Democracy Died First in Wisconsin – Long Live the Oligarchs

Published on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Democracy Died First in Wisconsin – Long Live the Oligarchs

by Thom Hartmann

The Wisconsin recall election was the first major test of the new era in American politics.

That new era began in January of 2010 when the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that the political voice of We The People was no longer as important as the voices of billionaires and transnational corporations.
Now we know the result, and it bodes ill for both 2012 and for the tattered future of small-d democracy in our republic.
A few of America’s most notorious oligarchs – including the Koch and the DeVos (Amway fortune) billionaires – as well as untraceable millions from donors who could as easily be Chinese government-run corporations as giant “American” companies who do most of their business and keep most of their profits outside the US – apparently played big in this election.
I say “apparently” because the Supreme Court has ruled that we no longer have the right to know who is really funding our election commercials, or even our candidates themselves.
Thanks to an irrational and likely illegal Supreme Court ruling, we have moved into an era of oligarch-run politics. As much as $40 million of our oligarch’s money was spent in Wisconsin in a handful of local races – a testing laboratory for strategies that will now be used against Democrats nationwide in 2012.
And so now we enter the battle of the oligarchs over the next fifteen or so months.
As the old saying goes, when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled. In this case, the mice aren’t just the voters. It’s democracy itself.
America is now – demonstrably, as proven by Wisconsin – just a few years away from the possibility of a totally corrupted, totally billionaire- and corporate-controlled political system. Political scientists call it oligarchy.
The Citizens United election experiment is over, and the oligarchs won. Long live the oligarchy.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country and an updated edition of "Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became "People" - And How You Can Fight Back." Previous books include:  Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture," "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight,"  "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It," and "Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion."

Related articles

• Thom Hartmann: What we can learn from the Tea Party (americablog.com)
• Unions look for silver lining in Wisconsin recalls (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Thom Hartmann: Corporate CEO's...job makers or job movers? (crooksandliars.com)
• Recall Recap Part I (themilwaukeedrum.com)
• Analyst: Wisconsin shows union battle is 'political dynamite' (cnn.com)

Setti Seeks Senate Seat?

TPMDC

Setti Warren Launches Senate Bid To Take On Incumbent Scott Brown

Jon Terbush | May 9, 2011, 5:15PM

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Newton Mayor Setti Warren (D)

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Newton Massachusetts Mayor Setti Warren (D) formally added his name to the growing list of Democrats aiming to take on incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) when he seeks reelection next year in one of the nation's bluest states.
In a campaign video posted to his website, Warren talked at length about his parents' lives as civil rights activists, and how they founded in him a sense of "shared responsibility." Warren often returned to that theme throughout the five-minute video, taking some direct swipes at Brown along the way.
"I believe Scott Brown is an honorable man, but he has not been the independent voice in the Senate that so many expected him to be," Warren says in the video.
In particular, he accused Brown of voting against policies that would help some of the state's most needy individuals.
"Scott Brown admits that he doesn't think about his own life when he votes against the very same programs that helped lift him as a troubled teen out of poverty," Warren says.
"We can never forget the sacrifices that others have made on our behalf," he adds.
Democrats see the Massachusetts Senate race as an important opportunity to wrest back control of a longtime Democratic seat, despite Brown being enormously popular with his constituents. Brown assumed office last year after winning the special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had held the seat for nearly a half century.
Several polls have shown Brown cleaning up in hypothetical head-to-head contests. A Suffolk university poll released last month showed Brown trouncing the virtually-unknown Warren, 52% to 9%.
Warren, the mayor of an affluent Boston suburb, is the first incumbent politician to enter the race so far. City Year co-founder Alan Khazei, attorney Marisa DeFranco, and local activist Bob Massie have all thrown their hats in the ring, though some big-name Democrats -- including Boston Mayor Tom Menino and Gov. Deval Patrick -- have stayed on the sidelines.
Despite being the first African American to win a mayoral election in Massachusetts, Warren is still relatively unknown, even in Massachusetts. A Suffolk poll last month found that over 70% of Massachusetts voters didn't know who he was.
Warren addressed that anonymity up front in his campaign video, hearkening back to how Brown seemingly came out of nowhere to win the 2010 election.
"Many of you don't know me," Warren says. "I'm probably about as well known as Scott Brown was two years ago."

