brandenpridgen

Posts by: brandenpridgen

It Isn’t About a Website

Dec 01

It is a great and comforting validation that people with large megaphones and big mouths have focused on the ailing website of the Affordable Care Act. They show us that naked self-promotion of individual and collective stupidity lives on in perpetuity.

Opponents of Obamacare wail and wring hands over the website. That dysfunctional site alone is reason enough to kill the entire program, they tell us. And it is evidence and proof of the folly and unconstitutional core of the entire Act, they insist. In their claimed clairvoyance they bray over what is in the heads of those who led us to such evil, although how they got into others’ heads is not explained. And now they have fixated their mean spirited, laser beam of antagonism on the website.

I must have been absent from class when they explained that the main purpose of reforming healthcare in America was a website. That is similar to the day I missed class when they explained all about death panels.

Full disclosure: I have not read all 2,500 pages of the Affordable Care Act, so I may be misinformed.

But my understanding is that the Act is designed to remove limitations on coverage for healthcare, this in order to promote better medical care for Americans. I thought it was to stop insurance companies from collecting premiums and then refusing to pay for the medical care that was supposed to be covered. I thought it was to make it so that poor people stopped using the emergency ward at their closest hospital for their primary care and instead steer themselves to primary care physicians. That is supposed to help catch medical issues earlier in order to promote better health and to lower overall healthcare costs for everyone.

It has been my understanding that Obamacare really isn’t about medical decisions. It is about how we fund medical care and all the changes for the better that will bring. There are no specific medical procedures that are prescribed or prohibited by the Act. That is between you and your doctor.

All of that is in place, with or without a facile website.

The ACA website and phone center will be incrementally improved in an ongoing program, just as such things are for most endeavors. So, while the current website is operating at a sub-optimal level, it is quite beside the point. That is, it’s beside the point for all of us except for the self-promoting political hystericals, locked in their rending of garments and feigned woe. What a bummer it will be for them when the website is fixed. They will have to find some other phantom horribleness over which to go all googly-eyed.

It Is Time

Nov 24

It has been 50 years, so the shock is gone, of course. The grief has passed for some and lingered for others, but the sense of loss remains palpable for most of us who remember. It was a loss of hope and of innocence for an entire generation and the blinding of a dream of something lofty.

All of us of a certain age remember where we were and what we were doing when we learned what had happened. We stayed glued to the the tube for days and our vocabulary was irrevocably altered by that day. Indeed, the term “grassy knoll” now means only one place on Earth. “School book depository” is a term for use solely in Dallas, Texas.

The initial furor ended and we were left with a permanent itch we cannot scratch. We crave the satisfaction of full explanation, of the ascribing of responsibility and of the meting of consequences to all guilty ones. Even after 50 years that simply has not happened.

The Warren Commission was designed to soothe the nation with a simple explanation. And it was a fine investigative body, except for its complete incompetence, its refusal to admit crucial evidence and testimony and the predetermined conclusion it carefully crafted. We Americans know a snow job when we’re in one and we resent being treated as simpletons. We want answers.

There remain so many critical questions. For example, if the whole thing was done by a lone gunman, how did a mediocre marksman manage to accurately fire three shots in four seconds, something even the best marksmen are unable to do with that model rifle?

Here is another. Acoustics engineers have studied audio records of those seconds of American history and developed various theories to explain the contradictory statements from people who were on the scene. They examined echoes from the surrounding buildings and some concluded that all sounds of gunfire came from one place. That is unconvincing to people who were in Dealey Plaza that day and who heard a shot and turned toward the sound by the fence bordering the plaza and saw a puff of smoke as from a firearm.

The result of all the official soothing, disingenuous explanations and denial has been a terrible addition to the loss of innocence of a generation. That addition is a loss of trust in government itself. Even now 61% of Americans distrust official explanations and instead believe there was some sort of conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, that an ideological loser would not have been able to do this on his own. Note that the 61% includes Americans who had not yet been born when the murder happened, so they are immune from the trauma of that moment and in a position to be clearer of mind about this entire chapter of our history.

One of the last actions of the Warren Commission was the sealing of evidence brought to the commission but which was shielded from the public. We were told that it would be unsealed and made public in 50 years. Well, that is where we find ourselves today. It is time to unseal and deliver the rest of the information to us and let the chips fall where they may.

