In the U.S., in particular, the FUNDAMENTALLY MORAL ISSUE OF GLOBAL WARMINGhas been “hijacked” by the Republican Party as an issue that is
an amoral, a mere “political” issue.
WhatARE YOUgoing to do about it? REGISTER & VOTE DEM!
The three decade longRepublican Party
resistance to and obstruction of legislation to slow global warming has been IMMORAL behaviorprimarily protecting the profits of the coal, oil and gas
industries etc. at unthinkable cost to humanity.
Ask yourself:
Is the on-going and future, profound
desecration of the natural world due to global warming not a MORAL concern? Not
a question of fundamental “WRONG”?
Are the on-going and future injuries, deaths, and destruction of our homes, cities etc., not a MORAL concern? Not a question
of fundamental "WRONG"?
All the world’s major religions agree that not acting to slow global warming is WRONG.
In Christian terms, NOT ACTING TO SLOW GLOBAL
WARMING IS A SIN.
We must ELECT A DEMOCRATIC HOUSE MAJORITY in spite of SUPER
WEALTHY AND CORPORATE “DARK MONEY”.
Our weapon in this class war against the 99+% is:
UNDERSTANDING THAT THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IN
THE HOUSE IS A PUPPET OF THE VERY WEALTHY AND POWERFUL
INCREASING voter REGISTRATIONS
INCREASING VOTER TURN-OUT
VOTING A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE
This is OUR ONLY WAY FORWARD TO AVOID THE WORST OF GLOBAL
WARMING.
Given the misleading media coverage of election donations
(focusing mainly on regulated donations raised for the “campaign” committees),
it is crucial to understand how unlimited “soft” and “dark” money have
completely thwarted the 1974-2010 attempts to limit the“buying” of the Presidency and Congress by donations of very wealthy individuals.
In 1971, the first "modern" finance law was passed (FECA). As part of the Watergate investigation, it was discovered that Richard Nixon won reelection with the economic support of ONLY roughly
1200 individual and corporate donors. In reaction, Congress passed amendments in 1974, 1976, and 1979. Upon the basis of
these laws, “hard” money donations to campaigns by corporations and individuals were severely limited in specific ways with maximum $3000 corporate donations given through
entities called Political Action Committees or PACs for short.
Matson cartoon: Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance
On the other
hand, “soft” money donations to political party committees could be unlimited
and were nominally intended to promote “party building activities” including
“get-out-the-vote” efforts and “ISSUE ADS”, i.e. supporting positions, not
candidates. In fact, from 1996 onward an increasing bulk of the “soft” money
was spent on ads that were effectively perceived as campaign ads.
After the partisan Federal Court decisions in 2010 (commonly
known as Citizens United and SpeechNow), unlimited donations that have
paid for the ever increasing, EVEN GREATER flood of attack and “issue ads”. The
vast bulk of attack and issue ads are now paid for by corporate (or union)
donations explicitly to “advocacy groups” under Citizens United, or individuals, or (technically ) “social
welfare” groups NOT REQUIRED TO PUBLICLY DISCLOSE THE SOURCES OF THEIR FUNDING,
“DARK MONEY”.The primary
limitation of these new super pacs is that their “political” ad spending is
not coordinated with the candidate campaign committees.
In
short, the 1973 “discovery” that about 1200 individuals and corporations could
finance a Presidential campaign, and the consequent attempt to diminish the
influence of great wealth in electing candidates that protect the interests of
the wealthy and powerfuland not those of 99+% of the public, has been DEFEATED!
Since 1993, the continued power and profits of the fossil
fuel industry have been ensured by the opposition of Republicans in the House
and/or the Senate. In other words, the failure to enact policies to slow global
warming has been THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
(photo credit: jmcdaid)
In the
last three sessions of Congress (2011 to the present), the Republican majority
in the House has blocked global warminglegislationas well as the Democratic
legislative agenda in general.
Not voting for a Democratic House of Representatives – whether that be by not
voting at all or voting for third parties – is ABANDONING RESPONSIBILITY
for PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS to the DISLOCATION, DESTRUCTION, PHYSICAL
& MENTAL HARM AND DEATH THAT RUNAWAY GLOBAL WARMING WILL BRING.
