Real Voting

While the Koch brothers do their fund raising and Obama Bashing and the Faux Nooz folks yammer on about their non-movement strategy for the up coming session of congress, there is a real disgust surfacing in many ways from ordinary people.  One of the thoughts that I am sure you may have had is that you do not want to be part of either party.  You may want to be an independent or decide to be part of a third party.  I have been pondering what that means for quite awhile now because in some ways I went down that road several years ago.

In the 70's and 80's I was leaning toward Libertarianism but was a Republican.  In Arizona that slowly became problematic because the Republican party started drifting to places I did not want to go.  When the anti-science, pro-radical-Christian-religionism took hold of the Arizona party and started putting stuff in the in-box for legislation to ban abortions (never mind who pays for it), gay bans, lowering the minimum wage, arresting and detaining the homeless and on and on and on, I stayed with the party because of, it turns out to be a mistaken idea, the belief that Republicans were the fiscally conservative stance.  It was not that I was against bigger government so much as that I wanted controls on government growth.  That was wrong headed but at the time I did not fully realize how and why it was wrong headed.  The sentiment was that, "government was the problem," as Ronald Reagan said.  That was not exactly where I was coming from but it was where that sentiment was leading.  As the so called Moral Majority took hold it was harder and harder to be the new form of Republican.  All this was before Fox news and the heavy handed commentators slamming their guests.  It was easier to have a political discussion then.

Leaving out the middle stuff for the moment here is where it led.  As a fiscal conservative I abandoned the Republican party in most ways but still called myself one (sorry it was true).  I experimented with the idea that perhaps the Green Party or the Nader group wold lead somewhere but here is what that brought me to.  The Electoral College does not have a single vote that will elect a President from one of the third party choices.  Not one.

To effect policy or to promote the common good what we vote for (or against) comes through one of the two "real" parties.  That was when I looked harder at what the basis of the two parties was really about.  The light bulb went on and I came to embrace the Democratic party as a still fiscally conservative person.  That does not mean what you might think... in fact currently I am leaning more and more toward the progressive end of the scale.  Yes, I "admit it" and realize that there is not a single electoral college vote for progressives either.  There are votes for Dem's who happen to be more progressive.   

The next thing to explore would be the deeper history of the country and what and how the lessons of the past will effect us all.  Rereading the Constitution is a great place to start.

Money Creeps In

So, by now you know who the Koch brothers are.  Between them it is estimated that they have a combined net worth of $22 Billion and that their father was one of the founding members of the John Birch Society.  They have continued Papa's work by throwing money into all sorts of political corners through Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party.  The reach for these guys is incredible and goes all through our landscape... even down to the school board level and up through Congress.  Their goals seem to include taking apart anything that government has a hand in helping us all do together.  Here's one example of how this works:

Kock brothers behind the destruction of school policy. 

One of the ways to combat them is to take a few pages out their playbook and go at it in the same way they do.  Thom Hartmann had suggested this a while back.

Become the Precinct Chair in Democratic districts.  What you then have is the power to name who will go on the ballot (especially for the primaries).  The training ground for any of this would be local office, including school districts and city councils.  The way this works is by, in many places, getting ten signatures and the local party has the list of possible Democrats to talk to (and ask to sign your petition) so that you can do this job of Precinct Chair.  The way that the Tea Party took over the Republican party so effectively was that they put themselves into this position and then packed all or most of the possibilities with Tea Party candidates.  If you did the same in the Democratic structure but putting forward Progressives and Liberals you would effectively leave centrist candidates on the sidelines.  Then the dialog would shift a touch left.  The reason, basically, that it is necessary to shift left is that the Republicans have shifted so far right as to be over the horizon.  The little secret here is that it is not expensive for a normal person to get that level of control.  What is difficult is seeing clearly enough to be effective at that job.