Our distrust of government, borne of the Kennedy assassination whitewash, has been fueled through the intervening years by an ongoing parade of lies and disinformation from our government. Our current DC dysfunction continues that, in part because so many of us have dropped out, wishing a pox on all their houses. That dropping out allows the crazy people to expand the debilitation of government and that actually exacerbates the very thing we loathe.

It is time for we Americans – and especially those who remember – to drop back in.

It is time to end our willful apathy, cynicism and disinterest and take the bold step of reinvesting ourselves in our country.

It is time for us to again be moved as we were that day in 1961, to pick ourselves up and,

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

If It Isn’t a Perfect 10 . . .

Nov 17

Look, it’s as plain as can be that the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – was flawed from the start. Whatever your political views, the act focuses on payment, not medical care itself. And it doesn’t cover everyone. Besides, the stupid website doesn’t work. Just de-fund it, already.

And while I’m thinking of it, our interstate highways are pretty beaten up. De-fund those, too.

Education. Now, that’s a mess. Our kids are way behind most of the industrialized world in science and math, so the only sensible thing to do is to just dump the system we’re using. Perhaps funding based on real estate property taxes made sense a long time ago. Maybe, maybe not. But that funding mechanism isn’t preparing kids for today, much less for tomorrow. And we’re not hiring and retaining the best teachers, either, as too many are on the “Three Years and Out” plan. No, this isn’t working well enough to continue to throw money at it, so just pull the plug.

The Postal Service doesn’t get any money from the government, unless some bureaucrat wants to mail a letter, so we don’t have to worry about that. But the people running it ought to be re-thinking their whole model. One stamp sends a letter to the remotest places in the U.S. every day. That’s crazy. Maybe congress should increase the requirement for their pension put-away to cover people who won’t be born for another 50 years. That would put the pressure on them to pull the plug.

And those spiffs to alternative energy companies – what’s up with that? Those technologies only supply 2% of our energy needs, which is way too little to make a real difference. No point in encouraging that, so we should just de-fund those loony subsidies.

What the heck is the government doing in the home mortgage industry? Everyone knows that Reagan was right about government being the problem. We should just let the free market do its magic. The FHA falls well short of doing things right all the time. Adios, FHA. And pay no attention to those too-big-to-fail bank derivatives that nobody understands. Let the free market work there, too, except if those guys crash and burn again and then government will be the safety net. Everything has an exception, right?

Medical R & D – now, that’s a real problem. We keep throwing money that way, but where is that cure for cancer? Have you seen it? Neither have I. Now, that’s a really dark hole into which we throw cash all the time, but that’s a system that never delivers like it should. De-fund that bad boy, too.

Back to Obamacare for a second. The website is so bad that it’s embarrassing. And President Obama did that, “If you like it you can keep it” thing, which turned out not to be true for everyone. Those are two more good reasons for trashing the entire program. Okay, really just one more, since I mentioned the website earlier. But it’s that bad, though, so it should be beaten up twice. Maybe continuously.

There are so many programs that we fund that work at sub-optimal levels. If we are to make good choices about what to do with our scarce resources (i.e. what’s in our collective wallet), then here is the bar that must be cleared: If it isn’t perfect, de-fund it.

There. That was easy.

Jax Fablz: Where Bees Go

Nov 10

There were hives. Lots of hives. They were all over the Federation of Bee Hives.

The drones worked hard, collecting pollen and bringing it back to the hives and the queens would look upon their work and say that it was good. But both the queens and the drones of the southern hives had too much to do and the summers were so hot and humid that they needed help.

Then one day a ship arrived with African bees. The southern bees cheered and bought the African bees, queens, drones and all. The African bees were made to labor for the southern bees who forced them to work very hard. They weren’t paid for their work, and were given only enough to eat to stay alive. The African queen bees gave birth to baby bees and they were owned by the local bees, as well, so the free bee labor pool grew and grew, but the African bees suffered and were very unhappy.

One day a group of northern queen bees told the southern queen bees that what they were doing to the African bees was terrible and that they had to stop. The southern bees did not like being told what they could and could not do and became very angry. They said, “We have hive rights!”

Well, the talk became angrier and angrier and hatred grew. The southern bee queens and drones insisted that they needed the free African bee labor so that they could become even richer. At last they said they had had enough of northern bee judgments and northern bee demands on them. With that, they left the Federation of Bee Hives.

