Gone and mostly forgotten (for a reason)

Packard came into existence in 1903 and lasted until 1958. It was an upscale company that really hit its stride in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. Their target market were upper middle class families, people of means, and their main competitors were LaSalle/Cadillac, Lincoln and Duesenberg.

Packard’s cars were nothing short of iconic beauty, proportion and engineering. Their tag line was, “Packard, ask the man that owns one.” Packard’s ironic problem was that it survived 1930’s depression addled America, a time when the deleterious affects of an economic collapse were not conducive to people buying automobiles, much less luxury ones. Packard, however stood for something, it had intrinsic value. Perhaps it was one of the first of the “designer” brands that are so coveted by many today, and by celebrities in particular. 

Packard made it through the depression and World War II intact and was ready to continue with what it saw as its rightful mantle, a nice slice of  post-war, peace time American market share. As with so many well known American brands, the late 40’s and early ’50’s were a time of phenomenal growth and prosperity. But things started to change in the mid ’50’s. Demand for automobiles swelled and the die was cast for what would ultimate create the Detroit Triumvirate, or the Detroit Three or the Big Three, however you wish to describe it. Companies that could stamp out huge numbers of appealing, affordable, reliable cars, at low cost, were all the rage, Packard wasn’t in the mix. Smaller auto companies like Willys, Kaiser-Frasier and Hudson fell by the wayside and were Hoovered up into larger companies. They just couldn’t survive the GM-Ford-Chrysler juggernaut.

The same thing happened to Packard. As a defensive move, they acquired Studebaker in 1954 and thought that two weak companies could be melded into one strong one, both occupying separate market niches. It didn’t work. Some of the problem was due to Packard changing its marketing direction and trying to go down-scale; other problems were of their own doing, primarily, unreliablity. Finally, Packard went away in 1958 and their acquisition, Studebaker was gone by 1964.

There were no call to arms in those days by the Federal government to bailout Packard; no stimulus funds, no nothing. It was survial of the fittest and Packard, along with the aforementioned brands clearly weren’t fit enough to survive. That happens in business. Just look at technological markets, who remembers the Osborne computer, Betamax, Vax mainframe, hell, the dial telephone? The landscape is littered with business failures, that’s how capitalism works, it is unforgiving. Much of what is left in the wake of  irrelevancy is simply the by-product of a continuing technological evolution. It just keeps on keeping on.

What about today’s trials and tribulations? GM, once the fattest of car companies is on life support. By all accounting and historical perspective, it should have gone down the drain. It was saved, for now, by a government administration that was clearly worried about job losses, good paying, union membership job losses. Most of GM’s problem was brought on by their lack of managerial character. They were capable of evolving and have proven this point in the past. But 30 years of myopic management and errors in jugdgement finally pulled the rug out from under them. They were able to survive mostly on their ability to raise fat amounts of cash and the occasional big market trend (pick-up trucks and SUV’s) that proved to be temporary sanctuaries for them.

Chrysler is an even more poingnant example. The have been doing the “fixin’ to die rag” for years; two brushes with collapse in the 1980’s, the mostly useless (except for Jeep) acquisition of American Motors in 1987, the  acquisition by Daimler in 1998, the acquisition by Cerberus in 2007 and the acquisition by Fiat (along with a cast of 1000’s) in 2009 . When does it stop?

Should natural forces have allowed GM and Chrysler to go away as others have before them? One of the beauties of our capitalistic system is that we do allow bankruptcy protection, an opportunity for companies to stop, collect their breath and keep on going. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.

I hate to see U.S. job losses, especially considering how bone-headed Federal policy has helped create these staggering losses in the first place (yes, I believe Ross Perot was correct back in 1992; that great big sucking sound went to the far east however). Is this reason enough for Federal intervention to save GM and Chrysler, you know undo previously done stupidity? I don’t know, I guess time will tell. Is the old capitalism paradigm dead? I doubt it. Anyway, in GM’s case  it has been good to be fat.

National Journal Online – Deficit Experts See Grim Future, Bitter Remedy

There is simply no other way out and the people know it, it is just the federal government who have their heads in the sand.  When your debt becomes so great you are facing bankruptcy you do two thing: stop spending and start paying off your debt as fast as possible.  For the federal government to do this it means drastic cuts in programs, laying off federal workers big time and higher taxes, taxes, taxes.

We American have ridden the gravy train in both our personal lives and in our national lives for many years now so I should comes as no surprise that the party is over  and now it is time to pay the tab.  Many have warned of this for years.  Ross Perot ran for President of the United States in 1992 mainly on fiscal responsibility and got 19% of the popular vote, so even then there were those of us listen and looking and seeing where the country was headed.  Perot is most well-known for telling  voters to listen for the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs heading south to Mexico should NAFTA  (north American Free Trade Agreement)  be ratified.   And indeed we Americans have heard the sucking sound from all over the world not just Mexico.  Our best paying high-tech jobs have gone to India, China and even the Philipines.  We who are  into computers have spoken  to people in the Philipines or India when we have had a problem with our computers or our Internet Services.

Ross Perot again tried to warn Americans with his report, “Suicidal Government Spending” that came out even before the Bail Outs and Obamanation!  TO VIEW THIS SLIDE PRESENTATION CLICK ON:

perotcharts.com/challenges/

Now we have more economist warning us and telling us what we must do, and do it NOW if we are to dsave ourselves.

Alice Rivlin, former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board and the founding director of the CBO, said that the longstanding challenge of growing entitlement spending had combined with profligate budget policy over the last decade and the recent commitments to rescue the U.S. economy to greatly advance the day of reckoning for fiscal policy. “What was a 30-year problem has become a 10-year problem,” Rivlin said. Net federal debt, which is running at about $8.8 trillion this year, will more than double to $17.4 trillion in 2018, rising from 60 percent of annual gross domestic product to 85 percent, she said.

This is an interesting article for those who have the stomach for it.  Of course us reading it won’t do a whole lot of good if congress isn’t also taking heed.  BB

After leaving CNN following a fairly successful run as a political commentator, Lou Dobbs has been publicly flirting with the idea of running for public office. Now a new Rasmussen poll states the obvious and says a Presidential bid would siphon off up to 14% of the Republican vote, enough to split the electorate and ensure reelection for President Obama no matter what his popularity has become three years from now.

There’s no doubt that we’re still way early when it comes to handicapping 2012, but there’s little doubt that any center-right candidate could split the opposition vote, much in the same way Ross Perot did in 1992, garnering 18.9% of the vote and allowing Bill Clinton to win with just 43% of the popular vote. Running again in 1996, Perot received 8% of the popular vote, not as significant a vote siphon to Bob Dole (who was himself a fairly weak candidate to field against an incumbent), but still the best showing by a third-party candidate in the last twenty years. In both elections, however, the impact was the same: voters who supported Perot ended up with a winner that was ideologically opposite most of their own positions.

But does the Perot experience now limit a third-party effect? Allahpundit made the point on Monday that in 2012 Republicans would most likely be so desperate to unseat Obama that all but the most extremely alienated would pull the lever for whomever the GOP candidate will be. Democrats did the same thing between 2000 and 2004 when they gave Ralph Nader 2.7% of a close vote, essentially helping George W. Bush, and got more unified the next go-around and gave him only 0.38% of the vote.

I never watched Lou Dobbs that much, and I couldn’t give you much in the way of an opinion of him. I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize he has no shot at winning anything nationally in 2012, which is probably why his spokesman is saying he’ll try to win Robert Menendez’s Senate seat instead. His chances there are probably better, though I’m not yet sure he could even win there. I’ll also say that I’m surprised how closely all the Republican challengers fare against Obama in a two-person match-up, including, yes, the “unelectable” woman who’s supposedly too stupid and too extreme to ever garner wide support on her own, Sarah Palin.

Overall, though, third-party candidates should always evaluated seriously on all counts including their ability to win in a general election. More often than not, third-party candidacies are vanity trips for the office-seeker that leave their supporters feeling momentarily good about their ideological voting purity but leave them electorally defeated. Does that mean we should never consider third-party candidates? Of course not, but we should always be realistic about their chances and what impact they have on the larger two-person race above them.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Maybe the single most defining feature of recent election (and the recent political climate in general) has been the absolute vitriol shown to incumbents. It is being compared to the attitude in 1994 and 2006. One obvious comment on this. The time between those two included: 12 years, 6 elections, and 3 presidential elections. Between 2006 and 2010 there will have been: 4 years, 2 elections, and 1 presidential election.

That significantly shorter time period may mean that the electorate is less willing to re-embrace the out of power party. So what will that lead to?  Mort Kondracke points out that the situation is ripe for a third party run. Although I hadn’t thought of it before, he is absolutely right.

Although the chances of a third party permanently establishing themselves are extremely small (the last one to do it was a little known group of anti-slavery advocates known as the Republicans in 1860) America actually has a pretty rich history of influential third parties.  Populists, Progressives, Dixiecrats, American Independents, and Independents/Perotistas have all changed elections and left a mark on the political landscape without winning the presidency.

I’m not sure what this party would look like exactly (maybe that’s worth tackling another time) but I get the sense that it won’t be one of the more established 3rd parties (Green, Libertarian) if one arises.

Once upon a time, individuals lived freely, constrained by their Christian moral code and relatively few Federal laws. Conversely, the federal government was severely constrained by the U.S. Constitution, state governments which asserted their sovereignty, and elected federal officials who respected the cornerstone principle of limited government. Today, the balance of power is completely upside down.  The “giant sucking sound” you hear is not Mexico as Ross Perot suggested in 1992.  It is coming from bloodthirsty politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C.  and their pawns in state and local governments.  Citizens have become modern day serfs.

While America cannot become any more upside down, things can get worse. If we don’t turn this around, government at every level will become so big, powerful, and corrupt that “We the People” will drown in regulation and taxation. It’s not too late.  As Earl Pitts would say, “Wake Up America!”

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 or Uncharted 2? -RattlensnakeStyle

Full disclousre.  I haven’t played MW2 yet.  In fact, I just started the franchise last weekend by renting World at War.   Which is a great FPS.  But theres a few of those around and they all kind of have the same thing going on.  Uncharted 2 is like nothing I have ever played before.  It truly was an experience for me.   Puzzles, platforming, shooting, great story, amazing visuals.  It wins GOTY hands down for me this year, personally.

How long could you make it on a deserted island?  Let’s say there are coconuts and rats. -MysterySolver

Islands mean fish.   I’m smart and relatively outdoors savvy. If I had a knife and a fire, I’d be alive for a while. Just bored out of my skull.

Do you play videogames as much as you did in the past? -EllisTurks

Im playing way more video games now than I did when I was a kid. I might have played Tecmo Bowl or Baseball Stars few games a week.  There was a lot of swimming, bike riding, and random fun in the woods when I was a kid.  Now I’m hitting the sticks every day for hours at a time.  I blame the shift on marriage, a 9-5 job, and marijuana.

There needs to be a political party solely dedicated to destroying the two party system. -OpinionBoxer

There needs to be a rich, charismatic, moderate to run as an Independant.   That’s really all it would take.  Ross Perot had a shot, but then he did that retarded drop-out/re-run thing and destroyed his own credibility and damaged future candidates.  What an amazingly asshole move there.

Why is TMZ being a bitch and not releasing the Carrie Prejean masturbation video? -DeathReception

Now that’s it been proven that she wasn’t 17 in the video like she originally claimed and tried to have her boyfriend lie for her, which he wouldn’t do for some reason, it will likely be released.  I mean, who wouldn’t go to jail on CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CHARGES for an exgirlfriend who dumped you because she decided she was going to have better prospects to date as Miss California.  If TMZ doesn’t release it, they will sell it someone who will.   It does them no good clogging up their archives.

Full house would be a much beter show if it werent for the leftist subtext; it was all about 3 polyamoros gay men raising kids  it was really a disgusting topic that that’s why i couldn’t watch it for more than a few minutes at a time -Panthertopdog

Let’s not forget Kimmy Gibblers horrible penchant for Communism.

You getting the Levi Johnston Playgirl? -XSessRage

Nah, I already read the article and I’m all set on seeing his junk.  I particularly enjoyed how in that interview, Levi seems to insinuate that knocking up a high school girl is experience that gets his foot in the door of the entertainment industry. And then they tell him that the majority of PlayGirl readers are gay men and he’s all “Yeah whatever, they say that, but theres a lot of cougars too.” And tries to play it off like its okay that men are sticking up his pages.

Can everyone shut up about Michael Jordan?  He’s the most overrated player in any sport, all time.  He was only good because his level of competition was so poor.  -CrestFightStrips

I’m open minded, but your argument doesn’t start off well when your position is that he’s overrated because he was too dominant.   Seriously. It’s a different game now, I’ll give you that. But, you couldn’t consider Tiger Woods overrated and he’s been just as dominant.  To a certain extent, Jordans experience changed the game of basketball to the way it is now. He showed how one person can take over a league, so now teams and the league build stars.  I’d like to hear more on this, because apparently, he was a real asshole. But, I never met him or anything.

