Defend Democracy from Republic Advocates

Most Americans assume that Democracy is still a central American ideal. It may not work as well as we might like, but one of our jobs as citizens and as a nation is to perfect Democracy.

A dangerous movement exists in our nation to take away voting rights from most citizens so as to turn back the clock and return America to being a Republic run by a limited set of people having full citizenship. They are able to confuse many honest citizens because the terms Democracy and Republic are not necessarily opposites. A Republic in which every adult person has recognized rights, including the right to equal treatment and the right to vote for elected officials, is called a Representative Democracy. The history of the United States of America, under the U.S. Constitution, is largely a history of moving from a corrupt Republic to a shining Democracy. [See America: Republic or Democracy?]

This anti-democracy movement started on the fringes of the far right, but in the last few years has gained traction among the Tea Party and even among some mainstream conservative Republican Party members. To make headway it lies about the differences between Democracies and Republics. It purposefully conflates the Democratic Party with democracy and the Republican Party with republicanism (of the type it espouses). It revises American history to deceive the American people about the genesis of our nation, our liberties, and the creation of our Constitution.

The Republican Party was not named for the idea that only rich white men should vote, as was the case when our Constitution was written. It was called the Republican Party because the best name, Democratic Party, was already taken. There is nothing wrong, or inherently bad, in the concept of a Republic. If anything, a key concept of the Republican Party when it formed in the 1850's was that the Democratic Party was not democratic enough. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery.

The Democratic Party arose when property requirements to qualify for the franchise were being reduced and eliminated in the early 18th century, allowing all white male citizens to vote for elected officials. This was a critical turn in U.S. history, and within the racialist and sexist thinking of that era meant that our republic was becoming more democratic. Andrew Jackson and his cronies saw the potential in becoming leaders of these newly enfranchised voters [See Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson] and so created the Democratic Party.

The Republicans did not advocate taking away rights from poor white males. They advocated eliminating slavery and extending the right to vote (and other rights) to non-white ethnic groups, notably African-Americans. Thus, in their early history, Republicans also helped to forge our democracy out of the entirety of our citizenry.

Both Republicans and Democrats later supported the right of women to vote, extending our democracy further with the 19th Amendment. In the 20th century the Republican Party championed the right of African-Americans living in the old south to vote. In the 1960's the Democratic Party finally overruled its segregationist wing and joined in making our nation one where every adult could vote and was equal in the eyes of the law.

Two Big Lies are being told right now by the anti-democracy demagogues. One is that only Republics protect human rights. They claim democracies mean majority rule and the ability of majority to take away rights (and private property) from individuals. Yet we have a democracy that protects individual rights better than most real Republics ever have. Republics typically are run by minorities that trample on the rights of majorities. Communist Party leadership of Soviet Republics is one recent historic example. More commonly in Republics voters and rulers have been limited to a small class of rich people. In American history our early republic was run by slave masters who refused to treat slaves (and American Indians, and even middle class white men) as having the rights listed in our Bill of Rights.

The other big lie is that God, through our Founding Fathers, embodied in our Constitution, mandated that the United States would be a republic with a limited franchise. They point to where the Constitution ensures that state governments are to have "a republican form of government." They conveniently forget that a Republic can be democratic or undemocratic, and still have a Republican form (elected officials instead of a monarch). They failed to note that the most powerful branch of government in the new Federal constitution was the House of Representatives, which was constituted according to democratic, not merely republican, ideals. The House may exhibit all the imperfections of humans and politics, but it successfully accomodated the extension of voting rights to all adults.

Don't think this issue will go away. There is money behind it and forceful evil intent. Advocating disenfranchising American citizens may be protected speech, but it verges on treason.

These people need to be stopped. Their ideas must be soundly refuted. Help create a body of public opinion that will reject their poisoned mind set. Forward this essay, speak out, or write your own commentary on this critical issue.

Republican Cuts: Loud Bark, Tiny Bite

I don't agree with the Republican consensus on much, but I do agree that the national debt and deficit are a problem that needs fixing. Unfortunately the Republicans on the House of Representatives Budget Committee have now revealed their real plans for fiscal 2011. They are not trying to cut a trillion from the $1.5 trillion deficit. They are not even cutting a tenth of that, $100 billion, as they had originally promised. They are down to cutting just $32 billion. Maybe they are hoping most people who did not go to sleep after the last election have trouble keeping the difference between a billion and a trillion clearly in mind.

