"Get Out Of Our House!" An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

Some say that the government of this nation is not at all responsive to the people. They say that most politicians are “professional” politicians that are firmly entrenched in “The System” in Washington that causes the Representatives of the people in Congress more interested in how they can be re-elected than how they can do the best for their constituents. This doesn’t make the Representatives necessarily “bad”, but it does lead to people putting their own self-interests over the interests of the people that they represent.

We see this in campaign donations by corporations that have no vested interest in the district the Congressman represents. We see corporations give money to Congressmen that do have an interest in the District. Either way, corporations do not really carry “personhood” and therefore under the First Amendment have no real guarantee of freedom of expression. They would like you to believe that in 1886 there was a dispute between a railroad, and that in that dispute they gained “personhood”, but that is not true, The court actually ruled against the railroad, but from a court reporters notes, they maintained they won the case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Personhood_Debate.

Whether or not you believe that corporations should have “personhood” or not, we can all agree that the money they give to politicians that make a career in the House of Representatives is a clear signal to the American people that many of our Congress people have interests that don’t coincide with the interests of the people they represent. The two-Party system in this country has caused stagnation in legislation that is needed to cure this nation’s problems. The constant partisan in-fighting has caused many good pieces of legislation to die in committees because there is no chance of these bills being passed because of the gridlock of the House. The politicians with their “special interests” won’t let these bills see the light of day.

There is an organization called “Get Out Of Our House” (GOOH pronounced “GO”) that is trying to bring ordinary folks into the House of Representatives and unseat all 435 members of the House. The political partisanship and the ineffectiveness of The House of Representatives in representing ordinary citizens is the reason this group exists. They are being led in part by Tim Cox who was on my radio show www.blogtalkradio/liberalpro.com last night. Tim is a computer engineer who once worked for Dell. He decided that this nation should come up with a different way to choose how the people should be elected to represent their districts. Tim got problem-solvers together and through brainstorming and looking at data across the nation, they decided that the two-party system is just not working.

They now have a website, www.goooh.com where people can join just by giving their e-mail address. Once they have joined they can choose to get involved by filling out a questionnaire and actually submitting their name to run for Congress. They are given 100 questions and the answers will be given to a group of 10 people that belong to GOOH in their district and through elimination based on the answers that they give on the questions, two people will be selected to run. This will happen according to Cox, throughout the 50 States and there will be a fund managed by GOOH to pay for their candidacy. This fund will come from the $100.00 fee given by all that want to run, and by donations from the web. This is an excerpt from their Website:
“Through GOOOH's Candidate Selection Sessions, you and your peers will select the candidate in your district that best represents your district's views. GOOOH will then fund the national election campaigns of all 435 candidates (one from each district) to run against the party politicians competing for each district seat. Because GOOOH is a process for selecting representatives (not an agenda-based party platform), we expect a very liberal candidate to be selected in San Francisco and a very conservative one in Colorado Springs -- but it will be up to the GOOOH members in each district to decide”.

This is one of the most novel ideas that I have ever heard of in my life. Could you imagine what we could accomplish without the Democrats and the Republicans fighting over every piece of legislation? Could you imagine what Congress would look like with ordinary people instead of professional politicians that are beholden to the “special interests”? The great thing about this is that after you fill out the questionnaire on how you will vote on specific issues, is that you are beholden to it. GOOH members are only allowed two terms and must be represent their districts and not their political party. I believe that this is an idea whose time has come. Check out their website and see it for yourself. With a Congressional approval rating of 17%, this Congress may well see this organization as a threat.

That’s the way I see it.

Do the Liberals Need A Party?

LPA: The recent victory of the Democrats in the last election should have been the death knell of The Liberal Party of America. Instead of being the death knell however, it seems as if the call for a third party has become more pressing than ever. It seems that no matter what we say to the Democrats (by we I’m talking about the Liberal/Progressives) , they don’t seem to be listening. There is a Progressive Democrat caucus in Congress, but they are small in number compared to the mainstream Democrats. The mainstream Democrats are hardly discernible from the mainstream Republicans.

What is a liberal? That question has been asked and answered by John F. Kennedy when he accepted the Liberal Party of New York’s nomination for President. Liberal was not such a polarizing word back in those times. Lately the word liberal has lost some of it’s negative charge because of the failings of the conservative right, that have shown people in this country how close to fascism they can get. During the Rights “glory days” they have managed to gut our rights under the Constitution, invade a sovereign nation and foment a civil war there that we are still involved in four year later, and set up a “unitary power of the executive branch” that considers itself to be above the law.

You would think that the election of a Democratic Congress would pave the way for impeachment, but before Congress was even seated in Washington the leaders of the Democrats sat with this President and then declared that “impeachment is off the table” to the consternation of the people that helped vote the Democrats into power. Many people thought this was a clever ruse by Democrats that would surely lead to investigations of people in the administration that would lead to impeachment. This has not happened either. What will it take for the Democrats to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of this administration? Now we are involved in a scandal that involves the Attorney Generals office. Unbelievably, The White House is being tied to the dismissal of eight Federal Prosecutors that seem to have been fired for political reasons.

How long will it take to convince Pelosi and Company that we need a stronger system of checks against this “Unitary Power” of this executive branch? Many Americans are wary of our own government and even the relationship between Democrats and Republicans is suspect. After a Republican Congress has enacted The Military Commissions Act of 2006 that takes away Habeas Corpus and leaves the use of torture open for discussion, The Patriot Act that allows the government to search your house without a warrant and many other laws and “signing statements” that cloud the issue of where your civil rights end and where the governments jurisdiction begins goes directly to the heart of The Bill of Rights that have almost been rescinded.

Maybe the idea of a third party that has political clout is called for. Maybe The Liberal Party IS just what the doctor ordered or maybe another party could carry the message that the American people are fed up with politics as usual in Washington. The corporate PAC’s that donate to political campaigns have just about become the “deciders” of who gets to run for office, and who doesn’t. Most American have become disgusted with the way Corporate politics are played in Washington and many States have voted for “Clean Money Elections”. This is something that Congress should be doing on the national level. We can’t afford another George W. Bush sitting in the White House. Right now I believe that we will be lucky to get him out of Washington when his term is up. With so many of the peoples rights usurped by all the laws passed in the last six years, we will be fortunate to keep our Republic intact.

Is it time for a third party? This is something that the people must decide. As an American you must ask yourselves if you are willing to sacrifice your freedom for the idea of security? Is this security real or is it imaginary? Are these terrorists that hate us around the world so powerful and omnipotent that we must give up our privacy? Do you want your government engaging in torture? Do you believe that we need to spend 350% more than our nearest competitor on military spending? Do you believe we need military bases in over one hundred countries? Do you want to spend you children’s inheritance on controlling the middle east?

Both political parties are saying yes to the questions that I just asked. Make no mistake of the fact that many of the goals the Republicans have are the same as the Democrats. The time of the two party system has long been at an end. The biggest question you must ask yourself is if you are happy with whom you get to vote for when you go to the polls and vote. For too many years we have had the lessor of two evils. All of the candidates that have won in the primaries have been well connected with corporate funding. How long do you want this to go on? Are you satisfied that we have people running that have “The Right Stuff”?

The choice is yours to make. You can either beg for a place at the table with the Democrats, or you can be a part of something bigger. The Liberal Party needs leaders. The Liberal Party needs voices. Even if we could represent a bloc of voters, we still would be more effective than trying to make our voices heard independently. I believe that it’s time for change. I believe you think it’s time for a change. Together we can make that change. Why wait?