Kucinich thinks Paul should be heard

Just about every day, another prominent Republican decides to leave Washington for private life, though not many Democrats are leaving. Both parties expect the Democrats to win control of the Congress and the White House in 2008, so even former Speaker Dennis Hastert and former Senate Leader Trent Lott are calling it quits. They apparently don't want to risk remaining in the unpleasant position of being in the minority.

This shouldn't be too surprising, because it reflects important differences between the two parties. Republicans, generally, don't like government, to start with. Their current great hero, Ronald Reagan said it best: "Government is not the solution; government is the problem." Democrats tend to follow Franklin Roosevelt, who believed government should take the side of working people to do the things they couldn't do for themselves, or that business wouldn't do. Thus, he created Social Security, unemployment compensation, and so on, over Republican opposition. Taxes were assessed more on the wealthy and big business than on working people.

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In recent years, the parties at the national level have changed somewhat, as the Republican Party has been strongly influenced by Christian fundamentalism, especially in the South, and the Democratic Party has been wooed by big business. Both parties cater to media giants that tend to control communication. This has resulted in the political dialogue moving to the so-called right, away from activist government in economic matters, but toward confrontations over religious issues at home, and economics and religion abroad.
So, we find all of the Republican candidates except Ron Paul supporting the war in Iraq. The Democrats - some which supported the war - seem mostly unwilling to withdraw all of our troops and end the occupation. Apparently, they are reluctant to allow the nations of that region to control their own oil, the main reason we have intervened there.

Among the Democrats, only Ohio's Dennis Kucinich advocates a total withdrawal from Iraq and the region. He led the opposition to the attack on Iraq and now, logically, supports the impeachment of Cheney and Bush. He also has been a strong advocate for alternative sources of energy, reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Kucinich is the only current presidential candidate advocating full national health care, "Medicare for all."

I had dinner with Kucinich, when he was mayor of Cleveland and getting blamed daily in the news for Cleveland's economic ills. His perspective was he was standing in the way of the Cleveland municipal power company being privatized, so he was the target of wealthy interests he called "corporate vampires," who were subjecting Cleveland and other American cities to "economic strip mining." He stuck to his guns, and the profit-free power system continued to provide cheaper energy to the area. He also engineered an increase in the city's income tax on upper level incomes. Like FDR with his Tennessee Valley Authority, Kucinich was providing a model for energy alternatives, and like FDR, he was taxing those best able to pay to fund government services.

Of course, the media still blame Kucinich for Cleveland's continued economic ills, even though several mayors, including current Sen. George Voinovich, have struggled with and failed to solve that city's problems. At the root of most of the economic problems of America's cities is, in fact, something like the economic strip mining Kucinich pointed out - but that's another column.

It's too bad that in the current presidential campaign Congressman Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul - both of whom oppose the occupation of Iraq - are treated as insignificant. They speak for millions of people, and are the best expressions of the two philosophies of government. Paul, the libertarian, arguing, "That government governs best which governs least," and Kucinich, the progressive, believing government should help ordinary people with the major problems of their lives, such as health care - and relishing his work in government.

Let's hope neither of them gives up any time soon. We need their views and their voices. And we need to include them in the debate

Ron PAUL and Kucinich on Peace

Kucinich and Paul face other potential repercussions for putting the life and death issue of war and peace before party loyalty. Both are incumbent congressmen and if they are unsuccessful in getting their party’s presidential nomination will seek re-election to Congress. Will they find themselves with a well-funded primary challenger? And, if elected, will they find their committee assignments downgraded? Will they be appointed to subcommittee or committee chairmanships or passed over in favor of party loyalists? There are many ways for a political party to punish lack of party loyalty. So, Kucinich and Paul deserve a great deal of credit for publicly standing up for peace before party.

And, Kucinich and Paul did not just come out in opposition to the current disastrous occupation of Iraq. They came out more broadly for an end to the aggressively interventionist U.S. foreign policy that is dominated by militarism. This is the type of paradigm shifting policy change that is needed in U.S. foreign policy.

The fact that the U.S. spends as much as the whole world combined on the military ensures that every other aspect of American civil life is underfunded. It is why the debt is increasing, infrastructure is failing, the U.S. remains addicted to oil, college is overpriced, health care for all unachievable, and pre-school for children widely unavailable. If the U.S. wants to build economic security at home it needs to stop spending half the federal government’s discretionary spending on the military. If we want to build security from terrorism the U.S. needs to stop creating enemies faster than we kill them. If the U.S. wants “them” to stop hating “us” we need to stop behaving like an empire.

