Citizen Brand

Voting made easy

Today is election day across America.  It isn't a big election day in most places but there are a few governors being elected and a slew of local issues being decided.  In some states, some people have already voted since early voting is becoming more in vogue these days.  Some states are also becoming more lenient in allowing voters to register right up until election day.  But most still close down registration a few weeks before.

And why do we still have this patchwork quilt of voting laws in 2007?  We know why.  Because it has taken decades and decades of blood, sweat and tears to even get to the point today where we have made it possible for everyone over the age of 18 to have the right to vote, much less a uniform approach to how we actually vote in the individual 50 states.

That should be next on our voting rights agenda.  We need uniform laws across the nation that says we can register to vote year around, including on election day itself; that allows for us to vote early starting four weeks before election day; and that says everyone in a voting line at the time of polls closing in any state of the union will be given the right to cast their vote.  Should we consider allowing people to vote from home on the Internet?  It should be studied, but call me old fashioned because it seems to me we should have enough desire to participate in the electoral process that we can get out of our house or place of business to go join our fellow citizens and vote in our polling place.

One other issue that should be considered is the day we choose to vote.  Federal law in 1845 mandated elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  Tuesday was generally considered the best day of the week for a country that was then dominated by agriculture.  Obviously, things have changed a bit.  So, lets move elections to Saturday.  Some states do that now.  It might be worth a try to reflect where our country is today.

Regardless, we should all vote whenever we have the opportunity.

Beauty and the Beast

One of my favorite blogs to keep tabs on is National Parks Traveler.  Kurt and Jeremy frankly do the best job of any blog when it comes to covering their subject matter - our national parks.  If you don't read it, I encourage you to do so.

I took a virtual hike through NPT tonight and found a story that makes it clear that some people in our federal government simply have too much time on their hands.  It seems our intrepid department of Homeland Security thinks that perhaps Osama Bin Laden may be contemplating a move to one of the American national parks.  I jest of course, but what other reason would they have for dreaming up the concept of making all of us show a new federal Real ID in order to enter any of our national parks.

This Real ID would contain all of your personal information readable by bar code such as social security numbers; addresses; phone numbers; and, some day according to Jeremy, things like retinal scans for easy identification.  I love technology, but I also am a big fan of privacy and this concept is a bit on the big brother side of the equation.  Thank goodness there are about 600 organizations lining up against it including the National Association of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association and the National Library Association.

Check my ID when I get on planes, trains and cruise ships but I think we should be able to move freely about the last places in this country that are still the way they were before there was a Stars and Stripes.

Now to end this on a good note, check out this link to a book of Ansel Adams photographs of our national parks.  Glance at a few of his incredible images from our parks and the thought of a federal ID program to enter these incredible spaces seems ludicrous.

The Don Imus affair

Don Imus was wrong to say what he said.  The Rutger's womens basketball team is right to meet with him and start a conversation.  We need more of that around the issue of racism in America.  It still exists and we all know it.  We just don't want to talk about it.

As Michael Corleone said in "The Godfather" -- we are all part of the same hypocrisy.  Media pundit Jeff Greenfield hit the nail on the head when he appeared on The Don Imus Show on Tuesday morning.  Greenfield said he and everyone else who ever appeared on the Imus show never once stopped to say that perhaps the comedy on the program went over the edge.  Greenfield said his fellow pundits and the big time politicians love the Imus show because they have a chance to do long form interviews they can't do anywhere else.  Now, of course some of those same people are lashing out at Imus for what he said.

Regardless of our ethnicity, religion or any other label we can put on people, we all have been guilty of either making a bad comment about someone or sitting by quietly while others make comments.  That is the hypocrisy we all have to own up to.

There is another side to this whole incident.  And I will turn to Kansas City Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock to discuss it.  Please read this column.  It is worth the time.

Obama's Cash

Strategically waiting until everyone else in both parties had announced the size of their presidential campaign war chests, Barack Obama fired across Hillary's bow with a $25 million dollar cannon shot.

We are still 20 months from the election.  Give us strength.

Clinton vs. Romney

The first election returns are in for the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.  It's Hillary Clinton vs. Mitt Romney with Hillary getting the early nod.  Said another way - it's $26 million to $23 million in their respective campaign war chests.  And a vote will not be cast for another nine months or so.

2008 represents the first time since 1952 that neither party will have an incumbent president or vice president in the running.  That factor along with the truncated primary schedule next winter is the reason we are being exposed to the unprecedented level of campaigning we are seeing in the spring of 2007 for an election that will be in November of 2008.

Another interesting fact about this election is that with Hillary Clinton in the running, it could continue the string of presidential elections since 1980 that will include either a Bush or a Clinton as either a presidential or vice presidential candidate.  And as Brady points out, there could be another familiar name in the running in 2008.

I'm a political junkie, but even this early start is too much for me.  It makes me wonder if the ultimate winner in November of 2008 is someone we have yet to hear from.  The stacked schedule of primaries would seem to make it impossible for someone who has yet to announce their intentions be able to win.  But it is also possible that we all could grow weary of those already out there asking us for our votes - and our money.

RFK

I have been a lifelong Democrat.  My family, dating back to my grandfather, Ross Swenson, have always been Democrats.  I am also a fourth generation Kansan.  Kansas is considered a Republican state, but has had a unique history of electing Democrats as Governor, to Congress and a few other statewide offices.  So the election of 2006 is very interesting to me right now as the Democratic Party seems to have found its voice again.  We shall see.

Regardless of how you tend to vote, if you are a political junkie as I am, you will likely view the release of the movie, Bobby, as something to anticipate.  It is the story of a night when you can truly say history was changed.

