It’s time to ratify new START

By Lt. General Norman Seip

For almost 20 years, the U.S. has had inspectors on the ground in Russia to conduct inspections and surveillance of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Now we don’t. Since December of last year, the treaty that enabled us to keep tabs on Russian warheads expired, and our inspectors came home.

The Senate will have a lot on its plate when it resumes action after the election but their top priority should be to follow the advice of U.S. military leadership, ratify the New START Treaty and put U.S. inspectors back on the ground in Russia.

As a former Air Force Commander, I managed over 30,000 active duty personnel and had to make decisive decisions to protect our nation’s security. This treaty should be ratified for a simple reason—it makes America safe.

The New START Treaty replaces a measure negotiated under the Reagan administration and signed by President George H. W. Bush, which for the first time put into practice President Reagan’s directive that we should “trust, but verify.” In addition to providing a state of the art verification regime that builds on two decades of experience monitoring Russian weapons, the New START Treaty makes modest reductions to both Russian and U.S. arsenals and provides vital transparency and stability the relationship between the countries whose arsenals account for 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

It is because the New START Treaty makes America safer that it has the overwhelming support of U.S. military leadership and national security experts from both political parties.

Over the course of six months of hearings, senators heard testimony in support of the treaty from the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of the Missile Defense Agency charged with overseeing U.S. missiles and missile defense. They heard supporting testimony from officials from the last seven administrations, including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, among many others.

In addition, seven former STRATCOM commanders wrote to Senators, urging them to promptly ratify the treaty. A recently published open letter in support of the treaty included the names of Colin Powell, Frank Carlucci, Madeleine Albright, Chuck Hagel and John Danforth among its signatories.

Some critics claim that the treaty limits U.S. missile defense capabilities. This isn’t the case. Robert Gates and Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, Director of the Missile Defense Agency testified New START “actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program.”

After months of vetting the treaty in more than 20 hearings with hundreds of questions answered, all substantive issues have been addressed.

When the Senate reconvenes it will have been almost an entire year since U.S. on-site inspections of Russian nuclear weapons and infrastructure were suspended.  Our uncertainty grows and our security shrinks as each additional day passes.  In testimony STRATCOM Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM noted “If we don’t get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and … we have no insight into what they’re doing. So it’s the worst of both possible worlds.”

Now it’s time for the Senate to act.

A total of 67 votes are necessary to pass the treaty making the votes of all Senators critical for ratification. This treaty is a straightforward, nonpartisan issue of security with overwhelming support from the nation’s military. Senators — it’s time to ratify New START.

Lt. General Seip was the former Commander of 12th Air Force and served as Chief of Standardization and Evaluation at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.

Outside groups – many relying on anonymous donors – help Republicans gain in Congress

The priciest midterm election in U.S. history saw a Republican tide sweep numerous Democrats out of office, as voters anxious about the state of the economy ousted more House incumbents from office than any time since 1948. While several money-in-politics axioms held true, money was not a panacea for embattled politicians.

In only about 85 percent of House races did the candidate who spent the most experience victory on Election Day, a relative low in recent years, according to a preliminary analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Candidates’ spending correlated to success in 29 out of 35 Senate races – or 83 percent – that had been called as of Thursday morning.

By comparison, in 2008, the biggest spender was victorious in 93 percent of House races and in 86 percent of Senate races. In 2006, top spenders won 94 percent of House races and 73 percent of Senate races. And in 2004, 98 percent of House seats went to candidates who spent the most, as did 88 percent of Senate seats.

Moreover, most self-financing candidates again faltered this cycle. And significant investments from outside groups helped elect more than 200 federal candidates. In two-thirds of races where outside groups spent at least some money on advertisements and other political communications, the dollars spent supporting the winner, coupled with amounts spent opposing the loser, exceeded dollars spent supporting the loser or attacking the winner, according to the Center’s research.

“Those that went to the polls Tuesday showed enormous dissatisfaction with the status quo and voted, once again, for change,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “The money changed too, surging as much as 40 percent over 2006 levels to our predicted $4 billion by cycle’s end. Despite the competitive political climate and the lowest House reelection rate in 60 years, however, the vast majority of incumbents and candidates who spent the most were still reelected.”

Read OpenSecrets.org’s comprehensive post-election report here.

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in federal politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. CRP’s award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants, individual contributions and income earned from custom research and licensing data for commercial use. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.

Know this number when you go to the polls: 1-866-OUR-VOTE

The SC Progressive Network is again taking part in a national effort to safeguard against problems at the polls. We will be fielding calls and tracking problems through a database that links voters with volunteer lawyers and election experts. And we’ll be putting up flyers with a toll-free hotline number people can call to report irregularities or other problems voting.

