"The Trail of Broken Promises" (Matt Gonzalez, Nader - Gonzalez '08):
Watching the Democrats in the final weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush’s agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.
PELOSI’S PROMISE TO END THE WAR
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, "Pelosi vows no ‘blank check’ on Iraq funds.” (1/8/07). In her own words: "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.” Rick Klein of the Globe noted "Pelosi’s comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation’s finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate.”
Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they’ve gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of "no blank check?”
REID’S FILIBUSTER RULE
Sen. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has complained that the Republicans have filibustered (a procedure used by the minority party to delay voting on legislation) more times in the last two years than in the entire history of the United States to explain why he can’t move forward a progressive agenda. First he said it was over 70 times, then adjusted it by saying it was 65 times (Las Vegas Sun 3/6/08); yet still the highest for any two-year period (the previous record was 57 filibusters) (Politico, 3/6/08; Gov.Track.us 4/15/08). But Sen. Reid’s frustration has proven to be a red-herring. Did you know that Reid lets the Republicans filibuster telephonically, meaning that he doesn’t require that they physically present themselves on the floor of the Senate? Why is he making it easy on them? Is this what an opposition party looks like?
REPUBLICAN CLASS ACTION REFORM
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee for president, has a long history of voting against the interest of the American people, and specifically, the working class. Before entering the presidential contest, he supported the Republican Class Action Reform Bill, which made it harder for class-action lawsuits to be brought in the state courts. State courts are exactly where consumer protection lawsuits and recent wage and hour claims have succeeded in improving the lives of workers and helped them obtain better wages and breaks during work hours have succeeded.
Progressive commentators at the time called it a thinly veiled special-interest extravaganza. Journalist David Sirota noted "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was to protect corporate abusers.” (The Nation, 6/26/06). So why did Obama vote for it?
PATRIOT ACT & FISA AMENDMENT
Sen. Obama supported one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in recent history, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which extended an earlier law granting law enforcement expanded powers to search telephone, e-mail, and financial and medical records, in addition to granting the federal government a host of other powers to combat so-called domestic terrorism. After saying he would oppose it if elected to the U.S. Senate (NOW questionnaire, 9/10/03), in July 2005, Obama voted for it.
But this wasn’t enough. After entering the presidential race and running on a "change” message, Obama vowed in February of 2008 to vote against—and filibuster if necessary—the FISA bill amendment (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) that gave immunities to telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. This eavesdropping program clearly violated the privacy of law-abiding Americans at the behest of the president, and made the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover seem tame by comparison. Those voting in favor of the bill didn’t even first require full disclosure to see how deep the illegal conduct extended and agreed to apply the law retroactively.
Despite his promises to the contrary, and despite the vehement protests of many of his supporters, when the FISA bill came to the Senate for a vote this past July, Sen. Obama voted for it without explaining how this vote fit in with his change message or reconciled with his repeated claims he was going to protect the American people from repeated assaults on civil liberties by President Bush. Here was his chance to lead and make good on his promise, and what did he do?
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the FISA bill "an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance" (ACLU press release, 7/9/08). Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office called the bill "a Constitutional nightmare” and noted "with one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant.”
Obama even voted to stop debate on the bill so he could get back to the campaign trail. How ironic is it that he was in a hurry to give more speeches about change and hope but couldn’t find the time or integrity to convert these ideas into action?
On the eve of the vote MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted "I’m betting that [Pres. Bush’s] wildest dreams did not include the prospect that Congress — a Democratic-led Congress — would help him cover up his crimes. Yet that is exactly what the US Senate is poised to do.” (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 7/8/08).
OFF-SHORE DRILLING
As Sen. John McCain started to call for domestic drilling to ease our dependence on foreign oil, rather than debate the scientific and economic illogic of the position, Sen. Obama announced that he agreed with McCain. Reversing a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling, Sen. Obama led his party’s reversal, offering no explanation for how this would ease oil prices, particularly as experts noted that drilling would likely have an almost imperceptible impact on oil prices in the near future.
As Lester Brown and Jonathan Dorn of the Earth Policy Institute noted in "Drilling For Oil Is Not The Answer” (9/30/08) "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that lifting the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) moratorium [of the lower 48 states] would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day—less than 1 percent of current consumption.”
Furthermore "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon.” Even if we combined the two regions in question, it wouldn’t amount to much of an impact on oil prices: "Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents—and this would not be seen for at least another decade.”
Proponents of drilling have also exaggerated theenvironmental safety of current off-shore drilling and oil production technology in general. There is widespread evidence that current drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is already leading to serious pollution and spills. After reviewing data from the National Response Center, the Houston Chronicle found there had been 595 oil spills across four state coastlines, totaling roughly 9 million gallons spilled in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ("Spills from hurricanes staining the coast” by Dina Cappiello, 11/13/05). So why is Sen. Obama, who claims to care about the environment, now advocating off-shore drilling?
DEATH PENALTY
In June of 2008, the conservative Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty in cases of child rape (Kennedy v. Louisiana held that states may not impose the death penalty for the commission of a crime that did not result in the death of the victim), a decision that surprised even death penalty opponents who hailed it as an important step toward full abolition of the death penalty. Sen. Obama’s response? He quickly called a press conference to denounce the decision. Obama stated that he agreed with the extreme conservative minority, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas. Despite the many known racial and class inequities inherent in the death penalty, a practice abolished and abhorred in most of the rest of the world, Obama celebrates that he has always been a supporter of it.
On the campaign trail, Sen. Obama likes to highlight death penalty legislation that he sponsored while a member of the Illinois legislature, to show his commitment to reform. But let’s be clear, he didn’t work on laws to address the disproportionate rate of death penalty convictions of African-Americans, but rather a law to require videotaped interrogations of death penalty suspects. Yes, something we can applaud, but something many critics have noted merely greases the wheels of this injustice.
Most disquieting of all, as a state legislator, Obama voted "to expand the list of death-eligible crimes” (Chicago Tribune, 5/2/07), despite admitting in his own allegedly soul-searching memoir that the death penalty "does little to deter crime.” (The Audacity of Hope, 2006).
AFGHANISTAN
On foreign policy, Sen. Obama’s approach is hawkish. He wants to deploy more soldiers to Afghanistan, which will only further destabilize the Afghan-Pakistani border. He simply ignores the historic reality that no invading army has ever managed to successfully win a war in this area or subjugate the Afghani people.
During its ill-fated 10-year war, between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet Union deployed 620,000 soldiers to Afghanistan and sustained 470,000 casualties (sick and wounded, including infectious diseases such as hepatitis and typhoid fever).
Why does Obama want to ignore these facts and risk further destabilizing the area and creating another Vietnam/Iraq occupation there?
IRAQ
With respect to Iraq, Sen. Obama has conceded the main argument of Sen. McCain’s campaign and said the so-called "surge” worked (despite significant evidence and analysis to the contrary). And he has vowed to keep soldiers in Iraq to fight counterterrorism. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, estimated this would take a 60,000 troop presence to achieve.
