Who me, Vote?

WHY VOTE – IT JUST ENCOURAGES THEM

Why vote?

You’ve heard that, right?  Why vote, it just encourages them.  That’s the jaded citizen talking. The one who pays her taxes, keeps her lawn neat and her kids clean, and not one person she ever voted for got elected.  Except for the ones who did and then disappointed her, because they didn’t do all the great things they had promised.

“Why vote?” she asks. “My vote doesn’t count, not really, even if I vote for the winning side, they’re all corrupt anyway.”

It’s easy to feel this way. I used to feel this way.  When it came time for me to register to vote at the age of 21 (yes, that was the voting age back “in the day,”) I said why bother? It’s just a choice between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.   I wasn’t thinking about things like Supreme Court appointments. I wasn’t thinking beyond the big national stage on which politics was played out like a high drama production on the nightly news.  We had bigger fish to fry, a war to end (Vietnam), women’s rights to secure, still more schools to integrate.

I didn’t connect the election with getting those things done, because I didn’t see that the national Strutters and Fretters on the (still small) screen were going to get a single thing done for any of those issues.

Direct action was where it was at. Marching and sitting in and  (for many of the young people around me) breaking things. Not so very different from today’s Occupy movement and the break away groups who take their rage and frustration into the streets, not the ballot box.

So none of my peers voted for Humphrey. At best, we thought he was the lesser of two evils. At worst, no difference.  Imagine, if we had voted, we may never have had Nixon and Watergate.  Would the war have ended sooner? Who knows; we never will.

Room for both:

Well, now I know there is room for both expressions of discontent.  March, sit it, write angry letters and rant, (I’m not advocating breaking things; that just encourages them to arrest you, not productive in the long run). 

But vote too. It’s fast and painless. (Yes, a little homework required.) You can do it in the comfort of your own home.  It just takes a little time and effort to understand the issues.  And I bet you understand more about them than you think you do, so why not just check a box expressing your opinion?

The go out and rabble rouse all you want.

What your single vote gets you: 

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, now a sage political commentator said this:  “Remember: The biggest party in America is neither Democrats nor Republicans. It’s the party of non-voters — a group that outnumbers the other two.”

So, see already, your non-vote has counted. The problem is it may have counted in a way you didn’t mean. It may have counted toward those not voting for something you wanted but didn’t vote for, because you thought your vote wouldn’t count.  

Voting lets you register a number, a statistic, on national issues, and even more importantly, on local issues.  Your vote may go into a big Halloween cauldron in the nationwide tally, but in your City, your County and even your State, your single vote can make a significant difference.  Here are some examples showing how your vote might just count a lot more than you think.

One vote in one small town’s very big election:

Here’s how it happened in one small town looking to raise money to keep a volunteer fire department going.

The fire tax needed a 2/3 majority to pass.  It looked like it would be fairly easy to attain as people in this remote coastal village relied on their volunteers as first responders in times of emergencies.  All voters were dutifully called by firefighters and their supporters before the election and many of them got a knock on their door.  Previous such measures had passed easily, but the volunteers were taking no chances as their need for up to date equipment was great.

On election night, the victory party turned into a wake when the final results were tallied and the measure came up one vote short.

The next day one of the volunteers casually asked another one if she voted before or after her shift. Very sheepishly, the volunteer answered, “I didn’t vote. I didn’t think my one vote would make a difference.”

You can bet that she hasn’t missed a vote since then.

                                                                     What could happen if an important tax measure fails. In this case, it wasn't 
                                                                     so dire; it passed at the next election and disaster was averted.

 

Slightly more votes in a bigger election:

 

In another election, this one for a crucial seat on the County Board of Supervisors, four candidates were in a hotly contested primary election.  One was a very popular sitting council member, and everyone agreed he would get the most votes. The race then was for the number two slot, to have a chance to go head to head over issues such as open space preservation and traffic in the fall.  

