Why should we ask John McCain harsh questions? Because we need to even the playing field. You see, if Barack Obama had McCain’s background, ignorance and bad character, the election would have been over months ago. The news media is holding back, though. Those media barbecues appear to be paying off.

So it’s time to even the playing field. Since the media keeps asking these sorts of disparaging and insulting questions to Barack Obama, it’s time to ask these same sorts of questions to John McCain. I admit that a few of these are outrageously unfair, just like many of the questions repeatedly posed to Obama.

Most of these questions are fair, though, and the news media has refused to dig deep and really get the answers Americans need. If you have additional questions that the media needs to ask John McCain, please submit them in the comments. I’d like to make this post a place where reporters are free to visit for ideas. As you can see, I’ve attached explanatory links to most of the proposed questions.

Unlike Barack Obama, McCain has a lot of explaining to do about what kind of person he has shown himself to be and portrayed himself to be. Let’s get started:

Generally Puzzling
Isn’t it true that you personally now oppose several bills that you yourself co-sponsored?

Why is your smile so creepy and fake?

Do you really believe that the President of the U.S. virtually functions as a dictator?

General Character Deficits

Isn’t it true that you aggressively courted your current wife, a 25-year-old beer heiress while you were still married to your first wife?

Is it true that you obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to your first wife?

How is it that being imprisoned in Vietnam or being shot down while flying a plane qualifies you to be president? Why shouldn’t we think that Vietnam messed up your head and made you erratic?

I notice that you aren’t wearing a crucifix around your neck. Is that because you hate Jesus or is it because you think you are better than God?

You have said some harsh things about a black man who is running for President. Prove to us that you and many of your supporters are not bigots.

Isn’t it true that you are not born again? How many times have you even been to church this year? How does that compare with last year, which wasn’t an election year?

How can we be sure that your wife won’t abuse drugs at the White House if you are elected President, or cover up her abuses of drugs?

Did you marry your current wife more for her great wealth or because she offered you social connections that advanced your career as a politician?

During the Vicki Iseman scandal, your wife Cindy suggested that because you were a man of character, you would never have an affair. But isn’t it true that you started dating Cindy while you were still married to your first wife?

Why did you work so hard to help spread false anthrax stories in 2001? Isn’t it true that your conduct in spreading those stories that Iraq was responsible for that anthrax enabled the Bush Administration to expose the lives and well-being of our soldiers in Iraq?

Isn’t it true that you broke your promise by not being in isolation while Barack Obama was questioned by Rick Warren?

Did you have any moral qualms when you left your first wife - a former swimsuit model - after she was disfigured in a car accident and put on a few pounds?”

Does the Religious Right know that you give talks before gatherings with dubious family values, including suggesting that your wife enter a topless beauty contest?

Aren’t you too old and forgetful to be President?

Why won’t you release all of your medical records? What are you trying to hide?

How many letters did you send for the purpose of interfering with an FCC investigation on behalf of your beautiful lobbyist friend, Vicki Iseman?

How much financial help have you and your supporters given to your lobbyist friend Vicki Isley to help her disappear since your close relationship was revealed?

Have you been sexually faithful to your current wife?

Shouldn’t you be concerned that your wife is too “icy” to effectively serve as First Lady?

Shouldn’t it raise huge red flags when people who run for high office refuse to make their family’s tax returns public? Why should your wife Cindy be an exception?

To be president, is it enough that one is an old wise-cracking, hot-tempered, and often confused and forgetful guy?

Ignorance of facts regarding major issues
Give us the names of some prominent economists who really support your “economic plan.”

Why do you seem to know so little about Iraq?

Tell me everything you know about the history, culture and religions of Iraq. You can have as much time as you need.

Out of touch with ordinary people
Didn’t your wife say that the only way to get around Arizona is by private jet? and see here.

You don’t even know how many houses you own, do you?

Tell us about some of the ways we could have wisely invested one trillion dollars in America had we not wasted it in Iraq? Take your time and talk about how we could have improved American with that vast sum of money. (more…)

All of the candidates are for sale, according to the August 21, 2008 edition of Rolling Stone.

The article, by Matt Taibbi, is entitled:  “Candidates for Sale:  What do Obama and McCain have in common?  The same big donors, who will expect to have their way no matter who wins.”

This is an article that will inform you of many distressing developments regarding the financing of our presidential campaigns, I can assure you.  And don’t expect the SEC to come to the rescue.

Check out this WaPo story:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

So why aren’t these people, especially Harry Sargeant III, being actively investigated? This strongly smells of election fraud. What else could it be? Truly, that election laws are being violated on a massive scale is painfully obvious. These “little” folks are helping big crooks to launder illegal election money.

Then again, I’m not optimistic that Bush’s hand-selected prosecutors are looking into these occurrences.

Does money buy elections?  After reading this 2008 paper by “Just $6,” you’ll have no doubt.  What is Just $6 about?

Congress would only have to spend $6 per citizen per year to publicly fund each and every election for the House, the Senate and the White House. When you consider that “pork barrel” projects cost every one of us more than $200 last year alone, it’s no contest.

