Scott McLarty: "After the Wall Street Protests..."

After the Wall Street Protests? Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator at Green Party of the United States, has posted a manifesto on Firedoglake making the case for an independent party.

Posted on Firedoglake, October 4, 2011
After the Wall Street Protests: To Change America’s Political Direction, We Need a Voters’ Revolt and a Permanent Noncorporate Alternative to the Titanic Parties
By Scott McLarty

The protests against Wall Street’s criminal theft of America’s future, to be followed on October 6 by the 'October 2011' occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, are cause for optimism. Maybe 'Arab Spring' is finally coming to the US. ('American Autumn'?) The protests, now spreading to other cities, are continuing despite the troops of police ready to club, pepperspray, and corral peaceful protesters into nets for mass arrest.

The biggest impediment to the democracy movement is not Fox News and pundits who believe that the Occupy Wall Street demos are a demand for 'big government', as if their entire understanding comes from a GOP talking points memo. It’s not the dismissive tone of journalists from the New York Times and other mainstream papers. It’s not the cable news stations who misreport the goals of the demonstrations or ignore them altogether.

The greatest danger is that many Americans sympathetic to the 'Occupy Wall Street' grievances, and maybe a small number of the protesters themselves, will soon fall into a familiar habit. In a few months we can expect to hear some of them declare "We must vote to reelect President Obama in 2012, to prevent a Republican victory."

The Republicans have already won, regardless of who takes the oath of office in January 2013. Endless wars, Wall Street pillage, and the trashing of the US Constitution are no longer the exclusive intellectual property of the GOP.

Barack Obama’s progressive supporters acknowledge that he didn’t quite fulfill their expectations as an agent of change and a bulwark against war and the predatory power of corporations. But the GOP is so much worse, they say, that we have to keep voting Democrat. This is nonsense.

The liberals, progressives, leftists, editors and columnists for The Nation and Daily Kos and other publications who insist we vote Dem in every election cycle are preaching self-defeat.

Apologists for the Democrats will say, “But there are some real differences between the two parties!” That’s true. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would not have been repealed by a Republican administration.

Overall, however, the differences between D and R have grown more and more insubstantial during the past few decades. In many cases, Democratic presidents used their power to fulfill the GOP agenda, often accomplishing what Republican couldn’t by themselves, for example, President Clinton’s passage of NAFTA with help from a Democratic Congress and President Obama’s willingness to carve up Social Security and Medicare.

On nearly every big issue from the wars to Wall Street’s looting of the economy to offshore drilling and oil pipelines, President Obama has shown a smooth continuity from the Bush-Cheney Administration. When he clashed with Republicans in the health care reform debate, the argument was really over which side could best accommodate for-profit insurance companies and other special interests, with Democrats offering mandates that require everyone to purchase private coverage, an idea they pilfered from Republican Congressmembers who introduced it in the 1990s. (See “Whose side are they on? An unexhaustive recent history of bipartisan convergence” below.)

The major newspapers, network and cable news shows, and other media inflate the small differences because they like to make the news as simple-minded as possible, and that means limiting the public debate to D versus R on any big issue. Other points of view, such as the one expressed by the Wall Street protesters, aren’t fit for serious coverage, or sometimes any coverage at all.

Progressives who believe that President Obama “is really one of us” are as deluded as conservatives who believe Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and other phony populists and corporate royalists when they call President Obama a socialist, by which they mean he’s a few degrees less rabid in his devotion to corporate rule than they are.

Instead of Democrat versus Republican, we should look at US politics as D and R versus the rest of us. Elections have become a contest between Democrats ready to fulfill GOP agenda and the GOP itself. Whether we elect a Democrat or a Republican to the White House, whether Democrats or Republicans win control of Congress, the center of political gravity remains on the side of the GOP. As George Lakoff has observed in several books and numerous essays, Democrats play according to Republican rules. Even when they’re telling outright lies, Republicans deal in gut-level messages that Democrats find themselves parroting: Support our troops! End big government!

Both of the Titanic parties accept enormous sums of money from corporate PACs to do the bidding of corporate special interest lobbies, but the GOP is far more shameless about its service to corporate elites and its ideology of privatization, deregulation, and concentration of economic power.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to be perceived as the party of the people, but won’t wean themselves off corporate campaign checks. They retreat from their stated principles and traditional constituencies and ignore progressive voices within their own party on the assumption that voters on the left have “nowhere else to turn.”

The retreat of the Democrats, their confused allegiances, and embrace of so much of the GOP agenda have meant a license for Republicans to move to ever greater extremes. Now we have a ‘liberal’ party that has moved to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon and a rightwing party that has descended into irrationality. Every decade, the political paradigm drifts further and further to the right.

If we want to interrupt this drift, we have to think outside of the two-party power bloc. The Occupy Wall Street protesters and their supporters have no voice in the two-party mainstream of electoral politics. It’s assumed that –if they vote at all — they will line up behind President Obama and a Democratic machine that regards them with contempt.

Time for a Voters’ Revolt

Dropping out of the elections and refusing to vote are not an option. Until we take steps now to break down the rule of the Titanic Parties and replace them in public office, we face decades of more endless wars, more erosion of basic human rights and protections for working people, and dwindling chances of a solution to global climate change.

Activism should not be limited to electoral politics. But the movement for a change in America’s political direction must include a voters’ revolt and the emergence of a strong and permanent alternative party that rejects corporate money and influence.

Without such an insurgence in 2012, the following topics will be missing from the election season debate after April or May: the plundering of the US economy by the financial industry; multi-trillion-dollar bailouts for Wall Street; the assault on public sector unions; universal health care (Medicare For All); ending the endless wars; the death penalty (Troy Davis will be forgotten); the dangers of the Tar Sands pipeline, offshore drilling, nuclear power, mountaintop removal mining, warrantless spying on US citizens, torture, and other gross abuses of power. Neither incumbent Obama nor the GOP nominee will mention these things.

Despite the best intentions of progressives like Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, and others, the Democratic Party will not be rehabilitated. A progressive challenge to President Obama in the primaries, as recently encouraged by Ralph Nader and others, will keep some of the complaints and ideals of the Wall Street protesters alive for a few months. By late spring, the challenger will be defeated by the Obama campaign juggernaut and the challenger’s supporters will find themselves muzzled, with the expectation that they’ll vote Dem anyway. That’s what happens in every presidential election.

The usual objection to voting third-party is that the candidate might ‘spoil’ by subtracting votes from a Democrat and enabling a Republican victory, with the role played by Green presidential nominee Ralph Nader in 2000 as the classical example. There are numerous problems with this accusation — it ignores manipulation and voter obstruction by GOP officials in Florida, a patently biased Supreme Court ruling that canceled vote recounts and delivered the White House to George W. Bush, and Al Gore’s own feeble campaign, which lost double-digit points in polls during the final months of the race (while Mr. Nader’s percentage never rose above a few percentage points) and failed to take even Tennessee, Mr. Gore’s home state. In Florida, the number of registered Dems who voted for Mr. Bush was four times the number who voted for Mr. Nader. Why don’t Democratic apologists ever apply the spoiler label to Republicans?

