Howard Wooldridge : Rocky Mountain High / 3

Howard "Cowboy" Wooldridge in Washington, D.C.,  with his wife Karen..
Misty and me:
Fighting pot prohibition in Colorado, Part III

An analysis of the 2012 state initiatives on cannabis.

By Howard Wooldridge / The Rag Blog / January 8, 2013

Howard "Cowboy" Wooldridge, the founder and director of Citizens Opposing Prohibition (COP), is a Texan since 1994 and a former Michigan police officer and detective. Wooldridge has become one of the most effective advocates in Washington, D.C., for ending marijuana prohibition and the "war on drugs.” Howard -- with his horse (and “partner in politics”) Misty -- took part in the successful Colorado campaign in support of Amendment 64, to legalize cannabis for recreational and industrial purposes there.

This is the third in a three-part series written for The Rag Blog.

The vote this fall has been heard “around the world.” The voters of Colorado and Washington cracked a big hole in the world-wide "Berlin Wall" of marijuana prohibition. Even Holland with its system of cannabis coffeehouses does not measure up to the full legalization passed in these two states.

I just read an article in Der Spiegel (Germany’s Time magazine) pointing out all the policy difficulties this vote has generated for President Obama and leaders of South and Central America. The light is now shining brightly at the end of the tunnel.

And there is no going back. Even if federal agents crack down hard in Colorado and Washington state, try finding a jury to convict "offenders" of anything. While in Colorado I had a meeting with Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett. He reiterated to me what he'd said on 60 Minutes: seating a jury of 12 on a marijuana case would be impossible. Jury nullification is a fact in these two states and it won’t go away now.

Beyond our borders, the ripples from the Colorado and Washington waves are striking forcefully, especially in Mexico and Central America. Mexico’s new President Peña Nieto has already called for a review of policy. He asked, "Why should my government enforce marijuana prohibition, when, if that product reaches Colorado, it becomes legal?"

Guatemala’s President Perez Molina has openly called to legalize all drugs to reduce or end the violence and suffering in his drug-transit country. These and other voices are emboldened by the vote, even as the power of the "gringos" is still felt. However, the United States is NOT abandoning its prohibition position, no matter that President Obama was a stoner, not just a toker.

What is all the yelling and screaming about? In Colorado, effective December 10, 2012, anyone 21 and older may possess one ounce (28 grams) of marijuana and grow their own up to six plants (three seedlings and three mature plants). And you know some will grow eight or t10 plants (like doing five miles per hour over the speed limit, cops usually won’t stop you for less than 10 mph over).

Also, the state will set up, by July 1, 2013, a system to sell marijuana in designated, regulated stores. The issue of driving under the influence of marijuana was not addressed. Police officers will continue to employ existing law to arrest for DUI marijuana and other non-alcoholic drugs that impair driving. Amendment 64 is now part of the Colorado constitution. This is important because the legislature cannot mess with it. Taxing marijuana, and how much, are still up in the air.

In Washington, marijuana up to one ounce became legal for 21 and over on December 6, 2012. Cultivation for personal use remains illegal. The state Liquor Control Board will develop, by December 2013, a system to sell marijuana. The Chairman of the House Committee on Public Safety, Roger Goodman, will be in charge of this project. Goodman is a committed cannabis legalizer.

As part of Initiative 502, Washington declared that any driver with five or more nanograms of tetrahydrocannibinol (THC, one of cannabis' active compounds) in their blood will be considered DUIM. Of interest, the experts credit the marijuana issue with getting an 81% voter turnout, the highest in the nation. The issue turned out voters for and against, and the side favoring an end to prohibition won.

Washington's tax scheme is set. Count on a 75% tax on the final product. That translates (say Washington government officials) into $12 per gram, currently the illicit market price for quality bud. At that price the cartels can still make a healthy profit by undercutting the price of the legal product.

Both states have a heavy responsibility to set up production, processing, and retail selling correctly. Literally, the eyes of the world are upon them.

Both states' initiatives also legalized the growing of cannabis hemp (for fiber, fuel, food, and thousands of other non-drug uses) but this will likely have zero impact. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration will still bust anyone growing on the large scale needed for industrial hemp.

Michigan also had five important city votes that demonstrate the will of the voters. The City of Detroit voted 3 to 1 to legalize marijuana. Even extremely conservative Grand Rapids (more churches per square mile than any city in the USA) made simple possession a civil infraction, like a parking ticket. All five votes ended in victory for the anti-prohibition side. Politicians have been put on notice of the will of the people. They ignore these votes at their peril.

What does that mean? In Texas, six-term congressman and former federal officer Sylvester Reyes LOST to legalizer Beto O’Rourke in El Paso this year. Reyes made legalization an issue and he lost. O’Rourke comes to the Congress in January as the first or second freshman elected who voters know favors legalization of marijuana. Jared Polis (D-CO) was probably the first.

The last of the good news came from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They voted YES to cannabis as medicine, an issue between doctor and patient. The Bay State makes 18 of the 50 states where God's medicine is legal at the state level. One in three adult Americans now has legal access to medical cannabis.

Sadly, Arkansas just missed legalizing medicinal cannabis. The vote was about two percentage points shy of common sense and personal liberty. Still, since it was close, and it was the first time any easing of cannabis prohibition had appeared on a Southern state ballot, supporters are putting their shoulder to the wheel and preparing for another day, another election.

Oregon’s Measure 80 failed by three points as a blame game divided supporters. Did it fail because it was not properly funded? Or was it so badly written funders knew it would fail and thus did not waste their money? M80 would have legalized possession and growing marijuana for adults without regard to how much one could possess. The most controversial part was a commission to regulate growing and selling that would have five growers elected at large and two appointed by the government. In other words, growers would be regulating themselves. This may have been what doomed the initiative.

Anti-prohibition forces have realized the goal of the first states going legal. nationally; they are re-energized, knowing that it has become a question of "when," not "if." The Empire will strike back as hard and as long as it can.

The DEA and narcotics officers want the paychecks, overtime, and job security. They will continue to spew lies and try to make Americans afraid of a brave new world of regulated and taxed marijuana. But they will lose. As a retired detective, I will grieve for each colleague slain in this useless, senseless prohibition. Which officer, which grower, which dealer will be the last to die?

Howard Wooldridge was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, November 30, 2012. You can listen to the podcast here:

[Harold Wooldridge, who was a Michigan police officer and detective for 18 years, co-founded Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and is executive director of Citizens Opposing Prohibition (COP).]

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Harry Targ : The Two Faces of the 2012 Elections

Tea Party favorite Mike Pence is the new governor of Indiana. Photo by Darron Cummings / AP.
Electoral contradictions:
The progressive majority and
the reactionary state governments

Challenges to a progressive future do not come just from Washington, Wall Street, or the Pentagon. In 2012, state election results led to single-party control of 37 state governments: 24 Republican and 13 Democratic.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / December 5, 2012

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana -- By many measures progressive forces seeking to defend the rights of women, workers, Latinos, African-Americans, youth, and the elderly won major victories in the 2012 election. President Obama was reelected with strong support from those to his political left.

Democrats, some identifying with populist policies such as Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin, increased their control of the Senate. And in the House of Representatives, Democrats gained a few seats including those for progressives such as Alan Grayson. The House remained in Republican control despite the fact that Democratic candidates out-polled Republicans nationwide by about 200,000 votes.

Most important, the coalition of progressives who increasingly see connections between the interests of workers, women, people of color, and those passionate about the environment, immigration reform, and peace have vowed to stay mobilized. They see the danger of  “grand bargains” which might make Beltway politicians weaken Medicare, Medicaid, and/or Social Security.

Progressives also are wary of deals that could sacrifice the environment to big oil, maintain the grotesque economic inequalities through tax breaks for the rich, and continue budget-busting military expenditures.

However, challenges to a progressive future do not come just from Washington, Wall Street, or the Pentagon. In 2012, state election results led to single-party control of 37 state governments: 24 Republican and 13 Democratic. Think Progress reported that only 12 states will have evenly contested, two-party government as the 2013 legislative sessions open. This much one-party dominance at the state level has not been seen since 1952.

In many of the Republican-controlled states, legislatures and governors are controlled by Tea Party advocates seeking to privatize public education, reject key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, install or expand Right-to-Work and anti-collective bargaining legislation, end support for Planned Parenthood, put creationism in science classes, and cut college programs not tied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula.

The states where Republicans dominate governorships and state legislatures are for the most part states in the South and across the Plains.

One of the few Midwest states where one-party rule will prevail in 2013 is the state of Indiana. Despite public perception, Indiana has a history of competitive government. Democrats have controlled bigger cities and industrial areas whereas Republicans dominated in rural and small towns of Central and Eastern Indiana.

Democrats held the governorship from 1989 to 2005, and elected former governor Evan Bayh as senator in 1998. He retired from that post in 2010. Democratic candidate Joe Donnelly, with strong labor support, won the 2012 Senatorial race over Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock.

