Cowardice asks the question ‘is it safe’? Expediency asks the question ‘is it politic’? Vanity asks the question ‘is it popular’? But conscience asks the question ‘is it right’? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must take it because our conscience tells us that it is right.

– Martin Luther King

On Saturday, November 8 the Democrat Congress gave us a corporate driven healthcare bill which amounts to nothing more than a de facto bailout of the healthcare insurance companies. The carnival conducted by the Democrats, masquerading as a debate around healthcare, demonstrates conclusively how craven are Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats.

We have witnessed cynicism in other administrations but the Obama administration has as raised cynicism to a veritable science. Imagine promising the poor and desperate people of this country healthcare reform and passing legislation which will not only hurt the working class but strengthen the very forces which oppose real reform – the healthcare insurance companies!

The darling of the Democrats, Alan Grayson, voted in lockstep with most of the other so-called progressive Democrats to destroy any possibility for meaningful healthcare reform for the next 40 years. How easily the Democrat rank and file is impressed. Grayson only had to bad mouth the Republicans, something which should be part of the job description of any elected Democrat. For doing the bare minimum he is hailed as a hero. So far removed from real heroism have the Democrats traveled. So ineffective and slimy have the Congressional Democrats become in sucking up to their corporate pay masters so they can keep doing more harm to the American people, that they are praiseworthy simply for criticizing the opposition. Imagine! The Democrat rank and file is impressed by a Democrat Congressman who criticizes the Republicans but votes for a healthcare bill that will spread misery on national level! Only Dennis Kucinich remained steadfast in his opposition to a corporate welfare bill masquerading as a health care reform bill. Perhaps Kucinich does more harm than good by remaining in such a party. By remaining a Democrat he legitimizes the actions he opposes and keeps millions of well intended people from forming a truly progressive opposition party believing the myth that the Democrat Party can be changed form within.

All of the Congressional Democrats and even the successor to George Bush himself recognize that universal single-payer health care (Medicare For All) is the only meaningful solution to the health care crisis in America. But these Democrats have decided that keeping their jobs is much more important than saving the lives of 45,000 Americans. By passing this most cynical piece of legislation they have put their thumbs in the eyes of the American people while the silk tongued oratory of the successor to George Bush will praise this bill even as he delights in the idea of how many people will live in misery.

Obama is so ignominious that even in this miserable mockery of health care reform he will deny benefits to the slave population in the United States as well as to women who need abortions. Obama continues to refer to the slave population created by the heinous William Clinton as “illegal immigrants”. We have 13 million slaves; they are not illegal immigrants. They are economic refugees created by trade agreements like NAFTA which allowed companies like Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra to ship billions and billions of tons of cheap corn into Mexico destroying the Mexican family farm. We are not talking about dirt poor farmers but farmers who employed 10-15 people. Having lost their farms, they wandered into the streets of Mexico City looking for jobs in those corporations that moved to Mexico thanks to the beneficence of that ever hated sperm stain, the successor to Ronald Reagan, who murdered a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children with bombs and sanctions.

When the US corporations closed up their plants in Mexico and moved off to China and Bangladesh where they could pay people $.50 an hour and $.35 an hour these former farm owners had the option of watching their families starve in the streets of Mexico or live as slaves in cardboard boxes in the underpasses of the United States. They have now become a new slave population, paying taxes and Social Security using phony identifications but denied even what would be considered hospitality anywhere else in the world – health care! Only the pro-slavery Democrats treat human beings in this way. Just as William, the stain, Clinton destroyed the women’s movement with his “Welfare Reform Act” which threw tens of thousands of single mothers into the streets and forced tens of thousands of others into the slavery of Wal-Mart like jobs, so also will Barry The Bomber’s healthcare reform continue pummeling the already staggering working-class American.

Here we have a health care bill which will not only drive up insurance costs but will not even permit the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, thereby driving up pharmaceutical costs as well! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that only 2% of Americans will be able to participate in this plan while 33% of Americans will remain either uninsured or underinsured. The bill even was stripped of the Kucinich amendment which would have permitted states to develop their own single-payer options. Americans will now be forced to buy health care plans from private insurance corporations. Forced!

Even a little arithmetic indicates what a horror show this nasty piece of legislation creates. Imagine a family at roughly 300% of poverty — around $55,000 a year. It will cost them in the neighborhood of $15,000 in taxes, $14,000 in mortgage or rent; close to $20,000 on childcare and they’ll need around $7,000 for food. That puts them in debt already! Now they will be forced to buy health care — forced! Under penalty of law! Even with government subsidies they will still be in debt! (There is not enough money in the bill to subsidize all the people who will need it). Now imagine a medical catastrophe. Even if caps are eliminated this family will be deeper in debt as the insurance companies increase their profits!

But wait! It gets better – worse if you please. The Congressional Budget Office also explained that one of the other reasons why so few people would be able to buy into this plan is that it “would typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans.” Yes, you read that correctly: “premiums that are somewhat higher”.

What about those people who don’t get coverage through their jobs or who have their health insurance dropped at work because there will now be an incentive to dump benefits? History already provides us the answer to that question. Most of the adults who tried to buy insurance on the open market never bought a plan because they could not afford it or they could not find a plan that met their needs. Now the prices will be higher! What a choice: buy insurance coverage or pay a penalty of hundreds or even thousands of dollars per family if they decide to forgo insurance.

LIEBERMAN TO THE RESCUE

The Senate version of health care reform is even more draconian than the House version, but the real hero of this tragedy, Joe Lieberman, promises to join a Republican filibuster! The independent senator from Connecticut, hated by liberal Democrats may yet save us! The senator told Fox News Sunday today that Democrats can certainly count him in the “no” column if they keep in a government-backed insurance plan. “If the public option is in there as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” signaling as he has before that he would back a Republican filibuster — which Democrats need 60 votes to break.

