Are You A Progressive?

It’s a good question these days. Who is a “progressive”? What does that mean? Everyone from Hillary Clinton to Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney has called herself (or himself) progressive, and it’s left a lot people wondering.

Are you a progressive? If you’d like to know, you can take a short 17-question survey and find out. Just follow the link and check it out.

What’s at the bottom of this is that, with the repeat cyclical fracturing of the left every election year over which candidate to support, combined with the failures of Nader, Kucinich, McKinney and other arguably left-of-center progressives to make an impact upon voters in this Presidential election, the impact progressives are having may be measured by the continued shift of Obama toward conservative positions. That doesn’t look good for progressives at all.

So who are you going to depend upon to get your message out that you want this war stopped and right now?

Who do you depend upon to do something about the price of gas? Your mayor? Your governor? Your congressman? Your president?

Progressives tend almost universally to agree that our U.S.- style democracy has been seriously compromised by the ability of corporate power to influence government by buying elections with PAC money in order to sponsor its own wars for profit, or to get its pharmaceutical drugs on the market, and to even write the laws themselves that infringe upon our liberties.

Conservatives will not change this, because it is their stock that is threatened by any change in the status quo, along with their profits, and their freedom to exploit the world and the poor in the name of “free enterprise.” The few progressives who manage to get elected would like to change this, but can never muster the support needed to do so because traditional Democrats have traded off their own power for pork barrel deals and personal advantages, such as corporate money for re-election.

Who then has the power to change this? If our elected officials are bought, and those like former candidate Dennis Kucinich who aren’t have been rendered powerless, what can we do as citizens?

If you believe that there is no way for American citizens to obtain effective representation in our elected offices, then you belong to a growing body of people who are joining a budding new organization called United Progressives.

The founders of this semi-formal union, launched this past month with an invitation to take a survey Are You A Progressive, are all former staff from the short-lived Presidential campaign of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who recognized that supporting a candidate who couldn’t win was not the best road to bring attention to the issues the candidate stood for, and it was not the way to bring about the kind of political change progressives seek.

What is a “union”?  How can that work for me?

The United States is a union. Superficially, it is a union of states, but within those states are people who claim proudly, “United We Stand,” and vote together, have a common, completely integrated economic system, and try to work out, in a semi-democratic structure, common problems and set common goals. As citizens of this country we are all united in our belief that at least we should be able to control our own destiny, we should be able to overcome poverty and disease, and we should be able to rid this country of all forms of discrimination.

Most people’s unions that now exist anywhere in the world are primarily political parties in countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belgium and Iraq. United Progressives is a people’s union also, but it is not a political party, if that means being organized principally to nominate and launch candidates to run for national political office.

United Progressive’s purpose as a union comes out of the fact that political parties and candidates often do more to divide people than unite them. Three parties can divide a majority constituency, conservative or progressive, and permit the minority to gain control of the political process. Candidates fracture clear majority constituencies which may actually agree on the same issues, but have been persuaded by one or both candidates that the other candidate is lying, or doesn’t agree to the important issues voters are most concerned about.

The purpose of this people’s union, then, is to establish a platform of issues first, and then get people to unite under them. When people are united, they are a force to be reckoned with. The need for progressive politicians to try to figure out a platform on their own that will win an election would eventually become pointless, because the constituency would already be established. If United Progressives held a clear majority of voters in the country, the results would be obvious. Even as a minority of voters, it would be persuasive in being able to make or break a candidate’s chance of winning an election.

Perhaps that seems a bit ambitious. However, Judy Ramsey, Co-Director of Administration and Public Affairs, says that “when progressives unite under one roof and vote together for the things we believe in, then progressives will have power.” That’s obviously the key to the strength of any union that attempts to bargain for its own interests.

In addition, most political organizations such MoveOn.org, ACLU, Common Cause and other similar progressive-leaning groups collect donations from members and supporters, and use the funds to contribute to political campaigns and lobby congressmen. The agenda is influenced, obviously, by the issues people are willing to support with their donations, and these organizations could not survive without money.

The constant need to raise money by an alphabet-soup assortment of groups, some of which are accused of simply being con artists, becomes a barrage of email from groups that, indeed, demonstrate very little accountability for their own actions.

United Progressives has no plan to seek donations. It does not currently collect any dues, and survives on the volunteer efforts and resources of its staff. It’s policy is to be able to survive with little or no money, and to determine its agenda based entirely upon issues which the public has already determined to be progressive. In time it hopes to capture the majority of voting adults in the United States.

The majority of people in the United States are in fact progressive on many issues. A recent survey conducted by the Indiana University School of Medicine indicates that 59% of doctors in the United States now support single-payer not-for-profit universal health care. A CBS News poll in February 2007 indicated that 64 percent of American adults support a government guarantee of health coverage for everyone.

An ABC/Washington Post poll in June 2008 indicates that 53 percent of Americans favor abortion in most, if not all cases, while only 44 percent oppose abortion in most, if not all, cases. A survey conducted for Common Cause in June 2006 by a research group indicates that ” a significant majority of voters, across party lines, support publicly-funded elections.” A survey by CNN in late June 2008 indicates that only 30 percent of Americans favor the war in Iraq while 68 percent oppose it. Sixty four percent would favor the withdrawal of most troops within a few months. Another poll done by Newsweek in June 2008 shows that 57 percent of all registered voters support either civil unions or marriage for same sex couples.

Because these voters stretch across the entire political spectrum, from Republican to Green Party members, as a true constituency, their interests do not get fairly represented. The compromises candidates feel that they have to make to appease certain elements within their own party constituency dilutes and often completely negates the power of a progressive stand among voters. As progressives they’re helpless because they cannot agree on the same candidate and have no other way to express their will in American government except through candidates who only represent a fraction of their causes, political action committees that are either one-note wonders, and other special interest groups that buy lunches for congressmen but little else.

