Partisan Free Politics

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill is making quite a few appearances in the MSM these days. Apparently, Congress is debating whether or not to grant telecommunications companies immunity for working with the National Security Agency (NSA) post 9-11 to spy on each and every American Citizen. AT&T is taking the brunt of the criticism, but Verizon is also know to have co-operated (providing the gov. with all of my phone calls). (Qwest is the only company known to have declined the NSA’s request, and also maintains that the warrantless wiretapping began 7 months prior to 9-11.)

Suspending the questions of whether or not the government should have co-opted the Telecom companies into violating the law, and whether or not the Telecom companies should have complied; my questions are for Congress. Why aren’t they performing in their capacity to oversee the bureaucracy? Why are they pretending that they had no role in allowing this violation of our Constitution? Where’s the responsibility? Where’s the accountability? Most importantly, why don’t people in the U.S. give a damn?

Many of you will say, “It was those evil Republicans who did it”. Nevertheless, from where I am sitting Democratic or Republican party alike, it’s the institution of Congress that is no longer accountable to its citizens, and We The People are to blame.

To find out more about Congress and the legislation that affects every aspect of your life check out the great resources at Open Congress.

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I had the opportunity to see the Mizero Children perform in D.C. today. They are a group of young Rwandan orphans who survived the 1994 genocide, and have somehow had their musical talents nurtured.  Which lead me to my question, what the hell happened to Africa?

As I scan the news of Africa, it is either genocide in Darfur, civil war in Somalia, kidnappings in  Niger, coups in the Congo, Hyper-inflation-induced disaster in Zimbabwe, not to mention a South African government which refuses to believe in AIDs, or a litany of other issues.

The problems of Africa are egregious violations of the most basic human values, but there are also more self interested reason that the U.S. should be more involved. Nigeria is the third largest foreign supplier of oil to the US. There is oil in Ethiopia and Sudan. The violence in Somalia is yet another training ground for Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the Chinese are pouring money into developing African infrastructure and cementing their relationships.

For all of these reasons, you’d think the US would be engaged in more vigorous diplomacy in the region and yet like Latin America we are too busy to act, even in our interest. Still, Africa survived colonialism by Islam and the West, and its people, like the Mizero Children, will surely survive these current crisis. They will nurture their creative talents and take their rightful place as equals among the international community - why not help them?

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If you were to ask Grover Norquist, Spencer Overton, David Keating, and Hendrik Hertzberg what values they shared in common, you might be shocked. Grover after all, is the man who is fighting for his right to “drown the federal government in a bathtub”. The left vs right divide does not get any more drastic.

Nevertheless, when it comes to partisan free issues, these candidates found that there was a lot of common ground they could share.

Transparency. They all emphatically agreed that some form of ReadTheBill ought to be passed This would mandate that all bills be made available online and to the public for a mandatory period ranging from 3 to 7 days, before Congress votes to approve it. It seems that everyone agrees that lawmakers should be more responsive to people.

Election reform. Ostensibly, they all agreed that some form of reform out to occur to give the citizens (and by that they all meant citizens groups) more power in government. Generally, they were receptive to instant run-off voting and reexamining single member districts.

Great Quotable

Grover “when there is bipartisanship in a legislature it means they are acting in their class interest as rulers” and “banding together to mug us”.

Hertzberg “most Americans live in areas where their vote is not going to make a difference”. “the electoral college is the death of politics”. “35 states aren’t competitive in the presidential contest”. “40 of our 435 Congressional seats are not competitive”.

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With all of the Buzz about third party candidates coming in to save the disenfranchised minority from Guiliani or Clinton, I thought that this may be an interesting time to say that I’ll be at the Claim Democracy conference this weekend.

This blog is being move to a new server, next week as part of a technological overhaul.

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Earlier this summer I had the pleasure of attending a taping of Hardball with Chris Mathews. The guest was none other than Sam Waterston of Law and Order. He was talking about this new movement called Unity 08. I was excited, I wanted to help, to jump on board the Unity 08 express and shake the two-party system to the core.

