Money wins elections. Whether it be a scholarly article by academics or an empirical analysis of the 2010 elections by the Wall Street Journal , the general rule is that the more money a candidate spends, the better is that candidate's chance of winning. Quite a few years ago, I read that something like 80% of the elections were won by the candidate that spent the most money. Nothing much seems to have changed in the intervening decades. The Wall Street Journal analysis of 2010 campaign spending shows that Republican groups prevailed in nearly 75% of the House races in which they significantly out-spent Democratic organizations.
True, it doesn't happen every time. Just ask Meg Whitman. She lost to Jerry Brown in the California gubernatorial contest after spending $145 million of her own money. Her campaign manager was quoted as saying of this very blue state "you can't change Democrats into Republicans".
But money affects elections often enough to make the Citizens United ruling a threat to our democracy. SCOTUS' Citizens United decision, a grossly bizarre interpretation of free speech and personhood, allows unlimited direct corporate funding to candidates' campaigns. Now here's the kicker... the Center for Responsive Politics estimates that 72% of the political advertisement spending in the 2010 elections would have been prohibited before Citizens United. You remember the 2010 elections - those were the ones that swept those zany Tea Party Republicans into control of the House of Representatives and made a significant dent in the Senate Democratic majority.
And it gets worse...on February 17, the Supreme Court of the United States blocked a Montana Supreme Court ruling that had upheld that state's century old limit on corporate campaign spending. As reported in Bloomberg Business Week, "The high court yesterday put the Montana law on hold until it announces whether it will review the measure, which is being challenged by two nonprofit corporations and a family-owned business." In a ray of light, the eminently reasonable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, writing for herself and Justice Stephen Breyer, said that the appeal in the Montana case “will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”
The care2 political blog provided additonal details of Justice Ginsburg's opinion: ”Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this court’s decision” in Citizens United “make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. A petition for certiorari will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”
One other ray of light is the state of Vermont. As reported in AlterNet, on the one-year anniversary of Citizens United, "state senator Virginia Lyons ...presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes 'an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.' Polls show that three-quarters of Americans oppose the Citizens United ruling. If a constitutional amendment is eventually enacted, Vermont's action may be remembered as the first small step on the path to reform.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Stop Stumbling into War Now
Inconceivable as it may be after the recent disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the midst of the ongoing economic problems in this country, the US may find itself in a war with Iran in the near future. With increasingly belligerent talk and accusations against Iran from Israel's Netanyahu and with Israeli and American drones in the area, there is an increasing sense of a mindless drift towards war.
Charles Mutede's February 14 post on The Stranger blog summarizes the situation with Israel's right-wing leader: "Netanyahu apparently feels, however, that he can manipulate right-wing Israeli influence on American politics to make it impossible for Obama to stay out of an Israeli war on Iran. He has defied the Obama administration by refusing to assure Washington that he would consult them before making any decision on war with Iran."
Frankly who the f**k does Netanyahu think he is? Even George Bush would not be convinced to tolerate and support an Israeli strike against Iran.
Hopefully Obama will not be forced into an Iran war by the right-wing lunatics and neocons in Congress and in the Republican Party in this election year. Hopefully he will take the only path to peace possible and publicly warn Netanyahu that if he institutes any such attack against Washington's wishes, he is totally on his own for the duration.
And hopefully, Obama was just grand-standing in his State of the Union when he said that he "will take no options off the table to achieve [the] goal [of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability]". As noted in today's Huffington Post, there is little enthusiasm in the military for any such war. Quoting Gen. Martin Dempsey's comment to the National Journal last month, a war with Iran "would be really destabilizing ... I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority." Dempsey is the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So at least there is sanity at that spot.
As for the presence of US ships near Iranian waters and US drones near the Iranian border, Rep. Dennis Kucinich asks how would we react if an Iranian aircraft flew near our coast? Maintaining the peace requires an all-out effort in diplomacy, not provocations against Iran's national sovereignty. Kucinich suggests if we want to deter Iranians from nuclear energy, we should show them the cost of such energy and that there are better ways to power a nation. If we want to deter them from developing nuclear weapons capability, the US should take the lead in nuclear disarmament. As Kucinich says in the linked video , "Don't we have enough wars that we're fighting in the United States? Do we need another war? Did I miss something that we somehow ran out of wars?"
