Seriously, the message on our newest tshirt shouldn’t be necessary. In a nation that came into existence and developed to full power under the initiation and spread of voting rights, it ought to be easy to get citizens to turn out and vote. The reality is that few Americans bother with voting.

The most common justification for not voting is a simple shrug. The second most common justification is to say that the candidates aren’t worth voting for.

Often, in many places, it is true that there is no reasonable choice among the candidates for a particular political office. However, it’s rare that just one political office is on the ballot. In a leap year like this one, Election Day in November will bring almost everyone a great list of candidates at the city level, county level, state level and national level.

Surely, some candidate in one of these elections will be worthy of your vote.

When you don’t vote, all you’re doing is giving the people who do vote more power. So, if you don’t agree with the way that most people are voting, not voting isn’t an effective protest.

The truth is that I know of at least one good presidential candidate who’s likely to be on the ballot in all 50 states this November. Her name is Dr. Jill Stein. Check her out – a vote for Stein will not be a vote wasted on more of the same.

We’ve created this t-shirt because, although there are serious problems with the American political system, we still believe in the democratic values that are at the core of the American identity. The real American dream isn’t to get rich. The American dream is to vote, and have it make a difference. For that to happen, the first thing you’ve got to do is show up.

If you find that there really is absolutely nothing worth voting for on the ballot, then don’t give any candidate or ballot initiative your support. But, show up to do that. Enter the voting booth and write in a candidate, or simply cast an empty ballot, if you must.

Remember, if you don’t vote, you let democracy die. Corporations and special interests won’t be to blame. You will.

Voting is the quintessential American ritual. So, we thought it was especially important that this tshirt is made in the USA. It’s sold through RedBubble, where every single shirt that’s sold is made by American Apparel, which has factories right here in the United States, providing jobs to Americans, and avoiding the nasty sweatshop abuses that are all too common in overseas outsourced garment factories.

The skull is not to represent the workers who made the shirt. It’s to represent what will happen to democracy if you don’t vote this year.

Cut, cut, cut!

Then, Newt Gingrich discovered that the voters of Florida wanted some pork barrel spending on big NASA projects. Gingrich wanted the votes of people in Florida, so that he could defeat Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary to be held there next Tuesday.

So, Newt Gingrich came up with a new promise: Gingrich promised that, if he is elected President, he will have the federal government build a huge permanent colony on the Moon, a base for a new human community that would… collect Moon dust. What’s more, this Moon base would be built in less than eight year.

One thing Gingrich hasn’t been able to explain is how, with the space shuttles out of commission, with the Department of Education destroyed, and with spending on science slashed to a fraction of its previous levels, the federal government could possibly get a permanent human colony on the moon in just eight years. Gingrich hasn’t shared the math that explains how this big government project of his can take place while Gingrich reduces taxes and cuts the size of the budget deficit.

Remember when your mother warned you against trusting people who promise you the Moon? I hope the people of Florida remember that advice, because that’s exactly the maneuver that Newt Gingrich is trying to pull.

So, Newt Gingrich wants to be President so that he can build home for himself on the Moon? Fine. Let’s give it to him. Only, let’s not make him President of the United States of America. Let’s make Newt Gingrich President of the Moon, and then have the Russians ship him off on a Soyuz rocket to serve out his term there, in a capsule on the side of the crater, the ruler of all he can see.

Newt Gingrich for President of the Moon… also available as a tshirt, not made on the Moon, but by American Apparel, right here in the USA.

It’s time to make another donation, and this time around we’re giving to Village Enterprise, which makes free skills training and grants rather than usurious microloans to poor people in East Africa so they can start up their own small businesses.

Here’s what Anderson said:

“With the complicity of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the Bush administration marched our nation off a cliff – morally, legally, and economically – by perpetrating a disastrous war of aggression against Iraq. President Obama, for his political advantage, simply shrugged off war crimes committed in conjunction with that war, with the excuse that we “need to look forward not backward.” It is a trademark reminder – in the spirit of President Ford’s ignominious pardon of Richard M. Nixon – that, in our two-tiered system of injustice, the rich and powerful are above the law, which is applied, often with a crushing vengeance, against the rest of us.”

