US Elections

Finally! No more debates, no more television advertisements, no more writing articles on the lunacy of the American electoral system… Yeah, right.

In less than 10 days Americans will head to the polls to decide once and for all who they want to be led by: Mitt Romney and his cohorts of the 1 percent or centrist President Barack Obama.

If the polls are to be believed (and they shouldn’t), the political landscape the day after the election will probably look similar to the day before, and things will likely carry on much as it has for the past four years. However, there are some variables that these polls don’t take into account, and I don’t just mean the weather.

For instance, millions of people left without a voice will surely make an impact and no one knows just how effective the voter suppression laws introduced by state Republicans will play out. With the polls already being fairly tight, these new factors bring an unprecedented amount of uncertainty. So I’m not going to guess what will happen, but I will discuss the insane possibilities.

2000 Revisited

Everyone remembers what happened in 2000 when Governor Jeb Bush and his secretary of state Katherine Harris disenfranchised tens of thousands of black voters in Florida. It created a tight race that would eventually be decided by the Supreme Court stopping the ensuing recount which meant that Jeb’s brother George had won by a few hundred votes.

This time around the same scenario is conceivable; Florida again has a Republican governor (Rick Scott) dedicated to suppressing the minority vote and the Supreme Court still leans to the right. The big difference in 2012 lies in the amount of swing states trying to mirror the sunshine state. Who knows whether Florida or another state taking similar steps might be the epicenter.

Strange Bedfellows

In order to win the presidency, a candidate requires 270 electoral college votes, in other words, half plus one of the 538 available. Given the close race, it is conceivable, however unlikely, that neither candidate will acquire the magic number. Given the political landscape, it is thinkable that the candidates could end up tied at 269 each.

In the event of a tie, the presidency is decided by the House of Representatives. The house which is currently controlled by the Republicans and is expected to retain their majority after November 6th would therefore name Mitt Romney as president.

The Senate which is currently controlled by Democrats would be tasked with naming the vice-president. Assuming the Senate retains their Democratic majority, Joe Biden would become Mitt Romney’s vice-president. Stranger still, if the Senate ends up going 50/50, Joe Biden as the current vice-president would be the deciding vote to re-elect himself for the position.

Recipe for Hate

One of the more frightening scenarios I can see unfolding (other than the Republicans controlling everything) would be Barack Obama getting re-elected by receiving the most electoral votes and Mitt Romney winning the popular vote.

This would follow in the footsteps of the 2000 election where Bush became president even though Gore received more individual votes. Democrats weren’t happy, but they never overreacted, imagine for a second what would happen if history repeated itself for the other side.

The extremist wing of the GOP with the help of their conservative pundits and television network would instantly brand Obama as an illegitimate president. If you think that’s far-fetched, just look at the lengths they’ve gone to about his place of birth and religion.

Although a certain percentage of Republicans have believed in Obama’s illegitimacy for years, it wouldn’t take much to convince the rest of the conservative base that Obama is a false leader who actually lost to Romney. The hate would build up so fast with every comment out of Limbaugh, Beck or Fox News’s mouth to the point where gun-toting lunatics everywhere might decide to right the wrong themselves and do something drastic… again.

Whatever happens on evening of Nov. 6 I will be expecting the unexpected. Strange things always seem to happen in a close race. Still, I’m sure none of these preposterous scenarios will come to fruition. Obama will get re-elected with majorities in the Senate and the House and every American will live happily ever after… until November 7th.

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Leave it to a secret recording of Mitt Romney giving a speech to wealthy donors to teach us more about the man behind the Etch-a-Sketch. If what he said is to be believed as genuine thought then I’d have to say the leaders of the Republican Party haven’t grown in intelligence since George W.

First off, in the speech recorded secretly at a $50,000 a plate Florida fundraiser back in May he said “There are 47 percent who are with him (Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

He wasn’t done; “Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people.”

