News Update

Alright, so here's the first (test) entry for SimianBrain, the Journal of the Eternally Confused.

The point: reading material. Why you should vote. Why you should care. How to organize your activism into change. We have a long road ahead of us.

Stop #1: Paul Krugman of the New York Times, 12-2-03, "Hack the Vote" Diebold voting machines, which Georgia uses, are especially problematic. I've contacted my representative, Denise Majette, about this issue repeatedly, and she seems to be hoping that I'll just go away.

Stop #2: EJ Dionne, Washington Post. "The Politics of Payoff" Bill Clinton was the center of a scandal when it was leaked that he allowed large campaign contributors to stay the night at the White House. I didn't like that one bit, but try this one on for size: George W. Bush has bankrupted the country by shifting wealth to the top one percent--who coincidentally have shifted much of that wealth back to George W. Bush and the Republican National Committee. Estate tax repeal, dividend tax repeal, ladies and gentlemen, we have a redistribution of wealth towards the top here. Oh I miss the days of those lame-o Clinton scandals. Child's play compared to what's happening here.

Stop #3: The incest of the public and the private. NYT reports on Thomas Scully, current administrator of Medicare, who has been hunting for a job for more than six months (many Americans can relate). The difference: Scully was a primary player in the recently passed Medicare reform bill who is caught in a bidding war between five law and equity firms. Okay, many Americans *can't* relate.

The story here is not Thomas Scully, who has probably behaved legally and even ethically (he made no secret of his job hunt while helping to construct a massive give-away to insurers). The story here is the ease with which people move from the public sector to the private sector and back again, and the conflicts that can create. See: Boeing, and then see sweetheart deals from Congress.

Okay, okay, it isn't all bad. Stop #4 takes us to the Howard Dean campaign. Yesterday, the campaign sent out a request for help from its 500,000+ members, but not to help Dean. Get ready to smile here. Dean's campaign is asking its members to support congressman Leonard Boswell of Iowa, the only Democrat in the Iowa delegation. Dean is asking people to contribute money, volunteer, or help out however they can, claiming that Karl Rove is targeting Boswell's seat from Washington.

As a left-leaning independent, I have been particularly disgusted by the democratic party's ability to lose perfectly good elections. Howard Dean doesn't seem interested in following that pattern. If he keeps this up, winning the White House won't even matter so much, he may just return a house or two of congress to the Democrats.