Moreover Obama "will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq” according to Democracy Now! Correspondent Jeremy Scahill. And Obama did not plan on signing on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of such forces by the U.S. government by January 2009, according to one of his senior foreign policy advisors. (Democracy Now! 2/28/08). (This is one promise Obama unfortunately has kept, refusing to sign onto the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont).
In an interview with Amy Goodman, Sen. Obama stated his intention of leaving 140,000 private contractors in Iraq because "we don’t have the troops to replace them.” He also stated the need to keep an additional "strike force in the region … in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.” Summarizing the interview, Amy Goodman concluded that it sounded as if Obama "would leave more than 100,000 troops, close to 200,000 in Iraq. ‘Troops’ meaning U.S. soldiers and military contractors which some call mercenaries.” (4/1/08).
Even concerning a possible timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq, Obama has diminished his promises. He now is committing only to "reducing the number of combat troops within 16 months,” presumably to "bolster efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.” (Obama/McCain debate, 9/26/08).
What we know for certain, though, is when given a chance to commit to a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Obama said "no.” When Tim Russert asked him, during a debate in New Hampshire in September 2007, if he could promise having American troops out of Iraq by 2013, he would not do so.
MILITARY SPENDING
According to military policy analysts at the Arms Control Center, in their report "U.S. Defense Spending, since 2001” military spending has risen from $333 billion in 2001 to $696 in 2008 (including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). It’s expected to rise even more in 2009, to $706 billion.
Despite this, Sen. Obama has joined Sen. McCain and called for increased military spending. "I’ve said that we have to increase the size of our military,” Obama told ABC’s This Week (9/7/08). The details of which he has previously noted in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs: "I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.” ("Obama surrenders on military spending” by Glen Ford, The Progressive, 1/15/08).
WALL STREET CRISIS
The current financial crisis has generated perhaps the most fascinating political rhetoric of all. Obama has blamed the Republicans for deregulation and in doing so, his poll numbers have given him a healthy lead as we approach the final days of the campaign. The only problem is that the economic crisis is not just the fault of the Republicans. It is the direct result of bipartisan bills enacted into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
In 1999 Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This repealed the last vestiges of an important Depression-era law, the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which prohibited banking, brokerage, and insurance companies from merging together, thus compartmentalized the financial industry and protected it from future collapses.
Equally significant in 2000, President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which repealed 20-year-old agreements between the Security and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, so that financial institutions could sell credit derivatives such as the now notorious "credit default swaps” without any oversight and with no regulation. Two of its cosponsors included Democratic Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tim Johnson of South Dakota. The measure had such bipartisan support that it was never even debated in the Senate and was passed by unanimous consent.
This resulted in the repackaging of mortgages into securities and the failure to regulate institutions that then over-leveraged themselves as they sold credit derivatives to investors who wanted protection from risky investments. This is what led to this financial crisis whose ramifications we have only begun to understand.
Both Obama and McCain voted for the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout despite the plea of 200 economists (including Nobel Prize winners) urging them not to do so (Open Letter to Congress regarding Treasury bailout plan, 9/24/08). Obama keeps emphasizing that the mess was the fault of Republicans alone. But how is this argument credible when the law responsible for the financial meltdown enjoyed unanimous support from both parties?
NAFTA
It was quite emblematic of Sen. Obama that he has changed his position on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to suit whatever situation he is in. First, while running for the Senate in 2004, he said he supported NAFTA and thought there should be more trade agreements like it. (AP story 2/26/08). Then, while running against Hillary Clinton he blamed her for NAFTA’s impact on workers in the "rustbelt” states of Wisconsin and Ohio. But once he won the primary things changed. When asked if he would truly invoke the six-month clause in NAFTA for unilateral withdrawal, Obama showed his signature political reversal.
NAFTA created a trilateral trade bloc encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which was meant to foster greater trade between its members. It primarily lifted tariffs on goods shipped between the three countries but has caused economic turmoil both among American and Mexican labor, with unexpected loss of jobs and negative environmental impacts.
Nina Easton, a Washington editor for Fortune, noted in a June 18, 2008 article that "the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA,” something he had promised to do when locked in a close primary race with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Asked directly about whether he would move the U.S. out of the trade agreement, Obama said "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” Fortune magazine concluded that, despite once calling NAFTA "devastating” and "a big mistake,” Obama "was toning down his populist rhetoric” and had no intention of following through with his anti-NAFTA promises now that the primary battle was won.
In light of this evidence, can we believe any of the other commitments he‘s made?
THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY
Those who think Sen. Obama will appoint good Supreme Court justices should just take note of his long history of supporting some of the worst Bush appointees to the federal bench, including Thomas Griffith (D.C. Cir.), Susan Blake Neilson (6th Cir.), Milan Smith (9th Cir.), Sandra Segal Ikuta (9th Cir.), and Kent Jordan (3rd Cir.). The Neilson vote was particularly troubling as both senators from her own state "blue slipped” her for being "too extreme.”
And even when he does manage to muster the courage to vote against conservative appointees, he does it in a lukewarm and perfunctory manner, refusing to join Democratic Party filibuster efforts. This is deeply troubling. He voted cloture (to end any voting delay) on Priscilla Owen (5th Cir.) and Brett Kavanaugh (D.C. Cir.) both extremely conservative jurists, thus ensuring they would be confirmed.
SEN. JOE BIDEN AS VICE-PRESIDENT
Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as a running mate is particularly troubling and does not bode well for the decisions Obama is likely to make if elected president. Obama has presented Biden as someone who never forgot his roots, is a working class, regular guy.
The only problem with this characterization is Sen. Biden’s voting record. He was one of the main supporters of the Republican Bankruptcy Reform Bill that Pres. Clinton vetoed twice, only to have it signed into law by Pres. Bush in 2005, with Sen. Biden’s ardent support.
Criticizing the Bankruptcy Reform Bill, Arianna Huffington noted that the bill "makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection [average annual income of Americans who file for bankruptcy is less than $30K]; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child-support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of equity in homes and asset protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses.” (Salon.com, 3/05)
Jackson Williams noted, in "Joe Biden: No True Friend of Working Men and Women” (Huffington Post, 10/27/08), that Biden "didn’t just vote for it, he helped carry the water on it. Some Democrats tried to soften the bill with a series of amendments; for example, exempting military personnel at war in Iraq. Biden joined the majority of his colleagues—the Republicans and too many Democrats—in knocking down every possible change that was offered.”
Sen. Biden has built a reputation as someone who works tirelessly for credit card companies, with some critics even referring to him as the senator from Mastercard—rather than the senator from Delaware.
In addition, Biden voted for the War in Iraq and the Patriot Act, so it’s hard to understand how Sen. Biden is going to help bring about change in the new administration.
OTHER FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES
Obama called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him. (Interview with Jorge Ramos, El Mercurio, 6/11/08)
He heaped praise on the first George Bush saying, "You know, one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn’t get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That‘s all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people.” (Larry King Live 3/23/08).
And in a much-anticipated speech to America’s pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Obama towed the typical pro-Israel line. He urged that Jerusalem would belong to Israel, despite peace efforts currently underway which would allow the holy city to be shared among both Israelis and Palestinians. He unequivocally stated "Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” And "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” (AIPAC speech, 6/08).
