AZ-06 Green Party Candidate Richard Grayson Announces That, If Elected, He Will Not Take His Oath of Office on the Bible But on the Book of Mormon

The Richard Grayson Green Party AZ-06 congressional campaign yesterday issued the following press release:

In 2006, newly-elected Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota ignited a controversy when he said he would not take his oath of office on the Bible but on the Qur'an.

Today Richard Grayson, Green Party candidate for the U.S. House seat for Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, announced that, in the unlikely event of his election, he would also not take his oath of office on the Bible but on The Book of Mormon.

"I want to recognize the beliefs of many of my constituents and the traditions I myself follow," Grayson said.

Grayson, not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is best known as the author of numerous books of fiction.

Congressional Democrats, Profiles in Timidity, Need to Let Tax Cuts for Jeff Flake's Billionaire Buddies Expire

Today's lead editorial in the New York Times rightfully calls out the Congressional Democrats on their timidity in not doing the right thing:

We are starting to wonder whether Congressional Democrats lack the courage of their convictions, or simply lack convictions.

Last week, Senate Democrats did not even bother to schedule a debate, let alone a vote, on the expiring Bush tax cuts. This week, House Democrats appear poised to follow suit. The idea is to spare incumbents from having to vote before Nov. 2 on whether to let the rich go on paying less taxes than the nation needs them to pay.

This particular failure to act was not about Republican obstructionism, of which there has been plenty. This was about Democrats failing to seize an opportunity to do the right thing and at the same time draw a sharp distinction between themselves and the Republicans.

President Obama has been steadfast — and basically correct — in calling to extend the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers and to let them expire for the top 2 percent. But by postponing a vote on the cuts, Democrats are increasing the likelihood of an eventual cave-in to Republicans, who are pushing for an extension of all the tax cuts, including the high-end ones.

We presume that Democrats, especially those in more conservative districts, are doing this in response to the anti-Washington insurgency on the right. But it’s hard to imagine that conservative voters will confuse them for Republicans, and punting on the tax cuts won’t score them any points with the Democratic base.

As the politics of the tax-cut fight move to center stage, far more important issues are being pushed into the background. Letting the high-end tax cuts expire, for instance, is a crucial step in the long process of reducing the federal budget deficit. Extending them will add $700 billion more to the debt over the next decade than under the Obama administration’s tax proposal — and for what? To bolster the weak economy, the money would be better spent in any of several more demonstrably effective ways, like payroll tax cuts, infrastructure spending or state aid to hire more teachers and police.

Letting the high-end cuts expire would also be a strong signal to the nation’s creditors that Congress has the political will to cut deficits and, by extension, to prudently service debts. Delaying a vote on the tax cuts leaves that message hopelessly muddled.

To their credit, 46 House Democrats sent a letter recently urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote on the tax cuts before the election. But 31 other Democrats — many of them self-described deficit hawks — also sent a letter urging that the high-end tax cuts be extended.

The American public is right to be confused and distrustful of its elected representatives.

Their focus on the well-being of the richest Americans is eclipsing the needs and concerns of vulnerable Americans. A roughly $1 billion pro-work program in last year’s stimulus law that has provided jobs to 250,000 low-income workers is scheduled to expire at the end of September. But with less than a week to go before adjourning, Democrats have been unable to get Republican support to extend the program or, it seems, to make the Republicans pay a political price for being the Party of No.

This program is a model of the welfare-to-work initiatives long championed by the Republican Party. But Republican lawmakers would prefer to end it than to let the Obama stimulus package be seen as helpful. So deep is their desire to thwart Mr. Obama and the Democrats, that they are ignoring Republican governors who have called for the program’s continuation. And they have indicated they would vote down a must-pass spending bill and other last-minute legislation if Democrats attach a provision to extend the program to those bills.

That is pure obstructionism, but it leaves Democrats still struggling to challenge the Republicans’ ability to define the terms of the political debate this election season, while Americans who really need the help go without.

As Roger Cohen in London wrote in the International Herald Tribune, comparing the U.S. to other nations moving ahead [italics in original]:

Britain has similar post-binge economic problems — of personal and national debt and spiraling deficits. But Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat partners have actually put bipartisanship to work — did any Republicans notice? They are looking to lock in five years of stability through a new law and push through painful cuts across government departments.

Five years is a decent stretch. In America today, quarter-to-quarter concerns hem in even a visionary chief executive.

The policy debate in the United States is head-spinning. Nobody knows if there’s going to be more fiscal stimulus, after the first $787 billion, or how a row over taxes will end. Under an Obama proposal, Bush-era tax cuts are due to expire at year-end for affluent couples and small business owners earning over $250,000. Republicans are digging in, saying it’s crazy to raise taxes in a faltering economy.

It’s not crazy. Ending the tax cuts for the rich is a minimum signal for a divided land, a statement that the two Americas are acquainted with each other.

But with Obama facing a stinging midterm defeat, it looks like a long shot. What is needed above all is some clarity and sense of direction — the kind Cameron has given in London and booming China consistently applies.