Rhetoric is a campaign circus designed to delight voters. Then there is the reality of being in Washington and realizing you are just a $200,000 per year clown surrounded by trade associations that dwarf billionaires in the amount of money and clout they can heave around. Consider, too, who really gets hurt by budget cuts.

The Republicans worship, as the sacred cows in their Trinity, the Free Market, the Pentagon, and Homeland Security. So most of the imperialist bloat is off the table as far as budget cuts. That leaves what is called Domestic Spending.

Congress does not spend money unless someone lobbies for it, so every bit of spending has its defenders. Republican rhetoric is that spending goes mostly to welfare bums and to bureaucrats who spend their days sharpening pencils for writing more regulations.

Consider Food Stamps. That's just a taxpayer give away to welfare bums, right? Wrong. It is a direct subsidy to two big, Republican-dominated, corporate industries. Grocery stores love food stamps. Corporate agriculture loves food stamps. Food stamps don't amount to much for any given family on welfare, but aggregate them over say a chain of Safeway stores or Archer Daniels Midland, and those billions become uncuttable.

And so the mostly middle-class angry men of the Tea Party and their leader Calamity Jane can elect all the prayer-obsessed idiots they want to Congress. Without food stamps the Free Market degenerates into ruinous competition. Same for funding science. Same for funding just about everything.

The $32 billion in cuts were so small the New York Times article did not even bother to mention exactly where they would come from.

Keeping up the rhetoric, the Democrats on the Budget Committee said the almost nonexistent cuts "will harm the economy and put more people out of work."

My guess is by the time the budget is actually passed, if it gets passed at all, another $100 billion in pork will be added in. Maybe $50 billion could be used to form a Department of Tea Party, Constitutional, and God Studies. Give all those Tea Party guys and gals good paying Federal jobs, and soon they will be singing a more harmonious tune.

Obama's Luck Runs Out

Fishtailing is a good way to describe the American body politic these days. The Democrats only got in back in 1996, and here it is in 2010 and they are on the outs again, at least in the House of Representatives. Our grand Constitution ensures that clean sweeps are nearly impossible by having only one-third of Senators elected every 2 years, and of course Barack Obama has two more years guaranteed.

Unfortunately we can't toss out lobbyists every two years. The same lot of bloodsuckers is there in Washington (and in State capitals) no matter who is President or which party controls Congress.

Obama is beginning to remind me of Herbert Hoover, and certainly reminds me of the ancient Greek adage that you don't know whether a man has had a lucky or unlucky life until he is buried. Herbert Hoover was a great guy and swept the nation in his Presidential bid in 1928. He had served less than a year in office when the stock market crashed. The Democrats won the House of Representatives in 1930 after roughly the first year of the Great Depression, except that no one knew in 1930 that anything was much wrong beyond a rather sharp drop off in the business cycle. Everyone thought the economy would start back up in 1931.

By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, blame for the Great Depression had firmly stuck to Hoover and the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, nothing they did caused the Depression and nothing they could have done could have prevented it. Even though the economy did not get much better under Roosevelt during his first term in office, most people failed to shift blame from Hoover to Roosevelt. World War II ended the Great Depression, not Roosevelt or the New Deal. I like some of the provisions of the New Deal, and some were helpful to people at the time, but it is false to give it credit for ending the depression.

Obama's timing, like Hoovers, was just bad. By the time Obama was elected in late 2008 the economy was falling apart. George W. Bush was not to blame; he did not create the housing bubble. Keep in mind that most American's don't follow politics or economics closely. It takes time for reality to sink in. Reality was real clear for all but the most obtuse by mid-2009, but by then Obama was President. Also, he made big promises to get elected, and some fools believed him.

Federal money that could have been used to create temporary jobs for people had to be used for banking and auto-industry bailouts. Those bailouts probably did save us from a depression-style crash, but the average voter doesn't worry about what might of happened. They know what happened: if they did not lose their job, people they know did. And almost everyone had their hours of work cut back in 2009, and so felt poorer. Small businesses in particular were driven to the wall.

Another difference between Roosevelt and the 1934 Democratic Party and Obama and the 2010 Democratic Party is that there was no safety net to speak of in 1932. So between '32 and '34, people were just happy to be fed and sheltered. The safety nets were in place in 2008, so people wanted more. They wanted their jobs back.