So, how is Barack Obama like Gerald Ford? The comparison Rocky Anderson makes is apt: Like President Ford, Barack Obama helped the President who came before him evade legal responsibility for serious crimes that were committed in the White House. Just as Gerald ford let Richard Nixon off the hook, Barack Obama let George W. Bush off the hook.

For those of us who worked for years to seek accountability for George W. Bush’s crimes, Obama’s assistance to Bush, Obama’s decision to put the matter into the “past” is especially troubling, given what we’ve seen of Obama’s own willingness to put our constitutional rights aside for the sake of increasing the power of Homeland Security.

Like Darcy Richardson and Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson is a great alternative presidential candidate for liberals who are tired of having their trust betrayed by Barack Obama.

Just a few days after the point of last tracking, the 2012 Republican Caucuses in Iowa reported these results:

Mitt Romney: 30,015 votes (24.6%)
Rick Santorum: 30,007 votes (24.5%)
Ron Paul: 26,219 votes (21.4%)
Newt Gingrich: 16,251 votes (13.3%)
Rick Perry: 12,604 votes (10.3%)
Michele Bachmann: 6,073 votes (5%)
Jon Huntsman: 745 votes (0.6%)
Herman Cain: 58 votes (0.01%)
Buddy Roemer: 31 votes (0.01%)
Gary Johnson: 0 votes (0.00%)

Did the CafePress MerchMeter match Iowa results? Nope. Rick Santorum was the recipient of nearly no enthusiasm in campaign paraphernalia, even in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. The Ron Paul wave online (also reflected in enthusiastic Ron Paul web postings) did not translate to Iowa caucus enthusiasm, even though Paul actively campaigned in Iowa. Michele Bachmann’s lesser online popularity also failed to materialize offline.

What does this mean? There were reasons to think that CafePress sales might have reflected tendencies for caucus results. Buying a shirt regarding a presidential candidate requires commitment, both in the spending of dollars and in the decision to wear that candidate’s name on one’s body going forward. Such commitment levels are more likely to lead people to show up for a caucus. On the other hand, the sales reflected a national trend, while the Iowa results reflected, well, Iowa — hardly a representative subgroup of the American population.

There are reasons to think that perhaps the CafePress results better reflect Republican rank-and-file sympathies — it is national-level data, and the local Iowa caucus results aren’t any more binding than CafePress’ sales statistics. Did you know that the nominating delegates from Iowa aren’t actually going to be picked based on caucus results, but rather will be selected at a later party convention? Yep, it’s true: the Iowa Caucuses are essentially just a beauty contest in their literal effect upon the GOP presidential nomination. They weren’t a real election any more than statistics on shirt sales are a real election…

… except in the sense of the Thomas Theorem, that something is real if it has an observable consequence in reality. Because Americans have decided to grant the Iowa caucuses a reality in consequences for presidential campaigns, they are socially real — and nobody’s decided to grant the CafePress “cultural barometer” that kind of legitimate reality. Is our collective decision right? What set of numbers ought we to respect more?

Unfortunately, a lot of relief charities use their distribution of largesse to press sectarian religious beliefs onto people in need. We try to avoid those groups. Instead, this month we’ve donated funds to the Humanist Crisis Response of the Foundation Beyond Belief, which is an organization of non-religious people seeking to help their fellow human beings. The Humanist Crisis Reponse is currently working to ameliorate famine in the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia, Eritraea and Somalia meet. We’re grateful for the work of the Foundation Beyond Belief; if you have money to spare we encourage you to give what you can.

Crazy? Are environmentalists really crazy?

In response to the posturing of the public relations firms and their fat advertising budgets, I offer the following alternative definition of what it means to be an environmentalist.

Environmentalists:
Those crazy people who think that Planet Earth matters

I gladly admit that I’m that kind of crazy.