I wasn’t given a middle name at birth, so Im going to legally add one on my 18th birthday.  Thoughts? -Navybound88

How else would you be a viable serial killer without one?  I’m gonna go ahead an offer “Vesuvius”.  Seriously.  Consider it.

Merril Hoge agrees with Belicheck’s 4th down decision, I think he’s had too many head injuries.  – somerandomguy

I had the opposite reaction everyone else seems to be having.  At first, I thought it was a mistake, but after it failed I started to come around to Belichicks thinking.  First off, he gets to make that decision because he has supreme job security.    Other coaches don’t have that luxury because they are on the hot seat and their teams suck. They punt that ball because it gives their team the team the best chance of not losing.  With the game on the line, he would rather Tom Brady have the ball in his hands to get 2 yards than Peyton Manning to get 50.  I think that’s reasonable.  Theres a big difference between playing to win and playing to not lose.

Roseanne was an awesome show. I watched it all the time.  Sure, the last season sucked, but I think that the last episode made up for that. -DaveKevin45

It was a culturally impactful show in the 80s. Before RoseAnn, being white trash was something to be embarrassed about.  It allowed a generation of worthless degenerates to actually STRIVE to become white trash, instead of allowing everyone else to consider them who they actually are, homeless people who happen to have homes at the moment.  Thanks RoseAnne.

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:

Speaking about the Republican “fear” factor, why don’t they cooperate, et al?  Most people don’t understand (or can imagine) the neocon bottom line because it is so outrageous: they really wish the United States to fail.

Background – I was an administrator for the City of Portland, and Multnomah County, Oregon, speaking and dealing with neocon repubs on a national basis for thirty-two years.  Their GOAL is to preserve, protect and defend special privilege from the democratic rule of law and the American nation.   They are NOT afraid; just arrogant.

Thirty years ago, in the early 1980’s, a CTPPD (a Consensus To Preserve Plausible Deniability), including Texas oil millionaires, automotive manufacturers, bankers, big-ticket real estate developers, insurance and medical care providers, investment firms, and wholesale raw materials providers, began a concerted and integrated campaign to discredit, loot and crush the American government. Call it “Stamping on Franklin Roosevelt’s Grave.”

I was told by Congressman Barbur Conable (R I-forget) back in ’73 that compulsory public education was unconstitutional and undemocratic and vouchers and home schooling would be introduced forthwith – it would be “most helpful in educating children with the right understanding for when they become adults.”  The John Birch Society injunction to its members was, “Join your local PTA, and take it over!”

I stood witness to the shenanigans surrounding local government’s share in the Savings and Loan Scandal (watched the Mormons spirit Jake Gaarn, Mormon hero astronaut-senator who led the S&L thieves on the Senate side, away to Salt Lake City and out of the public eye before the “s” hit the fan – I think this was their rehearsal for the Great American Mortgage Collapse – it has the same modus operandi).

Reagan assaulted government itself – “The ten most dreaded words…’I'm from the government…’“ Reagan went after the Air Traffic Controllers and made the first significant breach in federal protection for unions. The list goes on, as if subject to a consistent and integrated general game plan worthy of the best hostile takeover experts.  Clue.

The people’s government is the one force that is able to withstand and force these self-interested robbers to change. Therefore, the people’s representatives had to be bought, or as many as necessary, depending upon the moment’s tactical need, to shill for and protect corporate interests. The Republican Party (as the easiest – smallest, most uniform, least principled – to corrupt and manipulate had to become ascendant for a short time to gain control of the government and “fix” institutional areas that were most intrusive on the corporatist ability to do pretty much as pleased, including “enslave” people (wage-wise), or “waterboard” them (use any pressure or torture to force compliance and contribution to the corporate will).

They then stole the people’s treasury – carried it out under the glad hand of their born-again rich president Geo. W. Bush.  Dick Cheney is not an accident, but a premier product and instrument of a rapacious piratical, and practically pathological, corporate elite.  These are generationally all pretty much the same guys playing the same ugly way, administration after administration.  They are a scary bunch and they are not American patriots.

The neocon corporatist tactic now is to wave the weak hand – the Republican Party – to obfuscate, delay and confuse, while the real work goes on with the Rubin clones surrounding Obama (it is a real mistake to think that we can continue by reconstructing the past – our environmental jeopardy and social crisis require innovations and new directions that cannot include corporate capitalism – but while we must develop lower economic expectations, we don’t have to give up on a compassionate civilization.

The continued private dismantling, bankrupting and removal of America’s manufacturing capabilities to foreign climes is still in hemorrhage. Leading the list of outsourcers are well-known American companies, including the Xerox Corporation, the Oracle Corporation, The Hewlett-Packard Company, Accenture Limited, International Business Machines Corporation and Perot Systems (Recall old Ross warning against NAFTA that there would be “a great sucking sound as business went south.”

The neocon corporatists are not trying to fix the broken Republican Party – it is in the game plan to eventually destroy the two-party system and run with one party: cheaper, more efficient, less wasteful (ha!). Steele, Limbaugh, Beck, Cantor, Boehner, all the rest, are handy decoys, making a lot of noise all around the edges so that public attention is diverted from the corruption still proceeding at the center.  The corporatists like the wingnut Republicans because they are obediently silly followers; the Democrats, however, are apparently programmed to self-destruct, which would leave us with a permanently dysfunctional and therefore easier to manage wingnut government ?  Garbage in, garbage out.

The Republican circus masks the real working level where the boodle bags are still being packed. They are not working with us, because the neocon corporatists are still using and stealing from us. They don’t expect any retribution or punishment for it; it is the culture. They are so highly placed that they expect to tiptoe through the tulips while the rest of us fry in the ozone hole. They believe the “highest and best use” of any piece of land is how much money you can make off it, not the future it may provide if unmolested for all life, as we know it.

In 1991, an assistant from President Bush Sr.’s office met National Association of Counties (NACo) President Michael Stewart (R – Salt Lake Co.) at a cocktail party at the Annual Conference in Salt Lake City. I overheard them discussing the “best” form of government, ever. They agreed that it was Medieval England. Its benefits?

• The king is the sole authority, secures obedience, neutralizes all possible challengers; gains the monopoly of force; and, maintains law and order.
• Patriotism is focused on the nation, not on the localities that comprise it, transferring identity from the local to the national level, putting it at the disposal of the king.
• The state dominates or controls the religious life of society, or at least allies itself with the representatives of a single authoritarian religion to more easily manage the mob to the king’s totalitarian advantage.
• The state exerts control over economic life to facilitate circulation and exchange of goods, and to grasp as much as possible of the national wealth for the king and his allies.

In the medieval model stability is created through divine hierarchy. The church prays for the soul, the military fights to save the bodies and property of the “community”, and the peasants work to feed everybody. It’s a simple model, which allowed it to last for several hundred incredibly stultifying and repressive years in which the majority of humankind subsisted on the level of cattle, or swine, and wars were fought at personal whim of a vainglorious, and occasionally religiously demented elite. Does this ring bells, or what?

The important men at the 1991 cocktail party didn’t intend to install a king or a single church in America, but in variation, updated and recycled form, they favored state identification and alliance with a majority religion and a CEO working with a board of directors (perhaps preserving a faint hint of representative government – old habits, even bad ones, die hard). Call king and court president and cabinet, or rose and garden, they envisioned a tyrant working with an oligarchy of the privileged elite that they believe is, of course, best suited to govern.  The Bush-Cheney’s cabinet.

They were deadly serious and not amused when I asked if they had ever heard of Robin Hood or the Magna Carta.

Edward Gibbon wrote an apt description of Augustus Caesar that sounds a lot like George W. Bush, the lately deposed thinly veiled champion of the corporatist New Medievalism.  It reveals the shadowy Republican approach to governance, image over substance.  Gibbon writes:

     “He delights in the image of liberty and is pleased with considering himself as the accountable minister of the laws.

     “He claims a tender respect for a free constitution, which he destroys.

     “A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition prompt him to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never lays aside.

     “With the same hand, probably with the same temper, he signs death warrants and pardons.

     “According to the various dictates of his interest, he is at first the enemy, and at last the father of the nation.

     “As he frames the artful system of imperial authority, his moderation is inspired by his fears.

     “He wishes to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the army by an image of civil government.

     “Finally, the forms of civil administration are carefully preserved. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws may serve to display the virtues, but can never correct the vices of  the leader.”

“Americans deserve the government they elect,” my father used to say, but we know we didn’t elect Bush. Is Obama entirely our new free choice? Kings, as I recall, are divinely chosen – in our case, by fat cats and the Supreme Court. Kings represent the elite status quo, which presently resides in Wall Street. Wall Street wants to govern everything by itself, without any interference from the rest of us.  Father knows best.

Our species probably won’t be around long enough to figure out how to change from consumerist overpopulating inattentive polluters into minimalist birth-controlling aware conservationists.  We’ll overgraze our range soon.  One can see our rapidly escalating devastation of the planet.  Bush and his idiot followers accelerated it even more; they “rationalized” their irrational actions with fantastic myths to justify unreasonable behaviors.  There are only a few values in their make-believe world that are any good, and they are, of course, common and obvious to all humankind: love, mercy, truth, honor, and justice – those sorts of universal things, echoed by every other life philosophy ever conceived, that is, invented by man; but hypocritically enshrined by Republican spin meisters.

They have created and are attempting to retain dominance in an amoral, or consciously immoral world of corruption, thievery, and violence, instead of trying to eliminate or improve conditions that would remedy or heal it.  They are in fact, the enemy, and clear-thinking people who treasure compassion and cooperation must vigorously oppose them.  If a thing is contrary to the health and safety of the world, it should be destroyed.

You know what? The world is a dangerous place.  The fact that many choose – even, hysterically – to resist knowledge of its danger, do so at their peril, and endanger the rest of us.  Keeping silent about abuse, perversion, injustice, greed, vandalism, or prejudice is self-defeating, irresponsible, and destructive.  Self-willed ignorance is a socially and spiritually criminal act.  Pericles was right: People who say they have no business with government (democratic Athens, or the U.S.) have no business here at all.

Final words:  Keep on keepin’ on. We, the people, need you, dear reader.  Best regards to all,  j

President Kool-for-daze and family.

The AP has a nice article on what is a consistent trend throughout voter history — the rise of third parties at times when voters are unhappy. The article discusses Governor’s race in NJ between Democratic Incumbent Jon Corzine, Republican candidate Chris Christie, and Independent Chris Daggett. In NY’s 23rd District, the GOP candidate (Dede Scozzafava) was forced out of the race by surging Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. Scozzafava then endorsed her former Democratic opponent, Bill Owens.

Does this mean America is headed for a new era, the end of the two party stranglehold on political power? Sadly, I’ll have to say no.

Now, I’m not saying no because I hate third parties — quite the opposite. If my young voting record is any indication (and my independent party affiliation), I advocate third parties aggressively. However, I’m a realist above all, and while I believe that a few third party candidates may make inroads here or there, this will not be a permanent phenomenon.

Historically, third parties have been strongest when there is discontent in the nation. Look at Teddy Roosevelt, who harnessed the power of the Progressive movement into his Bull-Moose party, fighting with former friend and Republican candidate William Howard Taft, paving the way for a Wilson presidency (Wilson won with only 41.8% of the popular vote).

George C. Wallace took 46 electoral votes in 1968, playing at divisions in the electorate over de-segregation (Wallace opposed de-segregation). Nixon would win that election with 301 electoral votes, but, interestingly, only little more than half of the popular vote (he got 31,710,470 votes whereas Vice President and Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey got 30,898,055, and George Wallace got 9,906,473). An incredibly close race with a third party siphoning votes by playing to the divisive issue of the time.

Looking back to 1948, Strom Thurmond won 39 electoral votes as the segregationist, socially conservative Dixiecrat, again taking advantage of the racially divisive time period. Thurmond carried Southern states, most likely taking votes from Democratic candidate Harry S Truman (back when the South was solidly Democratic, pre-LBJ days) who still clinched a narrow victory over Thomas Dewey.

More recently, in 1992, Ross Perot gained about 19% of the popular vote, but no electoral votes. Perot’s focus on the economy, during a recession and after 12 years of Reagan-Bush, gained him a large amount of votes, even after he withdrew and then re-entered the race. However, and this is instructive as to the lot of third parties in America, Perot’s 1996 run for the Presidency was decidedly less successful. Why? Because Clinton absorbed many of the Perot voters with his economic agenda. Perot was the answer to growing discontent with both parties (the Republicans in power — Reagan and Bush — had more than tripled the national debt and the economy was in recession, and the Democrats were also saddled with a reputation of big government and larger spending), but once Clinton took office as a “New Democrat” and began the process of balancing the budget and leading the way out of recession, many voters who were discontented with the two main parties then supported Clinton. In effect, he neutralized the Perot voters, and brought them over to his side for the 1996 election.

