Let's Be Clear On This Election

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happened this past Tuesday. This is what took place, the above. And it occurred because the Republicans and Republican Party has done four things to load the votes and elections their way.

First, they have loaded state after state and district after district with gerrymandered and heavily gerrymandered districts. They make those districts snake through areas in order to give themselves more votes. It's well-known and documented.

Second, they write, propose and get passed as many "voter ID" laws as they can, in their obvious and direct efforts to get fewer of the elderly, Blacks, Latinos, Hispanic, Mexican, minorities, poor and physically-challenged to vote. By doing this, they've made clear they get fewer Democrats in the voting booth.

Third, they helped tear down the Voting Rights Act in recent years so, again, they can get fewer minorities in general but Blacks, specifically, to vote.

Finally, all of this helps load the Electoral College their way so what happened Tuesday, what's shown above, happens. More vote for someone but the Electoral College snaps that vote away. Candidates like Al Gore, first, in 2000 and now, Hillary Clinton, this year, win the popular vote but don't officially win the election.

If you go to this link, it shows Hillary Clinton got nearly 6 hundred thousand more votes than Trump.

US elections 2016 live results

We cannot and we will not merely bemoan the system.  We must change it from within.

The Shameless Catherine Hanaway

Catherine Hanaway is rather famously running for the position of Missouri governor this year. She's backed by moneybags, government- and legislator-buying, St. Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield and her latest TV ad is just, as I said above, shameless.


She's back to the same, old, very tired Republican campaign tactics of running a fear-based campaign and it's not just disappointing, it's disgusting.

It's also a lie.

Missouri is not, in fact, in any way "lawless" or getting close to devolving into any state remotely resembling lawlessness. Not even close.

The ad mentions rioting in Ferguson, totally ignoring the fact that an American was killed, needlessly in that city and that the area is shown, statistically, to have police incidents that target blacks for arrests and prosecution.

Justice Department finds racial bias 

in Ferguson police

Ferguson Police Routinely Violate 

Rights of Blacks, Justice Dept. Finds

If there were any true "lawlessness", it might well be in the Police Department itself. And if not lawlessness, then certainly not just injustice but gross injustice.

I wrote about this some time ago, Rex Sinquefield and his clear, even blatant attempts to buy this political race and election, outright, as well as other legislators and elections:

Missourians, you and your government 

are being bought---and sold

Not satisfied to merely buy---and own---Missouri's governor, Mr. Sinquefield is also trying his utmost to also buy himself his own---our--Lieutenant Governor:

Missouri's big money man gives 

$1 million to 2016 lieutenant governor

Here's more of Mr. Sinquefield's political handiwork:

At $37 million and counting, mega-donor 

Sinquefield says he's not going anywhere

So let's be clear here, Missourians, let's be aware:

--First, our state is no way devolving into anything remotely close to "lawlessness.

--Second, these are just ugly, in our face fear-mongering tactics on the part of Ms. Hanaway and it's very typical, Republican campaign tactics we should no way fall for;

--Third and finally, Rex Sinquefield is, again, trying to buy his own government representatives and so, our government, our legislators.

Let's not fall for any of it, Missouri. It's shameful, again, all of it, ugly, and very clear attempts to scare us into voting Ms. Hanaway and people like her into government office.

Links:

Hanaway ties University of Missouri events, Ferguson and murders

 Missouri, a Best Example of the Worst in American Politics

Pay-to-Play Politics: How Money Defines the American 

Democracy

We Do Elections Very, Very Wrong, America

Sure, we Americans do and have done a lot of things right and well, absolutely or we wouldn't have gotten where we have, socially, sociologically and certainly economically, without question. (We've a lot--A LOT--of things wrong like maybe Korea but definitely Vietnam and that unlawful Iraq War and too many things about race, etc. but we'll save that for another time and day).

All that said, one thing we do wrong--and by wrong I mean deeply, wildly and very expensively wrong, all, is elections. Check out just a few notes on how the rest of the world does them:

The longest campaign in Canadian history was 10 weeks.

In the U.K., political parties can only spend $30 million in the year before an election.

In Germany, political parties release just one 90-second television ad.

In 2013, over two-thirds of income to Norway's political parties came from the government.

In Australia, voting is compulsory.

In Brazil, Election Day is on the weekend.

We just aren't very bright. 

We need to undo our election system and campaigns and campaign finance and all those "campaign contributions", folks.

We have got to Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government 

Links:  The Problems With Our Government--and Our Elections

National Elections: What the UK Does Right and We Americans Do So Wrong

So Done

I am so done with this election.

Done with candidates.

Done with debates.

Done with the two political parties (though done with one far more than the other, truth be told).

Done with announcements.

Done with campaigns.

Done with announcements, all of it.