Think of it. With public funding, wealthy special interests and their hired lobbyists would no longer have a commanding influence over our politics and government. Instead of begging for campaign donations, candidates would spend their time communicating with voters. Once elected, our leaders would be free to focus on our nation’s challenges rather than having to worry about financing their next campaign. And there’s no doubt that more of our most able leaders would run for federal office when the ability to finance a campaign isn’t such a daunting obstacle.

When Barack Obama opts of out pubic financing for his campaign, the media screams bloody murder.   Why isn’t the corporate media admitting that John McCain has done the same thing?   Arianna Huffington explains:

Cut to Super Tuesday, when McCain had the Republican nomination all but wrapped up. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be bound by that $54 million limit, so his campaign did a 180 and opted back out of the public financing system.

But as David Mason, the Republican-appointed chair of the FEC, has pointed out, you can’t just unilaterally opt out — especially after securing a loan based on having opted in. The response of the McCain campaign is quite simply to ignore Mason. And because the FEC currently lacks a quorum (thanks to stalling tactics by that human roadblock to reform, Mitch McConnell) that’s where things stand, pending a ruling on a lawsuit filed by the DNC.

Yet few in the Swift Boat Media saw fit to point out this glaring contradiction in McCain’s cries about broken commitments made to the American people. Indeed, as Media Matters points out, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the CBS Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, Fox News’ Special Report, and CNN all dutifully reported McCain’s “Big deal” claim without mentioning McCain’s campaign finance chicanery.

In 1964, Rudolph Dreikurs wrote a child psychology book that is still considered a classic by child psychologist: Children: the Challenge. Dreikurs argued that using punishments to change behavior is inefficient.

No amount of punishment will bring about lasting submission. Confused and bewildered parents mistakenly hope that punishment will eventually bring results, without realizing that they are actually getting nowhere with their methods or, at best, they gain only temporary results from punishment. When the same punishment has to be repeated again and again, it should be obvious that it does not work. The use of punishment only helps the child to develop greater power of resistance in defiance.

Dreikurs argued that the authoritative idea of using punishment needs to be replaced with a sense of mutual respect and cooperation. Children need real leadership. “A good leader inspires and stimulates his followers into action that suits the situation.” It is important to arrange the learning situation such that a child learns “without a show of power, for power insights rebellion and defeats the purpose of child-raising.”

Dreikurs also cautions parents about using rewards:

The system of rewarding children for good behavior is as detrimental to their outlook as a system of punishment. The same lack of respect is shown. We “reward” our inferiors for favors or for good deeds. In a system of mutual respect among equals, a job is done because it needs doing, and the satisfaction, for the harmony of two people doing a job together…. satisfaction comes from a sense of contribution and participation-a sense actually denied to our children in our present system of rewarding them with material things. And our mistaken efforts to win cooperation through rewards, we are actually denying our children the basic satisfactions of living.

Since neither reward nor punishment is effective, what does Dreikurs suggest? He suggests using an approach he terms “natural consequences.”

Natural consequences” represent the pressure of reality without any specific action by parents and are always effective … What would be the natural consequence of forgetting one’s lunch? One would go hungry…. the idea of letting a child go hungry is horrifying to many parents. Actually, it is unpleasant to be hungry. But one missed lunch now and then is not going to cause bodily harm, and the discomfort may be effective in stimulating [the child] to remember to take his lunch with him…. we do not have the right to assume the responsibilities of her children, nor do we have the right to take the consequences of their acts. These belong to them.

I agree with Dreikurs. As a parent, I have become tuned to the existence of many styles of parenting. I have come to learn that rewards and punishments do not create responsible children. Instead, they create extended co-dependencies.

As I read Dreikurs book, I was reminded that our government constantly tries to regulate behavior through the inefficient methods of rewards and punishments, resulting in the same problems that result in a household that utilizes these approaches.

Our government has also evolved to do something far more insidious: hiding natural consequences from the citizens. Take Iraq, as one example. We don’t see caskets of our soldiers. We don’t see the mayhem still occurring in Iraq. The United States government and the corporate media work hard to protect us from these terrible images. This lack of information means that the citizens are protected from knowing the “natural consequences” of funding military action in Iraq.

We have been protected from knowing hundreds of other important things, as well, including government spying and government doctoring of scientific reports. The government, aided by an over-consolidated corporate media work hard to pump out lots of news and ads that hypnotize us to believe that the best way to be happy is to buy expensive things we don’t need. We are encouraged to over-consume, over-spend and over-trust the government. If you don’t believe me, pick up any episode of your daily “news”-paper or watch any episode of your local “news.” As a result of the lack of good information, we are now facing multiple terrifying economic, energy and environmental crises. We have been protected from the natural consequences and, therefore, we don’t know enough to change our ways. (more…)

The list has grown too long to ignore.  We are a country that exercises almost no foresight.  We wait for disasters to occur and only then (if then) does it occur to us to do something about the problem.

