First check out this exclusive 60 Minutes interview with brother Billy of SleptOn.com.
And to read more about the importance of this year's presidential election, click the link below.
The Most Important Presidential Election Ever. Really.
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce A. Dixon
Every four years we hear that the current presidential election is undoubtedly the most important one in our lifetimes, perhaps the most significant in all the long history of the republic. We heard it (and some of us said it) four years ago and will say it four years from now. And two years hence we will entertain each other with that famous blast from the past about how the current midterm elections are the most key and crucial midterm contests ever. Bet on it. Everybody says it, every two and four years, so it must be at least a little but true, right?
The idea of the vote is a potent and powerful idea, one that has seized hold of human political imaginations worldwide. All over this planet, ordinary people will work and organize and suffer and fight and die for the right to vote. At the dawn of the 21st century it's rare to find anybody, anyplace on earth who would suggest that people should not have the right to vote in elections that freely choose their rulers. Even the most despotic and least democratic ruling elites are forced to conduct sham elections to bolster their own legitimacy. Thus battle for the idea of the vote has been one.
The struggles now are over whether ordinary people will be able to exercise their right to vote, and whether their choices in elections will have any meaning. These battles are far from won. The Indian killers, the northern slave traders and the southern slave masters who wrote the US Constitution restricted the vote to white males with property, and didn't trust even this group. Originally they elected state legislators and those legislators elected senators and presidents. Ordinary people pushed back, and in the two centuries since women, the descendants of slaves and remaining Native Americans and others are now permitted to vote.
For their part, our American elites have fight back on multiple fronts, first to restrict who can vote, and to limit which candidates under what circumstances can run for office and whether their messages are allowed to reach the public. The wave of spurious voter purges, new restrictions on voter registration drives, ballot access laws that bar any candidates apart from Republicans and Democrats, and a privately owned public media system that only allows candidates with loads of money to get their messages out all operate to limit, frustrate and make our votes irrelevant.
For a long time too, our American elites have worked to take more and more matters that affect our daily lives outside the realm where elections and the vote can affect them all. Although the airwaves, along with the cable, internet and phone rights of way are owned by the public in the US, all these are in private hands. You can't vote your phone or cable bill down, and you can't vote to extend free internet access to schools and colleges in your town or city. The federal government charges broadcast TV station licensees in big markets like New York and Los Angeles nothing for their licenses worth billions of dollars, enforces no meaningful public services obligations upon them, and without public knowledge or approval has granted them $80 billion worth of new digital TV channels. Port and airport authorities and other unelected public bodies are brought into existence to levy taxes and spend public money with little accountability, and in the last two decades hundreds of government functions, from child support enforcement to fleet management to conduct of the elections, prisons and the military itself have been placed in the hands of unaccountable private corporations --- privatized.
So the terrain of the struggle for real democracy has indeed shifted. It goes far beyond the vote. But still, the vote matters.
Like the last several US presidential elections, this is one in which the idea of the vote, the idea that people do still have the right to determine our collective destiny, is more important than the choices we actually have. Four years ago more than sixty percent of the American people favored a speedy withdrawal from the war in Iraq, a national health care system and more funding for public education. Thanks to ballot access and campaign finance laws, and a privately owned media system that restricts the messages which reach voters, Americans were forced to choose between a pro-war Republican and a pro-war Democrat, both of whom favored letting private insurance companies run our health care system, and both of whom supported the cynically misnamed "No Child Left Behind" legislation facilitating the de-funding and privatization of public education.
Issue
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Obama
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McCain
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McKinney
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Nader
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Let's bail out Wall Street speculators!
|
Supported the bailout – called dozens of members of congress, including the black caucus, urging them to switch their votes. Talks about tweaking the bailout terms if he's elected. Maybe.
Score: 1
|
Liked it so much he offered to “suspend” his campaign in support of it.
Score: 0
|
Bad idea. Need to nationalize the entire operations of many banks and wipe the phony debts clean and bail out ordinary people, not Wall Street speculators.
Score: 4
|
Let's privatize public education!
|
Continues to support Bush's “No Child Left Behind privatization bill.
Score: 1
|
Voted for Bush's “No Child Left Behind” and openly supports privatization.
Score: 0
|
Although McKinney initially voted for it, both have called No Child Left Behind what it is, a trojan horse aimed at discrediting, de-funding and ultimately privatizing public education.
Score: 4
|
Single payer health care!
|
Claims health care is “a right” but will keep insurance companies in charge of it.
Score: 2
|
Doesn't believe there is even a health care crisis.
Score: 0
|
Like sixty percent of US doctors polled, McKinney and Nader both support single payer health care, taking insurance companies, which sop up a third of our health care dollars, out of the mix.
Score: 4
|
Let the government lock up whoever it wants for as long as it wants, and maybe torture them too.
|
Obama campaigned against the Patriot Act, but voted for it once in office.
Score: 1
|
McCain supports all manner of preventive detention, torture, the whole mess.
Score: 0
|
This goes beyond the Constitution. It amounts to repealing the Magna Carta. A really bad idea.
Score: 4
|
Let the government listen to and intercept any communications between anybody it wants.
|
Obama promised to lead opposition to FISA, but voted for it anyway.
Score: 0
|
No surprise here.
Score: 0
|
Both Nader and McKinney urged Democrats to fulfill their earlier pledges to filibuster this legislation.