Two women were virtually neck and neck on election night, but there were still outstanding absentee ballots turned in too late to have been counted yet at the Registrar’s office.  Both women were fairly unknown and neither had served in elective office before. But one was a nurse and professor, with a strong environmental bent; while the other seemed more interested in smaller parochial issues.

Two weeks passed before the final votes were counted. The nurse had won the right to compete in the fall by 22 votes.  

The rest, as they say, is history. She fought a grueling general campaign, backed by the Sierra Club which culminated in victory in November and preservation of some of the County’s most important baylands. She has held her seat against tough challengers because of the coalition she was able to build in that first election. 

One last example: medium sized town, medium sized election, one anxious candidate:  

Another not so dramatic election was a school board election in a mid-sized city.  A challenger wanted to shake things up and ran against a popular incumbent. Without doing much at all, the incumbent led by 100 votes or so on election night.  The challenger was dejected." If only I’d walked one more precinct!" he lamented.  But wait, by the time the final late absentee votes were counted, he was victorious, now holding the 100 vote lead. He has not been challenged in his office since that time and has been an effective school board member.

So your vote counts. It might be your vote alone that does make the difference, or yours and a few friends you take to the polls or yours and hundreds who think like you, but have not taken the time to vote.

If nothing else, vote because so many people don’t want you to. They know that if people don’t vote, they win by default.  Why else are there so many voter suppression efforts underway, putting into place voter ID laws, machines that switch the votes, not enough ballot boxes, hanging chads.

If a few more people voted in Florida in 2000, maybe, just maybe there would have been enough of a critical mass to stop Bush before all the last chad was hung.

Debra Saunders – Will be pepper-sprayed for cash

Commenting on the settlement received by the U.C. Davis students who were pepper sprayed during a peaceful sit down demonstration on campus last November, Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders offers to get herself pepper sprayed for the $30,000 settlement each student was awarded by the University. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Davis-pepper-sprayed-students-settle-3896116.php  (Read the very thoughtful comments too; they are eloquent and make me feel this blog is redundant.) 

I’d like to see that.  

The trouble with this story, as with much of Saunders’ jaundiced and skewed view of the world, is that she twists the truth just enough to weight the story in her favor.  In Debra’s world, because the students sat down in protest of tuition hikes, they were asking to be pepper sprayed, and cannot now cry foul over that treatment. What she doesn’t say is that the Davis students were also protesting police brutality used against peacefully protesting Berkeley students just days before.  http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/20/18700509.php

 

But Debra doesn’t let the facts get in way of good rant.  In some bizarre alternate reality, Debra tells us the students surrounded the cops, refused to leave and got pepper-sprayed for their threatening posture.  Once again, it is clear to me that Debra must phone this column in from outer space.  Her own paper carried the story and the photos showing students seated on the ground, arms linked together  being pepper sprayed. While other students may have protested outside the police circle, the ones who got sprayed were the ones on the ground.   

Civil disobedience is a longstanding tactic of the civil rights movement, but where does it say that when college students engage in it, whether protesting tuition hikes, striking for free speech or showing solidarity for fellow students, those people protesting become willing participants in having their eyes doused in chemicals designed to be used to subdue vicious dogs, riot control or personal self-defense.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray

 

Here are some other fun facts about pepper spray Debra might want to ponder before offering up her eyes:

 “When sprayed directly at the face, the effects of pepper spray can be severely incapacitating, invoking temporary blindness, breathing difficulties, a long-lasting burning sensation and severe coughing, with effects lasting anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. Although pepper spray is deemed a non-lethal agent, studies suggest that high levels of exposure can have serious health effects. A 1999 report on the health effects of pepper spray by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina states (pdf):

“Depending on brand, an OC spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents.(3) Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.” Pepper spray by Brianna Lee,   http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/pepper-spray/12472/

 

So, is pepper spray a proper response to peacefully demonstrating?  Especially the military grade pepper spray used by the Davis police.  There seems to be a trend among the right these days that civil rights were something that happened in the past and are only for African Americans. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/24/ann-coulter_n_1908958.html  (Also see this blog on that very subject, Ann Coulter on "Civil Rights" - Bring on the Exorcist, http://greendogdemocrat.blogspot.com/2012/09/ann-coulter-on-civil-rights-bring-on.html). 

