Unity08. A people's movement to take our country back.

Want to be free? Then take money donated here to keep Unity08.com up and running on the internet.Nothing wiil destroy this new movement if it does not contribute or support any one special interest group or candidates. Once a Unity08 ticket is chosen, contribtions and support can go directly to their campaign staff.
Money is what has taken the country from the people. Hopefully our Unity08 President and Vice-President will veto any legislation that is not good for the American working man, woman, and families!
We the people are the power that has built this nation. We must take it back from the greedy and corrupt few who have just about destroyed everything we the people hold dear.
God bless the USA, and heal nation to good health.
I wish all a good struggle with victory as your just reward!

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http://catherinecowan.blogstream.com/
http://wendy500.blogspot.com/2006/04/reverse-capitalismglobalism.html

http://dubai-and-tri-lateral-commission.blogspot.com/2006/03/dubai-and-trilateral-commisssion.html

http://popeye1.blogspot.com/

http://rougeandlipstick.blogspot.com/2006/05/rouge-and-lipstick.html

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I read today in the online news, CNN, that a person using the sold ID cards on the streets in California, was able to get into homeland security using the ID. I for one feel deep concern, wonder just who are our terrorists?

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ROUGE AND LIPSTICK!
"You can put rouge and lipstick on a pig, its still a pig." The US Senate plan is amnesty, no matter how much rouge and lipstick you put on it. The liberal republicans, such as, as Hagel, Grahram, and Spector, and the liberal democrats, such as, Kennedy, Reid, and Durbin, and President Bush are trying to fool the public into believing that the US Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill is not amnesty. They are fooling themselves, but not the public on this issue. No matter how much you "dress up a pig with rouge and lipstick, its still a pig." I am requesting all voters in the upcoming mid-term elections and the 2024 elections to vote these politicians out of office. I am also requesting the voters to start a third party campaign to "throw the rascals out." The US Senate is devious trying to kill any hope of passage of "border security" this year. Signed, "A concerned Citizen."

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I'm so excited for a non-partisan third party candidate. For once, my friends and family members were positive about a political email I sent. Most of them have checked out the website and want to hear more.

I hope that this organization is able to take the focus off of special election issues that always seem to pop up, and keep the focus on problems that affect the American majority on a daily basis. Issues such as an out of control debt, healthcare, the loss of manufacturing jobs, real immigration reform, and global warming seem to take a back seat in the media to issues like gay marriage and tax cuts once the elections are close.

The media, unfortunately needs constant feeds to keep these issues in the spotlight. We should all try to keep the media focused on the real problems in America, and let the corporations know that they cannot swing the elections any more through smoke screen issues.

I also write my Senators and my Congressional delagate on a regular basis, and everyone involved in this group should as well. My Representative just voted in favor of the telephone companies taking more control over the internet. I wrote him prior to the vote and have recently written him to express my dissappointment in his bowing to the lobbyists. They need to know we are keeping a close eye on their records, and we're not going to stand for corporations writing our laws anymore.

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If we don't soon get our democratic government functiioning as it was intended, we can kiss this experiment goodbye. We are a young country by historical standards. Where is it written that we are to survive as we now know our country. If we are to survive, we need to improve public participation in government. Government by the wealthiest 10 % for the the same 10% will not suffice. Neither do we need to be overly concerned about the extreme fringes. Could a 3rd party change things. Yes, if they have realistic plans for all aspects of our society-ecconomics, law, health, taxation, etc. There are enough votes in the middle to win. People need a choice.

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I know everyone has heard about all the bad things about Myspace, but I really think that they should make a Myspace Page!! Do you know how many people read that stuff all the time! Give it some thought!!

