http://www.themilitant.com/…

The Socialist Workers National Campaign Committee filed a request with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) October 30 for a renewal of its exemption from requirements to report the names of financial contributors.

The party’s exemption request is part of the fight of workers, farmers, and their organizations to be able to engage in political activity, including election campaigns, free from government, boss, and right-wing spying and harassment.

The request was filed on the party’s behalf by attorneys Michael Krinsky and Lindsey Frank of the internationally renowned law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman.

The FEC has continuously granted six-year exemptions to the SWP’s campaign committees since 1979, most recently in 2003.

In this year’s request to the FEC, 62 incidents of harassment from 2002 until 2008 are documented, including “physical attacks on SWP campaign supporters and offices, threatening mail and telephone calls, job firings and discrimination, and harassment of SWP supporters and campaign efforts by federal and local law enforcement as well as private individuals.”

Among the incidents:

• The Sept. 11, 2004, firebombing of the SWP campaign offices in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. A brick wrapped in incendiary material was thrown into the display window featuring campaign materials and political books, setting the headquarters on fire and threatening the lives of people living in the apartment upstairs.
• On May 16, 2007, two FBI agents arrived unannounced at the home of David Arguello, the 2006 SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in San Diego, California, on the pretense that they had information from an anonymous source that he advocated violence against the U.S government. The FBI agents interrogated Arguello about his political views and activities and his interest in unionizing his workplace.
• In October 2005, Lisa Potash, Socialist Workers candidate for president of the city council in Atlanta, Georgia, was fired from her job at Hormel Meats Corporation after her campaign was widely publicized in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

If their community has news sites called The Militant its not entirely surprising that one of their candidates was approached about advocating violence.

It seems odd to me that anyone would care that there were self described socialists. I’d think “capitalists” are hated moreso right now and you don’t hear of their homes being firebombed. Especially considering the president elect is practically a Fabian.

http://www.ballot-access.org/…

In every presidential election starting in 1888, at least one socialist party has participated. The Socialist Labor Party ran a slate of unpledged presidential electors in 1888 in New York state.

If one adds together the presidential vote of all the parties with these words in their party name: “Socialist”, “Communist”, “Socialism” and “Workers”, and calculates the percentage of the vote cast for such parties for president, one finds that the lowest percentage in history was in 2000, when such parties polled less than .02% of the vote. 2008 appears likely to be the second such presidential election. The combined vote in 2008 for the Socialist Workers, Socialist, and Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidates appears to be just barely under .02% (specifically, .019%). The worst year for such parties for president was 2000, when it was only .017%. In 2004 the percentage was .021%.

That’s because the major parties adopted the palatable parts of their platform.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
– Norman Thomas

http://www.ballot-access.org/…

This year, 23 presidential candidates are on the ballot in at least one state. That is the highest in U.S. history except for 1992, when there were also 23. Generally there are more such candidates in periods of great public unhappiness.

Here is a list, with the predominant party label for each, and the percentage of the voters that will see their names on the ballot:

Barack Obama, Democratic, 100.0%
John McCain, Republican, 100.0%
Bob Barr, Libertarian, 94.5%
Ralph Nader, independent, 85.2%
Cynthia McKinney, Green, 70.5%
Chuck Baldwin, Constitution, 59.8%
Gloria La Riva, Socialism and Liberation, 26.8%
Roger Calero or his stand-in James Harris, Socialist Workers, 25.0%
Brian Moore, Socialist, 21.5%
Alan Keyes, America’s Independent Party, 18.1%
Charles Jay, Boston Tea, 10.0%
Gene Amondson, Prohibition, 9.6%
Thomas Robert Stevens, Objectivist, 8.0%
Richard Duncan, independent, 4.6%
John Joseph Polachek, New, 4.3%
Jeffrey Boss, Vote Here, 3.0%
Jeffrey Wamboldt, We the People, 2.5%
Ron Paul, Taxpayers/Constitution, 2.0%
Jonathan E. Allen, HeartQuake ‘08, 1.7%
Bradford Lyttle, U.S. Pacifist, 1.7%
Frank McEnulty, unaffiliated, 1.7%
Ted Weill, Reform, .9%
George Phillies, Libertarian, .6%

Poor George Phillies at the bottom. I would vote for him or Paul if available in New Jersey. Sadly they are not.

http://www.ballot-access.org/…

On October 6, Survey USA released a poll for the New Hampshire U.S. Senate race. It shows: Shaheen (Dem.) 48%, Sununu (Rep.) 40%, Blevens (Libt.) 7%, undecided 5%.

If Ken Blevens polls as much as 4%, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party will once again be ballot-qualified. It was ballot qualified between November 1990 and November 1996, back when the vote test was 3%. In 1997 the New Hampshire legislature raised the vote test to 4%, but expanded the vote test so that U.S. Senate would count, instead of just Governor. In the entire history of popular elections for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, no independent or minor party candidate for U.S. Senate ever polled as much as 4%, except that Blevens himself polled 4.53% for U.S. Senate in 1996. However, the 1997 law change was written so that Blevens’ polling over 4% in 1996 did not count toward making the party ballot-qualified.

In the entire nation, the best Libertarian showing in a U.S. Senate race with both a Democrat and a Republican in the race was in 2000 in Massachusetts, when Carla Howell polled 11.9%.

The reason I post this story at all is due to what I emphasized above. Many many people think that political rules are uniform and that the reason third parties don’t do better is purely due to lack of interest by the public.