In Indiana legislative politics, the Republicans and Democrats each controlled one legislative body from the outset of the new century until the 2010 elections. Then Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives (60-40) and in 2012 won “supermajorities” in the House (69-31) and the Senate (37-13). Meanwhile Indiana elected Tea Party Congressman Mike Pence to serve as Governor. Pence will replace two-term Tea Party “light” Governor Mitch Daniels who was selected the new president of Purdue University by a Board of Trustees mostly appointed by him.

In total, Indiana politics which had been shifting to the right over the last decade, will become a “blood red” state in 2013. Republican spokespersons promise to complete the economic and political agenda they began to institute in the early years of the new century.

Paradoxically, Indiana voters solidly rejected the reelection bid of Superintendent of Public Education, Tony Bennett, who has radically transformed education from a public to a private institution. He has opened the door for taxpayer support for private religious schools. And he has introduced ill-advised “performance” standards to determine financial support for public schools.

To increase the possibility of incorporating markets and religion into what used to be a public education system, he and his colleagues have worked vigorously to destroy teachers unions.

Glenda Ritz, an award winning teacher and media specialist, defeated Bennett by a 52-48 percent margin. Tea Party legislators have indicated that they will move to make the Superintendent’s position an appointed one in the future.

Outgoing Governor Daniels, a key advocate of educational privatization, proclaimed that teachers used improper means to campaign for Ritz, as if the 1 million voters for Ritz who were not teachers were not relevant to the outcome (in Indiana there are 40,000 public school teachers). So if the people make the wrong choices, the Tea Party legislators imply, their right to make those choices must be restricted.

In 2011 the Indiana Institute for Working Families issued a report on the status of working families in Indiana. The report presented economic data on the condition of Indiana’s working families suggesting that workers in the state have suffered above and beyond the level of the national recession of 2007 to 2009. They suggest that, contrary to the public image promoted by outgoing Governor Daniels and his Tea Party legislative colleagues, the conditions of Hoosier working families have worsened as a result of their legislative agenda:

In fact, the data shows a recovery in Indiana marked by a weakened labor market, an unprecedented decline in wages, and dramatic increases in poverty. Due to across-the-board state budget cuts, a significant loss of public-sector jobs, and low uptake rates in work-support programs due to a public policy environment that’s not been conducive to working families, tens of thousands of Hoosiers are unnecessarily experiencing the human toll of this recession. (“Status of Working Families in Indiana, 2011," Indiana Institute for Working Families)

Indiana progressives have a difficult task ahead. They must reverse the rightward drift of Hoosier politics and public policy and in the long run build a progressive political movement that can fight for and win a new People’s Agenda based on justice, prosperity, and peace.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Howard Wooldridge : Rocky Mountain High / 1

Howard "Cowboy" Wooldridge and Misty fight marijuana prohibition in Colorado.
Misty and me:
Fighting pot prohibition in Colorado

Governor Hickenlooper moaned that tourism would decline or, if more tourists came, they would be the 'wrong sort of people.' What a muffin-head he was!

By Howard Wooldridge / The Rag Blog / November 28, 2012

Former police detective Howard Wooldridge will discuss his work to reform marijuana laws on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer, Friday, November 30, from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live on the web. Rag Radio is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Scranton and Mt. Cobb, PA, Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST). After broadcast, all Rag Radio interviews are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Howard "Cowboy" Wooldridge, the founder and director of Citizens Opposing Prohibition (COP), is a Texan since 1994 and a former Michigan police officer and detective. Like many men and women in law enforcement, he learned early that arresting people for drugs is a faulty proposition and a waste of time, pulling resources away from fighting real crime. Unlike most, however, Howard embarked on a committed crusade to change the drug laws.

With his horse, Misty, Longrider Wooldridge has twice ridden solo from coast to coast, wearing his big Western hat and a white T-shirt that reads, front and back, "Ask Me Why Cops Say Legalize Marijuana." Traveling on city streets and rural byways, camping out wherever night falls, Howard may have talked with more people one-on-one than any other single drug war opponent with the exception of the late Jack Herer. He has become one of the most effective advocates in Washington, D.C., for ending marijuana prohibition and the "war on drugs" in general.

Most recently, Howard and Misty took part in the successful Colorado campaign to legalize cannabis for recreational and industrial purposes there. (The state of Washington also passed a similar law.) Colorado began allowing medical marijuana use in 2000. In this first of a two-part special report to The Rag Blog, Howard writes about his and Misty's experience promoting Amendment 64 from a personal (and equine) point of view; next week, he'll write about the significance and likely fallout of the Colorado electorate's choice. -- Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

This is the first in a three-part series.

DENVER -- My pickup’s bed was full: two bales of hay, bag of shavings (horse bedding), saddle, bridle, horse blankets, plus all the gear needed to sustain a month on the road with my partner in politics -- Misty. Three long travel days later and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado came into view.

We had come to Colorado to promote their ballot initiative on marijuana: Amendment 64. This proposal would essentially (for those 21 and older) legalize, regulate, and tax the use and sale of marijuana. Its major features included: 1) allowing adults to grow enough for private, non-medicinal use; 2) permitting the legal cultivation of industrial hemp; 3) establishing a system in which marijuana could be taxed and sold through state-regulated retail outlets; 4) allowing employers to maintain their existing policies; 5)and it would not impact in any way the laws surrounding the medical use of cannabis.

"64," as it was known to all, was much simpler to explain and defend than the long, complicated and too detailed Prop. 19 that Misty and I had promoted for two months in California two years ago. Indeed, the prohibition forces in Colorado could only repeat the "fact" that the green plant would be easier for our kids to obtain, as their main reason to oppose. Governor Hickenlooper moaned that tourism would decline or, if more tourists came, they would be the "wrong sort of people." What a muffin-head he was!

At 64 headquarters on a side street in Denver, I met with the generals of the campaign: Misters Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente. The communications director Joe Megyesy joined us to plot where Misty and I could best serve 64. We decided to focus on population areas in the Front Range (eastern Colorado) and not go to the western side. We grabbed four of their well-designed yard signs plus some brochures before hitting the road to Fort Collins in the north center of the state.

After checking into the Motel 6, I pulled Misty out of her little trailer for a walk around the parking lot.

Misty, who had just spent the last three nights cooped up in her trailer, probably understood by then that this was another California-type adventure: the days spent on noisy, crowded street corners and nights spent in her little trailer staring at the walls. She knew from experience that I would be giving her extra carrots and other treats. Still, it would just be a tough month for her.

The first day went well. The most traveled road in the city yielded a solid three photos taken per minute by motorists and foot traffic. That meant by nightfall, we would be all over Facebook in northern Colorado. I was interviewed by two local daily papers and by the local TV station.

Afterwards I exercised Misty near the motel for nearly an hour. She loves to run and I indulged her. However, I was tired and careless, leaving my bridle and reins near the trailer. When I returned a few hours later, they were gone. As our Texas governor would say, “Oops.”

On Day Two we traveled to Greeley for a rally featuring Vice President Biden. We arrived early that windy, cold morning to greet the Democrats. We parked ourselves where all cars had to pass in order to park. About 10, a guy shouted from a window, "Don’t go anywhere." A few minutes later the reporter for NPR interviewed me while in the saddle. A week later he opened a nationally broadcast report with my statement on 64. Such things sure help me stay in the saddle. The Greeley paper also published our photo along with their report on the Biden rally. Misty again demonstrated her ability to attract great, free press coverage!

After another day on a street corner near the mall in Greeley, we traveled an hour down the road to Fort Morgan. The next day’s "street theater" yielded yet another newspaper article and photo. We were on a roll!

To be continued...

[Harold Wooldridge, who was a Michigan police officer and detective for 18 years, co-founded Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and is executive director of Citizens Opposing Prohibition (COP).]

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Lamar W. Hankins : 'Death with Dignity' Defeated

Image from WNYT.com.
'Death with Dignity' defeated:
Freedom denied by Massachusetts voters

If I decide that it is time for my life to come to an end for reasons important to me, that should be my decision.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 21, 2012

"The greatest human freedom is to live, and die, according to one's own desires and beliefs. From advance directives to physician-assisted dying, death with dignity is a movement to provide options for the dying to control their own end-of-life care." -- Statement from the Death with Dignity National Center

Since the founding of this country, the ideal of individualism has always been balanced with the ideal of community. Conflicts between the two concepts usually involve taking one person’s property or altering property rights for the betterment of the whole community, or preventing individual behaviors that might be harmful to the community as a whole (such as shooting a gun in the city, or failing to report communicable diseases to health authorities, to enable treatment or quarantine of an individual).

But individualism went down to defeat in a vote on November 6 in Massachusetts for reasons unrelated to the best interests of the community. That state was voting on a so-called Death with Dignity initiative that would have made Massachusetts the third state to officially adopt a law that recognizes the right of terminally-ill persons to end their own lives with self-administered lethal drugs prescribed by their physicians to end their suffering.

The prescription would be made available only after many safeguards are implemented. Oregon and Washington have similar laws and Montana’s Supreme Court has recognized such a right in that state’s constitution.

The Massachusetts proposal was modeled after the 1997 Oregon law that was the first Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) adopted in the nation. This choice of death with dignity appears not to have been abused according to the reports made each year by the Oregon Public Health Division. Since the law took effect in 1998 and through 2011, 596 Oregonians have ended their lives using the law. During this same time, 339 others obtained the prescription drugs, but did not use them.

