99% Satisfied w/ Internet Voting in Canada

Hello Independents!

Fear NOT! Lets take the lead on Internet voting!

Here in the USA there is a strong opposition to Internet voting. But they have NO FACTS to support the scary stories they tell about what “might” or “could” go wrong. Here is a report that gives FACTS about the successes of Internet voting.

We Independents can learn a lot from this report. I hope US companies will show this report to the state Secretaries of State and local election officials. Hopefully, such factual information will help Americans to overcome the baseless fear that now stymies the progress of Internet voting in the USA. Read more at, http://tinyurl.com/IntV-Facts


William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1
Internet Voting Explained on
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WJKPhD

Into the abyss? - from The Morning Star

From last weekend's Morning Star, a perceptive and timely article by Andrew Murray.

"Stare into the abyss, the philosopher Nietzsche advised, and the abyss stares into you.

Society has been staring into the abyss of capitalist crisis for three years now, and the view just gets more impenetrably gloomy.

And the abyss stares right back - what are you going to do about it? Do you have a plan or are you part of the void?

The time for accounting is impending.

By every measure the crisis is deepening and there is a sense that a really big wave is going to break sometime soon."

Link to the full article here:

Into the abyss? / Features / Home - Morning Star

President Obama and the Independents

Once again, I would caution Pres. Obama to read between the lines when it comes to how independent voters are characterized in the US press. Independents created our country. They were called revolutionaries then.

OBAMA

• Obama leans further left (By MICHAEL GOODWIN, NY Post) One of the enduring mysteries of the Obama presidency is why he keeps leaning far left when independent voters make it clear they want a centrist in the White House. It is not an academic point -- independents swung the 2008 election his way, and without them, Obama probably can’t win a second term
• Obama Draws New Hard Line on Long-Term Debt Reduction (By JACKIE CALMES, NY Times) In this new phase, Mr. Obama must solidify support among Democrats by standing pat for progressive party principles, while trusting that a show of strong leadership for the policies he believes in will appeal to independents. Polls consistently suggest that perhaps the only thing that unites independents as much as their desire for compromise is their inclination toward leaders who signal strength by fighting for their beliefs.

Mayor Bloomberg Might Testify in Haggerty Case

NEW YORK

• Prospect of Bloomberg in court makes picking jurors tricky (Thomson Reuters News & Insight) "Is there anybody here that feels that because a person is wealthy -- very, very wealthy, as we all know Mayor Bloomberg is -- that it's okay to steal from him?" Assistant District Attorney Eric Seidel asked. The prospective jurors shook their heads.
• Jury Selection in Case Involving Mayor Bloomberg and the Independence Party May Take a Week (Ballot Access News)
• How to salvage N.Y. redistricting reform (By Susan Lerner and Sean Coffey, Albany Times Union) The redistricting process should be driven by demographics, not the needs of the incumbent.

Blowing Away Nuclear?

Has a major technological breakthrough in Japan created a new generation of wind turbines that finally destroy the claims by the nuclear lobby that renewables can't match their dangerous and dirty radioactive power? Martin O'Beirne of THE ECOSOCIALIST ponders on what it could mean...

Major Wind Turbine Breakthrough! 3 times the output. The End of Nuclear and Fossil?

The designers of this new wind turbine, based in Japan's Kyushu University claim output, the amount of electricity produced is up to 3 times greater than a conventional turbine. 

The first question is...What major design breakthrough could possibly be responsible? Some super light material allowing the turbine to spin faster? Some inexplicable method of increasing wind itself...eh? No that would be silly, why did you say it, but not far off, see the video.

They have had the amazing idea of ...Wait for it......Putting a ring around the outside...Oh....So we have to be a little guarded before we get too excited. If it was that easy, surely it would have been done before now, right? Let's wait for some independent research and so on, and I mean independent because the fossil fuel and nuclear industries will be falling over themselves to rubbish it. 

The other caveat (ironically) is that the anti-nuclear movement in the wake of Fukushima are making progress.  The energy agency plans to earmark up to 20 billion yen ($261 million) for offshore wind farms. This has displeased the local fisheries. At the end of this video the commentator suggests the wind farms could be used for fishing, which is a little hard to buy. But hey I don't want to play sceptic here! 

IF the designers are right, the implications are immense. If we were to be conservative and say that all it does is double the output this really could be the end of any of those arguments about the cost of nuclear actually being cheaper than renewables (Ask the workers and local people at Fukushima how they define cost) Wind generation would be closer to those claims we heard all those years ago about nuclear (that it would be too cheap to meter). In the video below a single offshore wind farm using the turbines would be equivalent to an entire nuclear plant. Think of the 8 new nuclear power plants planned for the UK replaced by 8 offshore windfarms with the benefit of no nuclear waste to bury or plants to decommission.
 
In addition there is no great paradigm shift involved if we were to propose that the very expensive tar sands extraction and fracking would not get a look in. Just a quiet woosh of spinning turbines. 

But the real deal is how the argument stands up for capitalism. This could be divisive, major fossil and nuclear companies with their dirty fingers in all the pies, could not compete with companies pushing the new wind farms, they would either have to embrace it themselves or suffer the consequences, but either way the Military-Industrial (Fossil Fuel, Nuclear, War) Complex (as David Schwartzman calls it) that sustains capitalism would wither. Perhaps an example of how the market  (for a change) could work in our favour. 

Wouldn't it be something if nature herself destroyed capitalism before it destroyed her. 


original article, plus video HERE

John Avlon: Closed Primaries Too Easily Hijacked by Ideologes and Partisan Hacks

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Christine O'Donnell: Exhibit A for getting rid of closed primaries (By John Avlon, CNN Contributor) The lesson: Closed partisan primaries are fundamentally unrepresentative. They're too easily hijacked by ideological activists and party hacks beholden to special interests. And because these local primaries are the gauntlet that candidates have to run, they lead directly to the culture of hyperpartisanship that now threatens to paralyze our capacity for effective self-government.
• Primaries now 'the elections' (LETTER Clarion Ledger) Whether it's called "open primaries," or just equal right to vote by everyone, we need a system that gives everyone an equal voice, rather than independents being shut out of the "primaries" where most officials are chosen, and then have to pick between two party hacks in the general election.

Updates - Continuing Bad Weather

Over the last year, I've posted on a number of incidents and issues that in many instances continue to be in the news, but here is a short round up of some of the stories and issues that were either less prominent to begin with or which faded from news coverage (often in spite of their importance), and what has happened since the original post.

