Tag Archives: democracy

Congressional climate deniers are getting called on their BS at town halls this week.

by JulianGaray Posted on February 22, 2017

The protesters gathered in Boston’s Copley Square with some impressively nerdy signs, including “Scientists are wicked smaht” and “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.”

The rally coincided with the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held a few blocks away, but was not sponsored by the scientific organization. In fact, scientists have often been wary of participating in political demonstrations, citing the need for science to be objective and nonpartisan.

“We’re not protesting a party,” one scientist told the Boston Globe. “As scientists, we want to support truth.”

Truth, however, has increasingly become a political issue, with an administration that has denied climate change, attacked the value of the EPA, and put forward a non-evidence-based travel ban that would adversely affect many scientists and researchers in the United States. As one sign at the rally put it, “Alternative facts are the square root of negative one.” That is, imaginary.

Sunday’s rally was a warm-up act for the March for Science, which is expected to bring many thousands of scientists to Washington, D.C., on April 22, Earth Day.

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Congressional climate deniers are getting called on their BS at town halls this week.

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Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Call Burma a Democracy Just Yet

by hongNgocBaoTram Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama and other world leaders are sending their congratulations to Burma, whose biggest pro-democracy party, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory in a historic general election—the first time in nearly half a century that citizens had a hand in picking their rulers. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, clinched enough seats in the national parliament to form the next government and choose the next president. It’s a moment for celebration, but the fight for democracy isn’t over yet. Here are three challenges Suu Kyi’s party now faces:

Forming a government: In 1990, the last time Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a general election, the results were annulled by the then-ruling military dictatorship, which subsequently threw many of the party’s candidates in prison. Fortunately, the dictatorship ended four years ago, and leaders in Burma’s current government—dominated by former military generals—have congratulated Suu Kyi on her win this week and pledged to respect the results of the vote.

But the new parliament will not sit until early next year, and the new president likely won’t be inaugurated until March. That’s a lot of time for something to go wrong. “Nowhere else in the world is there such a gap between the end of the election and the forming of the new administration, and certainly it’s something about which we should all be concerned,” Suu Kyi told reporters last week at her lakeside residence in Rangoon.

Picking a president: Suu Kyi is Burma’s most popular politician, but she can’t become president. Before the dictatorship ended, the country’s military leaders wrote a constitution with a clause that makes Suu Kyi ineligible for the job because her late husband was British and her two sons hold foreign citizenship. Suu Kyi has vowed to get around this constitutional ban. Last week, she told reporters that she would lead the government in a position “above the president.” This week, she elaborated in an interview that the NLD would pick a president with “no authority” who would “act in accordance with the positions of the party.”

Dealing with the military: The NLD won a majority of contested parliamentary seats, but not all parliamentary seats were up for grabs. In fact, thanks to the constitution, 25 percent of seats are reserved for unelected military representatives who hold veto power over constitutional amendments and have no interest in allowing Suu Kyi to become president. Asked about the military bloc in parliament during a press conference last week, Suu Kyi replied, “I don’t believe in unbreakable blocks, especially human ones.”

The constitution also gives the military control over the defense, border affairs, and home affairs ministries. And in a state of emergency, it allows a special military-led body to assume sweeping state powers. What’s more, the military continues to wage civil wars against ethnic minority groups in the countryside, and Suu Kyi will likely have little control to end these conflicts. “Burma will get democracy,” Aung Thein, a member of the NLD’s campaign committee, told me. “But we will have to work for many years.”

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Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Call Burma a Democracy Just Yet

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Why Don’t We Make Election Day A Holiday?

by BlairArdill Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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An estimated 37 percent of eligible voters cast ballots during Tuesday’s midterm elections—the lowest voter turnout since 1942. It wasn’t that much of an anomaly, however: For decades, voter turnout in non-presidential election years has hovered far below what it was in the mid-19th century, when it peaked at around 70 percent. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance ranks the United States 120th out of 169 countries for average voter turnout.

Today, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed a way to reverse this trend: Make election day a national holiday. “Election day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote,” Sanders said in a press release announcing the Democracy Day Act. “While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.”

Sadly, Congressional Republicans, who’ve made voter suppression a key part of their electoral strategy, are about as likely to support a voting holiday as they are to declare war on Christmas.

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Why Don’t We Make Election Day A Holiday?

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Potential 2016 Contender Martin O’Malley Supports New Bill to Wean Politicians Off Big Money

by ImogeneSchafer Posted on February 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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While Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential contest, has made headlines lately for the big-money-fueled super-PACs lining up in her corner, another potential Democratic contender, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, is embracing the other end of the political money spectrum.

O’Malley, who would likely run to the left of Clinton in 2016, says he supports the Government By The People Act, a new bill recently introduced by Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes intended to increase the number of small-dollar donors in congressional elections and nudge federal candidates to court those $50 and $100 givers instead of wealthier people who can easily cut $2,500 checks. The nuts and bolts of the Government By The People Act are nothing new: To encourage political giving, Americans get a $25 tax credit for the primary season and another $25 credit for the general election. And on the candidate side, every dollar of donations up to $150 will be matched with six dollars of public money, in effect “supersizing” small donations. (Participating candidates must agree to a $1,000 cap on all contributions to get that 6-to-1 match.) In other words, the Sarbanes bill wants federal campaigns funded by more people giving smaller amounts instead of fewer people maxing out.

What makes the Sarbanes bill stand out is breadth of support it enjoys. The bill has 130 cosponsors—all Democrats with the exception of Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.)—including Sarbanes and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) And practically every progressive group under the sun has stumped for the Government By The People Act, including the Communication Workers of America, the Teamsters, Sierra Club, NAACP, Working Families, Friends of Democracy super-PAC, and more. Through efforts like the Democracy Initiative and the Fund for the Republic, progressives are mobilizing around the issue of money in politics, and their championing of Sarbanes’ bill is a case in point.

But O’Malley is the first 2016 hopeful to stump for the reforms outlined in the Government By The People Act. “We need more action and smarter solutions to improve our nation’s campaign finance system, and I commend Congressmen John Sarbanes and Chris Van Hollen for their leadership on this important issue,” O’Malley said in a statement. “Elections are the foundation of a successful democracy and these ideas will put us one step closer toward a better, more representative system that reflects the American values we share.”

No other Democratic headliners, including Clinton, have taken a position on the Sarbanes bill. (New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did include a statewide public financing program in his latest budget proposal. And Clinton, as a senator, cosponsored the Kerry-Wellstone Clean Elections Act.) Yet with nearly every major liberal group rallying around the money-in-politics issue, any Democrat angling for the White House in 2016 will need to speak up on how he or she will reform today’s big-money political system.

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Potential 2016 Contender Martin O’Malley Supports New Bill to Wean Politicians Off Big Money

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