And even ignoring we have, still, a little more than half of this month to go, ignoring February, we have 9 more months of this to go until the actual November election date.

Don't get me wrong, however.  I still know how important this election is and I'm still engaged and still decidedly for my candidate for the presidency but holy cow. These things go on and on and on.

We should be better than this.

We should be smarter than this.

And we are.

Or we could be.

I've written about this before. We could fix this and rather simply. Probably not easily but simply.

The Problems With Our Government--and Our Elections

We need to do what the Brits did, years ago, and limit our elections to one or, at most, two months in length, by law. This way, the big campaign money wouldn't be needed.

Too many Americans likely don't know that's what the Brits did or that that's how they run their elections---or that we could.

Could you imagine elections that don't last 2 years? I know I could. How much better, how much improved would that be?

We wouldn't have to waste all this time and all the money we do on the elections. 

Government officeholders wouldn't be perpetually running the next election race, just to get re-reelected.

We wouldn't have to go through this nonsense.

Link:   We could learn a lot from the U.K. election

National Elections: What the UK Does Right and We Americans Do So Wrong

Reporter Ari Shapiro, on NPR did a fantastic piece this week on the United Kingdom's elections. It so clearly points out what, as the title says, they do so wisely, so intelligently and what we do so backwards, so wrong and so needlessly expensively:

No Big Money Or TV Ads — What's With TheUK's Low-Key Election?

More than anything, they don't do big, they don't do them for long and they don't do expensive:

America experiences a long, drawn-out election fever, while the U.K. hardly shows any symptoms at all. That is to say, almost none of the events most strongly associated with an American presidential campaign are part of a typical British national election.

Take political rallies, where the bleachers fill with thousands of flag-waving, screaming supporters.

"I remember being in Denver in 2008," says London-based political consultant Steve Morgan. "The stadium was full, and thousands and thousands of people were outside, and millions more watching on television."

Morgan, who has worked in political campaigns in both countries, recalls the landmark moment when Barack Obama formally accepted his party's nomination to be president of the United States.

"We don't have that," he says.

The last time a British political leader tried to do something similar, says Morgan, "Was Sheffield in 1992, and it was Neil Kinnock."

The speech, three days before the election, was a disaster.

"The British media crucified him for trying to run an American-style campaign," says Morgan.

Kinnock's party lost that year, and no British politician has held a big rally like that since.

They--the Brits--very wisely put in a time limit for elections. They only last 4 months long, total. Can you imagine? How wonderful would that be?

Next:

Debates are another staple of American campaigns. There were four Presidential debates in 2012, including the Vice Presidential debate. Not so in the UK.

"Last election we had a leaders' debate for the first time," says political scientist Margaret Scammell of the London School of Economics. "We may or may not have another one this time."

There is no primary system so "there are no polarizing, surprising, wild-card candidates, and everything becomes far more predictable."

This sounds better all the time, doesn't it? Wait. It gets better:

"...in the U.K., 'We have very strict rules where you're not really allowed to advertise via television or radio as a political party,' says Katie Ghose. She's chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, a nonpartisan group that focuses on improving the way campaigns operate."

"We just think that there is really a grotesque amount of money spent in the U.S. on politics," says Ghose. That's a pretty widely-held view in Britain, which highlights a big cultural difference between the U.S. and the U.K.: In America, campaign laws value free speech above all else. The Supreme Court has ruled that limits on campaign spending may amount to limits on speech. In the U.K., people talk less about free speech and more about what Ghose calls "a level playing field."

"If you have one party that's just able to amass a load of money and shout louder than the others, that's not healthy for democracy," Ghose says. "And we wouldn't interpret freedom of speech to mean an unlimited ability to spend, spend, spend."

The hell of all this is that we could do this. There's no reason we couldn't. We could pass a law making elections only--what? One month? Two?  Then create a law making all those "campaign contributions" illegal. It would be a one-two punch, so to speak. And because elections would be so brief, it would make the possibility and feasibility of the campaign contributions ban work. Since there's no campaign, in essence, there would be no need for the campaign money.

It could work. Heck, it would work.

But the fact is, it has to come from us. It has to come from the people. We have to demand it. Who but the people buying elections think it shouldn't or wouldn't work?

Let's get this party started.

The Problems With Our Government--and Our Elections

The problems with our government are that

a) the elections for our representatives in our governement go on forever

b) we've made "campaign contributions" legal and

c) we've made unlimited spending on these campaigns not just legal but unlimited. That's insanity.

This is true for our national as well as state elections, too.

The fix?

We need to do what the Brits did, years ago, and limit our elections to one or, at most, two months in length, by law. This way, the big campaign money wouldn't be needed.

It's simple. It's badly, wildly needed. It's long overdue. It's simple.