Why the Fanatic Free-Market Fundamentalism of Jeff Flake and the Tea Party Is a Global Laughingstock

Anatole Kaletsky, the chief economist of a Hong Kong-based investment advisory fim and the author of Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, has a compelling op-ed piece in today's New York Times, "Blaming China Won't Help the Economy."

After discussing why Japan last week chose to ignore U.S. pleas and decided, like China, to manipulate its currency -- the value of the yen fell drastically after Japanese government market intervention -- Kaletsky goes on to say [emphasis ours]:

Japan’s action suggests that, in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the dominance of free-market thinking in international economic management is over. Washington must understand this, or find itself constantly outmaneuvered in dealings with the rest of the world. Instead of obsessing over China’s currency manipulation as if it were a unique exception in a world of untrammeled market forces, the United States must adapt to an environment where exchange rates and trade imbalances are managed consciously and have become a legitimate subject for debate in international forums like the Group of 20.

Market fundamentalists [this means you, Jeff Flake] who feel that government interference with free markets is anathema should be reminded that, by today’s dogmatic standards, Ronald Reagan is one of the great manipulators of all time. He presided over two of the biggest currency interventions in history: the Plaza agreement, which devalued the dollar in 1985, and the Louvre accord of 1987, which brought this devaluation to an end.

The fact is that the rules of global capitalism have changed irrevocably since Lehman Brothers collapsed two years ago — and if the United States refuses to accept this, it will find its global leadership slipping away. The near collapse of the financial system was an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment of revelation.

In this climate, the market fundamentalism now represented by the Tea Party, based on instinctive aversion to government and a faith that “the market is always right,” is a global laughingstock. Yet more moderate figures from both parties largely hold the same view: a measure to punish China over its currency passed the House Ways and Means committee on Friday with bipartisan support.

Outside America, however, a strong conviction now exists that some new version of global capitalism must evolve to replace what the economist John Williamson coined the “Washington consensus.”

If market forces cannot do something as simple as financing home mortgages, can markets be trusted to restore and maintain full employment, reduce global imbalances or prevent the destruction of the environment and prepare for a future without fossil fuels? This is the question that policymakers outside America, especially in Asia, are now asking. And the answer, as so often in economics, is “yes and no.”

Yes, because markets are the best mechanism for allocating scarce resources. No, because market investors are often short-sighted, fail to reflect widely held social objectives and sometimes make catastrophic mistakes. There are times, therefore, when governments must deliberately shape market incentives to achieve objectives that are determined by politics and not by the markets themselves, including financial stability, environmental protection, energy independence and poverty relief.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that governments get bigger. The new model of capitalism evolving in Asia and parts of Europe generally requires government to be smaller, but more effective. Many activities taken for granted in America as prerogatives of government have long since been privatized in foreign nations — even in what so many Americans view as socialistic Europe.

In France, Germany, Japan and Sweden, water supplies, highways, airports and even postal services are increasingly run by the private sector. For home mortgages to be backed by government guarantees would be unthinkable anywhere in Asia or Europe. Tax systems, too, are in some ways less redistributionist in Europe and Asia than they are in the United States. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the proportion of income tax raised from the richest tenth of the population is 45 percent in America, compared with only 28 percent in France and 27 percent in Sweden. These countries raise money for public services mainly from middle-class voters, through consumption and energy taxes, not by soaking the rich.

AS a result, these nations’ budgets are more stable and their governments have more ability to support their economies in times of crisis. They are also better positioned to manage their currencies and their trade relations, subsidize long-term investment in nuclear and solar energy, and spend money on infrastructure, job retraining and education. In America, by contrast, the tax system’s dependence on revenues from the richest citizens means that the social safety net and long-term goals like energy independence can be achieved only if the rich keep getting richer.

Which brings us back to Delaware. What if America decides to ignore the global reinvention of capitalism and opts instead for a nostalgic rerun of the experiment in market fundamentalism? This would not prevent the rest of the world from changing course.

Rather, it would make it likely that the newly dominant economic model will not be a product of democratic capitalism, based on Western values and American leadership. Instead, it will be an authoritarian state-led capitalism inspired by Asian values. If America opts, for the first time in history, for nostalgia and ideology instead of pragmatism and progress, then the new model of capitalism will probably be made in China, like so much else in the world these days.

The free market is not the solution to our problems. Neither is government - as a twenty-first century liberal, I know that. However, effectively using government to manage the market when necessary, as is being done so well by China - a country that is also leading the world in green technology as well as a state-of-the-art national infrastructure - is what we need after the collapse of our financial system two years ago.

But Jeff Flake is partying like it's still 1979.

Out-of-touch, living-in-the-past Jeff Flake will do all he can to put China ahead of the United States by the time his thirty or forty years in Congress are finally over.

China couldn't ask for a better American congressman than free-market fanatic Jeff Flake. He's doing a lot more for Guangdong and Shanghai than he's ever done -- or ever will do -- for Mesa and Gilbert.

Politics-As-Usual Jeff Flake: After Eight Years in Congress, He Wants Another Term to Destroy an America He Detests

For eight years, politics-as-usual congressman Jeff Flake has slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

Now this sleazy politico wants another term for a chance to finish the job destroying an America whose longstanding strengths and virtues he reviles.

