LET US COMMEMORATE 4000 U.S. SOLDIER DEATHS IN IRAQ WITH IMPEACHMENT

We must wake up! Drag ourselves out of the coffin of complacency and do what can be done. 

The alarm has been ringing days, months, years ago. Wake up!  Acknowledge we have the powers for change.  We must use them.

Thanks to all of you who tirelessly call us to action each day.

BELOW:  What if?

               City Club of Portland Bans Neville

                New Year New U.S.

                Today if I were Senator....                

                Get up and Go

                My Mission Statement




WHAT IF?

What if America went about it's business as usual on 911?

What if  firefighters didn't risk their lives to rescue on that day?

What if  we went to and from the office, to and from schools, and didn't stop to care?

What if Americans didn't leave their routines and travel from all corners of the nation to assist, search, provide, comfort, feed, clothe?

What if money didn't pour in to support and help?

What if Americans didn't demonstrate so much love and compassion that the world itself stood still in somber sympathy and support?

Well then you'd have Katrina where the nation watched the storms gather, the flood gates burst, the New Orleans citizens be trapped and abandoned waiting for a rescue that did not come while we watched people die from neglect.

And what if this neglect and apathy became habit and people became so sorrowful and frustrated that when others suffered they looked away?

And what if that looking away became business as usual and we went about our daily lives while more died than in the World Trade Towers? 

Well then we'd have the Iraq War - the White Elephant in the room. The war everyone is against and few are willing to end. We allow death and destruction to our very own while we go about our business as usual because to deal with it is bothersome, inconvenient, and besides who wants to take responsibility for this fiasco?

Had enough? I have.  I'll share the responsibility.  I'll work to end this fiasco.  I'll not sleep until our soldiers are home.  I haven't slept since they left anyway.

Help me.  This is doable.  This is right.  Vote for me.  I'll work day and night to bring our soldiers home.

CITY CLUB OF PORTLAND BANS ONLY FEMALE CANDIDATE FROM FORUM

EXPLOITS FREE MASSIVE MEDIA FOR THEIR PERSONAL PICKS ON OPB

"My complaint is not that I am not invited to the Club.  It is that the Club is using a public forum to provide massive public media to promote Merkley and Novick.  If you remove "public" and "mass media" I would not care."


Candy Neville, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in the May primary election, accused the City Club of Portland on Monday of discriminating against the only female candidate by excluding her from its April 4 political forum.
 
“The decision to invite only Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick is exclusionary, prejudicial and elitist,” said Neville. “If it were a private event for members only and closed to the media, then I would have no problem. But they are utilizing massive public media by newspapers, radio and TV stations from across the state to promote their candidates. The club is abusing the public trust by using this forum to promote and select the candidates of its choosing.”
 
Neville noted that the club departed from its routine criteria for selecting speakers and arbitrarily imposed additional guidelines to bar the only female candidate, as well as the only minority candidate, David Loera, from the forum. “No matter what rationale they offer for their actions, this action by a privileged few runs starkly counter the inclusive values of everyday Oregonians,” she said.
 
The club notified Neville on March 14 of the criteria, which includes a strong standing in the polls. She noted that the last day to file for the election was March 11, leaving no time for completion of a serious, inclusive poll.  “The only polls I’m aware of so far do not even include all the candidates and amount to informal, unscientific surveys,” she said.
 
Another criteria requires proof of strong fund raising. “I have intentionally chosen to hold no major fund-raising events and am running an old-fashioned ‘shoe-leather’ campaign intended to remind Oregonians that there are still candidates who want to win their votes, not buy them,” she said. The last criteria was name recognition, which Neville says she has achieved, as evidenced by the media coverage her campaign is receiving. “Google me,” she said.
 
Neville said Merkley’s campaign contacted her on March 14 and assured her of the candidate’s support for her inclusion in this forum. “I appreciate that and hope Novick will offer his support, as well,” she said.
 
Neville believes the City Club of Portland owes an apology to women voters, minority voters, and all Oregon voters who believe they are capable of making up their own minds.”

                                                NEW YEAR - NEW U.S.

Outspoken DPLC Dec. issue:
by Candy Neville, candidate for U.S. Senator

Happy 2008 to the unbowed, uncowed and unconquered!  Here is to you who celebrate your citizenship by caring for your neighbors, your country, yourself.  This is a season to be thankful for our many blessings and freedoms and to bless others with our freedoms.  This is a season of hope and truth.  An opportunity to stop waving the flag, and to plant it.  Here at home on behalf of those who cannot come home, do not have a home, and feel so very abandoned and alone.  And forgotten.

