U.S. National

Part 1: ELECTION MADNESS IN GA AND ARIZONA, & THE SANITY OF SCANNED PAPER BALLOTS

On GREEGREE zoom #118 we begin with a “How To” session from ANDREA MILLER of the Center for Common Ground and RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP.

Ray and Andrea explain how citizens from inside Georgia and around the US can plug into help turn out the vote in the upcoming December 6 US Senate runoff in Georgia.

This historic election will determine whether the US Senate will be 50-50 or 51-49, and will have enormous impacts on the fate of the nation.

JOHN BRAKEY of Audit USA then updates us on the “Lake Effect” in Arizona, in which a MAGA gubernatorial candidate is finally forced to concede defeat.

We also discuss major electoral studies confirming that the fairest and most reliable way to conduct a vote is with hand marked paper ballots that are then scanned.

The scanners provide the initial—very fast—results, which can then be checked with risk limiting audits and, if necessary, actual hand counting.

The election protection movement has fought for this outcome since Ohio 2004. 

“Guinea Pig Nation: How the NRC's new licensing rules could turn communities into test beds for risky, experimental nuclear plants,” is what physicist Dr. Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled his presentation last week.

The talk was about how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is involved in a major change of its “rules” and “guidance” to reduce government regulations for what the nuclear industry calls “advanced” nuclear power plants.

Already, Lyman said, at a “Night with the Experts” online session organized by the Nuclear Energy Information Service, the NRC has moved to allow nuclear power plants to be built in thickly populated areas. This “change in policy” was approved in a vote by NRC commissioners in July.

For a more than a half-century, the NRC and its predecessor agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, sought to have nuclear power plants sited in areas of “low population density”—because of the threat of a major nuclear plant accident.

A dark cloud will threaten the future of Pacifica until it re-establishes good faith and trust with its listener-supporters, and with the public at large.

Along with the staff of KPFA, KPFK and KPFT, a strong majority—more than 6800 voters—approved a change of by-laws in July, 2021.

That clear majority voted in the well-founded belief that the previous by-laws had failed, and that the structure of Pacifica’s management needed to be reformed if the Network were to survive.

In denying that rightfully approved change of by-laws, and then denying the rightful election of a number of candidates to the KPFK board, Pacifica broke its good faith and trust with its listener-supporters, and with the public.

The results have been painfully obvious.

As Myla Reson has pointed out,  Pacifica INITIATED the lawsuit against New Day---and a number of individuals--- in direct opposition to the wishes of the majority of listener-supporters.

Money donated by those listener-supporters was somehow paid to the legal team to deny those very listener-supporters their own clearly stated mandate for new by-laws.

After the election comes . . . the coverage, which always, at least in the mainstream media, seems to reduce everything to winning and losing, to strategy and tactics, rather than to the deep issues shaping the future.

The mainstream-created context of this year’s midterms amounted to: Will there be a “red tsunami”? That is, will the GOP, riding joyfully on the back of the bucking bronco of inflation, overwhelm Sleepy Joe’s Democratic Party and grab control over the House and Senate? Or will the Dems hold on, luck out, lose only minimally?

And the post-election news, of course, is the latter. The count continues as I write and not all election results, at national and state levels, are known yet, but what is known indicates that both parties more or less held their own and there definitely was no red tsunami. For the Democrats, this is the equivalent of a big victory.

America’s beloved, desperately needed Pacifica Radio is at the brink of avoidable death.  It needs a miraculous but do-able progressive uprising to overcome the toxic, outmoded structure that’s killing the Network.  

In July, 2021, the Pacifica Voting Membership voted 6820-5471 to revise the Network’s failed old by-laws (FOB).  

But their legal team refused arbitration and pre-emptively sued, at financial costs they refuse to reveal…while demanding still more!!!  Individual “New Day” reformers have been threatened with personal liability.  

