November 08, 2012

Some election reflections: USA November 2012

There's plenty of information on-line, here we present some women's victories, opinions, and referenda questions of interest. Just for starters.

For more election analysis: check out the Nov. 7 and 8 shows on Democracy Now!

Women in the Senate: Massachusetts voters elected the first woman senator in the state, Elisabeth Warren, who claimed the old seat of Ted Kennedy, won in 2010 by Republican Scott Brown. For an interesting background piece on Warren's previous government work on developing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new government agency set up to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, see Vanity Fair's article from Nov. 2011: The Woman Who Knew too Much.

In Wisconsin, Democrat Tammy Baldwin defeated her Republican rival, and will be the first woman there and openly gay senator. For a review of womens' victories, see: A record 20 women will serve in U.S. Senate, from the San Francisco Chronicle. "Washington, California and New Hampshire are the three states  in which women hold both U.S. Senate seats.  With the election of two Democratic women to the U.S. House of Representatives, New Hampshire became the first state to have an all-women congressional delegation."
See also the Washington Post's: Women make historic gains in the U.S. Senate

Election commentary (to be continued):

Now That The Election is Over By Starhawk | Published: November 7, 2012

 ..." What does an Obama victory mean for progressives, greens, anarchists and radicals far, far to his left?  To those folks who couldn’t morally bring themselves to vote for Obama, or possibly even to vote at all?  Who grew furious at me for urging people to get to the polls and admitting that I voted for him?

I say it’s a good thing.  No, Obama won’t enact the policies we want.  For one thing, he’s not an absolute monarch and he still has to contend with a Republican Congress.  For another, even though he won’t run again in four years some other Democrat will and they will still need big bucks to do it.  Complaining that politicians are tools of the corporations is like complaining that your sheep have wool.  Unless we change this system, that’s the nature of the beast.

So how do we do that?  We organize and agitate.  We don’t sit back, like many did four years ago, and expect the system to change itself." Read full posting here

Prop 37 Defeated: California Voters Reject Mandatory GMO-Labeling
7 November 2012. HuffPost Los Angeles

"California voters rejected Prop 37, which would have required retailers and food companies to label products made with genetically modified ingredients.

Millions of dollars, mostly from outside of California, were poured into campaigns both for and against Prop 37. But the donations that came in weighed heavily in favor of Prop 37's opponents.

Companies like Monsanto and The Hershey Co. contributed to what was eventually a $44 million windfall for "No on Prop 37," while proponents were only able to raise $7.3 million, reports California Watch." (more)

See also: "Biotech and agrochemical giant Monsanto alone gave $8.1 million to defeat the measure, and DuPont gave $5.4 million. Pepsico, Kraft Foods, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and the agrochemical firm BASF each gave at least $2 million." -- Voters Reject California Proposal to Label GMO Foods After Bitter, Industry-Funded Campaign Truthout.org, 7 Nov, 2012

Gay Marriage Advocates Win on Ballot Questions in Three States: "In a major shift in America's culture wars, advocates of gay marriage won in at least three states Tuesday, as voters in Maine and Maryland voted in legal recognition of same-sex marriage, while Minnesotans shot down a proposed amendment to the state constitution to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Voters in the state of Washington also had an initiative to legalize same-sex marriage on their ballots Proposition 74, and as of Wednesday afternoon the tallied votes were showing a slight lead in favor of the measure."

Green party results: "Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the Green Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees, drew 396,684 votes, or 0.3% of the national total." Press release with election day results