As we mentioned yesterday, elections of many kinds were held all over the country Tuesday.
Some elections, like the defeat of the anti-union measure in Ohio, the defeat of the voter suppression law in Maine, or the defeat of the 'personhood' amendment in Mississippi were fantastic examples of the power of the people, saying "Enough!" to the power of big money and special interests.
Other elections in the country – like many races in Virginia – were further pitiful examples of how money plays far too big a part in our political system.
While we always try to link to the best stories about any topic, when we combed through all the election stories out there, far too often, a large number of our media colleagues appeared to be pumping the election results they were assigned to focus on through a stereotypical filter of good versus bad.
With the Keystone pipeline controversy, a topic we've been focusing on a great deal lately, the appearance that dispute is headed to a stalemate is another example of lazy storytelling, one that major media organizations, including the L.A. Times, seem to have latched onto.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It's been obvious that many of President Obama's political advisors have been getting more and more nervous as the deadline for the President to make a decision on the pipeline has moved ever closer. As we've pointed out previously, many politicians in both major political parties, including Gov. Heineman, would be fine with the Keystone pipeline being completed through Nebraska, if the route was moved away from the Ogallala Aquifer.
While there is still some minor disagreement, it's been determined and generally accepted that Nebraska's own legislature and governor have the legal authority to move the pipeline. Actions being considered in the special session of the legislature also look to follow that determination with action. Some of the other measures before the Nebraska Unicameral in the current special session also follow the same action that President Obama and the State Department are now pushing for on the pipeline, looking towards added safety measures.
The decision that faces the President on the Keystone pipeline isn't strictly a binary one, of either allowing the project to begin immediately, or of denying it definitively. The President, through the State Department, may also call for more proof that safety standards will be adhered to as part of the permitting process. He may also call for more conditions to be met by TransCanada.
Finally, the State Department is looking at the option of whether they can re-route the pipeline, regardless of what Nebraska's state government says or does.
If it seems like this decision is complicated, that's because it is.
We won't deny that there are factions of both labor and environmental groups that desperately wish this was a simple black and white issue for the President to decide.
As we've said many times over the years about many decisions President Obama and his predecessors have made, this is not a simple decision.
If it were, it never would have reached the President's desk.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Dance With The One That Brung Ya
In many locations across the country, today is Election Day. Naturally, our entire staff is registered, and we'll vote where elections are being held. We even have family going to the work at the polling places, one of whom will be an Officer of Elections for his district in Virginia. His job is simple, but not easy. It'll take endurance, too: he must show up before the first voter, and stay until the polls close, making sure all proper legal procedures are followed, and that everyone who wishes to vote - and is legally authorized to do so - has the ability to have their voice heard.
Over the last few years, many in the GOP hierarchy have attempted to use this ridiculous fear - that the vote of someone not legally registered would be counted and then tip the scales against the favored candidate of the GOP - to enact draconian rules that effectively drive down several types of voters, especially minorities. In light of the copious recall and recount laws that exist these days, we're not only offended at this tactic - we also think it only serves to make Republicans look foolish and drive away voters they might otherwise convince to vote with them.
By the actions they've taken over the last decade, the modern Republican party appears to have some really strange ideas on how to convince minorities and women to vote for their chosen candidates.
In 2008, according to multiple sources, the primary reason those advising John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his V.P. pick was that she was a woman. After all, they thought - that was why some centrist and independent women liked Hillary Clinton, right?
This time around, some of those same advisors pushed Herman Cain to run for President - and after the last week of announcements about Mr. Cain's alleged conduct, and revelations of sexual misconduct and assault, we can't understand why any Republican political operative worth his paycheck didn't find out about all of these incidents long ago.
Being accused of sexual harassment once may be an accident. Repeating that conduct four times - that we know of - shows a serious lack of judgement.
It's not just the lack of judgement on the part of Mr. Cain that angers us, though.
According to multiple polls of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents, even after these recent announcements, they STILL prefer Mr. Cain to most of the other choices for President they're being offered right now. It's not that Republicans think Mr. Cain's accusers are lying - a majority think the allegations against him are true.