The 2011 Public Health report noted that the three most frequently mentioned reasons for using the law were “decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (90.1%), loss of autonomy (88.7%), and loss of dignity (74.6%).” These appear to be the same concerns expressed by others since the law took effect. Over 82% of patients who used the DWDA in 2011 had some form of terminal cancer, a figure that has been consistent over the years since the law took effect.

The Public Health report reveals that 94.1% of patients who used the DWDA last year died at home; 96.7% were enrolled in hospice care either at the time the DWDA prescription was written or at the time of death; and 96.7% had some form of health care insurance. These data have been fairly consistent throughout the years since the DWDA was enacted in Oregon.

Undoubtedly, Oregon’s health care system, especially its hospice care, has been a primary reason that the law has not been used by more people. A notable benefit of the law has been an improvement in Oregon’s end-of-life care, especially pain control.

But a similar law proposed for Massachusetts was narrowly defeated -- 51% to 49%. Opposition came mainly from the Catholic church and a group of disability activists associated with Not Dead Yet. My personal involvement with promoting the rights of the disabled as an attorney for the last 35 years and my experience with caring for disabled parents for several years has created a great deal of dissonance for me as I have listened to the arguments made by disability rights activists against Death with Dignity proposals.

In the mid-90s, I became involved personally with the Death with Dignity movement, first by helping to organize a chapter of Hemlock in the Austin area, then in support of Compassion & Choices (the successor to Hemlock through a merger), and now with the Final Exit Network.

I have favored death with dignity laws because of my support for the personal autonomy and the individual rights I believe all people should have to make decisions about their lives. I have not seen this issue as creating conflict between the ideals of individualism and community. For me, the decision to end one’s life to end one's suffering is purely an individual decision. But that’s not how other disability rights advocates see it.

Many of the arguments made by Not Dead Yet and others in Massachusetts focused on how Oregon carries out its DWDA, according to Melissa Barber, an Electronics Commination Specialist with the Death with Dignity National Center. They argued that doctors can't accurately predict when a patient will die, that there isn't a requirement for people to tell their families they've requested the medication, that there's no required psychological evaluation, and that patients who request the medication might not talk to hospice and palliative care professionals.

But all of these arguments are false or misleading. For example, in Oregon two doctors must find that the person requesting a lethal prescription has six months or less to live. It should be obvious that no one can accurately predict exactly when a person with a terminal illness will die, but physicians apply their clinical experience and their knowledge of the course of an illness to determine whether a person has six months or less to live.

It matters little whether I have six days or six years to live. If I decide that it is time for my life to come to an end for reasons important to me, that should be my decision. The accuracy of a doctor’s informed opinion about my life expectancy is beside the point.

Although patients in Oregon are encouraged to talk with their families and loved ones about their decision to request lethal medication, it is the patient’s choice whom to talk to about this decision. If I need a “feeding tube” to get adequate nutrition, whether I get it is my choice. I may or may not talk with family members about the decision, though I am sure I will be encouraged to talk with family members about the matter.

This is true of all medical decisions made by mentally competent adults. A decision about asking for lethal medication should be no different.

The argument about “no required psychological evaluation” is likewise specious. In Oregon, two independent physicians evaluate the patient for signs of depression. If they detect signs, they refer the patient to a mental health specialist.

Although many people believe that anyone who chooses to stop their suffering before what we call a natural death is mentally ill, there are no data to support such a position. Having my life controlled by another person’s fear or belief takes away my autonomy to decide what is best for me.

Lack of access to adequate health services is unlikely to be a reason for choosing to end one’s life shortly before it would end as a result of some terminal illness. The overwhelming number of Oregonians who choose to use the DWDA are in hospice care and have health insurance -- almost 97% of them. And about 40% of Oregonians who obtain lethal medications do not use them, which indicates that the system is not pushing people to hurry up and die, another argument frequently used to oppose death with dignity laws.

Perhaps the Not Dead Yet activists are concerned about a variation of the slippery slope argument, applied to those with permanent disabilities. Their position is that some people fear disability more than death. They assert that all people with a terminal illness will become disabled at some point during their illness. Because some people can’t accept this disability, they want to die rather than live through the disability to a “natural” end.

Such a desire is an indirect threat to people who choose to make the best of their disability and live with it. They fear that disability will come to be seen as a condition that should not be tolerated, leading to the killing of disabled people against their will.

In effect, they are saying that if I have a terminal illness, I can’t decide to end my life at a time of my choosing because it is not the decision they would make, and it might lead to euthanasia of the disabled.

This position is astounding to me. I would never want to decide for others a course of medical treatment or assistance when they are capable of making that decision for themselves. These activists have no right to make that decision for me. But they choose to deny me the rights they hold precious for themselves -- to decide how to live and die on my own terms.

 I’m Not Dead Yet, either, but I’ll not try to control how others live or die.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Tom Hayden : Sticking It to Wall Street

The fallen bull. Image from Tumblr.
A legacy of Occupy:
Sticking it to Wall Street

The Occupy movement energized a vanguard of voters to become more populist in their demands.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2012

It is unfortunate that Occupy Wall Street lost its momentum after the uprisings of 2011, because the election and its results have opened another opportunity to stick it to Wall Street and choke and reform the “great vampire squid” for another next generation. As I wrote six months ago in The Nation:

This year marks the first presidential campaign in our lifetime when the gluttony of Wall Street, the failures of capitalism, the evils of big money in politics and a discussion of fundamental reform will be front and center in election debates. No doubt the crisis that gave rise to Occupy will not be fixed by an election, but that’s beside the point. Elections produce popular mandates, and mandates spur popular activism. It’s time to organize a progressive majority.

From the general Occupy standpoint, Obama was just another Wall Street candidate, and the elections did not matter much anyway. That is a tragic view to take, since it robbed Occupy of an occasion to take credit and feel empowered -- “Fired up! Ready to go!” as the Obama multitudes say. In fact, Occupy did influence the election, did influence the outcome, and did shape the mandate, without, in most cases, its members even voting for Obama. Hopefully they will try to shape the terms of the bailout ahead.

The Occupy movement influenced the political climate in which Obama and his advisers chose to attack Romney as an agent of Bain Capital; incidentally, against the strong preferences of such powerful Democratic figures as Bill Clinton and Cory Booker, the Newark mayor who publicly said he was “nauseated” by the president’s attack on private equity.

The Occupy movement energized a vanguard of voters to become more populist in their demands. The Occupy movement surely helped make it possible for Elizabeth Warren to ride the wave to Washington. And those were only some of the aftershocks of Occupy long after it faded from the streets and headlines.

Wall Street, which did everything in its considerable power to turn on and defeat Obama, now thinks it is “time to mend fences.” (New York Times, November 8, 2012) But if Obama and Axelrod retain any of their Chicago political instincts, there should be some payback before any mending takes place. If Obama is forced to compromise his preferences on the fiscal cliff, reforming Wall Street is where he should be able to implement his words from the campaign trail.

If Obama had to stock his cabinet with Wall Street players in order to avoid total economic disaster in 2009, now he can offer some new choices and directions. Where is Ralph Nader when we need him?

Obama should stick it to Wall Street and make it hurt so badly that they will never forget the screws in this lifetime.

First, Obama should encourage Harry Reid to put Elizabeth Warren on the Senate Banking Committee and empower a de facto reform bloc of Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Harkin, Chris Murphy, Al Franken, Jon Tester, and Warren, among others. Let progressive populist leadership come out of the new Senate. Second, deeper public hearings should bore into the scandal and call the attention of public watchdogs over the obscure process of writing Dodd-Frank regulations on derivatives and hedge fund manipulations.

Wall Street lobbyists are already preparing a "lobbying frenzy” against the administration’s tentative plan to “apply derivatives rules to American banks trading overseas.” (New York Times, November 8, 2012) As Obama promised long ago about health care, such Wall Street plans should be exposed on television at every turn because, like mushrooms, they only grow in the dark.

This opening of the process for all to see can be achieved if there is aggressive monitoring of a U.S. senator. Wall Street somehow thinks its world will conveniently go dark as they lobby in stealth to weaken the Volcker Rule, contain the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and legislate a diluted authority for other key agencies.

The opportunity to prolong the recent ideological and values debate may increase, not subside. On the left, an opportunity still exists to enter the debate loud and clear with concrete demands.

To “occupy” Wall Street is no longer a policy demand, if it ever was. Extending democracy to Wall Street might be a better and bolder banner -- with proposals for greater disclosure, accountability, regulation in the public interest, a ban on secret donors to campaigns, a Robin Hood transactions tax, and a long state-by-state campaign to eliminate the Citizens United decision.

The theme song might be Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy Is Coming to the USA.”

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Katherine Haenschen : Thank you, John Cornyn!

Graphic from Burnt Orange Report.
An open letter to Senator John Cornyn...

...in recognition of his great achievement in electing female Democratic senators.

By Katherine Haenschen / Burnt Orange Report / November 12, 2012

Dear Senator John Cornyn,

I want to personally thank you and congratulate you on your tremendous electoral successes for Democratic Senate candidates this year. Thanks to your feckless leadership as chair of the NRSC, Democrats not only retained our majority in the Senate, we actually picked up a seat and helped elect and re-elect several strong progressive women.