Will you give it to him?

Pinal County Greens Endorse Dave Ewoldt, Green Independent Candidate for State Senate in District 28

Yesterday the Pinal County Greens issued the following statement on their website:

Apache Junction, Ariz., Sept. 24, 2010 -

Today the Pinal County Greens, a group of Arizona Green Party members in Pinal County, announced its endorsement of State Senate candidate Dave Ewoldt in Distict 24. A former Arizona Green Party member who fought the party's bosses in Pima County, Ewoldt is now running as an independent.

"There is no official Green Party member running for the State Senate in District 28," said the Pinal County Greens in its statement, "and it's only because the party bosses are vindictive that they are not supporting Dave Ewoldt, who embodies the Green Party's Ten Key Values better than most of the so-called 'endorsed' Arizona Green Party legislative candidates."

"Dave Ewoldt is by far the best and only choice for Green Party voters for the State Senate in central Tucson's District 28," the Pinal Greens' statement concluded.

Crabby, Constipated Congressman Jeff Flake Calls These Generous, Patriotic Alabama Schoolchildren "A Bunch of Little Jerks"

Congressman Jeff Flake's perverted values were on full display in yesterday's New York Times, in an article on how patriotic Americans like the Montgomery, Alabama, sixth-graders above, are donating to help pay down the national debt:

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — In a fifth-floor cubicle in a federal office building here is a wire-frame basket labeled “Gifts.”

Every few days, an envelope arrives, and a Treasury Department employee opens it. Inside, usually, is a check, often with a letter explaining why the sender wants to do his or her part to help reduce the federal debt of the United States.

A very small part, to be sure.

Last year, the Bureau of the Public Debt recorded $3.1 million in gifts, more than has been usual since the government began accepting such donations in 1961. At that rate, it would take millions of years to retire the $13.4 trillion the country owes its creditors, foreign and domestic.

While concerns about the economy, especially taxes and spending, have dominated the midterm election, it is hard to find officials who have made voluntary contributions to improve the nation’s balance sheet.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has not pulled out his checkbook, and fiscal conservatives, for whom the record debt is a rallying cry, have hardly mentioned the idea of giving.

Since the program began, Americans have given about $80 million. Recent donors include a class of Alabama sixth graders who raised $324.50 by selling cookies; a Maryland man who learned of the program in an evening accounting class; and Margaret E. Taylor, 98, of Findlay, Ohio, who died in 2006 and bequeathed $1.1 million to the cause.

“I get mixed reactions,” said John W. Krupansky, 56, a software developer in Midtown Manhattan who started reading about economics during the dot-com crash a decade ago, and has blogged about his tax deductible gifts, nine so far, of $25 each. “Some people are annoyed; they think the right thing to do is complain about the debt, not actually do something about it. Other people are amused that anyone would waste their time to do such a thing.”

This fiscal year, through July, the bureau has logged $2.7 million, about 9 percent less than at the same point last year.

Donors can send in a check or money order, or give online using a credit or debit card. The government does not advertise the program, and officials avoid drawing attention to it. The program tends to come up, they said, only when journalists ask about it.

Van Zeck, the commissioner of the bureau, oversees sales of Treasury securities and savings bonds; accounts for the debt to the penny; and ensures that the debt does not exceed the statutory limit, which Congress raised in February to $14.3 trillion.

Asked why the program was little known, he said soliciting donations might “seem straightforward and benign” but could rub taxpayers the wrong way.

“Whether to advocate that people do more financially to help the government than they already do — that’s not the kind of question that’s mine to answer,” he said.

The program was the idea of Representative Charles E. Bennett, a Florida Democrat who served 44 years in the House. Mr. Bennett, who died in 2003 at age 92, also wrote the law requiring that currency bear the motto “In God We Trust.”

He was known for public spiritedness. A World War II veteran, he returned his military disability and Social Security checks to the government. When he retired, he gave most of his campaign funds to charity and the Treasury.

Mr. Bennett’s law helped clarify the government’s authority to accept gifts dedicated to debt reduction.

While the White House believed that “such authority almost certainly already exists,” the legislation was “intended to encourage such gifts” and to create a way to accept them, according to a 1961 memorandum, now in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

But although the memorandum confirms that the gifts are counted toward debt reduction, the amount of giving has no real impact on government spending and borrowing.

“There does not appear to be any intention to put control of the actual level of the debt in private hands, although those who make such gifts may be under the impression that they are exercising such control,” Phillip S. Hughes, an assistant budget director, wrote in advising President Kennedy to sign the bill.

For some people, that makes the program toothless.

“It’s just good money after bad,” said Representative Jeff Flake, who with Senator John McCain, a fellow Arizona Republican, has introduced legislation that would let taxpayers designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax for debt reduction and require Congress to come up with an equal amount in spending cuts.

Mr. Flake said he had only a “vague recollection” of the gifts program, but that he did not support it. “I don’t think taxpayers should be on the hook more,” he said. “We already pay enough.”

But contributors have argued that shared sacrifice is what is most needed to revive the economy.

Teri Gisi, a teacher at Dalraida Elementary School in Montgomery, Ala., who coordinated the bake sale that sixth graders held last year after learning about the debt in class, said the recession was on their minds.