Sadly, at least one peace group, Friends Committee on National Legislation, is turning its back on these real peace candidates. FCNL whose slogan is “War is Not the Answer,” has published a voter guide that excludes Kucinich, Paul and Gravel – the three candidates who really believe war is not the answer. FCNL readers will not learn about these peace candidates in their on-line voter guide. Why? FCNL decided on an arbitrary cut-off point in polling that excludes these candidates. All the candidates that are included keep the military option for Iran on the table and do not advocate cutting military expenditures, only one (Bill Richardson) calls for complete withdrawal from Iraq. Are these “war is not the answer” candidates?

For Kucinich and Paul this stab in the back from a peace group comes at a bad time. Kucinich recently won a straw poll by the progressive Democracy For America and in early returns Kucinich is leading in the Progressive Democrats of America straw poll. Paul has been doing extremely well in straw polls around the country as well as in fund raising and in some polls is bettering candidates like John McCain. Both seem to be getting some traction but if the peace movement is not going to even report on their positions – a movement which should be the base of their support – then what hope do they have?

Sadly, the FCNL view is not uncommon among peace voters. Too many look at which candidate is most likely to win. Peace voters need to learn that voting for peace candidates is the way to increase their power. Voting for candidates who support the occupation or waffle on whether they will remove the troops in their first term is voting against the interests of peace. It is voting for war as the primary instrument of foreign policy and empire as the goal of U.S. policy – because that is the view of the candidates covered by FCNL. Peace voters need to have the courage to vote for peace candidates.

Paul and Kucinich differ on many issues – Paul is a free-market thinker who sees the solutions to economic disparity, lack of access to health care, poor education, the environment and the housing crisis in less government and more market-based solutions. Kucinich, while agreeing with Paul on bolstering civil liberties and individual rights, sees the solution to health care as ending the for-profit dominated health insurance industry and replacing it with a non-profit single payer system provided by the government. Similarly on environmental issues Kucinich favors a major government investment in alternative energy that is clean and sustainable, Paul doesn’t. Kucinich favors abortion rights, Paul opposes federal government involvement in abortion.

Peace voters have a choice between two solid peace candidates with two very different views of government and the economy, but they have more. Mike Gravel is another long-term peace advocate who has been active against war since the Vietnam era. Some peace voters may also see a candidate in Governor Bill Richardson who favors a complete withdrawal from Iraq, but is keeping the military option on the table for Iran and does not advocate shrinking the U.S. military.

And, in the General Election, peace voters will have other options no matter what the two establishment parties decide. The Green Party recently acquired a new member in Cynthia McKinney. The former Member of Congress recently registered as a Green in California and filed with the FEC to seek the Green presidential nomination. She has been strongly anti-war for her whole career and during her last congressional term sought impeachment of President Bush for his illegal invasion of Iraq.

Ralph Nader, the long-time consumer activist and former presidential candidate who has been working against the Iraq invasion and occupation since before the war began, is also considering a run for the presidency, possibly as a Green or as an independent. He has tirelessly worked to end the Iraq occupation and throughout his career has been an advocate for less spending on the military and more spending on the necessities of the people. Nader has also been a long-term advocate for impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their deceptions and manipulations that led to the Iraq invasion.

Another Green candidate worthy of mention is Jared Ball. He is an assistant professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, has a radio show in Washington, DC, and is founder of FreeMix radio which puts together a monthly hip-hop compilation. He is a veteran of Desert Shield/Desert Storm and an opponent of the Iraq occupation.

The Libertarian Party also has several candidates running and they are likely to nominate a peace candidate as well. The LP’s official position on the Iraq occupation is: “It is time for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq as quickly as possible in a manner consistent with the safety of our troops.”
Peace voters will have choices in 2008. There are several candidates who oppose both the Iraq occupation and the use of aggressive military force as the dominant approach to foreign policy. Peace voters make up the majority of Americans, but will they have the courage to vote their convictions or will they be manipulated by the two parties and the corporate media? Will they work and financially support peace candidates? It is a test for the peace movement to see whether it as the courage to put peace first.