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I am a registered republican in Mass. I plan to re-register as an independant or an unenrolled voter, and vote for a center leaning politition, on a Dem. ticket. It's about the only way I know to try to moderate these left leaning liberals Mass. is too well know for. I hope your websight does well. Thanks, Vote M.Romney!08

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Romney is NO moderate. Moderate is not allowing 140 pedophile priests operate in your state without even a comment Moderate is not fixing the underfunded pensions fund. Moderate is NOT fixing the massive fraud in MA government. Moderate is NOT allowing 10% (mostly illegals) uninsured drivers to operate in the state. Moderate is NOT allowing state moneys to fund illegals benefits and allowing amnesty cites. Moderate is NOT rolling back taxes AS REQUIRED by the voter referendum. Moderate is NOT reducing a bloated government. Moderate is NOT stealing all the tobacco settlement moneys and spend it on sanding the roads. Modreate is NOT spending the 5% hike on gasoline that was supposed to fix the roads and bridges ..and use the money for his pet projects. Moderate is NOT passing one soccer mom law after another .. making Mass the most restricted state in the nation. Mass is losing jobs and polulation .. one of the 3 states in the nation doing so. One should muse up his hair.. not vote for him.

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Health Insurance! Buy Your Own or Pay Fines! Its the law!

Thanks MittRomney for yet another invasion on our rights to decide anything for ourselves.

Too bad his other brainchild "Click it Or Ticket" didnt work out.

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You want to be taken seriously? Stop bashing those with different views. This is for you, Anonymous Romney basher. Take the high ground and win elections based on issues. If Unity08 is truly about ending "poliitics as usual", then supporters of the movement should not repeat the mistakes that have turned so many people off from politics.

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JF;
I can't help thinking of the show "Seinfeld" where he did the skit about doing a "show about nothing". Remember that one?

Well here we sit watching the unfolding of this new "revolution in politics" and we are subtley reminded that what we are striving for is to make this a nice civil campaign about nothing. Lets not take any stands on any issues that mean anything, after all its all about civility and winning.

Well, wake up call time.

This country is in some deep sh*t if y'all havenbt noticed. We dont need a vanilla campaign about nothing. If we want nothing we can rely on the two major parties to deliver us nothing. And over here we are supposed to catch that third party zealousness to run ... a campaign about nothing???

Is that what you guys in the duopoly of power actually think? That we who refuse to drink the KoolAid actually run campaigns based soley upon winning caring nada about substance?

You seem to have missed the point of revolution.

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I propose that we dispense with the fear-mongering about "amnesty" for illegal aliens and get on with a common sense approach to the problem. So-called "amnesty" is merely an acknowledgement that we have failed to exercise meaningful controls on immigration in the past, the damage is done and deportation is a cruel response to our own laxity. We have failed to enforce the existing laws because to do so was in the interests of corporations to have a pool of low-wage workers whose legal status prevented them from demanding better terms and who could be fired at will. We all benefit from this bargain by paying $1 a head for lettuce instead of $6.

I live in a border state and enforce the law here. I see no more crime from the immigrant community than from the general population. Their status as "illegal" aliens has led the "amnesty"-phobes to conclude that illegality is like virginity, once its violated there is no going back, once a criminal always a criminal. The same crime, I might add, my ancestors apparently engaged in when jumping ship in Virginia in 1689.

A moderate immigration position should recognize that the current tide of immigration is meeting the needs of our economy; an economy that at 4.6% unemployment cannot afford to deport 10% of its workforce. Create a reasonable path for migrant workers to participate in our economy; don't blame them for trying to better their lives by taking the routes we have laid open for them. Make them honest taxpayers and contributors to the social systems that they consume. Tax or fine the employers that ignore the new rules. Reduce the bureaucratic red tape that gives out 50,000 permits a year for legal guest workers when the economy demands 500,000.

That's the way it looks from up here. Buteo

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Has anyone encountered a think tank, accounting group, etc that has done an analysis of the costs to our economy of:

1) The new Security apparatus developed since 9-11. or

2) The cost of policies that are designed primarily to bolstered "patriotism" or "Americanism"?

Each of these issues strike me as woefully cost inefficient from a pure economic standpoint. The security apparatus includes all the people standing around watching things for a living. The TSA, Border Patrol, security firms on contract to the government. What actual value does this provide the economy other than a nebulous sense of "security"? And how long can our economy be expected to bear this extra cost?

