Category: Politics

In every election it’s a given someone loses.  My candidate, Jill Stein, didn’t win, but I’m not disappointed.  Four years ago, I couldn’t vote the Green Party option.  It wasn’t a ballot alternative in Kentucky.  This year, the Green Party appeared on 38 state ballots.  Just 12 more to go.

America needs a third party alternative to provide focus on pivotal issues commonly overlooked by Democrats and Republicans relying on expedience rather than principle on issues that include global warming; alternative energy; single payer health care;  corporate and banking reform; tax equity; the growing income gap; immigration reform; and budget management.

On a related front, the Green Party needs to expand its canopy to include support of “Death with Dignity” legislation.  My keen disappointment is the narrow loss of this humane initiative in my birth state of Massachusetts.  In a genuine democracy, personal sovereignty should be a given.  Thus, I had high hopes for Question 2 in a progressive state like Massachusetts.  Its narrow defeat by largely religious interests, however, suggests it will ultimately succeed.

This long campaign, often harsh in its rhetoric, has finally come to its close.  However our candidates fared, we need to seize the higher ground in relentless resolve to fully realize the American Dream of   “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I wish Obama well.

rj

And here we are, Election Day, at last.  As I see it, the results will be in, or nearly so, by 9 or 10 pm, EST.  Today’s sophisticated tracking methodologies are such that they rarely fall short of measuring their targets.  While Romney may garner an impressive percentage of the popular vote, he will lose decisively in the electoral one that matters, with Obama snagging  300 electoral votes, maybe more.  In fact, the Electoral College, based on the last five elections, may well doom the party of Lincoln regaining the Presidency any time soon, unless it can broaden its base.  Unfortunately, the Tea Party zealots are not going to vanish any time soon, as Tom Brokaw reminded us yesterday.

For me, the interesting items to monitor embrace my native state of Massachusetts; for example,  the see-saw Senate race between Elizabeth Warren and incumbent Scott Brown.  Normally, Brown would be likely to win, but not in an election to decide the presidency.  Vastly outnumbered by registered Democrats, a Republican Scott victory would require a considerable surge in vote splitting.  That’s one steep mountain climb for the personable Scott, though polls show the race to be remarkably close.

Another nail biter is the public referendum vote before Massachusetts voters on the Death with Dignity, or Question 2, initiative.  Modeled after Oregon’s 15-year old legislation, it boggles my mind that it even got on the ballot, given the state’s heavy Catholic (44%) constituency.  Nationally, as well, Catholic leadership has pummeled the initiative and contributed big money.

My candidate, Jill Stein (Green Party), who also happens to reside in Massachusetts, isn’t going to impact voters very much today, so no suspense there.  But this initiative, characterized by its compassion and intelligent respect for human dignity, deserves passage, regardless of one’s party affiliation.  Two arguments are largely employed by those urging its defeat: the moral and potential abuse.  The latter, however, stems from distortion, since only those with a life-expectancy of six months would be eligible.

What disturbs me most are the lack of empathy and the imposing of religious belief, notably by the Catholic church and many evangelicals, on others.  As such, these interests are not that removed from those of Islamic advocates of Sharia law.  They are certainly not democratic interests in their overriding the individual’s sovereignty to choose for herself.  These elements had fervently opposed even passive euthanasia several decades ago until the Supreme Court changed the landscape.

What’s at stake here is poignantly captured in the testimony of Tim Kutzman, a Unitarian-Universalist pastor in Reading, MA.  In seminary, he was outspokenly anti-physician-suicide.  Then, while visiting his hospitalized congregants, he came upon a new realty in their interminable suffering and desire for release.  Kutzman relates the story of his close friend’s death, theater critic Arthur Friedman, who languishing from Parkinson’s disease, ultimately refused water and food.  “It rocked my world,” says Kutzman, now a staunch advocate of Question 2.  ( Asssociated Press)

In final retrospect, though I’ve lived elsewhere for many years, I’ve never lost my pride in hailing from Massachusetts, a bellwether state renowned for its achievements in education, medicine, high tech and front row advocacy on progressive issues such as Gay Rights.  Thus, what happens in Massachusetts on this issue carries resonance far beyond its boundaries. The opposition knows this well.

