I support the Weak and Feckless Approach. Trust is based on mutual respect and reciprocity. If, at this moment of rage and cynicism, the ruling class goes even further and snubs popular opinion, then that will set off an ugly, destructive, and yet fully justified popular rebellion. Trust in government will be irrevocably broken. It will decimate policy-making for a generation. – David Brooks, NY Times
I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to blog about the lessons of Massachusetts or the direction the President should take in its wake. But leave it to David Brooks to bring out the worst in me. First let me begin by saying that what happened in Massachusetts was a message but not the one that the talking heads and pundits in the media are determined to sell us.
The election in Massachusetts was about President Obama and it wasn’t about President Obama. What am I saying? Am I trying to have it both ways like many of the talking shirts on television who purport to be journalist? No. Let me explain. The election in Massachusetts and the two governors’ races prior to it was not about the President or his policies. What those voters and future voters are repudiating is how our democracy currently functions or fails to function. What the fight over the health-care bill demonstrated to many Americans is that when it came to how our democracy works they didn’t know Jack. Prior to the health-care fight most Americans believed that our democracy functioned like it was taught in civics class so many years ago by a pleasant slightly overweight elementary school teacher. What they witnessed in the past few months turned their stomachs and rightly so. Many Americans had believed the system was broken and now they have some idea how truly broken it is.
The election in Massachusetts was about the President in the fact that he has not been the President he campaigned to be. He was the candidate of change and yet since his election he has not begun the most important change of all, fixing our broken government. The President like so many other politicians thought that the way to fix Washington was this elusive false narrative of bi-partisanship. The way to fix Washington has nothing to do with bi-partisanship in this toxic atmosphere. The term bi-partisanship supposes that you have two parties that are interested in a greater good, the benefit of the people. We currently do not have two groups who share that belief. What the two groups do share is that the greater good is their re-election and job security. The way we fix Washington is to allow our government to function on the most cherished democratic principle; the majority rules. The history of how we have gotten to this mythical 60 vote plateau is long and tawdry but the truth is as long as we allow it to dictate our politics then people like Ben Nelson and Scott Brown become more important than the will of the people.
When President Obama came into office his advisers mistakenly thought that it was George Bush and the Republicans that the public was repudiating, but it was deeper than that. Poll after poll showed that Congress and the government had historical lows in popularity and trust with the American people. To understand this you have to understand the Republican agenda. The Republicans have for decades sought to limit government and its influence in the lives of Americans. Many people have been blindly led to believe it was for patriotic reasons but the truth is that those who have power and rule over others do not need the same government as average Americans do. They don’t need or want for the government to regulate industries, or provide emergency services, or safety nets. In order to convince the American public that government is unnecessary and ineffective each Republican administration has allowed the government to function ineptly and then said, “See we told you the government can’t solve problems.” What this systematic assault on the government through incompetence has done has convinced a large portion of the American electorate that government is unable to help average people. The most recent example would be the Bush administration response to Hurricane Katrina. Has the federal government ever looked more pathetic?
If I were President Obama my number one priority would be to do a series of weekly fireside chats with the American people. I would begin by saying that I am just as appalled at the democratic process as the rest of the American people and we need to begin the process of changing it. Most Americans voted for dramatic change not in their lives but a dramatic change in how government functioned. President Obama was elected to change how the government worked in the lives of average Americans and that should have been one of his top priorities because without that mandate any changes in policy were doomed by the politics of negativity and incumbency. It is time for the President to side with those who elected him and rally those folks to help repair this broken democracy. Until we address this problem it won’t matter what the policies are or who the President is there will be no change. With the latest opinion of the best Supreme Court corporate money could buy the time for change has never been more critical.