After months of offering my services I have attended a Jungian marketing session with Cloitiare Rapelle, started a DC based Unity 08 meet-up group, helped create the “New American Agenda”, attended an online ballot access discussion – but still, I have no damned clue what Unity 08 is doing.

On its face, Unity 08 is the solution for people like me. Moderates want leadership around critical issues, without the endless partisan bickering about social issues. Moderates do not really care who is running the country so long as they have vision, acumen and integrity. If that is the case, then why does Unity 08 only have 113,000 registered members?

People that I talk to about Unity 08, especially the disenfranchised, are typically very excited about the possibilities of a moderate third party. With that said there are some major problems:

The only communications that come from Unity 08 are E-mail blasts from Unity 08 asking members for paltry donations and small favors. The latest request was an e-mail asking people to post this flyer in public places, unfortunately, these requests are intermittent, disjointed and fail to utilize available technologies.

If Unity 08 were a real presidential campaign, like Clinton’s, Giuliani’s, Obama’s, Huckabee’s, or Ron Paul’s – people would scoff at the centralized unremarkable way that the campaign is using the Internet (I keep waiting for Micah Sifry’s post on the TechPresident about Unity 08 to no avail). Despite the fact that it is an Internet based campaign, there is general a lack of social cohesion (something which the Internet can only facilitate, not replace), which is necessary for Unity 08 to succeed.

Finally, if Unity 08 is going to be a legit moderate third party movement, then its leaders need to increase visibility by promoting ownership – otherwise the “peoples movement to take our country back” will surely fail. Thoughts?

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Flipping between today’s Republican debate and other Main Stream Media, I heard something more disturbing than Tom Tancredo’s isolationist trade policy. It seems that the state of Michigan has moved it’s primary past the date of no return, violating the Democratic Party’s “four state plan”, which says that no state shall hold primary contest before: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Why does that bother me?

The DNC has already threatened to take Florida and Michigan’s right to a voting delegation (In plain English it means that neither state will have a vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary of 2008). There are three camps in this interesting debate.

1. The first is the overwhelmingly partisan argument offered by the DNC it basically goes something like “our party, our rules - we establish the game you play it or don’t”. So far most of the Presidential candidates are backing this party argument, with Obama, Edwards and Richardson even removing their names from the Michigan ballot (prompting this post in the first place). What happens when other swing states decide to follow suite?
2. The second camp is made up of Republicans who’ve got to be tantalized by the possibility of the Democratic Party and it’s presidential candidate spitting in the face of Florida and Michigan voters. Both states could easily go Republican if Democratic voters stay in doors. Florida went Republican in 2004 and 2000 by less than a percentage point, and Michigan went Democratic by 4% in 2000 and 3% in 2004 (decided by aprox 100,000 voters). Why/Are Republicans handling the situation better?
3. The third camp, which I consider to be “partisan free politics” is where I find myself. I have a moral objection to a gerrymandered party process in which voters can have their rights to vote in the primary elections simple stripped from them. These elections take place in government owned spaces, with government owned machines via the use of taxpayer dollars - what right do the parties have to simply strip citizens of their sovereign right to vote?

Which camp do you find yourself in? Have I grossly caricatured the camps for my straw man arguments - or is there something anti-Democratic about the Democratic party’s agenda on this issue?

Here’s what the mobosphere has to say about it

An excellent story by Mark Ambinder about how the Republicans are handling their Michigan primary issues.

What KOS has to say about it on the DailyKos. The comments are split into 1 and 3.

Here’s a resource from UVA on the ills of the primary nomination process.

NY times Caucus Blog

States in Revolt over “outdated” Presidential Primary System?

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part 2 - Democrats

This one is going to be rough. Democrats flock to health care like or [Insert your own awful cliché here] white on rice. Unlike their Republican counterparts, every Democrat seems to be taking the problems of our uninsured very seriously. So seriously in fact that every single one of them has “The Solution” – thank goodness, cause I thought this was a complex problem…
To be fair to the candidates, I am not going to get their plans 100% right – I did not read everything on all of their policies. Instead, I focused on watching and analyzing their message via there YouTube video and the candidate’s homepage. Because all of these candidates are interested in solving health care, I think it is more important to examine how they are selling it to us (the American citizens) as well as their donors (the companies and organizations), stay tuned. My premise is that most of this is just well intentioned rhetoric.

