It is very clear that the biannual farce that we are all urged to participate in is meaningless, rigged, and, since the imposition of the voting machines, totally unreliable. Who knows how many really vote, or who they vote for?
However, we have the forms of democracy, even though they are hollow.
Greens choose to use those forms, as if they meant something, to present our ideas to the citizenry.
This apparently is a threat to our ruling overlords, because they exclude Greens from forums in which they could actually present their program to citizens.
Last night, Laura Wells, the Green Party candidate for governor of California, was arrested for trying to use her ticket to get into the debate from which she was excluded!
And Huffington Post has an article on the exclusion of Rich Whitney from the debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters.
Here's my comment on the article, discussing the LWV betraying their stated principles by agreeing to the banning of the Green Party candidate-
30 years of right wing propaganda has an effect.
The League of Women Voters, supposedly a non-partisan group, now offends democratic principles by banning Rich Whitney from the debates.
Have they no shame?
They need to change their platform to match their actions. No more bragging about their non-partisan stance. How about this?-
"The League of Women Voters stands with the corporate media to make sure that American voters only hear from the two corporate parties. We have no interest in educating the American voter. We will use the respect we have earned over the decades to fool the voters into thinking that we have an interest in free and fair elections, while, behind the scenes, we scheme with corporate media to ban and exclude those candidates that threaten the oligarchy".
I think that this statement of "principle" is more accurate than the current, outdated one they profess.
The League of Women Voters, supposedly a non-partisan group, now offends democratic principles by banning Rich Whitney from the debates.
Have they no shame?
They need to change their platform to match their actions. No more bragging about their non-partisan stance. How about this?-
"The League of Women Voters stands with the corporate media to make sure that American voters only hear from the two corporate parties. We have no interest in educating the American voter. We will use the respect we have earned over the decades to fool the voters into thinking that we have an interest in free and fair elections, while, behind the scenes, we scheme with corporate media to ban and exclude those candidates that threaten the oligarchy".
I think that this statement of "principle" is more accurate than the current, outdated one they profess.
5 comments:
In Australia, we have two main parties as well. This time around the number of seats that both had was about the same so now we have a minority government largely controlled by the Greens and two Independents.
It promises to be interesting and hopefully the outcome will be the end of the two party system! Of course, as in America, it's hard to tell the difference between the two parties on some things!
The November elections hopefully won't see the Republicans back in power again in the Congress.
Cheers.
Hey Wage! I didn't realize you had a blog. Glad to see it.
To say I'm a little slow to answer your question (left June 17/09!!!!) is an understatement... but to answer this question left on my blog: Your CAR CLUB? WTF? You mean like cruising around wasting gas, picking up chicks car club? Or walking around blowing up SUVs undetected at night car club?
I belong to an antique/classic car club. Although vehicles are the farthest things from being "green", one could at least consider the preservation of these old babies, "green". ;-)
Mechanically I suspect they will last much longer into TLE than their modern cars counterparts by virtue of their simplicity. Cuba is the example to uphold.
I have a love-hate relationship with cars. One one hand, I love the variety of types and incredible ingenuity that goes into their manufacture, but I hate what we've collectively done to the planet in order to have several in every driveway. As an artifice of our modern world, they are truly fascinating... mainly due to the combined factors of the intricate complexity of their functioning with the pure elegance of their styling, (regardless of one's aesthetic taste) and their subsequent iconification within our culture. Not many consumer products can boast that kind of uniqueness, nor has captured the imagination of so many people.
We have the same problem here in Canada. The Green party candidate had to fight tooth and nail during the last Federal elections to be part of an "all party leaders" debate.
That said, we have four major parties here in Canada that hold seats in Parliament: The Conservatives, the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party (generally going from policitally right to left).
Despite that, we have four corporate apologists instead of two or three. Even the NDP pander to to their union masters. I think it's the nature of the modern beasts. Where there is money to be directed and power to be exercised, corporations and the supporting media will be whirring away in the background.
Until lobbying is abolished and the perversions of the system over the past 40-50 years are surgically extricated and purged, we cannot expect fundamentally different results from any new party should they rise to power.
Our elections are mere theatrical productions as long as votes are counted on computers.
The person who writes the program of a vote tabulating computer controls the outcome of any election run on that computer. The computer will produce whatever outcome the programmer has decided regardless of the selection made by the voters.
Anything else you say about elections in the U.S. is mooted by that fact.
I never understood why the paper ballot wasn't the appropriate technology for something that only happens once every two years. Let them wait for results - it only seems a little retribution for listening to their inane ads for long periods.
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