The policies in support of patriotism are no less costly. The current thinking on immigration suggests that our country gains by eliminating new migrant laborers and deporting those who are here. Is there a cost-benefit analysis anywhere? Or is this another policy born of fear.

The security blanket we have paid for in the last six years is certainly well-funded and loudly bragged on by current politicians, but can it be shown to be worth the cost?

At least, that's the way it looks from up here.

Buteo

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Buteo;
Dont kid yourself about the unemployment rate. Here's a link to a nice analysis of why the government data they feed us is all a pile of crap.

http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn/article/id=341

You can track back to the home page from that link to also debunk the GDP number ..

Believe nothing but what you can verify with your eyes.

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You can make a stand on issues and be civil at the same time. However, one of the big problems in today's political world is that politicians on both sides focus too much on why an opponent is wrong. Little time is spent on why a candidate thinks that he/she should win. I want a politician to tell me what he/she stands for, not what is wrong with the other one. So far, Unity08 has a platform that I'd endorse. If you really want change, a revolution, then you need to have a seat at the decision-making table. That means winning.

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JF; I couldnt agree more. Everyone stands for something. If they say that they dont, they simply are lying. This is why I jumped all over the Mitt Romney suggestion. The only thing he has stood for his running for president since the day he took the oath as our governor.
P-O-L-I-T-I-C-I-A-N-S need to be avoided at all costs.

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JF writes "So far, Unity08 has a platform that I'd endorse."

This part I question. What do they stand for?
We can stand here outside the castle gates and yell all day and night but they wont come out here and tell us anything.

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I haven't had time to go through all the comments posted, but have already seen a few that seem to make sense, and sense is something that I haven't seen for awhile with regard to some of the overblown hot button issues such as abortion, gay marriage, immigration, etc.

The comments of "Buteo" on 6/14/04 regarding Immigration Reality strike me as a common sense approach to what seems to be a fairly straightforward problem, without all the politics, pandering, scare tactics, etc. If this is the type of approach that something like Unity08 might lead to, I'm all in favor.

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Of all politics is being avoided by all politicians including those who post on Unity08. This system is going to fail and is the most serious issue facing taxpayers. We must face it and fix it once and for all time. FDR gave us this system and it was never intended to be the sole source of retirement income. Many have called it a Ponzi scheme and no one has been able to defend it. Our seniors and our youth deserve better representation on this issue.

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I don't know how to link back to a worthy comment posted by someone else, but Buteo's attitude re the immigration issue (posted somewhere along this thread on June 14th) is sensible and an excellent starting point for a discussion on this topic.
For what it's worth, I believe that the immigration issue, while deserving of the attention of policymakers, has been introduced as a hot button topic with the purpose of distracting voters from serious consideration of far more serious problems that confront us --global warming, a woefully inadequate health care system, a less than stellar education system, an outrageously expensive, misguided, inefficient, soul-and body damaging war in Iraq.

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The framers of the constitution struggled with establishing the balance between the rights of individuals and the power of government to act for the common good when they first met in 1787. They set up a system of checks and balances, emphasized the separation of powers and passed the bill of rights insuring against the exercise of arbitrary and capricious governmental power that could infringe on a great many individual liberties.

But what the framers were most concerned with protecting were the rights of property and those who had it. The opportunity that was missed was to establish a truly democratic state in which economic justice as well as universal human rights was the law of the land.

The men who wrote the Constitution were all men of property and constituted an elite segment of society. The rights of property were paramount in their minds, especially their own. As the eminent, late historian, Richard Hofstadter said, all American political traditions, Jeffersonian, Federalist, Jacksonian or otherwise, "...shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition... [T]hey ... accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man."

The framers missed the opportunity to make good on the words in the Declaration of Independence and give to all people, including women and those who were then slaves, the same rights. They distrusted the uneducated masses and believed in providing for the common good thru the use of governmental power only for very limited purposes. They also carefully crafted a system that would continue to put power largely in the hand of the propertied classes.

