Who Should The Next Supreme Court Justice Be?

Intellectuals seem to view each national horse race as important for many reasons but the one most often cited would have to be the possibility that a new president will be in a position to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.

People suffering from “two-party-itis” regularly tell deluded, independent, naifs like myself, that we simply must choose between Democrat and Republican because our single vote may well decide Roe v. Wade all over again!

Electoral college and safe states arguments aside, this discussion would almost be funny. If people could just lift themselves out of their illogical reveries and hover for a moment of quiet reflection, they might see what I see. I always relish the expression on an insistent Democrat’s face when I ask if they know how many Senators opposed Antonin Scalia’s appointment to the court? Scalia was, and is, seen widely as one of the most conservative justices we have had. Many thought that his appointment to the bench could signal the end of abortion rights as we know them.

The answer, in case you’re not aware of it, is none. Not a single Senator stepped forward to oppose Scalia’s confirmation. Not one single Democrat came out swinging or said, “Hey! That’s not a good idea!” Scalia was confirmed 98-0 by the U.S. Senate. Apparently, the same Democratic Party that insists we choose our presidents based on potential court picks were (unanimously) willing to risk overturning Roe v. Wade. Almost 25 years after Scalia’s appointment, abortion rights are still intact.

This should tell us at least two things.

One, that neither corporate political party is even slightly concerned about the Supreme Court changing our abortion laws.

Two, that Supreme Court justices often seem to change (or, at least, defy expectations) after their ascension to the bench.

Given that it really doesn’t seem to matter all that much who is picked for the court, perhaps, its also not so intelligent to make our presidential picks based on our fears about the Supreme Court?

I know it’s a pretty broad brush I’m painting with so, lets get to a finer point. There’s an issue beside abortion that all the justices seem to be on the same page about which, in the end, is probably far more important to us than any other single issue … corporate power.

Did you know that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has an office in D.C. which devotes much of its time to aiding Corporate America in its fight against the people of our country? It also spends a fair amount of its time vetting potential nominees to the court and lobbying for those who are most likely to support corporate interest and agenda.

Did you know that the single greatest trend on the court over the last several decades is that decisions in favor of actual human beings have become more and more infrequent every time corporate power is challenged? This tells me that the biggest concern workers and citizens should have when nominations are being made is the court’s continued subordination to corporate power. Like our government, the court seems to have become just one more hammer in the corporate toolbox. Just one more mechanism designed to represent those who need it least and to crush justice wherever profit is concerned.

There is a great piece on this very topic written by noted author and lawyer, Jeffrey Rosen, in the New York Times (March 2008). Its called “Supreme Court Inc” and every American who cares about justice and law and the little guy should give it a perusal.

President Obama has to come up with some appointees for the Chamber and the Senate to look at. I have a suggestion that seems politically expedient while also addressing the court’s demonstrably corporate bias.

One thing we all seem to be in agreement about is that Obama has made some absolutely terrible choices for his cabinet. He could now throw a bone to those of us in the working class to ensure that textbooks mark him as a president who (at least) tried to do one thing right. He has made it abundantly clear as he’s filled his cabinet that the interests he serves are not ours. Regardless of your political perspective, these appointments have been business as usual and show him to be every bit the sellout independents said he was all along.

In particular, if Obama wants to reverse the sting caused when he invited Tim “The Fox” Geithner to guard our economic hen-house, he needs to send Tim Geithner a clear message to those of us who work for a living that he really does want us to have a seat at the table. For those of who know that a Single-Payer health care system is the optimal replacement for our for-profit nightmare, an intelligent court pick could help remove the stinger Obama sets by refusing to even say the words, “single-payer”. Like the Clintons before him, Obama is totally in bed with the HMO’s and refuses to discuss the most rational solution.

Obama can keep being such a disappointment because, at the very least, he’s not George W. Bush. But, if he were to chose an American icon to serve on our nation’s highest court, it might go a long way towards redeeming his, so far, unimpressive (and similar) governance. It might help the many who feel betrayed to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Where might we find someone truly principled who has always stuck up for the little guy? Someone who has always understood that deregulation is only beneficial to those seeking to rob and steal. Somebody who has fought the good fight all of his life.

The person I have in mind is a veteran, a lawyer, a professor, an author, a lecturer and a full-time American citizen. He is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard and he has left an indelible mark on populist politics in this era of big business and corporate power. For over forty years, he has been a tireless champion of every important social justice issue.

Here is an opportunity for Obama to prove that his “talk” has a little bit of “walk” in it, as well. The President could put a well-armed “hen” in our judicial “fox-house” and reassure us all that there is a tiny little piece of justice to be found somewhere in the halls of power in this beleaguered democracy of ours.

Supreme Court Justice Ralph Nader. Let that sink in.

Justice R. Nader

Just think about all the positives for a moment before your knee jerks …

Mainstream Democrats could all breathe a collective sigh of relief as Ralph would be unlikely to run in 2012. They could start to set aside their mathematically-challenged (and terribly misplaced) anger at Ralph for 2000 and start to set their own party back on a path that values democracy instead of thwarting and co-opting the growth of alternative parties. Thoughtful Democrats could finally admit in polite company that they agree with Nader on most every single issue without being excoriated.

Mainstream Republicans could rest assured that while Ralph is against corporate power, he’s also only one judge out of nine. How much damage to corporate control could he possibly do? Thoughtful Republicans could rest secure in the knowledge that very few people in our country have shown a more principled or consistent respect and defense of our laws and founding documents than Ralph Nader.

Workers and independents alike would be inspired. They could look to at least one nationally prominent figure who never forgets where he came from and who can always be counted on to do what is right in the face of enormous adversity.

What, if any, are the negatives?

Ken Starr's Law Firm is Evil. No, Wait. They're Good!. No, They're Evil Again!

A friend sent this out. While I fully sympathize with the gay community in their fight against Ken Starr and the moral majority, I am always amazed at the short memory Democrats seem to have. Read on.


From: Mary Beth Bolduc
Subject: FW: This video will break your heart

Have you heard that Ken Starr -- and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund -- filed legal briefs defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and attempting to forcibly divorce 18,000 same-sex couples that were married in California last year? The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case on March 5, 2009, with a decision expected within the next 90 days.