The Republican Party has no solutions available. They want to cut the Federal budget, but they won't cut where the fat is: defense and homeland security spending. Cutting the federal budget means cutting jobs. Their idea of creating jobs is giving rich people tax breaks; job creation does not work that way, and tax breaks for anyone will just add to the federal deficit. The Tea Party and Republican ideology advocates do-nothing government. That may be a fine thing in some ways, but it does not create jobs.

But it probably does not matter. We are in an upswing of a business cycle, helped by robust demand from better-managed nations like China, India, and Brazil (all socialist, more or less). I doubt the Republicans in Congress will be able to do anything that would help or hurt the economy in a major way. But that won't keep them from taking credit for the improving economy. Of course, with Obama in the White House, he'll be working hard to take credit for the improving economy too. So maybe his luck will change again.

Afghanistan War and American Politics

The economic, military, and political stupidity of the United States of America's war against Afghanistan, and "War Against Terror," has been noted by an increasing number of American citizens over the last decade. The war makes sense only to the military-industrial complex. Watching President Barack Obama addressing disabled veterans on Friday, I saw the new mask of brutal Americanism. It is a smooth talking mask, crucial to keeping enough liberal voters in the war camp to keep the dollars flowing to the aggression industries.

Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?

Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.

Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.

But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.

Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.

One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.

In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.

Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.

Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.

To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.

No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.

It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.

Big Love in Congress, 1899

Brigham Henry Roberts was "an American jounalist; born in Washington, Lancshire, England, March 13, 1857. In the summer of 1866 he emigrated with his parents to Davis, co. Ut. At 17 he was apprenticed to the blacksmith trade, at which he worked four years; subsequently attended the University of Utah. Soon after his graduation he was called by the Mormon Church to its missionary service. After laboring for some years as a missionary he was elected to high office in the Church. He was also engaged in journalism and was for a time editor-in-chief of the Salt Lake Herald. In 1894 he was elected to the State Constitutional Convention. At the first State election he was the nominee of the Democratic party for Representative to Congress, but was defeated. In 1898, however, he was elected by a large majority. His election created widespread agitation throughout the country, and on Jan. 25, 1900, the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority voted to exclude him as constitutionally ineligible, as a polygamist, to a seat in that body."

Quoted from The University Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Knowledge, New York, The Co-operative Publication Society, copyright 1902. Volume 8, page 5169

I don't think highly of polygamy, but what one thinks of polygamy is often a result of one's religious beliefs. So in effect the other Congressmen threw a properly elected fellow out of the House of Representatives for belonging to a different religion. Given the number of Congressmen who had both wives and mistresses at that time, they were probably wanting the public eye taken off their own private lives.

What is particularly strange is that the most rigid and rabbid religionists in the U.S. tend to be big on the Jewish Old Testament, in which polygamy is practiced. None of the commandments is against polygamy. In the New Testament I have seen nothing against polygamy.

The U.S. Congress should apologize to the voters of Utah and to the memory of Brigham Henry Roberts. If the voters elect you, and you are a polygamist or bigamist or hold any religious beliefs you like, the Congress should seat you and put up with you as long as the voters of your district want you to serve them.

President Obama Does Afghanistan

Do you remember the patriotic frenzy after the destruction of the World Trade Center? It was not just Republicans who were frothing at the mouth. We - Americans - the good guys - had been attacked. And unprovoked. By some guys who did not even have atomic weapons. They did not even have cruise missiles. They didn't even have artillery. True, they had once had surface-to-air missiles, but the CIA gave them those and they had been used up fighting the Russians. They attacked us with nothing but courage and skill. Outrageous.

Only a couple of Democrats in Congress voted against attacking Afghanistan. No matter that the government and people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with the attack. True, the "criminal" or "religious" organization that actually carried out the World Trade Center attacks had bases in Afghanistan, but all kinds of war criminals are trained or based in the United States, and we Americans don't think that means anyone else should invade our country and overthrow our government.

The tiny remnants of the American left, mostly veterans of the Vietnam War or of the protests against it, dragged themselves out of hiding, started protesting and demonstrating, and eventually, especially after Iraq was invaded, managed to start influencing broader public opinion.

The politicians of the Democratic Party then supported the illegal war crime that was the invasion of Iraq. Still, at protest marches, a large segment of the demonstrators focused their hate on a man they were sure had worse grammar aptitude than they had, President George W. Bush.

Then as the country soured on the war, as people began to understand the history and players better, some Democratic Party politicians wet their fingers, felt the wind shift, and came out against President Bush's poor management of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2006 the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives largely because they pretended to be a party of peace. They now claimed had been tricked into rushing into war by that evil Bush. It never occurred to a bunch of politicians that another politician might occasionally tell a little lie.

