BBC: Proposed Carbon Targets Above Historical Safety Levels

A new historical record of carbon dioxide levels suggests current political targets on climate may be “playing with fire”, scientists say.

Researchers used ocean sediments to plot CO2 levels back 20 million years.

Levels similar to those now commonly regarded as adequate to tackle climate change were associated with sea levels 25-40m (80-130 ft) higher than today.

…
What that level is has been the subject of intense debate down the years; but one figure currently receiving a lot of support is 450ppm.

On Tuesday, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its prescription for tackling climate change, which sees concentrations of greenhouse gases peaking at the equivalent of 510ppm of CO2 before stabilising at 450ppm.

The Boxer-Kerry Bill, which has just entered the US Senate, also cites the 450 figure.

“Trouble is, we don’t know where the critical CO2 or temperature threshold is beyond which ice sheet collapse is inevitable,” said Dr Overpeck.

“It could be below 450ppm, but it is more likely higher – not necessarily a lot higher – than 450ppm.

“But what this new work suggests is that… efforts to stabilise at 450ppm should avoid going up above that level prior to stabilisation – that is, some sort of ‘overshoot’ above 450ppm on the way to stabilisation could be playing with fire.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299426.stm

Israeli Jew Elected to Fatah’s Revolutionary Council

What does he hope to achieve as a Palestinian Hebrew who is a full member of the Revolutionary Council? His core message, he explains, is "to suggest" to his new colleagues that there is nothing to fear in recognising the notion of a Jewish state. "The correct response is that we will not recognise an Israel defined by political Zionism." And perhaps just as importantly, Davis believes that Fatah can expand its role from representing only Palestinian Arabs to representing all of those who oppose "settler-colonialism". "It cannot win the struggle for equality that it has waged for so long as long as it remains only representative of Palestinians. To win the moral (high ground) it has to project itself as a democratic alternative for all. That is the message I first delivered and that I have persevered with and has led to my election to the Revolutionary Council after 25 years.

BBC: As temperatures rise, treelines advance

Trees around the world are colonising new territories in response to higher temperatures. From the US west coast to northern Siberia and south-east Asia, trees are growing at higher elevations, and at higher latitudes as the climate warms. Of 166 sites studied, trees are advancing at more than half, while they are receding at just two sites. The shift is revealed by the first global analysis of treelines published in the journal Ecology Letters.

BBC: Rural revolution How mega farms are transforming farming in Ukraine

From the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8218104.stm

You could call it the latest foreign invasion. No tanks this time, but a state-of-the-art agricultural army is on the move.

In large swathes of the country fleets of ultra-modern combine harvesters are bringing in the harvest from new mega farms.

Food security

But it is not Ukrainian money and know-how which is driving this agricultural revolution. It is foreign governments and companies.

The Libyans are negotiating for land here, as are the Russians and others.

Many governments are looking to secure land overseas as a way to ensure the food supply to their country does not fail.
[...]
Others go further, condemning the deals done by foreign companies as a “land-grab”, as rich countries and corporations snap up huge swathes of land in poor, developing countries.

Professor Tim Lang, one of the British government’s leading food security advisers, is one such critic:

“I feel sorry for Ukraine, here it is, it was colonised by the Russians, it was the grain basket for many, many years, it went downhill and now it is being asset stripped again by the West,” he says.

“You could say that it is good for the Ukraine, that it is getting inside investment from rich countries, that its productivity will go up, that since the collapse of the Soviet Union it has not had the requisite investment, that at least under Stalinism there was a huge amount of that sort of investment – you can paint that picture – but I’m not convinced by that.”

UK Guardian: The struggle against debt servitude

A kinder, simpler solution to the problem of runaway consumer debt: cap the interest rate at a reasonable figure.   Usury laws were once universal, probably owing to some language in the Bible on the proper rate of interest.  That all went by the wayside in the Reagan era, when states revised their usury laws to remove penalties for excessive interest.  S.C. did so in 1982.  The current Great Recession places extreme financial pressure on working people who must service debt acquired in fatter times, in some cases in complex mortgage arrangements that are partly to blame for the crisis.

London Citizens, a civic association in the UK, is sponsoring a campaign to cap the rate of interest in that country:

Following the financial crash of last year, a new issue emerged and a new campaign was forged. Our members experienced an increase in interest rates on money loans. The banks, many of which were now owned in substantial part by the public, were borrowing at half a percent but lending the money back to us at 40 times that rate, and more. Each of the major banks have credit card interest rates that start in the 20s and rise steeply with penalties. The same is true of consumption and mortgage loans when penalty payments see the rates jump into the 40s and 50s – more than a hundred times the interest charged to the banks. This is setting aside the bridging and pay-day loans sold by companies such as Shopacheck and Providential, where the interest rates start in the hundreds and go their own way from there. The cost of not earning enough to live has never been higher.

Our faith communities had no difficulty in naming this. They call it usury: the charging of excessive interest by the rich upon the poor with the corresponding transfer of whatever slender assets the weaker party had accumulated. They think it’s wrong and have decided to do something about it. And so was born the anti-usury campaign.

This has one goal: to establish a maximum beyond which it would be illegal to charge interest. We have a meeting tomorrow with the Royal Bank of Scotland where we will raise the possibility of a 10% maximum credit card. They are committed to being “responsible lenders” and we would like to help them fulfil that.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/11/anti-usury-campaign

Links: London Citizen

Spartanburg Herald Journal: Tax relief was tax hike for most

Source:  http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090806/ARTICLES/908061052/1083/ARTICLES?Title=Tax-relief-turned-out-to-be-tax-hike-for-most-homeowners

Tax relief was tax hike for most
$1M Spartanburg homes see big property tax cut

By Robert W. Dalton
bob.dalton@shj.com

Published: Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 12:20 a.m.