Related articles

• Newton Mayor Setti Warren eyes US Senate run against Scott Brown (boston.com)
• Patrick Outs Possible Senate Candidates (politicalwire.com)
• Poll: Scott Brown enjoys leads over all would-be challengers (thehill.com)
• Gov. Patrick's Name-Dropping (online.wsj.com)

Scott Walker Down the Rat Hole with the Palace Guard

Published on Friday, March 4, 2011 by PRWatch.org

Scott Walker Down the Rat Hole with the Palace Guard

by Mary Bottari

The Wisconsin State Capitol has erupted in a torrent of lawlessness this week that schoolchildren will be reading about for years. No, I don't mean rowdy protests resulting in mass arrests. Even though some 300,000 people have visited the capitol in the last two weeks, the crowds have been peaceful and fun; no arrests have been reported. I mean the convulsion of lawlessness that has seized Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the republican leadership -- a track record that would make Richard Nixon proud.

Republic Senate Passes Unconstitutional Measures to Rein In Wisconsin 14

As the Wisconsin Capitol remained in almost complete lockdown Thursday in vilolation of a standing court order, senate republican leadership turned up the heat on the missing 14 democratic legislators with an unprecedented series of new rules, some of which were quickly assessed as flatly unconstitutional by lawyers.  On Thursday, 19 republicans senators, passed a resolution authorizing the missing Senate Democrats to be taken into custody by any Wisconsin law enforcement officer for "contempt of the Senate." Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said the actions were justified because the 14 "have pushed us to the edge of a constitutional crisis."

The latest legal ploy comes in the context of news reports that the Wisconsin 14, who left the state to delay Governor Walker's bill to eviscerate 50 years of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public employees, were preparing to come back under their own steam to fight the battle of the budget. One senate staffer explained that it would be impossible for the 14 to remain out, when budget bill deliberations actually get underway because they were needed to defend school children, the poor and the elderly against draconian cuts in the bill.

The unprecedented “arrest warrant” was taken as a preemptive strike. As the Senators were meeting, a Dane County Court Judge was poised to rule the capitol lockdown unconstitutional. The Republicans hoped to shift the focus of the TV news that night and the next day to their missing democratic colleagues. But a wrench was thrown in these plans when the prominent law firm of Cullen, Weston, Pines quickly reminded the public that "the Wisconsin Constitution absolutely prohibits members of the Wisconsin Senate from being arrested for non-criminal offense.  The Wisconsin Senate' action today... has no basis in the law of this state. " Further, the firm argued that if the orders of the republican legislators were carried out, they themselves could be subject to a contempt ruling under Wisconsin statute which protects public officials from just this type of chicanery.
Late in the afternoon, the head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, James Palmer,  pleaded for sanity in the State Capitol: "The thought of using law enforcement officers to exercise force in order to achieve a political objective is insanely wrong and Wisconsin sorely needs reasonable solutions and not potentially dangerous political theatrics.”
Legal Chicanery and Petty Politics
Republican senators had been ramping up the pressure on democrats all week, passing a resolution Wednesday that fines the 14 $100 for every day they are absent.  Lawyers point out that the $100 fine is likely also unconstitutional under Wisconsin law. They passed a resolution to allow the senate sergeant at arms to request the assistance of any law enforcement officer in this state to find and return any senator who is absent without leave. The republican senators needed the extra help, since no local law enforcement agency was treating the political brouhaha as a serious police matter. It is likely the Wisconsin's State Patrol will be suborned into the hunt. The State Patrol is headed by recently appointed, Stephen Fitzgerald, father to both the Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald and state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald.

The Senate also assigned republican "supervisors" to the staff of he missing senators.  For instance, Republican Senator Cowles is assigned to supervise the staff of Democratic Senator Hansen. Many saw this as preparation to fire democratic staff members or the ultimate move to expel democratic senators, which would indeed cause a constitutional crisis, beyond the one precipitated by Walker's unilateral dictates.

"Palace Guard" Maintains Capitol Lockdown In Defiance of a Court Order

Since Monday March 1, the capitol building has been in an unprecedented lockdown as the governor attempted to clear the building in advance of his Tuesday budget address. Protestors, capitol workers, legislators, Congressmen and others were shut out. Windows were sealed shut. The lockdown continued in contempt of court, because a Dane County Judge ordered the capitol to open on Tuesday. When firefighters responding to an emergency call at the capitol Tuesday, even they were turned away (firefighters have stood with the protesters since the start of the frackass.) Although they were eventually allowed in to rescue a police officer from an elevator, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney said enough was enough. He withdrew his men from the capitol, saying they were not hired to act as a "Palace Guard."