MAKING A DEMAND
Before you vote for someone with such a checkered voting record, it might be worthwhile to make some demands on him, don’t you think? Or at the very least we should ask him to explain why he’s capitulated so many times.
I’m sure Sen. Obama would find such questions uncomfortable. In fact, even progressives find such inquiry bothersome: they are aware of Obama’s lamentable history of capitulation on votes that take away our civil rights, but nevertheless cling to their wish that Obama will be something other than what he has already proven himself to be.
But it’s not likely that he will be a transformative leader. He’s already announced economic advisors whose ideas are at the heart of the economic meltdown, like Austan Goolsbee, an aggressive free trader and subprime loan advocate, and former Clinton advisors, David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman, supporters of market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues such as the partial privatization of Social Security. ("Subprime Obama” by Max Fraser, The Nation, 1/24/08).
He has foreign policy advisors who helped take us into war, like Colin Powell, who in 2003 addressed the United Nations on behalf of the Bush Administration, outlining the reasons the U.S. had to invade Iraq (he also disturbingly, as a young Army Major, worked to suppress key evidence about the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam).
But that’s not all. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman spoke with journalists Allan Nairn and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos who discussed Obama’s foreign policy advisors (2/10/08). They noted that Obama proudly brought on to his team old cold warrior and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has boasted of having created the whole Afghan Jihadi movement; Anthony Lake, who was behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti during the Clinton years; General Merrill McPeak, who delivered U.S. fighter planes to Indonesia shortly after the Dili massacre in East Timor in 1991; and Dennis Ross who has pushed to subordinate the rights of Palestinians to the needs of the Israeli government.
What do you think the likelihood is that Obama will listen to us, once we’ve voted for him, without making any demands on him?
As Robert Scheer, a noted columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted on July 23, 2008, shortly after Obama voted for the FISA bill, "Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.” And Scheer made these remarks before Obama decided to support off-shore drilling, denounce a Supreme Court death penalty decision, and before he voted for the Wall Street bailout.
CONCERNING RALPH NADER
But we don’t have to vote for either Senators Obama or McCain, do we? Ralph Nader has a more impressive legislative record as an outsider than do Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain combined. And he has a proven record of fighting the culture of Washington. Just think of the Freedom of Information Act, Clean Air, Clean Water, automotive safety, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet despite these accomplishments, Obama and McCain do not believe they should even have to debate him.
What they don’t tell you is that the so-called independent Commission on Presidential Debates is actually a private corporation run by former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. The Commission, which was formed in 1987, is currently led by Frank Fahrenkopf, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and Paul Kirk, the former head of the Democratic National Committee. No wonder they won’t debate Nader or anyone else.
Of course they justify this by saying Nader isn’t polling well enough to include him in the debates. Yet, interestingly, both McCain and Obama were losing their respective primary races until they were let into televised debates. And there are well-known examples of how letting a candidate debate "mainstream” candidates can lead to a different outcome. Jesse Ventura won the governor’s race in Minnesota in 1998 when he was allowed to debate the Republican and Democratic Party candidates, going from 9 or 10 percent in the polls to ultimately winning the contest.
Ralph Nader polled at five percent and above at least four different times this year in national polls, and he even reached 10 percent in one poll in the state of Michigan (conducted by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, 4/15/08). This should have been sufficient to gain access to the presidential debates. Ross Perot got in the debates in 1992 even though he was polling below 10 percent. Perot went on to win 19 percent of the vote, and his warnings about NAFTA and deficit spending influenced Clinton policy and proved prescient. Afterwards, the two parties retaliated by creating a 15% threshold which ironically no candidate is likely to reach without being included in televised debates.
The worse part of the so-called presidential debates as they are currently produced is that two-party control ensures that the questions are not sufficiently hard-hitting. Isn’t it appalling that we saw three debates between Obama and McCain at a time our country is suffering its worst economic crisis, and no one asked these men "Why should Americans have any confidence either of you is the best choice to tackle these problems given that both of your political parties helped pass laws that made this crisis possible—or even inevitable?”
They also like to say that voting for Nader is throwing your vote away. The Democrats often cite the 2000 election to blame Nader for Bush’s victory. But they noticeably never mention the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton won because Ross Perot "spoiled” the race for George Bush’s father, an incumbent president. By the way, Clinton got only 43 percent of the vote in 1992 compared to 48 percent by Bush in 2000.
And they offer no explanation for why they haven’t worked on election reform since 2000. Imagine claiming your political party lost the presidency because the "winner” was declared even though he hadn’t won a majority of the votes cast? Then imagine doing nothing to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Isn’t it odd that the Democrats haven’t worked on election reform in the past eight years?
They never will change the system because the way things are now, they can be assured that they will be in office roughly half the time. They also count on people to accept their arguments that Nader and other third parties aren’t polling high enough to get your vote; that the real contest is between just two candidates.
If all else fails, they argue that it’s the most important election of your lifetime. I’m 43 years old and I’ve heard this argument each time the presidential race has come up.
If you accept these arguments, you are in effect rewarding the two parties for not fixing how we do elections in this country. You reward them for creating the Commission on Debates. You guarantee that things will not change. And you ensure that candidates that support single-payer health care, decent wages and pensions for workers, controls on corporations and a foreign policy based on achieving peace rather than driven by self-interest, cannot ever be heard.
Nader wants a more humane and democratic society. He’s seen that you can’t get anything done in Washington because senators like Obama and McCain ignore what’s good for Americans in pursuit of their own interests. Sure McCain talks like a maverick and Obama talks like a revolutionary, but look closely and you will see repeatedcapitulations to the very entities our government needs to get away from if we are to build a more democratic society.
WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE & EUGENE DEBS
Eugene Debs ran for president several times in the early 20th century. He advocated the right of women to vote at a time when it was not popular to do so and while other more successful politicians openly argued against giving women the right to participate directly in elections.
The general attitude among men was exemplified by Elihu Root, a former cabinet secretary to presidents McKinley and Roosevelt and winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace prize who said: "Suffrage would be a loss for women. I think so because suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, (…) but suffrage, if it means anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and politics is modified war. In politics there is a struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything which is adverse to the true character of woman. Woman in strife becomes hard, harsh, unlovable, repulsive…” (N.Y. Constitutional Convention, 1894).
President Theodore Roosevelt, himself, said "Personally I believe in woman’s suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it, because I do not regard it as a very important matter.” (Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbott, 11/10/1908). And President Grover Cleveland said, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” (1905).
Despite these sentiments Debs advocated this right. Yet he never obtained more than 6 percent of the vote. Let me ask you: Were the men who voted with Debs throwing their vote away? If you had lived in that era, would you have voted for him? Or would you have come up with an excuse for why it wasn’t important enough?
CONCLUSION
On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask "What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return "What’s that?” Or if I say, "You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, "No he doesn’t.”
At what point will there be intellectual honesty about what ishappening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be.
