Uncle Ted Stevens Guilty as Sin (If Ya Didn't Know, Now You Know)

In the words of a famous hip-hop legend, "If ya didn't know, now you know." "Uncle Ted" Stevens (R-AK) has been convicted of 7 felony counts of lying on his Senate financial disclosure reports by not revealing gifts and services totaling over $250,000 from 2001-2006. Uncle Ted could be sentenced up to 35 years, though with his connections is unlikely he would serve too much time. The storyline is that Stevens house was raided a year ago, and he was subsequently investigated and indicted for failing to report $250,000 of gifts, home renovations, and car deals paid for by campaign contiributor, VECO on whose behalf he passed favorable legislation. As they say, "Follow the money trail."

And speaking of the money trail, Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin was a director of The Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc. in 2003. This 527 group was created by Senator Ted Stevens to raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. Of course, Uncle Ted later endorsed Palin during her gubernatorial run, a fact which she would certainly not tarnish by calling for Stevens to step down from his Senate post. Though certainly this conviction during a dead even Senatorial race with former Anchorage Mayor, Mark Begich, a Democrat, certainly portends good news at just the right time for Begich's election chances, thus moving the Democratic-controlled US Senate closer to the magic number of 60.

FROM ABCNews.com , JULY 30, 2007:

FBI and IRS
criminal investigators executed a search warrant this afternoon at the Alaska
home of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. The search warrant is currently under
seal.

A federal grand jury has been investigating the senator's ties to VECO, an Alaska oil services firm. VECO is in the middle of a statewide corruption investigation that has tarnished Stevens' son, Ben, a state senator. The FBI raided Ben's offices last August.
Stevens has denied he is the target of a federal investigation, but he acknowledged in June the FBI had asked him to preserve certain records.

In a prepared statement for the media, Stevens confirmed the raid on his Girdwood home but declined to comment on it, other than to urge his constituents "not to form conclusions based upon incomplete and sometimes incorrect reports in the media."

In May, the Anchorage Daily News revealed the FBI was investigating whether the firm had paid for expansion work to Stevens' home in Girdwood, performed in 2000. Stevens has said he paid invoices for the work from his own pocket.

Stevens is the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate -- and the master of its appropriations process.

Alaska's sole congressman, Republican Don Young, who is also reportedly under FBI investigation for his dealings with VECO, is the man behind the "bridge to nowhere," the controversial $231 million earmark for a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska to Gravina Island with a population of 50.

Vote for US, We'll Protect You from the Immigrants

Have you ever wondered why non-whites, non-Christians, and immigrants tend to vote for Democrats by a 3:1 ratio? I always thought it was because as far as political platforms go, the DNC tends to better articulate the role of government in assisting the have nots, i.e., the poor, immigrants, etc. whereas the RNC articulates the welfare of the haves and is more susceptible to rule by lobbyists. Liberal blog Open Left penned a revealing article explaining in socio-cultural terms exactly why the GOP's message of cultural, Eurocentric superiority permeates their political platform and campaign messages and has been so successful for them.

All throughout the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, the media made hay of the Democratic candidates using identity politics to win primaries, i.e., Black voters vs Latino voters, feminist voters, and "bitter" rural and poor, working class white voters, etc. However, it seems that Republican politicians have effectively used identity politics to great effect for some time with the message of protecting their constituents from "THEM". That is, Blacks, non-white immigrants, and other undesirables.

Several prominent examples that come to mind. In 2000, George W. Bush gained the Republican nomination for President in large part because of his racist attack against John McCain when Karl Rove and former SC Attorney General Charlie Condon released whisper polling in South Carolina claiming McCain had fathered a Black child out of wedlock.

The so-called Bradley Effect was coined because of a California gubernatorial race in which Tom Bradley, the popular Black Mayor of Los Angeles was widely expected to win due to favorable polling but ended up losing the race. Polling later showed white voters falsely told pollsters they would vote for a Black candidate to avoid criticism, and then did not, thereby benefitting his white GOP opponent. According to this theory, a Black political candidate must generally have a double digit lead over his opponent in order to overcome the hidden bias.

