{"id":30101,"date":"2010-10-23T05:26:07","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T10:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=30101"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:10:02","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:10:02","slug":"one-woman-one-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/one-woman-one-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"One [Wo]man, One Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

With mere days left before the midterms, corporate funding for political ads has done more than smear and distort: it’s bedazzled.\u00a0In Nevada, where Majority Leader Harry Reid is fighting for his political life against Bagger Sharron Angle,\u00a0televised electorate pounding broke records. In Las Vegas, 1,200\u00a0ads<\/strong><\/a> played out across local television screens in a single day: some 10 hours of political advertisement. It’s been estimated that by the time this election is done,\u00a0$3 billion will have been spent to\u00a0secure our individual votes.<\/p>\n

Those of you who\u00a0thought your vote didn’t mean anything might want to reconsider. Every once in awhile, I read about how my vote has been so mugged by gerrymander and districting that it’s not worth owning, but this week it’s worth 3 billion dollars. Maybe democracy is in better\u00a0shape than we think.\u00a0Or not.<\/p>\n

Consider the race in\u00a0Nevada. You may remember\u00a0Reid’s opponent\u00a0as the ‘chicken lady’ who,\u00a0hyperventilating over\u00a0the inevitability of ‘Obamacare,’\u00a0suggested that people might barter with their doctor\u00a0for services\u00a0as was done in the Good Old Days. This was the quintessential moment when\u00a0the public\u00a0turned to\u00a0examine Tea Bagger candidates\u00a0more closely, sniffing to see if they all had a case of The Crazy\u2122 — a condition that\u00a0had seemed contained in\u00a0places like West Virginia and Alaska\u00a0prior to this election,\u00a0mostly confined to FOX News true believers\u00a0— and wondering just how absurd the dialog might get.<\/p>\n

A lot worse, it turns out.\u00a0Sharron Angle\u00a0has spoken of her hopes to\u00a0ax the EPA, the Department of Education\u00a0and the VA, declaring them unnecessary expenditures of big government. If\u00a0she loses\u00a0this race, it won’t be because she wasn’t mega-financed or, nose held, embraced by\u00a0Republican leadership.\u00a0It\u00a0will be because\u00a0her suggestion that Second Amendment rights might be necessary to “take Harry Reid out” is beyond the pale. If she ultimately loses, it will be because the radicalism of her proposals\u00a0is intolerable to most Americans. And if she loses by more than just a point or two, thank your favorite god and lucky stars, because it will mean that the American electorate is not as childish and one-dimensional as this season has\u00a0suggested.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here in\u00a0Missouri, Robin Carnahan is battling GOP House fixture and Bush loyalist, Roy Blunt, for a senate seat.\u00a0Cronyism has the Blunt\u00a0copyright\u00a0in this state, recently extending\u00a0to a term for his son, Matt, as governor. Carnahan also comes from a political tradition. Her father was the popular governor who posthumously beat out incumbent John Ashcroft\u00a0for a\u00a0senate term\u00a0after\u00a0his death in a tragic plane crash in 2000. Her mother, Jean, took his place by appointment. Robin is Missouri’s current Secretary of State. Attack ads on Carnahan are continual and infuriating,\u00a0the legacy of more than $300,000\u00a0in outside money\u00a0contributed these last weeks by, whispers say,\u00a0Rove’s group, American Crossroads, beefing up Blunt’s chances, which, sadly, look pretty good. Blunt accuses Obama of being a job-killer and spendthrift, and he promises job creation.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0suspect\u00a0this is essentially\u00a0the same ad campaign\u00a0the GOP is pitching in every state. The economy is driving this election season, a referendum on Obama’s inability to do more than stave off complete disaster. Realistically, no matter what the politicians say, they have very little latitude in influencing economics, and even less than usual these days,\u00a0while we pay\u00a0the ultimate\u00a0price for Reagan’s deregulation policies gone viral.\u00a0From state to state,\u00a0Republican candidates\u00a0use the same words and phrases, lifted from the thin GOP playbook and listed as their Political Rule #1: say it often enough, the rubes will\u00a0believe it. <\/em><\/p>\n

