2008 House

What Is a Populist Caucus?

davidswanson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:28:27 -0500

By David Swanson

The largest caucus in Congress with 75 members is the Progressive Caucus. It even has one member in that bastion of regressivism, the United States Senate. The progressive caucus uniquely supports majority positions (majority outside of Capitol Hill, I mean) on domestic and foreign issues, on trade and the environment, peace and diplomacy, education and healthcare, speaking up for the poor, the powerless, and all the rest of us. Its positions are not perfect and often appear constrained by a desire not to stray too far from the Democratic leadership. But it's the best we've got, as far as caucuses go.

However, the Progressive Caucus has rarely if ever stood for something and fought for it. It takes positions as a caucus, it even gets its members to all sign onto a position, and then when push comes to shove, usually about four of its members stand on principle and refuse to vote the way they swore they wouldn't. A prime example of this occurred when 90 Congress members, most of them in the Progressive Caucus, signed a letter to President Bush (why Bush and not Pelosi, I don't know) announcing that they would not vote for any more money to extend the occupation of Iraq, and then almost all proceeded to do just that. But examples are available all the time. The Progressive Caucus never blocks cloture votes (procedural votes on whether to have a vote), but is satisfied to vote for the losing side and allow measures it opposes to pass.

Once upon a time you could expect fairly progressive positions from the Black Caucus, but its membership consists of any member (41 of them) who is considered black, regardless of their policy positions or performance, and not all black members can be considered progressive -- far from it. Steve Cohen tried to join because he represents a majority black district, and was turned away for being white. But Artur Davis is a member in good standing. The Black Caucus Foundation is a corporate money hole. (The Progressive Caucus' foundation is brand new and its future unknown.)

The New Democrat Coalition with 57 members is militaristic and corporate and suffers from a hard case of voodoo economics. Meanwhile the Blue Dog Coalition, with 47 members, advocates against spending money, except on war and weaponry. These coalitions, the Blue Dogs especially, have been known to challenge the Democratic leadership and fight tooth and nail for their positions -- as they should. Another minority caucus that fights for its positions is, of course, the Republican Caucus.

Now along comes a new caucus of Democrats called the Populist Caucus, which has at least 23 members thus far, including my own Congress member, Tom Perriello. This appears to be a caucus for somewhat progressive members who want to say "middle class" a lot but not necessarily mention the poor or the working class, and who may or may not love weapons and wars. The caucus is "devoted solely to addressing middle class economic issues." If that's true, and it neither supports nor opposes militarism, but takes a populist and progressive stand on economic issues -- perhaps even in alliance with the Progressive Caucus -- and really fights for its positions, this could be very good news. And it is good news for my district, whose representative had publicly considered becoming a Blue Dog. He still could, as these caucuses all have overlapping memberships. In fact, 11 of the 23 populists are also members of the Progressive Caucus, which is encouraging. The Progressive Caucus has some new leadership and could conceivably fight for its positions in the coming months, but having a separate caucus that might do so doubles our odds. As the Blue Dogs have shown, it's not the number of members you have, but your willingness to take a stand that gives you power.

Here's what the Populist Caucus says it wants to work on:

1. Creating Good Jobs and a Secure Retirement: Creating and retaining good-paying jobs in America, providing fair wages, proper benefits, a level playing field at the negotiating table, and ensuring American workers have secure, solvent retirement plans;
2. Cutting Taxes for the Middle Class: Cutting taxes for the middle class and establishing an equitable tax structure;
3. Affordable Healthcare: Providing affordable, accessible, quality health care for all Americans;
4. Quality, Affordable Education: Ensuring quality primary education for all American children, and affordable college education for all who want it;
5. Fair Trade: Defending American competitiveness by fighting for fair trade principles;
6. Protecting Consumers: Protecting consumers, so that Americans can have faith in the safety and effectiveness of the products they purchase.

There's potential, but change I can believe in ain't in that list yet. How do you do #1 but not commit to the Employee Free Choice Act? How do you do #2 but not raise taxes on corporations and millionaires, and slash the expenses of wars, bases, and weapons? How do you do #3 but not back HR 676? Why would you fight for fair trade in order to be "competitive" rather than fair? Protecting consumers is good but what about citizens?

I blogged yesterday about a meeting that some allies and I had with Congressman Perriello. I had asked him if he would cosponsor the Employee Free Choice Act and thought he had clearly said yes. And that's what I reported. His office now tells me that he said he would support it but not necessarily cosponsor it. They haven't said that he won't cosponsor it, only that he's not saying he will. I've asked how, then, he will support it, and I'm waiting for an answer. Maybe the Populist Caucus will have one.