While it is never morally acceptable to do something wrong even for a good reason (the ends never justify the means), it is always morally acceptable to do something right even for the wrong reasons! Lincoln, for example, did not free the slaves because it was the morally correct thing to do. He did it for political reasons but nevertheless he did do it and it was the right thing to do. We may not like Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus but ironically we may be in their debt if they join the filibuster to block this anti-working class, corporate welfare legislation. We should be castigating Conyers and Grayson because of their vote in the House while we may have to heave sigh of thanksgiving for people like Lieberman and Baucus if they are successful in preventing this very dangerous piece of legislation.

   Give ‘em the old hocus pocus
   Bead and feather ‘em
   How can they see with sequins in their eyes?

   What if your hinges all are rusting?
   What if, in fact, you’re just disgusting?

   Razzle dazzle ‘em
   And they’ll never catch wise!

   Give ‘em the old flim flam flummox
   Fool and fracture ‘em

   How can they hear the truth above the roar?

   Back since the days of old Methuselah
   Everyone loves the big bambooz-a-ler

   When you’re in trouble, go into your dance
   Though you are stiffer than a girder
   They’ll let you get away with murder

   Long as you keep ‘em way off balance
   How can they spot you’ve got no talent
   Razzle Dazzle ‘em
   And they’ll make you a star!

(From the film Chicago)

On Friday, July 31 Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman, honorary members of the “Blue Dog” Democrat Party caucus, agreed to allow the single-payer healthcare bill (HB 676) to go to a floor vote before the end of the year. Pelosi said earlier this year that “single-payer is off the table.” For some reason when Pelosi and Waxman make this kind of commitment I hear the voice of Jon Lovitz in the background saying “Yeah! That’s the ticket! Why of course, we’ll let them have a vote on the single-payer bill, yeah, that’s the ticket!”

A young woman friend explained me that when some creep says to her “hey babe how about giving me your number” while she is out having a drink with her friends she gives him the telephone number of “The Rejection Hotline.” The creep goes away and does not understand until the next day when he “gets the message” on the Rejection Hotline. Then it’s too late.

While it is clear that President Obama is bucking for the coveted title of “Most Incompetent President”, desperately trying to edge out James Buchanan, the Congressional Democrats have long since held the title of “Most Incompetent Legislators”. With only brief rises to competence during the 1930s and 1960s the Democrats have abandoned any pretense of actually representing the people who voted for them.

Why then suddenly are Pelosi and Waxman giving the “liberal” Democrats a vote on single-payer health care? Waxman is the dandruff-eating pimple-nibbler who cut the outrageous deal with Obama and the Blue Dog Democrats which ensured that health care reform legislation would be unsustainable, and would consequently put off meaningful reform for another 20 years. When over 70% of Americans and over 59% of American physicians want single-payer health care, why would the corporate owned Democrats risk the passage of the single-payer healthcare bill?

The move came about somewhat as a fluke. New York Congressman Anthony Weiner threw a curveball. He introduced an amendment that would have created Medicare for the entire nation into the Energy and Commerce Committee healthcare markup session. That blew Waxman away! Nevertheless, Weiner was so surprised when Waxman said he would allow a vote on single-payer healthcare, he made Waxman repeat the statement making sure that it was clear and on the record. I guess we can see how much Representative Weiner trusts Pelosi and Waxman! They are the moral equivalent of a pair of leeches.

BY THEIR VOTE SHALL YE KNOW THEM

Largely the vote is seen as symbolic but at least for the first time, the concept of universal single-payer healthcare: government-funded, privately delivered health care will be given public exposure to the nation. Furthermore, when the bill comes to a vote, members of Congress will be forced to declare a position. When the bill fails, as is expected, Democrat rank-and-file should understand that the “Blue Dog” Democrats are, in essence, Republicans. Just as the Republicans had their think tank “Project for a New American Century” the Democrats have their “Progressive Policy Institute” which is anything but progressive. It is in fact the think tank of the so-called moderate or Blue Dog Democrats and is right in sync with PNAC.

It’s important to understand this reality because the Democrat Party’s talking point disseminators, the Democrats’ version of Rush Limbaugh, as well as the average Democrat voter, appear bewildered that health care reform has taken so long given that the Democrats have an overwhelming majority in both houses. But of course there is simply not an overwhelming majority of “Democrats” in the House or the Senate.

The Blue Dog Democrats are in effect Republicans. There are about 52 of them in the House and a handful of “unofficial members” in the Senate. While the House Blue Dogs actually have a caucus and a website,the best guess as to whom the Senate members are includes: Evan Bayh of Indiana, Tom Carper of Delaware, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Udall of Colorado, and Mark Warner of Virginia.

If President Obama had any concept of what it means to be a Chief Executive he would have brought pressure to bear on the Blue Dogs through the power of the bully pulpit as soon as he took office. He should have made it clear that any Democrat who opposes single-payer will face a challenger in the next primary. He should have kicked Pelosi and Reid in their collective butt to discipline House and Senate members to fall behind the House and Senate versions of the single-payer legislation. He should have done that for the Employee Free Choice Act as well. Just as the Employee Free Choice Act has been gutted, if Obamacare passes — that means any form of a public option which still allows the existence of private insurance companies — meaningful healthcare reform will be put off for another 20 years.

A MOMENT OF COURAGE

Up until this point the “Liberal” Democrats — the single-payer advocates — the antiwar Democrats — have essentially behaved like sniveling cowards having nothing to say as the various versions of a “public option” wash away the hope for meaningful health care reform. Usually when people like the liberal Democrats call the Suicide Hotline they are advised, “Go ahead; do it.”

To their credit however the liberal Democrats reacted swiftly when the conservative Democrats — 52 Blue Dog members of the House — said that they might block the healthcare bill from moving forward through the Energy and Commerce Committee. The liberals issued a letter bitterly attacking Waxman’s deal saying:

We regard the agreement reached by Chairman Waxman and several Blue Dog members of the Committee as fundamentally unacceptable. This agreement is not a step forward toward a good healthcare bill, but is a large step backwards.

Representative Lynn Woolsey of California said at a news conference “we have compromised, and we can compromise no more.”