But not by us.  This season we will remember and speak up for the trapped, dismayed, depressed.  We will speak up for the poor, the sick, the addicted.  We will bless the land that has blessed us, thank the family that raised and tolerates us.  We will hold in our hearts and our actions the soldiers away and the soldiers waiting to be deployed.

This year we will speak up for those who are not in a position to speak for themselves.  We will worry less about electing people and more about making history.  Making changes.  We will exercise the gift of free speech.  We will plan and begin the process of bringing our troops home.  We will not look the other way.  We will not tend to lesser, but easier business.  We will hold them in our hearts, our prayers and we will remember their families.

What is a new beginning if not a time to pause and genuinely care.  Let us join together in fearlessness and compassion.  May we lift our arms to those called to arms.  May we remember them in our prayers, good wishes and actions daily.

And may each day we take an action to bring them home.  On their soil.  With their families.  To strengthen us here - where we are.  Let every bell, carol, card call to your heart.  May you answer that call with love and action.  And may 2008 be the beginning of a power for progress and love not yet imagined nor known.  Thanks to you.

                                        Want to help?  Please pass on this link.


                                            TODAY IF I WERE SENATOR . . .

I liken the administration to arsonists, who daily ignite fires for us to run and put out.  All the while, we must build a base for established progress that minimizes and permanently extinguishes the fires.  Gradually, we must reclaim the daily productivity of our government.  Health plans, economy, education, labor, global warming, illegal immigration, equality and more are of vast and dire importance.  I comment on what hit the news today. 

And always, always, I would begin each day working to get out of Iraq and save the lives of our most precious natural resources - our soldiers, our citizens, our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, parents, neighbor.  Our protectors who are needed here at home.


GET OUT OF IRAQ:
    1. Resurrect, promote and work to establish extensive, comprehensive, and presently ignored:
H.R.508 Bring the Troops Home and Iraq Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2007 (Introduced in House)
    2. Promote immediately and methodical exit strategy in two week phase-outs, beginning with outer perimeters of U.S. involvement.  Replace each U.S. military personnel with Iraq personnel and train them for two weeks and commence with sending U.S. military personnel home.  Go into next perimeter and repeat until all U.S. military had returned home.  Leaving only Generals and high ranking strategists.  Then send them home too.  This method could be altered, replaced or improved.  It is intended to make obvious that when we set a goal we can take make a plan to achieve them.
    3. Increase weakened homeland security.  The military and their equipment are too far away to effectively defend freak terrorists attacks on our homeland.  This is evident by the fact that we were not equipped to save grandma's off roofs during Katrina disaster. 
       A.  Identify vulnerable points of interest in each state and fortify them.
       B.  Continue to train returned soldiers for immediate response if needed.
It is too late to find out after the fact, that we are not defense-ready at home.

TIMBER AND ENVIRONMENT: Read related stories in Oregonian 12/18/07
    I am weary of Oregon scrapping.  We have an industry the world relies on.  By upgrading our endeavors to top notch eco-friendly means of harvest, we can acquire a lion's share of a world market in the "build green" movement.  People desire and do pay more for "green" and the care of harvesting eco-friendly has a bi-product of long term, sustainable income for true loggers - not those who briefly log when big areas are open for clear cutting.  You can buy denim jeans for $10 bucks or $250 - it's how you design and market.  Same denim - different profit.  It is the same with timber harvesting.  With planning, the big money and big profits can stay here.  Timber harvests, tourism can be mutually beneficial.  Outside investors looking for quick profit "cut and run" with our future livelihood and wealth.  Don't let them.
    1. "Bush call for review of spotted owl plan.  U.S. forests/ The action stops short of scrapping the plan, which would allow more logging"  by Scott Learn and Michael Milstein of The Oregonian
     I would acknowledge that Bush took time to put effort into fund raising via activating the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.  This would strengthen profiteers - not long term industry profit makers - to "Cut and Run" with future sustainable logging, environment and tourism benefits. I would work to highlight the shenanigans and strengthen and promote the Endangered Species Act.  Quick profits only benefit the few.  A brief boom does not support logging tradesmen for the long haul.
    2. "Two clear-cuts emerge as the initial trigger to events that spilled truckloads of mud and debris onto U.S. 30" by Michael Milsten of The Oregonian 
    3. "Mudslides in clear-cut areas spur Weyerhaeuser to action" Associated Press.
     I would acknowledge and highlight the truth and reality of the "Cut and Run" philosophy and the severe impact on long term Oregonian timber industry, tourism, and native species. We must protect our natural resources so that long term  timber and tourism industries not become endangered species themselves.

