Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- Here's hoping.

The trouble with being a congenital optimist is that gloom-mongering feels so uncomfortable. The election in Iraq Sunday, like the one in Afghanistan last year, was moving, inspiring and hopeful. When there's a ray of light breaking through in a dark sky, I'd much rather concentrate on the ray than the black clouds.

But mitigating my optimism is the fact that I've been around for a long time. Not that longevity is any guarantee of wisdom, but it does provide perspective. I can remember when they had elections in Vietnam that looked hopeful in 1967. I can remember the elections in El Salvador in 1984. And I remember last year's election in Afghanistan, with the almost unbearably moving sight of Afghani women coming out to vote. Still, it didn't kill off a single raping warlord, did it?

Actually, there is a crisis in Social Security, though it is not what Bush portrays. For a very long time the government has taken the "surplus" -- that is, the Social Security revenues left over after all currently entitled recipients are paid their benefits -- and used it to defray current operating expenses instead of leaving it in the trust fund to cover the benefits of future retirees. They replace the pilfered funds with specially printed I.O.U.'s from the United States Treasury, and count this money as revenue on the balance sheet in order to make the budget deficit look smaller. At least since 1982 this practice has been not only legal, but mandated by law.

“As we here at home contemplate our own duties, our own responsibilities, let us think and think hard of the example which is being set for us by our fighting men. Our soldiers and sailors are members of well-disciplined units. But they're still and forever individuals, free individuals. They are farmers and workers, businessmen, professional men, artists, clerks. They are the United States of America. That is why they fight. We too are the United States of America. That is why we must work and sacrifice. It is for them. It is for us. It is for victory.”
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A Call for Sacrifice”, April 28th, 1942

It is very rare to find a talk show host or writer writing a column basically urging readers to read the writings or opinions of other talk show hosts or writers. I am urging readers of this commentary to read the full text of “Is Wal-Mart a Person? Thom Hartmann Tells Why It Is--Kind of--But Not Really: A Buzzflash.com Interview”(http://www.buzzflash.com/
interviews/05/01/int05004.html).

I am posting a few passages for this long interview to give readers a brief taste of this excellent examination of the threat posed by dominant Corporate political, legal and economic power in the United States today. This interview gives the readers an excellent insight into the historical evolution of this extremely serious problem.

“……the Constitution by the addition of the Bill of Rights, which gave humans a huge club they could use to beat back government if it ever were to become oppressive.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A substantial nit to pick with President Bush's second Inaugural Address and some questions about his theme.

"From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave."

Oh dear. It took us almost 100 years to get rid of slavery right here in the Land of the Free, it took us another 100 years to get rid of legal discrimination based on race and gender, and how long it will take us to achieve equal opportunity for all in this country no one can say. At least we're working at it. Or we were.

The Bush theme of what someone else christened "evangelical democracy" is rather like the "From the day of our founding ..." passage -- actually, it's more complicated than that. I, too, am happy to proselytize for freedom and democracy, but I don't think we can export it by force and I don't think we can expect the world to accept our noble intentions.

Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has publicly labeled as "a complete idiot" an Election Protection attorney he is attempting to have sanctioned. Blackwell made the derogatory personal attack outside a banquet-laden conference in Columbus being sponsored by Diebold, ES&S, Triad and other voting machine vendors.

Blackwell told the 56th annual winter conference of the Ohio Association of Election Officials that the 2004 vote in Ohio was the "gold standard" for national balloting. "We were shocked when people flew in and said the election could be stolen," he told an audience of several hundred election officials from around the state. "The election was not perfect, but it was perfectly inspiring."

The four-day conference held January 25-8 a Columbus's Hyatt Regency Hotel features banquets, luncheons and parties (including one entitled "A Night in the Caribbean") sponsored by the nation's leading voting machine manufacturers, including ES&S, Diebold, Triad, Hart InterCivic and other names now widely associated with questions about the accuracy of the vote counts in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I wouldn't say it's the most earth-shaking issue around, but I'm fascinated by this fight the administration is picking with the media over "private accounts" versus "personal accounts."

Here's the state of play: Everybody went along in cheerful harmony describing the president's Social Security plan as "partial privatization," since it would allow younger workers to put a third or more of their payroll taxes into private accounts. President Bush called them "private accounts," everyone in the administration called them "private accounts," and Republicans, Democrats and the media all called them "private accounts."

Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of "personal accounts" better than they do "private accounts."

When the Multinational Monitor judges gather to pick the 10 worst corporations of the year, one of their instructions is: name no companies that appeared on the previous year's list (barring extraordinary circumstances).

For the 2004 list, that means no Bayer (even though in 2004 the company pushed for import of genetically modified rice into the European Union, polluted water in a South African town with the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, and was hit with evidence that its pain medication Aleve (naproxen) increases the risk of heart attack, among other egregious acts), no Boeing (despite new evidence that the tanker plane scandal costing U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars is! even worse than it appeared), no Clear Channel (even though the radio behemoth in 2004 stooped to new lows with a "Breast Christmas Ever" contest that promised to pay for breast implants for a dozen contest "winners"),  and no  Halliburton (embroiled in a whole new set of contracting fraud and bribery charges in 2004).  But at least the no-repeat rule helps limit the field a bit.

And there remained plenty of worthy candidates.

"Agitation: discussion meant to arouse or increase dissatisfaction with things as they are and produce changes; work of an agitator." Webster's New World Dictionary

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), an outgrowth of the Kucinich for President campaign, just concluded a large, successful national conference in Washington, D.C. Over 500 spirited, determined activists from all over the country came to the University of the District of Columbia for 48 hours of speeches, panels (too many!), workshops and informal person-to-person networking. The panels, the heart of the conference, were focused on issues like Iraq, Israel/Palestine, voting rights/electoral reform, defending social security, universal health care, progressive media, racism, veterans issues and progressive spirituality.

There were no panels or workshops having to do with endorsing candidates. There wasn't even organized public discussion about the internal struggle going on within the Democratic National Committee to determine who will replace Terry McAuliffe as DNC chair, although the vast majority of the Democrats present, I'm sure, are hoping Howard Dean wins that battle.

The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) held a Summit in Washington, DC this past weekend at the kind invitation of Shelly Broderick, the Dean of the University of the District of Columbia Law School. The three day event was made possible by the organizational talents of Joe Libertelli and Tim Carpenter and many volunteers from the Carolinas to California. Washington was in a declared state of emergency for the frigidity, but inside the Conference, the warmth was overcoming as many diverse groups shared common vision, strategy and blue wrist bands. The PDA mission is ambitious; with faith in the unseen, they are building an umbrella coalition of many organizations with common purpose; Peace, Justice and Electoral Integrity and Reform. Whatever your first issue is foreign policy, environment, women’s rights, etc. your second issue, we are reminded, has to be Election Integrity and Reform. Without the later, it doesn’t matter how brilliant or right you are in the first; your strategy in those areas will be quickly deflated to hot air without the ability to guarantee that you can actually elect the people who will be instruments for needed change.