Election 2008

Republicans uptight about GOP T-shirts

2008-07-18T17:44:00Z

The Republican National Committee has threatened to sue online T-shirt printer CafePress for allowing vendors to create and sell GOP-laden T-shirts, stickers and portrayals of the republican party icon, the elephant.

Since the committee owns the trademarks to "GOP," "Grand Old Party," "Republican National Committee," "RNC" and the official GOP elephant logo, they can legally order CafePress to ensure their trademarks are not being illegally infringed upon. But the confusing part about all of this legal positioning is that many of the T-shirts being designed actually support the party!

If ever there was a sign that a party was losing touch with voters, this is it. At a time when transparency and mass communication is approaching its crescendo, the Grand Ole Party is embracing censorship, even among its biggest supporters! Someone get a shovel, this party is getting buried come November.

Hat tip: Threat Level

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Clinton returning to Senate; can she ever make up missed votes?

2008-06-24T16:11:00Z

According to AFP News, Senator Hillary Clinton is returning to the Senate today from vacation and she'll have a lot to do to make up for all the time she spent out of office.

Since she announced "I'm in" on her Web site in January 2007 for what The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has been calling the "Clusterf**k to the Whitehouse," Senator Hillary Clinton has missed 141 out of 575 Senate votes, or twenty-five percent. Nine of the votes she was absent for took place after she ended her campaign and embarked on an impromptu vacation from not voting.

The 141 absences weigh heavily on her otherwise attractive attendance record. While she's no Congressional Cal Ripken, in the seven years she's spent as a U.S. Senator, Clinton has been present for 91 percent of the votes.

Unfortunately for Clinton, you can't have someone else cast a vote for you - at least not legally - so the New York Senator ended up missing 71 out of 85 votes (84%) in the fourth quarter of 2007, and 57 out of 69 (83%) in the second quarter of 2008, according to Govtrack.

How does that compare to her rival (or future boss) you ask? Since his inauguration in 2005, Senator Obama has missed 268 votes, or 22 percent of all votes he was eligible for. Like Clinton, Obama missed the majority of votes during the campaign season. In this quarter, Obama has missed 60 out of 69 votes (89%). It makes you wonder why they are still getting paid as Senators!

Truancy, it seems, is a bipartisan disease. Since 1993, McCain has missed seventeen percent of all his chances to vote. Over the past year while campaigning, the Straight Talk Express has blown straight past the Senate voting machine roughly 68% of the time since he announced his candidacy in April 2007.

Senators Obama and McCain sit in the top ten of most absent senators, with Obama in first place and McCain in second. Senator Clinton ranks seventh. Among the other top ten most absent senators - not to be confused with absent-minded senators - are ...

-3rd place-John Kerry    [D-MA]      14% (585)
-4th-Joseph Liberman    [I-CT]       10% (421)
-5th-Daniel Inouye           [D-HI]       09% (391)
-6th Joseph Biden           [D-DE]      09% (386)
-8th Jim DeMint                [R, SC]     08% (390)
-9th Tim Johnson             [D, SD]   07% (407)
-10th Chris Dodd             [D, CT]   06% (274)

Your tax dollars at work, America!

Education 2008: Where the Presidential Candidates Stand

2008-06-09T16:24:00Z

In 2008, education reform ranks as the third most important issue for voters, behind only the war in Iraq and the economy. Unfortunately for these voters, public education is a task that is delegated to the states and although candidates have promised over and over to improve education in this country, the president in actuality has limited influence over education decisions made at the state and local government level.

President George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to improve education and was successful in getting the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act passed by Congress in 2001. NCLB measures student performance using standardized tests, the results of which determine the amount of funding school programs receive from the state in order to promote accountability at a local level. In order to receive state funding, NCLB also requires schools to employ only teachers who are “highly qualified.”

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)

While his Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, campaigned to end NCLB completely, Senator Barack Obama has promised to reform the act, saying that it has been poorly funded and implemented by the Department of Education. Another major complaint from the Democrats is that NCLB has created false measures of achievement, forcing teachers to direct their lessons not to the educational material but to the standardized tests by which their students will be measured. Obama also plans to restructure the funding formulas so that schools that need improvement receive more money to do so, rather than punishing them by taking away funds.

The cornerstone of Obama’s education platform is a plan entitled “Zero to Five,” which addresses the period from birth to pre-kindergarten. Under this plan, he would create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote early learning programs at the state level and help the states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.

