Early voting in Austin, TX

Some notes from the Texas primaries:

In Texas early voting has been going on for more than a week, and early voting stations have opened, campaign signs have proliferated, telephones have been ringing all over the state leaving automated messages and mailboxes are stuffed with campaign ads. In addition to the regular early voting locations on some university campuses, government buildings and shopping centers, there are also early mobile voting stations, they set up for one day in varied locations around Austin and today one of them was at the psychiatric hospital where I work. While mobile voting provided a convenient place for us to vote, the main impetus for making the Austin State Hospital a mobile voting location was to give the patients we serve that very same opportunity. So my colleagues and I were glad to vote there today and hopefully we will continue to host these polling stations in future elections as well.

From my own nonscientific observations, of the eight or so individuals voting at the same time that I was, none of them requested a Republican ballot. Of course, it is Austin. But I have heard that Democratic turnout has been huge all over the state. So much so that the local news station had to interrupt its nightly litany of children harmed by accidents or abuse, murders and fires to wonder whether the huge Democratic turnout could actually bode well for Democrats in state races as well – or as the news station put it, “could Texas go blue?” The next phase is on Tuesday (the official primary day), when precinct caucuses take place and more delegates are apportioned based on results of those caucuses.

About the Cleveland debate: Tim Russert is certainly dogged in his interrogation of the candidates. He is tenaciously grilling Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement. Obama has repudiated, rejected and complpetely denounced Farrakhan. If only Russert had used some of that tenaciousness instead of his lackluster interrogation of Cheney and other administration officials in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Of course, he is not the only media personality who dropped the ball in 2003. I suppose he is now making up for lost time.

Of meat and mortgages

The current recall of 143 million pounds of meat has caused an uproar over the abuse of sick animals at a California slaughterhouse. Local and national news outlets have shown videos of cows unable to walk being kicked, pushed and otherwise coerced to move through the slaughter process. The abuse of sickly animals is naturally repugnant, but amidst all of the outrage we hear not a word about the cruelty inherent in the factory feedlot process, where cows are crammed together and fed an unnatural diet of corn, hormones and antibiotics, followed by a torturous end on a slaughterhouse killing floor. Whether the animal is sick or not, the life of the factory cow is one of continuous abuse.

Of course the fact that the animals in the video were “downer cows” brings up the issue of food safety and the ability and/or willingness of our regulatory agencies to police the industries before an emergency occurs. Of the beef under recall, 40 % has been consumed, and 30% has not yet been found. A February 21st report on NPR notes that much of the beef in question was shipped to wholesalers, who then bundled it with other meat to produce sausages, burritos, meatballs, and other meat byproducts. So far there have been no reports of illness, but prion diseases like mad cow disease can take months or years to show up. The Agriculture Secretary noted that he did not think any increase in inspection regimens was necessary at this point. But what can we expect from an administration so antithetical to regulation of industry.

This bundling reminds me of that other bundling fiasco, also aided by regulatory indifference – wherein subprime mortgages were bundled with prime ones into mortgage backed securities, now causing so much havoc with the US economy. The downer cows of the mortgage world cannot be traced back to their origins either, and just like mad cow disease, their full impact could take years to ascertain. I don’t expect the gang in Washington to start regulating the very same financial services conglomerates they so abundantly gifted with the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Let’s hope that the next administration takes protection of the public more seriously than phony color coded alerts that divert our attention from real safety issues.

Supporting Obama

The Texas primary election is less that two weeks away, and I have been asked by those still pondering their vote how I arrived at my support for Barack Obama. So, in the interest of helping others to think through their own process, this is how I got here.

My support went originally to Dennis Kucinich. I admired his principled stand on issues ranging from the War in Iraq to single-payer health care to gay marriage. Some of my friends and acquaintances have called him a flake, I suppose for taking stands so far out of the mainstream that he could never get elected. And yet he spoke for a sizable portion of the Democratic party base, alienated by the centrist turn of the party. When he left the race, I switched my support to John Edwards who, while certainly an establishment candidate, spoke so eloquently and from the heart about poverty in this country and the need to alleviate it that I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he would truly put forth policies to end the country’s wealth disparities. John Edwards’ exit from the race left me with the choice between two centrist Democrats and the hope that they would somehow transcend the policies of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Barack Obama was not my first choice. In fact, I saw him as another centrist Democrat supported by corporate interests who was willing to let the very same insurance companies who had been gouging customers and denying coverage to desperate policy holders help set policies for universal healthcare. He and Senator Clinton have both received large contributions from financial services donors despite the fact that they have criticized the egregious Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 – legislation that has helped bring about usurious credit card interest rates and predatory lending practices of a deregulated financial services industry.

I did admire Senator Obama’s stance on the Iraq war, but not his support for Bush’s continuous requests for funding. Clearly, many are of the opinion that because our soldiers are in Iraq, we must continue to send money to keep them supplied and protected from the enemy. I think that any money we continue to sink into this war must go towards bringing our soldiers home – now. This is one of the main reasons I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton. Unlike many others, I do not hold her husband against her. I admired her attempts to bring universal healthcare to the country in the face of fierce opposition from the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, and it’s too bad that she is buckling to the very same lobbies with her current plan. Senator Clinton is also a supporter of NAFTA, a trade agreement that has caused economic calamity for many Mexicans and other Central Americans and contributed to their migration to the United States, with or without papers. Also, as a member of the US Senate Mrs. Clinton has staked a position as a foreign policy hawk, willing to continue on with the policies of American imperialism championed by her predecessors.

The choice between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama for me primarily comes down to this: I cannot vote for anyone who voted to give the megalomaniac Bush the power to attack a country that did not attack us, and then refused to recognize that their vote was in error. I realize that Senator Obama was not tested in the United States Senate on this issue but I am giving him the benefit of the doubt on this, just as I do for Senator Clinton on the 2005 bankruptcy bill that she was not present to vote for or against. The Iraq war issue is very important to me. Our military adventurism didn’t start with Bush, but to my mind it needs to stop with him. I would point out here that most of my family and many of my friends support Mrs. Clinton. They see her as more progressive on economic issues and health care reform and this may very well be the case. Many economists point out that her universal health care plan would cover most if not all of the uninsured. I appreciate this, but I also think that we must reign in our imperial ambitions, and that Senator Obama is our best chance here, especially with the huge number of progressive voters supporting him and ready to hold his feet to the fire – on military adventurism and the economy, presidential power and the influence of moneyed interests.

I have no illusions about either of the candidates. Whoever gets the nomination must face the ongoing scrutiny and if necessary the rebuke of an obviously revitalized grassroots base.