Here’s an especially heinous example: our government hires numerous financial experts, of course.  Alan Greenspan was one of them.  Why couldn’t any of them see the subprime disaster long before it occurred?  Instead, our government’s experts allowed unscrupulous mortgage companies to lend out far too much money to homeowners in the form of “exploding ARMs” such that it was entirely predictable that the borrowers would fall behind on their payments after only a few years, and that many would lose their homes through foreclosure.  Our government stood by while these loans were hyper-securitized to the point where the unscrupulous mortgage companies would go belly up, tranch-laden real estate trusts (who ultimately purchased the loans) would throw their hands and claim that they were innocent and Wall Street would laugh all the way to the bank.  That is, until Wall Street failed and successfully begged the federal government to bail out Bear Stearns.  All of this was entirely foreseeable.  The real disaster is that we failed to use our brains.

For another example, think of the Minnesota Bridge collapse. Let’s see… what might happen if you don’t allocate proper federal funding to fund sufficient bridge inspections?  Of course, it’s only after a huge bridge collapses or a major levee breaks that we start thinking about the resulting disasters here in America.

Do you want another example?  There are hundreds.

Remember when our president manufactured the need to go to war and all of the allegedly patriotic people (including many of your neighbors and friends, I’m sure) imposed group-think upon each other?  Voices trying to raise important concerns and objections were muzzled in the name of “freedom.”  What were we thinking?  That we were better off to parrot the President?  What we got is what we deserved: the low point was when Colin Powell lied to the American people, who patriotically nodded affirmatively, encouraged by their patriotic daily newspapers from coast to coast.  In retrospect, who couldn’t see that this type of “patriotic” group-think behavior would endanger our democracy?

Who couldn’t end see the problem with electing, as President of the United States, a man who lied about his military service and who had failed miserably in almost everything he had ever attempted, repeatedly covered up by his family?  What would you expect if you elected such a person to be president?  Why couldn’t we see all of this coming?

And look how we conduct “debates” to evaluate the next president.  They are largely substanceless and xenophobic, relying on soundbites and concocted personal attacks.  Why is it so hard to see that this is a terrible way to evaluate a President?

And why can’t we see that allowing large corporations to pour their money into the coffers of politicians will cause our politicians to do corporate bidding rather than responding to the needs of citizens?  Why is this so hard to anticipate or understand?  The fact that this legalized bribery goes on should be the front page headline in almost every newspaper almost every day. (more…)

Barack Obama on “Who is out of touch?”

Will.i.am has done another impressive job of assembling a huge talented group of people to convey his message.

To learn more about this video, visit Soupy Trumpet.

It appears that John McCain has put himself into situations suggesting that he had an sexual affair with a 40-year-old female lobbyist.  This politically devastating information can’t possibly be relevant to the current presidential campaign, unless…

Unless McCain has long-supported a political party that has consciously decided to make sexual moral pronouncements a major and unrelenting part of its political existence, all-the-while conflating the U.S. Constitution with the Ten Commandments and spewing this mentally-stunted version of democracy in a holier-than-thou piss-on you-if-you’re-different-than-who-we-claim-to-be sort of way.  McCain, of course, is also a prominent member of the Republican serial polygamy club, another manifestation of Republican hypocrisy when it comes to alleged Republican sexual purity.

Those conservatives who get angry at seeing political smear tactics involving sexual innuendo need to shut up and take this medicine because they’ve all earned it by voluntarily associating with a political party that specializes in hypocritical villainizing (sexual, racial, immigration status, religious beliefs, you name it).  If those who are upset by the release of this information regarding McCain and Iseman want these sorts of incidents to become irrelevant, they need to tell the Republican Party (by voting) to get government out of America’s bedrooms, for starters.

[The General George Meade statute located in front of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., created by Charles Grafley in 1927, apparently in a cultural climate much different than our own.  Posted here just for the hell of it - photo by Erich Vieth]

We’ll know that we’re cured of our obsession with the sexual practices of politicians when a politician’s private sexual choices are no more interesting to us than the private sexual choices of a sports celebrity or a famous movie director.   Can you imagine refusing to go to a movie because the director once had a marital affair?

Incidentally, private sexual conduct has nothing to do with whether a person would be a competent president.  Consider that each of the following presidents reportedly had affairs: Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy , Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland (who had a child with his mistress) and Thomas Jefferson.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg, because extremely powerful men are highly likely to have sexual affairs. It’s a fact of life, though this information often doesn’t come out until 30 years after the man’s death.  While that fact is not publicly known regarding a particular powerful living man, it is usually because he has a close-knitted circle of powerful comrades who keep that knowledge in check (for example, visit the above links and read about John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt).

The real dirt about McCain is not that he might have had sex with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, but that he spends so much time with lobbyists.  McCain, the “anti-lobbyist,” is very comfortable with lobbyists.  For instance, consider with whom McCain huddles these days now that he’s essentially wrapped up the Republican nomination:

[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington’s lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

I watched a few minutes of a Sunday morning Fox political program, and noticed that their fair and balanced coverage of presidential politics had several distinct spins.

On the republican side, McCain is the anointed candidate.

On the Democrat side, the race will be decided by the super-delegates. Every bit of subtle mud that can be slung at Obama is being dug and slung. Why just Obama?