That caused a bee civil war and over 600,000 bees died in the fighting. The Federation was saved and the African bees were freed, but there wasn’t a single bee anywhere who didn’t feel the pain and sorrow of loss of their fellow bees. All of the bees vowed that such a thing would never happen again.

The years passed and the southern bee queens and drones gave way to new generations of bees. No bee then alive had a memory of the terrible suffering of that war of long ago and not a single bee could remember the vow their ancestors had made. Still, they carried with them the stories of how their bee ancestors were told what they could not do. That kept a fire of resentment buzzing in their bee hearts.

They also carried a disdain for the African bees still in their midst. Like their southern bee ancestors, they liked to think they were better than the African bees, so they did things to keep the African bees down. The southern bees liked the feelings of power and control that gave them. But little by little the northern bees put a stop to many of the bad things that were being done to the African bees. That served to amplify the buzzing of the southern bees over how much they disliked being told what they could and could not do.

Finally, one day the southern queen bee of the largest southern bee hive spoke up. She had no memory of the awful suffering of the past, or at least she acted that way, because she hinted that perhaps her hive should secede from the Federation of Bee Hives. She was very pretty, but most bees knew that she was nothing but a pollen head. Still, she had tapped in to the southern bee feelings of resentment, a resentment nurtured by generations of bees that liked to see themselves as victims and blame other bees for their suffering.

Then more southern bees began to speak of what they called “the good old days” when the southern bee hives left the Federation. Like the pretty queen bee who had spoken up, they refused to acknowledge the terrible suffering that all bees had endured because of that bee civil war of long ago. They paraded in funny bee hats and old southern bee war uniforms. They waved the flag of those old days of hive secession and buzzed with pride. Indeed, there were quite a few southern bees who became so puffed up with feelings of their power of resentment that their hairy bodies and especially their heads became quite swollen.

One day one of the swollen head southern bee drones said that he would stand for office to represent his hive in the Federation of Bee Hives. If he were to win his election he would have to swear an oath of allegiance with his bee leg on the Bee Bible, promising to protect and defend the Constitution of the Federation of Bee Hives. But he had openly declared that he was a member of a group calling for the southern hives to secede from the Federation again.

And no bee had any idea what had happened to bee integrity or even common bee sense. They only knew that they were trapped in a downward spiral of bee fear and bee hate.

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Moral: Both the anger of victim-hood and the pride of self-righteousness lead to the same dark place. – JA

Another Shot In The Foot

Nov 03

The recent government shutdown over a stupid power play by right wing extremists, along with their threat to cause the United States to default on its debt, were more than just political theater and more even than a showdown episode. It was an exercise in self-destruction.

Yes, it was destructive to the Republican Party. On the other hand, the Republicans stopped being true conservatives at least 35 years ago and instead have focused on transferring wealth to the already rich from all the rest of us, ensuring our prisons are full of chronically voiceless people and starting unnecessary wars. So, who really cares if the Republican Party is in self-immolation mode? Just let them burn to the ground and perhaps some sane voices will emerge from the ashes.

The self-destruction you need to pay attention to is that of the United States of America. We have threatened the entire world with financial catastrophe. We have demonstrated repeatedly that our primary goal is national dysfunction. We have marginalized the majority of Americans. We have dramatically expanded the ranks of our poor. We have declared that we don’t want to fund the education of our children. And we do want to arrest and torture people without so much as charging them with a crime and then keep them imprisoned endlessly. All of this stands in stark contrast to the values we say we believe in like truth, justice, democracy, fairness, opportunity and other worthwhile attributes.

Given that contrast, what do you suppose the people in the rest of the world think when they hear the happy words but see the not-so-happy deeds? Surely, our mixed messages pull the rug from under their trust and confidence in us. Don’t imagine that is a small thing.

Trust is the cornerstone of relationship and we are in continuous relationship with a global society. For many decades the standard of world trade has been the American dollar. It is the symbol of global influence enhanced not just by military might, but also by trust and confidence in our values and our dependability. Once those things are gone, the money of some other country will step in and be the global standard and the United States will be a second tier country.

