Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Peace and War, Politics

Facing a tough race for his own seat in Congress, Dennis Kucinich is ending his presidential campaign.

This is very unfortunate. I heard Kucinich speak during the 2004 campaign, happily voted for him in the primary, and was appalled to see the way mainstream media refused to acknowledge his candidacy.

In fact, Kucinich and the similarly ignored Ron Paul are the only ones to raise any truly visionary ideas in this campaign (unless you count Huckabee’s idea to rewrite the Constitution as a Christian fundamentalist document–ugh!). Kucinich’s platform included single-payer health care, a dramatic shift toward renewable energy, and many other things we progressives have advocated for years–and which the mainstream media cloaks in invisibility, so candidates with something fresh to bring to the table get no coverage, and people have to hear about them through their own personal networks and brave media outlets like Democracy Now.

I question the ethics of a media empire that decides which candidates we should listen to, sanitizes those remaining, and ducks out on intelligent coverage of real issues. The whole system is deeply broken.

To me, Kucinich was the first person since George McGovern and Shirley Chisolm that I could vote for with a smile and a light heart, as someone who actually represents my views, and I wasn’t old enough to vote for McGovern.

He and Ron Paul have been the only ones willing to speak truth to power. Gravel has good politics but he’s been reaaaaly quiet!

The country is poorer for him being forced out.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Big Brother is Big Broke? One more bit of incompetence from the bizarre GWB administration:

The FBI lost a whole bunch of its wiretaps for failing to pay its enormous phone bill, USA Today reports.

Of course, since a lot of government wiretaps didn’t bother with such niceties as FISA warrants, this might turn out to be a good thing.

But don’t you feel so much safer?

Needless to say, some bloggers have been having some fun with this:

Fast Silicon:

Because incidents like this make it all too clear that “Big Brother” rides the short bus and frequently forgets to take his meds.

This same blogger referred to the FBI being “outed as morons.”

Then there’s this delicious satirical piece by James Dickerman on Huffington Post:

When the ACLU complained initially to the phone companies, talking about some constitutional hooey, the phone companies said that they were just trying to do their patriotic duty to help the FBI find terrorists between phone conversations about The Office. It made a lot of sense. Now though, the ACLU is saying, “Hey hey, phone companies. If you’re really so patriotic, why are you shutting down the wiretaps?” It’s a ridiculous idea that completely contradicts what the phone company is up to. Can’t the ACLU see that if the phone company had to shut down the wiretaps in order to protect our way of life?

If you want more, here’s the whole Google listing for fbi phone bill.

Oh, and wait till you see the FBI’s official excuse–one of the best examples of how not to write a press release I’ve ever seen:

The FBI is confident that the Department of Justice effort to create a Unified Financial Management System for all DOJ agencies will greatly strengthen oversight and controls over financial programs, including confidential case funds and the related costs associated with telecommunications services. While there is widespread agreement that the current financial management system, first introduced in the 1980’s, is inadequate, the FBI will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse, and is addressing the issues identified in the audit. Every effort is being made to either implement the recommendations or otherwise put in place corrective actions to ensure appropriate oversight.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Politics

This exchange between Mitt Romney and John McCain, and the follow-up dialogue with George Stephanopoulosshows everything that’s wrong with the bland, I-didn’t-mean-what-I-said-and-in-fact-I-never-said-it, duck-the-real-issues treacle that U.S. presidential politics has become.

Could you ever imagine Hugo Chavez spouting that sort of junk?

I’m no fan of McCain, but Romney should be ashamed of himself–except that he has made it abundantly clear to me for years that he has no shame. He specializes in the flip-flop.

And a lot of the other candidates imitate this crap. We, the American people, ought to flat-out reject it. We should demand that our candidates say what they mean, mean what they say, and be held accountable when they screw up or retreat into this sort of meaningless blather.

Columnist Chris Kelly analyzed it like this:

And then remembers that it’s probably on videotape somewhere. So he clarifies:

I would never stoop to accusing you of doing the horrible things everyone knows you do. I’d just insinuate it.