“We’ve had some students who’ve had to move in with their grandparents, students who’ve lost their homes to foreclosure,” she said. “Some of them didn’t even have new shoes for the start of school.”

Despite hardships, the students made debt reduction their cause. “Three hundred dollars to them is a large amount,” Ms. Gisi said. Even when a math teacher explained how large the debt was — “he showed them all the zeros,” she said — “they didn’t get discouraged.”

Treasury officials said they were prohibited from identifying donors. But in Parkersburg, a few employees shared stories.

A widow turned over the estate of her late husband, who had made regular gifts to express patriotism. Naturalized citizens, thankful for the opportunities afforded immigrants, have contributed. A man sent in a trove of rare coins, which were auctioned for far more than their face value.

Many taxpayers have simply signed over and mailed in their rebate checks, including members of Amish and Mennonite communities who have explained that their religious beliefs do not permit them to accept government assistance.

The bureau tries to make donors feel appreciated. Anyone who mails a check receives a thank-you form letter from Sherlyn West, a manager here.

“Your contribution will help ensure that we do not burden future generations with a huge debt,” it says.

As a little boy, I remember hearing a dispute between my millionaire grandfather - my father's father - and my millionaire great-grandfather, my mother's mother's father. They were bragging about who paid the most taxes and which one thus gave more support to the country they both loved.

They would have honored the Alabama schoolkids and spit in Congressman Jeff Flake's smug, self-satisfed, selfish face.

Jeff Flake is so un-American and has such crabbed, constipated values, he thinks he has nothing to give to his country. But he takes plenty, living the high life of a millionaire in Washington on his Congressional salary. He's selfish, just like most of you voters in the district who grew up learning how to be morons like Jeff Flake. That's why Nate Silver's blog Five Thirty Eight lists Jeff Flake as having a 100% chance for election.

America would be better off if there were more members of Congress who were Alabama sixth-graders than comfortable, I'm-all-right-Jack jerks like Jeff Flake.

Why the Tea Party Is Nothing But a Scam and Why Jeff Flake and His Cronies Are Un-American

E.J. Dionne, writing in today's Washington Post, explains correctly why the Tea Party is a total scam and not just a collection of elderly white assholes:

Is the Tea Party one of the most successful scams in American political history?

Before you dismiss the question, note that word "successful." Judge the Tea Party purely on the grounds of effectiveness and you have to admire how a very small group has shaken American political life and seized the microphone offered by the media, including the so-called liberal media.

But it's equally important to recognize that the Tea Party constitutes a sliver of opinion on the extreme end of politics receiving attention out of all proportion with its numbers.

Yes, there is a lot of discontent in America. But that discontent is better represented by the moderate voters who expressed quiet disillusionment to President Obama at the CNBC town hall meeting on Monday than by Tea Party ideologues who proclaim the unconstitutionality of the New Deal and everything since.

The Tea Party drowns out such voices because it has money -- some of it from un-populist corporate sources, as Jane Mayer documented last month in the New Yorker -- and has used modest numbers strategically in small states to magnify its impact.

Just recently, Tea Party victories in the Alaska and Delaware Senate primaries shook the nation. In Delaware, Christine O'Donnell received 30,563 votes in the Republican primary, 3,542 votes more than moderate Rep. Mike Castle. In Alaska, Joe Miller won 55,878 votes for a margin of 2,006 over incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is now running as a write-in candidate.

Do the math. For weeks now, our national political conversation has been driven by 86,441 voters and a margin of 5,548 votes. A bit of perspective: When John McCain lost in the 2008 presidential race, he received 59.9 million votes.

Earlier this year, much was made of the defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett, a Utah conservative insufficiently conservative for the Tea Party. Bennett lost not in a primary but at a Republican convention attended by all of 3,500 delegates.

Even in larger states, the Tea Party's triumphs were built on small shares of the electorate. Rand Paul received 206,986 votes in Kentucky, where there are more than 1 million registered Republicans and nearly 2.9 million registered voters. Sharron Angle won with 70,452 votes in Nevada, a state with more than 1 million registered voters.

The media have given substantial coverage to Tea Party rallies and even small demonstrations. But how many people are actually involved in this movement?

Last April, a New York Times-CBS News poll found that 18 percent of Americans identified as supporters of the Tea Party movement, but slightly less than a fifth of these sympathizers said they had attended a Tea Party rally or meeting. That means just over 3 percent of Americans can be characterized as Tea Party activists. A more recent poll by Democracy Corps, just before Labor Day, found that 6 percent of voters said they had attended a Tea Party rally or meeting.

The Tea Party is not the only small group in history to wield more power than you'd expect from its numbers. In 2008, Barack Obama did very well in party caucuses, which draw far fewer voters than primaries. And it was Lenin who offered the classic definition of a vanguard party as involving "people who make revolutionary activity their profession" in organizations that "must perforce not be very extensive."

But something is haywire in our media and our politics. Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian whose new book is "The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History," observed in an interview that there is a "hall of mirrors" effect created by the rise of "niche" opinion media. They magnify small movements into powerhouses, while old-fashioned journalism, which is supposed to put such movements in perspective, reacts to the same niche incentives.