The assertion that Mr. Nader siphoned votes away from Mr. Gore assumes that Democratic candidates have some kind of prior claim to our votes. The subtext of the spoiler accusation, when leveled by pundits and politicians who’ve made no effort to promote reforms like Instant Runoff Voting that would eliminate the alleged spoiler effect, is that two-party rule must never face interference from alternative parties and independent candidates. It’s a notion of democracy only one step removed from single-party states like China and the Soviet Union.

The only fair and democratic elections are multi-party elections, in which every voter has the right to see more than a choice between Big Mac and Whopper on the ballot, the right to know which candidate best represents his or her own interests and ideals, and the right to vote for that candidate.

Imagine that multi-party democracy existed in the US. The election of a half-dozen noncorporate alternative-party candidates to Congress would alter the political landscape, with Ds and Rs no longer each others’ sole competition.

If such a candidate participated in the presidential debates, he or she would raise ideas that no Democratic or Republican nominee would ever touch, like Medicare For All and rapid withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is owned and run by the Democratic and Republican parties, who took control over it in order to bar other parties’ candidates. D and R politicians in many states have conspired to rig the ballot access rules of many states to block third-party and independent candidates from running for office. The two Titanic parties have been corrupted by their own exclusive power as much as by corporate money and clout.

These obstacles are all surmountable, but only through a concerted mass effort led by a broad alliance of those critical of the two-party status quo, the bureaucratic and political power of major corporations, and the expanding power of government. The Occupy Wall Street protests, which have drawn progressives, Greens, anarchists, libertarians, nonvoters, frustrated Democrats and Republicans, and many others, are a model for such an alliance.

Alternatives like the Green Party are waiting for their moment — the moment of mass epiphany when Americans recognize them as an imperative comparable to the anti-slavery Republican Party in the mid 19th century. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are the abolitionists of the 21st century, demanding an end to the predatory power of Wall Street and other corporate elites over our political system, our jobs, our homes, our savings, our health, nearly aspect of our lives.

Until we recognize that Democrats are as dangerous to America’s future as Republicans, until we spark a national voters’ revolt, we’ll continue to commit political suicide every Election Day.

The Occupy Wall Street participants want to push the country in a different direction, away from corporate oligarchy, military aggression, and environmental depredation. Protests and direct action must continue as the election season unfolds, especially during next year’s national Democratic and Republican conventions. We must find, build, and promote noncorporate ways to live our lives and expand participatory democracy (see Ben Manski’s essay “The Protest Wave: Why the Political Class Can’t Understand Our Demands”).

And if we want these things to have a lasting effect, the “99 percent” movement that inspired the current demonstrations must move to the next level, which must include independent electoral action in 2012 and beyond.

Sidebar: Whose side are they on? An unexhaustive recent history of bipartisan convergence

• Is President Obama a “warrior for the middle class”?

In 2008, Mr. Obama became the highest recipient of Wall Street campaign contributions in history. After he was elected, he followed in the footsteps of Republican presidents by stacking his staff with Wall Street insiders and operators — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, economics advisor Larry Summers, Chief of Staff Bill Daley — whose deregulatory policies made the 2008 economic meltdown inevitable.

With bipartisan support in Congress, the Obama Administration bailed out the Wall Street firms that were responsible for the meltdown, while offering minimal aid to Americans facing unemployment and home foreclosures because of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis that these firms created. The White House and Congress have taken no steps to restore the Glass-Steagall Act or enact other reforms to curtail Wall Street power and prevent the next crisis.

The federal government plans to begin selling off the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac to private investment conglomerates (“vulture funds”), possibly the “largest transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector” in history.

Such actions were predictable by September 2008, before Mr. Obama’s election victory, when he undercut his pledge of “change we can believe in” with an endorsement of the first Wall Street bailout, in harmony with the Bush White House and his GOP competition, John McCain.

After promising to do so during his campaign, President Obama has refused to renegotiate NAFTA and other international trade pacts. These agreements, which tend to favor corporate power and profit over the rights and well-being of working people and the health of the environment, were authorized by President Clinton, who had initially opposed NAFTA while running for the White House in 1992.

Democrats have refused to repeal Taft-Hartley restrictions on union organizing. When Republican Gov. Walker want on the warpath against the organizing rights and benefits for public sector workers in Wisconsin in early 2011, Democratic Gov. Cuomo launched a similar assault against public sector workers in New York.

• Are Democrats the party of health care reform and Social Security?

The Democratic Party discarded its platform promise, since 1948, of a national health program while Bill Clinton was president. In 2009, Democratic leaders declared that universal health care (single-payer, also called Medicare For All) would be “off the table” — Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus’s words when he organized the health care reform round tables.

President Obama’s health care bill imposes mandates that function as a direct public subsidy to the health insurance cartel, an idea that Republicans proposed during the 1990s. Whether Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010 or the Republicans prevailed in blocking it, the insurance industry, Big Pharma, and other corporate lobbies would be the real winners.

Contrary to the current belief that the President recently compromised on Social Security and Medicare, he made his intention to slash them clear in 2010 when he appointed his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Catfood Commission”) and stacked it with politicians, economists, and company heads hostile to both programs. Rather than alleviating the skyrocketing costs of health care, the highest cause of personal bankruptcies, Obama policies further threaten middle- and low-income Americans and burden retirees.

• Are Democrats the party of social justice?

President Obama has remained silent about record US incarceration rates — the world’s highest, surpassing repressive countries like China and Iran — and the fact that most of those behind bars are young, poor, and mostly black or brown. Since President Clinton, Democratic leaders have supported the growth of the private prison industry, which profits by filling up cells with more inmates.

Both Democrats and Republicans support the War on Drugs, which has ruined lives and caused endless devastation in poor neighborhoods, and the death penalty, despite racial disparities and a growing list of exonerations and errors. President Obama refused to comment on the fate of Troy Davis, who was executed by the state of Georgia despite significant doubts about his guilt (seven out of nine witnesses changed their testimony, some of them claiming police coercion).

• The environment and global warming?

President Obama has authorized more offshore oil drilling (despite the lessons of the disastrous BP spill in the Gulf); endorsed new nuclear power plants that will make money for energy companies while taxpayers assume the high cost and high liability (despite the example of Fukushima); allowed mountaintop removal mining to continue to obliterate and poison the West Virginia landscape; remained silent about the extremely dangerous technique called hydrofracking for natural gas in New York and Pennsylvania; endorsed the myth of clean coal; and is on the verge of approving the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian tar sands.