If you have made it this far congratulations are in order, to be frank many of these candidates’ health care policies were not worth the time to research. They all want expanded health care rights, but I was disappointed because too few talked about how we were going to pay for it. One of the most innovative ways of paying for healthcare came from Mike Gravel. He wants to institute a national sales tax (other methods included repealing tax cuts (Biden) or making the employer pay “their fair share”).

Breaking away from the norm – my mother is actually a nurse-midwife, so the issue of health care is something that I have grown up around. When democratic candidates discuss this issue, I think they rarely get it right. They often talk of the evil agencies, whether it is the insurance companies, drug companies or hospital administration companies. Every time John Edwards mentions the evils of insurance companies, I cannot help but cringe; he made his millions off suing them – what are his real intentions? How many doctors did he run out of business? When Richardson, Gravel talk about creating a national electronic health care records system, how much is that going to cost? What is to stop the government from using that information for “law enforcement” and encroaching on my civil rights? If the government provides me with health care, what rights does that give them over my body and information? Can they pass a law requiring me to run 5 miles a day – that would after all cut costs?

I am not an ideologue, or at least not about this issue. Instead, I am looking for something pragmatic. How do we transition from what we have now into a system that allows Americans to build wealth without chronic disease destroying it? How do we build a system that allows American pharmaceutical companies to continue to lead the world in innovation? How do continue to encourage Doctors and Researchers from all over the world to come here to advance the world’s knowledge of medicine? How do we help the less fortunate?

I walk away having read through all of the presidential candidates platforms certain that none of them have “The Solution”.

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Part of my wonky nature, is my interest in the systemic components of democracies (wow, I know that sounds exciting, doesn’t it?).

There is a battle raging between the local politics and the DNC and RNC. It seems that citizens in states like Florida, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan and South Carolina and others are tired of the primary process (read the NY Times article here). It is unclear what the outcome will be, but the national parties have threatened various sanctions including denying the states ability to seat a delegation at the parties nomination conventions.

A DNC spokeswomen has already brought up a 25 year old supreme court case, which allows the parties and not the states to decide their nomination procedure (read the Miami Herald article here). This is a very exciting issue, because if the netroots weigh in, some degree of power may be wrestled away from the national parties.

Amidst the chaos, a group of partisan and non-partisan groups has come together to promote a locally organized National Presidential Caucus scheduled for December 7th. The plan has been endorsed by groups as diverse as TechRepublican and Democracy for America and with the rest of the primary system in chaos, who knows what will happen.

Proponents of primary reform say that small states like Iowa and New Hampshire, shouldn’t decide who becomes the Presidential Candidates every year. Meanwhile, others respond that a national primary will require candidates to raise more money to fund a national campaign. Either way change seems imminent…

For up to date news on ballot access I go to Ballot-Access.Org

To read more about systemic reforms I go to Fairvote

For an up to date Presidential Primary/Caucus Calendar I go to NASS

Here is another Primary reform oriented site (nationalprimary.info/)

(update) other blogs discussing this:

The Buzz,  The Swamp,  CQ politics,  FreeRepublic, WakeupAmerica

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Since 9/11 the federal government has been doing it’s utmost to protect us from ourselves. Thankfully however, the plug has been pulled on two controversial data-mining programs citing massive privacy invasions.

The first program was called ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment), brought to you by Michael Chertoff (a possible candidate for replacing Alberto Gonzales) and the Department of Homeland Security. The CS Monitor reports that ADVISE was “designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources”. Apparently the DHS missed the memo about the constitution (that it indeed exists). The project was discontinued after a report released by the Office of the Inspector General citing “major breakdowns in the system” in regards to privacy and erroneous information. (Read the Full Story)

The Pentagon’s TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notices) program was shut down last week. Described as a military neighborhood watch, this program has been used to monitor “local peace activists and students opposed to military recruiting”. (Read the Full Story)

I may be wrong, but I always thought that Republicans were supposed to be against this kind of thing?

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