NO HEALTH CARE PLAN IS BETTER THAN OBAMACARE

Just one day before Pelosi and Waxman agreed to permit the vote on single-payer healthcare, advocates of single-payer health held a press conference at the National Press Club. They unanimously urged Congress to defeat “Obamacare” which is defined as a weak or no public option plan which is bound to break the bank and not cover tens of millions of Americans; pretty much what we have in the United States currently. Dr. David Schneider — Obama’s personal physician for 22 years — said at this conference that he opposed Obama’s plan because it’s “a bad program that will set health reform back….It will give people a sense that something has been done — and it hasn’t been done…It’s a bad bill….No bill [at all would be] better than this bill….It will make things more complicated than ever.”

Sidney Wolfe, from Public Citizen said of the various “public option” plans that they are “false promises. It’s incumbent upon us to oppose something that cannot work.”

Jim Ferlo, a state Senator from Pittsburgh said he would “rather wait to get a single payer plan than any half baked Obama plan… [Obamacare is] just not going to work. It’s not sustainable. Any time you see Harry and Louise in paid commercials in the millions financed by big Pharma — now backing the Obama plan, and spending millions of dollars in daily commercials in favor of Obama’s plan — I say hold onto to your wallets. Something’s wrong.”

Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program said the Obama legislation “will not address the fundamental problems we are facing. It will not control costs.” Katie Robbins of Healthcare Now said her group would not support it even with the Kucinich amendment which would allow states to enact single-payer healthcare legislation.

Seeing liberal Democrats stand up on their hind legs is incredibly refreshing. It is as though we went back 500 years and heard Martin Luther say to the Church of Rome, “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders” (Here I stand, I can do no differently). A dangerous position for someone to take back in those days when people who challenged authority were often given the choice of cold chop or a hot steak! Perhaps it is even more startlingly reminiscent of Milton’s account of Lucifer when he looked into the face of God and said “non serviam” (”I will not serve”). Everyone remembers what happened to good old Lucifer however!

THE BLUE DOGS

The reason the Blue Dogs have been able to swing so much weight is because they issue ultimatums — “if you don’t do things our way, we will throw your crummy healthcare plan in the shredder.”

If the Blue Dogs had written Patrick Henry’s speech it might have sounded something like “give me liberty or give me a reasonable facsimile thereof.” Instead of saying “I am Spartacus” we probably would have heard Blue Dog Roman slaves say “I am Spartacus…er…but only figuratively… I mean…er… HE is Spartacus.” A Blue Dog Benjamin Franklin might have been heard saying “those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve a little peace and quiet.”

The Blue Dogs are fiscal conservatives. They support pro-gun legislation, free trade, bankruptcy and tort reform, have anti-abortion voting records, oppose amnesty for economic refugees (called “illegal immigrants” by the mainstream media as well as the Blue Dogs), and they oppose welfare and entitlements. These positions would constitute an excellent platform upon which to build a party. But of course there already is a party with such a platform. It is called the Republican Party.

THE TYRANNY OF THE DUOPOLY

If the 85 House Democrats who pledged their support for HR 676 (John Conyer’s single-payer healthcare bill) remain firm and declare they will not support Obamacare or any other health care Reform Act than HR 676 and drew a “line in the sand”, then at least they would get a hell of a lot of press and the bill might actually stand a chance of passing. Unfortunately none of them have said “no” to Obamacare. Their moment of defiance was short-lived and mostly rhetorical.

Alarmingly, when the “liberal” Democrats acquiesce so easily to the Republicans even within their own party we find ourselves living in what Michael Parenti calls one “the worst forms of tyranny”. This is not one of those tyrannies “we rail against” but one of those insidious types of tyranny “that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.” It is the tyranny of the duopoly.

To live as if our choices make any real difference in the long run may be the act of a fool, but to live as if they do not, that is the act of a coward.

– Albert Camus

Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!

– George Carlin

Back in the 70s preliminary, incomplete results on a substance called Laetrile were released indicating that this derivative from apricot pits inhibited the growth of cancerous tumors in mice. In short order, Americans went wild at the idea that a cure for cancer had been found. Although subsequent reports were released indicating that Laetrile showed no beneficial effects, groups of its proponents continued to preach the gospel of Laetrile. In fact, Laetrile not only has no effect as a cure for cancer, it is highly toxic substance. Nevertheless a quick trip to your search engine will show you that there are plenty of companies willing to sell you the substance now marketed as Vitamin B-17!

Another quick trip to your search engine will take you to a variety of Democrat Party discussion groups where you will hear people singing the praises of Obama’s “public option” health care plan — political Laetrile!

The authentic fix to our corporate-based, profit-driven, 37th-ranked healthcare system is called “universal single-payer health care”. No, it is not the socialized medicine of England. It is a healthcare system which is publicly financed and privately delivered. A form of it is already in place. It is called Medicare. There are no government bureaucrats “between” patient and physician. There are however insurance company bureaucrats between patient and physician in the privately controlled corporate healthcare programs currently in place. Worst of all however, the proposition that the so-called “public option” will be a significant change to the current system is simply preposterous.

Under the “public option” millions of Americans will remain uninsured whereas under single-payer there will be universal coverage. Everyone is in; no one is out! Under the public option, people can buy into the plan, keep private insurance or be uninsured. Under the “public option” the private insurance companies will continue to strip down policies and increase patients co-payments and deductibles whereas under single-payer coverage, all medically necessary services will be provided. The “public option” will be managed by the private insurers! Under the public option the cost of healthcare is expected to increase by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years while under the single-payer plan, there will be a $350 billion savings in administrative wastes each year and no net increase in health-care spending. In essence we will save $350 billion just in administrative waste and experience further systemic savings through negotiated fee schedules with physicians, global budgeting of hospitals, bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals, and rational planning of capital expenditures. With the public option we will actually be adding further layers of administrative bloat to our healthcare system through the introduction of the larger regulator/broker “exchange”.