On September 2, 2011, President Obama killed proposed national air-quality standards for smog, overriding a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution. His administration, and Democrats in general, have supported greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (“cap and trade”) that will allow polluting companies to trade and collect licenses to continue polluting. US obstruction remains the greatest impediment to the Kyoto Protocols.

• Peace?

Democrats pretended to be the antiwar party in recent elections, but in 2006 they boosted funding for the wars after gaining control of Congress. President Obama escalated the war on Afghanistan and expanded it into Pakistan, and launched a new invasion (Libya) without the consent of Congress. While ordering the withdrawal of some troops from Iraq, he is implementing Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to replace US armed forces, which are directly accountable to Congress, with private “mercenary” security firms, which aren’t.

In October 2002, the Democratic leadership voted for President Bush’s request for an extra-constitutional transfer of war power from Congress to the White House, effectively endorsing his plan to invade Iraq on fraudulent claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, nuclear weapons acquisition, and collusion with al-Qaeda. Under the Obama Administration, Democrats have adopted the neocon doctrine of unilateral aggression and the use of military force against countries at peace with the US. There has been virtually no difference between the Bush and Obama policies on the Middle East. The Obama Administration, which continues to arm Israel, had no objection to the Israel’s invasion of Gaza and massacre of civilians and strenuously objected to Palestine’s bid for UN recognition.

• The US Constitution and international law?

The Obama Justice Department has refused to investigate Bush-Cheney officials for torture and other gross abuses of power, constitutional violations, and war crimes. The administration has continued many of the same policies: warrantless surveillance of US citizens, denial of habeas corpus, extraordinary rendition, maintenance of “black sites,” harassment and legal action against whistleblowers. President Obama has surpassed the last administration in his intention to assassinate US citizens suspected of terrorism without any semblance of due process, as in the recent case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric killed in Yemen, whose name was on a secret “hit list” of people the President has targeted for summary execution.

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Scott McLarty is Media Coordinator at Green Party of the United States
This article is reposted from Firedoglake.

Help Wanted! Green California Graphics Artist

Dear Green Friends,
The time has come for Green Party activists to get ready for the 2012 California elections. One thing we will need are good cartoons, caricatures, graphics expressing the issues in California highlighting the contrast between the Green Party and the 2 Titanic Parties.

The graphic below is from the lead story of the Black Agenda Report, America's leading web site for news, commentary, and analysis from the Black Left. I think this graphic exquisitely expresses the growing revulsion among many African-Americans like me, with the smugness of Democratic Party "Obamamaniacs."

Posted on The Black Agenda Report, September 21, 2001
Barack Obama VS Those Craaaazy Republicans: Is He the Lesser Evil, or the More Effective Evil?
By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor and a state committee member in the Georgia Green Party



Of course, Bruce Dixon is writing for a national audience. In my opinion the most important mission of the California Green Party is to build an independent progressive force at the state and local level -- especially in the One-Party Democratic coastal cities.

What we need for inner-city Los Angeles campaigns are the services of a graphics artist to produce a similar graphic substituting images for Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Diane Feinstein, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for the image of President Obama.


See sample images of the California Democratic Party Hacks:

_{Governor Jerry Brown}

_{Senator Diane Feinstein}

_{Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa}

If you can help me. Please leave a comment here or e-mail me directly at:
AlexCathy@aol.com.

Whatever it takes

I have spent time this week browsing through the essays in the book Moral Ground Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril. Browsing is a word chosen carefully as I can not really plow straight through a book of 80 plus essays focused on providing an answer to the same question: Do we have a moral obligation to take action to protect the future of a planet in peril? Obviously they all answer with an emphatic YES or there would be no reason to publish such a collection.

While there are many ways to say Yes.. almost like dialects of a common language, I would pick on two particular items to make my point. One by Derrick Jensen and the other by Barack Obama.

Jensen's vision is one of the darkest that I have read. He begins by asking a very different question: "Do you believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transition to a sane and sustainable way of living?" He finds no indication that such a positive future is in store for us. Most of us who consider ourselves Green, or admit to being an "enviro" all know the word to the litany, we make our daily bended knee, but that is about it. Jensen demands more.

Those who come after -- presuming anyone survives -- are going to wonder what the fuck was wrong with us that we didn't do whatever it takes -- and I mean whatever it takes-- to stop industrial capitalism from killing the planet."

At the same time, Barack Obama's contribution is to describe "The Future I Want for my Daughters." This is not even his real work, but seems to be pulled together from three different sources, each footnoted and all attributed to Senator Barack Obama.

We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive for businesses that will serve as a model for the world. Let's be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we diud here. The time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we own past and future generations.

It is pretty clear that Obama and Jensen do not inhabit the same world. According to Jensen;

When most people in this culture ask, "How can we stop global warming?" that's not really what they're asking. They're asking "How can we stop global warming, without significantly changing this lifestyle [or deatstyle,, as some call it] that is causing global warming in the first place?"

The answer is that you can't.

So, let me post the future's question to now President Obama. "What the fuck is wrong with you that you are not doing whatever it takes to save a planet in peril."

I received an invitation to join in a protest against Canadian / US Tar Sands projects, especially the building of a long pipeline to carry Albert Tar Sands Crude to US refineries. The asked us to dig out Obama Buttons, if we had them from 2008, and to wear them. Given that Obama has backed this project, and is obviously NOT willing to "do whatever it takes" then it seems that the protest will turn out to be just another of those environmental feel good happenings. The only real reason to have anyone bring an Obama button is to gather them all and ship them to the white house... collect.

At some point, our progressive friend will learn that one part of "whatever it takes" is to divorce themselves from the idea that salvation lies with the Democratic Party.

Cornel West on The 'Brokeness' of the 2-Party System

I have annoyed friends and family many times with my opinions about the urgency of the Green Party as an alternative to the feckless Democrats for communities of color in cities like Los Angeles. Don't take my word for it. See below a brief video and my unofficial transcription of Prof. Cornel West's reply to a taunt by journalist Tavis Smiley on CSPAN that "we ain't got nowhere to go." West speaks in his unique blend of Ivy-League scholar and country preacher on the "brokenness" of the two-party system much more eloquently than I.

TAVIS SMILEY:  "We ain't got nowhere to go. What you gonna do, Doc?"

CORNEL WEST:  "Bear witness, brother. That's all you can do in your life: tell the truth and fight for justice."

TAVIS SMILEY:  "How would you know who to vote for?"

CORNEL WEST:  "Well ... it depends ... we got two years now. You see, the thing is now is this. It is very clear that the two-party system is part of the brokenness that we're talking about. We've got both parties that are dominated by the same interests -- corporate big banking. You've got ordinary citizens -- different political, ideological, racial groups feeling relatively powerless. Relatively impotent. Now, that can be the makings of a crypto-fascism if we don't begin to come to terms with it.

