Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria Interview: A Political Odyssey

On Thursday, August 14th, Think Youth was honored to have Fmr. Senator Mike Gravel and journalist Joe Lauria on the podcast to discuss their book, “A Political Odyssey, The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It.”

Co-hosted by Johnny Camacho, Elizabeth Cable, Jeff Pritchard, Mike Rushmore, and Dan Solis.

Special thanks to Seven Stories Press.

Episode 26 | [Download MP3]

Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria to join Think Youth for an interview.

Mark your calendars! Think Youth will be conducting what promises to be an exciting interview with Former United States Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate, Mike Gravel. Also joining us will be renowned investigative journalist, Joe Lauria.

Senator Gravel and Mr. Lauria will be discussing their book, “A Political Odyssey, The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It,” which chronicles Senator Gravel’s life and career.

The interview will be published on Think Youth, both as an audio podcast and a written transcript, on Friday, August 15.

Election 2008: Ralph Nader in Athens, Georgia

On July 25th, 2008, my father, my thirteen-year-old brother, and I went to go see Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and 2008 Independent Presidential candidate, speak at “Master’s Hall” on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. I had been incredibly excited to see that Nader was coming to Georgia on his “Southern Tour”, and no more than forty miles away from my town, no less! My father, being the good open-minded fellow that he is, agreeably drove myself and my uninterested brother there and paid the $10 each to get in. We each received a free Nader/Gonzalez ‘08 pin for this payment. There was a long table set up just outside the hall for this practice of collecting money, and for collecting signatures on a petition to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Georgia. The number of signatures necessary to get Nader, or any Independent candidate, on the ballot in Georgia is inane: 42,489 signatures by July 8th. Such ballot access laws are implemented so that independent candidates cannot make a significant challenge to the two major parties in power (who are the ones that make the laws, of course).

The event was at 5:30 in the afternoon; we three were situated in our seats by 5:00, and we watched as the hall filled up with likely about two hundred people. Since Ralph Nader had held an event in Columbia, South Carolina, at 12 o’clock that afternoon, and since he had run into some bad traffic on the way to Athens, he did not arrive at the hall until about 6 o’clock that evening.

After giving a brief press conference upstairs, Nader arrived, amidst a burst of applause. He walked down the aisle, right next to where I was sitting (close enough that I could have touched him, if I lacked judgement and prudence), towards the podium. Nader sat down and briefly rested from his busy schedule while a young African American campaign volunteer, a “concerned citizen”, gave an earnest introductory speech. In this speech, the young man affirmed how much he cared about the country and the issues at hand, and how important it is for everyone to care and be civically involved. And then he said, “And now I am proud to present a more-than-worthy 2008 presidential candidate, Mr. Ralph Nader.” The crowd erupted into applause. This was the moment that we had all been waiting for. We three were not disappointed.
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The End

Former Senator Mike Gravel, on May 25th, 2008, acknowledged the truth for the last time in his political career. “This is the end. I started in politics at 15 years old, and this is the end of my political career. Right today. Right this afternoon.”

Asked if there was anything that he would have liked to have done differently in this campaign, Gravel said, “No, no, no, we played it straight. My style of politics is just to tell people what you are, what you believe in, and what you want to lead to.”

Mike Gravel’s political career may have ended on a warm day in May 2008, but it began when, in 1945, as a young man at age 15, he began passing out flyers and volunteering with local political campaigns in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. It continued when he headed to Alaska in 1956, leaving the Kennedy-controlled politics of Massachusetts, in the hopes of launching his own political career. Alaska was the perfect place to do it; when Gravel first arrived there, it was in the pre-statehood phase and didn’t even have any Senators yet.

Mike Gravel was elected to the Alaska House of Representative in 1962, and he tried to make the most of the power of his office in order to help people. Gravel said at the HRC/LOGO debate in August 2007, “My first piece of legislation in the State Legislature was the creation of the Human Rights Commission of Alaska. I fought hard, I used political capital. And what I learned is that when you use political capital, more capital comes to you. The Human Rights Commission dealt with gays and dealt with the black community. That was my first accomplishment, and I felt it deeply.”
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Libertarian Debate at 9:00 EST Tonight on C-Span

It is May 24th, and the Libertarians are in the midst of their National Convention in Denver. The Convention started on May 22nd, and will continue until May 26th. This year, there are many candidates for Libertarians to choose from. Six of those candidates acquired enough “tokens” today to participate in a Live Libertarian Debate on C-Span tonight, at 9-11 o’clock Eastern time, 6-8 o’clock Pacific time.

