Labelling and Localism: Local is the Political versus Supply Side Administration of Food

Mystery food is Orwellian-ly and totally misleadingly called "label conformity" in this corporate-biased piece of propoganda and legislation rolled into one. They are concerned that local people, wanting and gaining more knowledege about how to eat right might cut into the anonymous low grade montage of bilk they sell or pump into everyone. And they are right. The pink elephant in the room is in those little pink packets: the New Mexico state level laws and desires that are building to ban cheap sugar substitute of aspartame. This is a drawing of the battle lines between the interests of the consumer and how the interests of the corporation are totally at odds with it materially speaking, or in terms of knowledge about the materials.

Certainly like most Bush neocon legislation ("Healthy Forest"...Clearcutting bills; "Healthy Skies"...Coal Power Plant Expansions and Off-Regulation Bills, etc.; The fascist "Patriot Act", etc.) all show a use of Orwellian inversals.

However, we can indeed have label conformity--that is pro consumer, by allowing for uniform standards to appreciate locality in labeling. Including a great deal of information on the label can be the conforming standard. However, the supply side informally gatekept idea of "label conformity" really means corporate informal political clientelism and means consumer conformity and institutionalized ignorance.

And the larger that the food corporations get, the more they cut corners and food's interconnected nutritional and ecological soundness (with pesticides/herbicides used more and more in scaled agricultulre), and even economic soundness. The three issues of health, ecology, and economics really call these shallow corporate corporate ideas totally into question.

The labelling issues story is one that everyone should follow--how politics of labelling can be either in the benefit of the consumer, or in this bill, designed to engineer a forced repressive consumerism with less choices available and with more consumers in the (corporate) dark because they want to micromanage consumer behavior from central locations in distant offices, instead of listen to and respond to consumer behavior. Such corporate consumptive ignorance and ambivalance of the risks are at root in the short term bottom lines (nonplanning) of corporations.

This goes well with the points raised in the Supply Versus Demand article. It's what you might even call a textbook example of the supply versus demand principle, as scale expands the material and ideological (i.e., knowledge) interests of consumers and the interests of supply side organizations and actors completely diverge. Ideally, consumers should have access to all the information about their purchase they want. From the point of view of the supply-side ideal, consumers should all be force fed in complete ignorance and lack of choice to maintain the clientelism sitution desired of whatever the corporation wants to give them.

Ideally as mentioned in the proposals of Toward A Bioregional State:

Consumer rights shall always trump supply side rights of organizations and sellers when it comes to any of the issues of (a) basic knowledge about the commodity; (b) the capacity for discriminative choice from the point of view of the consumer which shall be maintained; (c) when it comes to issues of individual and public health, (d) of ecological interactive effects, and (e) of economic sustainability.

In issues of human health, ecological issues, and economic sustainability, the smaller jurisdictional level has more awareness, knowledge, and interest in these endeavors; therefore jurisdictional sovereignty of smaller jurisdiction over the larger state should be the uniform principle in these issues of material commodity regulation.

Congress Poised to Pass Bill Taking Away Right to Know What's in Your Food

Tell your Congressman or Congresswoman to vote "No" on House of Representatives Bill H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act"

The House of Representatives will vote this week on a controversial "national food uniformity" labeling law that will take away local government and states' power to require food safety food labels such as those required in California and other states on foods or beverages that are likely to cause cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, or mercury poisoning. This bill would also prevent citizens in local municipalities and states from passing laws requiring that genetically engineered foods and ingredients such as Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) be labeled.

The House will vote March 2, 2006 on a bill that would gut state food safety and labeling laws. H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act," lowers the bar on food safety by overturning state food safety laws that are not "identical" to federal law. Hundreds of state laws and regulations are at risk, including those governing the safety of milk, fish, and shellfish. The bill is being pushed by large supermarket chains and food manufacturers, spearheaded by the powerful Grocery Manufacturers of America.

Big food corporations and the biotech industry understand that consumers are more and more concerned about food safety, genetic engineering, and chemical-intensive agriculture, and are reading labels more closely. They understand that pesticide and mercury residues and hazardous technologies such as genetic engineering and food irradiation will be rejected if there are truthful labels required on food products. Industry-sponsored H.R. 4167 is gaining momentum and must be stopped! Act now! Preserve local and regional democracy and protect yourself and your family from unsafe food by sending an email or calling your Representative and urging them to vote "No" on H.R. 4167.

