The New Opposition: Republicans Take Minority Role in Two-Party System

The Republicans have taken on the role of the opposition party, and they’ve already shown that they’re not planning on taking prisoners. Where the Democrats have a tendency to try to seem bipartisan and for the most part let their rival administrations appoint the Cabinet members and federal judges they want, the Republicans work hard to force Democrat administrations to go with their second or third choice because of tax evasion and nanny problems. I’m not saying it’s OK to have illegal immigrant nannies, but my point is that if the Democrats would have done their job when they were the opposition party, maybe some of the rancid fish working under Bush would have been thrown back into the pond.

I’m proud to say, by the way, that I got this video up a couple of days ago, which means I beat out the networks; the story of the strong Republican opposition to the stimulus plan was all over CNN yesterday. Plus I totally caught Anderson Cooper in a really yellow move, before a commercial break the teaser was: What really caused the plane to crash in the Hudson River? A new report reveals blah blah blah… And after the commercial, the story is: Bird parts were found in the plane engines. OK, so what Really caused the plane crash was what we’ve been told all along? They’re using this thing to get people to sit through the commercial break now. It’s good news that everyone survived, but otherwise it’s not that interesting a news story. Can we move on to something else?

Being the minority party allows the Republicans to take on the facade of being against the direction in which things are currently moving in Washington, and have been since they were in the majority. The Democrats have gotten in trouble for being too bipartisan in the horrible legislation passed under the Bush administration, but the Republicans are successfully distancing themselves from bailout legislation today, even though their opposition is based on the failed concept of job creation through tax cuts and their attempts to break the United Auto Workers union.

When they are in the minority, both parties use their position, although they do use what little power they have to actually make legislative change, to attempt to define themselves. The Democrats try to define themselves as the party willing to compromise to get things accomplished, and the Republicans are taking on the stronger position of a real opposition, rather than cooperation, party. They’re shutting out the new administration’s legislation, and putting together the talking points to change public opinion. The Democrats don’t have the luxury of being able to really convince people that they were opposed to what the Republican majority was doing because they were voting Yea, and they have to depend on the talking points put forward by the progressives who would really rather be voting third party anyway.

The war of words is coming on strong. The media has already been using terms like “terrorists’ rights” to define Obama’s shutting down Guantanamo, and Dick Cheney has taken it a step further, claiming that Obama will give the terrorists the opportunity they need to attack us with nuclear weapons. He fails to point out that the terrorists have had U.S. soldiers conveniently shipped over to them in droves for the last five years in Iraq, so they’ve been able to kill Americans without having to falsify passports or pay for airline tickets. Now, the headlines are all saying “Maximum Wage” and then in little tiny letters (for corporations accepting bailout money). Obama set the limit at $100,000 above his own salary, when some of us would be willing to kill for $50,000 a year (or at least work for a corporation that systematically kills people). I think there’s nothing to complain about here, although it is legally questionable to impose these limits and even morally questionable to add these limits to the deal after giving away the bailouts.

The corporations receiving bailouts, however, are giving big bonuses for a reason. What bad performance? The corporations have an excuse to do all the downsizing they want with no nagging naysayers because “everyone has to tighten their belts”, and they’ve successfully convinced the government to give them billions of dollars in free money. That’s 100% profit. I’d say it’s time for big bonuses all around, and pop open that champagne. Even if a limit is imposed this year, these executives will be rewarded later for this performance unless some kind of permanent limit is placed. I’m not even in favor of putting a permanent limit to executive pay. Instead, we should be demanding that the corporations pay their workers a real living wage, regardless of where they outsource the work, and installing the kinds of good business practices and regulations our government has been working hard on phasing out over the years, and whatever they have left over after that, let them enjoy it as they please.

The Bush Legacy in the Middle East – Holy Wars and International Lawlessness

The Difference Between Lawless Corporatism and Marxist Communism – 3%?

I have stated in my other blog that I was impressed with some of the things Barack Obama has said and proposed, but I maintain that there was too little difference between the two major candidates in the last election. Before getting into how similar they are, I want to make it perfectly clear that their differences will have an effect on the U.S., its people, and the rest of the world, and that we are better off with Obama as president than John McCain.

It struck me as funny the way the two sides were representing eachother during this presidential election, because one side, not so much Obama himself, who was trying to make the point that McCain shared policies with George W. Bush, but the peripheral Democratic narrative was that the Republican Party is the party of corporate cronyism and McCain is no better, and Sarah Palin was sent out to spread Joe the Plumber’s message that Barack Obama’s “spreading the wealth around” made him a socialist, and the peripheral argument went so far as to call him a Marxist Communist.