Do you really want to vote for someone who has already voted to take away your civil liberties because of some vague wish that he’ll act differently as president? Obama himself, speaking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, made a remark that could just as easily apply to him, and, unwittingly makes the case for why no one should vote for him: "We can’t afford a president whose positions change with the politics of the moment. We need a president who knows that being ready on day one means getting it right from day one.” (Salem, OR, 3/21/08).
If voting for war appropriations and taking away civil liberties was bringing us closer to a more democratic and egalitarian society, well, I would advocate it. But it isn’t doing that.
What is your breaking point? At what point do you decide that you’ve had enough?
What do they have to do to lose your vote?
Matt Gonzalez is Ralph Nader’s Vice-Presidential running mate on an Independent ticket.
That is lengthy. Hopefully you found a pleasure to read. (I did.)
Also there is an update to Howard Zinn's endorsement of Barack Obama.
Howard Zinn now says he's voting for Nader.
The famous historian lives in Massachusetts, where Obama is ahead by 20 points.
Zinn created a stir earlier when he said he was voting for Obama.
He legitimately took some heat for supporting the corporate Obama.
But late last night, Zinn admitted in an e-mail to our campaign that he made a mistake and now says he will vote for Nader.
And Zinn urges all people of conscience to vote for the true progressive in slam dunk states.
Of which there are now many.
(Zinn says that in non slam dunk states, he urges people to vote for Obama. We obviously disagree with that bit of advice.)
Or as Ralph Nader put it today:
"A vote for Nader/Gonzalez on November, rather than being wasted by piling onto an Obama landslide or McCain implosion, will produce a stronger hammer and watchdog for what millions of Americans want -- including public Medicare for all with private delivery and a living wage for the one in three workers who don't make one."
"Unless millions of voters of conscience choose the progressive hammer and watchdog of Nader/Gonzalez, millions of votes will be tactically wasted and serve only to increase the mandateless landslide of Barack Obama."
So, if you are ambivalent about this election, fear not.
If you live in a slam dunk state, follow the advice of Howard Zinn.
Vote Independent.
Vote Nader for President.
Onward to November
The Nader Team
PS: A lot of our supporters heard that Zinn said he was voting for Obama. Now that he has set the record straight, it's important that we pass along the word. So, forward this e-mail to your friends and family.
PS: Remember, if you donate $100 or more, we will ship to you the hard cover 40th Anniversary edition of Unsafe at Any Speed -- Ralph's historic expose of the American automobile industry -- autographed by the man himself. It was the book that launched the American consumer movement and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. This autographed edition is bound to become a rare collector's item after the election. So, get it now. Only a limited number left. (This book offer ends November 4, 2008 at 11:59 p.m.)
Forward to a friend Comment on our blog
I have no link for it and I do not see it online. C.I. forwarded me the e-mail. (I wrote about Howard's endorsement last week in "Howard's 'Zehn'.") I also disagree with Howard that only people in so-called 'safe' states should vote for Ralph. We'll never have change or a working democracy is the only ones who participate are in 'safe' states.
An old friend from college called today as he was looking at political news online. I was in a session and wasn't able to take the call then but his message was that "It's still ____ [C.I.]'s world and the rest of us are all just guests." (Sunny wrote, "He said put in that he was laughing when he said that.") When I called him back, he told me he'd e-mailed me something which is below:
"What If...All These Polls Are Wrong?" (Jake Tapper, ABC News' Political Punch):
Is it possible that every one of these polls is wrong, that the numbers are wiggity wiggity whack?
Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post gives voice to that notion, to the Obama campaign's deepest, darkest fear in “Accuracy Of Polls a Question In Itself; Skeptics Challenge Assumptions Made.” And our friends at the ever-optimistic, straw-grasping RNC are sending it out.
There "appears to be an undercurrent of worry among some polling professionals and academics," Abramowitz writes. "One reason is the wide variation in Obama leads: Just yesterday, an array of polls showed the Democrat leading by as little as two points and as much as 15 points. The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll showed the race holding steady, with Obama enjoying a lead of 52 percent to 45 percent among likely voters.
"Tap on Jake," he wrote on his e-mail. He then paired it with this by Ava and C.I."TV: Some moments should stay undercover" (Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review, October 12, 2008):
In fairness to the pollsters this go round, the loaded question they're asking is a loaded one not because of them. Matthew Rothschild, Bob Herbert and a lot of other idiots (include KPFK's Margret Prescod who was shameless last week) have created an environment where a basic question asked in every election poll is now a loaded one. They did that by repeatedly insisting that racists won't vote for Barack and by arguing repeatedly that those not voting for Barack were racists. We pointed out how damaging that was to the polls when the Democratic Party primary was ongoing. And if you check those polls against the actual results in many of the states Hillary won, you'll see less votes for Barack than the polling predicted.
Polling is not an exact science and the only poll that matters is the election vote. Polling works as an indicator (when it works) and not for who's going to win the election but for where campaigns should and should not invest time.
But it does not work when an egg head class has repeatedly told the American people that those who will not vote for Barack are racists. We've tried to figure out why idiots push that nonsense? Maybe they think it will intimidate on election day? Most likely, it won't. Most likely, people will say, "I voted for Barack" and won't vote for him. How many? No one knows. But when so many idiots have pushed to make a vote for anyone other than Barack a vote for racism, you can't expect to get honest answers in the polling.
Someone should have called them out on it a long time ago. We're told (by friends with the Barack campaign) that they're aware of the problem and it's created a huge issue for the campaign. They're trying to figure out what's the magic number to lead by. They have no clue -- not because they're idiots but because Idiot Rothschild, Idiot Herbert and so many others have made it impossible to get an honest answer from the most basic polling question of whom are you going to vote for?
Smart observers have already grasped that even exit polls on election day will now be in question due to idiots turning "who are you going to vote for?" into a loaded question. If Barack loses (we have no idea who will win), some of the harsh words should be aimed at the people who repeatedly attempted to make it vote-for-Barack-or-be-a-racist. It was stupid. And it never should be allowed to happen again. If Barack loses (and he may win, we're not saying he's going to lose), a large part of the blame will have to go to those who so poisoned the well that his campaign was denied accurate polling numbers. (That's not arguing that the problems in the primaries don't matter. In this, we're speaking of the general election phase and how the polling is damaged -- a fact that became very clear as the primary process wrapped up.)
Some people never give honest answers when polled. That's a given. It's a small number. Equally true is the die-hard Republicans aren't going to worry that their supporting their candidate means someone screams "Racism!" But by refusing to run from the left, Barack has made this election about swing-voters and independents. That's the area that's most effected by this vote-Barack-or-you're-a-racist nonsense. (Most Hillary supporters heard that false charge so many times that they no longer give a damn.) And if you look at polls on the election that go beyond just who you will vote for, you can already see disturbing trends for Barack with independent voters. With independents, for example, last week's polling found off the chart sympathy for Palin. It was a much larger number of independents than regularly say they will vote for McCain-Palin. Are they just more sensitive to the sexism aimed at Palin?