The Courage Campaign has created a video called "Fidelity," with the permission of musician Regina Spektor, that puts a face to those 18,000 couples and all loving, committed couples seeking full equality under the law.

Please watch this heartbreaking video now. If you have the same reaction that I did, you can help spread the word by sharing it with your friends ASAP -- before the Valentine's Day deadline:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/Divorce

The more people who see this video, the more people will understand the pain caused by Prop 8 and Ken Starr's shameful legal proceeding.

After you watch the video, please join me and over 60,000 people who have signed a letter to the state Supreme Court, asking them to invalidate Prop 8 and reject Starr's case.

Thanks.


* MY RESPONSE *

Mary Beth,

I did see this and it is heartbreaking. In a way, though, the injustice of these actions is a major victory for gay rights. Anti-gay fervor always rouses progressives and, in this weird time, when everyone seems to be in a coma while Obama continues to manifest a virtually unchanged imperialist American foreign policy, it is vital that we roust up continued support for a truly progressive agenda. Perhaps Starr's firm should be thanked for getting people angry and active. No one else is doing it!

That said, something else broke my heart involving Starr and his thugs. About four years ago, Starr's firm was hired in Pennsylvania to sue Carl Romanelli and Ralph Nader and keep them off the ballot (in the senate and presidential races, respectively). Did you hear about that? These thugs came in and kicked them both off the ballot (even though they had collected twice the necessary signatures). They then sued them for legal fees and the crooked (Democrat appointed) judges awarded the firm $75,000 dollars in legal fees from each of the candidates!!

Carl and his family are still in very real danger of losing their home to these bastards. Ralph has since had his judgment reversed. Even though the court's original decision had been overturned by a higher court and even though a handful of the Democrat operatives responsible for this are now in jail, the decision to make Carl responsible for the Starr firm's fees has, thus far, stood! It is a travesty what these two-party fascist scum will do! I agree.

The Democrats want Greens and independents to work with them. I think that they first need to take a good look in the mirror (as Democrat-King Alan Chartok might say). To gain this sort of trust the Democrats would need to stop behaving just as badly as the Republicans, wouldn't they?! I have a long memory and the reason I don't work with either corporate party is terrible hypocrisy of exactly this sort. The Dems are now saying that Starr and his firm are evil bastards because they subvert democracy and squash minority rights ... but were they saying the same thing when they hired these scum to thwart our very democracy?

Peace,
Matt

What I Really Want To Know

I consider myself a third party activist. I only support independents and Greens and Libertarians. I do not vote for Democrats or Republicans, ever. As such, I am often asked my opinion by those who play the two party game. I try to be civil and decent. I try to help them understand my viewpoint and I sincerely try to understand theirs.

Over the last decade, I have asked a few questions that I really figure any two-party denizen should be able to answer ... simply to restore my faith in humanity's ability to reason if for no other reason. Can you help me?

I asked Alan Chartok (of our NPR affiliate, WAMC) and his pals on The Media Project, Ira and Rex, to comment on why the media gives Ralph Nader zero coverage during each election cycle. I asked this because I believe that ALL media ignores thrid party candidates on purpose to prop up our system of corporate machine politics. This of course raised the hackles of all three. All of their media mechanisms covered Ralph 2-3 times over the past year. In their view, thats much better coverage than other media gave him. They wondered aloud what my problem is, then? Rex Smith (the Albany Times Union editor) even piped in to say that he felt that Nader already had his time in the sun and that his message doesn't resonate any longer with the American public. Thats why they don't cover him.

There are two huge problems with this narrow answer to my broad question;

1) Does anyone who appreciates the promise of democracy really think that the 1/4 of 1% of media coverage Nader actually got in 2000 was "fair coverage" by any reasonable measure of the word? He was polling 10-18% during that election cycle and it certianly seesm thatbwere he given 10-18% of the coverage that he would have been in the debates which might well have given him a win. Can Nader or othr independents ever truly "resonate" with anyone when the populace is subjected to the two corporate candidates 100 times a day for an entire year and are not even made aware of their many other choices? 36,500 to 3 mentions. Is this really the "liberal" media's idea of "fair and balanced"?

2) If its just Ralph Nader who has worn us all out, why then does corporate media also basically ignore ALL the other independents and third party candidates, as well? In this election cycle, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Chuck Baldwin, Gloria LaRiva and Roger Calero were all basically ignored, too. No one even knew about them. How could they possibly have "worn us all out" or "had their time in the sun"? Why is it that THEY didn't deserve to be covered at all? I'm not sure that I can see this behavior as anything short of willful and criminal manipulation of our information and our democracy.

A member of the local DFA chapter asked me Wednesday if I was "happy". You could see that Obama's victory made him feel that a cloud had lifted. His "team" had "won". I would write "Bob" off as a loon except that many other Democrats reached out to me withg similar sentiments, many of whom I respect greatly. To be frank, I feel sorry for people like "Bob". In my world, the ruling and the corporate classes control our democracy. That's a terrible truth but being awake to it allows me to avoid all the emotional highs and lows and the football team mentality that so many Americans seem caught up in.

I know that my fight as a citizen is a daily one against the corporate power that chokes democracy. Its never a winner take all battle waged once every four years. I don't suffer severe depression when a Bush is in office nor do I feel like I just ate a bag of mushrooms because we've elected an Obama. I don't expect the ruling class to deliver me any substantive change for the better regardless of which puppet they say is "our leader". I'm a realist.

I asked "Bob" the same question I have been asking Democrats for ten years, thus far;

"I have been working outside the Democratic Party because I do not believe that the change I want can ever come from such a flawed and co-opted machine. If just one Democrat would tell me what it is EXACTLY that has been accomplished over the last forty years by "working from within", I might better understand why you people do it. Just humor me ... tell me what specific piece of legislation has been passed by either corporate party that could demonstrably be considered pro-worker?"

"Bob" responded heatedly, "I'm not going to answer that but we're a damn sight better than the Republicans. Thats all I have to say." "Bob" then walked out.

This "walking out" is the reason why better than 100 million Americans don't vote in any election cycle. They see no visible, pragmatic reason to do so and we refuse to explain how it works to anyone's benefit to vote. Is it possible that we're not really sure ourselves?

