CAPITOL AREA PROGRESSIVES (CAP) - DEMOCRATIC CLUB OF ELK GROVE
Capitol Area Progressives is dedicated to the development, promotion and implementation of progressive policies and legislation. Capitol Area Progressives advocates progressive issues and candidates at local, state and national levels through a variety of mechanisms: campaign consulting and training; community education and action; grassroots organizing; lobbying; and fundraising. Capitol Area Progressives believes in returning the power of our democracy to our citizens and, as envisaged in our constitution, establishing a government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
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Now that House Republicans are insisting their vote against the bailout yesterday had nothing to do with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s supposedly “partisan” speech, some are wondering what in fact turned at least 10 Republican votes Blunt thought he had against the bill.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported this morning that conservatives may have been taking their marching orders from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who “was whipping against this up until the last minute” — despite issuing a statement supporting the bill as the vote was taking place:
MITCHELL: I’m told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, that it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know it, it was socialism. And then at the last minute comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place
COLUMBUS—A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election.
Michael L. Connell was served with a subpoena in Ohio on Sept. 22 in a case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. Connell, president of GovTech Solutions and New Media Communications, is a website designer and IT professional who created a website for Ohio’s secretary of state that presented the results of the 2004 election in real time as they were tabulated.
At the time, Ohio’s Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, was also chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio.
Connell is refusing to testify or to produce documents relating to the system used in the 2004 and 2006 elections, lawyers say. His motion to quash the subpoena asserts that the request for documents is burdensome because the information sought should be “readily ascertainable through public records request” – but also, paradoxically, because “it seeks confidential, trade secrets, and/or proprietary information” that “have independent economic value” and “are not known to the public, or even to non-designated personnel within or working for Mr. Connell’s business.”
According to sources close to the office of Clifford Arnebeck, one of the Ohio attorneys who brought the case, Arnebeck intends to ask the court to compel Connell to testify. An emergency conference with the judge, originally scheduled for Monday, is to be rescheduled.
It takes a hard heart not to like Sarah Palin. She has a winning personal story. She can be poised, charming and funny. As she showed at the Republican National Convention, her ability to deliver set-piece speeches — a big part of the job for all politicians, but especially Presidents — is considerable. On balance, she’s probably an asset to John McCain. But we should stop pretending that she is ready now or anytime in the forseeable future to be Commander-in-Chief.
I reached this conclusion after watching the foreign-policy portion of her disastrous Sept. 25 interview with Katie Couric. A number of commentators, including The Atlantic’s James Fallows and Slate’s Christopher Beam, have said that Palin resembled, in Beam’s words, “a high-schooler trying to BS her way through a book report,” which is an insult to both high-schoolers and B.S. Palin’s answers were hesitant, convoluted and at times — like when she appeared to suggest that Vladimir Putin might be preparing a one-man airborne invasion of Alaska — downright loony.
The Record, of Stockton, California, may not be the most well-known of newspapers, but they have been, for a number of decades, one of the most consistent. The last time the paper endorsed a Democrat for the White House, the year was 1936 and the lucky endorsee was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Since then, the closest a Democrat has come was in 1992, when they endorsed neither Bill Clinton nor George H. W. Bush to send a message that “a larger role for the third-party candidate” was warranted.
That’s all changed over the weekend, in a move the California paper describes as a turning of the “tide”:
For the first time in 72 years, The Record is endorsing a Democrat for president.
William K. Black is Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was counsel to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and was a whistleblower in the Keating Five scandal. His book on the crisis is “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.”
Twenty-one years ago today five U.S. senators met with federal savings and loan regulators at the request of Charles Keating, who controlled Lincoln Savings and Loan. They became known as the “Keating Five"—Alan Cranston, D-Calif., Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., John Glenn, D-Ohio, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. The Keating Five meeting was the event that transformed the S&L debacle from a story buried in the business section to one of the worst financial and political scandals in U.S. history (though the current financial crises have proven even worse).