Good news on the story of Rania Abdechakour. Rania was the little 5 year old Algerian girl with cerebral palsy who had been living with her aunt and uncle in Lancashire for several years. Back in May, the British Government decided to expel her, in spite of the lack of medical facilities or a secure home for her back in Algeria. After a lot of hard work by her aunt and uncle and others, she was granted the right to remain in late August and they are now formally adopting her.

The "Ground Zero Mosque" - remember the fuss about something that was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero? For weeks the media was filled with protests and reams of commentary about how the proposed Muslim cultural centre in New York was an affront to the people who had died in the Twin Towers, dreadfully conflating all Muslims with the handful of men who led the attacks on 9/11. Since last year, the centre has progressed slowly in terms of development - planning obstacles have slowly been overcome and designs for the front of the building which incorporate the Jewish Star of David and the Christian Cross suggest that its intention remains what its sponsors have all along insisted - a centre for faith reconciliation, not some victory monument. Given that some 70 innocent Muslims died in the carnage of the Towers (and tens of thousands in the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan since), why in any case should there be no Islamic content to marking the losses of that day?

An ice free North Pole may now be barely 5 years away...

Not so good news on climate change....Britain had its most severe winter in decades last year amidst speculation that the warming "Atlantic conveyor", which brings the mild climate from the Mexican Gulf, had slowed down or even stopped. After millenia of Britain enjoying a much warmer climate than its latitude warrants, at least one expert in the field believed the Gulf Stream, as it is called, had turned off, at least temporarily. Without confirming anything, the Government did acknowledge that the weather was much worse than normal for the second year in a row and decided to ask the Chief Scientist if there had been a "step change" in our climate. He has yet to report, but Britain's summer has now been cooler than normal in spite of a continuing global rise in temperatures - and more and more extreme weather events around the planet as man-made carbon emissions continue to rise faster than ever. Climate change does not simply mean constantly warmer weather everywhere - although the longterm trend is upwards. The impact of global warming could mean cooler temperatures in Britain and western Europe for a time if polar ice melts and the cooler water from the Arctic melts into and diverts the flow of warmer water from the south-west. The latest prognosis from the Arctic is bad - summer ice melt has reached record levels this year and is proceeding at roughly double the anticipated rate, with an ice-free North Pole anticipated during the summer by sometime as early as 2016 rather than the 2030s as previously predicted.

Meanwhile, in the USA, climate activist Tim DeChristopher continues to languish in jail under a two year sentence of imprisonment for disrupting an auction of land to the oil and gas industry by falsely bidding. At his trial, he argued that he had been forced to choose the lesser of two evils - acquiesce to the land auction going ahead and the damage the resulting oil and gas exploration would cause; or commit a crime by bidding falsely in order the disrupt the land sale. He has lodged an appeal against his conviction, but for now remains in prison for a crime that harmed no one and no organisation - in fact, the auction itself turned out to be an invalid process because of procedural irregularities, so Tim has been imprisoned without technically committing any crime at all.

But better news for bees: in the UK at any rate, the general consensus seems to be that it has been a good year for our stripey pollinating friends. Colony Collapse Disorder has decreased and there is now some evidence to support a diagnosis that agrochemicals are responsible for their recent, often mysterious declines. Even the bad winter didn't deter them and there has been a bumper honey crop this year as a relatively mild spring let them get busy. However, with no consensus on how to tackle CCD and the chemical industry keeping a close involvement in the beekeeping world in defence of its own interests, bees are still in longterm decline - the number of UK bee species has fallen by 50% in the last sixty years; so our little friends are not out of the woods and into the flowery meadows yet.

In spite of all the violence of the Arab Spring and the apparent shaming of Britain and other western states over their longterm association with Arab dictators and kelptocrats, our Government's lust for profit from blood remains undiminished. UK Premier David Cameron behaved appallingly when he took a group of British arms merchants on a tour of Cairo's Tahrir Square where people had died protesting against a regime funded by America and supplied by the British arms industry. But just days later, we were at it again, with a big UK delegation out in the Gulf at the IDEX Arms Fayre in Abu Dhabi which took place hours after the Bahrain Government machine-gunned protestors on the streets of its capital. 

Cameron later welcomed the Crown Prince of Bahrain to Downing Street, while it was with clear reluctance that the British Royal Family cancelled the King of Bahrain's invite to the Royal Wedding at the end of April. In September, in spite of their mealy mouthed condemnation of dictatorships and the embarrassment caused when Libyan rebels found evidence that the Con Dem Government had been selling sniper rifles to the Gaddafi regime right up to the start of the civil war,  Ministers supported the huge Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition in London - where one company was exposed by Amnesty International to be selling illegal leg irons. Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, tabled an early day motion in the Commons condemning the exhibition and calling for an end to arms sales to regimes with poor human rights records.

And mention of the Royal Wedding brings back memories of perhaps the most confused newspaper page of the year, if not longer. Clinging on to the last of the big wedding story of the year but wanting to move onto the big breaking news story, the Daily Telegraph's international edition ended up with one of the most bizarrely tasteless front pages in newspaper history...

In June, Greenpeace used Star Wars as a theme to attack Volkswagen car company for its lobbying against reductions in carbon emissions in spite of its advertising promoting it as an allegedly environmentally aware company. Stung by being likened to Darth Vader's planet-destroying Death Star, VW  deployed its employees in a counter-demonstration when Greenpeace unfurled one of their signature banners at a car show: the result can be seen here, but you do have to look closely to see the staff holding up their blue placards.

And lastly, back in May, I blogged on how police had very brutally arrested and carted off a film maker and a handful of others who were silently dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. They were held under anti-terror laws, a ludicrous over-reaction by the authorities to a perfectly harmless activity - all of it filmed here.

The following week, in a challenge to authoritarianism's assault on peaceful activity, hundreds of people turned up to dance, though a little less silently...

The Fat Cat Who Won't Feed His Own...

Our political masters love to make out that they are just normal folk in special jobs. So, when they are not siring kids like the Blairs and Camerons have done while in Downing Street with great PR flourish, they go for the next best thing in terms of image - pets; especially rescue pets.