The main piece of evidence used by both sides was Obama’s proposal to reduce taxes in a range of the hundreds or a little over $1000 a year for working families, and to raise the amount paid by the top tax bracket by three percent. In other words, we’re supposed to believe that the difference between corporate cronyism and a Marxist welfare state is a three percent tax increase for maybe five percent of Americans. How dramatic!

The similarities don’t end there. Even the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation put together a comparison of the two tax plans, complete with biased analysis, poor documentation of sources, and misleading charts, that pointed out many similarities in the two candidates’ proposals concerning items on their agenda which get less national media coverage, such as the estate tax, which does only affect those who I would say are quite wealthy. Obama has mentioned that everyone wants a living wage, but he hasn’t dared mention actually writing legislation to require it.

As for other issues affected by the presidency, a real discussion of foreign policy was off the table. The rhetoric was certainly more belligerent on the McCain side, especially in Iraq, but as for actual policy, getting out of Iraq but leaving it in safe conditions, or returning victorious from Iraq, may not necessarily be very different. Both candidates support a long-term continued military presence. Obama stated that he will negotiate with hostile states without preconditions, which is a much better position than McCain’s, but does not affect the bias in favor of Israel in Middle Eastern policy. There has been no discussion of foreign policy in any other area than the Middle East, preconditions, and a little bit about Russia earlier in the campaign. Both candidates have taken a very aggressive stance on international affairs, and the kind of sneaky, dirty business happening in many nations around the world on the part of the U.S. government, such as in South America for half of the 20th century, or the failure to take a stand on atrocities, war, and poverty abroad, especially in Africa, are unlikely to change.

The main difference between the two was how they framed their arguments. As diplomat in chief, what the president says is important, so it does show movement in the right direction that we elected the candidate who best represented the ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality in his rhetoric, but if Obama fulfills his campaign promises to be exactly like Bush or maybe Bill Clinton in nearly every function of the office of the presidency, a significant and meaningful change will not be achieved.

Here are the real issues few people are talking about. The military industrial complex is taking half our budget, we are in debt, we are spending money on things that we shouldn’t be spending money on, like illegal wars, and saving money on things we need, like universal health care and the protection of the rights and well-being of the citizens of the U.S. We let corporations get away with murder, literally, unless you can come up with another name for polluting with full knowledge that not only is it causing global warming, but it is killing pockets of people in densely polluted areas all over the world.

What follows are my own words, and I haven’t heard of any public figure addressing this issue. We all should know by now that the middle class is shrinking, but I want to look at what’s happening more in depth. I believe that the middle class was formed because the labor movements, the populists, the socialists, and the people who were just plain fed up with deadly working conditions, slave hours, and payment engineered to keep them in debt to the company towns where they lived, organized and fought for their rights to a living wage (then called a minimum wage), their rights to organize and unionize, and their rights to safe working conditions. They bled and died to win these rights, the out-of-control big businesses they worked for actually hiring strikebusters to suppress them with both clubs and firearms.

Today we have a middle class because these people fought for their rights, and because a Depression-era progressive movement elected a president, Franklin Roosevelt, came up with a plan, the New Deal, which was a comprehensive package to provide temporary work building innovative infrastructure and bringing power lines even to rural areas, building dams, and building the national parks, to young people who were too poor to study, and gave them funding to go to school and get an education.

Now the middle class is disappearing because we have failed to keep up this progressive work. Congress has time and again refused to raise the minimum wage, which would be at $10 today, on a national level, not to mention what it would be in cities, were it adjusted for inflation. Today more and more young people are living with financial help from their parents, working at jobs that don’t pay the bills. Many believe that this is temporary, and that as they advance in their careers, they will earn enough money to start a family and buy a home eventually, but this may not be the case. Many promotions today come with very little pay raise, upward mobility between classes is at a low, and if you’re counting on becoming a manager where you work in order to make more money, you may be able to with time and hard work, and that’s fine for you, if they pay you a living wage, but there will always be more workers than managers, and they have a right to a future as well if they work. Work hours are getting longer, benefits are disappearing, and the dream of becoming a homeowner or even being able to pay your own rent and food and raise a family is fading away.

How is it possible for the system to continue in this direction? How can an entire generation be working poor? They’re getting help from their parents, and those who do not, simply slip between the cracks of the system and end up homeless, jailed, or otherwise excluded. As time goes on, more and more people will slip through the cracks as their families lose their homes, run out of savings, have to spend all their money on pharmaceuticals in their autumn years, get tired of helping their kids and disown them, or die. Without a living wage, this problem is going to grow. It is an international problem, and businesses are moving into nations all over the world and slowly robbing the middle class of their livelihood through stagnant wages.

The solution I propose is to put a living wage and good working conditions requirement within the U.S., and on all products and services imported to the U.S. That’s not going to happen without a strong national progressive movement, and the impressive Obama win came with some real ballot initiative losses for the progressive movement, like the California same-sex marriage proposition. What we can do is support third parties and living wage initiatives on a local level, win local elections, and show that there is a real progressive movement happening under the two-party noise.

