![eagle claws](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/eagle-claws.jpg)
Perhaps restoring the American faith in the election process via “none of the above” platform, showing people they still have control over the system would be a stronger approach to reforms.
Perhaps restoring the American faith in the election process via “none of the above” platform, showing people they still have control over the system would be a stronger approach to reforms.
The issue of general election presidential debate inclusion has been litigated to death. There has been loss after loss after loss for 35 years.
There is only one way to fix the debates problem. That is the strategy used in 2007-2008 by “Rock the Debates.” A few dedicated people who lived in Iowa and New Hampshire used every chance they had to corner major party contenders and ask if they would agree to at least one inclusive general election debate. “Inclusive” means everyone who is on the November ballot in enough states to theoretically win, would be invited.
In the entire history of the United States, there has never been a presidential election with more than seven such candidates. In 2008 there were six (Obama, McCain, Barr, McKinney, Baldwin, Nader). Same in 2004, there were six.
Phi Beta Iota: To keep up with ballot access lawsuit, people subscribe to Ballot Access News. It is 26 and one-half years old, a print publication that appears every month. At $15 per year this is a bargain – and here is the comment one citizen who signed up included with their address in the paypal note: “For the first time [subscribing to your newsletter] I feel I am doing what every citizen should be doing – paying attention!] Look for the Subcribe line about six lines down from the upper right corner.
Responding to an inquiry, the founder of Ballot Access News who has also been active with Free and Equal and the Council of Alternative Political Parties, had this to say….
Write-ins for all office are banned in Nevada, Hawaii, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Also Arkansas and South Carolina won't print write-in space for President on the ballot. South Carolina has a statute saying no write-in space for President, but Arkansas doesn't, and the Secretary of State just made it up.
People generally get on the ballot in all 50 states by hiring professional petitioners. That takes lots of money, of course.
I am wildly in favor of Americans Elect.
Asked to elaborate on Americans Elect, he says….
It is not true that Americans Elect's board can pick and choose who the presidential nominee is. Just because some reporters are lazy and report this without checking the rules, doesn't mean they are accurate.
Anyone can run in the Americans Elect presidential primary, but people who have been members of Congress, or cabinet members, of big-time generals, or Governors, only need 10,000 clicks; others need 100,000 clicks.
If the winner of the Americans Elect primary is a Democrat, and he or she chooses a Republican vice-presidential running mate, the ticket is “deemed” balanced and the Americans Elect board cannot tamper with it. If Ron Paul won the Americans Elect primary for president, and he chose Dennis Kucinich for vice-president, there is nothing Americans Elect's board could do about it.
The board only can intervene to see if the ticket is “balanced” if one of the nominees is neither a Republican nor a Democrat.
Phi Beta Iota: While we continue to be suspicious of Americans Elect, initially started as a Trojan Horse for Michael Bloomberg, Richard Winger's intelligence and integrity and professional knowledge of American politics and the art of the possible is without peer. We shift our view of Americans Elect to “neutral” at this time.
Bernie Sanders Explains Why Congress Fears Citizens United
Bill Boyarsky
truthdig, 16 December 2011
It took just 12 minutes and 29 seconds on the Senate floor for Sen. Bernie Sanders to expose the real power of corporate America over our elections. It should be a rallying cry for the embattled minority trying to clean up the system.
Sanders, one of two Independents in the Senate (along with Joe Lieberman), was speaking Dec. 8 on behalf of his proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s devastating Citizens United decision, which permits corporations, unions and issue advocacy organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money from their own funds to support or oppose candidates.
Exploring #Occupy 2.0 – Part 1 – Brilliant #OWS foreclosure activism
Dear friends,
During the next week I'll be reporting on a wide variety of initiatives and inquiries arising among Occupy activists in this transition phase of their movement. But first I want to share one of the main thrusts of their emerging effort, which is showing up in a variety of forms around the country – foreclosure activism. This article, in particular, gives a good glimpse into the sophistication of the organizing work being done by these folks.