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I Give Up
Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Best Government Money Can Buy 2
In the last article, I wrote that I had 3 opening proposals to wrest our government away from the corporations and the special interest groups that now dictate our political policies and direct our national debate. Like the tick or the octopus with its sticky tentacles, loosening the hold of corporations and special interest money will be difficult and will require the efforts of all of us. These guys rely on the apathy of the masses to continue their hijacking of our government and elected officials. Here are my proposals and I welcome comments and other suggestions on the part of fellow concerned citizens.
The three suggestions I would like to have implemented are:
1) Revoke the personhood of corporations.
2) Limit the number of lobbyists, the amount of money they are able to donate, and require a five year ban on government officials and employees from joining or lobbying for corporations in which they have worked on legislation for.
3) Institute a two term limit for all elected offices.
Revoke the personhood of corporations
This I believe is the cornerstone of any real reform of our political process. Our political system has become more and more unresponsive as corporations have been given more rights as individuals. The founding fathers of this nation were very suspicious of corporations; it was after all a corporation (East India Trading) that was used by the English crown to project their empire on the Americas. It was even debated and proposed by Thomas Jefferson to have freedom from monopolies inserted into the Bill of Rights.
We believe that corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges we willfully grant them. Granting corporations the status of legal "persons" effectively rewrites the Constitution to serve corporate interests as though they were human interests. Ultimately, the doctrine of granting constitutional rights to corporations gives a thing illegitimate privilege and power that undermines our freedom and authority as citizens. While corporations are setting the agenda on issues in our Congress and courts, We the People are not; for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money.[1]
Corporations were never meant to be endowed with the rights of humans, by their very nature they cannot be human or considered so. In a grave miscarriage of justice and bribery the Supreme Court in 1886 granted personhood to corporations and the rest as they say is history. Because many of the judges were once corporate lawyers themselves eventually the pleas of the corporations that they were in fact people won out. This decision opened the flood gates and allowed the wealthy corporation owners to remove the shackles placed on them by the states that chartered them. They now had 14th Amendment protections from government intrusion. This amendment had been written for one purpose and that was to guarantee the rights of slaves, period.[2] This was stated in the dissenting opinion and still holds true today. Because the original decision was based on incorrect interpretation of the law and bribery on the part of greedy corporate owners, it is in the best interest of the Republic to resend the original decision.
Why is this change so important? With the current sitting Court co-signing on the side of all corporate cases that come before it, the power of the corporations is only going to get greater. We the people cannot compete with the corporations. The founding fathers of this nation knew that and warned of this impending loss of control of the government to these corporate benefactors. It is unfortunate, but they knew that the darker side of human greed for money and power would overrule what is best for the people. As long as we afford corporations 14th Amendment protections they can continue to pump boatloads of money into the political process and continue to corrupt our system of democracy. Democracy is based on one person, one vote and equal protection for all. How can this include a non-entity?
How cruel was it to use the same law that disproved one lie (slavery; one man can own another) to create another lie (that corporations were people). Sometimes the irony of these guys just baffles me. They have the gall to use the same law that freed people and use it to enslave people. The whole purpose of corporations getting personhood was so that the same small group of owners could continue to control the country and maintain “white male privilege”. Remember when all this started “We the people” only included white males, who owned property. This only amounted to 10% of the population at the time and they were the only ones able to participate in democracy. If we are really serious about changing this clusterf**k we call democracy, we must open up democracy to all the people; not just those of privilege.
And please spare me all the corporate PR feel good messages about how corporations have been good for America through its racial policies, gender equality, and foundations. Corporations have done more to harm to the Republic than to help it and we will all be better off once they are relegated to being under the control of we the people once again.
Read more!Thursday, June 28, 2007
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires?
As the number of residents moving to lands that sit adjacent to federal lands increases, the mission of the U.S. Forest Service has changed. Initially designed to do campground maintenance, research, road repair and backcountry wilderness management, they have become the fire fighters for wealthy land owners who want to enjoy the great outdoors at tax payer expense. I have no problem with people living where they want, but if you choose to live in a dangerous place (sides of mountains, near forests, etc.) you must be willing to accept the inherent risk of doing so. Why should we the tax payers subsidize your million dollar dream home?
