It doesn’t take a village–It takes you!

That will be the theme of my  campaign for US Congress 2012 that I’m kicking off in a few days with a homemade sign in my own front yard.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the past month as to whether I want to even try to make a difference by running as an an independent candidate for the US 32nd Congressional District.  I’m so disgusted and fed up with the leadership of both parties.  One bunch is as greedy and selfish as the other.  Neither party represents  80% of Americans.  The overwhelming majority of Congress are in it for themselves.  All you have to do is look at their votes and look at the increase in their net worth over the past 3 years while the majority of Americans have been going down the tubes many of them losing their jobs and homes.

Here in Dallas, a city located in my district, we have over 175,000 children living below the poverty line–enough to fill the .Dallas Cowboy stadium (seating capacity 80,000) more than twice.  Imagine that!  a city right here in my district with 175,000 in need, going to bed hungry.  That is a disgrace.  And this is just one city in my district.  There are other cities as well.

And how does the current US Representative of the 32nd district, Pete Sessions, represent  these children and their parents?  Not very well.  If he did, we would not have over one-third of the children in our district living below the poverty line.  And how does Mr. Sessions run his campaign?  He runs his campaign like they all do–by appealing to the richest of the rich for donations.  By holding exclusives parties that cost more to attend than many Americans earn in  month, or in some cases several months.  This is democracy?  Not by my standards.  Mr. Sessions held a ski party fund raiser in Park City Utah.  How many parents of those children living below poverty level in Mr. Sessions District do you think attended that party?

Mr. Sessions is a Republican, but the Democrats do the same thing.  Until more than a few people called them on their hypocrisy, Michele Obama was was supposed to be the key speaker at a reception (Nov 1, 2011) at the Westin Oaks in the Galleria. Later in the day, she was going to be a special guest at the home of Laura and John Arnold for a private reception and dinner. John Arnold was a former natural gas trader for Enron.  The Houston Chronicle reported:  The super-wealthy hedge fund manager and his wife will introduce Obama to individuals who paid $10,000 for the privilege or couples who paid $15,000. There’s a bargain-basement price, as well — $250 per person to attend the cocktail party earlier in the evening.”

There is more to Mr. Arnold than that.  In 2001, as it was going down the tubes and thousands of American’s pensions with it, Enron paid Mr. Arnold an $8 million bonus.  When Enron collapsed in 2002, he founded Centaurus with his previous year’s bonus. How about that!  Arnold didn’t skip a beat, nor did he lose one cent of his $8 million dollar bonus.  Thousands of Enron employees were not so lucky. They lost their pensions they had tied up in Enron’s 401K retirement plan.  His company now has as much as $3 billion in assets under management.  His employees include several big name energy traders including ex-Enron President Greg Whalley.  And guess what?  Mr Arnold is part of an organization pushing to convert public pensions — including teachers, police, firefighters and others — to 401(k)-style plans.  Sure you betcha. Then people like Mr. Arnold can skim off the top and leave the rest with nothing–just like he did with Enron employees.

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Description of the Campaign that I will run.

I got sidetracked.  (The stuff goes so deep that it is difficult to not get lost in the muck.)

1.  I will not take a cent of campaign contributions–not even from the people in my district.

2.  I will begin on Saturday (March 3) by posting my first homemade campaign sign in my yard.  (I’ll post a photo of it on this site)

3,  Whether people in my district vote in the primary on April 4 is up to them.  If they are completely disgusted with both parties, I advise them not to because in Texas, if  you vote in the primary, you cannot sign the ballot petition of Independents like me.  It’s considered as voting twice.  However, if you do want to vote in the primary, you can still vote for me in the fall if I garner enough signatures to get my name on the ballot.

4.  In the months of April and May I will be walking around my district gathering signatures for my ballot petition.  At that time I will ask all who sign my ballot petition to do this:
a.  Make two homemade signs saying “It doesn’t take a village-  Vote for Emma Berry 32nd US District”
b.  Put one sign in your yard and give the sign to another person in the district asking them to do the same thing.
c.  Then instead of giving money to support me, give as much as you can to help someone in the 32nd district. who needs the help.
d.  Then contact me with the story of what you did.  Tell others about your story. Your story will mean more to my election than thousands of dollars contributed to my campaign.

AND THAT’S MY CAMPAIGN STRATEGY.  Will it work?  I don’t know.  That’s entirely in the hands of about 600,000 people who reside in the 32nd district.  But just imagine if it does work.  What does that say?  A campaign won without a cent. What does that say about the possibility for good?  It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” doesn’t it?  Not only should we pull ourselves up, we should bring others with us.  As long as we have even one boot in the boat, we can offer a hand to someone who is drowning.

Perhaps I”ll brand my campaign:  As long as you have one boot still in the boat . . .

Proclaim the Queen!

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Tempest in a teapot, a ladle, a teacup

Cicero, in the first century BC, in his De Legibus created  possibly the precursor to the modern expressions, “Gratidius excitabat fluctus in simpulo, ut dicatur”, translated: “Gratidius raised a tempest in a ladle.

The French referred to the popular uprising in the Republic of Geneva near the end of the 17th century as “une tempete dans une verra d’eau” (a tempest in a glass of water).

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You may notice that the media leave out an important feature of many of these turnouts:  the percentage of voters who actually showed up to vote in these Republican primaries.  That says a lot about the true interest.  For example, I don’t know the actual percentage of Republicans who showed up to vote in Colorado but yesterday afternoon I heard on the radio that the percentage was estimated to be as low as 10% of the registered Republicans. Then, if you will consider that the registered Republicans are a minority of registered voters in many of these states.  .  .  Well, you get the big picture, don’t you?

Romney gave a small taste as to how he will be responding to his defeat in the coming weeks.  Looks like he plans to hit Santorum, Gingrich and Paul hard as being Washington insiders.  That’s a smart tactic and it will work against Obama too. When it comes to Washington DC, that is Romney’s unique claim–he is an outsider.  However, he forgets that when it comes to being a Wall Street insider, he may be the champion.

“Washington will never be reformed by those who have been compromised by the culture of Washington. This is a clear choice. I’m the only person in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never served a day in Washington. And where I come from, leadership is about starting a business, not trying to get a bill out of committee,” Romney said.

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We have Maine this Saturday February 11 and then Michigan and Arizona on February 28.

Maine is up for grabs, but I would expect Romney to win Michigan handily.  Arizona is another toss up.  And the wagons will grind on bringing the greatest show on earth to its next stop where, instead of addressing the real issues of  lack of jobs and the poverty in these states, these politicians will be spending millions to advertise promises as thin as air while extracting the price of a ticket in the form of a “donation” to continue their fabulous hot air machine.

Few seem to notice that the crowds are thinning out and the Circus Masters, with a few of their close friends are the only ones who seem to be attending their show.

Proclaim the Queen!

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No better example than their references to Saul Alinsky–as if he were some evil communist who tried to overthrow the country.  They should be ashamed of themselves but it should come as no surprise that these enemies of the poor should pick on one of the largest heroes of the poor–Saul Alinsky.

If you are among the ignorant and listen to candidates like Newt Gingrich (who definitely knows better) you would think that Barack Obama personally knew Saul Alinsky.

Saul Alinsky died in 1972 in Chicago.  Barack Obama was 11 years old at the time and living in Hawaii.

Saul Alinsky, as I’ve pointed out was no  Communist.  He was not even a socialist.  But these days, anyone who is not a right-wing Tea Party fanatic is a Socialist to most members of the Republican Party and they are certainly painted that way by the Republican candidates.  Saul Alinsky’s “crime” (like that of ACORN) was helping the poor to organized their communities. Saul Alinsky has been compared to Thomas Paine as being “one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left.”  MORE

As Bill Moyers pointed out in a recent Truthdigg article, Saul Alinksy was  ”. . . A patriot, in a long line of patriots, who scorned the malignant narcisism of duplicitous politicians and taught every day Americans to think for themselves and to fight together for a better life. That’s the American way, and any good historian would know it.”

Believe me, people like Newt Gingrich and the leadership of BOTH parties are scared out of their wits about the uprising of the middle class of America against them and they are doubling down on their efforts against the majoirty.

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The Tea Party and Even Mitt Romney Are Associated with Saul Alinsky

Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks organization helps bankroll the Tea Party, gives copies of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.  Mitt Romney’s own father fraternized with Saul Alinsky.

BuzzFlash recently dug up photos of George Romney meeting with Saul Alinsky to discuss ways to help the urban poor.  Imagine that! A time in American history when politicians dared to discuss poverty instead of pretending that that the poor are lazy good-for-nothings who don’t want to work–as it comes today from the mouths of the investor class and the ignorant fools they convince with their lies.

But You are a Fool if you think that the leadership of the Democrat Party today is any different in its attacks on the middle class and the poor than the Republicans

But before you start thinking that the leadership of the Democrat Party are any different from the leadership of the Republican Party, you need to remember what a Democrat majority in BOTH houses of Congress did to ACORN.  They voted to cancel funding to ACORN–an organization whose only crime was to empower the poor by registering them to vote and organize in their communities.  That is the last thing that the plutocrats in charge of Washington want the majority of people in the USA to do–organize.  That’s why they have called out their attack dogs on Occupy.

A Democrat majority in BOTH houses of Congress destroyed ACORN and the sole proof?  A highly doctored video created by a known right-wing operative by the name of James O’Keefe.  It took ACORN a year, but they finally cleared their good name in court.  It was too late.  Because of all the negative publicity of the vote of the Democrat majority in BOTH houses ACORN lost almost all its funding.  They had to declare bankruptcy.

SHAME ON THE DEMOCRAT AND THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP.  THE PLUTOCRATIC LEADERSHIP OF NEITHER PARTY DESERVES OUR SUPPORT.  It would be closer to the truth to say that the leadership of both parties are right-wing fascists who fully support a global war against the middle and working class.

They have different rhetoric, but when it comes to their votes, there is no difference whatsoever between a Democrat and a Republican member of Congress.  For example, many would call Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold “liberals”.  Yet both of these “liberals” voted to defund ACORN solely on the flimsy testimony of a known right-wing operative.

Proclaim the Queen!

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