Michael Moore - Hardly a Progressive Thinker

Michael Moore's most recent piece is "How the Democrats Can Blow It" (see it at "alternet.org" or at Moore's webiste). In it, he says that Dems should not demean McCain if they wish Obama to win. Moore calls Republican tactics like "swiftboating" a "cesspool" that "they swim in". At the end of this diatribe, he casually refers to Nader-supporters as "crazy".

How does Moore expect anyone to take him seriously? The attacks on Obama have been no better and no worse than what has been done to Nader by Moore's own precious party, the Demoncrats. Scurrilous attacks are scurrilous attacks regardless of where they come from.

Calling people who HAVE spines and who work for democracy, peace, single-payer health care and sustainable energy "crazy" people is not a particularly effective way to win them over.

Every time this porcine "progressive" speaks of his ex-patron in such disrespectful terms, I am saddened to see so many absorb his bilious effluent.

Moore's worst crime against the truth is his own "swift-boating" of Nader insofar as the 2000 election is concerned. He does it subtly at the end of this piece. This propaganda is every bit as bad as anything the right has thrown at Obama. In a way, its worse because Obama has access to corporate media to respond whereas Nader has no reasonable access.

Here are some facts about 2000 that people may use to better judge Moore's own "cesspool tactics":

1) There were TEN candidates on the ballot in Florida in 2000 (six other candidates beside Bush, Gore, Nader and Buchanan). They ALL exceeded the magic vote total of 537. Using Demologic, this makes them ALL "spoilers"! Can you name even one of these "bastards who gave us Bush"? Do you know one of these "egomaniacs who handed it to the neo-cons"? Have you thanked any of these candidates (besides Ralph) for "destroying our country"? Why was Ralph the ONLY one singled out by the corporate media and unprincipled Demoncrat operatives like Moore? Anyone who frightens the little sissies in the corporate media that much must be having quite an impact.

2) Gore refused to fight for 57,000 black voters who were illegally disenfranchised by the Bush machine in Florida. Thats roughly 106 times more votes than he would have needed to reverse the results of the election! In "Fahrenheit 9/11" we actually see Al Gore banging his little gavel, refusing to hear the pleas of black congressional reps fighting for their constituents. Is Al Gore a) a racist; b) a scumbag: or c) just a dumb f*ck?

3) Nationally, in 2000, EIGHT MILLION Democrats voted for GEORGE W BUSH! Only about 700,000 Dems pulled the lever for Ralph. Why don't these idiots clean up their own pro-war yard before yelling at us about ours?

4) I have a spine so I vote on principle. I understand those who SAY they vote for Democrats "strategically" (thats French for "without spine"). But, those who say this seem painfully unaware that there are 39 safe states, places where even sheep farmers from "Shane" would be voting independent or third party. A vote for either corporate puppet in these states is the poster child for "throwing your vote away".

Moore backed Nader without reservation in 2000, He has NEVER explained why he betrayed us and joined the fake left. He continues to suggest that Bush is Nader's fault. Bush is AMERICA'S fault. Michael, and it is high time you stop trying to pin it on a guy who has spent his entire life fighting battles on our behalf.

The 2006 "transition" shows us exactly what to expect when voters are dumb enough to trust the Democrats! Nothing. Nader supporters are not the crazy ones. We want democracy and we are willing to work at it for as long as it takes. We don't support candidates who accept corporate money. It may take several decades for the mainstream to grok this, but as long as we're out here fighting a TRULY principled battle, we will eventually win. Democrats lose ... even when their candidates win.

Using Tax Money To Kill Democracy!

If you consider yourself knowledgeable about politics and you believe there is a special place in Hell for those who sabotage our elections, you just may want to read up on these lesser known culprits doing that evil work right next door in Pennsylvania. Not all "theft of democracy" occurs in Florida and Ohio and not all of it is sponsored by the Republicans. Interesting stuff!

Pa. Statehouse scandal cited in Sen. ballot case

PETER JACKSON
The Associated Press
The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 16, 2008
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20080716_ap_pastatehousescandalcitedinsenballotcase.html

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A former Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate on Wednesday asked the state's highest court to reopen his two-year-old ballot-access case because state legislative officials arrested last week on corruption charges were allegedly involved in the challenge that knocked him out of the race.

Carl Romanelli, once regarded as a threat to Democrat Bob Casey in the 2006 Senate race, and his lawyer, Lawrence Otter, want the case sent back to Commonwealth Court. There, they plan to ask a judge to dismiss a ruling requiring them to pay more than $80,000 in legal costs.

Romanelli and Otter cite grand jury allegations that state House Democratic caucus operatives directed as many as 30 taxpayer-paid employees to review signatures on Romanelli's petition in the ballot challenge that killed his candidacy.

"A democratic society can no longer function if the government is going to support candidates and suppress other candidates using its funds and resources," Samuel Stretton, the attorney for Romanelli and Otter, wrote in Wednesday's filing in the state Supreme Court.

Casey, a son of the late governor, won the election over Rick Santorum, then the third-ranking Republican in the Senate.

A Casey spokesman said the senator was not aware of any illegal activity surrounding the Romanelli ballot challenge.

"There was never any indication ... about anything like this going on," said the spokesman, Larry Smar.

In a similar challenge that prevented Ralph Nader from running in Pennsylvania as an independent presidential candidate in 2004, the grand jury alleged that as many as 50 House Democratic staffers invested "a staggering number of man-hours" in efforts to block his candidacy.

The state Supreme Court ordered Nader and running mate Peter Miguel Camejo to pay $81,000 in legal costs of the voters who challenged his signatures , a judgment that Nader is contesting in the District of Columbia courts.

Nader's lawyer, Oliver Hall, said he is weighing whether to raise the Pennsylvania corruption case in that litigation.

"We are going to aggressively pursue every avenue to oppose this judgment," Hall said. "It now appears to be clear that (the judgment) is the result of a criminal conspiracy."

State Attorney General Tom Corbett's office last week charged each of the 12 defendants with theft, conspiracy and conflicts of interest counts in an alleged wide-ranging scheme to use taxpayer-funded employees, equipment and other resources to advance their political interests.

