joeklein

Patricians and Corporatism

2012-06-27T17:05:00.000-05:00

The vast political fissure that threatens the very soul of the American Experiment, widened a bit with the reaffirmation of Scott Walker's governorship through the unsuccessful recall. Now I personally believe that Tom Barrett is an honorable man but I think his soft demeanor and non-confrontational style were overwhelmed by the ideological enthusiasm of Walker's adherents. I honestly think in terms of Neville Chamberlain at Munich with bratwurst and beer served at the Governor's Mansion to the tune of "Peace in our time." Then perhaps this argument is just an inevitable ignoratio elenchi via reductio ad hitlerum ... Yes this is a mea culpa to Godwin's Law.
The most disastrous of United States Supreme Court decisions are arguable, Scott v. Sandford, Pleassy v. Phergusson, and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Each of these decisions diminished civil liberties and place property property owners's rights before civil liberties. The last, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has opened the floodgates to the wholesale purchase of the political system by corporate interests; interests primarily controlled by Americas's patrician class. This new crack in the foundation of the American Republic contributed to the massive shift toward neoconservatism in the 2010 midterm, as corporate dollars where used to carpet bomb the airwave with right leaning political advertisements.

The recall election of Scott Walker drove home the power of these special interest. Any television or radio show that in any way touched upon politics was sandwiched between virolent attack ads promulgated by both major political parties. Scott Walker's budget repair bill was a special interest smorgasbord. The repair bill not only paid off contributors, but gutted many of Wisconsin's progressive reforms dating from the first half of the Twentieth Century. The net result was to move regulatory and administrative control of business and environmental regulations out of the hands of professionals and into the hands of the Governor's cronies. This makes fundraising easier for the Governor as the relationship between contributors and payback pork is not interrupted by those pesky privileged academics and nonpartisan civil servants.

Both Republican and democrats share the blame for current conditions. Both your liberties and the very soul of the American Republic is a stake. I don't think we can wait for a turnover in the current USSC or Democratic largess to roll back the laws the ensure corporate domination of politics.
Perhaps it is time for a new movement or a new party? Perhaps it is time to become a pirate.

The "Right" to Unions and Collective Bargining

2011-04-01T13:02:00.000-05:00

First of all a number of founding documents of the European Union and the Canadian Constitution recognize both the right to establish unions and the right to collective bargaining. What other civilized nations think and do when they express moral values superior to our own, establishes the inferiority of our values. The United States' history regarding the civil rights of non-whites, underscores that just because we do not now see a right as a part of the law, does not make our action morally correct nor our morality superior.

In terms of domestic law, Congress has sighed on to some of the international agreements regarding labor rights, and as such these have, all be it limited, legal standing.

http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-2/25-domestic-obligations-of-executive-agreements.html

On 19 June 1934, the US Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing
the President to join ILO. On 20 August 1934, the US government and took
its seat at the ILO.

A number of ratified treaties may lend wight to the argument that the
right to collective bargaining is an international convention.

http://www.law.uiuc.edu/publications/cllpj/archive/vol_25/issue_2/MartinArticle25-2.pdf

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Signed by The United States 5 Oct  1977
Ratified by The United States 8 Jun  1992

"Article 22

1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others,
including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of
his interests.

2. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other
than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a
democratic society in the interests of national security or public
safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or
morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This
article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on
members of the armed forces and of the police in their exercise of this
right.

3. Nothing in this article shall authorize States Parties to the
International Labour Organisation Convention of 1948 concerning Freedom
of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize to take
legislative measures which would prejudice, or to apply the law in such
a manner as to prejudice, the guarantees provided for in that Convention."

US reservation are here:

http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/usdocs/civilres.html

People who make profit through exploitation, always find a way to rationalize their injustice.

The broken ideology of the right.

2011-03-23T12:51:00.000-05:00

Is what the right posits about low taxes just B.S.? Evidence this:

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism

Do Not Bargin You Rights Away

2011-03-06T11:19:00.001-06:00

The suppression of rights is tyranny. The stability of democracy is in its capacity to give voice to aspirations of the people. If the voices are in conflict, then open debate and reasonable compromise is in order. Politics *is* the art of compromise.