Noam Chomsky in a HuffingtonPost/TomDispatch co-post notes another diplomatic path to solve the nuclear weapons issue. He sites overwhelming international support for undertaking "meaningful steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces deployed there), better still extending to South Asia." This fuller solution (Middle East plus South Asia) would have the advantage of bringing Israel, Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These three countries are the only ones to never have signed the NPT and they all have nuclear weapons. (It should be noted that North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.)
There is some hope that world peace can be maintained and that we will not stumble into another disastrous war in the Middle East. It is going to take hard diplomatic work, creative solutions, and the courage and political will to stand up to those who would clamor for that war or try to lure us into it.
Charles Mutede's February 14 post on The Stranger blog summarizes the situation with Israel's right-wing leader: "Netanyahu apparently feels, however, that he can manipulate right-wing Israeli influence on American politics to make it impossible for Obama to stay out of an Israeli war on Iran. He has defied the Obama administration by refusing to assure Washington that he would consult them before making any decision on war with Iran."
Frankly who the f**k does Netanyahu think he is? Even George Bush would not be convinced to tolerate and support an Israeli strike against Iran.
Hopefully Obama will not be forced into an Iran war by the right-wing lunatics and neocons in Congress and in the Republican Party in this election year. Hopefully he will take the only path to peace possible and publicly warn Netanyahu that if he institutes any such attack against Washington's wishes, he is totally on his own for the duration.
And hopefully, Obama was just grand-standing in his State of the Union when he said that he "will take no options off the table to achieve [the] goal [of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability]". As noted in today's Huffington Post, there is little enthusiasm in the military for any such war. Quoting Gen. Martin Dempsey's comment to the National Journal last month, a war with Iran "would be really destabilizing ... I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority." Dempsey is the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So at least there is sanity at that spot.
As for the presence of US ships near Iranian waters and US drones near the Iranian border, Rep. Dennis Kucinich asks how would we react if an Iranian aircraft flew near our coast? Maintaining the peace requires an all-out effort in diplomacy, not provocations against Iran's national sovereignty. Kucinich suggests if we want to deter Iranians from nuclear energy, we should show them the cost of such energy and that there are better ways to power a nation. If we want to deter them from developing nuclear weapons capability, the US should take the lead in nuclear disarmament. As Kucinich says in the linked video , "Don't we have enough wars that we're fighting in the United States? Do we need another war? Did I miss something that we somehow ran out of wars?"
Noam Chomsky in a HuffingtonPost/TomDispatch co-post notes another diplomatic path to solve the nuclear weapons issue. He sites overwhelming international support for undertaking "meaningful steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces deployed there), better still extending to South Asia." This fuller solution (Middle East plus South Asia) would have the advantage of bringing Israel, Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These three countries are the only ones to never have signed the NPT and they all have nuclear weapons. (It should be noted that North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.)
There is some hope that world peace can be maintained and that we will not stumble into another disastrous war in the Middle East. It is going to take hard diplomatic work, creative solutions, and the courage and political will to stand up to those who would clamor for that war or try to lure us into it.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
When Will They Ever Learn?
That famous line from Peter, Paul and Mary's 1960's anti-war anthem "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" should give us all something to think about as America approaches the eleventh anniversary of the Afghanistan War.
The Afghanistan War became the longest war in American history on June 7, 2010 - longer than Vietnam, longer than Korea, longer than World War II. Leon Panetta says we'll be ending it next year. Not soon enough by a long shot. It never should have been waged. Terrorism is best controlled and prevented by police actions. Of course, if you are asleep at the wheel and the the largest single-day attack on American soil occurs on your watch, you need to show that you're doing something - even if what you are doing is destructive, costly and ineffective. But the neocons decided to declare a war on terror and Afghanistan was their easy first choice. They then expanded this so-called war to invade Iraq, a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 and, of course, which had no weapons of mass destruction. A permanent state of war (I mean, really, how can you ever defeat a noun) facilitates the destruction of civil liberties in a democracy. Politically it creates an atmosphere that favors militarists, fear mongers, and neo cons. Reason goes out the window as any opposition to war policies are branded "unpatriotic" or, in the more recent terminology of the right-wing echo machine, "You don't believe in American exceptionalism!"