ECONOMY:
    We need a brave new approach to stimulus packages. A small handout is necessary, but very short lived.  People need jobs.  The nation and indeed Oregon has an infrastructure that is in massive need of repair.  I propose patterning ourselves after the TVA, identifying projects that need doing and do them - hire the work force and get them earning and spending. And of course, saving.
    I would favor setting strict guidelines for lending institutions that have wreaked havoc on our economy via the "Cut and Run" lending of the past two years.  Profiteers have arranged loans that purchasers could not support.  The losses left the buyers and the note-holders holding the bag of nothing.  This simple act of "Cut and Run" greed has caused damage to the housing industry, national economy and world economy.  It was avoidable.  Now it needs to be made enforceable.

PELOSI PROJECT #411:
    If I were in office today, I would make all the above goals easier to achieve by working to get all remaining 411 congresspersons - starting with five in the Great State of Oregon - to cosign Kucinich bill to impeach Cheney.  Justice denied is more than an anchoring burden, it impedes progress.  Whether Cheney was removed from office or not, the active process of impeachment is a marvelous tool to slow him in promoting more attacks on foreign nations.  It would show the world that we Americans are not cowed, but rather stand up and speak up.  It would invigorate us as we dashed the chains of complacency and disappointment that impede us each day.  At the very least, I would work for the five congresspersons from Oregon to stand and be an example to the rest of the nation by saying, "Oregon says no.  Oregon stands up. Oregon demands accountability."

                                           Want to help?  Please pass this link on.



                                                        GET UP AND GO!                                       

Outspoken DPLC Nov issue:
by Candy Neville, Candidate for U.S. Senator

Remember the tragic fire of 1962 at the small grade school in Owa when dozens of children died or were severely burned fleeing the flames while pushing and cramming down an old fashioned metal escape slide from the second and third floors?  No?  That's because it didn't happen. 

I attended that small country school for six months in the sixth grade while we waited to buy a house in a nearby town.  I was eleven years old and we had a fire drill.  Everybody leapt from their seats and pushed and shoved to get out via that old metal and fully enclosed escape slide.  I was too little to make much leeway and seeing the kids jammed in there and barely moving made me want to flee the escape as much as any fire.  I watched this fiasco and knew with a certainty that if this had been a fire - we would be dead.

The next English assignment, I wrote a detailed essay on how to have a right and proper fire drill.  To my astonishment, the school adopted it.  Was there ever a blaze in that old wooden fire trap?  I have no idea.  But I do know that if they had not implemented a system to escape the fire - and if there had been a fire - they would have died and we would all remember the tragic school fire of 1962.  And had I not written my simple essay, I would have allowed it.  There is nothing that goes on that we do not allow.

Remember 2002 when Congress relinquished their power to the executive branch, namely George Bush, to declare war on Iraq?  We allowed it.  Remember the multitude of inspectors marching into Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction and finding none?  And remember Saddam Hussein's spokesman offering to allow 2000 FBI agents into Iraq to verify there were no weapons of mass destruction?  And Bush's spokesman responding with, "Tell them we'll meet them in Baghdad?"  This invasion into Iraq was depite "worldwide antiwar protests of between six and ten million people in more than 800 cities, the largtst such protest in human history according to the Guinness Book of World Records."  It is reported that 36,000,000 people took 0part in 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.  Yet we allowed Congress to go unchecked and the president to remain in office.  There is nothing that has happened that we did not allow.

And now there is talk by the Bush administration to invade Iran.  The Senate approved a symbolic Rebuke of Iran.  76 Senators, including Gordon Smith, foolishly voted Yea.  22 Senators, including Ron Wyden, voted Nay.

There is nothing that will happen that we do not allow.  If 36,000,000 cannot stop an Iraq War then we must rally 36,000,001.  If 3,000 protests do not stop a war from occurring then we must rally 3,001.  We must empower our congresspersons even further to stand up, speak up, starting here, starting now WITH US and let the Great State of Oregon be heard within our Capitol and without on our street corners, with our e-mails, letters and phone calls.  We must continue insisting on justice and if justice is denied doing the most thorough and practical endeavor of all - impeachment of those who ignore the please of the multitudes, the voice and, indeed, the will of the people.