We are in a headlong rush to hand over world leadership to China, led with daring forcefulness by crazy Americans who tell the world that the United States cannot be trusted. They do that by paralyzing our government and threatening creditors with our default and those exercises are scheduled for a replay in the middle of January.

For more on the American Brand and the crazy messages we give the world, review Bruce Terkel’s blog here. Then comment below with your ideas about how to stop us from repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot.

R2D2 And You

Oct 27

A few days after one of my Money, Politics and Democracy presentations, an attendee wrote to me, saying,

“After asking you a question at the DUUC presentation, I went home and began re-reading the Constitution, thinking that the Supreme Court decision re: Citizens United basically indicated that corporations were persons and therefore were entitled to freedom of speech. I got as far as Article 1 Section 2 [paragraph 2]: ‘No person shall be a Representative . . .’ and thought, ‘No corporation could be elected a Representative,’ so how can those esteemed justices equate corporations with persons? Surely, the Founding Fathers didn’t envision corporations as persons, so those strict constructionist justices violated their own philosophy and stretched the applicability of the amendment to make it possible to rule in favor of corporations.”

It seems an absurd stretch to extend all the rights of human beings to inanimate objects, in this case called “artificial persons” – that seems to be some kind of a legalistic term for corporations – but that is what the court did.

My view is that money is not speech, but instead, quite obviously, is property. The view of the Supreme Court is that money is the equivalent of speech and, therefore, cannot be regulated. While I don’t care for their interpretation, at least a thin case can be made for that equivalency. For example, it will cost me money to make a documentary based on my Money, Politics and Democracy presentation. Given that my presentation is an exercise in free speech, the money spent to produce the documentary has some rough equivalency to free speech. That is a stretch, but, as I said, at least a thin case can be made.

Not so much with rights for “artificial persons”. In fact, I can make the case that a robot is an “artificial person”, but it is pretty difficult to envision extending all the rights and protections of citizenship to R2D2 or your Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

It seems to me that a strict constructionist would see that, strictly speaking, only people are people and that only people are given rights and privileges by the Constitution, a document which makes no mention whatsoever of corporations or “artificial persons”. Yet somehow we find ourselves with five justices of the Supreme Court who can’t tell the difference between people and robots.

Strangely, an amendment originally designed to protect the then-freed former slaves has now given way to protection of corporations just as though they were flesh and blood human beings. It seems that for today’s Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment has been lengthened by an additional sentence, such that it now reads:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. All of the foregoing shall apply equally and without limit to any corporation or institution of any kind or any inanimate object.“ (text in bold italics mine – JA)

And if that is true, then the 1st Amendment protection of free speech applies equally to those same corporations, institutions and inanimate objects. Just imagine how repugnant the post-Civil War congress of 1868 would find that.

And things may get worse.

In the McCutcheon v. FEC case now before the Supreme Court the plaintiff seeks to remove all limits to political contributions. Should those five justices continue to fail to understand consequences and continue to be unable to make simple differentiations that are readily apparent to most of us, then our politicians and our government will go to the highest bidder and the sale of our American democracy will be complete.

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News Bulletin from AT News

Dateline: Washington DC

The Washington Redskins are changing their name because of all the hatred, violence, and hostility associated with that word.
From now on they will be known simply as the Redskins.

Are You Ready?

Oct 20

Boomers are the ones who were told, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” (thank you, Jerry Rubin), the ones who were going to change the world and who most certainly were never going to get old. But now we are past the point where we can refuse to trust anyone over 30, we did change the world but many of us still refuse to get old. That has created a billion dollar industry of erection sustaining drugs for old stud wanna-bees.

The next time you see a Cialis commercial on television take a good look at the happy couples. Of course they are happy, as the commercials imply that they are so hormonal that they are having sex whenever the wind blows.

Notice, too, that everyone is good looking. We viewers subliminally hope that Cialis will deliver that benefit, too. And there is something else. The women are all at least 15 years younger than the men. Little surprise there, since the drug hucksters are selling a return-to-youth fantasy to old guys.

Let’s see, he’s a “senior” who refuses to acknowledge time, wants to be the young stud he never was, so he pairs himself with a young, nubile, willing kitten (yeah, that’ll work) who smiles at him with just a hint of lust in her eyes – and he’s ready! All of this comes at just seven bucks per thrill pill.