This is the historic role of third parties in America — the answer to discontent with both the two major parties. They run, they siphon off enough votes to make the major parties recognize the growing movement in America, and then the major parties absorb their views to neutralize them and pacify the electorate. When was the last time you saw someone running on the Bull-Moose or Dixiecrat or Know-Nothing ticket? These movements don’t often survive past a few elections at the most, because their views have been taken on by one of the major parties (Perot) or their views become out of step or fall out of favor (such as the racist Dixiecrat and Know-Nothing parties). Or because people are frightened to vote third party.

Which leads us to the 2000 election. Discontent spread over various things (the Monica Lewinsky affair and Gore’s subsequent attempts to disassociate himself with Clinton, the false image of Gore perpetuated by opponents (for instance, he never said he invented the internet), and the conservative bend of the Clinton-Gore “New Democrats’” on various economic issues like deregulation and free trade), which lead to an extremely tight race in which Gore won the popular vote of the American people, but lost the election after the Supreme Court decided Bush won Florida. Ralph Nader, running as a Green Party candidate, was the answer to much of this dissatisfaction. He posed a progressive alternative to the Gore “New Democrat” and the “Reagan Conservative” Bush, and won 2.74% of the popular vote.

Viewed as the spoiler that caused Gore to lose (though Gore actually won the popular vote, as noted above), Nader would have no substantial effect in later elections. Essentially, I believe, the thought process became “a third party cannot win and can only hurt my second choice candidate, so I have to vote for one of the two major parties”. Also, the 2000 did not have the extremely large issues that dominate politics today (terrorism and the economy — the 2000 election was pre-9/11 and the economy was not in a recession). The stakes may seem higher now than they did in 2000.

Finally, as Ralph Nader has noted before (I’ll search for the link to the interview), it is extremely difficult to unify a third party, which (like any other party) boasts an intellectual diversity of members. Splintered into various segments, often on a state level instead of a national level, a party may be successful in gaining some elected seats here or there, but without a unifying force it probably won’t translate to a broader single movement that will redefine the political spectrum.

Looking at what has occurred before as a guide, these third party candidates may have scattered success as voters become disillusioned with the Obama Administration but are stilling unwilling to vote for the contemporary Republican Party (dominated as it is by its radical elements — think Limbaugh, Palin, ‘birthers’, and ‘death panelists’), but they will most likely not change the political landscape in the long-term. If the economy picks up, and things start looking better (or if the Republican Party retains its extremist views), these voters may return to the Democratic fold. If the Republican Party recreates itself into a party of intellectual conservatism and jettisons its fringe elements and evangelical base that frighten away moderate voters, then it will likely gain these independent-voters.

Today I received an e-mail from Organizing for America*, the remnants of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, titled “One year ago.” It’s meant to be nostalgic.

 Ah, yes – memories:

It was almost one year ago, on November 4, 2008, that I walked into my neighborhood polling place knowing that I’d vote for either Democrat Barack Obama or independent Ralph Nader, for whom I had voted in 2000 (when he ran for president on the Green Party ticket). Even as I walked through the polling-place door, I still wasn’t 100 percent sure which of the two candidates ultimately would get my vote.

In the end, I ended up darkening, with my black ballpoint pen, the oval next to the name “Barack Obama.” I knew that he’d win California anyway, and in the end I found the opportunity to vote for the nation’s first non-completely-white president to be rather irresistible.

Today, I wish that I had resisted.

Barack Obama has turned out to be pretty much another Bill Clinton — a “centrist.” Which means a coward. An appeaser. A politics-as-usual kinda guy.

There was nothing “centrist” about the eight long years of nightmarish rule by the unelected BushCheneyCorp. When the Repugnicans have the power, they don’t hesitate to use it. Remember when Gee Dubya was “re”-elected in 2004 with only 50.7 percent of the popular vote, but the members of the Bush regime called this a “mandate” from the American people nonetheless?

Here is Obama, having been elected by 53 percent of the people, which by the opposition’s definition, anyway, is a huge ol’ fucking mandate, and here is Obama with both houses of Congress dominated by his party, yet what accomplishments has he made?

That “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Obama reassures his opposition not to worry because thus far into his presidency he’s done nothing — it’s pretty accurate.

While the Democrats, led by the Obama White House, aren’t owning their power, I see that the wingnutty Repugnicans (which, in most cases, is redundant) were even successful in forcing out the Repugnican candidate in a U.S. House of Representatives race in New York state (the special election is on Tuesday and she dropped out of the race yesterday) because they consider her to be too moderate — and I think: Damn, why can’t we progressives force out those “Democrats” who are too moderate?

Instead, we have “Democrats” like Harry Reid and my U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, whom I have always thought of as Mrs. Joseph Lieberman.   

“Base sends GOP warning shot in NY-23,” a Politico headline reads, and I think, Why isn’t the base firing warning shots at the “Democratic” obstructionists in Washington?

Why can’t we progressives be as aggressive as the wingnuts are? Especially when they’re wrong about just about everything and we’re right about just about everything?

It’s too early to know whether the wingnuts’ victory in New York state in pushing out the Repugnican candidate they deem to be too moderate will help or harm the Repugnican Party in the short term, I suppose, but, it seems to me, pushing out the woman candidate (Diedre Scozzafava) for yet another conservative white male candidate (Doug Hoffman) will harm the Repugnican Party over the long term because, although the stupid white men are trying to fight it, rule by stupid white men is going the way of the dinosaurs in an increasingly diversifying nation. 

That Hoffman is running on the “Conservative Party” ticket doesn’t seem to bode well to me. It was when the Southern racists broke off from the Democratic Party, apparently starting with racist Strom Thurmond’s running for president on the “Dixiecrat” ticket in 1948, that the Democratic Party lost the South.

Should the wingnuts succeed in gaining some third-party strength, it seems to me, this will only help the Democratic Party. As The Associated Press notes, in the 1992 presidential election, billionaire businessman Ross Perot’s third-party ticket (the “Reform Party”), which had a bent to the right, won 19 percent of the popular vote; “Perot vastly altered the dynamic of that contest,” the AP notes, adding, “Democrat Bill Clinton was the beneficiary of that three-way contest, taking away the presidency from [Repugnican] George H.W. Bush with just a plurality of the vote.”

Any third party that might emerge over the coming years that comes even close to the success of Perot’s Reform Party in 1992, it seems to me, probably would stem from white angst and thus probably would siphon away Repugnican votes.

That scenario probably wouldn’t give progressives much leverage, however, because the Democratic presidential candidate could win with a plurality, like Bill Clinton did in 1992.

Those of us on the far left and the far right aren’t really represented in Washington, D.C., however, and I’d be fine with a four-party (or multi-party) system: the Democratic Party could be for those who are center-left, the Repugnican Party could be for those who are center-right, the wingnuts could have their own party (the “Conservative Party” or whatever the fuck they want to call it), and we progressives could have our own party, too — the Green Party, preferably. 

Or maybe it just needs to be a fight to the bitter end, a (bloodless, hopefully) rematch of the Civil War. That seems to be what those on the far right want, and as a member of the far left, I say: Let’s give that to them.

*Remember when the remnants of Howard Dean’s failed campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination became Democracy for America? Damn, are the Obama people copycats… They act like Obama did it all on his own, when, in fact, Obama only rode in on the wave that Dean and his supporters created…

President H.W. Bush, borrowing a phrase from an earlier era, popularized the term “New World Order” (NWO) in the early 1990s. But while the New World Order has legitimate roots, it has come to be associated with little more than paranoid conspiracy.

Given what we’ve witnessed in recent times, however, is it wise to continue to dismiss the notion out-of-hand?

The following metaphor, Friedmanesque but nevertheless useful in view of the controversial nature of this topic, paints a picture of what political and economic progress may look like as the 21st Century progresses — and why a NWO may not be as far-fetched as so many of us are inclined to believe.

Imagine a smattering of raindrops hitting the pavement. Each raindrop represents the relative isolation and sovereignty of each nation. As those raindrops increase in number — meaning more countries climb aboard the international trade bandwagon — they connect like dots.

With enough rain — overlapping treaties and trade agreements — pools of water form (commonwealths operating under a shared constitution and/or currency). This is a natural evolution of the free trade process.

The European Union is but one such trade and currency pool, and it is not at all out of the question that more are to come. In Asia, in fact, The Wall Street Journal reported October 12, 2009 that an “Asean Plus Six” proposal seeks to integrate the 10 member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Much like a succession of raindrops merging to form large swaths of water, boundaries between nations may become less distinct in the years to come. Such a progression inevitably begs the question: Is national sovereignty passé? And in even longer-range terms, will ethnic, language and cultural distinctions begin to dissolve too?

While far-sighted, these questions are just that: Legitimate questions.

When people say that the prospect for a North American Union is little more than a conspiracy, they are, in effect, saying that they know the future beyond a reasonable doubt. What this denies in the here-and-now is an appreciation for the reality that a World Federalist Movement (WFM) has been afoot for decades. The mainstream media may not give these long-ranging issues press time, but world federalist organizations do, in fact, exist in the United States, Canada and elsewhere in the developed world — and they run websites replete with historical timelines that anyone can verify for themselves.

This much we know of modern times: Peacetime economies are evolving toward tighter integration for the sake of shared prosperity. Debates over whether this is incidental or intentional detract from the point: The logical extension of removing conflicting trade laws and legal barriers may well be a set of conditions wherein borders are intact on maps, but members function more like states in a global confederation (interregionalism).

Some say we may even see this convergence culminate within our lifetimes.

In a speech then-president-elect Barack Obama gave in Berlin, he had this to say:

No doubt there will be differences in opinon. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.

A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden.

In this new century Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more, not less.

Partnership and cooperation between nations is not a choice. It is the only way. The one way to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

President Obama’s message? This isn’t personal. This isn’t partisan. This “burden” is the future. And no, we do not have a choice.

President Obama, to be clear, is but one of several American presidents in recent years to share a globalized vision — hence his statement that a “change in Washington” will not deviate world leaders from a transnational progressive path:

SERIOUS QUESTIONS FOR SERIOUS TIMES

• Does a shift toward increasingly large and impersonal centralized governance bode well for freedom to exclude oneself or one’s nation from a one-size-fits-all policy? Or will freedom to opt out be the one guarantee regional integration proponents — world federalists — can’t promise?
• Is it in keeping with human history and human psychology to share a collective vision without breaking rank? How does world federalism propose to respond to “agitators” and civil unrest within its Utopian framework?
• Does consolidation of legal and political powers represent a net gain or is it offset by the potential for corruption and abuse at the hands of a powerful few whose legislative reach has gone global?
• At an economic level, can or will world federalism deliver on its promise of peace and prosperity for all world citizens? Or does it violate the all-eggs-in-one-basket principle: posing, instead, a dangerous level of economic and international codependency that will hold individuals and markets alike captive to the weakest link within the whole?

How do you feel about the path we are apparently headed down?

Jed Babbin on HumanEvents.com compares the Tea-Partyers to the Ross Perot supporters of 1992.  He says:

Perot’s “Reform Party” achieved 20% of the 1992 vote, enough to enable Democrat Bill Clinton to gain the White House.  Incumbent George H.W. Bush was seen as an ultimate Washington insider who had distanced himself too much from the policies of the president who he had served for the preceding eight years. The Perotistas were people highly distrustful, fed up with Congress and Washington politics which they believed was ignoring them.

The 1992 exit polls told the tale.  Perot voters were made up (in almost equal parts) of all ages, all races and both genders.  Fifteen percent were Democrats and twenty-one percent were Republicans but – most importantly – thirty-three percent were independents.

Twenty-six percent of them hadn’t voted in the 1988 presidential election.  They were angry, sufficiently so to vote against the status quo in Washington.

One of the Tea Party leaders from a western state told me last week that they were real conservatives, a reflection of the base.  He could not be more wrong.

The Perotistas were in 1992 — and the Tea Partyers are now – “kitchen table issue” voters.  Healthcare is one of those issues that affects families directly, and most Americans feel strongly enough about it to become politically active.  Their political activity is transient, and their votes – to the extent they are cast — are up for grabs.

The question is whether Republicans can capture their anger and turn their energy into votes?  Or will the Tea Partyers stay home in 2010 as they did in 1988?

The political currents are much the same as they were in 1992.  Congressional job approval remains very low, about 25% according to the latest Real Clear Politics average.  And in the generic congressional ballot – the party approval ratings – Democrats still lead by 45% to 39.5%.

As one recent poll found, most Americans believe that their healthcare system will be better if Congress does nothing rather than pass Obamacare, and believe that members of Congress don’t have a good understanding of the subject.