Please Take Action Now--Send a Message to Your Congress Member in the House of Representatives to Vote "No" on H.R. 4167
http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/labeling.cfm

And please call your Congress Member at 202-224-3121

Regards & Solidarity,

Ronnie Cummins,
Organic Consumers Association

Related News Headlines

2/25 - States right in food fight (Toledo Blade)

2/24 - State Leaders Take Charge (Wall Stree Journal)

2/18 - Feinstein-Boxer: Don't Preempt California Food Safety Laws(Ubanet/CA)

2/2 - Federal food label law would trump California's Prop. 65 (Scripps Howard News Service)

1/30 - "Food Labeling Uniformity" Bill Will Actually Eliminate Consumer Choice -- Act Now

1/16 - Corporate Food Giants & Congress Threaten States' Rights to Label Food

12/15 - House Republicans Move to Kill State Food Safety Labels

11/8 - Industry Pressing Congress to Outlaw States' Rights to Require Labels for GE Food


2.

Heroic NM Senator Fights Aspartame Machine

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
2-19-2006


I had the pleasure of meeting with Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino who sponsored the New Mexico Senate aspartame bill. No doubt the lobbyists with the morals of rapists preyed on his mind...and today he wrote this letter:

Aspartame Buys Time

By Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino
2-19-2006

Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to the corrosive influence of money on our public policy. I'm not just talking about the shenanigans inside the beltway of our nation's capitol-that Congress is for sale to the highest bidder has unfortunately become a practically accepted tenet of the American belief system.

So accepted is it that the astounding arrogance and venality being revealed by the current Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff scandals in the District of Columbia scarcely produce raised eyebrows, let alone outrage.

But I'm not just talking about that.

Nor am I talking only about the way that [centralized] moneyed interests are able to sway [and demote] local government toward policies that benefit those interests; hey, we apparently prefer a system in which local elections go to the highest bidder and business-as-usual involves twisting contractors' arms to secure campaign contributions.

Instead, today I'd like to zero-in on the pressure applied to our third level of representative government, the carryings-on that occur in the halls of State Government ... in all its branches.

And from among at least a dozen recent, painful examples of how big business manages to protect itself from such wet-blanket considerations as the good of the public, I'd like to select one as a representative: the continued approval of the reliance by processed food and beverage manufacturers on the chemical aspartame.

As an artificial sweetener, one now being added to some 6,000 products, it is difficult for most Americans to not consume aspartame daily. Its safety (and clearing up any doubts about that safety) would seem to be of critical importance to millions of us. But any discussion of this topic has been postponed in New Mexico indefinitely-through influence exerted by representatives hired by the Japanese manufacturer of aspartame, the Ajinomoto Corporation.

Those well-connected hired hands managed, in December, to frighten the State Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) into backing off of the public hearings into aspartame's safety that they had originally agreed to conduct this coming summer. They managed this delay by challenging the authority of the State of New Mexico to review anything already approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and by threatening to sue the state if we tried to do so.

Then those same hired hands resurfaced (augmented by the addition to their team roster of Butch Maki, a close confidant of Gov. Bill Richardson) in time to quash all attempts to discuss the matter during the just-concluded State Legislature.

There was one hearing on the subject and it drew significant numbers of the industry lobbyists, all of whom asserted the same party line: The substance is perfectly safe; the Federal Government has looked at it carefully and who the heck is New Mexico, anyway, to raise any questions about it? [Because in issues of human health, ecological issues, and econmic sustainability issues and commodity heath the smaller state should be soverign over the larger.]

The committee succumbed, and turned down the measure to ban aspartame 7-2.

That half-hour hearing was the total discussion of the matter this year in the public arena in New Mexico, unless the EIB board changes its mind and decides to call Ajinomoto's bluff by going ahead and holding a hearing.

The incredible spectacle of corporate hirelings exerting this kind of influence is, to our great shame, all too common in our state. The Legislature has resisted reforming campaign finance laws to inject some real muscle, which leaves the door wide open to the corporate powers to throw money around strategically, buying whatever access they need or blocking their opposition's access to the policymakers.

But no one should be surprised that Ajinomoto would rely on muscle to protect its profits from aspartame. The entire history of this product's approval by the FDA is rife with muscle flexing ... and very little in the way of science. Originally, it was a patent of the Searle Pharmaceutical Company. And beginning in the late '60s, the FDA repeatedly turned down Searle's submissions for approval, the results of its testings leaving serious doubts in the minds of FDA scientists.