How Did Perriello Beat Goode?

davidswanson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:08:24 -0500

By David Swanson

How did a Democratic challenger defeat a Republican incumbent in an enormous rural district in southern Virginia? A Democratic group in Charlottesville called Left of Center organized a forum on that topic Monday night. Speakers included three staffers on Tom Perriello's victorious campaign: Brian Bills, his personal assistant; Kelli Palmer, who registered African American voters in the southern most part of Virginia's Fifth District; and Rachel Klarman, lead field organizer for the southern counties. Also speaking were two newspaper reporters, Will Goldsmith of the C'ville Weekly and Lindsay Barnes of the Hook. And providing some historical context was Fred Hudson, chair of the Fifth District Democratic Committee.

All of the speakers addressed the reasons Perriello had won. Of course he won by only 0.2 percent, but the big question was how he'd managed to make it close at all. The loser, Virgil Goode, had always carried at least 60 percent of the vote in the past. Each speaker provided different reasons for the upset, not because they disagreed with each other, but because there were a great many factors that had all come together. The speakers all steered clear, however, of the biggest, if least heart-warming reason for Perriello's success: money.

Perriello brought in almost as much cash as Goode. He spent it as I would want a candidate to spend it, but not necessarily how a candidate has to spend it to win in our corrupt system. Perriello had 30 people on staff and paid rent for eight offices. According to Bills, Perriello spent more on his field operation than any other congressional campaign in the country ever has. But what about the fortune needed to buy back essential little snippets of time on the television airwaves we own but do not control? That's where the powers of party and money combined. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C., and the independent group My Rural America spent over a million dollars on ads for Perriello and against Goode. In contrast, the Republican Congressional Committee and the National Right to Life Committee only spent $150,000 on pro-Goode and anti-Perriello ads.

The speakers on Monday all seemed to agree that the field work and the ads had worked well together, that people who had seen the ads late in the campaign had been able to connect them with their memories of having met Perriello or his staffers or volunteers earlier in the year. Over the summer, Perriello's staff and volunteers did a great deal of charity work in addition to traditional campaigning. That was one factor in the campaign's success at generating more media coverage than the incumbent.

Another major factor that was discussed on Monday was the incumbent himself, Virgil Goode, who had become a recognized failure as a congressman and who ran a terrible and complacent campaign (so complacent that no major signs of vote theft or suppression arose). Goode's obsession with bashing immigrants, Muslims, and gays made him less relevant to voters than a candidate who talked about jobs. While Goode denied that he hated immigrants when I blogged about it, Perriello was able to convince voters that Goode's immigration obsession alienated him from even his own party in Congress, making Goode less effective.

Perriello talked about religion constantly during the campaign, not to mention country music and NASCAR. But on the traditional pseudo issues of cultural division like abortion and gay-bashing, he did not adopt right-wing positions, as Goode, the former Democrat, had done, and as Virginia Governor and incoming chair of the Democratic National Committee Tim Kaine has done. Perriello mocked Goode's tendency to answer questions about the miserable economy of Southside Virginia with comments on same-sex marriage.

Obama boosted interest in this election in a district that is 24 percent African American but had previously seen only 16 percent of voting by African Americans. Yet Bills pointed out that Perriello was the only contested candidate in the state who actually received more votes than Obama. Hudson noted that Perriello actually swamped Obama north of the James River (where the progressive city of Charlottesville is) and trailed him south of there. Yet it was in the southern towns that Perriello gained the most over the performance of previous challengers to Goode: up 20 percentage points in Martinsville and 14 in Danville.

Palmer said that the campaign had sent a mailing to every known unregistered voter, and had then sent registration forms. Then they had used robocalls that said "If you need help registering to vote, Press 1." Pressing 1 took you to a real person. They also hired and recruited aggressive staff and volunteers. Some of them would drive up to anyone on the curb, ask if they were registered, and if not jump out of the van with a clipboard and register them on the spot. Another technique was to look for houses with lots of cars and activity, walk in the front door or the back yard and start registering everyone. Palmer said they were able to register 5,500 new voters in her area in nine weeks, heavily young voters. In all, 50,000 new people registered since the last election (many registered by the good work of the Virginia Organizing Project). Palmer registered whole families, including elderly black voters who wanted to know what they would have to pay and what test they would have to take -- vestiges of Virginian traditions.