And all the political energy expended by the Tea Partyers in August seems to have gone for naught.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to pass a healthcare bill that will be – in all relevant terms – the same as the one that was the subject of all the August outrage.

And the transient energy of the Tea Partyers?  It’s no longer in evidence.

The “visible” energy of the tea-partyers may be somewhat subdued.  After the high of the march on DC on 9/12, there has been little outward evidence of the tea-partyer’s activity.  To an outsider like Mr. Babbin, it may indeed appear as if the tea-partyer activity has vanished.  However, to those of us who are tea-partyers, there is plenty of activity beneath the surface.

My email inbox is filled everyday with posts on the various 912 project websites of which I am a member.  There are still tea-parties in various parts of the country being organized and carried out nearly every week.  Not that anyone outside the tea-party community would ever know about it since there has been zero media coverage since 9/12, even from Fox.  There are 912 candidates; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents starting up campaigns in most states.  GOOOH is one of the most promising of the grassroots campaign organizations.  Give them a look.

For me personally, the events of the last year have changed my outlook on politics and this country forever.  This is not “transient energy”.  Tea-partyers talk of being “awakened”.  I may take some heat for this, but I liken my “awakening” to discovering Christ as my savior over ten years ago.  When a person gives their life to Christ, they are changed from the inside out.  Having been awakened, my attitudes and feelings about politics have also been changed from the inside out, since I have become aware of the Constitution and the founders and the truth about the progressive agenda at a very basic level.  I believe this is true of most, if not all, of the tea-partyers.

Mr. Babbin closes with this:

The Republican Party used to stand with the independents – the Reagan Democrats – on everything from federal spending to national security.  It’s time to renew that focus, and conduct a national ideological campaign.  If they start now, they can win big next year, and again in 2012.  If they don’t, they will remain in the wilderness.  And none of the Tea Partyers will shed a tear.

On that note, he is absolutely right.

From The New York Times:

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

Newly released campaign records show the mayor, as of Friday, had spent $85 million on his latest re-election campaign, and is on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million before the election on Nov. 3.

Original DVD cover

That means Mr. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, will have easily burned through more than $250 million — the equivalent of what Warner Brothers spent on the latest Harry Potter movie.

The sum easily surpasses what other titans of business have spent to seek state or federal office. New Jersey’s Jon S. Corzine has plunked down a total of $130 million in two races for governor and one for United States Senate. Steve Forbes poured $114 million into his two bids for president. And Ross Perot spent $65 million in his quest for the White House in 1992 and $10 million four years later.

…snip…

Mr. Bloomberg has used his wealth, estimated at $16 billion, to establish what appears to be insurmountable financial dominance in the race.

He has spent at least 14 times what his Democratic rival in the race, William C. Thompson Jr., has: $6 million.

…snip…

Since late September, the pace of Mr. Bloomberg’s spending has drastically accelerated: He is now sending nearly $1 million a day into the city’s economy. The bulk of the money is devoted to advertising on television, radio and the Web, but much of it bankrolls a first-class approach to parties, snacks and travel.

The campaign has spent $322,521 on food, $293,953 on transportation, $176,066 on furniture and $39,858 on parking.

…snip…

With more than 100 employees, his campaign now has a staff larger than 97 percent of all businesses in New York City. And his political operation has become a one-man economic stimulus program, buying $8,892 worth of pizza from Goodfellas Brick Oven Pizza on Staten Island and in the Bronx. The company had suffered a big drop in business since the start of the recession.

…snip…

Squier Knapp Dunn, the media company responsible for the mayor’s television ads, has taken in $48,313,776. While most of that money pays for TV time, media companies typically receive fees of about 15 percent.

…snip…

The spending has drawn howls of protest from good-government groups and advocates of campaign finance reform. In interviews, several said, angrily, that the mayor’s decisions to rewrite New York City’s term limits law and then spend wildly to secure re-election, have undermined democratic principles.

“Whether Bloomberg wins or loses, the toxic combination of mega-spending and crass use of his office to bypass the voters on term limits will always be a stain on his mayoralty,” said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group.

…snip…

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign, Howard Wolfson, defended the spending, saying, “Voters in this race have a choice between one candidate who is independent and doesn’t take a dime from special interests and another who practices politics as usual.”

Mr. Thompson, a Democrat, has had the unenviable task of trying to raise money in the middle of a deep recession, when many voters already assume that Mr. Bloomberg will prevail.

…snip…

The newly released records show that Mr. Bloomberg is handsomely rewarding top aides who take leaves from their City Hall posts to join the campaign. His first deputy mayor, Patricia E. Harris, is earning about $28,000 a month. It is a healthy raise: At City Hall, she made about $21,000 a month.

The mayor also typically showers the aides with additional bonuses after Election Day.

All that money shows how far Mr. Bloomberg has come, wealth-wise. His campaign spending this year will nearly equal what his boyhood hometown of Medford, Mass., population 55,000, devotes to its annual budget.

Technically, Ross Perot isn’t dead, in much the same way Carol Channing’s not dead either, or how David Guest wasn’t dead when he married Liza Minnelli a few years ago, even though everyone thought he was (or, at the very least, if not dead, then a dime store mannequin whose face had melted).

So, Perot can’t really have his ghost haunt anything, unless it’s a time traveling ghost from the future sent to warn Democrats that a tsunami’s coming in 2010 that could very well make the 1994 Contract With America take over of Congress look like a tiny splash in a nondescript pond.

Here’s an article that goes with the tsunami metaphor, while inventing a new word entirely: Dems Have Reawakened the Perotistas.

It’s really interesting because back in 1992, we remember being in high school and Perot won the straw polls our schools took.

We also see pretty clearly that absent third party Perot’s influence, the Clintons would never have been elected President…Perot spoiled it for Poppy Bush (in much the same way Daggett’s going to spoil it for Chris Christie in New Jersey in just a few days).

Here’s an interesting bit from the article above:

In 1992, the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, was a disappointment to his party’s base and a pariah to the Democrats. Government seemed to have lost its grip. The deficit became a massive issue, a symbol of out-of-control government. The hangover of Cold War sacrifices, the S&L bailout, runaway crime, huge trade deficits, the long-term trend of manufacturing decline, and, of course, the recession contributed to the sense that America desperately needed to get its house in order.

That’s followed up by this next part, which pretty much describes all of you who come here to read us:

But the Perotista revolt of “raging moderates” and “angry centrists” reinforced Clinton’s rhetorical commitments and the voters’ expectations.

We realized the other day that we’re Clintonian Moderates more than we are Democrats at this point.  After what the Left did in the 2008 primaries and what the Left in the form of Dr. Utopia is doing to this country in the White House, we’re more raging moderate than ever.

Back in 1992, with Bush in the White House, moderates and centrists turned against him…and the Clintons, in the campaign, smartly harnessed that.  Coupled with the votes Perot stole from Bush, it’s how the Clintons got their first term.

But, these moderates and centrists, the article argues, didn’t like healthcare reform and didn’t like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, so they “shallacked” Democrats in 1994 and gave Gingrich the House and Senate. The article maintains Liberals still don’t believe that’s what happened and are wearing their Cleopatra costumes year round, not just at Halloween:  queens of denial all.

Fast-forward to today. The tea-party protesters are in large part the heirs of Perotism, and they are being subjected to the same insults. Liberal commentators are deaf to the tea partiers’ disdain for both political parties, preferring to cast the protesters as a deranged band of birthers and racists or hired guns of a Republican “AstroTurf” campaign.

Meanwhile, as National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru has argued, the Democrats have convinced themselves that the moral of Clinton’s failed health-care push is not that he was wrong to try, but that he was wrong not to cram it through against popular opposition.

President Obama promised a “new era of fiscal responsibility,” but he’s governing as if exploding the size of government is what Americans want, polls be damned. The Democrats’ budget games and giveaways amount to poking the angry Perotista beast with a stick.

If the GOP can convincingly align with and exploit the growing Perotista discontent, it very well might ride to victory on a tsunami the Democrats can’t even see.

We strongly believe Sarah Palin is positioning herself to appeal not just to the GOP base and rally them in the years ahead, but also to take advantage of everything this article is describing.

Palin sure seems like she’s going to offer up a Contract With America style alternative to Dr. Utopia…and could be the person everyone rallies around in the next year for 2010…so she can capitalize on that success to run for president in 2012.

Liberals keep insisting Tina Fey and Katie Couric and all the other lapdogs of Dr. Utopia “destroyed Palin” and “made her unrunable”…but we echo what the author of this article says about Liberals being foolish and unable to see a tsunami forming against them.

They hate Palin so much, they don’t see her support building…and they don’t see the stars aligning and Fates conspiring to give her the perfect environment in which to run for president and defeat Dr. Utopia and the Liberals once and for all.

We wish it was Hillary Clinton who was positioned somewhere out there to do this, but if it can’t be our champ HRC, we’re behind our Sarah 100%.

Miranda, amanda – and dux femina facti, you damn betcha.

It will surprise none of you, candid readers, that la divina Sara’s new memoir Going Rogue: An American Life, with six weeks to go before release date, has already rocketed to number one on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Yes, Governor Palin, that most potent mixture of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Magna Mater and Britomart, to name just a few of her coruscating personae, is a rock star, who leaves bourgeoise hags like Miss Hell Obomber and lumpen lesbians like Hillary Clinton in the dust.  She’s a scintillating ball of energy and blooming good health — in addition to being a blend of William Jennings Bryan and Robert Alphonso Taft, of blessed Old America memory — and she could draw 50,000 people to the opening of a hardware store, on an hour’s notice.

Beat that, Barack Hussein Ogabe, you gangling, crack-smoking pimp.  But then, I guess there are no chapters in Alinsky for dealing with forces of nature.  The affirmative-action incompetent in the White House and his loathsome Chicago handlers are way out of their depth dealing with Palin, as we saw last fall when her mesmerizing speech at the Republican National Convention sent Ogabe’s Potemkin village campaign into a tailspin (rescued, just in the nick of time, by the spectacular collapse of the Federal Reserve’s stock-jobbing house of cards).

Herewith, therefore, a link to SarahPAC, where you can donate a few Yankee dollars to our first female President’s political action committee, as I did this afternoon — yes, my widow’s mite goes to Sarah, and cheerfully done:

http://sarahpac.com/

I trust Gov. Palin will continue to be the focus of support not only for us Constitutionalists, populists, paleoconservatives, libertarians, and values voters, but also for all you Republicans of good will out there who think McCain, Grahamnesty and Lamar Alexander (the last two voted to confirm Red Sonia Sotomayor) and the rest of those country-club Viagravators should get bent.

Grahamnesty : Does the depilated old queen imagine that thin, tight rictus passes for a smile? And that porcine nose, as though he were constantly scenting his own sulphurous fart.  Would that Mencken were living at this day, to satirize this high prole come up in the world, or better yet Catullus, with his Celtiberian nouveaux riches proudly showing their teeth on the slightest pretext, freshly brushed with Spanish piss.

Speaking of country clubs, the principle-free zone that is Mitt “Stop Me if You’ve Heard Me Deny the Divinity of Christ Before” Romney, and the rest of the Grand Old Plutocrats, better be nice to Sarah. Remember the last banker with a personality bypass who crossed us and thought he could still be president? The one defeated by Perot and succeeded by Clinton?

(Editor’s Note: This piece from Kenosha Marge is cross-posted from her bunker up North known as “Witch’s Will“. Orignally posted under the title “How do I know? The experts tell me so.”)

September 30, 2009

By Kenosha  Marge

It occurred to me recently, while bemoaning the fact that we do not have a viable 3rd party choice in this country that perhaps “I” was part of the problem. Part of the problem because I believed that we couldn’t have a viable party because the “common wisdom”  or   the “experts” tell us so.

Just as the power of positive thinking works, so does the power of negative thinking.  If we are convinced something can’t happen then we won’t make much of an effort in that direction. No use us “spinning our wheels” is there? The old beating our heads against a brick wall approach that everyone tells us is stupid and not constructive. Add painful.

Remember that old limerick that went something like this:

They told the young man it couldn’t be done

With a smile on his face he went right to it

He tackled that job that couldn’t be done

And you know what, he couldn’t do it.

Thinking about that limerick and how I let that kind of thing insidiously convince me that we couldn’t have a viable 3rd party I realized that I was a knothead. Of course that’s something I all ready knew, but I suddenly realized that on this issue I was more of a knothead than usual.  I was allowing the “common wisdom” and the “experts” to shape my opinion and thus help to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I am not naive enough to believe that having a 3rd Party choice would solve all our problems. Getting rid of most of the corrupt and corrupted politicians in Washington D.C., while putting the fear of re-election into the rest is what’s absolutely necessary. Add a cease fire with shooting ourselves in the foot by electing the same old pols with our same old partisan votes.

Those would be the same pols that disappoint us time and again. As a punishment we re-elect them. Perhaps they packed us in pork and we consider that good governance. We do if we consider getting ours at the expense of the good of the country good governance.  Let me state for the record that I don’t.

