Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
I am doing what I can to address the destruction of democracy in America._Without taking back our government, nothing will change.
In my new book, An Unlikely Truth,
I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove
the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative
democracy to America.
An Unlikely Truth
(Literary Vagabond Books) will be released worldwide on March 24th.
But by special arrangement with Amazon, early-release copies are
immediately available. Get a copy of An Unlikely Truth . . .
72% of American voters are for raising taxes on the wealthy.
That equates to 108 million people.
76% of American voters want to cut back on military spending.
That's 114 million people.
72% of American voters want a federal minimum wage of $10.00 or more.
108 million people.
74% of American voters are for ending oil subsidies.
111 million people.
79% of American voters want no cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
Over 118 million people.
93% of American voters want labeling of GMOs in their food.
That's nearly 140 million people!!
But none of this gets done!
The simpleand insulting truth is that a mere 500 or so men defy the will of
millions, that the very people we elect and send to Washington to create
laws that protect our interests, refuse to represent us, ignore our
clearly stated will on these crucial issues and many more.
They ignore "we the people" and do the bidding of "we the rich". Until
we confront these play-for-pay lapdogs, they will continue to serve a tiny
elite minority of rich and powerful oligarchs and America will continue
its slow but certain decline. You and I will live like beggars and
America will become a Third World country.
We've all been appalled by recent events. We've watched as our government was shutdown. We've been horrified by the fight over the debt limit. We've seen the systematic destruction of our democratic way of life.
So what can we do? With millions of dollars of fat cat money floating around, the voice of the regular guy has been drowned out. There has been no way to get rid of the crooks and liars. But I believe now there is.
How did that old expression go?
"Throw the bums out!"
We do this using a new, unique and powerful strategy
for taking on the corrupting cancer of money in politics __ an end run
around the iron grip which Wall Street, big banks and corporate
oligarchs now have on our political system. This sledgehammer approach
gives the 500 corporate toadies in Congress, who arrogantly sit inside
the Washington DC bubble and ignore the very people who voted them into
office, a simple straightforward ultimatum: Do your job and start
representing "we the people" or collect your pink slip.
It's a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners method for cleaning up the corruption
among our elected officials and putting people in office who will do our
bidding. It forces the men and women we choose on election day to start
taking their orders from us, instead of the deep-pocketed puppet
masters who have effectively stolen our government by buying off our
senators, congressmen, even our president, with huge campaign donations.
This is an election year and people are frustrated and angry. Congress started the new year at a historically low 13% approval rating.
I say we channel that frustration and anger into a unified and constructive
effort to restore true representative democracy to our country.
It's up tous. But something has to happen immediately. We are fast approaching a point of no return, beyond which the specter of a rigid totalitarian state looms. Either we replace our current legislators or they will replace our country with one we don't recognize.
Approval of Congress stands at an all time low. Only 13% think they're doing their job.
Almost half of American voters "think their own member of Congress does not deserve reelection" while only 25% thought they did.
This is an election year __ perhaps the most important election year in recent history __ meaning we have a choice to make.
Will it be more of the same?
Are we going to be obedient little robots again and pull the lever for the guy with the clever campaign ads and teeth-whitened smile?
Or is it time to take this seriously?
Our situation is certainly serious. Despite the massaged statistics we are
fed and the latest Wall Street bubble courtesy of our Federal Reserve,
our economy is in shambles. Popular and highly successful programs like Social Security and Medicare are still under attack by the viciously
selfish 1%. The rich still don't pay anywhere near their fair share of
taxes, and they seem bent on starving the most vulnerable among us by
cutting food stamps, heating oil subsidies, unemployment benefits, child
care, school lunch programs. Jobs continue to be shipped to slave wage
countries in Asia and profits bankrolled in tax havens around the world.
Corporations get the royal treatment and we regular citizens get the
shaft.
Our ship of state cannot find a new, better direction by rearranging the deck
chairs, hiring a new trumpet player for the band in the Captain's
Lounge, or repainting the life boats.
It really comes down to setting an entirely new course, even turning the ship 180ยบ
around if it's heading entirely in the wrong direction. Nothing less will get the job done.