Long ago, then Vice-President Nixon had trouble over his puppy, allegedly a bribe, but deftly swiped the issue away by appearing on-screen with the mutt demonstrating its cloying affection for Tricky Dicky. Later, across the Atlantic, the urbane Harold Wilson had his Labrador Paddy. Thatcher made up for an absence of  animal pets by having her Cabinet, but subsequently John Major adopted a stray cat (which his successor Tony Blair was at one point forced to prove he hadn't killed), while in the White House Clinton had Socks the cat, even Butcher Bush kept dogs and Obama adopted a rescue dog for his kids.

Keeping up with tradition, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on taking office that a rescue cat, Larry, would be coming to live in Downing Street. The poor animal duly arrived in a cat cage to be feted by the press (one of whom Larry animatedly scratched) and he was pictured on the Cabinet table with a Union Jack collar patriotically attached. Milking the idea of being a fun-loving guy, Cameron even had himself photographed with an assistant holding Larry out to a visiting President Obama.

The significance of the Obama photocall should not be underplayed - the US president, at his folksy best, is all smiles as he pats the cat, while the assistant looks genuinely pleased with the animal. Safely a few feet back, Cameron smiles but, with his hands firmly on his hips, he sort of gazes at the cat with a mild disdain. A bit like a Victorian father with his kids, he'll try to look interested if he has to, but for God's sake, don't ask him to actually touch the creature himself and no - do not, under any circumstances, expect him to hold it.

And now the truth is out. Fat Cat Cameron, multi-millionaire, happy to portray himself as an animal lover, does not even pay to feed the cat. His own cat. In spite of his cash, in spite of milking the publicity shots, he won't stump up for even a can of kat-o-meat or a box of biscuits. No, this rich man makes his staff pay for his cat. And now he has ostentatiously agreed that they can hold a quiz evening to raise money for poor Larry's upkeep. Dependent on the random vicissitudes of charity, poor Larry needs to remember the words of an old Labour leader, "That if the Tories win...I warn you...do not fall sick..."  Who, after all, will meet the vet fees?

Quite unsurprisingly, just like his past wheeze of trying to be seen as a keen environmentalist by cycling to work while a large car drove behind him carrying his briefcase, Cameron's attempt to pose as a lover of fur (living and domesticated as opposed to the creatures he likes to hunt and shoot), now stands exposed as just another tawdry publicity stunt. As if we hadn't guessed...

So spare a thought for Larry as he contemplates an uncertain future. He was originally obtained to help catch rats that were to be found living in Downing Street. Clearly, his work is not yet done...

The Last American

"Science fiction is when the improbable becomes probable..." 

This is the definition of the sci fi genre emblazoned in the entrance to an imaginative (free) exhibition currently on at the British Library in London, Out of this World. It sets out the history of the imagining of new or different worlds by authors from the earliest to the most current - I was delighted to discover that the first trip to outer space was described in The True History by the second century Greek-Syrian author Lucian, regarded as the father (or maybe great-great- grandfather many times removed) of this type of escapism.

Though escapism may be more than a slight misnomer - because while sci fi can provide entertaining stories, it has also long been a vital repository of comment on the societies and conditions observed and experienced by those who write it. Whilst pure yarns feature aplenty, credible science fiction requires some degree of possibility, however remote, to avoid slipping into pure fantasy (where, according the exhibition, the impossible becomes possible). Whether a reflection of contemporary progress - such as dreams of rocket flights to the Moon or Mars and speculation on what alien wonders might be found in stories such as HG Wells First Men on the Moon - or gloomier prognoses such as the post-apocalyptic On The Beach, which covered the nuclear threat of the Cold War era - science fiction should tell us something about ourselves as much as about the imagined alternate realities it postulates.

In some cases, this can be positive - Star Trek and Dr Who have long mixed teatime family entertainment with real physics, even if highly theoretical or somewhat warped (no pun intended). And of course, Dr McCoy's non-invasive hypodermic pressure syringe is now a medical fact. But in other cases, a more negative picture can be drawn, usually as a warning by the author of the possible consequences of some contemporary ill.

One such tale is a book among the exhibition called "The Last American" by John Ames Mitchell, published in 1889. This recounts the story of an expedition in the year 2951 by the Muslim Persian Admiral Khan-Li to rediscover the long lost land of Merikha, a thousand years after the contemporary world has been destroyed by runaway climate change.

Mitchell's novel is short - the original publication ran to less than 80 pages but with lots of very imaginative, colourful illustrations; it is available for free download (text only) from Project Guttenberg. And on reading it, there are a striking number of passages that cover the materialism and greed which Ames Mitchell saw as representing American society in his day, even although at that time it was an emergent power, its global reach still several decades in the future. These passages remain strikingly relevant today, not only to America but increasingly to our entire globalised world.

As the Persians of a millennium from now climb through the overgrown ruins of New York and Washington DC, postulating on the use of buildings and the purpose of ancient objects (a satirical view of the archaeology that was becoming so popular in spite of its wildly speculative methods at the time of the novel's writing), the expedition's historian is delighted to discover the ruins of what he considers to have been the cause of the Merikhans downfall:

He stopped speaking, his eyes fixed upon an inscription over a doorway, partly hidden by one of the branches of the oak.

Turning suddenly upon me with a look of triumph, he exclaimed:

"It is ours!"

"What is ours?" I asked.

"The knowledge we sought;" and he pointed to the inscription,

NEW YORK STOCK EXC….

He was tremulous with joy. "Thou hast heard of Nhu-Yok, O my Prince?"

I answered that I had read of it at school.

He continues a little later with an explanation:

"They were great only in numbers and too weak to endure success. At the beginning of the twentieth century—as they counted time—huge fortunes were amassed in a day, and the Mehrikans became drunk with money."

Whereupon I exclaimed, "O Land of Delight! For much money is cheering."

But the old man shook his head. "Very true, O Prince; but the effect was woful. These vast fortunes soon dominated all things, even the seat of government and the courts of Justice. Tricks of finance brought fabulous gains. Young men became demoralized. For sober industry with its moderate profits was ridiculed."

"Verily, that would be natural!" I said. "But in a land where all were rich who was found to cook and scrub, to fetch and carry and to till the soil? For none will shovel earth when his pockets are stuffed with gold."

"All were not rich. And when the poor also became greedy they became hostile. Then began social upheavals with bloodshed and havoc."

Several other passages cover the materialism of the fallen society - shopping and bargain seeking were its people's highest objectives - and the expedition is at once astounded by the size of its originally powerful cities and by the totality of its collapse. The explorers are delighted when they find a well preserved Persian rug among the ruins, commenting that although the least decayed item they found, it is older than the degraded items surrounding it, such was their transient and disposable design. Without spoiling the conclusion, the denouement has reference to yet another contemporary ill Ames Mitchell saw in his pleasure-seeking contemporaries.

