Saturday, December 29, 2012

CURING THE ILLS OF DEMOCRACY




Al Smith is one of those credited with having said “The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy”.  As a democrat (with a little d) I certainly hold to that philosophical statement. Democracy in America was under attack this past year of 2012 and in my opinion won most, not all the battles, and is still winning the war.  There are those who would replace our democratic republic with an oligarchy of the rich, a plutocracy of the 1% with the other 99% basically doing their bidding.  Our Senators today are either millionaires or owned by millionaires and many of our Representatives are in the millionaire category.

Unfortunately discussion of government structure and processes, administrative and election law is among that which engenders the least interest among our people.  Only when rulers threaten to tax their favorite beverage (tea in 1773 or soda in NYC in 2012) do people begin to focus on the power of government and the rules that put the governed in office.   More democracy does not promise nirvana nor paradise but it just might preserve this republic for another hundred years and give my grandchildren and their grandchildren a free and prosperous country to live in.

There are a number of democratic reforms we need to enact to preserve popular democracy.  We need to abolish the Electoral College and elect the nation’s President by direct popular vote.  Doing that will among other things reduce the temptation of some politicians to play with the electoral college rules in their state (as State Sen. Pileggi is determined to do in Penn) to favor one party over the other.  Direct popular vole will strengthen the President’s position as spokesman and leader of the nation both home and abroad.

We need to revamp our voter registration laws.  If in fact the American people want photo id presented whenever a voter votes than why not institute same day registration using the photo id rather than a two step process of registration pre voting and needing id on two occasions. If the supporters of photo voter id are sincere they should support same day registration as the logical extension of their plan.  Photo id required of already registered voters is just an attempt to suppress turnout of minorities, young people and the very old who most often lack photo id.

I served in the New York State Assembly for eight years.  I strongly support term limits for all elected officials.  What seems fair and workable are two terms for most executive officers and six terms for 2 yr legislators (3 terms for 4 or 6 year legislators.  The idea behind a citizen legislature was not to make these positions career jobs but to have citizens representative of the population acting on the laws that govern the people.

It’s time get serious about a form of re-re-districting, if we are going to elect our representatives by district, which prevents political gerrymandering.  One possibility is using existing county and municipal lines and letting legislators cast a weighted vote based on the population.  The boundaries of our counties and municipalities were set many decades and in some cases centuries ago with no reference to Democrat or Republican strength.  The weighted vote would accomplish the objective of one many one vote and using existing boundaries would allow for district representation so people could relate to their individual representative.

The U S Senate needs to stop acting like a millionaire's downtown club and become the people's second house that was envisaged when the constitution was amended to provide for direct popular election of Senators.  The filibuster needs to be abolished and majority rule allowed to govern the Senate with the rights of the minority on a given issue to offer amendments and engage in some debate.  But except in the cases the constitution provided for e.g. treaties no super majority of more than 51 should be required to enact legislation for the country.

There are other reforms at local, state and national level that should be implemented to open up our governmental processes and encourage more people to participate, e.g. universal ballot access.  We must insure that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth”.

29 December 2012









29 December 2012   

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

A MANDATE IS NOT A MANDATE WHEN DEMOCRATS WIN - SAY REPUBLICANS.





There is only one national election in the United States, It occurs every four years. That national election chooses the President of the United States.  He or she becomes the spokesperson of the American people and the commander in chief of the armed forces, the leader of his/her political party.  But, according to Republicans who lost the Presidential election this year the re-elected President won no mandate.

They even have the temerity to claim that the Republicans won a mandate by retaining a majority of the House of Representatives (where they lost eight seats). The House of Representatives elections, which occur every two years, are 435 separate district elections with 435 geographically determined constituencies.  Factors such as district apportionment and the popularity of incumbents, as well sometimes of local issues or particular local response to national issues, often determine the outcome of those races.  Rarely has the President’s party picked up seats when he was re-elected as the Democrats did this year.  And they gained in the Senate which consists of 33 statewide races every two years with state issue focus.

But the Republicans cannot concede to Obama a mandate from the voters.  Despite the fact that he joins the list of Presidents who were re-elected.  Despite the fact that in both of his elections he garnered over 50% of the popular vote a feat accomplished by only FDR in the 20th century. When Eisenhower and Reagan won their second terms Democrats who controlled Congress cooperated and oft  times deferred to his leadership.  When Clinton won a second term Republicans got a bit more cooperative, they stopped closing down the government.  But the Republican Party, which like the super rich they represent, feels entitled to control the Presidency. In fact it may be the only entitlement they support.  When a Democrat wins the Presidency it’s rule or ruin time for the Republicans.