What is happening in Madison Wisconsin is symptomatic of tyrannical usurpation of power, not an effort to resolve the structural financial problems of a state. The structural financial problems can be resolved without specialized tax codes written by the business magnet contributors to the governor's campaign coffer. The structural financial problems can be resolved without usurping the rights of workers. The whole apparatus of the state government is being pivoted in support of a radical business magnet agenda, funneling power and money into the hands of a corporate oligarchy.

The agenda cripples the power of people to build new businesses and ossified the existing corporate oligarchy. Our future is in public education and a strong public university system. Our future in attracting the talented people of the world to come here. Our future is in building infrastructure that provides open markets, in power production and information systems. Our future is in a strong investment in transportation infrastructure that can aide Wisconsin in riding out the inevitable spikes in gasoline and diesel oil prices.

We spend too much money on prisons, highways, and tax breaks for large corporations.

Certainly we can and must squeeze more efficiency out of government, but this is best done by an educated and empowered work force. Our most efficient and productive domestic industries empower workers at the lowest levels and flatten bureaucratic hierarchies. We must apply the state of the art methodology of modern management to the business of government.

Unions are a human right.

2011-02-23T16:48:00.000-06:00

Forward is the motto emblazoned on the Wisconsin flag. America and Wisconsin share the belief that *we* are a light to the world, the *we* hold the torch of liberty high, the *we* stride before the huddled masses, *forward* into a future that assures justice, *forward* into a world of limitless opportunity. It is the America that believes in that commitment to *forward* progress that I write this for.

Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was appointed as a delegate to the United Nations by President Harry S Truman. On December 10, 1948 she presented to the world, a gift of liberty drafted from the poetic heart of the America dedicated to *forward* progress; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In her address to the UN General Assembly introducing the declaration she said: "We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation in 1789, the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the US, and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries."

Article 23 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees to everyone, "the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

The European Union also incorporates as a fundaments human right, the right to unionize and the right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is recognized as a human right in Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of December 2000 and in Article 12 of the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers of 1989, as well as the 1961 European Social Charter of the Council of Europe (Article 6). Modern Europe bears the imprint of the American commitment to *forward* progress in these documents.

America's commitment to *forward* progress is what differentiated us in the eyes of liberty loving peoples everywhere, making us a superior choice to monarchial imperialist in the 19th century and totalitarian communism and fascism in the 20th century. The lack of malice shown toward us by the liberty loving youth on the arab streets, owes much to an admiration for American's commitment to *forward* progress.

In Madison Wisconsin we now face a choice. Do we maintain America's commitment to *forward* progress, or do we not? Do we stand for the fundamental and globally recognized rights of working people, or not?

Shall we passively watch as Scott Walker leads Wisconsin back to a new Gilded Age, or shall we resist?

21st Century Revision of Wisconsin Corruption Cartoon

2011-02-22T08:49:00.000-06:00

Note from editor: Please revise the following political cartoon.

Replace Rail-Road President with Koch Brothers.

Put two "pet dogs" next to Rail-Road President/Koch Brothers.

Label pet dogs "Cato Institute" and "Americans for Prosperity."

Give the "Americans for Prosperity" pet a small monkey on a chain labeled "Tea Party."

Raise the amounts to reflect real campaign contributions.

The demise of government by the people.

2011-02-16T12:37:00.002-06:00

Wisconsin's suicidal drive to consolidate the rule of the corporate oligarchy has moved forward under the command and control the the lumpenproletariat leader, Governor and Principate, Scott Walker. Any act which furthers the decline of workers rights, eliminates the cumbersome instruments of democracy, or moves our economy into dependency on monopolies, trusts, cartels, or oligopolies, is OK with Scott.

Any ecological concern about the transformation of the global environment by carbon emissions, make no difference this rainy Wisconsin day in February. As any youthful Tea Party young pioneer knows, the scientists at the Cato Institute (funded through the magnificent benevolence of the Koch Brothers and Exxon) have disproven the negative effects of anthropomorphic induced climate change, discredited renewable energy, and shown the economic futility of any form of publicly funded mass transit.

The future prosperity of the American nation, or at least its oligarchy, will be guaranteed as long as the lumpenproletariat are properly assuaged through bread and circuses, or the modern Wisconsin equivalent, junk food and packer games. (GO PACK)

Please ignore the industrialist behind the campaign finance curtain, we are simply returning to the form of government that existed before the liberal pinko progressives and socialist reined in the free market capitalism epitomized by Byron Kilbourn and closed down the brothels on Milwaukee's Water Street.