Three percent isn’t enough of a difference. We need more voices.

GOP Defeated, Now We Can Start Talking About Third Parties

We’ve successfully elected the lesser of two evils, and it will make a real difference for the United States and for the world. I’m proud of this fact; I like Barack Obama, although I do realize that he is not likely to work toward the kind of real change we need. The difference between the candidates is only a few percentage points on most issues. But it is a step in the right direction, and it shows that, although it may be just as much for show as anything else, we do have the power to enact some amount of change when things are at their worst.

During the worst of times is when we most need the kind of new and innovative ideas that are only coming from third parties. When Obama says he’s going to invest in alternative energy, I think he might throw some money at it, probably more than Bush has, but I don’t believe we’re going to have a real solution to our energy problems, at least not the way we would with a Green Party Congress and a Ralph Nader presidency.

But during the worst of times, we are most afraid of giving our votes to third party candidates for fear of contributing to the election of the most frighteningly dangerous candidates out there. That’s why now, now that the White House and Congress are under the control of the Democratic party (and as the evening progresses, we’ll find out whether the Democrats reach 60 Senate seats), we have to take advantage of the current political environment and the post-election interest in analyzing the state of our democracy to build a third party movement.

If you look at the rest of this site, you’ll see that I’m proposing to organize voters who want to vote for third parties but prefer to vote strategically when necessary, to show that this is a group with enough numbers to make a difference, especially in the local elections which we tend to ignore with the nationalized media focusing on the President. The idea is not to destroy what we have achieved in this important election, but to expand upon it, make a real difference on a local level, and show our strength and continue to pressure the political establishment to open up the system to a plurality of voices. Given unconditional support just because they’re better than the worst candidates, they will quickly fall into old habits, failing to take a stand to make a real difference in the lives of the people.

Remember, things were far from perfect before George W. Bush came along and made a mess of the nation. Change back to the way things were isn’t good enough. We have to keep fighting, and we have to go further. Congratulations to Obama and the Democratic Party, and I hope they keep their promises, but we need still more change and we will make our voices heard and make it a reality.

New Project to Organize Potential Third-Party Voters

This is a new site dedicated to solving the problem of voting for third parties without wasting what little influence you have in the two-party system.

In the United States, many people would like to vote for third parties, and are not satisfied with the two parties which almost exclusively control the political process. Many of us feel like the two parties have very few differences, and given the fact that there are only two parties with any real chance of winning important elections, they don’t need to differentiate themselves. Rather than representing the people, whose votes they have a 50-50 chance of getting anyway, they prefer to represent the interests of the sources of funding for their campaigns and the business interests of their wealthy friends. It’s a government by the wealthy, of the wealthy, and for the wealthy.

The only thing keeping many Americans from voting for third party candidates is the fear of throwing their vote away, and not being able to elect the lesser of two evils. I contend that they have a point; while the differences between the two major parties may be few, they have shown themselves to be important enough to fight for.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t find creative ways to influence the policy of the nation we live in. The simple threat of voting for a third party forces candidates to address issues they would otherwise ignore. I’m looking for a way to make it possible to actually get these candidates in office, as well.

Here is my proposal: If we, the voters who are tired of voting for the two major parties but are unwilling to give up our right to vote strategically for the less harmful candidate, create an organization, we can create a database, keep track of how many members of our organization are in each district, and start to make a difference. If we have the numbers to win an election, on a local, state, or national level, we will agree on a candidate and the members of our organization in the constituents involved will pledge to vote together and take the election. Failing to reach an agreement, without having enough pledged votes to really make a difference in an election, you can simply vote for your favorite candidate among those available, be they third-party candidates or the lesser of two evils.

It’s about organizing intelligently for change. The success of this concept depends on active participation, so please leave a comment, join the forum, email me at capitalocracy@gmail.com, join our community, write for this blog, and help create a real, effective movement for change.

Get your neighbors involved, because the best way for this movement to grow would be to start winning elections on a local and state level. We can make real change on a local level, and a show of force in the national political arena. Local politics are important. Remember, you don’t have just one vote, you have many, not just for the president, but for your representative, your Senator, your state representatives, your city council, your judges, in some cases, and your school board. There tends to be an information vacuum in local politics, and in many places, there is no opposition to the main party in power. If that’s the case where you live, join our organization, ask your neighbors to join you, and create an opposition party in your hometown.

If you’re interested in the idea, or if you have any questions, email me or comment here. Tell us what you think. Write articles on your political opinions and what kind of changes you’d like to see that the major parties aren’t offering and send them in, and I may post them here. Spread the word. If you take part, we can put together a movement which will really make change, without taking away the influence you already have in the two-party system.