Faced with the problem of getting his supporters in to the Assembly Chamber on Tuesday, the governor and his guard escorted a cadre of lobbyists and well-heeled friends through a utility tunnel that runs from a parking lot across the street, under the capitol grounds to the capitol basement. Madison City Council woman Shiva Bidar-Sielaff heard that the tunnel might be being used for this purpose and went to check it out. She found about a dozen police officers guarding the tunnel entrance, some from Milwaukee, some in suits with unknown insignia. She witnessed an unmarked police vehicle screech into the garage. Out stepped the First Lady, Tonnett Walker, who was hustled into the tunnel as if the parking garage was under attack. "It was all very 'Men in Black,'” the City Council woman said with a laugh who watched with a handful of other observers. Other Walker supporters had been bused in earlier; the bus signs and arrows were still up on the walls.

Not surprisingly, the Governors plans to cut $1 billion dollars from public education and cap property taxes in order to force localities to balance their budget shortfalls on the backs of teachers and other public workers was greeted with wild cheers. Only about 20 protesters were allowed in and were quickly escorted out when one upstart let lose a single “boo.”  The private address took place in definance of a standing court order to open the capitol to protesters, promting democratic assembly leader Peter Barca to question the legality of the whole event under the state's strong open meetings laws.
Desks on the Capitol Lawn

On Wednesday, Assembly Democratic Representatives couldn’t get their work done in a capitol in a virtual lockdown, so they took their desks out on the lawn for office hours. Democratic Rep. Nick Milroy spoke with constituents standing in the freezing cold -- the Wednesday low for Madison was -6 degrees -- not including wind chill. Milroy relocated his desk, complete with family pictures and trinkets onto the muddy lawn. On Thursday night, Milroy was wrestled to the ground by police trying to prevent him from getting inside the building to his office.

Representative Marc Pocan was so irate with ever-shifting rules and the open access republican legislators seemed to enjoy that he issued an “Open Letter to Whoever is Calling the Shots on the Lockdown at the State Capitol,” demanding to know who was in charge and asking for a measure of fairness for the constituents of democratic legislators.
On Thursday, a lone protestor stood in front of the parking lot which holds the capitol utility tunnel entrance with a sign "Rat Hole Entrance to Walker's Palace."
Court Rules Capitol Shutdown Unconstitutional (Again), Protesters March Out in Victory

In the early evening on Thursday, a Dane County Court Judge ruled for the second time that Walker's virtual shut down of the capitol was an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of the protestors. An agreement was reached to return the Capitol to normal business operations by Monday. After talking to former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, Capitol Police Chief Tubbs and Sheriff Mahoney who explained the terms of the agreement, the protesters agreed to leave the building for cleaning. The 100 or so remaining protesters, who had stayed in the Capitol Building in an effort to keep it open, packed up their gear and left to the applause of Democratic Assembly members and countless other supporters who had been blocked from entering the buiidling these past few days.

Lautenschlager summed up the two day-long court battle: "This is an important determination by the courts. First it says that actions of the state government officials are unconstitutional, and it also affords average citizens the right to be in their capitol on Monday to lobby their legislators and conduct normal business. It is a huge plus in terms of access and a huge plus in terms of signaling to Governor Walker and his colleagues that they will not be allowed to tread on people's constitutional rights.”
Protesters Having a Big Impact, Walker's Poll Numbers Tanking
All that drumming from the Wisconsin State Capitol is having a big impact. The governor's poll numbers are tanking and even the republican-friendly polling firm Rasmussen shows that only 41% support the governor's propsal to gut collective bargaining in the state, 56% support the workers. Another poll shows that if the election were held today Walker would lose in a rematch 52%-45%.

© 2011 Center for Media and Democracy

Mary Bottari is the Director of the Center for Media and Democracy's Real Economy Project and editor of their www.BanksterUSA.org site.

Related articles

• Scott Walker Down the Rat Hole With the Palace Guard - Huffington Post (news.google.com)
• Scott Walker and Wisconsin GOP Continue Lockdown in Contempt of Court; Issue Unconstitutional 'Arrest Warrants' for 14 Democratic Lawmakers (alternet.org)
• Wisconsin: Protestors Leave Capitol (time.com)
• Wisconsin governor tells absent senators: Return or 1,500 get laid off (cnn.com)
• Wisconsin Senate Republicans Order The Arrest Of Senate Dems; Police Association Says No (crooksandliars.com)
• "Wisconsin Republicans have 'ordered the apprehension' of Senate Democrats" and related posts (dailykos.com)
• Wisconsin Senate Leader Fitzgerald Fails To Get Upper Hand Over Democrats (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Wisconsin governor tells absent senators: Return or 1500 get laid off - CNN International (news.google.com)
• Wisconsin Democratic Senator: 'none of us are going to be the 20th vote alone' (dailykos.com)

A Thought on Evan Bayh and Partisan America

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Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

A Thought on Evan Bayh and Partisan America

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Not long ago I was debating someone on television. I thought the discussion was going well until the commercial break when a producer said into my earpiece “be angrier.”