But Americans and especially the wealthy and corporations won't easily go along with this just as so many don't understand the benefits of the Fairness Doctrine in our media we used to have.

We can only hope.

Fight and work for change.

And hope.

Link:  We could learn a lot from the U.K. election

3 Simple, Intelligent Improvements/Soutions to Our Current Problems

So simple. So smart. So helpful. So important.

Unlike

Fight to end campaign contributions

Surely we agree our government is badly broken and bought and paid for by the wealthy and corporations:



Please join:

Mayday PAC

Let's fight back.  We must.

Let's get our country back.  Back for the people.

Politics, elections and government in America today

Our government legislators and representatives have become prostitutes. Prostitutes in the truest sense of the word, to and for money, to and from businesses, corporations and the wealthy for money so they can afford their election campaigns and they can continue to remain in their political positions. It's constant. It is in no way even subtle. They're not sexual prostitutes, of course, but people exchanging money with a quid pro quo, certainly.

This is not healthy. This is not good for our nation.

Not good for the people or the nation in any way.

It only serves the wealthy and the corporations.


We must fight for change.

Why we must fight to get the big money out of our government

Why we must fight to end campaign contributions in elections in America.

Don't like our government?

What a question, right?  I mean, who does like our government of late?  Well, other than the wealthy and corporations who can and do get whatever they want because they can buy our legislators, their legislation, our laws and so, our government.  They love it, sure.  They're lining their pockets.

But us?

And the thing is, so many say they don't know what they or we should do to fix it, to fix the mess that is Washington, DC.

Well, the one thing I think we can all agree on, no matter if we're from the Left or Right or Middle or whatever.

That is, get the money out.

Get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of the money from the wealthy and corporations out of the government.

And to do that, it has to get out of our elections.

To that end, I propose five uncomplicated, clear, intelligent, straight-forward ways we could do just that--get the money out of our government.

First, legislate an end to the earlier ruling by the Supreme Court that is Citizens United .

To say that corporations can and should be able to unload untold millions and billions of dollars of their money into our elections is insanity. It weakens, badly, each of our own opinions and votes.  Corporations only exist for themselves and for their own existence and continued, ever-increasing profits. People exist for people and the nation exists for the betterment of the people. Those different needs and goals are all we need to know about why we need to work and legislate for us and not for corporations.

Second, Make it illegal to go to and from government positions and private companies. We have to kill the very famous "revolving door" from government to corporations and back. Once again, it puts the corporations first and people second, if even there.

Third, pass The American Anti-Corruption Act.

 



If a legislator is considering legislation that would effect a company, that same legislator shouldn't be able to take money or any remuneration of any sort from them. It makes sense. Again, it's not complicated.

Fourth, we have to fight to end campaign contributions, period, in the country. We have to get the money out of our election system so we consequently, get it also out of our government. We have to eliminate the legal ability for companies and the wealthy to give our representatives these bribes, these "contributions", this money sjust so they can buy whatever legislation they want, country--and people--be damned.  Note:  we also need to get this accomplished on the state level, state by state, so we, the people, win there, too.

Finally, in order to make the need for the money go away, we need to shorten our elections.  This is doable, eminently doable. England wisely did it years ago. We just need to legislate that campaigns are--what?--one month, two months long?  By law. It only goes against what we're used to, that's all. It doesn't make sense any longer.

And none of these take away anyone's right to free speech. They may still speak all they'd like. There would just be parameters to the money and the length of the campaigns, that's it.

So let's get started.  Let's make 2014 the year we begin this big, smart, necessary work.

Here's to us.

Link:  Citizens United : Dedicated to restoring our government to citizen

Don't like long, seemingly unending elections?

Keep this quote in mind, then.

If you don't like these interminably long elections or the obscene corporate money in our election system and so, our government, keep this in mind.

It's all this way because we allow it.

Want shorter elections?

Do something about it.

Raise heck with your Senators and Representatives in Congress. Email them. Post as much on their Facebook page.

Don't just sit there and gripe.

Do something.

We can still fix this political mess that is America but it will take work.

And it has to come from us.

And so it begins...

The big push, from Summer, 2012, all the way to the first Tuesday in November--election day:

Romney bests Obama in May fundraising, raising nearly $77 million

It starts in earnest now but from now to that fateful election day, the big money--the really big money--from the wealthy and corporations of this country is going to pour out for Mitt "Mittens" Romney so they can get that corporate shill in the White House.

Mr. "I'll Say Anything, Just So You'll Elect Me President" is gunning for the presidency, as we know, and all those corporations and the rich people want him in there.