They could have cut off appropriations for the wars (the House can do that) but they did not. They wanted the war to be an issue to help them in the 2008 elections.

The economy turned sour, and the Democrats now own the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch.

And the war goes on. The only change: now Democratic Party politicians blame their failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the ineptitude of the puppets the CIA installed in those countries.

Can Barack Obama get the CIA to change the American puppets running Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Yes he can!

Is America A Democracy?

Is America a democracy? Is it a republic? As I explained in America: Republic or Democracy?, a nation can be both. In broad terms I think it is fair to say the the United States of America is a republic that is also a democracy. Call it a democratic-republic (but also recall that some 20th century nations that styled themselves "The Democratic Republic of ..." looked suspiciously like dictatorships).

Here I want to go a bit deeper into the idea of whether the United States of America is a democracy. The long-term historical trend has been to give more groups of people the right to vote in elections. In the 20th century women and people not of European descent gained the right to vote. The voting age was also lowered to 18. This would strengthen the democratic element of our republic. However, this broadening of the right to vote does not insure that the majority view on a particular issue becomes law.

It might be fair to call America a careful, conservative democracy. Suppose a minority position becomes a majority position, as determined by polls. It may take a long time for the majority's view to become policy or law. It is possible that elected officials may realize public sentiment has changed and make appropriate changes quickly, but that seldom happens. Representatives tend to remain loyal to the groups of people that got them elected. So those who oppose the change, or at least some of them, must be voted out of office.

Elections are held every year, but most terms of office have a two year minimum. Let's focus on the national level. The House of Representatives is re-elected every even-numbered year. To get a new majority, in tune with changed public opinion, could take up to two years, depending on where in the election cycle the change of opinion took place.

But only one-third of the members of the U.S. Senate are elected every two years. Each Senator is elected for six years. So it could conceivable take six years for the new majority to emerge in the Senate. And the President can veto the work of a mere majority, so a sympathetic President would be needed, which could take four years.

Even then, as we have seen in U.S. history, the Supreme Court could find reasons to block change. Since the Supreme Court is not elected, but members are given life time appointments by the President, it can easily take a decade for a change to take place if the Supreme Court opposes it. On the other hand, on some occasions the Supreme Court, in deciding a law case brought before it, has made sweeping changes in the laws by a single ruling. These rulings may or may not reflect the sentiments of the majority of citizens.

Even the above scenario assumes an issue is important enough to be the deciding factor in elections. But issues are bundled together so that the voters cannot always get what they want. You can vote for only one person in the House of Representatives. Generally, the set up is that the choice is between a Republican Party candidate and a Democratic Party candidate. Perhaps neither candidate is willing to work for the majority opinion on a particular issue. Or voters, and those seeking their votes, prioritize a different issue (taxes, abortion rights, immigration, etc.) over the one where opinion has changed.

In fact, because of the necessity of bundling issues when voting for candidates, even when there is a clear majority on a particular issue, there may never be appropriate legislation passed on that issue.

Does that mean that the process is not democratic? I think that would be too harsh of a criticism. To a large extent it is an unintended consequence of the republican (that is, representative) structure of our government. Some states get around this problem by allowing for referenda (votes on a particular issue by all of the voters). But there is no mechanism for a national popular vote on a single issue.

Knowing that bundling is part of the mechanics of government in the United States, special interests have every reason to thwart the will of the majority by affecting how issues are bundled. Take "wasteful government spending." One person's wasteful spending is another person's job or profits. If you ask Americans if they want to "eliminate wasteful spending at the Pentagon," they will almost all say yes. But no defense contractor thinks his profit centers are wasting the taxpayers' money. You can't run for Congress with eliminating Pentagon waste as your main issue. The other candidate will just say she's against waste too. There is no election advantage in it. So it never rises to the top of the agenda of elected officials. The same is true, most of the time, of waste at other agencies. It is true that public interest groups are sometimes successful at exposing waste. Before he became President, Harry Truman is reputed to have done a good job with his Senate committee to investigate and eliminate wasteful military spending. But generally speaking, waste is part of the package.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the least democratic, most conservative of our institutions. Of course the Supreme Court couches its decisions based on its interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which is quite difficult to amend. In reality the Supreme Court has a long record of interpreting the Constitution to suit itself. That is why the appointment of a new Supreme Court judge or two can have greater affects on American law than almost any other event. But it is important to remember that the U.S. Constitution can be amended. In the past, amending it has often had a greater affect on government than electing whole new Congresses, Presidents, or even Supreme Courts. It is surprising that so little effort is put into amending the Constitution. There are many reasons for this, but mainly it is not a priority for the major political parties. It requires a lot of hard work to get a Constitutional amendment passed, and most attempts to amend the Constitution fail.