All of that changed in 1981 when Ronald Reagan took the presidency. He listened to the then head of Searle, Donald Rumsfeld, (yes, that Donald Rumsfeld) who bypassed the scientists and went straight to the new Reagan appointee at FDA. Within weeks, the scientists were overruled and aspartame was approved. Several FDA scientists resigned in protest. They even alleged that Searle had fabricated results in the testing submitted.

Twenty-five years later, the evidence is mounting that our growing incidence of brain tumors, organ cancers and neurological diseases has followed the introduction of so many artificially created additives and chemicals in our food. It's only a matter of time until even Ajinomoto's money won't be able to block the unavoidable link between these unnecessary products and our decline in health.

When that happens, as it finally did to tobacco and lead and other heavy metals found in gasoline, we will act. The sad thing is that thousands of deaths and ruined lives will occur between now and then.

One of the cruel ironies to aspartame is that it was supposed to create sugar-free soft drinks for the benefit of diabetics. Since its introduction, the incidence of diabetes has soared. Some critics link the two. What is clear is that it ain't helping.

With all that money and muscle behind it, aspartame has evaded its comeuppance for another year. But the final reckoning can only be postponed, not avoided.

End of the Senator's letter

Last month there was still another study: http://www.wnho.net/new_greek_aspartame_studies.htm Bottom line: Alzheimers

We are now taking aspartame brain tumor cases in New York and New Jersey for litigation, three year statute of limitations.

When I think of the Calorie Control Council sending out press releases trying to prevent the public from believing these studies, as they have done since the New York Times article, I think of the millions of babies murdered in their mother's womb as the CCC pushes this toxin on pregnant women. May they receive within themselves the recompense for their error, and may Jehovah God see to it, and add to it.

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599

Doctors mentioned in this post can be seen in the documentary Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. They are the heros of the anti-aspartame movement, continually publishing to rid the planet of this poison.

More information on aspartame on www.wnho.net and www.dorway.com (In memory of David Oliver Rietz who lost his life to aspartame)
Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

The Local Wing of Politics: Progressivism isn't national left wing and conservatism isn't national right wing, both are local or nothing at all

This is only a good example how the seat of any concern over human rights, health, ecology, and economy isn't an ideological issue. It is a geographic issue that appeals to particular geographies, instead of parties. Note in the article below that the organized frameworks here that are for these issues are entirely local. We should reconceptulize the whole basis of politics here, to take into account the Local Wing versus the National Wing. In the National Wing, they use whatever flavor of the month ideology to gatekeep against the Local Wing.

The Local Wing is why called 'left' environmentalist and so called 'right' gun rights organizations are working together on the local level to create local conservation corridors for wildlife in the Rocky Mountains--while these ideological groups on the national level pretend these issues are enemies of each other. They aren't. The ideologies are. The issues aren't. Another good example of 'right-wing environmentalism'--and a serious critique of how misleading it is to frame it as a left issue--is the book Deeper Shades of Green:
The Rise of Blue Collar and Minority Environmentalism in America.[link]

A new merger of movements is aborning. African-Americans, who had largely ignored much of the environmental movement as irrelevant to their primary social and economic concerns, became increasingly aware that racial discrimination can take the form of environmental injustice. Workers, long accustomed to the adage that jobs are more important than preserving the environment, have discovered that they were often sold a bill of goods....In the process, these groups have found each other. They have become America's newest, most radical, and most committed environmentalists. Radical, not because they adhere to esoteric theories about humankind's ecological crimes against the biosphere, but because they have discovered a mother's passion for true family values when her child's life or health is in danger. Committed, not because they believe deeply in a particular political philosophy, for most come from fairly unremarkable backgrounds, but because they are America's real communitarians. They believe that neighborhoods matter and that government should be in the business of protecting, not destroying, our sense of community.

And that is why the Local Wing--full of people on the left and right--are totally opposed to the neocons and their health destroying, economic destroying, and environmntal destroying policies.

Just goes to show you that the Local Wing knows how to run society much better than the criminals on the national level. Finally, someone came out and said it in Congress: Bush is a criminal syndicate.

This is of course why the criminals at the national level enjoy keeping the Local Wing divided up on irrelevant and superfluous divisions. These ideologcial divisions are only constructed from the national level, instead of presuming that the national parties are something from the local that is reflected on the national level. On the contrary, the national parties of the Republicans and Democrats, as mentioned throughout Toward A Bioregional State, are increasingly without any grass roots support at all! More that shows it:

California Senate voted 23-10 in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 10 relative to the USA PATRIOT Act, making California the 404th government entity and the largest of eight states to have done so. The other seven are Alaska, Colorado, Hawai’i, Idaho, Maine, Montana, and Vermont. Beginning in 2002, eleven California counties and 53 cities have passed resolutions. The combined populations of states and communities that have enacted resolutions is now nearly 87 million—roughly one in three U.S. residents. The California Assembly passed the resolution on January 3, 2006.