Yet, our often bitter national conversation __ sometimes a shrill shouting match
__ is always focused on the tiniest details, irrelevant details which
serves both to distract us and obscure the larger issues which are the
real source of our national conundrum and chronic paralysis. Whether
this is intentional or not, it has poisoned all of the air in the room
and killed progress on the many critical __ as in life-or-death __
challenges confronting us.
We argue about capping student loan percentages and whether bankruptcy should be allowed for individuals who can't pay for their student loans. Public funding for advanced education has been coming up short both at
the national and local level. Public universities facing insolvency are
either depending more on private __ as in corporate __ funding, or being
completely privatized. Tuition is shooting through the roof. To assure
profitability, institutions of learning are becoming more beholden to
private industry. The disturbing upshot of these trends is that higher
education is becoming unaffordable for the majority of young people, at a time when employers are demanding even more education of their
prospective employees. Nevertheless, all we seem capable of doing is
nitpicking away about the burgeoning student debt problem.
The real question is what kind of country doesn't educate its population?
Conservatives say the money isn't there. Yet we spend in the upwards of
$1 trillion a year __ that's trillion with a 't' __ on our military. We
really need to ask: Books or bombs?
We argue about the upsides and downsides of Obamacare, wrangle over
the exemptions and loopholes in the program, condemn governors who
are opting out certain aspects of the Affordable Healthcare Act. These are certainly genuine issues but not the problem.
The real problem is twofold: There is nothing keeping the cost of health care
under control __ we spend 17.7% of our GDP on health care, next closest
are Holland at 11.9%, France at 11.6%, Germany at 11.3%, Canada at
11.2%, __ and much of what we spend on services is turned into
corporate profits. You get sick, corporations make money. The sicker you
get, the more money they make. Am I off here but isn't there something
bizarre or even cruel about turning human misery into an ATM machine?
So forget the details of this sub-clause and that policy rider. We need to address a very fundamental question about what kind of society we want. Is America a country where the proper care and health of its citizens is a
fundamental and integral part of "the general welfare" __ is a basic
right __ or is it a service commodity like getting your car tuned or
your house painted? There is no other modern industrialized nation which does not lean toward seeing health care as a right, like voting, free
speech, freedom of religion, and so on. America distinguishes itself by
ignoring this most fundamental aspect of life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. Only in America will you be left to die just because your
insurance doesn't cover your problem or like 40 million others you have
no health insurance.
We talk about whether we should go to war with Syria or Iran, whether we should continue to use drones, what we can do about North Korea. Yes, this is a dangerous world. But we ignore a simple fact. We are the ones making the world a more dangerous place. We are now viewed by the rest of the world as the greatest threat to peace and stability on the planet. With maybe a few obvious exceptions, we are the problem, not those we are constantly demonizing. We are becoming a pariah in the world community.
Because of the wholesale takeover by the military-industrial complex of our
foreign policy apparatus, meaning wholesale embracing of a neocon imperialistic world view, we don't even consider peace as an option. We don't work for peace. We don't think about peace. We rarely mention peace. The military option, from targeted drone bombing to full-scale war is apparently the only option. We have a one-size-fits-all strategy: Bomb, kill, destroy.
The real question is: Do most American citizens want America to rule the
world by force? Do the imperial ambitions and delusions of global hegemony
of our leaders truly reflect the values of the majority of our citizens?
What insanity is Washington DC championing here on our behalf?
Who's version of America arms the world __ we are the biggest arms supplier
on the planet __ antagonizes every other world power, bullies its friends and foes alike, never takes 'yes' for an answer unless it's a 'yes' for armed confrontation, and expects to survive?
This is a survival issue. Because if any significant number of the countries
becoming increasingly fed up with America's my-way-or-the-highway
tactics unite, no amount of bombs and bullets will rescue us. Think
about this: America hasn't won a war since WWII. Oh right . . . forgot. There was Grenada. A country of with less than 1/4 million people with no standing army. We trounced them.
Then as we spend about as much on the rest of the world combined on our vast military machine, we scream and yell __ perhaps rightfully so __ about
our national debt, about both our personal and public indebtedness,
about home mortgages, foreclosures, credit card debt, of course, again
student loan debt, how much we owe China and Japan, etc. Sure these are
important matters. But they are only the dirty wine glasses on the
Titanic.