Obviously, the answer is to unite. So if you think you might be a progressive, it might be worth the trip to visit http://www.unitedprogressives.us , take a look at their platform, take the short survey, and then join this union if you support their stand. It costs absolutely nothing.

For further information, contact
Judy Ramsey
Co-Director/Administrative and Public Affairs
jramsey@unitedprogressives.us

Make Me A Star

Make Me A Star ISBN: 1401604048 ISBN-13: 9781401604042 Publisher: Thomas Nelson Format: Trade Paper w/CD Page Count: 288 Amazon

Nashville Star Judge and Music Industry Executive Anastasia Brown Talks to HotMedia in a videotaped interview about her newest venture: writing.

Anastasia Brown, who co-authored this book with USA Today writer Brian Mansfield, has positioned herself as one of the few leaders in the music industry who seem to understand both the trends and what it takes to take advantage of them in today’s world of superstar successes through such mechanisms as American Idol and Nashville Star, the NBC talent show on which she has served as a judge for several seasons.

This book is definitely a must-read for all those who want to get a label deal or get on one of these talent shows. But more importantly, it’s for those who can’t or don’t know how to make that kind of cut.

Only one person can win in one of these shows, and it takes a very unique talent that can withstand the pressures of such a contest. This book is for the thousands of people who nevertheless are great potential artists, great songwriters, have beautiful talent, and should have access to the knowledge of what it takes to win, regardless of whether or not they can make it to the top on one of these shows..

If you’re one of those people, this book is for you.

Watch the interview.

Group Claims U.S. Water Supply is Contaminated with Uranium: Canadian Firm Held Responsible

Water, food supplies and the agricultural grocery basket of half the entire nation may be contaminated.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A group representing five Indigenous petitioners, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and two environmental organizations, Clean Water Advocacy Project and Rock the Earth, claim that a vast water table that spans the central plains from South Dakota to Texas is being poluted by a uranium mining process that extracts uranium from underwater deposits. The High Plains Aquifer supplies water to a region that provides many, if not most, of the nation’s essential grains, vegetables and livestock, and spans a cross-section of the entire U.S. from southern South Dakota to Texas..

“Based on available science, we believe there is an inter-mixing between the radioactive and toxic releases in and around the mined aquifer and the Brule, Arikaree and High Plains Aquifers which are being used by the petitioners, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and people in eight states from Nebraska down to Texas” says Bruce Ellison, Attorney for Oglala petitioners Debra White Plume and Owe Aku.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, identified in red, draws its water from the High Plains Aquifer.

Members of the group have filed indigenous rights briefs opposing a proposed license amendment requested by Crow Butte Resources, Inc.(CBR), a Canadian mining company licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extract uranium from the aquifer. The mining near Crawford, Nebraska, in the northwestern corner of the state, has been going on for more than 17 years.

The group believes that this underwater mining releases radioactive and toxic chemicals like Radon, Thorium, Radium and Arsenic into the environment, not only in the water but in the air as well.

The In Situ Leach (ISL) mining process involves injecting a bicarbonate solution into the water aquifer which releases uranium from sand particles in the aquifer and also stirs up and releases radioactive and toxic chemicals like Radon, Thorium, Radium and Arsenic into the environment. The uranium is removed from the water and a form of “geo-chemically changed” water is re-injected into the aquifer. No ISL uranium mine has ever returned the water in the mined aquifer to baseline levels and ISL mining may be responsible for elevated kidney and cancer problems and the closure of 98 wells due to arsenic contamination at Pine Ridge.

In addition to the use of additional valuable water resources, CBR has admitted to:

§ a spill of approximately 300,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste at its mine in Crawford , Nebraska ;

§ failure to clean up one-third of the spills equaling approximately 100,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste;

§ admission that a broken coupling led to a one gallon per minute leak for several years into the Brule aquifer. It is believed that the leak resulted in toxic contamination of at least 525,000 gallons of water per year; and

§ admission of a leak that contaminated 25,000 sq. ft. of the Brule aquifer.

From existing operations, CBR has had no less than 23 reported leaks of radioactive material. The petitioners assert that this contradicts CBR’s statements that they have operated without any environmental impact and indicates that CBR should not be allowed to expand its existing operations.

Some 98 private wells closed on the Pine Ridge Reservation following the 1997 Chadron well-casing failure.

The briefs explain the superior water rights of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and its members, including four of the petitioners, under the Winters Doctrine. The briefs also explain the petitioners’ and the Tribe’s rights under the Ft. Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868, Federal Indian law and environmental justice policies, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Supporting affidavits explaining the significance of continued access to local, pristine water for medicines and ceremonies were filed including those from several of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, and from Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth.

During a January 16, 2008 hearing in Chadron, Nebraska, Chief Administrative Judge Ann M. Young requested briefing on the indigenous and water issues which are germane to the case because of proximity of the ISL mine to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Lawyers working on behalf of the Indigenous Petitioners, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the environmental groups pointed out substantial rights of Petitioners and the Tribe including the Winters right to a sufficient quantity and quality of water to make the Reservation “livable” and productive, the trust responsibility, hunting and fishing rights, as well as rights to meaningful and effective consultation concerning activities that may threaten the Tribe’s water resources or the ability of the Lakota people to practice sacred ceremonies such as the “sweat lodge” using local, pristine water unadulterated by the ISL mining process.

“The Oglala (Lakota) recognize a cultural and spiritual value of water which we call “mni” much greater than its use as a vital natural resource,” said Mrs. White Plume.