 

Everyone else, I guess, who speaks out about unfair conditions, deserves pepper spray in the eyes. What next, Debra, dogs attacking striking teachers?  Fire hoses for veterans marching for health benefits? How much would you take for those experiences?

Poltiical Mythology or Republican Spin?

In today's Chronicle column, entitled "Overly obstructed - deconstructed" in the print version and "The mythology of Obama's obstacles"in the SFGate version, Republican columnist Debra Saunders tries to spin the details of when and to whom Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said that the "single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," into a Democrat-destroying myth.  They got the time and place wrong, rants Saunders.  But did they misquote?  No. Did they take it out of context?  No.  He said it when it appeared the Republicans were on the verge of  mid-term gains.  He said it to an interviewer from the National Journal .  He never denies saying it or meaning it. 

And furthermore, that's not all he said. In explaining his comments in a speech after the 2010 election, he said the only way to achieve the Republican goals to "repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things. We can hope the President will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it. And it would be foolish to expect that Republicans will be able to completely reverse the damage Democrats have done as long as a Democrat holds the veto pen."

So, after criticizing Obama's programs ("damage Democrats have done"), and then because his new Congress will will not be able to "completely reverse" this damage, he needs a president who will not veto their programs.  (Read the Glenn Kessler Washington Post "Fact Checker" article about who said what when here.)

So he said it; he meant it, and he reiterated it. It's a fact.  It doesn't have wings, a horn in the middle of its head or live in a lake in Scotland. By focusing on the when and where rather than the what and why, Saunders is the one obstructing the truth, that the Republicans, led by McConnell and John Boehner, have made it their no. one priority to obstruct, deflect and prevent passage of any legislation Obama and the Democrats put forward, whether in the past they would have agreed with it or not.     Like waivers in the welfare program their own governors asked for. And jobs for veterans.

But I guess in Republican-World, spin is everything. That's why Obama is looking good for a second term and Democratic chances for Congress are rosy. As long as we are talking myth and superstition, fingers crossed that it all doesn't get derailed by the very real voter suppression efforts now underway by Republicans in swing states.

Here's a quote for Ms. Saunders to ponder: Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai:"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” Let's see how she spins that one.

Ann Coulter on "Civil Rights" - Bring on the Exorcist!

Right wing shrieker Ann Coulter's head was spinning in such full Exorcist mode, that she was in danger of screwing herself into the ground, this morning on George Stephanopoulos's This Week.  

By now we know that Coulterism is counter universe stuff, but she outdid herself this morning, first blaming the media for Romney's current troubles; claiming the real video containing his 47% wasn't even shown, to surprised protests of yes it was, by her co-guests, then, when her head stopped its rapid 365 rotation long enough for her mouth to respond to a question of whether she thought immigrants' rights were civil rights she said,  “No. I think civil rights are for blacks ... What have we done to the immigrants? We owe black people something. We have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven’t even been in this country.”

"what have we done to immigrants?"  Of course immigrants were just the subject of the moment; she also threw in gays and feminists, those destroyers of America, in making her proclamation that civil rights were only for blacks.  

And didn't say, but I'm sure thought, "And we're done with that, get over it."

Chronicle Joins Dark Side to Keep Consumers in the Dark

In today's SF Chronicle, an editorial urges a no vote on Proposition 37, the GMO labeling measure on the November ballot. Prop. 37 would require all food sold in stores in California containing genetically modified organisms or GMOs to disclose that clearly on the label.  It's a modest step for consumer awareness.  Don't you want to know what you are eating and feeding to your kids?

The makers of these organisms, engineered into plants to make them more pesticide resistant, give them longer shelf lives, and otherwise modify their genetic make up chemically, are spending major bucks to come up with spurious arguments why this simple measure is bad for the consumers.  Who is behind the No of Prop. 37 campaign? major chemical companies like Dow, Monsanto and others, who stand to profit big time by keeping you, the consumer, in the dark.   They apparently don't think "better living through chemistry" is a motto that will win the hearts and minds of the American people in the 21st century so now they bring up the specter of citizen lawsuits, and the unscrupulous lawyers who will take advantage of the law to make millions for themselves and drive mom and pop retailers out of business.