Could be. But we don't know because the polling is flawed more so than in any other election. The Obama campaign made a big ad buy in a state they're not going to win. We asked friends with the campaign about that. (The state has not gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1976 and Barack lost that state's primary to Hillary. Large regions of the state will not go to Barack.) They don't believe they have a fighting chance but the polls say otherwise and no one wants to be wrong. While Barack has his own personal money tree, the fact of the matter is that money should have gone into a swing state and everyone knows what the swing states are. They are the same ones from 2004 and 2000 more or less. Instead, because of the polling, they're spending a large amount of money in a losing state. (Much larger than the press is aware of. They've also gone the syndication route and tried appealing to demographics that didn't pan out in the primary when they advertised late nights and in the afternoon in the same state.)
Saying he can't win that state is a prediction. But it's based on pattern and it's based on looking at the state's big race this year (the US Senate) where an incumbent very much tied to the White House is leading outside the margin of the error (and that was before last week's debate which a friend with one of the state's PBS stations told us was a disaster for the Democrat who was tag teamed by the Republican and the Libertarian candidate). That state is not rejecting the candidate so closely tied to the White House. That state is not embracing the 'change' Senate candidate. And if you compare the 2002 polls when the same Republican won his Senate seat, you see that a huge western section of the state, left out in the polling due to a number of issues, turned out for that candidate. The same section is being left out again in the polling and he probably has that as sewn up as he did in 2002.
But Barack's got to spend money in that state and we actually feel sorry for him on that issue. Despite the gas bags self-love, polls are not an instrument/resource to say "My candidate's winning!" but a tool to clue a campaign in on where it needs to focus the attention. Obama-Biden is flying blind and, if they lose, post-analysis better include the gas bags who created a climate in which who-are-you-going-to-vote-for became a loaded question.
As he pointed out, the press is playing catch up with Ava and C.I. On the phone we talked about how it has always seemed like the world played catch up to C.I. We were swapping old stories on that and, before you knew it, we were trying to figure out a day when we could all get together. I told him if it is on a Saturday, C.I. will most likely have no problem attending. Now that she (and Ava, Kat and Wally) are back on the road speaking, it is much easier to schedule it on a Saturday.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, October 29, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the SOFA updates, Bully Boy's bored in the White House, Iraq launches an investigation into the attack on Syria, Palin talks energy, Gonzalez talks values, and more.
Yesterday US Secretary of State Condi Rice met in DC with Massud Barzani who is president of the Kurdish region of Iraq and he told the press that the main point stressed by Rice was the treaty masquerading as a Status Of Forces Agreement. Today Barzani went to the White House to meet with the Bully Boy.
Seated side-by-side, the two provided an Oval Office photo op and Bully Boy declared, "We had a discussion today on uh on several major topics. We talked about the progress on the election law and on the hydrocarbon law, but we also talked about the strategi -- Status Of Forces Agreement, called the SOFA. President Barzani has been a very strong advocate of the Iraqi government passing the SOFA, and I appreciate that. I informed the President we received amendments today from the government. We're analyzing those amendments. We obviously want to be uh we want to be uh helpful and constructive without undermining basic principles. And I remain very hopeful and confident that the SOFA will get passed. And Mr. President, you get a lot of credit for your leadership on that issue." Barzani chose to speak through a translator. His final statement (other than "thank you") was translated into English as: "And in terms of SOFA, we do believe that it is in the interest of the Iraqi government, it's in the interest of this country, and we have been and we will continue to support it and support its ratification." That led to Barzani correcting the translator with "Iraqi people."
Translator: And in terms of SOFA, we do believe that it is in the interest of the Iraqi government --
Massud Barzani: Iraqi people.
Translator: -- it's in the interest of this country and we have been and we will continue to support it and support its ratification.
That is not a minor point especially considering the seperation impulses re: the Iraqi government on the part of the KRG. Dan Eggen (Washington Post) describes Bully Boy's remarks and attitude as "mild encouragement" which comes after "strong suggestions from other administration officials that a compromise is unlikely. White House press secretary Dana Perino said on Tuesday, for example, that the "door is pretty much shut" on further negotiations." "Mild encouragement" might be too strong. When speaking Bully Boy rarely looked at Barzani and when Barzani spoke (except during the "thank you" sentence), Bully Boy was looking everywhere else and making weird grimaces (most notable when Barzani referred to "some major problems").
Yesterday at the US State Dept, deputy spokesperson Robert Wood refused to comment on the amendments being reported stating he had no seen them: "But until the Iraqi government compiles these concerns into a, you know, onto a piece of paper and forward it to us officially I can't really respond." Today spokesperson Sean McCormack handled the press briefing and the amendments were the first thing raised by the press. We did we received some comments from the Iraqi government. . . . The SOFA, yes, indeed we did. However, you'll be disappointed, I suspect, in my response Matt [Matthew Lee, Associated Press]. Since we just received these today we're going to take a careful look at them, give it a thoughtful review and once we have had a chance to assess them we'll provide a reply to the Iraqi government. So the process continues." [This echoed Dana Perino's earlier comment at the White House today, "I've not seen them. Our negotiating team in Baghdad has them. It's possible somebody else here in the building has, but I have not seen them. And we're going to decline to comment on the content of them and our reaction to them until we have a little bit more time to look at them more closely.") Matthew Lee pointed out how little time was left ("you've got a two-month lifespan" before the UN mandate expires December 31st) and McCormack replied, "I'm not aware of any substantial work at all on any alternative." He then clarified that with, "I don't think anybody's put pen to paper on anything."
Unrelated to Iraq -- unless you ask a question about Iraq -- the US State Dept does take seriously those random polls. And they are trying to provide more video content. State Dept spokesperson Sean McCormack wants you to ask questions directly and to do so by video ("less than 60 seconds"). They're calling it "Briefing 2.0."
Sean McCormack: The idea is that you will be able to ask questions of me directly by posting a video on YouTube. So what you need to do in order to participate in this is go to the State Dept channel on YouTube, click on this video and follow the instructions after that. It's pretty easy. This should be a lot of fun. I know it's going to be fun for me. I get to hear from the press corps and their questions every single day and give them answers. This is opportunity for me to hear directly from you and for you to hear directly from me, whatever happens to be on your mind. So give it a try. We're going to try to get to as many of your questions as we possibly can. If we don't get to it first time around, keep trying. So go to www.youtube/statevideo and follow the instructions after that.
Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reported this morning on the proposed amendments to the treaty which "would give Iraqi authorities the right to determine whether a U.S. service member was on- or off-duty when he or she committed an alleged crime outside American bases, where such an American would be tried. It also would allow authorities to inspect all U.S. cargo enterting the nation. Iraqi politicians see the changes as a way to preserve Iraqi sovereignty." Mary Beth Sheridan and Karen DeYoung (Washington Post) explain al-Maliki's "cabinet now wants the agreement to include language to 'confirm that Iraqi land would not be the center for aggression' against its neighbors, said Planning Minister Ali Baban, who attended Tuesday's meeting. . . . The inspection demand, along with an explicit ban on attacks on neighboring countries, reflects concerns that the United States might launch an attack on Iran from Iraqi territory." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) notes that the changes sought by Baghdad include killing the clause that allows Iraqis to ask the US to remain in their country past 2011. Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshya Zebari told the BBC today, "The Americans have accepted to look seriously into this amendment. Some of them, actually, are language-related formulations, not substantive, but some other amendments are substantive changes, which I personally doubt will go down well with the American side." Arash Parsa (Iran's Press TV) explains, "Iraqi groups have reacted to the security pact in different ways. For example, certain ultranationalist Kurdish leaders have welcomed SOFA and the US military presence, in line with their traditional policy, just because they believe it might lay the groundwork for realizing their dream of an 'independent Kurdish country'. However, Iraqi Sunni groups which mainly rely on an Arab nationalist ideology, see the US military presence in their country as a serious infringement on Iraq's sovereignty, hence they are reluctant to get too close to the Americans. Shia groups have also a clear picture of the situation in their mind; after the Shia clergy adopted an uncompromising stance against the pact, every Shia politician is aware that he or she must pay a heavy price for supporting such a humilating pact. Of course, that is, if there were any Shia politicians who are ready to sacrifice their country's sovereignty for short-term interests."
At the State Dept today, Sean McCormack also declared that despite the announcements by the Syrian government, the US school and cultural center remain open. That he knew or said he did. But will the US Embassy in Syria shut down today? He didn't know. Will the US Embassy close due to protests that were scheduled for today? He didn't know. He said that was something each embassy determines based on their own security assessment. Earlier at the White House, Dana Perino had directed the press to the State Dept for questions regarding "the possible closure of the embassy". Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) quotes al-Maliki's spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh declaring, "The Iraqi government rejects the strike by the U.S. planes on Syrian territories as part of the policy of the Iraqi government and its constitution which does not allow the Iraqi land as a base to conduct such attacks on neighboring countries. The Iraqi government has initiated an investigation on this incident and called for the U.S. forces not to repeat such an act." Parker also notes Iraq's Parliament also condemned the US attack on Syria. Ellen Knickmeyer (Washington Post) reported this morning on a letter to the United Nation and its Security Council that Syria delivered which "urged Iraq to investigate the U.S. raid and said the attack came as Syria had been increasing efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq." The Iraqis are going to investigate and Reuters reveals that Iraq's National Media Center declared today, "The Syrian side will be provided with all details and information when investigation is concluded."
Turning to some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing that claimed the lives of 2 people working for the Ministry of Education, a Baquba roadside bombing that claimed 1 life and left fifteen people wounded and a Mosul car bombing that claimed the life of 1 police officer. Reuters notes six other police offiers were wounded in the Mosul car bombing and notes another Mosul bombing that wounded three Iraqi soldiers and another Mosul roadside bombing which left three police officers injured, a Ramadi roadside bombing claimed 1 life and wounded another person, and a Kirkuk sticky bomb resulted in two police officers being injured. Reuters also notes a roadside bombing near an ice cream shop claimed 5 lives and left seventeen people wounded.
Shootings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Balad Ruz home invasion in which 3 people were murdered ("the father of the Sahwa leader, his daughter and her husband") and fourteen more ere wounded. Reuters notes 1 Iraqi soldier shot dead in Mosul and 1 Iraqi police officer shot dead in Mosul.
Iraq doesn't have sovereignty currently, let's not assume it has justice. Two years ago three American service members were killed: Thomas Tucker, Kristian Menchaca and David Babineau. Tim Cocks and Peter Graff (Reuters) explain that two of the three accused in the attack "were found not guilty" yesterday but the third, Ibrahim Karim al-Qaraghuli, was judged to be guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Whether he's guilty or not, who knows? Whether there's justice in Iraq is debatable. However, David Babineua was killed while Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker were spirited off and tortured before they were killed. So we'll note the conviction. Equally true is that statements were made connecting the assault to the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old
Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the murder of her 5-year-old sister and both parents by US soldiers (not Babineua, Menchaca or Tucker). In 2006, Gregg Zoroya (USA Today) reported on how Justin Watt (who was not part of the conspiracy) came forward with what he had been hearing. This was while US soldiers Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker were missing and, though the two were not involved in the war crimes, they were the ones chosen for 'punishment' as The Sunday Telegraph revealed in December 2006. Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) explains today, "The attack was one chapter in a brutal history of this army unit. Just four months earlier, American soldiers from the same unit raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killed her, her parents and sister, burning the bodies afterward.
Four soldiers were convicted and sentenced in the rape case and a fifth soldier was discharged from the military. A sixth had already left the military when the others were court-martialed; he is scheduled to be tried in federal court. None of the soldiers captured and killed on June 16 were among those implicated in the rape and murder case." Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) also notes Abeer and explains that the trial involved testimony "from witnesses who were unwilling to show up in court." October 22nd, Mike wrote, "Abeer is the 14-year-old girl who was gang-raped while her parents and five-year-old sister were killed in the next room. Then Abeer was murdered. All the US soldiers involved in the war crimes have been punished except for Steven D. Green." Mike noted Brett Barrouquere (AP) reporting on what happened after Steven D. Green was taken into custody -- he became a "chatterbox" and was "voluntarily making nearly two dozen statements while in custody". Green, who was admitted in the military on one of their moral waivers, has been fingered by the other soldiers as the ring leader. He has maintained he is innocent in the past but his lawyers are now floating an insanity plea. Unlike the other soldiers, Green had already been discharged before the war crimes were revealed. For that reason, he will be tried in a civilian court.
Turning to the US presidential race. Julia Preston (New York Times) reports Democratic presidential nominee Barack "Obama embraces new law-and-order language adopted in the Democratic Party platform at the convention. Although Americans are 'welcoming and generous,' the platform states, 'those who enter our country's borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law.' Instead of the Democrats' emphasis, as recently as last year on integrating illegal immigrants into society, the platform says, 'We must require them to come out of the shadows and get right with the law.' Heather Higginbottom, the Obama campaign's director for policy, said Mr. Obama had not altered his basic views. If elected, Mr. Obama would insist that illegal immigrants pay back taxes and fines, learn English and go to the back of the immigration line to become legal." That is so offensive but not at all surprising. Latinos didn't favor Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primary a 'little,' they favored her overwhelmingly and it was because there was a relationship and a record. It was ignored by the liars of Panhandle Media but Latinos can always be discarded and trashed by the likes of Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders, et al. (Phillip Rodriguez' Latinos '08 documentary told the truth the liars of Panhandle Media refused to.) So it's no surprise that the vindictive Obama political machine would create one of the most offensive party planks regarding undocumented workers as a form of punishment. Independent journalist David Bacon has long covered the challenges immigrants to the US face and his latest written report is "Silence on Immigration" (Foreign Policy In Focus) which notes of the next president, whomever he or she is, "Something is clearly wrong with the priorities of immigration enforcement. Hungry and desperate workers go to jail and get deported. The government protects employers and seeks to turn a family-based immigration system into a managed labor supply for business. Yet national political campaigns say less and less about it. Immigrant Latino and Asian communities feel increasingly afraid and frustrated. Politicians want their votes, but avoid talking about the rising wave of arrests, imprisonment, and deportations." Bacon's latest book is Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press) and it was published last month. Yesterday Dissident Voice featured Lance Selfa calling out PDA (Pathetic Democrats of America). Today Joshua Frank offers "Note to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After Election Day?" which includes the following:
Does [Norman] Solomon even understand what it means to "put up a fight"? And what's with the notion that progressives will "apply pressure" once Obama wins? They have no cash and he's already going to receive most of their votes. What are they going to do to pressure him, poke him in his ribs? Cause a stink by farting through the halls of Congress? Obama may actually listen to us if he thought progressives were considering to vote for a guy like Ralph Nader, which is the point Nader seems to be making by campaigning in swing states this week. Nader knows how to put up a real fight, one not mired in hypotheticals and fear-mongering, so he's pressuring Obama where it matters most.
