Money in politics

Voices

Aug 11

Eighty percent of Americans who know of the over-reaching, legislation-from-the-bench Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case – the one that ensured unlimited money influencing our politics – want it reversed. That number varies by just a handful of percentage points, depending on respondents’ political views. This issue is the venue where ultra-left tree huggers and hair-on-fire Tea Party members can join hands, sing Kumbaya and wave Don’t Tread On Me flags, all at the same time. The trick in getting action on this is to expand the number of Americans who know about the CU decision so that we can exert sufficient pressure on lawmakers to pass the 28th Amendment to the Constitution to get big money out of our political process.

It was to that educational purpose that I crafted the Money, Politics and Democracy program that I have been delivering to various local groups for the better part of a year. I delivered it last week to a fledgling group in DuPage and Will Counties who care enough about this issue to leave their front porches on a lovely summer evening and sit in a hot meeting room in order to learn.

Be clear that I have another motive in my talk. It is to motivate people to take action. And it is to that point that I direct you to an essay by Jesmyn Ward in today’s New York Times entitled A Cold Current. Her story is about racism, the devaluing of people by “othering” and how we react to that. There is a parallel to her story in today’s economically punitive America.

Think about the America you believe in, the one you want to leave to your children and grandchildren. Look deep into your notion of The American Dream. You better think about it, because we are crafting the America we will bequeath to your descendents right now. It is just possible that the dream that you hold dear for your dear ones and yourself is a different dream than that dreamed by the leaders of our pharmaceutical industry, our energy barons, the fabulously wealthy individuals – the 1%. That is because those people are exactly like everyone else in this sense: We all act in what we believe to be our best interests.

I don’t even remotely imagine that the Koch brothers arise every day with sights on the evil they might do or the mischief they can create for most Americans. As the titans of Big Pharma spent $390 per second fighting Obamacare, they weren’t doing it to ensure that our healthcare system remains the worst among industrialized nations. Neither do the leaders of the American Petroleum Institute air its television ads with the pretty blonde in a black pants suit in order to create more super-hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy so that more Americans might suffer and die. They do those things because it is in their financial best interests to do what they do, so they spend the big money to make their voices heard. It is all about the voices.

So, rather than putting your effort into demonizing the big bucks class in America, your energy needs to be focused on making your voice heard. Let go of any notion of instant gratification, because this is a long term push. Just understand this: If you don’t make your voice heard, people with a very different dream for America from the one you believe in will have their voices heard, because they will be the only ones talking.

Now go read Jesmyn Ward’s piece. Read it first for her message about racism. Then read it again and substitute “classism” and you’ll understand.

Bankruptcy

Jul 14

No, not that kind.

This is about political bankruptcy. It is about a Republican Party that doesn’t make decisions based on fact and, in fact, ignores fact and instead creates fatuous fantasies. It is a party that brought us a president who doesn’t read, who ignores facts and who makes decisions based on gut hunches. No, I didn’t make that up. It is what President George W. Bush told us about the way he makes decisions. And, yes, he had the “football” and could have pushed the button to send nuclear missiles to annihilate millions based solely on his “gut hunch.”

This is a party that is legally bankrupt, as it seeks to institutionalize discrimination with a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This is a party that is legally bankrupt as state house after state house finds diabolical ways to prohibit from voting American citizens who are not white or who are poor.

This is a party that is morally bankrupt, as it chants the same mantra year after year, that it is all about jobs, jobs, jobs, but every opportunity to stimulate job growth has been filibustered by Republicans on the floor of the Senate or voted down by the Republican dominated House. Okay, there was one bill – the veterans jobs legislation – but the Republicans had to be shamed into passing it.

But let’s be fair. The Democrats took over in 2009 and have steadfastly refused to prosecute Wall Street bankers who defrauded the public with their swamp of mortgage derivatives. The same Justice Department has refused to prosecute bankers for their millions of fraudulent home mortgage foreclosures. This is the same Democratic Party that refused to create legislation to prevent another round of “too big to fail” and, guess what, once again the banks are too big to fail.

