a little Q and A for a snowy Friday
- Influence of campaign contributions on elected officials?
. . . imagine winning without them
- Influence of election results on House and Senate majorities?
. . . everything
- Limit to campaign contributions from anonymous individuals?...
. . . no limit
- Contribution status of Corporations as per recent Citizens United vs. United States decision of Supreme Court?
. . . Corporations are Individuals (aka: "persons") entitled to anonymously stuff as much cash into a campaign kitty as they can manage to scrape together
- Benefit of recent Tax Break extension approved by (Corporate friendly) Congress last month, for Corporations and remaining wealthiest 2% of Americans?
. . . continued reinvestment of American tax dollars into expansion of foreign job creation (major factor in job losses stateside) = continued tax free growth for these Global Corporations
- Benefit of same recent Tax Break, approved by Congress last month, for remaining 98% of middle and lower income Americans ??
. . . 9+% nationwide unemployment; cash strapped State economies; rising credit interest rates; steady pace of Home ...foreclosures; harassing phone calls from Filipino Debt collection clerks; little encouragement from Federal Officials that situation will/can reverse itself without cooperation of Capitalist (say "Corporate") intervention
- Status of these Corporations sending US jobs and salaries overseas?
. . . The US Supreme Court protects the right of these "persons" to use their foreign made fortunes to intimidate elections; stuffing both Houses of Congress with "representatives" who are inclined/beholden to perpetuate this cycle.
- Solution?
. . . Lets work to reverse the current Conservative/Tea Party/Big Business tendency to equate Federal Oversight or Regulations with Fascism or Communism and get some momentum from the significant population of remaining Americans to remind these Fat Cats and their hoodwinked minion Who does the real working and spending and soldiering and child rearing and writing and composing and cooking and welding . . . and lets regain the system's original intention of working for a decent quality of life for all off us here in America. Hell, somebody got these illegitimate ideas into the minds of millions of earnestly arrogant, "faith-based, real-Americans". I merely insist that Truth fits through the same sized door as Fiction. The real trick is figuring out how to clear the room to fit it. I will go to my grave believing in the superiority of a compelling articulation of the facts as the most effective option to accomplishing this. We must remind the Republican Congress that we are not serfs in some Capitalist nightmare, but are instead reasonably informed voters protected by one hell of a Constitution.
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Jen: We're not? War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. The revolution is complete.
. . . . . (props and a nod to G.O.)
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Kevin: So, I should write a stern letter to my Congressperson and/or Senator? Then what? The receipt of a rubber stamped letter. A letter loaded with sincere rhetoric of empty concern and campaign jargon asking for my support. A letter loaded with all of the visions we see but will never be put forward to a vote because our representation has been bought. I’m not satisfied with the service either but it will take one hell of an action to change the course. Anyone up for it?
. . . thought I heard a cricket
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Prof. Hot Wind: Whenever I get frustrated about the size of the whole picture I do three things:
1] ask myself if the situation would improve if I did/said nothing.
2] give credit to the problem for its sheer enormity; to myself for getting my head around most of it; and forgive the public for being so exhausted by living it, fighting it and settling on the demands of the compromises it dictates, that they subcontract the media to distill their opinions for them . . . and
3] put my objections and thoughts on paper. Here I can reduce the situation into manageable pieces and function.
Get your friends to hear a second opinion. Be ready to expose a lie with aplomb.
Many an individuals impression of the current mess is formed by overhearing uninformed people pontificating in public places. The quantitative damage to the truth of this scenario might be better understood if we were describing someone with the flu, coughing freely into the confined space of a pub.
Remember: the bottom line in this game is the Vote. In itself the vote is free. The tools used to persuade the Voter however, are not. Sophisticated tools such as market demographic analysis and wide media exposure are generally an exclusive provision of large corporate interests with arsenals of cash, working to disfigure public agendas in a manner that caricatures their "personal" balance sheets at the expense of General Public works, wrestling for the same Federal allowance. This approach has the well exercised advantage of pimping the Truth into performing as its cell-mate bitch, which efficiently confuses the marginally attentive voter . . . . . The truth is NOT free!
I get my "facts" from Public Radio, the Times, Harpers mag, MSNBC and the Internet. The idea that these sources are reliable enough to form a Truth is a compromise I made some time ago to preserve my sanity. My occasional dalliances into Conservative media, (i.e.: The Journal, FOX news, Nat'l Review...) are helpful reminders that this is a very large, very diverse country, where Truth gets pounded against the ropes on all four sides of the ring by opposing heavyweights, quilting patchwork scenarios from the same box of rags in calculated, varying proportions. . . .