CBR is a subsidiary of Canadian multinational Cameco, Inc. [NYSE: CCJ], which calls itself the largest uranium company in the World. Last year’s gross revenue exceeded $2 billion.

If you would like to express an opinion about this, contact:

President George W. Bush – E-mail the President or Vice President; call or write the White House;

U.S. Senators – Search for your senators by name, state, or congressional class; and visit their websites.

U.S. Representatives – Find contact information for your U.S. representative by typing in your zip code.

State Governors – Select your state to access e-mail, telephone, and postal contact information for your governor.

State Legislators – Search for state legislators and topical legislative information, by U.S. states and territories.

Donations for this effort may be made to Plenty International, fiscal sponsor of the project ( www.plenty.org ), placing “Save Crow Butte” in the memo line, or mail to: POB 394, Summertown, TN 38483; http://www.plenty.org

# # #

Aligning for Responsible Mining (ARM) is an indigenous-led non-profit organization dedicated to the application of the International Precautionary Principle to mining and opposition to “Abusive Mining” which is mining that fails to satisfy the Precautionary Principle. More information on the Crow Butte case may be found at www.SaveCrowButte.org and information from ARM’s Uranium Advocacy Project may be found at www.UraniumIsNotMyFriend.com.

The Myth About Universal Health Care in Canada

by Paul Barrow

There’s a little video called A Short Course in Brain Surgery making the rounds these days to reinforce the argument that single-payer universal health care in Canada is a disaster. The video, also available on YouTube, is part of the Free Market Cure Video Series created by filmmaker Stuart Browning “to inform Americans about the dangers of collectivized medicine and the benefits of free markets in health care.”

The subject of this video, Lindsay McCreith, certainly has a valid complaint. Having to wait four months for an MRI scan to determine the truth of a suspected brain tumor is inexcusable, and there ought to be a more reasonable solution, short of all the misleading inferences this video makes. An article in the National Review of Medicine discusses the ramifications of a lawsuit pertaining to this case in further detail. The backup of people needing health care and being put on a waiting list is widely acknowledged in Canada and there is open dialogue about it. In fact, Canada’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Quebec’s single-payer system in 2005 because “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

“Since 2002,” according to an article in Wikipedia, “the Canadian government has invested $5.5 billion to address the wait times problem. In April 2007, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that all ten provinces and three territories would establish patient wait times guarantees by 2010. Canadians will be guaranteed timely access to health care in at least one of the following priority areas, prioritized by each province: cancer care, hip and knee replacement, cardiac care, diagnostic imaging, cataract surgeries or primary care.”

You can find a report by the Canadian National Physician Survey just released March 18 that cites the major problem being a shortage of doctors. Health Canada estimates that by 2010, Canada will be short 5,800 physicians. However, despite that, the CNP survey indicates that

In 2004, 26% of physicians planned to reduce their hours. The 2007 NPS confirmed that in fact 27% of physicians had reduced their hours over the last two years. Now, 35% of physicians plan to reduce their weekly work hours over the next two years - from 28% of family physicians in Manitoba to 37% of family physicians in Quebec and the Territories; and from 30% of other specialists in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia to 40% in Quebec.

That’s a productivity difference that could translate, according to Health Canada, into a real shortage of 10,400 physicians. It’s an interesting but telling irony that doctors themselves who practice in Canada have a closed-shop mentality and are doing all they can to restrict the growth of the medical industry because it protects their practices.

An article in Readers Digest points out that “Canada’s doctor shortage is partly rooted in a 1991 report commissioned by the provincial deputy ministers of health. In that document, Morris Barer and Greg Stoddart, two health economists, predicted that Canada was facing a physician surplus. In response, provincial governments, scrambling to save money, cut first-year enrollment to Canadian medical schools by about ten percent.”

Doctors are also under strict price controls in Canada, they must retire at age 65, and although the majority of them earn over $100,000 per year (the average in 2006 was $202,000 before expenses), many leave the country for the U.S. where they can earn more. An article in the National Post says that “Over the quarter century since the Canada Health Act became law, approximately 12,000 Canadian doctors have moved south.”

However, if the U.S. switched to a Canadian-like health care system, that option would no longer be open to them, and it’s very possible that both the problem in Canada and the prospect for such a problem in the U.S. would be significantly reduced. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation left which does not have universal health care. So the problem is not specifically single-payer universal health care itself but the milieu in which such a system exists. It’s an attempt to operate such a system in an international environment where greed and self interest more than compassion and public health rule the day.

Creating greater incentives for students to enter a medical career might be one solution. In 2004, the Canadian Medical Association called for $1 billion investment to increase medical school openings and help fast track foreign-trained doctors become licensed in Canada. In 2004 there were more than 4,000 foreign-trained doctors residing in Ontario alone, driving taxis and delivering pizza, because the resources for helping them transition to a medical career in Canada enabled no more than 200 to be licensed that year.

In addition, Canada licenses only about half as many new doctors every year per capita as Britain, which also has universal health care.

Obviously, to propose that McCreith’s dilemma is an argument against single-payer universal health care is quite misleading. The problem is obviously much more complex. Actually, Canadians are probably more proud of their universal health care system than they are anything else. They are proud that, even if you have no money at all, you don’t have to suffer a horrible disease unnecessarily, and you don’t have to die, just because you can’t afford it. There have been other examples about Canadian health care, not necessarily Ontario, that say that, economically, it’s a very sound system.