Concerning “tokens” the Libertarian Party website clarifies, “The 12 presidential candidates who made the trip to Denver for the National Convention have been petitioning Libertarian delegates for their support in the form of delegate tokens, which go towards qualifying candidates for certain events at the national convention.”

The candidates debating will be Former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel, Former Congressman Bob Barr, Mary Ruwart (a Libertarian party activist), George Phillies (Libertarian activist and professor of physics), Steve Kubby (Libertarian activist and cancer patient), Michael Jingozian, and Wayne Allyn Root (business mogul). Other Libertarian candidates who did not acquire enough tokens to debate were Christine Smith, Daniel Imperato, and Alden Link.

If you have any interest in the campaign for the 2008 Libertarian nomination, be sure to tune in tonight. Again, it starts this evening at 9 o’clock Eastern time on C-Span, and goes on until 11 o’clock. If you had the interest to watch the debate, please leave a comment here on what you thought about it.

Politics of Insanity

Over the past couple decades, the American people have seen the incompetence, corruption, and inability to get anything done among the collective group of their elected officials. These elected officials find themselves indebted to lobbyists and corporations who donate to their political campaigns, rather than their constituents, and so they often find it necessary to represent and work for their corporations rather than their constituents. Many Americans these days are probably now wondering, “How do I go about picking a candidate who is competent and able and who is not corrupt, so that I can then vote for them and work for them, so that they can get into office and work for me?”

It is difficult attempting to scrutinize each candidate to try to determine what exactly they are thinking, so I have come up with a better solution to ascertain that the candidate that you elect will work for you, and work hard. For those candidates running for elected office, what the constituents need to do is to all get together, have the candidates in front of them, and then everyone stand back and each throw one dart towards the candidates. I almost can guarantee you that the candidate who receives the most darts will work, and work hard, for his or her constituents. They shan’t want any darts thrown at them again.

But, seriously, friends, there is an incompetence, corruption, and ineffectiveness that seems to be held collectively among our elected officials, with a few exceptions. It also seems to be held, generally, among both of the major political parties. What we, the American people, have essentially been doing these past several decades is swinging back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans, reverting from one to the other when one does not satisfactorily execute its promises. When we tire of one party, the other party shouts, “Here! We can do all of the things that you want, and more! We shall be a ‘change’ from this other useless party!” But this new party does not deliver on its promises either.

We switch back and forth, finding each party unsatisfactory over and over again, and we expect different results each time the Democrats or each time the Republicans promise to bring different results. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is, according to Albert Einstein, the very definition of insanity.
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Mike Gravel is a Libertarian now?

I have supported Mike Gravel for a long time now. I have always admired his willingness to call out the liars within the Democratic establishment. I have supported the National Initiative for Democracy, which is an idealistic and romantic idea of how the system should work. Gravel’s Fair Tax is also idealistic and romantic, however, the problem with the Fair Tax is that it is unfair, but really that is another matter.

Quite a few times throughout his campaign I have wondered why Senator Gravel has done certain things. Some of them do come across as crazy and a little bit wacky. In one video Gravel is seen on a street corner with Ron Paul supporters trying to set up a debate with Paul and another time Gravel dressed up as Santa Claus for a special holiday musical video. Neither of these times, was I really concerned that Mike Gravel did not deserve my support.

However, last night Senator Gravel announced that he would be switching parties and joining the Libertarians.

I wanted to update you on my latest plans before news gets out. Today, I am announcing my plan to join the Libertarian Party, because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country. I wanted my supporters to get this news first, because you have been the ones who have kept my campaign alive since I first declared my candidacy on April 17, 2006.

I completely agree with the criticisms about the Democratic Party, however the Libertarian Party is the wrong direction to go. It is said that the two pillars of the Libertarian Party are “greed and weed.” I am a Liberal, I believe in helping the working poor. So really, I could never support a candidate who entered the same party Ron Paul shied away from. I don’t know who I will support now, I may stick with Gravel. The other options are a celebrity speech reader and a famous wife of a famous president. Nader of course, is a possibility, but maybe that is too cliché.

Why not Gravel or Nader or both?

“I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.”
-Barack Obama

http://gravel08.us

Corporate Control

It is a well-known and unfortunate fact in the United States that businesses, corporations, and special interests play a much greater role in our politics and government than we would certainly like it to. There has been, for decades, if not centuries, the element to our politics that is the corrupting influence of money. It has become particularly pronounced in recent years, especially in this 2008 Presidential Election, where candidates of both political parties are raising millions and millions of dollars each in campaign cash. In fact, this could be the first billion-dollar presidential campaign in our country’s history. That is, assuredly, not a positive sign.