With the single-payer plan large scale cost controls will ensure that benefits are sustainable over the long term whereas, with the “public option”, uncontrolled costs ensure that any gains in coverage are quickly erased as government is forced to hike spending or slash benefits.

The public option will be in competition with the private, for-profit health insurance companies whereas there will be no such competition under universal single-payer healthcare. In fact, private insurance would be used only for supplemental or special needs and ultimately the private insurance companies would close their doors. Who would want to pay twice as much for a system that has caused the American healthcare system to be ranked as 37th in the world in terms of quality of health care delivered?

Under the single-payer plan “cherry picking” (picking only the most healthy Americans to insure — meaning the less costly) would be eliminated whereas under the “public option” the private insurance companies would continue to have the option of choosing to insure only those “less sick” which would consequently force the sick into the more expensive “public option” or continue to leave them with no health care at all. Moreover, under single-payer the costs of the system are distributed across the entire population whereas under the Democrats’ “public option”, costs are shifted to the sickest of the privately insured with the “public option” then ultimately having to pick up the sickest members of the population and bearing the associated significant costs across a much narrower population.

Of course under the single-payer concept, there are no pre-existing conditions for coverage while under the “public option” legislation the private insurance companies would continue to deny coverage to such people, forcing them to purchase the “public option” plan.

Unfortunately only a few members of Congress support the plan over 70% of the American people demand — universal single-payer healthcare. The “public option” has sown within itself the seeds of nemesis: it is designed to fail. This way the Republicans will blame the Democrats for the failure of health care reform while at the same time retaining the huge contributions they receive, along with the Democrats, from the HMOs and private healthcare insurance corporations. Moreover, the “public option” plan will effectively delay meaningful health care reform — single payer — for another twenty years.

The lead apostle of this public option for the Democrats is Howard Dean. Last Friday, tragically, he was a guest on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now”. His appearance was announced the day before so that listeners could call in or send e-mails containing questions that would be asked of Howard Dean — the 2004 Democrat presidential candidate who took more contributions from healthcare insurance companies and HMOs than even corporate owned John Kerry. Of the hundreds of e-mails and telephone calls containing questions for this long-time proponent of corporate healthcare, only two were ever asked!

Perhaps we have begun to expect too much of Amy Goodman. She and her sidekick, Juan Gonzalez, even allowed Howard Dean to make the outrageous statement that we are in Afghanistan to help the Afghani women! By this time in the interview the knowledgeable listener had become becoming dizzy and bleary-eyed and just for a moment might have believed to have heard Howard Dean say: “I’m not a liberal but I play one on television”. Unabashedly this guy calls himself “a social liberal and a fiscal conservative”. That is, of course, the political definition of a member of the Libertarian Party. But Libertarians are against war so essentially that makes Howard Dean closer to the proverbial “compassionate conservative” George Bush than it does to Democrats like John Conyers or Dennis Kucinich.

Under the “public option” legislation, no subsidies are provided for individuals or families which have an income that is 400% of the federal poverty level. What does that mean? It means that for a family of four, that threshold is an income of $88,200 (that’s 400% of $22,050 which is the 2009 “poverty income level” for a family of four). Thus if you have a family of four and make $88,200 you get hit for 19% of your family income for health care – that’s $16,758 a year!! More for those with greater needs! By no stretch could that be considered what corporate Democrat Howard Dean calls “affordable”.

It doesn’t take an MBA to see that health insurance and health care are no longer affordable for average-income individuals. Any reform proposal that would make health care affordable for everyone must include a transfer from the wealthy to average- and low-level income families and individuals. Any member of Congress, who votes for the “public option” should be, if it passes, forced to drop out of their congressional plan and sign on to the “public option”. How many, one is constrained to wonder, would vote for the legislation under such a circumstance?

The “public option” healthcare system, managed by the private healthcare insurance companies, that Obama and congress are duping the American public into accepting, really amounts to a bailout of those insurers. A bailout of healthcare corporations which have caused 18,000 Americans to die every year because they have had no coverage! A bailout of healthcare corporations which have caused 50 million Americans to live in fear and anxiety because they cannot afford healthcare insurance! A bailout of the healthcare corporations which continue to finance the political campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain who have put the interests of their corporate pay masters before the health of the American people!

The “public option” scam was designed to push the “Single Payer” healthcare plan, demanded by the majority of Americans, “off the table”. It was engineered this way by the Democrats to accommodate special interests like the Pentagon and its contractors (just two of the cabal members). These special interests do not want to share the federal budget to accommodate the healthcare needs of the American people, the logical outcome if the Congress adopted “single-payer healthcare”.

If Americans are to have the same excellent, comprehensive healthcare enjoyed by the citizens of every other industrialized nation in the world then they are going to have to end the “War on Terrorism” which Howard Dean tells us is being waged to make life easier on women in Afghanistan. Anyone who believes Howard Dean when it comes to the war on Afghanistan or the “public option”, would also be excellent prospects for a sales rep with a special deal on Enron stock or a bridge in Brooklyn.

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I dont know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Running on – running on empty
Running on – running blind
Running on – running into the sun
But Im running behind

– from “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne

Screaming in the Rain

I was on my way home from doing a radio interview in Reading, Pennsylvania. It was very cold, windy and pouring rain. As I got closer to home, I found myself driving down a road where many of my campaign lawn signs had been planted. I noticed that one had blown over and was lying in the street. I pulled my car over the side of the road, jumped out of the car and began screaming at the sign as I picked it up, straighten it out and re-planted it. “You’re not going to lay there on the road, in the rain and get hit by a truck. You’re going right back where you were and do your job”.

That was the first of three stops I made. When I jumped back in the car after yelling at the third lawn sign, it just dawned on me that I had ruined a very good pair of shoes and perhaps a very good blazer while saving around five dollars worth of lawn signs. But it took me until I got home to realize what had happened. It wasn’t about the price of the lawn signs and it wasn’t about wrecking my shoes and blazer.

