The Reality
Friday, November 18, 2005
The Right to Vote
The right wing got their agenda across during their time in exile with "stunt-legislation" - laws and amendments that highlighted what they saw as the weaknesses of the Democratic party - whether or not that legislation had any chance of passing.
I say we do the same now during our exile and introduce an Amendment to the Constitution establishing a federal right to vote.
The Republicans are vulnerable on this issue. Americans as a collective body feel that our elections should be fixed, that something is wrong and they care because the believe the right to vote is precious (if under-utilized).
I wouldn't kick one bit if the amendment did pass. Even if it didn't, wouldn't you love to get on the record the names of the politicians who don't support the right to vote?
After the 2000 Election Nightmare and constitutional crisis the Republicans got ahead of the unfocused anger of the left to propose the Help America Vote Act - a nifty piece of legislation that did not solve the problem - it merely added new problems and put the fix in on future elections. It was classic Trojan Horse stunt legislation. Dems who voted against the Help America Vote Act voted against the right to vote.
Lets us play that same card.
Spending HAVA money is Spitzer's idea of electoral reform. God help us. Spending HAVA grants will not ensure a fair election. Just ask Ken Blackwell and the disenfranchised voters of Cuyahoga County, OH. The HAVA law as written and enforced is deeply flawed.
Even if Spitzer procures one voting machine for every 100 registered voters in every precinct, if these machines run on secret closed-source software and have no paper trails, the sanctity of our franchise is at risk.
Even if New York State serves a model, with same-day registration, equal voting machine systems, equal numbers of machines, equal time to vote, an end to partisan oversight of the electoral process, extended voting periods, early voting, IRV and Proportional Representation and intra-precinct voting allowances--we would still be eons from real election reform.
Why? Because there would be 49 other states lagging behind us, reluctant to conduct open and accountable, non-partisan, re-countable elections. This fundamental lapse leads inevitably to inequitable elections due to the inconsistent patchwork of state-level systems.
Our voting system is built on the constitutional foundation of "states' rights": 50 states, 3,067 counties and 13,000 different election jurisdictions, all separate and unequal.
Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. spoke on the floor during the debate over Ohio's Electoral College votes and said, "I want to be clear. Today's objection is not about an individual, but our institutions. It is not about Republicans, but our Republic. It is not about Democrats, but our democracy. It is not about an election result, but our election system - it is broken and needs fixing."
During 2000 Supreme Court deliberations in Bush v. Gore, which ultimately determined the occupant of the White House, Justice Scalia went out of his way to establish that the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for the president of the United States. We don't!
A state right is not an American citizenship right, but a right defined and protected unevenly by each state - and limited to that state, however crooked, broken, arcane and dysfunctional they may be. Therefore I support a Voting Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that applies to all citizens with a unifying set of rules for all states.
Although Rep. Jackson's HRJ. 28 is not all the reform that is needed, if its goal is to prevent future electoral fiascos--like Florida, Ohio or elsewhere--it is a vehicle for getting started. After all, who, aside from Antonin Scalia, would argue against the right to vote?
How badly do you want democracy?
¶ 10:41 PM 0 comments
I say we do the same now during our exile and introduce an Amendment to the Constitution establishing a federal right to vote.
The Republicans are vulnerable on this issue. Americans as a collective body feel that our elections should be fixed, that something is wrong and they care because the believe the right to vote is precious (if under-utilized).
I wouldn't kick one bit if the amendment did pass. Even if it didn't, wouldn't you love to get on the record the names of the politicians who don't support the right to vote?
After the 2000 Election Nightmare and constitutional crisis the Republicans got ahead of the unfocused anger of the left to propose the Help America Vote Act - a nifty piece of legislation that did not solve the problem - it merely added new problems and put the fix in on future elections. It was classic Trojan Horse stunt legislation. Dems who voted against the Help America Vote Act voted against the right to vote.
Lets us play that same card.
Spending HAVA money is Spitzer's idea of electoral reform. God help us. Spending HAVA grants will not ensure a fair election. Just ask Ken Blackwell and the disenfranchised voters of Cuyahoga County, OH. The HAVA law as written and enforced is deeply flawed.
Even if Spitzer procures one voting machine for every 100 registered voters in every precinct, if these machines run on secret closed-source software and have no paper trails, the sanctity of our franchise is at risk.
Even if New York State serves a model, with same-day registration, equal voting machine systems, equal numbers of machines, equal time to vote, an end to partisan oversight of the electoral process, extended voting periods, early voting, IRV and Proportional Representation and intra-precinct voting allowances--we would still be eons from real election reform.
Why? Because there would be 49 other states lagging behind us, reluctant to conduct open and accountable, non-partisan, re-countable elections. This fundamental lapse leads inevitably to inequitable elections due to the inconsistent patchwork of state-level systems.
Our voting system is built on the constitutional foundation of "states' rights": 50 states, 3,067 counties and 13,000 different election jurisdictions, all separate and unequal.
Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. spoke on the floor during the debate over Ohio's Electoral College votes and said, "I want to be clear. Today's objection is not about an individual, but our institutions. It is not about Republicans, but our Republic. It is not about Democrats, but our democracy. It is not about an election result, but our election system - it is broken and needs fixing."