The tale is well written, the crumbling ruins and emptiness of the deserted citadels hauntingly conjured, and you can trace to here the origins of scenes and themes picked up, deliberately or not, by authors and screenplays in science fiction throughout the 20th century. But the most striking aspect is how prescient his observations were of the future of his own society at a time when it was still in transition from an essentially agricultural society to a fully industrialised, commercially obsessed one. 

Although New York and other large cities were well established and as terrifyingly cramped, dirty and crowded as any in the world, most Americans still lived in rural settings. Ames Mitchell's imaginative projection of the processes underway at his time is science fiction at its best - and arguably its most accurate: he was predicting man-made climate change nearly a century and a quarter ago.

Intentionally or otherwise, it is also ironic that he should have picked the country he did for the home of his intrepid explorers - in spite of their comic names (the ship's pilot is called Griptillah and the historian is Nhofhul), as they gather their artefacts for the Museum of Teheran, Islamic Iran has evidently survived the climate disaster and outlived doomed America by at least one thousand years.
 

Out of this World runs at the British Library, until 25th September.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou....

I am returning to blogging a little earlier than planned in part because since my last post at the end of August, the Total Politics magazine and website has announced its blog awards for 2011. These are voted for by its readers and set out in a wide range of different political categories.

After just one year of proper blogging, I am chuffed and more than a little surprised that Viridis Lumen has done really well:

 -  3rd Place in Top Green Blogs category
 - 15th Place in Top Green Bloggers category
                                                       - 33rd Place in Top Leftwing Blogs category
                                                       - 64th Place in Top Leftwing Bloggers category

So I wanted to give my very profuse thanks to any and all who voted in any or all categories.

It was also cheering to see other good leftwing Green blogs doing well:

Derek Wall's Another Green World came 2nd in the Green Blogs and also Green Bloggers, and 27th in Leftwing Blogs; while Martin O'Beirne's The Ecosocialist came 13th in the Green Blogs and Martin himself came 49th in the top Leftwing Bloggers. Other left Greens like Jane Wilkinson also did well, while Bright Green Scotland and its writers featured across several categories.

Geographically closer to home for me, Kirklees Green Council Group leader Cllr Andrew Cooper saw his Greening Kirklees jump up a good few places (symbolised in his blog by a certain brand of soft drink): Andrew is one of a growing but still relatively small band of Greens who have exercised executive power in local government, having been a successful Cabinet member for housing. His blog is well worth a look at for its posts about a range of topics but with a focus on his work on Kirklees Council - where his efforts have been instrumental in implementing a number of practical and effective green initiatives, copied and claimed by others near and far - imitation is indeed the best form of flattery.

So thanks again to anyone who has voted, and thanks for reading. If you've not visited some of the other blogs listed above or in the right side panel, please take a look when you've some time - they give a wide range of progressive and green perspectives on politics, the world and life in general.

As for me...onwards... :)

The Pitfalls of Party Loving Political Scientists

Recently two well known political scientists Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann have chided columnists Matt Miller and Tom Friedman for calling for a third-party, or independent, candidate for president. The two scholars urge that the American people continue their co-dependent relationship with the two-party system. They acknowledge that this relationship is "dysfunctional," but only offer their "dismay" as to why it is that way.

Their sage advice is that an Independent presidential candidate is a bad idea; in their words, pure "Fuhgeddaboudit," which is a technical term for bull shit. But in sharing their wisdom, they completely disregard the contrary advice of our Founders.

As I show in Chapter Two of my recent book, Internet Voting Now!, among the most important original objectives of the Framers, or authors, of the US Constitution, was to fashion a government that could not be taken over by political parties. Generally, our nation's Founding Fathers abhorred political parties. They regularly referred to parties as "factions." They knew from their own experience that political parties put the party's self-interests, such as winning elections and obtaining privileged legislation, before the best interests of the people as a whole. Wary of such organizations, they sought to establish a system of government that would always strive to act in the best interests of the whole country.

John Marshall, who some say is the greatest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote, in a letter to his brother, that party politics are "despicable in the extreme... Nothing, I believe, more debases or pollutes the human mind than faction."

Another independent thinker, Thomas Jefferson, had a deep contempt for political parties. A friend once asked Jefferson if he considered himself a member of any political party. Jefferson replied, that "[I have] never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

With amazing prescience John Adams wrote, "There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties … This … is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

Hamilton was contemptuous of parties, in part, and like Jefferson, because they could corrode an individual's sense of civic morality. Hamilton wrote that a "spirit of faction" can drive individuals to do together that "for which they would blush in a private capacity."

Lets not forget the warning of our first president, who said in his Farewell speech that political parties could "become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government…"

As a nation we goofed. We have lost the way our Founders set for us. But instead of one faction dominating the whole, we have a two-party system, which is a malignant parasite on the body politic. Now, as Americans Elect comes along with a slim hope of breaking the grip that parasite has on the presidential election process, these two highly eurdite professors of political science come along with their "collective wisdom."

But instead of being wise, they ask the most pathetic question conceivable in light of our Constitution's original intentions; that is, "Even if an independent did prevail, how would he or she govern?"

The answer is that he or she would govern as the Constitution intended – without the interference of factions! Party loving political scientists have lost the capacity to see that the two-party system smears over the separation of powers originally intended by the Constitution's Framers. They take the smear – Party Government – as the summum bonum of American politics. But just those few quotes from the Founders should be enough to show how wrong they are. The highest good for American politics is not party government, it is Constitutional government, with a separation of powers rather than a smearing together of powers by private self-serving groups.

While Americans Elect is not free of flaws, at least they are making an effort to break off the co-dependent relationship between the American people and the two-party system. We Independents should reject the advice of party lovers, and give our full support to AE.

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Face Book: http://tinyurl.com/BillonFB
Twitter: wjkno1
Internet Voting Explained on
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WJKPhD


Notes:
Marshall, http://tinyurl.com/MarshallBio, page 410
Jefferson, http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0800.htm
Adams, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams
Hamilton, Fed 15, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/fed.asp
Washington, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

baltimore

Baltimore Sun: Top Two Might Fix Baltimore's Broken Primary System

OPEN PRIMARIES
Fixing Baltimore's broken primary (EDITORIAL Baltimore Sun) There are plenty of other models for how to run an election so that it more accurately reflects the will of the people than the strict party system we have here. An intriguing idea is the one recently enacted in California; there, the top two vote getters in the primary (regardless of party affiliation) square off in the general election. It's worth considering. Other ideas, such as proportional representation and run-off elections, could better engage voters and provide elected officials with a clearer mandate.

