Friday, June 04, 2004

Election Reform 2004 -- Republican and Democratic Women Are Being Discriminated Against by Robert Wilkinson Well, women ARE being discriminated against. Given they are over half the population of our country, women are woefully underrepresented in Congress. The idea that we shoulld have over 230 women in the House and over 50 in the Senate might scare more than a few good old boys. Personally, I think it's a good idea, since it would definitely open up the dialogue about such trivial things as the domestic budget priorities, public health, universal health care, and other true family values that usually go unnoticed by our present male dominated Congress. It's usually the female Senators who do the admirable job of reminding the more enthused in our Congress that we need to maintain at least a little budget sanity along with our humanity. I noticed that a woman, Stephanie Herseth, was elected to the single seat in the House of Representatives apportioned to South Dakota. Though it's based on population, it seems unlikely that people in South Dakota (and other states as well) are fairly represented in Washington DC if they only have one or two members in the House. It seems like there should be at least 3 for each state. The Senate was apportioned without regard to population. It seems that this is actually a good argument for tripling the size of the House of Representatives, which of course would be an excellent to give we the people more representation and the present closed game would be opened up to a lot of other people, helping the economy and creating jobs in many ways. And while we're at it, it's a great argument for apportioning 1/3 of House and Senate seats for men, 1/3 for women, and 1/3 open in which both genders could compete. That way there would never be more than a 2/3 - 1/3 inequity, regardless of who occupied which seat. What do you think? 10:33:10 AM

The Socialist and Trotskyite roots of the Neoconservative movement by Robert Wilkinson I'm not sure I agree with the assessment in this article from The Weekly Dig that the Neocons represent a "victory of conservatism in American political life - and the failure to form a meaningful opposition. The far right views of the neocons have come to define the Republican Party as it made its resurgence in America, but they retain the core conservative views as well." In fact, the Neocons have very few if any traditional conservative values, as was illustrated in an article posted here not long ago. However, they do have their roots in Socialism and even Communism. Their philosophical godfather, Leon Trotsky, was the founder of the Red Army and one of the driving forces behind the Russian Revolution. So really, a better name for them is "NeoSocialists," since their policies resemble more a corporate Socialism draped in an ultra-patriotic veneer. Of course, they've amalgamed the whole thing into a mutant form of state-sponsored religious corporatism, so they're not really Socialists in a traditional sense. So in the "looking glass" world we live in, perhaps they are "Neofascists?" So here "left" meets "right" in a totalitarian soup that is bankrupting our country, destroying other countries, alienating others, and generally behaving like the proverbial "bull in a china shop." They may have a vision, but they don't have a clue. 8:15:58 AM

© Copyright 2006 Robert Wilkinson. Last update: 8/27/2006; 10:44:05 AM.