An interesting comparison of U.S. and Canadian systems is found in Wikipedia:

Government and private health and public policy analysts have compared the health care systems of Canada and the United States. The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP. In 2005, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was US$6,401; in Canada, US$3,326. The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 9.8%. Studies have come to different conclusions about the result of this disparity in spending. A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the U.S., in a Canadian peer-reviewed medical journal, found that “health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.” Life expectancy is longer in Canada, and its infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., but there is debate about the underlying causes of these differences. One commonly cited comparison, the World Health Organization’s ratings of health care system performance among 191 member nations published in 2000, ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th, and the overall health of Canadians 35th and Americans 72nd. However, the WHO’s study methods were criticized by some analyses. Some argue that Canada has had higher mortality rates for some conditions, such as heart attacks. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service carefully summarizes some recent data and notes the “difficult research issues” facing international comparisons.

Here are the myths, according to a platform position taken by Ohio Congressman and former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich:

Americans are The Healthiest People in the World.
FACT: Citizens of 34 nations live longer than Americans.

The U.S. is the Best Place to Get Sick.
FACT: The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. 37th in the world for health system performance. Countries like Australia and the United Kingdom rank above the U.S. Americans have lower odds of surviving colorectal cancer and childhood leukemia than Canadians who do have national health care.

Covering All Americans Will Lead to Rationing.
FACT: Same-day access to primary-care physicians in the U.S. (33%) is far less available than in the United Kingdom (41%), Australia (54%) and New Zealand (60%). Per capita spending for health care averaged $2,696 in countries without waiting lists and $5,267 in the U.S.

Global Competitiveness is Hampered in Comprehensive System.
FACT: “Health care costs are not just a burden and barrier to care for individuals; they are taking a heavy toll on American businesses.” The strain on employers in 2005 was staggering. “The average total premiums for an employer-based family plan was $9,979 in 2005 …”

We Cannot Afford to Cover All Americans.
FACT: We already spend enough to have universal health care. “The truth is, we cannot afford to not reform the health system.” We spend about 50% more than the next most expensive nation and nearly twice per person what the Canadians do.

According to comments I heard recently on CSPAN which were made on the Senate floor by Senate Finance Chaiman Max Baucum, (D-Montana), Americans are spending two trillion dollars each year on health care. That’s the highest of any country in the world and more than twice as much per capita being spent by the next highest country.

The reason why is that Americans are in the grip of not only the insurance industry, but the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment as well. Insurance costs simply reflect the ever increasing costs of health care itself. Having private insurance creates the mindset that when we have a problem, we have a bottomless well of financial aid to cover our costs. But it isn’t the consumer who raids the insurance coffers; it’s the doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the myriad specialized services and enhanced technology that is rewarded, because they will bill the insurance companies to the maximum allowable coverage involved. It becomes a free-for-all in which the patient is simply a conduit for the transfer of wealth from the insurance companies into the hands of these other industries. The patient and the insurance-buying public are really the victims because it is from their pocket that insurance premiums are paid.

The costs of health care are being driven higher by the pharmaceutical companies out to sell new drugs and more of them, by medical technology companies out to sell new diagnostic and treatment tools such as the proton beam reported on by CBS News which costs in the neighborhood of $140 million to build, and the medical profession is out to profit from the increased “need” for examination after examination to check on the multitude of possible side effects from all these drugs.

We live in a mindset about our health that isn’t driven by health itself but by people profiting from illness and looking for as many ways as possible to convince you that you are ill and you need drugs.

You can find an outline of the Kucinich-Conyers bill for not-for-profit single-payer universal health care, H.R. 676, on the Library of Congress website.

There are undoubtedly problems and many obstacles to be encountered with any legislative effort to enact universal health care in the U.S., even if we were to ignore conservative opposition. Any large bureaucracy created by it would be huge and cumbersome and full of all kinds of flaws. But my health and your health and the health of our children must not be a question of profit or of making some people rich. It is the responsibility of us as a community and as a nation to see that we not only have security but that we have education, health and housing as well. None of these should enter the realm of profit or be subject to conditions in which only a specially advantaged few reap the benefits.

The Challenge Facing Progressives Today

by Paul Barrow

With the failure of the Kucinich campaign to muster a showing of more than 2 to 4% in any primary, with Dennis’ withdrawal from the race not even two weeks before Super Tuesday, and the entrance, now, of Ralph Nader as an independent, the question on the minds of most progressives seems to be, “Why do I have a headache right now?” or maybe “Did I just fall asleep and have a nightmare or what?”

After its dismal showing in 2004, the Green Party is by all appearances still in complete shambles. In 2005 a Counterpunch article by Joshua Frank said, in direct reference to 2004 Green Party candidate David Cobb (whose vote total was a mere 118,000) and his apparent unwillingness to share leadership, that “narcissism runs rampant” in the party. “Let’s hope,” Frank wrote at the time, “that Camejo [Nader’s running mate in 2000], the Green Alliance and other like-minded Greens can join forces and topple the current party ‘leadership.’ If they aren’t successful, 2004 won’t be the worst election the Greens will ever endure.”

Ralph Nader

Not much has changed. Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, at the Green Debate in San Francisco just this January, pleaded with the audience for unity, saying, “I have never seen anything like I’ve seen in the Green Party.” The dividing lines became even more crystalized now that their most favored candidate, Ralph Nader, who has been under pressure by a “Draft Ralph” effort within the party, has snubbed their offer in favor of announcing a run as an independent.

In a press release issued Friday February 29, Green Party leaders expressed their disappointment in Ralph Nader’s decision, announced on Thursday, the previous day, not to seek the 2008 Green presidential nomination.

