Vote!

They say voters respond emotionally rather than rationally. This must be true when you consider the number of people who vote against their own interests or do not vote at all. Because of this it is as easy for politicians to become jaded as it is for voters to become jaded. If the voters will not pay enough attention to see who is looking out for them you might as well take the money and run. That is what the Republicans are now doing! They mask this by finding scapegoats they can blame for Bush’s recession. It is the immigrants, both legal and illegal, who are taking your jobs and driving down your wages, the Republicans say. The one thing the Republicans want to avoid is any revelation about the fact that they are representing the people who are exporting your jobs. That is why the Citizens United case was such a horrible decision. Because of that decision special interests are anonymously pouring millions of dollars into the election to support Republican candidates who will do nothing to prevent the exportation of jobs. We need to deal with illegal immigration, but the primary cause of the loss of jobs and decrease in wages is outsourcing, and the Democrats are the only ones addressing that issue. It is up to you to vote for your job! If you want to keep your job you will vote for a Democrat.

On a lighter note: California has the distinction of having candidates who have presented the silliest political advertisements and candidates who have presented the most brilliant advertisements. Conservatives are all too fond of waxing nostalgic. Meg Whitman did this to her detriment. She said that thirty years ago anything was possible in California, adding that that was why she and her husband moved here. She then said that she wanted to restore California to what it had been.

Her opponent, Jerry Brown, countered this advertisement by pointing out that he was the Governor thirty years ago, and Ms. Whitman was correct when she talked about how well the state was doing under his leadership.

Her ad was an oops and his ad was brilliant. I thank both of them for the comic relief.

Questionable Qualifications

When extremists on either side of the political spectrum control the debate the discourse becomes anti-intellectual. Extremists like to talk about common sense because they do not want to deal with the complexities of the real world. They find it much easier and, from a political standpoint, more effective to take a simplistic approach they can convert into mind numbing slogans people will remember. In this regard common sense has become a misnomer. Common sense is what tells us not to place our hands on a hot electric heater. Ohms Law and the other things we need to know to design or make an electric heater are not common sense. My point is that most of our endeavors require a combination of knowledge and judgment as well as common sense, and governing is no exception to this rule. We should expect everyone running for public office to know the structure of our government and how it works. We should also expect everyone running for public office to have a grasp of the issues and an understanding of the problems confronting us. It is perfectly reasonable for us to expect our legislators to know what a proposed bill will do for or to the citizens of this country.

Asking a candidate running for Congress or the Vice Presidency of the United States to name a Supreme Court decision with which that candidate disagrees is not a trick question. It is the job of the Supreme Court to decide complex and often controversial legal issues. The fact that those issues are controversial means that everyone who has given the matter any thought at all can name at least one decision they consider to be wrong. Furthermore, some of the decisions have such a strong impact on us that the names of the cases in which those decisions were rendered have become a part of our vocabulary. Yet neither Sarah Palin nor Christine O’Donnell could name a single Supreme Court decision with which they disagreed. The question posed to Ms. Palin allowed her to choose any case decided during any time in the entire history of Supreme Court. She could have at least said Dread Scott. The question posed to Ms. O’Donnell was to name a recent case. Ms. O’Donnell, however, was free to define recent. She also knew that Ms. Palin had fumbled a similar question, and because of the recent controversy over the decision in the Citizens United case she should have been prepared for a question about Supreme Court decisions.

The Supreme Court decisions a candidate will consider objectionable or desirable tell us a lot about that candidate’s political philosophy and what legislation that person will support or oppose. Given the position Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell have taken on abortion they could have honestly named Roe v. Wade as a decision they find objectionable. The problem with calling the Roe v. Wade decision wrong, however, is that it will draw the ire of all the people who favor a woman’s right to choose. As candidates both women might have wanted to avoid that issue, but what about the role religion should or should not play in our public schools? Both Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell have objected to what they erroneously consider to be a ban on prayer in public schools, yet neither of them named Engle v. Vitale or Murray v. Curlett as objectionable decisions. All right, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume for the sake of argument that they were looking for a case that would not draw attention to their unpopular opinions. The perfect case to cite as objectionable if they wanted to appeal to their anti-government base without appearing too extreme would be Kelo v. City of New London, which allows local governments to use eminent domain to procure property for commercial development. Kelo was a recent decision and easy to remember because of the outrage it provoked.