The majority of Spartanburg County homeowners now pay more in property taxes than they did before the much-hyped tax relief the state Legislature approved in 2006.

As an added bonus, they also pay an extra penny on the state sales tax, part of the swap lawmakers worked out to remove school operating taxes from owner-occupied property.

Owners of $100,000 homes in the city of Spartanburg paid $889 in 2006, the year before Act 388 went into effect. That dropped to $863 in 2007, but climbed to $921 last year, according to figures from Spartanburg County Auditor Sharon West. West said she wouldn’t know until September what the taxes would look like this year.

Almost 39,600 Spartanburg County homes are valued at $100,000 or below, with about the same number worth more than $100,000.

For residents with a $1 million home — 35 houses in the county are valued at $1 million or more — the 2008 tax bill was $8,791, down from $14,990 the year before Act 388 took effect.

State Rep. Harold Mitchell said the figures prove what he was saying when the Legislature debated the tax swap — that the plan was designed to bail out the wealthy. Mitchell was one of 31 House members to vote against the swap.

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Mitchell, D-Spartanburg. “The owners of these 39,000 homes are working-class citizens of Spartanburg. “There’s already a financial crunch, and their taxes are increasing at a time like this.”

State Sen. Lee Bright said he’s opposed to property taxes, period. He said it was only fair to give high-end homes the same break as more modest residences.

“Higher wage earners pay a disproportionate amount of taxes now,” said Bright, R-Roebuck. “With the amount of taxes they pay now, to say any kind of tax reduction would bail out the wealthy is not accurate.”

Bright said the real issue is the state’s spending habits. He said if lawmakers control spending, the taxing issue will take care of itself.

“We continue to talk about tax policy, but the elephant in the room is our spending problem,” Bright said.

Owners of $200,000 homes in the city paid $2,455 in 2006 and $1,795 last year. Owners of $500,000 homes paid $7,156 in 2006 and $4,419 in 2008.

One reason for the disparity is that owners of homes valued up to $100,000 already were exempt from school operating taxes under a 1995 tax relief plan. But millage increases quickly erased the modest reductions they experienced under Act 388.

Act 388 prevents local governments, school districts and other taxing entities from increasing millage by more than a formula based on population growth plus inflation. But, West said, most entities are going up to the limit.

“If they miss it one year, they can’t go back and recoup it under Act 388,” West said.

Spartanburg County Administrator Glenn Breed said the county has increased its millage the full amount both years Act 388 has been in effect.

“If you don’t approve it one year, you lose it forever — or until the act is changed,” he said.

Breed said the ongoing budget crisis has compounded the problem. The state cut about $2.5 million in funding to the county this year.

“Where do you make that up?” Breed said. “It kind of forces the issue.”

Breed said taxpayers will be “stuck in this same scenario” until the Legislature amends Act 388 or approves another property tax reform package.

Bright said that’s not going to happen in the session that begins in January.

“I know there’s been a lot of talk about repealing Act 388, but that’s not going to happen,” he said. “There are a lot of issues that are going to come to the forefront, and that’s not going to be revisited.”

Daily Show on the New York Times

This clip is broad like the steppe, offers no solutions and runs right at the most obvious jokes.

That said, you can still see that the NYT is in trouble here, but will continue forward ostensibly as is.

Why do people in a bind and possessing no sense of humor consent to be interviewed by Daily Show correspondents?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=230076&title=end-times

I picked up this link from a blog entry on the UK Guardian website, a paper that has seemingly better managed the transition to the internet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jun/12/new-york-times-jon-stewart.  Better in that the Guardian treats its online and print editions as two separate entities.  The guardian website has the same reporting as the paper, the same analysis, the same editorial stance. Transitory news and information earns more prominence on the Guardian website.  The appearance of the medium kind of demands that.   But the analysis is there, and you’ll find it reading online.

The NYT hasn’t apparently adapted its editorial style to the new medium: it always leads with the analysis in political stories, a personal anecdote in news stories.  If you want to know what’s going on in a NYT article. Skip to the 10th paragraph.  Harder to do on the web.

More:
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/06/is_the_huffington_post_killing_the_new_york_times_and_the_washington_post.php

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/06/07/the-new-york-times-we-may-slide-into-irrelevancy-but-at-least-we-update-daily/

SC NAACP standing up to SC Electoral Commission

Its been a while since the election and, like the return of Paul Volcker, South Carolina’s electoral difficulties were predictable.  The Spartanburg Chapter of the SC NAACP held a public forum on problems and possible fixes with the election last night.

Spartanburg County Director of Voter Registration and Elections Henry Laye was there, addressing a widely reported technical failing of the vote:

Part of the problem with long lines in this year’s presidential election was that laptop computers with lists of registered voters on them couldn’t talk to one another — a problem that led to awkward, sometimes arbitrary divisions in line based on people’s last names. Laye said he was given a quote of $37,000 on Monday from a vendor that would allow those laptops to share a secure wireless connection and eliminate the need to divide people into any kind of alphabetical line.

 Laye was speaking to the Herald-Journal this past summer about long lines and you’d think from the June 10th article that the state had the problem well in hand.  In fact the ten precincts which used the laptops were among the slowest, with some waiting four hours to vote. 