“A lot of Greens have supported Mr. Nader and wanted him to win the party’s nomination. There has been an active effort by many Green leaders to ‘draft’ Mr. Nader as a Green candidate, and his success in recent Green primaries demonstrates that he remains a very popular figure within the Green Party. There is widespread disappointment among Greens that he chose to go a different route,” said Phil Huckelberry, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States.

CSPAN’s Washington Journal asked him that same Friday evening, “you’ve run on the Green Party ticket. Why not run on the Green Party ticket again?”

“Well, because I think Cynthia McKinney is running, and I think it would be wonderful for the Green Party to have an African American woman. She has been elected numerous times to the House of Representatives, and I think we need several progressive initiatives in this country.”

“And that was the decision not to run on the Green Party ticket. Because she announced? “

“Well, there are others as well. You know, the Green Party is only on 21 ballots, and we don’t want to be distracted. We have to get on 50 — try to get on 50 state ballots. The Greens have their way of doing things, and we have our way of doing things.”

Nader’s idea that “we need several progressive initiatives in this country” clearly doesn’t subscribe to the most popular formula for winning a seat in Washington, D.C., i.e., people of like mind uniting behind a single candidate. His strategy is obviously not about winning offices or even supporting others who may want to; if it could be anything at all, it may be about educating voters. The problem some may have with that is that the American public already knows Ralph Nader and what he stands for. His strongest day in any election returns was in the year 2000. Since then, it’s been pretty much downhill.

Cynthia McKinney

Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. congresswoman who served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003, and from 2005 to 2007, representing Georgia’s fourth congressional district. She was defeated in the 2002 Democratic primary due, according to a Wikipedia article, “to Republican crossover voting in Georgia’s open primary election which permit anyone from any party to vote in any party primary. ” A Counterpunch article gives more graphic details. Republicans and the pro-Israel lobby ganged up on her and voted for the opposition Democratic candidate in revenge for her claim that George Bush was intentionally withholding information crucial to an understanding of 9/11 and because McKinney encouraged debate on the Israel-Palestinian problem in support of the Palestinian cause.

Following her successor’s run for Senate, Cynthia McKinney ran again for the House position and won, but was defeated again in the 2006 Democratic primary^. According to the Wikipedia outline, “She left the Democratic Party in September 2007 and on October 22, 2007, filed paperwork with the FEC creating an exploratory committee for a Green Party presidential campaign. ”

Her record as a congresswoman has been consistently pro-progressive and consistently firebrand. In part because of her pro-Palestinian leanings, her public record has been also consistently laced with allegations of anti-semitism, and includes such dubious behavior as an on-air criticism of a personal aide and a highly controversial letter to the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed suggesting alternatives on how to re-direct his $10 million charitable offer to help with 9/11 disaster assistance after it was rejected by Mayor Rudi Giuliani. The prince had suggested that U.S. policies in the Middle East had contributed to the September 11 attack. Nothing like a little truth to cause people to see red. And nothing like going for a little thing like $10 mil. Then there was “The Capitol Police incident” in which she struck a security guard at the Longworth House Office Building after walking around rather than through the metal detector. The guard went after her and she nailed him. She should have been wearing a lapel pin which identified her, but did not have it on, apparently.

McKinney has also gotten into hot water over remarks she has made concerning Al Gore. According to Wikipedia, she once wrote that “ ‘Al Gore’s Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I’ve never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time.’ The Gore campaign responded by pointing out that Gore’s campaign manager, Donna Brazile, was black.”

Uncompromising radicalism has always been a constant fixture in politics throughout history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t unite. The irony of such a fierce, polarizing and perhaps even violent approach to one’s opponents in the context of a call for unity which Cynthia made in January is hard to ignore. An even greater irony is that progressives need firebrands just like her even if they cannot afford her. It’s that call to our deepest sense of what is right, or should be, that gives energy to the left.

We are all very self-righteous fools, trapped by a sense of honor to our conscience — trapped because it tends to masquerade as the small finite absolute condition in the midst of a universal chaos. Men like Eckhart Tolle would say that we should “embrace the chaos,” and that could mean accepting any end, regardless; it could also mean that we should be a little more open to the opposition.

The problem is that firebrands cannot lead; their usefulness is only to point the way. Dennis Kucinich mustered all that he could out of his soul to rid himself of anger. His Department of Peace must have represented the very epitome of that desire, and yet it goes without saying that you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t always take the country out of the boy. Dennis always looked angry, even when he smiled. I’ve got his autobiography, and I’m going to read it one of these days, because I’d like to know why. It’s something written into him that may even come from generations past. But you can mark my words: that anger written on his face is probably most of what doomed his election.

If unity is an objective, what should progressives do about Nader? The Nader factor clearly skews efforts by any progressive group, Green or otherwise, because there are his faithful followers, however shrunken in size, he holds a tight grip on. Nader is making his second bid as an independent in complete competition with the party with which he is most identified.

The Nation magazine, an old entrenched, firmly established (old school) progressive magazine, has re-posted the open letter it wrote to Nader in 2004, begging him not to be a “spoiler” again. They needn’t worry. His time as a spoiler-of-merit has come and gone. My feeling is that his impact in this election is going to be so minimal as to be completely insignificant, even laughable. If he came to capture the Kucinich vote, he certainly won’t get mine, because I’m trying to leverage it elsewhere.

Yet this election season, Nader could have been a very large force for the good of the progressive movement. He could have endorsed Kucinich, but he didn’t. He could have endorsed Cynthia McKinney, but he chose not to. There is at least some hint of evidence, from the little that I’ve seen, that Nader had been playing games with the progressive leadership, i.e., Kucinich, McKinney, et al, threatening to run as an independent again unless certain conditions were met for him in the Green Party and perhaps even Dennis’ platform. There have been rumors as well that he was bowing to Kucinich while Kucinich was running.