How About A Third Party?

THIRD PARTY

• The pitfalls of a third-party candidacy (By Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, Washington Post Opinions) First, a third candidate can end up tilting the contest toward another candidate. In 2012, the nightmare scenario for us would be angry or demoralized independents and discouraged centrist Republicans gravitating toward the third candidate, enabling a far-right Republican nominee to prevail with a narrow electoral majority or with a plurality followed by a win in a deeply divided House. (Americans Elect, to its credit, has tried to draft electoral rules so that, in the plurality scenario, its electors would pledge to vote for the most centrist or reasonable major-party nominee.)
• Ron Paul: Why Do Underdog Candidates Run for President? (By Palash R. Ghosh, International Business Times) Probably the biggest challenge to third-party candidates is the electoral rules of the major parties or state electoral laws. The Bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, a committee of representatives from both parties tasked with organizing general election debates, has mostly ignored the inclusion of third-party candidates unless there is enough support from the media and the public for their inclusion. 

Round-Up From Tuesday Special Elections in New York

NEW YORK

• Opinion: Special Elections Show the Waning Power of the Party (By Justin Krebs, WNYC/It's a Free Blog) The Democratic Party in New York City should feel like it's being challenged on all sides -- because it is. This isn't just about sinking poll numbers on a national level, though that doesn't help.  It's about transforming loyalties in local and state politics.
• Working Families Party and Green Party Both Set New Record for New York Legislative Nominees (Ballot Access News) Gonzalez’ showing is the best ever for a New York WFP nominee for the legislature.
• NY-9: Winners and Losers (By Alex Isenstadt, NBC-NY from Politico) LOSERS: Downstate Democrats – With New York losing two seats in reapportionment, Weiner’s vacant seat was a perfect target for elimination – a way for Democrats tasked with redrawing the state’s congressional map to protect long-serving incumbents. But with the seat now in GOP hands, the ripple effect is that a downstate Democratic incumbent could now be axed.
• GIANARIS BILLS STRENGTHEN VOTING PROCESS (John Toscano, Queens Gazette/I On Politics) •S 1972 allows for Election Day Voter Registration so new voters can register to vote up to Election Day itself.
• Mayor To Testify In Haggerty Trial? (John Toscano, Queens Gazette/I On Politics)
• Democrats vow to pursue Medicare message after N.Y. and Nevada losses (By Felicia Sonmez and Paul Kane, Washington Post/2chambers) The main problem, Burton said, is that too many Democrats are not taking the Republican field seriously given some of the positions candidates have staked out - on Social Security and Medicare, for example - that could turn off crucial independent voters.
• The Rise of Democratic Discontent - After this week's election defeats, unhappiness with the president is sure to build. (By KARL ROVE, Wall Street Journal) Mr. Obama's main political challenge between now and November 2012 is winning back independent voters. After voting for him by a 52-to-44 margin in 2008, only 41% approve of his job performance and only 34% approve of his handling of the economy in the latest Resurgent Republic Poll. On big issues, independents look a lot more like Republicans than Democrats.

Where are the Independent strongholds in California's political landscape?

CALIFORNIA TOP TWO
California's Independent strongholds and the political calculus of the top-two open primary (by Damon Eris, CAIVN) One might easily conclude that two Democrats would be assured the top two spots in the primary and head to the general election, since it is a Democratic majority district.  But, if there were a Democratic favorite supported by half of all registered Democrats, with the rest of the district's Democrats more or less equally supporting the other five Democrats in the race, the Republican, Independent or third party candidate could easily advance to the general election with as little as 8-10% support in the primary, depending on how the district's Independents vote.  It is for this precise reason that the state's Democratic and Republican parties are considering holding caucuses or conventions prior to any such primary elections, to nominate the candidate who would be the "official" representative of the party at those elections and hopefully avoid splitting their party's vote.

NY-9 Special Election Goes to Bob Turner

NEW YORK
SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS: Ninth Congressional District (City Hall News)

• Ninth Congressional District: Bob Turner 54%, David Weprin 46%
• 23rd Assembly District: Phil Goldfeder 54%, Jane Deacy 46%
• 27th Assembly District: Michael Simanowitz 76%, Marco DeSena 24%
• 54th Assembly District: Rafael Espinal 44%, Jesus Gonzalez 32%, Deidra Towns 23%
• 73rd Assembly District: Dan Quart 66%, Paul Niehaus 34%
• 116th Assembly District: Anthony Brindisi 57%, Gregory Johnson 43%
• 144th Assembly District: Sean Ryan 71%, Sean Kipp 21%
• 28th City Council District: Ruben Wills 67%, Allan Jennings 17%, Michael Duvalle 11%, Clifton Stanley Diaz 6%

• After Weprin Loss, Queens Democratic Party Faces Hard Questions (By Adam Lisberg, City Hall News) Yet within Democratic circles, Republican Bob Turner’s surprise 8-point victory over Assemblyman David Weprin was a harsh judgment on the Queens Democratic Party, which picked Weprin, assumed he would win easily in a district with a 3-1 Democratic tilt, and failed to react when Turner’s campaign caught fire. “They picked a candidate, rested on their laurels and wrote off Brooklyn,” said a frustrated Democratic elected official, one of many who gave up on the Queens Democratic Party’s efforts long before Election Day.
• CANDIDATE COLLEGE: A NEW YORK CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EVENT (Co-Sponsored by Common Cause New York, Women’s City Club of New York, and New Roosevelt, Media Sponsors: City Hall & The Capitol)
• Koch’s reapportionment plan is dead (LETTER Queens Courier) Although a majority of state legislators actively endorsed former Mayor Koch’s call for an independent legislative redistricting process, this is not what we got. Where are the voices that promised an independent redistricting commission? Of course, nowhere to be found now that the two parties begin drawing district lines that will insure the re-election of these politicians over the next 10 years? When we elect the same people, time and time again, why should we expect different results?
• Democratic Party Pick Wins Brooklyn Race (By LIZ ROBBINS, NY Times) The Democratic machine whirred and then roared in northern Brooklyn on Tuesday, churning out a significant victory for Rafael L. Espinal in a fiercely contested three-way race for the 54th State Assembly District seat.
• Republican Wins N.Y. Democrat Weiner's House Seat (by Joel Rose, NPR) "There may be some people that are voting against Weprin because they think they're voting against Obama," said Greg Stein of Forest Hills. "I don't buy it. I don't see that connection well at all." Stein thinks voters in the district are angry about the economy, not the president's foreign policy.
• Is the Republican Win in New York a Sign? (By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NY Times/The Caucus) But drawing broad conclusions from elections in districts of about 600,000 people — especially when only a small fraction of those turn out to vote — can be tricky.