Laye’s reference to a secure connection to the internet is puzzling, since he makes a virute of each machine’s independence from wireless communication in the June 10th article.   It may be that Laye is merely looking for a vendor to assume responsibility, as the BofE has wholeheartedly accepted the ES&S marketing strategy of the states problematic iVotronic machines.

I don’t believed that the South Carolina Board of Elections was dilligently vetting its purchases.  Unlike states like Ohio and Florida, South Carolina’s BofE doesn’t post much in the way of critical information on its website.  If this state has commissioned academic trials of its voting system, then it hasn’t seen fit to share the results with the public.  Florida and Ohio have done so, and it would probably be acceptable for South Carolina to make use of their work.

Its well known locally, but maybe is less known outside the state that the SC NAACP has taken the state government to task over removal of the Confederate flag from the State House grounds.

 

NAACP initiates public discussion on voting issues

By Jason Spencer
jason.spencer@shj.com

Published: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 3:44 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 3:45 p.m.

Striking while the iron is hot, as Dwight James put it, the South Carolina NAACP and its local branches hosted a town hall meeting Monday night to go over the good, the bad and the potential changes that need to be made in this state’s election process.

James, the executive director of the state organization, left saying the discussion has only begun.

“I’m taking away from this a sense that there is growing support for an early-voting system in South Carolina,” he said. “And public officials are beginning to wake up to the fact that they need to make it easier and more accessible to vote.”

After the introduction of nine panelists — which included state Sen. Glenn Reese, state Rep. Harold Mitchell and Spartanburg County Councilman Michael Brown — the night quickly turned into a forum where people could vent their frustration and brainstorm ways in which the state could move forward. State Reps. Mike Forrester and Derham Cole Jr. were among the 50 or so people in the audience.

While some of the concerns have been raised in a public setting before, frustration from long lines — and some claims of voter intimidation — are still simmering from Election Day. Any change in the process will be at the feet of the state Legislature, which convenes in January, and perhaps to a limited extent, county government.

Office of Registrations and Elections Director Henry Laye will make a presentation to Spartanburg County Council later this month and to the Spartanburg County Legislative Delegation in February.

Some ideas broached Monday night:

– Early voting has become an increasingly hot topic. Such a system would be similar to what’s in place in North Carolina, where multiple polls are set up around a county two to three weeks before an election and any registered voter can cast a ballot there for any reason. There are multiple costs associated with such a system, not to mention the problem of finding venues to host the polls. But Bob Hall, head of the voting rights group Democracy NC, pointed out that this year, about 60 percent of Tarheel State voters took advantage of early voting. He also said counties like Buncombe (home to Asheville) and Wake (where Raleigh is) began opening polls in malls and other places that draw large numbers of people.

– Mitchell said he’s willing to look into a system that establishes a secure database that would allow online voting in South Carolina.

– Part of the problem with long lines in this year’s presidential election was that laptop computers with lists of registered voters on them couldn’t talk to one another — a problem that led to awkward, sometimes arbitrary divisions in line based on people’s last names. Laye said he was given a quote of $37,000 on Monday from a vendor that would allow those laptops to share a secure wireless connection and eliminate the need to divide people into any kind of alphabetical line.

– Disagreement over the necessity and fallibility of same-day voter registration intensified whenever that subject was brought up.

– Mitchell and Reese both said the state needed to crack down on the Division of Motor Vehicles, where many people choose to register to vote. One woman, Yvette Lee, told a story of 122 young people who had registered to vote for the first time this year at the DMV — only to have Election Day find them still without voter registration cards or any way to cast a ballot.

– Alice Henderson, an officer in the League of Women Voters, expressed interest in going to an all-mail form of voting, similar to what Oregon has adopted.

– Reese said candidates should be outlawed from going to any polls for the purpose of greeting people on Election Day.

The Spartanburg County Democratic Party will hold a post-election forum at 6 p.m. Monday at the Chapman Cultural Center.

URL: http://www.goupstate.com/article/20081202/NEWS/812020225/1083?Title=NAACP_initiates_public_discussion_on_voting_issues

 

Further reading:

Ellen Theisen. “The Privatization of United States Elections:  June 18, 2005. Speech to the Washington Federation of Democratic Women“.

Post-Election Thoughts on Minor Party and Independent Performance

The preliminary Presidential election results, according to CNN are:

Obama	63,364,884	52%
McCain	56,022,312	46%
Nader	651,356	1%
Barr	486,121	1%
Baldwin	173,632	0%
McKinney	140,507	0%

The numbers will change somewhat as the final results come in. Nader will probably hit 700,000. McKinney does only slightly better than Green nominee Cobb did in 2004.

I voted for Cynthia McKinney, Green Party candidate. However, I did some, very minor, campaigning for Nader/Gonzalez in the last few weeks. I campaigned for Nader to maximize the progressive vote, I figure the relative strength of the Nader campaign gave it a better chance of picking up wavering voters.

A few of my co-workers talked about their minister’s endorsing McCain from the pulpit. I waited in line for about an hour and a half to vote at Inman Mills Baptist Church. Small town Republicans were motivated to vote, there was no likelihood of the Obama taking SC.

Neither was there much possibility of a progressive breakthrough. My neighbors and co-workers knew Nader was running. Almost everyone thought he was the Green Party candidate. Mentioning McKinney produced confusion, and lecturing at that stage of the game seemed counterproductive.