It's that Republicans and conservatives don't seem to think it matters that one of their leading candidates for President is possibly a serial sexual abuser, someone who appears to have a problem abusing his position of power to try and force women to do things against their will.
While that attitude, by itself, is sick, the more depraved attitude is the racial mirror to the GOP's 2008 Palin tactic; more and more, it appears Republican leaders and backers chose Herman Cain to attempt a run for President because he's an African-American.
For a party that continually attempts to claim they represent a new brand of modern conservatism, all we see in their current attempts to court women and minorities are the same old clueless, chauvinist and racist attitudes, done up in a fancy new dress.
If this is your political party of choice, we hope you realize how you appear to the rest of the world.
Over the last few years, many in the GOP hierarchy have attempted to use this ridiculous fear - that the vote of someone not legally registered would be counted and then tip the scales against the favored candidate of the GOP - to enact draconian rules that effectively drive down several types of voters, especially minorities. In light of the copious recall and recount laws that exist these days, we're not only offended at this tactic - we also think it only serves to make Republicans look foolish and drive away voters they might otherwise convince to vote with them.
By the actions they've taken over the last decade, the modern Republican party appears to have some really strange ideas on how to convince minorities and women to vote for their chosen candidates.
In 2008, according to multiple sources, the primary reason those advising John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his V.P. pick was that she was a woman. After all, they thought - that was why some centrist and independent women liked Hillary Clinton, right?
This time around, some of those same advisors pushed Herman Cain to run for President - and after the last week of announcements about Mr. Cain's alleged conduct, and revelations of sexual misconduct and assault, we can't understand why any Republican political operative worth his paycheck didn't find out about all of these incidents long ago.
Being accused of sexual harassment once may be an accident. Repeating that conduct four times - that we know of - shows a serious lack of judgement.
It's not just the lack of judgement on the part of Mr. Cain that angers us, though.
According to multiple polls of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents, even after these recent announcements, they STILL prefer Mr. Cain to most of the other choices for President they're being offered right now. It's not that Republicans think Mr. Cain's accusers are lying - a majority think the allegations against him are true.
It's that Republicans and conservatives don't seem to think it matters that one of their leading candidates for President is possibly a serial sexual abuser, someone who appears to have a problem abusing his position of power to try and force women to do things against their will.
While that attitude, by itself, is sick, the more depraved attitude is the racial mirror to the GOP's 2008 Palin tactic; more and more, it appears Republican leaders and backers chose Herman Cain to attempt a run for President because he's an African-American.
For a party that continually attempts to claim they represent a new brand of modern conservatism, all we see in their current attempts to court women and minorities are the same old clueless, chauvinist and racist attitudes, done up in a fancy new dress.
If this is your political party of choice, we hope you realize how you appear to the rest of the world.
Monday, November 7, 2011
How Main Street Is Moving On, While Wall Street Is All Wet
This past weekend, the weather in all of our locations was great for getting out and doing things like talking a walk, running some errands or delivering donations to the needy (like some of those at the Occupy DC encampment). For hundreds of thousands of Americans, this past weekend was also a great weekend for moving - specifically, moving money away from the biggest banks in America.
From Seattle and Texas, to San Francisco, the Quad Cities, Philadelphia, Des Moines - and yes, even Wall Street - Americans have finally begun putting their money where their interests are. From clergy to college students, Americans are yanking their funds away from the big banks that quite obviously don't give a damn about the needs of Americans.
According to the Credit Union Association of America, since September 29th of this year, 650,000 Americans have moved their money from big banks to credit unions and smaller local banks. That's more people moving their money to smaller, more locally focused financial institutions since September than all the Americans who joined credit unions in 2010.
Like other facets of the Occupy movement, the Move Your Money project also appears to have worked successfully - a fact we're fairly certain many of our colleagues in the mainstream, corporate-owned media will ignore today.
While some of the media is still claiming that the bigger banks simply don't care about the kinds of customers that are leaving for the credit unions, the fact is, those customers are worth millions, or possibly billions of dollars. If the average checking account balance of those 650,000 customers was only $2500 - less than half the average checking account balance - the big banks just lost $1.6 billion dollars in the last five weeks.
