This February and Next November, Vote for Peace!
Dear family and friends,
As is the case in most presidential elections, our upcoming one is marked by serious and complex issues that We, The People are tasked with deciding the course of. More often than not, these issues are about our common humanity and morality and NOT as shallow as partisan politics, as the media and political machines would have us believe. The most urgent issues facing me this election cycle are
• Iraq – a strategy for ending the war and bringing every soldier home.
• Iran – preventing another unnecessary war by exercising creative and intelligent diplomacy
• Nuclear Weapons – halting the development of a new generation of U.S. nukes, and leading the international community in disarmament.
Some very brief facts about each of these topics:
• Iraq - as of NOW – Saturday December 8th at 9am – there have been 3,886 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq, coupled with tens of thousands of injuries and estimates of up to a MILLION killed Iraqis, and all at a cost to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of more than $475 BILLION.
• Iran - a recent intelligence report reveals that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program as long as FOUR YEARS AGO, and yet the Bush Administration continues to try to scare us with the threat of a nuclear Iran. Reports are showing that President Bush knew about the cessation of nuclear activities, and yet his administration is currently spinning that data as reinforcement for their belief in imminent danger and fear.
• Nukes - this administration has been pursuing production of new nuclear weapons during its entire term, even though we already have a stockpile of nearly 10,000 Earth-destroying weapons (approx. 1/3 of the entire nuclear stock on this planet, and most of them are armed.) each ONE of them carries about 30 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, and it would take no more than a few hundred of them to destroy a major portion of the world.
Most of our choices for President have a position on these issues, which makes it fairly clear what kind of world we can expect with them in office. Here’s my simplified rundown:
> if your value system and religious morals and American dream include more illegal war, indefinite deployment of troops, military action against Iran, and the production of more weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying all life, then vote for
Sam Brownback
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Huckabee
Duncan Hunter
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Fred Thompson
> if your values include Peace, Justice, and Democracy; if your religion tells you to honor life and creation; if your America is one that leads the way toward Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for all, then vote for
Joe Biden
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Dennis Kucinich
Mike Gravel
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
Ron Paul
Bill Richardson
Of course it’s slightly more complex than that; there are other issues, and variations within my either-or analysis. However, on these three major issues – Iraq, Iran, and Nuclear Weapons – it really is pretty clear who would go in with proverbial and literal guns blazing and who would exercise intelligence and compassion. It is my belief that we vote not for our selves so much as for generations just beginning and yet to come. With them in mind, i refuse to be programmed for fear and a twisted sense of “justice” that amounts to no more than bestial vengeance. I refuse to continue to leave this world less healthy, less just, and less peaceful than when i found it when all the tools and opportunities to do the opposite lay right before me.
If you want to be an active participant in your political community (a Citizen):
1. REGISTER TO VOTE! One super-easy way is to go to rockthevote.com and fill in the form. You print it, sign it, and mail it. Done! You have until 15 days before an election to register or change your party. The Primaries are on February 5, 2008. You have until January 22 to get your registration in their hands.
2. EDUCATE YOURSELF. It’s nothing less than your responsibility. All of the candidates have websites, and many organizations make voting guides and catalogue the candidates’ positions. One that i really like is from Peace Action West.
3. VOTE! The United States is one of the only democracies to place the burden of voting on the Citizens (many other places make it a holiday so you don’t have work or school to contend with). Please make voting a priority! If you’re crazy and believe in being the change you wish to see in the world like i am/do, you can declare it a personal holiday...skip work and school, volunteer at a polling station, and vote!
Peace,
-evan
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Comments (5)
Thank you Evan, You are truly a model citizen!
Comment #1 Posted by: Suza | December 8, 2007 10:06 AM
thanks, Suza...i try. (and here's the secret: it's not that hard!)
a friend just sent me this very handy matrix for where the candidates stand on all kinds of issues!
there are now officially...
ZERO excuses not to be informed when you vote!
Comment #2 Posted by: evan austin | December 8, 2007 12:31 PM
It not all gloom and doom aout there. The U.S. and Russia have been converting nuclear arms into fuel for a while now.
"Since 1987, the United States and countries of the former USSR have signed a series of disarmament treaties to reduce their nuclear arsenals by approximately 80%.
Nuclear materials declared surplus to military requirements by the USA and Russia are now being converted into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors."