“Why should I be angrier?” I asked him, irritated that he hadn’t appreciated the thoughtfulness of debate.

“That’s how we get channel surfers to stop and watch the program,” the producer explained. “Eyeballs are attracted to anger.”

At this point I lost my temper.

The incident came back to me when I heard about Evan Bayh’s decision to leave Congress because he felt it was becoming too partisan. The real problem isn’t partisanship. Bold views and strong positions are fine. Democratic debate and deliberation can be enhanced by them.

The problem is the intransigence and belligerence that has taken over Congress and much of the rest of the public — a profound distrust of people “on the other side,” an unwillingness to compromise, a bitterness and anger disproportionate to issues being discussed.

Anger makes good television, but it’s fake and it teaches Americans the wrong lessons. Anger also can win elections (Senate Republicans haven’t given Obama any votes because they’ve been eyeing the 2010 midterms since he took office, hoping for a rerun of 1994), but partisan anger is just as fake, and it undermines the capacity of our democracy to do the public’s business.

By the way, I was on CNBC this morning, and the subject of discussion was Bayh’s decision. No producer prodded me to be angrier but Larry Kudlow introduced the segment by saying that I’d be “duking it out” with Steve Moore, who writes editorials for the Wall Street Journal. And when it came for us to discuss the gridlock in Congress, Larry continuously interrupted, saying the reason for the gridlock was Obama’s lefti-leaning agenda.

When this is almost all the public sees and hears about public issues, it’s no wonder Americans begin to think everything is an angry shouting match. Americans stop listening to each other. We retreat into small ideological bubbles and talk only with people who agree with us. We forget how much we have in common, and how important it is to get on with the task of making the nation better.

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Alicia Brody Commentary on Scott Brown Victory

Image via Wikipedia

A Sad, Sad Day for Massachusetts
Wow. I'm still stunned. Not to mention upset. I've been following some of the news coverage of what happened in last week's election, to fill the late Senator Edward Kennedy's seat in Congress, and I think that many of the people who voted for Scott Brown are soon going to realize they made a mistake. I predict that, within the next six months, "Don't blame me, I voted for Coakley" bumper stickers are going to start appearing on cars around the Bay State. If this one vote really means that the entire nation heads back down into the awful mess we were mired in under the prior administration, Massachusetts voters for Brown will feel even worse. I don't think it will, but it will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Based on anecdotal evidence, I think most Democrats and Independents who voted for Scott Brown did so because they wanted to kill this health care bill. That, in my opinion, is short sighted on two counts. First, killing this health care bill because of scary things that have been said, or because one doesn't like parts of it, doesn't fix our problem of 40,000,000 uninsured Americans. Once we have a health care bill in place, we can fix the parts of it that don't work or don't work as well as we would like. If we don't have a bill at all, we are going to have to start from scratch each time this debate comes up.

In addition, a lot of the statements that have been made about the bill (huge amounts coming out of people's paychecks, death panels, the government interfering with treatment) just aren't true. Second, think about all the other things that many Democrats and Independents in Massachusetts believe in: marriage equality, a woman's right to choose, affirmative action, environmental justice, waging peace, and corporate responsibility. Do you really think that Republican Senator Scott Brown will stand up for those issues? Scott Brown did not run as a moderate and was not, again based on anecdotal evidence, elected to help the U. S. Senate's political parties agree on a healthcare compromise. What makes anyone think that he will become a moderate now?

Martha Coakley didn't run the greatest campaign. She, like many politicians, stuck her foot in her mouth a few times. She probably did assume that, having won the Massachusetts Democratic Primary, she was destined to be seated in the Senate. She should not, however, have to shoulder the blame alone. The Democratic Party has not done a good job of educating the public about the healthcare bill. If they had, many citizens wouldn't have voted for Scott Brown just because they feared that legislation.

There is one thing I'm glad I haven't heard in the aftermath of this election. I was afraid that widespread voting irregularities would be revealed and, while I wouldn't mind seeing Scott Brown removed from office if it turned out that he cheated, I'm pretty sure he was elected fairly by voters who were trying to send a message to Washington but went about it the wrong way. My hope is that we learn from this and that the Democrats really change.