My mantra has become “Partisanship is un-American and unpatriotic and dammit, it’s lazy too.” Quite a wordy mantra, it definitely needs some work. However, it work for me.

We get so focused on the Democrats and Republicans that we forget how many other parties have come and gone since the founding of our government.

Most know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat. But did you know that Thomas Jefferson was a Democrat-Republican? Perhaps that doesn’t seem so strange given that we basically have the same thing today, they just pretend to be different on television. The two major parties each take a turn to screw the public, steal from the public and score points off their “adversaries” by doing things that will harm the public. Unlike Jefferson, what we have now are Democrat-Republican-Asshats.

Historical political parties

The following parties are no longer functioning. Some of them had considerable influence. Listed in order of founding.

• Federalist Party (c.1789–c.1820)
• Democratic-Republican Party (1792–c.1824)
• Toleration Party (1816-c.1827)
• Anti-Masonic Party (1826–1838)
• National Republican Party (1829–1833)
• Nullifier Party (1830–1839)
• Whig Party (1833–1856)
• Liberty Party (1840–1848)
• Law and Order Party of Rhode Island (1840s)
• Free Soil Party (1848–1855)
• Anti-Nebraska Party (1854)
• American Republican Party (1843-1854)
• American Party (“Know-Nothings”) (c.1854–1858)
• Opposition Party (1854–1858)
• Constitutional Union Party (1860)
• National Union Party, (1864–1868)
• Readjuster Party (1870-1885)
• Liberal Republican Party (1872)
• Greenback Party (1874–1884)
• Anti-Monopoly Party (1884)
• Populist Party (1892–1908)
• Silver Party (1892-1902)
• National Democratic Party/Gold Democrats (1896–1900)
• Silver Republican Party (1896-1900)
• Social Democratic Party (1898–1901)
• Home Rule Party of Hawaii (created to serve the native Hawaiian agenda in the state legislature and U.S. Congress) (1900–1912)
• Socialist Party of America (1901–1973)
• Independence Party (or “Independence League”) (1906-1914)
• Progressive Party 1912 (“Bull Moose Party”) (1912–1914)
• National Woman’s Party (1913-1930)
• Non-Partisan League (Not a party in the technical sense) (1915–1956)
• Farmer-Labor Party (1918–1944)
• Progressive Party 1924 (1924)
• Communist League of America (1928–1934)
• American Workers Party (1933–1934)
• Workers Party of the United States (1934–1938)
• Union Party (1936)
• American Labor Party (1936–1956)
• America First Party (1944) (1944–1996)
• States’ Rights Democratic Party (“Dixiecrats”) (1948)
• Progressive Party 1948 (1948–1955)
• Vegetarian Party (1948–1964)
• Constitution Party (United States 50s) (1952–1968?)
• American Nazi Party (1959-1967)
• Puerto Rican Socialist Party (1959–1993)
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964)
• Black Panther Party (1966-1970s)
• Communist Workers Party (1969–1985)
• People’s Party (1971–1976)
• U.S. Labor Party (1975–1979)
• Concerned Citizens Party (1975-1992) Become the Connecticut affiliate of the Constitution Party (then known as U.S. Taxpayers Party) with party founding
• Citizens Party (1979–1984)
• New Alliance Party (1979–1992)
• Populist Party of 1980s-1990s (1984–1994)
• Looking Back Party (1984–1996)
• Grassroots Party (1986–2004)
• Independent Party of Utah (1988–1996)
• Greens/Green Party USA (1991–2005)
• New Party (1992 – 1998)
• Natural Law Party (1992–2004)
• Veterans Party (2003-2008)
• Christian Freedom Party (2004)

Gone and mostly forgotten until Googled at Wikipedia.

The Top Three of the 3rd Parties are:

Constitution Party – socially conservative, fiscally conservative

Green Party – socially progressive, fiscally liberal

Libertarian Party – socially liberal, fiscally conservative

Libertarian Party: Founded in 1971, the Libertarian party is the third largest political party in America. Over the years, Libertarian Party candidates have been elected to many state and local offices.

Libertarians believe the federal government should play a minimal role in the day-to-day affairs of the people. They believe that the only appropriate role of government is to protect the citizens from acts of physical force or fraud. A libertarian-style government would therefore limit itself to a police, court, prison system and military. Members support free market economy and are dedicated to protection of civil liberties and individual freedom.

Constitution Party

is a United States political party rooted in the paleoconservative movement. It was founded as the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party in 1992. The party’s official name was changed to the Constitution Party in 1999; however, some state affiliate parties are known under different names. The party’s goal as stated in its own words is “to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundations.” ^[1] The party puts a large focus on immigration, calling for stricter penalties towards illegal immigrants and a moratorium on legal immigration until all federal subsidies to immigrants are discontinued.^[2] The party absorbed the American Independent Party, originally founded for George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign. The American Independent Party of California was an affiliate of the Constitution Party since its founding, but disaffiliated itself after the 2008 Constitution Party Convention to support Alan Keyes and his America’s Independent Party. The Constitution Party’s affiliate in California now bears the name of California Constitution Party.

Green Party of the United States (GPUS)

is one of the political parties in the United States, and similar in mission to many of the worldwide Green Parties. The Greens, a voluntary association of state parties, have been active as a nationally recognized political party since 2001. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by their corresponding states. The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP), a forerunner organization, first gained widespread public attention during Ralph Nader’s presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. With the founding of the Green Party of the United States, the party established a national political presence becoming the primary national Green organization in the U.S. eclipsing the earlier Greens/Green Party USA which emphasized non-electoral movement building.

I have voted for Green Candidates now and again. Now I’m not sure I want to do that again. Being fiscally liberal is not a good fit for me. And voting for a “Green” is quite often the same as voting for a Democrat. The same skunk with a differant stipe isn’t what I’m looking for.

There are literally dozens of other “3rd Parties”, many whom I must confess I had never heard of before. There is a link below if you want to take a look around and see what’s available.

The problem for most 3rd Party candidates is getting on the ballot.

In most states a 3rd party candidate must gather signatures from citizens. The number varies from state to state. Here’s just a sample:

Georgia: The legislature passed a law in 1943 requiring that new party and independent candidates submit a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters in order to get on the ballot for any office. Previously, any party could get on the ballot just by requesting it. The result has been that since 1943, there has not been one third party candidate on the Georgia ballot for U.S. House of Representatives.

Florida: The ballot access laws for third parties and independent candidates have been very severe ever since 1931. Since 1931, there have been only two third party candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives on the ballot and only one third party candidate for the U.S. Senate. There has not been a third party or independent candidate on the ballot for Governor of Florida since 1920. Currently, a filing fee of 7% of the annual salary of the office is also required unless the candidate is a pauper, while a third party or independent candidate for any statewide office (other than president) needs 196,255 valid signatures — no independent candidate in any state in the U.S. has ever successfully complied with a signature requirement greater than 134,781 signatures.

Arkansas: The legislature passed a law in 1971 providing that new parties could not get on the ballot unless they submit a petition signed by a number of voters equal to 7% of the last vote cast. Because this law in 1977 was held unconstitutional (courts have since held that petition requirements cannot exceed 5% of the electorate), the legislature changed it to 3%. No political party has ever succeeded in getting on the Arkansas ballot, under either the 7% or the 3% rule — partly because the state requires that the petition be completed in the four months during the odd year before an election year.

West Virginia: Third party and independent candidates for office (other than president) must circulate their petition before the primary. It is a crime for any petition circulator to approach anyone without saying “If you sign my petition, you cannot vote in the primary.” The law can be enforced because it is illegal for anyone to circulate a petition without first obtaining “credentials” from election officials for this purpose. Furthermore, it is impossible for third party or independent candidates (not running for president) to ever know in advance if they have enough valid signatures because if anyone who signs a candidate’s petition then votes in a primary, the signature of that person is invalid. For candidates, it is impossible to know who will actually vote in the primary, and it is too late to get signatures after the primary.

Tennessee – 25 signatures is all that is required as of 2006 to be put on the ballot for any elected office. A candidate for President of the United States must put foward a full slate of candidates who have agreed to serve as electors (11, at least until the 2010 census). A party must mainatain five percent of the vote statewide in order to be recognized as a party and have its candidates listed on the ballot under that party’s name; the last third party to do so was the American Party in 1968; none of its candidates received five percent of the statewide vote in 1970 and it was then decertified as an official party.

Texas – For a registered political party in a statewide election to gain ballot access, they must either 1) obtain five percent of the vote in any statewide election or 2) collect petition signatures equal to one percent of the total votes cast in the preceding election for governor, and must do so by January 2 of the year in which such statewide election is held. An independent candidate for any statewide office must collect petition signatures equal to one percent of the total votes cast for governor, and must do so beginning the day after primary elections are held and complete collection within 60 days thereafter (if runoff elections are held, the window is shortened to beginning the day after runoff elections are held and completed within 30 days thereafter). The petition signature cannot be from anyone who voted in either primary (including runoff), and voters cannot sign multiple petitions (they must sign a petition for one party or candidate only).

Both major parties make it as difficult as possible for 3rd Party candidates to get on a ballot. It’s not that they fear that any 3rd party will win,although Ross Perot did give them a scare, it’s that 3rd parties often act as spoilers.

Perot’s candidacy received increasing media attention when the competitive phase of the primary season ended for the two major parties. President George H.W. Bush was losing support, and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton was still suffering from the numerous scandal allegations made in the previous months. With the insurgent candidacies of Republican Pat Buchanan and Democrat Jerry Brown winding down, Perot was the natural beneficiary of populist resentment toward establishment politicians. On May 25, 1992 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine with the title “Waiting for Perot”, an allusion to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot.

Whatever the reason the fact remains that we could have more choices when we vote. We can have more choices if we insist that those choices be made available to us in every election, local, state and national. We owe it to ourselves to look around and see what’s available.

Or we can just make our selection from a very limited menu as usual. Funny thing is, we wouldn’t accept that at a hamburger joint but we accept it meekly when it comes to our government.  If we don’t work to change that we have only ourselves to blame.

It doesn’t matter what the experts, the mavens, the pundidiots, and common wisdom is trying to tell us. Because all of the above are so wrong so often that why we listen to them/it at all is a complete mystery to me. A mystery I suspect would baffle the offspring of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple. And that’s the picture I leave you to try to get out of your head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States#Historical_political_parties

This link is for modern political parties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_(United_States)

Ross Perot link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot

Campaign to get 3rd Party Candidates on Every Congressional Ballot

http://www.breakthematrix.com/Third-Party/campaign-to-get-3rd-party-candidates-on-EVERY-Congressional-ballot-in-2010

Getting 3rd Party Candidates on the ballot a difficult endeavor

http://www.satireandcomment.com/sc1007thirdparty.html

Ballot access

http://www.ballot-access.org/winger/fbfp.html

Ballot access laws by state

http://home.earthlink.net/~maxhamforpresident/id28.html

By Kenoshamarge

It occurred to me recently, while bemoaning the fact that we do not have a viable 3rd party choice in this country that perhaps “I” was part of the problem. Part of the problem because I believed that we couldn’t have a viable party because the “common wisdom”  or   the “experts” tell us so. 

Just as the power of positive thinking works, so does the power of negative thinking.  If we are convinced something can’t happen then we won’t make much of an effort in that direction. No use us “spinning our wheels” is there? The old beating our heads against a brick wall approach that everyone tells us is stupid and not constructive. Add painful.

Remember that old limerick that went something like this:

They told the young man it couldn’t be done

With a smile on his face he went right to it

He tackled that job that couldn’t be done

And you know what, he couldn’t do it.

Thinking about that limerick and how I let that kind of thing insidiously convince me that we couldn’t have a viable 3rd party I realized that I was a knothead. Of course that’s something I all ready knew, but I suddenly realized that on this issue I was more of a knothead than usual.  I was allowing the “common wisdom” and the “experts” to shape my opinion and thus help to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

I am not naive enough to believe that having a 3rd Party choice would solve all our problems. Getting rid of most of the corrupt and corrupted politicians in Washington D.C., while putting the fear of re-election into the rest is what’s absolutely necessary. Add a cease fire with shooting ourselves in the foot by electing the same old pols with our same old partisan votes.

Those woulf be the same pols that disappoint us time and again. As a punishment we re-elect them. Perhaps they packed us in pork and we consider that good governance. We do if we consider getting ours at the expense of the good of the country good governance.  Let me state for the record that I don’t.

My mantra has become “Partisanship is un American and unpatriotic and dammit, it’s lazy too.” Quite a wordy mantra, it definitely needs some work. However, it work for me.

We get so focused on the Democrats and Republicans that we forget how many other parties have come and gone since the founding of our government. 