Just for the record, let’s look at a few facts on the ground. Every Democratic administration is saddled by the debts and disasters created by its Republican predecessors. It’s history, look it up. The big spenders and job killers are invariably the ones who protest that they aren’t. When George W. Bush finally admitted that the economy was in a nose dive, the Troubled Asset Relief Program was signed into law in October of 2008, embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike. That was called\u00a0‘necessary spending,’ but anything spent after the turn of that year was quickly deemed wasteful excess and entitlement giveaway.<\/p>\n

Amazing how quickly and predictably the worm turns, ain’t it? Essentially, the Republicans want to eliminate public spending but continue to pour huge sums into the military while cutting taxes for the richest and providing welfare for the corporations. Wall Street bailout? No problem, they won’t even debate it amongst themselves. The right\u00a0doesn’t balance the books,\u00a0it cooks them, Enron-style.<\/p>\n

Next, the whole idea that Republicans will provide jobs is laughable.\u00a0That has never been their claim to fame. Perhaps they will spur business to provide some\u00a0overseas jobs,\u00a0hire some faceless, foreign employees\u00a0willing to contract the work for pennies on the dollar. The Chamber of Commerce will even bring in their Chinese counterparts<\/strong><\/a> to teach us how to outsource. But it should be no surprise that jobs will not\u00a0magically trickle down,\u00a0now that manufacturing represents only about 10 percent\u00a0of our GDP. We don’t make useful things anymore, we just shuffle things around.<\/p>\n

The word to remember is FIRE: finance, insurance, real estate. Finance now makes up about 42 percent\u00a0of our GDP. In saner times,\u00a0finance represented 9 or 10 percent. If you add the other FIRE components, there isn’t much left to manipulate in order to create new jobs, and we’re running out of people flush enough to victimize. Capitalism is swallowing its own tail,\u00a0eating its own seed, consuming itself. So much for Roy Blunt or any other Republican candidate creating jobs.<\/p>\n

And yet, despite it all, I have a dream:\u00a0that on balance,\u00a0we aren’t the pea-brains the moneyed class thinks we are. Surely we can see that the conservatives running this show are not mainstream but radical. Surely we can\u00a0acknowledge that the money coming out of the woodwork — 9 times as much for Republican candidates, now,\u00a0than for Democratic — is calculated to buy an election. And while I know that trusting estimates based on polling\u00a0is as dicey as reading chicken entrails,\u00a0an encouraging uptick in Democratic\u00a0polling this week may indicate that reports of the ‘enthusiasm gap’ were exaggerated. In these last days, there are indicators that the youth, Hispanic and black votes are on line for November. And I consider this\u00a0advertising deluge a mistake on the plutocracy’s part. A nation counting its pennies will always notice an excess of anything being frittered away, and in so polarized a political atmosphere, this level of spending\u00a0has been noticed.<\/p>\n

51 percent of the\u00a0public thinks that Obama’s approach to the economy will eventually work.\u00a0But\u00a0after the topsy-turvy mid-term projections, will he have the congressional cooperation to\u00a0accomplish it?\u00a0The difference in the direction of the two parties is evident, but here’s a reminder on the big spending, job-killing issues: in TARP I, George Bush bailed out bankers and high-rollers;\u00a0in TARP II, Obama bailed out teachers,\u00a0firefighters and the unemployed.\u00a0And even though the\u00a0unemployment numbers remain high, Obama\u00a0added\u00a0more private sector jobs<\/strong><\/a> in 2010 than George Bush\u00a0created in the\u00a0entirety of his eight-year presidency.\u00a0To repeat, the entire eight years of his tenure.\u00a0Forget Bush’s record at your own peril.<\/p>\n

Times are tough, and the choices ahead of us are difficult. But don’t\u00a0allow your\u00a0attention to be bought by distorted narratives and election spin. Those ads assume you\u00a0can be fleeced by the loudest voice, the most provocative insinuations\u00a0and the highest bidder.\u00a0Prove the plutocrats wrong this season, citizen. You’ve got a 3 billion dollar vote.\u00a0Spend it wisely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Judith Gayle | Political Waves With mere days left before the midterms, corporate funding for political ads has done more than smear and distort: it’s bedazzled.\u00a0In Nevada, where Majority Leader Harry Reid is fighting for his political life against Bagger Sharron Angle,\u00a0televised electorate pounding broke records. In Las Vegas, 1,200\u00a0ads played out across local … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}