It's kind of remarkable. Democrats entered this cycle needing to defend 23 seats to the Republicans' 10, and yet we managed to make gains!

As a matter of fact, come January, 20% of the Senate will be women, the highest share in the history of the upper chamber. It's a good start, and it wouldn't have been possible without your efforts.

Now, to be fair, one of the newly elected female Senators is a Republican -- Deb Fischer of Nebraska. She'll join Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Kelly Ayotte in the female Republican Senators club, where they can privately grind their teeth every time the male members of their delegation do stuff like try to block the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Thank you, Big John, for recruiting and standing by candidates who hold ass-backwards attitudes towards women, rape, and pregnancy. You stood by Richard Mourdock when he said God intended rape pregnancies to happen and called them "a gift." Earlier this cycle, you failed to force Todd "Forcible Rape" Akin out of the Missouri Senate race, then succumbed to immense pressure to withdraw the NRSC's financial support from his campaign.

Now, in the election post-mortem some media outlets are blaming you for refusing to help Akin, as if it's your fault that Republicans didn't pick up the seat. I guess the Missouri body politic just had a way of shutting that whole race down.

Come January, you'll be joined in the Senate by Elizabeth Warren, who dispatched truck-drivin' Wall Street incubus Scott Brown -- the one who like you voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gives women equal pay for equal work. (Out of curiosity, do you think female Senators should be paid less than their male counterparts? Don't answer that. No wait, do. You're up for election in two years.)

Do you remember the tough-talkin' statement you released when President Barack Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Let me refresh your memory:

Another day, another unelected czar is added to the Obama Administration. The President's reliance on unelected czars to implement his radical agenda skirts the very checks and balances our nation was founded upon, and directly contradicts President Obama's pledge to be the most transparent Administration in history. What is transparent is that making Elizabeth Warren his "consumer czar" is an obvious political favor to special interest groups -- like labor unions and liberal grassroots organizations -- meant to invigorate them 50 days before an election.

"Unelected czar." Hey John, you know what you can call Elizabeth Warren now, when you yield to her on the floor of the US Senate? The Gentle Lady from Massachusetts.

The best news is that your spectacular failure will pay Democratic dividends for years. Four Supreme Court Justices are over 70 years old, and it's possible that President Barack Obama will be able to appoint the next four justices to the bench during his second term. So far he's appointed two women. His next four appointments will likely protect Roe v Wade, and possibly hear major cases pertaining to marriage equality.

I look forward to writing snide commentary about your efforts to block President Obama's appointees from their "upperdown" as a member of the judiciary committee. Maybe you can come up with something more original than "czar" this time?

All in all, it was a great night for Democrats in Tuesday, especially Democrats running for the U.S. Senate. So thank you, John, for all you did to make these historic gains for women and Democrats possible.

Keep it up. Make sure your party continues to be dominated by right-wing, misogynist, nativists who support dismantling the basic functions of government. It may work in Texas (see also: your new colleague Ted Cruz, who may start stealing all the headlines once he brings his special brand of crazy conservative sanctimony to D.C.) but increasingly that mode of thinking is working less and less.

Cheers,
Katherine

[Katherine Haenschen, an Austin-based activist, political organizer, and blogger, is editor in chief of the Burnt Orange Report.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Ed Felien : Forward Over the Fiscal Cliff?

Taking the dive! Image from Photobucket.
The next step:
Forward over the fiscal cliff?

If John Boehner wants to give the car keys to the crazies, and they’re willing to drive over the cliff, then the rest of us should step back and begin to talk to our moderate Republican friends.

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / November 12, 2012

Obama’s victory is a victory for women’s rights, for the rights of immigrants to dignity and a path to citizenship, a victory for African-Americans in their continuing struggle against racism, and a victory for working people.

Romney vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v Wade and, by making abortion illegal, he would have made women’s bodies the property of the state. He would have made immigrants unwelcome in this country. He would have strengthened the hand of racists in this country.

And he would have phased out social security and medicare, eliminated Obamacare (that has guaranteed medical coverage for all Americans), cut health and safety standards for workers, and driven down wages in the public and private sectors.

That didn’t happen. We’re not moving backwards. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll move forward unless the Democrats put some starch in their backbones and get ready for the fight of their lives. The battle for the future has not been won. That battle has just begun.

Democrats just added to their majority in the Senate. They now have 53 Democrats and two Independents who will probably vote with them against 45 Republicans. But one senator can filibuster a bill and stop it, and it takes 60 votes to override that filibuster.

The Republicans have demonstrated that they will do everything to obstruct progress in the Senate. They have used the filibuster 370 times in Harry Reid’s tenure as Majority Leader of the Senate. During an even more contentious period Lyndon Johnson, who served as Majority Leader for the same amount of time as Harry Reid, had to face just one Republican filibuster.

There is nothing sacred about the filibuster. It is not part of the Constitution. It is a relatively modern invention meant to protect the state’s rights of southern racists.

The rules of the Senate are adopted on the first day of the session. The Democrats must adopt rules eliminating the filibuster, and they also must eliminate the rule that allows one senator to put a hold on a presidential appointment. If we are to move forward, then we have to smash through these barriers that Mitch McConnell and his Southern racist pals have set in our way.

The Democrats made some gains in the House but not enough to control it. There are still some races that are too close to call, but it seems the Republicans will have a 40-vote edge. In order to hold his caucus together, John Boehner has had to cater to the crazies.

But the Tea Party Caucus had only 61 members during the last session, and two of the worst of that lot were defeated: Roscoe Bartlett and Joe Walsh (another Republican expert on women’s health, who said abortion isn’t necessary to protect the life of the mother because women never die from childbirth any more. According to Amnesty International: “During 2004 and 2005, more than 68,000 women nearly died in childbirth in the USA. Each year, 1.7 million women suffer a complication that has an adverse effect on their health.”).

All the Democrats need is 21 Republicans to join with them in a Congress of National Reconciliation -- a bi-partisan Congress that will put the good of the country ahead of partisan wrangling. Up to now, the threat against moderate Republicans has been, “If you don’t cooperate with the Tea Party, then we’ll run against you in the Primary and beat you.”

But what has happened when they’ve done that? What happened to Todd Aikin, Richard Mourdock, and Christine O’Donnell when those Tea Party darlings won their party’s primary? They went down to defeat when faced with Democratic moderates. If 21 moderate Republicans would caucus with the Democrats, then the Democrats must offer them the Speaker’s role and the chairs of all the committees.

But more than that, the Democrats should offer them help in their next election: if they stand with the Democrats in trying to move this country forward, then the Democrats must stand with them when the Tea Party reactionaries try to move this country backwards by trying to run over them.

There is a lot at stake. We need to make our tax laws more fair. The rich must pay their fair share. We need to make sure Social Security and Medicare are solvent, but we cannot cut any of the benefits.

And in order to get this country back on the road to prosperity we need to help the people at the bottom of the ladder of opportunity. If we raise the federal minimum wage, that will translate immediately into more goods purchased, more homes built, and more prosperity for everyone.

Right now we are looking over a financial cliff. What would happen if we went over that cliff? If Congress does nothing, then there would be automatic cuts in Defense that would close down unnecessary military bases in Southern states and foreign countries.

The Bush tax cuts would expire. That means working people would have a slight increase in their payroll taxes, but it would also mean rich people would begin to pay their fair share. It should be easy to restore the tax cuts for working people in the next Congress.

So, if John Boehner wants to give the car keys to the crazies, and they’re willing to drive over the cliff, then the rest of us should step back and begin to talk to our moderate Republican friends. This financial cliff could be a driveway where we could work together for a bi-partisan Congress of National Reconciliation.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog]

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ELECTION 2012 / Harry Targ : 'Vote Today, Organize Tomorrow'

Graphic by Favianna Rodriguez / favianna.com.
Assessing the election:
'Vote today, organize tomorrow'

In the months ahead, progressive forces need to reexamine the history of social change in America, conceptualizing movement possibilities everywhere...

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / November 12, 2012

The commentaries on the 2012 presidential election are rolling in. Over the next several days and weeks progressives will be discussing the meaning of the 2012 elections for “Where do we go from here?” The desperate need is for us to resume rebuilding America and planting the seeds for a vision of  “21st century Socialism.”

So for now here is a list of some of the issues progressives and radicals should begin to discuss all across the nation.

First, MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd emphasized from the outset of election night commentary that the demographic changes in American society are and will continue to transform politics and the prospects for change.

By 2050, a National Journal report predicted “minorities” -- that is Black and Brown people -- will constitute a majority of the population of the country. In the presidential election just completed 24 percent of the voters were African Americans and Latinos. Also youth as a proportion of these populations is growing.

Finally, women are a segment of the voting age population that is growing and motivated in part by a rejection of political ideologies and theologies that prohibit their control of their own bodies.

Second, in addition to race and gender, the 2012 election results point out emphatically that class matters. There is no question that the labor movement, including public employees, and grassroots workers’ organizations revitalized after 2010 in the industrial heartland, was instrumental in facilitating a Democratic “ground game” in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and even Indiana.

