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Vol. 10 No 16...Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race... 04-20-07
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Table of Contents

1. Intuit's Vibe...The Butterfly...By John Burl Smith
2. News You Use...Buying the War
3. Bit of History...United States Electoral College
4. Disgruntled
5. Politics Y2K7...No Democracy in DC
6. Hood Notes...Ending Electoral College
7. Venue for an Artist...Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (Excerpt)
...By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
8. Mailbox
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Intuit's Vibe
The Butterfly
By John Burl Smith

The butterfly said it was going to be alright!
It spoke in unguarded tones.
Willing hearts do fly free.
I was once a grub like thee.

The greatest struggle is always within.
There in the chrysalis you are what life was.
No more what you thought life made you.
Now something strange and unfamiliar is growing too.

The butterfly said it was going to be alright!
It flapped its wings saying of its action.
That is what I feared that day
when pain took my thoughts away.
As you, once despaired
over what was happening caused me a fray.

Overpowering at times I am sure.
The mind is only capable
of grasping the possibilities imagined.
The vision of focus is not tomorrow but today.
Whatever becomes must be composed of your clay.

The butterfly said it was going to be alright!
It flashed a rainbow of color
from its beautiful black wings.
Here take this inspiration to paint your world.
It is your radiance and brilliance
when you emerge from your shell.

Know that fear grips tightly
while struggle amplifies pain.
A condition of life that is our mortal coil not a stain.
We must feel to know we are real.
Your wings with strength
the spread will lift you above the dread.

This is what the butterfly said of this time.
The family of grubs left behind
will not know you are fine.
Appearing at this off season a warmer month
usually bids bonjour, comment allez-vous.
The chrysalis awaits all grubs,
a butterfly I know the reality
for me is the same for you.

News You Use
Buying the War

"Iraq is part of a war on terror. It's a country that trains terrorists.
It's a country that can arm terrorists. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are
a direct threat to this country." George W. Bush

Buying the War is a must see documentary by Bill Moyers that examines how
the Bush administration, with media complicity, used lies, fear and
propaganda to sell the war against Iraq. According to David Swanson, who
has previewed the documentary, "The claims that the White House made were
not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were
transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and
misdemeanors."

Moyers interviews key media players, including Dan Rather, formerly of
CBS, Tim Russert of Meet the Press, and Walter Isaacson, former president
of CNN, that did not question the administration's case for war. In
contrast to the media cheering section, Moyers interviews Bob Simon of 60
Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, and John Walcott and Warren
Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers on their investigative efforts to
determine whether there was any evidence to support Bush's case for war.

Every citizen in this country is responsible for the carnage in Iraq. It
is our duty to know the facts and work to correct this situation. A good
place to start is a look back with "Buying the War." The PBS website at
www.pbs.org lists the program's air date as Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 9
PM. Viewers are advised to check local listings for the date and time in
their broadcast area. PBS Channel 8, which covers the metro Atlanta area,
will air the program on Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 2:30 PM. Check your
local listing and mark your calendar.

Bit of History
United States Electoral College

According to Article II, Section 1, Clause II of the Constitution, "Each
state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,
a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no
Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit
under the United States, shall be appointed an elector."

Not an academic institution, Electoral College refers to the indirect
process established by the Founding Fathers to elect the US President and
Vice President. In fact, the nation's founders wanted to avoid majority
rule. Thus, under the original US Constitution, only members of the House
of Representatives were directly elected by the people, i.e., white male
property owners. Members of the Senate were chosen by state legislatures,
the President by electors, and the judiciary by the President and the
Senate. For the Founding Fathers, the system of electors diluted the
votes of large states, allowed the incorporation of the three-fifths
compromise into the process of choosing the nation's chief executive and
ended the large-small and free-slave controversy over representation.