After the Supreme Court, the national institution that most resembles an undemocratic Republic rather than a Democracy is the U.S. Senate. There are two major problems with the U.S. Senate, if the goal is democracy. One is that there are so few Senators and so many Americans. At the time I am writing the population of the United States is about 305 million, so on average each Senator could be said to represent 3 million people. In California two Senators represent 36.5 million people. When you represent that many people, who do you listen to? At the other end of the spectrum is the state of Wyoming, with a population of just over one-half million people. That means that the Senators from Wyoming can be in closer contact with their constituencies. It also means that special interests operating at the national level can put unduly significant amounts of money into the election of Senators from states with small populations. Even without interference by special interests, small-population states tend to be rural. In the U.S. Senate rural populations have far better representation per voter than urban populations. This violates the basic rule of democracy: each citizen's vote should count the same.

Finally, there is the question of money. Citizens may know very little about the citizens who are seeking public office beyond what the campaigns choose to tell them. Usually, but not always, in the United States the candidate with the most money wins. Therefore campaign donors may influence policy more than voters. Both nationally and in some states there have been attempts, broadly called campaign finance reform, to lessen this distortion of democracy. Some have been relatively successful, for instance limiting how much money any one person can give to a campaign for Congress. Others have failed, in particular the idea of publicly financing campaigns. Special interest groups try to kill or maim these laws, and if they are passed set to work to do end-runs around them. The ability of some candidates to raise more money than the other candidates could get from public financing also tend to make these laws irrelevant.

Democracy in itself accomplishes nothing. In a democracy we may have eliminated political violence, but in the struggle for control of government there can be the equivalent of an ongoing, but very civil, war. Those who work the hardest, or have the money to hire the hardest election workers and lobbyists, have an advantage over those who merely have an opinion.

There are specific structural reforms that might make America even more democratic, such as electing the Supreme Court, or recasting the Senate so that each Senator represents the same number of voters. However, already democracy is a big playing field. Individuals and groups of people have many opportunities to push for what they want. If you feel you are in a majority and yet not getting your way, the thing to do is to push harder. If you are in a minority, but feel you are in the right, you need to work harder to bring your views to others.

If you find that a wealthy minority is bribing (perhaps legally, with campaign donations or perks from lobbyists) your representatives, you should probably get yourself another representative. If a wealthy minority is bribing both major parties, help elect independent third party candidates that share your views of the problem.

Democracy is a big notion. No one institution or marker determines whether a nation has a democratic form of government, or the reality of democratic self-rule. Even in a democracy there may be widespread injustice, environmental destruction, bad cultural values, violence, economic disarray, and just plain bad decision making by fully democratic institutions. But compared to dictatorships and other forms of minority rule, democracy puts people in the best position to reform their society and governance in a peaceful way.

And the War Goes On #2

Last fall the voters sent the Establishment a message: get our troops out of Iraq. So much for Democracy. For my earlier take you can see my first And the War Goes On blog.

Democratic Party apologists, of course, blame our continuing presence on the Republicans and in particular George W. Bush. The Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives could have ended the war by cutting off funds for Iraq, but most of these party hacks only used the public's turning against the war as a means to get votes.

Norman Solomon, critic of the U.S. media and of U.S. militarism, spoke in my town, Point Arena, California, last week. His solution: elect different, anti-war, democrats to Congress. He claimed it was a mistake in the 1960's to not vote for the Democratic Party. He was relying on the mainly-progressive-Democrats in the audience mistaking their myth for what actually happened back then.

In, say, 1963 the Democratic Party was run by a racist majority. It was anti-women's rights. It was anti-gay. It was intimately interwoven with the military and arms industry; it invaded Vietnam.

Who then changed the direction of the country? Not Democrats, and certainly not Democratic Party politicians. The people who fought for change were socialists, communists, anarchists, radical feminists and black nationalists. I am pretty darned sure that Malcolm X was not a Democrat; neither were the members of the Black Panther Party.