Two-hundred and fifty thousand low pay and exploitive jobs, he will make! His industrial sponsors shall be allowed to fully consume our natural resources, pollute our air, and enslave future generation to fossile fuel dependency! He is more brilliant than any economist, offering a vision of a state virtually free of unemployment! I salute the intellectual prowess of our collage dropout and state potentate! All glory to the New Gilded Age! Eradicate those pesky unions! Use the National Guard to stop the socialist labor activists! Gerrymander to make eternal GOP domination! Establish for a thousand years the best government that the oligarchy can buy!

Reactionary Ostriches and Scott Walker

2010-04-24T02:10:00.000-05:00

At one time the United States had two political parties, both with a left, a middle, and a right. Richard Nixon managed to lop off most of the right wing of the Democratic Party, the so called "dixiecrats," and put them solidly in the Republican camp. The Republican liberals and moderates have been slowly boiling away from that party, since any moderate actions by a Republican now days gets him or her labeled as a RINO.

The new symbol of the Republic Party should be The Reactionary Ostrich. The Republican solution to anthropogenic climate change, peak oil, and the contribution of tax cuts to the federal deficit is denial and sticking their collective heads in the sand. The GOP of late has become ideologically apposed to truth. What is currently more disturbing is the tendency of GOP candidates to shuffle further to the right and to put themselves at the podium in front of the Tea Party. The Tea Party is essentially a modernized retread of the John Birch Society backed by the purse of the Koch brothers through their front-group Americans for Prosperity.

Now I may nominally and from time to time be in support of the Democratic Party, but I must admit that my support is mostly driven my my current disdain for the Republican Party. When I was 18, I was a card carrying Socialist, and even today I find myself flirting on and off with the Greens. Electoral politics being what it is, makes it difficult to accomplish change without winning an election now and then. Unfortunately that probably means sticking to one of the two large political parties, and picking the lesser of two evils. Historically political innovation comes from third parties. It would be nice if we could elect a third party candidate for governor or senator, but I don't see it realistically happening soon. So my political party loyalty is quite honestly not particularity deep; but then I can't honestly say I am happy with that. No doubt everyone on all sides will want to use this statement against me at some time in the near future.

Honestly folks, everyone on the left, Democrats, Greens, Socialist, whatever ... needs to work to defeat of Scott Wal ker for Governor of Wisconsin. Here is a man who embraces the Tea-Party doctrine and is surrounded by people who deny anthropogenic climate change, peak oil, and the contribution of tax cuts to the federal deficit. His followers fill the Journal Sentinel online comments with vitriolic diatribes against "entitlement"; often seemingly used as thinly veiled racial slur against Milwaukee's minority population. Social Justice is thought of by these folks as equivalent to communism. Walker and his following want to cut government down until it's just military, police, and prisons; give the rich tax cut and take all regulations off business; drowned everything else in a bathtub.

To me this philosophy smacks more of fascism then conservationism. To save Wisconsin, Scott Walker, the brown bagger, must be defeated.

Start up, stupid!

2009-11-04T22:51:00.002-06:00

The Wisconsin right-wing nuts are insistent on our state Mississippi-fying itself by lowering taxes. They like to spend money on prisons and highways, so the cuts to balance out their proposed corporate tax cuts must come out of education, public assistance, mass-transit and parks. I can be for lower taxes, but fix the budget hole made by truth in sentencing, and the urge, started by Thompson and sustained by the highway lobby, to build highways until you have eight lanes to Crivitz. We spend far to much of our state dollars on prisons and highways.

The voters should ask, is the concept that "low taxes and low regulation are the key to more business," valid? What if the tax and regulation cutting saga is nothing but Baloney Stock? If our model is Texas and Mississippi, then they should be the states with the most per capita start ups!

BUZZZ! Wrong answer!

Crunch Trends came up with this map:

Interesting article and hypothesis: http://trends.techcrunch.com/2009/09/11/state-startup-analyis-crunchbase-supports-ntrepeneurial-immigration-reform/

Then another look at start up data by a gentleman in Illinois comes up with another interesting hypothesis: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/what-states-have-the-best-startup-environment

Another great place to look and think about the problem is the SSTI State Venture Capital Dashboard.