Of course, such a direct confrontation to Obama's backward policies ruffles the slacks of many devout liberals. But that is the point. Progressives are not flush with cash and as we all should know, flashing the almighty buck is usually the best way to grab a politician's attention. But the only thing we have at our immediate disposal now is votes. These crooks need us to get elected. Obama already has the majority of left-wing support shored up despite his resistance to embrace our concerns. Imagine if he had to earn our votes instead of receiving our support without having to do a thing for it?
So let's prepare for what's ahead. Obama may win next Tuesday, but what will happen to the movements that have been sidelined in order to help get the Democrats elected? What will become of the environmental movement after January 20? Will it step up to oppose Obama's quest for nuclear power and clean coal? Will the antiwar movement work to force Obama to take a softer approach toward Iran? Will they stop the troop increase in Afghanistan?
These are but a few of the questions I'd like progressive supporters of Obama to answer. I've yet to hear exactly how they will pressure an Obama administration. In fact, I don't think they will. George W. Bush will be gone and that will be enough for most. Progressives faced a similar confrontation in 1992 when Bill Clinton took office, but without much of a fight we saw neoliberalism take hold in the form of NAFTA and we endured the Telecommunications Act, Welfare Reform, a forest plan written by the logging industry, the dismantling of Glass-Steagall, the Iraq Liberation Act, and much much more.
What makes the Democrats believe that they even deserve our support now? President Bush has indeed been bad, but his most egregious policies were upheld and supported by the majority of Democrats. They gave Bush the green light to whack Saddam while they controlled the Senate. They supported the PATRIOT Act (Obama voted for its reconfirmation), the War on Terror, Bush's increased Pentagon budget, a no-strings Wall Street bailout and two awful Supreme Court confirmations. You may also remember that two years ago we ushered Democrats back into office with the belief that they might actually fight Bush on Iraq. Instead we've had nothing but complicity, with Democrats time and again supporting increased war funds.
Ralph Nader is the independent presidential candidate and Matt Gonzalez is his running mate. Staying on a the topic of the foolish such as Norman Solomon, we'll note this from Team Nader:
Donate $3 now to Nader/Gonzalez.
Why?
Three is the number of principled journalists who this week recognized the long term benefit behind Ralph's run for President. (That's a big number for the week before the election -- trust us.)
Before we get to the three, check out one Norman Solomon, who again this week makes the tired old argument that Obama is the least worst of the two major party candidates.
And therefore educated citizens should not risk a vote for Nader/Gonzalez.
Compare this lily-livered Norman Solomon approach to the three principled ones who weighed in on the Nader/Obama/McCain contest.
Number one, we have Alexander Cockburn, writing in this week's issue of The Nation magazine.
Cockburn has been looking this month for one positive reason to vote for Obama. He's still looking.
In an article titled "Against Obama," Cockburn makes the point that:
"Abroad, Obama stands for imperial renaissance. He has groveled before the Israel lobby and pandered to the sourest reflexes of the cold war era. At home he has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He has been fearless in offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful."
Number two, we have William Greider.
Greider wrote an article, also in The Nation this week, titled "Nader's Stubborn Idealism."
In it, Greider argues that Ralph is "a man of political substance trapped in an era of easy lies."
Greider quotes Ralph as saying "So long as progressives are willing to settle for the least worst alternative, they will remain ignored and excluded from power."
And number three, we have Allison Kilkenny who makes a similar point in the Huffington Post this week, in an article titled "The Least Worst Trap."
So, you have your three principled journalists.
And your Norman Solomon style unprincipled ones.
The principled ones will join with us -- the Nader/Gonzalez campaign and you, our loyal supporters -- on the winning side of history.
With the end of corrupt political party domination of our soci ety.
When Obama/Biden engage in another risky foreign war.
When a Democratic Congress rubber stamps their rightward drift.
But to build toward victory, we need your help now.
To drive upward our vote totals.
And to send a message to corporate Washington -- we're here, we're organized, we're not going away.
So, donate your $3 today.
Join Nader/Gonzalez on the winning side of history.
Onward to November
Meanwhile Jake Tapper (ABC News) covers the Los Angeles Times refusal to release the videotape of Barack partying with unsavory types. John Bentley (CBS News) notes Republican presidential candidate John McCain has called for the paper to release the 2003 videotape which includes Barack with that man he barely knows Bill Ayers as well as Bernardine Dohrn: "We should know about their relationship, including, apparently information that is held by the Los Angeles Times concerning an event that Mr. Ayers attended with a PLO spokesman. The Los Angeles Times refuses to make that videotape public." Scott Conroy (CBS News) reports Governor Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, raised the issue:
"What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support," Palin said.
Over the chorus of loud boos from the crowd, Palin pointed out that the Los Angeles Times has refused to release the videotape of the banquet, which was explained in detail in the story that the newspaper published over six months ago.
"Maybe some politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own," she said. "In this case, we have a newspaper willing to throw aside even the public's right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed."
This comes as McCain-Palin releases a new advertisement. At the campaign's official blog, Matt Lira explains (link also has the video for the ad): "Today, McCain-Palin 2008 released its latest web ad, entitled "Preconditions." The ad highlights that while Barack Obama has pledged to meet with Iran and other state sponsors of terror without preconditions, Iran has outlined several preconditions of their own. For a meeting, Iran is demanding that the United States cease its support of Israel and that all American forces must leave the Middle East. The question is what will Barack Obama do?" Meanwhile the Christ-child climbed back on the cross today. Jake Tapper reports Barack whined that John McCain has "been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book." He went on to claim that McCain will next call him "a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten!" McCain spokesperson Tucker Bonds responded, "No one cares what Barack Obama does with his toys, but Americans do care that he wants to raise taxes, add a trillion dollars in new spending and redistribute your hard-earned paycheck as he sees fit." On the plus, it should be noted that -- unlike MSNBC stooge Rachel Maddow -- Barack grasps that there is a difference between a Socialist and a Communist.
Palin gave a speech on energy today in Toledo Ohio and Julie Bosman (New York Times) is one of the few reporting on that:
Standing on a riser above a concrete floor, under the glare of fluorescent lighting, Ms. Palin addressed fewer than 200 people, mostly employees of Xunlight Corporation, a spin-off from the University of Toledo that manufactures solar energy implements.