Score: 4
|
Clean coal? Safe nukes? Sounds like a plan...
|
Takes lots of money from coal and nuclear power lobbies, although he sometimes admits nukes are not all that safe.
Score: 1
|
No surprise here.
Score: 0
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There is no such thing as “clean coal” and safe nuclear energy has always been a myth. Nukes are also horrendously expensive, since private insurance companies won't insure them.
Renewable and sustainable energy has to leave out both coal and nukes.
Score: 4
|
Should we withdraw all US forces from Iraq?
|
Only “combat brigades”, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, and maybe Pakistan.
Score: 0
|
Maybe in a hundred years.
Score: 0
|
Bring them all home in six months or less. Pay reparations for the massive destruction of human lives and infrastructure.
Score: 4
|
Should we withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan?
|
We are losing, so we should send more troops/
Score: 0
|
We are winning, so we should send more troops.
Score: 0
|
Bring them all home in six months or less. Pay reparations for the massive destruction of human lives and infrastructure.
Score: 4
|
Let's threaten Iran with nuclear annihilation.
|
Let's talk to them while we threaten them.
Score: 1
|
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.
Score: 0
|
Bad idea. Withdraw the fleet and bring the troops home from the Middle East, period.
Score: 4f
|
Let's threaten the Russians with missile bases right on their borders.
|
Good idea. McCain isn't tough enough on the Russians.
Score: 0
|
Good idea. Obama;s not tough enough on the Russians.
Score: 0
|
Another bad idea, maybe the mother of many bad ideas. We don't need another cold or hot war with the Russians. They probably don't need it either.
Score: 4
|
Let's blockade Cuba some more. And Gaza too, while we're at it.
|
Serves those Palestinians and Cubans right for choosing the wrong leaders.
Score: 0
|
Really dumb idea, and criminal besides. Blockades are collective punishment and against international law. The blockade of Cuba hasn't worked anyway, and people are starving in Gaza.
Score: 4
|
The US spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
|
Not enough. The US empire needs more weapons, needs to fight multiple wars at the same time in different parts of the world.
Score: 0
|
It's time to spend less on the military and more on human beings and human needs.
Score: 4
|
Creating jobs and raising the wages of existing workers.
|
Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act, but will only mention it in front of union audiences, suggesting that it's not anything he'll fight over.
Score: 2
|
No surprises here.
Score: 0
|
Both support the repeal of Taft-Hartley, which would make many kinds of organizing legal again that haven't been for 6
0 years.
Score: 4
|
On NAFTA, WTO and so-called “free trade” agreements
|
Mumbles a little about more favorable terms for labor., and even voted against one of several “free trade” bills, but won't repeal NAFTA, and claims to be a firm believer in “free trade”.
Score: 1
|
No suprises here.
Score: 0
|
Nader and McKinney both affirm that there is no such thing as “free trade”, and so-called “free trade” agreements are really investor rights agreements, and should be done away with.
Score: 4
|
On ending the bogus “war on terror.
|
Obama pretends to believe that the “war on terror” is real. And that makes it real enough.
Score: 0
|
For McCain, the war on terror is the organizing principle of American life for the next century or more.
Score: 0
|
McKinney and Nader will both tell you that the “war on terror” is an excuse to wage resource wars, to subvert economies and invade nations at will.
Score: 4
|
On America's social policy of black mass incarceration.
|
When speaking before black audiences, Obama will admit the fact of black mass incarceration, but mostly seems to blame black people for it.
Score: 1
|
Forget it. And let's have privatized, faith-based prisons while you're at it.
Score: 0
|
Both of them affirm that the mass incarceration of black people has long been social policy in the US, a failed and malevolent experiment that needs to end, and soon.
Score: 4
|
Counting every vote, and making sure every vote is counted
|
Obama is mum on theft-prone voting machines, and silent on the need for paper ballots.- If pressed, he will reluctantly defend ACORN. Maybe.
Score” 1
|
You gotta be kidding.
Score: 0
|
McKinney and Nader have consistently called for paper ballots to take the place of theft-prone voting machines, as has taken place in Canada.
Score: 4
|
TOTAL SCORE
|
Obama: 12 out of 80.
|
McCain: a perfect 0
|
Cynthia McKinney: a perfect 80
Ralph Nader: a perfect 80
|
Thanks to a privately owned media system that prevents campaign messages dissenting from the corporate status quo from reaching more than a tiny fraction of voters, neither Nader nor McKinney will be contenders. All the available polling indicates that Obama will win the election, even though McKinney and Nader are far closer to the actual opinions of voters on issues ranging from health care to foreign policy and education, and economic policy. The election, if it isn't stolen, will do what elections do, and confer legitimacy upon the administration in power.
So the issues don't matter much. And with so little difference between the two main candidates, even the candidates don't matter much either. What makes this the most important election yet is that the integrity of US election processes themselves are under attack as never before. The Republicans have unleashed an all-out assault on voter registration, launched wholesale purges and spurious prosecutions, and engineered the computerized theft of many contests in the last decade. Democrats have done and are doing little to stop them, and this includes the leader of the Democratic party, Barack Obama.
No matter who wins or steals or whatever, the most important thing is what we do after November 4. Elections do not solve problems or usher in vast social changes. Mass movements do that. As we said back in 2005:
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It’s time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.
That will be our job, no matter who wins on November 4.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and is based in Atlanta GA. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
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