Of all the minor campaigns, Nader/Gonzalez was the best organized. The McKinney campaign needed one break in this election: Hillary Clinton had to be Democratic nominee. Without being situated as the progressive African-American candidate for President, McKinney’s opportunities to attract attention evaporated. The subsequent disorganization of the campaign did nothing to overcome the already massive hurdles. Maybe Nader hired all the experienced people. Maybe the Greens didn’t have any money to hire anyone. Probably both. Somebody should write a book on the third party campaigns in 2008.

The media’s complete and utter fixation on the Presidential election as a horserace precluded the introduction of alternatives even when the McCain and Obama patently agreed on an issue. The best chance for breaking this lock occurred around the breakout: when Obama and McCain both flew back to Washington to endorse the Bush-Paulson emergency plan and massive public opposition erupted. Well, we got through that and back to talking about Joe the Plumber in the space of about a week. Topics that were never even seriously entertained in the media were the essential sameness of the GOP and Dems on Healthcare – neither plan corrects the basic problem of controlling cost – and the War in Iraq – both major parties support continued U.S. military presence until a stable puppet regime is established.

A national progressive Presidential campaign should simply hire the Nader organization. There aren’t sufficient resources or opportunities to run more than one national independent-progressive campaign. A Nader/McKinney ticket would have made more since than the Green campaign we got. I don’t think this is the end of the Green Party, which has done relatively well in in local elections this time. In Chicago, the Bay Area, Portland, Maine the Greens are the second party vs a Democratic machine. It would be foolish to rebrand that local organization. It might be possible to establish a federative structure at the national level that would preserve the Green Party, but expand the base to include the independent voter’s that nader attracts, independent unions like the United Electrical Workers, state parties like Vermont’s Progressive Party, and progressive organizations like Physicans for a National Health Plan and the Wilderness Society, whatever socialist organizations that would come on board, etc. Most of these organizations either did, or came close to, endorsing Nader in 2000. There’s your ready-made cabinet.

Maybe desirable to expand the party to more mainstream independents like the Independent Party of Minnesota, which at least declined to endorse either McCain or Obama and has a strong left-libertarian element. It was always Nader’s goal to build a reform movement, not an ideological party.  Taking in the results of this election, maybe that’s a better use of energy.

Maybe a looser national structure is needed. Nader’s organization is run by the man like a CEO.  The Greens appear to be poor at articulating the effective parts of the party as a whole.  A federative structure might use the strength of both. Set political reform, national health care, and withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan as the baseline.  Emphasize independence from the two parties, not a whole new party structure.  The Greens continue to participate as a national party, the Progressives, Peace and Freedom Party and others as state or regional parties.  If the Democrats fail to establish national health care and the war in Iraq is dragging on in 2010, then you may lay the groundwork for a federation to endorse a progressive candidate, using the ballot lines available, and getting new lines in other states in a collective basis – but work on healthcare, withdrawal and political reform first.

A federated political party hasn’t really been tried in the U.S. The Labor parties of Europe were traditionally organized this way. The Conference for Progressive Political Action was an attempt in the Twenties, wrecked by labor leaders too close to the Democrats. If you learn that lesson, the thing could work, and maybe later form the basis for a new political party. A federative national platform for progressive politics could represent solutions to national problems, like single-payer healthcare, and provide a context for local campaigns to work.

Chris Hedges: Only Nader Is Right On All the Issues

Only Nader Is Right on the Issues

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081103_only_nader_is_right_on_the_issues/
Posted on Nov 3, 2008

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who has covered many
wars around the world. His column appears Mondays on Truthdig.

Tomorrow I will go to a polling station in Princeton, N.J., and vote for Ralph Nader. I know the tired arguments against a Nader vote. He can’t win. A vote for Nader is a vote for McCain. He threw the election to George W. Bush in 2000. He is an egomaniac.

There is little disagreement among liberals and progressives about the Nader and Obama campaign issues. Nader would win among us in a landslide if this was based on issues. Sen. Barack Obama’s vote to renew the Patriot Act, his votes to continue to fund the Iraq war, his backing of the FISA Reform Act, his craven courting of the Israeli lobby, his support of the death penalty, his refusal to champion universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans, his call to increase troop levels and expand the war in Afghanistan, his failure to call for a reduction in the bloated and wasteful defense spending and his lobbying for the huge taxpayer swindle known as the bailout are repugnant to most of us on the left. Nader stands on the other side of all those issues.

So if the argument is not about issues what is it about?

Those on the left who back Obama, although they disagree with much of what he promotes, believe they are choosing the practical over the moral. They see themselves as political realists. They fear John McCain and the Republicans. They believe Obama is better for the country. They are right. Obama is better. He is not John McCain. There will be under Obama marginal improvements for some Americans although the corporate state, as Obama knows, will remain our shadow government and the working class will continue to descend into poverty. Democratic administrations have, at least until Bill Clinton, been more receptive to social programs that provide benefits, better working conditions and higher wages. An Obama presidency, however, will make no difference to those in the Middle East.

I can’t join the practical. I spent two decades of my life witnessing the suffering of those on the receiving end of American power. I have stood over the rows of bodies, including women and children, butchered by Ronald Reagan’s Contra forces in Nicaragua. I have inspected the mutilated corpses dumped in pits outside San Salvador by the death squads. I have crouched in a concrete hovel as American-made F-16 fighter jets, piloted by Israelis, dropped 500- and 1,000-pound iron-fragmentation bombs on Gaza City.