We cannot allow Trump and the GOP to win!
Our very lives depend on it!
Unite-Vote BLUE!
VOTE IN #HRC & a Democratic House MAJORITY for positive policy changes and for CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION!
Every vote counts AND VOTES for THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES in the HOUSE ELECTIONS–
ESPECIALLY IN DISTRICTS THAT DEMOCRATS NEED TO PICK UP – are VOTES that may COST US A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE. At
this point in the 2016 campaign, more and more Republican leaders, candidates, and very wealthy corporate and individual Republican supporters are assuming a Democratic
Presidency and a Democratic majority Senate. And so the focus of the corporate
and individual wealth that the Republican Platform is designed to favor is now on
the House races.
Current House of Representatives count.
The
Democrats need to add at least 30 House seats in order to have a majority.The
last election with such a large gain for the previously minority Party in the
House was the Johnson – Goldwater election of 1964. This
was also the last time there was such an extreme division in the Republican
Party. The
30 seat gain hurdle is particularly hard to overcome because of:
the Federal
Court decisions permitting unlimited “dark money” into the political process
the historically extreme number of House districts that have been redrawn
to protect Republican candidates
~To see where and how you can help Democrats pick up House seats in the 2016 elections, visit Global Warming 2016 Legacy.~
Thus, in the 2016 election, more than ever before, every
vote counts AND VOTES for THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES in the HOUSE ELECTIONS–
ESPECIALLY IN DISTRICTS THAT DEMOCRATS NEED TO PICK UP – ARE VOTES THAT MAY
COST A DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE.
We must NOT UNDERMINE our ability to regain DEMOCRATIC House seats by voting for third party candidates. This is EXACTLY WHAT THE GOP wants you to do.
Without a DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT and BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS, RUNAWAY GLOBAL WARMING WILL,
NO DOUBT, DEFINE OUR FUTURE.
We cannot allow "big business" to continue to mislead us, influence our country, and harm us for their personal profit! Fight back with your voice and your VOTE!
Georgia Congressman, John Lewis,June 22, 2016
"...Sometimes you have to get in the way. You have to make some noise by speaking up and speaking out against injustice & inaction..."
With the current focus on new legislation to help prevent
the kind of violence against innocent members of the public that recently
occurred in Orlando, it is important to step back and put the issue in a larger
historical and social context.
AK-47
To start
with, economic interests groups like the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel
industry, and the military-style weapons and munitions industries have many obvious
characteristics in common. In each case,
these industries seek greater profits for their mainly wealthy shareholders by
selling “products” that clearly do or may, as in the case of the recent Orlando
mass shooting, put the general public at risk of terrible harm. Whether we are
talking about the risk of lung cancer and other smoking related heath damage,
global warming and its catastrophic impacts in the present and future, or the
increasing incidents of massacres of innocents in America, profits have been
and continue to be a higher industry priority than the public well-being.
At the same time, such industries have continued to try to
misinform the public about terrible adverse impacts of their “products” by
using many different arguments that, in fact, have been and are consistently deliberately
misleading and demonstrably false.
The cigarette industry touted the association of smoking with lung cancer as actually due to stress, personality type, etc.
In America, we still hear from almost all leading Republican politicians and candidates that global warming is a hoax or that the consensus of climatology scientists should be ignored because
not enough research has been done OR
there must be no uncertainty in climate science before policy makers should accept that the main driver of global warming is human activity (and therefore, we may be able to slow the warming by what we do).
Likewise for the military-style
weapons and munitions industry, their front men have been so successful that
the arguments and discussion about protecting the public from harm has moved so
incredibly far away from banning all “machine guns” (National Firearms Act of
1934) and their potential for mass killings/injury to who is Constitutionally
“entitled” to own such weapons (as well as who is entitled to own munitions
that put law enforcement wearing protective vests at risk).
In
the U.S., more than other capitalist countries, very profitable economic
interests have typically used every resource, notwithstanding their prior
knowledge of the risk of harm to the public, to insure their continued
profitability. A key resource is always the effort to mislead the public,
policy makers, law enforcement, media, etc., about known harm to the public.
Although
not universal, profits before responsibility to the public well-being has become
a tacit norm of corporate behavior.