Why would a 62-year-old man with a couple of university degrees jump out of his car on a cold, windy day in the pouring rain and start yelling at lawn signs insisting to them that he wasn’t going to let them lay in the rain drenched street and get hit by a truck? It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that what had happened began to coalesce in my consciousness.

This is what it’s like to run for Congress as an independent. This was a metaphor I could’ve never constructed consciously. I never gave a thought about wrecking a pair of shoes and a blazer in order to save five dollars worth of lawn signs. It was what I simply had to do. This is what I’ve been doing every day for the last nine months.

Why did this happen today? Have I finally snapped? In a week the election will be over. I have no money. Worse; I am around six thousand dollars in debt. I raised ten thousand dollars but I had to spend seven thousand of those dollars just to get on the ballot. That is how much it costs to collect the five thousand signatures required in Pennsylvania this year to appear on the ballot. So I had only three thousand dollars to conduct my campaign compared to the five hundred thousand dollars raised by my Republican opponent.

Raising money is not rocket science. There are only a couple of things you have to do. First of all you have to ask. That is the main reason why people contribute. But you do have to explain to people the value they will derive from their donation. If they don’t believe they will receive any value from such a donation, there will be no contribution.

So after hundreds of telephone calls, hundreds of letters and e-mail messages to thousands of people over nine months I have only raised ten thousand dollars. I know a lot of people. If each one that I asked had contributed just two hundred dollars I would’ve raised four hundred thousand dollars. That would actually be enough for an electoral victory. But out of the thousands of people I contacted only three dozen contributed a total of ten thousand dollars. What value did those three dozen people see that the thousands of others did not?

If someone were to ask me if I would like to have a seven series BMW, I would give them an emphatic ‘yes’. On the other hand, if they then said all I had to do was hand over seventy thousand dollars, I would have to say that I didn’t want one quite that much. Give it to me at no cost and I’d love to have one. I might even come up with twenty thousand dollars. But I would never spend seventy thousand dollars for an automobile. It is simply a luxury that I cannot afford.

Everyday I get e-mail messages and telephone calls telling me what a great job I’m doing and how much we need to have candidates like me. But as soon as I finish thanking the person for their complement and ask for a donation the message becomes very clear. “John, you’re doing a great thing but you can’t really ask me to throw away money on a candidate who cannot win. Maybe I can let you have twenty-five dollars”.

That’s when I go in to my explanation that, although I cannot get elected, there are many things that I can win. I usually explain how I was only permitted to participate in one debate two years ago but this year I have appeared in all three. I explain about all of the radio stations and newspapers which have interviewed me; all the organizations which have invited me to speak this year while none of that happened two years ago. But in the final analysis, I am perceived as a luxury candidate that people cannot afford. Progressives want me in very much the same way I want a seven series BMW. Give it to them with little or no cost and you have a deal. But I am just not worth two hundred dollars let alone two thousand.

JOHNNY I HARDLY KNEW YA

You hadn’t an arm, you hadn’t a leg,
Hurroo Hurroo
You hadn’t an arm, you hadn’t a leg,
Hurroo Hurroo
You hadn’t an arm, you hadn’t a leg
You’ll Have to be put with the bowl to beg
Oh my darling dear you look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ya

– From “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya”

Last Sunday night I went to the AMVETS to make a little campaign speech with the other candidates. After the presentation a big husky women veteran grabbed me by the arm and said, “Honey, you was the best one up there”. I thanked her very much and asked her if she would tell her friends about me and ask them to vote for me too. She said “oh honey, I ain’t going to vote for you; I hardly know you. I ain’t never seen you before tonight. I ain’t never seen you on the television and I ain’t got none of them postcards from you. None of the other ladies never heard of you neither. I think you ought to get a job on the radio because you sound very good like that Rush Limbaugh”.

Of course she has never seen me on television or received a post card from me and I only appeared in each of the newspapers that serve my congressional district one or two times as part of an article about the incumbent. It costs a lot of money to do those kinds of things. It would cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to send a postcard to each of the voters in my congressional district! The Republican and Democrat Parties send out postcards for their candidates. That way the candidates do not even have to use any of the funds they raised on postcards. They will spend their money on television advertising.

Even at this late date I could flood the local radio stations with advertisements for only about six thousand dollars. I could place an ad in the “Community Courier” for two thousand dollars and get into one hundred and ten thousand households. I could get out powerful progressive message and raise the consciousness of tens of thousands of people but this effort is of such little value that only a very few see it worth a contribution over two hundred dollars.

Buddy Can You Spare a Dime

They used to tell me I was building a dream
and so I followed the mob
when there was earth to plow or guns to bear
I was over there
right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream.
With peace and glory ahead –
why should I be
standing in line,
waiting for bread?

– From “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime”

The author of that depression era song tells us that the narrator is not bitter; he is bewildered. He is a man who had faith and hope in this country. Then came the crash. Now he can not accept the fact that the bubble has burst. He still believes. He still has faith. He just doesn’t understand what could have happened to make everything go so wrong.

Our nation is now closer to fascism than it has ever been. The two corporate parties have led us into two illegal wars, stripped us of our civil liberties, plunged us into a ten trillion dollar National Debt and have made corporations our masters instead of our servants. We have troops not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in one hundred twenty-seven nations around the world. In the last few weeks we have bombed Pakistan and invaded Syria. For the first time since the Civil War we have a combat brigade on duty in the United States “to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities”. So much for the Posse Comitatus Act.

The two major presidential candidates have both confessed they plan to continue a foreign policy of war and aggression with the concomitant slaughter of potentially another million innocent men, women and children. Both have committed themselves to a failed economic system which sacrifices the well-being of ninety-nine percent of the people on the altar of the superrich ruling elite which finances their political campaigns.

The Republican and Democrat parties lack any clear vision for America. They have no real leadership and they inspire no hope for the future. They have given us a view of the world that is clouded by war, poverty, ignorance, fear and violence. I have a different vision for America. I see an America that leads the world in spreading peace instead of war; hope instead of fear; sustainability instead of disaster; freedom instead of occupation. I see an America in which every person, regardless of their race, creed, color, age, gender or sexual orientation is valued and lives in dignity, and every person is free to reach his or her full potential.