The bioregional state recommendations in the book would help to bring out the Local Wing, by removing national parties capacities to gatekeept and divide it as a political power, by allowing local politics to frame its own local concerns before being clientelistically driven to support the hydra-headed DemocratTM-RepublicanTM police state that only wants to totally remove the Local Wing.

There's some interesting graphs in this article about the scale of the misapplied funding in the U.S. right now. The U.S. is without any enemies or military competitors. A total of half or more U.S. budget is being swallowed each year by contractors for one building of government--The Pentagon. However, there really is nothing in the way of support for this fantasy world that the neocons promote of a dangerous world. It's only empty air(waves) and rigged ballot boxes that both parties support the rigging.

That is why you should support your Local Wing parties instead of any of the national left parties or national right parties. Perhaps you should join a watershed based organization before supporting a National political party?

Both Democrats and Republican parties in the U.S. are totally corrupted. 87 million people of the Local Wing say that the RepubliDems are corrupt and wrong.... Which is more than Bush dupes or Clinton dupes ever got to vote for them. Think about that.

Remember, the Local Wing is the majority. Bioregional state motifs would bring about its institutionalization.



California Enacts Resolution Critical of PATRIOT Act


SACRAMENTO, California - February 17 - On Thursday, February 16, the California Senate voted 23-10 in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 10 relative to the USA PATRIOT Act, making California the 404th government entity and the largest of eight states to have done so. The other seven are Alaska, Colorado, Hawai’i, Idaho, Maine, Montana, and Vermont. Beginning in 2002, eleven California counties and 53 cities have passed resolutions. The combined populations of states and communities that have enacted resolutions is now nearly 87 million—roughly one in three U.S. residents. The California Assembly passed the resolution on January 3, 2006.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) commends State Senator Liz Figueroa, who introduced the resolution last year, and her colleagues in the Senate and Legislature for their principled stand in defense of Californians’ civil liberties. Republicans Tom McClintock and Sam Aanestad were among those who voted for the resolution.

Said BORDC’s director, Nancy Talanian, “The California resolution sets a standard we hope Congress will follow as it considers reauthorizing several controversial sections of the PATRIOT Act and the administration’s approval of warrantless wiretaps. The resolution states that no state resources will be used to collect information based on residents’ activities that are protected by the First Amendment, or to scoop up personal records without a direct connection between the records sought and suspected criminal activity.”

California’s resolution also observes that government security measures “should be carefully designed and employed to enhance public safety without infringing on the civil liberties and rights of innocent persons in the State of California and the nation.”

The BORDC congratulates Hazem Kira of the California Civil Rights Alliance, which spearheaded the California effort, and its 23 member groups such as California’s three ACLU chapters, the Green Party and Libertarian Party of California, peace and justice groups, several interfaith organizations and local Bill of Rights Defense groups throughout California.

The passage of the California resolution has the potential to affect the PATRIOT Act debate well beyond California’s borders, as Congress considers the PATRIOT Act reauthorization.

Congress members with more civil liberties resolutions in their districts tend to be willing to take a strong stand in defense of civil liberties. BORDC data show that the 174 representatives who opposed a PATRIOT Act reauthorization compromise bill on December 14, 2005, were four and a half times as likely to have one or more resolutions passed in their districts as the 251 members who voted in favor. The Senate filibustered over that compromise bill’s inadequate civil liberties safeguards. Talanian explains, “If you go further, and compare the vote of the House of Representatives in October 2001, when only 66 representatives voted against the PATRIOT Act, to December 2005, when 174 representatives voted against the reauthorization, it is clear we’re making progress in turning our government’s attention towards our fundamental liberties. So we expect continued positive results now that the most populous state in the union has come to the defense of the Bill of Rights.”

Media Advisory:

California resolution text

List of resolutions by state (PDF) at
http://www.bordc.org/resources/Alphalist.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0217-07.htm

REPORT: Voter Owned Elections in Maine via Clean Election Fund, Echos Bioregional State Ideas, And It Works

It works so well that the Corporate DemocratsTM seem to be attempting to defund it to remove competitive elections!

This echoes the previous post and its moral: that even when given a choice, the Democratic Party prefers to repesent private bankers over the people of a state. Instead of a party, they are acting as a shell corporation and elections "holding company". (However, I don't want to split hairs that aren't there--I think this post further shows that there is nothing substantially different from a Democratic Party in power and a Republican Party in power at this stage. They are both attempting to gatekeeping and stop electoral choice. After all Hillary Clinton and John F. Kerry both support the artificial war (profiteering) even more than Bush from the statements they have made.

Similar to what is described below, the Bioregional State suggests a form of national trust fund for clean elections on the federal level--as well as many more like Maine on the state level. And the results are immediate in terms of expanded voter choice of parties running--which is the only informal check and balance on keeping parties legitimate and contesting each other instead of colluding against the public.

It is nice to note that this Maine test of an State Elections Fund works out fine in creating this expanded voter choice. Note expanded numbers of contested elections. All they should do next is [1] turn their districts to watersheds (as mentioned in the bioregional state book and lots of more pesky details--on numerical ramification of this, etc., and what to do about scale and variety of representation, already figured out) and watch sustainabilty occur through the then "ecologically in sync" innate political feedback process.

However, one critique would be, [2], there is still nothing mentioned about the auditability of the elections in Maine. It hardly matters if elections are "clean" when the vote count can be rigged and dirtied up after the fact. In the bioregional state, paper based auditability is required. See "Article 27" of the Constitution of Sustainability, from Toward a Bioregional State. I put it directly after this interesting discussion of Maine.

NEWS/COMMENTARY: Voter Owned Elections in Maine, re 1996 Referendum Clean Election Act in Maine, now Showing Results, started in 2000, So Getting Defunded by Democratic Party of Maine in power!

trenchant quotes:

....despite continued moaning and groaning in some quarters about the squandering of taxpayer money to pay for attack ads, overblown promises and other nefarious trimmings of the standard political campaign, the reform is proving to be a big success.

The election of 2000, the first year the reform took effect [in Maine legislative elections only], showed a substantial, politically healthy increase in the number of contested legislative primaries compared to the previous election. In the general election, 33 percent of the candidates on the ballot were clean-election contenders. Two years later, that figure jumped to 62 percent, and in 2004 it was 78 percent. But success in this case is not measured in terms of its growing popularity with the politicians who have embraced it. Its real success is in cutting the traditional monetary ties that bound our elected representatives in Augusta to the special interests that paid their way there. It has given them the independence to concentrate on their obligations to the people of Maine in general, undistracted by any special sense of loyalty to deep-pockets supporters.

But if the Clean Elections Act has been successful at the legislative [i.e., only district] level, it has never really been fairly tested on a statewide basis in a race for [still moneybags driven] governor. In 2002, the first time an opportunity for such a statewide test came up, neither of the major party candidates [of course you should expect that...]-- Democrat John E. Baldacci nor Republican Peter Cianchette -- embraced the reform (although Green Independent Jonathan Carter did).

[Even given the chance, "Democrats" prefer corporate-private-banker funds in Maine!] Half of the dozen or so candidates for governor this year, including two Republicans and a Green Independent, have applied for public funding. (Unfortunately, [Democrat] Baldacci has again opted for the old-fashioned method of relying on private donations and special-interest contributions to finance his re-election campaign.)

[And the Dems are the ones killing it off!] When Baldacci and the Legislature were looking around for ways to balance the state budget a while back, they found what they regarded as a dandy little cash cow in the Clean Election Fund. So they raided it, drawing nearly $7 million from the fund to pay for other projects. They have since restored part of what they "borrowed," but there is still a balance of more than $4 million to be paid back. In other words, if the fund runs dry this year, it is not evidence of any inherent shortcoming in the clean-elections process. Rather, it is a consequence of fiscal juggling [andintentional destruction of choice] that can and should be promptly fixed by the jugglers responsible.

It should be clear by this stage that only formal institutional change will bring about greater democracy. Start thinking along those lines. And on that note, I suggest a browse of Toward A Bioregional State--at the link on your right over there --->



Voter Owned Elections in Maine
author: Jim Brunelle
e-mail: jbrune@maine.rr.com
editorial in Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

In a 1996 referendum, Maine voters endorsed the Clean Election Act, a groundbreaking campaign finance reform law aimed at wresting control of the ballot box away from the wealthy individuals, corporations and special interests that traditionally have supplied the cash that drives -- and often determines -- elections.


Thursday, February 09, 2006
COLUMN: Jim Brunelle

Keep it clean

Ten years ago, Maine voters put their stamp of approval on one of the better governmental bargains of our time. They reclaimed ownership of our election process.

In a 1996 referendum, voters endorsed the Clean Election Act, a groundbreaking campaign finance reform law aimed at wresting control of the ballot box away from the wealthy individuals, corporations and special interests that traditionally have supplied the cash that drives -- and often determines -- elections.

And despite continued moaning and groaning in some quarters about the squandering of taxpayer money to pay for attack ads, overblown promises and other nefarious trimmings of the standard political campaign, the reform is proving to be a big success.

The election of 2000, the first year the reform took effect, showed a substantial, politically healthy increase in the number of contested legislative primaries compared to the previous election. In the general election, 33 percent of the candidates on the ballot were clean-election contenders.

Two years later, that figure jumped to 62 percent, and in 2004 it was 78 percent.

But success in this case is not measured in terms of its growing popularity with the politicians who have embraced it. Its real success is in cutting the traditional monetary ties that bound our elected representatives in Augusta to the special interests that paid their way there.

It has given them the independence to concentrate on their obligations to the people of Maine in general, undistracted by any special sense of loyalty to deep-pockets supporters.

All we have to do is look at the current cesspool of congressional scandal precipitated by big lobbyist donations in the guise of campaign contributions to appreciate that Maine has created a system much more protective of the integrity of the election process.

Do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that anything like the corruption being exposed in Washington, D.C., has tainted the Maine Legislature in the past.

With some exceptions, the lawmakers of this state have always been a pretty honest lot. But removing the complicating factor of private campaign financing now makes it easier to remain so.

For one thing, it means that lobbyists at the Statehouse must rely more on the power of persuasion than on any pre-existing condition of political gratitude as they approach individual lawmakers.

Conversely, legislators are better positioned to consider a bill exclusively on its merits rather than in terms of its effect on a generous campaign supporter.

But if the Clean Elections Act has been successful at the legislative level, it has never really been fairly tested on a statewide basis in a race for governor.

In 2002, the first time an opportunity for such a statewide test came up, neither of the major party candidates -- Democrat John E. Baldacci nor Republican Peter Cianchette -- embraced the reform (although Green Independent Jonathan Carter did).

This time around, there is more interest in the clean-elections approach at that level, which is encouraging but also creates a practical problem. There might not be enough money in hand to accommodate everybody who qualifies.

Half of the dozen or so candidates for governor this year, including two Republicans and a Green Independent, have applied for public funding. (Unfortunately, Baldacci has again opted for the old-fashioned method of relying on private donations and special-interest contributions to finance his re-election campaign.)

If any more than three candidates qualify for public funding -- it is not easy -- the state's Clean Election Fund is likely to run short of cash this year. That prospect may give critics fresh ammunition to attack the system, although it is both premature and unfair in this case.

The money is -- or should be -- available. It has just been diverted, that's all.

When Baldacci and the Legislature were looking around for ways to balance the state budget a while back, they found what they regarded as a dandy little cash cow in the Clean Election Fund. So they raided it, drawing nearly $7 million from the fund to pay for other projects.

They have since restored part of what they "borrowed," but there is still a balance of more than $4 million to be paid back. In other words, if the fund runs dry this year, it is not evidence of any inherent shortcoming in the clean-elections process. Rather, it is a consequence of fiscal juggling that can and should be promptly fixed by the jugglers responsible.

In Maine, campaign-finance reform is working well. The trick now is to keep it moving briskly forward under the weight of its success.

Jim Brunelle is a weekly columnist and has been commenting on Maine issues for more than 40 years. He lives in Cape Elizabeth and can be reached at jbrune@maine.rr.com.

---
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/02/333796.shtml


Next, an excerpt from this post--which is actually from a section of Toward a Bioregional State, the book:

Article 27

Section 1.

In the interest of a competitive party environment for democratic elections, where candidates are potentially independent of private capital for the launching and maintaining of campaigns or their content, all Local, State, and Federal Elections shall be publicly funded. Additionally, see Article II, Section 18.

Section 2.

No where are private public relations personnel or advertising personnel to be employed by the local, state, or federal governments, or funded by the local, state, or federal governments. The government itself is already public relations incarnate and can speak for itself to the people.

Section 3.

In all political party campaigns for office, political parties shall be prohibited from appointing personnel to their informal party administration of an election campaign from any simultaneously incumbent personnel in power in a state.

Section 4.

Complete transparency and paper-based auditability of the entire voting infrastructure in local, state, and federal elections shall be maintained as a public jurisdictional issue.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.