In 1996, Tennessee politician Harold Ford, Jr. had a great chance of becoming the first Black to win a US Senate seat since Reconstruction until his Republican challenger, Bob Corker, released an ad that played on the fact that Ford attended a Playboy Super Bowl party for 4,000 attendees and featured a naked blonde telling Ford to "call me" with the insinuation that this Black man will take your white women. Those of us in the Black community are well aware of the stereotype of Black men dating blonde women. Needless to say, the ad did enough damage to derail the candidacy of Ford, considered nationally to be the inevitable candidate.

In the past two years, the Democratic and Republican congressmen wrestled with passing so-called "immigration reform." A number of Republicans lined up against the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and helped to defeat passage by arguing against supposed "amnesty for illegals" when a number of the parts of the legislation to reform the immigration system was actually good. I want to know, since when did white Americans gain the right to bar "those other people" from entering their country? Every single person currently living in the United States either emigrated here from another country or have as ancestors people who called other countries and continents home, whether English, Dutch, German, Italian, Irish, Jewish, Spanish, certainly Africans, Asians, etc. That's why for many years this country has been called the "melting pot" of the world. So there really is no such thing as a "Real" American as many Republican ads would like us to believe because everyone here other than the Native Americans are from somewhere else!

Remember the Good Old Days (1992-2000)?

The good old days occurred from 1992-2000 when President William J. Clinton was in office. Unemployment was among the lowest in our history (about 5%), the economy was booming, and we were relatively at peace with the rest of the world (except for intervention in Kosovo, non-intervention in Rwanda, and a brief but failed stint in Somalia). Well, it's now 2008, and I'm sure wishing massive voter fraud perpetrated by the Rove Republican party hadn't succeeded in getting GWB forced down our collective throats.

Look at the picture. Need I say more?

Republicanism vs. Conservatism & the Death of Small Government

As a youth who is old enough to remember President Ronald Reagan (I was 4 years old when he was elected the second time), I have always heard certain catch phrases that have become embedded in the Republican psyche--conservatism and small government. Those terms especially starting with the administration of Reagan came to define the GOP, and to this day, these terms are what any good Republican will tell you is crucial to defining what the Republican party and Republicanism are all about. Unfortunately, I believe one of the major reasons that the Republican party is no longer relevant to the American people is because they have forgotten those ideals that made them respected in the Reagan heyday. Of course, they have totally disregarded their debt to the very people that have voted them in office time and time again (the little guy in Appalachia, and the "bitter" folks in Pennsylvania), and have instead catered to a very small group of morally bankrupt individuals & corporations who tell them what to do and say for the love of money. That discussion of course, could take up a series of blog posts, so I digress.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I am a proud lifelong liberal Democrat who has no problem voting my conscience. All that means is that for national elections I tend to vote Democrat for President and Congress, and for local and state elections, I vote for the person who best articulates and has a track record of living the values that I care about, whether Democrat, Republican or independent. As a student of history, I have always been impressed with the way the Republican political machine gained and has largely held on to power state-wide and nationally since the Nixon 1970's to the present. Ironically, the GOP has in large part become successful especially throughout the South due to the rise of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's-1970's and the resultant "white flight" from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Certainly one term that President George W. Bush has made popular is "Compassionate Conservatism", which I guess is supposed to stand for the new and friendlier Republican way of governing. The "No Child Left Behind" endeavor as well as partnerships with community organizations and faith-based programs were to be critical elements of this better brand of conservatism. But 8 years later, all we have are broken promises, bigger government, record national debt, shaky at best standing in the international community, armed forces that are stretched thin by unnecessary war, and the collapse of our sacred financial markets due to the greed encouraged by Republican deregulation of corporate America, just to name a "negative benefits".