Klarman pointed out that Goode's seniority and membership on the appropriations committee were hurdles to be overcome. Perriello, she said, was able to convince people that he would work harder and be more effective, and in fact he campaigned much longer and harder than Goode. There was also the problem of undervotes. Some 15,000 people had voted for president four years ago and not voted for a congress member. According to Hudson, solving this problem was likely aided by the Obama campaign's decision not to provide yard signs. This allowed the district to create 3-way signs for Obama, Senate candidate Mark Warner, and Perriello. This was important for those who still thought of Goode as a Democrat, as well as those who were big fans of Warner, a former governor. Some 10,000 people voted for McCain, Warner, and Perriello.

The discussion on Monday night must have been heaven for people who love political strategy (and isn't most everyone now an amateur strategist?). But I still tend to focus on what is generally called "the issues" or "policy positions." I want to know what a candidate will do if elected. There was no discussion in Monday's presentations of what policy positions helped or hurt the campaign, much less of what Perriello would be working on first. Back in April, I had interviewed Perriello for an hour on a radio show (audio clip) and I'd struggled to get him to commit to any progressive positions. I'd been frustrated by his open intention to simply obey his party and its president. He wouldn't back single-payer health coverage or anything else I asked about. (Of course Goode had run ads calling his previous challenger a supporter of "socialized medicine," "amnesty for illegals," etc.) People I know have spoken more privately with Perriello and come away thinking he was very progressive, albeit without any specifics.

Bills called Perriello a "conviction candidate." He said that his guy did not triangulate and pander like Bill Clinton, but told it like he saw it, and he saw it very much from the left. He was not bound to any party. And so forth. But the instant that someone asked a question from the floor, Bills retracted "left-leaning" as not the correct characterization for Perriello. None of the speakers touched on what the positions were that Perriello had expressed with such conviction. Members of the audience discussed campaigns for lobbying Perriello to take some good positions, but even among the audience members I spoke to the idea of anyone challenging Perriello in a primary in 2010 was unthinkable. Hudson said that he believed Perriello could win the general election again, and that we could ensure that he be able to remain in Congress as long as he wants. Hudson said this as if such an outcome must unquestionably be everyone's goal, and quite regardless of whether Perriello does what we want while he's on the job.

When I asked about policy proposals that had had an impact on the victory, Bills said that Perriello's economic plan for jobs was a big selling point. It was at this point in the discussion that the speakers touched on Goode's failures to relate to his struggling constituents' need for more than targets of hatred. Lindsay added that Perriello's smarts and long-windedness played well in a race against the bumbling Goode in a year in which President Bush's feeblemindedness had made wonkishness attractive.

Perriello's staffers seemed extremely smart, dedicated, and passionate. They had won an upset election over the most racist and hateful member of our national legislature by registering more people to vote and investing in grassroots organizing, while giving 10 percent of their time to charity. Regardless of what Perriello does, his campaign was inspiring. I wish I could tell you what he'll do. I wish I could provide Perriello's own perspective. A large coalition of peace and justice organizations that I work with has been requesting a meeting with him for weeks and has been getting turned away.

I expect that the audio of Monday's forum will show up here:
http://www.cvillepodcast.com

Goode Riddance

davidswanson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:06:11 -0500

A Darfur-supporting, time-tithing, self-deprecating newcomer becomes Virginia's big electoral surprise.
By Dahlia Lithwick

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—It's been more than 72 hours since the polls opened on Tuesday, and Tom Perriello is only 19 minutes away from the official declaration that he has won—in one of the most dramatic upsets of the 2008 election—the congressional seat for the 5th District in Virginia. Perriello is sitting outside a coffee shop in Charlottesville, besieged by voters dying to know whether they've stopped the ballot-counting marathon yet. "Can I say congratulations yet?" asks a woman. "What's the final count?" A man says he is getting tired of hitting "refresh" on the Virginia State Board of Elections Web site. Perriello grins, explaining that after days of what he calls "cinematic" vote counting, the official count now gives him a 747-vote lead. This after the AP prematurely called the election for incumbent Virgil Goode on Tuesday night, then called it for Perriello on Wednesday. Vote totals seesawed back and forth as military ballots, paper ballots, and write-in ballots were counted and recounted.

Read the rest at Slate.

Recount Fictions in Virginia's Fifth

davidswanson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:22:28 -0500

By David Swanson

As of about 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, 316,476 votes had been counted in Virginia's Fifth District congressional race between incumbent bigotted xenophobe Virgil Goode and challenger Tom Perriello, with 158,562 going to Perriello and 157,914 to Goode, for a difference of 648 votes or 0.2 percent of the total.

According to a report on Charlottesville's NBC-29:

"There is no 'automatic' or 'mandatory' recount. If the results differ by one percent or less, the losing candidate can formally request a recount in court. If the difference is less than half of a percentage point, the same candidate still has to make a request and the state will pay for it."

