Last night I volunteered at the Nader rally in Salt Lake City. He asked us this question, "Where is your breaking point? Where is your moral compass?" Meaning, he wants to know what will it take for us as citizens to put our foot down and take our power back? Washington has us convinced that we are powerless. We all know that according to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that power should be in the hands of the people. Nader clearly lays out that the power in this country lies in the hands of corporations. Do you realize that corporations have the same rights and privileges as people in this country? Do you know they had those rights before women did?
Let me point out just a few things for you to think on:
1. Polls show that the majority of Americans want our military out of Iraq, and that we want the government to cut back on military spending. Both Obama and McCain want to increase spending. Ya, that's right. Nader is the ONLY candidate that will get us out of Iraq and significantly decrease military spending.
2. Nader fights (notice he's ALREADY fighting) for a living wage for everyone!
3. 18,000 people die/year because they do not have health insurance...Nader supports single-payer health care (as do 59% of physicians) that would give health care to everyone.
4. Nader is the ONLY candidate who is actively, and will continue to, fight corporate crime...Obama and McCain won't even bring it up because they won't bite the hands that feed them.
I could go on and on...tell me, what IS your breaking point? When will you be outraged enough with our current government run by corporations? I've had more than enough and I'll be fighting it.
Really what it comes down to is that Nader wants to give us back out power. He has the experience and the integrity to do it. I have yet to meet someone who has heard Nader speak in person who doesn't end up supporting him 100%.
16 comments:
Sure wish I could have gone to the rally! There was no way I could make it. Couldn't bail on the hub and kiddos for a summer work party (it was at the same time) and then a book club discussion with friends about Under the Banner of Heaven. But I couldn't wait to read about it on your blog! I hoped there would be a post about it.
I am confused. My understanding, after reading Obama's books and listening to all of his speeches,is that he supports:
-ending the war
-decreased military spending
-lobbyist reform (he's accepted zero lobbyist money for his campaign)
-increasing the minimum wage
-universal health care
-regulating corporate power
If I am misinformed please let me know HOW it's true that Obama does not want these things.
I am open to changing my opinion if I find out it's grounded in false information. I know there's so much I don't know.
So I love all that Nader stands for and agree, just thought Obama supported all the same things. And knowing that Nader is not going to win, I see him as helping McCain's chances at the throne, which would be unbearable. I know that's an old argument to not vote Nader but I can't help feeling that way. Do you trade principle for practicality? I just don't know. All I know is that I absolutely can't take any more conservative agendas.
I'm going to votenader.org to read more. Thanks for the post!
Here's what I found on Obama's site concerning military expansion:
Rebuild the Military for 21st Century Tasks: As we rebuild our armed forces, we must not simply recreate the military of the Cold War era. Obama believes that we must build up our special operations forces, civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces, so that local allies are better prepared to confront mutual threats.
Expand to Meet Military Needs on the Ground: Barack Obama supports plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops. Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families.
That sounds like an increase in military spending to me. I don't want that. Nader will NOT increase military anything. He will decrease military everything-bringing it down to a level that will enable us to simply defend ourselves.
Concerning practicality vs. principle...I'm tired of comprimising. I, as an American citizen, should not have to be a political strategist. I should state my breaking point, and stay true to it. For example, I believe that we should oil and continued drilling are NOT a solution to the energy crisis, no matter what. RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND ACT! If enough of us organize we CAN make a difference. What about the Rosa Park's of our communities...one woman sparked the Civil Rights movement...why can't I spark other progressive movements. She decided what her breaking point was and she didn't move!
I found this link to Obama's financial contributors:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Exelon Corp is a nuclear energy company. Interesting. Look up some of these companies. It's pretty interesting to know what Obama is beholden to.
McCain (note the reference to Mc as in MCDonalds) and Obama are your average corporate puppets ready to do business as usual. More spending on a useless military and more big breaks for the United States of Corporations. Nader is the only one whos done the research and has been his whole life and is WILLING do change things, term limits, etc. that put an end to career politicians and all the things that prevent progress and democracy.
Where was Nader during the primaries? I would have loved to see him debate the other candidates.
I'm all for starting a movement. I just thought Obama was the new movement. :) Apparently I need to rethink a few things because everything you all are telling me I have not considered before. So thank you for making me aware and I will try to be a good citizen by making sure I am more informed. I better go do some homework!
You have to have a certain amount of money to participate in the debates. Not very democratic is it? Also the Democratic and Republican parties are coporations themselves and THEY host the debates. Of course, they don't want Nader in the debates. That's something Nader is trying to bring attention to and change.
Oh, I see. And poor Ron Paul was able to attend but they never let him speak! It was sad. His ideas, even though I didn't embrace them, were so original that I wanted to hear more. It might as well have been just Romney and McCain up there.
Dee,
Here are a few articles you can read that has information about Obama's campaing contributions. I also have several others if you are interested:
Bankrolling a Presidential Campaign: The Obama Bubble Agenda
by Pam Martens
Part I
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05052008.html
Part II
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05062008.html
and this last one is also really good:
Money Over Morals: Obama’s the Candidate of the Hedge-Fund Partners
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/05/10805/
And finally, a Democracy Now episode about Obama's advisers and their relations to China:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/5/american_foreign_policy_brought_to_you
I've always thought that you must vote against your least favorite candidate these days of a warped political system. Then I realized that I'd be voting out of spite. The bottom line: Voting for a lesser evil is STILL voting for evil.
We are light reflecting light. All there is is light. Do I wish to reflect the light of the lesser evil, or do I wish to reflect the light of someone who reflects my ideals?
Gandhi, among others, have repeatedly said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
I cannot control the numbers, I will not let the numbers control me. I can only control me. So I'll be me and follow my morals, and vote for the candidate that most reflects those morals.
