With no major third party candidate garnering attention this election season, news from alternative political parties is hard to find.  The Communist Party, USA, has no mention of a candidate.  The Libertarian Party is so far quiet on who is trying to be a candidate.  The Constitution Party is slated to have it's convention in mid-April, though I don't find any information on who is trying to be nominated.

The Land of the Dead, it seems, is in slow motion.

SOPA Strike

The Abominations of Laws known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) are nothing of the sort.  These acts will permit the taking down of Web Sites based on NOTHING BUT ALLEGATIONS of copyright violations.  And the US Government is walking in lock-step with the Entertainment mafias known as RIAA and MPAA to completely trash freedom of information access like this.

It's time for a global spring, folks.  Information is the life's blood of the Internet.  Don't let this happen.

http://sopastrike.com for more information on how to put an end to these pieces of non-intellectual trash.

3rd Parties All But Inactive

With Congressman Ron Paul trying to effect change from within the GOP (and getting soundly rejected by a party leadership that seems ready to wither away a vast grassroots center-right movement), the lesser known parties seem largely silent of late. The Libertarian Party is trumpeting the Tea Party gathering in Washington D.C. The Green Party is trying to woo former green jobs "czar" Van Jones and his "America carried out 9-11 on itself" conspiracy theories. The Communist Party is hooked on ObamaCare. I'm surprised there is no response to Obama answering Joe Wilson's cry by instituting an amendment that adds a citizenship status test onto the HR3200 package. I suppose there is a presumption that such an item will be surreptitiously deleted in conference committee should bills get that far.

With Harry Reid trying the same "We'll pass it no matter what the American people want!" battle cry that failed for Nelson Rockefeller before the GOP sweep of 1994, and with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats paying more attention to Joe Wilson's politeness than to his correctness, this would seem a terrific time for parties on the Left *and* on the right to enter into the debate, even if in small ways. But, frankly, the debate seems entrenched among the two major parties.

Too bad. I think the leadership of BOTH those parties are largely in a fantasy world more attuned to political maneuverings than to any real interest in either the people *or* The Constitution. And it wouldn't surprise me if bean counters on both sides of the aisle are sweating buckets that anyone is actually paying attention to this.

Green Party Allegations in PA

Green Party want-to-be Senatorial candidate Carl Romanelli in Pennsylvania wrote last October about his exclusion from the PA Senate race.  His story, published in the Green Party online quarterly known as “Green Pages,” discusses how he was excluded from the race, and, in his words, Democrats in the state:

…[M]oney was used in the effort to remove my name from the 2006 ballot, and for the effort to displace Ralph Nader from the ballot in 2004. In the challenge against me, the Democrats are accused of using a caucus of up to 36 staffers to research the campaign signatures for flaws, negative public relations, and other dubious activities. In the Nader case, the same technique was used and a caucus of up to 50 state workers was used.

Mr Romanelli points to indictments against key PA Democrats as proof that Democrats were willing (and indeed obligated by party loyalty) to engage in gross misuse of taxpayer funds and even in committing “serious constitutional crimes” against all who dare to oppose the state two-party duopoly.  The indictments could lead to hundreds of years of sentences for the parties involved.  And the wrangling still isn’t over, as recently pointed out in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Indeed, the Post-Gazette even refers to court motion documents by some of the Democrat defendants that even manage to suggest participation by other Democrats as a kind of “everyone-does-it” excuse.  Based on what I saw in the Post-Gazette, those Democrats are decidedly unhappy to find themselves so named, and are vigorously denying the reports.

It should be interesting to watch how this and the Governor scandals in New York and Illinois affect party politics.  Not just for the Democrats, but for the Greens.

-RØß-

What’s Yours Isn’t Yours

The Green Party recently highlighted a confrontation between Neil Cavuto of Fox News and Lisa Wells:

The video is important because I think it highlights an important point of this brand of liberalism. I don’t think either one of them did any credit to their viewpoint. I don’t think it’s hateful to want to level the playing field. Lisa Wells talks about how much of the middle/lower class’ pay is taken up in taxes vs how much for the upper class.

But she seems to me to be making a very clear implication that the money is not to be considered a possession. There *is* a clear and growing rift between the richest and even the middle class. That’s a fair point that Greens and other liberals espouse. But I always find it dangerous when that stance is used to create statements like, “the rich can afford it.” I don’t think The Constitution can be said to endorse the idea that, simply because one group says another has too much, that’s authorization to take it away. The only way that argument can carry any weight is to deny some pretty fundamental rights about private property that I believe are very clearly delineated in The Constitution.

Neil, for his part, goes way too far in trying to characterize Lisa Wells has having kind of hatred or prejudice against the rich. Lisa doesn’t have to want to “get back at” the rich in order to want a more fair tax system. It’s fair, I think, to point out that some of the same tax policies that have driven economic progress have also been abused into loopholes that create a rift in the relative tax burden among the various economic classes. how to fix that rift is a debate worth having. Do I oppose progressive taxes? Yes. But I’m willing to discuss it without accusing liberals of hating or wanting to hurt some class.

Final Totals

It was only to be expected that the two major parties dominated the vote totals, and got every single Electoral Vote. For those interested, here are the popular vote totals, thanks to Independentpoliticalreport.com.

• Obama
  63,086,600
  52%
• McCain
  55,848,864
  46%
• Nader
  649,097
  1%
• Barr
  484,96
  31%
• Baldwin
  173,178
  
  (all 0% from this point. I’m not sure how they got Barr’s 0.4 to round to 1%.)
  
• McKinney
  141,010
• Keyes
  34,512
• Paul
  19,285
• La Riva
  7,166
• Calero
  7,110
• Moore
  6,273
• None of these candidates
  6,246

I've omitted all with less than 5,000 votes. Some of the above were independents, not running under any party banner. Others, like Alan Keyes, ran under different party banners and even with different VP nominees depending on the state at which one looked. Here possible, I've included links to respective party organizations, rather than to candidate Web sites.

Certainly, this season has wrought an historical outcome. Now we'll see how a virtually one-party government works in D.C.

-RØß-

Green Party Candidate: Cynthia McKinney

The Green Party is probably most famous as the party Ralph Nader affiliated himself with in his 1996 & 2000 bids for President. Nevertheless, the Green Party has a significant history. It is, more or less, the official US chapter of the European Greens movement. Nader's 3rd place finish in 2000 was probably their highest point in terms of the Presidential race.

This season, the party has nominated Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and her VP partner is "Hip-Hop Activist and Journalist" (from the GP's own press release) Rosa Clemente.

Those seeking further information on the GP can visit the site linked above, and can find the party platform at this link.