Defeating Money in Politics with Art

Ok, I will finish this series despite how many of you don't show up to read it so ti can at least be printed(even though print is dying) so I am still rewriting and reediting the interview with Obama supporters during the Democratic primaries of 2008, so this week we are still....

Like other issues, the issue of money in politics is what will speak to what is or is not done in the next Congress more than the Presidential election of 2012. Unfortunately we didn't hear about that in any of the debates thus far and it is the most important issue, because it spans to all issues and speaks to what hope legislation has of affecting the lives of real people.

Because of the daunting nature of this problem given how little money in relation to corporations real people have, it can feel rather hopeless. However, there are times when the creativity of certain individuals can make a difference as it has in the past.(PDF) That is where I am trying to make a difference using whatever talents I have because I have no money and very little voice or say in our real political process which is real pernicious hence the issue at hand.

The good people at GOOD Maker have set up a design contest to call attention to this dire and most important issue.

art > MONEY: Design to Define a Movement

You can vote for my piece here featured below, and if you like all my contributions in both writing and artwork over the years I ask that you please do because the competition is fierce and there are a lot of good pieces. You can vote using facebook which is probably the easiest way(don't worry, I won't know anything about your personal info and neither will anyone else) but if you don't want to use facebook to vote, you can sign up to Good Maker which is probably a good idea because this organization uses creativity as an outlet for good things which made me want to get involved in this contest to hopefully do some good.

Money in politics defeated qualitative health care reform. Money in politics defeated the Brown Kaufman amendment and the stronger Volcker rule during the Dodd Frank proceedings leaving many of the rules undefined as well as a real bank rescue instead of handing the same banks that caused the crash, trillions. Behind every sellout of every politician and behind every good politician's(Senator Sherrod Brown for Instance) inability to do anything about it, there is also big money.

Even Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has admitted in the recent past that the banks own our legislative branch as a whole. So those are just a few of the multitude of reasons why attention to the general issue of money in politics regarding Citizens United, Buckley vs Valeo and the most important issue corporate person-hood undecided but decided anyway(because of a suspicious clerk on the inside with a corporate conflict of interest) in Santa Clara County Vs. Southern Pacific Railroad which is the most pernicious.

I covered this in this diary which shows the daunting measure of this problem here:

What to Do When Liberal SCOTUS Justices Think Corporations are People Too

Voting like all transactions with regard to creating and moving capital/money is now electronic since money is not dropped out of helicopters nor ballots anymore, but this metaphor was strong, I thought, because most of our money supply goes to the coffers of the big banks, oil companies, and other corporations who make the biggest investment that always pays off which is buying the government they want and a population convinced to vote against their interests. So the printed dollars into printed ballots was a metaphor that perhaps more people now understand since more people are at least aware that the Federal Reserve prints money.

Because of corporate person-hood which is illegitimate and recorded illegitimately in Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad the money supply in our economy and it's velocity will run towards buying all Senators and Congressman that pretend to write our laws. Overturning Citizens United via Super PACS and 501(c)4s(no disclosure at all) is just a small step to mitigate this damage like the EFCA would have been(also defeated by big money) with regard to Taft Hartley and right to work laws but an important one.

Anyway, spreading awareness of this issue by participating in this voting process in which voting is open till 12 pm today so the real voting process is hopefully some time soon more worthwhile is a worthy endeavor in my view. I hope you enjoy my entry and this redux which I think would have maybe scored more votes and is more iconic but I am happy with the idea and both.

I hope you agree with me and thank you for voting!.

Halloween Post: Zombie Cat Food Commission Edition

As a reminder this week, we are still.....

And it's Halloween time and there are neoliberal bankrupt zombie commissions and ideas! This Catfood Commission just won't stay dead and Nancy Pelosi is talking about resurrecting it. It started out with Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg in 2008 with an event at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Their purpose was to cut, loot, and perhaps privatize Social Security of course as Republicans and third way DLC Democrats have tried to do for many years. In 2009 Conrad and Gregg tried to get their so called entitlement reforms fast tracked into the recovery package President Obama and Congress passed even writing an Op Ed in the Washington Post in support of such measures. Conrad and Gregg started threatening against voting to raise the debt ceiling if  their commission wasn't raised from the dead.