Or that's the line in today's Chronicle editorial:  "We do not have an issue with the concept of letting Californians know whether the food they eat has been genetically modified in some way....Perhaps the main problem with Prop. 37 is that it invites citizen lawsuits as a primary means of enforcing the labeling law."

They then cite what they claim to be abuses of California's Prop. 65, which requires notice of toxic materials like lead and cancer causing chemicals in products sold in California.  Yes, we all know there are those who exploit the law for their own benefit. It happens with all aspects of life.   But that does not justify the greater evil of allowing unchecked chemically altered foods to be foisted upon unsuspecting consumers with no consequence.

And without citizen lawsuits, with the possibility of recovering attorney's fees, who would bring scofflaws to task?  That's why these provisions are put into laws like the California Environmental Quality Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air act.  When these laws are broken, people, the environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink and yes, the food we eat, all suffer.  Who better to be able to stop violations than the citizens designed to be protected. The chemical companies won't do it.  And allowing recovery of attorney fees makes it possible for ordinary people who can't afford to hire attorneys to fight long battles against much better funded opponents to protect them from potentially life-threatening, environment-damaging toxins.

A flimsy excuse for not voting for a sensible law that, after all, only labels what's in the product. it doesn't outlaw GMO's.  Monsanto and Dow and can continue their food experiments to their hearts' content.  They just have to tell us which foods they are experimenting on.  I guess their biggest fear is an informed public will choose not to use their family as guinea pigs in the chemical companies' experiment.

To read the other side of the story, go to http://www.carighttoknow.org     

Debra Defends Romney on the 47% - with about 47% enthusiasm

Trying hard to justify Romney's blooper

Here she goes again. In today’s Chronicle, Debra Saunders, who I believe is secretly pulling out her hair by its roots over having to yet again, defend her boy Romney, as the good little Republican she is, uses some convoluted reasoning to tell us that Romney’s statement at that now infamous fundraiser, caught on video, and broadcast all over the internet and picked up by both the mainstream and the down stream media all week – and who took that video anyway and how did it find its way to Mother Jones I wonder?)  about 47% of Americans not paying taxes is “in the right neighborhood.” (Poor choice of words, as Romney’s neighborhood is on the other side of the tracks and up the hill from the people he purports to be talking about. I guess he has a good telescope to keep an eye on the peons below.)

While acknowledging it was a mistake to lump in the likes of senior citizens who have worked their whole life paying into the system, and now live on their meager Social Security, she says Romney “also hit on a truth: the percent of filers who pay payroll taxes for Social Security, but not federal income taxes has grown a lot.”

Taxes are taxes are taxes

Note:    Payroll taxes ARE income taxes. They come out of your income.  They go into a federal pot.  They may or may not be around to help you when you reach the age of retirement.  (Not, if Ryan/Romney have their way – they’d rather you put your money in the all mighty market and let the whims of economic forces, which the people who live in their neighborhood control, determine whether you get a pot of gold or potluck at the end of your working days). And only about 17% of people pay neither of these taxes. These include the elderly and the "working poor."

Saunders concedes Washington had good reason to provide some tax relief for the working poor, but parrots Romney’s belief that this somehow results in “over half of voters [supporting] any scheme designed to expand the federal government secure in the knowledge that they likely will not have to pay for it.”

Huh?  Where did that come from?   Over half the voters want the government to expand the government?  Which part of the government?  The military? I don’t think so.  Homeland security?  Probably not that either.   Maybe the part that builds roads and bridges, and puts out fires and catches criminals, and protects our air and water and food safety.    Those could all use shoring up.   But the part about not having to pay for it comes right out of the air. Or the Romney talking points.