But on the other hand it also means ... the Tea Party, brothers and sisters, they're going to become more and more upset with the Establishment in the Republican Party because the business interests and their populist interests will begin to be more and more in tension.

And at the same time, Barack Obama, masterful, eloquent, charismatic ... in his language. In his policies ... you can't bring in Geithner and Summers and claim that you're building on the legacy of Martin King.

Martin died for sanitation workers. He died because he sided with poor babies in Vietnam against American occupation. He was anti-militarism. He was anti-imperialism. He was against the American empire in terms of its presence around the world undercutting what he thought to be certain principles. But all Martin could do was bear witness. That's why when he died 75% of Americans were against him. 55% of Black people were against him. 'Cause he was too ... loving. When you love poor people that much, when you love working people that much, that makes you the freest man in the country or the freest woman in the country. But you are also the biggest threat to both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Who killed the Progressive Movement?

Well, I am not sure that the progressive movement is dead… or if it even really existed.  But Princeton's Cornell West is trying to breath life back into it and told Obama so. West's Letter to Obama was broadcast on BBC World News America this week and asks a fundamental question about the focus of Obama's administration."How deep is your love for poor and working people?" 

I think that the events of the last 12 months have shown that there is much which the President can not control, Professor.  Was it Obama's fault that Max Baucus (D-MT) allowed the medical insurance companies write the health care legislation?   Obama saw what happened to the Clintons when they went outside of Congress and wrote their own version of the legislation. 

Determined not to make the same mistake, Obama ended up with an indigestible sausage whose making was all too transparent. We saw just how much the U.S. Senate marches to the tune of corporate protection.  Offered a wide range of health care funding options from many countries with better systems than we have, they chose none of them.

Put aside the problems with health care legislation and try to imagine what will happen to climate change legislation this year.  Once again, we will have legislation written by the very industries whose excess exhalations we need to control. 

So, here is a list of reasons why Obama has not lived up to your hopes, Professor.
Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid…

need I go on?
Pete Stark, CA-13; Dennis Cardoza, CA-18; Jim Costa, CA-20

Beginning to get picture?
Max Bachus,  Evan Bayh,   Richard Dubin, Charles Schumer.

Here is a reminder, Professor.   Change from the top is always about power.  The direction of change must come from the people.  To the extent that we, the people, can rally around a few fundamental ideas, then we might accomplish what you desire.   Place your hope in the people, not the President.

Michael Moore: Begging Obama on Afghanistan

In 2004, Michael Moore and Bill Maher got on their knees on national television to beg Ralph Nader not to run for president again. Six years later, Mr. Moore is begging Democratic President Barack Obama *NOT* to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Behold the difference between Republicans and Democrats -- when Democrats are in power we get to beg on our knees facing the White House.

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. ...

Michael Mooere's "Open Letter to President Obama" is a good letter. It is also a sad letter. It is sad that in 2010 after eight years of war that such a letter is even necessary.


Posted on MichaelMoore.com, November 30, 2009
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
by Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Republicans to the world: We don't want or need you.

It takes a lot to make a progressive hero out of Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) but between Oklahoma's Sen. Inhofe and the climate change blatherings of a couple of ex-junkies named Beck and Limbaugh, they have managed to to just that. But, they also had some help from our own Senator Boxer and Obama Administration, as I wrote before.

The delay of Boxer and the Obama administration in dealing with climate change have put the world at risk. Those countries with whom we should be working toward some solutions to the problems of climate change are, in fact, looking at the United States's failure to come to grips with reality and beginning to wonder just how much change with got when Obama swept into office.

At climate talks in Barcelona, the last UN sponsored meeting before Copenhagen, some 50 African countries walked out.

African delegates walked out of meetings during United Nations climate change talks in Barcelona, Spain this week, claiming that developed countries were not making solid commitments to cut their emissions of climate-warming gases.

Americans, in their usual arrogant manner, might dismiss this a bunch of poor countries whining about their status after centuries of exploitation. However these same countries are going to face the brunt of problems and have started to find ways of dealing with it. Already, we are seeing climate change refugees moving from country to country in Africa and  governments were forced to act now in light of what was sure to come.

African nations adopt refugee convention

Kampala / Agence France-Presse
African leaders on Friday ratified a convention on the protection of the continent's internally-displaced people, refugees and returnees, billed as the first of its kind worldwide.

The number of refugees in Africa is now close to 20 million. I wonder what America's Minute Man organization will say about illegals when climate refugees start to demand entry to the US because our arrogance devastated their homeland.

But back to the US and Senate Republicans. All but Graham have walked out of the mark up of the Boxer led committee meetings that were supposed to be marking up the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (Kerry - Boxer). As one Democratic Senator quipped, the Party of No has become the Party of No Show.

This act of (not sure what word to use… arrogance? stupidity?) makes US participation in the Copenhagen talks problematic. European leaders are aiming their messages directly at the US Congress.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Congress and the Obama administration Tuesday to take bold steps to address global warming, even as Senate Democrats and Republicans feuded over whether to press ahead with a climate bill.

I hope that Sen. Inhofe had someone read that Washington Post article for him.

The view from the British press is even bleaker.

The US has given up hope of reaching a global climate change treaty at Copenhagen and is working towards a deal late next year, the Obama administration said today. The decision ends hopes of a legally binding deal being sealed next month.

Through all of this, the failures of Congress to act will follow one after one until catastrophe forces action and then it will be too little. Shall we call this the New Orleans Syndrome, naming it after a city where, like climate change, the catastrophe was foretold, action was delayed, and even now is being buried in rhetoric like ruin of the 9th Ward was carted away, buried out of sight and the lessons forgotten.

We can no longer afford to leave the Senate in the hands of Republicans in a state of perpetual denial and Democrats in a state of perpetual compromise. The world is looking to the United States for leadership. Republicans would lead by mooning the world.

Obama's Collosal Blunder Part 2.

It is now almost a year and a half since the economy of the United States started to unravel.  Companies have failed.   Unemployment is at it's highest in decades.  States like California teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, lurching from one partial solution to another, all predicated on future growth to pay the debts. TARP was passed and some of the banks have even repaid their debts… mostly in the interest of avoiding future government regulation.

It is that sticky question of regulation that should be in everyone's mind.  I listened to Andrew Ross Sorkin and Charlie Rose today discuss Sorkin's recent book, Too Big to Fail.  It is an enlightening conversation in that Sorkin has had access to almost all of the major players: Paulson, Geitner, Bernanke, etc.  The story he peaces together is mind boggling, especially when you consider the pace at which it was all happening.

What is even more mind boggling is the fact that not a single piece of new legislation has left Congress to land on the President's desk that would help us avoid such problems in the future.  I argued before that Health Insurance Reform was a critical mistake for Obama in that it is preventing us from having the discussion on climate change that we really need to be having.   Health Insurance Reform will save a few lives.  Dealing effectively with climate change will save millions. 