Blessings on the Journey.
coheartedly,
Tom
Occupy Wall Street on Your Street
Astra Taylor The Nation December 7, 2011
10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement
Occupy Wall Street has put the attention of the country, in fact of the whole world, on the deep wrongness of the current American economy and democracy. Both are broken and rigged by design to produce extraordinary incomes and security only for an elite few.
I am an enthusiastic admirer of Occupy Wall Street and its organic siblings in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States.
My Facebook news feed has been filled with more astonishingly creative handwritten signs and home brewed video in the last month than at any time since the months preceding our ill-fated invasion of Iraq.
This cannot last. That said, I have no sure prediction as to what will bring the American plutocracy to heel.
We know that change will not come from our judicial system or Congress. Each made the current conditions possible. The Supreme Court, after all, unleashed unlimited corporate spending on elections, turning over a hundred years of precedent. And Congress has repeatedly passed on the opportunity to restore income tax rates on billionaires to Clinton, let alone Reagan levels, or to close the hedge fund tax loophole that has enriched a handful beyond our comprehension.
Change might come at the hands of the rest of the world. Tired of our military presence in nearly 200 other countries. Tired of how our regulators looked the other way as American financial institutions nearly borrowed, manipulated, and deceived their way into a world financial crisis that destroyed family wealth built up over decades. Tired of how our political system could not rein in Wall Street in the aftermath of the crisis. The U.S. has become a peculiar form of rogue nation.
Or change might come as a result of sheer fear among the plutocrats, now that the occupiers know where they live and have the audacity to visit the gates of their homes.
My favorite historian, the late Howard Zinn, studied social change sufficiently to caution that change rarely happens as a result of a plan, or on a schedule, or because it is convenient. Sometimes, a regime appears invulnerable right before the cracks appear, and the wall comes down.
There is no substitute for keeping the pressure on so that when the cracks appear, there are enough people – a movement – to open the crack wider and make possible what previously seemed unthinkable.
Which is why I so admire Occupy Wall Street and the truly grassroots movement it has spawned.
CREDO is not of or from Occupy Wall Street. But we support it. Our actions are of a very different sort. We have a policy agenda. Our members write, call, visit, and rally to make change happen on literally hundreds of public and corporate policies that have the ability to make life better or worse. Our members have written, called, faxes, emailed, rallied, registered and every other way of doing the work of showing up over thirty million times. If you want to participate in this kind of progressive advocacy, check out the footnotes at the end of this piece. But without a doubt, thirty million moments of activism have not been enough because the bad guys keep winning and the 99% are losing the fight.
Which is why we need the space and the challenging conversation forced on a reluctant mass media by Occupy Wall Street. Rather amazingly, the media is now finally reporting on unemployment and jobs rather than solely focusing on the false inside-the-beltway crisis of a Federal deficit.
Our goal is to be supportive of this new space. We have respectfully engaged our members in pushing back on police misconduct. We have marched and promoted marches. We have delivered food.
But we most emphatically do not know better than the growing number of participants in Occupy Wall Street what demands should emerge or what tactics the burgeoning movement should take. We stand with the vibrant participants of Occupy Wall Street now and in the months to come. As the weather turns cold and the 1% move from ignoring the movement, to ridiculing the movement, to undermining it and eventually seeking to crush it, CREDO will be there.
In the meantime, here are a few ways that I and the staff at CREDO staff have worked to support Occupy Wall Street. There are many more. We urge you to consider taking these and similar steps.
It's Time to See if the 99% Are Really on Your Side; Give Them a Christmas Present: The Electoral Reform Act of 2012!
If there could be unanimous agreement among all the Occupy Wall Street groups that the next phase of the movement should be a general strike, could they pull it off? Not yet, I'm afraid. Not unless they can figure out how to get the backing of the remaining 99%; because general strikes are supposed to include everyone. And while it's true that the rest of the 99% are in the same financial boat, they haven't started rowing in unison with the OWS movement yet. That's because many of the 99% are confused by the movement. They're waiting for a demand they can rally behind. On the other hand, they're not at all confused by their financial reality! So what wrong with this picture?
If the OWS movement really represents the 99%, then they should throw the rest of them a bone. How about the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 tied up with a Christmas ribbon–a one-day General Strike “to show we can.”