In article .com>,
blnder wrote:
>
>It will not happen. Bush has set us back to the dark days of Reagan--
>and then some.
>
>And there's no more "voting out" nor "voting in" people. They are all
>one party- The Greed Party.
>
>We live in a country with NO opposition party. It is a joke. The
>"democrat v republican" debate is a charade- to make us think they care
>about us.
>
>And thank the U.S. corporate media (part of the problem) for not
>reporting any of this-- nor exposing it.
>
>An oligarchy. That's what the U.S. is now.
>
>Most Americans are too naive to grasp this reality.

Some hope remains: Primary elections! Where worse offenders lose to
challengers within their parties!
Do you get your butt off the chair or the driver's seat to vote in
those, especially in years other than one that is a multiple of 4 with a
second-termer in the Oval Office?

The good news that I hope catches on comes from *of all places* the US
state that has most of its land area sometimes said to be more like
Alabama than Alabama is, and as far as I have heard the only 1 of all 50
that has no lobbyist disclosure law covering all state politicians!

That state had a sneaky state government pay raise that raises pay of
those who had a chance to vote on it before they survived re-election
(which is against the state constitution), and did so in a convoluted way
that was convoluted ("unvouchered expenses") so as to have some chance of
being upheld by state supreme court judges (who also benefited from this
pay raise legislation).

Last November, a state supreme court judge who voted to uphold that in a
court case lost a retention election - second time in state history.
Another state supreme court judge voting in favor of upholding that pay
raise and being up for a retention election survived it by a historically
low margin.

But back to primary elections: About a dozen state legislators lost to
same-party challengers in these, including the top 2 ranking state
senators!

That state is Pennsylvania.

Oh, the top rank member of PA's lower house of legislative branch?
Survived - and I believe because his district is in Philadelphia.
What else about Philadelphia he
Biggest primary election challenge on the basis of incumbent voting for
this pay raise had the incumbent surviving by a few percent.
The Philadelphia one that looked most likely to go in favor of the
challenger (too close to call for a while and I did not check into late
official/final tallies) was mentioned in the newspapers as being decided
more by race than on the pay raise issue.
And the supreme court judge that lost the retention election had the
votes from Philadelphia being in his favor.
So much for Philadelphia being better than "more like Alabama than
Alabama is"!

- Don Klipstein )