Want to do something to fight the Advantaged Elite sucking money away from your Health care for an extension on their summer home in Costa Rica?
Then give to the organizations who made you aware of Global Warming, of Tax breaks for the Rich, of the Oil Spill in the Gulf and the illegitimate War in Iraq . . .
Donate to NPR, subscribe to publications that match wits with your common sense. This is the best way for millions of us "financially insignificant" Americans to pool our resources and expose the "Corrupt-Truth" of the Powers-That-Be, currently taking control of OUR Congress.
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Kevin: I get it! Scream louder. Kinda like, as I understand the story, Barabbas won his freedom at the Passover Feast. So, we back our favorite "news" channel, get some pop-corn and wait for this to be played out in high definition, right? How about a system of accountability that doesn't allow the chosen ones, (voted into office on a platform of promises by which they won the right to represent us) permission to walk away after they compromised our visions? Sounds like something we have now . . . Election day!
It's not working. I find myself voting for the lesser of two evils. Don't get me wrong. I agree with your standards but the media methodology for finding a truth is just as corrupt as big business involvement in our government. Fact has turned into opinion. I'm not throwing my hands up but some cancers are unsurvivable.
Oh, and the Barabbas thing? That didn't work out too well . . .
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Prf H W: I'm moved to agree, by virtue of your passion, that you're "onto" something, but it would be a disservice to this dialogue to conclude that "something" is an understanding of me. We share a belief that the government is composed of people who increasingly pass laws much less representative of the needs and wishes of We the People and more favorable to the opposing special interests of an extremely powerful, fabulously wealthy minority.
I will liken good governance to the center of a Target. (I write "good" and not "perfect" governance to emphasize that there will never be progress absent the old "quid pro quo".) For the sake of understanding, I will calibrate my analogy by suggesting the creation of Social Security was a bulls-eye. (Others will surely disagree.)
I think its safe to state that in spite of all the rhetoric about individual marksmanship, our current Congress is far more focused on those matters existing outside the perimeter of our target than any red or white colored ring inside it. My whole contention is that we accept "good governance" as intending only that which legislates behavior on the basis of an analysis of all the available, objective facts. (Issues of morality and environmental protection, for example, score high on my scale of objective reasoning, as their neglect or abuse will, in every probability, create an acceleration of expanding conditions contributing to a deteriorating quality of life. )
One's marksmanship is analogous to one's understanding of, and relationship to, the facts. Big Business has been using the media to manipulate the general population, too preoccupied with job and family, by using their extraordinary media influence to move the target toward their own special interests and away from its proper, natural coordinates as the destination of the greater public good. In any sport, getting caught cheating is penalized . . . any sport I guess but politics.
Your frustration has possessed you to mistakenly conclude that the solution is to either close down and concede defeat or roll a cannon onto the target range. I like the image but reject the sentiment. I wrote above that votes are free to the voter but expensive for the campaigns. Good "Grouping" wins elections, but success for the "People" can only be served by "Grouping" one's arrows nearest the bulls-eye. It is the goal of the intellectual Progressive that everyone be educated to distinguish a legitimate target from a Corporate hoax when called on to pull the ballot lever. If information fell like leaves from the trees, Big Business would never succeed in influencing elections and our Congress would look remarkably different than it does today. Your cannon would create more collateral complications than our current economic situation could effectively contain.
The Truth however is not raked from the ground but harvested from the top-most branches of the tree. It takes work to form an educated opinion which is why America is so damn confused today. If you can't find a ladder, GIVE to those organizations you trust to harvest the data for you and bring it home to your intellectual kitchen.
Distrust of subcontracted Data Collection, (the feedback loop of the true paranoid) can be tamed by trusting in one's own reason and moral compass. I once learned that physics cannot explain how the helicopter lifts up and away from the ground; and yet it does. So when Oil-backed "experts" tell me that Global Warming is a myth, I make a withdrawal from my media accounts, like Scientific American or National Geographic where I learn about diminishing populations of Polar Bears and Emperor Penguins and choose to dismiss one source over the other. This news then squeezes into conversations with friends and strangers and eventually into the ballot box. This is called Democracy. And in spite of your anxiety Hoople, it works.
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Kevin: Oh yes, democracy, very nice. Great theory and has worked well for so many years. But its in need of an overhaul, wouldn't you say? Democracy’s ability to be fair has been compromised. The very system you praise will prevent said system from evolving out of the corrupt state it’s currently in to one that’s fair and balanced for We The People. Loop holes have been exposed, fail safes have been compromised. The representation we’ve voted for needs to close the loop holes and stabilize the fail safes. This can’t be done without the compromise of the position they’ve been bought and paid to represent; a position that included campaign funding thus a nice job, and money for all the “toys”. Do you really believe sending a couple dollars to NPR and walking around with a sign declaring your discontent will sway a Senator from his/her current allegiance to big business? I think not.
