A look at the current economic collapse,some of its causes, and moves to social control that are taking place as a result of it.

House Speaker Pelosi reversed herself July 10, saying that the Judiciary Committee may indeed hold hearings on the Impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Congress then voted overwhelmingly to move forward on the resolution with 251-166 with 24 Republicans voting in favor. Candidate Paul Richmond welcomed this as an indication that the surge of mass support for Impeachment is working. “It’s a basic principal,” Richmond said, “when we get enough of a parade, the professional politicians will eventually move to the front of it. When we do our jobs as citizens and work to keep our elected leaders honest, it does sometimes pay off.”

In a time when we are seeing record levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are being done in government, Incumbent Norm Dicks has drawn three challengers from three parties. Despite communications from their campaigns, the incumbent has not returned a single communication indicating his availability to engage in a single debate. Ballots for the primary election will be mailed in early August.

Congressional Candidate Paul Richmond joins others in condemning Congresses recent vote, granting immunity to the telecoms who took part in illegal, warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. Incumbent Congressional Representative Norm Dicks again broke with the majority of Democrats. “When large corporations break the law, they should be punished,” said Richmond. “Otherwise what’s the point? What signal does it send when our prison population has increased ten-fold in thirty years, and corporations go unpunished?”

As U.S. Congress member Dennis Kucinich introduced a Resolution calling for the Impeachment of George W. Bush, Paul Richmond again called on Congress to support this. A complete copy of Kucinich's Resolution is available at ,http://www.c- span.org/ pdf/bush_ impeach.pdf.

The question has arisen and is now being debated: should the United States talk with Iran. The United States should not only talk with Iran, the United States should begin the talks with a deep heart felt apology to Iran.

Paul Richmond filed today as a candidate for U.S. Congress in Washington’s 6th District. Paul Richmond is a community activist, lawyer and media producer who has successfully fought against government waste and intrusions into our civil rights. Among other things helped end a pilot program that had the National Guard accompanying Police on Drug Raids, helped to defeat a major pork barrel project at the ballot, and helped to remove several bad actors from office . He has made the Northwest his home for twenty years, and worked to leave every community that he’s lived in better than he found it. His party affiliation is Democrat. Richmond is running his campaign on a platform of restoring our civil rights and transitioning from a war time economy. “At the root of all our problems is the fact that our country is a military based economy, and quickly becoming an economy based in little else,” said Richmond. “My opponent, Norm Dicks has brought a lot of money to the region. But he’s not done it in a way that’s built anything sustainable. The effect has largely been as if we were a household that put all our money into fireworks and blew it up. At the end of the explosion, we’re left with nothing of value. And the effect this has had on our basic liberties is a disaster.” Richmond sees himself as pro military. “Those fighting our wars have been used and abused,” he said. “The number of U.S. dead, more than 4,000, that’s half the population of Shelton where the Democrats held their 6th Congressional Caucus a few weeks ago. The number of seriously wounded, including young people missing portions of their skull, or unable to walk is now several times the town of Shelton’s population of 8,000. At the same time, the troops are losing their homes and going to predatory lenders to get paycheck advances.”

Paul Richmond, Congressional Candidate for Washington’s 6th District sent a letter today to Incumbent Norm Dicks. The letter praised Dicks for its past good work, including his role in ending the production of an entire line of Nuclear missiles. But it went on to state concerns that the elected representative that showed vision and leadership in this past crisis has been missing in action for a long time. The letter pointed to three main issues of concern. 1) Dick’s votes in favor of the Iraq War and Occupation, and its continued funding, including a vote this past Thursday that went against the votes of the majority of Democrats; 2) Dicks continued support of laws that take away from our civil liberties and weaken the Bill of Rights. These include laws like the PATRIOT Act that he has voted in favor of and the Homegrown Terrorism Act that he co-sponsored; and 3) Dicks support of “free trade” agreements that undercut basic protections to labor, the environment and give corporations greater rights than governments. Individually these are all distressing. But, wrote Richmond, taken together these form an integrated attack on the most fundamental rights we are granted under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Taken together these point us to a society where the rights of corporations are placed above those of citizens. Taken together these point us to a society that is no longer a genuine Democracy or very much of a free society. Richmond concluded the letter by saying he looked forward to debating these issues with Dicks in the future.

Forty hours before Democrats in Washington’s 6th Congressional District will meet to endorse a candidate, Incumbent Norm Dicks broke with the majority of his party and voted to support continued funding of the illegal Iraq War and Occupation. The Campaign of Paul Richmond issued this Statement: We are astounded that our opponent Congressman Norm Dicks joined with a minority of Democrats in voting for continued funding of the useless and illegal Iraq War and Occupation. (http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll328.xml) While the vote was thankfully defeated (147 Democrats, 2 Republicans voted No, 132 Republicans merely voted present.) it shows that the Congressman is at odds with the majority of citizens, the majority of Democrats, and his constituency.

6tH District U.S. Congressional Candidate Paul Richmond calls on Incumbent Norm Dicks today to Vote against further funding for the Iraq War and Occupation. Today the Congress is asked to allocate 162 Billion to continue the useless Iraq War and Occupation with no strings attached. Estimates are now that the war will already cost us Six Trillion ($6,000,000,000,000) Dollars. That does not include the more than thirty thousand (30,000) wounded veterans and their families.

Paul Richmond, Democratic Candidate in Washington’s 6th District, opposing 33 year incumbent Norm Dicks called on his opponent for greater transparency in the earmarks process. Dicks, through his spokesman George Behan, has refused to release his list of earmarks.

“The economic model for this country,” said Richmond, has become The Producers.” In this movie and play an unethical Broadway Producer and their Accountant realize they can make more money by producing a bad play no one will want to see, than producing a good one. All they have to do is gather in huge amounts of investment money and produce a flop. “As we go to pay taxes today we should know why this country moved from being the world’s greatest creditor nation to its greatest debtor beginning in the “fiscally conservative” 1980’s.” Said Congressional Candidate Paul Richmond. Includes Media Release and Paper

Candidate Darcy Burner and others recently released what is being hailed by many as a “Responsible Plan” for exiting Iraq. It’s been given prominent play in the Seattle PI, as well as the Nation, Huffington Post and others. While the work is a good synthesis of much current Democratic sponsored legislation, and makes many valid points, the plan does not challenge the fundamental premise that the U.S. needs to dominate other countries. In doing so, it fails to ask the hard question of whether a never ending “war on terror” (which it supports) can coexist with a free society.