Letters to the Editor
-
My senators betrayed me
I live in Colorado and both of my senators voted for this Fisa amendment bill. I expected that from Bush bootlicker Wayne Allard. He's a repug and thank God this is his last term. Hopefully we can get a real dem in his seat. However my other senator is a DINO, Ken Salazar. He voted for this abomination. I'm ashamed to say I voted for him. I won't make that mistake next time. I have written my senators and represenatives but it doesn't make much of a difference. They vote the way they want to. They could care less about the people they represent. Nothing is going to change even if we get a dem in the White House. Has Hillary or Obama denounced anything the Bush admin has done? None of the front runners have said they will restore our civil liberties. None of them has said they will restore the checks and balances of our constitution. I'll tell who will get my vote. The candidate that says I will undo every illegal unconstitutional act that the Bush admin has done. I will close the torture centers and secret prisons around the world. I will give accused terrorists a fair trial and a chance to defend themselves. That none of the front runners are talking like this, shows nothing's going to change. They will just take the ball and run even farther with it. See how much they can get away with. How much farther down the road to fascism they can take our country.
-
What is to be done?
Back in the day, the left felt at a loss without something called an "analysis," a position that took stock of where things stood, where they had to be, and how to get from here to there.
The right has long had an analysis. It threads through several writings. One in particular is the 1971 "Powell memo." Google it and you'll see what got Lewis Powell onto the Supreme Court.
The memo is impressionistic, not deigning to list issues. Instead it flags a crisis of drift, fed by leftish attitudes that denigrated America but were unmet by the business class, whose members saw mostly to their individual bottom lines.
Powell excoriated them for this, predicting disaster if they did not become a political movement. Though remembered for his Bakke opinion, a more consequential one was Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. It held corporate participation in elections could not be limited to issues in which they had a particular business stake. It was so radical that William Rehnquist was among the dissenters.
At the level just below Powell's pitch we face a few large-scale trends behind the walls closing in on our republic: privatization, globalization, industry self-regulation, deunionization, permanent war, unilateralism, religious and racial hate, suppression of truth and fact-finding, election manipulation, neglect of the environment and health, and media integration into the means of governance.
Relative to these trends our politicians are epiphenomenal, a dependent variable. Perhaps one can add to the list, but these and their synergies sum up in a social picture in which, increasingly, citizens' choices are relegated to markets and diverted from politics except to ratify the trends under other labels.
I don't know if ordinary citizens can be mobilized in the way corporations and their allies were. To be candid, it all seems too much. Never mind funding and misinformation. There are too many pet ideas out there about where the linchpin is, too many points at which to be wedged apart, too many individual woes and distractions, too much naive moralism at the expense of realism. Aside from all this, not many have the constitution to descend into the pit of despair to see the crisis in all its aspects and make their way back, at least back into politics, since there's the option (not to mention need) simply to survive individually: we don't control the surplus.
So where does this leave us? Sorry. This is only the picture of an answer.
-
Why is this so hard to understand?
We hold the people who continue to perpetrate these outrages ACCOUNTABLE. Feel free to vote a straight Democratic ticket in the general election, which is preferable to not voting or voting third party in my opinion.
But there are primaries, you know. And if someone wants to challenge the incumbent on his or her lack of fealty to the Constitution, some political hay might be made.
Right now these cowards think all they have to fear is the talking heads on chat shows.
-
-- jebldmm
"I can't tell you how disappointing it is to see you ignore everything that Democrats have done to expose Republican corruption and fall into the trap of blaming them for wrongs the didn't have the power to prevent, and don't have the power to change.
In a word. Horseshit.
-
Primaries
I'm ready to throw the bums out, too....but not enough to allow a RW Republican to manage to eek out a victory in CA. Here in CA, the Republican primaries are rarely won by moderates.
That being said, I will be voting AGAINST Feinstein and willing to campaign for ANY decent opponent of hers in the primary. If she squeeks through and wins anyway, only then will she'll get my vote.
Who knows, if the heat gets turned up enough, some of these old timers might even feel the need to retire and emjoy the good life.
Webb, on the other hand, he's even more of a disappointment for some reason. It's beginning to suck that the only thing that makes Webb okay is that he's not as bad as George Allen would have been.
-
Within the party
I just sent an e-mail message to the chairman of my Democratic Party county organization, and to the presidents of the local Democractic clubs which I belong to.
The gist of it was that the issue of this disastrous FISA vote has to be dealt with locally, and dealt with without delay. A public vote of no confidence in the DLC, DSCC and DCCC by the county party rank-and-file, sent to the state party leadership might help. I'm going to the state meeting on August 11, although not, unfortunately, as an official delegate, and I'll see what I can do to bring this issue to the table.
It's long overdue, I admit, but the hope was that our elected representatives would come to their senses and do the right thing. Now that it's been amply demonstrated that they have no intention of doing the right thing, it's time to do what we can to threaten them with consequences up to and including outright schism. If it takes running against the party's chosen in the primaries, I'm prepared to do what I can to make that happen as well.