Sir, I don’t have cannon to aim at What’ll never be fixed. But I’d be more than willing to give couple dollars to someone that does. When the smoke clears, you can thank me for eliminating the face you’ve continuously, and to no avail preferred to strike with a glove. I’m not trying to suggest trading in your powdered wig for a civil defense helmet but you may want to consider a gauntlet as opposed to a glove.
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Prf H W: You and I continue to talk past each other. Could it possibly be this difficult to talk someone off the ledge? You write in theory about replacing the current system by employing practices that are un-Constitutional. I write about re-energizing the voter base to use the Constitution to clean its own house. I sincerely believe my method represents the only remaining option to achieve our common objective. I believe also that you underestimate the persuasive power of ideas; the punch of a well reasoned, strategically delivered exposure of false truths.
I've only to ask you for an explanation, in light of your bleak, pessimistic evaluation of the health of our Congress and the Constitution, how the voice of American underdogs like Gays and Trans genders achieved the formal, legal representation they earned last month with the repeal of DADT.
How about the unregulated exploration for shale oil in the Country's subterranean world of precious, irreplaceable aquifers (called Fracking) that was recently ordered a degree of unprecedented protection against the reckless injection of dangerous chemicals previously endorsed by an environmentally unfriendly Bush administration? This took energy, intelligence and perseverance to make happen. . . But it happened.
From issues like Iraq to the Gulf oil spill, the government begins operations under the mistaken premise that it is somehow beyond the scrutiny of investigation and therefore immune from consequence. Somehow We the People stopped an unchallenged, open ended waltz into the oil fields of Iraq and demanded answers to the lies that "justified" it and a timetable to end it.
Obama's attempt to diminish the extent of the Exxon oil leak (manipulate the public's reaction) was also exposed by nonpartisan experts from the private sector and the truth that quantities of oil ten times the "official" estimates were hemorrhaging off the Louisiana coast became public knowledge. In both cases it wouldn't be a stretch to suspect that large Petroleum interests used their considerable influence to steer the course of Government outside the perimeters of public dialogue. What stopped them? What reversed the course of unchecked government autonomy and Big Business ruthlessness?
No Kevin, for you alone I'll hang on to my powered wig and gloves for the remainder of the dance , but God help the cad who tries to cut in.
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Kevin: The shooting of Congresswoman Gifford was truly unfortunate and my heart goes out to her family. Shot by a lunatic . . . a crazy man, so the media reports. Can you imagine if his actions were truly politically motivated? Could the media present this truth to the listening and upset public. Not just upset about the shooting itself but by the current political atmosphere as well? No, they need to tell us it was an isolated act of an imbalanced man. They had to tell us that he was a secluded thinker acting out of inner turmoils raised to an elevation so high that his only outlet was a violent act and his actions had nothing to do with politics.
How many other people might be on the edge of "going postal" over current conditions? His thinking may be twisted but if you recall his did post some youtube videos. In one, the burning of an American Flag showing his disdain for something. How out of touch are we, really? The media had to play this up as one person gone astray. I don't see myself picking up a weapon and charging the Capitol but I'm sure there is a growing movement of people that are tired of words alone, especially in Arizona. If you think that anarchy isn't on the doorstep of what should be done next, check out Europe.
Saying no, repeated, to a rapist usually doesn't work. Thus pepper spray, tasers, and the right to conceal carry. We aren't talking about one on one. This is one on millions, a passive oppression by our government with respect to We The People or one businessman on the financially stressed masses. When the public gets it's hackle up high enough and the court house doesn't seem to be effective, do you think for one minute the public won't deny themselves a lynching?
respectfully, Kevin (rope salesman on the unemployment line)
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Prf H W: Maybe it's the models we're using; maybe it's the research we do; maybe it's the context we manipulate to frame the models; or maybe it's just a fundamental difference in how we view ourselves in the whole messy drama. My instincts lean toward every conceivable combination of the four. Whatever the explanation, we seem incapable of reaching one another on some important issues. But as long as you have a response; something to say that you want the world to hear, I promise to make every attempt to write back, provided we actually discuss things and avoid spinning in separate, rhetorical orbits.
Let me start by critiquing the models you are using to persuade me. In the first paragraph of your last message, you clearly describe a fact that you and I, to differing degrees, can use as a starting point of understanding: that Governments use "the Media" to control their "agenda(s)".