To form a séance for it these zombies attached it to the debt ceiling/Pay-Go bill in January of 2010. However good prevailed  the amendment failed and there was no commission once again. But not for long, for President Obama vowed in his SOTU speech after that to create it by executive order with Executive Order 13531 which he did; the Simpson Bowles Commission chaired by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. These dark lords tried to reign over the commission but their proposals failed to garner the 14 votes necessary for their proposals. The Commission died and so these zombies put forth their own proposals which was a white paper and that went nowhere too but not without a promise from the political elite that their ideas would not be forgotten and would be forever floated particularly with the Grand Bargain in the fake fiscal cliff debate coming up after the election in 2013.

But this did not start with Conrad and Gregg or even Simpson and Bowles. It started with a Wall St. billionaire Investment Banker whom started a foundation to destroy Social Security and Medicare in the name of zombie fiscal responsibility; thy name is Peter G. Peterson. He got former President Bill Clinton to facilitate a pre-Catfood Commission in 1993 called the Kerrey Danforth Commission headed by Democratic Senators Bob Kerrey and John Danforth. Peter G. Peterson was a member of that Commission. So as you can see Peterson has had Democrats as well as Republicanism under his spell for awhile and today he has the ear of President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The debt ceiling debacle which led to the Super Congress, the sequester, and the Grand Bargain set to bring forth the so called fiscal cliff after the 2012 election has Peter G. Peterson's influenced and fingerprints all over it. Oh the spell he has all politicians under as they set forth to plunder our Social Safety net.

He spent a billion dollars of his own money over the years to spread the fact-less zombie insanity in the media that there is a 20 trillion super sub prime crisis by Social Security(irrelevant to deficit economics but he doesn't know that or does and doesn't care) and Medicare. Truly scary propaganda putting an unruly spell on the electorate.

And like donkeys herded like sheep, Democratic voters either buy into this or make excuses for it because the President is involved in some way. As economist James Galbraith says, those numbers represent the strangest balance sheets I've ever seen, all liabilities and no assets. However try breaking the spell during election season where you will find little rhyme or reason when it comes to the real issues of the day.

The kind of herd mentality present among Democratic partisan is truly terrifying and they are being controlled by the dark overlord Peter G. Peterson and the zombies in his service Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg as well as all mainstream corporate news stations that run his propaganda like CNN. Die Zombie Commission  Die! Go back to the hell from whence you came! The dark treasonous horde controlled by the name Peterson! Don't ever come back again!

Happy Halloween!

The Democratic Primaries in 2008: Hillary Clinton's Campaign Pt 2

Welcome back. Here is the conclusion of Walt's interview with Hillary Clinton supporters. The archive is to the right in the right panel that pops out, but just in case you can't find it, here is a link to part 1. And now the interview continues.

As you can see, Walt was starting to realize that issues based questions were not going to get very far when it came to Hillary's candidacy which was considered historic by many because of the prospects of being the first woman elected. Of course Carol Moseley Braun ran for President in the Democratic Primary of 2004 which could be considered more historic being both an African American and a woman, but she didn't have the name recognition and support that Hillary Clinton did. Hillary also had the Clinton Democratic machine behind her and much of the mainstream media as I mentioned in my last post. However, the issues like the Iraq War and our health care crisis are what affects the most lives so Walt tried to press on.

It was hard for Walt to believe what he was hearing so he was a little taken back. The aura of Hillary's inevitability was continually touted by the corporate media and as one of the Clinton campaign's main messages it kept coming back. The prospects of electing the first woman as President seemed to trump any mention of the pressing issues that were supposed to be behind this 2008 election. These questions were not verboten in 2006 as they were what allowed Democrats to take over Congress two years ago, but now the symbolic nature of Hillary's candidacy seemed to trump everything else.