The message is clear: Conservatives think that Obama is electable, and they are not particularly worried about Clinton. It’s a safe bet that they have a campaign set up to effectively counter a Clinton candidacy; they’ve had over a decade to do the research. But they might fear that a proverbial left-field candidate like Obama might do something rash if elected, like expose and change the underpinnings of the lengthy and profitable electoral process.

Maybe they think that Muslim radicals will have a harder time convincing their young followers that Barack Hussein Obama is the enemy, and the profitable war will wind down.

Perhaps they simply think that he is activating the youth vote, and once the draft-age population is politically involved, all the profitable “wars” (on drugs, on terror, etc) will fade.

Possibly they fear that his multicultural upbringing and education will make it impossible for him to see just the narrow picture when asked to approve dumb laws and expensive and futile unfunded mandates.

Maybe it’s just that their pollsters think that someone with less of a melanin deficiency is more electable than one with two complete x chromosomes.

But, hey. I’m just an ignorant blogger.

With the possible spoiler of Mike Huckabee, it’s clear that John McCain is set to be the candidate the Democrats need to beat in November. The irony of the ongoing battle between Hillary and Obama is that, policy-wise, they just aren’t that different. There were some real differences between the Republicans, but those differences are not what McCain seems to be gearing up to run on. He is all about Iraq.

McCain has to convince hardline conservatives that he’s their guy. Why? Because he has occasionally backed some responsible legislation, like McCain-Feingold. He refused to sugarcoat our waning industrial possibilities while campaigning in Michigan. He has spoken positively about amnesty programs for illegal immigrants. He has not always been a friend to Big Business. True Red Republicans of the Bush League see the potential for fiscal treason in McCain—that he might raise taxes, control campaign spending, or propose, back, and sign Democratic-sounding legislation that would take the country toward *gasp* Socialism.

I have a hard time squaring complaints from anyone that McCain is somehow not a fiscal conservative when Bush just put forward a three-point-one TRILLION dollar budget (with the largest slice for defense spending since WWII). It just goes to show, all the rhetoric about Democratic profligacy is really just a complaint that the Dems spend the money on things the Republicans don’t like. It’s not the money, it’s the programs.

Setting that aside, though, McCain obviously doesn’t think he can sway them all. So he’s about to start campaigning hard on the pitfalls of an Iraq withdrawal. I will wait for the P-word to rear its ugly torso—Patriotism. The suggestion will be made that anyone wishing to pull out is somehow not patriotic. We saw this under Bush, aspersions cast on some of the most loyal, patriotic, and demonstrably courageous people who suggested that maybe this war was a bad idea and that, furthermore, we more or less screwed it up by going in blind, deaf, and predetermined.

I hear echoes of the Sixties all over again, and of all the people who should know better, it is John McCain. (”Pull out…doesn’t sound manly to me, Bub. I say leave it in there till the job is done and they’re thoroughly messed up.”)

The problem is, this may well play for the American voter. When we have serious doubts, we tend to stick with what we’re doing rather than risk change. We have to have our faces rubbed in the muck of bad decision-making before we finally say—in sufficient numbers to matter—enough is enough. I am not sanguine about the political maturity of the American people.

And the thing is, we aren’t getting our faces rubbed in it. We’re adapting. Gasoline is high, the American industrial base is shrinking, we have infrastructure problems galore, but we’re making accommodations and doing fine, thank you. People complain, but by and large we haven’t actually lost anything that matters. So much of this debate is still in the realm of hypotheticals, theories, ideas, and potentials.

So we look to the Democratic candidates and what do we see? One old school politician who would probably do a fine enough job and maybe make a few worthwhile changes, mainly around the edges, and one young firebrand who is promising Big Changes. And a serious look at their policies shows that, really, they differ by degrees, not ideas. It’s going to devolve into a popularity and demographics battle. Which barrier do we want to break first? Gender or race? And underlying that, is the question no one wants to ask: does it really matter anymore?

In my misbegotten youth, I used to be what they call a Single Issue Voter. Was a time I voted against anyone who wanted to erode the Second Amendment. Yes, I was one of those Right to Bear Arms purists. I had bought into the argument that an armed populace kept the government in line and the first step towards tyranny is to disarm the population at large. There’s truth to that in history, but today, here, in this country, it’s a rather weak argument. Power doesn’t work that way. Not to say it couldn’t, but for now it simply doesn’t.

I could also argue that anyone wishing to tamper with the Constitution was de facto untrustworthy. Which may also be true. People doing good for me whether I want it or not is loathesome. Make the subject anything but guns and you see this immediately.

But the truth is, single issue voting only means you’re not informed, interested, or intellectually capable of understanding multiple issues. Or it means you don’t care about anything else, which is just as bad. It is stupid.

As it has transpired, most of the Second Amendment purists voted into office in the last forty years have also brought with them a whole suite of ideologies I cannot abide. They are, many of them, the natural constituency of the George W. Bush League. That single issue—preserving an unquestioned right to own, carry, and by implication use something which I, in fact, do not own or carry—comes packaged with people whose other policy positions I find absurd or dangerous.

The word Balance comes to mind. Tricky at the best of times.