As one can see here, likely as a result of Blevens doing well enough to make a significant impact on an election, the rules were made more strict. The Ds and Rs do their best to keep third parties as insignificant as possible by making asymmetrical laws which are completely biased in favor of those already in the majority. Worse still is the biased enforcement of those laws. Should the Ds and Rs break them the courts rule in favor of them. Should a third party, more often than not, they are ruled against. Take for instance the issues in Texas where the Ds and Rs submitted candidates after the deadline. The Barr campaign took it to court and lost. In West Virgina where the LP was unable to get enough signatures in time for the deadline but did within a few days was disallowed from the ballot. Then you have places like Pennsylvania where the Rs are suing to keep Barr off the ballot and Louisiana were the Socialist party and Libertarian Party were just bumped off. The former not being able to get back on.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/…

I know some of you will say, ‘Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?’ That’s a damn good question. In November of ‘06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I’ll tell you why. Because I can’t stand one more friggin’ minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I’m almost at the point where I don’t care if the Democrats don’t have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain’t “Bush” and the word “Republican” is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that’s good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That’s why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters — that big “D” on the ballot.Don’t get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that’ll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

He calls out Hillary for making race an issue and he goes and uses party bigotry instead. As if the D’s are better. As if the parties contain members of uniform belief. Because Ron Paul and John McCain have the same platform. Or Mike Gravel or Denis Kucinich and Obama or Clinton. If this guy wants a 3rd party to succeed why not find a candidate in the Green, Libertarian, Socialist, or other party to back? He is a collectivist so I understand it’s difficult for him to look at individuals instead of arbitrary groups but it’s still sad that these people who claim to be disgusted with business as usual continues to play the game as usual.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there.

As if Moore gives a shit about the Constitution. His policy surely doesn’t indicate it. He has little concern for individual liberty or hardly any of the intentions of the Constitutions.

I like what MooreWatch.com points out:

Michael Moore has endorsed Obama.  This should be the death knell for the Obama campaign, since not a single candidate for political office endorsed by Michael Moore has ever won.  The endorsement is aboout what you’d expect, the usual nonsensical ramblings of a multimillionaire socialist.  Read it yourself if you like, I just want to make a couple of observations.

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan.

No you don’t, Michael, you live in a penthouse in Manhattan.  Jim and I know your home address.  You own property in a swanky part of Michigan.  (You know, where you held your film festival, rather than in Flint, the town you claim to come from but don’t.  Why help out the disadvantaged in Flint when you can suck up to the rest of the millionaire liberals who own gigantic private estates?) So, either you’re registered to vote in two places (New York and Michigan) or you’re lying your ass off to perpetuate the farcical image of yourself as an average Joe.  Both of these sound equally plausible.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years.

And here we see the classic liberal self-image as a pathetic waif being beaten by an all-powerful machine.  This is one of the things I find more vulgar and disgusting about liberalism than anything else, their incessant need to view themselves as victims.  I guess this is why they believe that the government is the solution to ever conceivable problem.  If people weren’t pathetic victims they might be able to find solutions to some of their own problems, and if that were to happen (God forbid!) it would deny liberals the ability to derive self-satisfaction from pointing to a government program and saying, “See what a wonderful person I am?  I supported that proposal!”

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country.

Thus says a guy who has made himself filthy, stinking rich by working with massive corporations.  But let’s not let a little rank hypocrisy get in the way of your own perceived sense of victimhood, huh Mike?  Just keep dressing like a slob and wearing your baseball caps, the world is full of idiots who will actually buy your little persona.

http://www.ballot-access.org/…

http://www.wcax.com/…

A (New Hampshire) judge has struck down a new law that allowed the state to sell detailed voter information only to major political parties.

Judge Carol Ann Conboy wrote that the law put small parties at a distinct disadvantage.

Before the law went into effect in July, most voter data, such as name and party registration history, had been available only on a town-by-town basis. Under the law, the information was available statewide, but only to parties that have received 4% of the vote in a statewide contest. In New Hampshire, that meant only the Democrats and Republicans.

I got into a discussion at Thanksgiving dinner about ‘wasted votes’ and how a vote for Ron Paul or the Libertarian candidate would be one. The arguments went that a vote for either would siphon votes from the person you dislike least of those who ‘have a chance.’ That reasoning makes no sense to me. Who defines who has a chance? The media? If everyone followed that reasoning it would only take a single individual to claim who could win and everyone else would need to vote for that person. When do you determine who to vote for? Do I support Ron Paul and attempt to get his name an platform out to the voters until the very second I vote for Rudy? Why would anyone invest the time into supporting a candidate they feel more closely matches their beliefs just to vote otherwise? They won’t… and that will create the self fulfilling situation of the ‘one who can win’ winning. Let us not forget that rarely is the propagation of information linear. If I’d never bothered to look into Ron Paul my family would have unlikely had shown any interest in him (not that necessarily support him now.) As support increases so does the acceleration and that will give credibility to the campaign… which unfortunately many people use as a major component in deciding who they will vote for. But even if you ignore all that, which is a major component IMO, there are black and white reasons why third party votes are not wasted. Statutes like this one in NH and the one in NJ and in so many other jurisdictions create completely biased environments for the other partys and independents. You can’t have the government provided tools to help you raise awareness of your party or it’s candidates until you raise awareness of your party. But for those who already have the awareness and means… we’ll subsidize them. Doesn’t seem fair and it’s surely not equal. If any vote is wasted it is when it comes to the popular vote for POTUS where most states’ electors vote with the majority. If 50% of NJ goes D than all those R votes above 5% are a waste… but with laws like the one in the article in effect a vote for Libertarian or Green or Constitution or Socialist wouldn’t be. You’d be helping to level the playing field.