QUOTE OF THE YEAR: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed….”
The Declaration of Independence, Approved by the Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776.
SENSE AND NONSENSE - WARNING: IT IS EASY TO BE NAÏVE!
From the editor: The last phrase in the above quote from The Declaration of Independence identifies succinctly what is at stake in the 2008 Presidential election next November. At the risk of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” I have seen enough evidence to convince me that the last two presidential elections have been “manipulated” at best and “stolen” at worst with Machiavellian Karl Rove acting as CEO of the corporation of dirty tricks. With the arsenal of such tricks ranging all the way from “caging” through “push polling” to outright election fraud (not voter fraud), the 2008 presidential election could certainly be stolen right out from under the eyes of the governed.
After all was said and done in Florida eight years ago, Bush only won the entire state by 537 votes. This razor thin margin was in spite of exit polls that had Gore winning the state; in spite of a confusing ballot tricking many voters into voting for two presidential candidates; in spite of erroneously disqualifying many voters as “felons;” in spite of challenging many voters of color requiring them to fill out “provisional” ballots that were never counted; and in spite of the Supreme Court ruling in Gore v. Bush. Again, in 2004, the dirty tricks campaign evolved directly into Diebold voter machine discrepancies and election site manipulations engineered by the Ohio Secretary of State. The end result is a Bush-Cheney criminal political machine which lied us into war in an effort to control Middle East oil reserves. They have stamped any evidence that would be required to convict them under an impeachment proceding “Top Secret” or as Cheney instructs “Treat as Top Secret.”
As I write this column, caucusgoers in Iowa have chosen Obama and Huckabee as their choices for democratic and republican presidential candidates. Both of these men are “preaching” the feeling of hope: Obama preaches about the hope for unity and Huckabee gives evangelicals the hope that the line between church and state can be erased. I don’t trust either message. I think unity can only happen AFTER voters stand up to the corporate takeover of the political process. And I think the second greatest threat to the “consent of the governed” is the threat of a creeping (and creepy) theocracy.
I think any of the top three democratic presidential candidates would be a hugh improvement over the last eight years of government by the few, for the few, and of the few -- an aristocratic oligarchy headed down the road of facism as documented by Naomi Wolf in “The End of America.” (Note: An abbreviated version of this book appeared in an April 24, 2007, article published by the Guardian of London.)
Nevertheless, I don’t think a democratic victory can be taken for granted next November. Such a victory is not certain for the simple reason that the stakes are now measured in “trillions” of dollars rather than “billions” or mere “millions.” When a country elevates profit and money to an “end that justifies any means,” such as we are now allowing, our ability to govern sensibly, our civilization, and even our planet is in jeopardy.
Personally, in choosing a leader that can negotiate through the dangerous waters that Bush and company have created, I am more comfortable with a “fighter” who understands the importance of unity, rather than a “unifier” who might understand the importance of fighting.
In short, I briefly stated my presidential preference in the Dec. 6, 2006, issue of The Compass immediately after Democrats won both the House and Senate in the 2006 congressional election. To quote: “The Compass backs the ‘grassroots’ approach of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and will not support any candidate who sells their soul to corporate interests. For this reason, our early choice for an electable Democratic ticket is John Edwards for President and Barack Obama for Vice-President.”
I have not seen or read or experienced anything in the 13 months since that endorsement to change my mind or my preferences.
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
A PRIMER ON STOLEN ELECTIONS
From the editor: Following are excerpts from an article by author Thom Hartmann published by CommonDreams.org on November 29, 2004.
“Ironically, the Democratic Party knows how to highlight election fraud and start national movements to bring down administrations that try to steal elections. A Party-affiliated group has helped do it four times in the past four years.”
“But not in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere else in the USA.”
“Instead, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Madeleine K. Albright, Chairman) has joined up with a similar organization affiliated with the Republican Party the International Republican Institute (John McCain, Chairman) other NGOs and US government agencies to support the use of exit polls and statistical analyses to challenge national elections in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. In three of those four nations they succeeded in not only mounting a national challenge, but in reversing the outcomes of elections.”