The Keating Five, including McCain, were perfectly situated to take action to protect their constituents. They could have held oversight hearings. They could have warned the widows. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” an anonymous commenter one said (in a statement generally, but inaccurately, attributed to Edmund Burke). These men did nothing.
Lincoln was (and remains) the most expensive S&L failure of an insured U.S. depository, costing the taxpayers $3.4 billion. Keating recruited the senators because the regulators were about to remove his control over Lincoln. The regulators had discovered that Lincoln had large losses and was engaged in widespread fraud and forgeries designed to hide its violation of the “direct investment” rule. That violation was the largest in history — over $600 million. S&Ls that had large amounts of direct investment always failed. Direct investments were fatal not because of their intrinsic risk, but because they were superb aids to accounting fraud, the “weapon of choice” of financial firms.
McCain suspends campaign, wants to delay debate until after bailout vote
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/24 at 04:43 PM
Rawstory.com
Muriel Kane and Dave Edwards, 09/24/08
John McCain has said he will suspend his presidential campaign Thursday and wants to postpone Friday’s scheduled debate with Democratic candidate Barack Obama to return to Washington and work on a solution to the financial crisis gripping the country.
Obama said he was caught off guard by McCain’s televised proposal and insisted that the American people deserved to hear the two candidates outline their economic proposals during their first side-by-side appearance.
“It’s my belief that this is exactly the time that the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess,” Obama said. “I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to be able to deal with more than one thing at once. I think there is no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country.”
New York Times, 09/24/08
By JACKIE CALMES and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.
The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.
Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis & Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.
Declaring yesterday that they are “done answering questions” about Troopergate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) and her aides have refused to cooperate with the legislative assembly’s investigation into allegations she wrongfully fired the police commissioner. Instead, they are answering only to the Personnel Board investigation — a board of three people appointed by the governor. (All three were appointed by former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, and one was reappointed by Palin.)
Today, the Anchorage Daily News reports that Palin could end the Personnel Board hearing “simply by refusing to cooperate.” State law allows the person who filed the complaint — in this case, Palin herself — to end the investigation by refusing to participate:
Alaska Statute 39.52.310: (i) The unwillingness of a complainant to assist in an investigation, the withdrawal of a complaint, or restitution by the subject of the complaint may, but need not in and of itself, justify termination of an investigation or proceeding.
The investigation, in other words, could end any moment Palin — or the McCain campaign — decides it’s going too far. Alternatively, even if the Personnel Board inquiry is allowed to be completed, its findings could remain secret. “The proceedings of the board are conducted in secret,” the New York Times reported, and according to former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, it may never release its findings publicly:
Barack Obama rejected the proposal—put forward by John McCain today—that the two presidential candidates leave the campaign trail, delay Friday’s debate, and return to Washington to work on a bailout package for the economy,
“Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time,” he said, “it is not necessary for us to think we can do only one thing and suspend everything else.”
Expressing concern about infusing “Capitol Hill with presidential politics,” Obama said it was his desire to see the debate go forward.
“With respect to the debates it is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in roughly 40 days will be responsible for this mess,” he said. “I think it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. I don’t see why we can’t be constructive in helping with this problem.”
Obama, who would not commit to taking advertisements off the air as McCain’s campaign has, delivered his remarks hours after McCain announced the suspension of his campaign. The Arizona Republican insisted that it was time for the two candidates to return to work to help push forward a bi-partisan bailout package to deal with the financial crisis.
Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/24 at 03:58 PM
NaomiKlein.org
09/22/08
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).
The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to “return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms.” In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow “competition” (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.
A 1992 video featuring a Republican senator, Republican congressman and top Capitol Hill staffers who worked on Vietnam prisoner of war and missing in action issues say John McCain collaborated with North Vietnamese while a POW, and then covered up that involvement to the detriment of POW/MIA families seeking access to classified Pentagon records about their own family members.
