THIS IS JIM HIGHTOWER SAYING . . .
EVERYONE'S VOTE SHOULD COUNT
Here's a radical idea: In a democracy, your vote ought to be counted. No matter how you feel about Al Gore, George Bush, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, or anyone else in the recent presidential squabble, the ones who really matter are the citizens who cast their ballots with the innocent assumption that those ballots would be treated as the inviolate expression of each voter's will. Yet . . . stuff happened on November 7th.
Poor Florida. It's now the poster child for electoral chicanery and incompetence. Though it's far from being the only state with bizarre ballots, antiquated machinery, and sloppy procedures, Florida's bizarreness, antiquation, and sloppiness has put the very legitimacy of a presidential election in question . . . and disenfranchised thousands of its citizens.
You want bizarre? Some 3,000 Jewish voters in Palm Beach "voted" for Pat Buchanan! What, Yassar Arafat wasn't on the ballot? These people meant to vote for Gore, but the punch-card ballot was so convoluted that those who punched the hole next to Gore's name inadvertently voted for Buchanan. Then there's Daytona Beach, not previously known to be a bastion of socialism, yet nearly 10,000 presidential votes there inexplicably ended up in the column of the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party.
Most bizarre of all, though, is the performance of George W. Bush, who went to federal court to negate a state law that would allow a manual recount of some of Florida's machine-counted ballots. Bush claimed that machines don't make mistakes like humans do--obviously a guy who's never had to deal with his own phone and credit card bills.
What happened to Bush's noisy campaign rhetoric about how he's opposed to "litiginous liberals" who're always running to lawyers, about how he opposes "federal intrusion into a state's affairs," about how he always "trusts the people," and about how he'll never "leave anyone behind." Just rhetoric, apparently.
The Crucial Missing Ballots
One thing that the woeful presidential race and its untidy aftermath made clear is that no matter which guy ultimately prevailed, we wouldn't have to bother finding space on Mt. Rushmore for another face.
The establishment media, however, can't stop telling us how historic and exciting it is that George and Al essentially tied, and all media attention has been riveted on Florida, with its messy vote counts, recounts, and no-counts. But while they've endlessly scrutinized a few thousand votes in the Sunshine State, they've completely missed a more telling story about some 100 million votes that also went astray in this election.
These are the ballots of almost half of the American electorate who chose NOT to vote, mostly because they felt there's little difference between Bush and Gore and that both would service the money powers rather than serve the people. Those who did vote mostly were the affluent who have prospered under the Wall Street boom, while non-voters mostly are those middle- and low-income families who have been hit with downsizing, stagnant wages, job-killing trade scams, the family farm crisis, and other assaults from both Wall Street and Washington.
The "democratic crisis"in our country is not about some messed-up ballots in Florida, but about a messed-up, two-party system that represents the few and excludes the many. Let's do the math:
·52% of the electorate either didn't vote or voted third party;
·That left 48% casting ballots for Bush or Gore;
·They split this vote evenly, giving both about 24 %;
·But at least half of their votes were not from people who actually support them, but from people voting against the other guy.
This means Bush and Gore each have the support of only about 12% of the American people. To have a president who is the choice of only a thin, wealthy slice of the American public is not to have a democracy, but a plutocracy. Time for us to build a new politics that is of, by, and for the left-out majority.
Bush's Big Mess in Texas
George W. Bush keeps saying he wants to do for the national government what he's done for Texas government. Dial 9-1-1 right now!
Bush's state government is a wreck, full of mismanagement and ethics scandals. The Texas governorship is one of the weakest in America, yet W. has proven inadequate to handle even this light load.
Start with the Texas department of housing. "It's a genuine, certifiable mess," says a Bush financial backer who has dealt with it. He says he brought the agency's problems to the attention of Bush's office two years ago, but was ignored. Other officials are not ignoring it, however-the state auditor, a bipartisan legislative committee, the FBI, the IRS, and a grand jury have been probing into this department. Even the head of the department, a developer hand-picked by Bush, resigned amid charges that he was ramming through inferior projects and giving preference to a select few developers, including some of his former business cronies.