These wars were totally unjustified. Since many think that right and wrong has to do with power and winning (as in, "might makes right"), here's something to think about. The end result of these disastrous wars is far from what was envisioned by the war planners and what was hoped for by the neocons. In Iraq, power is now held by Shia political parties closely aligned with Iran. In Afghanistan, the most likely outcome is some power sharing arrangement between Karzai and the Taliban.
The world, as Jonathan Schell says, is unconquerable (Note 1). We will not be able to impose our will on others in the long-term by violent means . We seem never to learn that war always causes more misery than we can contemplate. We seem never to learn that, even if we put aside the moral considerations, war is ineffective and leads to unintended and unimaginable consequences.
So to answer the nearly 50 year old question of Peter Paul and Mary...apparently not yet.
(1) The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. Jonathan Schell, 2003, Henry Holt and Co., New York). From the jacket notes: "a visionary work that explores the limits of violence and charts an unexpectedly hopeful course toward a nonviolent future".
The Afghanistan War became the longest war in American history on June 7, 2010 - longer than Vietnam, longer than Korea, longer than World War II. Leon Panetta says we'll be ending it next year. Not soon enough by a long shot. It never should have been waged. Terrorism is best controlled and prevented by police actions. Of course, if you are asleep at the wheel and the the largest single-day attack on American soil occurs on your watch, you need to show that you're doing something - even if what you are doing is destructive, costly and ineffective. But the neocons decided to declare a war on terror and Afghanistan was their easy first choice. They then expanded this so-called war to invade Iraq, a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 and, of course, which had no weapons of mass destruction. A permanent state of war (I mean, really, how can you ever defeat a noun) facilitates the destruction of civil liberties in a democracy. Politically it creates an atmosphere that favors militarists, fear mongers, and neo cons. Reason goes out the window as any opposition to war policies are branded "unpatriotic" or, in the more recent terminology of the right-wing echo machine, "You don't believe in American exceptionalism!"
These wars were totally unjustified. Since many think that right and wrong has to do with power and winning (as in, "might makes right"), here's something to think about. The end result of these disastrous wars is far from what was envisioned by the war planners and what was hoped for by the neocons. In Iraq, power is now held by Shia political parties closely aligned with Iran. In Afghanistan, the most likely outcome is some power sharing arrangement between Karzai and the Taliban.
The world, as Jonathan Schell says, is unconquerable (Note 1). We will not be able to impose our will on others in the long-term by violent means . We seem never to learn that war always causes more misery than we can contemplate. We seem never to learn that, even if we put aside the moral considerations, war is ineffective and leads to unintended and unimaginable consequences.
So to answer the nearly 50 year old question of Peter Paul and Mary...apparently not yet.
(1) The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. Jonathan Schell, 2003, Henry Holt and Co., New York). From the jacket notes: "a visionary work that explores the limits of violence and charts an unexpectedly hopeful course toward a nonviolent future".
Monday, February 6, 2012
The Horse Race
After savoring the Giants' great victory in the Super Bowl, I guess it's time to get back to posting on politics. Eli Manning was again phenomenal down the stretch and Mario Manningham's amazing catch along the sidelines in the game-winning drive will go down in history right there with David Tyree's "velcro" helmet catch in Superbowl XLII. Besides being the great national spectacle that it is, the Superbowl had another advantage this year - it totally dominated the news and forced the Republican primary season below the radar.
I've not posted much on the horse race aspects of the Republican primary since it doesn't much interest me. There have been so many front runners as the far-right try to nominate ABM (anybody but Mitt). Recently though (Florida and Nevada), the Tea Party wing of the Republican party seems to be declining a bit in influence. Unless Gingrich can pull off some amazing upsets in the coming weeks, it looks like Romney is on the way to winning the nomination. It ought to be fun as Newt goes after Mitt - seeing the two lead clowns slugging it out will be entertaining. But make no mistake...in the general election the Republicans will come together and make Obama the target of their hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the SCOTUS Citizens United decision.