Watch the Video
The video raises probing questions about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee’s war record, especially after McCain made his captivity a major part of his qualifications for the presidency at the Republican National Convention. In 2004, the GOP focused on Democratic nominee John Kerry’s war record to criticize his candidacy.
To date, the video has been posted on a handful of blogs but has been ignored by the mainstream media. While it features Republican stalwarts on POW/MIA issues, it also suggests that McCain’s war records at the Pentagon and in North Vietnam would reveal potentially very controversial details about the GOP’s presidential candidate.
The nearly eight-minute video is posted on YouTube under “Vietnam Veterans Against McCain.” It begins with the title, “1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs,” and features ex-Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), Rep. Robert Dornan (R-CA), senate staffers Tracy Usry, James Lucier, and military family members Lynn O’Shea, of the National Alliance of Families and retired Army Cpl. Bob Dumas, whose brother was a POW lost in the Korean War, and Joseph Douglass, Jr., author of Betrayed, about America’s missing POWs. The video has no author credits.
Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute; a longer version of this article is available at nationinstitute.org.
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them
The Bush administration’s proposal to bail out some of Wall Street’s biggest players with an unprecedented transfer of public wealth to the private sector sent shock-waves throughout the nation.
Already deep in deficit, the administration wants to borrow $700 billion dollars—in addition to the $900 billion already spent this year to prop up troubled lending institutions and deal with the fall-out from the housing crisis—and entrust it to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, fresh from a long run on Wall Street himself. He’d then buy up worthless paper from struggling banks.
Who would get the money? Nobody knows. Paulson says he wants to hire Wall Street firms to oversee the process.
Under Bush’s plan, the taxpayer would get little, if anything, in return. The whole thing would happen without Congressional oversight, save for a semi-annual report on the process, and Paulson’s actions would be beyond challenge in the courts.
It is an economic coup d’etat in the making. And people are talking about little else. Here’s 10 things that have been on our radars ...
Sen. Barack Obama holds a lead in four key battleground states, but it appears that the candidates’ handling of economic questions in coming debates could be the key to their fates there.
Sen. Obama holds slight leads over Sen. John McCain in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and Wisconsin, where Quinnipiac University has conducted separate, new polls for The Wall Street Journal and Washingtonpost.com. But his leads aren’t commanding, and all the states appear to be in play.
The best news for Sen. Obama in the new surveys may come in Colorado, where he has moved to a four percentage point lead, 49% to 45%, after being down by a percentage point in August. That means Colorado presents a good opportunity for Sen. Obama to swing a Republican state to his favor this year.
Meanwhile, Sen. McCain’s best shot at turning a blue state red might be Minnesota, where Sen. Obama leads by only a 47% to 45% margin, which falls within the poll’s margin of error. That’s a significantly reduced margin from the 17-point advantage Sen. Obama enjoyed in June in the state that hosted Sen. McCain’s nominating convention.
In Michigan, meanwhile, Sen. Obama holds a four-point edge, 48% to 44%. And his largest lead is in Wisconsin, where the race stands at 49% to 42%.
The findings suggest the parties’ widely watched national conventions didn’t produce a significant wave for either candidate in these crucial states.
Part 1: McCain’s Pro-Vet Image Clashes With Record
PHOENIX — Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, continues to hold a substantial lead over his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, among military veterans — despite the fact that Obama has consistently voted for higher increases in veterans’ health-care spending and advocated sweeping reforms at the Depart. of Veteran Affairs.
The most recent Gallup poll of registered voters, conducted in mid-August shortly before the Republican National Convention, showed that among those who had served in the military, 56 percent backed McCain, compared to 34 percent for Obama. Among all registered voters, Obama led McCain 46 percent to 43 percent.
The poll found that veterans favored McCain not because he is considered a war hero after his almost six years as a POW in North Vietnam. Rather, Gallup emphasized that because most veterans tend to be Republican–47 percent said they were Republican or leaned toward being so– they were simply backing their party’s presidential nominee.
Senator Obama recently issued a Statement of Principles for the Treasury Proposal…
The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led to a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression.
But regardless of how we got here, the circumstances we face require decisive action because the jobs, savings, and economic security of millions of Americans are now at risk.
We must work quickly in a bipartisan fashion to resolve this crisis and restore our financial sector so capital is flowing again and we can avert an even broader economic catastrophe. We also should recognize that economic recovery requires that we act, not just to address the crisis on Wall Street, but also the crisis on Main Street and around kitchen tables across America.
But thus far, the Administration has only offered a concept with a staggering price tag, not a plan.
Yesterday, President Bush announced his $700 billion plan to buy out troubled financial institutions. Demanding enormous faith in his administration’s stewardship, the plan “would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt,” and to hire outside firms “to help manage its purchases.” Further, the proposal provides no oversight mechanism:
Sec. 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Bush is demanding unprecedented control over billions of dollars — with no oversight. His history of mismanaging taxpayer dollars should make Americans skeptical of his buyout plan:
Kopp hiring proved Palin’s fundamentalist street cred; (It’s all about the Supreme Court)
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/21 at 12:05 AM
Anchorage Daily News, 09/20/08
ALAN BORAAS
So far Gov. Palin’s handling of Alaska’s Troopergate has focused on why Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan was fired. An equally important question is why Chuck Kopp was hired to replace him.
On June 30, 2008, David Brody of CBS News reported John McCain met in North Carolina with Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, director of the multimillion- dollar Samaritan’s Place faith-based charitable organization. McCain was courting the religious right who, at the time, were skeptical of his social conservatism and his Christian qualifications. After the meeting Graham issued a statement praising McCain’s “personal faith” and added, “We had an opportunity to pray ... for God’s will to be done in this upcoming election.”
Subsequent events suggest that the price of support for McCain by the fundamentalist Christian leadership would be a vice presidential candidate of their liking. Gov. Palin was a logical choice for Franklin Graham, whose ties to Alaska include a palatial, by Bush Alaska standards, second home in Port Alsworth: a community that has often served as a retreat for Christian fundamentalist leaders.
But Gov. Palin did not promote a socially conservative agenda during her first two years as governor and some Alaska right-wing commentators called her an economic liberal. Send us a sign, national fundamentalist Christian leaders seemingly said, that proves your credentials. In firing Monegan and hiring Kopp, Palin would have gained a controversial measure of revenge in a family dispute and established her standing as a Christian conservative politician.
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
McCain and the POW Cover-up Sydney H. Schanberg: The war hero has long sought to bury information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.
A Man Who Gets His Way Journalists & Journalism
Sydney H. Schanberg: A veteran newsman recalls Rupert Murdoch. Despite his promises to protect editorial integrity of the Wall Street Journal, don’t expect him to get a soul transplant any time soon.
Obama campaign files suit over “voter-foreclosure” plans
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/17 at 08:20 AM
The Michigan Messenger
By Ed Brayton 9/16/08
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan over the Michigan GOP’s plan to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls, as first reported by the Michigan Messenger.
Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, announced the lawsuit in a conference call with reporters this afternoon. It was filed on behalf of the campaign, the party and three Michigan residents who have had their houses foreclosed upon in recent months.
Bauer called the GOP plan to use foreclosure lists “a new and especially repellent version of caging.” Caging is a technique of challenging voters where they take lists of addresses, mail to them with a “do not forward” marking and if for whatever reason those mailings are returned, they use this as a basis for claiming that the voter no longer lives at the address at which they are registered.
NYTimes.com, 09/17/08
EDMUND L. ANDREWS, MICHAEL J. de la MERCED, MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
WASHINGTON — Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.
The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.
With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
Poll: Palin’s Favorable Rating Slips 10 Points in 3 Days
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/17 at 08:04 AM
Pensito Review
Jon Ponder | Sep. 16, 2008
More evidence of a slide, cited by Newsweek:
Over the course of a single weekend, Palin went from being the most popular White House hopeful to the least.
Since Sept. 13, Palin’s unfavorables have climbed from 30 percent to 36 percent. Meanwhile, her favorables have slipped from 52 percent to 48 percent. That’s a three-day net swing of -10 points, and it leaves her in the Sept. 15 Diageo/Hotline tracking poll tied for the smallest favorability split (+12) of any of the Final Four. Over the course of a single weekend, in other words, Palin went from being the most popular White House hopeful to the least.
What happened? I’d argue that Palin’s considerable novelty is starting to wear off. In part it’s the result of a steady stream of unhelpful stories: her unfamiliarity with the Bush Doctrine during last Thursday’s interview with Charles Gibson … her refusal to cooperate with the Troopergate investigation; her repeated stretching of the truth on everything from earmarks to the Bridge to Nowhere to the amount of energy her state produces. That stuff has a way of inspiring disapproval and eroding one’s support. (Interestingly, Palin’s preparedness numbers–about 50 percent yes, 45 percent no–haven’t budged.)
Huffingtonpost.com
September 9, 2008 | 01:32 PM (EST)
Three Things You Can Do Personally To Affect the Outcome of the Election
Over the last couple of days I’ve received more calls and emails than I can count from people with fear in their voices. They want to know what to make of McCain’s post- convention bounce in the polls. They want to know if Obama can still win. Most of all they want to know what they can do to help.
McCain’s post-convention bounce resulted from two factors:
First, was three days of the Republican Convention, during which large numbers of viewers watched Republicans and fellow travelers like Joe Lieberman repeatedly deliver a carefully crafted message. They blasted Obama. They postured about change. Their kids looked adorable. Subject anyone to largely one-sided messaging for a week and some will be convinced. Some of that will stick; much will disappear as memories of that experience fades.
Second - and more importantly - McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin moved a lot of white women. The Washington Post poll released today showed white women shifting from an eight-point pre-convention lead for Obama to a 12-point McCain advantage.
What does this mean for the outcome of the race?
The race today is about even, with McCain having a slight advantage in the popular vote, and Obama having an advantage in electoral votes. The effect of exposure to the convention itself will likely diminish over the next several weeks. In 2004, Bush moved to a nine-point lead after his convention and most of that gap disappeared within a few weeks.
The long-term effect of the Palin factor is less certain. Much depends on what all of us choose to do now.
There are about ten likely electoral vote scenarios that could develop in this race. In eight of them, Obama is the winner. The underlying desire for change, and the overall disgust with the Bush-Republican administration of the last eight years, is just as real as ever. The website http://www.Fivethirtyeight.com employs a sophisticated projection model to predict electoral outcomes, and it still gives 61.2% odds that Obama will win in November.
But this week’s polling numbers have certainly given a wakeup call to lots of Progressives who might have become complacent in their views that Obama’s victory was a lock.
What did we think - that the gang who has run this country for the last eight years would simply roll over and surrender without a fight? These guys are very good at running elections and they will bite and claw and gouge eyes to win.
Luckily, we don’t have to just sit by and watch from the sidelines, and hope that someone else makes the right call or runs the right TV spots.
There are three steps that every one of us can take that will actually impact directly the ultimate outcome of this race.
1). Take personal responsibility to win this election. More than any election in modern political history, this election will be decided by the work of millions of people who talk to their neighbors, make small donations on the internet and - most importantly - demand that every voter go out to vote.
And I mean demand that every voter go to the polls. To win, we need to change the electorate. In this election, friends don’t let friends not vote. There is too much at stake. The damage of another four years of Bush-McCain economic and foreign policy would be catastrophic for the future of our children, and children all over the world.
The key point is this: don’t just whine to your friends about what the campaign should do, or the party should do, or the candidate should do. Take personal responsibility to do the two things that will win: persuade swing voters, and mobilize voters who won’t vote unless they are motivated to do so.
The Obama campaign has the best field operation in the history of presidential politics. Join it. Take an assignment. Make contributions on the Internet. Hold a fundraiser. Write a letter to the editor. Most important: don’t sit on the sidelines.
The recent polls should provide a call to arms to everyone who wants change in America or believes in progressive values.
Don’t think what you do is inconsequential or can’t affect the outcome. My firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, ran the field operation for a wonderful congressional candidate in south Florida in 2000. We did a great job. We knocked on every door. We pulled out lots of votes. But we lost by 550 votes. It was the same 550 votes that beat Al Gore and gave us George Bush.
If we had just dragged out one more Democrat per precinct in the closing hours of that Election Day, America would have been spared the nightmare of the last eight years. Each of us could decide the outcome of this election, too.
In 2008, Progressives in America are presented with an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally change the direction of American politics. As I argued in my book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, we could be on the verge of a new progressive era in America. If we win, progressives will be able to take the offensive and reshape the political and economic structures of our society for the first time in four decades. We can come out of our defensive crouch and help shape a democratic society infused with progressive values, with the fundamental principle that “we’re all in this together” not “all in this alone.”
But to have that opportunity we have to win - and winning requires that we all stand up now and take the future into our own hands. The game is on. Get out of the stands and onto the field, into the arena. The work we do over the next 56 days could be the most important that any of us will do in our lives. Let’s not miss this precious opportunity to make history.
Newly released video shows how easily electronic voting machines can be hacked, pried open
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/09 at 11:32 AM
Rawstory.com, 09/09/08
John Byrne
A newly released video depicts an eerie scenario in which voting machines produce an XXXXXX result for the ballot position of US senator after a vote is placed and then replaces the XXXXXX with an individual’s name.
Though it appears to be part of an eerie low-budget sci-fi thriller, the producers weren’t B-movie conspiracy theorists. Instead, they were students from the University of Santa Barbara’s Security Group, participating in a project commissioned by the California Secretary of State.
Why the video was posted now despite the fact that the project took place last year remains unknown. It may have its roots in a legal threat issued by the voting machines’ manufacturer in March. In a sharply worded letter to a Princeton research team that had audited their machines before, Edwin Smith, the VP for “Compliance/Quality/Certification,” said that the publication of any security audit of “Sequoia software [or] its behavior” would force the company to “take appropriate steps” through its “retained counsel.”
Last week, Virginia’s Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech, issued a press release regarding proper protocol for college students registering to vote. In interviews with Inside Higher Ed Tuesday, it was described by turns as “unsubstantiated,” “chilling,” and (more generously) as not “incredibly encouraging or friendly.”
It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”
The county registrar of elections said Tuesday that the memo was intended to counteract the absence of cautionary information given to students signed up through the ubiquitous get-out-the-vote registration drives. Generally speaking, however, those interviewed for this article said the warnings are, at worst, farfetched and misleading, or, at best, overstated and not typically supported in reality.
Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home; Taxpayers Also Funded Family’s Travel
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/09 at 07:42 AM
Washingtonpost.com, 09/09/08
By James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick
ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8—Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.
The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.
Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.
The governor’s daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.
Gov. Palin hiding husband’s correspondence related to trooper union
Posted by admincathlyn on 09/08 at 04:36 PM
Rawstory.com
Nick Juliano, September 8, 2008
E-mails between Todd Palin, Gov’s aides among hundreds kept secret
Dozens of e-mails exchanged among several government employees and Todd Palin, the husband of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin who has no formal role in her administration, are not being turned over in response to an open records request in the state.
The e-mails are being kept secret ostensibly because they deal with policy deliberations between the governor and her staff, the contents of which do not have to be disclosed to the public. However, Todd Palin’s presence in the e-mail chains seems to belie concerns that their contents need to remain strictly in the domain of the state government.
Another possible reason for the withholding is the political damage that could accompany disclosure of the e-mails. According to subject lines of the e-mails, they seem to deal with a public sector union representing Alaska state troopers that the Palins have been feuding with for years as well as one of the governor’s main political opponents.
Mother Jones’ David Corn outlined the backstory behind the missing e-mails Monday.
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