In 1999, another top official in the housing agency steered a million-dollar contract to a company . . . and shortly thereafter got a job with this very same company. Then came Florita Bell Griffin, a Bush appointee to the housing board who was arrested and indicted in June for awarding lucrative agency tax credits to a company in which she secretly was a partner-a deal worth half a million bucks to her.
Asked about Bush's housing mess, an aide airily replied that the governor "can't make everything a priority."
OK, but how about his $610 million state budget overrun, the $440 million in unspent funds for children's health care, the state auditors' report on "gross fiscal mismanagement in Bush's economic development office . . ." and other cases of self-dealing and cronyism in the health department, lottery commission, university investment boards, and elsewhere? Before he gets promoted, shouldn't George W. Bush have to clean up the mess he's made of Texas state government?
Clean Up Politics With Clean Money
Pssst. Hey, Bucko . . . step over here. Would you like to have your voice and vote count in politics again? Well, I've got a deal for you, Bucko--just put up five dollars, and you can get your government back from the greedheads and boneheads!
No, this is not a come-on, but a legitimate way for We the People to reclaim our democracy at a cost of no more than five bucks each per election year. It's called the "Clean Money Option," and the people of Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont already have voted it into effect for their state elections. This year, Missouri and Oregon have Clean Money initiatives on their ballots, put there by ordinary citizens who want candidates to compete on their ideas and qualifications, not on the size of their campaign contributions.
These initiatives provide public financing of state elections (from the governorship to legislative seats) for candidates who voluntarily agree not to take private funds. In Oregon, Measure 6 provides $25,000 in the primary elections for all House candidates who qualify, then $50,000 each to the general election candidates, including third-party candidates.
Wait a minute, you say: "Why the hell give our tax dollars to politicians?" Hello. We already give all our tax dollars to politicians for them to allocate each year, billions of which go to do favors for their big campaign contributors. We'll save these billions by eliminating those special interest contributors.
With every voter putting no more than five dollars into the Clean Money pool, candidates won't have to go hat in hand to lobbyists and fat cats, instead spending their time talking to voters. Just as important, the Clean Money fund means that a regular person can run for office--a school teacher, carpenter, or shop owner--has the same access to funding as the incumbent does.
Bring the Clean Money option to your state or city. To learn how, call Public Campaign: 202-293-0222.
Congress Sells Out the Middle Class, Again
This is your lawmaker's brain: It's willing to fight for the American people. This is your lawmaker's brain on the drug of corrupt campaign contributions: It's willing to sell out the American people for a pot of gold. Any questions?
Any questions were answered on October 4th, when both houses of Congress rammed through a bill that will help destroy the middle-class future of the American people. We're being told that our future prosperity is dependent on getting high-tech jobs, right? Be a computer programmer or engineer, we're told, and the American dream is ours. Yet, these are the very jobs our lawmakers sold out from under us on October 4th. That's when they approved a bill allowing 195,000 engineers and programmers from India, Russia, and elsewhere to come into our country and take these jobs at a half to a third lower pay than what Americans get.
The rationale of the Bill Gateses, Michael Dells, and other high-tech royalty is that they "just can't find" qualified Americans to do this skilled work, so there's a "critical shortage" requiring low-wage foreigners to fill the gap. Horsehockey. The industry only creates about 150,000 of these jobs a year. Our colleges graduate more than 160,000 qualified high-techers annually. But Bill, Mikey, and the boys don't want to pay the going rate for these skilled employees, so why not get Congress to more than double the supply with low-wage imported workers and bust the pay scale for everyone?
Also, this high-tech immigration law lets US firms fire their American workers and replace them with cheaper employees from abroad. The insurance giant AIG, for example, has already fired its entire programming staff, even requiring the discarded Americans to train their foreign replacements or lose their severance benefits.
This is Jim Hightower saying . . . The high-tech barons pushing this treason put $22 million into the pockets of the Democrats and Republicans who conspired to pass it.
--Contact us directly at: <hightower@essential.org> Copyright 1998 --Hightower and Associates, Inc.