Yet, as Sorkin tells us near the end of the program, for all the demand for new legislation that accompanied the bailout, for all the public outcry for re-regulation, or at least for regulators who were willing to regulate, nothing has happened.  Maybe Congress is happy to have the tea baggers railing about Socialize Medicine.  It keeps us from having to deal with the substantive changes to our system that need to be made. 

In the meantime, our economy has improved a bit.  At least that is what investors on Wall Street think. They have run up the prices of many stock.  In fact, Sorkin tells us that banks are now re-inflating their balance sheet by valuing up those same toxic assets they tried to dump not so long ago.

Greens need to be reminding everyone that it will be harder and harder to make these needed changes as the remembrance of the catastrophe passes from Washington minds. We need to be sending letters to Congress asking where are the protections that they promised.  Otherwise, we will do it all over again, with mortgages on flooded properties along low lying coasts, with credit default swaps to cover the pricing risks of carbon trading.

An unregulated carbon market is not something I want to control my future.

The choices that this administration has made point to not the socialist / Marxist ideology that Republicans are so worried about. Rather they point to a group of political technocrats who are over confident in their ability to manage opinion that they are willing to risk our future by avoiding the hard problems.  Well, the hard problems are still there and we have done nothing.

A colossal blunder from Obama?

I have really begun to think that Obama has made a colossal blunder in the way that he has chosen to handle climate change. It would seem to me that his presidency will be evaluated by history on the manner in which he has reacted to this crisis. It won't be Iraq, Bush's war, nor even Afghanistan… now known as Obama's War. It won't be health care. But those are the issues on which he has chosen to spend his time and his political capital.

It could be argued that he did not choose Iraq and Afghanistan. True about Iraq but he certainly has, from the days of the campaign, chosen to play in Afghanistan.

It is the focus on health care that concerns me and makes me question his judgment. It has the ring of a young man trying to prove that he could get done what Clinton could not, taking Obama forever out of Clinton's shadow.

But this is not issue number one. It won't determine the fact of our economy, or of our comfortable lifestyle. Climate Change will. Failure to address the biggest elephant in the room is a way to be trampled and I don't want my children to suffer for Obama's failure to take his biggest challenge head on.

In the mean time, opposition to Obama has had the opportunity to hone their economic arguments about big government and the costs to the tax payers. If the opposition to the economic bailouts has this ring, and the opposition to health insurance reform has this ring, what do you think will be the key element of the Republican opposition to doing anything about climate change? I can just hear Boehner and McConnel droning on now while Glen Beck stirs up the troops by labeling them "Commies".

There is only a very short time between now and the next meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference - Copenhagen. The best Obama can bring to the meeting is a flawed bill from the House of Representatives, a draft of a bill from the US Senate and a history of having climate change treaties not being ratified in the Senate. The prospects are bleak.

At this point, Obama has yet to expend any political capital to try and get a climate change bill passed in the Senate. Most of the heavy lifting about the economics of this issue has been carried by Joseph Romm at the Climate Progress blog. Even today, Romm cited Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard on Climate Change.

We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.

We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.

In the same post, he quotes Carol Browner as saying it would be a “big mistake” if Congress passed a clean energy bill without a cap on emissions.

I agree with her assessment. I just don't think that this Congress has the courage to do that. There are too many who are too willing to compromise too much for the sake of another vote. So, we will invest in oxymoronic clean coal technologies until we figure out that it is too late. We will shift to burning wood at our power plants because it will be called a "renewable" and the CO2 will fill the skies as before.

This the the issue where science and politics are on a collision course. We must not let the politicians win. How I wish that there were Green willing to stand up and challenge Barbara Boxer in the Senatorial Race this year. Her Republican Opposition seems to be demonstrating their ineptitude at every turn, though Fiorina could bankroll whatever she wants for as long as she wants. DeVore might have the so many manic Republican votes locked up that she will drop out rather than throw good money after bad and we know that DeVore's solution to everything is to go nuclear.

The challenge from a Green would be all about doing the right thing, about standing for ones values and not the value of a contribution. If done right, it would be about correcting Obama's big blunder and saving humanity.

It's blog acton day and this is my contribution.

The Urgency to Address Global Climate Change

There seems to be no urgency in the US. I mean, even Sen. Boxer looks at the problem as something to do when they clear health care reform off the table. Well, it is a hell of a lot more important than that.

I want to call everyone's attention to a paper by Dr. John Lemons that was posted at Climate Ethics earlier this month. I quote from the Introduction:

The goal of this paper is twofold: (1)to briefly describe recent scientific information on global climate change that suggests a greater need for urgency of action than might have previously been thought, and (2)to suggest that philosophers develop ethical stances that support nonviolent civil disobedience action to mitigate the problem of global climate change given its urgency.

(it loads faster from the 1st link).

There is a real opportunity to do something about this, now, not later. Obama gave a good speech today at the UN, mouthing all the right words as is his style. However, he can not deliver a good product out of a Congress where his party has overwhelming majority control. That is really sad. It says loads about the ethics of our leadership in Washington. Even our Senator Boxer seems to think that Climate Change is something that they will get to when health care is finally off the table. That just may be too late. The world will watch what the US does in Copenhagen in December and, based on past performance, it won't be much except talk.

This is no longer purely an economic issue, nor only about technology. As Dr. Lemons lays it out, our ethical standards are being challenged and we are failing.

Time for Greens to save this planet.

The politics of racial unity

I wonder if we have seen a tipping point in the political expression of race in America. At one level, there is the very fact that Barack Obama is now the President of these United States. As he remarked himself, 60 years ago his father would not have been served at many eating places in America. One commentator said that he grew up knowing, really knowing that no black child would ever become President. Now, his grand children will never think that way again.

At another level, though, was the way that Obama asked America to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. So many in my county have celebrated the day by taking a train to San Francisco and participating in celebration event there. This year was no exception. A Santa Clara County Green blogged about the 24th annual Freedom Train.

At the end of the train ride in San Francisco until 2 years ago used to be a march from the Caltrain station at 4th and Townsend to the SF Civic Center. The official line was that with the election of Obama the dream has now been 'realized'. Setting aside the debatability of what I take to be a vast overstatement of today's reality (ie. does an election of yet another Duopoly candidate to lead the Amurikkkan Empire, biracial or not really fully 'realize' Dr. King's dream -- No, I certainly don't think so -- one of our guides on the Freedom Train intimated that the politically impolite reality was that paying for the police to line the march and to seal off the route was too expensive at this time for the volunteer organization NorCalMLK to be able to pull off.

Let me contrast that perception to the reality that Obama had issued a call to celebrate the day by turning it into a National Day of Service, volunteering to help your community as a way of honoring not only the Dream of Dr. King, but also the knowledge that this dream can only be achieved by hard work.

To me, this feels like we have taken step beyond the old politics of racial divide and identity. Alex Walker was right to question the need for any people of color caucus.