The defendants include former Rep. Michael Veon of Beaver County, the No. 2 Democratic leader until he was ousted in the 2006 election; Mike Manzo, the former chief of staff to House Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese, who has not been charged; and one sitting legislator, Rep. Sean Ramaley, D-Beaver. All the defendants are free on bail. Veon, Manzo and Ramaley have said they are innocent.

The ballot challenges left Nader and Romanelli, a railroad consultant who had been making his first bid for statewide political office, thousands of signatures shy of the number needed to qualify for their respective ballots.
Eleven Commonwealth Court judges were involved in examining Nader's petitions. Nearly two-thirds of his signatures were declared invalid, and the presiding judge cited widespread evidence of fraud that "shocks the conscience."

Democratic strategists regarded both Romanelli and Nader as spoilers who would siphon votes from the Democrats in those races.

Smar noted that Santorum's supporters provided most of the financing for Romanelli's signature-gathering effort.

"Nothing changes the fact that his signatures were invalid," said Smar.
Part of the reason for the monetary judgment against Romanelli and his lawyer was that they lacked the resources to defend themselves against the ballot challenge, Stretton said.

For example, some days they failed to muster the nine representatives that the judge wanted from each side. The Democratic State Committee, which mounted the challenge, consistently had the requisite number, he said.

"If there are going to be any fines and costs, they should be reserved for those who misused government offices and taxpayer funds in mounting this challenge," he wrote in the latest filing.

Bumped off ballot, Green Party candidate goes to court

By Tracie Mauriello
Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh), July 17, 2008
http://www.post-gazette.com

HARRISBURG -- A third-party congressional candidate filed a court petition yesterday saying he had been bumped from the ballot based on illegal work done by Harrisburg Democratic staffers who were arrested last week on corruption charges.

Carl Romanelli, a Green Party candidate in the 2006 U.S. Senate race, is asking the state Supreme Court to dismiss a ruling requiring him to pay $80,408 in legal costs incurred during his fight to stay on the ballot. He was bumped from the ballot after numerous signatures on his nominating petitions were challenged as invalid.

A grand jury presentment last week included evidence that those signature challenges were based on work by dozens of Democratic House employees while they were on the clock and being paid with tax dollars.

The grand jury found that staffers were similarly involved in an effort to remove former presidential candidate Ralph Nader from the 2004 ballot.

"The use of government monies to sponsor or support a candidate and/or challenge another candidate is absolutely dreadful and impermissible and a total violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," attorney Samuel C. Stretton wrote in the petition filed yesterday on behalf of Mr. Romanelli and Larry Otter, an attorney who had represented Mr. Romanelli during the petition challenges. "A Democratic society can no longer function if the government is going to support candidates and suppress other candidates using its funds and resources."

Mr. Romanelli had been viewed as a potential spoiler who could draw votes away from Democrat Bob Casey Jr. during his 2006 race against longtime Republican Sen. Rick Santorum.

Mr. Casey's spokesman Larry Smar said he was "absolutely unaware" that legislative staffers had been put to work challenging petition signatures on the senator's behalf.

"We absolutely had no idea any of this was going on," he said. "But, as far as the ballot challenge, the names on the Romanelli petitions were still invalid, no matter what took place."

Mr. Nader and running mate Peter Camejo were seen as potential spoilers in the 2004 presidential race. House Democratic staffers were involved in petition challenges that got them removed from the ballot and assessed $81,000 in court costs in Pennsylvania.

"It seems clear that the judgment [against Mr. Nader and Mr. Camejo] was related to conduct set forth in the presentment and, for that reason, we think it is the ill-gotten fruit of a criminal conspiracy and cannot be enforced," said Nader attorney Oliver Hall. The presentment "clearly shows you have 50 state employees who are marshaled into service by a political party for the purpose of suppressing voter choice in a federal election by forcing a candidate off the ballot."

Mr. Nader and Mr. Camejo have not yet paid the $81,000 and have not decided whether to ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to remand the case, as Mr. Romanelli has.

Among those charged in the grand jury investigation were former House Minority Whip Mike Veon, D-Beaver Falls; Rep. Sean Ramaley, D-Economy, and Michael Manzo, former chief of staff to Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese of Waynesburg.

Tracie Mauriello can be reached at tmauriello@post-gazette.com or 717-787-2141.

Letters: One Reader's View

Investigate sabotage of Nader efforts

Philadelphia Inquirer, July 17, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080717_Letters__One_Reader_s_View.html

It is unfortunate that Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesman Abe Amoros used the criminal indictment of 12 prominent Pennsylvania Democrats as an occasion, once again, to defame 2004 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and 2006 Green Party senatorial candidate Carl Romanelli ("National tie to Pa. bonus scandal," July 15).

As Amoros should know, only a tiny number of signatures on the Nader petitions - 687 or 1.3 percent of the total - were counted as "forgeries" by their signers, and in the words of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas Saylor, there is "no evidence" to support Democrats' claims that the Nader campaign was even aware of such signatures. Furthermore, no allegation of fraud was ever raised against Romanelli's petitions.

There is, however, evidence that the Nader petitions were the target of widespread and deliberate sabotage: specifically, petition circulators discovered and removed about 7,000 obviously fake signatures prior to submitting the petitions.

Attorney General Tom Corbett should make it a priority to discover who was behind this unlawful conduct, and to clarify the role of the law firm mentioned in the indictment, which helped perpetrate the miscarriage of justice that denied Pennsylvanians their free choice of candidates in the 2004 presidential election.

Oliver Hall
Counsel to Ralph Nader
Washington

It's The Deregulation, Stupid!

It's the Deregulation, Stupid

Democrats from Carter to Clinton helped roll back the government's regulatory power, but as the economic crisis deepens, "regulation" is no longer such a dirty word.

by James Ridgeway March 28, 2008

Speaking at Cooper Union in New York City on Thursday, Barack Obama went where few Democrats have dared to go in the past quarter-century: He made a case for more regulation. As part of a speech on his economic platform, Obama depicted the current economic crisis as a consequences of deregulation in the financial sector. "Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it," he said. "Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one—aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight."