Ben Smith at politico.com reported on January 30 a conversation with Nader in which he responded to an inquiry about an “exploratory website” the latter had created. It “wasn’t timed to Edwards’ withdrawal,” Nader said, “but that Kucinich’s withdrawal had made space in the race for him.

“We’re testing the waters on the overriding issue of corporate control, of our political economy, and anything else the dogma of commercialism wants to latch on to,” he said then.

He also said he’d make third-party ballot access a major issue, after what he sees as a “national conspiracy” by the Democratic Party to deny him a place on the ballot in 2004, subject of a recent lawsuit.

He also said he saw some overlap between his positions and Ron Paul’s.

“His position on corporatism is taking some people who think the overriding political issue is corporate domination,” he said. “But he has positions which are not acceptable – like he wants to acknowledge the regulatory agencies I helped create.”

The question then, if these are his issues, is why wasn’t he campaigning for Dennis? Where was his voice during that long dry period when the Kucinich campaign needed help from those who carry all the weight and wear the progressive britches in the family?

One very likely and obvious answer is that Dennis is a Democrat. We have this purist self-serving mentality in the Green Party, which Nader apparently panders to also, justifying his “third party” argument, that preaches an old Marxist view that reform from within the capitalist system is impossible, that the mainstream Democratic and Republican parties have been completely co-opted by corporate interests, and that working within or through these institutions is just selling one’s soul to the devil. Nader said in 2000 that Al Gore and George Bush were “Tweedledee and Tweedledum — they look and act the same, so it doesn’t matter which you get.”

Dennis obviously does not agree with that position, or hasn’t, and a Nader endorsement would have appeared to have been a reversal of the fundamental basis the latter has for engaging in third-party politics. Such a strident posture, while an obvious attempt to win members to the third party fold, is self-defeating, and tends to use paranoid generalizations about “them” and “they” as though anyone not within the fold is some part of a greater conspiracy. The very people they are trying to draw in, the larger liberal Democratic voter constituency, are being labeled as corrupt and stupid and brainwashed and probably even evil.

Nader was a guest on CSPAN’s Washington Journal on March 1st, and a caller suggested, as might be expected, that he had cost Gore the election in 2000. Without hesitation, Nader, who insisted upon being insulted, called the guy a “political bigot.”

I don’t know if he considers that dialogue, but it definitely wasn’t meet and greet. I suspect that the caller was actually someone who had supported progressive causes and simply felt that Nader made the wrong political choice in continuing his campaign at such apparent expense to the left.

A comment on the politico.com website expresses a typical response by such thinking to critics of third-party candidates: “Absolutely, Ralph Nader should run! It’s time we started having more choices, and put an end to these two-candidate races. Couldn’t **any** third-place candidate be considered a “spoiler,” at least retrospectively? . . . . .How will we ever get a chance to have a third-party candidate like Mr. Nader (or Bloomberg, or whoever), if people feel bullied into voting only for one of the two candidates “most likely” to succeed. Maybe if people start voting more for Independent candidates, one day an Independent may actually win, and put an end to this two-party crap. Let’s make that day sooner rather than later. ”

The indignant attitude of the writer points directly to the difficulty of unifying progressives who insist upon following their heart rather than their head. The justification is absolute and undeniable, just as is declaring one’s freedom to walk out into the middle of an L.A. freeway at anytime one pleases. It’s called, being “dead right.”

For Nader the topic is apparently considered off the table, and maybe that’s as it should be. But it is very obvious that progressives need a new approach and a new vision. The prospects for third party candidates hasn’t been improved by the candidacy of Ralph Nader, if it is taken into consideration that the “spoiler” jacket has in fact had a very serious impact upon progressive voters, causing them to turn away from him in very large numbers since 2000. Any other third party candidate, such as McKinney, feels the cost, and yet somehow ignores it purposefully, angrily, as though in a suicide pact with her entire party.

Progressives need new leadership and new answers. The old narrative about corporate control of the media and rigged elections doesn’t seem to convince people that the progressives offer serious alternatives. American citizens, progressives included, aren’t sufficiently motivated to strive for or vote for anything better. The status quo has an easier feel. The idea of winning something holds greater sway with the majority than pie in the sky. Progressives need not only a party but leaders who are willing to accommodate progressives across a much broader spectrum of values rather than to find ways to polarize and to divide them all up into corporatists and anti-corporatists, the pro-Hillary and the anti-Hillary, the good people and the monsters, the pure and the tainted. We all tend to have that Samantha Powers tendency to call our opponents “monsters.” Whether they are or not, we need to pull back on our punches a little, so that there is some possibility of uniting for common cause. There has to be middle ground between the extremes that we seek and the mainstream that we oppose that will energize and motivate larger numbers of people so that we can win at least something, if not all, that we want.

Paul Barrow is publisher/editor of Hotmedia

Vanity Fair: Bush Started the Palestinian Civil War

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme Iran-contra 2.0, recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory. He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen, Wurmser says.

See the whole article in the April Issue of Vanity Fair.

A Report from the Front

The news may not have reached you yet, given the tendencies of the corporate media and its priorities, but Tennessee was lashed by a rather severe squall line of tornadoes night before last. NPR reported this morning that fifty five people lost their lives in the region, most of them in Tennessee. According to our local Nashville daily, the Tennessean, this is the worst in 33 years.

Some of my “friends” will be greatly vexed to learn that I suffered only minor damage. Some of the leaves that were still hanging on to last summer’s bliss in my neighbor’s large backyard oak were taken. Aside from that, my free-standing yard umbrellas are still up, and I haven’t had to pick up any old McDonald’s Big Mac wrappers off the windshield of my car.