So, to be frank, the line towed by the Walkers - Sykes crowd is pure unadulterated bull. The truth is that the "tax climate" and regulation has only a minimal effect on start ups. The real truth is probably more a combination of education, access to capital, and acceptance of risk taking. Since our state's major capitalists are either in retail, insurance companies, or the decedents of long dead early 20th century entrepreneurs, we have a problem here. The old rich of our state are nearly the opposite of the risk takers who fuel growth elsewhere. The risk takers tend to be young, urban, and both economically and racially diverse.

Our first step in making Wisconsin more entrepreneurial should be to stop listening to the old rich, who want us to be like Mississippi, and start making ourselves more like Silicon Valley, Boston and Seattle.

What our state needs is creativity, urbanity, diversity, capital and a clear picture of the future based on science. What we don't need is a misguided and wrong ideologue like Walker turning the knob of state commerce toward Mississippi, when we should be turning it toward Silicon Valley.

That would be stupid and disastrous.

Being Silly and Going Nowhere

2009-08-20T13:34:00.006-05:00

The real issue in running for government is, do you have the guts to put yourself out for public ridicule? If you desire a change for the better, what better place to put ideas to the test, but in the public forum?

So let's not ridicule, but respect people who seek public office, especially if their sole motivation is to further the public good. Attack policies, not people. ... and yes I should endeavor to do the same.

I honestly believe that I would have done better things for our community than the current County Executive.

That I am guilty of not being a professional politician, I confess, this is true.

I would like to think that for the most part the good people at Urban Milwaukee, and those within the progressive, trade unionist, and urbanist circles of Milwaukee County would see me as a friend. Is it then a proper thing to call your friends 'silly' for desiring to do right?

Doyle’s Decision Could Send Ripples Through Milwaukee’s Political Landscape

The Car Economy

2009-04-27T15:54:00.002-05:00

"With cars, you can go where you want to go when you want to go. But they also have the most environmental impacts, the most social impacts and the greatest cost to our system - to park it, to enforce it, to run it, to import the oil. All of these things have severe impacts that we really just can't sustain anymore. The other modes have their limitations, too. As a pedestrian, you can only go so far. As a bicyclist you can go a little bit further, as a transit rider you can go furthest, but you can't go where you want to go all the time. There's got to be a way to link all these modes. When you add in car-sharing, bike-sharing and taxis, all of a sudden you have this menu of options that you can use, just like you would a car, without all the impacts."
-- Timothy Papandreou

"In the early 1920s when every US city of more than 5,000 residents had at least one streetcar line, households spent an average of just 3 percent of household income on transportation. Today families spend an average of 19 percent."
-- Privatizing The Cost Of Transportation

The anti rail crowd arguments don't stand up to scrutiny. Good public transit saves society and individual families money and it gets cheaper the more people use it. Cars, on the other hand, cost more the more they are used.

Taken For A Ride

2009-03-27T00:17:00.000-05:00

The anti-transit cabal

2009-03-22T15:07:00.014-05:00

The Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation are the sources and for many of the rail v. bus "studies" cited by Sykes, Belling and Walker. They have an agenda. Take a look at who is connected.

The Kock Family lies at the center of the web. They use libertarian doublespeak to argue for disemboweling government regulation so that they can gain special financial advantage by keeping America addicted to oil and automobiles. The people most victimized by the intellectual dishonesty of these organizations are disenfranchised white middle class males who have been brainwashed into supporting political movements that give power and money to these big oil industrialists.

David and Charles Koch own virtually all of Koch Industries, an oil, natural gas, and land management firm and the second largest privately owned company in America. based on an annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people compiled and published by Forbes magazine on March 11, 2009, David and Charles Koch are tied for being the 19th richest person in the world, each with assets in excess of 14 billion. Their father was a co-founder of the John Birch Society.

Please support rail mass transits, but don't forget to purchase your pins to aide identification at our next public meeting. To fully understand this comment, view the John Birch Society link.

The State of The County

2009-02-16T13:55:00.002-06:00

Walker - the blind.

2009-02-15T17:20:00.011-06:00

Walker is blind to the future, perhaps that is why he stand in front of a 48 star flag on the Milwaukee County web site. Apparently he thinks he is living before August 21st, 1959.