Working people are fired up, angry, and possibly ready to become a “class for itself.” And, in those states where labor made a difference, activists readily articulated connections between workers’ interests and interests of women and people of color.

Third, big money gives enormous advantage to the one percent as they select and promote candidates and issues. Big money also facilitates voter suppression and it pressures the mass media to give unwarranted attention to their claims about the society.

All the mainstream media, including the more liberal MSNBC, exaggerated the Romney debate bounce, claims about changing momentum, the closeness of the elections, claims derived from multiple and endless polls, and a hyped cognitive airspace about an alleged appeal that Romney/Ryan had.

While much of the election hype was driven by the competition for viewers, there is no doubt that the Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the millionaire super PACS were able to project their vision well beyond the proportion of those in the society who endorse it.

Even though the power of money should not be dismissed, this election shows, once again, the power of the people. The unsung heroes and heroines were the millions of people who stood for hours to vote in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, California, New York, New Jersey, and all around the country, despite the best efforts of state governments and Tea Party groups to discourage voting.

It would be a great mistake in the future to demean voting, even voting for one of the two major parties. It remains the symbolic hallmark of real democracy. As articulate spokespersons, such as Nina Turner, Ohio State Senator, and Georgia Congressman John Lewis eloquently expressed it, people put their bodies and lives on the line to secure the right to vote. That must never be ignored.

What progressives need to work for is a society where that vote can be clearly cast for those who support the people’s interests.

Fourth, building a movement all around the country matters. In 2008, the Democratic Party crafted a 50-state strategy. Resources were channeled into campaigns in states and communities that heretofore had only small progressive movements.

But in 2008 that changed and in unlikely places such as Tippecanoe County in North Central Indiana, an overwhelmingly red county, Barack Obama carried the area and Indiana went blue. The same experience occurred elsewhere in states like North Carolina.

After 2008, such communities were written off because they were not communities in “swing states.”

Subsequent to 2008, activists in the industrial heartland, some of the western states, and the South were seen as beyond mobilization again. In some places, such as Central Indiana, Eastern North Carolina, and even Ohio and Wisconsin, those who had mobilized in 2008 remained so despite being written off by the Democratic National Committee (and many progressive groups).

The 50-state strategy had the potential for developing into a nationwide social movement. After 2008, the Democratic Party moved away from this approach and some of the Left returned to focusing on progressive politics on the coasts.

In the months ahead, progressive forces need to reexamine the history of social change in America, conceptualizing movement possibilities everywhere, while recognizing the particularities of history, culture, politics, and organizational potentials in different geographic locales.

Finally, progressives need to examine political outcomes in states and communities. Preliminary data indicate that while progressive constituencies rose up angry against reactionary candidates in various state and local races as well as national campaigns, the most right-wing sectors of the one percent control state governments in almost half of the 50 states (where Republicans control both legislative assemblies).

And it is these state governments since 2010 that have imposed right-to-work legislation, attacked collective bargaining for public employees, defunded Planned Parenthood, built private schools and voucher programs that will destroy public schools as we have known them, resolved to impose anti-science subject matter in school curricula, and have systematically ignored environmental hazards. The national government moved “blue” in 2012 while it remains blood “red” in many states.

Progressives need to address many, many more issues in the coming months: the “fiscal cliff,” military spending, drone warfare, climate change, and expanding the health care system for example. The key point is to begin to change now. As one wonderful graphic urged on Facebook election day, “Vote Today, Organize Tomorrow.”

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Marilyn Katz : On Women Making a Difference

Women win big: Clockwise, from top: Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Claire McCaskill. Image from PopSugar.
Making a difference:
On women and the election

We are not red states and blue states, we are blue cities (and suburbs) in red states, filled with the young, the diverse, the women -- who are the rising tide.

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2012

CHICAGO -- The pundits will spend the next days parsing the strategies of the various campaigns, analyzing the Romney campaign’s errors and the Obama campaign’s smart moves -- and all of that will be true.

However, for me, it is the particular efforts of women that made the difference.

Not only were women a decisive voting block, providing Barack with a critical 18 percent gender gap vote, but, from the beginning, we recognized this election as being as much about us as about the President -- about our lives, our futures. And as women always do, we figured out what needed to be done and did it.

Thousands of woman have spent the last nine months raising money, knocking on doors, making endless phone calls. They devoured information and became the critical truth-tellers to neighbors, friends, and strangers.

Personally, I am deeply moved by the constancy, energy, and skills of women that not only brought Barack to victory but also Elizabeth Warren, Claire McCaskill, Tammy Duckworth, Cheri Bustos, Tammy Baldwin, and many others.

While the pundits are looking at the electoral map and talking about it as the "new formula for Democratic victories," I look at it and see the future of America. We are not red states and blue states, we are blue cities (and suburbs) in red states, filled with the young, the diverse, the women -- who are the rising tide.

It is to our credit that in the face of billion-dollar super PACS, scurrilous ads, non-stop barrages from the talking heads of Fox News and the ultra-right, and, despite many dark moments, we persevered. We spoke truth and took power.

It’s long been said that “women can make the difference." And we did.

Also, some reflections on the Jewish vote: Despite unbelievable fear mongering, the tirades and money of Sheldon Adelson and the emails of the Lauders, the Jewish vote has retained its progressive presence, going at least 69% for Obama. As important, 70 of the 71 J Street-endorsed Senate and Congressional candidates won their elections.

These are good "facts on the ground" for encouraging a real path for a two-state solution and peace in Israel and Palestine.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com.  Read more articles by Marilyn Katz on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Jonah Raskin : A View from California

"California Dreaming." Art by Tom Horner / Dribble. Inset image below from San Francisco Sentinal.
A view from California:
Which way the wind blows

Obama’s reelection is only the beginning. The hard work of transforming the nation lies ahead

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2012

SANTA ROSA, California -- Watching national politics from the coast of California, where I live, and where nearly everyone votes for Democrats, feels weird. It felt especially weird on the evening of Election Day as I waited and watched to hear whether Obama would be reelected or Romney would waltz into the White House along with Paul Ryan and Karl Rove.

Whomever Californians chose for president didn’t seem to matter at all. It was all decided before the vote was counted in my own state, and almost all of the attention was focused on what the media calls “swing states.”

As it turned out, Obama won the swing states, including Ohio. He lost the South big, lost the heartland -- from North Dakota to Texas -- and lost the white male vote over the age of 50. But he won the rest: the urban vote, the black vote, the Latino vote, and the vote of the 47% that Romney abused in a campaign speech that came back to bite him big time.

It seems clear that the future of American politics belongs to the Democratic Party, which is now clearly the party of youth, Latinos, women, and the working class. (Hey and a few liberal millionaires, too.)

It’s also the party of students with loans, families who love Obamacare, same sex couples, both married and unmarried, and marijuana smokers who voted to legalize weed in Colorado and Washington.

If the Obama victory signals anything it signals the continuing wave of the cultural revolution that began in the 1960s, spread in the 1970s, took a beating under Reagan in the 1980s, and again with Bush I and Bush II, and that came back strong in 2008.

Obama’s reelection in 2012 is a victory for grassroots democracy of the kind that appeared in the streets and in the parks of Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention and that literally took a beating from Mayor Daley’s police. That old Democratic Party is gone.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement played a crucial role in the reelection of Obama because it made Americans aware of social, economic, and political inequalities and injustices. It helped us to see that Romney belonged to the party of the 1%, the party that would like to cut social security, go back to the greed feed of the Bush years, and let citizens fend for themselves without government help in the wake of unemployment, storms such as Sandy, and human-made disasters, too.

Watching it all unfold from California felt pretty good on Election Day. We may not tip the scales, or count in the political balance of things, but we know how to vote, whom to vote for, and we don’t swing back and forth. We want Obamacare; we want legal weed; we want same sex marriages to be lawful; we want the government to help the poor, the needy, the homeless and the hungry, just as Roosevelt’s government helped Americans in the Depression of the 1930s.

In fact, Californians voted for Governor Jerry Brown’s measure to increase the state sales tax and to levy higher taxes on people making over $250,000 a year. The funds are earmarked for education where they’re definitely needed.

I don’t know if California is the dog that wags the tail of the nation, or the rest of the country is the dog and California the tail it wags. Do we start trends or do we finish them? It’s not clear, though I hope that the rest of the country begins to like and to accept the idea of taxing the rich and the super-rich. It’s about time.

Obama’s reelection is only the beginning. The hard work of transforming the nation lies ahead. We’ve got to stop war, stop Wall Street greed, stop corporations from funding politicians, stop old conservative white men from bullying and beating up their own sons and daughters, nephews and nieces.

Hey, there’s as much of a generation gap now as there was in 1968, though today it’s clearer which way the winds are blowing, and clearer, too, that history is on the side of youth and change, not on the side of the Mitt Romney’s and the Karl Rove’s of the world.

[Jonah Raskin is the author of American Scream, The Radical Jack London and Rock ‘n’ Roll Women and a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Steve Russell : The Election Night Rhythm and Blues

The Obama Four celebrate victory in Chicago on election night. Photo by Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images.
From the POTUS to Sharon Keller:
The election night rhythm and blues

What got me off my leftist disgust with Obama high horse was the cold realization that we were about to lose victories won by our parents. We were in danger of dropping the baton.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2012

AUSTIN -- I offer some reflections on the Silly Season now ending.

