounds that the other country harbors, trains, equips and funds a terrorist cell.
F. Domestic Security
*Strict enforcement of our First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, association and petition. Federal, state and local governments must safeguard our right to public, non-violent protest.
*End torture, such as in prisons like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other U.S.-controlled facilities.
*Restore habeas corpus, a legal action to obtain relief from illegal detention. End the use of indefinite detention without trial.
*Revoke the USA Patriot Act.
*Enact a constitutional amendment affirming that the rights outlined in our Bill of Rights are human rights and do not apply in any way to corporations.
*Oppose the death penalty in the United States and worldwide.

Geez, that’s just the DEMOCRACY section! I agree with most of the SOCIAL JUSTICE section, with special emphasis on consumer protection, a single-payer health insurance, and alternatives to incarceration; re: abortion, I quoted Hillary Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” mantra. Ditto ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY, focusing on recycling and also transportation’s mass transit, bicycles and pedestrians. I don’t necessarily disagree with the ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY section, but none of its tenets made my first draft, except the elimination of hunger.

The rest of your questions will have to wait, Chris.

February Rambling about comic book issues, and music

The first Cajun song ever recorded

Local judge removes 5-year-old from grandparents to live with mom and known child abuser. “Local” being in Michigan, with the child being moved to Utah with a mother who had never been part of her life. This particular case involves Troy, the grandfather in question, who’s contributed to the ABC Wednesday team. He’s not thrilled with the way the actual story came out – I’ve seldom liked stories I’ve appeared in myself – but the “justice system” is SO wrongheaded in this case, which, as I’ve linked to before, is not an isolated incident.

KunstlerCast #215: Nicole Foss Interview. Economic contraction and the fate of the nation.

Mad props for Anita Hill.

Blogger Alvin McEwen has published a booklet called How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America, which deftly exposes the most common anti-gay propaganda. Also, conservatives file amicus brief in a case before the Supreme Court; they are supporting the plaintiffs in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to California’s anti-gay marriage referendum.

How Joe E. Ross (of Car 54) is NOT like Donald Trump or Michele Bachmann.

I mentioned Melanie LAST month; I COULD mention her weekly. This month, she talks about 17 years of defying death and fulfilling longed-for dreams, and for futures that are better than what we have known.

Jaquandor: On Snark and his eleven years (!) in Blogistan. Not only that, he answered some of my questions!

Amy’s 600th post is about Frickin’ Frackers.

Euthanizing gay dogs for Jesus.

Arthur remembers C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General, “an unlikely ally in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”

Shooting Parrots, on juries: “Has it come to the point where a group of citizens have failed to grasp the basics of the legal system or even a working understanding of the English language?”

Roger Ebert “took after” his aunt Martha.

Recovered suitcases from an insane asylum; this is a Kickstarter project I backed.

Why does bottled water have an expiration date? We HAVE some 2007 water in our emergency kit. Hmm.

I want THESE people to move my stuff; too bad they are in Japan.

One of many reasons why people hate Disney: Disney Refuses To Allow Epilogue To Appear In The Don Rosa Collection. You may not know the name, but if you ever read the Disney ducks, you’ve probably seen his work. The publisher Egmont has agreed to publish a link to career-end.donrosa.de in the final volume, which leads to the now unpublished text, a scathing indictment of compensation practices. (Mark Evanier clarifies this, but does not dispute, in Rosa’s case.)

A fine letter to DC Comics objecting to the hiring of hatemonger Orson Scott Card to write some Superman comics.

Eddie Campbell’s Rules of Comic Book Comprehension.

Colleen Doran, comic artist, says: Fandom, You Deserve Better Friends.

Library prof bops doc who K.O.’d comic book industry.

You can NOW hear my buddy, comic book artist Steve Bissette blather [his word] with Robin at Inkstuds: PART 1 and PART 2. Steve also noted on Facebook: “Note to self: NEVER FORGET this tweet from “Neil Gaiman @neilhimself My #gatewaycomic was Alan Moore & @SRBissette’s Swamp Thing in 1984. I had stopped reading comics. They hooked me back.” Sunday, Feb. 10, 12:23 PM.”

In 1896 William George Crush created the second-largest ‘city’ in Texas, only to deliberately demolish it overnight in a publicity stunt that went catastrophically wrong.

Internet Explorer usage and the US murder rate.

Sesame Street takes on Downton Abbey.

uJigsawArt Jigsaw Puzzle iPhone App & iPad App, designed by Deborah, my friend since 1977.

Must note that Tim O’Toole, my choir buddy, has two books in the Amazon.com pipeline, on Kindle. Two paperbacks are available at their Create Space subsidiary: THE AMERICAN POPE and SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS. Haven’t read them yet, but I will, probably the pope book first.

An archeological history of the Beatles?

A BUNCH O’ MUSIC

Dustbury remembers Shadow Morton.

Allons à Lafayette is the first Cajun song ever recorded.

I Heard The Voice Of A Pork Chop – JIM JACKSON (1927). Ragtime Blues Guitar.

Chuck Miller’s The Ease of Vocalese and musical references to chess.

George Gershwin plays a piano version of “Rhapsody in Blue”.

Young@Heart Chorus performs I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

The theme song to the Road Runner cartoon show, in Korean.

Adam Warrock songs. I especially like the Doctor Who song. The store I worked at for many years carried the novels, but I never read them and have only seen one entire episode.

The Arthurian election reform article

What IS the solution to a fairer voting process?

After the 2012 Presidential election – thank every deity it is over – you may recall that only a handful of states were crucial to the decision – Ohio! Florida! Virginia! The Democratic “blue” states – New York, California – were not in play, nor were the Republican “red” states such as Texas. Candidates didn’t campaign in those because of most states’ “winner-take-all” mechanism when it came to the Electoral College. All the electoral votes of a state would go to one candidate. (The upside is that I missed the vast majority of the political ads.)