Download a copy of the Election Protection flyer to post in your polling place. Poll workers are usually glad to have a resource to help answer questions and solve voter problems, but if they object, please let our office know by calling 803-808-3384.

For more, see 866ourvote.org.

Constitutional amendments on the Nov. 2 ballot

SC Fair Share’s positions:

  • Amendment 1 – Vote No. Amendment fixes no known problem and could make it impossible to outlaw unacceptable hunting practices in the future.
  • Amendment 2 – Vote No. This amendment is just anti-union posturing of doubtful Constitutionality.
  • Amendment 3 – Vote No. This amendment asks us to put more money into savings at at a time when we can’t pay for core services. That would reduce the funds available for education, health care and protecting the vulnerable while we climb out of the recession.
  • Amendment 4 – Vote No. Like Amendment 3, this amendment asks us to put money into savings before we fund core services. In hard times, it would reduce the funds available for education, health care and protecting the vulnerable.

SC Fair Share is a member of the SC Progressive Network.

Download full summary of  Constitutional Amendments 2010.

Voting machine lawsuit dismissed

On Oct. 5, Federal District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed Brett Bursey’s complaint against the voting machines used in South Carolina. Bursey had argued that the machines, which do not produce a paper ballot that can be recounted, violate federal statutes.

Bursey is the Director of the South Carolina Progressive Network, a 16-year-old coalition that promotes good government and civic participation.

“The voting machines we use have been decertified in other states, for the very reasons we believe they are unreliable and unverifiable,” Bursey said.

Federal law requires: “The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system (Help America Vote Act 42 USC 15481).” The voting machines in South Carolina do not produce a permanent paper record, nor do they allow a manual audit, or recount.

Federal laws also require the preservation of all records in federal elections for 22 months. Since the machines in use in South Carolina do not produce a paper record, and the original memory cards in the machines were erased two weeks after the June 8 primary, Bursey asserted that they violate federal laws.

“We presented the court with expert testimony that the results of the June 8 primary in the US Senate race were statistically improbable,” Bursey said. The questions surrounding the unusual vote totals and patterns could not be resolved, because the machines don’t produce a paper ballot that can be recounted.

“Voters in South Carolina have lost confidence that their votes are counted accurately,” Bursey said.

Judge Currie dismissed the lawsuit against the Election Commission, ruling that Bursey doesn’t have a “private right of action” to enforce the statutes on voting records; only the US Attorney General does.

“I provided the judge with a time-line of my efforts to get the US Justice Department to take up the case,” Bursey said. “I noted that the US Attorney told me that the case was ‘too politically charged’ for him to intervene.”

In dismissing the case, prior to hearing arguments on the merits of the complaint, Judge Currie wrote, “While this court takes no position on whether South Carolina is in compliance with the statute, the fact that a federal statute may have been violated and some person harmed does not automatically give rise to a private cause of action in favor of that person.”

Bursey said, “We presented expert testimony to the Election Commission in 2003, prior to the purchase of these machines, that they were unreliable. We remain convinced that contracting our elections out to a private company, with proprietary codes and software, is contrary to an open and transparent democracy.

“The good news, is that the malfunction rate of these machines is so far beyond the guidelines set by the US Election Assistance Commission, that they need to be replaced. We will be introducing legislation this year for a voting system that doesn’t depend on secret software, produces a voter verifiable paper ballot and is much cheaper to own and maintain.”

One Nation Working Together, under a groove

By Kerry Taylor
Charleston, SC

For a few hours on Saturday, they were one nation under a groove as thousands of labor and progressive activists rallied for jobs, peace, and affordable education at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. With little time to spare before the November elections, more than 400 organizations, including the NAACP and dozens of national unions, organized “One Nation Working Together” to boost enthusiasm on the left and counteract the high-profile forces of reaction. According to many pundits, conservatives are poised to make strong gains in the November elections, undermining the possibility of progressive reforms. This past August, on the 47th anniversary of A. Philip Randolph’s historic March on Washington for jobs and civil rights, right-wing populists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin headlined a massive demonstration on the same spot intended to give focus to the white-hot anger that has emerged since Barack Obama’s November 2008 election.