But hey, why not take credit for things once they have happened and the opinions of voters have changed? That is all the Democratic Party did. It turned against the war - once Richard Nixon was President. It came out for civil rights for blacks and women - once it was clear that the votes of blacks and women could only be gotten that way. And no one noticed the Democratic Party in the forefront of pushing for gay rights.

And the Vietnam War went on, and on. The Democrats had the votes in Congress to end it all along, but they did not. Not under Lyndon Johnson, not under Richard Nixon.

Founded on the principle of slavery and a genocidal policy against Native Americans, the Democratic Party has had no redeeming moments in its history. It's two Patron Saints, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could not be bothered to give African Americans the right to vote in the South. It created the Atomic Bomb program and is the only party to ever use nuclear weapons in war, and at that it chose civilian targets to "test" its new weapons of mass destruction.

Make no mistake: the Democratic Party loves war. Al Gore wanted to invade Iraq but felt restrained by public opinion. Barack Obama talks about peace but actually plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq if he is elected President and has promised to widen the war to Pakistan, just as Richard Nixon promised to end the War in Vietnam but instead extended it to Laos and Cambodia.

American citizens, wake up and get off your asses. We need new parties to represent us. The war crimes organizations, the Democratic Party and Republican Party, need to be defeated. Then they need to be categorized as what they really are: criminal organizations.

I would like to make the Green Party into an organization that the voters can trust and empower. If other parties emerge that are against war and meet my standards for social justice, I think that would be great.

People say this is a two party system, so your only choice is to work for change within the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. But if you look at the U.S. Constitution, it names neither party, nor does it restrict us to two parties.

And if you look at U.S. history, really looking rather than just accepting generalizations that are meant to discourage truth seeking, you will see that two parties are not really the norm. Most significantly, the Republican Party was started in the 1850's in response to the Democratic Party's continuing promotion of slavery. There have been many third parties that have elected some officials. There have been regional third parties, meaning that they were the leading party in their region, and one of the two "major" parties was typically runner-up. And in the South, after the Civil War until about 1968, there was really only one party, the Democratic Party.

Here's a plan: help make northern California and other "liberal" areas into a two party system where the two parties are the Greens and the Democrats. This has already taken place in San Francisco. But it did not happen because people sat around and waited for it to happen. It happened because thousands of people who care about social justice and the environment went out and worked in elections. They lost a lot of elections before they elected the first Green to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; they missed electing Matt Gonzalez to be mayor by a hair. But there have been Green mayors elected to a number of smaller cities in northern California.

I think that once the voters are able to choose freely between Green Party candidates and Democratic Party candidates, without worrying about the Republican Party spoiling the elections, Green candidates are going to win a lot of offices. This will undercut the gravy train of corruption that both the Democrats and Republicans depend on to control this nation. It will be the beginning of the end for the Republicans, and hopefully the death of the Party of Slavery, the Democrats, will be long in following.

And the war goes on. You can stop it, but only by supporting genuine anti-war candidates. And if someone has joined the Democratic Party, they have shown their weakness and willingness to be corrupted.

Cindy Sheehan Takes on Nancy Pelosi

When you ignore the spectrum of what really should be done, and look within the spectrum of what actually is done in U.S. politics and government, Nancy Pelosi, Representative of San Francisco and current Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, can look pretty good. Representative Pelosi is a favorite target of hate-talk right wing radio; she represents a kinder, gentler, and not rabidly fundamentalist Christian establishment that is good on social issues like women's rights, racism, and to a tiny extent social justice.

Cindy Sheehan was a political unknown until after her son Casey died military service in Iraq on April 4, 2004. She gradually became a well-known anti-war activist; if you missed that somehow you can get a bit of background at the Cindy Sheehan Wikipedia article.

On July 8, 2007 Mrs. Sheehan announced she would run for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 8th Congressional District of California, a seat currently occupied by Nancy Pelosi.

The usual wisdom in that Mrs. Sheehan does not have a chance. Since she does not have a chance, she will get little money and support, so she will not be able to enlarge her chances.

Only the 8th Congressional District covers about 3/4 of the city of San Francisco.

Anti-war sentiment is extremely strong in San Francisco. Although the city is overwhelmingly registered to vote in the Democratic Party, the voters are very issues-driven. A Green Party member, Matt Gonzalez, who had already served on the Board of Supervisors (City Council in most Cities) came close to winning the race for Mayor in 2003. Gonzalez received 47% of the vote. Ross Mirkarimi, another Green Party member, currently serves on the Board of Supervisors.