We the people need to hold our legislators accountable. Not for being human, but for breaking promises, breaking the law, and acting immorally (and I'm not referring to who's sleeping with whom---I'm talking about doing the right thing). I was reminded recently that I can't have all the power and none of the responsibility. I have to participate and make my voice heard on election day and beyond. I am responsible. We are responsible.

Another Lump of Coal

Image by Public Citizen via Flickr

Published on Saturday, December 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Healthcare Bill a Nightmare Before Christmas

by Billy Wharton

Call it the nightmare before Christmas or Santa's lump of healthcare coal. Either title captures the disastrous qualities of the healthcare reform bill passed by Senate on Thursday. After months of media coverage, a summer of wild town hall meetings and all the high-sounding rhetoric one could swallow, a 2,000 page monster has been birthed. Though President Barack Obama hailed the bill's passage by declaring, "This will be the most important piece of social legislation since Social Security passed in the 1930s," it carries few of the universal qualities or public control of the Social Security legislation. For all the political theater associated with the bill, remarkably little in the bigger picture of healthcare in America has changed - private health insurers still run the system, Washington politicians are still gathering in the campaign contributions and millions will still be left without health insurance.
Bad Gets Worse in the Senate
The Senate bill is even weaker than the already comprised piece of legislation passed by the House of Representatives. The number of uninsured capable of gaining insurance will be somewhere around 24 million. With private plans as the alternative, estimates are that more than $450 billion in tax-payer money will be transferred to private insurers in order to allow the uninsured to gain coverage. However, that coverage will be something akin to the lowest form of car insurance - you get by before the eyes of the state, but get into an accident and you will find yourself facing massive debt. Estimates are that the low-coverage plans would only cover 60% of costs. Even worse news comes for the more than 20 million people who will likely remain uninsured. They will now also have to forfeit 2% of their annual income because of it. A nightmarish scenario indeed - uninsured and penalized!
Smaller parts of the bill also promise negative outcomes. Medicare plans are still being trimmed by $43 billion. Democrats claim it is fat-cutting through the elimination of tax-payer subsidies to private insurers. Seniors fear the long-term impact of the cuts will result in reduced services, especially for quality of life issues such as the ability to participate in exercise programs for free. Reproductive rights also took a hit. While the Senate bill moves off the harsh language on abortion proposed by the Stupak amendment in the House bill, it still represents a serious reversal of reproductive rights on a national scale. If a female subscriber wishes to use her healthcare plan to pay for an abortion, she will have to pay into a separate fund connected to plan. Given the unexpectedness of most unwanted pregnancies, this measure practically eliminates the ability to use insurance to obtain an abortion. The Stupak amendment was defeated in
words, but its content seems certain to return in practice.
Finger-pointing Misses the Big Picture
Who is to blame for such a fiasco? Much progressive ink has been spilt in examining the days leading up the Christmas Eve coup. Joe Lieberman has been a particular target, and even Bernie Sanders has taken some grief for removing his single-payer amendment and, ultimately, voting yes on the bill. Yet this focus on the theatrics of the approval misses the larger structural dimensions of how this bill will become law. Sure, Lieberman converted his leverage as a fence-sitting Conservative into a further watering of bill and Sanders left the field without much of a fight, preferring a go-along-to-get-along approach in order to fight another day. Neither of these statements says much about how this bill came to be.
The real story of this bill is rooted in two moments. One came from the campaign trails of 2008, where massive sums of campaign contributions from health insurers and pharmaceutical companies tipped the balance of national and local elections throughout the country. Democrats drank deeply from this revenue stream and proved to be loyal servants to both the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical lobby. The contributions were targeted - committees that would be formulating the healthcare reform bill, such as the House Committee on Ways and Means, received an inordinate amount of funds. No wonder then, that when candidate Barack Obama declared a goal of "universal healthcare coverage," little rebuttal was heard from the normally vocal insurance lobby. The fix was in and it was insured by some $2 million dollars in donations to his campaign.
Just to insure that things went well for the healthcare lobby, an army of lobbyists was mobilized at a critical juncture in May 2009. The lobby spent a reported $2.3 million a day peddling influence. Such a massive expenditure of political and financial resources insured that the perspectives of private insurers were represented at every committee meeting and in the offices of every elected representative. The lobby was also buffered by the efforts of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which successfully exported their free-market notion that "insurance exchanges" could cure the ills of rising healthcare costs. Soon everyone - from Barack Obama to Harry Reid and even Howard Dean in his statement opposing the bill - was parroting this line. This, despite the fact that nearly sixty years of private control, through free-market policies, over healthcare has created a national emergency in the cost and access to care. So much for learning from
history.
Single-Payer: Union Hall or Lobby Day?
There was some resistance to this process as single-payer proponents did their best to fight the good fight. Massively outgunned in the realm of financial resources, they turned to a campaign of civil disobedience that bore witness to the sheer hypocrisy of the proceedings. Democracy was not in motion in the House committees that formulated the bills, and doctors, healthcare activists and victims of private insurers rallied to express their dissent. For their trouble, these activists received stinging rebukes from some of the very same politicians they had championed as friends. Not only Sanders, but Representative John Conyers, the author of the single-payer bill HR 676, voted in favor of the watered-down reform proposal. Both yielded to expediency and provided a useful lesson in how power politics work in Washington, where you are only as good as your next campaign contribution or legislative horse-trade.
In the end, the movement in support of single-payer was too thin - not able to mobilize large numbers or exercise any influence on a political process saturated with corporate funds. Single-payer activists will have to return to running broad educational campaigns with an eye toward developing a movement with solid roots in working communities throughout the country. They may pick up some new allies from a labor movement that recoiled from unfettered support of the Democrats once the terms of the Senate bill were released. Now wonder then that the bill was swiftly forced through - popular support was rapidly dwindling. In the end, a painful lesson may have been learned - only the ungovernability of the people in motion can win single-payer. To accomplish this, the church congregation, the dinner table and the union hall are more potent weapons than cultivating "friends" in the Senate or House.
The Healthcare Scrooges
Like Scrooge before his revelation, the health insurance industry and their Democratic and Republican representatives have one-track minds - money, money, and money. Such a singular pursuit blinds one to the reality of the social suffering that the three ghosts introduced old Scrooge to. A day may come, perhaps even sometime soon, when the millions of sufferers wake up from this nightmare in order to assert the only quality that no socio-economic system can strip them of - their humanity. Then we might not be willing to offer our healthcare Scrooges the chance to reform themselves. It will be right to the political grave for the private insurers and their political lackeys in order to insure that healthcare becomes the birth-right of all the people. What a wonderful Christmas present that would be.
Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Monthly Review Webzine, The Indypendent, CommonDreams.org and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.]