I can’t join the practical because I do not see myself exclusively as an American.  The narrow, provincial and national lines that divide cultures and races blurred and evaporated during the years I spent in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Balkans. I built friendships around a shared morality, not a common language, religion, history or tradition. I cannot support any candidate who does not call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to Israeli abuse of Palestinians. We have no moral or legal right to debate the terms of the occupation. And we will recover our sanity as a nation only when our troops have left Iraq and our president flies to Baghdad, kneels before a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war dead and asks for forgiveness.

We dismiss the suffering of others because it is not our suffering. There are between 600,000 and perhaps a million dead in Iraq. They died because we invaded and occupied their country. At least three Afghan civilians have died at the hands of the occupation forces for every foreign soldier killed this year. The dead Afghans include the 95 people, 60 of them children, killed by an air assault in Azizabad in August and the 47 wedding guests butchered in July during a bombardment in Nangarhar. The Palestinians are forgotten. Obama and McCain, courting the Israeli lobby, do not mention them. The 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza live in a vast open-air prison. Supplies and food dribble through the Israeli blockade. Ninety-five percent of local industries have shut down. Unemployment is rampant. Childhood malnutrition has skyrocketed. A staggering 80 percent of families in Gaza are dependent on international food aid to survive.

It is bad enough that I pay taxes, although I will stop paying taxes if we go to war with Iran. It is bad enough that I have retreated into a safe, privileged corner of the globe, a product of industrialized wealth and militarism. These are enough moral concessions, indeed moral failings. I will not accept that the unlawful use of American military power be politely debated among us like the subtle pros and cons of tort law.

George Bush has shredded, violated or absented America from its obligations under international law. He has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, tried to kill the International Criminal Court, walked out on negotiations on chemical and biological weapons and defied the Geneva Conventions and human rights law in the treatment of detainees in our offshore penal colonies. Most egregiously, he launched an illegal war in Iraq based on fabricated evidence we now know had been discredited even before it was made public. The president is guilty, in short, of what in legal circles is known as the “crime of aggression.”

The legacy of the Bush administration may be the codification of a world without treaties, statutes and laws. Bush may have bequeathed to us a world where any nation, from a rogue nuclear state to a great imperial power, will be able to invoke its domestic laws to annul its obligations to others. This new order will undo five decades of international cooperation – largely put in place by the United States – and thrust us into a Hobbesian nightmare. The exercise of power without law is tyranny.

If we demolish the fragile and delicate international order, if we do not restore a world where diplomacy, broad cooperation and the law are respected, we will see our moral and political authority disintegrate. We will erode the possibility of cooperation between nation-states, including our closest allies, and see visited upon us the evils we visit on others. Obama, like McCain, may tinker with this new world, but neither says they will dismantle it. Nader would.

Practical men and women do not stand up against injustice. The practical remain silent. A voice, even one voice, which speaks the truth and denounces injustice is never useless. It is not impractical. It reminds us of what we should strive to become. It defies moral concession after moral concession that leaves us chanting empty slogans.

When I sat on the summit of Mount Igman in my armored jeep, the engine idling, before nervously running the gantlet of Serb gunfire that raked the dirt road into the besieged city of Sarajevo, I never asked myself if what I was doing was practical. Forty-five foreign correspondents died in the city along with some 12,000 Bosnians, including 2,000 children. Some 50,000 people were wounded. Of the dead and wounded 85 percent were civilians. I drove down the slope into Sarajevo, which was being hit by 2,000 shells a day and under constant sniper fire, because what was happening there was a crime. I drove down because I had friends in the city. I did not want them to be alone. Their stories had become mine.

War, with all its euphemisms about surges and the escalation of troops and collateral damage, is not an abstraction to me. I am haunted by hundreds of memories of violence and trauma. I have abandoned, because I no longer cover these conflicts, many I care about. They live in Gaza, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Beirut, Kabul and Tehran. They cannot vote in our election. They will, however, bear the consequences of our decision. Some, if the wars continue, may be injured or killed. The quest for justice is not about being practical. It is required by the bonds we share. They would do no less for me.

South Carolina’s Two Party Monopoly At Work

Bob Walkeris the incumbent Republican representative to the South Carolina State Assembly from the 34th District in Spartanburg County. Walker lost the Republican primaryto Joey Millwood, by only 19 votes. a newcomer supported by the Governor Mark Sanford and the Spartanburg County GOP chair Rick Beltram.  Millwood is on the ballot against Democrat Mark Chambers tomorrow.
Spartanburg’s daily paper published an editorial endorsing Walker and requesting that voters write his name in on the ballot.  The papers justifications are reasonable: neither of the two candidates on the ballot seem ready and/or capable of serving as Representative.  I’ve quoted the editorial in full at the bottom of this post.

The unsought endorsement of a Walker has led to a collusion of the Spartanburg Republican and Democratic Parties which is intended to completely deprive Walker of a hearing and the opportunity to be elected. In a highly unusual move, the chairmen of the Spartanburg Democratic and Republican Parties held a joint press conference condeming the paper for encouraging votes for any candidate other than the two on the ballot.  With typically twisted logic, GOP chair Rick Beltram cast the paper’s endorsement as putting a burden on his party to suppress Walker’s vote:

Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltramsaid Wednesday’s editorial endorsing Walker over both Millwood and Chambers put a burden on his team of volunteers to make sure the outgoing state representative does not engage in any kind of campaigning.