I’m not sure why this part of town, the SE part of Nashville known as Antioch, was completely untouched, but it seems consistent with the usual path these things take in our area. We’re largely a mixed neighborhood here, which might explain it. We have both good people and bad people. Most deadly storms like this have followed a track either 10 to 15 miles south or, as this particular storm did, the northeastern quadrant in Sumner County in Hendersonville and Galatin. I know that there must be mostly bad people up there and God can get a good bead on them laying out in the open like that, all congregated together.

I had a home in Hendersonville from 1996 through 1997, and I really had a sense of being very vulnerable during that time. My wife says it was because I needed to pay the bills, but I’m certain it was the storms.

Night before last, the night of the storm, I had attended a gathering of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing at a local brewery. Someone had proposed, it seems, that if a demonstration were to just happen, having one happen where a sufficient quantity of excellent dark ale was available might be quite opportune.

My pale faced friend in the tall glasses, as it turned out, took me by the hand and led me straight to bed (my own). I was totally unaware the following morning that it had been anything other than just a typical Tennessee night full of puffy redneck glitter and child molesters lurking in their old Datsun sedans with no hubcaps, grinning at some private joke.

I did, in fact suffer damage, but the storm occurred in my world in a much different cosmic space. I’ve been editing a filming my production company did of Twelfth Night, performed by a local theatrical company, a two-hour taping of which I had completed editing of about fifty minutes.

It takes me about an hour to edit one minute of tape because it’s multi-camera and a lot of review is necessary to make the cuts where they are most effective. So fifty minutes of editing is fifty hours of work.

Somehow that storm had a parallel twister running through my computer that knocked out every bit of that edited file, and not just that file, but five backup files as well.

You get to wondering, even though your house is still completely intact and your son isn’t lying dead in the driveway, Why me, Lord? Why me?

Paul Barrow

Revolution: What do you think?

by Paul Barrow

Remember the Students for a Democratic Society? Patty Hearst? If you thought the sixties had disappeared, think again.

There’s an ideological torch appearing on college campuses today being carried by a group of self-described Marxists who believe that reforming the Democratic party is useless. Probably that really wouldn’t matter, a silly thing to contemplate, wouldn’t you say, if it were not for the fact that this just happens to ring a bell inside my skull.

How many people do you hear saying that these days? The Democrats are useless. The Democrats are no different from the Republicans. They’re all on someone else’s payroll and sleeping around like whores with the hundred thousand corporate lobbyists who regularly haunt their offices.

You’re saying it and I’m saying it. The Republicans are saying it. The Green Party is saying it. And every single one of us who sees Dennis Kucinich shut out of the system is saying it. The Democrats are useless.

But there’s a group of activists in this country tied to a worldwide network called the Worker’s International League who are doing a lot more than just saying it. They are young, savvy, intellectually bright students and graduate students, enormously steeped in politico-economic philosophy and history, who just happen to be convinced that Marx was right, that capitalism cannot be salvaged, that it’s a disease that infects everything around us with greed and corruption. They claim a worldwide network of members with more than 3,000 supporters of the now-deceased former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, and deep involvement in the politics of Venezuela and many other countries. What’s more, they have the capital to send teams of young men around to college campuses across the country and around the world to deliver the gospel of socialism. More importantly here in the U.S. they are preaching to students that since the closest thing to them ideologically in America, the Democratic Party, is unreformable, the message is abandonment of any constructive reform within the American political system aside from anti-war acitvism.

Their only solution: revolution.

It seems somewhat contradictory when you think about it. You have people who don’t mind, if it is necessary, a radical and full transformation of government in which undoubtedly thousands would possibly die in violent struggle, opposing war on the principle that war is inherently evil because innocent people die. But the paradox seems to escape them. They preach a peaceful revolution, but they would accept, nevertheless, a violent one.

Obviously, certain kinds of death through violence are acceptable, would you say, as long as they serve one’s own ends, the “struggle,” the “workers,” the “movement.”

I attended an all-day meeting with the Worker’s International League at a local private university gathering here last Saturday. WIL, which also publishes the Socialist Appeal, “the Marxist Voice of Workers and Youth” (http://www.socialistappeal.org/), appears to be a growing movement among students who are greatly disenchanted with mainstream politics. You will find that these are the people who populate the outer fringes of both the Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich camps in this group.

I spoke with several who said that if they were to vote, (which they wouldn’t of course, they assured me), they would vote for Dennis Kucinich. But Dennis is unreformable, they say, a U.S. representative who says many great things but has in his platform the slogan “Saving Capitalism..” That’s a clear indication that he’s not one of them, irregardless of the fact that Dennis favors increased corporate taxes, an end to offshore incorporations to escape them, and increased involvement by the government in how they do business. Whether Dennis recognizes it or not, corporations represent, to the WIL, in fact, a return to feudalism as lords of the estate, dictating the terms of welfare and livelihood of its subjects, bonded to them by the chains of debt to a corporate-controlled economy constructed entirely upon the shoulders of consumers who have chased the rabbit down the hole and discovered themselves staring in the mirror of an ugly monster who wants more and more and more.

That’s an assessment that is rather difficult to avoid.

Reform or Revolution

At first blush, it sounds a little scary. Am I telling you that we have the makings of a revolution going on in this country? This organization believes that revolution, not reform, whether peaceful or otherwise, is the only means to change. Yet it appears that most members do not preach the violent overthrow of the government, do not believe in it as any sort of realistic objective, and simply believe that creating a movement of believers in Marxist socialism is the sole purpose of the organization. They do get involved in anti-war activities as an organizational cause, and most members actively protest in other social causes as well independently. But you can’t convince me that if and when the remote possibility occurred that they had overwhelming numbers believers in the population, there wouldn’t be some tendency toward a coup of some sort.