Waking up the next day, I was pleased to learn I did not dream that the POTUS was reelected and that Gov. Romney actually made a gracious concession speech. This was looking unlikely when I went to bed with Romney refusing to concede Ohio in the face of overwhelming evidence that the counties still out would not help him.

It was difficult not to chuckle at a tweet let fly by The Donald Trump calling the election a sham and advocating, I kid you not, “revolution!”

Pampered wealthy people, arise! You have nothing to lose but your tax shelters!

GMO labeling failed in California, which was rendered a probable outcome not by the merits but by the sums of corporate money that went into defeating it.

Recreational weed won in Colorado and in Washington. It’s only a matter of time until we can get high without being terminal cancer patients or chronic pain sufferers needing a prescription. Bad news for the liquor business.

Marriage equality scored three popular vote wins, becoming law in Maryland and Maine and beating back a ban in Minnesota! I saw this coming from being a university teacher. The younger generation, liberal or conservative, simply does not care who somebody else marries.

The Congress is improved by Alan Grayson returning and Allen West and Joe Walsh leaving. On the downside, Michelle Bachmann won by the drag of a knuckle.

Tammy Baldwin becomes the first out lesbian in the U.S. Senate, in a Senate with the most women to serve in that body ever.

The Tea Party remains the gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats, having now denied the Republicans slam-dunk victories sufficient to have taken control of the Senate.

The latest Tea Party fiasco was led by the two guys who wanted to be kinder and gentler about rape in order to crack down on abortion. That turned over Indiana and saved a seat in Missouri. This adds to Tea Party debacles in Delaware, Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska.

In Alaska, the mainstream Republican defeated in the primary won election as a write-in and as a result readily departs party discipline with no fear of the Tea Party.

Linda McMahon has now burned almost $100 million in her own money trying to buy a Connecticut Senate seat. McMahon has beaten the record for cost-ineffectiveness held by Texan John Connally, who spent $11 million in the 1980 Republican primaries to buy one delegate. (Another Texan, Phil Gramm, made a spirited run at the record in 1996, when he spent $8 million to get run out of the race by Pat Buchanan.)

Texas is, to blend a metaphor, still sipping on the Tea Party Kool-Aid. Hell, they’re sucking on the ice. So Texas goes until the demographics catch up.

So, now, whither the national GOP?

Will they decide that they lost for excessive crazy or insufficient crazy?

So far, the crazy has cost them control of the Senate. Taking out Dick Lugar in Indiana was particularly stupid. They gave up slam-dunk wins to embrace the crazy.

On the downside, over 40% of the country is crazy.

To the extent the crazy is driven by racism -- and it's hard to ignore the margins in the Old South and the continual bitch slaps on Hispanics -- that kind of crazy is doomed to demographics.

To the extent that crazy is driven my misogyny, the female body has a way to shut that thing down. The female body acquired that by the means shown in the pic that went around the web in the last week allegedly showing Susan B. Anthony being beaten down in the street for trying to vote. While the photo was of a different suffragist, the essential message is true.

Women vote. Get used to it. They are not going back.

The money for the crazy came from the 1%, but this election teaches they are going to have to fund a sellout from among the hoi polloi, because electing one of their own is not likely.

My favorite quote of this season is the metaphor mixed by San Antonio’s Julian Castro, when he said the American Dream “is not a sprint or a marathon -- it’s a RELAY.”

What got me off my leftist disgust with Obama high horse was the cold realization that we were about to lose victories won by our parents. We were in danger of dropping the baton.

The Donald speaks. Screen grab off Twitter.
The worst realization of 2012 is the degree to which we’ve allowed voter suppression in the name of stamping out virtually nonexistent retail voter fraud while ignoring computer-driven wholesale voter fraud. This is going to bite unless we stop it.

The outcomes were the usual mixed bag in a divided country, but I generally like them in the high profile races.

The worst outcome is the justice system in Texas, still roiled by party sweeps. Austin’s Third Court of Appeals, which used to be my judicial career goal, has lurched to the right. A guy I once put in jail for obstructing access to an abortion clinic is now on the Texas Supreme Court, having defeated a more mainstream Republican who committed the sin of birth with an Hispanic surname.

But the very, very worst of the lot is the easy reelection of Sharon Keller as Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Let me explain, so you can discount, if you choose, the views of a judge who was elected by the crazed voters of the People’s Republic of Austin, Babylon on the Colorado.

Suppose you have an ugly rape and murder of a teenage girl.

The only evidence is a statement by the defendant that required considerable bending to fit the facts: he bragged that he had consensual sex with a female hitchhiker, who was apparently an adult.

But the “scientific evidence” of a blood test “could not exclude” him.

The government was not proud enough of this case to seek the death penalty, which was probably a good thing for the defendant, as he was quickly convicted.

Many years of durance vile later, DNA testing becomes possible that DOES exclude the defendant and points to some unknown male as the perpetrator.

When these facts arrive in the Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge Keller deems them insufficient to require a new trial because of the possible presence of an unidentified co-ejaculator or prior consensual intercourse.

Never mind that the jury never heard this theory.

Never mind that the prior consensual intercourse theory required inventing a sexual history for a young girl that by all credible accounts did not exist.

In the service of what? The finality of judgments, the same argument against the DNA testing that kept Michael Morton in prison for an extra three years while the government fought the testing. Testing which in the Morton case not only exonerated an innocent man but also led to the arrest of another man, who had DNA in the system.

Now, if you believe the finality of judgments is not a value, you are an incompetent lawyer who ought not be put on the Bench.

But how heavily you weigh the value of finality is a matter of judicial philosophy. My own view is that finality is a much more weighty consideration in a civil case then in a criminal case, because in the latter case there might be a felon running loose, freed by the error.

That’s philosophy. If you agree, vote for me. If you don’t, vote against me. That’s fair and square if we choose to elect judges.

But that was not the main issue in Sharon Keller’s race.

She got a phone call from the defenders of a convicted murderer, pleading that they had a computer crash and were going to be later than five o’clock filing a petition for a stay of his execution scheduled for THAT NIGHT.

She would pretty much have to stay the execution, because the ground was that the U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear another case containing the identical issue.

Her response? The courthouse closes at five. Be there or be square... or, more to the point, you have a dead client. Which is exactly what happened.

The "Honorable" Sharon Keller. Photo by Eric Gay / AP.
Now, let me expose my biases.

Go back to when I was a baby lawyer, newly licensed and just defeated in my run for Justice of the Peace. Persons in the system either did not know me or knew me as having just been rejected by the voters.

After 4 p.m. on a Friday, a woman came into my office with one eye swollen shut, busted lip, bruises all over her. She was afraid her husband would finish the job.

This was in the days before family violence protective orders, so the only remedy in court was a temporary restraining order in a divorce case.

This was also before computers, so I took a divorce petition and filled in her information and handed out pieces of it to both of our clerical persons and two other lawyers. They typed while I worked the phones.

I called the District Clerk’s office, because by this time it was past 4:30. I explained myself.

The clerk who answered the phone, who I assume did not know me from Adam, agreed to keep the office open until I could get the papers there and even went down the hall to count heads in the district judges’ offices. The clerk got back to me with the information that there were still three district judges working.

Within 45 minutes, I got the petition done and sworn to and filed. It was after six when a judge signed it and I hand carried it down to the Sheriff’s office, where the civil process unit was closed. The dispatcher called somebody in from dinner, and he promised me an attempt would be made that night.

I guess I was spoiled by learning my trade in Travis County.

After I lost that election, I had a couple of occasions to present bond applications to the man who defeated me at his home after hours.

Years later, after he had quit the Bench, he tracked me down where I was spending the night at my girlfriend’s house to present a bond. I signed it, but that’s not the point. The point is that I heard him speak for his client, regardless of the time on the clock.

I leaned my trade where there were district judges like Jim Meyers and Harley Clark and Jim Dear who you could roust out of their homes or away from the dinner table in the restaurant or out of the stands at a ball game.

There was no guarantee they would give you what you wanted, but the point was that they would hear you. At any time.

When I ran for judicial office again, because of the way I learned my trade, I knew both that I would make less money than most lawyers and that I would not get to work only eight to five, five days a week, and I would be giving up a certain amount of privacy.

Police need search or arrest warrants at all hours. Defense lawyers need consideration for bonds at all hours. Civil lawyers need temporary restraining orders at all hours. I believed, and still believe, that this is what a lawyer takes on by putting on the black nightgown and taking the oath.

You don’t promise any particular ruling, but you do promise to hear people who need to be heard.

Therefore, I’ve many times kept my office doors open past five for reasons a lot less weighty than considering whether the government will be allowed to kill a man that evening.

But maybe that’s just me, and maybe it’s just an artifact of where I learned my trade.

I hope it’s not just me, but I’m retired, and Sharon Keller cakewalked to reelection over a candidate with better paper qualifications who won the Bar poll and virtually every endorsement from all ends of the political spectrum.