McCain will campaign on a single issue. Oh, there will be other policy positions he’ll talk about and want to deal with, but at present it looks like he’s going to threaten America with the awful prospect of “pulling out” if we vote for the Democrats. He will polarize people over a Single Issue that will push all the rest to the side in an emotional gambit to convince us to—wait for it, he may yet use the phrase—Stay The Course.

In such an environment, the first casualty is reason. You can’t even get close to truth without that.

I would really like to see the two Democratic front-runners make a deal, put together a ticket that can roll over this irrationalism. The Republicans are once again demonstrating their major strength—they’re forming ranks and closing up behind a candidate and they will see it through as a group. For a bunch of people who profess to believe in American Individuality, they sure can cast it aside quickly enough for their Cause. Democrats traditionally devour each other.

The one factor we have left to see whether McCain has a reasonable shot or not is who he picks as a running mate. Because that will indicate who he thinks his successor will be, ought to be. As it appears right now, if Hilary and Obama made a deal and ran together, it would be the best of all possible worlds. Either one of them is acceptable to me.

I suppose I should say whether I think we should get out of Iraq. Saying— believing—that we should never have gone in to begin with is not the same thing. Now it would be like making a mess of a paraplegic’s kitchen, then leaving without cleaning up the mess. So I guess I’m forced into the opinion that we would be ill-advised to simply pull out until Iraq really does have a security base that works well enough. Otherwise, they will be divvied up by the various factions outside their borders. Iran has, in fact, an old score to settle, and they are more dangerous to future peace in the region than Iraq ever was. Saddam ultimately was just greedy. The Iranian hierarchy are Inspired.

But that doesn’t mean I’d vote for John McCain—all the other things he’s bringing to the table are things I do not really support.

Single Issue Voting is for morons.

Why did Obama win in Iowa? This video gives you a good idea of why. Obama adopted, as his motto, “The fierce urgency of now.” Obama is not a mere speech reader, as you can see from this speech he gave on November 10, 2007. He really hits some solid notes along the way.

Whenever we take the time, we are better able to see that all issues are anchored by deep issues.   That’s the kind of day it was for me today. 

I’m in Washington D.C., attending the Consumer Rights Litigation Conference sponsored by the National Consumer Law Center.   NCLC is an invaluable resource for those of us who advocate and litigate for consumer rights.  At one of the afternoon sessions today, I had a chance to hear a panel of consumer advocates discuss recent developments in federal law regarding consumer rights. 

It’s quite depressing, for the most part.  You see, well-monied corporate financial interests own Congress.   Consumer rights are on the ropes.   Many industries are free to lie, cheat, steal and to impose onerous terms on consumers, thanks to the best federal laws money can buy.  They do this through corporate immunity, preemption and the imposition of mandatory binding arbitration before biased arbitrators.  All of these were gifts from Congress in return for huge amounts of money contributed by lobbyists.

I’ve been to Washington D.C. several times before, and I’ve always reveled in the history and the architecture.  

Now, I can’t help but feel ambivalent.  It’s a city awash in immense amounts of corrupt money. 

We are a country that preaches that the People are the government, but that is less true than ever.  If you don’t believe me, just try to call your Congressional representative, mentioning that you are a concerned citizen.  See if you can get five minutes with him or her.  Then offer to contribute $100,000 to his or her next campaign and see what happens. Here’s more proof that our lawmakers have little or no conscience when it comes to bribes:  note last week’s revelation that the head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission sees no problems taking $60,000 in gifts and trips from businesses she is charged with regulating.

Back to NCLC.  Here’s what kind of work NCLC does.  NCLC members represent the interests of un-powerful people (which includes many middle class folks these days).  It provides consumer lawyers like me with information that we need to litigate cases against powerful corporate interests.  I’ve sued predatory lenders that include payday lenders, title lenders and sub-prime mortgage companies; for each of these suits, I’ve drawn upon the guidance of NCLC.  When big corporate interests break state laws, many of them are allowed to hide behind mandatory arbitration clauses that they unilaterally impose upon their customers.  The ability to do this was yet another gift from Congress. 

Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear.  Many consumers plunge themselves into debt irresponsibly and get exactly what they deserve when the debt collector comes calling.  When a people can’t afford medicine for their children, they should never go out and put a big-screen TV on the credit card.  Again, there are many (many) irresponsible consumers.  But not all consumers who struggle financially are irresponsible.  That is why consumer lawyers feel compelled to do the work they do.

NCLC helps me (and other consumer lawyers) by providing an excellent set of legal reference books, updated by practitioners.   They offer advice to those who are new to the consumer law field.   This information is invaluable.  (more…)

I wish I could have taken credit for writing an article I just read:  The presidential primary scam: Why the game is rigged, and why true democracy is only a secondary factor in the nation’s rush to nominate the next president.   The author is Michael Scherer. Here a taste of the article:

The whole stinking process was designed by dead men in smoky parlors and refined by faceless bureaucrats in hotel conference rooms. It is a nasty brew born of those caldrons of self-interest known as political parties. At every stage, advantage is parceled out like so much magic potion.

