Anyone who knows me knows that I have some serious issues with our President. Whether it be the drug war, drone strikes or the lack of arrests on Wall Street for the ones who not only crashed our economy but profited immensely off taxpayer bailouts.
Despite these and other issues, I cast my ballot today for Barack Obama.
Why?
It's the Supreme Court stupid.
That right now is the most important issue when I think of who I am voting for. What kind of supreme court do I want. One that's even more conservative than it is now? Just look at the kind of decisions we've already had from the court. Citizens United which expanded corporate speech rights, and Knox vs SEIU that will the effect of limiting the power of unions to compete with the campaign fundraising ability of corporations.
With a Romney presidency expect union rights and women's rights to be eroded even more.
Say goodbye to Roe v. Wade, they only need one more conservative justice.
With a more conservative supreme court it wont matter who is in office when the court will be able to rule everything the president does as unconstitutional, and you can forget about overturning Citizens United.
But It's not just the court.
It's tax policy too. Romney's plan is to cut taxes 20% across the board and raise military spending by two trillion dollars. Despite his promises of it being revenue neutral it will explode the deficit even if he cuts every program that helps the poor, the sick and elderly.
The result will be massive income inequality and debt, worse than what we have now. There is a Turkish born host I've come to admire that is convinced there will be an economic collapse. On his show, The Young Turks Cenk Uygur explains that every time there has been a large amount of income inequality, such as in the 1920's, we have had an economic collapse.
He's right.
Romney's policies have the purpose of redirecting as much money to the rich as he can before that collapse happens.
President Obama, though he's a corporatist, center right governing president, will try to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut entitlements in an effort to balance the budget.
Essentially I'm saying that Romney would take us off the cliff, and I'll be damned sure that I don't help make that happen.
This is no time for a protest vote.
I won't lie, the green party candidates tempted me at the polls today, I also liked and supported Rocky Anderson, because I think the Democratic party has become too centrist, too establishment and not progressive enough. Nonetheless I know that the greens and other third parties will never have a chance to compete as long as we have money in politics controlling who gets the most ads, and who pays for the debates.
The money is the problem.
So while I call myself a progressive, I held my nose and voted for the man who's not going to take us off a cliff. In the hopes that we can try to change the system he operates in instead of letting the Tea Party and Mitt Romney burn it down.
It's my hope that after today, after Obama wins, we can shift our focus to the real issue. The big green elephant in the room.
Money in Politics.
You said it well, and said what I was thinking. I’m tired of the “get along, go along” Democrats that want to get back to business as usual and their supporters who keep going into “tolerance” mode when faced with an enemy, quickly morphing into full blown Fascist tendencies. I too voted for Obama for similar reasons as you, but I would also love to see the GOP go out of business, not because I’m a psychopath who favors mono-partisanship but, because without the distraction of The Republican side show, more focus can be thrown on the Democrats’ own blemishes. I believe that with only one old party still in operation, other political parties can finally come in from the fringes and give us a chance to challenge convention.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment!
ReplyDeleteThe GOP as of right now does need to go out of business. Simply for the fact that they are so hilariously right wing. I think we need more parties and a direct democracy instead of an electoral college. But to achieve those we not only have to eliminate the dual hegemony of the Republicans and Democrats but get rid of the money. That will allow 3rd parties from the right and left to compete and may the best ideology win.