Before the night is over I will get a dozen “at-a-boys” in e-mail messages or from people on the phone and maybe if I’m lucky someone will contribute twenty-five dollars. Yesterday someone contributed five dollars. Running a congressional campaign on thirty dollars a day and a dozen “at-a-boys” pretty much explains why I went “screaming in the rain.” But it no longer makes me feel like I am “building a dream”.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

– C.L. baron de Montesquieu

For the last few weeks in one Pennsylvania newspaper after another the story which is being called “Bonusgate” has been unfolding. By July 9 over a dozen employees of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus along with two former Lancaster County Democrat leaders have been indicted. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office announced the charges were the first phase of an investigation into allegations that state employees used public time and equipment and got taxpayer-funded bonuses for political work.

Some of that work involved the use of state employees to challenge the nominating petitions of Ralph Nader in 2004 (See my article “Political Profiling in Pennsylvania” and Carl Romanelli 2006. The state employees used by the Democrats to remove Romanelli were particularly pernicious .(see my article “The Price of Free Speech“) Democrats went to such lengths to have me arrested for disorderly conduct just in order to eliminate another one of Romanelli’s defenders. The grand jury report described a “massive” effort by House Democrats to oust the independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader from the ballot in 2004. The report also says that in 2006 the same machine was fired up again to remove Carl Romanelli, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate.

The Democrats’ Culture of Corruption

The grand jury found that as many as 50 Democrat House Caucus staff members participated in the Nader petition challenge and contributed a staggering number of man-hours. One House Democrat employee testified before the grand jury that “everybody was working on this”. It was virtually a caucus wide endeavor and many of the employees spent an entire week on the Nader petition challenge. None of the supervisors of this “veritable army of caucus staffers” ever asked the workers to take unpaid leave and the bulk of the research was done in the Capitol complex and in the district office of former House Democratic Whip Mike Veon.

The grand jury found that House Democrats paid $1.2 million in bonuses for campaign related activities from 2004 to 2006. This was only a single facet of the concentrated effort to employ taxpayer funds and resources for campaign purposes.

Upon the successful challenge to the Nader petition Democrat Whip Mike Veon sent an e-mail to his staff stating: “FYI. Great job by our staff! This would have never been successful without your work. You have given John Kerry an even better opportunity to win the state. One of the five most important states to win this year[sic]. This is a very significant fact and significant contribution by each one of you to the Kerry for President campaign. You should take great pride in your efforts.”

The Romanelli petition challenge was led by Brett Cott, a former analyst on Veon’s Capitol staff who announced it was very important to “leadership” that Romanelli not appear on the ballot. Staffers were told not to worry about leave but to focus on getting the petition challenges done as soon as possible.

To make matters worse both Ralph Nader and Carl Romanelli were ordered by the courts to pay the Democrat Party’s legal expenses! One of the largest law firms in the world, Reed Smith was used by the Democrat Party in its effort to remove Ralph Nader. Nader was ordered to pay $81,000 in legal fees. Ironically the law firm of Reed Smith contributed somewhere in the neighborhood of $37,000 to the election campaigns of the judges who ruled against Ralph Nader and in favor of Reed Smith!

As I said in my 2005 article, “There are two ways to defeat democracy, one way is by preventing citizens from voting, and the other is by preventing worthy candidates from appearing on the ballot. When the law can be used as a subterranean tool in a process which can only be labeled ‘political profiling’ the meaning and the intent of the law is subverted as is the democracy from which those laws were supposed to have sprung.”

That ain’t no way to treat a lady

The Pennsylvania Democrats do not limit their efforts at destroying the democratic process by only attacking Presidential or Senatorial candidates. Only one week ago a member of my own campaign staff who was collecting signatures for my ballot access effort in Lancaster Pennsylvania was harassed by a Democrat Party operative in plain sight of the Democrat Party candidate for Congress. My campaign worker told me that the Democrat staffer said to her, in a menacing voice, that he would go over her petitions with a magnifying glass and check that there were no duplicate signatures on any of my petitions. Having an operative of the Democrat Party menace a woman helping an independent candidate achieve ballot access indicates the level of depravity to which the Democrat Party and its operatives have sunk.

With any luck the grand jury will discover that the removal of Romanelli and Nader constitutes nothing less than a criminal conspiracy with the overt purpose of destroying democracy in Pennsylvania. The judgments against Nader and Romanelli should be abandoned and Democrat Party leaders in Pennsylvania should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for this heinous act.

When Congress came into session with a Democrat Party majority, left leaners of every stripe and not a few conservatives hoped that, at the very least, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would come to an end and the more egregious assaults on our civil liberties like the USA Patriot Act would be repealed.

After one year of a Democrat Congress we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Democrat Party gives every indication that that our stay will be indefinite. Instead of repealing egregious pieces of legislation like the USA Patriot Act even more brutal attacks on our civil liberties have been passed by the Democrats through such legislation as the Military Commissions Act which actually undercut one of the cornerstones of Western democracy; habeas corpus.

With the Democrats showing themselves to be as bloodthirsty and as cavalier as the Republicans in destroying our civil liberties the American voter might want to begin looking for an alternative to the Democrats. The Green Party has maintained, on paper, that it has been opposed to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan since those invasions began and that it is similarly opposed to any legislation which restricts our civil liberties. But what exactly is the Green Party doing to advance this agenda?

Instead of preparing to deal squarely with the problem of the Democrat Party through a fission strategy, tragically the Green Party is setting itself up to run a presidential campaign modeled on the mindless strategy of 2004. By any measurement, the Green Party’s 2004 strategy to run an unknown candidate, who had no funding, nor any way to raise significant funds, and to run him in only those states where he would not present a threat to the Democrat’s candidate was a disaster. The Green Party’s candidate, David Cobb got 100,000 votes (as opposed to their 2000 presidential candidate Ralph Nader who got 3,000,000 votes) lost its ballot status in nine states; it lost 50,000 members; its rate of growth has now become a rate of decline; its treasury is empty and it has gone from running 400 candidates a year down to running 100 candidates a year.