That's not the kind of money even the big banks can afford to let get away at that speed.
Yet, even Wall Street insiders admit: the people who control the Wall Street banks and the large corporate entities those banks often prop up, just can't seem to handle some hard and ugly truths about current Wall Street business methods and who they really are.
One of those truths is something the Occupiers are dead right about when they blast the richest of the rich in America as mostly "Wall Street" types. The overwhelming majority - 60% - of the top one-tenth of one percent of the wealthiest people in America work on or with Wall Street, banking, and large corporate interests.
Another ugly truth is that nearly 300 of the biggest corporations those one-tenth percenters ran paid little or no taxes over the last three years. Thirty of those companies paid no income taxes at all, or even got paid by the U.S. government. During that same period, those same companies raked in profits of $160 billon.
The truth that should shock the Wall Street types the most is the one we bet they'll refuse to focus on - and the one we think you should remember most today. It's what the Occupy movement did, through millions of Americans, with this past weekend's Move Your Money day.
We - the little people, the peons if you will - took our small piles of money to our small local banks and credit unions, institutions that WILL lend and support our local economies (unlike many of the big banks), and took more than $1.6 billion away from the tons of cash the big banks have to play with.
And we did it in just over a month. Imagine what we could accomplish if we kept up that kind of pace over the next year. This is only just the first step.
There's an old saying about how it's better to be pissed off than pissed on. Now more than ever, we think maybe the Wall St. one-percenters are having to re-learn that lesson the hard way.
From Seattle and Texas, to San Francisco, the Quad Cities, Philadelphia, Des Moines - and yes, even Wall Street - Americans have finally begun putting their money where their interests are. From clergy to college students, Americans are yanking their funds away from the big banks that quite obviously don't give a damn about the needs of Americans.
According to the Credit Union Association of America, since September 29th of this year, 650,000 Americans have moved their money from big banks to credit unions and smaller local banks. That's more people moving their money to smaller, more locally focused financial institutions since September than all the Americans who joined credit unions in 2010.
Like other facets of the Occupy movement, the Move Your Money project also appears to have worked successfully - a fact we're fairly certain many of our colleagues in the mainstream, corporate-owned media will ignore today.
While some of the media is still claiming that the bigger banks simply don't care about the kinds of customers that are leaving for the credit unions, the fact is, those customers are worth millions, or possibly billions of dollars. If the average checking account balance of those 650,000 customers was only $2500 - less than half the average checking account balance - the big banks just lost $1.6 billion dollars in the last five weeks.
That's not the kind of money even the big banks can afford to let get away at that speed.
Yet, even Wall Street insiders admit: the people who control the Wall Street banks and the large corporate entities those banks often prop up, just can't seem to handle some hard and ugly truths about current Wall Street business methods and who they really are.
One of those truths is something the Occupiers are dead right about when they blast the richest of the rich in America as mostly "Wall Street" types. The overwhelming majority - 60% - of the top one-tenth of one percent of the wealthiest people in America work on or with Wall Street, banking, and large corporate interests.
Another ugly truth is that nearly 300 of the biggest corporations those one-tenth percenters ran paid little or no taxes over the last three years. Thirty of those companies paid no income taxes at all, or even got paid by the U.S. government. During that same period, those same companies raked in profits of $160 billon.
The truth that should shock the Wall Street types the most is the one we bet they'll refuse to focus on - and the one we think you should remember most today. It's what the Occupy movement did, through millions of Americans, with this past weekend's Move Your Money day.
We - the little people, the peons if you will - took our small piles of money to our small local banks and credit unions, institutions that WILL lend and support our local economies (unlike many of the big banks), and took more than $1.6 billion away from the tons of cash the big banks have to play with.
And we did it in just over a month. Imagine what we could accomplish if we kept up that kind of pace over the next year. This is only just the first step.
There's an old saying about how it's better to be pissed off than pissed on. Now more than ever, we think maybe the Wall St. one-percenters are having to re-learn that lesson the hard way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)