Letters to the Editor
Craig234
Published Letters: 234 Editor's Choice: 61
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White House error
[Read the article: What Scott McClellan said]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How can we push for this to be corrected?
I tried calling the White House press office - and got through to them on the second try - but they only speak to members of the media.
It's difficult for a citizen to get an answer from the White House.
It's outrageous for them to falsify the record - I watched the video, and there is no indication McClellan said what the White House claims.
I'm going to call my Congressman next.
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Wrong points
[Read the article: Arnold's big flameout]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The author distorts Schwarzennegar's blatant power grab initiatives as 'reform' initiatives such as for union pensions.
The author makes a reasonable argument about the problem with union pensions being too high - but fails to note that the ballot initiztive did nothing about that directly, it simply weakened unions across the board in their ability to fund their sides' politics.
Look at the agenda: cripple unions' fundraising, while doing nothing to cap the huge private contributions available to the right; eliminate the gerrymandering by democrats in California to get more republican seats, while doing nothing to eliminate gerrymandering in other red states such as Texas or Ohio, simply giving a gift to the republicans nationally; giving the governor more one-sided power in the budget, etc.
That has little to do with the two cherry picked points the author made about 'legitimate reform'. The strongest case could be made on re-districting - but as I noted, how much sense does this make when other states continue not to fix their problem? It's not unlike the states who consider allocating their electors proportionally - and who guarantee if they did candidates would ignore them.
These are examples where ideal and practicality don't meet - and it seems we're limited in being able to fix it with federal law.
So, we hold our nose, and put up with the imperfections, in the interest or protecting our interests.
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A few minor notes
[Read the article: Don't get "Fooled Again"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to post something that's authoratatively informed to help resolve the issue. But I can't. I simply have not put the amount of effort into learning about the election to be able to get past the 'presumed innocent, want more investigation' stage.
But I would like to add a few comments from what I have seen.
A few blocks from Salon, Crispin gave a speech last week to the Commonwealth Club. I have to say my reaction to it was similar to Farhood's reaction to his book: I felt he talked a whole lot about the topic of the criticism of his assertions - but while expecting that to lead up to some summary of the facts supporting them, he suddenly announced his speech was over without 'the meat' being delivered, IMO.
He made various references and assertions, and his message was well structured around how republicans stole the election 'before, during and after the voting', and he made reference to some activities, but I never felt he supported much - as Farhood said, he seemed to assume the correctness of the allegations.
Now, there is smoke - and I'd like to see it investigated. Examples include his allegations of (IIRC) 'thousands' of activities including the calls to black voters telling them they'd be arrested if they voted with any unpaid child support or traffic tickets - he even referred to a specific team of paid republican operatives who travelled from state to state making these calls. But that's all the evidence for them.
Another is the problem with why republican districts had plenty of machines and short lines, democrats had few machines, long lines.
He offered many assertions on this too, such as there being thousands of machines left locked in storage that could have been used.
Crispin makes his case passionately - he puts his neck so far out that you want him not to be exaggerating. It reminds me of watching Nixon play all the cards about the American people having to be able to trust their president and such, raising the stakes to use all the goodwill of the office, making the price far higher if (and when, in his case) the truth shows otherwise.
In other words, Crispin isn't just making the case - he's laying it out in such a way, to appeal to anyone who cares about the integrity of our system, asserting so strongly that he's right and being falsely smeared, the the stakes greatly increased for all investigators of election wrongs if the truth is otherwise.
It's the sort of thing, if false, you might see the republicans put someone up to to discredit the whole side of the argument.
I'm not beginning to allege Crispin has done that.
I think too, though, that whatever the fact with the election being 'stolen', we should not lose site of the many other problems with our current system - including the issue of corporate donations playing such a large, corrupting role. I think we should ban corporate donations from the system, removing the laissez-faire late 19th century policy that corporations are legally people.
Crispin had a lot of other points and anecdotes that are interesting and should be further looked into.
Let's figure out a mechanism to do so - with the congressional investigations so broken now, and the media investigations so broken now, that'll take some effort (the Viet Nam 'hearings' with veterans John Kerry participated in come to mind) - and debunk any the moment we find they're false, as Farhood did with at least one.
Finally - it'd be nice of some people recorded some of these calls telling them the election is on another day, etc.
An actual tape might get some media exposure, and convince a lot of people that the problem is real.