Recently the FDA issued an import alert which allows detainment without inspection of “all milk products, milk derived ingredients and finished food products containing milk from China due to the presence of melamine and/or melamine analogs”. The FDA notes that this is a a recurring problem: “In 2007, bulk vegetable protein products imported from China were contaminated with melamine and melamine analogs, apparently from deliberate contamination.”.

It’s educated speculation that food processors and national inspection agencies around the world engage in behavior like this guided because of the failure of a profit-first mindset to address the real needs of the people. When one is motivated primarily by profit instead of our mutual well-being they make decisions to increase the “apparent volume” of food by adding water and adding melamine “in order to inflate the apparent protein content found in the product”. Similar choices are made when passing laws: why else would the US tolerate laws that allow Texas cattle ranchers to sue for “false defamation of perishable food” and “business disparagement” (these laws became more famous when Oprah had Howard Lyman on her show and said “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!” after Lyman spoke about how the cows were treated)? Why tolerate an FDA that doesn’t inspect every cow when mad cow disease breaks out like the US Government Accounting Office told us the FDA failed to do back in February 2001? Why is the US so tolerant of melamine-laced products on the market at all?

The same could be said for worker abuses which lead to sweatshops and low prices at shops like Walmart. The big difference between these problems is that it is harder to convince people whose media feeds them a steady diet of self-centeredness (distractions including celebrity news instead of real news, ads blaring “low low prices!” instead of “living-wage workers!”, and political debates that only allow corporate-vetted candidates to name a few) to speak up in favor of someone else’s health instead of their own.

How much are your retail store “savings” and the free-market religious myth worth to you relative to your health and the health of others?

Apparently a lot of you have given the Democrats your votes, your time, and your money. What will you do if President-elect Obama continues President Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors thus making Obama as multiply impeachable as Bush already is? Ralph Nader succinctly lays out the problem for Obama continuing the crimes of Bush’s presidency: (the link and formatting is mine)

Much is already known and documented officially and by academic studies and media reporting. In the category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, are

1. the criminal war””occupation of Iraq,
2. systemic torture as a White House policy,
3. arrests of thousands of Americans without charges or habeas corpus rights,
4. spying on large numbers of Americans without judicial warrants and
5. hundreds of signing statements by George W. Bush declaring that, he of the unitary presidency, will decide whether to obey the enacted bills or not.

To its everlasting credit, the conservative American Bar Association sent to President Bush three reports in 2005-2006 concluding that he has been engaged in continuing serious violations of the Constitution. This is no one-time Watergate obstruction of justice episode ala Nixon that led to his resignation just before his impeachment in the House of Representatives.

Nearly two years ago Senator Obama, contrary to what he knows and believes, vigorously came out against the House commencing impeachment proceedings. It would be too divisive, he said. As one of one hundred Senators who might have had to try the President and Vice President in the Senate were the House to impeach. He should have kept impartial and remained silent on the subject.

As President, he cannot remain silent and do nothing, otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and become soon thereafter a war criminal himself. Inaction cannot be an option.

Violating the Constitution and federal laws is now routine. What is routine after awhile becomes institutionalized lawlessness by official outlaws.

Ralph Nader circa November 13, 2008

How will the liberal Left hold Obama accountable when they were willing to let the Democratic Party get away with taking impeachment “off the table”? Hoping for change won’t be enough. The old excuses tried to make Democrats look powerless to stop Bush while Democrats wrote more checks for war, agreed with Bush on FISA, legalized telecommunication corporation immunity alongside Bush, supported bailouts which will probably come to over $1T, and so on. But excuses won’t hold water with the most facile observer of Congress because Democrats have held a majority in the House and Senate since 2006 and soon there will be a Democrat in the White House. Tight senate races might give the Democrats an unfilibusterable supermajority in the Senate.

This presidency is really a test for anyone who supports the Democratic Party. Will there be organized publicly-visible objection like the opposition to the Iraq war where millions gathered in the streets before that invasion began? Or will there be silence like what happened during Gore, Kerry, and Obama’s presidential campaigns? Without serious organization and objection who will challenge impeachable crimes?

Congratulations to Randall Cotton for his well-deserved article about his anti-war and local tax policy activism. I voted for the local property tax increase (aimed to help the poor) due to his activism. I don’t mind spending more money in taxes when the money will go to help those in need. Governments are in a position to collect and distribute money far more effectively than any private organization can do, and I don’t think the poor should have to rely on private largesse.

Ralph Nader on Democracy Now! put President-elect Obama’s victory into perspective for Americans:

Well, obviously we all congratulate Barack Obama. We wish him well. But the precursor to his election has not been very encouraging, and he has repeatedly taken up the positions of the corporate supremacists, not just his latest vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, but a whole string of votes and policy positions. He opposes single-payer health insurance. Well, the HMOs and the insurance companies do, too. He wants a bigger military budget. So does the military-industrial complex. His idea of a living wage on his website is $9.50 an hour by 2011. That would make it less than it was in 1968, adjusted for inflation.