During 2000 Supreme Court deliberations in Bush v. Gore, which ultimately determined the occupant of the White House, Justice Scalia went out of his way to establish that the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for the president of the United States. We don't!
A state right is not an American citizenship right, but a right defined and protected unevenly by each state - and limited to that state, however crooked, broken, arcane and dysfunctional they may be. Therefore I support a Voting Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that applies to all citizens with a unifying set of rules for all states.
Although Rep. Jackson's HRJ. 28 is not all the reform that is needed, if its goal is to prevent future electoral fiascos--like Florida, Ohio or elsewhere--it is a vehicle for getting started. After all, who, aside from Antonin Scalia, would argue against the right to vote?
How badly do you want democracy?
¶ 10:41 PM 0 comments
Dems Should Run on MLK
Every MLK day America sees a clip of the "I Have A Dream Speech" with a bumper of vapid commentary about his leadership in the struggle for Civil Rights and against racism. There might be mention that the struggle (to end racism) goes on.
[Nevermind that the march on Washington for civil rights was organized by a gay African-American named Bayard Rustin whose civil rights as a homosexual still aren't recognized in 2005.]
However, the last four years of his life and work are being ignored.
King is being sanitized into a smoothed off, mellowed out respectable national hero whose comfortable, present-day image bears little resemblance to the human King or to the political King of 1965-1968.
What was Dr. King fighting for the last four years of his life? After he won the Nobel Peace Prize? What got him killed in Memphis?
The 1965 - 1968 King was a new-styled political leader who called on America to achieve the kind of deep reform that would transform ours into a genuinely just nation. This was Dr. King, the liberal. This is the torch the Democratic Party must take up again, give King credit for, and then run with.
This is the Dr. King who believed that there is no excuse for poverty in this country.
This is the Dr. King who believed that poverty is violence.
This is the Dr. King who was prepared to risk everything for the larger goal of a world transformed by the genuine peace that silences not only the guns of violence, but also the words of violence and the shouts of hatred and the whimpering tears of fear and pain and violation.
This is the Dr. King whose life bears relevance and truth across the years demanding that we take up the cause.
This is the Dr. King who raged against the Vietnam War shouting "every bomb dropped on Vietnam explodes in American inner cities."
After he won the Nobel, he began to understand that the racism he been struggling against since 1955 is not the real evil. The problem is violence, and it is on this evil that he began to focus his attention.
He began increasingly to see this deeper violence, this deeper evil in the United States, was expressed in the Vietnam War and in the poverty that is endemic in our nation.
By 1967 he had begun to focus his attention more and more on the Vietnam War and on poverty. He saw that both are expressions of violence, of the violation of one people by another. And he saw that the essence of racism is also violence. Militarism and racism are woven together with the notion that it is acceptable for one people to treat another inhumanely.
That racism and war breed in this hatred and violence is, perhaps reasonably obvious, but it may not be quite so clear how poverty is also a form of violence.
When the economic system is focused on wealth and power, it is no longer focused on the people. That shift in focus permits people to be treated as tools, to become raw material for the production of wealth. Their value is seen as part of the cost of doing business.
When the point of economic activity moves from the betterment of the people to the accumulation of wealth and power, then the obvious thing to do is to reduce this cost of doing business to an absolute minimum. One becomes more concerned with cost than with the impact of economic activity on the people. The inevitable result is poverty.
Dr, King said in a speech at Riverside Church, "We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'people-oriented' society." He stated one cannot be people-oriented and tolerate poverty. This was the core of his opposition to the Vietnam War and of his campaign against poverty, both of which were the center of his activity between the 1964 and his death. This wisdom has the power to make us very uncomfortable. Good. We should be uncomfortable.
Democrats must be the party of the people, thereby forcing Republicans to be the party of corporations. Democrats have been the party fighting for freedom, Democrats have been the party to tackle poverty and failed foreign adventures. Keep fighting King's war. ¶ 10:36 PM 0 comments
[Nevermind that the march on Washington for civil rights was organized by a gay African-American named Bayard Rustin whose civil rights as a homosexual still aren't recognized in 2005.]
However, the last four years of his life and work are being ignored.
King is being sanitized into a smoothed off, mellowed out respectable national hero whose comfortable, present-day image bears little resemblance to the human King or to the political King of 1965-1968.
What was Dr. King fighting for the last four years of his life? After he won the Nobel Peace Prize? What got him killed in Memphis?
The 1965 - 1968 King was a new-styled political leader who called on America to achieve the kind of deep reform that would transform ours into a genuinely just nation. This was Dr. King, the liberal. This is the torch the Democratic Party must take up again, give King credit for, and then run with.
This is the Dr. King who believed that there is no excuse for poverty in this country.
This is the Dr. King who believed that poverty is violence.
This is the Dr. King who was prepared to risk everything for the larger goal of a world transformed by the genuine peace that silences not only the guns of violence, but also the words of violence and the shouts of hatred and the whimpering tears of fear and pain and violation.