And so, knowing the likely outcome of the presidential race, I will nonetheless excitedly be monitoring the results for the initiative in Massachusetts, willing to believe that reason and empathy can once again trump parochial interest and promote human dignity.

“The Green Party is no longer the alternative; the Green Party is the imperative.” (Rosa Clemente)

Hey, I’m only one individual, but isn’t that where we begin–ourselves? The light just popped on. Me, I’m voting Dr. Jill Stein on Tuesday!

I wanted to vote Green Party here in KY back in 2008, but it wasn’t a ballot option then, so I voted Nader. This time, I’ve the option to pull the lever for a better nation and a greener world. I’m voting for transparency, economic equity, corporate and banking scrutiny, alternative energy, single payer health reform, a more peaceful world.

Lincoln famously spoke at Gettysburg of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Come Tuesday, I’m voting not for oil, corporations, hedge funders or banks. I’m voting for the people.

Vote for Obama? Don’t bet he’ll deliver. If you ask why I say this, just scroll down to my September 12 post that gives instances of 500 promises he made in 2008, but didn’t keep.

Romney? Let’s not get silly. This guy’s worth $250 million, yet paid an effective tax rate of only 14% on his 2010 and 2011 income. By the way, Romney owns several luxurious homes, including a $10 million New Hampshire retreat on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee along with a La Jolla $12 million residence he wants to replace with an 11,000 square foot version, replete with an elevator garage costing 50,000K. But, oh, he cares about you!

The shame of these four debates has been the absence of humanity’s greatest challenge posed not by a nuclear Iran or an expansionist China, but climate change. Excuse the oxymoron, but it’s a silence that echoes a continuing callousness to what is already eroding our future. Meanwhile, hurricane Sandy portends still more to come.

And just who is Jill Stein? You can, of course, go to her website JillStein, but just a few biography tidbits:

Age 62, she hails from Illinois, but has resided in Massachusetts since graduating from Harvard University (magnum cum laude) and Harvard Medical School. A long time instructor in internal medicine and mother of two grown sons, she lives with her husband, Richard Roher, also a physician, in historic Lexington. Dr. Stein first entered into politics when she ran for governor in 2002. She’s authored two well-received medical reports, one of them translated into several languages. Active as a citizen, Dr. Stein has been twice elected to Lexington’s Town Meeting and been in the forefront of health and environment reform efforts. She’s appeared on TV shows such as Today and Fox.

Some would argue a vote for Stein is a vote for Romney, since it’s likely one less vote for Obama. I beg to differ. In some states already in the electoral column for Romney, like Kentucky where I live, casting a Green Party ballot isn’t going to supplant destiny. It does, however, allow me a voice. What it helps assure as well, should we Greens poll 5% nationally, is the infusion of $20 million in federal funding that will help build momentum for building the party and setting the agenda for meaningful social and economic justice. In this year’s tedious march to the election, Greens have been left out of the conversation. A vote for Stein voices our demand for a seat at the table.

Additionally, third parties have their place in the political arena, even though they don’t win. The most recent example was Ross Perot, who gleaned enough of the vote to put Bill Clinton into the White House in ’92. The same again in ’96, when Perot captured 18% of the vote. By the way, Clinton never achieved a 50% majority in either election. On the other hand, Bush, the son, won because there wasn’t any substantive third party opposition, resulting in an election thrown into the Supreme Court in 2000.

Third parties help us draw distinctions. If you took away the party and candidate labels in the recent debates, could you really discern the differences between the candidates?

Third parties, in close elections, teach losers not to play the expediency card. Had Gore tweaked his positions just a bit more to the Left in 2000, he would have conceivably nullified Ralph Nader’s 1%, winning the election outright. Iran? Afghanistan? Conversely, Nader with just that one percent may have altered history. This year’s election doesn’t pose a serious challenge to Obama’s reelection. While the ballot numbers may be dead even, Obama leads in nearly all of the battleground states and will likely achieve a plurality of at least 20 electoral votes beyond the required 270. Rest assured, your vote won’t be wasted in its underscoring of the salient issues.