Troy Davis Set to be Executed 9/21/2011

step right up

Pew Research: Partisan Ideology (A Philosophical Shell Game)

Moderate. Liberal. Conservative. Republican. Democrat. Independent.  With choices like these, who's to say what the Pew Research poll means! What does it mean to say you are a liberal or a conservative? What does it mean to say you are a Republican, Democrat or independent? And what does it mean to derive meaning from polls?

THE PARTIES
More Now See GOP as Very Conservative - Views of Parties' Ideologies (Pew Research) Nearly half of independents (47%) say their political views are moderate, about the same as last year. The remainder tilt conservative, with 33% saying they are either conservative (29%) or very conservative (4%); 17% say their views are either liberal (14%) or very liberal (3%).

Recommended chaser:
Whereas modernist conversation required a grounding in epistemological claims about why we think and feel the way we do when we try to influence each other, Newman and Holzman see that view of language as a kind of "aboutness" and as limiting. In contrast, they propose a view of language as something we perform in relationships, and they take readers beyond John Shotter's position that all meaning-making conversation occurs in a context of justification and argumentation. They suggest, instead, that new meaning is best created in a shared performance of meaning, and they discourage recitations or negotiation of meanings that we bring from our prior forms of "knowing". --  A Review of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman's The End of Knowing, By Tom Strong, Division of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary

Today's NY-9 Special Election a Partisan Conundrum

NEW YORK

• Special Election! So What’s So Special? (By CLYDE HABERMAN, NY Times/City Room) The ballot choices on Tuesday come courtesy of the leaders of the major parties, who could not bear the idea of letting people in that Brooklyn-Queens district choose their candidates in open primaries.
• Anti-Gay Marriage Forces Converge On NY-9 (By Adam Lisberg, City Hall News) The TV ads and the big endorsements are trying to make today’s special election in the Ninth Congressional District a referendum on President Barack Obama, Republican budget cuts and Israel – but a low-profile campaign among Orthodox Jews aims to make it about same-sex marriage.
• Dems fear loss in N.Y. House race (By: Alex Isenstadt, Politico) In a room adorned with pictures of Queens County Democratic power players, including Rep. Joe Crowley, the party chairman, and the late Rep. Thomas Manton, a row of desks is stacked with get-out-the-vote materials, organized in manila envelopes by neighborhood — part of what Weprin officials describe as a sophisticated Election Day operation. The campaign says it has 1,000 workers and by Tuesday will have contacted more than 200,000 voters — some more than once. With the assistance of the organized labor-backed Working Families Party, Democrats plan to target around 60,000 labor households. 
• Pols: Vito’s a geezer freezes (By Aaron Short, The Brooklyn Paper) Good government groups call the practice “objectionable.” “Seniors should not be walled off from the world for political reasons or any other,” said Common Cause’s Susan Lerner. “Seniors want company, they want to feel a part of current events.”

Unraveling New York State Independence Party With John Haggerty

• NYC mayor: Victim in political operative's trial? (Associated Press, Wall Street Journal) While the party isn't charged, prosecutors have said in a lawsuit that the party knew or should have known about Haggerty's alleged scam. The lawsuit seeks to force the party and Haggerty to forfeit the money he allegedly stole; for now, the suit has prompted a civil court judge to freeze one of the party's accounts last winter.
  
• Setback in Bloomberg Case (By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL, Wall Street Journal) Mayor Michael Bloomberg knew he wouldn't control the spending of more than $1 million he gave the New York State Independence Party for the 2009 election, a defense attorney for a political operative accused of stealing the mayor's money argued Monday. State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel dealt Manhattan prosecutors a setback by denying their motion to bar the defense from making that argument at the trial of the operative, John Haggerty.
  
• Bloomberg recovers in Quinnipiac poll (By ALEXANDER BURNS, Politico) Incidentally, the path for Bloomberg — or any wealthy, moderate independent — to run for president has always involved President Obama tanking and the Republicans nominating someone with drastically limited appeal. So the conditions for a serious third-party run haven't faded, even if the prospect of finding a viable candidate has.
• Is Independence Party’s influence waning? (By ELIZABETH COOPER, Utica Observer-Dispatch) The Independence Party has taken a tumble from the coveted third line — directly below the Democratic and Republican parties — down to the fifth line.

America 2011: The public is having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election

INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT
America Needs a Makeover (The Daily Beast, By Tony Dokoupil, MSNBC/PowerWall)  Interview with Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum:

TF: Right now it's like the public is having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election. There's almost no overlap between the two groups. It's like they're in a circle and we're in a circle. What that tells you is that the incentives—financial and political—don't correspond to the themes of the country.

Which is why you say the system needs a shock, perhaps from an independent third candidate.

MM: It's not going to correct itself with its own routine procedure. We think an independent candidate probably would not win, but would reveal the existence of a large constituency up for grabs between the Republicans and Democrats, and that would create incentives for each party to try to co-opt those voters by adopting some of those programs.