Kucinich's acknowledgment of seeing a UFO

Although it's unlikely that voters will ever have anything resembling a close encounter with Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), the two-time presidential hopeless has helped revive an issue that means more to many Americans than any election: suppression of UFO evidence by the men in black.

You may recall that during a recent MSNBC Democratic presidential candidates' debate, moderator Tim Russert drew out Kucinich on the revelation (by Oscar-winning paranormal investigator Shirley MacLaine) that he had once spotted a "triangular craft, silent and hovering." Kucinich's reply, which was intriguing in its own right, came at a conjunction of -- well, maybe not of UFO activity, but certainly of UFO aficionado activity.

This fall saw the first anniversary of the multiple-witness saucer incident over the United Airlines terminal at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, which is already shaping up as this decade's great sighting. In late October, a federal judge ordered NASA to search its records for information on one of two fabled UFO sightings from 1965.

And last month, the New York-based Coalition for Freedom of Information held a conference at which more than a score of pilots from around the world gathered to share their experiences with unidentified flying objects. Moderator Fife Symington (the controversial former governor of Arizona) summed up the conference by calling for the government to stop perpetuating "the myth that ALL UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms" and reopen its official Blue Book investigation, which has been closed since 1969.

Are we on the verge of an alien breakthrough? Is this new critical mass of respectable UFO hawks about to rout the army of dissembling federal agents, driving around in their 1964 Chevy Malibu with their shades and fixed smiles?

Probably not. There have been high-profile flying saucer enthusiasts in the past, including astronauts Buzz Aldrin, who spotted a mysterious something during Apollo 11's return trip, and the late Gordon Cooper, who once informed the United Nations, "I believe that . . . extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which are a little more technically advanced than we are on Earth."

Kucinich mentioned in his own defense that President Carter was a UFO witness, and he might have mentioned that Ronald Reagan was as well. Then again, if you think presidents really run the country, well, that's what "they" want you to think.

If anything keeps the cult of the UFO alive, it's not the respectability of the witnesses but the clumsy, protesting-too-much denials of government agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration got caught in a fib about last year's O'Hare incident after the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request. And it's somewhat perverse to call for reopening a federal UFO investigation given how universally hated the knee-jerk-skeptical Project Blue Book turned out to be.

John Podesta, the Clinton White House chief of staff who has never disguised his interest in flying saucers, makes the case that the government should declassify its UFO-related materials "and let people have at it," a demand that is as reasonable as it is unlikely to happen, given how easily this topic can be rerouted into japery.

In his debate reply, Kucinich made a point dear to respectable UFO investigators: "It was an unidentified flying object, OK?" he said. "It's like ... it was unidentified. I saw something." There's a difference between saying objects in the sky are sometimes not familiar and claiming to have been probed by taciturn "grays," and people such as Coalition for Freedom of Information co-founder Leslie Kean express understandable frustration that UFO ridicule purposely blurs that distinction.

But with Kucinich as a central advocate, ridicule may be unavoidable. In the debate, Kucinich made a self-deprecating joke about moving his campaign headquarters to "Roswell, New Mexico, and another one in Exeter, New Hampshire." Roswell everybody knows about, but with the easy reference to the 1965 Exeter incident, Kucinich leaves the impression that he's not just a UFO witness, he's a buff.

Let him go on, and we suspect Kucinich will soon be expanding on the Kecksburg sightings, the Val Johnson incident, Lonnie Zamora, the "Kaikoura lights" and countless other visitations from the sky that continue to sustain our nation's sense of mystery.

Democrates at the Heartland Presidential Forum

The people got more microphone time than the politicians.

Five Democratic presidential candidates who spoke at the Heartland Presidential Forum Saturday in Des Moines could do little more than nod and listen as person after person – mostly out-of-state residents – shared emotional stories of perceived injustice.

And the audience of 3,600 did not hesitate to express emotion. As they listened to descriptions of loss of health insurance, the stench of a nearby factory farm, or a family split up by immigration officials, the crowd frequently yelled out: “That ain’t right!” and booed.

Hillary Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York, felt the glare of their displeasure after Billy Lawless, a Chicago immigrations rights organizer, asked her if she’d commit to giving undocumented workers a path to citizenship in her first 100 days as president.

Clinton, who spoke via telephone after weather prevented her flight to Iowa, said immigration reform is a top priority.