There is also the decline of alternative forces in politics. The Republican establishment, such as it is, has long depended far more on big money than on troops in the field. In search of new battalions, GOP leaders stoked the Tea Party, stood largely mute in the face of its more outrageous untruths about Obama -- and now has to defend candidates such as O'Donnell and Angle.

And where are the progressives? Sulking is not an alternative to organizing, and weary resignation is the first step toward capitulation. The Tea Party may be pulling a fast one on the country and the media. But if it has more audacity than everyone else, it will, I am sorry to say, deserve to get away with it.

In the same Washington Post, Harold Meyerson explains the un-American, distorted thinking of people like right-wing fanatic Rep. Jeff Flake and his Tea Party cronies:

There are un-Americans among us. They don't share our values, yet they control the most powerful offices in the land. We must rid ourselves of this fifth-column menace.

That's pretty much the Republican and Tea Party line these days. When a right-wing talk show host interviewing Sharron Angle, now the Republican senatorial candidate in Nevada, told her last year that "we have domestic enemies" and that some of them worked within "the walls of the Senate and the Congress," Angle chirped up, "I think you're right."

The Tea Partyers aren't wrong about the growing influence of un-Americans in high places. They've just misidentified who those un-Americans are.

As the right-wingers see it, even President Obama's more conventional ideas have no place or precedent in the American experience. Ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Dinesh D'Souza reasons in his summa idiotica currently on the cover of Forbes magazine, cannot be explained within the confines of American political thought. However, he writes, "if Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income to pay even more."

I'd like to see D'Souza explain why the highest tax brackets during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower took 90 percent of people's incomes.

This ascription of all things Obama to alien ideologies and religions -- he's a Muslim, a European socialist, an anti-colonial African Marxist -- has a basis not in empirical fact, of course, but in political logic. It speaks, in powerful metaphoric terms, to that large group of white Americans who see their country slipping away. With each passing year, America grows less white, less powerful and less prosperous, at least from the perspective of all but the rich. There's no correlation between the demographic change and our economic slump, but millions of Americans believe and fear that there is. And for many of those millions, Obama has become the object of their fear and rage that their America is being lost.

In fact, a good deal of American prosperity is being lost, but if there are homegrown agents of this decline, they're not in the administration.

Consider the debate in Congress about whether to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if China continues to depress the value of its currency. Roughly 150 House members, including 45 Republicans, have authored a bill to do just that, and the Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill on Friday. Unions and some domestic manufacturers support the bill. But a large number of American businesses, in a campaign coordinated by the U.S.-China Business Council, oppose it.

Now, there's nothing un-American in opposing the legislation as such -- far from it. Support for and opposition to tariffs are both as American as apple pie. The question here is whether the 220 corporations that belong to the council -- household names such as Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Boeing -- are already so deeply invested in China as manufacturers, marketers or retailers that buy goods there to sell them here that their interests are more closely aligned with China's than with America's. Revaluing China's currency would be helpful to domestic U.S. manufacturers, their employees and the communities where those employees live and work, but America's largest companies have long since ceased to be domestic.

Given the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, it's a safe bet that every major U.S. corporation will devote greater resources to building, buying and selling there. But China, unlike the Obama administration, truly is guided by an ideology alien to most Americans -- Leninism -- and wields far greater control over what U.S. corporations can and can't do there than the U.S. government does over what corporations can and can't do here. Our leading companies' economic interests, and those of their Chinese hosts, whom they cross at their peril, are increasing likely to pit them against proposals that diminish China's edge, however obtained, in global competition.

As the Tea Partyers contend, there are un-Americans among us. They hold some of the most powerful offices in the land.

Like Congressman from Arizona's Sixth Congressional District.

Pinal County Greens Endorse Democrat Terry Goddard for Governor, Oppose the "Anti-Green" Green Party Candidate Larry Gist

Earlier today, the Pinal County Greens, which previously endorsed our candidacy, had this press release on its website:

Apache Junction, Ariz., September 22, 2010 - The Pinal County Greens, a political organization made up of members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, today announced its endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard, whom it called "the only progressive candidate for governor and the only alternative for Green Party members who support our ten key values."

At the same time, the Pinal Greens announced that they were opposing the candidacy of Larry Gist, the phony Green Party candidate who got on the primary ballot but who does not endorse the Green Party platform.

"Larry Gist is just another right-wing wacko Arizona politician," the Pinal Greens said. "The only thing truly green about him is the money he used to buy his way onto the ballot by paying people to get his petitions signed."

"We urge all progressive voters to avoid even accidentally supporting the right-wing wacko Larry Gist," the Pinal Greens said. "Don't be fooled by the 'GRN' after his name. He is a Green in name only. Terry Goddard's positions are much closer to those of the Green Party's Ten Key Values, and he's the best choice by far to replace the failed governorship of the incompetent Jan Brewer."

The Pinal Greens also censured the Arizona Green Party for not having a true Green candidate running for Governor. "If the Arizona Green Party bosses had thought things through," the Pinal Greens' statement said, "they would have made sure we had a gubernatorial candidate who supported the party's Ten Key Values before getting enough signatures to get the party on the ballot in 2010."