Two years ago Mr. Macaca, George Allen, lost a close senate race in Virginia, the last great Virginian rejection of racism before the defeat of McCain-Palin and the possible defeat of Goode. Allen chose not to request a recount. His campaign or supporters of it had engaged in widespread suppression tactics, including misleading calls and flyers and intimidation. It's possible that he preferred to avoid close scrutiny of the election because of how deep his dirty tricks ran. Or maybe he just decided he couldn't win. If Goode loses the initial count this time and chooses not to recount, the same question will haunt us. If Perriello loses the initial count, only requesting a recount would fit with the statements he has recently made about the importance of taking the time to be sure every vote is counted. But then, he is working with the Democratic Party which absolutely loves to concede, so anything's possible.

The interesting question is, if they do a recount, what in the world will the recounters do in order to maintain the charade that they are "recounting" something? I ask this not because I distrust the people doing the recount in any way, but because there simply isn't anything to recount. Most of the votes were cast on DRE machines, electronic machines. Unlike voting on a paper ballot, voting on a DRE does not leave behind any item that can be counted or recounted. The same NBC-29 story explains:

"If and when a recount occurs, it's different every time. According to Iachetta, electronic ballots can be 're-counted' by re-reading the cards that hold the results or just by going over the statement of results again."

Even NBC was forced to put "re-counted" in quotes. The votes exist, if they exist, inside a machine. The machine spits out a number, and we all simply have to trust it. If the machine can be made to spit out a different number, that would be interesting, but it wouldn't help anything, because we'd have no basis on which to guess whether the first or second number was closer to an accurate count.

Now it could be discovered that some of the counts are impossible or improbable (machines have sometimes given candidates in various parts of the country more votes than there were voters, or reported that huge numbers of voters chose to vote in a local race and ignore a national one, etc.) Or it could be shown that a machine had been suspiciously tampered with, or that the data had been altered by an interested party. Or some innocent human error in processing the totals could be found. But aside from those possibilities, assuming everything seems to have worked perfectly, we actually have no possible way of knowing whether a machine count is accurate or not. As far as I know we have no exit polls here to help us either.

This probably means a couple of things. First, it probably means that a "recount" is not going to change the results dramatically, since most of the votes can't be recounted. Second, it might just mean that more people in Virginia come to grips with the need to replace our misguided techno-fetish for dysfunctional machines with paper ballots publicly counted at every polling place. In fact the Virginia Constitution requires the public counting of ballots, and DREs can't do that.

Now, some of the ballots in this contested race are paper. I voted early on a paper absentee ballot, as did a lot of other people, and others voted on provisional ballots on election day. All of those ballots could be carefully recounted by hand and the totals made public for each polling place. In most places, paper ballots are counted on optical scan machines, which are notoriously as unreliable as DREs, even when they aren't being jammed by wet ballots as happened in some parts of Virginia on Tuesday. The advantage of optical scan counting is that it leaves behind the paper ballots, which can be counted by hand if needed. But check out this report from the same NBC-29 story:

"Paper ballots will most likely go through a tabulating machine again."

Are they serious? If the ballots are counted by hand in small numbers locally, and the totals posted publicly and added together, a count can be extremely reliable. If the ballots are counted by a machine, and the total comes out different from last time, which total do you use?

Other factors could come into play here, including late arriving absentee ballots or attempts by Goode's team to disqualify various people's provisional ballots. There is some chance, I think, that this will help wake us up to the need for universal registration. If we didn't make everyone jump through so many hoops in order to vote, and simply let everyone vote in the same way that we let everyone have a Social Security number, then scary tales about Mickey Mouse showing up at the polls wouldn't be taken seriously even on Fox News.

When the first count is finished, if either the winner or the loser has any suspicion that a recount could come closer to the truth, then they have a duty to insist on it, and to insist that it be taken seriously and done with the extreme care that we put into counting money or sports scores. Sadly, we just don't have an electoral system that will allow any of us to be sure of the outcome no matter how many times they "recount" it.

Tom Perriello Up By 814

davidswanson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:55:29 -0500

By David Swanson

In Virginia's undecided Fifth District congressional race, Tom Perriello is now up 814 votes with possibly more still to be added, and a recount likely. But most of the over 300,000 votes cast cannot be recounted, since they were made on electronic machines.

Good bye, Virgil Goode, You left us all worse off and more hateful. May you become a nicer person in a line of work where you don't think bigotry is your key to success.

Welcome to Congress, Tom Perriello. May you actually represent us and be patient with us as we experience the shock of it.

Help Make History

highcountryprogressive — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:58:39 -0400

Roy Carter is tied in his race to unseat Virginia Foxx, who took over for Richard Burr.

