Republican Rampage Against The Institutions Of Democracy Continues Unabated

It probably wouldn't sound cool for the Republicans to trumpet how they feel only the wealthy and, more important, those existentially beholden to the wealthy, should be allowed to run for president-- not to mention every of office. It's just another little way conservatives have always tried to tamp down of that whole democracy thing they find so distasteful and inconvenient. But yesterday the House passed, 235-190-- in a strict party-line vote [with the exception of one independent-minded Republican, Walter Jones (NC) who abandoned Boehner's and Cantor's jihad against democracy]-- H.R. 3463. Mississippi fascist Gregg Harper introduced the bill, which only had one cosponsor, Tom Cole (R-OK), another right-wing freak, and if it were to pass the Senate-- it won't-- and be signed by the president-- no chance-- would do away with the voluntary subsidies for presidential election.

At a time when we should be drastically expanding federal funds that go into elections and getting corporate cash out of the political process, Republicans, of course, true to their hideously whorish natures, want to make the whole process of our elections into a straight-out corporate auction and a mockery of democracy. The exact same people voted the exact same way when the Democrats offered a Motion to Recommit which would have required the continued protection of elderly, disabled and military voters, notwithstanding the termination of the Election Assistance Commission. The Republicans wanted no part of that, of course. Frankly I was shocked that even the most corrupt ConservaDem corporate kiss-asses, like Steve Israel and Joseph Crowley, as well as all the Blue Dogs, voted with Pelosi on this. Amazing!

At the same time Harper's legislation ended attempts for the federal government to insure some kind of fairness and honesty in voting booths, something else conservatives hate since it tends to prevent them from stealing elections as easily.

The vote followed a sometimes contentious debate in which some Democrats charged that the GOP effort to end the EAC is in line with other Republican attempts to suppress voter turnout in next year's election. The EAC was established in 2002 after the very close and controversial presidential election of 2000 election, and was meant to ensure states meet certain voting standards.

The EAC [Election Assistance Commission, which Harper's bill would abolish] has disbursed more than $3 billion in “requirements” payments to states to update voting machines and enhance election administration.

"There is no doubt that a voter suppression effort is underway in this nation," Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) charged on the House floor. "Abolishing the Election Assistance Commission, an agency charged with ensuring that the vote of each American counts, is just another step in the voter suppression effort and would completely remove oversight of the most important process in our democracy."

Another Democrat, Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.), said the only reason to want to end the EAC is to "suppress votes," and said votes that would be lost are minority votes, "the same groups who were targeted by Jim Crow laws."
 
“I cannot put a price on our democracy, but it would be the height of recklessness to do away with that agency when election officials tell us they most need the assistance that only EAC has or can provide,” Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) said.

I always enjoy discussing the issues of the day with teabaggy congressmen on Twitter

Stating the obvious, Hoyer told CNN that doing away with the EAC 11 months before a presidential election could lead to lower voter turnout. "The Commission's primary mission is to provide states with the resources they need to ensure everyone eligible to vote can cast their ballots and have their voices heard. We ought to be making it easier for voters, not eroding our ability to protect them and their right to participate."

And for the whiner who have been complaining that OccupyWallStreet has no program and no demands, one constant theme has been about electoral fairness and getting our elections off the auction block. Wednesday author Arundhati Roy dug into it a bit for readers of the Guardian in an interview where she observes that "The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution." Arun Gupta, who conducted the interview remarks in his intro that "ending pervasive corporate control of the political system is on the lips of almost every occupier we meet. But this is nothing new. What's different is most Americans now live in poverty, on the edge, or fear a descent into the abyss. It's why a majority (at least of those who have an opinion) still support Occupy Wall Street even after weeks of disinformation and repression."

AG: Do you think that the Occupy movement should be defined by occupying one particular space or by occupying spaces?

AR: I don't think the whole protest is only about occupying physical territory, but about reigniting a new political imagination. I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost. The fact that in New York and other places where people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.

...AG: Your essays, such as The Greater Common Good and Walking with the Comrades, concern corporations, the military and state violently occupying other people's lands in India. How do those occupations and resistances relate to the Occupy Wall Street movement?

AR: I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the obscene amassing of wealth of US corporations is part of the same system of the exclusion and war that is being waged by these corporations in places like India, Africa and the Middle East. Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries. So, whether this movement is a movement for justice for the excluded in the United States, or whether it is a movement against an international system of global finance that is manufacturing levels of hunger and poverty on an unimaginable scale, remains to be seen.

AG: You've written about the need for a different imagination than that of capitalism. Can you talk about that?
 
AR: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States-- that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.

In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.

The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure-- all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern-- should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people's wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.

AG: What would the different imagination look like?

AR: The home minister of India has said that he wants 70% of the Indian population in the cities, which means moving something like 500 million people off their land. That cannot be done without India turning into a military state. But in the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost.

India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment. And this battle demands that the world see that, at some stage, as the water tables are dropping and the minerals that remain in the mountains are being taken out, we are going to confront a crisis from which we cannot return. The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment-- the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living-- are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future.