democracy

I was just reading something really interesting:

Facebook users in Washington state will have something else to brag about to their online friends: that they registered to vote on Facebook.

The secretary of state's office said Tuesday it will have an application on its Facebook page that allows residents to register to vote and then "like" the application and recommend it to their friends. It's expected to launch as early as next week.

As soon as I saw that I thought "wow, what an idea!" What Washington is doing is trying to get their citizens more involved in our democracy. They want to make it easier for people to take the necessary steps to engage in their constitutional right to vote.

Voter turnout in the United States averages 67% in a Presidential year. Non-presidential years, it drops below 50%. Our nation, once considered the birthplace of democracy, has dropped to number 55 in voter participation. That is a joke, but one the GOP loves.
Amazing!

Since Republicans had their wave in 2010, a concentrated effort by the right has commenced to make it harder for people to vote. The Republicans know an amazing fact; this country is mostly Democratic. They know that when Democrats get energized and get out to vote that the GOP will lose. So instead of trying to conform more to the views of the people, the GOP has taken to actions to silence the people.

That's a problem.

The mayor of New York hits the nail on the head:

Correcting this imbalance is not easy, but in a growing number of states, budget deficits are being used to justify efforts to scale back not only labor costs, but labor rights. The impulse is understandable; public sector unions all too often stand in the way of reform. But unions also play a vital role in protecting against abuses in the workplace, and in my experience they are integral to training, deploying and managing a professional work force.

And that’s something missing in the current debate. All the focus is on salaries and benefits, yet safety and training are a big issue the unions play a big part in. How about we take a really deadly statistic to prove this?

But an examination of the incidence of coal mine fatalities since 1995 shows that in every year but one fatal accidents occurred in non-union mines at a rate disproportionate–usually much more disproportionate–to the non-union share of the workforce. In other words, unionized mines were much safer.

Safety and training go hand in hand. When unions negotiate, one of the things they push for is better education, especially when it comes to worker safety, but also they push for better safety equipment. A lot of times other concessions are made to achieve this, including salaries and benefits. But that’s something the Walker crowd doesn’t want you to know about. Let’s just go ahead and have more Upper Big Branch mine accidents and fatalities.

And then Bloomberg gets to the heart of the matter:

Wingnut Confederate Yankee:

Go to your Congressman's office and scream at him in the most colorful language possible. Hang him in effigy at protests. If you're willing to do the time for the crime, have a swing at him.

(emphasis added)

And the commenters are even nastier:

I hove no problem targeting these scum or their families. They are targeting mine with this piece of shit law they passed. I believe it was a french philospher, sorry cant spell his name, that said the best form of government is democracy liberally sprinkled with assassination. It appears it is time to start the latter part. Let these ass-hats know that we are displease and will not wait to show our displeasure.

Posted by: Tim in Philly at March 24, 2010 04:02 PM

(and incase it gets deleted, here is the screen grab):

(click for larger view)

I am doing my civic duty and alerting the authorities, as well as the hosting provider of this. It’s time for us to be vigilant and let our law enforcement put an end to this needless call for violence.

A lot of people in the progressive blogosphere are shocked by the passionate disagreements going on over the uncertain fate of health care reform. I for one am not. We are dealing with an issue that will very much affect every single one of us, so people are going to take a much deeper look at the legislation than usual.

Add to that the very different effects it will have on people and the issue gets that much more confusing. A lot has focused on the average family of four living 250% above the poverty line, but what about that family living at 150% or 100% or even 350%? What about the single people out there at varying levels of income.

We’re all bloggers and all very opinionated, and that is a great thing for our democracy. I would never try to push my views of the bill on someone who opposes it, nor would I question their intentions. That restraint is something we haven’t seen to much of.

What I do have a big problem with is some of the dishonesty coming out of the debate. Rather it be intentional or through a casual omission of facts, the point remains that this is a very bad thing.

I really hate singling people out, but in this case I will – one on each side of the debate.

First we have Ezra Klein. Yesterday Ezra wrote a post saying:

And there are, to be sure, some differences. The public option did not survive the Senate. The individual mandate, which Obama campaigned against, was added after key members of Congress and the administration realized that the plan wouldn’t function in its absence. Drug reimportation was defeated, and a vague effort to have government pick up some catastrophic costs was never really mentioned.