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Noam Chomsky applauds Senator Gravel’s past and present accomplishments

 A statement, purportedly from the great Noam Chomsky himself, was recently issued on the front page of Former Alaskan Senator and current Presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s official campaign website. The statement applauds Gravel’s accomplishments, and it reads as such:

“Alone among members of Congress, Senator Mike Gravel had the courage to take a stand that not only helped bring the atrocious Indochina wars to an end, but also made a great contribution to breaking the wall of secrecy that governments erect to protect themselves from their own citizens. I am of course referring to his release of the Pentagon Papers, properly called “the Gravel edition,” which provided the public with a unique opportunity to become educated about affairs of state…  

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The only thing we have to fear is…

Franklin Roosevelt said in his First Inaugural Address, during the thick of the Great Depression, to a frightened, uncertain, and despairing population: “Firstly, I would like to assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.” Roosevelt, arguably one of the greatest Presidents of these united states, gave new hope and comfort to the down-trodden population with his first address to the American people. And, ultimately, he would assuage the people’s fears altogether by lifting them out of the terrible Depression. 

In 1933 and the years following Roosevelt’s Inauguration, the leaders of yesteryear triumphed over the problems facing them. We must face many new challenges in this new millennium, and it seems to me that we have something new that should be feared above all. Read more

Why Mike Gravel Should be the next President

With these elections, it is necesary that people carefully consider all of the candidates, even though the media likes to thin out the field of candidates for us before a single vote is even cast. Do not discount any candidate immediately: it is your duty as a citizen and voter of the United States to evaluate any and all candidates to decide which one best represents you. Dispel any qualms about Gravel’s electibility: the fact of the matter is that if everyone believes that a candidate is electable, then they will be electable, while if everyone believes that a candidate is not electable, then they are not. People should vote for whom they truly agree with in the primaries, so maybe then they won’t be presented with two bad choices in the general election (and then complain about that fact). So, here, in order to inform the population, I’ve written an article detailing the aspects of Former Senator Mike Gravel’s illustrious life and his positions on various policies and issues.

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In support of the Fair Tax

There are two main progressive systems of taxation: an income tax (which is what we have now) and a sales tax. Some people, particularly presidential candidates, are discussing which tax system would be best for the United States. With the income tax, you’re taxed on what you earn; with the sales tax, you’re taxed on what you spend. To learn more about these tax systems and to decide for myself which one is better for America at this point in time, I decided to apply, to both tax systems, the three requirements that a tax system needs to ensure fairness: total transparency, no exceptions, and simplicity. Read more

Corporate Censorship

You may or may not know that Former Alaskan Senator and current 2008 presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, Mike Gravel, has been excluded from the October 30th MSNBC Democratic debate and will be excluded from the November 15th CNN debate. He met all of the arbitrary requirements for the November 15th debate, except for one: he has not raised $1 million dollars. This only serves to further the corruption and influence of money in our politics, which is ridiculous considering that most Americans believe that there is already an inordinate emphasis on money in politics. (For example, Chris Dodd has about the same amount of support levels as Mike Gravel, and yet Dodd has raised over $13 million total? How is that possible?)

So, Gravel is holding an Alternative debate on November 15th (which will be able to be seen on Ustream.tv). But I am not writing here to simply rally support against Gravel’s censorship. It is my duty to address the full scope of the problem, so I would also like to note the problem of censorship by the media in general, and its implications for our society.

Gravel is certainly not the first candidate to have been censored by the media. Ralph Nader (who I defend against accusations that he is the reason that Al Gore lost in 2000), Dennis Kucinich, and countless others who don’t quite fit the mainstream media’s ideas, or who are not corrupt and don’t take money from special interests and corporations, have been censored or are in danger of being censored.

Because, you see, if a candidate is not in the pocket of the corporation that owns the media, then it is against the self-interest of the corporation to allow that candidate to speak out on the media outlets that the corporation controls. This works vice-versa, as well. Candidates who are in the pockets of the corporations that own the media will be allowed to speak on the media outlets that the corporation owns.

This corporate influence in our media only serves to make sure that the candidates that we elect to our highest offices in the land are the most corrupt candidates. It serves to make sure that the candidates with the most integrity are silenced. It’s no wonder that we have such a sorry bunch of representatives in Washington. It’s no wonder that we have a man like George W. Bush as president. Unfortunately, their lack of integrity is why they win.

It is very dangerous to allow the corporate media to have this kind of power over us, to thin out the field of candidates before a single vote is even cast. It undermines the values which our democracy was founded upon, and it undermines our democratic elections. Are we really such a democracy after all, when the rich and powerful alone decides who runs our government? Our government is not of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

Our so-called “democracy” is currently in a very unfortunate state. It’s time to bring Democracy back.

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