Putting Boots (Birkenstocks) on the Ground: Part II

 

It looks like the American public, or some significant portion of it, is waking up.  There is now a new populist uprising in the making.  Long beaten into submission, the cowering lumps of disengaged despairing doormats have finally seen the writing on the wall, are breathing a new life, and getting ready to strike back at their oppressors -- the 1% and the .1% and the .01% -- who just about have it all, but want even the few remaining scraps.

The statistics have been clear for some time.  Everyday Americans -- the 99% -- have been getting royally screwed. Government of the people, by the people, for the people has been turned into a hollow slogan, a fading recollection of a noble, now irrelevant, improbable, and ostensibly inoperable idea.

In spite of the best efforts by the media -- always in service of the rich elite -- to hide the rotten news mounting during this democratic devolution, people have grown increasingly aware of the problems and outcomes.  They didn't need to look at charts and statistics.  They felt the pain personally.  Individual wealth for everyday Americans is shrinking. Wages and purchasing power are in decline.  People are in debt up to their eyebrows.  Schools, roads, whole communities are falling apart.  The water isn't even fit to drink.

The Sanders/Trump populist uprising is the inevitable result.  Eventually, the pain becomes unbearable and people understandably look for some way or some one to fix things.  Sanders has some great ideas, Trump has a big mouth.  They each in their own unique and characteristic ways represent a "savior" to the masses.

But neither of these men, or any presidential candidate for that matter, can get the job done.  That is written in stone.  Read the Constitution.

How does it get done?

We get it done.  Sure, you can follow the campaign, go to your favorite candidate's rallies,  watch the battle for the presidency unfold on the boob tube.  After all, it's the best reality show in town.  Better than Mud Wrestling With The Stars!

Then, when you want to actually do something for yourself, your family and friends, your community, your country, please tear yourself away from this insulting media circus and begin to actually change the world for the better.

Forget about the labels.  Forget Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, right wing, left wing, socialist, Green Party, Tea Party.

Americans actually agree on a lot of important things.  Arguably most!

With all of the shouting, the cage fighting of the Republican debates, the far more civil and intelligent but still largely irrelevant Democratic debates, muddled by the sports-team-like coverage of all matters political by our entertainment-oriented media, you wouldn't know this.  But most Americans actually share a host of values and priorities, and even more surprisingly, specifically agree on much of what needs to be done and not done.

Here is a short list of things U.S. citizens by sizable majorities agree on:

75% of Americans want a federal minimum wage of $12.50 per hour.
63% of Americans want a federal minimum wage of $15.00 per hour.
75% of voters want fair trade agreements protecting jobs, workers, the environment.
76% of voters want a cut back on military spending.
76% of voters want the U.S. completely out of Afghanistan.
79% of voters want no reductions in Social Security, 70% support expanding it.
79% of voters want no reductions in Medicare.
80% of voters oppose the "Citizens United" U.S. Supreme Court decision.
68% of voters think taxes on the wealthy should be increased.
71% of voters support massive infrastructure renewal.
74% of American voters are for ending oil industry subsidies.
93% of voters want GMO labeling on their food.

These are huge majorities!

These astonishing and powerful consensuses get lost in the trivialization, marginalization, and other weapons of mass distraction and sheer propaganda we all endure just trying to find out and understand what's going on.  We are teased, taunted, cajoled, manipulated, titillated, dazzled, disturbed, and generally overwhelmed by the main stream media.

But we are not informed.

If anything we are confused, sometimes outright misinformed.

Thus we lose focus.  We can't keep our eye on the prize, because from watching television we have no idea what the prize even is.

Worst of all -- and it almost appears to be intentional -- we are divided.

We are set against one another, encouraged to vilify and blame others, the very people we actually agree with on a lot of things, the very people who are our natural allies as we fight for our survival in the class warfare the rich and powerful wage on us.

Turn off your TVs.  Hide your smart phones under the mattress.  Let the screensaver on your computer do whatever it does -- swimming fish, go-go dancers, shooting stars -- and don't disturb it to watch the latest Trump riots or primary predictions.  It's mood lighting.  Recycle your USA Today, your daily newspaper, your weekly and monthly magazines.

Then . . .

Go talk to someone.  Anyone!

Your neighbor, your cousin, your kid's teacher, that lady down the street who is always working in her garden, the guy who polishes his car three times a week, your ex-spouse, anyone in your community who you can approach without getting shot.

Maybe you could bake some cupcakes or buy some wonderful muffins from the bakery in town.  Or make a trip to Costco, if all the bakeries in your area are now out of business.

Start out with something like this:

"Would you like a cupcake?"

In Part III of this series, I'll suggest where you go from there, while you're munching away on whatever treat you brought along with you.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Putting Boots (Birkenstocks) on the Ground: Part II



 

What if . . . ?

 

What if you had a favorite cause or a host of issues which were important to you?

∞  Better schools.
∞  Taxing the wealthy.
∞  Mortgage debt relief.
∞  Raising minimum wage.
∞  Protecting social security.
∞  Expanding Medicare.
∞  Reducing the military.
∞  Ending police brutality.
∞  Free college education.
∞  Money out of politics.
∞  Safer water and food.
∞  Ending the wars.
∞  GMO labeling. 