The election reversals were accomplished by funding local groups -- most made up of a core of activists and college students -- who worked to topple regimes that had rigged their own re-elections.”
“Thus, the first key to returning America to multiparty rule and re-opening the political process will be in electing progressive Democrats (and Independents like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders) to the U.S. House and Senate…”
“But first we must prepare to take on a Republican machine that has already corrupted the election process in the past three elections….In a preemptory move, Republicans are now calling for an end to exit polls in the USA because, as RNC Chairman and former Enron lobbyist Ed Gillespie noted on November 4th (2004), ‘In 2000 the exit data was wrong on Election Day, in 2002 the exit returns were wrong on Election Day, and in 2004, the exit data were wrong on Election Day -- all three times, by the way, in a way that skewed against Republicans and had a dispiriting effect on Republican voters across the country.’”
“Each of those three ‘skewed’ elections was an opportunity for national mobilization.”
“In 2000 it could have been to highlight the removal from voting rolls in Florida of tens of thousands of African American Democrats. The 2002 election could have revealed the ‘trade secret’ software running non-paper-trail voting machines in Georgia that defied the polls and threw out Max Cleland (helping establish Republican control of the Senate in 2002). And the 2004 election could have again raised questions about voting machines.”
“As generations of activists have taught us, we can’t wait around for politicians to fix a corrupted political system It’s going to take -- as the Ukranians are now showing us -- involved and active citizens to make this happen, and that requires an organizational framework to cut through the political and media fog.”
From the editor: Following are excerpts from an article by Larry Chin entitled “Electronic Voting: The Stolen Election of 2004. The article appeared Nov. 6, 2004 online at www.globalresearch.ca.
“How Bush-Cheney stole the 2000 election was a matter of obvious historical fact, confirmed by post-facto mainstream media reports (See front page article in the Sept. 12, 2001 issue of The New York Times) of a Gore win, and detailed by numerous investigators such as Greg Palast in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”
“Then came the ‘black box voting’ machines. (For detailed analyses of black box voting, read the work of Bev Harris.)”
“In the 2002 mid-term elections, the Republicans ‘shocked’ Democrats by solidifying their power in Congress, using the same fraudulent methods, along with new and improved black box technology.”
“The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called ‘amazing’ upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale -- a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash days before the vote -- was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing.”
COLORADO DECERTIFIES VOTING MACHINES
From the editor:Following are excerpts from an article by Dan Frosch that appeared in the Dec. 19, 2007, issue of The New York Times.
“DENVER -- Thousands of Colorado’s electronic voting machines do not work properly and have been decertified, according to a review by the Colorado secretary of state that has left elections officials scrambling to find viable machines in time for local and Congressional primary elections in August and the presidential election in November.”
“At a hearing at the state Capitol on Tuesday (Dec. 18, 2007), the secretary of state, Mike Coffman, urged legislators to amend state law ‘due to extraordinary circumstances’ so counties could fix the machines for next year’s primaries on Aug. 12 and the general election on Nov. 4. He asked lawmakers to allow counties to use a software patch that could potentially improve their electronic voting systems and suggested that once those improvements were made, testing data from other states be used to expedite the certification process in Colorado.”
“We identified obvious problems, and there’s no way we could ignore them,” Mr. Coffman said in an interview, a day after he announced the results of the review, ordered in September 2006 by a state judge who ruled that Colorado’s process for certifying voting machines was inadequate.”
“The review, by electronic voting systems experts, outside auditors and cyber-security specialists, found multiple problems with machines that were made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic, and Election Systems and Software and that are used in 52 of Colorado’s 64 counties, including Denver.”
“Last week, the Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, released a review of electronic voting systems there that found critical security flaws in systems by Hart and Election Systems & Software, asa well as another company, Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.”
“The Colorado report did not find fault with Premier machines, which Claudia Kuhns, executive director of the Public Integrity Project, which supports the use of paper ballots in Colorado, said, ‘troubles me a great deal.’”
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
Copyright © 2008, The Compass Society