The result has been a horrific year of abject failure.  Rightfully elected board members, irreplaceable staff and many of the Network’s most popular hosts have been purged.  Basic operations have deteriorated into failed state chaos.  Phone lines have crashed, utility bills are unpaid, and Pacifica’s listenership has crashed along with its finances. 

We devote the first hour of the GREE-GREE zoom gathering #116 with the great DAVID HOGG and a deep dive into two issues at the core of American politics: gun violence and youth turnout.

Now a senior at Harvard University, Hogg has become a national icon in the movement to lower the death toll from guns and motivate the youth vote.

David’s work, in tandem with JOHN ROSENTHAL, has significantly changed views of gun registration and control in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Hogg and Rosenthal have helped pioneer the AMERICA CALLING organization which aims to vastly expand the turnout among young voters.

Rosenthal’s efforts, in conjunction with Hogg, have tangibly lowered the gun violence death rate in Massachusetts, and could do the same nationwide, saving more than 26,000 lives.

These two grea activists are already legends in making real change in American politics.  

Rooted in the younger generations now taking control of the electorate, while simultaneously working to end gun violence, they are not to be missed.
Part 1:

DELAND, FL – (Nov. 1) An eye-opening new report by the well-respected, longtime election organization, Florida Fair Elections Coalition (FFEC), predicts that thousands of voters are about to accidentally lose their votes in the 2022 Governor’s race, just as tens of thousands of voters have lost their votes in that race since 2010. These votes are lost because some voters mistakenly vote for more than one candidate in the Governor’s race, something that typically happens only in the Governor’s race and the Presidential race.

10/30/22
City of Ft. Lauderdale seeks to privatize the drinking water of the Central Broward Region to a foreign corporation. The city owns and operates the Fiveash Treatment Plant, serving Ft. Lauderdale, Oakland Park, WIlton Manors, Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, Sea Ranch Lakes, Port Everglades, and portions of Davie and Tamarac. The reason for the proposed public-private partnership (P3) is to build a new treatment plant at the Prospect Wellfield, just west of the Executive Airport, in the flight path at the end of the runway. This will involve replacing a two-mile drain well currently in use at the Prospect site, installing miles of pipes to connect the new location to present infrastructure, plus multiple studies, approvals, and permits required for building a water treatment plant so close to an airport.

We first pose to him the hope to remove the statue of General George McClellan from the streets of DC, and for official recognition of Sally Hemings as the third First Lady of the United States.

We hear from MIKE HERSH about the details of Rep. Raskin’s great career.

Rep. Raskin then lays out the case for federal criminal prosecution against Donald Trump.

Our own JOEL SEGAL tells of his long-standing friendship with Rep. Raskin, and then asks critical legal questions on prosecuting Trump and on preserving our democracy.

RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP gives us a critical presentation of the desperate need to shift the Democratic Party to becoming an actual democracy organization with a shift to grassroots organizing.  

McClendon underscores the need to stop pouring millions of donor dollars into media advertising and switch to establishing the kind of GOTV / person-to-person campaigning that won the “Georgia Miracle” in 2021, shifting control of the US Senate.

BRYNN TANNEHILL informs the Rep. on the plight of trans citizens under Republican regimes.

Above all, one golden attribute renders our species worth saving: a capacity for compassion, to see the world through another’s eyes, and to feel it with a shared heart.

It’s the rare empathetic genius whose music can evoke, exalt and immortalize that capacity.

High atop that list would be Bonnie Raitt, whose transcendent Just Like That has soared to the top of the charts… and into the timeless repertoire.

Daughter of a concert pianist and a Broadway legend, Bonnie has climbed unique artistic, political and spiritual peaks.

Her lifetime in music slides from blues to folk, r&b, rock, reggae, pop, classical standards and more. A partial of list of artists with whom she’s performed tracks our musical heart-print, through the likes of John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, CSN, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow, John Prine, Nora Jones, Pete Seeger, Allen Toussant, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Ruth, Charles & James Brown, Peter Tosh Taj Mahal, Mavis Staples, and more. Her duet with her father, John Raitt, moves mountains: