<http://www.freepress.org/index2.php> The Free Press: Speaking Truth to Power
<http://www.freepress.org/departments> Departments <http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19> Election Issues Will Al Gore face his inconvenient truths about our stolen elections? by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman May 18, 2007 Al Gore has just made his second major contribution to our national political dialog. His first, "An Inconvenient Truth," has helped make the perils of global warming real to the American mainstream. Now his "Assault on Reason" is excerpted in Time Magazine. With it he paints a compelling portrait of a democracy being obliterated by money and television. The content is very much on point. But the former Vice-President must finally face the huge personal responsibility he bears for much of the problem. First, he was an important party to the complex but catastrophic Telecommunications Act of 1996. This Clinton-era corporate goodie bag enabled a huge spike in the monopolization of the electronic media Gore now decries. To fight the problem, Gore should now become an active agent in reversing that horrific pro-monopoly give-away. He could fight to re-establish meaningful pluralistic media ownership and public access, and for reviving both the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Provision, which once guaranteed balance in media content. Second, Gore was victim of the theft of the election of 2000, but he also enabled it. In the entire history of the United States, few events have more deeply damaged our democracy than the stolen Florida vote count and warped Electoral College outcome that followed. The Electoral College was ostensibly designed at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to protect the rights of small states. But it also facilitated the ability of slaveowners to cast 3/5ths of a vote for each of their chattel. There are few more destructive monuments to electoral cynicism. Gore would be a welcome ally in finally ridding ourselves of this historic obscenity. After all, he won by half a million popular votes and "lost" the election. That Gore was victimized in 2000 was largely his own fault. Amidst the carefully choreographed chaos of the Florida 2000 vote count, the Gore campaign inexplicably asked for a recount only in four counties, rather than statewide. This was a miscalculation of epic proportions. In recent years it's been proven that Gore did win the legitimate Florida statewide vote count, and would have prevailed with a full and honest recount. The Florida 2000 recount was sabotaged by Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, as J. Kenneth Blackwell did again in Ohio 2004. In both cases, a very sophisticated GOP apparatus aided by key technicians from partisan voting machine companies, has been bound and determined to steal the presidency at any cost. Gore's actions on the 2000 recount might be discounted as a stategic failure. But they were followed by something much, much worse. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2600 Recommended Resources <http://www.kpfk.org/> http://www.kpfk.org/ <http://www.commondreams.org/> http://www.commondreams.org/ Ara [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