The ground is shifting and we had better learn to dance to a new tune.

Tune up the fiddles

Over the weekend, Marnie Glickman initiated a poll at Green Change, inviting a selection between several attractive alternatives for the most important action by Obama in his first 100 days. You don't have to join Green Change to register an opinion though it would be a good idea to do so.

I voted for "Support reducing greenhouse pollution by at least 30% in 2020." My rationale is simple. I asked myself what would be the consequences if any one of these were not done. In the case of ghg reduction, the consequences are so horrendous that it is difficult to contemplate. The EcoAction Committee of the national Green Party already has a First 100 Days document that we offered to all Green Party presidential candidates. You can read that here. It was not strong enough about global warming, climate change, global warming and any associated issue.

During the next month, I will produce a series of posts regarding this issue and how we must act to avoid what James Hansen calls the Venus Syndrome. Stay tuned for more to come.

Turning 350 into policy

In my previous post today, I allowed Lorna Salzman to articulate the criticism (one with which I fully agree) that the Left has failed to take seriously the implications of ecology. However, there is some hope that a new seriousness about science will help turn the tide of public opinion on this.

I first need to call attention to a letter that Dr. James Hansen has sent to PEBO through the man he named as his Science Adviser, John Holdren. This makes very clear the fact that much of what the Democratic Party seems to be planning for 2009, an environmental policy based on bowing to the Gods of the Free Market Economy and a cap and trade mechansim, is a recipe for failure. You can read it here.

You should also read Hansen's revision to an earlier open letter he had written entitled "Tell Barack Obama the Truth."

If Greens can only do one thing in 2009, it should be to hasten the change to a policy based on ecology, one that is designed to save the earth, not destroy it.

Peter Camejo Was Right - California "Dysfunctional"

Peter Camejo, California's Great Green Prophet, was right.

The Los Angeles Times solemnly declares that "California government is arguably more dysfunctional now than it was when [Governor Gray] Davis, a Democrat, got the boot. The budget deficit has grown... Partisan gridlock grips the Legislature... as the state plunges into crisis."

It's five, long, bloody, wasted years late, but late, I guess, is better than never.

Peter Miguel Camejo

1939-2008

Click above to hear Peter's summary statement at the 1st Recall Debate on national television, September 3, 2003. Hear the Green Party candidate's prophetic remarks on budgets, fair taxes, universal health care, full equality, and his dream of seeing California "become the world leader in renewable energy"

"Look at this debate today. Do you really want to go back to when there's only two people allowed in them, where you hear the same points of view over and over again? We have a two-hundred year, dysfunctional, money-dominated, winner-take-all system"

-- Peter Camejo, September 3, 2003.

Published in the Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2008
Is California Too Unwieldy to Govern?
By Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld

...But California government is arguably more dysfunctional now than it was when Davis, a Democrat, got the boot. The budget deficit has grown so huge that a shutdown of government services looms. Partisan gridlock grips the Legislature, and lawmakers bicker as the state plunges into crisis.

"The recall absolutely hasn't helped at all," said Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at UC San Diego.

The state's latest collision course with insolvency has renewed the question in the Capitol: Has California become ungovernable?

...Others say this nation-state is so oversized, Balkanized and polarized that it is destined for dysfunction no matter who is in charge. They cite its influx of immigrants, its constant tensions over water supply and its large, self-contained regions that bear little resemblance to one another...

...Some of the political leaders who for years have been engaged in efforts -- largely unsuccessful -- to make state government run better fret that the current dysfunction creates a fertile environment for more shortsighted ballot measures...

Commenting on the hoopla over Barack Obama's election, David Sirota wrote that "America's only authentic national religion" is what he has dubbed "Presidentialism:"

the worship of the president as an all-powerful, all-knowing deity who is the only important political actor in our country.

Even now, with California facing a complete breakdown, Democrats and Republicans, and "liberal" and "conservative" intellectuals are obsessed with foreign affairs and Washington gossip. I confess to a sneaking envy for the good people of Illinois. At least the adventures of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich got people talking about state and local government in Illinois (only because of the connection to Obama).

All politics is local.

Where Were You During the California Crisis of 2001-2003?

I was living and working in San Jose, nearing the end of my twenty-year career as a computer programmer. Peter was the only one speaking "Truth to Power" about both the Internet crash and California's phony electric power crisis, Rolling blackouts; huge bailouts; massive "high tech" corporate fraud. Santa Clara County, s single county with barely a million people, lost 200,000 jobs. "For Sale" signs sprouted like mushrooms among the high-tech campuses. In 2002, Sobrato Development opened a gleaming blue-glass office tower on Almaden Boulevard in downtown San Jose that was unoccupied. It stood there as 17-story monument to the hype and the lies of the Internet bubble-blowers.

The amazing thing was in the One-Party Democratic San Francisco Bay Area nobody who was "somebody" gave a damn. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Cisco Systems Corporation) and Anna Eschoo (D-Hewlett-Packard Corporation) with the support of their wholly-owned subsidiaries, i.e., the South Bay Labor Council, happily went about serving the interests of their masters. Big league journalists like Mr. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, flew in, sat at the feet of the "Great Men" from Stanford University, kissed the rings of the gods such as John Chambers of Cisco Systems, Craig Barrett of Intel, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Carly Fiorina of HP and then filed a gushing story how the rich needed to get richer and the poor needed to get poorer.

Doesn't anybody remember this?

In 2001, California was plunged into an unprecedented energy crisis: rolling blackouts, soaring power bills, and Democratic Governor Gray Davis' panicked administration. Turned out the Golden State was being systematically ripped-off. Documents and audiotapes proved Houston-based Enron Corporation asked power companies to take plants offline - in order to make more money. In one taped phone call, an Enron employee celebrated the fact that a massive forest fire had shut down a transmission line:

ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Yeah.
ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: Now, the magical word of the day is "Burn, baby, burn."
ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: What's happening?
ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: There's a fire under the core line. This will delay us from 45 to 2,100.
ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Really. Burn, baby, burn!

Doesn't anybody remember this?

Less than a decade later, with a terrifying spike in oil prices, the energy greedheads and carbon pushers applied the "shock doctrine" to stampede Californians into accepting offshore oil drilling and new drilling in old wells in places like inner-city Los Angeles, even though experts agree this will have no impact on the global marketplace for oil.

Five, long, wasted years Democrats and Republicans piled more debt, fiddled over water, denied the impact of climate change on their car-based development model, raised taxes as "fees," and continued coddling "Big Boys."

ONE-PARTY REPUBLICAN SAN DIEGO was devastated by wildfires in 2003. Developers and their wholly owned "conservative" county supervisors, ignored warnings about development in unincorporated areas. San Diego County had 5 percent fewer fire personnel than comparably populated areas and no county fire department.