Link to info:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Military_warheads_as_a_source_of_nuclear_fuel
Comment #3 Posted by: Brian | December 8, 2007 02:25 PM
I'm just going to gloss over the comment by Brian in favor of nuclear(fission) power. He's shown himself to be impervious to science, reason and logic when it comes to the most heavily subsidized form of power generation ever devised by human beings.
The primaries are coming up and it's is a very different primary season we are facing in 2008. Generally, the primaries have been engineered by the two big parties to advance the candidates that the power centers most desire. There are any number of ways this is done. Media saturation, misleading stories, repeatedly playing only the microphone channel of a candidate at a big rally when he screams in the loud loud hall. Things like that. Little nudges and suggestions and innuendo and incredulity. We've all seen it. Stories along the lines that Dennis Kucinich is a kook and has no chance because his wife has a tongue ring. Stories that there are really only two, possibly three, candidates because all the others are "hopeless". This is usually referred to a covering the horse race rather than the issues confronting this nation and anyone dumb enough to want to be its President.
By far the biggest factor in ensuring that only the sanctioned candidates get nominated is the primary structure itself. The emphasis on New Hampshire and Iowa are the biggest tools in the arsenal to ensure that the power centers man(woman in this case) gets nominated. In the past, whoever wins those two primaries is generally given the nomination. It's called building momentum and it's a function of the media and the nature television coverage. Voters are told that candidate x won in NH or Iowa and they are the logical front runner for the nomination. Here the media prays on a psychological weakness in the American electorate. Voters like to vote for winners. Never mind that combined NH and Iowa make up less than 10% of California's gross state product. Or that only 4.2 million people live in NH and Iowa combined. (There's ten million people living in Los Angeles county alone!) Forget that the economies of both NH and Iowa are tiny and largely rural and that the populations are homogenous and overwhelmingly white. The two parties use these two tiny states to eliminate any real threat that Democracy might break out and threaten their anointed candidates.
This primary season is very different. This time NH and Iowa and even South Carolina matter about as much as their relative importance to the whole country. In other words, they don't matter at all. The Iowa caucus happens on January 3rd and NH goes off on January 8th. In most years, whoever wins in these tiny states are touted by the mainstream media as THE candidate. Never mind that Iowa and NH only command 86 of the 4,371 delegates available or just 2%. The media's behavior, in stark contrast to what the framers of the Constitution had in mind, actually misinform the citizens that the nomination is now set in stone because less than 2% of the delegates go to some candidate based on who the people in Iowa and New Hampshire vote for. That story-line is going to be much more difficult to maintain this year.
From when Iowa opens the primary season on Jan 3 to the California primary on Feb 5, there are six states holding primaries for a total of 540 delegates. It takes at least 2,188 delegates to win the nomination from the Democratic Party. On February 5th, 22 states vote in their primaries for a grand total of 2064 delegates.
Here are the states voting on F5 in order of their importance: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee, Colorado, Arizona, Connecticut, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah, Delaware, Idaho, North Dakota, Alaska
Of those states voting on F5 California has fully one fifth of the delegates available that day. Nearly twice as many as the second place contender New York. With this one vote on F5, a candidate could lock up the whole nomination as long as they win either Michigan or Florida. This means that Iowa and New Hampshire do not matter. Ignore them. Whatever the media tells you about who's "winning" before F5 is meaningless unless you, as a voter, believe the. I wish this would happen: all the Democrats in California decide to vote for Dennis Kucinich on F5. If that were to happen, he could win the whole nomination.
One final note. The Democratic Party allows proportional distribution of delegates. That means that if there are 100 delegates and Clinton gets 28% of the vote and Edwards and Obama get 26% and Kucinich gets 20%, they each get that number of delegates. If there is an effective tie at the convention because no one has the required 2186 delegates to win the nomination, then some serious horse trading happens. Edwards and Kucinich's delegates go where they want them. If the breakdown comes to a tie between Clinton and Obama with Edwards and Kucinich holding a lot of delegates, the two most progressive candidates will get to decide who gets the nomination. Bye bye Clinton.
Comment #4 Posted by: spk | December 8, 2007 07:13 PM
evan, this is great. Thanks!
Comment #5 Posted by: Sally | December 11, 2007 10:07 PM