Noting that if its candidate for governor gets at least 50,000 votes, the Arizona Green Party would get permanent ballot status in future elections, the Pinal Greens said, "we should have at least tried to get someone our members and other progressive voters could have supported. Now the Arizona Green Party is in the ludicrous position of opposing the head of its own ticket."

The Arizona Green Party has gone on record as opposing Gist. So far only the Pinal County Greens have endorsed Democrat Terry Goddard.

Flatulent Rep. Jeff Flake's Foul-Smelling Farts Raise "Big Stink" on Capitol Hill; Recess Called to Clear the Air as Legislators Rise on Point of Odor

Congress Should Pass the DREAM Act Now and Enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Congressman Jeff Flake Is Salivating Over the Prospect of Getting His Hands on Your Young Daughter's Body. And His Intentions Are Anything But Good.

If he has his way, right-wing Congressman Jeff Flake will get his government mitts on the precious bodies of your young daughters and deny them the reproductive rights adult women have treasured for generations.

While claiming that government can do nothing to help people and masquerading as a so-called "libertarian," fanatic Jeff Flake wants to give the government control of women's bodies.

Jeff Flake's NARAL Pro-Choice America rating: zero.

Jeff Flake's Planned Parenthood Action Fund rating: zero.

Flake supports a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and turn American girls and women and their doctors into criminals.

Flake believes fetuses have more rights than girls or women do.

Flake would deny women both rich and poor access to abortions.

Flake wants to make sure that your teenage daughters don't have access to information about sexuality and reproduction.

Flake wants to ban mifepristone (formerly RU-486).

Flake wants to take away all reproductive rights for our brave women in the military service.

Flake voted to end funding for family planning programs worldwide.

Flake voted for the odious "global gag rule."

Flake voted to deny government workers medical insurance that would cover reproductive health and contraception.

Make no mistake about it. If he has his way, Jeff Flake will be controlling your daughter's body every day of his life. He's salivating at the prospect of gaining control.

On the other hand, I fully support a woman's right to choose and have for over forty years when, pre-Roe, I went to my first demonstration supporting abortion rights.

Democratic candidate Rebecca Schneider also is a strong supporter of a woman's right to choose.

Jeff Flake wants to control the choices your daughter can make. Don't let him!

Jeff Flake Tells Jobless Over-50 Workers: "Tough Luck. Not My Problem. In Fact, I'll Take Away Your Unemployment Benefits. The Rich Need Tax Cuts."

What does Jeff Flake tell the many East Valley residents and other Americans who have worked all their lives until the Great Recession but now find themselves among the long-term unemployed and who fear, because they are over 50 and no longer in demand, that they may never work again?

"Tough shit, ladies and gentlemen," Jeff Flake tells them. "It's not my problem. It's not the job of the federal government to help you in any way - not in a market economy. You lazy bastards shouldn't even be getting unemployment insurance benefits or food stamps or anything. My role is to make sure millionaires and billionaires pay less taxes."

That about sums up what the fanatic free-market extremist Congressman tells people like the ones highlighted in a front-page New York Times story about older workers who've been laid off and can't find jobs no matter how desperately they try and who are scared and desperate:

For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again

By Motoko Rich

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

After other recent downturns, older people who lost jobs fretted about how long it would take to return to the work force and worried that they might never recover their former incomes. But today, because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy’s recent pace, many of these older people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes.

For Ms. Reid, it has been four years of hunting — without a single job offer. She buzzes energetically as she describes the countless applications she has lobbed through the Internet, as well as the online courses she is taking to burnish her software skills.

Still, when she is pressed, her can-do spirit falters.

“There are these fears in the background, and they are suppressed,” said Ms. Reid, who is now selling some of her jewelry and clothes online and is late on some credit card payments. “I have had nightmares about becoming a bag lady,” she said. “It could happen to anyone. So many people are so close to it, and they don’t even realize it.”

Being unemployed at any age can be crushing. But older workers suspect their résumés often get shoved aside in favor of those from younger workers. Others discover that their job-seeking skills — as well as some technical skills sought by employers — are rusty after years of working for the same company.

Many had in fact anticipated working past conventional retirement ages to gird themselves financially for longer life spans, expensive health care and reduced pension guarantees.

The most recent recession has increased the need to extend working life. Home values, often a family’s most important asset, have been battered. Stock portfolios are only now starting to recover. According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.

Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. “That’s what we should be worrying about,” said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, “what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable part of their career and their life.”

Forced early retirement imposes an intense financial strain, particularly for those at lower incomes. The recession and its aftermath have already pushed down some older workers. In figures released last week by the Census Bureau, the poverty rate among those 55 to 64 increased to 9.4 percent in 2009, from 8.6 percent in 2007.

But even middle-class people who might skate by on savings or a spouse’s income are jarred by an abrupt end to working life and to a secure retirement.

“That’s what I spent my whole life in pursuit of, was security,” Ms. Reid said. “Until the last few years, I felt very secure in my job.”