In the meeting, playing the devil’s advocate, I suggested that perhaps, if the organization really supported revolution, then they ought to be supporting the continuation of the war in Iraq, rather than protesting it, due to the degree to which it weakens and destabilizes the American government, economy and divides the public. Wouldn’t that be a strategic advantage?

It was a pointed challenge and I was surprised by the reaction. Such a suggestion was viewed with amazement and dismay, and it was apparent, at least on the surface, that the core moral sentiment of being opposed to violence outweighed any serious consideration of such an objective.

Dis-affection with the Establishment over the war is clearly fundamental to the life of this group. As long as we have a continuation of neoconservative thinking within the Democratic Party, a desire for a permanent occupation in some form in the Middle East, and the resulting reaction to American imperialism which has been responsible already for 9/11 and many other tragedies around the world, we threaten our own foundations with the sense of urgency that develops among youth by the moral decay of their elders.

Judge Rules Against Kucinich in Texas Loyalty Oath Case

January 11, 2008 12:34 PM

A federal court judge ruled today against Dennis Kucinich’s challenge of a
Texas Democratic Party requirement that Democrats who appear on the
state’s presidential primary ballot agree to unconditionally back the
national party’s eventual nominee.

Texas Democrats denied the Cleveland congressman a spot on the state’s
primary ballot because he crossed out that provision in paperwork he filed
to participate in Texas’ Democratic presidential primary. Kucinich
informed the party he’d only pledge to support a nominee “who would not
employ war as an instrument of foreign policy,” court documents say.

Kucinich and country music star Willie Nelson, a Texas voter who supports
Kucinich, challenged the Democratic Party’s decision in United States
District Court for the Western District of Texas. They said the “loyalty
oath” violated Kucinich’s “associational, speech and due process rights”
and asked that Kucinich be placed on the state’s March 4 primary ballot.

After listening to an hour of arguments on Friday morning, Judge Lee
Yeakel issued a ruling (PDF) in favor of the Texas Democratic Party.

“The democracy in our state allows party members to make the rules,” Texas
Democratic Party attorney Chad Dunn said after the decision. “The party
has a Constitutional right to govern itself, and that’s what the court
found.”

Kucinich’s lawyer, Donald McTigue of Columbus, could not be reached for
comment immediately after the ruling.

Kucinich submitted a statement (PDF) to the court Thursday that said he
believes the oath would require him to endorse the Democratic nominee,
financially contribute to the nominee and avoid publicly disagreeing with
the nominee or the nominee’s legislative proposals.

“I believe the Texas Democratic Party’s oath would chill my ability to
speak out and campaign on behalf of the issues I believe are important to
the constituents of my congressional district, the Democratic Party, and
to the American people,” Kucinich said in the statement.

Dunn said Kucinich’s legal team indicated they might appeal the decision
to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In that event, Dunn
said, legal papers would be filed on Monday.

Dunn hopes all legal wrangling will be wrapped up by the end of next week,
when most of Texas’ 254 counties begin printing their primary ballots.

NBC Un-plugs Kucinich from Presidential Debate

Friday, January 11, 2008

DETROIT, MI - Less than 44 hours after NBC sent a congratulatory note and
an invitation to Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich to participate in the
Jan. 15 Democratic Presidential debate in Las Vegas, the network notified
the campaign this morning it was changing its announced criteria,
rescinding its invitation, and excluding Kucinich from the debate.

NBC Political Director Chuck Todd notified the Kucinich campaign this
morning that, although Kucinich had met the qualification criteria
publicly announced on December 28, the network was “re-doing” the
criteria, excluding Kucinich, and planning to invite only Senators Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards.

The criteria announced last month included a fourth-place or better
showing in a national poll. The USA/Gallup poll earlier this month showed
Kucinich in fourth place among the Democratic contenders.

In an email to the Kucinich campaign at 2:35 p.m. on Wednesday, January 9,
Democratic Party debates consultant Jenny Backus wrote:

“Congratulations on another hard-fought contest. Now that New Hampshire is
over, we are on to Nevada and our Presidential Debate on Tuesday January
15. This letter serves as an official invitation for your candidate to
participate in the Nevada Presidential Debate at Cashman Theatre in
downtown Las Vegas. You have met the criteria set by NBC and the Debate.”

Todd notified the Kucinich campaign this morning that the network had
decided to change the criteria and limit participation in the debate to
only three candidates.

Kucinich is the only remaining Democratic Presidential candidate who:
voted against the original Iraq War authorization in 2002 and every
war-funding measure since; voted against the so-called Patriot Act;
advocates a national, not-for-profit health system that covers all
Americans; has called for the repeal of NAFTA and withdrawal from the WTO;
and proposes a national back-to-work program (Works Green Administration)
patterned after the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The Kucinich campaign, which filed an emergency complaint with the Federal
Communications Commission last week because of ABC’s decision to exclude
the candidate from a nationally televised debate, is considering legal
action to address “the blatant disregard of the public interest in
silencing public debate that dissents with the views of NBC, its parent
company, GE, and all of the military contractors and their
candidate-funding corporate interests. Corporate control of the media is
one issue. Corporate media control of the information that is allowed to
reach American citizens is much more dangerous, much more sinister, and
much more un-American.”

“When ‘big media’ exert their unbridled control over what Americans can
see, hear, and read, then the Constitutional power and right of the
citizens to vote is being vetoed by multi-billion corporations that want
the votes to go their way,” the Kucinich campaign said.