America no longer has a democracy

Voter Apathy

In the 2000 national election, 110.8 Million people voted. That's out of 186 Million people who are 18 years and over. 40% of the people who could have voted in 2000 did not vote. The details are here.

The June 2006 election, in California, had the worst showing at the polls since workers began tracking the number in 1946.

Voter apathy in and of itself isn't that bad, but when the people that don't vote are disproportionately liberal, which I believe they are, then we have a problem. How can I make this claim? Because young people are the largest segment of the disaffected and they are more liberal than their older counterparts.

Voter apathy is, I believe, a strategy by the GOP. The wedge issues discussed in my last entry only serve to turn people off.

Electronic Voting Machines

Diebold's CEO said in 2003 he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Diebold makes the machines that counted 40% of the vote in FL in 2000. If Diebold's propietary system that counts your votes does not scare you, it should. They have been proven to be very insecure. Two companies (Diebold and ES&S) counted 80% of the vote in 2004. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the CEO's of those companies... they are brothers. That bears repeating: two brothers controled the companies whose machines counted 80% of the votes in 2000. Apparently that was no big deal to most people. As was the fact the contested election in FL in 2000 was presided over by Bush's brother and Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State (you know, the person in charge of counting the votes). She was also Bush's Florida campaign co-chair the year before.

And now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a compelling piece, with 208 footnotes to document the case, that the 2004 Presidential election was stolen.

Dirty Tricks

There is new information that further plans to tamper with election
results in Florida: a secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals. From the article, "a Republican spokeswoman did not deny that voters would be challenged at polling stations." The Republicans clearly have no qualms about what they are doing. When will people wake up? It's not about gay marriage. It's not about supposed tax cuts. It's not about flag burning. It's about the poor and working class of this country voting in a bunch of lying politicians that are turning this country into something that none of us will like, when we finally realize what they've done.

For more dirty tricks, look at Robert F. Kennedy's article on the 2004 election.

Why do we stand for this? What should a sane person do? [The answer: vote and do it via absentee ballot.]

Watch out America, the GOP are busy at work

The GOP is at it again. It's an election year, after all. Before I get to that, did you hear what Bush said when asked to name the "most wonderful moment" of his presidency? He said "I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7 1/2-pound largemouth bass on my lake." Nothing else came to mind. I believe it.

Here's what the GOP are up to:

• bringing back the "gay" issue, this time it's about gay adoption
  
• more tax cuts for the rich being sold as tax cuts for "all americans" (more here)
  
• bringing back the flag burning issue
  
• immigration, immigration, immigration
  

Where did gay marriage go after the 2004 election? No where. It completely disappeared because it had served the purposed for which it existed in the first place, to elect Republicans.

My prediction: the Republicans will successfully pull the wool over the eyes of the American public yet again over the phantom issues. In other words, the Democrats will not win either the House or Senate in 2006.

Also, let's not forget these things:

• the mess in Iraq -- if you want a good idea what's going on there, watch this
  
• the posturing with Iran -- WMDs, WMDs!!
  
• the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan -- the drug companies are the winners here
  
• the swelling budget deficit
  

What about solving real problems? Like:

• the environment
  
• the cost of medical care
  
• we have a growing poor and a growing prison population (and we lock up more people than any other developed nation)
  
• the national debt