Beltram claims that if Walker says so much as a “thank-you” to someone encouraging him to run that the county party will file an injunction against the non-candidate.

The paper condemned the two parties in a subsequent editorial, putting the case for political openness very plainly:

Why do the parties want to limit the choices available to voters?

They are not the legitimate gatekeepers of the political process. They have no authority under the Constitution. A candidate does not have to earn the approval of one of the parties before he can be considered by voters.

If the county parties are threatened when voters are encouraged to consider options outside their narrow offerings, their only viable choice is to offer better candidates, not try to impose artificial limits on the political process. And they certainly have no right to stifle political speech they dislike.

The Spartanburg County Republican Party  subsequently did file an injunction in state circuit court to prohibit Walker from campaigning.  The county GOP charged that Walker was violating the state’s “sore loser” law, the same law that the Democratic Party used to keep Eugene Platt from running as a Green in the 115th Assembly district outside Charleston. 

Judge Roger Couch sided with the GOP, ruling:

‘Defendant, Robert E. ‘Bob’ Walker is hereby ordered, to refrain from offering or campaigning in the ensuing (2008) general election for election to this office (House District 38) or any other office for which a nominee has been elected in the party primary election.‘

Campaigning for Walker quitely continues, without his involvement.  It doesn’t seem that the courts or the County GOP can overcome the reservations of the paper and a large number of citizens: that the Democrat is unready and the Republican is a ideologue in the pocket of a school voucher’s PAC.

An organization called “Citizens For A Better Spartanburg” has been supporting Walker through phone calls and campaign literature.  BothWalker and the group say they are not in contact with each other.

The Herald Journal has been quite good about opposing the “sore loser” law, even writing an editorial in support of Platt back in the spring.   Hopefully the exposure of the manipulation of voter choice by the two parties will lead to the law’s repeal.

In the meantime, since I live in the 34th Assembly District, I’ll be able to tell just how the electoral commission is equiped to handle write in votes.  Given the extremely poor reputation of the iVotronic machines, and the laxidazical attitude of the SC Election Commission, I’m prepared to witness some frustration, and possibly a botched election.

 

•  Bob Walker’s profile on project votesmart is here.
• The Herald Journal October 15, 2008 editorial endorsing Walker.

Write in Bob Walker
Spartanburg Herald Journal Editorial
Published: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 11:21 a.m.
Citizens in state House District 38 don’t have a good choice for effective representation on the ballot this year. That’s why they should write in the name of Bob Walker.

Order a Reprint Walker, the district’s incumbent representative, lost the Republican nomination to political newcomer Joey Millwoodby a margin of 19 votes in a primary with just over 3,000 votes cast.

The state’s “sore loser” law prohibits Walker from running against Millwood, and he has made no move to do so, but the law doesn’t prohibit voters from rethinking the decision made by a small turnout in the GOP primary.

Millwood is opposed on the ballot by Democratic nominee Mark Chambers. Neither candidate is likely to represent the district well in Columbia.

Millwood, sports editor of the Tryon Daily Bulletin, is a reflexive, ideological conservative. He backs the proper position on some issues, but his understanding of those issues is superficial. For instance, he says that one of his top priorities is to cut state spending, but he cannot say what he would cut beyond the money that goes to the General Assembly’s competitive grants program, a tiny portion of the state budget.

More troublesome is Millwood’s willingness to support using public funds to pay for private school tuition through tax credits. Supporters of such programs have poured large amounts of money into Millwood’s campaign.

Millwood has been funded by these groups to such a degree that voters have to wonder whether he can break away from what he calls his “movement” if the best interests of his district dictate such a break.

Mark Chambers, who provides maintenance for restaurants, is a well-intentioned and community-spirited man but is not up to the job of representing northern Spartanburg County in the Statehouse.

An effective lawmaker has to be able to take a serious, in-depth look at the issues before him and let the practical concerns of his district determine his vote. He also has to be able to work with other lawmakers to affect important legislation.

We are not confident that either Millwood or Chambers can provide that level of representation. We know that Walker can. He has a record of effective work in Columbia.

It is unusual to recommend that voters look outside the ballot to fill an office, but it is necessary in this election. House District 38 voters should write in the name of Bob Walker.

This story appeared in print on page A12

GOP challenges to black voters in Spartanburg County

From the October 31, 2008 Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Page A-1:  

…Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltram, taking the role of a poll watcher, challenged the vote of 74-year-old Fannie Rogers because he didn’t believe her signature matched what was on her credentials. This upset the actual poll worker — the person who checks in a voter — and soon Ruby Rice, president of the Spartanburg NAACP branch, was involved.

‘I don’t have real good handwriting anyway, and this man (Beltram) said it didn’t match the writing on my card,’ Rogers said. ‘It really upset me. Ruby came over and asked him if he was harassing me. He said no. I said yes.’

The poll worker left in tears, Beltram left, saying attorneys for Republican candidates would be at the Election Office today, and Rice left to call the state Election Commission and complain.

…

Beltram painted himself as the victim in the situation, saying once he questioned the validity of Rogers’ signature, ‘all the black ladies ganged up on me.’

‘They targeted me. Soon as I walked in, it was clear,’ Beltram said. ‘As soon as I saw Michael Reese, I knew right away what was going on. But I didn’t talk to a voter. I talked to a poll worker, and she’s the one who wanted to bark back.’

Phyllis Mann Article: Mistreatment of Louisana prisoners after Hurricane Katrina

Update Oct. 9, 2008: Green Party Watch has posted an lengthy statement from the McKinney campaign on the sources of McKinney’s allegations here.