As Hofstadter noted, it was inevitable that Jefferson's laissez faire economics became the politics of the most conservative thinkers, not his concern with the rights of man. Hofstadter also said that Jacksonian democracy was really just a "phase in the expansion of liberated capitalism." The fear of tyrrany -- then and now -- was to a great degree the fear of interference with one's unfettered property rights.

As for our political rhetoric and partisanship, we are stuck in an old, traditionally American trap -- the sort of trap we all fall into when we respond to hate speech with anger.

In a 1964 article in Harpers' Magazine, Hofstadter wrote of "The Paranoid Style of American Politics." He said "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds." His article shows how from even the end of the 18th century in America the elite class of wealthy men who dominated the leadership of the United States to the present day protected their economically privileged status against the have-nots below them by using the fear of such people as Masons, or Catholics as scapegoats to cover up their own economically advantageous position. Even Aaron Burr's conspiracy to carve out an empire for himself in Louisiana was alleged to have been a Masonic plot.

Hofstadter noted that Harriet Beecher Stowe's father was a leader in the early anti-Catholic movement. The hallmark of these paranoid movements was the use of the fear, in Stowe's words, that "a great tide of immigration, hostile to free institutions, was sweeping in upon the country, subsidized and sent by 'the potentates of Europe,' multiplying tumult and violence, filling jails, crowding poorhouses, quadrupling taxation, and sending increasing thousands of voters to 'lay their inexperienced hand upon the helm of our power.'"

Sound familiar? Fear of outside enemies and paranoia about immigration has a long and unfortunate history in this country as a calculated technique of politics.

This technique is designed and used by those who wish to obscure the central, primarily economic issues of our time. They use the hate speech, the paranoid style of politics, as a way of changing the subject from economic justice to some sort of cultural or social issue.

The most common tactics, the structural hallmarks of this technique are the use of simple logical fallacies: presenting false dilemmas, misstating an opposing view so as to easily dismiss the resulting straw man, and the always popular ad hominem attack.

The point is to divert attention, stir emotions and thus change the subject.

As Hofstadter saw American history up to 1865 and beyond, a common ideology of "self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity" has guided the Republic since its inception. By cupidity, Hosftadter meant that efforts to promote the common good through the actions of government were hit and miss, spotty, and based more on tactical political considerations than otherwise.

The missed opportunities, the things that could have been done better, other than ending slavery and granting women and ordinary people the vote right off, are not very different from the issues facing us today: Improving the country's education system, its transportation and energy infrastructure, curbing the unfettered use of monopoly or plutocratic corporate power, protecting public health, establishing the right of ordinary working people to a living wage, to health care, and granting access to and assistance for many of the necessities of life that the wealthiest Americans simply take for granted.

These options all have been taken off the table by a system that places more value on the ability of a few to manipulate their wealth to skew our political system for their own advantage than it places on the public good.

The balance was struck in the beginning in favor of economic individualism at the expense of the ability of government to provide adequately for the public good.

That much appears not to have changed.

During his tenure in the White House, Theodore Roosevelt had shown how powerful that office could be in marshalling reform sentiment. He believed that the president had to be responsive to the will of the people, but that he also had an obligation to lead and not merely follow the mob.

Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, proved far more conservative than Roosevelt had realized, and by 1910 the ex president was harboring ideas that he might run for office again in 1912. Roosevelt began to articulate his own version of progressive reform, which he called the "New Nationalism," and which would be the basis for his campaign for the presidency.

The New Nationalism was not a shallow piece of rhetoric thrown together for the campaign; it represented a carefully thought through analysis of American society and the role that government ought to play.

The old nationalism, he claimed, had been used by sinister, special interests. He now proposed a New Nationalism of dynamic democracy that would recognize the inevitability of economic concentration; to counter the power of the giant corporations, Roosevelt proposed bringing them under complete federal control, so as to protect the interests of the laboring man and the consumer.