What if you knew with absolute, 100% certainty that a candidate if elected would go to Congress and fight to get new laws passed on those issues?

What if you knew that the candidate when elected had no choice? That there was no room for excuses or quibbling? That this candidate was bound by legal contract to do precisely what you wanted him or her to do?

What if this candidate was not a Democrat of a Republican?

Would you be afraid to vote for this individual, even knowing with absolute certainty that he or she would go to Washington DC to do exactly what you wanted done?

Would you be throwing your vote away voting for this candidate?

Or would you be throwing away your vote by supporting a Republican or Democrat, who you knew would promise all the right things, then go and vote the way the corporations, bankers, rich and powerful, and their mercenary lobbyists told them to vote?

Obviously, if you were the only person to vote for this candidate who was required by contract to keep their promises, your vote wouldn't count for anything. Your vote would have been "thrown away" by all the other votes which defeated your candidate of choice.

But what if hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of voters did the same as you and voted for someone they could trust?

What if . . . ?
__________________________________________________________

 

"Candidate Contracts: Taking Back Our Democracy" is now available. This is how we get the representation we deserve. This is how we make our elected officials do our bidding, to stop taking orders from the 1%, the rich and powerful who have destroyed our system of government with their truckloads of money . . .

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[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Ship of State

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 180º
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 ]

“Take me to your leader!”

 
Strong, visionary, decisive leadership has been missing for so long in America, we don't even know what it looks like anymore.

Arrogance and charisma are not the same as leadership. George W. Bush was as arrogant as they come and Barack Obama is as charismatic as it gets. But both represent terrible ideas, a disdain for democracy, and a complete disregard for the will of the American people.

Here's what I think.

A strong leader doesn't lie to his supporters out of convenience or for his own political gain, or make mincemeat out of the facts because he thinks he personally knows whats best for the country. He respects us and is truthful, even when the truth is worrisome or painful.

A strong leader takes sometimes controversial stands on difficult issues out of conviction, not out of convenience. He looks for direction in a set of principles __ those spelled out with clarity and candor when he ran for office __ not poll numbers and focus groups.

A strong leader is not afraid of tarnishing his own image because his ideas or policies might be unpopular. His concern is the greater good of America and the welfare of the American citizenry, not his place in history.

A strong leader defends and supports those in our society who are the weakest and most need of help __ because a free society and true democracy is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, not how it venerates and toadies up to its privileged and powerful.

A strong leader is not impressed by money and power, only that which fulfills the basic tenets of the constitution, the intentions of the nation's founding fathers, and what fosters the greater good for the majority of citizens.

A strong leader recognizes everyone is equal before the law and makes tough choices in enforcing it.

A strong leader cannot be bought or influenced by the rich and powerful and remains loyal to the majority of Americans who entrust him with the responsibilities of his powerful position.

A strong, visionary, decisive leader offers big solutions to big problems. If the car is broke, he fixes it or replaces it. He doesn't just shine the hubcaps and claim he's doing all he can, or worse, claim that shiny hubcaps will get the car running again in top form.

There are more but what I've outlined constitute a good start in defining leadership.

I personally believe Mr. Obama, and the House and Senate leadership, both Democrat and Republican, fail on all counts. I don't know what other conclusion you could draw after watching the fiascos and tragic blunders of the past twenty years.

We have BIG problems in America. They are almost incomprehensibly big. Sometimes they are within the framework of legislative and executive policy formulation. But we also must acknowledge that sometimes they are systemic problems, requiring thorough and fundamental revisions of the way we go about doing things __ BIG solutions.

All the hand-wringing that goes on in the name of shaping public policy, basically a soap opera to keep the masses distracted and uninformed, is cowardly and insulting. This fiscal cliff is a joke. The debate over taxing the rich is simple-minded and tunnel-visioned.

Which points up another example of total lack of leadership. A leader does not let others set the rules of debate, or frame the argument. A true leader brings a fresh point of view, one that is rife with possibilities and potential for positive change. A true leader doesn't let his opponents decide what and how much will be discussed.

If Obama were serious __ and I'm convinced he's not __ about actually addressing the enormous challenges facing this country, he wouldn't be letting a cry-baby like Boehner and a turkey-neck like McConnell push him around. Before those two bozos ever got a foothold, Obama could have cut the legs out from under them by going to the America people, given us some straight talk, and with our support gotten some things done.

Why didn't he? Why hasn't he?

Because Obama is not a leader. He's a follower. To make it even more horrifying, he's a follower of a nefarious and suicidal neo-conservative world view. Obama is a militant imperialist, a dyed-in-the-wool corporatist, a wannabe elitist, an anti-democratic authoritarian, and a self-aggrandizing narcissist.

Hardly the makings of a strong, independent, creative leader.

With the onset of the New Year, spirits will be high and optimism in good supply.

Let's hope that these men and women who think of themselves as spokespersons for the American people, who as a result of being elected to the highest political offices in the land probably think of themselves as being among America's best equipped to steer the country on a constructive course, will finally live up to the high opinions they have of themselves.

Let's hope we see some real leadership.

It's been way too long.




[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]