Romney doesn’t seem to understand two things; first, everyone pays taxes. The 47% he mentions has been a conservative pundit talking point for years, but it cloaks the real truth. Close to 2/3 of the 47% pay a pay-roll tax. A family of five making fifty grand a year only pays this pay-roll tax and its percentage is usually higher than Mitt’s capital gain tax. The other 1/3 is made up of senior citizens or the disabled collecting social security and those whose income is below $20,000/year.

Second, and I wonder if Romney realizes this, but the States where people are disproportionally dependent on the government for handouts and “don’t pay taxes” are all Republican controlled States with only one exception (Idaho). That’s right; Romney is insulting the very base of his supporters, lucky for him most of these voters are uneducated, uninformed or too religious to vote for a democrat. Republicans have a history of getting people to vote against their interests going back to Nixon.

The second item in Romney’s speech that caught my ear was his little tale about his trip to a Chinese factory back in the nineties. He talks about the factory having one little bathroom at the end with maybe ten bedrooms. The rooms had 12 girls each with three bunk beds on top of each other. Around the factory was a huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers.

Romney said “Gosh, I can’t believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in.” The tour guide said that the barbed wire and guard towers were there to keep other workers out and Romney bought it. The guide also told Romney that the girls leave during the Chinese New Year and some save up enough money so that they don’t come back. It never occurred to him that the New Year is the only time they’re permitted to leave and they don’t come back because they don’t like working with a gun in their back for a dollar a day.

Regardless, if you’re as gullible as Romney or if you’d prefer to take the guide at his word, the point to this lies on Romney’s appreciation of the situation. No one knows if Mitt purchased this particular factory, but it appears as though the visit inspired him to buy one just like it while at Bain Capital. Romney told this story to explain a comment he made that “95 percent of life is set up for you if you’re born in this country (the US)”, born with a silver spoon that is.

The last thing I should mention about the speech is Romney’s almost unthinkable prospects for Middle East peace. He said “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel”. That might be true, perhaps if he were talking about Iran or Hamas, but the majority of Palestinians want peace as much as most Israelis, they want security as much as Israelis, they want a country like Israelis and have for decades.

What kind of potential leader of the free world goes and dismisses the prospects for peace and just hopes that something good happens? Are you fucking kidding me? What leadership! He then goes on to say “the only answer is to show your strength. Again, American strength, American resolve, as the Palestinians someday reach the point where they want peace more than we’re trying to push peace on them”

Say what you want about Palestinian ideology, politics or tactics, the only way America or Israel has pushed peace on them is by imprisoning their citizens, dropping bombs and by blockading, annexing and occupying their land for 45 years. How much more does the US & Israel have to “push”?

Well there you have it, but what do you expect from a man so ignorant and out of touch that he believes that the average middle class family earns $250,000 a year. Romney was mocked during the primaries as someone likened him to an Etch-a-Sketch for his flip-flopping nature, a contrast that has since faded. I believe that the Etch-a-Sketch label is still a valid comparison, the only difference being that the Etch-a-Sketch is permanently erased.

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Most people would agree that finding a politician who lies is as easy as coming across a man who pays taxes. After all, politicians are normally bred in a law school and/or business school and taught how to win regardless of how. But while a legislator who lies isn’t all that new, the method and rate of how they fib has changed in the last dozen years.

With exceptions such as Nixon, Bush Jr. or Clinton who each told a real whopper, lying in politics used to be reserved for incumbents who simply went back on their campaign promises. This election cycle, rather than lying about their own policies, the focus appears to be lying about the other candidate. Nowhere was this more evident than at last week’s RNC.

Before the Republican National Convention started, GOP pollster Neil Newhouse told an ABC News forum in Tampa that “We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Newhouse was referring to a Mitt Romney ad that claimed Barack Obama had “gutted” work requirements for welfare recipients. Obama had simply given that option to certain States that had asked for more control.