News Flash – Forests catch on fire; mountains erode, these are natural phenomenon that have taken place in nature from the beginning of time. If you want to spend millions of dollars to get that perfect view of the ocean off the side of a mountain more power to you, but don’t do it on my dime. For some reason some people have gotten the idea that protecting them in high risk areas of nature is the federal government’s job. Many of these same people decry big government and poverty programs, but have no trouble demanding that the government fight the wild fires and if necessary repair or replace their million dollar homes if they become damaged due to what occurs naturally.
Some residents in the high-risk areas worry that the federal government will be tempted to pass the problem along to local governments or homeowners.
“The federal government is there to protect the community from disasters,” said Ron Ehli, 50, a volunteer fire chief in Hamilton, Mont., an increasingly popular getaway in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula.
“Where Florida might have hurricanes, or California earthquakes, we have wildfires,” Mr. Ehli said. “And the federal government should be there to protect us.
Truth be told, the nation’s founders would probably be shocked that the government was still in the land or firefighting business. Land, as the early framers of the republic saw it, through legislation like the Homestead Act, was for settlement and farming, and especially for private ownership.[1]
Excuse me, these people have chosen to live in harm’s way. If I pitch a tent in the middle of the highway, do I have a right to expect the government to protect me from the cars? Why is it ok for the government to protect those who need the least protection, but not ok for the ones who need it the most. This is another instance of where we have gotten our priorities mixed up; government is to protect those who cannot protect themselves, not those who foolishly tempt fate to live some extravagant dream. We are still struggling to get New Orleans rebuilt almost two years later and these folks want government fire and mud-slide protection; give me a break.
“Both of us were aware that these things happen,” said Ms. Morris, 47, as she looked out the window to the charred hillside. “We just didn’t think it would happen this fast.”
A new generation of Americans like the Morrises, in moving to places perched on the edge of vast, undeveloped government lands in the West, are living out a dangerous experiment, many of them ignorant of the risk.
Their migration — more than 8.6 million new homes in the West within 30 miles of a national forest since 1982, according to research at the University of Wisconsin — has coincided with profound environmental changes that have worsened the fire hazard, including years of drought, record-setting heat and forest management policies that have allowed brush and dead trees to build up.
“It’s like a tsunami, this big wave of development that’s rolling toward the public lands,” said Volker C. Radeloff, a professor of forest ecology and management at the University of Wisconsin. “And the number of fires keeps going up.”[2]
It has always amazed me how people claim to love nature, so long as they can control the environment. I like the great outdoors, but I don’t like the bugs, the rain, or the fires; this is of course what makes nature, nature. So many today want a virtual reality, they want the experience without the experience. They want a buffer between them and the great outdoors. Nature has a pattern and these patterns are how it renews and regenerates itself. Because of our wanting to control those patterns for the sake of development we have perverted the natural ebb and flow.
“I personally feel if they’re stupid enough to build their house with trees and stuff all around, it’s their dumb luck,” said Nancy Garness, 53, a baker at the Coffee Cup Cafe in Hamilton, who came to the area with her parents in the late 1950s when she was 4.
Insurance professionals say much the same thing.
“We all went through a period of, ‘write the policy and take the money,’ ” said Barry Whitmore, a State Farm Insurance agent in Hamilton. “Now we’ve got a wildfire checklist, and based on the answers, a home is either insurable or not insurable.”[3]
As the cost for protecting these developments continues to escalate it appears that people are starting to realize the nature of the beast. Even the greedy insurance companies realize this is a no-win situation, that nature will run its course. If anything as the climate patterns change there will be more fires and mudslides that will be more devastating. You want to be Davy Crockett, go right ahead, but when his cabin burned down he was looking for Uncle Sam to bail him out, why should you?
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