In the original Constitution, only the term "electors" appears. Electoral
College, the name given to the group of presidential electors that are
chosen every four years by popular vote in each state on Election Day,
came into general usage in the early 1800s and was first written into
Federal law in 1845. Electors cast the official votes for President and
Vice President. Today, the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4. The Electoral
College is administered at the national level by the National Archives and
Records Administration via its Office of the Federal Register.

The electoral process was modified in 1804 with the ratification of the
12th Amendment and again in 1961 with the ratification of the 23rd
Amendment, which allocated to the District of Columbia as many electors as
it would have if it were a state, except that it cannot have more than the
least populous state. The least populous state (currently Wyoming) has 3
electors.

Since the election of 1964, the size of the electoral college has been set
at 538, which is equal to the 100 Senators, 435 Representatives and 3
electors allocated to the District of Columbia. A candidate must receive
a majority of electoral college votes to win the presidency. If no one
receives a majority, the election is determined by Congress (the House for
presidential candidates, the Senate for vice presidential candidates).
The House of Representatives has elected the President on two occasions,
in 1801 and in 1825. The Senate has chosen the Vice President once, in
1837.

Under the current system, the vote of an individual living in a state with
three electoral votes is proportionally more influential than the vote of
an individual living in a state with a large number of electoral votes.
While the popular vote is calculated, it does not determine the winner of
the election. In the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000, the
candidate who received the popular vote did not become president. Of these
four national elections, only the 1824 election was decided by Congress.
In the case of Rutherford B. Hays (1876) and Benjamin Harrison (1888) both
lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college. Violence and
fraud prevented many blacks and white Republicans from voting in Southern
states in these elections. In 2000, George W. Bush received a majority of
electoral college votes after the Supreme Court stopped the Florida vote
recount.

The college is usually made up of party regulars whose candidate wins each
state. (Sources: Encyclopedia Americana and http://en.wikipedia.org/)

Disgruntled wants to know: Reporting from Baghdad, CNN's Kera Phillips
revealed another tragic side of the illegal war and occupation of that
sovereign country. For pennies a pill, all kinds of prescription
medication is available to citizens of this troubled nation, even
psychotropic drugs without prescriptions. While we may not know for years
to come all the kinds of drugs the Columbine killers were out of their
minds on, hints that the Virginia Tech suicide killer was on some kind of
prescribed psycho medication should come as no surprise. Question is, by
allowing the free flow of these kinds of drugs in Iraq, is the US aiding
and abetting suicide attacks?

Disgruntled feels: Obscene! While the various presidential candidates
are being praised for their prowess at raising money, the obscene sums
amassed do not restore confidence in the electoral process. To the
contrary, all this money shows the rich will still control this
government, regardless of the candidate that "wins" in November 2008.
This is the best government money can buy! It is obscene, a real tragedy.
To call it a democracy, even a representative one, does the term a
disservice.

Disgruntled says: In taking its hard turn to the right, the Bush
administration is being credited with trashing the Department of Justice,
especially the Civil Rights Division. Morale is at an all-time low,
especially among career DOJ employees, as inexperienced Bush political
appointees have disregarded past practices, eschewed the rule of law and
demonstrated more interest in achieving a narrow political agenda than
meting out justice.

Politics Y2K7
No Democracy in DC

On Monday (4-16-07), thousands of District of Columbia (DC) residents
celebrated Emancipation Day by marching in support of the DC Voting Rights
Act, which if passed by Congress and signed into law by the president will
give the district voting representation in Congress. At present, its more
than 500,000 residents are represented in Congress by Delegate Eleanor
Holmes Norton (D), who can cast votes in committee, but cannot vote on
measures on the House floor.

In effect, residents of majority black Washington, DC, the nation's
capitol, pay taxes, but do not enjoy voting representation in the
legislative body that decides important national issues of life and death.
On more than one occasion, Delegate Norton has said she believes race is
the basis for the Congress' historic denial of full representation in
Congress for DC residents.