She called for greater energy independence, blaming decades of presidents and legislators for failing to achieve it.
"It's been 30 years' worth of failed energy policies in Washington, 30 years where we've had opportunities to become less reliant on foreign sources, and 30 years of failure in that area," Ms. Palin said. "We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly 20 Congresses and seven presidents."
Ms. Palin also laid the blame at the feet of her Democratic counterpart, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed offshore drilling. Mr. Biden was overheard telling a supporter on the campaign trail that he did not support clean-coal technology in the United States.
AP states she "called for a 'clean-break' from Bush energy policies, which she said have relied too much on imported oil." CNN reports that McCain will appear on Larry King Live tonight.
Meanwhile, Ralph's running mate Matt Gonzalez issues his own important statements:
Watching the Democrats in the final weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush's agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.
PELOSI'S PROMISE TO END THE WAR
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, "Pelosi vows no 'blank check' on Iraq funds." (1/8/07). In her own words: "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions." Rick Klein of the Globe noted "Pelosi's comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation's finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate."
Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they've gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of "no blank check?"
REID'S FILIBUSTER RULE
Sen. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has complained that the Republicans have filibustered (a procedure used by the minority party to delay voting on legislation) more times in the last two years than in the entire history of the United States to explain why he can't move forward a progressive agenda. First he said it was over 70 times, then adjusted it by saying it was 65 times (Las Vegas Sun 3/6/08); yet still the highest for any two-year period (the previous record was 57 filibusters) (Politico, 3/6/08; Gov.Track.us 4/15/08). But Sen. Reid's frustration has proven to be a red-herring. Did you know that Reid lets the Republicans filibuster telephonically, meaning that he doesn't require that they physically present themselves on the floor of the Senate? Why is he making it easy on them? Is this what an opposition party looks like?
REPUBLICAN CLASS ACTION REFORM
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee for president, has a long history of voting against the interest of the American people, and specifically, the working class. Before entering the presidential contest, he supported the Republican Class Action Reform Bill, which made it harder for class-action lawsuits to be brought in the state courts. State courts are exactly where consumer protection lawsuits and recent wage and hour claims have succeeded in improving the lives of workers and helped them obtain better wages and breaks during work hours have succeeded.
Progressive commentators at the time called it a thinly veiled special-interest extravaganza. Journalist David Sirota noted "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop 'frivolous' lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers." (The Nation, 6/26/06). So why did Obama vote for it?
PATRIOT ACT & FISA AMENDMENT
Sen. Obama supported one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in recent history, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which extended an earlier law granting law enforcement expanded powers to search telephone, e-mail, and financial and medical records, in addition to granting the federal government a host of other powers to combat so-called domestic terrorism. After saying he would oppose it if elected to the U.S. Senate (NOW questionnaire, 9/10/03), in July 2005, Obama voted for it.
But this wasn't enough. After entering the presidential race and running on a "change" message, Obama vowed in February of 2008 to vote against—and filibuster if necessary--the FISA bill amendment (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) that gave immunities to telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. This eavesdropping program clearly violated the privacy of law-abiding Americans at the behest of the president, and made the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover seem tame by comparison. Those voting in favor of the bill didn't even first require full disclosure to see how deep the illegal conduct extended and agreed to apply the law retroactively.
Despite his promises to the contrary, and despite the vehement protests of many of his supporters, when the FISA bill came to the Senate for a vote this past July, Sen. Obama voted for it without explaining how this vote fit in with his change message or reconciled with his repeated claims he was going to protect the American people from repeated assaults on civil liberties by President Bush. Here was his chance to lead and make good on his promise, and what did he do?
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the FISA bill "an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance" (ACLU press release, 7/9/08). Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office called the bill "a Constitutional nightmare" and noted "with one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant."
Obama even voted to stop debate on the bill so he could get back to the campaign trail. How ironic is it that he was in a hurry to give more speeches about change and hope but couldn't find the time or integrity to convert these ideas into action?
On the eve of the vote MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted "I'm betting that [Pres. Bush's] wildest dreams did not include the prospect that Congress -- a Democratic-led Congress -- would help him cover up his rimes. Yet that is exactly what the US Senate is poised to do." (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 7/8/08).
OFF-SHORE DRILLING
As Sen. John McCain started to call for domestic drilling to ease our dependence on foreign oil, rather than debate the scientific and economic illogic of the position, Sen. Obama announced that he agreed with McCain. Reversing a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling, Sen. Obama led his party's reversal, offering no explanation for how this would ease oil prices, particularly as experts noted that drilling would likely have an almost imperceptible impact on oil prices in the near future.
As Lester Brown and Jonathan Dorn of the Earth Policy Institute noted in "Drilling For Oil Is Not The Answer" (9/30/08) "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that lifting the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) moratorium [of the lower 48 states] would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day--less than 1 percent of current consumption."
Furthermore "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon." Even if we combined the two regions in question, it wouldn't amount to much of an impact on oil prices: "Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents--and this would not be seen for at least another decade."
Proponents of drilling have also exaggerated theenvironmental safety of current off-shore drilling and oil production technology in general. There is widespread evidence that current drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is already leading to serious pollution and spills. After reviewing data from the National Response Center, the Houston Chronicle found there had been 595 oil spills across four state coastlines, totaling roughly 9 million gallons spilled in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ("Spills from hurricanes staining the coast" by Dina Cappiello, 11/13/05). So why is Sen. Obama, who claims to care about the environment, now advocating off-shore drilling?
DEATH PENALTY
In June of 2008, the conservative Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty in cases of child rape (Kennedy v. Louisiana held that states may not impose the death penalty for the commission of a crime that did not result in the death of the victim), a decision that surprised even death penalty opponents who hailed it as an important step toward full abolition of the death penalty. Sen. Obama's response? He quickly called a press conference to denounce the decision. Obama stated that he agreed with the extreme conservative minority, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas. Despite the many known racial and class inequities inherent in the death penalty, a practice abolished and abhorred in most of the rest of the world, Obama celebrates that he has always been a supporter of it.
On the campaign trail, Sen. Obama likes to highlight death penalty legislation that he sponsored while a member of the Illinois legislature, to show his commitment to reform. But let's be clear, he didn't work on laws to address the disproportionate rate of death penalty convictions of African-Americans, but rather a law to require videotaped interrogations of death penalty suspects. Yes, something we can applaud, but something many critics have noted merely greases the wheels of this injustice.
Most disquieting of all, as a state legislator, Obama voted "to expand the list of death-eligible crimes" (Chicago Tribune, 5/2/07), despite admitting in his own allegedly soul-searching memoir that the death penalty "does little to deter crime." (The Audacity of Hope, 2006).
There is more, that's all that will fit into the snapshot.
iraqmcclatchy newspapersleila fadelthe washington postmary beth sheridankaren deyoung
dan eggen
ernesto londono
ellen knickmeyerthe los angeles timesned parkerdamien mcelroy
jake tapper
david bacon
pbs
joshua frank
the new york timesalissa j. rubin
scott conroycbs news
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