Since my political philosophy is somewhat left of center I agree with the decisions in Roe v. Wade, Engle v. Vitale, and Murray v. Curlett. There is not enough time for me to name all of the decisions with which I disagree. The four fairly recent decisions that come readily come to mind are as follows:

1. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision rendered in this case ranks right down there with the most poorly reasoned decisions in history. Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to buy elections or politicians and it certainly does not mean the freedom to do so anonymously.

2. Bush v. Gore. This is the decision that helped George W. Bush steal the 2000 Presidential election. It was outrageously partisan and dangerous.

3. Miller v. California. In this horrific decision the Supreme Court abrogated its responsibility to interpret the first amendment to the Constitution by allowing local communities to ban any material those communities deemed pornographic.

4. Plessey v. Ferguson. This decision said segregation was constitutional under the separate but equal doctrine.

I will concede that even an educated person might not be able to name all of the decisions that person finds objectionable. I think we have all walked away from a conversation thinking about what we should have said. Sarah Palin did not have the opportunity to confirm the names of any Supreme Court decisions during her interview with Katie Couric, but an educated person still should have been able to name at least one of them. I also think Ms. O’Donnell should have been prepared for a question regarding Supreme Court decisions. Even if Ms. Palin and Ms. O’Donnell could not recall the names of the cases, they should have been able to demonstrate some knowledge of case law. For example, they should have been able to say they objected to the Warren Court’s decisions regarding the role of religion in public schools or the Rehnquist Court’s decision regarding eminent domain. The inability of either of then to do that could be cured, but the ignorance it demonstrated is just one example of why neither of them is qualified to hold a federal office. The way they yammer about common sense and almost flaunt their ignorance tells me they have to appeal to low information extremists. The sad fact is that they both lack the requisite intellectual curiosity to learn what they need to know to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, Sharon Angle, Art Robinson and the other extremists running as Republican nominees share that deficiency.

Say What?

There are polls that supposedly show blue color workers drifting to the Republican Party. All right, I know blue color workers are not intellectuals who spend any time studying the candidates or the political process, but I always thought they had some basic instinct for survival. I always thought that even people who are not paying attention can only be screwed a certain number of times before they realize they are being had. I always thought they would then respond appropriately to the politicians who are conning them. A blue color worker who votes for Republican candidates today is defying all reason and common sense. This worker is like a lamb walking up to a lion and asking the big cat if he is hungry. Even if those workers are cynical enough to think that all politicians are corrupt, it does not take an intellectual to realize that not all corruption is equal. Nor does it take an intellectual to understand that competing interests support different candidates. For instance, a large manufacturer will always support a candidate who is running against someone who is supported by labor unions. What this means is that even low information voters should be bright enough to realize how important it is to know who is buying whom.

The Citizens United Case greatly increases the influence of money on our elections, and it is making it far more difficult to see precisely who is buying whom. Large corporations now funnel their money into political groups with euphemistic names in an effort to conceal their influence. The names of those businesses are hidden from you and me, but the politicians who are receiving the funds indirectly know who is putting up the money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the organizations engaging in this deceptive practice. It is pouring millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican candidates from a general fund that includes money from unrevealed U.S. sources and money from foreign countries such as India, China, Russia, and Bahrain. The Democrats are sounding the warning loud and clear. They think you have the right to know if foreign interests are influencing our elections and who else might be buying your politicians. The Democrats have introduced a bill to force all organizations that support political candidates to reveal who contributes funds to those organizations. The Republicans are preventing that bill from being passed.

The reason why the Republican Party does not want you to know who is supporting their candidates is all too obvious. Here is a hint for you: the Republicans are blocking a bill that would do away with the tax incentives given to companies who export your jobs; the Republicans are also threatening to repeal the recently enacted legislation that will protect consumers and the recently enacted legislation that will regulate the people who have gambled away the value of your 401K and other pension plans. In other words, the Republican Party does not want you to know they still represent the people who are exporting your jobs and the financial institutions that caused this recession!

Who the Republicans are now representing is not a historical departure for them. They have always received most of their financial support from large businesses, and the Democrats have always received much of their financial support from labor unions. It is not my intention here to be an advocate for labor unions, but it is an indisputable fact that labor unions have a strong incentive to keep and increase the number of jobs in this country because it is the people who work here that belong to those unions. The large businesses, on the other hand, have a strong incentive to drive down the cost of labor by exporting jobs. Given the high unemployment and low wages caused by George W. Bush’s recession what the Republican Party is now doing is unbelievably destructive. They are even opposing extensions of unemployment benefits and many of them want to lower or repeal the minimum wage while extending the budget busting Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country!