He matched McCain in the third debate, belligerent””belligerency for belligerency, toward Russia, toward Iran, more soldiers in Afghanistan, supporting the Israeli military repression and occupation and blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. And virtually nothing about 100 million poor people in this country. That’s why I really fault him, that he played the Clinton linguistic game by talking constantly about the middle class and not mentioning the word “poor.”

And we expect more of him. And I don’t think he has a public philosophy of where corporations must operate in this country. How? Under what rule of law? Under what regulation? Under what vulnerability to litigation in the courts? He’s proud of tort reform, supports the nuclear industry, supports the coal industry. So we’re really talking about just more of the same, in terms of the corporate domination of Washington.

I detected no concern, no quaking of concern, among the drug industry, oil, gas industry, nuclear, coal industry, Wall Street, over his probable election in the last few weeks. Usually, when they’re really worried about a politician, they will issue warnings. But Barack Obama has raised far more money than John McCain from Wall Street interests, corporate interests and, above all, corporate lawyers. And the question to be asked is, why are they investing so much in Barack Obama? Because they believe he’s their man. So, prepare to be disappointed, but keep your hope up.

Ralph Nader, November 5, 2008 on Democracy Now! (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript)

Add to that, continued presidential support for the death penalty (the change from Pres. Bush being that Obama recognizes that it was used to kill innocents and the death penalty doesn’t have the intended effect of stopping crimes for which capital punishment is used), and I remain fearful about what that means for death row inmates (DN! has been following Troy Anthony Davis’ case). It would be better to send a clear signal that the death penalty isn’t just costly and does nothing to reduce certain crimes, the more compelling reason to reject it has to do with killing people being ethically unjustifiable and offering no room for making mistakes. We simply aren’t going to teach people not to kill while we continue to carve out an exception for the state.

I remain concerned about what Obama’s policies will amount to for the nation’s poor. I don’t see serious change for the better so long as health insurance companies are allowed to control health care policy. I don’t recall anything in Obama’s policies addressing homelessness, and I don’t think a 90-day reprieve on making mortgage payments for those who are close to eviction will seriously reduce the eviction rate after the 90-day window ends. Sending more American poor into war isn’t going to help either (as Sgt. Matthis Chiroux points out, Obama is not an anti-war candidate: “I’m very excited about what an Obama candidacy””or Obama presidency, the kind of racial unity it can bring, but I’m worried that people in this country believe he is truly going to be an antiwar president, and he’s not. He’s very far away from that. He’s got plans to leave troops in Iraq. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan, go into Pakistan.”). Locally, I’ve already seen anti-war efforts decrease just like they did when Sen. John Kerry was the Democratic party candidate and the national anti-war campaigners were unwilling to challenge Kerry’s pro-war message—he’d manage occupation better than George W. Bush.

My friends who supported Obama’s campaign tell me that progressives will challenge him after they give him their support (vote, time, money) and get him in office. I find that strategy to be wholly unwise if your goal is to really help people in need because there’s no clear mechanism for making a candidate follow your advocacy if a candidate knows that they have you in their back pocket. Corporations surely don’t behave that way, they only pay to help campaigners when it’s clear that there’s a deal before the election.

I hope that the good feelings and celebrations going on now change into real progressive political pressure. From what I can tell of Obama’s policies, funding sources, and voting record, he’ll need a lot of pressure to do what’s right by those most in need.

Ralph Nader‘s running mate, Matt Gonzalez, asks “What do they have to do to lose your vote?“.

Good question. What’s your breaking point? How much support for the death penalty, corporate welfare, corporate crime, saying one thing and voting differently, and silencing electoral competition will you continue to tolerate? How effectively can major-party candidates use fear to keep you from voting your interests?

I find it amazing that major-party candidate supporters ask everyone nationally to “do the math” (motivated by fear of the opposing major-party candidate, no doubt) and voters from electoral-college-insignificant counties (like all counties in Illinois except Cook county, where Chicago is) obey them concluding that they had better vote “defensively” for a Republican or Democrat. Millions of voters nationwide are in such positions and they apparently aren’t doing the math: their vote for US President is inconsequential because of the structure of the electoral college. It wouldn’t matter if nobody but Cook county Illinois voted for US President because Cook county basically dictates where all of Illinois’ electoral votes go. People apparently know that the way to speak out in such a rigged game is to not vote at all (and tell people you dislike all the ballot-qualified choices, and then organize politically for a binding “None of the Above” choice) or to vote for someone other than a major-party candidate. In counties with sufficient population to steer electoral votes, there is plenty of good reason to vote your values (which almost certainly aren’t well reflected by corporate-funded major-party candidates).