As an auditor, Ms. Reid loved figuring out the kinks in a manufacturing or parts delivery process. But after more than 20 years of commuting across Puget Sound to Boeing, Ms. Reid was exhausted when she was let go from her $80,000-a-year job.

Stunned and depressed, she sent out résumés, but figured she had a little time to recover. So she took vacations to Turkey and Thailand with her husband, who is a home repairman. She sought chiropractic treatments for a neck injury and helped nurse a priest dying of cancer.

Most of her days now are spent in front of a laptop, holed up in a lighthouse garret atop the house that her husband, Denny Mielock, built in the 1990s on a breathtaking piece of property overlooking the sound.

As she browses the job listings that clog her e-mail in-box, she refuses to give in to her fears. “If I let myself think like that all the time,” she said, “I could not even bear getting out of bed in the morning.”

With her husband’s home repair business pummeled by the housing downturn, the bills are mounting. Although the couple do not have a mortgage on their 3,000-square-foot house, they pay close to $7,000 a year in property taxes. The roof is leaking. Their utility bills can be $300 a month in the winter, even though they often keep the thermostat turned down to 50 degrees.

They could try to sell their home, but given the depressed housing market, they are reluctant.

“We are circling the drain here, and I am bailing like hell,” said Ms. Reid, emitting an incongruous cackle, as if laughter is the only response to her plight. “But the boat is still sinking.”

It is not just the finances that have destabilized her life.

Her husband worries that she isolates herself and that she does not socialize enough. “We’ve both been hard workers our whole lives,” said Mr. Mielock, 59. Ms. Reid sometimes rose just after 3 a.m. to make the hourlong commute to Boeing’s data center in Bellevue and attended night school to earn a master’s in management information systems.

“A job is more than a job, you know,” Mr. Mielock said. “It’s where you fit in society.”

Here in the greater Seattle area, a fifth of those claiming extended unemployment benefits are 55 and older.

To help seniors polish their job-seeking skills, WorkSource, a local consortium of government and nonprofit groups, recently began offering seminars. On a recent morning, 14 people gathered in a windowless conference room at a local community college to get tips on how to age-proof their résumés and deflect questions about being overqualified.

Motivational posters hung on one wall, bearing slogans like “Failure is the path of least persistence.”

Using PowerPoint slides, Liz Howland, the chipper but no-nonsense session leader, projected some common myths about older job-seekers on a screen: “Older workers are less capable of evaluating information, making decisions and problem-solving” or “Older workers are rigid and inflexible and have trouble adapting to change.”

Ms. Howland, 61, ticked off the reasons those statements were inaccurate. But a clear undercurrent of anxiety ran through the room. “Is it really true that if you have the energy and the passion that they will overlook the age factor?” asked a 61-year-old man who had been laid off from a furniture maker last October.

Gallows humor reigned. As Ms. Howland — who suggested that applicants remove any dates older than 15 years from their résumé — advised the group on how to finesse interview questions like “When did you have the job that helped you develop that skill?” one out-of-work journalist deadpanned: “How about ‘during the 20th century?’ ”

During a break, Anne Richard, who declined to give her age, confessed she was afraid she would not be able to work again after losing her contract as a house director at a University of Washington sorority in June. Although she had 20 years of experience as an office clerk in Chattanooga, Tenn., she feared her technology skills had fallen behind.

“I don’t feel like I can compete with kids who have been on computers all their lives,” said Ms. Richard, who was sleeping on the couch of a couple she had met at church and contemplating imminent homelessness.

Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

At this year’s pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.

Advocates for the elderly worry that younger people are more likely to fill the new jobs as well.

Rep. Jeff Flake's attitude is shameful to people like me and his Democratic opponent Rebecca Schneider. Liberals believe that governmment should help those who have been thrown out of work and are facing desperate times through no fault of their own.

Just as in the Great Depression, the current Great Recession requires strong government intervention to help those who are suffering because of the inequities of the free market that Jeff Flake believes is working perfectly, even now.

Why, Jeff Flake doesn't believe in even the safety net of unemployment insurance benefits we've had since the 1930s. He's voted against them 23 times. If he and his right-wing buddies take control of Congress -- something he was crowing about this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" -- he plans to eliminate unemployment benefits entirely, as well as end the food stamp program, take away Medicare from seniors, end Social Security.

You see, Jeff Flake believes the only job in a free market is to make sure millionaires and billionaires pay nothing in taxes. Well, that's reasonable - if you're Jeff Flake and corrupt billionaires like the Koch brothers have bankrolled your cushy political career for a decade.

If you're unemployed -- or you have a loved one who is -- or maybe you fear you might lose your job and find it hard to get another one, maybe you should think about voting for someone other than the billionaires' best friend and the enemy of decent hard-working families, four-term Congressman Jeff Flake.

Green Party Candidate for Congress AZ-06 Richard Grayson Poll: SHOULD ARIZONA BE KICKED OUT OF THE UNITED STATES?

Many supporters have suggested that, in the highly unlikely situation that I do get elected to Congress, the first piece of legislation I introduce should be one to eliminate my job -- and those of John McCain, John Kyl, and the other Arizona members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In other words, they want me to sponsor a bill that would kick Arizona out of the union. This would eliminate the state that's dead last in job creation and education and which comes in second in the percentage of its residents living in poverty.