He would also quadruple funding for Early Head Start - a federally funded community-based health education program for low-income families with infants and toddlers and pregnant women.

Obama has emphasized the importance of improving teacher preparation and performance. He would create Teacher Service Scholarships to pay for undergraduate or graduate teacher education in exchange for teaching in a high-need field or location for at least four years. He would also require all schools of education to be accredited and would create a voluntary national performance assessment of new educators.

Making post-secondary education more affordable is another pledge Obama has made. He proposes the American Opportunity Tax Credit that would make community college tuition free and cover two-thirds of the cost of tuition at the average public college or university for most students. However, he has not released details on how he intends to fund such an expensive program.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

In his 2008 candidacy, Republican Senator John McCain has officially supported standards, such as those required by No Child Left Behind, to measure public schools and use performance against these standards to determine how much funding schools receive. He voted for NCLB in 2001 and continues to support it, but has stated that some changes need to be made to the act, such as allowing parents to choose which school their child will attend through publicly funded vouchers.

Vouchers are the foundation of his education platform and McCain has said that all federal funding must be predicated on parents having the ability to enroll their children in better schools, rather than requiring them to stay in failing schools. His official campaign website says that he “will fight for the ability of all students to have access to all schools of demonstrated excellence, including their own homes.”

Like his opponent, McCain has focused on improving the quality of teachers across the nation, but his focus is on free market competition - schools should compete to be the most innovative and student-centered to attract and reward the best teachers.

McCain has said little about post-secondary education so far in his campaign. During an event in New Hampshire in December, he said he supports tax deductions for college tuitions and that “we’ve got to do everything we can to make education affordable for all Americans.”

Later, he corrected his statement, stating that he misunderstood the question and does not support tax deductions for tuition. He has said he backs greater federal funding of Pell grants and government low-interest student loans, though he missed the vote on a bill that cuts the interest rate on loans and increases Pell grants.

There are 76.6 million children under the age of 17 currently enrolled in school in the United States. For those children and their parents, education is a major concern. But the quality of education in the country affects all of us indirectly. An educated populace translates to a more robust workforce, correlates to a slower population growth rate, ensures a more concerned and decent society, and influences the number of participants in the democratic process.

Edited by Jaime L. Hartman

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From SNL to the Senate: Al Franken's improbable bid for Congress

2008-06-09T12:26:00Z

If you think Congress' performance is laughable, it may be getting even funnier soon. Former Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken has clinched the Minnesota Democratic party's nomination for his bid to be a U.S. Senator.

Franken, a 57-year-old Emmy award-winning comedian, first gained momentum as a political force following the publishing of his best-selling book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (1999), and later for Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (2003). The successes prompted Franken, a graduate of Harvard College, to return to his alma matter to serve as a Fellow for Harvard's JFK School of Government, campaign hard for John Kerry in 2004, and become a syndicated, liberal radio talk show host.

The democratic nod of approval pits Franken, 57, against Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman. But many contend the comedian will have a hard convincing voters to take him seriously.

Part of Franken's campaign strategy for a Senate seat revolve around surviving political attacks about unpaid back taxes, a 2000 Playboy article he wrote entitled "Porn-O-Rama," which extolled the contributions of computers to the porn industry and detailed potential human-machine sexual encounters, and some off-color jokes about rape made when he was just a comedian working off shock value.

According to Bloomberg News, "the Playboy controversy followed news in April that Franken spent $70,000 on back taxes and penalties in 17 states where he'd made paid appearances from 2003 to 2006. Franken blamed an accountant's mistake for delays in paying out-of-state taxes."

Of his other less popular comments and "creative works," Franken expressed regret and issued an apology.

``Most of the stuff I wrote was really funny and really appropriate, and some if it wasn't funny and wasn't appropriate,'' he said. ``I am sorry if what I did has caused some people to doubt my commitment to them on some issues.''

Regardless of what you might think about his comedy style, Franken's campaign is anything but a joke. One look at his website quickly reveals a candidate trying to connect with his constituents, promote social causes like environmental protection, and embrace web tools like blogs, podcasts, and YouTube to promote his candidacy. Come January, don't be surprised to hear a whimsical retort to the President's State of the Union address from Senator Franken.

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Federal government awards $10 Million to Improve Election Data Collection

2008-05-29T17:52:00Z

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) will award five states $2 million each to improve the collection of precinct-level data in the November 2008 election. This marks the first time the federal government will issue grants to states to improve federal elections data.