In 2007 when wild fires blazed again, there was just one new city fire station. A ballot proposal to boost taxes for fire protection, of course, failed. Meanwhile, Republican "conservative" Mayor Dick Murphy resigned in disgrace and Republican "conservative" Congressman Randy Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

ONE-PARTY DEMOCRATIC LOS ANGELES, where my wife and I live today, has a grossly incompetent government presiding over bad schools, a shuttered King/Drew hospital, cops mishandling evidence, and a "perp parade" of unethical leaders. Plans for solar energy may be just a "greenwashed" boondoggle. In my African-American neighborhood, any criticism of Democrats on any issue is instantly condemned by their "Amen chorus" of intellectuals as a racist attack on "Our Community" in general.

Democrats and Republicans govern badly, but they know how to divide and rule us based on skin color, sex, or whether we live in town or country. Ensconced in gerrymandered one-party districts, they think they can hustle us forever.

There is a "hole", an empty space, where there ought to be an intelligent, grown-up, no-nonsense opposition to big city Democrats. But what are voters like me to do when Republicans are a joke and forty years of Republican "White Backlash" conservatism means everything written and said about African-Americans like me and my Black and Latino neighbors is based on stereotypes. Decades of Republican dominance has left us without even a language for reform. Thus, for example, all talk of "education reform" must genuflect to Republican hatred of public school teachers and the children of "Those People" in public schools with "reformers" absurdly holding up places like "conservative" San Diego as models of "good government."

A plague on both their houses!

Peter Camejo was right.

What the Green Party needs is a Community Organizer

Reuben Navarette's OpEd in today's San Francisco Chronicle considers that there is a greater connection between Barack Obama's campaign for president and Caesar Chavez than most realize... including Navarette himself, it appears. For some it seems only to have translated Si, se puede! into Yes we can.

Today, I received a post election analysis of the Malik Rahim campaign for Louisiana's 2nd Congressional District. It was put sent by Robert Caldwell, Rahim's campaign manager and it underscores with hard numbers, precinct by precinct, the fact that there is nothing more effective than face to face community organizing, a particular style of involvement in issues and enlisting of everyone into taking responsibility for changing the status quo, confident that together, Yes, we can.

If there is a political model for Greens it is this. We do not accept corporate donations. We have almost no money. All we have are a comparatively few people and the best set of values of any US political party. When Bill Moyers told students that "The only answer to organized money is organize people" I felt he was talking to us.

We may have taken a few steps

but we are not there yet. I hope that no one thinks the election of Barack Obama means that we have finally put race behind us in America. We are a long way from that goal. Click Read more! to see just how far we have to go.


A friend from a small town east of Denver told me this story.

A sixth grader told the art teacher that all the economic woes were Obama's fault. When the teacher pointed out to the eleven year old wheat farmer's son that it would be two months before Obama would be president, the kid replied "oh good then there is still time to shoot him."

That is just one more example of the casual racism that still inhabits so many minds and inhibits us from being what we could be. A writer at High Country News told his own story of the Persistence of Bigotry in America. This was from a rural community on the other side of Colorado. Paolo Bacigalupi writes about breakfast at a diner shortly after the election.

She turned to the other waitress, a soft woman with an apple-pie demeanor.

"What was that one about the Rose Garden?"

The other waitress came over, warm and motherly. "Why are they tearing up the Rose Garden at the White House?" she asked, smiling. A beat, and then, "Because they're putting in a watermelon patch."

"Wow, I guess that's sort of funny."

"You get it if you're from the South," she said.

"We've heard the stereotype," my friend scowled, but I didn't want him to cut short our little anthropological spelunking into casual racism just yet.

Reminder: Colorado voted FOR Obama. 54 to 46. At least San Miguel County, where Green Art Goodtimes in a County Commissioner proved to be more liberal than most.

The best thing for America would be for Obama to prove to be a damned good president. It won't be good for Greens, though, since he will have to act on many of our key issues to accomplish that. Then what will we do?

How smart is your grid?

UCLA economic professor Matthew Kahn has a blog devoted to Urban and Environmental Economics. According to today's post (linked above) IBM has been taking out full page ads in the NY Times, lobbying for a "Smart Energy Grid". This is not new from IBM. The company set up a coalition with Center Point Energy to digitize electrical grids.

I note that the idea of a smart grid has come out of the mouth of Obama on more than one occasion as a prerequisite for the deployment of wind and solar system.

Matthew Kahn is professor of economics at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Environmental and Energy Economics Group. He’s author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment.

Kahn says that he will be on NPR tomorrow(Nov. 24th). The show is On Point and the subject is Obama and the Green Economy. Unfortunately it will not be carried from KQED or other local public stations. So, I will have to download it later if I want to listen, and I do.

A Center - Right government?

In all of the excitement over the election of Barack Obama, with California focused on Proposition 8, the media never mentioned that there was another country that had an election on Nov. 4... New Zealand. I mention this because there were several things we should take notice of. Click Read more! and I will go through it.


The previous government in New Zealand was the Labor party. They had a minority government and worked with the aid of 6 Greens. In the most recent election, the Labor government was handed it's walking papers, but Greens added 2 seats.

The winner was the National Party, described as being "Center Left." According to the New Zealand Herald the incoming Prime Minister, John Key said "Hopefully just a change of government will give some confidence to the economy, that we are going to put economic growth at the top of the agenda."

Is this a characteristic of a Center Right government? to put economic growth at the top of the agenda? Isn't that what Obama said he would do in his first news conference as President elect? "I will confront this economic crisis head-on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity."

It sounds to me that New Zealand changed a leftist government for one whose policies are Center-Right. And in America, we bounced a far right Republican Party for a Center-Right Democrat. The really sound the same.

I think that a many members of the PDA are going to become frustrated. We need to welcome them with open arms.

One more chance to change America

I am sure that most of you have absorbed Obama's speech from last night, if not its full implication. I want to talk about just this excerpt copied from here.

I believe that these words from our president elect tell us exactly what we must now do and, like Boone Pickens on energy, I have a plan. Click Read more! for the future of our party.



Obama said:

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can."

Today, I posted the following at Green Change, but since most of you don't read that, I will repeat it here.

I know that most progressives loathe Dr. Frank Luntz. He was, after all, the architect of the message that was behind Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. Most do no know that he was also the man who wrote Harold Ford Jr.’s stirring keynote speech at the 2000 Democratic Convention, crafting a message that was far different from the one written by Gore’s staff. There are several points that Luntz makes about political discourse in America that we had better pay attention to… and I will just mention 3.

Candidates need to be genuine. Luntz feels that Kerry lost the election in 2004 the moment he stepped on the stage, saluted and said “John Kerry reporting for Duty.” That almost universally generated negative reactions and forever marked Kerry as being not real.

Candidates need to have a narrative to what they are doing. We understand stories. This is the opposite of being policy wonkish, which I tend to be.