Let me close with a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Chris Hedges:

The November election is not a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is not a battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It is a battle between the corporate state and us. And if we do not immediately engage in this battle we are finished, as climate scientists have made clear. I will defy corporate power in small and large ways. I will invest my energy now solely in acts of resistance, in civil disobedience and in defiance. Those who rebel are our only hope. And for this reason I will vote next month for Jill Stein.

rj

Update: Police arrested Dr. Stein Wednesday evening in Texas when she brought food and supplies to protestors at the Keystone XL pipeline construction site in Wood County. In a later statement, Stein said that Obama and Romney were only talking of the symptoms, not the causes of disasters like Sandy.

Note: For specific Green Party goals, see Jill Stein

The NYT is reporting that the Labor Department will release its October jobs report, on time, tomorrow morning. The last before the election, it could influence any undecided voters that may still be out there. I know I’ll be giving it close scrutiny. Yes, I’m one of the undecided, as I find it a stalemate when it comes down to weighing the assets and liabilities of each candidate.

I’ve pursued this election campaign daily, watched the debates, scrutinized the media feedback. Using a ledger approach, I find the issues, pro and con, come down to mainly those I list here:

Obama assets:

Environmentally aware

Clean energy proponent

Economic stimuli

Health care reform

Tax equity

Return to 1967 borders for Israel

Banking reform efforts

Pro choice

Obama liabilities

Big government

Failure to initiate immigration reform

Apologist for America

Possible Administration cover-ups

May allow Iran the bomb

Supports the Employees Free Choice Act

May appoint additional activist Supreme Court members

Less business friendly

Romney assets

Small business advocate

Strong military

Would appoint constructionist Supreme Court members

Balanced budgets

Opposed to The Employee Free Choice Act

Less government intrusion

Strong on non-nuclear Iran

Romney liabilities:

Pro life

Less compassion for the poor

Would replace current social security index

Beholden to Israeli lobby

Insensitivity to global warming

More dirty coal and oil advocacy

While economy analysts are anticipating tomorrow’s report will indicate continuing gains in jobs, manufacturing, and housing, this may not help me get past my stalemate as a voter caught in an eclectic mix of liberal and conservative purviews, in keeping with my mindset that truth usually falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

In 2008, I voted for a third party candidate. I may do so again.

rj

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley.” (Robert Burns)

The October surprise arrived this evening in Sandy’s windy assault on the Northeast. How it factors into next week’s election is anybody’s guess, and you can work varying good or bad scenarios for either candidate. Provided he doesn’t make any mistakes, the President can be seen being presidential. It’s also a safe bet that most folks on the receiving end are likely to be grateful. The storm, moreover, relieves Obama from the incessant focus on a still languishing economy along with the emerging reality of the government’s grievous misfire in preempting the Benghazi debacle.

As I write, the Labor Department may delay Friday’s crucial job report until after the election. Probably no conspiracy here, since we don’t know how the report would break in favoring Obama or Romney, though you’d think the Administration would push for its release we’re it favorable, come hell or high water. After all, the economy has been showing inklings of improvement in several sectors, ie., housing and employment.

Perhaps the most potent advantage for the President is that the storm may corral the incipient surge towards Romney even in battleground states like Ohio, now rated a toss-up.

You might argue that Sandy has handed Obama the election on a silver platter. But hold on: there’s one thing the speculative press may be missing that favors Romney. Vast as Sandy is, with winds extending 175 miles from its center, it mainly impacts those states, apart from Virginia, that are foremost in the Democratic column anyway.

Whatever happens, the media will have plenty to chew on following next Tuesday’s voting results.

rj

As I write, monster storm Sandra plows its way towards its projected target. In like manner, our rancorous politics will soon funnel into Election Day. I wish I could say November 6 will, like refreshing rain, bring our national rancor to its close, but I know better, and so do you.

