Elections are another forum of political struggle and to participate, it is always wise to have a litmus test list for deciding on the candidates who should receive your vote. It is the program that must prevail in your decision. The primary issue is war or peace, or in other words, guns or butter, for we cannot have both.

There are a lot of "liberals" claming to be for civil liberties and social services but support bombing Afghanistan. Since paying for war makes it impossible to pay for social services, these hypocrites do not deserve our vote and in fact are an insult to our intelligence. The following is a very basic criteria for judging candidates' suitability for our vote:

1. Oppose bombing Afghanistan.

2. Oppose funding Israel: The United States gives billion above the table and billion below the table to Israel annually to guarantee protection of the oil companies' profits in the Middle East from any progressive struggle such as nationalizing the oil companies and redistributing the wealth to the workingclass who create all wealth and who have the greatest need. That is the reason the United States has made Israel a junior partner of US imperialism.

3. Oppose the death penalty concretely by voting against it. This especially applies to federal and state legislators and to governors, who make the decision on the existence and the implementation of the death penalty.

4. Oppose construction of prisons. This also especially applies to federal and state legislators and to governors. Just as we cannot have guns and butter on the federal level, so too we cannot have prisons and schools on the local level. The concentration camps, also known as the prison-industrial complex, has grown while school funding has been cut.

5. Oppose stadium swindles and Olympic Game sites in the USA. The Olympic Games is the latest version of the palm-greasing corporate welfare construction projects, heavily subsidized with our tax dollars, known as stadium swindles. The Summer Olympics should be permanently in Athens, Greece and the Winter Olympics should be permanently in Norway. Very often "liberal" Democrats will be good on other issues, but are big supporters of stadium swindles. Thus, they do not have our interests at heart at all; they have corporate welfare as their priority. These stadium swindles are often passed with election fraud, as occurred in San Francisco in 1997. See http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium

Feel free to add your own criteria for judging candidates. It is long overdue that everyone vote their hopes, not their fears. The world is horrified at such "liberals" as Democratic former Pres. Clinton who bombed Yugoslavia so the US military could build a base to enable big business to mine the minerals including oil in that area. Greece had huge demonstrations against the war in their neighboring country, with signs portraying Clinton as another Hitler. The US is doing exactly the same thing in Afghanistan so Unocal can build its oil pipeline. See: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2002/0209/448097021FR09KARZAI.html

If a candidate's literature does not state their positions on the above issues, call their office and ask for their position on the above litmus test. If they do not meet ALL the criteria on this litmus test, do not vote for them. That is the ONLY way our message of putting butter before guns will be received. If you do not find a suitable candidate for a given position, skip that position. It is always worthwhile to vote on the propositions, so please do that. The "lesser" evil is profoundly evil and the world cannot afford these horrors anymore. In fact, it never could afford any evil. Vote positively, and vote in every election.