I have begun a political blog called "Understated Priorities"-- it's at www.understatedpriorities.blogspot.com
It is mostly entries from reference books on the topic of politics: quotes, aphorisms, poems and a lot more. I discuss each entry and am open for your comments, too. Current posts included:
Here is your opportunity to reflect on the major thoughts related to government, politics and people. Enjoy!
David Weller
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I'm excited to share a new place to communicate and read the latest political news headlines: All Things Reform Netvibes Universe page. It is free and open to the public to use 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week. I've spent quite a bit of time adding/dropping modules, rearranging them, changing colors, module sizes, etc.; I consider our public page now out of "beta" stage.
The purpose of All Things Reform's Netvibes is to encourage free and easy ways to communicate online to share the government reform message, and to easily keep up with the latest news headlines from the best sources.
Communications features:
Political news features:
Of course, the internet is always evolving with the introduction of new technologies, so I reserve the need to update the page as required. However, it is now ready to use at your leisure to help you in your political reform activism. Enjoy!
Sphere: Related ContentCitizens Against Government Waste is returning to a fight in Congress they thought they had already won-- open and competitive bidding in the defense procurement process. Yet, despite a scandal, a massive federal fine, and even criminal penalties for some of those involved, Boeing Co. is once again trying to use its political connections in Congress to secure an Air Force refueling tanker contract.
While the $35 billion cost to taxpayers of the tanker contract is significant, more is at stake in this battle than dollars and cents. Letting Congress disrupt the competitive procurement process will set a dangerous precedent for all future federal contracts. Members of Congress will simply select their favored pet contractors, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or the impact on our Armed Forces.
Please tell your U.S. Representative and Senators today that you won’t stand for this blatant political manipulation, by sending a customizeable letter from CAGW's website. Or, call them directly through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Thank you
The Center for Public Integrity has released a report titled "The Buying of the President 2008". They will release a new chapter every month in five parts over the course of a week. The first month's chapter is now coming online.
Every four years, the Center’s The Buying of the President investigates how money shapes presidential campaigns. The 2008 edition explores the roles that money and special interests play in presidential politics — a behind-the-scenes examination of everything from how the major candidates and their parties raise money to the ins and outs of opposition research and the spoils that go with a term in the Oval Office.
The web site, www.buyingofthepresident.org, is just one of many reports published and online at CPI. Check them out, for in-depth research on critical government reform issues.
We have a new Political Calendar at the top of this blog in the left column. It is a reminder for the average citizen on what to look forward to in Washington DC over the next year or so. If you click on a link, you will be taken to more information about the particular special day(s).
It will of course be continuously updated and improved with political dates of use to the US citizen.
Presented by the Center on Communication Leadership at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Ceasefire! Bridging the Political Divide is a forum for exploring ways to improve political dialogue and decision making at all levels.
Convened by Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the conference features a keynote address by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The program also features remarks by Governor Janet Napolitano, chair of the National Governors Association and two important panel discussions featuring key journalists, political strategists, philanthropists, and non-profit community leaders.
Free webcasts are still available for internet viewing for the June 18-19, 2007 Los Angeles forum.
CREW, a public advocacy organization, has issued a press release concerning the Bush legacy of politicizing civil rights-- the Civil Rights Commission is stacked with partisans.
Washington, DC – This morning, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) hosted a press conference call with the NAACP and MALDEF to demand that U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey rescind a Bush legal memo that authorized deceptive appointments of exclusively partisan Republicans to the bipartisan Civil Rights Commission.
The letter, signed by LCCR, CREW, NAACP, MALDEF, National Women’s Law Center, National Partnership for Women & Families, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Congress of American Indians and the ACLU is online:
http://www.civilrights.org/library/advocacy-letters/usccr-letter.html
In order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Bush Justice Department wrote a memo allowing Republican members of the Commission to switch their party affiliation to “independent.” That allowed the president to appoint more Republicans to the bipartisan eight person commission under the guise that they were somehow “independent,” allowing the Bush administration to circumvent the law requiring that no more than four members of any party serve on the commission.
During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey pledged to review “significant” decisions of the Office of Legal Counsel to ensure that such decisions were “sound, soundly reasoned, soundly based.” Allowing this deception in the appointment process was neither sound, soundly reasoned or soundly based and is a continuation of the Bush administration's legacy of undermining the credibility and subverting Congress' intent to retain the commission's independence and bipartisan membership
Mukasey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
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The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living offers a free weekly thoughts newletter of Thomas Merton, a famous 20th Century American monk. The Sep. 3rd issue strikes to the heart of what All Things Reform is about-- ethics and politics. Here Merton in his later years speaks of it, not as an agenda of a program with a definite beginning and ending, but as a way of life.