Yup, we watch the commercials and we fall for the fantasy. Somehow, the pleasant and desirable images and the smooth sound of the voice-over, go down easily and we accept the whole package. Actually, though, it is nothing but a manipulation of you and me for the profit of the pharmaceutical corporations selling us dreams in a pill.

It works the same way in the political arena. Radicals and rich guys are trying to separate you from your cash and your power with slick commercials, images and slogans, and even a chest-thumping testosterone rush, all for their own benefit, not yours. Maybe instead of mindlessly absorbing the fictions we’re fed we should get in touch reality before the American plutocratic coup is complete.

It is the right moment right now. Are you ready?

WARNING: If you go blind, lose your hearing or die, stop taking Cialis immediately – it will be too late for you. Correspondingly, if you lose your democracy, it will be too late for all of us.

This Just In

Oct 14

October 15, 2013 – Washington DC

In a joint press conference called late yesterday by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), accompanied by Republican House Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Reince Pribus, Chairman of the RNC, it was announced that President Ronald Reagan will no longer be the beating heart of the Republican Party.

For decades the idol of conservatives and the touchstone for everything on the political right, Reagan has been summarily rejected as unfit to hold that lofty position any longer. Boehner explained to a stunned crowd of reporters and hangers-on that this has been coming for a while. “The last straw was the realization that President Reagan would not have gambled with America’s national and international integrity by threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling,” said Boehner. “Today everyone knows that we can just stiff whoever we want in order to get everything we want. I mean, debt ceiling? Get serious.”

“President Reagan had the stodgy attitude of days long gone,” McConnell added. “That dog won’t hunt in today’s world.”

Not to be outdone at the microphone, Congressman Cantor invoked the new Tea Party mantra first voiced by Congressman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), saying that a default on our debt wouldn’t be a big problem because, “We have plenty of money coming in.” Cantor continued, “President Reagan just didn’t understand today’s world and we will no longer invoke his name with every exhale.” He paused and added in a quiet, contemplative tone, “It will be an adjustment for all of us”

In the closing moments of the press conference Chairman Pribus took to the microphone and said, “I just want to make sure that you have a clear and accurate context for this. All of America’s problems can be traced to one source – the Democrats. Sadly, they forced on America a president who wasn’t even born in this country and he has single-handedly shut down the federal government.”

The conference ended with no questions allowed and with no indication of who the new beating heart of all Republicans will be. However, a possible hint came from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was standing nearby, wearing a tri-corner hat and being cheered by Sarah Palin who winked and screeched, “You betcha.”

The Continuing Frog Boil

Oct 13

The U.S. budget sequestration went into effect on March 1, 2013. It was designed to reduce defense and certain non-defense discretionary spending by annually declining percentages through 2021. It applies these cuts with the fine precision of a large asteroid smashing into the Earth. It was said to be designed as a pressure on Congress and the White House to hammer out a budget agreement on a timely basis and was not supposed to go into effect because its stupidity was unthinkable. Apparently, some of the major actors in that drama didn’t do enough thinking, because we’re living with the sequester now. Oddly, we are not hearing much of a wail from those affected. There are reasons for that.

First, the impact of the sequester on defense spending is small enough to be a rounding error for the agencies with nearly unlimited spending ability and which buy thousand-dollar toilet seats, tanks for fighting the non-existent Soviet Union in a land war and trillion-dollar airplanes that no one wants. Besides, when the affected contractors are unhappy with the government they don’t march in the streets. Their comments are given behind closed doors, so you don’t hear them.

Second, many of the domestic program cuts only affect poor people and nobody listens to them. For example, study after study has shown that early childhood education is the cornerstone for later success in higher education and for a lifetime. But the sequester cut 57,000 children out of the Head Start program, thus necessarily relegating them to a much dimmer future. Understand, though, that the Head Start victims of the sequester are poor kids whose parents’ voices aren’t heard in Congress because those parents don’t make large campaign contributions, so they don’t have access. And you can’t hear them because the corporate media doesn’t relay their brutal reality.

Here is another example. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the sequester would produce a reduction in economic growth of 0.6%, saying that this would affect job retention for 750,000 Americans. “Retention” is not about new jobs. It is about employed people just keeping their jobs. That means three-quarters of a million Americans will lose their jobs because of the unthinkable sequester. Like the parents of kids kicked out of Head Start, the newly unemployed don’t have access, so you don’t hear their voices, either, and it is relatively easy for the rest of us to ignore the change.