He's running in the most conservative district in North Carolina, and his opponent Foxx called ALL Democrats "Godless Socialists."

If it's true that anyone, regardless of income or social status, can run for national political office in this country then this man should be elected and I encourage you to take the time to read about him, and possibly support a school teacher's bid for congress by having him on the show for a few minutes, with Jim Dean, the brother of the party chairman.

His name is Roy Carter, who's running an amazing campaign for U.S. Congress in NC-05, and in full disclosure I'm his Political Director.

He was my high school teacher, when I was struggling and considered dropping out he convinced me to stick it out and graduate from high school. And now I'm four months away graduating college with a degree in journalism, and a minor in political science. And last summer I was able to intern for Dean's Democracy for America organization, all due to Roy Carter believing in me.

When you hear the words Baptist, Deacon, Southern good ole' boy, high school football coach/teacher, and farmer in one of the reddest districts in NC you would hardly picture that person being a Progressive.

At best you might consider the guy a Blue Dog Democrat, at best, like Heath Shuler in the neighboring district.

The thing about Carter is, his "progressivism" is not something based on ideology, but rather common sense.

It wasn't a staunch opposition to imperialism or to nation building that made him opposed to the invading Iraq back in 2002.

It was the simple fact that Iraq had not attacked us and therefore we should not attack them. And that's what he told his High School students in the classroom in 02 and 03, I should now because I was one of them.

Carter is a man who has coached football and taught science for forty years, also tending to the family farm, and he built his own house four times, never living much of a public life.

But after he saw former student after former student being shipped off to Iraq, and then being Stop-lossed, he decided it was his duty to help bring them home safely to their families.

So he boldly announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress in a district that has been Republican since 1994 and produced current NC Senator Richard Burr.

It's also a heavily gerry mandered district and the odds usually are against any Democrat winning there. But after none of the big name democrats, Mayors, Town Council members, and lawyers were too scared to run, Roy bravely threw his hat into the ring to defeat right-wing extremist Rep. Virginia Foxx.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk6mTyxekZ4&eurl=http ://... /

In the past the Democrats struggled mightily in challenging Foxx by nominating perceived "intellectuals," men who had written several books and who came off as elitist.

That simply wouldn't work in a district where NASCAR started, that's the birthplace of Lowe's Hardware, and hosts the east coast's largest bluegrass festival.

It's a backwoods district, country as you can imagine.

But this time the Democrats got it right by backing the guy who has a southern drawl, and the personality of Andy Griffith (Andy's hometown and the basis for the show are also in the district).

You'd think given the nature of the district that only way of winning would be to run as a Blue Dog and serve as one too in order to stay in Congress but that's not the case.

Roy is running as a full blown progressive, issuing landmark statements in opposition to Mountain-top Removal (the source of most of the district's power), corporate greed, and the Iraq War. And most importantly the corruption of his opponent:

http://www.roycarterforcongress.com/5.27.html

He wants to trash NAFTA, end No Child Left Behind, end the tax breaks for the large oil corporations, and will demand universal health care for all Americans.

And he'll be great on the House floor, fighting for progressive ideals with the intimidating factor of a hard nosed football coach.

And Roy has been getting involved during the campaign as an activist as well.

Carter appeared at an anti-war rally at the local university, Appalachian State, and drew many of the crowd of 500 to tears with an inspiring speech.

Weeks later Roy joined 50-60 students in a sit-in in the Chancellor's office of the University over the University's use of sweatshop labor to produce it's apparel.

It really is a unique story, he's become a hero of the Left, and the netroots, being named Democracy for America's Grassroots All-Star and winning their endorsement, as well as that of LCV, NEA, etc...

In the Grassroots All-Star race 90 Democratic Congressional challengers were entered into an online voting pool, that was open to anyone with an email address, and an relatively unknown man like Carter who's never run for anything before finished in first because people fell in love with his story.

When Carter retired as a coach and teacher, after forty years, he was making $40,000 a year.

His opponent is worth around 9 million.

Let's prove to America that a poor man can still win a Congressional election.

What's truly amazing about the whole thing is that Roy, by running as a progressive, in rural NC, is poised to win and is in a statistical dead heat in the polls.

And that's because he's taught at four different schools in the district, so he's practically a hero in four separate communities here.

The folks here know him and respect him as a person -and the conservatives are drawn to him because of his southern charm and persona.

His former students and players swear by him and many have volunteered to canvass, phone bank and work the polls for him.

Wish you could see his 250+ pound former offensive linemen going door to door for their coach.

I truly believe he's going to pull this out, and will shock the world getting elected as a progressive in a heavily republican district.