So with the stage set, the Republicans wasted no time dedicating a whole night to “We Built This”, taken from a completely out of contex Obama quote. That same night New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said during his keynote address that “we choose respect over love” meaning Americans wanted the truth rather than political pandering. He then went on to say “We have a nominee who will tell us the truth and who will lead with conviction. And now he has a running mate who will do the same”. Less than twenty-four hours later, Christie was made a liar.

The night after the New Jersey Governor spoke those words, said running mate Paul Ryan gave his Vice Presidential acceptance speech. Now, I’ve heard politicians of all shapes and sizes stretch the truth from time to time, but I’ve never heard so much nonsense come out of a single speech. Here is but a sample:

• He blamed the nation’s credit downgrade last summer on Obama even though the agency specifically blamed Republicans for refusing to accept any kind of further tax revenue.

• He said Obama had added more to the national debt than all former presidents put together. Although Obama inherited an annual debt of $1.2 trillion from Bush, the debt has risen by one third making Ryan’s claim impossible.

• Ryan claimed that Obama had broken a campaign promise to save a GM plant in Wisconsin, not only did Obama make no promise, but the plant closed during Bush’s term.

• He accused Obama of doing nothing with the creation of Bowles-Simpson (National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform). Ryan actually led republicans to vote against the plan.

• Ryan also mentioned that Obama had cut $716 billion from Medicare. Obama simply eliminated inefficiencies that were no longer required thanks to the affordable care act. Ryan’s own budget called for the same cuts.

Notice these are all falsehoods about Obama. It’s as if political speech has become an offshoot of television attack ads where making the other guy look bad is more important than making yourself look good.

Paul Ryan’s speech was actually covered half decently in the corporate media; at least once they got their facts straight, even Fox “so-called” News had a couple commentators state that his speech was full of lies.

Mitt Romney for his part did mention a couple of these fabrications during his acceptance speech the following night, but mainly stood clear of talking about anything. He failed to mention climate change, immigration, Afghanistan, social security or financial reform.

It seems even in the information age, the Republican Party is practicing “proof by assertion”, where if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. What’s scarier than the Republicans adopting a strategy used by Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is that it just might work; Republicans know that a good part of the electorate are uneducated or uninformed and don’t pursue the facts.

I’m curious to see if this strategy continues in the coming months. I’m equally curious to see if the Obama campaign adopts a similar approach should they start to fall behind in the polls. If this is to be the new way campaigns are run, the people will have to get informed even more than since their word will mean even less than it did before.

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This past Saturday, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney selected Congressman Paul Ryan as his choice for vice-president. Two weeks before the Republican national convention, Romney hopes that his selection will reset his campaign and refocus attention on the economy rather than the tax returns he refuses to make public.

Mitt’s choice of Ryan was well received among Republicans and Democrats alike. Ryan was the author of the now infamous “Ryan Budget” that took great steps to shrink the size of the national government, provide tax cuts that disproportionally favors the wealthy, and defunds various social programs—it’s no wonder Republicans love him.

Democrats on the other hand see this as an opportunity to point out the vast differences between the two parties. President Obama will be able to expose the Republican plan for what it is: an all-out assault on the poor and middle class.

You see, Paul Ryan is first and foremost a libertarian who hailed Ayn Rand as his hero and mentor saying “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Rand was a 20th century libertarian author (and prophet to some) who centered on the idea that selfishness is a “virtue”. She described altruism as “evil,” and condemned Christianity for sympathizing with the poor. Ryan was forced to distance himself somewhat from her philosophy in 2012 (Republicans don’t mix well with atheists), but the influence can’t be so easily washed away.

The corporate media is already calling the 2012 election a clash of ideologies regarding the government’s role in society. The republicans prefer low taxes and few social programs, small government, but one that is friendly toward business. Democrats by comparison are… also friendly towards business, but at least they still recognize the plight of the poor. The Republican ticket seems to consist of a very wealthy businessman and a man who wants to make him wealthier.

Paul Ryan’s controversial budget raises taxes on the poorest of Americans while lowering them on the richest, it would also end Medicare and replace it with a voucher system. Ryan wants to eliminate Pell Grants for more than 1 million poor students, privatize social security which he characterizes as a “ponzi scheme” and, of course, repeal Obamacare. Unless you’re a rich man, you stand to lose.