TR said: "The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. "

And that remains our problem to this day.

The noisy, seemingly endless American culture war -- fought over such issues as Hollywood depravity and the alleged disparity between mainstream values and those of cultural elites -- is a giant smoke screen that clouds the real cause of Middle America's distress. And what might that real cause be? I think it's economic. To be specific, it's unconstrained free-market capitalism, which has routed the social and political forces that once kept it in check.

Like Tom Frank, I think it is unregulated capitalism, taken to its laissez-faire extreme, that has outsourced the blue-collar prosperity of cities like Wichita and driven the Kansas farm economy to "a state of near collapse." So why did so many aggrieved Kansans band together not to fight the economic philosophy that put the screws to them, but to elect and reelect proponents of that very laissez-faire philosophy?

To explain this paradox, look to what Frank calls the "Great Backlash," a species of conservatism that emerged in reaction to the social and cultural upheavals of the late '60s. The backlash "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues -- summoning public outrage over everything from busing to unchristian art -- which it then marries to pro-business economic policies."

Frank says it is not a marriage between equals. The business agenda gets enacted, producing "low wages and lax regulation." The rich get obscenely richer as a result. Yet the cultural agenda remains unfulfilled. "Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its
act." Meanwhile, backlash strategists have repackaged the idea of the American "elite," to devastating political effect.

In its new meaning, as Frank says, retailed incessantly on talk shows and in screeds with titles like "Treason" and "Bias," the term doesn't refer to members of the nation's economic upper crust, who reap the benefits of tax cuts and deregulation. No, in backlash-speak, an "elitist" is a member of an exclusively cultural establishment, defined as a collection of liberal snobs in the media, the academy and government who sneer at the values of ordinary Americans. Hapless liberals are forced to fight a rear-guard action against these charges in large part, Frank says, because they've conceded most of the economic ground already.

One day, in the library stacks, Frank stumbled across a book called "The Populist Revolt." Up to that point, he had associated the term "populism" with the kind of revolt Reagan was urging: of ordinary Americans against a too-powerful government. Now he discovered a radically different populism, in which late 19th-century Kansans, among others, saw concentrated economic power as the main force citizens needed to confront.

The contrast was a revelation. One populism acknowledges that we live in a business universe. The other doesn't see that. For the new conservatives, it's all about government, and business is just invisible.

Frank asks: If not capitalism, what?

He answers that we live in a capitalist state now, but we also lived in a capitalist state in the 1960s and the 1950s and the 1940s. And yet it was a very different country. The balance of power between labor and management hadn't collapsed. Wealth distribution hadn't reverted to a 19th-century pattern, with ever-increasing concentration at the top.

That capitalism was a better model, according to Frank, and I agree.

According to Frank, a large part of the blame for the backlash phenomenon should go to the criminal stupidity of the Democratic Party in abandoning its commitment to labor and economic justice in pursuit of white-collar votes and corporate contributions.

The Dems think that to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies, Democrats must stand firm on issues like abortion rights while making endless concessions on economic issues such as NAFTA, welfare, privatization and deregulation. The result? Democrats become Tweedledum to the Republicans' Tweedledee on the laissez-faire economy, leaving their opponents free to woo blue-collar voters with backlash issues.

Frank is right on.

The Democrats either need to go back to what TR said or I call for a new, third party to represent me in taking the following positions, as said by TR in 1910:

"In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity.

"In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege.

"The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows.

"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

"We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

"One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the states.

"The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens."

This defines the fundamental political question of our time. I think we need this aspect of TR's leadership again.

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Once again Seneca's clear grasp of our dilema leaves me speachless .{applause}

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Reply to JF on June 14, 2024 - 1:08pm

JF, I was trying to save you from yourself. Anyone who thinks Romney is a viable candidate to be the leader of the free world needs therapy. Just examine his record.. that's all you need to know. If you saw someone muse up his hair, you would witness him stutter himself into a glob of silly putty.

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