. . . This election cycle, a top Democratic candidate shaking someone’s hand in Miami before the end of January is breaking the rules, unless that someone is handing the candidate a check at the same time. To put it another way, Democrats’ communicating with voters has been barred in Florida, but taking money from voters is OK. To put it a third way, the system is not only irrational but offensive to the nation’s most basic values. “The only way that you can hear a candidate campaign is if you are willing to pay a campaign contribution,” explains Steven Geller, Florida’s exasperated state Senate Democratic leader. “It is astounding.”

They don’t teach all of this in school, because even a fourth-grader would get up from his desk and walk out of the classroom in protest.

The devil is in the details and this article provides plenty of details. 

Here a meta-aside.  Have you ever seen a parent dealing with an obstreperous three-year old?  A time-tested parent trick is to offer the child trivial choices, making the child believe that she is empowered with regard to the endeavor (“Would you like to clean your room before lunch or after lunch?”).  The trick is that the choices function as distractions, whereas the basic outcome is fixed from the get go. 

It’s the same thing with voting.   By the time Election Day rolls around, all of the deal-making has already occurred, much of it according to Byzantine political party procedures detailed by this article.  By the way, political parties are not even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.  Good luck voting for a candidate who doesn’t ally himself with a political party.  The bottom line is that you get to vote for this corporate money corrupted candidate or that corporate money corrupted candidate.  It’s your choice!   That is the essence of the “freedom” to vote, that you have a choice that is not much of a choice at all.  

Why isn’t it a wide open field?  Because the whole process is corrupted by money (And see here and here). And because most highly qualified people want nothing to do with politics. And because even good people can be swift-boated into ignominy.  I recently disparaged the belief in free will.  The faux vote is a good example of how things feel wide open free when they are anything but (I can vote for this candidate or that one or I can throw away my vote on a write-in candidate).  The political system treats adult voters like three-year-olds.  

It’s called the American Dream because “you have to be asleep to believe it.”

I’ve rarely agreed so many times in four short minutes.

The great thing about America is that anyone can step up and run for high office.  This is technically true, at least.  

The horrible thing about America is that most sane people wouldn’t dare run for any high office.

I’ve been watching a bit of the ongoing campaign for President.  I’ve been disappointed and saddened, for the most part.  I think the system ruins those people with good intentions.  Further, I think that we’re not seeing the most capable people standing up to run for office.

I know some extremely intelligent and good-hearted people who would make excellent political leaders.  Really, I know at least a dozen such people.  They wouldn’t dare run for high office, however, and I can’t blame them.   In fact, almost all intelligent people are discouraged from running by the system itself.   The fact that our political system discourages the best and brightest (at least 99% of them) from running for high political office is arguably the biggest threat to our democracy.   

The evidence?  Almost everyone in Congress sits on his/her hands, while we attack Iraq.  Here’s another:  Our congress eternally is afraid to deal with two of the biggest issues facing us:  media reform and campaign finance reform.  Not to mention health care, social security, meaningful energy policy and dozens of other major issues.

Here is how the system filters out the people it most desperately needs.  To be a politician, you need to be willing to do the following:

• You’ll constantly need hit people up for big money, i.e., you’ll need to engage in rampant bribery on an unimaginable scale. 
• You’ll need to pretend that you’re not selling out your electorate when you spend all of time taking in all of that campaign money.
• You’ll need to successfully squeeze people and businesses for big money—lots and lots of money.  You’ll spend at least have your time in office raising money.  If you don’t do that corrupt work well, you’ll soon be out of office.
• You’ll need to be willing to almost always say what you don’t mean.
• By being an politician, you’ll invite vicious attacks on yourself, your spouse, your children and your friends (the kinds of attacks that turn war heroes into villains & people who go AWOL into war heroes).
• You’ll need to give up much of your privacy and you’ll be hounded and attacked whenever you are in public.
• You’ll probably need to live away from your permanent home for extended periods.
• You’ll need to pretend that you are without flaws or a flawed history.
• You’ll need to commit yourself to a frenetic schedule, giving up much of what you enjoy doing.
• Because you probably don’t have professional-honed presentation skills (you aren’t proficient in front of a camera), you will be ridiculed for that reason.
• You’ll clamor for media attention like you were a heroin addict and the media outlets were pushers.
• You’ll need to be willing to publicly reveal your personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, good motives and lack of evil motives for everything you do and say.  All of these will be pried open for endless doses of accusation and ridicule. 

What kind of person is still willing to run for high office, even after considering these hurdles?  For the most part, the kind of person who is so dysfunctionally driven that they will never have enough power and notoriety.   Sure, sprinkle in a few true-blue heroes, a few people who are honorable, humble, intelligent and not duplicitous, but don’t expect them to step up and serve. Or if they do serve, expect the system to destroy their integrity within a couple of years.

Campaign finance reform is the most important, but not the only, solution to this horrible situation.  It might take a second American Revolution to clean up this mess. 

E.g., Don’t hold your breath that the Democrats will save us.  Or that anyone will.  It might take something far more dramatic.  Perhaps something revolutionary.  But it’s going to require far more than sitting around watching our TV’s to make it happen.