Most know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and that Andrew Jackson was a Democrat. But did you know that Thomas Jefferson was a Democrat-Republican? Perhaps that doesn’t seem so strange given that we basically have the same thing today, they just pretend to be different on television. The two major parties each take a turn to screw the public, steal from the public and score points off their “adversaries” by doing things that will harm the public. Unlike Jefferson, what we have now are Democrat-Republican-Asshats.

 Historical political parties

The following parties are no longer functioning. Some of them had considerable influence. Listed in order of founding.

• Federalist Party (c.1789–c.1820)
• Democratic-Republican Party (1792–c.1824)
• Toleration Party (1816-c.1827)
• Anti-Masonic Party (1826–1838)
• National Republican Party (1829–1833)
• Nullifier Party (1830–1839)
• Whig Party (1833–1856)
• Liberty Party (1840–1848)
• Law and Order Party of Rhode Island (1840s)
• Free Soil Party (1848–1855)
• Anti-Nebraska Party (1854)
• American Republican Party (1843-1854)
• American Party (“Know-Nothings”) (c.1854–1858)
• Opposition Party (1854–1858)
• Constitutional Union Party (1860)
• National Union Party, (1864–1868)
• Readjuster Party (1870-1885)
• Liberal Republican Party (1872)
• Greenback Party (1874–1884)
• Anti-Monopoly Party (1884)
• Populist Party (1892–1908)
• Silver Party (1892-1902)
• National Democratic Party/Gold Democrats (1896–1900)
• Silver Republican Party (1896-1900)
• Social Democratic Party (1898–1901)
• Home Rule Party of Hawaii (created to serve the native Hawaiian agenda in the state legislature and U.S. Congress) (1900–1912)
• Socialist Party of America (1901–1973)
• Independence Party (or “Independence League”) (1906-1914)
• Progressive Party 1912 (“Bull Moose Party”) (1912–1914)
• National Woman’s Party (1913-1930)
• Non-Partisan League (Not a party in the technical sense) (1915–1956)
• Farmer-Labor Party (1918–1944)
• Progressive Party 1924 (1924)
• Communist League of America (1928–1934)
• American Workers Party (1933–1934)
• Workers Party of the United States (1934–1938)
• Union Party (1936)
• American Labor Party (1936–1956)
• America First Party (1944) (1944–1996)
• States’ Rights Democratic Party (“Dixiecrats”) (1948)
• Progressive Party 1948 (1948–1955)
• Vegetarian Party (1948–1964)
• Constitution Party (United States 50s) (1952–1968?)
• American Nazi Party (1959-1967)
• Puerto Rican Socialist Party (1959–1993)
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964)
• Black Panther Party (1966-1970s)
• Communist Workers Party (1969–1985)
• People’s Party (1971–1976)
• U.S. Labor Party (1975–1979)
• Concerned Citizens Party (1975-1992) Become the Connecticut affiliate of the Constitution Party (then known as U.S. Taxpayers Party) with party founding
• Citizens Party (1979–1984)
• New Alliance Party (1979–1992)
• Populist Party of 1980s-1990s (1984–1994)
• Looking Back Party (1984–1996)
• Grassroots Party (1986–2004)
• Independent Party of Utah (1988–1996)
• Greens/Green Party USA (1991–2005)
• New Party (1992 – 1998)
• Natural Law Party (1992–2004)
• Veterans Party (2003-2008)
• Christian Freedom Party (2004)

Gone and mostly forgotten until Googled at Wikipedia.

The Top Three of the 3rd Parties are:

Constitution Party – socially conservative, fiscally conservative

Green Party – socially progressive, fiscally liberal

Libertarian Party – socially liberal, fiscally conservative

Libertarian Party: Founded in 1971, the Libertarian party is the third largest political party in America. Over the years, Libertarian Party candidates have been elected to many state and local offices.

Libertarians believe the federal government should play a minimal role in the day-to-day affairs of the people. They believe that the only appropriate role of government is to protect the citizens from acts of physical force or fraud. A libertarian-style government would therefore limit itself to a police, court, prison system and military. Members support free market economy and are dedicated to protection of civil liberties and individual freedom.

 Constitution Party

 is a United States political party rooted in the paleoconservative movement. It was founded as the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party in 1992. The party’s official name was changed to the Constitution Party in 1999; however, some state affiliate parties are known under different names. The party’s goal as stated in its own words is “to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundations.” ^[1] The party puts a large focus on immigration, calling for stricter penalties towards illegal immigrants and a moratorium on legal immigration until all federal subsidies to immigrants are discontinued.^[2] The party absorbed the American Independent Party, originally founded for George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign. The American Independent Party of California was an affiliate of the Constitution Party since its founding, but disaffiliated itself after the 2008 Constitution Party Convention to support Alan Keyes and his America’s Independent Party. The Constitution Party’s affiliate in California now bears the name of California Constitution Party.

Green Party of the United States (GPUS)

 is one of the political parties in the United States, and similar in mission to many of the worldwide Green Parties. The Greens, a voluntary association of state parties, have been active as a nationally recognized political party since 2001. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by their corresponding states. The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP), a forerunner organization, first gained widespread public attention during Ralph Nader’s presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. With the founding of the Green Party of the United States, the party established a national political presence becoming the primary national Green organization in the U.S. eclipsing the earlier Greens/Green Party USA which emphasized non-electoral movement building.

I have voted for Green Candidates now and again. Now I’m not sure I want to do that again. Being fiscally liberal is not a good fit for me. And voting for a “Green” is quite often the same as voting for a Democrat. The same skunk with a differant stipe isn’t what I’m looking for.

There are literally dozens of other “3rd Parties”, many whom I must confess I had never heard of before. There is a link below if you want to take a look around and see what’s available.

The problem for most 3rd Party Candidates is getting on the ballot.

In most states a 3rd party candidate must gather signatures from citizens. The number varies from state to state. Here’s just a sample:

Georgia: The legislature passed a law in 1943 requiring that new party and independent candidates submit a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters in order to get on the ballot for any office. Previously, any party could get on the ballot just by requesting it. The result has been that since 1943, there has not been one third party candidate on the Georgia ballot for U.S. House of Representatives. 

Florida: The ballot access laws for third parties and independent candidates have been very severe ever since 1931. Since 1931, there have been only two third party candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives on the ballot and only one third party candidate for the U.S. Senate. There has not been a third party or independent candidate on the ballot for Governor of Florida since 1920. Currently, a filing fee of 7% of the annual salary of the office is also required unless the candidate is a pauper, while a third party or independent candidate for any statewide office (other than president) needs 196,255 valid signatures — no independent candidate in any state in the U.S. has ever successfully complied with a signature requirement greater than 134,781 signatures. 

Arkansas: The legislature passed a law in 1971 providing that new parties could not get on the ballot unless they submit a petition signed by a number of voters equal to 7% of the last vote cast. Because this law in 1977 was held unconstitutional (courts have since held that petition requirements cannot exceed 5% of the electorate), the legislature changed it to 3%. No political party has ever succeeded in getting on the Arkansas ballot, under either the 7% or the 3% rule — partly because the state requires that the petition be completed in the four months during the odd year before an election year. 

West Virginia: Third party and independent candidates for office (other than president) must circulate their petition before the primary. It is a crime for any petition circulator to approach anyone without saying “If you sign my petition, you cannot vote in the primary.” The law can be enforced because it is illegal for anyone to circulate a petition without first obtaining “credentials” from election officials for this purpose. Furthermore, it is impossible for third party or independent candidates (not running for president) to ever know in advance if they have enough valid signatures because if anyone who signs a candidate’s petition then votes in a primary, the signature of that person is invalid. For candidates, it is impossible to know who will actually vote in the primary, and it is too late to get signatures after the primary.

Tennessee – 25 signatures is all that is required as of 2006 to be put on the ballot for any elected office. A candidate for President of the United States must put foward a full slate of candidates who have agreed to serve as electors (11, at least until the 2010 census). A party must mainatain five percent of the vote statewide in order to be recognized as a party and have its candidates listed on the ballot under that party’s name; the last third party to do so was the American Party in 1968; none of its candidates received five percent of the statewide vote in 1970 and it was then decertified as an official party.

Texas – For a registered political party in a statewide election to gain ballot access, they must either 1) obtain five percent of the vote in any statewide election or 2) collect petition signatures equal to one percent of the total votes cast in the preceding election for governor, and must do so by January 2 of the year in which such statewide election is held. An independent candidate for any statewide office must collect petition signatures equal to one percent of the total votes cast for governor, and must do so beginning the day after primary elections are held and complete collection within 60 days thereafter (if runoff elections are held, the window is shortened to beginning the day after runoff elections are held and completed within 30 days thereafter). The petition signature cannot be from anyone who voted in either primary (including runoff), and voters cannot sign multiple petitions (they must sign a petition for one party or candidate only).

Both major parties make it as difficult as possible for 3rd Party Candidates to get on a ballot. It’s not that they fear that any 3rd party will win,although Ross Perot did give them a scare, it’s that 3rd parties often act as spoilers.    

Perot’s candidacy received increasing media attention when the competitive phase of the primary season ended for the two major parties. President George H.W. Bush was losing support, and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton was still suffering from the numerous scandal allegations made in the previous months. With the insurgent candidacies of Republican Pat Buchanan and Democrat Jerry Brown winding down, Perot was the natural beneficiary of populist resentment toward establishment politicians. On May 25, 1992 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine with the title “Waiting for Perot”, an allusion to Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot.

Whatever the reason the fact remains that we could have more choices when we vote. We can have more choices if we insist that those choices be made available to us in every election, local, state and national. We owe it to ourselves to look around and see what’s available.

Or we can just make our selection from a very limited menu as usual. Funny thing is, we wouldn’t accept that at a Hamburger Joint but we accept it meekly when it comes to our government.  If we don’t work to change that we have only ourselves to blame.

It doesn’t matter what the experts, the mavens, the pundidiots, and common wisdom is trying to tell us. Because all of the above are so wrong so often that why we listen to them/it at all is a complete mystery to me. A mystery I suspect would baffle the offspring of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple. And that’s the picture I leave you to try to get out of your head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States#Historical_political_parties

This link is for modern political parties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_(United_States)

Ross Perot link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot

Campaign to get 3rd Party Candidates on Every Congressional Ballot

http://www.breakthematrix.com/Third-Party/campaign-to-get-3rd-party-candidates-on-EVERY-Congressional-ballot-in-2010

Getting 3rd Party Candidates on the ballot a difficult endeavor

http://www.satireandcomment.com/sc1007thirdparty.html

Ballot access

http://www.ballot-access.org/winger/fbfp.html

Ballot access laws by state

http://home.earthlink.net/~maxhamforpresident/id28.html

Our German friends went to the polls this evening in what was variously described as a “yawner,” “soporific” and “one of the dullest in living memory” in which turnout reached a record low. How low is as yet unclear: there seem to have been about four million fewer votes cast this year (depending upon the number of outstanding ballots).  That kind of drop should translate to a fall of 5-7 percent in terms of turnout, for a “lowest ever” result of around 70-72%.

(Yes kids. 70% is the lowest ever in Germany.  Let this be a lesson that there are other – and I dare I hazard the sacrilege of saying better – ways of doing democracy.)

However I would submit that this has been a crucial poll for both Germany and the world.  Suffice it to say that Germany remains, even now (especially now), the economic engine of Europe.  Their unemployment is now below even our own – the benefit of a strong social safety net built at great cost during years of boom – and the first shoots of global recovery have appeared there.  Along with France it essentially decides the direction of Europe, flail though Britain might (indeed, rightly or wrongly); it is a cornerstone of America’s Afghanistan policy, its European policy, its Iranian policy, its Russian policy… I run on.  (And could.)  But in short, this was an election of great significance to us – and not, indeed, just for foreign policy. What is happening in Germany is heading for us, too.

Background

On a basic level the political system is – was – dominated by two large parties and a number of smaller ones.  The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) are centre-right – though the name falsely implies some commitment to clericalism, more prominent in their Bavarian branch than generally.  They’re generally the party of rural areas, the country, and the south of Germany, especially Bavaria.  The Social Democrats (SDP) are centre-left – the party of the unions, workers, cities, especially in the north.  They have between them provided every Chancellor in modern German history.

In addition there are the Free Democrats (FDP, known colloquially as the ‘Liberals’), re-established along with the SDP and CDU/CSU at the refounding of the Republic.  They’re just that: though what we would call relatively “progressive,” as with most modern classical liberals  – sounds weird, especially as in America we term it “libertarian” – what the FDP really cares about is economics and driving government out of business.  As such it’s slightly socially moderating to either the SDP or the CDU/CSU, but economically quite radical.  Wealthier, college-educated urban Republicans would be quite at home here, and the FDP appeals to an educated, wealthy urban/suburban demographic.