Cynthia McKinney has caught some flack, and gotten some national exposure from Fox news, for saying that 5,000 black prisoners of New Orleans jails were executed during Hurricane Katrina.   There is a kernel of truth here, but not a lot of evidence that people were intentionally murdered.

This is Louisiana lawyer Phyllis Mann ’s initial report on the severe physical mistreatment of prisoners following Hurricane Katrina. I’m reposting it here in HTML on account if its only being available in PDF format on the web in the archives of the Louisiana Criminal Defense Lawyer’s newsletter , The Advocate.  The article is important for its first person account of the incredible maltreatment of prisoners by New Orleans area law enforcement agencies.  The neglect that Mann describes is shocking.  The suffering is bad enough, without people being killed.

I’m more bemused by the reaction to McKinney’s statement than upset by the claim itself.  Surely the U.S. government has killed enough people to make killing prisoners plausible.  Maybe some people would dispute that.

If I can, I’ll do a post on the other resources that are available.  But I thought this was important enough to post seperately in full.  If  Ms. Mann or the Advocate would like the article removed, I will do so.

Hurricane Relief Aid
By Phyllis Mann
The Advocate: Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Volume 2, Issue 4.
Fall 2005
Page 3 – 6
http://www.lacdl.org/Newsletters/LACDLFall2005.pdf

When we woke up on Monday, August 29th, the lawyers who had evacuated to my house from New Orleans were all breathing a sigh of relief. What little word there was seemed to suggest that Katrina had veered east at the last minute, sparing New Orleans the worst of what we had expected. Boy were we wrong. By Wednesday, we began to realize just a tiny portion of what Katrina had done to New Orleans and to our criminal justice system. It was on Thursday that we learned our clients had been inside the jails of Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Plaquemines, St. Tammany, all through the hurricane and the levy breaks. We heard that they were being sent to facilities all over the State of Louisiana – some to parish jails, some to DOC prisons – and no one knew who was being sent where or when.

The McKinney Choice

South Carolinian and Green Party supporter Kevin Alexander Gray has written a piece in this month’s Progressive Magazine on the conundrum facing those who want to support independent politics in a place where politics itself is so stunted.

The McKinney Choice
By Kevin Alexander Gray,

The Progressive Magazine. October 2008 Issue.

http://www.progressive.org/mag/gray1008.html

MENTION TO SOMEONE that you’re thinking about voting for former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader and they’ll respond, “So, you’re voting for McCain!” Or they’ll say, “You’re wasting your vote.” And if you’re black and not planning on voting for Obama, you may be labeled a “hater” or an “Uncle Tom.” I know. I’ve been called those names. Poet Amiri Baraka, never one to be shy, has labeled all those not supporting Obama as “rascals.”

It doesn’t matter that McKinney is herself African American or that Rosa Clemente, her running mate on the Green Party ticket, is a hip-hop activist and an Afro-Puerto Rican. What matters, for most, is that Obama represents the first realistic chance for a black American to win the White House, and that he is better than McCain.

But should those be the overriding considerations?

While Obama is cosmetically attractive, he is still a status quo politician. What’s more, he has gone out of his way to disparage members of the African American community as a way to ingratiate himself with white voters. And he sometimes defends the same rightwing positions as his Republican counterpart, as when Obama supported Bush on the FISA bill and agreed with Scalia on the D.C. gun ban.

Aside from Obama’s limitations, there’s the question of movement politics. If we believe that the two party system rigs the electoral game, if we believe that corporate money contaminates both parties, and if we believe change comes from below, then why must we get in line behind Obama?

With these thoughts in mind, I went out to explore the McKinney candidacy. McKinney, who served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives for twelve years, left the Democratic Party last year to join the Greens. In Congress, she had one of the most progressive records. And as a Presidential candidate, she offers up a coherent agenda.

In her acceptance speech at the Green Party convention in Chicago on July 12, she denounced what she called “Democratic Party complicity” in “war crimes, torture, crimes against the peace” and “crimes against the Constitution, crimes against the American people, and crimes against the global community.” She said, “Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it.” She told her supporters, “A Green vote is a peace vote,” and “A Green vote is a justice vote.”

Whether the subject was the Iraq War, or Afghanistan, or Katrina, or veterans’ rights, or Blackwater, or civil liberties, or the environment, or universal health care, or equal pay for equal work, or free college education, or the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, McKinney hit the progressive high notes. (But she was a little off key when she indulged the “9/11 truth” people.)

“We are in this to build a movement,” she said. “We are willing to struggle for as long as it takes to have our values prevail in public policy. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country rightside up.”

McKinney’s platform resembles that of Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Representative who ran as the most progressive candidate in the Democratic primaries. Like Kucinich, McKinney wants an immediate end to all wars and occupations by U.S. forces, beginning in Iraq and Afghanistan; the orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from the more than 100 countries around the world where they are stationed; Articles of Impeachment to be filed against Bush and several members of his Administration; and the creation of a Department of Peace. She would also like to see a number of other Bush initiatives repealed, like the Patriot Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, and the Military Commissions Act.

Like Obama, McKinney name-drops Martin Luther King a lot. But whereas Obama constantly utters King’s line about “the fierce urgency of now,” McKinney uses King in a different way. She says “the racial disparities that exist today are worse than at the time of the murder of King.” And she quotes King’s comment that the United States is the “greatest purveyor of violence on the planet,” saying that it is still true today.