It would appear at least from the polls that the American people have woken up to the Republican obstructionist intransigence. The President defeated McCain by ten million votes and after four years of intense negative attacks by the Republicans and their Tea Party masters he defeated Romney by five million votes nationwide. He has a mandate to fix the fiscal crisis in a fair way that requires the wealthy to pay the rate of taxes they paid in the 1990's and reform national insurance programs to the extent that such alterations will reduce the growing national debt. 

The American public is becoming more educated as to how the system works.  If the radical right wing Tea Party controlled Republicans play the party of NO for the next two years, I believe they will be replaced by a Democratic majority in the House and additional Democratic Senators and then they will learn what a Progressive mandate means.

4 December 2012

Monday, November 5, 2012

VOTER SUPPRESSION DELAWARE CO. (PA) STYLE





I served for sixteen years as the Chairman of the Delaware Co. (PA) Democratic Party and for the years 2010-12 as the Democratic member of the county Board of Elections.  The time period involved covered four Presidential elections 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.  I was chairman of a large municipal party in the county for the election of 1992.  In each of those years national candidates feared voter suppression efforts and organized out of county lawyers to combat them.  The voter suppression efforts didn’t happen and more often than not the outside attorneys got in the way of the local party activists who knew what they were doing.

This year 2012 is different.  There are clear signs of some practices that the Republicans, now run by new leaders and fearful of the growing Democratic registration, have sunk to.  I should also point out that Democrats won the Presidential elections in the county from 1992 through 2008 with increasing margins.

This year Delaware County found a loophole that enabled it to ignore Gov. Corbett's (a Rep.) edict to extend the deadlines for applying for and returning absentee ballots.   This year a surprising number of Republican poll workers in solidly Democratic precincts are calling in sick or otherwise not working so the Democrats are expected to find people to keep the polls open.  This has the effect of keeping those Democrats from other get out the vote tasks and it slows down the voting since some people at the tables will be new.  And this year in many precincts Republicans recruited friendly Democrats and got them appointed to precinct election boards (in one case even getting a Republican appointed to a position that the election law properly enforced would require the appointee to have been a Democrat.)

We will learn on Nov. 7th whether the Election Board returns to its practice, ended two years ago, of rejecting provisional ballots if the poll worker makes an error which is no fault of the voter thus denying a vote even if the voter is registered. Republican operatives are all over the place spreading the false rumor that the Presidential candidate is not part of the straight ticket trying to discourage Obama supporters from voting straight Democrat thus reducing the vote for the down ballot Democratic candidates.

In 2007 the Republicans tried to interfere with absentee voting in the Radnor township local elections and our party stopped them.  In 2011 they tried to change the results of a primary by rejecting 4 legitimate absentee votes and our election commissioner and his pro bono attorney stopped them.  This year the new Republican leadership in this county apparently is unafraid of the new Democratic leadership and so begins to go down the slippery slope of voter suppression.  One of the strongest and most effective Republican leaders I knew in this county once said “If we can’t win an election we deserve to lose.” The Republicans in Delaware County had better remember that - if the voter suppression is in any way effective this year, and even if it isn’t, we may well see a voter revolt in Delaware County that will say to the Republicans who run this county.  You may be able to win our votes but you can’t suppress them.

5 November 2012

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

WHY AMERICA NEEDS TO RE-ELECT OBAMA





In the interest of full disclosure, and for the benefit of those who don’t know, I am a liberal Democrat and have spent most of my adult life in public service and party politics. I usually (though not 100% of the time) vote for the Democratic candidates for office.  I do so based on my interpretation of the history of this nation and the principles that those candidates stand for.

On November 6th this nation faces an election that is much more than just a contest between two candidates or two parties.  It is more than a referendum on an incumbent President.  It is, like some elections in the past, a determinative election that may well decide the future course of this nation for the next quarter century.