This is quite a statement from a candidate who's received $6 million in campaign contributions from securities and investment firms, just slightly less than rival Hillary Clinton, who cashes in at $6.3 million. Obama's criticism was sharp, but his six-point plan for rebuilding a regulatory structure was short on both details and teeth, and relies on the Federal Reserve, which is like having the fox guard, well, the other foxes. Still, his use of the r-word signals what is at least a rhetorical departure for a party that has been running from regulation for decades.

Obama isn't the only one. Last week at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, also argued that years of banking deregulation were in part responsible for creating the subprime mortgage crisis and the larger economic downturn, which he didn't hesitate to call a recession. He talked about the need to impose more "discipline" on investment banks, requiring a higher level of capitalization and transparency. Frank called on Congress to consider establishing a "Financial Services Risk Regulator" that would have "the capacity and power to assess risk across financial markets" and "to intervene when appropriate."

Such a proposal may seem like too little too late in a month when the likes of Bear Stearns crumbled to dust, yet, like Obama's speech, it suggests a small shift in what has long been the dominant position of the Democratic Party. Without entirely eschewing the sacred myth that the free market always knows best, some congressional Democrats are envisioning a more direct role for the federal government in carrying out economic policy and imposing rules and restrictions on banks and brokerages. Calls for increased oversight of financial markets come at a time when the Federal Reserve System, the quasi-public institution that is seen as the fulcrum for managing the economy, is losing credibility, what with its failure to predict or head off the current crisis and its ineffective and controversial responses once it arrived. Americans are beginning to look elsewhere for leadership on these issues. As the economy continues to decline, some voters may finally start asking their government to rein in Wall Street. And some Democrats may finally be willing to veer out of lockstep in the party's long march toward deregulation.

Deregulation has been the mantra on both sides of the aisle since the late 1960s. Long gone are Democrats like Michigan's Phil Hart who, as chair of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, held hearings on the concentration of economic power in the United States, and proposed expanded government regulation of everything from the oil and auto industries to pharmaceuticals to professional sports. Hart believed that because wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of such a small number of corporations, the market economy had become no more than a facade. In this context, what would bring about lower prices and greater productivity and innovation was more government intervention and regulation, not less.

Hart got a Senate building named after him, but his warnings about the threat of unbridled corporate power and consolidation went unheeded. Instead, the rush to deregulation began, first in the transportation sector. Efforts begun under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford came to fruition under Jimmy Carter, who hired deregulation guru Alfred E. Kahn to head the Civil Aeronautics Board, the widely loathed agency responsible for regulating the airline industry. Senator Ted Kennedy and his then aide, future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, embraced deregulation as a consumer issue, and with their support, Kahn quickly worked his way out of a job: The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act dissolved the CAB and removed most regulation of commercial airlines. Carter also signed into law bills deregulating the railroads and the trucking industry.

You could argue that transportation deregulation has been a wash—replacing a system of bureaucratic incompetence with one of profit-seeking negligence, and exchanging safety for lower prices. The same cannot be said for the deregulation of the energy sector, notably the natural gas and oil industries under Ronald Reagan, and the electric utilities under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Left to its own devices, a deregulated energy industry has given us Enron and Exxon—California brownouts and $100 barrels of oil. Deregulation of the telecommunications industry, also under Clinton, reduced the number of major phone service providers to just a handful of multimerged giants.

Even more damaging, in light of today's economic crisis, was the sweeping deregulation of the banking and financial services industries that took place in the 1990s. What makes this enterprise particularly confounding is not only the fact that it took place under a Democratic president with support from a majority of Democrats in Congress, but that it followed so closely on the heels of the savings and loan crisis, which ought to have served as a cautionary tale on the dangers of deregulation in the banking sector. The Depository Institutions Act of 1982, another Reagan initiative, was supposed to "revitalize" the housing industry by freeing up the S&Ls to make more loans. Instead, the regulation rollback led to what economist John Kenneth Galbraith called "the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time" as they engaged in a fury of high-risk lending. The collapse that followed cost taxpayers an estimated $150 billion in government bailouts, and contributed to the recession of the early 1990s.

Yet Bill Clinton, elected in large part because of that recession (a la James Carville's "It's the economy, stupid"), was talking about deregulation before he was even inaugurated. The National Review reported that "Bill Clinton embraced at least one Reaganesque idea at the Little Rock economic summit" he held in December 1992: "banking deregulation."

The banking industry objected to regulations put in place in 1989 after the S&L debacle, as well as others dating back to FDR. The heads of the six major U.S. banking associations, according to the National Review, had written "a long letter to the President-elect in December advocating nine substantive reforms." The conservative magazine concluded that the new president seemed more than willing to oblige, but bank deregulation was being held back by such powerful congressmen as "House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez (D., Tex.), a populist throwback to the Thirties who believes bankers are by definition out to exploit the 'little guy'" and "House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D., Mich.), who holds a quasi-religious belief that banks caused the Great Depression and must be tightly regulated. (Dingell's father was a principal author of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.)"

The Glass-Steagall Act was, in fact, a primary target of the Clinton-era deregulation effort. An early piece of New Deal-era legislation, the act was passed in response to speculation and manipulation of the markets by huge banking firms, which most liberal economists believed had brought on the crash of 1929. Glass-Steagall imposed firewalls between commercial banking and investment banking, and between the banking, brokerage, and insurance industries. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and campaign contributions, "Eager to create financial supermarkets that peddle everything from checking accounts to auto insurance, the three industries for years have lobbied Congress to streamline regulatory hurdles that bar such operations."

Despite Bill Clinton's announcement that "the era of big government is over," it took the better part of his administration for him to push these initiatives through Congress. In 1999, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, always a good friend to Wall Street, finally brokered a deal between the administration and Congress that allowed banking deregulation to move forward. Shortly after the compromise was reached, Rubin took a top position at Citigroup, which went on to embark upon mergers that would have been rendered illegal under Glass-Steagall. As the New York Times put it, Rubin would be leading "what has become the first true American financial conglomerate since the Depression"—a conglomerate that could exist only because of legislation he had just shepherded through Congress.

Passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 was celebrated in a Wall Street Journal editorial as an end to "unfair" restrictions imposed on banks during the Great Depression, under the headline "Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade." But Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, writing in Mother Jones, warned that the legislation, which amounted to the "finance industry's deregulatory wish list," would "pave the way for a new round of record-shattering financial industry mergers, dangerously concentrating political and economic power." Mokhiber and Weissman also predicted that such mergers would eventually "create too-big-to-fail institutions that are someday likely to drain the public treasury as taxpayers bail out imperiled financial giants to protect the stability of the nation's banking system."

Enter Bear Stearns. In addition, the merging of commercial and investment banking helped enable high-risk mortgage lending to make its way into the mutual funds and 401Ks of millions of Americans in the form of mortgage-backed securities. "Diversifying bad debt just spreads the poison," as Frank said in his Boston speech. It also makes a falling housing market reverberate throughout the economy far more than it did even during the S&L collapse. Enter the subprime crisis. And welcome back, 1929.

As these new financial giants go into freefall, a little regulation once again sounds like a good idea, just as it did in 1933. But increased regulation will never come willingly from the Federal Reserve, an "independent entity" that is answerable to no one, and has always operated largely in the interests of the big banks that make up its membership and provide its funding. Under two decades of leadership by the notorious anti-regulator Alan Greenspan, the Fed took a hands-off approach, preferring to set "guidelines" for the financial industry rather than enforce rules. In December 2007, the New York Times compiled a rundown of the multiple warnings and pleas made to Greenspan, over a period of at least seven years, to address the dangers posed by subprime lending—all of them, of course, rebuffed by the man who still claims he couldn't have predicted that the housing bubble would someday burst. The Fed's approach is unlikely to change much now—at least, not without a fight.

The Federal Reserve is set up in such a way that Congress cannot force its hand. But it can apply pressure, by way of threatening to pass legislation to accomplish what the Fed refuses to do. That's what Barney Frank did last summer, when he thought Fed chair Ben Bernanke wasn't doing enough about predatory lending practices. "The Fed has the authority to spell out rules about what is unfair and deceptive," Frank said in an interview with Bloomberg News. "If by default the Fed is not in the process of doing it, we, I think, should pass a law giving the authority" to other government agencies.

Now, in addition to outlining a plan to deal with the epidemic of foreclosures, Democrats on the Financial Services Committee are looking at legislation that could force financial firms to sing for their supper—a few bars, at least. The Financial Services Risk Regulator proposed by Frank last week would have the power to demand "timely market information from market players, inspect institutions, report to Congress on the health of the entire financial sector, and act when necessary to limit risky practices or protect the integrity of the financial system." In return, he said, financial institutions would have "potential access to the discount window for nondepository institutions."

Frank was referring to the lending program for brokers started by the Fed on March 17, which extends the same lending rules previously employed by commercial banks to securities firms. Two days after it opened, Financial Week reported, under the headline "Investment bank CFOs Not Proud," that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had already overcome concerns that borrowing from the Fed might "make them appear financially weak," and had taken advantage of the discount window, at the new rock-bottom interest rate of 2.5 percent. So Barney Frank's modest proposal simply says that if the government is going to back loans to billionaire investment firms at rates that middle-class credit card holders can only dream about, the companies are going to have to submit to a little oversight in return.

Critics outside the government have taken things a step further, advancing the view that if the taxpayers are going to be responsible for bailing out greedy financial giants like Bear Stearns, they ought to get a piece of them in return, as well as some say in how they are run. Conceivably, the federal government could either take over and run the affected enterprises, or at the very least take a share of the stock in order to exercise control. "I think it makes the most sense to take it [Bear Stearns] over outright," Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in an email last week. "The key point is that we don't want Bear Stearns taking big risks with the public's money. I suppose it's better that we at least share in the gains if they do this sort of gambling, but it would be better to have the government directly step in and not allow the gamble."

Such measures are highly unlikely. But Baker argues that a bailout without some kind of consequences will have no impact at all on the kind of unrestrained, irresponsible behavior on the part of financial firms that got us into this mess in the first place. "The issue here is essentially the moral hazard problem that you had with the S&Ls," he said. "If you have the option of making a bet where the government covers your losses, you might as well make it a risky one."

Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also says he wants to "pin down just how the government decided to front $30 billion in taxpayer dollars" to back the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase. He and Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) have both said they will hold hearings on the matter. But according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Baucus and Dodd are among the top recipients of donations from the securities and investment industry.

In the end, the real question is what kind of regulation of these industries can come from a Democratic Party that now relies on them to fund its campaigns. A few reform-minded Democrats in Congress won't get far without support from the White House. And while financial industry campaign contributions to Democrats have climbed ever since Bill Clinton shifted the party's rhetoric and policymaking away from "big government," donations in this election cycle dwarf those of the past.

With his speech in New York, Obama is clearly trying to show himself to be a man who isn't afraid to bite the hand that's feeding him. He is also putting space, on this issue, between himself and Hillary Clinton, in part by reminding voters of the outcomes of Bill Clinton's policies. He denounced both "Republican and Democratic administrations" for regulatory failures leading to the current crisis, and, as the New York Times reported, "handouts supporting the speech" noted that "the banking and insurance industries spent more than $300 million on a successful campaign to repeal the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in 1999." Any effort Hillary Clinton might make to separate herself from her husband's positions will be undermined by the fact that Robert Rubin, promoter of bank deregulation and still a top official at Citigroup, is an advisor to her campaign. On Monday in Philadelphia, in her own speech on economic issues, Hillary Clinton urged President Bush to immediately form an "Emergency Working Group on Foreclosures," which "could be headed by eminent leaders like Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, and Bob Rubin."

For the moment, at least, Obama has staked out the higher ground on this issue. In the end, though, says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, "No matter who becomes our next president, Wall Street will have an indebted friend in the White House." Once the campaign rhetoric fades, the only thing that might bring change on Wall Street is a revolt on Main Street, from Americans who finally cast blame for their lost homes and depleted retirement accounts on its rightful source.

James Ridgeway is Mother Jones' senior Washington correspondent.