Mrs. Pelosi, with the rest of the Democratic Party leadership, voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe she has genuinely turned against the wars, but it does not seem like she is against wars of aggression. She is only against unpopular wars of aggression that don't work out for the U.S. establishment. She is playing a game the Democrats so successfully played during the Hoover administration, when they prevented Herbert Hoover's relief programs for the Depression from passage so that they could blame Hoover and the Republicans for the nation's suffering. Mrs. Pelosi and the Democratic Party majority in the House had, and has, the power to stop the war by cutting off its funding. Instead she postures against the war and then watches as George W. Bush and the Republican Party become increasingly unpopular. The gravy will be hot and plentiful if the Democrats can win the race for President in 2008 and retain control of Congress.

Well, the Republicans can burn in Hell for all I care, but the Democratic Party is a war crimes organization too.

I hear a lot of people whine about the Democrats and Republicans, but then they won't pitch in to get Greens and Independents elected to office.

I know that Cindy Sheehan has little or no prior experience in government. I don't care. I want to Send Them a Message: No more U.S. Wars of Aggression.

So I am going to send Cindy's campaign some money, as soon as they are set up to receive it.

Nancy Pelosi was born to a life of privilege (her dad was once Mayor of Baltimore; you can guess what that was like if you've seen The Wire). She married a guy whose brother was already on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; she and her husband have oodles of their own money and plenty of rich and powerful friends.

Cindy's campaign web site is http://www.cindyforcongress.org/. Nothing is up yet, but you can bookmark it and go back. And give money. Voting is not enough. Volunteering is great, but it is not enough. Every campaign needs money, even a grassroots rebellion. Let's kick everyone who voted for the invasion of Iraq, Democrats and Republicans alike, out of office. Let's see how some fresh people can do in office.

More data:

Nancy Pelosi Wikipedia article
Nancy Pelosi's campaign donations

Of Salmon, Green Voters and Vineyards

Mike Thompson has a lot of environmentalist voters in his district. The predominantly Democratic 1st Congressional District of California is mostly rural, covering the northern California coast from the Oregon border to southern Mendocino County, then swinging inland to lap into the suburbs of Sacramento.

As recently as twenty years ago the votes of citizens who worked in the timber industry, as loggers, foresters, and mill workers, were important in this district. But as all the trees were clearcut and the mills closed down, the new people who moved into the district saw it as a place to live amidst natural beauty. They mostly consider themselves environmentalists, whether they are registered to vote Republican, Democrat, Green Party, or independent (called Decline to State in California).

Mike Thompson has a Democratic Party constituency that is much more liberal than he is. During the years of Republican dominance in Congress he prided himself on being a centrist who voted with the Republicans on issues like tax cuts for the rich. In return the Republicans had no problem with doing some things for Congressman Thompson's donors in the timber and wine industries.

The Democratic political party in his district is formidable. Republicans have mostly been relegated to winning county supervisor seats in the most conservative areas. No Republican has provided a serious contest for a seat in Congress or the state assembly or state senate in over a decade. In a recent election in Mendocino County the Green Party candidate came in second after the Democrat. A number of Green Party members have been elected to seats in "minor" offices.

So it is important to the Democratic party machine that they appear to be environmentalists, and serious environmentalists at that. They have to balance that against their traditional financial support from the timber industry, real estate interests, and wine industry. The timber industry is dying, so that is not a problem. The wine industry is the most environmentally destructive business in the area. Democratic Party politicians and paid staff don't want to talk about that. Mike Thompson was instrumental in creating the Wine Caucus in Congress and is its Democratic Party co-chair.

So the Democrat machine has specialized in being for environmentalist causes, but being unable to actually get enough votes in Congress to hurt their campaign donors.

That is no longer enough now that the Democrats control the state legislature and Congress. The Democrats have gone to great lengths to secure their power; they don't want to endanger it by alienating donors or environmentalists voters. Democrats in the rank-and-file want action on the environment and on Iraq, not empty gestures.

Mike Thompson illustrates traits of a consummate politician. He has found two magic keys that make it unlikely a Green Party candidate will ever threaten to take his seat based on his environmental record.

One is throwing tiny bits of federal money at conservation projects. These typically take farm or timberland and convert it to a park or conservancy district. Often most of the money is raised by private donors. The work is done by environmental groups, but they must beg a Congressman, in this case Mike Thompson, to grease the skids. In return they are expected to praise Mr. Thompson's somewhat sketchy environmental record when he runs for office.