Marty Kaplan is a really smart media-reform and political-reform guy who tells it like it is.  In this recent piece in Huffpo, titled “Our Years of Magical Thinking,” Kaplan worries that too many of us have the attitude that good things will simply happen.  It is a pervasive and dangerous attitude.  I agree with him.  For the most part, good things take planning, sacrifice and hard work.  Bad things often just happen.   It takes a lot of effort to build something.  On the other hand, mere decay and neglect can bring it down.

Politically, we now face many huge struggles but there is no indication that the key players (all of us are key players some of the time) are willing to do what it takes to effect real change for the better:

Today, magical thinking is the belief that a Democratic White House and a filibuster-proof Congress is all that stands between the country and meaningful political reform. Is it really credible that elected officials who got to Washington without making campaign finance reform and media reform their signature issues will risk their incumbencies to force the only kind of change that can rescue democracy from the dangers the Founders warned us about, no matter who’s in charge?

Why is “magical thinking” dangerous?   It’s because people who believe in magic are lazy and naïve.  They are all too willing to trust the next seller of political snake oil.  As Kaplan writes:  “What haunts me is the possibility that Americans will one day decide that there is something so inherently dysfunctional about our political system that rolling the dice on non-democratic change is the only hope to rescue it.”

I also agree with Kaplan that media reform and campaign reform are huge issues that urgently need help.  In fact, without first addressing these two festering problems, it will be one hundred times harder to have the necessary national conversation to fix any other complex national issue (there are dozens–take you pick).  Sorry to end this on this depressing note.  Perhaps I’ve just been reading too much about what the candidates aren’t discussing . . .

The federal government’s decision to lay a subpoena on Michael Moore provides a psychological insight (not a new insight) into the Bush Administration. The suboena probably has something to do with Moore’s visit to Cuba.  

American law doesn’t prohibit Americans from visiting Cuba, but it does prohibit American citizens spending their own money in Cuba.   As I understand the law does allow certain non-profit organizations to take your money before you land in Cuba and they can spend money to feed and house you.  So, perhaps, Bush is trying to nail Moore on this law.   Or maybe it’s something else.  We just don’t know yet.  It is interesting that numerous Americans visit Cuba every year without a subpoena (just Google “Cuba” and “vacation,” yet Moore gets nailed when he goes to Havana. 

The “why” is obvious. Michael Moore has driven a harpoon through a gaggle of corrupt politicians with Sicko.  And we do know that Bush & Co. are vengeful, small-minded megalomaniacal and fascist control freaks. 

The question on my mind is how many insurance company executives can the federal prosecutors possibly finagle onto a jury?  I ask this because the prosetor will desperately need them to convict Moore of anything. But there just aren’t enough of those high-salaried executives out there to outnumber the millions of common citizens who know from personal experience that Moore is largely speaking truth when he tells us that the American health care system is inefficient, incredibly expensive, exclusionary, and often corrupt.  Oh, and here’s another thing.   Many of the competent federal prosecutors have been fired anyway–because they were competent.   So who’s going to try this federal case against Michael Moore?

And what will result from this subpeona, no matter what it is really about?   It will make Michael Moore into a victim/hero.  It will be a world-class promotion for people to go see Sicko.  The prosecution of Michael Moore will go nowhere.  What is accomplished by this new subpoena is that Americans have been reminded of what a petty-minded vindictive man sits in the Oval Office.  We saw this same vindictiveness before, when the Administration outed Valerie Plame.

Moore dared to embarrass the Republicans (and many Democrats) with Sicko. He did his work in a way that is resonating across American.  Millions of Americans are now asking why we can’t afford to guarantee every American citizen a decent level of medical care.  In Sicko, the scene with six- and seven-figure healthcare campaign contributions superimposed over many of our most powerful elected officials drew gasps and derision at the theater I attended.  That’s political blood in the water and the citizens are moving in.   

Here’s another thing that Moore did to embarrass Bush:  By going into Cuba and showing (by walking down the street and being treated kindly by the people, including the doctors) Moore exploded the myth that Cuba is a hideous place, simply because it remains “Communist.”  If anything, Moore’s scenes from Cuba made me want to visit Cuba for an extended stay. 

In sum, Bush allowed his reptilian emotions take over when he gave the OK to send out that subpoena (if you don’t think the decision to send it wasn’t cleared on high, think again).   The bottom line is that Bush is going to pay for this one.  Almost no one CARES about technical laws regarding visiting or spending money in Cuba.  This is Michael Moore’s dream to get attacked by the federal government.   It was Osama Bin Laden’s dream to successfully bait Bush enough to cause Bush to expand the war beyond Afghanistan.  

Being easily baited is not the mark of a strong leader. 

In his recent article at Salon.com, “How to fix campaign financing forever for $50,” Farhad Manjoo explores what should be a national priority: campaign finance reform. 

Why should it be a priority?  Because private money corrupts all political dialogue.  It makes us think that politicians are taking The People seriously, when they aren’t.  Our current system of private political donations give birth to the ubiquitous Orwellian political sound bites (e.g., the Clear Sky Law).

Presidential candidates must now start raising at least $2 million a week, or $286,000 every day, including weekends, until the election.  And the sales pitch for the contribution is not anything like this:

Please give me LOTS of money.  In return, I won’t invite you to special gatherings of political and corporate elites.  I won’t answer your phone calls any more than I answer the calls of people who don’t contribute anything.   I won’t have my staff flock to hear your legislative proposals.  All I’ll do is continue representing the interests of all the people.