An hour before the scheduled noon start of Saturday’s program, six burly and animated Cleveland-area autoworkers boarded the Washington Metro and chatted with curious passengers, who were surprised that they had not heard of the demonstration, but expressed support and provided tips on navigating the Metro system. Making their way across the Mall, the autoworkers brushed past canvassers representing various causes and socialist groups before joining their United Autoworkers sisters and brothers, who were easily identified by their Navy blue T-shirts. Other workers joined their respective seas of purple (Service Employees International Union), green (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and red (Communications Workers of America).

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were among the high-profile speakers at the demonstration. But singer and actor Harry Belafonte, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and a participant in the 1963 march, provided the sharpest rebuke of the Tea Party, accusing members of “moving perilously close to achieving villainous ends.” Belafonte dubbed Saturday’s gathering “America’s wake up call” and an indication that “the giant called democracy is at last stirring again.” Gregory Cendana, interim deputy director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, reminded the crowd of the interconnectedness of struggles for workers’ rights and LGBT equality, immigrant justice and access to quality education.

For the president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, Donna DeWitt, the demonstration could not have come a moment too soon. “We needed this infusion of energy,” said DeWitt, noting that several young union members were ecstatic about having had the experience of marching in Washington. “Something big is going to come of this,” she predicted. “The national labor leaders have seen the potential of this kind of mobilization.” South Carolina activists packed six buses and made special efforts to include students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities, according to DeWitt. Dozens of other union members living near the border traveled with North Carolina delegations. One bus from Charleston became a mobile classroom, as longshore worker Leonard Riley distributed packets of educational material provided by the national organization and led discussions on current workers’ struggles and political issues facing the labor movement.

NAACP activists Mable and Brad Brown flew up from Miami to take part in the demonstration. As a former educator, Mable Brown said she supports all of the demonstration’s stated goals, but is especially concerned about high unemployment, school reform, and police brutality in South Florida. According to the Browns, the Miami Branch NAACP sent a small delegation of young people to Washington, but that many more activists made the trip from northern Florida.

National unions and the NAACP did an impressive job of mobilizing their members who provide the Democratic Party with much of its activist base. Unaffiliated young progressives and white college students, however, were largely absent from Saturday’s event. They will surely be out in greater numbers for the Oct. 30 “Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive” organized by Comedy Central stars Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but a demonstration combining forces would more closely mirror the winning coalition forged by the Obama campaign two years ago and would serve as an effective counterpoint to both the Republicans and the timid wing of the Democratic Party.

By 4:30 p.m., when most of the demonstrators were packed away on buses bound for the Bronx, Raleigh, and Rock Hill, funk legend George Clinton and friends assembled on stage at Lincoln’s feet. Smiles broke out across the crowd and Abe’s stone toes appeared to wiggle as Clinton ripped into his 1978 hit, “One Nation Under a Groove.” After nearly 10 minutes of P-Funk, the simulcast screens went black and the engineers cut the sound system. Unfazed, Clinton’s band segued into “Give Up the Funk,” the strains of which could barely be heard just a few hundred feet away. It mattered little to the dancing stragglers — black, white, Asian and Latino, gay and straight, old and young — their insistent demand for “funk!” offering what may be the best response to this mean political season.

A history professor at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., Kerry Taylor co-chairs the board of directors at the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Facing South.

Calling all activists!

Don’t miss it!

On Saturday, Sept. 25, members and allies of the SC Progressive Network will gather for an afternoon of fellowship and talking politics. Grassroots activists will travel from across the state for the meeting, which runs from 11:30am to 4pm at the CWA Hall, 566 Chris Dr. in West Columbia. Participants will look ahead to the midterm elections and the upcoming legislative session, and map a strategic way forward.

“This is our most important meeting of the year,” said Network Co-chair Rep. Joe Neal. “We will talk about how we can work together and focus our energy to be most effective.”

Network Co-chair Donna Dewitt, president of the SC AFL-CIO, said, “We are looking forward to seeing our members from across the state, and meeting newcomers. We are in the process of restructuring our organization, now that we’re entering our 16th year, and we are looking for fresh ideas and bold leadership.”

Network Director Brett Bursey said, “We are facing challenges unseen since the Great Depression. But hard times are the best of times for organizing, as the struggle for social justice is no longer an abstraction for a growing number of people. Let’s make the most of this opportunity.”

The Network is a coalition of grassroots groups and individual members from across the state working collaboratively to promote good government, sound public policy, and an engaged, informed citizenry.

For more on the Network, see scpronet.com, call 803-808-3384, email network@scpronet.com, or join us on Facebook.

AGENDA

11:30 – 12:30 Registration and lunch (RSVP for the sandwich buffet: $10)

12:30 – Welcome to Oz
Network Co-chair Rep. Joseph Neal will preview the upcoming legislative session.