The second method is not always available, but the Klamath River and its related irrigation projects have provided the perfect opportunity for Mr. Thompson, who seized it with gusto. In 2002 large number of salmon died in the Klamath River due to low water flows. Mike Thompson earned his environmentalist Red Badge of Courage by piling up some 500 pounds of dead fish in front of the Interior Department. It was a great photo shoot. To this day ask most people in this district what they know about Congressman Thompson, and they will say "he's the guy who was mad about the dead salmon."

Lately Democrats in Congress have revived the issue. They believe they can link Vice-President Dick Cheney to the salmon kill. It was politics: the water the salmon needed was diverted to farmers in Oregon, likely Republican voters. Actually, they just took their regular amounts of irrigation water, but it was a low-water year, so the salmon suffered.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat said: "Thompson said the reduced river flow "wasn't about salmon or water, it was about electoral votes in Oregon."" The important political lesson to note here is that these farmers (and voters) were not in Mike Thompson's district.

A real test of Mr. Thompson's environmental credentials would be: is he willing to close down his vineyard and winery friends in his own district by no longer allowing them to suck water out of the rivers and aquifers? Ask the environmentalists who live on rivers like the Navarro about how much water is left for the Salmon once vineyards finish taking their sips. Ask environmentalists in Napa County about pesticides in ground water and runoff.

More Data:
Mike Thompson Watch Main Page

Mike Thompson is the current elected member of the United States House of Representatives for California's 1st Congressional District.

And the War Goes On

At what point does a nation, in particular the civilians of a nation, take on the collective responsibility for the evils ordered by their leaders?

The War in Iraq goes on. No doubt there will be suffering if U.S. troops leave. No doubt there was suffering before U.S. troops got there. But there is also no doubt that the starting of the war was a War Crime; that Democratic Party politicians, with extremely few exceptions, supported it along with Republican politicians. And there is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of people have died, both Iraqi military and civilians. The sum total of suffering rose because of American action, and it will subside when our troops leave.

The Democratic Party politicians want to wear their peace symbols and have their war too, and they have succeeded. They allowed the Republican minority to vote with substantial minority of Democratic congressmen to pass, 280 to 142, the funding needed to continue the war crimes without any significant restrictions or a timetable for withdrawing the troops. Complex maneuvers were required: the actual vote, on roll call 425, was to concur in a Senate amendment to H.R. 2206, which makes "emergency supplemental appropriations" for the 2007 fiscal year. The Senate passed H.R. 2206 as amended too, so now George W. Bush will sign it.
To stop the war in Iraq the Congress would have had to just pass no funding at all. That would not please their donors and the people whose votes are bought with your tax dollars.

The guy from my district, Representative Mike Thompson, is a good illustration of how this vote had to be engineered. Mike is popular, known for his work on the Wine Caucus, but of course against drunk driving. He states he is a Catholic, but in this northern California district he finds it best to be pro-Choice. To this day he derides the Peace Movement from the Vietnam War era; he fought in the war and will not admit he committed war crimes. But vast majority of voters here want out of Iraq, and not in 2008. So Mike supports our troops, but voted against the appropriation because he was assured that it would not pass. He's tired of those peace protests outside his office. I hope he is having nightmares, I hope the ghosts of the Vietnamese are prioritizing haunting his dreams at night. Maybe that is why wine is so important to him.

But we are collectively responsible for allowing this to happen. I don't want to go too far with the idea of collective responsibility. The Democratic Party, headed by President-for-Life Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman, decided collective responsibility made it okay to firebomb German and Japanese urban centers. Then they committed the most famous war crimes in history, the vaporization of the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If the Islamic fundamentalist warriors hold the U.S. collectively responsible for supplying military aid to Israel, does that justify an attack on a basically civilian target like the World Trade Center?

I don't expect the American people to do much thinking. It would be nice, but historically it is not a trend. But to the limited extent that thought takes place that is not the mere echoing of stupid TV shows (and YouTube), I think we all should think about collective responsibility.

The communists of Vietnam may not be my cup of tea from an ideological standpoint, but I think they got it right as far as national responsibility. They had a responsibility to throw out the French. They had a responsibility to throw out the Americans. But they did not need to attack the French in France or Americans in actual United States territory.

Self-defense, or collective self-defense, should not be waived as a right and duty. But using it as an excuse for aggression is an old trick, used by petty criminals and Presidents of the United States alike.

Iraq is not about self-defense. Afghanistan is not about self-defense either.

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