I hope I’m not the only person who finds this outcome to be a very sad and even tragic counterweight to some generally good national election results.

[Steve Russell lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the sixties and seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve, who belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is also a columnist for Indian Country Today. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu. Read more articles by Steve Russell on The Rag Blog.]

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Jack A. Smith : The Left and the 'Lesser Evil' Dilemma

Graphic from Liberation News.
For whom should the left vote?

Many progressives now view Obama as the 'lesser evil,' but worry he will sell them out once again.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / November 5, 2012

There are important differences, of course, between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican contender Mitt Romney, but the long conservative trend in American politics will continue regardless of who wins the presidential election November 6. Either candidate will move it right along.

From a left point of view, Obama is superior to Romney in the sense that the Democratic center right is politically preferable to the Republican right/far right. The Democrats will cause less social damage -- though not less war damage or the pain of gross inequality or the harm done civil liberties -- than their conservative cousins.

Indeed, both candidates are conservative. Obama is moderately so, judging by his first term in the White House, though “liberal” in his current campaign rhetoric and on two social issues -- abortion and gay marriage. Romney is definitely so, though he shifts opportunistically from the extreme right to the right and back again. In the last weeks of the campaign, sensing his impending defeat, the former Massachusetts governor momentarily leaned to the center right.

The Republican Party has gravitated ever further to the right during the last few decades and is now securely in the hands of extremist politicians, symbolized by the ascendancy of the Tea Party and the many House and Senate members who follow its far right agenda. Jim Hightower, the well known liberal Texas columnist, wrote an article in AlterNet October 8 that briefly described key programs in the GOP platform:

• Medicare must be replaced with a privatized "VoucherCare" (or, more accurately, "WeDon'tCare") medical system;
• All poverty programs must be slashed or eliminated to "free" poor people from a crippling and shameful dependency on public aid;
• The government framework that sustains a middle class (from student loans to Social Security) must be turned over to Wall Street so individuals are free to "manage" their own fates through marketplace choice;
• Such worker protections as collective bargaining, minimum wage, and unemployment payments must be stripped away to remove artificial impediments to the "natural rationality" of free market forces;
• The corporate and moneyed elites (forgive a bit of redundancy there) must be freed from tax and regulatory burdens that impede their entrepreneurial creativity;
• The First Amendment must be interpreted to mean that unlimited political spending of corporate cash equals free speech; and
• Etcetera, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

The one thing Hightower left out is that if the Republicans insist on identifying corporate bosses as “Job Creators,” why then aren’t they creating jobs? Romney blames China, as do the Democrats, but that’s election politics. China is a rising capitalist economy that only started to really take off about 15 years ago, and it is doing what all such rising economies do -- adopting some measures to grow and protect their developing industries and trade.

The U.S. did it too as a growing economy for many decades. That’s capitalism. It goes where it can make the most profit. Washington supports this. Nothing prevents the U.S. government from investing in the creation of millions of jobs in America except conservative ideology.

Despite the seeming distance between the two parties on economic issues -- emphasized by Republican proposals cribbed from the pages of Atlas Shrugged -- economist Jared Bernstein, a Democrat, wrote on his blog September 6 that he was going beyond “good Democrats and bad Republicans” to perceive “the ascendancy of a largely bipartisan vision that promotes individualist market-based solutions over solutions that recognize there are big problems that markets cannot effectively solve.” He’s on to something.

Bernstein, until this year Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser, then wrote:

We cannot, for example, constantly cut the federal government’s revenue stream without undermining its ability to meet pressing social needs. We know that more resources will be needed to meet the challenges of prospering in a global economy, keeping up with technological changes, funding health care and pension systems, helping individuals balance work and family life, improving the skills of our workforce, and reducing social and economic inequality. Yet discussion of this reality is off the table.

There are a number of major policy areas of virtual agreement between the parties. Their most flagrant coupling is in the key area of foreign/military policy.

The Democrats -- humiliated for years by right wing charges of being “soft on defense” -- have become the war party led by a Commander-in-Chief who relishes his job to the extent of keeping his own individual kill list. What neoconservative would dare fault him for this? Imagine the liberal outcry had Bush been discovered with a kill list! This time the liberals didn’t kick up much fuss.

During the third presidential debate Romney had little choice but to align himself with Obama’s war policies in Afghanistan, the attacks on western Pakistan, the regime change undeclared war against Libya, the regime change war in Syria, the aggressive anti-China “pivot” to Asia and drone assaults against Yemen and Somalia with many more to come.

Virtually all liberals, progressives, some leftists, and organized labor will vote for Obama. Many will do so with trepidation, given their disappointment about his performance in office, particularly his tilt toward the right, willingness to compromise more than half way with the Republicans, and his reluctance to wage a sharp struggle on behalf of supposed Democratic Party goals.

Many of these forces now view Obama as the “lesser evil,” but worry he will sell them out once again. According to the Washington publication The Hill on Oct. 24:

Major labor unions and dozens of liberal groups working to elect President Obama are worried he could "betray" them in the lame-duck session by agreeing to a deal to cut safety-net programs. While Obama is relying on labor unions and other organizations on the left to turn out Democratic voters in battleground states, some of his allies have lingering concerns about whether he will stand by them if elected....

The AFL-CIO has planned a series of coordinated events around the country on Nov. 8, two days after Election Day, to pressure lawmakers not to sign onto any deficit-reduction deal that cuts Medicare and Social Security benefits by raising the Medicare eligibility age or changing the formula used for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments.

"There’s going to be a major effort by lots of groups to make sure the people we vote for don’t sell us down the river," said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. “People, groups, organizations and networks are working very hard to get Obama and the Democrats elected, and yet we are worried that it is possible that we could be betrayed almost immediately," he said.

One specific issue behind this distrust is the awareness that, if reelected, Obama has said he will seek a “grand bargain” with the Republicans intended to slash the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. During deficit talks with House leader John Boehner over a year ago Obama voluntarily declared that cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were “on the table” for negotiation -- the first time any Democratic President ever offered to compromise on what amounts to the crowning legislative achievements of the New Deal and Great Society administrations.

At the time Obama envisioned reducing Medicare by $1 trillion and Medicaid by $360 billion over two decades. The exact amount from Social Security was not disclosed. During the campaign Obama promised to “protect” these three “entitlements.”

While denouncing Romney’s “plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program and increase health care costs for seniors,” AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka disclosed Oct. 23 that “a bipartisan group of senators who are not up for reelection is working behind closed doors in Washington to reach a so-called grand bargain that completely bypasses this debate and ignores the views of voters. What is the grand bargain? It boils down to lower tax rates for rich people -- paid for by benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Another reason for a certain suspicion about what Obama will achieve in a second term is based on his unfulfilled promises from the 2008 election. Here are some of them from an October 27 article titled “The Progressive Case Against Obama” by Matt Stoller:

A higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill.

Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision.

Many liberals and progressives seem convinced that the two-party system is the only viable battleground within which to contest for peace and social progress, even if the two ruling parties are right of center. This is one reason they shun progressive or left third parties.

This national electoral battleground, however, as has become evident to many Americans in recent years, is owned and operated by the wealthy ruling elite which has, through its control of the two-party system, stifled any social progress in the United States for 40 years.

Throughout these same four decades the Democrats have shifted from the center left to center right. The last center left Democratic presidential candidate was the recently departed former Sen. George McGovern, who was whipped by the Republicans in 1972. In tribute to this last antiwar and progressive presidential candidate, and as a contrast to the present center right standard bearer, we recall McGovern’s comment from the 1972 Democratic convention:

As one whose heart has ached for the past 10 years over the agony of Vietnam, I will halt a senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day. There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North [Vietnam]. And within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong.

There is more to America’s presidential and congressional elections than meets the eye of the average voter. Next week’s election, for instance, has two aspects. One has been in-your-face visible for over a year before Election Day, costing billions. The other is usually concealed because it’s not a matter that entertains public debate or intervention.

The visible aspect -- the campaign, slogans and speeches, the debates, arguments and rallies-- is contained within the parameters of the political system which Obama and Romney meticulously observe. Those parameters, or limitations, are mainly established by that privileged elite sector of the citizenry lately identified as the 1% and its minions.

The concealed aspect of elections in the U.S. is that they are usually undemocratic in essence; and that the fundamental underlying issues of the day are rarely mentioned, much less contested.

Many of the major candidates are selected, groomed, and financed by the elite, who then invest fortunes in the election campaigns for president, Congress and state legislatures (over $6 billion in this election). And after their representatives to all these offices are elected, they spend billions more on the federal and state level lobbying for influence, transferring cash for or against legislation affecting their financial and big business interests.

American electoral democracy is based on one person, one vote -- and it’s true that the wealthy contributor of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to favored candidates is similarly restricted to a single ballot. But the big spenders influence multitudes of voters through financing mass advertising, which in effect multiplies the donor’s political clout by a huge factor.