A number of organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil
Rights, DC For Democracy, People For the American Way, Common Cause, NOW,
League of Women Voters and MoveOn.org, helped organize this march.
Marchers gathered at Freedom Plaza; braving a cold drizzle and winds of up
to 60 miles per hour, they marched to the Capitol Reflecting Pool, where a
rally was held. Speakers, including DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, members of
Congress and civil rights leaders, highlighted the hypocrisy of US efforts
to export democracy abroad while denying more than half a million DC
residents congressional representation.

The DC voting rights bill before Congress would treat DC much like a small
state with two US Senators and one US Representative. It would also give
Utah an additional seat in the House, bringing the total number of
Electoral College votes to 539. On Thursday, the measure is scheduled to
come to the House floor for a vote; it is expected to pass.

Hood Notes
Ending Electoral College

The Electoral College is antithetical to the concept of one-person,
one-vote democracy. Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law a bill
that makes Maryland the first state to pass a measure that could
effectively end the electoral college. The interstate compact bill allows
the state to cast its electoral votes for the presidential candidate that
wins the national popular vote. Before the law goes into effect, enough
states to comprise a majority of the electoral college votes (270) must
pass similar measures.

The bill's sponsor, Maryland state Sen. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and
constitutional law professor at American University, noted, "The electoral
college is intertwined with slavery. It worked like a dream for the slave
owners, because each slave, which was denied citizenship and voting
rights, counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of
apportioning House seats. And that increased a slave state's electoral
votes." Indeed, according to Sen. Raskin, the current winner-take-all
system, in which the candidate who wins a majority of a state's citizen's
votes wins every one of its electoral votes, evolved as states,
particularly slave states, vied for power leading up to the Civil War.

To the dismay of many Californians, last fall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
(R) vetoed an identical bill. In general, Republicans oppose ending the
electoral college, which dilutes the votes of big population centers that
tend to favor Democrats. The Hawaii Legislature last week voted to join
the interstate compact; Republican Gov. Linda Lingle has not signed the
measure.

The popular vote concept enjoys broad-based appeal. More states are
expected to entertain similar legislation in the lead up to the national
election.

Venue for an Artist
Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (Excerpt)
By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's
happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody
murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state
right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and
we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But
instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the
politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be
kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound
bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and
maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country
anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore
the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.
Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the
wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders
are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in
Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And
the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not
the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call
yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and
willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're
eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to, as
soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them
to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I
think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight
shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least
it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they
don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their
interests.

Hey, America, wake up! These guys work for us. Who Are These Guys,
Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in
Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll
tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution.
We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us
are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come
from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all
the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an
intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this
stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common
principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us
stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln?
What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There
was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up
and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.orlandosentinel.com ...Thousands of felons to regain civil
rights...by Jason Garcia and Maya Bell...In what supporters called a
historic change, Gov. Charlie Crist and the state clemency board agreed
Thursday to restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of felons. The
decision overhauls Florida's Reconstruction-era laws stripping felons of
their civil rights. Florida had been one of three states to permanently
revoke civil rights from felons, and the law became a issue after the
botched 2000 presidential election. Today, there are as many as 950,000
felons in Florida, according to one recent estimate, though state
officials Thursday put the figure at 628,000.

Email www.legitgov.org...Articles of Impeachment to Be Filed On Cheney...
By Mary Ann Akers...Rep. Dennis Kucinich...declared in a letter to his
Democratic colleagues that he plans to file articles of impeachment
against Dick Cheney...Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution gives
Congress the authority to impeach the president, vice president and "all
civil Officers of the United States" for "treason, bribery, or other high
Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Email www.presstv.ir ...Blix: US must halt own nuke program...The head of
the UN Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Hans Blix, has said that
the US should stop proliferating nuclear weapons. At a ceremony in Madrid
for the release of his book titled "Weapons of Terror" Blix said that if
the US genuinely wants to prevent the proliferation of other nation's
nuclear programs, it should present itself as a role model and
"completely" halt the development of its nuclear arms.

ends

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