Whatever the result, our ills are likely to continue and may even worsen: a sluggish economy; soaring deficits; the shrapnel of sequestration in January. Abroad, a tiltering Europe; an Arab Spring gone wrong; the progressive materializing of Iranian nuclear capability. Perhaps we should lament the winner’s fate.

As it stands right now, I’m not tethered to either candidate. Both have proven themselves masters of solipsism masquerading as wisdom. Not wanting to be manipulated by party interests, I registered as an independent several years ago. Wary of the dangers inherent in political partisanship, I found unanticipated support one day in coming upon George Washington’s remarkably visionary Farewell Address (1796), warning of the destructive capacity of political parties to vest themselves in parochial partisanship rather than the national interest:.

It [party faction] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of ;party passions.

My father was a life-long Democrat, despite admiring Teddy Roosevelt. I think he’d have liked Reagan as well had he lived, though probably wouldn’t have voted for him. I married into a family much the same way, for whom “Republican” probably came close to a dirty word. And obviously there are Republicans who have never opted to vote Democratic. All of this just tells me how much we’re shackled by the culture we’re embedded into, beginning with family, rather than filtering the debris through that best teacher, experience.

Political rancor isn’t anything new, of course, but then you’d think in the digital age we’d have our wits about us and not fall prey to demonization and snake oil promises.

In closing, let me quote another distinguished American, Walt Whitman, on the corruptive legacy of partisanship:

America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for I see clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but their will, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of the States, the ever-overarching American Ideas, it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of them” (Democratic Vistas, 1870).

And that’s why I’m an Independent. I’m just not going to drink the snake oil!

Be well,

rj

It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump and Election Day will be upon us. Although debates possess potential to help us view candidates more fully, and even to shift momentum as seems to have occurred after the first debate, they can frequently run as shallow as a drought stream in August. More likely we remember them for their gaffes, or their generating new memes such as President Obama’s “bayonet” analogy of the last debate, the likeability of the proponents, their apparent command of facts, etc.

Alas, the casualty is more likely to be substance. Whatever happened to seismic suffering and its inveterate challenge? From these debates you would gather poverty–think the likes of Bangladesh, Haiti, Somalia–has been solved. And global warming? While we may debate its causes, we cannot deny its consequences, already upon us and mapping our future. Think about it: three debates (four, if you include the veep debate) and not one question on global warming! I hold that we define ourselves not only by what we say, but by what we omit.

In all the debates, moderators have played a big share in their failure by not asking the sizzling questions on issues such as nuclear proliferation. If nothing else, these debates have mirrored a colossal absorption with ourselves in their shocking indifference to the plight of our earth and its increasingly beleaguered populace, not just the American middle class.

Must all moderators derive from the press, often with their own hidden biases? We would do better with the likes of someone like Fareed Zakaria, whose mainstay is to sound out the truth rather than adumbrate ideology. Or perhaps a panel approach of disparate moderators to provide for balance, scope, and substance would offer us better vistas.

In so many ways, these debates have failed all of us in their platitudes and cliches. Consider the matter of economics, rightly a center piece for focus in the Great Recession. To promise more jobs and balanced budgets should not be conflated with result. We must get at the devil in the details. Two unacknowledged integral factors posing destabilization of the middle class with no easy, if any, resolutions are vested in globalization and the digital revolution. Third world workers can now compete in a global market place at lower cost. Meanwhile, the digital revolution means more jobs going through the shredder. Increased stimulus spending is unlikely to dent their effects and may ultimately even complicate our morass.

At the worst, we can take the ostrich approach and bury our heads in the sand. (Our debates show we have a talent for this.) At the best, we can at least probe for solutions.

More than ever, we need to preempt the political capacity for glibness rather than substance. In an elbow-touching world menaced with the damocles sword of marginalized income and hammer blows to Nature’s resiliency, it behooves us to hold our candidates’ feet to the fire.

Anything less subjects ourselves to further political manipulation and erosion of trust, complicating our future.

Be well,

rj