The winning states-Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin-will use the funds to develop methods and procedures for collecting data that other states and jurisdictions can replicate. The EAC will include this data in its biennial Election Day Survey, a comprehensive report on how Americans vote in federal elections. The EAC's 2004 and 2006 Election Day Surveys include statistics on key election issues such as voter turnout and registration, overvotes and undervotes, poll workers, and voting equipment and machines, among other topics.

"Solid data on how federal elections are carried out in all U.S. states and territories can help local officials make effective, fiscally-sound enhancements to the voting process," EAC chairwoman Rosemary Rodriguez said.

Ten states applied for the Election Data Collection grants, and winners were selected through an independent review process. The Omnibus Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2008 and Public Law 110-161 authorize the EAC to distribute the grants. The Act also requires states to submit data they collect to the EAC by March 2009. In turn, the EAC is required to evaluate the grant program's overall success, and provide Congress recommendations for changes to federal laws and regulations to improve the collection of data. Additional information about the program is available in the grant announcement.

2000 presidential race once again becomes center of discussion thanks to HBO film

2008-05-29T14:34:00Z

Charlie Rose recently hosted an interesting discussion about the HBO film Recount with Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Toobin, Senior Legal Analyst at CNN and David Boies, Al Gore's attorney during the 2000 recount proceedings.

The discussion centered around an interview given by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the veracity of the film, and dives back into the "what ifs" of Al Gore's bid for the White House.

Recount chronicles the five weeks between the Nov. 7, 2000, presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and the December Supreme Court ruling that upheld Florida's count and gave Bush the White House. During that election, a number of Florida counties encountered difficulties with their voting machine counts and a legal battle ensued over whether or not the state of Florida should engage in a hand recount to compensate for the inability of the voting machines to read the dimpled and hanging chads - pieces of the voting punch cards.

DNC launches McCain smear campaign through new 'McCainpedia' website

2008-05-20T14:21:00Z

In both a sign of the power of new media and elevated muckraking, the Democratic National Party recently launched a website hellbent on making Republican Presidential contender John McCain look like a flip-flopping reactionary.

The website is called McCainpedia to convey the fact it is both about McCain and is populated by visitors using a Wiki - a technology that allows anyone to submit content to the website (think Wikipedia). Although pretty basic, the site highlights the issues on which McCain most deviates from the Democratic party, namely Iraq, maintaining the Bush tax cuts, and abortion. It also showcases McCain's top verbal blunders of his political campaign, like his statement that he's be OK with the U.S. remaining in Iraq for "100 years," although he later clarified he simply wanted a military presence there similar to the security forces that currently exist in Germany, Korea, and Japan.

In another section, entitled FlipperTV, a series of videos showcases candid moments along the campaign trail where McCain was asked tough questions and gave poor, partial or nebulous answers. While it's a bit ironic to attempt to depict McCain as a Presidential contender offering only vague solutions and promises of change given that's the main criticism of Senator Obama's campaign, the reality is that FlipperTV fails to paint McCain as a flip-flopper the way John Kerry was in 2004.

While a good idea for the party, McCainpedia stops well short of making the Republican contender seem disingenuous, unresolved, or out of touch - three goals the website appears to be reaching towards. At the end of the day, the thin content simply highlights the fact that there are fewer differences between McCain and the democrats than the dems would like to admit.

McCain says gaydar jamming best left to state and local governments

2008-05-19T13:25:00Z

McCain made an appearance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend in an attempt to combat growing concern about his age and ability to connect with younger voters.

The Saturday Night Live skit he took part in starts slowly but is definitely worth watching all the way through. In it, McCain pokes fun at his own age by stating that he has the "oldness" needed to protect America and vowss to fight wasteful government spending on projects like the gaydar blocker.

Presidential candidates on veterans

2008-04-22T10:00:00Z

Over 17 million veterans voted in the 2004 presidential election. If you include the 37 million dependents (spouses and dependent children) of living veterans and survivors of deceased veterans, this constituency block jumps to over 61 million, or over 20 percent of the US population. With such large numbers, why does it seem like veterans' issues have been lost in the campaign rhetoric? And how are the candidates addressing this large group of potential voters and the organization that supports them?

OhMyGov! has provided the Cliff's notes to get its readers up to speed on the positions of the leading presidential candidates, as they pertain to vets.