Take Zack de la Rocha's advice, along with Nader's and "Take the power back!"
Thanks for posting your political views Ann, you've inspired me to vote!
I can't believe it. I just wrote this insanely long comment and then accidentally erased it! So I hope I can remember what I even wrote!
Ashsan -thank you for the links. I will surely check them out.
To all of you -I hear your very great points about voting for the candidate who embraces your ideals most and I agree, almost. I still wonder from a more utilitarian perspective I suppose, if what's "right" changes based on the possible consequences of the act. So, I know, we believe that if everyone truly studied and made themselves aware, Nader would get elected. But the reality is, our country is not ready or willing to accept these ideals. So if I vote Nader, along with everyone else who is voting for the candidate who most represents them, then I see more negative outcomes than good. He still won't get elected, judging from the past, and it will have a real chance of sending McCain to Washington. Four more years of right-wing atrocities is MY breaking point. Far worse than an imperfect, but far better leader who I believe will open the gateway to a leader like Nader in the future. Sometimes when a leader is too radical it has the opposite effect by turning people away. I feel like Obama is willing to compromise out of necessity in order to have better outcomes over all. I think I need to accept that most of the country doesn't embrace the ideals that we do and give them time to slowly progress (that sounds so condescending, eek!), which I think the country is doing, with big steps forward followed by a few steps back. For example, consider the frogs (was it frogs?) in boiling water. If you throw them into a pot full of boiling water to start, they immediately will jump out. But if you put them in water at a tolerable temperature, and gradually bring it to a boil, they never jump out and before they know it they are dead. Well that example sounded good until the end. Ha ha! So that's how I see Obama will open the hearts and minds of Americans, flaws and all. Through small steps forward and powerful leadership ability. Take his speech on race, for instance. It was bold and I'm sure changed the way many people think of race in our country. I really doubt it, but surely Lincoln has his flaws, no? But probably not. :)
I hope I don't sound crazy and that I make any sense at all. I know that I have so much more studying to do about this but those are my thoughts at the moment. But I reserve the right to take it all back should I change my mind! :) Thanks for discussion about this and please feel free to challenge any of this. I welcome it.
p.s. I do think some things are inherently good or right, regardless. It's especially concerning politics mostly, that it gets so very complicated for me.
aye, can't believe I wrote especially, mostly.
Thanks everyone for your comments here! Keep 'em comin'!
Dee,
I understand your concerns. However, I think the more insidious outcome of voting for the least worst is that the Democratic Party looks more and more like Republicans (which thet have been looking more and more like for twenty years), and they begin to do essentially the same things as Republicans. Even worse than this, though, is the fact that their move right is obscured by the mere name Democrat, so that people think they are still voting for something quite different when in reality they are not. The best example of this (an example extraordinarily similar to the current Obama situation) is Clinton. If you do the research, Clinton ran a very similar campaign to the one Obama is currently running, promising very similar platforms and even using the same phrases about change. But anyone who examined Clinton's list of advisers and his actual platforms would have seen that Clinton was a corporate candidate and, as such, had no plans to do anything but technically question the project of imperialism, free (for some) trade, and violent nationalism. Clinton himself said that people had elected him thinking that he was the progressive's or disenfranchised person's dream candidate when in fact he was the Wall Street bondsman's dream candidate. He openly admitted that the title of "Democrat" persuaded people to elect a person who would actually behave exactly opposite to their interests.
And what was the result? The poor got poorer and we kept up our militarism, we canned welfare and the environment deteriorated. The worst consequence, however, was that the title of "Democrat" convinced people not to look into any of this, and you can still find millions of people who thought that Clinton's presidency was progressive. In actuality, it refused to question very sinister political ideologies and set the stage for the excesses of George Bush.
The same thing is happening with Obama, who, despite his rhetoric (crafted carefully around a misleading loophole in campaign law) of not receiving corporate money, has actually received more than McCain and who, despite his superficially progressive utterances (which are either unfounded or completely contradicted by his behavior) employs as advisers the same people who helped to make the Clinton years a Wall Street dream: Rubin, Fhurman, etc. All this is occuring under the deliberate ad-style image that Obama has constructed--an image the dissuades people from actually investigating his claims and platforms.
I think that the Clinton years are a warning to Obama-ites, if they will just look into it a bit.
Don't let the name "Democrat" have more weight than the actual policies a candidate supports. Obama, like Clinton, refuses to interrogate the basic tenets of war, imperialism, and the free market. His critiques are technical not substantive.
Lastly, if you vote in Utah, you and all your friends can vote Nader without stress. So sayeth the deformed electoral college.
YES!
If because I vote third party another criminal is put into office; at least I know I voted and stood up for my ideals; and the terrors the new president will help bring this faulty system down another notch and make the people of this country wake up a little more. Its sad that the past eight years hasn't done it, but who knows; maybe another term or two the American people will REALLY wake up to the greed, instead of just recognizing it exists and continue to play apart of the system.
For me voting dem. or rep. is supporting a system I've never believed in... yes, even as a sixth grader being taught about the election process I found myself caught in this predicament we discuss here. And when I turned 18 I didn't register, and I still haven't registered out of fear of playing part of a system I didn't wish to support.
I'm happy to say, I am registering in this election because now I wish to be part of a reconstruction.
America is not invincible: EVERY great empire falls (I say this with joy in my heart)! Like the forest fire, it is all apart of a bigger picture.
So now I take a step back and I say trust it, vote your way, even if it means the corporations win. And I'll trust you; even if you vote for the corporations.
Your reasons are my reasons, though your vote may be cast differently, both votes are valid; two sides of the same coin; we work for one goal: purification.
Maktub.
Post a Comment