City, county, congressional, and state votes, on the other hand, matter a great deal because you have more power there. Unfortunately those elections are rigged in other ways (we couldn’t, for instance, have a 90%+ Congressional retention rate otherwise—everyone’s Congressperson is corrupt but yours, right?). The media is a major source of problems for any campaign who refuses to spout corporate-friendly views. Interviews are easily blacked out (consider how little air time third-party and independent candidates like Nader/Gonzalez get these days but how much time TV hosts like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have to talk about the latest round of ads from McCain/Obama; Maddow’s segment with Ron Paul on October 30th was getting interesting when she abruptly ended the segment without any real discussion of the issues Paul raised). Media buys are horribly expensive (particularly for cash-strapped small campaigns) and TV debate coverage is prejudicial and unreliable. Sometimes TV debates are canceled when participants don’t meet capricious qualifications (like the New York anti-war candidate, Jonathan Tasini, who couldn’t debate Hilary Clinton for US Senate because he hadn’t raised enough money, or the CPD restrictions which are set to keep everyone but the two major-party candidates out). Or sometimes they’re canceled when media outlets don’t want to push for broadening the terms of allowable debate (like when Google recently canceled its debate because Sen. Obama refused to appear; probably because Google would have had him debate Ralph Nader).

Today’s Democracy Now! program put to shame the corporate media and corporate-run so-called debates (run through the Commission on Public Debates) and did it in one hour (including breaks and headline news coverage).

Senators Obama and McCain get plenty of time for lame topics like negative campaigning but third-party and independent candidates get a virtual media blackout. McCain lamented that this “very tough” campaign “could have done at least ten [town hall meetings] by now” but it’s a safe bet that neither McCain nor Obama would have debated anyone but each other in order to narrow the terms of allowable debate. According to Ralph Nader, Google cancelled its debate (where it looked like Nader would have been included) when Obama pulled out. McCain/Obama ignore salient issues as well: discussion of the invasion and occupation of Iraq was scarce, the war in Afghanistan was unmentioned. These two wars are worth trillions of dollars that could have been better spent at home delivering exactly the kind of health care plan both corporate candidacies run from: single-payer universal health care (McCain tries to attack Obama from the left on this and Obama flees from identification with single-payer universal health care despite that’s what a majority of the US public wants). Meanwhile, both McCain and Obama are for giving $700B to corporations under the control of an unelected Goldman Sachs businessman who won’t so much as appear in a public hearing.

DN! invited Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, Independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney to respond to the same questions put to the Democratic and Republican nominees. Barr and Baldwin couldn’t appear so we got to hear from Nader and McKinney.

I highly recommend watching or hearing what these candidates have to say (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript). These are the views you won’t get to hear on the mainstream corporate-led media.

Amy Goodman also announced that she’ll be moderating the third-party candidate debate from 7:00 to 9:00 on October 19th. I hope Nader will participate in that event and I look forward to learning more about the excluded candidates from their own words.

Sen. Obama (D-IL) can see to them both. Both corporate US presidential candidates have been upfront about their shared allegiance to so-called “clean coal” (one of many important points on which the two major party candidates agree) but the corporate press won’t tell you what that phrase really means. On 2008 October 7, Democracy Now! hosted a debate between Joe Lucas, a spokesperson for the “clean coal” campaign, and Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network and author of the new book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript).

Counterpunch.org has the scoop on one of Obama’s other major campaign funders—Exelon:

In 2006 Obama took up the cause of Illinois residents who were angry with Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power plant operator, for not having disclosed a leak at one of their nuclear plants in the state. Obama responded by quickly introducing a bill that would require nuclear facilities to immediately notify state and federal agencies of all leaks, large or small.

At first it seemed Obama was intent on making a change in the reporting protocol, even demonizing Exelon’s inaction in the press. But Obama could only go so far, as Exelon executives, including Chairman John W. Rowe who serves as a key lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Lobby, have long been campaign backers, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars dating back to Obama’s days in the Illinois State Legislature.

Despite his initial push to advance the legislation, Obama’s office eventually rewrote the bill, producing a version that was palatable to Exelon and the rest of the nuclear industry. “Senator Obama’s staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, we could see it weakening with each successive draft,” said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Illinois, where the nuclear leaks had polluted local ground water. “The teeth were just taken out of it.”

Inevitably the bill died a slow death in the Senate. And like an experienced political operative, Obama came out of the battle as a martyr for both sides of the cause. His constituents back in Illinois thought he fought a good fight while industry insiders knew the Obama machine was worth investing in.

Obama’s campaign wallet, while rich with millions from small online donations, is also bulging from $227,000 in contributions given by employees of Exelon. Two of Obama’s largest campaign fundraisers include Frank M. Clark and John W. Rogers Jr., both top Exelon officials. Even Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, has done consulting work for the company.

During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions “on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable — and realistic — for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration.” Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry’s top trade publication, praised the senator. “Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of ‘common sense solutions’. And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind.”

The rising star of the Democratic Party’s ties to the nuclear industry run deep indeed, but Obama may not only be loyal to Exelon and friends.

Exelon is also a major backer of Rep. Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL) campaign.