In 1800 the election began a quarter century of essentially nonpartisan federal government allowing the new nation to grow and its government develop without partisan rancor.  In 1828 the election began the Jacksonian era which was marked by the growth of white democracy and manifest destiny.  In 1860 the election presaged a civil war that led to the end of slavery in this country and the transformation from states in a federation into one nation.  In 1896 the election determined that the rich business oriented people would rule America basically until 1930.   And, the election of 1932 set the stage for the New Deal which was based on the theory that the federal government could establish level playing fields for all citizens and provide a social safety net so that working people would not fall into the poverty of the Great Depression.  The election of 1964 ratified that consensus approach which lasted until 2000 (the so-called Reagan revolution did not disturb the essential elements of the New Deal and the Great Society; in fact with the Earned Income Credit Reagan recognized the need to help the working poor.)

Now we have the election of 2012:  A clear contest between two attitudes toward the role of government.  The tea party controlled Republican Romney-Ryan approach would privatize every possible feature of the federal government and end the social safety net programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, WIC, and PBS as we know them.  The Democratic Obama-Biden plans call for continuing the federal government’s role in the lives of the citizens of One Nation (not Fifty) working with and supporting both business and labor.

The best example of these differences in the economic sphere is the auto bailout.  While Bush was busy bailing out the Big Banks - Obama’s contribution here was to preserve and restructure the American automobile industry, saving thousands of American jobs and restoring that industry to its international preeminence by loaning money that has since been paid back.  Obama did that without breaking unions or bankrupting investors (in fact Romney made $15 million dollars on investments in a car parts supply business that benefited from the bailout - a company that closed 24 plants and shipped jobs to China).  If there was an inadequacy in Obama’s response to the great recession it was that the stimulus was too small.  Economists and politicians alike know that the federal government cannot create private sector jobs (in fact Republican governors have been busy eliminating public sector jobs at a rate as fast as the private sector can add jobs) it can only create the economic conditions at home and abroad to facilitate and encourage private sector growth.  In the 1930's the New Deal was funded only to levels that allowed it to ease the pain of the people - it was only when World War II caused an astronomical explosion in our expenditures in hiring and producing that the Depression ended.

In the area of foreign policy the difference between these two philosophies is stark.  The tea party Republicans have adopted the neo-con Bush approach to every problem - troops on the ground and dollars for the war machine companies.  Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex; I don’t think he expected it to take over his political party. Obama has followed the path of collective security; working through the United Nations and other international organizations that were founded on American governmental principles.  Unlike the neo-cons who never met a dictator they didn’t like, Obama stood with the people of Libya and helped them overthrow Qaddaffi; he supported the people in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen as they replaced long time corrupt regimes.  He aided the people of South Sudan in there breakaway from the genocidal practicing Sudanese regime.  And, he ordered the strike that killed Osama Bin Laden despite the fact that he was hiding out in the territory of an ostensible ally.

The two Presidential tickets also represent completely different attitudes toward the cultural changes that have occurred in this nation since the 1950's.  Obama worked with Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Obama signed the Ledbetter Act to begin the march to equal pay for equal work for women (Romney is still considering his position on that three year old law).  Obama has exercised the powers of the chief executive of our nation to present automatic deportation of young Latino and other immigrant students brought to this country illegally by their parents who know and love no other country than ours. Obama has stood firm in support of women’s rights to make their own reproductive health choices.   As for Romney-Ryan well you know Father Knows Best - the limited federal government or the fifty state nations should regulate not Wall Street or business but the private lives of its citizens.  The tea party controlled Republican party has become a party of reaction that seeks to end planned parenthood; outlaw all abortions even in the case of rape, incest of the life of the mother; put gays back in the closet; and force all young Latino’s to self-deport. 
The President encapsulated his opponents' philosophy when he declared that the Republicans want to the return to the foreign policy of the 1980's, the social policies of the 1950's and the economic policies of the 1920's. And Vice President Biden summed it up best when he said that because Obama was President “General Motors is Alive and Bin Laden is Dead”.

You don’t have to like Obama or dislike Romney to make your choice on November 6th.  You have to ask what kind of America you want to see in twenty five years and vote accordingly.  If you want an America were all feel that they have a shot at the American Dream; where children can get the education that their ability entitles them to; where men and women can get decent paying jobs; where seniors don’t have to worry about the cost of their health care and whether the stock market has decimated their private pension funds because they have social security insurance; and where this country enters a century of peace because it leads by the rightness of its values not the might of its weaponry; then your choice is clear - VOTE OBAMA-BIDEN.  Reject the Republican Romney-Ryan Radical Reactionaries - Embrace the Positive Changes for Equality Occurring in America - VOTE FOR THE FUTURE.

30 October 2012