Press Release From Candidate Oscar Arce

I am originally from Costa Rica; I came to the US in 1984 and have been a Greenfield resident since 1999. Through this time, I have built a record of community outreach, organizing and advocacy, including political and social campaigns committed to empowering individuals of diverse cultural and economic backgrounds.  

I have had the opportunity to meet and work with inspiring community leaders on behalf of many different issues, and the common denominator has consistently been focused on making a difference to improve the quality of life for local residents.

In this role, I have worked with colleagues of differing political philosophies, but we recognize that in joining efforts we can accomplish more by working together and motivating others to get involved as well.  This is how we achieve success in a democratic society.

I am committed to community service; it is a passion and an honor to have the opportunity to work on behalf of neighbors and residents in the community and to advance social and civic issues.

Now I would like to represent the Second District in Massachusetts. I will advocate tirelessly for this community, working with the local leaders, listening to their concerns, and facilitating a voice for local constituents at the State level. If chosen to represent the Second District in the State House, it becomes my duty to bring the Government back to the community, meaning that people have the right to know what issues are being addressed and express their feelings directly to me so I may represent the collective interests of the community.

I want to engage with other State representatives to build coalitions, share information and support one another’s goals in order to find effective solutions to the needs of our communities.

We are going through tough economic times. We must gauge public opinion to address the needs of the community and engage the people and resources necessary to resolve the most pressing issues. This must be presented to the constituency in a manner that is accessible to all and easily understood, and the outcomes easily measured.

As a member of the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, I have the know-how to represent this community:

• I am a member of the affirmative action committee, working to advance opportunities and training for minorities.
• I am on the board of the Massachusetts Stonewall Democrats, working on behalf of our LGBT community.
• I am on the board of the Greater Falls Discovery Center in Turners Falls, helping to educate the public about the Silvio O. Conte National fish & wildlife refuge.

I am involved with many civic causes because as a social activist and community organizer I recognize that it is our responsibility to work trying to improve the quality of life in Greenfield and surrounding communities.

Do your best for those that defend us, Many thanks,..........................................Oscar