It was June 4, 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy had just won the California presidential primary giving him the momentum he needed to capture the Democratic nomination for President and a date in November against the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.  RFK's was a candidacy of destiny.  He was in part fulfilling the unfinished Presidency of his brother John.  But he had his own agenda and his own voice that was finally being heard.  And as he spoke from the podium of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles that late spring evening, his voice was sure and his destiny seemed certain.

But it was 1968.  We were just weeks removed from the assassination of Martin Luther King.  It was Bobby Kennedy's voice that terrible night that tried to calm the nation.  We were a nation in turmoil.  We were in a war that had lasted too long.  We had internal strife over that war in Vietnam.  We had internal strife over racial issues that had been going on since the Civil War more than a hundred years before.  It was a time we needed a voice of reason and calm to help guide us through the confusion.

I was 12 years old the night Bobby Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  I went to sleep that night after hearing part of his victory speech claiming the California primary.  I awoke the next morning to the news that he had been shot and was near death.

Just two months before that, Bobby Kennedy shook my hand.  In 1968, at the age of 12, when an iconic figure such as Robert F. Kennedy shakes your hand, you do not ever forget it.  I remember that moment right now as if it were yesterday.

I wonder how a 12 year old thinks about our political leaders in 2006.  I fear that they don't have the same feelings that I had for Bobby Kennedy in 1968.  He was my first, and still, greatest political hero.  I believe to this day that our country and our world would have been different had he been elected President in 1968.

I will watch the movie Bobby when it comes out with a mixture of sadness and wonder.  It's a movie about the night RFK was killed which is sad.  But it will allow me the time to think about what might have been.  And it will reinforce to me how important it is for all of us to stay involved in our electoral process and vote for the people we think can make a difference.

Bobby Kennedy was shot on June 4, 1968 and history was forever altered.  But it also forever made me politically active.  For that, I have him to thank.

One man, one vote

He vetoed the stem cell bill.

The House of Representatives passed it 238-194.

The Senate passed it 63-37.

Bush vetoed it 1-0.

72 percent of Americans supported this bill that would save lives and improve the overall health of future generations.

This is one of the most absurd and tragic political events I have seen.  That includes Watergate.

Call or email your members of Congress and tell them to send him the same bill again.

Stem cells

Seriously.  President Bush is going to use his first ever veto on a bill that more than seven of every ten Americans support.  I have two comments.

First a political one.  Let's say for a moment that I'm advising a politician right now who can't find even four of every ten Americans who think he's doing a good job.  But he has the opportunity to sign a significant piece of legislation that more than seven of every ten Americans support, it would make me at least pause and consider advising my client to sign the bill.

Comment number two.  Setting aside petty political gains that could be made with a signature, this particular piece of legislation will also open the doors to real medical breakthroughs on a host of diseases that have plagued us for much too long.

That might be another reason to sign the stem cell bill.

Here are some links on this issue, including one from my brother Scott at rhrealitycheck.org, a site he helped create.

The American Diabetes Association has an on-line petition you can sign asking the President not to veto the bill.  My wife is diabetic and I just signed it.  Diabetes is one of the diseases that would be an early beneficiary of stem cell research.

Stemnews.com is a great resource that easily demonstrates the important progress than can be made with stem cell research.  Stemcellresearchfoundation.org is another good resource.

Mr. President, please sign this bill and be remembered as a leader who could admit a mistake, reverse course and launch an age of unprecedented medical progress.

Voting

I have no patience with people who do not vote in elections.  It is pathetic that the most powerful democracy in the history of the world has one of, if not the poorest voter turnout election after election.  There are no excuses anymore.  Registration has been made simpler and more accessible.  Early voting weeks ahead of the actual election day is becoming the norm in most states.  The only excuses left are laziness and apathy.

There is a great new website called PayAttention.org that makes it real clear what happens when people don't vote.  For example, we might get a Side of Hashbrowns elected.  It's a clever site with a serious message.

Let's try to work on our voter turnout this year.  Spread the word.  Voting does make a difference.  If you don't vote, you cannot complain about the outcome. 

Guns or Butter

It's the age old economic argument - guns or butter.

Now, Samuel Loewenberg tell us in Salon that the hunger season has come early in Niger, yet another African country facing a pandemic of hunger.  And the guns or butter debate has taken on a new dynamic.  He points out that any aid directed toward fighting hunger tends to go to those countries torn by war as opposed to those who are at peace.  Loewenberg writes:

"It is often worse for a starving child to live in a country at peace and with a stable government, because war-torn countries attract most of the funding, said Morris.  (James Morris, who heads the World Food Programme) The hundreds of millions suffering from simple poverty are overlooked. Meanwhile, sites of horrendous conflict like Darfur, in Sudan, receive media attention, but usually only of the "it's horrible and there's nothing we can do about it" kind.

But in the case of peaceful Niger, and its neighbors in Western and Southern Africa, there is something that can be done -- and relatively cheaply, at that. In the seven countries in Southern Africa facing a hunger crisis, for instance, the WFP needs $637 million to feed Southern Africans for the next three years. So far it has only half that amount. The absence of that money is catastrophic: In Zambia, food distributions were halved in the week before Christmas.

To put these millions of dollars in perspective, the cost of the occupation in Iraq is more than $150 million a day. So five days of war, a work week, would feed more than 12 million people for three years."

Ironic isn't it?  If you live in an African country, pick up a gun and start a skirmish, you are more likely to get food aid than if you don't pick up a gun.  And if we put our guns down in Iraq for one week, we could make at least a dent in the hunger pandemic that is decimating an entire continent.

It's obvious that governments cannot solve this problem.  Where are the corporations and nonprofits ready to partner to solve this most basic of causes in our world.