What doesn’t work to fix the campaign contribution system?  Contribution limits. Manjoo argues that getting around the limits “has become a huge Washington business.” Here’s another thing that doesn’t work: Making politicians disclose who gave what to whom. Manjoo suggests that “sunlight just isn’t so great a disinfectant.”  Information is freely available, but there’s too much of it for the public to digest, or maybe we’re just apathetic.  As if we don’t know that huge energy and financial corporations financed President Bush into office. 

Manjoo writes, however, that there’s already a plan out there that would work.  It’s a plan promoted by two Yale professors, Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres.

The centerpiece of the plan is to give every voter $50 to donate to candidates running for federal office.    All of these campaign donations would be secret, so that political candidates -knows the source of the money they’ve received.  “Anonymous giving means no quid pro quo.”  At $50 each, this plan would cost $6 billion per election cycle. That’s a lot of money.  But consider that we’ve spent 60 times that amount in Iraq so far, a war that (I believe) never would have occurred had clean-money politicians occupied federal office.  Consider all of the other waste and lost chances that occur because our national dialogue is corrupted by political money.

That $60 billion can be expected to fuel the public’s traditional opposition to public financing.  You’ve probably heard it yourself from your neighbors: “Why should we give more money to those damned politicians?”  (more…)

In my opinion, two issues which overshadow all other issues: media reform and public financing of political campaigns. Why?

Without these two reforms, public information will continue to be dishonest information. The media and those running for national public office will continue to present a picture warped by corporate (purely financial) interests. This is a recipe for disaster. Corporations “care” about making money. Corporations don’t care about individual liberties, except to the extent that it helps them make more money. I’m not saying that the people who work for corporations are necessarily moral monsters. I’m only saying that when those (often good and decent) people are sitting behind their corporate desks, they know that their primary job is to make the balance sheet look good.

Corporate power in both of these arenas, then, should be minimized. Instead, they dominate. Currently, big corporate money determines what is news and what isn’t. Big corporate money tells us who will run for national office and who won’t. It’s that simple.

When we vote in November, it admittedly feels like a choice. But it is always a choice between two candidates who have been pre-chosen based on their abilities to beg for enough corporate money to get their messages out. The People vote only after big corporate money chooses. Why else do most national candidates from both parties take huge donations from most of the same big corporations. Corporations have bought “access” with that big money. And the more “access” they have, the less you and I have. Here’s a clear statement of the problem. and here’s the website of Public Campaign, which includes much more detailed information about why we need to end the current system of legalized bribery.

I’ve decided to take the time to point out major candidates who have staked clear positions in favor of A) Media Reform and B) Public Financing of Campaigns. I’ll be keeping a tally in the coming months. Last week I attended a press conference of Dennis Kucinich, where he strongly supported both reforms.

Today’s featured candidate is John Edwards, who unmitigatedly supports public financing of political campaigns, as indicated by the excerpt from a town hall meeting:

It wasn’t on the original schedule of the National Conference for Media Reform, but Dennis Kucinich agreed to hold a press conference tonight.  Kucinich ran for president of the United States in 2004.  He has indicated that he plans to run again in 2008.

I hadn’t ever before been to to a press conference of a presidential candidate.  I learned of it at the last minute.  I packed my press credentials (the media reform conference granted these to me on the basis of this blog), my video camera, a still camera, a pad of paper and a couple pens and dashed to the designated area.

In his prepared remarks, Kucinich pounced on the issue of media reform.  He demonstrated himself to be familiar with many aspects of media reform and the Internet.  In the not-too-distant future, he intends to hold Congressional hearings on media reform (”for an entire week, if necessary”).  He believes that media issues are among the most important issues facing this country today.  In response to a question I asked, Kucinich said he considers the media reform to be closely related to the possibility of campaign finance reform.  At the point when we have more of the former, he said, we will have the opportunity to implement the latter.  Campaign finance reform should take the form of public financing, he asserted.

He invited those attending to submit their ideas for issues to explore at his media reform hearings.  Foremost among those topics will be media ownership.  In response to a question, he indicated he would also consider re-implementing the fairness rule.

Kucinich is intense and dedicated. He demonstrated himself to be well-prepared and highly articulate on each of the issues he addressed tonight. His presentation, including the question-and-answer period, lasted for one hour. 

I attempted to videotape the entire session, though my videotape ran out with only 10 seconds to go.  I plan to post my video of this press conference on this site in the near future.

The press conference wasn’t limited to issues on media Reform.  President Bush’s intentions regarding Iran were discussed at length.  Bush has drawn up plans to attack Iran.  He has moved naval vessels and bunker buster weapons into the area.  US troops have already moved over the border into and out of Iran, in an attempt to provoke Iran to attack the US. According to Kucinich, all of this (and more) is a premeditated and conscious attempt by Bush to provoke Iran to attack the United States, thereby justifying a full scale retaliation.

According to Kucinich, there has been a monumental change in attitude among congressional Republicans.  (more…)