The working poor pay taxes. Plain and simple. Stop lying about that.  Even if they get some federal breaks, they pay FICA, they pay sales tax, they pay property tax (and don’t tell me that if they rent, they don’t. Savvy landlords factor their tax load into that rent, and in poorest neighborhoods, abuses abound). And don't get me started on retires. They paid their whole working life into the system.  Do  Debra and her man Romney really expect us to believe these folks want more government without having to pay for it? 

The price of civilization

As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “Paying taxes is the price of admission to a civilized society ”  (or some variation on that. In a legal opinion he said: "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society" and he is reported to have said (in a book by Justice Felix Frankfurter on Holmes' life) to a young secretary:  "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." 

What kind of society do we want?  Do we really want only pharmaceutical companies researching drugs to cure diseases? Do we want private toll roads?   Private fire departments?  Sick people too poor to pay for private insurance or private doctors, spreading germs to all?  Kids too ignorant to get any kind of job because their parents can’t send them to the private schools?  Or maybe we do. Maybe we want kids to work in factories for a pittance, like Romney saw in China, where the barbed wire is to keep people out, because a pittance looks good when you’re starving on the street.

The big lie - Tax cuts for the rich create jobs

And one last point. Debra lambasts the Obama proposal for increased taxes on the rich, reading from her Republican playbook, that to do so would “give business another reason to sit on their capital instead if hiring new workers.” Well, Debra, or someone, anyone, please show me the jobs, created in this country because of the Bush tax cuts.  Where are they, what are they?  According to one report by Forbes writer Rick Ungar (admittedly calling himself the "token leftie, much as Debra refers to herself as the "token Republican") in July of this year, during the Bush years, the increase in employment in the United States was between 4.5 and 7%.   That's a lot less than in the years without major tax cuts for the wealthy. So much for "job creators." 

As Ungar says:  Putting more money in the pockets of the wealthy may create a few jobs for the foreign bankers who get to count the extra money funneled into into the off-shore accounts of the rich, but there is nothing in the way of actual data to support the notion that putting more money into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans will inure to the benefit of those looking for work.

Why Organic is Better - Let me count the ways

A few days ago, my husband, who is not a true blue organic fan, told me his lips had been tingling for two days.  He thought maybe he was getting the dreaded cold sore, but nothing developed and the tingling continued.  Then it dawned on him.  The thing that had triggered the mystery lip-discomfort.  He had eaten a prune the night before.

 "was it organic?" I asked.

"No," he said sheepishly.

"Pesticide residue," I said.

"But I washed it." said he.

"Doesn't matter, if it was over-doused with poison."

"Yuck," he said.

Pesticide residue in our food is just one of the reasons that eating organic food is better for you. Despite what you might have read in the newspapers lately about there being no more nutrition in organic food than in conventionally grown food (a dubious claim, if you read the literature and comments closely), consider these other reasons to grow and eat organic:

• Better for the land.  Soil that is not saturated with pesticides is more healthy, using natural mulch for fertilizer and no pesticides to linger in the ground, leach out to the water table or run-off to nearby streams and lakes.

• Better for the people who grow and pick the produce we eat. Farmworkers have long been on the front line of the pesticide load.  Several of the early farmworker struggles were over the use of heavy pesticides in the fields. Farmworkers and their families experienced higher rates of cancer and reproductive disorders than the general population.Have we really forgotten all that?

• No GMO's (genetically modified organisms), which is better for the health of the land as well as the people eating the food. Why? GMO food has been "modified" to resist pesticides that kills weeds and bugs, so the pesticide load is likely to be high, not to mention the issue of mutations in insect and plant life that adapt to the new conditions. 

• Promotes local agriculture over agribiz.  Wouldn't you like to know where your food comes from? Smaller farms growing organic produce just makes more sense.  Get to know your local farmers, if you live in a productive area of the Country, and most areas are productive at least part of the year. Even if they don't grow purely organically, chances are they will uses fewer pesticides and artificial fertilizers, and if not, start pressuring them as consumers and neighbors.  Support your local food economy and it will support you.