Candidates must use that narrative to express their aspirations for their community, their state, their country depending on what level of office they aspire to. Obama did this very well, maybe never as well as he did last night with story of the older woman, the daughter of slaves, who had seen so much, done so much. And then using that narrative to point to where our future might be.

If we can not find the candidates who can do that, then we will never have success.

Now here is a simple biographical narrative. Malik Rahim bringing NOLA together on Common Ground. Malik Rahim, keeping the lights on, the clinic open when government could not. Malik Rahim rebuilding New Orleans’s 9th Ward after the Destruction of Katrina. And we need Malik Rahim to help rebuild this country after the destruction of Bush / Cheney.

If we are going to stop the hemorrhaging we need to turn total attention to getting Rahim elected,, as Obama would say “in this year, in this election, at this time, Change can come to the Green Party.”

The election in Louisiana’s 2nd District is December 6… we have one month to change this party, to change this country. What will you do to help?

Why I Won't Vote for ANY California Democrat

California is going for Democrat Barack Obama 55% to 33% according to a Field Poll released Thursday before the election. If this holds up, it will be the biggest California landslide by any candidate (including Californian Ronald Reagan) since World War II.


GP Candidate Cynthia McKinney with Alex Walker in Chicago

Very well. My "Brotha" Barack does not need my vote, and since pumping up Dem totals only encourages my local scoundrels, I won't vote for any Democrat in California.

All politics is local.

Surf the Internet and you'll find thousands of posts about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Russia, India, Israel, and Palestine. Across the political spectrum, intellectuals obsess over world affairs.

Want to know how the U.S.A. got into this mess? Want to know how we were overwhelmed by cynicism, divisiveness, demagoguery, "Pay-To-Play" governance, and sleaze? It didn't start in that mythical "Washington." It started in places like little Wasilla, Alaska... and big Los Angeles.



I could write a long book about this. Today, I'll be brief, and just list the Dem screw-ups. One great thing about the Internet is that you don't have to take my word for it. Click the hyperlinks below and read the MSM stories for yourself.

One-Party Democratic Los Angeles County

• Los Angeles Police Department - Brutality
• Los Angeles Police Department - Incompetence
  
• Martin Luther King/Drew Hospital
• Southern California Regional Rail Authority
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority - Expo Rail Line
• Baldwin Hills Oil Field - "Drill Baby Drill!"
• South Central Urban Farm
• Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
• Los Angeles County Jail and Paris Hilton
• Los Angeles City Commissioner Leland Wong
• Los Angeles - Marlton Square Development Project
• S.E.I.U. President Tyrone Freeman
• Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn
• Inglewood City Clerk Yvonne Horton
• Inglewood Police Department
• Congresswoman Laura Richardson
• Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez
• County Supervisor Yvonne Burke
• State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas
• City Councilman Bernard C. Parks
• Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo
• Cities of Lynwood, Carson, and South Gate
• Lynwood Recall Election
• City of Cudahy
• Carson City Council
• City of Carson and Keith McDonald

Democrats presided over all of these screw-ups. Many of the scoundrels are people of color. My wife and I have lived all over this country and nowhere have I seen so many political hacks who are Black like me.

The Three "Playboy" Mayors

No essay about ethically-challenged politicians would be complete without a special salute to California's "Playboy" mayors. They've worked hard holding up the Bill Clinton Tradition.

• San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzalez
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Vllairagosa
• San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

Our "Great" 2-Party System in My Neighborhood

In 2006 in my 33rd congressional district, Democrat Diane Watson received 100% of the vote. Across the street and down the hill, the 35th congressional district was a comparative hotbed of democracy -- Democrat Maxine Waters garnered "only" 83.7% against candidates for the Libertarian and American Independent Parties. My representative to the California state assembly from the 47th assembly district, Democrat Karen Bass, actually had to run against a bona fide Republican.

Here's the message that Republican Jeffers M. Dodge, self-described "tall white fair-haired male political activist," sent to me and my neighbors:

Jeffers MacArthur Dodge

"I have said this many times, Get off drugs, go back to school, stay married, love your children, go to church, get a job and take responsibilities for your actions."

Wow! Like we really needed a Republican "angry white man" to instruct us to love our children. Two years ago voters in law-abiding, tax-paying, working families in my neighborhood reacted to Mr. Dodge exactly the same as voters in law-abiding, tax-paying, working families in any city, suburb, small town or rural county to a stream of insults -- casting 84.87% of their votes for Democrat Karen Bass.

Democrats: (left to right): 33rd District Congresswoman Diane Watson, 47th District Assemblywoman Karen Bass, and 35th District Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

The 2008 presidential election may be the most important in modern U.S. history. This year that other "major party" in our sacred 2-party system, is running candidates for all 3 seats.

Republican David Crowley is running against Watson; Republican Lady Cage-Barile is challenging Bass; and Republican Ted Hayes is trying to oust Waters. If you visit their official web sites, you'll find nothing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; nothing about an economic crisis; and next to nothing about education or health care. You will find, however, that all three are strongly opposed to abortion, same-sex love, and "illegal aliens" from Mexico. On national television Mr. Hayes has said that "illegal immigration is the worst thing for blacks since slavery." Ms. Cage-Barile sends this high-minded message on her official web site:

"For more than a decade, California politics has been led by an Ultra Liberal Controlled Legislation, which has managed to alienate Conservative Americans, Religious Americans and Patriotic Americans from the decision making process... California is left with the low education ranking of 47th in the nation, the largest influx of illegal immigrants ever, a campaign to make men effeminate, irresponsible spending of our tax dollars, constant raising of taxes. . ."

Leave it to Republicans to "reach out" to my African-American community by red-baiting, race-baiting, and homophobia.

Karen Bass has been elected the first African-American woman in history to serve as speaker of a state assembly. Maxine Walters, top-aide to Mayor Tom Bradley in the '70s, Jesse Jackson gal in the '80s, and a legendary liberal in Congress -- co-founding the "Out of Iraq Caucus" -- is a legend. The 3 Democratic incumbents are not worried.

Republicans: (left to right): 33rd CD candidate David Crowley, 47th AD candidate Lady Cage-Barile, and 35th CD candidate Ted Hayes.

I mean, look at 'em!

Tell me we don't need the Green Party because I have the "choice" to support these Republican wingnuts and you are telling me, in effect, I need no choice at all.

See below an authentic expression of the heart of the California GOP circulated by a Republican club in San Bernardino County.

Hence our dilemma: one-party Democratic regimes are incompetent and corrupt, but the mean, angry, hateful racist Republicans are not an option.

There is a "hole" in U.S. politics. There is an empty space -- a vacuum -- where there ought to be an intelligent, grown-up, no-nonsense opposition to what big city Democrats are doing. The old fashioned politics they represent is as unsustainable in the 21st Century as the old politics of the Bushies.

The Green Party is the second party and the next phase of our struggle begins November 4th.