This interview was getting intense. It turned out that to some of her supporters Walt Priceman was not merely questioning Hillary's campaign based on the merits, but as an attack on a kind of electoral and symbolic faith.

This interview was overheard by other Hillary Clinton supporters passing by. Their reaction was an extreme one and then things really started to get out of hand. It turned out that the act of merely asking these questions shattered the initial image they have had of the former First Lady and then Senator of NY for years. It was time for this interview to end and for the write up.

So that about sums it up. This interview doesn't apply to all Hillary supporters(some who are my good friends), but it does accurately show my experience in my debates with most of them. Walt Priceman conducted interviews with supporters of each main candidate in the Democratic Primary to ask the tough questions no one else would ask in order to gaze the motivation behind the support of each candidate.

It may be awhile since I had this portion of the series drawn and written already, but in the next chapter Walt Priceman will be conducting another intense interview with the supporters of then Senator, Presidential candidate, and now President Barack Obama. I hope to keep working to keep this series going as sort of my Primary Colors looking back from then to now to see where everything went wrong so we don't blindly support politicians who don't mean what they say or say what they mean. Hopefully more people will be more skeptical of the politicians who don't really care about their interests in a qualitative way in 2016 when the next primary will begin so that is why I think it's worth taking a look back and worth finishing this project.

Thank you for reading, and please share this far and wide.

The Democratic Primaries in 2008: Hillary Clinton's Campaign Pt 1

I'm new at publishing online comics, though I have been drawing comic book related material for most of my life. This story was written during the Democratic Primaries so you will find some familiar material referenced from those days. There are times when I think I should have went to journalism school instead of art school, and I think of this project as a mish mash of the two. My views have changed while staying the same in many aspects since I wrote this. I am considerably more radical and have considerably less faith in the electoral system than when I wrote this.

However, I do think of these days as a sort of coming of age period where I met many of my best friends online. I had never blogged about politics before getting involved in the Democratic Primary. It was a challenge to put myself out there, but from those days to today I have found my political identity; I have shaped my views to a hilt going through what everyone else went through from the wars to the ongoing economic crisis that came to a head in 2008. This is a fictionalized account of real experiences and sometimes real conversations from the Democratic primary in 2007-2008.

I hope you enjoy this look back and can relate. There is more that has to be written and drawn, but I started out with the Hillary Clinton experience in the early stages of the primary. I hope you will follow along and demand I finish this series so I will.

And here is the truth about the dynamics of the 2006 mid-term election victory for Democrats. Rahm Emanuel would have screwed the whole thing up if he got his way like he helped screw the economy up with helping to pass NAFTA and Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with China while working for Bill Clinton. Too bad he kept failing upward to Obama's Chief of Staff and to now being the anti union mayor of Chicago.

And here is where Walt Priceman makes his first stop once the primary is heating up and Hillary Clinton is the front runner. The aura of Hillary Clinton's inevitability professed everywhere by the corporate owned media really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, especially those that didn't want a political dynasty in the White House. A different narrative was needed.

There were always legitimate questions about the aura of inevitability involved with regard to Hillary's campaign going by the polling and who she hired to run it. All of these things seemed to go by the wayside when Walt questioned the logic behind her support.

Now certainly not all Hillary supporters were this irrational, but a good number of them really couldn't debate the merits of her record(and the reasoning I was given, as you can see, was rather bizarre) or her electability. And so the false accusations of sexism towards reporters like David Sirota and others who asked these questions were used to defend Hillary sadly.

Looking back she probably might have won had she been the nominee(and she would have been had she not have voted for the war), but it would have been close given the horrible advice she was given and inept way her campaign was run. She really had it all and her campaign totally self destructed.

That is all for this post. I'll post the second parts of this interview where Walt grills this Hillary supporter about these said issues regarding Hillary's candidacy next week. Thank you for reading.