And they'll do anything and everything to get it, too, including shelling out all that big money and stealing your vote in the ballot box, let there be no dougt.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-bests-obama-may-fundraising-raising-nearly-77-152825223.html

Another American calling for shorter election campaigns

Hopefully this will catch on

Ms. Keli Goff, author, commentator & contributing editor to The Huffington Post, from TheLoop21.com from her column at The Huffington Post yesterday:

Maybe this is one issue where our country -- which I still consider the greatest in the world -- should consider taking a cue from our cousins across the pond. The duration of England's last round of elections? One month. That's right, one whole month. Four weeks for candidates to get their message out to voters, and that month included substantially fewer debates and television advertisements than we are bombarded with in this country. (Although that may have something to do with the country's restrictions on the influence of outside political groups in fundraising and political advertising, another area where we lag behind our allies.)


Shorter election campaigns and campaign finance reform.


Maybe one day, eh?


Link to original post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keli-goff/what-england-can-teach-us_b_804112.html

With warm and fuzzy thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States

The "Citizens United" ruling by the Supreme Court, earlier this year, hurts all Americans, truth be told.  Some (young?) Republicans and those on the Right think it only hurts the Left and Liberals but the fact is, the millions and, likely, billions of dollars that will be spent by corporations on elections will hurt the entire country and put us even more in the hands of the corporations.  It's "us" little guys--the working class and all of us not making $100,000.00 per year against "them", the people and corporations with the money.  If we don't stand together and somehow legislate down the "Citizens United" ruling, we should all fear for Democracy.  And I don't say this to be melodramatic.

More proof: If you're not angry, you're not paying attention

It was bad enough when our government--the George W. Bush White House, to be precise--took us into an unnecessary, murderous, wreckless, unnecessary and both nationally and internationally illegal war. The Iraq War, of course, to be specific. That was bad enough. To date, 4415 American Soldiers have given their lives because of it, while at least 31,907 American men and women have been wounded. If that isn't enough to make you angry right there, I don't know what will. But now, after the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year which made legal unlimited quantities of money they can contribute to any political campaign, here's another one--another reason to be angry and, hopefully, for us to do things about it. Get this: News Corp., the media company controlled by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch, gave the Republican Governor's Association $1 million in June. The floodgates of unlimited money to politicians and political campaigns have been opened, folks, and your democracy isn't just for sale. Your democracy and your vote has been sold. It's been given away. And the corporations bought and sold it. Angry yet? You'd better be. And we'd better start doing something about it all. Links: http://antiwar.com/casualties/ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-16/republicans-set-for-gains-in-u-s-governors-races-as-funding-sets-record.html

Quote of the day--on elections and marketing on this election day

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. ~Adlai E. Stevenson. We're in way over our heads, Adlai.

Accountability in our election system

Okay so the John Roberts' Supreme Court blew the lid off spending limits and reporting of campaign funding limits with its ruling this year for corporations and, basically, the wealthy of the country. I wrote about it earlier, of course. It was and is, of course, a travesty, when it comes to minimizing our votes--because it does--maximizing the voice and will of the corporations and wealthy and keeping people accountable for what they say in elections. And the Democrats, right now, are trying to fix this but, you guessed it--the Republicans are already threatening to fight this for both themselves and their corporate masters: Democrats need at least one Republican to support the measure in order to get the 60 votes needed to overcome GOP procedural delays, but their chances of doing so are slim. So far, not one Senate Republican has swung behind the measure, which is strongly opposed by the party's leadership. Nor is it clear that all 59 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will support the bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement Monday that the bill is designed to "protect unpopular Democrat politicians by silencing their critics and exempting their campaign supporters from an all out attack on the First Amendment." I don't care if you're a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, an Independent or a Tea Party member--if you're not wealthy, this goes against you, whether you know or believe it or not. Link to original posts: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/disclose-act-faces-gop-fi_n_660461.html

More of what the Republicans want--and are doing

...this time, here in Missouri.

This is a beauty.

The REPUBLICAN CONGRESS in Missouri just took away, obscenely enough, any and all campaign contribution limits in legislative campaigns.

Unbelievable.

Seems these same REPUBLICANS (never forget) wanted to make sure all the wealthy people and corporations could and would dump all the money they can on the REPUBLICAN candidate of their choice.

And that's exactly what they're doing.

Their boy, Kenny Hulshof, who's running for Governor, was about out of money for his campaign, after spending through his Republican Primary. So, after just 3 days of having lifted these campaign contribution limits, he's taken in $1,209,006.00.

Three days, ladies and gentlemen.

This is ugly.

This is stupid.

This is no way to run a government.

If you didn't think your government was for sale before, it most surely is now. At least it is here in Missouri.

And never forget---REPUBLICANS DID IT.
________________________________________________________
For more on the story, go here, to the Kansas City Star:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/story/779307.html