New York Politics: Haggerty, Turner, Weprin, Gonzalez and Towns

NEW YORK

• Trial of ex-aide Haggerty, accused of pocketing $1 million from mayor, is still Bloomberg's problem (BY Melissa Grace and Erin Einhorn, DAILY NEWS) "The mayor violated [campaign finance rules], and Haggerty is going down for it," said one prominent campaign finance lawyer. "[Bloomberg] signed a form that said that he would only spend money on his campaign through his campaign committee....If [the money] wasn't for his campaign, then Haggerty couldn't have defrauded him."
• Vito is a bloc 'blocker' (By AARON SHORT, NY Post) Jesus Gonzalez and Deidra Towns say the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Center, a Lopez-founded charity that manages several senior facilities in the district, has made it nearly impossible for them to meet constituents in those buildings.
• Guide for the Last Minute Voter: 2011 Primary and Special Election (by Gotham Gazette) The political parties, though see this contest as a chance to show their strength -- or, more accurately, the other side's weakness – and have dumped in money and resources. Over the weeks, both candidate seem to have readily adopted the role as their party's standard-bearer. At a recent debate in Howard Beach -- complete with Tea Party hecklers and a pack of noisy Weprin backers in the rear of the church meeting room -- the two epitomized a left/right split.
• Independence Party endorsements raise questions (By BRYON ACKERMAN, Utica Observer-Dispatch) Dozens of candidates will be on the Independence Party line in elections this year in Oneida County, but there have been questions about the nomination process used in two of the highest profile local races: the Assembly and the Utica mayoral races… Ernie Sanita is running for mayor on an independent line and said he wasn’t interested in screening with any political parties.
• Turner up by six, just two days before New York special election (By Alexis Levinson, The Daily Caller) Turner has a strong lead with independent voters, 58 percent of whom say they will vote for him. Just 26 percent plan to vote for Weprin. Turner also has the majority of the Jewish vote, a demographic that makes up 36 percent of the district according to PPP’s results. Fifty-six percent of Jews say they will vote for Turner, while 39 percent say they have chosen Weprin.

shaky freedom, fairness, violence, conflict and development in america

PHOTO: David Belmont

On Being a Muslim American Post 9-11

INDEPENDENT VOICES
August 'Gus' Preschel and Dr. Omar Ali (WFDD Voices & Viewpoints, Denise Franklin) Dr. Ali describes some of the challenges of being a Muslim American post 9-11.
 Listen (mp3) here.

CLEAN ELECTIONS
PSN 2011 Election Reform Roundup: Conservatives Push Voter Suppression Nationwide (Cristina Francisco-McGuire, Progressive States Network) Advocates such as Project Vote, Demos, ACLU, Lawyers’ Committee, and NAACP have also played a key role in defending democracy throughout the states. Not only have they filed challenges against legislation such as Florida’s Voter Suppression Act and Missouri’s voter ID ballot initiative, but lawsuits to ensure state agency compliance under the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) have been refreshingly successful. In 2011 alone, lawsuits in Indiana and New Mexico resulted in settlements that reinforce the NVRA’s mandate that public assistance agencies offer voter registration materials to clients. Lawsuits in Louisiana and Georgia are ongoing, while advocates have filed notice in Michigan and Texas regarding similar NVRA violations.

235 Years Later, One Man (and Now Woman), One Vote Achieves Judicial Legitimacy in New York!

Congratulations to the minor party coalition Conservative Party, Working Families Party and the Taxpayers Party that brought the lawsuit that reviewed the double-count "glitch" --  it took a lawsuit to correct a computer glitch? Ahh, the world we live in!

NEW YORK

• State Heeds Minor Parties on Voting-Machine Complaint (By SAM ROBERTS, NY Times/City Room) Under a consent decree signed approved Thursday by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, the board agreed to reprogram voting machines before the 2012 general election to prevent people from voting more than once for the same candidate.
• Editorials - The Daily News endorses Jesus Gonzalez to represent Brooklyn's 54th District in the Assembly
• Forget Rome: Jesus Gonzalez Takes on Brooklyn (Village Voice) Gonzalez, meanwhile, has the Working Families Party line, which is working to reestablish its political potency ahead of the 2013 citywide cycle after a rough few years with nearly losing its ballot line amidst an investigation of its apparent collaboration with Data and Field Services, a nominally independent private company that seemed to only work for WFP picks and at remarkable discounts.
• Democrats now likely to lose Anthony Weiner's seat (By Alex Pareene, Salon/New York City) Siena college now has Turner at 50%, with Weprin at 44%. That's within the margin of error, but it's obviously a bad sign for Democrats.
• NY-9: A referendum on Obama? (By Jennifer Rubin,Washington Post/Right Turn) Whaa?
• Turner blows past Weprin, leads by 6 points in latest NY-9 Siena poll (by Colby Hamilton, WNYC/The Empire)

Illinois and South Carolina: Open Primaries Attract Independent Voters

OPEN PRIMARIES

• House Freshmen Emerge as G.O.P. Power Brokers (By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, NY Times) Mr. Scott brings something else to the table: he is one of only two black Republicans in Congress right now, which candidates also see as a boon. “We hear all the time, ‘How are you going to reach out to the African-American vote?’ ” Mr. Connelly said. “I always tell people two words: Tim Scott. He has proved that conservatives have principles that are attractive to black Americans.” … While Mr. Perry and Mitt Romney are beginning to build their operations, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, has the deepest and most professional infrastructure in the state, where he is hoping that the open primary system will attract more moderate voters to his cause. He was Mr. Scott’s first town hall guest, back in May.
• Illinois Activist Launches Initiative to Convert Illinois Open Primary to a Secret Open Primary (Ballot Access News) Bill Clutter, a private investigator in Springfield, Illinois, is launching an initiative to change the Illinois open primary, from one in which primary voters must ask for one particular party’s primary ballot, to one in which primary voters in the secrecy of the voting booth choose one party’s primary ballot.

Colorado Independents: Partisan Drift or Closed Primary Strategy?

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Unaffiliated-voter numbers in Colorado decline (By Kurtis Lee, The Denver Post) In August, active unaffiliated voters dropped to 29 percent, while Republicans rose to 37 percent and Democrats remained even at 33 percent.
• FROM THIS PAST FEBRUARY -- Bill rejected that would open Colorado primaries to unaffilliated voters (By Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post) Unaffiliated voters still will have to declare themselves a Republican or a Democrat to vote in a Colorado primary. A House committee Thursday killed a bill that would have allowed unaffiliated voters to vote in primaries without having to give up their unaffiliated status.

Partisan Reactions to California Top Two Continue

CALIFORNIA TOP TWO

• California State Appeals Court Hears Arguments over Injunctive Relief in Top-Two Details Lawsuit (Ballot Access News) On September 7, the California Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard arguments in Field v Bowen. The issue is two particular aspects of the California top-two system (Proposition 14), and whether the Superior Court should have granted injunctive relief in a special election earlier this year.
• Lawmaker-residency bill dropped until 2012 (LA Times/PolitiCal) Jones said the bill was being held until 2012 in connection with other provisions in the measure that apply to California's new "open primary" system, which allows the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, to advance to the general election.
• California Legislative Analysis Shows Election Administration-Related Problems Caused by Prop. 14 (Ballot Access News) The analysis also says, “This bill shortens the format in which a candidate’s party preference is displayed on the ballot, shortens and clarifies the ballot instructions that appear on the ballot, and eliminates certain type size and typeface requirements to give county elections officials greater flexibility to format their ballots. These changes should help address some of the concerns raised by elections officials in this committee’s oversight hearing.”
• California push to change candidate residency laws scrapped (Sac Bee/Capitol Alert, Torey Van Oot) The current language for Assembly Bill 1413 was inserted into an existing bill just one week ahead of the scheduled end of the legislative session. But the effort was abandoned today, just hours after a scheduled hearing on the bill has been postponed, as supporters decided to hold off on action until next year.