Third, we human beings only become aware of change when a big WHUMP! smacks us in the head. Most of the time we tolerate small changes quite easily and don’t even notice them. By the time we at last notice their accumulation into a WHUMP!, it is too late to prevent the adverse consequences that we will live with forever. That is to say, most of us are living with the unrecognized effects of small changes and, like live frogs in a slowly heating pot of water, we fail to recognize that we are being boiled alive.

Yet, metaphorically speaking, that is what is happening to Americans. We are tolerating changes like the sequester, either because each change is very small, as they are for most of us, or we are accommodating them because we are powerless, as it is for the poor, the disenfranchised, the unemployed – the very people who don’t contribute big money to political campaigns.

And the incremental deterioration story gets worse. The current government shutdown engineered by Ted Cruz (R-Psych Ward) and his extremist pals has already kicked another 7,000 kids out of Head Start and 19,000 more are on the way out the door. Those kids will under-perform and we will lose the benefit of their contributions and their genius. Some will drop out and be a weight on society and some will turn to crime for survival. For those who don’t care about those kids, surely even the investment class understands the value of spending a buck today to get a return of two in the future. Yet all they seem to be able to see is that they want everything now.

Head Start is just one example of incremental changes that are absorbed with barely a public whimper – there are many more – but we will all pay the price.

On the other hand, here is a happy thought: we’re saving money today because we’ve cut unemployment compensation for those 750,000 Americans being laid off this year and we won’t have to listen to them complain because they don’t have a voice powered by campaign contributions.

Come to think of it, perhaps you are not donating thousands of dollars to the right legislators every election cycle. If that is the case, you just might want to check the thermometer in your pot. It might be edging up the the WHUMP! mark at the top of the scale.

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Definition: The Republican Caucus – a gathering place for the clueless.

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“Let me just check my talking points, and . . . Why, here’s something flamboyant and hateful I can say to rile up the base and make them cheer for me. And here’s another. Wow! There’s a whole pile of ’em! I’ll never run out of self-serving drivel.” Sen. Ted Cruz in an imaginary and oh-so-brief moment of honesty.

What Do You Want?

Oct 06

A fundamental question in all negotiations is, “What do you want?” Of course, there are other questions each party must answer but everything hinges on knowing what you want. Absent that, all negotiations are just exercises in defeating the other guy for no clear purpose other than the opportunity to do a little chest beating. Not much good happens from that.

Indeed, On Thursday Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) said of the government shutdown, “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” And, in fact, nothing good came from that, except for Stutzman’s hand getting slapped by other Tea Party people for making them all look stupid.

The answer to the “What do you want?” question for each side in our ongoing DC dysfunction is “government.” The Democrats want government to be an active agent in society. The Republicans continue to follow the slick campaign quip of Ronald Reagan, “Government is the problem.” That is to say, what Republicans want is to do away with nearly all government. To that point, Grover Norquist has told us that he wants to reduce government in size such that he can “drown it in a bathtub.” And, due to 2010 redistricting, the Republican extremists have managed to shut down much of the federal government and have threatened to default on the nation’s debt in pursuit of their government destruction goal. Apparently, nothing is sacred to them in their quest – not even our national honor nor the world economy.

This is not a situation where each party is equally to blame for the mess we’re in. This is the result of a few dozen radicals holding the United States and the world economy hostage.

The question for all the rest of us is, “What do you want?” If you want to terminate all the things you have come to expect from government, then the extremists’ view and their Machiavellian methods are for you.

On the other hand, what you want might include the protections that only a functioning government can provide, things like meat inspection, careful review of drugs before they’re used on your children, air traffic control so that the airplane on which Granny is riding doesn’t go bump in the night with another airplane, ensuring that our kids get an education for success both today and tomorrow, building and maintaining our bridges and interstate highways, all national security functions, funding the research work at the National Institutes of Health so that when you get sick there is medical help for you and so many other important functions. If that is what you want, then it just might be a good idea to contact your representative and senators in Congress and tell them to shape up, especially if one of them is a Tea Party zealot with his/her gun pointed at Uncle Sam (aka you).

As always, the behavior you tolerate is the behavior you get.

One more time: What do you want?

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JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler