OBAMA: CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN--NOT!, Part 4

Third, vote third party! In most states, progressives can choose the Independent Ralph Nader or the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney, and conservatives can choose the Libertarian Bob Barr or the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin. It would really shake the political system if, for example, McKinney and Barr outpolled Obama and McCain. McKinney and Barr each served multiple terms in the House of Representatives, longer than Obama has been in the Senate; they can be trusted to know what to do in the Oval Office. Consider your third party options lower on the ticket as well. For example, in San Francisco, progressives who are fed up with the pro-war, pro-bailout, "impeachment is off the table" Nancy Pelosi, can write-in independent Cindy Sheehan, who is thinking about starting a new political party after the election.13

Fourth, "Abandon All Fear, Ye Who Enter Here!" If you honestly believe that Barack Obama will make an excellent President, then by all means, vote for him. But if you are not voting so much FOR Obama as AGAINST McCain, think again. The Democrats (with very few exceptions, such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)) are the Republicans in slow motion. They are taking us in the same direction as the Republicans. The bailout bill, supported by both Obama and McCain, should have proven that to you. If the government really wanted to help us, it would have paid off the mortgages of all veterans making less than $250,000. And it would have passed a law mandating an adjustment of principle on every house that appraises for less than the mortgage balance, turning every ARM into a 30-year fixed at a reasonable rate and outlawing future adjustable rate mortgages. Instead, it is bailing out companies that are still hoarding, or spending lavishly on their executives. US banks bailed out by the Federal Government are still not lending in appreciable amounts, but they are rewarding shareholders and executives and buying up other banks.14

I have a colleague at my workplace who believes in voting for the candidate he thinks will produce the fewest body bags. But people are going to die under the current political system either way. It just depends or whether they die in a war,15  or whether they die anonymously on the street,16 or kill themselves and their families before they can be turned out of their homes.17  So the candidate you think will produce the fewest body bags may only be producing the fewest that can be more easily counted. Think about that.

Fifth, abandon identity politics, now and forever. The fact that a candidate has your skin color, your genitals, or is someone you would be comfortable having a beer with, is not a reason to vote for that person. Likewise, things like genitalia, skin color or ability to socialize with the working class, should not disqualify a candidate from getting your vote. It is the candidate's job to empathize with our needs and problems; we don't have to identify with the candidate. Part of why we are where we are is that we have voted ID politics. How many people felt that George W. Bush was one of them, or that Sarah Palin is one of them. (For all the election theft that took place in 2000 and 2004, tens of millions of people actually did vote for George W. Bush). Martin Luther King, Jr. was right,  "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Expand that to include all the other identifiers as well.

Last but not least when it comes to elections, think about ways our electoral system needs to be improved for future elections. Elections are too costly. What could this nation do with the money that is going into the Presidential and Congressional races? Add your state races and ballot measures. It's like asking how much health care we could buy with money that is currently going for insurance company overhead. The expenditure is obscene. This also limits public office to the wealthy and those who can get the financial help of people of extreme wealth.

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, Obama's national fundraiser is Penny Pritzker, of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. She is a billionairess and a sub-prime mortgage queen.18  As President, how can Obama seriously tackle the issue of sub-prime mortgages and mortgage backed securities with such a person so prominently on his team? Yet how could he stand on the threshold of the White House without Pritzker, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and other lower profile billionaires backing him?

The media are another problem. We have to demand to hear all the voices in a campaign season, not just the ones that the big networks present to us as viable. The decision on viability is OURS to make,not the punditocracy's. Debates must be returned to a neutral group such as the League of Women Voters, and not subject to the bargaining of the major party favorites or to rules that exclude candidates. Elections belong to the people, not the candidates or parties. Things will change when we realize that what is ours has been taken and we step up to take it back.

Reforming how we vote is critical. Electronic voting must be abolished. Yes, older methods were open to fraud as well, but a vote was not so easily subverted as it can be with computers. To see just how easy it can be, go to my blog at http://kelliasworld.wordpress.com/, click on the big tag called Electronic Voting, and scroll down to the videos on how to hack an electronic voting machine. Paper ballots counted publicly by hand is the way to go.

What then?

Of course, voting is just the first step. There is much to be done after an election day, and various ways to do it. You may not have the time or inclination to be politically active in the conventional sense. But you can at least educate yourself about what kind of politics and economics you would like to see in this country and the world.

The "other side", and by this I mean the ultra-wealthy, know what they want. David Rockefeller summed it up very well when he said:

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers (emphasis mine) is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.19

Believe what you want can come about quickly if a critical mass of people make up their minds that it needs to be that way. Incrementalism may have gotten us into this mess, but we don't have time for incrementalism to get us out of it.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.20 --Margaret Mead

ENDNOTES

 1  |  2  |  3  |  4