So the recent Republican plan to change states from winner-takes-all, the way every state, except Maine and Nebraska, does it, to awarding electoral votes by Congressional District, seems to be fairer. And it would be if Congressional boundary lines were drawn equitably.

But as Arthur@AmeriNZ noted a few weeks ago, “Republicans… worked hard, and spent large amounts of money, to win control of state legislatures in 2010 precisely so that they could write the congressional district maps to ensure Republican victories — they now even admit that was their plan all along. This gerrymandering by Republicans is the reason that they control the US House of Representatives even though they received fewer votes than Democrats did. Now, they want to do the same thing in presidential elections.

“Were it not for gerrymandering, the Republican plan would be closer to a proportional system for electing a president than the current winner-take-all approach allows for.” That’s why I had originally thought of such a solution, which seemed obvious at the time, years ago. “However,” and I also noted this at the time, “because of gerrymandering, it instead cynically twists that goal to ensure Republicans win the presidency even if they lose the popular vote—something that could very well happen every election under the Republican plan. So, what we’d end up with is something far less democratic than what we have now.” Which is not very democratic at all.

“If the US were to pass a Constitutional Amendment requiring all states to use truly non-partisan commissions to draw the boundaries of Congressional Districts based solely on population—and forbidding them from taking party voting history of areas into account—then it might be possible to make the Republican plan credible.” This, of course, will NEVER happen. In New York, there were lost promises of having nonpartisan boundaries drawn. “However, most state legislatures would never give up their power to draw the maps, and Republicans aren’t about to walk away from the one thing that could ensure their minority party retains power for at least the next decade…

“The best possible solution would be direct popular election of the president — abolish the Electoral College altogether.” That would be true in the abstract. But the sad fact is that in the real world, I don’t know if I want my vote in New York State, in a close national election, compromised by voter suppression in Pennsylvania, incompetence in Florida, or outright fraud in Ohio.

Arthur noted that, in the current system, “small states are overrepresented,” and of course, that is accurate, but also intentional. A state such as Wyoming has one member of the House of Representatives, so three electoral college votes for the one House seat, plus the two Senate seats. New York has 27 members of the House, so 29 electoral votes. Wyoming has in fact about 3% of the population as New York; changing it to direct vote would, in fact, make the folks THERE less likely to cast a ballot. No small state would pass a Constitutional amendment to make their voters have less impact.

What IS the solution to a fairer voting process? Failing the suggestions put forth, such as fair reapportionment, which simply won’t happen, I have no idea.

My ambivance about Ed Koch

Ed Koch also didn’t endear himself to upstate voters when he ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York State in 1982, again against Mario Cuomo.

Edward I. Koch died recently. He was the brash, outspoken mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. You should watch this interview conducted in 2007, where he “reflected on his life and political career, and talked of how he would like to be remembered.” I would agree that he brought some fiscal stability to a city on the brink of bankruptcy, “turning a $1 billion budget deficit into a $500 million surplus in five years. He restored the city’s credit, doubled the annual budget to $26 billion and oversaw $19 billion in capital improvements.”

The year 1977 was tough for both NYCNY and me. The city had a blackout that led to widespread looting. A guy dubbed Son of Sam was going around shooting people. I had graduated from college the year before and was underemployed in my college town in the autumn of 1976. In desperation, I lived with my parents in Charlotte, NC for the first four months of 1977; not my favorite place at the time. Then, after a brief trip to Binghamton, NY, I ended up living in the apartment of my sister and her husband at the time. Much of the time, they were in Boston, though they were present some of the time, and he and I did not get along that well.

I had a 30 hour per week telephone job from 6 pm until midnight. I spent most of my time hanging out in Greenwich Village with a co-worker named Michael, who pursued an ill-fated romance with a young woman. I’ve long since lost track of him, but have remained friends with the woman to this day.

So I wasn’t all that engaged with the politics that was going on. It seemed that there were a half dozen folks running for mayor. Ed Koch had been a reform-minded member of Congress, but his pro-death penalty position troubled me greatly. I ended up rooting for Mario Cuomo, who was the state’s Secretary of State.

Despite living there, I was totally unaware of signs that were apparently all over the city saying “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” Mario Cuomo has continually denied being behind these signs, and though Cuomo and Koch appeared together from time to time subsequently, Koch never forgave either Mario, or his son Andrew, the current New York State governor. (I tend to believe Mario, but wouldn’t be surprised if Andrew were involved; he was a very nasty guy.)

He also didn’t endear himself to upstate voters when he ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of New York State in 1982, again against Mario Cuomo. Koch described his run as hubris. He was hurt by an interview with Playboy magazine, where he was insulting to upstaters, describing rural life as “a joke,” for instance.

Amid his accomplishments, and they were many, it was thought by many that he was lousy on race relations with blacks, and extremely slow in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

After his time as mayor, he worked as a partner in a law firm, did radio commentary, wrote newspaper columns, and even movie reviews. talk-show guest. his support of the war in Iraq peeved me, especially since he had opposed the Vietnam war as a Congressman. More recently, he tried, unsuccessfully, to get nonpartisan reapportionment done, which I support.

The writer Pete Hamill said in 2005 that he was “some mad combination of a Lindy’s waiter, Coney Island barker, Catskills comedian, irritated school principal and eccentric uncle.” This was meant as a compliment, and it’s pretty accurate. The praise he received was no doubt warranted, but somehow, I was not his biggest fan.
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Artists Against Fracking is a video postcard from Yoko Ono to Andrew Cuomo

From the 1977 Sacred Songs album, NYCNY by Daryl Hall, which rather sounds like NYC, NY of 1977