The County Executive reveals his inability to be either pragmatic or capable of empirical thought through his transit policy. Perhaps this is the product of believing at face value reports produced by the big oil funded Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. The public should be suspect of these "Libertarian" organizations funded by people seeking their own advantage regardless of the impact on the health and welfare of our society. After all, the Laissez-faire society these "think tanks" advocate is the perfect place for keeping the lower and middle classes under the thumb of big oil.

Walker's ideological posturing has been an impediment to the progress of Milwaukee County. He is a roadblock to fixing the problems at Milwaukee County. This is why the Milwaukee County continues to decline under his "leadership." As the 'ol Harry Truman quote goes: "How many times do you have to get hit over the head before you figure out who’s hitting you?”

Good transit brings wealth to communities. Transit is a logical and necessary investment in a world of increasing population, diminishing oil supplies, and climatic change.

The below PBS NOW episode features a conservative Mayor with vision. An example to show that not all conservatives are blind to the future.

An example to be emulated

2008-11-22T00:33:00.007-06:00

If it works in a car centric place like Charlotte, NC; it can work in Milwaukee.

Reconnecting America's Jeff Wood presents a slide show about Charlotte's transit system

Slideshow

International monetary policy -- thinking out of the box.

2008-11-20T15:52:00.005-06:00

One of the problems that contributed to the Great Depression was a breakdown in international trade. One boost to international trade, as shown in the Euro zone, is a shared currency and the elimination of exchange rates. One achievable possibility would be to synchronize monetary policy between the Euro, Canadian Dollar, US Dollar and the Yen. I.E. 1 Greenback = 1 Loony = 1 Euro = 100 Yen.

This would increase trade between the participants and build a exchange rate free trade zone among relative equal nations.

Recent world events have shown us that our economies are truly closely linked. The myth of separateness is refuted by the daily interactions between our stock markets, exchange rates, and banks.

Auto Makers

2008-11-20T15:17:00.011-06:00

The talk show unfairness doctrine.

2008-11-18T13:30:00.002-06:00

Bruce Murphy throws rhetorical punches at Sykes in his recent posting on MilwaukeeMagazine.com.

Sykes doesn’t directly address or deny that conservative talk radio hosts
(1) perpetuate the notion that listeners are victims and the host is the vehicle by which they are empowered;
(2) use an us-versus-them approach that regularly targets Democrats, “Republicans in Name Only” and the mainstream media;
(3) refuse to do an even-handed discussion of issues;
(4) belittle callers when the argument can’t be won on the merits;
(5) strategically find occasions to disagree with the Republican leaders or conservative doctrine to give the impression of being an independent thinker;
(6) won’t risk their credibility by backing a Republican candidate who has no chance of winning;
(7) rely on the “you know what would happen if this was a liberal” line of attack;
(8) use the “pre-emptive strike” to immediately accuse the media of overplaying a budding news story that might make conservatives look bad;
(9) selectively use facts to support their position and ignore any that don’t; (10) pound away on an issue, hour after hour, day after day, to motivate listeners to contact their public officials in support of a particular policy;
(11) use a double standard on such issues as the line-item veto, perjury and activist judges (all three are great if they help Republicans or conservatives, but bad if used in support of Democrats).

More evidence that Milwaukee's anti-rail talking heads are wrong.

2008-11-18T10:11:00.002-06:00

This You-Tube video was posted to The Overhead Wire.

Steady at the helm!

2008-09-19T16:16:00.001-05:00

The laissez-faire meltdown.

2008-09-18T13:02:00.005-05:00

Look at our economic history. The regulatory regime put in under FDRs New Deal managed to smooth out the boom and bust cycle that plagued the U.S. economy in the century prior to the 1930s. The post FDR America had recessions rather than depressions. The economic cycle of boom and bust that ravaged this country between the civil war and the great depression was tamed by regulatory oversight of both Wall Street and the banking industry.

In the 1980s and 1990s a rabble of post-Reagan economic ideologues emerged from the right wing of the Republican Party. These self proclaimed Neo-Conservatives or ‘Neocons,’ sought the dismantling of FDR’s regulatory regime and a return of America to laissez-faire policies.