The Merton Reflection for the Week of September 3, 2007
"[Reading Chuang Tzu, I wonder seriously if the wisest answer (on the human level, apart from the answer of faith) is not beyond both ethics and politics. It is a hidden answer; it defies analysis and cannot be embodied in a program. Ethics and politics, of course: but only in passing, only as a "night's lodging." There is a time for action, a time for "commitment," but never for total involvement in the intricacies of a movement. There is a time of innocence and kairos, when action makes a great deal of sense. But who can recognize such moments? Not he who is debauched by a series of programs. And when all action has become absurd, shall one continue to act simply because once, a long time ago, it made a great deal of sense? As if one were always getting somewhere? There is a time to listen, in the active life as everything else, and the better part of action is waiting, not knowing what is next, and not having a glib answer."
Thomas Merton. Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday, 1966: 173.
Thought to Remember
"A postulant who has come to the end of his rope and wants to leave, but who has been dissuaded (not by me), stands in the novitiate library leafing through a book called Relax and Live. Sooner or later it comes to that."
Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander: 173
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has released it's third annual Beyond DeLay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch). This is an opportunity for all constituents (and future voters) to check to see if their Congressmen is on the list.
Reminder: every citizen of the U.S. is a constituent (has representatives in elective offices from the local to the national levels.) Become familiar with yours; I particularly am an active correspondent with my U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators. The white widget on the left panel of this page will take you to your own public servants' websites.
I make a point of reading on a daily basis several political reform blogs; one in particular I like is the Public Campaign Action Fund blog-- it promotes Public Campaign's work for public financing of elections. Clean elections is indeed the solution to many of today's campaign ethics problems on the federal, state and other levels of government.
It's not common I commit a whole post to another person's post and comments, but since it includes a comment by yours truly, I wanted to share this one from Public Campaign's own, Kathy Schlieper.
Joel S. Hirschhorn has just published an informative analysis on political reform-- it concerns the common practice, during a low voter turnout, of voting for "the lesser of two evils". It's conventional wisdom for people on general election day to vote against the more "evil" candidate, by voting for only an alternative major candidate. Most of those times, there are just the two nominees from the major political parties-- a Democrat and a Republican-- that are on the ballot, as well.
As a former National Press Secretary for the Reform Party, I'm well aware of the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the two-party system in these United States. Ultimately, voters should select candidates in the primaries and on general election day who are honest and accountable, and who are qualified for each of the respective open seats; this applies to all of levels of government, from the local to federal. And, the duopolistic major parties should present to the people their most qualified candidates, who are honest and accountable, as well as the minor parties such as the Libertarians, the Green Party and the Constitution Party.
Mr. Hirschhorn has a book out right now as well, entitled "Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government". It promotes several political reforms which, put together, conditions our electoral system for cleaner, more responsible elections.
According to the first Global Peace Index, the United States is ranked 96th out of 121 countries in its peacefulness, and in the drivers that create and sustain that peace. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the country intelligence division of The Economist Group that publishes The Economist newspaper, compiled the Index. They measured countries' peacefulness based on a wide range of indicators - 24 in all - including ease of access to "weapons of minor destruction" (guns, small explosives), military expenditure, local corruption, and the level of respect for human rights.
I'm surprised it took this long to rank countries based on such an important topic. The only other powerful indicators of world peace might be the Nobel Peace Prize and Amnesty International; also, the Carter Center, headed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter reports its own findings, from its "waging peace" around the world.
The troubled U.S. government openness and transparency conditions contributed significantly to its low ranking. A high level of trust between public officials and the general public only exists when our candidates, who run for office, are both honest and accountable; this would be especially attainable in a national electoral system that is fair and equitable among its political parties.
Campaigns come and go, but the people never change. They move at their own pace in their own direction. It is up to the leaders to do the right thing. I'm not talking about being correct-- it is that leadership is thoughtful and humble in its responsibilities.
As for the people, they're not right all of the time. But in crises they do what is correct.
In 2008, do what is correct-- vote for true leadership.
TIME's Real Clear Politics is an example of the backwardness in American politics today-- they claim that the reason Ron Paul shouldn't be in the Republican Party debates is because he is a libertarian-- not a rightist. That kind of reasoning is bad politics-- not open politics.
Another good example of power grab politics is the way the redistricting process was handled in Texas a few years ago. Then U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from Sugarland, Texas, bullied his peers in the Texas legislature into passing a biased political re-alignment of U.S. House districts in Texas.
For the good of the country, let us progress in electoral politics. True leadership by our two major parties-- the Democrats and the Republicans-- respects constructive ideas, even if it's from a political minority. A flourishing of parties in the political process is a sign of a healthy republic.
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