Help us make history:

http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/18412

www.roycarterforcongress.com

No Surprise in the Senate Bailout Vote

dlindorff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:30:41 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The US Senate did what the Founding Fathers expected it to do when
they devised the idea of an upper house of Congress. Playing the role
of Britain’s House of Lords to the House’s House of Commons, it ignored
the rabble (that’s us, the voters) and voted the opposite way of the
House of Representatives, which on Monday had voted down the Bush
Administration’s proposed $700-billion to $1-trillion give-away to Wall
Street financial companies.

The Senate vote in support of the measure, which went 74-25 (the
ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy missed the vote), reflects the fact that, first
of all, Senators, who run representing entire states, are very
difficult to unseat because of the huge cost of mounting a media
campaign against an incumbent, and second that two-thirds of them even
don’t face voters this November, (and one third not for another four
years).

The House, in contrast, which defeated a similar bill earlier in
the week by 228-205, while still largely an incumbent’s sinecure, is
still a place where every member faces the voters every two years.

So now the bill goes back to the House for a second round of voting
tomorrow, this time in a version devised in the Senate to try and
convince 12 of Monday’s nay voters to switch to yea. The sweeteners: a
rise in the size of bank deposits insured by the (already
over-stretched) Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from the current
$100,000 to $250,000, and some $115 billion in new tax breaks, some for
business, and some for wealthy taxpayers (a raising of the threshold
for applying the alternative minimum tax).

In other words, the minimum cost of this bailout, has been raised
from the $700 billion that the House rejected last time to $815
billion! And it’s a fair bet that more sweeteners will be added once
the bill goes to the House floor. (It should be noted that neither of
the measures added in the Senate has anything to do with a rescue.
Moreover, the first, upping the FDIC insured deposit limit, is simply a
time-saver for the rich, who could have simply moved around money to
separate banks to accomplish the same thing, while the second only
succeeds in driving the US budget further into the hole.)

The pressures on House members from lobbyists, House leaders of
both parties, and from the White House, will be enormous. The question
is whether public pressure, which was unprecedented over the past week,
jamming the Capital switchboard and crashing the Capital website, will
be equally enormous.

If voters again flood their representatives with calls and emails
demanding that they not support this rip-off bill, it is still possible
that the bailout will die and Congress and the White House will have to
go back to square one to work out a more reasonable and fair way to
salvage the US financial system than simply putting the results of 15
or more years of reckless Wall Street greed all on the backs of average
taxpayers.

As I have written earlier, the proper way to go about this would be
for both the Senate and the House to schedule and hold hearings on the
crisis and on ways to develop a rescue of the economy and the financial
system. Such hearings should include testimony from the victims of Wall
Street’s misdeeds—the homeowners who are losing their houses, the small
businesses that can no longer borrow funds to finance expansion or to
meet short term cash needs, the retirees and workers who are seeing
their pensions pillaged. They should include testimony from the
hundreds of economists, including Nobel Laureates like Joseph Stiglitz,
who are warning that the bailout as currently designed will not work
and could make things worse. And they should grill executives of the
major financial institutions about how they drove things to this
perilous state.

Then they should craft a response that meets the needs of the
public, not just the bankers and their investors, that will help to
rebuild the economy and the financial system on a sounder footing, and
that will punish those who abused the system and who have brought it to
its knees.

The Senate vote (which included yes votes from both major party
presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, both the
beneficiaries of large campaign donations from Wall Street interests)
was a victory for those who caused this crisis, and who hope to receive
all the money being put on the table.

The House vote will be a test of whether the public still has any
power at all to have its interests considered in what is still referred
to as this American democracy.

The advocates of this ripoff, from the President on down, have been
using cheap scare-mongering to try to win the day, claiming that if a
bill isn’t passed immediately, the country will spiral into a
depression like the 1930s. This is ridiculous. The country has been in
a credit crisis for months, and if Congress spend another month or two
deliberating and devising a good bill, it would not put the country in
any greater danger of collapse than it is already in. In fact, this
rush to pass a bad bill is far more likely to lead to disaster.

So once again, whether or not you have called your US
representative, get on the phone and do it again. Demand that they vote
“No” and say if they do not, you will vote against them in November.
The numbers to call are: 202-225-3121, 202-224-3121 or 800-828-0498. If
you cannot get through, look up in your local phone book blue pages the
number of a local constituent office for your representative, and call
there. In fact, do that anyway, too. You can also send an email to your representative.