But it’s even more remarkable than that. Mitt Romney has the power to reverse-insinuate. Sometimes when he directly says something, it turns out he’s really just hinting.

He can unsay things by saying them. Don’t ask me how that’s possible. It resists interpretation, like abstract expressionism.

BTW, I’m using “treacle” as Lewis Carroll used it–to describe a bland, unappetizing mishmash–think of it as Muzak(TM) without music. I actually do like molasses.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Politics

Obama has a commanding lead. He is a remarkable orator, a very charismatic figure. His record is not quite as progressive as his rhetoric, but if he (or Edwards) is the nominee, I would vote Democrat in November. If it’s Clinton, with her hawkish politics and defense of extremely antilibertarian legislation such as the Patriot Act, I’ll vote for Cynthia McKinney on the Green ticket.

Edwards’s second-place showing is remarkable given the way he was outspent.

The marginal voices are being squished out. Neither Kucinich nor Mike Gravel got any showing at all, and Richardson, Biden and Dodd together couldn’t muster 3 percent. Ahead of time, Kucinich threw his support to Obama in the caucuses, and Nader to Edwards. Following the results, Dod and Biden dropped out.

Speaking of outspent, the very scary Mike Huckabee ran away with the GOP side, 34% to Romney’s 25, and Romney outspent him 3:1. And Ron Paul got 3 times as many delegates as Giuliani.

Much as I love the idea that you don’t have to spend your way to the nomination, I am extremely troubled by Huckabee’s beliefs. I don’t trust him to be the president of all of us.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Politics

While others are shocked, investigate reporter Greg Palast is not surprised that Jon Mendelsohn, chief fundraiser for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, is involved with a big scandal.

Nine years ago, Palast secretly recorded Mendelsohn–thinking he was taling to a lobbyist from Enron–bragging that he could get to anyone in British government is the price was right, even Gordon Brown (at that time in charge of the British treasury).

His question is not how a supposedly ethical party man was able to channel “£630,000 ($1.2 million) in dodgy, possibly illegal, campaign contributions to Labour”–but why Brown, who couldn’t have been uninformed about Mendelsohn’s shady history, brought him on board in the first place.

An interesting question, indeed!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Politics

Who will the Democrats nominate? Let’s hope it’s not Hillary. There are thousands and thousands of people in the “democratic wing of the Democratic Party” working to nominate somebody who more closely represents the progressive viewpoint.

Hillary has made it abundantly clear that neither peace or personal liberty is particularly important to her. She has an abysmal record. She voted for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, has been quick to embrace the Bush Administration’s warmongering rhetoric on Iran, has as far as I can tell has shown no real leadership during her years in the Senate.

She has a double-whammy disadvantage. the Right, for reasons I don’t understand, demonizes and vilifies her to the point where they would come out in droves to vote against her, even if her opponent is someone they also despise–while the Left is completely uninspired by her, recognizes the betrayal of their constituency, and wouldn’t turn out to support her bid. The Dems are crazy if they nominate her.

She may get some votes from muddy thinkers who think that voting for a woman is always the progressive choice (ignoring examples throughout recent decades from Margaret Thatcher on down). She won’t get votes from true progressives.

While I might have to grit my teeth to do it, I think I could vote for any of the other Dems in the running. If it’s Hillary, I’ll bloody well vote Green. And in the primary at least, I’ll have the fun of voting for a candidate whose views are quite close to my own: Dennis Kucinich.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Politics

How to Reform the US Voting Process: A 7-Point Plan
Do we ever need serious electoral reform in the US (all those in parliamentary democracies can take a moment to laugh at us)! Here’s my reform platform:

  • Instant runoff voting
  • Allocation of presidential electoral votes proportionally in *all* states (Nebraska and Maine already do this)
  • Proportional representation in Congress and state legislatures including minority parties at a 5 percent threshold
  • De-marginalization of third parties (possibly through a parliamentary system)
  • Participation by all recognized party candidates in party debates
  • Removal of elections from the control of clearly partisan operatives such as the State Co- Chairs of one candidate’s campaign

    • [This actually happened both in Florida, 2000–Katherine Harris–and Ohio, 2004–Kenneth Blackwell. In both cases, the Secretary of State, in charge of the election, also happened to be the Bush state co-chair. In both cases, the question of who actually won that state will be forever under a cloud. and in both cases, the state was the crucial determinant of victory or defeat nationally. and in both cases, millions of people do not accept the “result” as valid–myself included–and therefore grant no legitimacy to the Bush II presidency.]