Because the real question is: Why doesn't the nation we pay our hard-earned
taxes to have control of its own currency? Why don't we as Americans
have any say whatever in the way the money of the richest country in the
world is handled by its central banking institution, the Federal Reserve? The Federal Reserve is not federal __ meaning a part of the federal government __ any more than Federal Express. It is a privately
owned-and-operated corporation! Our currency is not issued by Uncle
Sam. It's issued by Uncle Ben, as in Ben Bernanke! How can we get our
budget priorities in line when we don't have any control over the very
currency we use? This sounds on the surface like some abstract question
but it is fundamental to creating a sound economic system. He who
controls the purse strings controls the world.
And now is the really big one, which spawns all of the others. This is the big daddy sitting at the top of this shit pile of self-deception causing all
of the yelling, blather, incoherence, gridlock, confusion, frustration,
helplessness __ the ultimate bargain with the Devil.
We argue about Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, we have our standing jokes about Libertarians and spoiler candidates from the Green Party, and we point at the ultimate lepers of our time, socialists!
But the simple truth is that it's not about Democrat vs. Republican. It's about
tyranny. The tyranny we have invited by our apathy and our self-invoked
declaration of surrender. The tyranny that marches in when hope is
replaced by hopelessness and toughness traded out for submission and compliance. It's the tyranny of the power elite that fills the vacuum of citizen engagement and self-rule. It's the tyranny of rule by a tiny core of elite oligarchs when voting becomes an exercise in futility, if not a complete joke.
All of this contentiousness, bickering, in-fighting, out-fighting,
cage-fighting is irrelevant. Because we don't have representative
government anymore.
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA IS DEAD!
Now that's the real issue.
And until we address that issue, nothing else will get done. Politics will be
a board game, about as relevant to governing our nation as Monopoly is to
the real economy.
The evidence for this is clear.
No matter who is in power, Democrat or Republican, most everything just gets worse.
Ralph Nader made the controversial claim in his 2000 campaign for president that the two parties were Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. That was both perceptive and prescient. Now in the coming mid-term and 2016 elections, it is even more the case than ever. Real choice within the two-party
system is an illusion. Third party and other independent candidates are
almost totally shut out, shouted down, or mocked by those who benefit
from having a two-party system beholden to the corporate aristocracy.
So the questions we need to address here are not the hot issues of the day. The questions are practically never what is being discussed in the 24/7/365
tsunami of scandal, rumor, manufactured crisis, and drama queen reporting
that passes for news these days.
The most important question is whether we can become a functioning democracy again.
Whether a Democrat or a Republican supports gay marriage or gun control or legalization of marijuana may seem like life-or-death issues. This is
what we constantly hear from both media pundits and politicians alike.
But these issues __ these "details" __ pale against the real question,
the big question.
Do these men and women in suits __ Democrats and Republicans __ support America?
Do they support America, or is their true loyalty to the huge transnational
corporations which are looting our treasury via corporate welfare and
off-shoring their profits, turning our country in a big wasteland devoid
of real opportunities for real Americans, trashing the environment, and
bankrupting our political system by buying our elected representatives?
So what's the point of all of this?
It's very simple . . .
We can wring our hands, fret and ponder about the minutiae. But until we fix the big problems, nothing will get resolved. Our educational system is
rigged. Our health care system is rigged. Our foreign policy is rigged.
Our tax system is rigged. Our monetary system is rigged. Our democracy is rigged. So . . .
We can sweat the small stuff but all we will end up doing is standing in a puddle of sweat.
I talked about this problem of scale __ the big fundamental systemic issues vs.
the narrow typically charged and highly divisive ones __ quite some time
ago in a previous blog called "You Don't Use A Microscope To Find The Cow You Don't Use A Microscope To Find The Cow That Left The Barn".
I also discussed the epic levels of exaggeration which issues from our
government institutions supported by the talking puppets in the media,
essentially propaganda designed to convince the public that the dysfunctional blowhards we elect to public office are actually getting something done. That blog was called "Differences That Don't Make A Difference".
Back then __ respectively April and March 2011 __ neither seemed to make much of an impression. But considering it's been almost three years now and things are just getting worse, maybe this would be a good time to revisit them.
As to the important business of steering the ship of state . . .
Maybe it's time for a mutiny.
[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
