Phoenix Woman @ 90

[snip]
. . .But if you want to help the process along, you can go to http://www.publiccampaign.org, the Clean Elections people, and work with them to help spread the public financing of elections across the country and into the national level. It’s a large and growing movement, and in places you wouldn’t expect it to be, like Arizona (where not coincidentally, Democrats have made gains at the state and local levels since Arizona went to clean elections).

In my own opinion, the biggest reason our politics is so messed up is because of the staggering (and ever-growing) cost of elections. Candidates in some Senate races in this cycle will be spending close to what Bill Clinton and Bob Dole spent in 1996 on their presidential campaigns. (In fact, the 2000 Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani/Rick Lazio in New York, Clinton spent $30 million while Giuliani and Lazio spent at least $40 million — and probably more: I’m not sure if this graph counts the $20 million that Rudy raised before he bowed out.) And the only entities that can reliably foot the bill for this are — you guessed it — corporations. And their lobbyists. Clean elections stop this trend dead in its tracks.

I agree. I think one of the Republican’s goals is to reduce “votes” to the status of a commodity, to be bought and sold like everything else. For them, the idea of selling your vote to the highest bidder makes perfect sense.

Bob in HI

Hi Bob!

Sorry I didn’t respond to a comment from you a while back. Things move pretty fast here and I don’t have much time to keep up with it. But I’m glad to see an old TO member here. How have you been?

You’ll be interested in this article posted by Cossack (comment #254, PW’s “Come Saturday Morning” thread) on how we can apply pressure to the Democratic Party to do what we want. Hint: They don’t need our money so much, since they’ve got their corporate fat cats to supply that. But their lifeblood is volunteer precinct workers to get people registered and get out the vote. What will they do if the volunteers refuse to work during the critical months before a presidential election? Oh my. Now that’s pressure.

Loo Hoo. @ 76

Why didn’t they release it before the 2004 election?

As to the Democrats not making an enormous production about this information….I really wonder if they are like the ham and egger perennial losers in a fake wrestling. Always knowing when to throw the match.

-GSD

You said a mouthful, GSD! Check out this article posted by Cossack (comment #254) on Phoenix Woman’s “Come Saturday Morning: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly” thread. We are getting conned, big-time.

This must be some kind of good-cop/bad-cop scam. (Better vote for us because there’s no telling what those other guys will do to you!) So we vote for them but we still end up doing time. It’s always that “next election”, they tell us, that’s going to give them the power they need to make real changes. So keep on supporting them and settling for less, because someday they’re going to give us what we want.

Nobody is this “stupid”, that they can’t figure out how to frame an issue when the science of perception management is out there for everyone in political life to see and study. They are framing issues: but they’re aiming it all at us, not the opposition. They’re making us believe they’re in our corner. The party leaders have made a cynical calculation that they must please the corporate contributors, while appearing to fight for us. A delicate balancing act, but necessary for gaining and keeping power.

Hoyer and Emanuel work hand in hand… against the progressive elements of the party. Both A*P*C and corporate Clinton sympathizers. Even tho’ Emanuel is no longer the head of the DCCC this time round, he’s still gonna make sure that primaries are not going to be a problem against BAD dems in 2008.

I suppose things were going too well for Dems, so Hillary & Rahm had to interfere, by triangulating with some Repubs, to preserve their chance to grab the Presidency.

This makes it more obvious that the only thing standing between now and the end of the Iraq war is Republicans and Dems who love geometry.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the’re pure evil or of no use at all. We just need to recognize who the opposition is and what their tactics are, so we can fight effectively and win.

I suspect we’re in for more triangulation policy-making in the next few months, so be ready to be disappointed again and again.

We should take every opportunity to demonstrate good leadership (speech rhetoric or in proposing legislation and so on); to push Congress in the right direction; to expose Republican Congressional corruption (and complicity with Bush), stupidity, incompetence, fraud, etc. and to show the public the differences between good Progressive leadership and the alternatives. Civility, but aggressive politickin’.

(and Obama in particular seems incapable of opening his mouth without repeating Republican talking points).

now why would that be?

mebbe cuz in his heart of hearts, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool DLC Dumbocrap?

has everyone forgotten his undaunting support for his mentor, HoJo Lie-berman, last fall, even AFTER Conn. Dems had repudiated the wattled war-hawk?
.

Nope…I did not as you can see from my post: ‘Why Joey the LiarMann is still in the Senate’! And the reason is!

AssClowns like Obama, Schumer, Reid, Boxer and Clinton supported their ‘good friend’ The LiarMann.

Maybe The Sparrow needs to visit Rahm?

Ha! Good one.

Bring on the bird!

This entire bogus meme is based on the idea that not funding the troops (as Bush and Cheney want the war to be funded) will leave our troops in Iraq (and Afghanistan) without the money and materials necessary to do their job, thus endangering their lives (anymore than Bush and Cheney have already endangered their lives?).

Thus, after Memorial Day, Democrats in Congress need to enact a stand-alone bill that specifically covers the Pentagon-projected expense (based on a liberal troop-level projection) of redeploying our troops out of Iraq, sometime in the future, no deadlines or timetables or benchmarks required.

In other words, a “rainy day” redeployment fund, totally separate from any day-to-day operational funds.

Democrats, in enacting this measure, will essentially be saying, “Yes, we support the troops. In fact, we feel so strongly about the safety and well-being of our troops, that we are going to fund their redeployment right now, and put the money in a “rainy day lockbox,” without any assurances that President Bush ever plans on removing our troops from the middle of the civil war raging in Iraq. But at least the funding will already be in place to cover the cost of redeploying our troops out of Iraq, as efficiently and safely as possible, when the order is finally given for them to leave Iraq.”

Do you see?

Democrats were pushing deadlines and such, knowing full well that Bush would veto any Iraqi War funding bill containing these provisions. Also, this “all or nothing” approach played right into the hands of the Rovian smear merchants with their “cute” talking points, that defunding the war would leave our troops in harms way.

In one simple bill, therefore, Democrats could turn this false message around. Democrats would be “supporting the troops” by making certain that sufficient funds are in place already, in a “rainy day lockbox,” to cover the expense of reploying our troops out of Iraq.

Plenty of money budgeted to cover this. No troops left behind and endangered because of a presumed lack of funds. When the order is finally given (probably not by Bush or Cheney, but possibly by their successors in the White House). Money just waiting for when the time comes. Money held in “escrow” for our troops.

Do you see?

So, Democrats in Congress…hop to it.

And I continue to be amazed at how many battered wives keep telling themselves it’ll get better when they know they’re stuck with an abuser that will never change. The democrats have fucked up for the last time for me. Go read Murtha’s blog comments on Huffpost. The blowback is amazing, hence Rahm’s uh-oh, pasty-faced, apologia/bullshit shpiel.

The co-dependant two party system has become so disfunctional there is nothing left to lose by voting for a third party candidate. I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out in the fall. Meanwhile, don’t call me democrat. And I mean that in both senses.

First of all, I don’t even think that Congress impeaches Members of Congress. I believe each body can censure or even expel members of that body.

Second, on what grounds? That you don’t think they’re following sufficiently aggressive political tactics in pursuing a policy that you agree with? Do you even live in either of their districts?

Please, no more circular firing squads. Let’s leave that to the Republicans for a while.

Have at it.