I had my first chance to talk to Randi Rhodes on air yesterday (Jan 3rd) about the Abramoff Scandal and how the GOP is likely to try and spin (or ignore) what is going on. (I was "Frank from LA")
The discussion was fun, interesting and free wheeling... but mostly ranged from the Abramoff Guilty Plea and it's implications within to GOP to Protection of the Voting Rights act and Campaign Reform.
Details on the flip
Several weeks ago I noticed that when "Duke" Cunningham took a guilty plea for accepting bribes, Fox News was silent. In fact, that was the day that Bill O'Lielly started "Campaign to Save Christmas". Operation: Pay no Attention to the Grown Crying man and LOOK OVER HERE... was in full swing. So when I spoke with Randi, this was my main hook.
The same thing is likely to happen with the Abramoff Scandal, at least until the the Propoganda wing of the GOP (Faux News, Redstate.org, Freepers) can come up with some healthy way to spin this into nothing more than punative partisan prosecution.
As it turned out, Both O'Lielly and Hannity and Colmes spent their programs talking about the Miners - not Abramoff... what a coincidence?
What I said to Randy was that the Abramoff situation plus the NSA Wiretap scandal may have a lot of people saying the "I" word - even Bob Barr and William Safire are "with the critics" on the Wiretap thing - but even so, there is absoluately no way that this Congress is going to impeach this President, not with John Sensenbrener as Chairmen of the Judiciary Committee.
We have to do first things first - we have to take back Congress, but we can't do that until we defeat Diebold on a state by state basis, uphold and reaffirm the voting rights act -- and most important reform our campaigns.
What I suggested to Randi is an idea that I call the "Blue Curtain Spots". This idea is actually a couple years old - and I blogged about it last September.
(It's called "Blue Curtain" because the idea is very similar to what West Wing Democratic Presidential hopeful Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) pledged during his campaign - that he would not use expensive and flashy ads with graphics and voice-overs, he was make all statements to the public himself while looking into the camera in front of a plain backdrop - like a "Blue Curtain". I didn't get the idea from West Wing, I had it first -- but it's nice to see that they recognize it's power and simplicity)
The idea requires restabliment of the fairness doctrine (for equal time), followed by an FCC mandate that requires that broadcast stations provide free time for political purposes to all qualified parties.
Randi correctly pointed out that radio and tv stations depend heavily on the ad revenue that comes from political ads -- and I countered that this can be solved by making the ad revenue that would be lost by broadcasting these ads - completely tax deductable, or better yet making it a tax credit. So instead of only being shown at 3:23 am, these ads would appear in Prime-time just like anything else -- the key difference is that the candidates don't have to pay for it anymore. And if they don't have to spend all this money to be on Television, they don't have to spend half their time in office trying to raise money for their next campaign -- they might actually have time to govern, and actually Read the bills - like say, um...the Patriot Act - before they vote.
So, before we try and get Congress to Impeach the President -- IMO we should use the political leverage created by the Abramoff bribery scandal to push forward Campaign reforms -- not finance reforms - CAMPAIGN reforms that will genuinely level the playing field and not just protect Democrats, but even Republicans from the temptations of the lobbyists.
Frank (Vyan) Walton
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