All three candidates claim to be strong supporters of veteran's issues. Barack Obama is the only candidate on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC). John McCain, a veteran himself, maintains a lengthy record in the Senate of supporting bills to help veterans. Hillary Clinton, though her legislative record is not as deep, still offers many initiatives honoring and supporting veterans' needs.

Barack Obama pledges to fully fund the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to ensure so the VA can meet the needs of the veterans it serves. He believes the current administration has consistently underfunded health care for veterans and wishes to rectify the situation.

Already the nation's largest integrated health system, he vows to make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible to include the expansion of centers of excellence and investments in specialty care.

Senator Obama has cosponsored measures that would provide additional funding increases for veterans. He reintroduced the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act to improve the VA's planning process to avoid budget shortfalls in the future and has been a leader in fighting homelessness among veterans.

He authored the Sheltering All Veterans Everywhere Act (SAVE Act) to strengthen and expand federal homeless veteran programs that serve over 100,000 homeless veterans annually. As part of the SAVE Act, Senator Obama reintroduced legislation that would help veteran's transition from the DOD health system to the VA system by extending the window in which new veterans can get mental health care from two years to five years.

He also helped to pass legislation in December 2006 to provide comprehensive services and affordable housing options to veterans and passed an amendment to ensure that all service members returning from Iraq are properly screened for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

John McCain pledges to do everything in his power to ensure that those who serve today and those who have served in the past have access to the highest quality health care, mental health care, and rehabilitative care in the world no matter the cost.

McCain believes the most important benefit we provide to veterans is health care. He is currently working to maintain, enhance, and guarantee an adequate level of health care funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs by fighting to make VA health care an entitlement program instead of a discretionary budget item. This would ensure the VA's health care budget was not subject to cuts as frequently.

Over the years, McCain has been an advocate for all those who serve and their families, improving veterans' health care, providing veterans with the benefits they have earned, easing their transition to civilian life, and honoring the fallen. He has supported numerous funding increases, initiatives to make the VA more efficient, and proposals to give higher pay to VA doctors in order to recruit and retain high quality physicians and dentists.

He has been a leading advocate in the Senate for disabled veterans throughout his entire career. He fought for nearly fifteen years - introducing numerous bills - to ensure that veterans with service-related disabilities can receive the retirement benefits that they have earned, as well as the disability compensation benefits that they are entitled to. He has also worked to ensure that veterans can have their disability claims processed in a timely manner, working with the VA to rectify its huge backlog of claims and providing additional resources for that purpose.

Over the past few years, McCain has successfully pushed for provisions to compensate disabled retired veterans for this disparity and cosponsored a measure to allow disabled veterans to be enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program - the same health insurance offered to Congressmen.

McCain has also been a staunch supporter of bills to help homeless veterans by providing them with counseling, independent living training, and residential treatment programs so that they can address and overcome ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse that plague many homeless vets.

During the first Gulf War, McCain helped increase the death gratuity payment and double the soldier and veterans' group life insurance. He has also been an outspoken advocated for the creation of a number of other veterans' memorials, including a memorial to honor disabled veterans and the National Native American Veterans' Memorial.

Hillary Clinton, like the other candidates, believes in providing affordable and quality health care for all veterans. As President, she states that she would ensure the VA is adequately funded and has the capacity to avoid backlogs and to handle greater enrollments. She wishes to move to electronic medical records to avoid paper losses and proposed providing coverage through her proposed universal health care plan, the American Health Choices Plan, to all veterans who choose not to use the VA system.

Clinton supports a process by which DOD and VA determine disability ratings to establish standardized and consistent disability benefits for veterans who served. A proponent of the health care needs, she recognizes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in increasing numbers of service members returning with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and supports reforms to ensure vets and their families have the care and support they need to combat these complex injuries.

In an effort to show her support of veterans, Clinton introduced two resolutions to honor the service and sacrifice of veterans who have been awarded the Purple Heart, and additional resolutions to honor both the Cold War and Korean War veterans.

While all three candidates promise to support veterans via health care, fully funding the VA, and extending veteran benefits, little mention of improving operations at the VA passes through their lips or websites. Questions remain unanswered. How can the VA improve physical access to health care? What new technologies can be employed to enhance efficiency and record keeping? What partnerships can be forged with other health organizations to keep costs down at the VA while improving care quality? How can VA hiring practices play a role in ensuring veterans find work after service? Where is all the extra money for veteran programs coming from? Is there a way for VA facilities to raise money for veteran programs through sales of unused properties or by providing services to non-veterans in communities where veteran numbers are lower?