So I want to know what happened to the supposed GOP values of 'small government' and how does the modern GOP (not sure if that is an irony) reconcile exploding federal budget deficits, government bailouts and takeovers of failing financial corporations, disregard for the Constitution & a more insidious invasion of privacy? To help answer this question I read a recent article written on these issues by Wick Allison, the former publisher of one of the most well-known Republican publications, The National Review. In this article, I think he does a great job of describing how so-called Conservatives got away from the true meaning of small government, and why he believes a new type of politician, Barack Obama can restore conservative (lowercase "c") government to the US.

I'll leave you with links to a few articles so you can read more for yourself:

Former National Review publisher endorses Obama

The Death of Republican Philosophy

Nice Bailout. Now Pay for It!

Dodd bill more aggressive than Treasury plan

Abortion & The One-Issue Party

Today I read this Huffington Post article about how the Republican party keeps successfully using the abortion issue (as well as gay rights, guns, affirmative action aka "Stop those Blacks from taking our jobs.") election after election, and the American public is complicit in letting them get away with it.

It is quite disingenuous that the Republican party has nothing to offer over 90% of us but continuous war(s), an increasing $500B federal debt and counting, an economic climate resulting in some of the largest corporate layoffs in history, taxes that take more and more out of the little guy's pockets, conspiring with big insurance, health management and big oil to severely limit our choices for competitive alternatives (in Florida for ex, the insurance industry is famous for buying the Republican lawmakers so that pro-consumer laws are not passed in the state), deregulating the financial industry to such a point that it's players feel no shame about a record number of home foreclosures, under-performing schools, supporting our troops in the form of giving them 3-5 consecutive tours of duty without adequate R&R with family, and the list goes on and on.

Has anyone ever considered that in all the years that Republicans have held the White House & even in the years that Republicans have controlled Congress, abortions have NEVER been reduced? (Since 1980, Republicans have been President 20 out of the last 28 years). It's more rhetoric over substance, and as long as the American voters continue to let one party hold one or two issues over us while screwing us on every other issue we care about, then all we have is our own ignorance to blame (refusing to see the truth). The greatest example I can cite is the 2004 election fraud. We KNEW that George Bush was a sorry President made possible by his father having stacked the Supreme Court. But instead of going with the guy who was smarter, had a more accomplished record, a REAL war hero with command experience (not someone who dressed up and posed by fighter planes like GW), we collectively (especially Christians) chose to be hoodwinked and distracted from those issues most important to us by the Gay Marriage amendments which were introduced state by state by the Republican party for this exact reason. Our resulting disenfranchisement has continued until this day.

I certainly don't condone abortion except in cases where the mother's life is in danger or in extreme cases of health-related complications. As an example, I once had a neighbor named "Mary". Mary was physically limited due to several chronic illnesses & health conditions which she had suffered with her entire life. She and her husband tried for a child, and the Drs. warned her that she was literally risking her life if she tried to birth a child. Well of course they went ahead anyway, and now her quality of life has deteriorated in such a way that I'm not sure how she makes it from day to day. Additionally, Mary's child is severely handicapped as well. Mary herself is to all intents walking dead. In this case, clearly I believe that Mary did the wrong thing by having a child. This situation I cite only as an exception, and it is an exception nonetheless.

The bottom line, though is that we as voters must educate ourselves and find out our local and national candidates platforms and whether they just spout this rhetoric at election time when it counts the most (politically) and whether this matches up with their track record when it really counts (morally). Ask yourself, how is it that we can claim to care so much about a baby before it is born (I myself am pro-life), but yet we stop caring about that baby after birth (the farce of No Child Left Behind which guarantees that schools in better neighborhoods will continue to get state funding while the failing schools in predominately poor neighborhoods who actually NEED the financial assistance will not receive such, no cost-effective health coverage for millions of youth, etc).