I was privileged to be a guest of my friend Jean Colman of Welfare rights Organizing Coalition who was being honored by Representative Jim McDermott at his Potato Festival. (http://www.wroc.org give them some Love if you have the means it is a wonderful organization) Jim gave a little talk about what was going on in DC and then answered a few questions from the audience. He said he was smiling a whole lot more nowadays when he goes to Washington.
Questions were asked about impeachment and after the standing ovation for the person who even mentioned it, Jim asked us what we thought congress should do ~ work on impeachment things, which would take the entire energy of congress as it did in the Clinton thing, or try to clean up the myriad of messes the Republicans have left beginning with the Iraq war and then trying to clean up the domestic and environmental stuff? He tried to say that, if we impeached Bush then we would be left with Cheney, and the whole room called to him that we should impeach them both and then Nancy Pelosi would be our president. That made him smile even more ~ but he said nothing to it.
He gave us a little aside about the firing of McKay, one of the attorneys who were fired in the probe being conducted by the House. He told us that McKay, whose family he know, and was from a long line of Republicans was a loyal Republican but not someone who would easily be corrupted. When our extremely close governor's election was being re-counted, McKay refused to buckle under the very hard push by the Bush administration to call the election for the Republican that eventually lost by (supposedly) 150 votes. When McKay refused to fix anything for them, he was fired.
I know some of the people here who worked on the Voter Machine things (Paul Lehto, attorney) and they said that voter fraud was rampant in 2 counties (my words not his though I believe he would say that). Interestingly those two counties have been the only ones to completely changed over to touch screen voting and have a heueueuge gap of rich and poor. One of the richest people in the world, Paul Allen, lives in Thurston county along with a lot of Weyerhauser elite and then low income people are at the economic bottom and there are far more of the poor than the few rich.
However as it is in all places, rich are the ones who have the clout and voice. In Snohomish county there are Microsoft billionaires, football players vs migrant workers, working poor and others again who far outnumber the rich live in that county as it is in Thurston county. In Snohomish county, it was reported and ignored that at the height of the election day when voting data was being pumped to the server, the prcessing suddenly went down for about 15 or 20 minutes and all those votes went out into cyberspace to be forever lost. Too bad, they said, the machines cannot be wrong and we won't do it again. Then McKay was called by Bush people and told to fix things, but he refused to do it. BTW Bill Gates lives in King county and this county could be re-counted because we vote on paper ballots that can be mailed in or you can vote at the precinct of your choice.
Hmmm
After the event was over, there was a knot of people gathered around Mr McDermott arguing the impeachment issue. They all felt that it would be worth the energy of Congress. Impeachment would take care of all the other mess in the way when the American People would be vindicated. Then Congress could move to strike all the bad legislation and goings on because the whole administration would be discredited and all the stuff they pushed through could be changed easier. I was interested to note, this group of folks compromised people of all ages, from the very elderly to youth, so it had both the energy of youth and the wisdom of age supporting oimpeachment within it. McDermott pointed out all the extremely dire things Congress has to do and also that because the Senate could never get a majority if LIEberman who would vote against it, and the Senate would not be able to pass anything around impeachment, so why put energy into something that would not at this time, pass in the Senate?
I am of two minds about this: I see the impeachment argument, but I also see what Jim is trying to say. We have over 12 years of horrible Republican policies being made and there IS a disgusting mess that Congress has about 2 years to try to clean up. Yet I see the other side as well. I am wondering what you all think. If I knew how to do it, I'd make a poll but I suspect there are other polls like it at Kos anyway.
Should Congress throw all their energy into impeachment or get busy and clean up the messes Republicans have ignored and/or made?