Unlike other democracies (and totally unlike the US) Germany does not allow a leader to have less than the total support of Parliament, called Bundestag; that means no minority governments as in Canada.  Throughout most of modern German history neither major party could gain a majority in parliament.  This meant not only that the FDP always chose who governed, but assured that they were almost always in government.  Though they were always the bridesmaid and never the bride, this made them relatively impervious to shifts in the electorate or their own vote totals.  Vice-Chancellor Genscher thus served in that role for twenty years and was continuously in government for twenty-five years under three chancellors.  Neither party cared much for them, but there was rarely a way around them.

But in the 1980s two other forces have appeared.  The first were the Greens (known as Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, or Alliance ‘90/The Greens, after the coalition between Western and Eastern parties formed after the fall of the Berlin Wall).  Starting slowly the Greens eventually shucked off their origins as a protest party and became willing to join a government (perhaps reflecting their growth from a niche environmentalist party to the favored outlet of the wealthy, urban left).  This was a major development: for the first time a government could be formed without the free-market FDP, making a socially leftist government possible.  It also tipped the subtle balance of German politics; given the unlikelihood of the Greens’ siding with the conservative Christian Democrats, it had the effect of opening up possibilities for the Social Democrats while driving the FDP even further into the CDU’s arms, as for the first time they faced opposition without them.

Reunification brought with it a new party.  First called the Party of Democratic Socialism, then combined with a coalition of ex-SDP members, the Left is a motley crew of ex-East German communists, far-left anti-communist reformers, disaffected Greens and Social Democrats, frustrated workers and welfare recipients.  It is the first quality that has made them anathema to the rest of German politics: initially it met with a cordon sanitaire of the type deployed in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to stop extremist parties from joining government.  At first it didn’t matter: the Left was a small party focused mainly in the East, so drawing fairly equally from potential CDU/CSU and SDP voters, and for the first decade of its existence it struggled both to repudiate communism and connect with the electorate.

Change is rarely spare

That changed in 2005.  The economic reforms of SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder managed to trigger a Bangkok dilemma: his actions were considered unacceptable to leftists and insufficient to rightists.  The Greens, in power for the first time since 1998, occupied only three or four non-economic ministries and provided little resistance.  In 2005 the SPD-Green alliance rallied on the back of the personal unpopularity of Angela Merkel, then CDU/CSU leader; but it was to no avail.  The government lost its majority.

Left leaders Oskar Lafontaine (above) and Gregor Gysi (below). Guess who was a Communist

But the CDU/CSU did not gain one.  Indeed they lost nearly as many seats as did the SPD.  The big winner was the Left party, now co-headed by a high-profile SPD defector, Oskar Lafontaine.  Lafontaine and others balked at Schröder’s reforms, which were seen to be uncompassionate, excessively pro-business and – worst of all – Anglo-American.  From a low of just two seats in 2002 the Left gained 54.  This is basically because the German system, mixed-member proportional, makes big changes between major parties require big changes in the overall vote.  This rarely happens, and a government has a majority of only 20-40, including coalition partners.

Drive a wedge of 54 into that – 54 members of Parliament that no one will have and that consequently will vote against anyone – and you have a problem.  Germany had that problem.  No coalition of two parties gained a majority.  Of the many options only one was plausible: a “grand coalition” of both CDU/CSU and SDP.

How can two opposed parties work together?  Tenderly.  Schröder had to go – and go he did – and in his place were Merkel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, formerly his second-in-command.  Steinmeier was a politician with limited public exposure, first as head of Schröder’s private office and then as Foreign Minister, and despite an even split of ministries between the grand partners it was Merkel who gained credit for being public-spirited and a “safe pair of hands.”

Despite predictions they survived the entirety of their four year term.  But predictably Merkel and the CDU/CSU entered the election with a big lead over the SPD.  The entirety of the election campaign did nothing to dent that lead.

Yesterday and what it means

The results are contained here.  (Don’t laugh, Wikipedia is filled with elections nerds, and unlike so many national election bodies writes with an eye to general clarity.)

The traditional CDU/CSU-FDP coalition “won.”  But this was on a very small increase in seats (13) for the CDU/CSU (and a drop in votes).  These were mostly “overhang seats,” a German quirk which basically awards bonus seats because an opponent wins more individual seats than their party vote would allow.  This benefits the two major parties, as they win most of these single-member seats on the basis of strong regional and local support.  (It makes its last appearance this year – German courts ordered it quashed by 2011.) The SDP lost a record 76 seats and came an anemic second.  Here’s the kicker, though: both major parties had their worst result ever.  Only a bare majority of Germans voted for both parties of government combined.

The FDP surged to 93 seats (the CDU/CSU had 239), which means their partners will contribute some 30% of the coalition’s total, a number unprecedented in Germany and indeed most modern parliamentary democracies).  This was the greatest night in their history.  Their success has been so profound that they are actually within striking distance of being Germany’s second party – an unheard-of development.

Both the Greens and the Left also had the best nights in their history.  Though they maintained only their single constituency seat, in urban Berlin, the Greens surged over the 10% mark for the first time to take 68 seats.  The Left did better still – they surged to 13 constituency seats, including a majority of those in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, and rose to 76 total.  Only the success of the FDP prevented the Left from forcing the two main parties back into grand coalition.  For the first time, the three opposition parties’ total votes and seats outnumbered either of the two parties of government.

It can’t be surprising that the collapse of the SDP aided both the Greens and the Left – despite leadership under leader Steinmeier which, if not stentorian, was not at all disastrous.  The SDP is at serious, even terminal risk of becoming merely a pan-German leftist fraction, splitting their traditional voters with the Greens in the West and the Left in the East.  There is no love lost between the two, especially as the Left is (bizarrely) depriving the Greens of some of their anti-establishment luster.

FDP leader Guido Westerwelle, who hopefully didn't drink it all in one go

But Merkel must be said to have lost, too.  Her majority comes from the FDP’s success and they will not fail to let her know it.  Worse, whereas the grand coalition allowed her to govern “above politics” while avoiding any difficult questions – with the SPD’s tacit consent – the FDP have become unashamedly radical in their economics and their opposition to green politics, and they will push Merkel in their direction.  She cannot simply shrug, as she did with the SPD, and agree that the differences are irreconcilable for the sake of the government.  (Hence the suggestion that she actually preferred the prospect of a new grand coalition.)  The FDP will take their ball and go home if she doesn’t give them almost everything they want, and it’s likely she’ll do just that.  The consequence of not doing so is implicit in this interview, where the FDP leader tries to put down fears about a “centre-right” government: this “party of all people” is perfectly capable of making a government itself one day, especially if they continue to shine in the face of a taciturn, unhelpful Christian Democrat majority.  “We wanted reform – our own allies betrayed us,” etc.

Clearly people are fed up in general, and there is a sense that the financial crisis has revealed that the traditional manner of doing business – by whomever – has failed.  All three smaller parties were fired up; anyone in government is meanwhile seen to be tainted.  This is a trend that has been growing and escalating as the post-9/11 world has taken shape.  It will continue to do, especially if the far right-wing National Democratic Party – neo-Nazis in all but name, handicapped only by being run through with agents of the security services – manages to begin making an impact.  So far, though, Germans are far more ready to cast a ballot for ex-communists than neo-fascists.

Elsewhere

These trends: the decline and fragmentation of major parties; surge in support for parties with more hardened, philosophically coherent (and so inflexible) beliefs on the fringes of the political spectrum; and an increased tempo of attacks by the mainstream against that fringe which has the effect merely of eroding further their own popularity; they don’t exist in Germany alone.  Britain, France, and the US face similar problems and have electorates of similar prosperity and more similarity of mind than many think.  They may not vote for the same things, but all follow the same cues.

British National Party rally (Sentinel)

In the UK all three parties have been hurt by the financial crisis and the related row over MPs’ expenses.  As in Germany, the collapse of the primary center-left party has not unlocked a surge for the center-right: people want Labour out but they don’t want the Tories in.  In the meantime disaffection with the political system and calls for reform are reaching a fever pitch.

A brief surge in the popularity of independents and other parties seems to be abating, but then there are established fringe forces to turn to: the conservative anti-European UKIP, the Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, and the ultra right-wing BNP.  As yet there isn’t really a well-organized leftist force along those lines, partly because of the defeat of the unions by the Conservatives and the Trotskyists by Labour coupled with the presence of two established, mainstream left parties who can exchange votes between them.

Strangely in a solely first past the post system, like the UK or US, you seem to get more minor and fringe parties than you ever do in a country that actually lets them win.

Villepin (left) and Sarkozy (right) - as it were

In France personality politics seem to count for more than ideologies (and really, Gaullism’s less an ideology than a state of being), but the success of the National Front – they made it to the second-round of the French presidential election in 2002, which saw Jacques Chirac re-elected with 82% by a coalition of mainline conservatives and leftists of all stripes who encouraged a vote for “the crook, not the fascist.”  Though the rare and unexpected success was not repeated two years ago, terrible splits rage through the political class as the Socialists continue to gleefully tear each other apart and the entire ruling class of the governing UMP is embroiled in the Clearstream trial (or, put so much more delicately in its native italics, L’Affair Clearstream).  Clearstream sees the President of the Republic, Nicholas Sarkozy, suing the last Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, for allegedly falsifying a document listing Sarkozy as the recipient of a defense kickback.

Such behavior obviously makes off-the-grid candidates like young Communist leader Olivier Besancenot and perennial Franco-German Green Daniel Cohn-Bendit more palatable to the general public. Interestingly 2007 saw a moderate force appear and challenge the two main parties for the presidency, the Democratic Movement under Francois Bayrou; but after failing to endorse either remaining contender and disappointing results in parliamentary and European polls it looks to fizzle.  People can say what they will – nobody votes for a moderate party.

Canada faces an even more daunting prospect.  Unable to form a majority government after three elections in four years, with another looming, the Parliament split between the center-left Liberals and center-right Conservatives is further cleaved by the increasingly left-wing New Democrats and the Quebecois sovereigntist Bloc.  Add atop that a Green Party which polls 10% but doesn’t win a seat and you have a centre-right, and at times quite right-wing, government for whom only about 35% cast a ballot, against left wing votes of something like 52% (and a further 10% who would prefer not to vote in Canada at all).  The continuing inability of Ottawa to form a government is really a consequence of the annihilation of the Progressive Conservatives at the 1993 election, masked for eleven years by outsize Liberal majorities drawn from the resulting chaos.

There’s little prospect of a similar fate for either the new Conservative government or the Liberal opposition – though one might take the selection of a philosopher as their leader to be a sign of some despair – but a snap election today would probably ratify that of the last two polls.  This is no “message” from the people, besides that they don’t much care for anyone they have and don’t think it’s worth voting for anybody they don’t.  Quebec, lacking a separatist majority, is so divided between the mainstream parties that it returns almost uniformly separatist members who wouldn’t take part in any government (despite a half-baked attempt to replace the Tories with a Liberal/NDP coalition with Bloc support, which triggered an extraordinary dissolution of Parliament and a change in the Liberal leadership.

And then there’s the USA.  Our situation is a bit different because of the overwhelming difficulty of altering the basic structure of our government (which assures it’s only been done once or twice, and then relatively minor changes); the non-parliamentary system of government which makes it more difficult to logically tie a Congress together with a government; and the non-ideological political parties.  Make no mistake: Democrats are liberal and Republicans conservative out of convenience.  History is littered with liberal Republicans (and continues to be clogged with conservative Democrats).  Our parties are first and foremost regionalist.

But indeed all of these factors coalesce to make the situation worst of all the others.  Our ossified political system, reflective of an age in which travel, communication and authority were totally different, practically breeds disaffected.  A high rate of abstention is one way.  Another is the recent spate of specifically ideological “independent” (of what?) movements.  Ross Perot and Reform and Ron Paul come to mind most prominently. (But not Ralph Nader; his relationship with the Greens was uncertain at best.)

Ron Paul - a new force in politics, like him or lump him

The American system – for reasons totally alien to its practice – tends to suppress most of these movements.  That’s the effect of the primary system: force dissident candidates to fight intraparty elections rather than stand independently or found a new party entirely.  Like most of the progressive reforms of the early 1900s, primaries have had unexpected and almost totally anti-democratic side effects.  (Thanks for that, WJB.  Where was that cross of gold again?)  Not for nothing are the British Conservatives, riven themselves with internal dissent and still broadly unpopular, adopting the primary for their own candidates.

The object then becomes not the creation of new parties but the “capture” of existing ones.  The Democrats and Republicans are subject to an unending series of political, ideological and personal coups as different factions with different priorities attempt to seize control of the party – and through them government – via favored candidates.  (Hence the otherwise inexplicable vitriol on the liberal wing of the party towards Hillary Clinton, not usually thought to be a McCarthyite herself.)  Even these movements are often as geographic or personal as ideological – Nancy Pelosi has ensured the placement of liberal, Californian allies at the head of a number of key committees, even ousting and replacing John Dingell (Michigan – Ann Arbor and Detroit Suburbs) on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

But even this broad, non-ideological two-party consensus – encompassing a space which would otherwise be occupied by five or more parties were they ideologically- or geographically-based – has come under increasing strain.  Progressive Democrats are having a harder time governing with conservative Southerners now than at any time since civil rights and the phenomenon of Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and other populist figures have driven a deep, festering wedge into the Republican ranks.