1pm – Lead, follow, or get out of the way!

Rep. Neal and Co-chair Donna Dewitt will facilitate a discussion on our organizing and policy focus for the coming year. If your group will be targeting specific bills, or amendments, bring information to share with our members. We will co-ordinate and streamline campaigns to maximize our collective reach and clout.

1:30 – Regroup, restructure?
As we head into our 16th year as an organization, it is time to reconsider our structure and revamp our bylaws. Stark changes in the grant world have radically diminished the Network’s finances and we cannot rely on grant money to fund the organizing and policy work we have been doing. We need to reorganize to promote new leaders from our individual membership. We won’t finish this work at the Summit, but we should reach a consensus on what structural changes make the most sense, and a process for moving forward.

2:15 – Protecting Social Security: What’s happening and what you can do about it. Join the SC Alliance for Retired Americans’ postcard petition campaign to tell members of Congress and the Deficit Commission: Hands Off Social Security!

2:30 – SC Progressive Voter Coalition session

The Coalition (ProVote) includes progressive parties, caucuses, PACs and individuals. We will target races in the November elections where we can make a difference and ask that everyone adopt a campaign near them.

4pm – Adjourn

War steals from the poor and unemployed

By Tom Turnipseed

Military spending is causing huge deficits and wasting money needed for education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and developing clean, renewable energy. Some 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. 50.7 million Americans did not have health insurance and 43.6 million or 14.3% lived beneath the poverty level in 2009, according to the Census Bureau and the numbers are even higher now.  Expenditures for our bloated war complex are about 55% of all discretionary spending.  We have spent more than a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and much more in bribes to government officials, and tribal chiefs and payments to corrupt private contractors. According to the Democratic Leadership Council, US military spending accounted for 44% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and the military in 2009.  Our military spending is as much as all of the next 15 countries combined. The number of people killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is anywhere from 100,000 to a million or more depending on who does the estimates. Statistics on the number of civilians and military personnel killed are often distorted by military propaganda.

Glorification of the mass terrorism of war by media, politicians, weapons makers and other violence peddling war profiteers is depressing.  Killing people by war and willful violence is the most demented activity of our species. War is intrinsically evil.  Peacemakers like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are real heroes rather than the war complex hyped “warriors” who “fight for our freedom” by killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan so the US can  control their governments and natural resources. Metaphors like the war on poverty seem inappropriate in describing anti-poverty programs, which are diminished by the diversion of resources to make war.  Lyndon Johnson took on the pervasive poverty of the 1960 by promoting broad anti-poverty social programs like civil rights, education, Medicare and Medicaid as part of his Great Society.

Rather than advocate more social programs that provide jobs, Obama wants to tinker with middle class tax cuts and a roll back on tax breaks for the fat cats, but how much will trickle down to poor and unemployed people?. When a reporter asked Obama to discuss his views on the poverty agendas of  LBJ and Dr. King, he answered, “I think the history of anti-poverty efforts is that the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy. It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Economic growth and tax cuts that increase corporate profits will not eliminate poverty. Such praise of Reagan’s supply side economics isn’t new for Obama.

During the presidential campaign in 2008, Obama said, “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.  He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.  I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.  I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”  Does Obama model his super smooth style after Reagan’s slick salesman act?

Reagan was a mediocre movie actor when he became the host of the General Electric Theater on NBC.  General Electric launched his political career by sponsoring a national speaking tour for their handsome, look-um-in-the-eye, all-American guy, who promoted their conservative philosophy.  He was the ideal political huckster for corporate America’s unbridled greed. Reagan put a nice face on the mean-spirited politics of fear and greed, blaming welfare mothers, social programs, government regulations and the “evil empire of the Soviet Union” as causes for America’s troubles. Scapegoating poor people and criticizing government programs enabled him to deliver a giant tax break for the rich, roll back health and safety regulations, and push through a gigantic military buildup for corporate defense contractors like General Electric. His racially charged attacks on affirmative action hurt racial minorities and women.

Obama’s smooth rhetoric can’t conceal his role in bailing out Wall Street, cutting deals with corporate interests to dilute the healthcare reform bill, and developing financial regulations in closed-door meetings with bankers.

Rather than praising Reagan, Obama should make Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt his role models and work to establish social programs which provide jobs for poor and working class people. LBJ can also teach Obama that endless wars won’t work. We should end tax cuts for the rich and transfer funds from war and Wall Street to social programs that put people to work and reduce poverty.

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and peace activist in Columbia, SC. Read his blog here: http://tomandjudyonablog.blogspot.com.