If past performances are any indication, it will be truly ugly with ad hominem attacks against Obama reaching a fever pitch - especially in the PAC-funded third party negative ads. Or as Al Franken's The Truth (With Jokes) noted about the 2004 election - the Right will try to win based on a campaign featuring "fears, smears, and queers".
Hopefully, the independents in the country know enough about Obama to resist the coming onslaught. The most recent national poll has Obama leading Romney 52% to 43% but this will undoubtedly change as the Republican attack machine turns its attention to Obama. If anything can be said about Romney's victory in Florida, it's that money wins elections. Surprisingly, those polled think that Romney would do a better job on the economy.
This seems to be an area totally devoid of any understanding. It was clearly Republican deregulation policies that led to the economic collapse in 2008. It was clearly the neocon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the tax cuts for the rich and the agreement not to negotiate lower prices for Medicare prescription drugs that sent us into deficit mode. And it was clearly Republican opposition that prevented a sufficiently large stimulus package from being approved that delayed the jobs recovery. If the people want more of the same, they should continue to elect Republicans. But let's not get the root causes of our current economic problems confused with our disappointment that Obama was not able to do more to resolve it. The hole the Republicans dug was too big and the constraints and obstructionism they placed in play were too crafty for a President who wanted to "reach across the aisle".
Update 2/8/12
With Newt Gingrich on the sidelines for at least one of yesterday's races (honestly I'm not following it that closely so I can't tell you which one(s)), Rick Santorum took the 3 state primaries. The AP reports this afternoon that the delegate count is:
Romney 98
Santorum 68
Gingrich 29
Paul 9
Fox News had a different count this morning:
Mitt Romney – 107
Rick Santorum – 45
Newt Gingrich – 32
Ron Paul – 9
Hmm...well I guess it will be sorted out by election day.
I've not posted much on the horse race aspects of the Republican primary since it doesn't much interest me. There have been so many front runners as the far-right try to nominate ABM (anybody but Mitt). Recently though (Florida and Nevada), the Tea Party wing of the Republican party seems to be declining a bit in influence. Unless Gingrich can pull off some amazing upsets in the coming weeks, it looks like Romney is on the way to winning the nomination. It ought to be fun as Newt goes after Mitt - seeing the two lead clowns slugging it out will be entertaining. But make no mistake...in the general election the Republicans will come together and make Obama the target of their hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the SCOTUS Citizens United decision.
If past performances are any indication, it will be truly ugly with ad hominem attacks against Obama reaching a fever pitch - especially in the PAC-funded third party negative ads. Or as Al Franken's The Truth (With Jokes) noted about the 2004 election - the Right will try to win based on a campaign featuring "fears, smears, and queers".
Hopefully, the independents in the country know enough about Obama to resist the coming onslaught. The most recent national poll has Obama leading Romney 52% to 43% but this will undoubtedly change as the Republican attack machine turns its attention to Obama. If anything can be said about Romney's victory in Florida, it's that money wins elections. Surprisingly, those polled think that Romney would do a better job on the economy.
This seems to be an area totally devoid of any understanding. It was clearly Republican deregulation policies that led to the economic collapse in 2008. It was clearly the neocon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the tax cuts for the rich and the agreement not to negotiate lower prices for Medicare prescription drugs that sent us into deficit mode. And it was clearly Republican opposition that prevented a sufficiently large stimulus package from being approved that delayed the jobs recovery. If the people want more of the same, they should continue to elect Republicans. But let's not get the root causes of our current economic problems confused with our disappointment that Obama was not able to do more to resolve it. The hole the Republicans dug was too big and the constraints and obstructionism they placed in play were too crafty for a President who wanted to "reach across the aisle".
Update 2/8/12
With Newt Gingrich on the sidelines for at least one of yesterday's races (honestly I'm not following it that closely so I can't tell you which one(s)), Rick Santorum took the 3 state primaries. The AP reports this afternoon that the delegate count is:
Romney 98
Santorum 68
Gingrich 29
Paul 9
Fox News had a different count this morning:
Mitt Romney – 107
Rick Santorum – 45
Newt Gingrich – 32
Ron Paul – 9
Hmm...well I guess it will be sorted out by election day.
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