Like most politicians these days, Paul Ryan was bought a long time ago by the energy industry. He’s received $65,000 from the Koch Brothers alone, $432,181 from natural resource companies which includes close to $250,000 from oil and gas. It’s no surprise then that the congressman has rejected the effects of climate change. It should also come as no surprise that his budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion (small government indeed).

Since the coming of Reaganomics over thirty years ago, the wealthy in the United States have never had it so good, but that doesn’t mean team Romney don’t want to try and make it even better. But for those who think putting a businessman in charge will miraculously repair the economy, consider this: there have only been two successful businessmen in the last hundred years to be elected president; the first being Herbert Hoover and the other being George W. Bush. The first one had the Great Depression start under his watch, the other brought on the Great Recession.

During the occupy movement last year, the 99%’s slogan that referred to the greed of the banking industry was “Never have so many been screwed by so few”. If Romney manages to win the White House, those words will merit repeating.

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*Photo under Creative Commons license. 

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”. Those words were spoken a couple years ago by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It was a sentiment that Republicans at the national and state level, along with corporations, business owners and Supreme Court Justices put into action even before those words were spoken.

For starters, Republicans who are the minority in the Senate have all but changed the system. The majority used to rule in the hundred member senate, whichever party got fifty votes plus one (the tie breaker belonging to the Vice-President) won the vote.

Today Republicans in the senate have made the filibuster a part of their culture, forcing Democrats to need a three-fifths majority or sixty votes. Republicans have used this tactic to block important job bills from being passed and have done so repeatedly.

With the help of majority Republicans in the House of Representatives doing likewise, it’s been said that Republicans are purposely bringing down the economy to prevent Obama’s re-election. According to McConnell’s statement, it is more important than helping the people who elect them.

In 2010, the conservative leaning Supreme Court ruled in favour of the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United. The landmark ruling said that the First Amendment prohibited the government from limiting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. In other words, money is equal to free speech.

When it comes to corporations and unions, it should come as no surprise as to who each is allied with and which has more funds to spend. If the recall election in Wisconsin was any indication, the era of the Super PAC gives Republicans a huge advantage. Scott Walker in Wisconsin outspent his Democratic rival nearly 8-1, mostly from cash outside the state.

In support of Republican nominee Mitt Romney, billionaire Sheldon Adelson has already spent $35 million of his own money and plans to spend over a $100 million before the election. Adelson is but one man; the billionaire Koch Brothers will spend even more.

So while conservatives are donating tens of millions at a time, Obama is forced to fundraise instead of leading his country. In fact, Obama has already held more fundraisers than the last six sitting presidents combined and he is still behind.

Most might think that blocking job creation bills and outspending their opponents by wide margins is enough for Republicans to reclaim their throne. Just in case, State Republicans have been playing their trump card across the country (and I don’t mean The Donald).

The founder of the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) and conservative activist Paul Weyrich once said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down”

Weyrich may be deceased, but the words he spoke over thirty years ago have been put into action by ALEC and has resulted in new voting laws being adopted in at least a dozen Republican controlled state legislatures.

Hundreds of thousands of potentially legal citizens are being purged from the voting rolls in places like Florida and Texas. Other states have mandated new voter IDs, barred convicted and previously convicted felons from voting, cut down voting periods, etc.

These conservative measures don’t amount to a conspiracy, it’s wide open for everyone to see. The problem is for people to see it, the corporate news media would have to report it. I’m not just talking about Fox so-called News who would prefer to add fuel to the Republican fire; I’m talking about the other networks that used to keep the two political parties in check. The fact is they’re too scared to lose out on the billions of Super PAC advertising dollars that’ll be coming in.

With the odds increasingly stacked against him, Obama is going to have to resort to old fashioned politics. I believe his chances are going to rest on his ideas and his ability to articulate them. Sadly, that might not be enough.

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