Today and tomorrow are the last chance to stop this travesty from happening. Act today, and don't forget to spread the word.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36551';
digg_title = "No Surprise in the Senate Bailout Vote";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n The US Senate did what the Founding Fathers expected it to do when they devised the idea of an upper house of Congress. Playing the role of Britain’s House of Lords to the House’s House of Commons, it ignored the rabble (that’s us, the voters) and voted the opposite way of the House of Representatives, which on Monday had voted down the Bush Administration’s proposed $700-billion to $1-trillion give-away to Wall Street financial companies.\r\n\r\n The Senate vote in support of the measure, which went 74-25 (the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy missed the vote), reflects the fact that, first of all, Senators, who run representing entire states, are very difficult to unseat because of the huge cost of mounting a media campaign against an incumbent, and second that two-thirds of them even don’t face voters this November, (and one third not for another four years).\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

We Need to Demand Hearings!

dlindorff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:03:19 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

With the Bush Administration, the two leading presidential
candidates, and the Congressional leadership, as well as a phalanx of
Wall Street lobbyists all pushing hard for a massive transfer of
taxpayer money to the coffers of banks and investment banks, the
American people need to demand a halt to this bums' rush to a bailout.

We've seen what happens when Congress forgoes the time-tested
process of deliberative and investigative hearings and simply takes a
floor vote on a Bush Administration-backed measure. First there was the
October 18, 2001 resolution for use of military force against Al Qaeda
in Afghanistan. Because there were no hearings on that measure, its
loose, deliberately ambiguous wording has been used ever since by the
Bush/Cheney crew as authorization for their global so-called "War" on
Terror, including the claim that the president has the dictatorial
power ignore treaties, US law, and bills passed by the Congress.
Shortly thereafter, there was the Patriot Act, a compendium of
anti-Democratic measures that had failed to win passage in Congress
over the years which were cobbled together in the dead of night by
Bush/Cheney zealots and passed on a voice vote the next day by a
Congress too cowed to hold hearings on the measure. Then, in October
2002, there was the second authorization for use of military force
resolution, this time against Iraq, which has ended up miring the US in
a disastrous five-year-long war without end that has killed 4500
Americans, chewed up 40,000 more, and killed in excess of one million
innocent Iraqi civilians.

Had there been serious hearings on any of these three terrible
measures, there is a chance none of them would have passed, or that at
least, had they been passed, they would have been reworded to tie the
administration's hands. The first AUMF could have limited military
actions to attacking Al Qaeda. Period. The Patriot Act's constitutional
overrides could have been exposed early, and challenged. And the
administration's lies about the alleged threats posed by Iraq could
have been challenged in public by other witnesses, plus a clear
requirement could have been included that any attack on Iraq would need
UN authorization.

Now Congress is being pressured to pass an equally horrific bill
with no hearings. We know that 200 leading economists, including at
least three Nobel Laureates, one of them former World Bank economist
Joseph Stiglitz, are opposed to the bailout, saying throwing a trillion
dollars at Wall Street won't work and will be a waste of taxpayer money
or worse. We know that it fails to address the root problem--the
housing and mortgage crisis. We know that it could be a crippling blow
to the dollar. Yet without hearings to expose this giant scam, the only
ones getting through to members of Congress are Wall Street lobbyists,
their pockets stuffed with campaign cash.

Citizens can't even get past the Capitol switchboard, which is
jammed with angry callers trying to get through to their
representatives and senators.

The point that needs to be made is that there is no great urgency to
pass a bill. The administration's claim that the bottom will fall out
of the economy and that the country will be plunged into a depression
if the bill isn't passed immediately is nonsense. The Great Depression
took years to develop after the 1929 stock market crash.

The current market could collapse, and there'd be plenty of time to
act to revive the national economy. Meanwhile, the credit crisis, which
is serious, has been underway for months and months. It is not
something that came up last week and needs to be resolved tomorrow (as
if that were possible by the mere passing of a give-away bill). There
is plenty of time to hold the kind of hearings that will let members of
Congress, and the American public, learn about the causes of the
crisis, of its impacts, and about what the various strategies are that
might most effectively address it.

So the public demand should not be for passage of a "good" bailout
bill. It should be for a halt to this rush to passage of any bill. The
demand should be for "No Bill Without Hearings!"

So call Congress (202-225-3121, 202-224-3121 or 800-828-0498) and
tell your representative and your two senators that you don't want them
railroaded. Tell them you demand hearings before legislation. And tell
them, again, that you will vote against anyone who votes for the
current bailout for Wall Street. (Hint: If you can't get through, then
call one of their local offices, which are listed in the blue pages of
your phonebook, or go visit a local office.)