McKinney also adopts positions that Obama won’t go near, such as: demanding reparations for African Americans, offering amnesty for all undocumented immigrants, ending “prisons for profit,” and calling off the “war on drugs.”

But having a shiny progressive platform does not guarantee progressive votes. I recall a rule of organizing in the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign: “Define your own win.” Reason being: If it’s about who has the most money, resources, access, etc., those going against the flow or those who are resource poor will always be sold short. Especially when the powerful set the rules and call the game.
Running was Shirley Chisholm’s win in 1972.

Jackson’s win was successfully advancing a progressive, multiracial, multi-issue agenda.
So what’s McKinney’s win?

She says the Greens want to pick up “5 percent of the national vote” in the coming election with the hope it “confers major party status” on them.

“Then we will have an official third party in this country,” McKinney said in Chicago, “and public policy that truly reflects our values.”

Yet 5 percent may be a tough nut to crack, given the party’s up and down performances in the past three Presidential elections.
As a Green candidate in 1996, Nader garnered 0.7 percent of the total. Four years later, he and the party increased their support three-fold, pulling in 2.74 percent of the total vote while receiving no electoral votes. In 2004, the Greens ran Texan David Cobb under a “safe states strategy.” Cobb appeared on twenty-eight of fifty-one ballots, down from the forty-four Green lines in 2000. The strategy supposedly focused its efforts on states that were traditionally “safely” won by the Democratic candidate, or “safely” won by the Republican candidate, so as not to run in swing states. This defensiveness was in reaction to the Nader-haters of 2000, who still blame Ralph for giving the country George Bush. Cobb got an infinitesimal 0.096 percent of the vote, while Nader as an Independent picked up 0.38 percent of the total.

This election season the Greens have abandoned the discredited “safe state strategy,” says Brent McMillan, political director of the party. McKinney and Clemente are on the ballot in thirty states, according to the Green Party.
The party’s national electoral history may prevent McKinney from being taken seriously by even the angriest of voters. “It seems that there’s no in-between game,” says longtime grassroots activist Brett Bursey of South Carolina. “The Greens pop up during an election season and that’s it.” He and others argue that the election-year “top-down approach” of choosing big-name candidates like Nader and McKinney rarely lends itself to the off-year followup that is needed to build an effective national party. “It will take more time than running doomed electoral campaigns that do little more than make the candidates and their few supporters feel superior,” says Bursey.

Bursey may have a point. The Greens have a dearth of campaign offices (local folk where I live in South Carolina don’t know how to get involved), and there are precious few grassroots volunteers outside of traditional Green “strongholds.” Obviously, money matters, and McKinney and the Greens have very little.
And the Obama candidacy is tricky for the Greens. “There are some Greens who won’t support a Green at the top of our ticket today, regardless of who that person is,” says Gregg Jocoy, of the South Carolina chapter. “White Greens don’t want to hurt Obama’s chances.”

Given these difficulties, the question once again arises: “Why bother?” To which Clemente replies, “People have to make some clear choices about which side are they on.” The goal, she says, is “building the new imperative.”
One can only hope that because McKinney and Clemente are raising important issues they’re not wasting their and others’ time.
But let me put a word in for being contrary, for refusing to go with flow, and for rejecting the choices we are given when we have that opportunity. Sometimes it is necessary to stand up and say, “I’m not with that.” Defying the corrupt two-party corporate system may be one of those times.
The choice is yours. And mine. And for me, it’s not an easy one.

Kevin Alexander Gray is a writer and activist living in South Carolina. He managed the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson in the state. His forthcoming books are “Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics” and “The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”

Banking and Securities Deregulation Started in 1999

Back in 1999, Nader was opposed to deregulation of the financial services sector via a weakening of the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President.  These bipartisan-approved changes allowed the intermingling of banks and securities that helped prepare the way for the current crisis.

Now Congress is icing down the champagne again in celebration of the new and much more grandiose deregulation package, this time of the entire financial services industry – combining banks, securities firms, and insurance companies (and in some cases, nonfinancial corporations) under common ownership in soon-to-be trillion-dollar conglomerates. In the process, Congress is creating a financial system designed for the affluent customer in which low- and moderate-income families and small businesses will face less access, fewer choices, and higher fees.

…

Congress is wading into the deregulation swamp in good economic times with a roaring stock market and quarter after quarter of record financial profits – the worst possible time to ask Congress, with its short-term memory, to make tough decisions against the wishes of the industry. Amid the economic euphoria, it is little wonder that warnings about the safety and soundness of financial institutions, inadequate deposit insurance reserves and the weaknesses of an uncoordinated, overlapping and outmoded regulatory system are greeted with legislative yawns.

A study released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) last month found that consolidation in the banking industry just between the years of 1990 and 1997 had “increased the risk of insurance fund insolvency by 50 percent.” The report warned that the risk had increased further during the past two years.

The risk of insolvency is “becoming inseparable from the health of the 25 largest banking organizations which control 54.5 percent of the assets,” the FDIC researchers found. These are the very institutions that will be combined with insurance companies and securities firms in the new, too-big-to-be-allowed-to-fail conglomerates.

But that wasn’t the kind of testimony sought by the House and Senate banking committees, which instead used the hearings largely for the purpose of painting simplistic rosy scenarios and providing a platform for the corporate executives, lobbyists, and campaign donors to promote the legislation.

Ralph Nader is founder of Public Citizen. This piece originally appeared in the Washington Post, Friday, November 5, 1999; Page A33.