In some respects this year really has been an extraordinary one.  All of that plus the suggestion by a sitting governor that perhaps secession was legit after all and the inexplicable running battles over health care and climate (60% of the Congress is Democratic, yes?) and it’s no surprise that there’s a bumper crop of independents getting a lot of earlier exposure.

America’s a weird case.  In almost any other country I would say that both parties here are headed for a thumping (and both generally perform poorly in a generic ballot).  But the Constitution was not designed for parties and did not lend us a system that manages the inevitable ones well; and the two major parties have had decades – indeed centuries – to craft everything to their advantage and build up structures necessary to blunt even the best-funded challengers.  (We were speaking of Ross Perot.)  It also hurts that there are little in the way of central party structures; parties are not national affairs as in Europe because America is not a metropolitan country, with a clear center and periphery.  The people – political leaders, staffers, fundraisers – necessary, able and willing to craft any sincere challenge to the political center are not concentrated if they exist at all, and the ideological confrontation required for pieces of one party or the other to collectively defect simply isn’t there.  Animus, even hatred, has not yet translated into intolerance.  Part of that is because American politics is an older man’s game than most.  They are simply not as passionate, or hot-headed, depending on your view.

The party system we have will not last forever; but I can say that only in an abstract historical sense.  It could go on for a hundred years or a thousand or ten or through the day after tomorrow.  I don’t know.  There are signs that it’s corroding, and badly, in a way incomparable to the past – but this isn’t quite unique yet.  I am certain, if nothing else, that discontent with American politics will only continue to grow while the two parties continue their singular dominance of the country.  Don’t be fooled by good turnout recently (and ours still isn’t very good); it’s the break in the fever that foreshadows a renewed attack of the virus.

The bottom line is that it appears, at least to me, that the consensus built after World War II – not ideological, for that departed long ago, but the basic structure of how Western countries allow themselves to be governed – is breaking down.  Record losses for major parties, record gains for minor ones, fringe candidates with growing bankrolls and calls, even here, for broad-based electoral reform.  This evinces an entire hemisphere of people unsatisfied with their legacy.

The common thread seems to be a belief that the major political groups, the parties of government, have sacrificed a coherent, rigorous system of beliefs for the possibility of a vague electoral mandate.  Those parties and figures who reject that path, and prefer to offer an honest explication of their ideology, have begun to surge instead.  (Though in Europe and Canada more than here.)  If the parties of government are going to continue to be that in the future, the horror of triangulation and microtargeting will have to give way.  Ideology must be on offer; not just “real beliefs” or “convictions” coupled with vague platitudes about a stronger future but systems of seeing the world, the civil society, politics and the place of government in them.

Otherwise it will be extremists, unafraid to bare to the world their vision for it, who will benefit. For in a democracy ideological battles are no different than electoral ones: in the end it’s a matter of who chooses to show up.

 

The federal government spent $167 billion in 1994 on corporate tax breaks and handouts – an average of $1400 per taxpayer (not including subsidies from counties and cities, hazardous waste cleanup costs, or limits on corporate liability).  By contrast, the total price tag for Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps and public housing came to $50 billion, or $400 per taxpayer.

Not many politicians talk about this.  A rare exception is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who said to the Democratic Leadership Council in November 1995 that people are mad because “we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind.”  Then, he said, “Since we are committed to moving the disadvantaged from welfare to work, why not target corporate welfare as well?”

The White House quickly distanced itself from Reich’s speech, but activists of all kinds picked it up: Perot’s United We Stand-America made it a major target of angry-middle groups; the right-wing Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute joined Ralph Nader to present a list of corporate pork barrel reforms.  Yet, neither Congress nor the White House makes much of corporate giveaways in budget-balancing plans.

What are the giveaways?  The active variety includes agribusiness, military contractor subsidies, loan guarantees, and the bailout of the S&Ls, and computer databases.  The rights to lumber and minerals on federal lands are routinely granted for $5 per acre, making the United States the only country in the world that virtually gives away its depletable natural resources!  Drugs developed with taxpayer money are routinely given to drug companies for monopoly marketing with no restraint on price, or royalties returned to the people.  The major television networks get free broadcast licenses with minimal public responsibility or obligation.

Passive corporate giveaways come in the form of tax breaks and loopholes.  Private individuals pay taxes at higher rates than corporations.  The investment tax credit designed to increase economic activity is historically taken as a windfall.  Tax breaks granted to be put back into productive equipment, plants and jobs, are commonly used to buy out other companies, creating no new jobs or wealth.  Subsidies actually debilitate innovation and efficiency.

In the debate over budget deficits, many ask, “How can we take food out of poor kids’ mouths and continue to subsidize the rich?”  Scant legislation has been introduced to rid us of tax loopholes for the rich. There’s been no serious move to initiate cost-benefit analysis of corporate giveaways, in the same way they’ve meticulously reviewed health and safety regulation for years, and assaulted affirmative action and the minimum wage.

One problem is that connections are frequently not made between things that people don’t like and what causes them.  Well-funded corporate lobbies and toadies are too adept at directing people’s anger against government in a massive, daily, Rush Limbaugh-/Lars Larsen-esque hate-your-government drumbeat.  They work to keep the focus away from corporations, which are the dominant institution in our society.

Government has been only a minion, a simply willing agent, for transferring tax dollars to corporate coffers. We are the richest nation in the history of the world and our richest (corporate) citizens behave as if divine providence, rather than selfish market decisions doom the poorest (human) citizens.  However, if the corporate greed issue is connected with people’s deprivation – and we brand-name the greediest corporate kings in the United States – we can turn the tide against the self-interested, compassionless and undemocratic aspects of the corporate institution. Corporations should pay their fair share to the citizens and communities, which enable their success.  That can result in real tax reform, without creating unnecessary hardships for the poor and middle class.

WALL STREET LIES BLAME VICTIMS TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL MELTDOWN by Nomi Prins, Wiley Press.

To hear it from the big financial companies, the big crash started when poor people bought homes they couldn’t afford. But that was at most 1% of the problem.  Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nomi Prins’ new book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it’s hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we’re all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/142944/wall_street_lies_blame_victims_to_avoid_responsibility_for_financial_meltdown

ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY

The Guardian/UK

US DOLLAR SET TO BE ECLIPSED World Bank President Predicts by Heather Stewart

The United States must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world’s reserve currency as American dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, the World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, warned yesterday. United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency, says Zoellick. Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, he said it was time for a “responsible globalisation”, in which decision-making was shared between the old powers and developing countries such as China and India.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/28-7

The Real News Network

CLEAN COAL IS FICTION says Jessy Tolkan: Washington saying coal industry can be “clean” is pure fiction.

Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations’ Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan’s coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining. Tolkan says that Washington’s push for “clean coal” is not enough because the coal industry’s and President Obama’s argument that the production of coal can be clean is “an absolute, 100% lie.” She also says that “the science is clear that if we don’t address coal head on, it’s almost “game over” for the planet.”

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/09/28

The New York Times

CASSANDRAS OF CLIMATE by Paul Krugman

Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.

And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/28-3

ENVIRONMENT-POPULATION JUMBOPAK

POLLUTER BORN EVERY MINUTE

Minor League Moves: The Orioles Affiliated with The Norfolk Tides in 2007

Minor League Baseball teams move around for many reasons with a fair amount of regularity.  At the end of every season there are almost always a number of teams that either changes their major league affiliation or moves to another city.  A few years ago my team here in Norfolk told the New York Mets and the Minaya – Bernazard Axis of Idiocy to “get out of town and don’t let the door hit you.”  The Mets had treated their AAA affiliate badly for years and these guys gutted the Mets farm system.  I talked with various Mets scouts this year who although not saying anything on record nodded in agreement about my observations of the Mets.  So the Mets went to New Orleans and this year to Buffalo and managed to continue their mangled management of their minor league system.

However teams change affiliations for a number of reasons.  One reason that Baltimore relocated to Norfolk was the entrance into the Hampton Roads TV market.  Other reasons include facilities, distance from the home club, fan base issues, tradition or local government policies.

When I was a kid I lived in Stockton California where I got my first taste of Minor League ball watching the Stockton Ports of the California League in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  At the time the team was affiliated with the Baltimore Orioles.  A few years back I had opportunity to talk with Orioles great Paul Blair who remembered his days playing in Stockton at Billy Hebert Field.  The Ports have since been with the Brewers, the Rangers, the Reds and the Athletics and maybe a couple of others over the years.  This is not unusual as teams try to move their teams closer to the major league club or local owners negotiate deals with major league franchises to move teams to their markets.

Last year there were several moves in the International League and the Pacific Coast League. In the PCL the biggest news was the relocation of the Dodgers AAA affiliate from Las Vegas to Albuquerque, a move that returned the Dodgers to one of their tradition minor league cities.    The Ottawa Lynx franchise left that city for Allentown Pennsylvania to become the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. This left that city without any baseball.  A Canadian league that was supposed to move a team there folded.  This is actually sad for Canada as both Ottawa and Montreal which had a long baseball heritage with the Major and Minor leagues no longer have teams.  This is in large part due to the Canadian government’s tax policies that ensured that minor league players would be taxed by both the US and Canadian governments.  This made the situation difficult if not impossible for many minor league players from the states and as a result the major leagues moved all of their teams out of Canada except the Vancouver Canadians in the Northwest League.  Since the Northwest League is a short season single “A” league and most of the players are college players there is a different dynamic at work than the rest of the minors.

In 2009 the New York Mets brought the team once known as the Norfolk Tides from their home in post-Katrina New Orleans to Buffalo. In Buffalo the Mets replaced Cleveland who had moved their team to Columbus.  This ensured that the city of Buffalo and especially Bison’s fans would bask in the misery inflicted on both Norfolk and New Orleans fans for the foreseeable future.  The Bisons under Mets management finished the season with the worst record in Triple “A” ball.  I saw them several times in Norfolk and there wasn’t a young prospect of any caliber on the team.  There was an ass-load of older “has been” players who are deep into the tail end of their careers and I looked like I was in better shape than some of them, some of the guts and butts were simply huge.   The Mets under the current Oscar Minaya management are pathetic.  They have no prospects, their minor league system is broken and if the Bison’s plight was not enough their AA affiliate the Binghamton Mets were the worst team in AA Ball.  If Ross Perot was talking to Larry King about them he would say “That’s just sad Larry.”

Cleveland moved its affiliation to Columbus to be closer to the major league team while the Washington Nationals who had been in Columbus moved to Syracuse when Toronto moved its Triple “A” affiliation to Las Vegas in the Pacific Coast League.    In the mean time Atlanta which had been embroiled in a decade long contest with Richmond’s clueless city council led by Doug “I have no plan or clue” Wilder for a decent stadium to replace the cesspool called “The Diamond” gave up.  Since they and not a local owner controlled the franchise, they moved the Braves to the Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett County.  Richmond has one of the worst if not the worst ball park in the International League and maybe the minors.  Having been to the Diamond many times I have to say that it was the worst venue that I have ever seen a ball game, decrepit and uncomfortable seating, poor amenities, and a field that flooded if so much as a thimble full of rain fell made it a horrible venue for fans as well as players.  Thus the city which refused to work cooperatively with the Braves lost its team and AAA franchise, a franchise that has been for many years one of the best in the minor leagues.  Richmond lost their hockey team as well to this bunch’s inept leadership.  These people have to be one of the most clueless city government s in the entire United States and certainly the worst managed state capital.

All of this leads to the first move of the 2009-2010 off season.  On the 23^rd of September the Eastern League announced that the Connecticut Defenders franchise would move to Richmond in time for the 2010 season.  The city has agreed to make improvements on the Diamond to keep it viable until a new stadium can be build by 2012, a plan that should be doable unless the city has decided to make their plans for the new stadium on the Mayan calendar which assumes that the Cubs will win the World’s series, that Jesus will come back and the world as we know it will end.

The team is an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, which means that if the Tides are not in town that I may make a number of trips to Richmond in 2010.  The Giants will stay with the team through the end of 2010 and hopefully for me will remain in Richmond for many years.  Richmond is allowing fans to suggest new names for the team.  A link to that site is here: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/sports/baseball/name-the-team/

There will be more team moves announced in the coming month or so as cities and major league teams alike assess what they need.  Cities with a long minor league heritage may lose teams, some cities are building stadiums to get teams and some cities may end up with teams in the independent leagues.  Regardless Minor League Baseball will continue to do well and fans will come.

Peace,

Padre Steve+