  • And don’t let us forget the most important: voter-verified paper ballots, screened on a first pass by an optical scanner machine for a preliminary count but then hand-counted under appropriate supervision and controlled conditions, in the presence of neutral observers, observers from each party (including third parties), and the media
    • Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics

    By now, everyone’s probably heard the news earlier in the week: not only did Iran stop pursuing its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but Bush knew this as far back as August–even though he was still claiming otherwise as recently as Tuesday

    ABC put it like this:

    “I was made aware of the NIE last week,” Bush said Tuesday. “In August, I think it was [Director of National Intelligence] Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.”

    However today the White House is saying the President was told much more…

    [White House press secretary Dana] Perino stated Bush had been told in August that Iran suspended it’s covert nuclear weapons program.

    Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney et al. are still beating the drums of war against Iran. Isn’t it time to beat the drums for impeachment, instead?

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    TV pundit and talk show host Lou Dobbs is a master manipulator. He did an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now–an arena that he clearly considered hostile territory–and he used every sleazoid right-wing media manipulation technique I’ve ever seen: interrupting, name calling, avoiding the topic with a twisted answer changing the subject, denying he said something until it was proven on tape, claiming to hold a high standard only to be caught out on fact-checking issues, demanding to be allowed to finish the question but not granting his interlocuters the same courtesy…and plenty more. This interview demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with “punditocracy.” Oh yes, and he cleverly started the interview by focusing on areas that his audience would actually agree with. But most of his hour focused on immigration, and especially on exposing his rather bizarre sources for his politics on that issue.

    Fortunately, Goodman and Gonzales were up to the challenge and kept him honest–territory that seems, from listening to the interview, to be terra incognita: unknown.

    I particularly liked Juan Gonzales’ response here:

    LOU DOBBS: What in the world is your point?

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m getting to my point, but give me the time to do it. We have time on this show, unlike—we don’t do soundbites here, alright?

    Go to the link and don’t just read the transcript. Listen or watch, and examine this interview through the lens of media manipulation by a right-wing punditocracy that doesn’t want to give air to opposing views, makes up facts when the real ones are inconvenient and resorts to personal attacks when nothing else seems to be working.

    Lou Dobbs embodies much that is wrong with contemporary journalism–but Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, and the entire Democracy Now staff (which does an amazing job digging up news that doesn’t make the mainstream media, five whole hours a week), embody much of what is right.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics

    A Democratic Congressional staffer wrote a piercing and widely circulated memo showing that the Republicans know how to frame things, while the Dems gather ’round the policy-wonk water cooler and talk to themselves in dull messages.

    This of course is nothing new. Back in the ’90’s, Newt Gingrich unleashed the “Contract With America” (which many progressives quickly dubbed “Contract On America”, as indeed, it turned out to be).

    The last really powerful Dem to be able to sound-bite a key message so it becomes a rallying cry was probably Lyndon Johnson, with his Great Society, War on Poverty, etc.

    Yeah, so read the article. And read books like George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant, or other books on persuasion. While social change takes more than sloganeering, it definitely helps if you can frame the discourse. Failure to do so is why both Kerry and Gore were close enough to defeat that the election could actually be stolen from them, and why their weak and ineffectual attempts and keeping their victories fell flat.

    I think it’s also interesting that what led me to this article was a blog post by copywriter Ben Settle (I read a lot of copywriting newsletters) called Democrats Suck at Copywriting? Didn’t hear about this one from any of my progressive pen-pals.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail