Mike's Election Guide (24 page)

Information on the U.S. Electoral College is from the National Archives website in a section devoted to the U.S. Electoral College (
www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college
). Regarding the process for selecting electors, according to the Archives it’s generally the case that “the political parties nominate electors at their State party conventions or by a vote of the party’s central committee in each State. Electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party. They may be State elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate.” Further, the Archives state that there is no Constitutional or Federal provision requiring electors to adhere to the results of the popular vote in their state. However, 26 states and the District of Columbia have state laws binding electors to cast their vote for a specific candidate.

The information on the crazy cool democracy in ancient Greece comes from Professor Paul Cartledge’s article “The Democratic Experiment” on the BBC website on Ancient Greek History at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekdemocracy_01.shtml
.

The Center for Responsive Politics collects data on re-election rates and reported that between 1998 and 2006 congressional incumbents were reelected an average of 96.8 percent of the time. The lowest re-election rate in the past 30 years was 88 percent in 1992. Detailed information is available online at
www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php?cycle=2006
. Senate re-election rates are slightly lower, at 79 percent in 2000 and 2006, 96 percent in 2004, and 86 percent in 2002.

The Center for Responsive Politics tracks the amount of money various business sectors and lobbying organizations contribute to presidential campaigns. Check out their website at
www.opensecrets.org
. The amounts listed were as of May 21, 2008.

Information on the amount of money that gun rights and gun control advocates have contributed to presidential campaigns is from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Issue Profile, “Gun Control vs. Gun Rights.” It is available online at
http://opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns/index.php
.

Former Senator Phil Gramm’s connection to the McCain campaign and his efforts to deregulate the banking industry is detailed by MSNBC.com, “McCain Economic Policy Shaped by Lobbyist,” Jonathan Larsen and Keith Olbermann, March 28, 2008;
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24844889/
.

One good source for information about John McCain and how the press has covered him they way they covered candidate Bush is
Free Ride: John McCain and the Media
, David Brock and Paul Waldman, Anchor Books, 2008. See pages 49 to 58.

For an excellent discussion of why the Democrats should forget about the South and instead concentrate on the Mountain West and shoring up support in traditionally blue states, see
Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South,
Thomas F. Schaller (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006; with a new Afterword in 2008).

The Union of Concerned Scientists “World Wide Nuclear Arsenals” fact sheet, July 2007, reports that the United States has 10,000 nuclear warheads and Russia has 15,000. Together, these two countries have more than 96 percent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal.The information can be accessed online at
www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/worldwide-nuclear-arsenals.html
.

Little League Baseball changed its rules for pitches in all divisions beginning with the 2007 season. The pitch limit varies by age, and the more pitches a player throws the longer he must rest before pitching again. For complete rules see “Little League Implements New Rule to Protect Pitchers’ Arms,” published on August 25, 2006, and posted on the site
www.littleleague.org/media/pitch_count_08–25–06.asp
.

2. HOW TO ELECT JOHN MCCAIN

A full transcript of Barack Obama’s June 4, 2008, speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is available from National Public Radio, “Transcript: Obama’s Speech at AIPAC,” June 4, 2008;
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432.

For a full transcript of John Kerry’s denial of having seen
Fahrenheit 9/11,
go to
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/08/lkl.00.html
. The interview aired on CNN’s
Larry King Live
on July 8, 2004.

3. TEN PRESIDENTIAL DECREES FOR HIS FIRST TEN DAYS

Don’t believe me that government-run healthcare systems cost less and provide better care than our screwed up market-based system? Then maybe you will believe the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Its
OECD Health Data 2007,
published in July 2007 (
http://miranda.sourceoecd.org/vl=2536797/cl=15/nw=1/rpsv/figures_2007/en/page2.htm
), reported on the health spending and resources for all member countries, including Canada, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.S. spends 15.3 percent of its GDP on health care, as opposed to Canada (9.8%), France (11.1%), Sweden (9.1%), and the United Kingdom (8.3%). No OECD member country spends a larger percentage of their GDP on healthcare than the United States.

The World Health Organization, “World Health Statistics 2008—Mortality and Burden of Disease,” tracks the life expectancy at birth for countries around the world. The life expectancy for someone living in the United States is 78, compared to 79 in the United Kingdom, and 81 in Canada, France, and Sweden. See pp. 36–44 of
www.who.int/whosis/whostat/2008/en/index.html
.

The Library of Congress reports that HR 676 has 90 co-sponsors:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110: h.r.00676
. For more information on John Conyer’s HR 676, United States National Health Insurance Act, go to
www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php
, a site run by Physicians for a National Health Program.

For information on who pays for drug research, see the following sources:
The Truth About Drug Companies,
Marcia Angell, Random House: New York, 2004;
New York Times,
“Drug Companies Profit From Research Supported by Taxpayers,” Jeff Gerth and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Apri1 23, 2000;
www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/042300hth-drugs2.html
; Frontline: The Other Drug War,
Interview with Marcia Angell, PBS.com:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/other/interviews/angell.html
.
Marcia Angell is quoted on
Frontline
as saying:

The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is their incredible PR and their nerve.

In fact, if you look at where the original research comes from on which new drugs are based, it tends to be from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], from the academic medical centers, and from foreign academic medical centers. Studies of this, looking at the seminal research on which drug patents are based, have found that about 15 percent of the basic research papers, reporting the basic research, came from industry. That’s just 15 percent.

The other 85 percent came from NIH-supported work carried out in American academic medical centers. In one study, 30 percent came from foreign academic medical centers. So what we know about the numbers indicates that the foreign academic medical centers are responsible for more new drug discoveries than the industry itself.

All tax data for comparing French and American taxes is from “OECD Taxing Wages Statistics 2007.” The figures cited are for a two-earner married couple, one at 100 percent of average earnings and the other at 67 percent of average earnings, with two children. The figures are based on total tax payments less cash transfers, which the OECD defines as “employees’ social security contributions and personal income tax less transfer payments as a percentage of gross wage earnings.” Without taking cash transfers into account, the tax rate is higher for French families with children, but because the government transfers money back to the families, subtracting the amount of the cash transfer from the total tax bill is a more accurate reflection of actual costs.

According to the French Embassy in Washington, DC, the French social security code puts no limitation on the number of allowable paid sick days per year, except in the case of long-term illness, which is generally considered to be between 1 and 2 months. In that case, the employer does have the right to begin taking steps to lay a person off. At that point the social security system picks up the bill and supports the ill person.

My primary source for material on the history of high fructose corn syrup is Greg Critzer’s
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2003
),
which should be required reading in all high schools. Additional sources on HFCS include
www.grist.org
, “ADM, high-fructose corn syrup, and ethanol,” Tom Philpott, May 10, 2006,
http://gristmill .grist.org/story/2006/5/10/135951/485
;
New York Times,
“Seeing Sugar’s Future in Fuel,” Clifford Kraus, October 18, 2007,
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/business/18sugar.html?pagewanted=1&—r=1
;
New York Times Magazine,
“The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity,” Michael Pollan, October 12, 2003,
http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=52
; and
www.cato.org
, “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare, James Bovard, September 26, 1995,
www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html
. For additional information on the number of people without clean drinking water or basic sewer systems, see WHO, “Drinking Water, Sanitation, Health and Disease,”
www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/mdg1/en/index.html
. Although it is certainly the case that the cost of digging a well in a third world country varies greatly depending on the type of well and numerous other factors, according to sources at Africare and the Millennium Water Alliance, $10 per person is a conservative estimate.

Information on the Social Security tax ceiling and keeping the trust funds solvent by eliminating the ceiling was obtained from the Congressional Research Service report by Debra Whitman titled “Social Security: Raising or Eliminating the Taxable Earnings Base,” Congressional Research Service-CRS Report for Congress, January 26, 2006;
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL32896_20060126.pdf
. It states, “If all earnings were subject to the payroll tax but the base was retained for benefit calculations, the Social Security Trust Funds would remain solvent for the next 75 years . . .”

In 1982 the percent of covered earnings that were taxed for Social Security was 90 percent; in 2004 that number was down to 85 percent. That percentage is projected to fall to 83 percent for 2014 and later.

According to the 2006 Congressional Report on Congress, “if the base was completely eliminated for both employers and employees so that all earnings were taxed, but those earnings did not count toward benefits, solvency would be restored to Social Security. The increased revenue would eliminate 116% of the projected shortfall and the program would have surplus of 0.32% of wages. Under this scenario, the payroll tax rate could be immediately
lowered
by 2.6% of taxable payroll (from 12.4% to 9.8%), and the system would remain solvent for the next 75 years. However, the traditional link between the level of wages that are taxed and the level of wages that count toward benefits would be broken.”

Source material for the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and Francis Bellamy is from “What’s Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?” by Gene Healy,
www.cato.org
, November 4, 2003; “The History of the Pledge of Allegiance,” Associated Press, June 14, 2004; and
Washington Post
, “The Pledge of Allegiance; The Big Story—An Occasional Look at What Everyone Is Talking About,” May 23, 2004.

4. SIX MODEST PROPOSALS TO FIX OUR BROKEN ELECTIONS

The
New York Times Magazine
reported on the estimated failure rate of electronic voting machines in “Can You Count on Voting Machines?” by Clive Thompson, January 6, 2008,
www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html
.

The source for information on voter turnout is International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, “Voter Turnout Rates from a Comparative Perspective,” Rafael López Pintor, Maria Gratschew and Kate Sullivan,
www.idea.int/publications/vt/upload/Voter%20turnout.pdf
(see page 80 for U.S. in comparison to Western Europe and North America).

Voting machine failure rates are from the
Los Angeles Times,
“Tallying the Woes of Electronic Balloting,” Chris Gaither, September 24, 2004, and accessed online at
www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=2907
.

Obama’s fundraising information is from the Campaign Finance Institute, “Newly Released 2007 Reports Give Clues to Candidates’ Financial Strengths and Vulnerabilities Going into Super Tuesday,” February 1, 2008;
www.cfinst.org/pr/prRelease.aspx?ReleaseID=177
.

For information on why we vote on Tuesdays, seeS. 2638: Weekend Voting Act, GovTrack.US;
www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110–2638
.

For info on Canada’s “National Register of Electors” and how they used to have a U.S.-like inefficient voter registration process, visit the official Canadian Election website:
www.elections.ca
.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my publisher, Grand Central Publishing, for the unconditional support and commitment to get this book in the hands of as many voters as possible. Grand Central used to be called Warner Books and was part of the TimeWarner empire. Then the French bought Warner Books, so I guess you could say I now work for the French. One more talking point for O’Reilly.