Any normal organization would have gotten rid of the officers responsible for such a devastating strategic failure. But the Green Party is not just any normal organization! Not by a long shot! Not only have they kept all of the failed officers in place but they have even promoted one of the leading demogreens, Phil Huckelberry, to its Steering Committee. In fact Jim Coplen, Budd Dickinson, Jason Nabewaniec, Jody Grage, and Holly Hart all worked hard to destroy the independence of the Green Party in the 2004 election and were rewarded by the members of the National Committee for this horror show by being elected to the Steering Committee and now remain in total control of which proposals the National Committee will consider and whether those proposals will require a simple majority threshold for passage or a supermajority threshold of 66.6%.

As if that weren’t sufficiently suicidal, the National Committee has put the entire electoral process of the Green Party into the hands of a man with the highest record of failure in the entire party; Greg Gerritt. Mr. Gerritt is in charge of what the Greens call their “CCC” Coordinated Campaign Committee and their “PCSC” Presidential Campaign Support Committee. The Green Party’s failure over the last four years can be laid at the feet of David Cobb, John Rensenbrink, Ted Glick, Ben Manski, Dean Meyerson, Jody Grage and Greg Gerritt. While Cobb may have been the only one who understood the entire mechanisms that segregated the party’s membership from its decision-making processes, we have Gerritt to thank for the continued decline of the party without any effort to bring this decline to a halt. He even mismanaged a major contribution which cost the Coordinated Campaign Committee $25,000.

The Demogreens

Every party has factions. The Green Party is no exception but the factions in every other party, especially the Democrat and Republican Parties manage to put their differences aside in favor of one key value “party unity”. Neither the Democrat Party nor the Republican Party has a faction which actually wants to bring about the end of that party in favor of strengthening some other political party. Not so the Green Party.

One of the major factions in the Green Party is called the “demogreen faction”. It is also referred to as the “lesser-evil-greens faction”. A more lengthy but rather more descriptive title would be “Democrat Party Accommodationists”. These are the people in the Green Party who believe that the function of the Green Party is to improve the Democrat Party and by all means to avoid hurting Democrat Party candidates. Phil Huckleberry, one of the leaders of this faction, made this demonstrably clear at the 2005 Green Party convention when he stood up and screamed while pounding the table: “I did not join an independent party, I joined the Green Party; I did not join the Green Party to fight the Democrat Party”. Huckleberry continues to warn Green Party members not to criticize “progressive” Democrats.

The faction in opposition to the demogreens is usually called the Independent Greens. These are Greens who see the Green Party as independent from both of the corporate owned parties. They do not see the role of the Green Party as having anything to do with helping the Democrat Party. The Independent Greens also insist that the Green Party be democratically organized. They want each state to be proportionately represented with respect to the number of Greens in each state. The demogreens, which are the right wing of the party, reject the concept of “one person one vote” which is the very cornerstone of democracy. In essence they would favor a system whereby a Senate would be given legislative power instead of a House of Representatives. The logic of the demogreens emerged in the 18th century and gave rise to the Electoral College and the United States Senate.

The demogreens have actually taken this antidemocratic philosophy further than the landed aristocracy which gave us the United States Senate. The demogreens seek to bar democracy of any kind within the Green Party. They seek to keep the membership fully divorced from the decision-making process of the national party leadership. The disproportionate size in state delegations is the mechanism by which this system is created and perpetuated.

Green Party Corruption

One of the paid administrators in the Green Party is Brent McMillan whose history of failure as Political Director goes hand in hand with the failure of his supervisor Greg Gerritt. Simply being a failed Political Director however, is not the end of McMillan’s difficulties. Recently McMillan (a demogreen) insisted that Elizabeth Arnone, the only Independent Green who sits on the steering committee with eight demogreens, and John Murphy, delegate from Pennsylvania were heading up a “fifth column” effort to destroy the Green Party!

Continuing in this insane vein, McMillan then, in a state of prejudicial rage writes a letter to the Green Party’s steering committee slandering one of its presidential candidates, Elaine Brown, by writing that she “is paranoid delussional (sic) and is also a late stage alcoholic”. Ms. Brown is a long time activist, a former leader of the Black Panther Party, a Green Party candidate for mayor of Brunswick, Georgia in 2005, an author and college lecturer, a community organizer and an incredible asset to the Green Party. This is how she is maligned by a Green Party hired gun!

Most normal organizations would have thrown McMillan out on his butt for making such a groundless, prejudicial statement before getting sued for libel, slander and defamation of character. But the Steering Committee, eight of whom are demogreens, has come to his aid and instead is calling for the resignation of Liz Arnone for blowing the whistle on McMillan.

Adding injury to insult, John Murphy who has been working for four years in the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition to help rid Pennsylvania of the egregious ballot access laws which prevent minor party candidates like the Greens from running for election was, himself, actually denied the ability to run for election to a position on the Coordinated Campaign Committee in an effort to ride herd on Gerritt.

Murphy’s own state party chair, ignoring the rules, would not even permit him to run for election to obtain a seat on this committee. There was only one criterion for evaluation: did Murphy have campaign experience? But instead of simply writing a note to the party secretary, demogreen Holly Hart, informing her that Murphy indeed had the required experience, the Pennsylvania chair set up her own version of the Star Chamber and, after receiving a communication from Greg Gerritt begging her not to permit Murphy to run, Murphy was denied ballot access! Denied the very ability to run for office within his own party!

Preventing worthy candidates from running for office is as grievous a sin against democracy as preventing people from voting. But acting in an antidemocratic fashion has never bothered the leaders of the Green Party. It was precisely that kind of behavior which gave the Green Party the strategy failure of 2004.