@2008 The Foundation for National Progress

Read the article online:

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2008/03/deregulation-economic-crisis.html

Check out the latest from Mother Jones at:

http://www.motherjones.com

Dodging Impeachment

The following is a wonderful piece by Ralph Nader. While I wholeheartedly agree that Bush and Cheney and their evil cohorts should rot in prison til the end of their days, I also must believe that the responsibility to effect this impeachment lies solely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party. Any peace and justice advocate who pressures real progressives to take time out of their busy schedule to call or write the corporate Dem who "took over" in 2006 thinking this will have some sort of effect on them are unbelievably naive. It is a huge waste of time, at best. At worst, it is a purposeful diversion which takes time away from more pressing and possible matters (like national health care, the illegal occupation of Iraq and local political races). The Democrats who voted for the war will simply continue to fund and support it while talking to their constituencies about how their "hands are tied". These are not the people's representatives. They represent "those that brung 'em" to paraphrase the late great Molly Ivins. They are certainly not going to impeach their war profiteering buddies in the Oval Office.


Published on Saturday, October 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/13/4512

Dodging Impeachment by Ralph Nader

The meeting at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 5, 2007 was anything but routine. Seated before Cong. John Olver (D-MA) were twenty seasoned citizens from over a dozen municipalities in this First Congressional District which embraces the lovely Berkshire Hills.

The subject-impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.

The request-that Cong. Olver join the impeachment drive in Congress.

More than just opinion was being conveyed to Cong. Olver, a then 70 year old Massachusetts liberal with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These Americans voted overwhelmingly during formal annual town meetings in 14 towns and two cities in the First District endorsing resolutions to impeach the President and Vice President.

Presented in the form of petitions to be sent to the Congress, the approving citizenry cited at least four “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

They included the initiation of the Iraq war based on defrauding the public and intentionally misleading the Congress, spying on Americans without judicial authorization, committing the torture of prisoners in violation of

both federal law and the U.N. Torture Convention and the Geneva Convention, and stripping American citizens of their Constitutional rights by jailing them indefinitely without charges and without access to legal counsel or

even an opportunity to challenge their imprisonment in a court of law. Forty towns in Vermont and the State Senate had already presented their Congressional delegation with similar petitions.

Impeachment advocates reported the results to Cong. Olver from each town meeting. Leverett’s vote was 339-1; Great Barrington was 100-3. No vote in any of the towns or cities was less than a two-third majority “yes” in favor of impeachment, according to long-time activist, Atty. Robert Feuer of Stockbridge, Mass.

With three fourths of reports completed Cong. Olver, who voted against the war, raised his hand and said, “Spare me, I know full well the overwhelming majority of my constituency is in favor of impeachment.” He then told them he would not sign on to any impeachment resolution whether against Bush or against Cheney (H.Res. 333 introduced by Cong. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)). He was quite adamant.

In taking this unrepresentative position, Rep. Olver’s position was identical to that of the House Democratic leadership and many of his Democratic colleagues.

The Democratic Party line on impeachment is that Bush and Cheney are the most impeachable White House duo in American history (they believe this privately). The Democrats do not want to distract attention from their legislative agenda, and need Republican votes for passage. Moreover, they do not have the votes to obtain the requisite two-thirds of the members present for conviction in the Senate.

Strangely, none of these excuses bothered Republicans when they impeached Bill Clinton in the House for lying under oath about sex and proceeded to a full trial in the Senate where they failed to get the required votes. Can

Clinton’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” begin to compare with this White House crime wave?

The last question to Cong. Olver was from a young veteran back from Iraq and Afghanistan. “What could we possibly do to bring you around to our way of thinking,” he asked?

Cong. Olver’s response, after several seconds of silence, was “You have to prove to me that impeachment will not be counterproductive.”

Members of Congress should apply the same standard to themselves that they like to apply to members of the Executive and Judicial branches-namely to honor their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. That Oath is

supposed to transcend political calculations.

Maybe the Democrats think that Bush and Cheney are such wild and crazy guys that a serious impeachment drive in Congress would provoke the two draft-dodgers to launch a military emergency, strike Iran or otherwise generate a crisis, based on their continual fulminations about the “war on terror,” that would engulf the Democrats and throw them on the defensive for 2008.

In short, the Democrats may be viewing Bush and Cheney as being so defiantly, aggressively impeachable on so many counts as to be unimpeachable. That is, with the White House harboring so much political nitroglycerine, don’t even try to remove it. Such a cowardly position would make quite a precedent for future Presidents who want to illegally elbow out the other two branches of government and our Constitution.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions.

Inspiration For Progressives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Click on this link to watch a short video about our political system. There's definitely a good analogy to be had here.

Just think of the lions as the republican elite, ruthless and pragmatic.

Think of the crocodiles as the democrat elite, trying to steal from the republican elite's table. Failing, they sink, barely noticed, back to the depths.

The buffalo are the progressive herd. Separated, alone, wandering around aimlessly mooing about things (with no particular organized agenda or vision). Its no surprise that they wander right into a trap. They then run off leaving a baby to fend for itself! But wait! Whats that noise? A herd of progressives comes thundering over the hill. Check out that huge progressive as he flips that republican into the air! Strength in numbers! And, it looks like the baby might survive after all ....

The People ... United ... Will Never Be Defeated!

Ralph Nader - My Presidential Candidate

In the last several presidential election cycles, the name Ralph Nader has become synonymous with the word “pariah”. In Republican circles, people don’t seem to have any problem with Ralph’s running for office (their mistaken assumption is that he pulls voters from the Democrats). It’s much more likely that his five decade career as a citizen activist has raised their ire because they may profit directly by investing in companies he may have sought to regulate or restrict. Nader’s staunch defense labor and the environment put him on the side of “big government” from their perspective.

Many Democrats respect Nader deeply for his championing of “their” issues but many of them have fallen prey to the propaganda casting him as the “spoiler” of 2000. Some even blame Ralph for the entire Bush administration and all its foibles. It doesn’t matter to them that there were five other candidates on the Florida ballot with enough votes to “spoil” Gore’s election. It’s unimportant to them that Gore put up no fight when most analysts agreed he had won. They don’t care that Gore lost his home state (and Clinton’s) and ran a campaign that made Kerry’s 2004 effort look lively by comparison.

Perhaps the real reason Democrats have so vilified Ralph is that he had the nerve to say out loud what just under 25%* of us already know, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.” He never said there was NO difference, just that it was slight. Given the almost entirely corporate sponsorship of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, George Bush and Barack Obama, it would seem that he was absolutely correct.