Newt Gingrich was outraged by Ron Paul’s support for liberty. His angry response was that “Timothy McVeigh succeeded!”

Timothy McVeigh succeeded? McVeigh was part of a network of right wing extremists that wanted to radically reduce the size of the federal government. After the Oklahoma City bombing, however, the size of the federal government increased. That doesn’t look like success to me. McVeigh’s terrorism provided a powerful lesson: Violence isn’t a reliable method for creating political change.

These details were beyond the grasp of Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectual mind. Gingrich declared that McVeigh succeeded simply because he killed large numbers of people, as if that was McVeigh’s final objective. Then, Gingrich spoke in support of the radical expansion of federal government surveillance powers through laws like the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. “I don’t want a law that says, after we lose a major American city, we’re sure going to come and find you. I want a law that says, if you try to take out an American city, we’re going to stop you!”

Gingrich’s approach seems like good sense, if you accept Newt Gingrich’s premise: That the United States is in danger of losing a major city. That premise, of course, is as flimsy as wet toilet paper. The United States has never had a major city “taken out”. Oklahoma City, of course, isn’t a “major American city”, but even Timothy McVeigh’s terrible attack didn’t destroy Oklahoma City – it only destroyed part of one building in the city. Even Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t result in the destruction of a city. In the context of real American history, Newt Gingrich’s fearful premise isn’t realistic. His hyperbole isn’t helpful.

Those who have a deeper knowledge of American history than what Newt Gingrich can offer also realize that what Gingrich proposes is something that American law was never supposed to do: Focus on preventing crime, rather than punishing it. Constitutional structures such as the fourth amendment were established to prevent the formation of a law enforcement system that was focused on controlling citizens’ activities in order to create a strict society of law and order. In the United States, the system is supposed to err on the side of freedom, with the presumption of innocence.

We aren’t supposed to have big government systems of surveillance targeted against people living peacefully within the United States. The Constitution guarantees protection from unreasonable search and seizure of our bodies and our property. The Big Brother spying laws that Newt Gingrich defends have disabled this constitutional protection, creating a law enforcement system that has more in common with that of the Soviet Union than what the authors of the Bill of Rights had in mind.

Newt Gingrich markets himself as an expert in history, but it’s obviously been a long while since he cracked open a book on American history. Gingrich has allowed his ideological preoccupations with fear and insecurity to overshadow some of the most basic facts of American history and government. His desire for a huge federal government spying system always looking over the shadows of American citizens in order to serve as a crime prevention system places Gingrich in opposition to the highest ideals of our national history.

In 2012, Americans who support the Bill of Rights must take a stand against Newt Gingrich.

On the other hand, we know that the very nations that are plagued by exploitation in labor are the same countries whose people are in need of the resources to help them avoid being exploited. So for every shirt we sell, we commit to donate a dollar to an organization empowering poor people in poor countries to make their lives better. Our latest donation goes to Village Enterprise. Village Enterprise gives out microgrants (not usurious microloans) to help people in East Africa start their own businesses, and also fosters savings groups consisting of and managed by these new small business owners so they can accumulate resources and better themselves in the long term.

While we’re spreading liberal political messages on t-shirts, we ought to be willing to send money to support liberal political action. That’s why we also commit to donate another dollar for every shirt we sell to a worthy political cause here in the United States. This time around, we’ve donated to the American Civil Liberties Union. Search through recent news headlines for “Occupy” and “ACLU” and you’ll find hundreds of articles detailing the ways in which ACLU legal teams have been fighting in court for the legal rights of protesters in occupations from Boston to Wall Street to Oakland to Wilmington and on and on. While occupiers are holding the nation’s squares in free speech assemblies, the ACLU is doing the quiet but crucial work of keeping government officials on the right side of the Constitution and holding the government accountable when it violates American protesters’ rights. You may think participants in the #Occupy movement are being treated shabbily — and you’re right — but without the intervention of the ACLU, matters would be much worse.