I am not naïve enough to think that blue color workers read this blog, but you do. If you know a blue color worker who is thinking of voting for a Republican candidate buy him a beer at a crowded bar where he has to stand up. And try to pull his head out of his ass!

An Attack On Sanity

The Republican Party has two groups of people who are living in alternate universes. They have the religious right and the billionaires. I know it must seem strange for the religious right to share a party with billionaires considering what the bible says about a rich man’s chance of ever reaching the kingdom of heaven, but logic and reason are very low on the religious right’s priorities. The religious right does not think the government should provide any services or protections that they have to pay taxes to support because God will take care of everything. The billionaires are in complete agreement with that attitude because they think they are God. In other words, the religious right-wingers are like zebras that refuse to think about the fact that they are on the lion’s menu and defend the lion’s predatory behavior on the grounds that lions have to eat.

Most of the religious right-wingers vote for Republicans but deny they are Republicans. A Prior generation of them described themselves as Birchers; this generation of them describe themselves as tea partiers. They are in favor of the benefits and services the government provides to them, but they think the government also provides the same benefits and services to people who do not deserve them. Since the government does not distinguish between who is worthy of benefits and services and who is not worthy of receiving those things the government must be evil, and it should do absolutely nothing. If you try to point out that the religious right is working against its own interests people who belong to that group will tell you it does not matter. The world is, after all, a wicked place. God knows who is worthy and who is not, and He will provide.

If you point out the inconsistency of denying you are a Republican while habitually voting for Republicans the religious right will tell you they are taking their country back starting with the Republican Party. Unfortunately, taking over the Republican Party is no idle boast. Now that a significant number of corporate Republicans have lost primary elections to the tea partiers even well established, moderate Republicans are afraid to anger the people who would abolish social security, medi care, abortion even in the case of rape or incest, and every other government program and/or regulation you can think of. Thus you have Michael Steel refusing to discuss with Lawrence O’Donnell the wacky behavior and absurd positions taken by Republican candidates such as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell while still defending the political viability of those wing nuts. This interview with Michael Steel would have been comical if it were not for the danger posed by the possible election of those candidates and others who are now turning the November elections into a mental health test.

In California we have a different dynamic. The most notable Republican candidates, Meg Whitman for governor and Carly Fiorina for U.S. senate, are billionaires. Both live in an alternate universe of wealth and privilege, and are disconnected from the rest of us who object to being on lion’s menu. This disconnect is all too obvious. When Ms. Whitman was on the board of directors at eBay she approved laying off ten percent of the work force there while voting herself a huge golden parachute. She makes no apology for this or for the fact that she is trying to buy the election. When Gloria Allred filed a lawsuit against Meg Whitman for firing an undocumented house keeper Ms Whitman had employed for almost a decade, Ms. Whitman denied knowing the house keeper was undocumented. When Ms. Allred produced evidence to the contrary, Ms. Whitman still refused to admit she had made a mistake by continuing to employ the house keeper until just before Ms. Whitman filed to run for governor. What Ms. Whitman did instead was to accuse Ms. Allred of acting as a surrogate for gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown. She is so out of touch she thinks she can convince us that this is a phony issue rather than an indication of her flawed character and arrogance. High information voters are opposed to her because they know she is a billionaire who will represent billionaires rather then us. For less savvy voters, however, the hypocrisy revealed by the lawsuit will be a deciding factor.

Carly Fiorina’s political views are almost as hair brained as those held by the religious right. She has not made a show of those views as a candidate, but she is still disconnected from the majority of the voters. When she was CEO of Hewlett Packard she publicly bragged about shipping thousands of jobs overseas. Furthermore she is so clueless she allowed herself to be filmed as she made a snide remark about the hairdo worn by Senator Boxer. Ms. Fiorana is also running the lamest attack ad of the season. It is a clip of Senator Boxer asking a general to call her Senator rather than ma’am. The reaction of everyone I have talked to about this ad is “So?” Why Ms. Fiorana thinks it is so unreasonable for a senator to want people to call her Senator is a mystery to most voters.

This combination of the religious right and the billionaires would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. The anti-government stance of the religious right would give free reign to the very people who are exporting our jobs and whose irresponsible behavior almost took down our entire economy. Furthermore, the areas in which the religious right wants the government to interfere with our lives would take away many of the rights we take for granted. I am talking about a woman’s reproductive rights, a worker’s right to be protected from injury in the work place, and freedom of and from religion, etc.

Tune in, turn out, and vote! I am not making this stuff up. There is far more at stake than you might think!