As 2008 approaches, we will be asked the proverbial question, “Which hamburger (candidate) do you prefer – a Whopper or a Big Mac?” Strangely, those wanting a salad can never be included in the framing of this question. We are expected to debate and anguish over the merits of each offering and to ignore the fact that corporate sponsorship has rendered them all pretty much identical to one another.

On May 25th, a man who has addressed this two-party problem quite directly will arrive in Glens Falls for a visit. This man believes that wars are created by the military-industrial-congressional complex (he sees the loss of human life on both sides as preventable). He knows that clean air and workplace safety are not “left” or “right” issues. He knows that a “conservative” with cancer needs health care just as much as a “liberal” injured in a car crash. He knows that seatbelts and airbags don’t ask for your party registration before they save your life - they just work.

Ralph Nader will be at Red Fox Books signing copies of his new autobiography, “The Seventeen Traditions”. He and film-maker, Henriette Mantel, will also attend the premiere of “An Unreasonable Man” at Aimee’s Dinner and a Movie. The documentary is the highly acclaimed Sundance Selection about Ralph Nader, his life and his legacy.

For more info, contact: Matt Funiciello (518) 361-6278 mattfuniciello@earthlink.net

* According to the BOE, 52.8% of registered voters in Warren County were Republican in 2006. If you combine blanks and third party registrants into a group, it is 24.3% of the electorate and the Democrats, 22.9%. Food for thought.

Crooked Democrat Judge Fines Nader $89,000 For Running for Office

I have attached a truly frightening piece below about the lengths to which the Democrats have now stooped to quash democracy and shut down third party candidates. The Democrats, through actions like this, are succeeding at making the Republicans look like the good guys. When I read articles like this, I am quite relieved to be associated with neither set of ruling class, neo-corporatist swine.


OpEdNews
www.opednews.com/articles/genera_michael__070502_democrats_tighten_no.htm
May 2, 2007
Democrats tighten noose on Nader and Greens in punitive attack on "Third Party" candidates
By Michael Richardson

The Democrats are tightening the financial noose around Ralph Nader for his failed bid to obtain ballot access in Pennsylvania during his 2004 Presidential campaign. Nader had been deprived a place on the ballot after extensive litigation, brought by the Democrats, and was later assessed a hefty $89,821 penalty by the Pennsylvania courts to be paid to the Democrats for court-related costs. Nader appealed the assessment and was recently denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Emboldened, lawyers for the Democrats have now entered the costly order as a final judgment in an ongoing effort to enforce the penalty.

Nader attorney Oliver Hall says about the post-election vendetta, "They have overreached and gone way too far, it is unprecedented." The obvious chilling effect on independents and minor party candidates is not lost on Carl Romanelli, the 2006 Green Party would-be candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. Romanelli, too, has been hit by the Democrats with a huge bill for their costs in removing him from the ballot and has been ordered to pay $89,668.

If successful in Pennsylvania, Democrat legislators around the country will likely introduce similar punitive election laws in other states, particularly "swing" states, in a preventive effort to keep independents and minor party candidates off the ballot.

Capital University law professor Mark Brown has studied the 2004 legal wrangling that took Nader off the ballot in Pennsylvania and recently published a law review article on the affair. Brown discovered the Democrats were aided by a judge who may have been motivated by animus toward Nader's candidacy.

Nader needed 25,697 signatures on his nomination petitions to get a spot on the Pennsylvania ballot and submitted approximately 52,000. A week after filing the petitions the Secretary of State accepted Nader's nomination after tossing about 5,000 signatures for various reasons. That same day, August 9, 2004, eight Democrat "objectors" represented by two dozen lawyers challenged some 37,000 of the remaining signatures. After weeks of legal wrangling eleven judges were assigned the monumental task of a line-by-line review of Nader's petitions.

Judge James Collins, who assessed the $89,821 bill, led the review declaring Nader's petitions were "rife with forgeries" and that "this signature gathering process was the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this Court." Collins alleged that "thousands of names" were "created at random"…a view dissented from by Justice Saylor of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who declared the Nader campaign had not been shown to have engaged in any kind of "systemic" fraud and that only 687 signatures out of 51,273 had actually been rejected for forgery.

Professor Brown has discovered that Judge Collins personally ruled that 568 of the 687 purported forgeries were fraudulent leaving the other ten judges to find only 119 forgeries. Collins and two of the other reviewing judges discarded thousands of signatures on very "technical and complicated" criteria including a missing middle initial, use of ditto marks, or mixing printing with cursive writing. Collins ended up rejecting 70% of the 10,794 signatures he reviewed.

Brown wrote in his law review article, "Moreover, the eleven judges who reviewed Nader's signature submissions apparently employed different standards to invalidate signatures at alarmingly different rates." In a footnote, Brown notes that 3,500 signatures were invalidated for unstated reasons.

Brown writes there was a "concerted Democratic program to purge Nader from the presidential ballot." Further, "The lesson to be drawn from the 2004 presidential race is that neither major party can be trusted to police a general election ballot. Major party interests naturally lean more toward rigging and sabotaging than insuring fair and competitive fights."

"The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court pressed just under a dozen judges into service at different locations over the course of two weeks to canvass 52,000 signatures submitted by the Nader campaign. Not only did this Herculean effort push the Nader campaign beyond its legal and technical capacity--some of the proceedings were not even attended by Nader's lawyers--the eleven judges invalidated signatures at alarmingly different rates."

"Forcing lawyers to scramble among a dozen courtrooms in as many days to uphold an agency's decision authorizing ballot access is neither measured nor productive. The practice is not only constitutionally objectionable, but it also facilitates a moneyed effort to veto a political outsider's participation in the electoral arena."

Attorney Hall says that Ralph Nader is still reviewing his options regarding the costly and punitive order issued by Judge Collins to punish Nader's bid for public office.

Professor Brown concludes his analysis of the Democratic legal attack on Nader, "I suspect that as long as America's political system rewards an empty lust for power, politicians and judges will continue to turn blind eyes to fair procedures."

Permission granted to reprint. Authors Bio: Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about politics, election law, human nutrition, ethics, and music. In 2004 Richardson was Ralph Nader's national ballot access coordinator.