And the summed it up with this:

In an op-ed today, John Kerry takes on the useless embargo we have against Cuba:

For nearly 20 years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War took a less bloody but equally hostile form. The United States and Vietnam had no diplomatic relations. Vietnamese assets were frozen. Trade was embargoed. But in 1995 the United States normalized relations with Vietnam. The Cold War had ended, and we even signed a trade deal with a country where 58,000 Americans had given their lives.

The result? A Vietnam that is less isolated, more market-oriented, and, yes, freer — though it has miles to go.

Yet when it comes to a small impoverished island 90 miles off the coast of Florida, we cling to a policy that has manifestly failed for nearly 50 years.

While our Cuba policy has largely stood still, reality has changed dramatically. Today, the Cuban "threat" is a faint shadow, change is afoot in the Cuban leadership, and — importantly — Cuban-Americans increasingly seek broad, far-reaching interaction across the Florida Straits.

We need a Cuba policy that looks forward, brings our strengths to bear, and builds on what works to help the Cuban people shape their country's future.

Democracy in Cuba rightly remains an American policy goal. But for 47 years, our embargo in the name of democracy has produced no democracy at all. Too often, our rhetoric and policies have actually furnished the Castro regime with an all-purpose excuse to draw attention away from its many shortcomings. We have played to Fidel Castro's strengths, not ours.

Read on

Again from NY-23:

We crunched the FEC contribution numbers this afternoon to discover that 95 percent of Hoffman’s donations came from individuals and PACs based outside of the district. (Hoffman himself doesn’t even live in NY-23.) Only $12,360 of the $265,341 he’s raised came from potential constituents. Hoffman collected money from donors in 35 states. Of the total 146 donors, only 22 were actually from within the district he hopes to represent. The campaign’s biggest backer is the Washington-based Club for Growth, accounting for more than one-third of all fundraising ($83,260).

So only 5% of the money he raised was actually from people he would represent. Like I always said – it’s not a democracy, it’s an auction. This just cements that notion in stone.

Larisa has uncovered some very disturbing posts by the right wing crazies:

I was going to add this as an update to my earlier post, but thought it deserved its own post. Apparently, some glue-sniffing types are hoping that our own military will be inspired by the Honduras coup to overthrow our own president in order to save democracy. I kid you not. I have been reading the comments at several blogs and they are mind-blowing.

This is the exact kind of stuff you would expect to hear in some government report. I don’t know what we would call that report. Maybe something about right wing extremists?

Exit question. What would happen if we had our own military try to overthrow a President as popular as Obama? I think we can pretty much imagine it. We would end up with a civil war in this nation. So basically these wingers are advocating for the destruction of the United States of America. Maybe we should keep Gitmo open, just for them.

Bob dug up this interesting list of the top recipients of campaign money from the insurance industry in the House and Senate.

TOP 10 SENATE RECIPIENTS:
McCain, John (R-AZ) $251,834
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $200,200
Baucus, Max (D-MT) $183,750
Lieberman, Joe (I-CT) $101,400
Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) $98,600
Collins, Susan (R-ME) $96,500
Kyl, Jon (R-AZ) $90,450
Warner, Mark (D-VA) $89,700
Hatch, Orrin (R-UT) $85,903
Nelson, Ben (D-NE) $83,300

TOP 10 HOUSE RECIPIENTS:

Cantor, Eric (R-VA) $113,850
Camp, Dave (R-MI) $112,923
Pomeroy, Earl (D-ND) $104,500
Boehner, John (R-OH) $101,200
Deal, Nathan (R-GA) $100,000
Towns, Edolphus (D-NY) $87,750
Rogers, Mike (R-AL) $74,000
Blunt, Roy (R-MO) $72,800
Ryan, Paul (R-WI) $69,000
Tanner, John (D-TN) $68,500

What’s interesting is that those are the same people who oppose any kind of public plan, including Max Baucus, who is one of the Senators in charge of health care reform. If America is supposed to support democracy then we should first learn how to run one.