Feed items

War Criminal Condi Rice Coming To Portland, Oregon

Submitted by lonevet2008 on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 08:43

SPREAD THE WORD, PUT THIS OUT ON YOUR LIST, WE MUST MAKE LIFE HOT FOR THE WAR CRIMINALS AND THOSE WHO SUPPORT THEM. THIS EVENT IS SICK AND NEEDS A DOCTOR.

About the Event from PSU: "Portland State is pleased to honor the Melvin Mark and William Furman Families at its twelfth annual Simon Benson Awards Dinner, October 19, 2011. The event will take place at the Oregon Convention Center's Portland Ballroom, and will feature a compelling keynote address by former secretary of state, Dr. Condoleezza Rice."

So let me get this straight, Portland State University is going to bring a war criminal to give the keynote address to raise money for higher learning. This is outrageous and must be confronted at PSU and the Convention Center. Individuals For Justice will be spreading the word and will confront Rice when she arrives here in October.

War crime charge(s):

  1. Crime against peace – planning and carrying out a war of aggression.
  2. Complicity in the commission of a war crime – wanton destruction of cities and villages, evastation not justified by military necessity, ill-treatment of civilian population of or in occupied territory.
  3. Complicity in the commission of a war crime – torture, ill-treatment of detainees.

We will protest this event-meet us on October 19 Location: NE 1st Ave. and NE LLoyd Blvd, Convention Center Time 5:00 PM

The Theme is to call **condi a liar, that will be on my protest sign and the chant for the people going in to listen to her lies. We can tell people going in that what this monster is going to tell them is a lie.

Please get the word out now, talk to your friends and let us stand against this defective being coming to Portland. It is suspected she will get the same amount of money she received from Miami University $150,000. The president of PSU refuses to let us know what she is being paid; however we do not think she is going to give her talk below what Miami paid her.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2011/09/410164.shtml?discuss
http://individualsforjustice.com
http://warcriminalswatch.org

**Refuse to cap due to disrespect and/or disgust.

Why 3rd Parties?

Submitted by info on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 04:26

OPP member Barbara Ellis has put together a post explaining the purpose of 3rd parties for her political friends who still cling to the Democratic Party as the only hope Americans have for the nation's survival. Read on.

"...when the variety and number of political parties increases, the chance for oppression, factionalism, and nonskeptical acceptance of ideas decreases."-- James Madison

"The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day."-- Theodore Roosevelt

"How many more decades are we going to give them before we get rid of this least-worst, this lesser-of-two-evils mind set and start breaking this corporate grip . . . and have alternative candidates from alternative parties that stand as if people mattered first and foremost?"--Ralph Nader


Why Third Parties?

They rarely win, but 3rd party candidates are essential.

By ROBERT LONGLEY (About.com/Guide)

While their presidential candidates stand little chance of being elected, members of America's third parties have historically promoted concepts and policies that have been incorporated as important parts of our social and political lives. Here are some major examples:

Women's Right to Vote.  Both the Prohibition and Socialist Parties promoted women's suffrage during the late 1800's. By 1916, both Republicans and Democrats supported it and by 1920 the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote had been ratified.

Child Labor Laws.  The Socialist Party first advocated laws establishing minimum ages and limiting hours of work for American children in 1904. The Keating-Owen Act established such laws in 1916.

Immigration Restrictions.  The Immigration Act of 1924 came about as a result of support by the Populist Party starting as early as the early 1890's.

Reduction of Working Hours.  You can thank the Populist and Socialist Parties for the 40-hour work week. Their support for reduced working hours during the 1890's led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Income Tax.  In the 1890's, the Populist and Socialist Parties supported a "progressive" tax system that would base a person's tax liability on their amount of income. The idea led to ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913.

Social Security.  The Socialist Party also supported a fund to provide temporary compensation for the unemployed in the late 1920's. The idea led to the creation of laws establishing unemployment insurance and the Social Security Act of 1935.

Read more ...

Obama Caves on Clean Air

Submitted by info on Fri, 09/02/2011 - 16:42

Obama yields on smog rule in face of GOP demands
Julie Pace and Dina Cappiello, Associated Press
9/2/2011 WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a dramatic reversal, President Barack Obama on Friday scrubbed a clean-air regulation that aimed to reduce health-threatening smog, yielding to bitterly protesting businesses and congressional Republicans who complained the rule would kill jobs in America's ailing economy. Withdrawal of the proposed regulation marked the latest in a string of retreats by the president in the face of GOP opposition, and it drew quick criticism from liberals. Environmentalists, a key Obama constituency, accused him of caving to corporate polluters, and the American Lung Association threatened to restart the legal action it had begun against rules proposed by President George W. Bush.     Read more at AP

Obama: Man of Mystery

Submitted by info on Wed, 08/17/2011 - 15:54

American Extremists - How high?
How high?

Romney: "Corporations are people, my friend."

Submitted by info on Fri, 08/12/2011 - 16:18

Ted Rall Says It All

Submitted by info on Wed, 08/10/2011 - 18:03

Click on Cartoon for Bigger Image

Click on Cartoon for Bigger Image

Democratic Party Leaders Agree to Automatic Medicare Cut

Submitted by info on Mon, 08/01/2011 - 03:10

About a month ago, we revised our issues table on the front page of this website to show that the Progressive Party opposes cuts in Medicare, while the Democrats and Republicans do not. A prominent Democrat questioned our conclusion that the Democratic Party is in favor of Medicare cuts. We said, "Just wait and see."    Read more ...