The corruption continues with delegate Hugh Esco from Georgia. Georgia is the former home state of Cynthia McKinney. As it turns out Green Party National Delegate Esco was on the payroll of the Democrat Party. Apparently, this delegate from Georgia may not even reside in the United States! He appears to hold an administrative position in the Green Party of Canada. Curiouser and curiouser!

The Arrival of Cynthia McKinney

The best thing to happen to the demogreens since the safe state strategy is Cynthia McKinney. The former congresswoman from Georgia is a great asset to the Green Party and with a bit of luck could be our vice presidential candidate but not if the demogreens get their way. While Cynthia may have name recognition with many members of the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) she is virtually unknown to 98% of the voting public. At a press conference earlier this month in Madison, Wisconsin which has over 600,000 voters, only 30 people turned out to hear her. She got almost no press coverage at all. Tragically, when she does get any press coverage she is smeared by the corporate media as a “cop slapper”, “conspiracy theory nut” and has even been accused of anti-Semitism.

The demogreens plan to use Ms. McKinney as a surrogate for safe states. Unlike Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney has no national constituency; no ability to raise significant funds. This makes her virtually another David Cobb minus the devious intentions. The Green Party has only 19 ballot lines remaining. McKinney may be able to pick up another half dozen but after that, there is little she will be able to do with no name recognition, no money and no loyal following to build organizations in states where the Green Party has no ballot line.

The Paper States

To ensure that McKinney becomes the presidential candidate of the Green Party the demogreens under the leadership of Greg Gerritt engineered the failure of a recent proposal which would guarantee that the apportionment of delegates to the national convention would be at least a rough approximation of the concept of “one-person one-vote” or in this case “one green one-vote”. It is very likely that we will go into the convention with states like Indiana which has a total of 47 Greens (yet Jim Coplen of Indiana managed to engineer himself a seat on our steering committee) getting eight delegate votes along with a group of 16 other states known as “paper states”.

The “paper states” came about as an artifact of Nader’s presidential campaign of 2000. Several states across the country established Green Parties during the Nader campaign but they fell apart soon after the election. Those state Green Parties nevertheless remained “on the books” and were quickly taken over by the demogreen faction. This means that 16 states with less than a thousand Greens have 32 delegate votes in the Green Party’s National Committee enabling them to outvote states like Pennsylvania which has 15,000 Greens yet only eight delegate votes. Those 32 delegate votes also offset California’s 41 votes yet California has 150,000 Greens — 40% of the total Greens in the country. The delegate apportionment rule being favored by the demogreens will put a cap on California’s delegates at 20% meaning that 50% of California’s Greens will not be represented!

The Grassroots: Now or Never

It may be too late but unless the rank and file; the grassroots Greens, awaken and insist upon the resignation of every member of the steering committee with the exception of Liz Arnone, the book will close on the Green Party of the United States. Unless the rank and file Greens in Maine, Illinois and Wisconsin ousts every member of their national delegation the book will close on the Green Party of the United States. Unless the rank-and-file members of the Green Party of the United States insist upon a democratically organized political party which is completely independent of the Democrat Party, refusing to support Democrat candidates directly or indirectly, the book will close on the Green Party of the United States. The time for doing this is now measured in months, perhaps even weeks. It is likely however, that no matter how the time is measured it may have already expired.

The Unknown Factor: Ralph Nader

If the demogreens’ e-mail messages to the Green Party’s National Committee could be heard instead of read they would sound something like whining dogs, cackling hens or screeching cats. These are the same people who have been saying for the last four years “if only Nader had come to our convention, he would have gotten the nomination”. They behave as if they had no idea what Manski and Meyerson did back then. Now their cackling, whining and screeching is taking the form of “well Nader hasn’t even bothered to tell us he’s a candidate”.

Any 12-year-old with a modem could’ve told you why Nader didn’t announce a couple of months ago. It was clear that he was about to get a tremendous amount of publicity as a result of the movie “An Unreasonable Man” being broadcast all over the country by PBS from December 18-24. Clearly had Ralph announced before that time PBS would not have been able to show that movie since it might have been considered promoting a presidential candidate. If the whiners, cacklers and screechers had paid any attention, they would’ve heard that Ralph said publicly several times he would make his announcement around the end of December. No one would throw away the kind of publicity he received during that week in December coupled with the publicity he received as a result of his lawsuit against not only against the Democrat Party but the law firm which sued him in the first place.

If the leaders of the Green Party were thinking strategically they would be focused on one objective: obtaining 5% of the popular vote so that they could qualify for matching funds in 2012. Certainly there are other objectives to be achieved such as growth in membership, return of lost ballot lines and the resulting increase of funds in the Green Party treasury. Only Nader can get the votes required to return their lost ballot lines. Only Nader can get the necessary 5% they need for federal matching funds in 2012. Only Nader has the national constituency required to raise sufficient funds to run a presidential campaign. Only Nader as the infrastructure already in place to organize those states where the Green Party has no ballot line. While there are indeed many well intended Greens supporting Cynthia McKinney, the real support for McKinney is steeped in corruption and driven by the desire to do minimal damage to the Democrat candidate as in 2004.

The Horizon: Militant Populists

As the tidal waves of history come crashing down on the crumbling walls of the Green Party washing away even the stains of Cobb, Gerritt and Huckleberry, a new movement is already beginning to take shape. As the bearded, braided, crystal gazing, alternative dress, let’s-everyone-make-nice, politically-correct-language-obsessed Greens are reabsorbed into the political environment, a militant form of populism is beginning to make its voice heard. A zeitgeist, if you will, spreading slowly but inextricably from the south is taking hold of the angry, frustrated, politically and economically disenfranchised Americans who long to make their voices and their will heard in the United States. This spirit is beginning to embody not the doctrinaire Democrats of The Nation Magazine bellowing the trite catch phrases of a hollow liberalism but the tens of millions of Americans who know only intuitively that something has gone very wrong and that if there ever was an “American Dream” it could only come with the futile purchase of the next lottery ticket.