Don't forget to write letters, too, to your local paper demanding hearings and a reasoned response to the crisis, not a bailout.
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Surprise! Congress Listened to the Voting Public!

dlindorff — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:43:24 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The most entertaining thing about this Wall Street crisis and the
refusal of the House of Representatives (not failure but refusal) to
pass a bailout bill negotiated by the Bush White House and the House
leadership is how shocked and upset those leaders and the pundit class
have been by the idea that members of Congress would actually heed the
wishes of their constituents!

The Founding Fathers always saw the lower house of Congress as
voice of the people—the elected body that, because its members had to
face the voters every two years, would be most responsive to public
sentiment.

Because of the power of money and the role of the corporate media
in filtering the information that voters get about what is actually
going on, that close connection between public and public servant in
the House has long ago broken down. This time, however, because the
crisis hit within five weeks of the national election, and because the
crisis involved something that everyone cares about—their money—it
worked.

The public is paying attention, and most of us got it. It was
obvious that Congress and the White House were out to screw us out of
our money in order to protect the millionaire and billionaire traders
and conmen who have been running the Wall Street casino for the last
decade and a half without any adult supervision.

Now that people are paying attention, it will be interesting to see
how these corrupt leaders, Democrat and Republican, will fashion that
bailout and get it passed. Once aroused from their TV-induced slumber,
the American public may not be willing to get rolled. If the anger
grows, and the calls and emails to Congress—which brought down the
Capitol website Monday and jammed the switchboard for several days
beginning last week—continue to flood in threatening an electoral
Armageddon for those who back a bailout, Congress may yet be unable to
pass a bill.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Now let’s make something clear. The stock market crash that
happened on Monday was no crisis. The market can rise and fall with
little or no significant impact on the broader economy, or even on
those who have their retirement income invested in equities. While
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and House
leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Minority Leader John Boehner may
point frantically to the falling Dow as a dire warning to members of
Congress to take action, it is all just scaremongering.

The real issue is not the stock market—it’s the credit markets. And
these have been shut down to borrowers—both individuals and
corporates—for months. Which means that there is no sudden urgency to
pass a lousy, rip-off bailout bill in days without proper hearings and
investigations into what is really needed.

The Bush Administration’s whole idea here from the start was to use
scare-mongering and high-pressure tactics honed in the 2002 campaign to
gin up a war against Iraq to get a bill through Congress that would
make a virtual dictator out of the Treasury Secretary, and to siphon a
trillion dollars or more out of taxpayers’ accounts and into the
pockets of the already stunningly rich financial class. It was to be
one final wrecking ball by the Bush/Cheney gang launched at the
American economic and political system, allowing the people who have
run the country into the ground over the last eight years, and their
financial backers to walk away with all the cookies.

It could still happen if the public doesn’t stay fired up and
angry. But for now, it’s at least exciting and deeply satisfying to see
the Administration, and the cowards who run the so-called Democratic
opposition in Congress, scrambling frantically to come up with a scheme
to get this ripoff passed.

What should happen? Congressional Democrats should put a hold on any action until after Election Day, which after all is only five weeks off. They should say that the voters must be heard on this critical national issue of how to rescue the economy and fix the financial system. Hearings should be scheduled in the relevant committees—oversight, banking, securities regulation, housing, the elderly, health and human services, etc. (yes, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is right in observing that given that most bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical emergencies, if the US had national healthcare, we wouldn’t have the housing foreclosure crisis)—and a special prosecutor should be established to look into the corruption behind all the recent financial sector failures. The real victims of the deregulatory orgy need to be heard, as do some of the 200 economists (including at least three nobel laureates) who have opposed this bailout. Then when the true nature and extent of the crisis and its causes have been laid out in clear public view, along with some real solutions for real people, appropriate legislative reforms should be drawn up, debated and voted upon, to be finally enacted into law.

No rush to judgment! No short-circuiting of the critical process of hearings!

The economy will survive this process.

What we cannot survive is a continuation of secret government, backroom deals and trillion-dollar bailouts.

BACK TO THE PHONES!
_______________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Weasel Watch

dlindorff — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:49:42 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

It is going to be entertaining, to say the least, to watch John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom endorsed the crooked, stacked rip-off bailout bill being scaremongered into law by the Bush Administration.

Now that it is clear that the American public overwhelmingly
recognizes this bill as a corrupt attempt to rob them and reward the
crooks and shysters on Wall Street, how will McCain and Obama weasel
out of their endorsement of the proposal?

They can certainly count their lucky stars that the vote was in the
House and not in the Senate, where they would have already had to take
a public stand up or down on the measure, but let's be clear--both men
have said they suppport the negotiated proposal that was put to the
House today, and which went down to a stinging defeat, 228-205, despite
the solid support of the House Democratic leadership.

Meanwhile, to see how your representative voted, click here. You'll know what do to...