Wanted: Candidates for U.S. Congress (to replace David Wu in the 1st District of Oregon)

Submitted by info on Sun, 07/31/2011 - 03:31

David Wu will soon resign as the U.S. Representative for the 1st District of Oregon.  Governor Kitzhaber must call a special election to fill the vacancy.  He says he will allow sufficient time for the major parties to conduct primaries, which means that the special election to fill the seat will take place sometime 80 days after Wu resigns.  A somewhat likely election date would be November 8, 2011, which is when the normal off-year election will occur in any event.

The Oregon Progressive Party has the right to place a candidate on the ballot for this seat.

The deadline for the Party to choose a candidate is to be set by the Secretary of State of Oregon.  It could be as soon as September 8.

The legal qualifications are simple.  The U.S. Constitution specifies:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

So a candidate needs to be at least 25 years old, a U.S. citizen for 7 years, and an inhabitant of Oregon at the time of the election.

There is no legal requirement that the candidate be a resident of the 1st District, but it would help.  Here is the current 1st Congressional District of Oregon Map, which we believe will not apply to the special election.  It zooms all the way in to the street level.  The District includes most of Portland west of the Willamette River as well as Clatsop, Columbia, Washington, and Yamhill Counties.  And here is the Redistricted Map of the 1st Congressional District of Oregon, which the redistricting law enacted by the 2011 Legislature indicates is in effect as of July 2011 for congressional elections.  The new boundary lines are very, very similar to the old ones, except that the new district will include the area between Scapoose and NW Portland that is currently in the 3rd District.

If you are interested in being the nominee of the Oregon Progressive Party, please fill out the short Candidate Questionnaire.

Establishment Professor Fiercely Denounces The Two Major Parties

Submitted by info on Sun, 07/24/2011 - 05:31

Budgetary Deceit and America's Decline

Jeffrey Sachs
Huffington Post
July 23, 2011

. . . Obama's campaign promise to "change Washington" looks like pure bait and switch. There has been no change, but rather more of the same: the Wall-Street-owned Democratic Party as we have come to know it. The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It's more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.

Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class. He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers' mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended. It's not hard to understand why. Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal. In America today, only the rich have political power.

Obama could have cut hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that has been wasted on America's disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, but here too it's been all bait and switch. Obama is either afraid to stand up to the Pentagon or is part of the same neoconservative outlook as his predecessor. The real cause hardly matters since the outcome is the same: America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush. Amazing but true. . . .

Who runs America today? The rich and the multinational corporations. Who runs the White House? David Plouffe, whose job it is to make sure that ever word, every action of the president is calculated for electoral gain rather than the country's needs. Who runs the Congress, on both sides of the aisle? The lobbyists, who win in every negotiation. And who loses? The American people, who have said repeatedly that they want a budget that sharply cuts the military, ends the wars, raises taxes on the rich, protects the poor and the middle class, and invests in America's future not just in Obama's speeches but in fact.

America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites. Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.  Read more ...

OPP Member Barbara Ellis Proposes a New WPA with 15 Million Jobs

Submitted by info on Sun, 07/24/2011 - 05:05

Put 15 Million Back to Work Fixing $2.2 Trillion in Infrastructure: the Works Progress Administration

[NOTE: The Oregon Progressive Party (OPP) has become the first party in the nation to endorse the resurrection of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) as a major solution to hiring millions of the 15 million unemployed to work on the $2.2 trillion needed repairs on America's infrastructure.

The author of this article is Barbara G. Ellis, an OPP member. It appeared in TruthOut, a major internet new/analysis website dealing with progressive issues. The first third of the article involves the current spate of nationally known columnists strongly urging a WPA-II: Paul Krugman, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Bob Herbert, Rich Lowry, Michael Moore, and others. The middle third gives a brief history of the WPA and its accomplishments during the Great Depression. And the last third includes a suggested plan for the program to be implemented under the co-direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Navy’s Seabees (the construction batallion).

The Corps of Engineers directed the program throughout the 1935-43 period of the Great Depression. Some 8 million of the 25 million unemployed were WPA-ers, and almost every county in the nation were touched by the many programs under its umbrella, especially Oregon with the Bonneville Dam and Timberline Lodge, and Government Camp.

The full article is presented, if you click on its title above.]

by: Barbara G. Ellis Ph.D.
Truthout July 23, 2011

Perhaps all is not lost for the republic's economic future, even as its leaders let this nation hurtle toward the abyss of the Great Depression II. An immensely successful, sensible and practical solution is being signaled by increasingly thunderous shout-outs from prominent people: pundits Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Rich Lowry, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, filmmaker Michael Moore and two new web sites - not to mention millions of voters with long memories and the friends and families of the nation's 15,000,000 unemployed.

Their solution? Resurrect the phenomenally successful Works Progress Administration (WPA) of 1935-1943. It put food on the table, kept a roof overhead and put spending money in the pockets of nearly nine million jobless. They built everything from roads, bridges, dams and utility systems to schools and hospitals. They staffed libraries and taught more than a million adults and 90,000 draftees how to read.     Read more at Truthout...