Presidential candidates on the environment and energy

2008-04-17T14:34:00Z

"Green" is hip in 2008, even in the presidential campaign. No longer do candidates and their supporters debate whether or not global warming is a real problem, but rather what needs to be done to reverse it. A candidate who prioritizes the environment is not slandered as a "tree-hugger" or "crunchy," instead the candidates clamor to be perceived as the greenest of the green.

While Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama predictably offer the more stringent and more expensive plans for environmental protection and energy independence, Republican nominee John McCain has come out strongly for environmental stewardship.

The issues of environmental protection, energy independence, and economic concerns intertwine with one another but can generally be categorized into following the issues:

Climate change
Dependence on foreign oil
Environmental stewardship and economic growth
Nuclear Energy

Climate change

All three candidates cite global warming as one of the greatest challenges of the decade and propose plans to lead the world in reversing it. Predictably, the platforms of both Democratic candidates include aggressive policies and plans for reducing greenhouse gases, but the emergence of McCain as the presumptive Republican nominee insured that the Democratic candidate would not have a lock on the environmental vote.

McCain cosponsored the first Senate bill calling for mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 2003 and has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's lack of action against climate change.

All three candidates support a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system, though the levels vary. Obama's and Clinton's plans call for carbon emissions to be reduced to 80% of the 1990 level by 2050.

McCain is a cosponsor of the 2007 Climate and Stewardship Innovation Act, which calls for emissions to be decreased to 30% of 2004 levels by 2050. All candidates call for credits to be auctioned so that polluters pay for the emissions they release and the revenue would be slated to support the development of clean energy.

Neither McCain not Obama supports the Kyoto Treaty - an international carbon emissions trading market - although McCain would sign the treaty if India and China were included in the pact. Obama stated he would support establishing a similar trading system with a smaller number of counties. In contrast, Clinton strongly supports the Kyoto Protocol.

Dependence on foreign oil

With approximately 66% of oil consumed in the US in 2006 being from foreign imports, energy independence is a big issue for the candidates. McCain announced that energy independence in 5 years is a goal of his and he would make it a "Manhattan Project." A onetime critic of ethanol, he now lauds it though he opposes government subsidies for it, instead arguing for a market-based incentive. He calls for adding capacity to the electric grid in the form of nuclear energy and renewable power so that plug-in battery operated cars are a viable alternative.

Obama wants to reduce oil consumption by at least 35% by 2030, offsetting the equivalent of oil we would have imported during that time. He plans to do this by retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic automakers to better compete with oversees companies making fuel-efficient cars. Within 18 years, he wants fuel efficiency standards to double. He also supports investing federal resources in ethanol, including tax incentives and investment in biofuel refineries in rural areas.

Clinton proposes a $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, for the development of alternative energies. This would finance one-third of a $150 billion 10-year investment. She supports incentives that would aid domestic automakers in the form of "Green Bonds" and calls for fuel efficiency standards of 55 miles per gallon by 2030. Clinton would also double federal funding for alternative energy research and development projects but is vehemently opposed to expanding domestic oil drilling.

Environmental stewardship and economic growth

Clinton's plans aim to spur economic growth in the green building industry by retrofitting and modernizing low-income homes to make them more energy efficient. She has sponsored a bill to make all federal buildings carbon neutral by 2030. This could be accomplished by increasing the use of daylighting, alterative energy sources like solar and win power, and insulating mechanisms to limit the need for temperature regulation.

She also pushes for the expansion of public transportation and the protection of endangered species.

Obama would create a competitive program to encourage new building codes that prioritize energy efficiency and establish a federal investment program to help manufacturing centers modernize and Americans learn new skills for producing green products.

McCain also believes that stewardship of the environment and economic interests are linked, saying that economic success depends on sustainable energy use and unspoiled natural resources. He points to Theodore Roosevelt as a hero of his and calls for protection of our national treasures, including the National Park System.

Nuclear energy

Clinton and Obama are reservedly pro nuclear energy, assuming a proper means for disposal of nuclear waste is created. However, both candidates are against the use of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository - the current plan for nuclear disposal.

McCain strongly supports investments in nuclear energy and supports the Yucca Mountain repository.

Regardless of which Democratic candidates emerges from the nomination process, it is certain that there will be much discussion of environmental concerns during the general election. If the candidates are true to their promises, a major change in the direction of this country in terms of energy use and environmental protection will come in 2009.