The Neocons apparently snoozed through history class during the lecture on the “Gilded Age,” an often glossed over period in American History; a time when laissez-faire economics so destabilized American society as to cause labor revolts and wild swings in the economy. The social, economic and political disruption was so extensive as it nearly destroyed the system of capitalism in the United States and contributed to the rise of the Bolsheviks in Europe. We did that laissez-faire experiment and it proved disastrous.

A country dominated by large unregulated monopolies is little different from a country where the state is the monopoly. Be it Corporatists or Communists; the centralized control of the populous by a corporate elite or a single political party, inevitably tends to drive countries down the path toward endless war (cold or hot) and suppression of both political and economic freedom.

Unregulated capitalism tends to destroy itself. Market capitalism works best when many independent producers and providers of goods and services, openly compete. Thus unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism, which allows the aggregation of capital, political, and economic power into the hands of the few, is destructive of the system that spawns it. Regulation is necessary.

The regulation of large business, when properly done, is good for small business. Small business can be defined as places where the owners work side by side with the workers. Somehow the Neocons managed to cleave small business people, independent consultants, entrepreneurs, and the working middle class away from progressive politics. They have successfully propagandized the idea that what is bad for the large corporation is bad for anyone seeking economic improvement. The Neocon economic illusions build on cheap energy and cheap labor, forces us now to drive past the abandoned row of walking distance neighborhood owned stores, the few cents saved at the big box alternatives taken away by declining wages and rising fuel prices. Big box stores suck the oxygen out of small town business districts and neighborhood commercial strips.

For workers, economic diversity allows many places where talent can be plied and provides many opportunities for self-improvement. Economic diversity, allows social mobility, monopoly, locks workers in. Access to education and capital allows the big brewery worker to open a micro brewery, or the big electronics company's young engineer to start a computer company. This is that story of Randy Sprecher and Steve Wosniak. Economic diversity brings opportunity, monopoly brings servitude. The domination of our country by big businesses has transformed the once proud American working class into hamburger flippers and big box store greeters.

The Neocons sold a bill of goods to the American people; they linked Liberty and personal freedom to laissez-faire economic policy. Ironically in the process they managed to strip our country of fundamental Constitutional guarantees such as the right of habeas corpus and judicial review of place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized; making a person’s, houses, papers, effects and self, open to unreasonable searches and seizures at any time or place. History evidences that the maintenance of our national Liberty is more the stead of the small shopkeeper than of the corporate Robber Barron.

Our current economic and political condition, the ill-defined and endless war on terrorism, and the deplorable erosion of our constitutional rights are the product of the Neocons.

Desperate to retain power, they fall back on doublespeak. So now these defenders of the laissez-faire resort to nationalizing lending institutions, suppressing investigation of their VP candidate’s past, and engaging in blatant voter suppression. These are the acts of desperate ideologues, desperate to retain power.

Now is the time for action. Both the Republican Party and the people of the Republic need to break the link to the Neocons. The GOP and McCain by maintaining their link to the Neocons have chained themselves a sinking ship. America needs to repudiate the Neocon philosophy and vote them out, or we, like the GOP, too shall assuredly find ourselves chained to that same sinking ship.

Palinoccio

2008-09-11T16:05:00.005-05:00

"Palin's requests to Congress came at a time of huge federal deficits, while Alaska state revenue was soaring due to rising oil prices and a major tax increase on oil production that Palin signed into law in late 2007."
-- Palin's earmark requests: more per person than any other state

"Palin reduced the state government's requests for special projects this year to 31 earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 person."
-- Despite cuts, Alaska earmarks still high

"Total 2008 earmark spending for Wisconsin is $182.5 million, or roughly $33 per resident, according to the database."
-- JSonline: Earmark spending has power to divide, unite

Vote Republican

2008-07-04T15:01:00.001-05:00

Voter ID - sans card

2008-06-24T15:33:00.005-05:00

Nobody likes it when I say voter ID can be done in such a way as to not discourage voting. If the real goal is to insure the legitimacy of the voter, then we could simply take a digital snapshot at the time of registration and put the snapshot, with the registration information into a data base. This can be done with web based software and a laptop.

When you go vote the poll worker would then look you up on the database. If you need to register on site, the poll worker would use a laptop with a cheap USB camera to put your address and image into the database.

No fuss, no hassle, no waiting at the DMV.

The fact that this method is not under consideration speaks volumes about the intent to use voter ID for vote suppression.