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October 21, 2007

Fractal Politics-- Local Trickle Down of Campaign Lie, Distortion Tactics

By Rob Kall

In Bucks county, where I live, we see attack ads, framing and distortion and lies that come from the same mold that spawned the ugly campaign strategies of Karl Rove and Grover "starve government to make it small enough to drown in a bathtub" Norquist. The next few weeks should be spent on local politics, building the base, doing GOTV, and reminding voters which candidates and parties got them in the mess they are now in.

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In Bucks county, PA, where I live, we see attack ads, framing and distortion and lies that come from the same mold that spawned the ugly campaign strategies of Karl Rove and Grover "starve-government-to-make-it-small -enough-to-drown-in-a-bathtub" Norquist.

The next few weeks should be spent on local politics, building the base, doing GOTV, and reminding voters which candidates and parties got them in the mess they are now in.

When right wingers oppose big government spending, they're anti tax, anti-socialism, anti-big government. When Democrats oppose gazillion dollar boondoggle projects that will raise taxes, the right wing spin machine accuses them of partisan politics. They did it in congress with the SCHIP program and now they're doing it in Bucks county PA with a courthouse boondoggle.

Already, estimates for the cost of the courthouse have gone up massively, and local Democrat supervisor candidates Marseglia and Santarsiero project that ultimately it will cost over $200 million. With a population of about 600,000, that works out to more than $1300 for a family of four.

Since Bucks county has a huge reputation for only hiring partisan contractors who register and contribute Republican, you have to wonder, well, really, there's no need to wonder at all, if the Republicans win, who will be awarded the contracts for the Courthouse boondoggle.

We see this same pattern nation and world-wide, under the Bush administration-- partisan, contracts put out without bidding, abuses and overcharges and failure to monitor and regulate.

The right wing spin machine that attacks Democrats and independents running against Republican incumbents has a well practiced, well honed attack method that can be highly effective. But it is almost always based on half truths or outright lies.

For example, in Bucks County, right wing attack ads claim that as township supervisor, county supervisor candidate Steve Santarsiero approved the biggest development in his township's history. The background is that a very large tract of land was on track to be developed as a multi-box store mall and industrial park (matrix.) Santarsiero says that he played a major roll in changing the development steamroller so a senior community was put in, with zero increase in school requirements, adding over a $million in revenues, drastically decreasing the impact of the development upon the community, compared to the mall and industrial park that had been planned.

Santarsiero should be applauded as an anti-sprawl hero, but not in the spin twisted world of the Bush/Rove inspired Bucks County Right wingers sponsoring the attack ads which support the Republican candidates.

Then, we have Polly Beere, who is trained and who has experience as a cardiologist and pathologist-- running for county coroner against a podiatrist who is not even licensed to diagnose or treat any parts of the body above the knee. This is more than a matter of competence. Ability to recognize the differences between accidental death, suicide and murder can leave murderers running free. Ability to recognize dangerous disease can leave dangerous megaviruses unchecked. So... why is it necessary for her to send in a letter to the editor correcting failure on the part of the local daily paper to even mention that the "doctor" she is running against is a foot doctor?

We see this over and over again in Bucks county-- that right wing incumbents are dreadfully underqualified, while their opponents on the left are far more educated and competent to do the job, and the right wingers make up for it with desceptive, or dishonest, ugly attack ads.

Bucks county is a microcosm that represents what has been happening, what has been perpetrated upon the US on the macro level-- where, throughout the federal government, former heads of industrial or partisan advocacy groups have been appointed, like wolves in the henhouse, to enforce, or more accurately, distort or ignore regulations.

The latest federal example is the temporary appointee Susan Orr, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (DASPA). She would oversee Title X, the nation's family planning program. Considering that she has made unbelievably anti contraception statements, this appointment is an insult to Americans. Here's what CBS news reported:

Orr has been criticized for public statements which have indicated an anti-contraceptive view in areas of education, public policy and health insurance.

In 2000, while working as a policy director at the Family Research Council, she objected to a Washington, D.C., city council bill requiring health insurers to pay for contraceptives. By not including a “conscience clause” allowing employers to withhold contraceptive coverage, Orr said the council would force employers "to make a choice between serving God and serving the D.C. government.

"It's not about choice. It's not about health care. It's about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death," she said.

In April 2001, when President Bush proposed ending contraceptive coverage for federal employees, Orr said, "We're quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have it."

In February 2001 she told the Conservative Political Action Conference that President Bush's reinstatement of the "Mexico City Policy" (which prohibits federal funds going to organizations that provide, even as only part of their services, abortion) was proof that he is pro-life "in his heart." She also advocated against administration approval of RU-486."


Across the US, right wingers will, at local levels, in cities, towns, townships, counties and states, be attempting to recreate the toxic anti-government policies-- anti-child health care, anti corporate regulation, anti-environmental protection, anti carbon emission reduction-- anti-worker protections-- under the lame name of anti-socialism, anti tax, anti big government.

If the Democratic national party is smart (and I'm not saying they are. I am saying that so far, they have been spineless and too corporation and globalism friendly) they will spend a lot of money in the next few weeks fighting the stupid ads the right wingers are running. Here in Bucks county, the ads are misleading, dishonest or half true, deceptive ads about dem candidates raising taxes and failing to protect suburban sprawl. The national dems, who now have loads of money, compared to a flat busted RNC, should be doling about big budgets in close races, with general ads that say something along the lines :

Remember how the right wingers ran ads saying how bad the democrats would be in 2004? Remember how they threatened you with taxes and troubles, how they smeared. If you're happy with the candidates they supported, then vote for them. But if you know now that their attacks supported candidates who have made things worse, including blocking funding for health care for children and keeping a bad war going-- then vote for the people they are attacking-- and know that their ads are built on half truths and lies. Fool you once and it's their fault. Get fooled again, and you have only yourself to blame.
There's more. We know that in many districts where right wing incumbents are retiring, no replacement candidates have arisen yet. And in many close call districts where Dems won in 2006, no opposition candidates have come forward. Why? They're waiting to see how local races go. If the local Republicans do well, that will encourage stronger candidates to come forward, candidates who have to give up more, who have more to lose, if they run.
If the local Dems wiin, then they send a message that it does not look good for Republicans in the district. It will discourage the strongest candidates. So... I asked a local dem party leader yesterday if the National was supporting local county candidates, in the county where Patrick Murphy lost. Yes, Murphy won his election because of a handful of pockets of his district in Philly and Montgomery countiers.
You would think the DNC would have the sense to support some of the local county candidates, to set the stage for next year, helping local dems win in Bucks county, to intimidate the strongest candidates on the right from running. Nope, not the invertebrate dems at the national level. No spines, and it's looking more and more like, not much in the way of brains either. They may even be dumb enough to think that the Dems won in 2006 because of what they stood for, rather than total disgust with the right wing war party.
* * *
The problems we're seeing in Washington didn't start in Washington DC. They started locally and local politics is where the cleanup must begin. That means cleaning out a whole lot of politicians who have been going along to get along. It's time to throw a huge mass of incumbents out-- both Republican and Democrat-- particularly those who we've seen don't have the guts to face the tough choices necessary to get us out of Iraq, to care for children's health, to re-instate the constitutional protections thrown out by panic-stricken legislators afraid to stand up for democracy (FISA.)

The elections in November will probably have a very light turnout. The next few weeks will be important-- opportunities for you to do all you can to get absent ballots filled in, get voters registered and then do all you can to get out the vote. If you haven't yet, get in touch with your local organizers and get involved. Wear out some shoe leather.


Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel


Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.


His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.


Join the conversation:


On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution


and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation





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