They say Arizona's anti-American attitudes -- its racism, xenophobia, crazy right-wing nativist tea-party wacko majority's weirdo beliefs -- make it so sucky that the Cactus State needs to be given the boot. The residents seem to hate the federal government anyway.

Miss Wit, aka Deborah Goldstein, designed this t-shirt that shows a map of the proposed improved Arizona-less United States ("Piece Out, Arizona"). We'd like to ask those who stop by our website here to vote in the poll at right over the next week and tell us what you think: Do you think Arizona should be thrown out of the Union?

Three Justice League Members - Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter - Endorse Arizona Green Party Congressional Candidate Richard Grayson

"In darkest day, in brightest night, no evil shall escape Richard Grayson's sight."

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"Richard Grayson will be a straight-arrow representative of the people."

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"Richard Grayson favors a path to citizenship for illegal aliens."

All Jeff Flake Supporters and Other East Valley Republicans Should Join the October 30 D.C. March to Keep Fear Alive

Maybe there'll be a hurricane or freak snowstorm or something that will keep you grounded in Washington so you can't come back for Tuesday, November 2, Election Day.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
March to Keep Fear Alive
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

And remember: it was socialists who pioneered early voting.

Why Does Millionaire Congressman Jeff Flake Hate Arizona's Hard-Working Middle-Class Families?

If you're part of a hard-working middle class family in Arizona, millionaire Congressman Jeff Flake hates you.

While your family has been struggling over the past eight years, Jeff Flake has been doing nothing in Congress but trying to get his made-up face and supercilious sound bites on camera and making sure that he and his millionaire and billionaire buddies and campaign donors have made out like bandits.

He's interested in the rich, not struggling middle-class families. His votes show that. Today the Wall Street Journal's front page cries out, "LOST DECADE FOR AMERICAN INCOME":

The inflation-adjusted income of the median household — smack in the middle of the populace — fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.

The data, released Thursday, underscore the extent to which U.S. households relied on government benefits — and each other — to weather the recession and how living standards at the middle of the middle class have stalled. The recession has been particularly hard on young workers and young families. Younger workers have a harder time qualifying for unemployment benefits because they have a shorter work history.

That has prompted many young adults to move in with family, or put off leaving home in the first place. The number of 25-to-34-year-olds living with their parents rose 8.4% to 5.5 million in 2010 from 2008. Within that age group, 42.8% fell below the poverty threshold—$11,161 for an individual.

The Census snapshot indicated that the gap between the best-off and worst-off Americans widened a bit more in 2009, a long-standing trend.

But corporate lackey Jeff Flake votes against every government program that would help hard-working middle-class families. He doesn't believe they're worthwhile. That's why he wants to eliminate unemployment insurance, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. He believes in social Darwinism, the law of the jungle, that the free market will take care of everyone - even though history has proven him an asshole again and again.

Hey, you may be a struggling East Valley middle-class family, but you're going to vote to re-elect Jeff Flake, aren't you? To give him and his fat-cat Republican buddies another chance to lower your income? Jeff Flake counts on schmucks like you to give him another two years to keep screwing you while he laughs all the way to the bank. Otherwise you'd be voting for me or Democrat Rebecca Schneider.

Over One-Fifth of Arizonans Live in Poverty, and Rep. Jeff Flake Does Nothing But Laugh and Say, "Go Fuck Yourselves, Poor People!"

According to the latest report, more than one-fifth of Arizonans live in poverty, a figure higher than anywhere else in the nation except Mississippi.

Figures Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau show nearly 1.4 million Arizonans in households earning less than the federal poverty level - about 21.2 percent.

As Howard Fischer wrote for Capitol Media Services,

The new report shows that even with a sluggish national economy, there is an increasing disparity between Arizonans and those living everywhere else.

In 2007, for example, before the economy tanked, Arizona's poverty rate was 14.3 percent, compared with the national rate of 12.5 percent. That put Arizona at 14th-highest in nation.

By 2008, the percentage of Arizonans living in poverty rose to 18 percent, while the national figure rose to 13.2 percent. That ranked Arizona fourth-highest in the U.S. And the current 21.2 percent number is approaching a level one and a half times the national average.

What has Rep. Jeff Flake ever done for Arizona's poor people? Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Bupkis.

Oh wait, with his votes, he's laughed at their poverty and told them to go fuck themselves.

You're on your own, poor people, Jeff Flake says with a smile as he votes against unemployment benefits, food stamps, government aid to children, for housing, for education.


Jeff Flake doesn't give a shit about poor people, and that's one reason he needs to be replaced.

But, you, the dopey assholes who make up the most of the voters in the East Valley's Sixth Congressional District, don't give a shit about your poor neighbors, either, and that's why Jeff Flake is a shoo-in for re-election.

He doesn't have to worry about opponents who actually would try to help poor people like Democrat Rebecca Schneider or myself.

Those Arizonans who live in poverty deserve better representation in Congress than do-nothing, care-nothing, fuck-the-poor free-market fanatic Jeff Flake and his equally disgusting Republican colleagues.