dubyaD40.com - Guest Blog

dubyaD40.com's Guest Blog

Election Won, Election System Broken
Monday, November 27, 2006

Stephen Crockett
November 27, 2006

American voters should not think that our election system is working fine just because control of Congress changed hands in 2006. The election system nationally, and likely in your local community, is broken!

We do not have reliable, standard voting procedures and equipment in every community. Many voting machines are still not reliable and can be easily corrupted. Vote counting is still in private hands and controlled by a small number of "for profit" corporations. Voting rights are still being manipulated, and often denied, by partisan officeholders. Elections are still hugely expensive and more advertising exercises than public discussions of issues and policies. The right to have your vote counted honestly and correctly is still not Constitutionally guaranteed.

We have an election crisis. The system must be fixed. Both national and state Constitutions should be amended to guarantee uniform equipment in all voting jurisdictions, that all votes be honestly and correctly counted and that all citizens residing in a jurisdiction should have the right to vote.

No government, at any level, should be allowed to restrict voting rights by any group of citizens except those currently institutionalized in mental facilities or jails. Of course, non-citizens residing in the community should not be permitted to vote. ID laws should not be used to restrict voting rights of the poor. All citizens should automatically be registered when drivers' licenses are applied for, school enrollments registered or Social Security cards issued. All citizens should be able to enroll by using postcards mailed to all addresses in the nation. Any type of ID should be accepted.

Penalties for double voting or voting by non-citizens should be severe. Strong felony charges and long sentences should be imposed on anyone attempting to rig elections. The strongest penalties should be faced officeholders who systematically deny the voting rights of large groups of citizens or who corrupt honest vote counts.

Personally, as a death penalty advocate, I would favor the death penalty for fraud by the top election officers in any state involving either large numbers of voters or that potentially alter election outcomes (although life without parole would be acceptable as an alternative to the death penalty.) The penalty should be as severe as treason during wartime. The crimes are comparable in my opinion. Both attack our existence as a free nation.

Equality of votes should be a guiding standard strictly applied in law. Differences in voting equipment can result in votes being lost in voting jurisdictions with sub-standard equipment. Federal money should be used to buy the same safe equipment for every community. The equipment should provide a paper trail that cannot be manipulated and can be audited. The entire process should be open and public.

Campaign finance laws should be passed everywhere to reduce the cost of running for office. If required to prevent court interference, constitutions should be changed to specifically state that spending unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes is not guaranteed by free speech rights. Reasonable restrictions should be permitted by law.

This election crisis is critical to preserving American freedom. The entire future of our nation is at stake. This crisis is more important than any other issue facing our nation. We must act, now!

Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio

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Retire The Worst Republican Members Of Congress
Thursday, November 23, 2006

Stephen Crockett
November 23, 2006

There are still some of the worst Republican members of Congress in power. Democrats and independents along with reform minded Republicans need to retire these bad politicians in the 2008 elections. The time to start is today.

These Republican Congresspersons are closely tied to large corporations and vote routinely against the interests of their constituents. Because they are really representing giant drug companies, Big Oil and international corporations, their Democratic challengers are heavily outspent. We have 2 years in which to raise money from other places in the nation to help even the playing field in these races.

Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina are two truly nasty pieces of work politically. When the public started demanding government action over oil industry price-gouging, Blackburn and Foxx rallied with other oil money soaked Republican Right Wing members of Congress to block any legislative action. They crusaded against wind-fall profit taxes on the excessive profits of Big Oil.

Both Blackburn and Foxx are solidly in favor of outsourcing of good paying American jobs and our manufacturing base to third world countries. They care about corporate profits more than workers in their Districts or the national security of the American nation. Blackburn and Foxx do not seem to care that America is losing the manufacturing base required to protect our nation and way of life. They routinely have opposed good labor laws and higher minimum wages. They are anti-worker.

They are not friends of the environment. Pollution seems fine with these Congresswomen as long as the huge campaign contributions from polluters keep arriving. They are opposed to universal national healthcare since the “for profit” healthcare and drug companies are mailing huge checks. They strongly support anti-consumer legislation and draconian bankruptcy laws since the corporate campaign money keeps piling up. The bankruptcy laws they support favor giant corporations seeking bankruptcy protection over small businesses and consumers.

Blackburn and Foxx helped shift the federal tax burden from the wealthiest of the wealthy to middle-class and working class Americans. Both are among the members of Congress most responsible for the runaway national debt and federal budget deficits.

Blackburn and Foxx are strong supporters of Bush’s Iraq disaster. They are supportive of Bush’s attacks on our Constitutional rights and freedoms. There are no bigger enemies of real campaign finance reform or tighter ethics in Congress than Blackburn and Foxx!

In summary, Marsha Blackburn and Virginia Foxx must go. We cannot keep such awful politicians in power. I am urging the Tennessee Democratic Party, the North Carolina Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Move-On.org and allied organizations to target these two Districts. I urge labor unions, environmentalists, consumer rights groups, small business organizations, civil liberties advocates, veterans groups, reformers of all strips and average voters to work together to retire Blackburn and Foxx in 2008.

Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio

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Carville Simply Wrong on Howard Dean and DNC
Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Stephen Crockett
11-20-2006

I find it difficult to express my severe disappointment with my former hero, James Carville. When Carville appeared on the national political scene, he was a real breathe of fresh air. The Cajun Democratic dynamo was a real man of the people speaking in the language of the average man on the street and talking about real world issues.

Carville appears to have slowly been captured by the system. He is now talking like an inside the Beltway politician and spewing the normal venom of the Washington insiders against the populist leader of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean.

Carville seems to think that Dean should be replaced because the Democratic gain in Congress was not bigger than the landslide it was. (No seriously, he has been making statements to that effect. I am not making this up.) Carville and other Washington insider critics believe that the Democratic National Committee could have won around a dozen more seats in Congress by putting more money into those House races.

Dean has been focused on a real 50 state strategy of Party building that has already helped Democrats gain control of Congress and the US Senate. We made impressive gains in Governorships and state legislatures. We made impressive gains in the West and Northeast. The decline of Democratic prospects in the South has been halted and significant future gains appear likely.

It is true that more money would have produced victories in certain campaigns had they received more national support. The campaign of Chris Bell in the Texas Governor race is a prime example. The Ford Senate campaign in Tennessee really needed more national financial support. The House seats not won are important but targeting the right ones would have been difficult if not impossible to determine. Money pulled from other DNC efforts might have resulted in losses elsewhere in this election cycle and future elections.

Carville seems to be excessively focused on short-term gains. This kind of thinking is largely responsible for the decline of the Democratic Party in the pre-Dean era. The Washington power elite had been playing insider politics as a zero sum game looking for immediate gains at the expense of the future before Dean became DNC Chairman.

Our entire nation has been suffering from this kind of short-term thinking from the elite in DC and Wall Street. As a nation and a political party, we need to relearn the concept of sacrificing now and investing to produce a more bountiful future. Howard Dean gets it!

Carville has lost touch with his populist roots. Dean has not. Dean would spend money building a grassroots Democratic structure in places like Mississippi, Iowa, Montana, Kansas, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. He would make the Republicans fight to hold their geographic base instead of always being on the defense trying to protect a shrinking Democratic geographic turf.

The Democratic Party needs to be a truly national Party with a truly national leadership. We have that kind of leadership at the Democratic National Committee. We have a national leader who wants to recruit and strengthen our Party at the county, town and city level everywhere. He will not write-off places like Licking County, Ohio or Lincoln County, Tennessee or Cecil County, Maryland. He will not surrender Valdez, Alaska or Lynchburg, Virginia or West Jefferson, North Carolina to uncontested Republican dominance.

Dean will fight for our great Democratic Party in all 50 states and not just a dozen or so competitive Congressional Districts. Democrats will fight in those Districts and another 400 more in 2008. We will fight again in 2010 and 2012. This fight is eternal. We need a Party organization that is permanently vigilant and not based just on individual candidate campaigns during election years. Dean gets it!

The great Democratic tide is still rising. It is a populist tide. The Washington insiders and power elite in the Democratic Party can join the effort or be swept away. The 2006 Election was the beginning and not the crest. This new populism is based on a struggling middle class given national power by the Internet and the rise of new organizations. This populism is closely tied by issues and background with the grassroots of the labor union movement and local civic reform movements. It has deep roots in the FDR New Deal traditions of the Democratic Party. Dean gets it!

In the heartland, the Democratic Party has shown surprising new life in recent years. The Red heartland has started to become Purple and looks headed Blue. This development can be seen in activities like My Rural America.org.

Carville needs to get out into the heartland and start talking to local Democratic leaders. Carville needs more Kansas and less DC. Dean has not been captured by the system. I still have hope for Carville. I will be praying for him. I hope he can learn from Howard Dean and reconnect with his roots in the populist tradition of the Democratic Party.

Stephen Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio

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My Fellow Patriots
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Agnes Kincaid
November 14, 2006

My Fellow Patriots,

Now that we may revert to a dual federalism and have more control of our lives and how we live them rather than let government have us become one, long, "Truman Show" for our people to endure for one more second. We will work together to build a stronger and wiser nation than there has been in decades and once again shine as an example to the world for our kindness, humanity, and resilience and assist others to do the same. It's time to help our fellow man to rebuild after Katrina and to be assured that such a disaster never occurs again by building stronger and better levies, making sure there are safe areas, (other than Superdomes), for people to meet in order for them to be protected in times of disaster.

Let us once again make insurance companies answer to their policies holders and live up to their contractual agreements. While we're at it, let's give the "No Child Left Behind Act", the old heave ho and let the teachers get back to doing what they were trained for and that is to teach. For far too long our teachers have been required to teach to the test and our children are left to suffer as well as the educators and the learning process.

But most of all, let's take back our right to privacy, bring our troops home and be loyal to those who have served and suffered for an illegal war and many of whom will never be able to resume their former lives again. Let's make sure that the Veterans Administration in every state knows that Americans will always take care of one another, not just the most recent but also those of who have served to defend and protect throughout our history.

Let us once again return to real family values, work to protect our environment, and to protect our children and not let them grow up to only be left struggling to pay for our mistakes. Let's get back to our fundamentals that begun with the writing of our Constitution and bring back the America our forefathers once dreamed of this nation being - a Democracy.

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