Democracy is grossly undermined by the funding from rich individuals and corporations that determine the outcome of many, probably most, elections. These are the wealthy with whom a Romney can easily describe 47% of the American people as scroungers dependent on government handouts, and they will chuckle and applaud. They are the same breed with whom an Obama can comfortably mock the “professional left” within his party and get knowing nods and smiles.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama at debate in Denver. Photo by Charlie Neibergall / AP.
The most important of the major issues completely omitted from the elections and the national narrative is the obvious fact that the United States is an imperialist state and a militarist society. It rules the world, not just the seas as did Britannia, and the sun never sets on America’s worldwide military bases, an “empire of bases” as Chalmers Johnson wrote.

Most Americans, including the liberals, become discomforted or angered when their country is described as imperialist and militarist. But what else is a society that in effect controls the world through military power; that has been at war or planning for the next war for over 70 years without letup; that spends nearly $700 billion a year on its armed forces and an equal amount on various national security entities?

The American people never voted on whether to become or continue as an imperialist or militarist society any more than they voted to invade Iraq, or to deregulate the banks, or to vaporize the civilian city of Hiroshima.

In the main a big majority believe Washington’s foreign/military policies are defensive and humanitarian because that’s what the government, the schools, churches, and commercial mass media drum into their heads throughout their lives. They have been misinformed and manipulated to accept the status quo on the basis of Washington’s fear-mongering, exaggerated national security needs, mythologies about American history, and a two-party political system primarily devoted to furthering the interests of big business, multinational corporations, too-big-to-fail banks, and Wall Street.

Needless to say, both ruling parties have participated in all this and it is simply taken for granted they will continue to cultivate militarism and practice imperialism in order to remain the world’s dominant hegemon.

There are many ways to keep the voting population in line. The great majority of Americans are religious people, including many fundamentalists. Both candidates of the political duopoly have exploited religious beliefs by telling the people that God is on America’s side and that the deity supports America’s dominant role in the world, and its wars, too.

At the Democratic convention in September, Obama concluded his speech with these inspiring words: “Providence is with us, and we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.” The term Providence, in the sense intended, suggests that God “is with us,” guides America’s destiny and approves of the activities we have defined as imperialist and militarist.

Romney declared last month that “God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world.”

Further along these lines, Obama said in the third debate that “America remains the one indispensable nation, and the world needs a strong America, and it is stronger now than when I came into office.” Having God’s backing and being the only one of some 200 nation states in the world that cannot be dispensed with is what is meant by the expression “American Exceptionalism” — a designation that gives Washington a free pass to do anything it wants.

American “leadership” (i.e., global hegemony) has been a policy of the Democratic and Republican parties for several decades. A main reason the American foreign policy elite gathered behind Obama in 2007 was his continual emphasis upon maintaining Washington’s world leadership.

Many other key policies will not change whether Obama or Romney occupy the Oval Office.

• For instance, the U.S. is the most unequal society among the leading capitalist nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). About half its people are either low income or poor, and they received lower benefits than families resident in other OECD countries. What will Obama and Romney do about this if elected to the White House? Nothing. Burgeoning inequality wasn’t even a topic during the three debates. And in Obama’s nearly four years in office he completely ignored this most important social problem plaguing America.
  
  According to the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: “Economic inequality begets political inequality and vice versa. Then the very vision that makes America special -- upward mobility and opportunity for all -- is undermined. One person, one vote becomes one dollar, one vote. That is not democracy.”


• Climate change caused by global warming is here. America has been wracked in recent years with devastating storms, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, as have other parts of the world. One of the worst of all storms decimated large parts of the eastern United States a few days ago. And what will Obama and Romney do about it? Nothing. This most important of international questions was not thought worthy of mention in all three debates. Bill McKibben got it right the other day when he said: “Corporate polluters have bought the silence of our elected leaders.”
  
  Obama’s environmental comprehension and occasional rhetoric are an improvement over Romney’s current climate denial (one more cynical reversal of his earlier views). But the president has done virtually nothing to fight climate change during his first term -- and he simply can’t blame it all on the Republicans. He has a bully pulpit with which to galvanize public consciousness but doesn’t use it. Actually the Obama government has played a backward role in the annual UN climate talks -- delaying everything, even though the U.S. is history’s most notorious emitter of the greenhouse gases that have brought the world to this sorry pass.


• The shameful erosion of civil liberties that swiftly increased during the Bush Administration has been continued and expanded during the Obama Administration. One cannot help but question the teacher training that goes into producing a Harvard Professor of Constitutional Law who blithely approves legislation containing a provision for indefinite detention that in effect suspends habeas corpus for some, a heretofore sacrosanct aspect of American democracy.


• The economic suffering of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans in the years since 2008, when the Great Recession began, is far worse than that of whites. Black family income and wealth is incomparably lower. Black unemployment is twice that of whites. The Obama White House has not brought forth one program to alleviate the conditions afflicting these three communities, and it’s hardly likely a Romney government would do any better.

On other visible election issues, such as the rights of labor unions, the Democrats are much better than the Republicans, who despise the unions, but Obama has certainly been asleep at the switch, or maybe he just knows labor will support him come what may.

Portraying himself as a friend of labor, Obama refused to fight hard enough -- even when the Democrats controlled the House and Senate -- to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, the one bill labor truly wanted from the White House in return for years of service. During his first term Obama presided over anti-union legislation and stood mute as the labor movement was pummeled mercilessly in several state legislatures, even losing collective bargaining rights in some states. With friends like this...

In rhetoric, Obama is far superior to the Republicans on such issues as social programs, the deficit, unemployment, foreclosures, tax policy, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. But in actual practice he has either done virtually nothing or has already made compromises. When he thinks he may lose he backs away instead of fighting on and at least educating people in the process. Look at it this way:

• The only social program to emerge from the Obama Administration is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a near duplicate of Romney’s Republican plan in Massachusetts. Obama wouldn’t even consider the long overdue and far better single payer/Medicare-for-all plan.
  
  Obamacare is an improvement over the present system, although it still leaves millions without healthcare. But it only came about after convincing Big Insurance and Big Pharma that it would greatly increase their profits. The big insurance and drug companies accumulate overhead costs of 30%. Government-provided Universal Medicare, based on today’s overhead, would only be about 3% because profit and excessive executive pay would be excluded.


• In his willingness to compromise, Obama largely accepted the Tea Party right wing emphasis on deficit reduction instead of investing in the economy and social programs, especially to recover from the Great Recession, continuing stagnation and high unemployment. This will mainly entail budget reductions and targeted tax increases focusing on finally ending the Bush tax cuts for people earning $250,000 or more a year. These cuts were supposed to expire two years ago but were extended by Obama in a compromise tax deal with obstructionist Republicans Congress.

It’s an old Republican trick when in office to greatly increase the deficit through tax breaks and war costs, then demand that the succeeding Democratic Administration focus on reducing the deficit by virtually eliminating social programs for the people. Reagan and Bush #1 did it successfully to President Bill Clinton (who spent eight years eliminating the deficit without sponsoring one significant social program), and Bush #2 has done it to Obama.

Almost as informative as what separates the two parties is what they agree upon. Bill Quigley, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, compiled the following list, which was published on AlterNet Oct. 27:

1. Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes.
2. Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing the 5,113 U.S. nuclear warheads.
3. Neither candidate is campaigning to close Guantanamo prison.
4. Neither candidate has called for arresting and prosecuting high ranking people on Wall Street for the subprime mortgage catastrophe.
5. Neither candidate is interested in holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for the torture committed by U.S. personnel against prisoners in Guantanamo or in Iraq or Afghanistan.
6. Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of drones to assassinate people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia.
7. Neither candidate is against warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, or racial profiling in fighting "terrorism."
8. Neither candidate is interested in fighting for a living wage. In fact neither are really committed beyond lip service to raising the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour -- which, if it kept pace with inflation since the 1960s should be about $10 an hour.
9. Neither candidate was interested in arresting Osama bin Laden and having him tried in court.
10. Neither candidate will declare they refuse to bomb Iran.
11. Neither candidate is refusing to take huge campaign contributions from people and organizations.
12. Neither candidate proposes any significant specific steps to reverse global warming.
13. Neither candidate is talking about the over 2 million people in jails and prisons in the U.S.
14. Neither candidate proposes to create public jobs so everyone who wants to work can.
15. Neither candidate opposes the nuclear power industry. In fact both support expansion.

Over the past several weeks, liberal and progressive groups have been seeking to convince disenchanted voters who share their politics to once again get behind Obama with renewed enthusiasm and hope for progress. These organizations fear such voters will not turn out on election day or instead vote for a progressive third party candidate such as the Green Party’s Jill Stein, or a socialist candidate, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Peta Lindsay, both of whom are on the New York State ballot.

It would be better for all American working families, including the poor and the oppressed sectors if the Republicans were defeated, and Obama will do less harm than Romney and the far right.

I will not vote for Obama because he is a warrior president comfortably leading an imperialist and militarist system -- a man who ignores poor and low income families, who eviscerates our civil liberties, and who knows the truth about global warming but does pathetically little about it.

I’ll vote for Peta Lindsay, a young African American socialist woman. I completely agree with her 10-point election platform, the last point of which is “Seize the banks, jail Wall Street Criminals.” [Peta Lindsay is on the ballot in 12 states.] And I want to help to build socialism, the only real answer to the problems afflicting America and the world.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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