Road to Hell Is Paved With Intentions

2012

• Dems fret over Obama re-election (By Michael Barbaro, Jeff Zeleny and Monica Davey, New York Times in Sac Bee) To reassure nervous Democrats, the president's campaign aides are traveling the country with PowerPoint presentations that spell out Obama's path to re-election. Their pitch is that Obama's appeal has grown in traditionally Republican states like Arizona, where there are fast-growing Latino populations, and that Republicans have alienated independent voters with "extreme" positions on popular programs like Medicare.
• Huntsman struggles to keep candidacy alive - The Utah Republican was a long shot from the beginning: He's tried to be the voice of reason in a field that has been courting the angry voter. In New Hampshire, he makes a last stand. (By Paul West, Washington Bureau, LA Times) Huntsman, scion of a wealthy Salt Lake City family, has distanced himself from the rest of the GOP field in an effort to appeal to moderates and independents. But he seems to be hawking a product for which there is no market.
• Huntsman has $15 million to $66 million in assets (By Michael J. Bailey, Boston Globe) Considered a moderate, Huntsman has struggled to resonate with GOP voters. Focusing on the traditionally independent voters in the first primary state of New Hampshire, he has established one of the biggest campaign organizations ever there. Yet his poll numbers remain stuck in the single digits.
• Huntsman discloses his personal wealth (By T.W. Farnam, Washington Post/Post Politics) The Huntsman campaign has been mired in the low single digits in polling throughout the Republican nomination contest. Huntsman has run toward the ideological middle, hoping to appeal to independents who can vote in open primaries like those in New Hampshire.
• The election of 1992 could be harbinger of 2012 election (By Perry Mitchell, Special to the Coastal Point - DE) Any third-party candidate would face dynamic institutional barriers in winning the presidency. Duverger’s law from social sciences says that the plurality system existing in our congressional and presidential elections forces us into a two-party system, which is a huge barrier for a third-party candidate to overcome. The big challenge for our two-party system in 2012 will be how to accommodate the diverse views within its parties and nominate a centrist candidate. So far, the politics of 2010 and 2011 don’t show much promise that this will occur.
• Larry Sabato Politics Column Shows Plausible Scenario for an Electoral College Tie in 2012 (Ballot Access News) Even with only two candidates receiving electoral votes, a tie could occur and then the U.S. House would choose the president, with each state having one vote.
• Seemann Says: Ron Paul may be charismatic, but doesn’t understand science (By Chris Seemann, LSU Reveille) If the nation were striding up to an important impasse, could Paul be stubborn enough to stand his ground when Obama could not? Perhaps he would become frustrated enough to eschew pursuing another term for the purpose of making a stand. Whatever the case, the possibilities are intriguing.
• The Road to Hell Is Paved with 'Electable' Candidates (By Joseph Ashby, American Thinker) The theory reminds me of when my mother observed that boys, in order to impress girls, tend to do things that impress other boys.  Similarly, politicos and pundits try to impress independents by doing things that other partisans perceive as independent.  But just as running fast, jumping high, and lifting heavy things often fail to impress would-be sweethearts on the second-grade playground, so too is the Establishment's premise often incorrect.

Obama, Tea Party, Jobs and Speeches

OBAMA

• CNN analysts: Reaction to Obama jobs speech (From CNNPolitics.com) President Barack Obama on Thursday laid out his $447 billion economic plan before a joint session of Congress, saying that lawmakers should put the interests of the American people before politics.
• Can Obama overcome D.C.'s partisan poison? (By John Avlon, CNN Contributor) John Avlon says a fired up President Obama was appealing to the middle class and small businesses. "He'll need to put forward an equally bold and bipartisan deficit reduction proposal, because the American Job Creation Act's estimated $450 billion price tag will provoke some rote "Stimulus II" criticism, and independent voters in particular have wised up to the fact that throwing federal money at a problem doesn't solve it."
• Obama raps tea-party philosophy in jobs speech (Kathie Obradovich, Des Moines Register/Iowa Caucuses) Obama said most Americans don’t care about politics. But he was speaking to the ones who do, including independent voters who might be lured by the tea-party approach to government. Where would our country be today, he asked, if leaders of both parties had decided not to build our highways and railroads, or decided the federal government didn’t have the authority to create Social Security and Medicare?
• Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan (By MARK LANDLER, NY Times) “You should pass this jobs plan right away,” the president declared over and over in his 32-minute speech, in which he eschewed his trademark soaring oratory in favor of a plainspoken appeal for action, stiffened by a few sarcastic political jabs.

University of Louisville Candidate Forum Today September 11, 4-6pm

KENTUCKY

• UofL sponsoring gubernatorial candidate forum this weekend [Colleges] (by Eve Lee, Louisville.com) This Sunday, September 11, candidates for Kentucky governor will speak at a public forum organized by the Yearlings Club-University of Louisville discussion series… Independent candidate Gatewood Galbraith and Kentucky Senate President and Republican nominee David Williams have accepted invitations to participate. 
• Beshear Avoiding Debates With Williams (By Dan Roem, National Journal/Hotline) Last week, Beshear decided to pull the plug on a "Kentucky Tonight" appearance slated for Sept. 26 that is set to feature Williams and Galbraith.

The Politics of Charity

NEW YORK
Charity Probe Questions - State Inquiry Could Scrutinize Pay at Nonprofit Overseen by Governor's Sister (By JACOB GERSHMAN, Wall Street Journal) The agency paid its chief executive, Laurence Belinsky, $546,000 in 2008—including a $157,000 bonus—and $508,000 in 2009, according to IRS filings. His salary is more than 40% higher than the median salary of chief executives of nonprofits based in the Northeast with operating budgets of more than $13 million, according to Charity Navigator, a prominent charity database.