The surgical sting of this statement draws on a common phobia best articulated in the classic Orwellian call to due diligence, 1984 and the introduction of his sublime creation, Big Brother. Government unscrutinized will invariably fall to the temptation of power. That citizens are crushed to serve the ruling oligarchy is not insulting enough. No, you and I share Orwell's more sadistic vision that the public are being subliminally manipulated to resign their God given impulses and eventually, willingly, surrender their instincts. But this telling of the story alone is insufficient to sustain my suspicions of the current state of our national dilemma. Unlike the model, our real government is a fragmented body of many constituencies at odds over who should read the map and who should drive.
One body works to manipulate the press and the other body to expose, then shame, the first. What you and I continue to call "the Government" is in reality "the government" or "a government". The distinction is critical to our discussion, for without recognizing its significance we are sentenced to talk our talk on seperate sides of a thick glass wall forever.
I believe the key to understanding one another lies in examining our techniques. Though inspired by our day to day perceptions of everything the world has used to injure, to insult us; our witness to greed in all its raw, contemptible complexity, we essentially describe these events to each other in codes, in models, in extremes. Orwell could introduce us to his world only after he had offensively invented it, as it was the consequence of its existance and not its birth that established a point from which to begin; a consequence that was essential to his statement on the savagery of rule and the unforgiveable sin of complacency. 1984 was a model of the highest order, yet logically speaking, having been stripped of birth, an enigmatic orphan from its place among living, breathing political practicality, where it ironically enjoys undying acclaim.
But you and I are not writing a morality play here. We have been speaking to each other in maxims for too long now. Outside our comfort zones, we have chosen to focus in this discussion much too closely on the models which best express our anxieties, failing to remain faithful to the real world of government and hence, real world logic. We are attempting to create equations of life, from life, by distilling our impressions of life's hand selected offences and further reducing them to the least common denominator; not simply once, but over and over again.
Representatives who continue to write laws on behalf of you and me, only to have them defeated in caucus, deserve my attempt at understanding their struggle. It is my responsibility to go out in the real world and make people understand that these things need to be done; that those people are standing between getting them done and destroying any chance of doing them.
And as much can be said of the Press as I have mentioned of the government. From the top oozes the story, picked up by the dog, finished by the crow and buried by worms; enough stench to go around. Let's face it, the Press, like everything else in this country, is divided along as many philosophic alliances as there are communities, churches and social clubs across the land; some for sale, some bought, some independent. One editor's lie is another editors scoop. It is our responsibility, if we want to continue exercising our right to complain, to discern for ourselves whose story most logically fits the model we obsessively protect in our minds.
And this brings us to the worms, We the People. You speak quite a bit about people at the end of their rope, extremists and psychos with automatic weapons and counter-revolutionary organizations preparing to signal the attack; you even had a rapist in a cameo appearance some where in your most recent response. I will attempt to tie this line of debate up in one sack and pass any future reference to the topic over to the professionals who pay their bills keeping these guys looking over their shoulder.
For all the noise a single gun can make; I think of Lincoln and Kennedy
For all the noise a bomb can make; I think of Oklahoma and the Trade Towers
For all the noise a paramilitary bunch of suspended-pubscent Nazi Skin Heads can make; I think of the Civil War, Waco, the Weathermen and the Ku Klux Klan;
I think of how little effect these people and organizations had on our Constitution and the idiots in Congress who run it into the ground. I have just listed some of the most heartbreaking losses in our collective memory as a nation, but it is important to note that each and every one of these threats were met with our complete intelligence, justice and wrath.
For the purpose of our continuing dialogue, I ask/want you to examine certain choices you make when forming your anologies. The use of pepper spray for instance, or mace when confronted with a rapist would be a superb metaphor if our situation were no longer in the hands of men and women with whom we simply and vehemently disagree, but have acted outside the Constitution and parameters of international civility or law.
If you and I were discussing arrests without Miranda, the sanctioned use of violent force to silence any and all peaceful protests; the abduction of writers and leaders involved in the advance of opposition philosophies or perhaps the disappearance of innocent civilians, never to be heard from again, you would have scored some very big points with your example. But using a rapist to characterize the need for aggressive techniques to replace Constitutional law in our effort to stand against Congress' choice to extend income tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans, without the least regard for whether the lives of the remaining 304,000,000 Americans, our jobs or our children's future could benefit from them, well that's just what one might call a nonsequitor. They might be creeps but they ain't crazy. They simply don't give a damn. And on this point I yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from Las Vegas.