This is the Dr. King whose life bears relevance and truth across the years demanding that we take up the cause.
This is the Dr. King who raged against the Vietnam War shouting "every bomb dropped on Vietnam explodes in American inner cities."
After he won the Nobel, he began to understand that the racism he been struggling against since 1955 is not the real evil. The problem is violence, and it is on this evil that he began to focus his attention.
He began increasingly to see this deeper violence, this deeper evil in the United States, was expressed in the Vietnam War and in the poverty that is endemic in our nation.
By 1967 he had begun to focus his attention more and more on the Vietnam War and on poverty. He saw that both are expressions of violence, of the violation of one people by another. And he saw that the essence of racism is also violence. Militarism and racism are woven together with the notion that it is acceptable for one people to treat another inhumanely.
That racism and war breed in this hatred and violence is, perhaps reasonably obvious, but it may not be quite so clear how poverty is also a form of violence.
When the economic system is focused on wealth and power, it is no longer focused on the people. That shift in focus permits people to be treated as tools, to become raw material for the production of wealth. Their value is seen as part of the cost of doing business.
When the point of economic activity moves from the betterment of the people to the accumulation of wealth and power, then the obvious thing to do is to reduce this cost of doing business to an absolute minimum. One becomes more concerned with cost than with the impact of economic activity on the people. The inevitable result is poverty.
Dr, King said in a speech at Riverside Church, "We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'people-oriented' society." He stated one cannot be people-oriented and tolerate poverty. This was the core of his opposition to the Vietnam War and of his campaign against poverty, both of which were the center of his activity between the 1964 and his death. This wisdom has the power to make us very uncomfortable. Good. We should be uncomfortable.
Democrats must be the party of the people, thereby forcing Republicans to be the party of corporations. Democrats have been the party fighting for freedom, Democrats have been the party to tackle poverty and failed foreign adventures. Keep fighting King's war. ¶ 10:36 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
The Scary Thing With ScAlito
So Bush bent over for the Republican Taliban. What’s new? That’s not the scary – what’s scary is that the more I read about this ScAlito clown, the more I’m seeing how similar he and I are. Scary.
We’re both the kind of guy who gets mad reading The New York Times. We both very probably get upset thinking about the progress of this country’s history. We both want to change it. And at our worst, I suspect we both wonder after a really rough day if maybe there’s not a different country we were meant to live in.
We both live with this hemorrhaging but mostly silent frustration. I recognize it in his face. I know that pain.
Like ScAlito I ache for some fabled place to be my home. And occasionally, I consider leaving this land of ours and look to another country that might better fit the bill.
For me, you know, the place’d be like, a country where you know, maybe the citizens are treated equally and stuff. And where, whatever, maybe children have the, uh, right to healthcare, something. I’d be cool with a country where citizens are guaranteed the right to vote, even, you know – just for starters. Really, I’m not picky.
The trouble of course is that for ScAlito, as far as I know, the planet Earth doesn’t contain a Free Market Theocratic Feudal Sharecropper Serfdom Police State. Did it ever? Either way, short one colony on Mars, he’s stuck here with the rest of us.
Which brings me to the scary – - scary for the rest of us…. the women, gays, minorities, immigrants, the sick, disabled, elderly, poor, the chronically ill, the raped, the tortured, the uninsured, the strugglers (ah hell everybody who isn’t rich, white and a man) and among they, the wrongly accused, the falsely imprisoned, the terminally ill, the open-minded and the free-spirited – - scary for all of us, I have, at most, one billionth the power of ScAlito on the SCOTUS.
…aaand cue nightmare -- Happy Halloween.
¶ 12:11 AM 0 comments
We’re both the kind of guy who gets mad reading The New York Times. We both very probably get upset thinking about the progress of this country’s history. We both want to change it. And at our worst, I suspect we both wonder after a really rough day if maybe there’s not a different country we were meant to live in.
We both live with this hemorrhaging but mostly silent frustration. I recognize it in his face. I know that pain.
Like ScAlito I ache for some fabled place to be my home. And occasionally, I consider leaving this land of ours and look to another country that might better fit the bill.
For me, you know, the place’d be like, a country where you know, maybe the citizens are treated equally and stuff. And where, whatever, maybe children have the, uh, right to healthcare, something. I’d be cool with a country where citizens are guaranteed the right to vote, even, you know – just for starters. Really, I’m not picky.
The trouble of course is that for ScAlito, as far as I know, the planet Earth doesn’t contain a Free Market Theocratic Feudal Sharecropper Serfdom Police State. Did it ever? Either way, short one colony on Mars, he’s stuck here with the rest of us.
Which brings me to the scary – - scary for the rest of us…. the women, gays, minorities, immigrants, the sick, disabled, elderly, poor, the chronically ill, the raped, the tortured, the uninsured, the strugglers (ah hell everybody who isn’t rich, white and a man) and among they, the wrongly accused, the falsely imprisoned, the terminally ill, the open-minded and the free-spirited – - scary for all of us, I have, at most, one billionth the power of ScAlito on the SCOTUS.
…aaand cue nightmare -- Happy Halloween.
¶ 12:11 AM 0 comments