We must stand up, speak u0p, starting here and starting now.  Until.  Until democracy in our homeland is restored.  Until elected officials high and low heed the will of the people or be removed from a position which blocks and denies - rather than heeds and promotes - our wisdom, our wishes and our choice.

Every two years the largest group of activists draw together to promote the candidates and their party.  What an opportunity to address en masse before unseen and use this time of action, to demand an end to injustice and insanity in our nation.  While you promote your party and your candidates - you must speak up for your fellow Americans, your children, your family, your friends and yourself.  Starting here and starting now.

                                   Want to help?  Please pass this link on.



                                        MY MISSION STATEMENT

The Democrats have a marvelous slogan, "We can do better." Not only can we do better, we must admit that we know better and then act on that knowing.

                            Stand up.  Speak up.  Starting here.  Starting now. 

    My name is Candy Neville. I am running for U.S. Senator from Oregon against Gordon Smith via the Democratic primary in May 2008. It is not about whether I win or lose — or whether any one person wins or loses.  The time to depend on winners or losers is over. We must care about ourselves and each other and take action. Not in 2008, but today. We must stand up, speak up, starting here, starting now.

    We are not in Iraq to give our troops something to do. The majority of them want to come home and dedicate their patriotism, talents, skills, lives to their own families and their own country. Their predicament haunts me, and I am certain it haunts the multitude of you.  I am told that almost 1/2 of Americans believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Iraq was associated with Bin Laden.  Not only can ignorance no longer be an  excuse, it can no longer be an option.  Ignorance is a luxury we cannot afford.

    We must return representative government to the United States. Many of our politicians and congressmen do not answer our contacts, respond to our e-mails, return our phone calls — and too often do not even have somebody else do so. They do not keep track of our opinions, and they do not even pay attention to the polls regarding what the American people want.  This is not acceptable. Each one of us, Democrats and Republicans, must make it known without a doubt that this will no longer be tolerated regarding the representatives we have elected to our own parties.

    We are very fortunate in Oregon to have Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Peter DeFazio vote the desires of the people - to take an on-going and intelligent stand against the war, and to oppose the abdication of Congressional power.  They have been the minority who have utilized common sense, courage and integrity.  As the senseless war wages, and our nations’ and Oregonian lives are sacrificed, we must as a state embolden our congressmen even more and call on them to stand up and speak up louder and more adamently until this national disgrace ends.

    We must lift a finger to call, write or e-mail. If that does not work, we must yell, stomp our feet and meet on street corners. We must stand up, speak up, starting here,  starting now.  We Americans must cease bickering among ourselves and falling for slogans,  shenanigans and foolish rhetoric. We must turn our ire and insistence to making our own chosen representatives listen to and represent us. Democrats to Democrats. Republicans to Republicans. We must cease to be "the little people" and become the big citizens who demand respect and representation.

    We must remove from office those who do not serve our purpose — who block us from getting any meaningful work done. Who ignore our poor and, indeed,  produce more poor.  We must do our patriotic duty and even impeach when necessary.   If we collectively do not approve of the direction we are going, we must collectively remove those elected officials from office who force wrong and disastrous direction upon us. We must dust off the courage we claim to have and use it here at home.
 
   We are a good nation. We are a good people. I miss us. I miss our personal power. I miss our bravery — and loath our rhetoric about bravery - while we express through our actions and voting and paralysis - terror and fear — terror and fear — for all the world to witness.  Our nation must cease to cringe in fear and weakness; and we must rise again here at home. We must preserve and protect our national resources and treasures — starting with our troops, our Katrina victims, each other and the environment that feeds and nurtures us.

    We must individually cease falling for slogans and political tricks, while doing nothing  ourselves. Oddly, this should be a fantastic time in American history. The majority of us agree about what must be done. Now it remains to be seen if the majority of us will act.

    I have much to learn.  I have never chosen politics as a career.  But like so many of us, I have been sickened at the turn our country has taken.  It is time for me and you to stand up, speak up, starting here and starting now.  I have often wondered how people look back on times of cowardice in history and try to explain to their families why they, as an individuals, did nothing.  This also haunts me and it is an answer I do not want to know. 

    I do not offer you a false hope and promise about my personal power.  I offer you a true hope and promise about yours.  You have it.  Please use it.  Starting here and starting now.  I do ask for your encouragement and that we encourage each other to return our nation to a position of pride, dignity, courage and peace.  And in May, I ask for your vote.

                                       Want to help? Please pass this link on.                           

                                     Paid for by Candy Neville for U.S. Senate