But Lawless pressed her, asking if she’d do it in the first 100 days.

Clinton said it’s up to Congress to pass such reform, but as president she would do as much as possible.

The crowd booed, apparently upset that she wouldn’t commit to a 100-days promise.

Chris Dodd, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, was the next candidate to get that question, and he quickly answered: “Absolutely, absolutely.”

“One of the great sources of our wealth and strength of our country has been the diversity of our people,” Dodd said. “We’ve never done anything worthwhile as a nation when we’ve done it out of fear and hate.”

Saturday’s crowd was hardly just caucus-eligible Iowans. People were bused in from Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Minnesota, and organizers said people from 33 states were represented as part of a kick-off to the Campaign for Community Values.

The forum was hosted by Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and Campaign for Community Values, a movement that includes about 100 community organizations.

Only one Republican responded to the invitation – businessman John Cox - but the hosts’ lawyers advised against a solo member of one party because it would appear to be an endorsement.

Also in attendance were former North Carolina senator John Edwards, Illinois senator Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich, a representative from Ohio.

Here's some of what they had to say:

EDWARDS: He listened to Virgene Martin of Bridgewater’s story about 400 people banding together to fight a factory farm. They failed, and the hog operation is now located next to Martin’s own family farm.

“What’s happening is these big corporate farming operations, and big multi-national corporations that are taking over farming in America, these corporate predatory lending operations, these big drug companies, big insurance companies, big oil companies, big banks, big gas companies we see what they’re doing to destroy our land,” Edwards said. “We see what they’re doing to destroy our people and take away our assets. How long are we going to let these people run the United States of America?”

Edwards, a former trial lawyer, said he beat those big corporations in the courtroom, “and I’ll beat ‘em again.”

KUCINICH: Irlanda Helgen of Marshalltown got teary-eyed telling Kucinich about a father of five children whose wife left for work one day and never came back because of an immigration raid.

“There are no illegal human beings,” Kucinich said in English and Spanish.

Deb Thomas of Wyoming told Kucinich that oil and gas companies that use hazardous chemicals in drilling are turning communities “into toxic wastelands.”

“We understand why we’re in Iraq, in a word,” Kucinich said and held out the microphone to capture the audience shout the word “Oil.”

Kucinich gave a fiery answer about his plan to move the country away from reliance on coal. He talked about a “full employment economy,” where everyone has a job, as well as health care for all, and education for all, from age 3 through college.

And he got wild applause when he said: “We must give those who come to this country a path to legalization.”

CLINTON: Patricia Divine Wilder of the town of Walla Walla in Washington state said she’s a small business owner who can’t afford health insurance. Her 36-year-old nephew also had no insurance, and by the time he went to the doctor for pain in his back and shoulders, his cancer was incurable.

“James died,” Wilder said, then paused to cry.

“Take your time,” Clinton said softly.

“James died,” Wilder continued, “just six weeks later."

“We have to have a better government safety net,” Clinton said, then gave a summary of her health care reform plan.

DODD: Emira Palacios, of Wichita, Kansas, told Dodd she came to the United States 22 years ago as an undocumented worker. She has spent over $15,000 during the process of becoming a citizen, and she and her 18-year old son will vote for first time in the next election.

“Take your time now,” Dodd said when Palacios became too emotional to speak.

Dodd said the country has to “have secure borders, obviously.”

Later, a moderator cut him off when his answer crossed the two-minute limit.

“I get more time here than I get at those debates, though, I can tell you that,” Dodd said, chuckling.

OBAMA: Deidra Lewis of Massachusetts said her daughter woke up with a burning feeling in her eyes one day. Lewis had to cut back her work hours to deal with her daughter’s rare eye disease. In January, she lost her health insurance.

But she enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the public program made the difference between a child going blind or keeping her eyesight.

“Can you look into Alexsiana’s eyes and tell me don’t all God’s children deserve medical care?” she asked Obama.

Obama said yes. Alexsiana crossed the stage to hug him. The audience couldn’t hear what he whispered in her ear.

Obama vowed to have a plan in place for health insurance for all Americans by the end of his first term as president.

After a string of stories told by people from the Bronx, Cleveland, Mississippi, South Carolina and California, Debra Carr told Obama she is from Des Moines.

Obama immediately said: “I want you to caucus for me.”