This is the Democratic administration that has refused to prosecute the prior administration for its blatant lawbreaking by torturing prisoners and for illegal detention. And it is the same party and administration that has expanded the war in Afghanistan, a war that plainly cannot be won. History would have told President Bush that fact before he commanded an invasion, but he would have had to have read a history book to know that.

This is a war with ever-morphing goals, no strategy for success, with a continuing supply of dead bodies and an economic cost that will eventually reach $4 to 6 trillion dollars. And this is a war that President Obama has continued and expanded, notwithstanding his pledge to end American military involvement by the end of next year. How many more dead Americans will we have created between now and then? Would you like to be the last soldier or marine to die for that unholy cause?

The far righties hold dear a deep distrust of government. They are right to do that, because they continue to champion and elect untrustworthy legislators.

The far lefties are never happy because government continues to eviscerate the values and rights they hold dear. But they sit on their recliners on election day or fail to jump through the hoops necessary to register to vote or they just drop out entirely and complain loudly.

We get the government we deserve – or do we deserve the government we get? Either way, we’ll continue to get what we are getting now until we require better. Until then, you can expect a government in the pocket of corporations and fabulously wealthy people who crave money and power above all else. They are the ones who pull the strings of the Marionette America and bringing to us our national bankruptcy. We are the ones who tolerate that.

Are You an Old, Rich White Guy?

Jul 07

Pollution is an ordinary part of manufacturing. For example, those shiny, chrome plated gizmos like your ballpoint pen and the reflectors of the tail lights of your car are bathed in toxic chrome when they are made and they drip chrome into the water that rinses them. Capturing that residual chrome is much more expensive than just flushing it down the drain, so chrome platers don’t much like EPA regulations that make them install expensive waste water treatment facilities. Those who own and run other companies subject to EPA regulations feel pretty much the same way.

Come to think of it, lots of companies don’t much care for OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, either. That government bureau makes companies do expensive things, like install safety devices that prevent people from being decapitated or electrocuted or having their hands chopped off in manufacturing machinery. OSHA requires construction companies to ensure that their employee wear hard hats so that their heads don’t get sliced or crushed. All of that costs money that companies don’t like to spend.

Those pesky state legislatures have passed laws that require that your children be in child safety seats and that you be belted in and air bagged. All of that costs money that car manufacturers don’t like spending.

Old, rich white guys like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and others who own the companies that we force to spend extra money in order to protect all of us want to do away with lots of government driven protection. They want that precisely because that protection costs old, rich white guys money. Indeed, over the years the car companies resisted pollution controls, safety glass, turn signals, safety belts and more because those things cost money. If you’d like to know more about the thinking of such people, those who seek money and power over all else, have a look at the words of Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s number two from 1941 – 1945. He wrote a blistering Op-Ed for the New York Times on April 9, 1944 focused on American Fascism, the blending of government and business. You will likely find that the description in his essay is stunningly and disturbingly similar to our socio-political circumstances today, including the lying, the cheating, the demonizing and, worst of all, greed masquerading as patriotism. The bulk of that comes from old, rich white guys. You can find Wallace’s article here and here.

The old, rich white guys are thankful that elections are so expensive that candidates have to continuously grub for cash, especially big pots of it, because then those who are elected become indebted to those old, rich white guys. That stimulates those politicians to take every measure possible to thwart legislation that might be good for most Americans who are not old, rich white guys.

Those politicians do things like make it harder for non-rich, non-white Americans to vote, because doing so keeps the old, rich white guys in power and in the money and that keeps the politicians well funded and in office. The flow is so pleasingly circular. Our national history is replete with egregious examples of voter suppression and the current voter ID laws about to be enacted in Texas, North Carolina and Ohio are the newest. Those laws will disenfranchise millions of non-rich , non-white Americans and will have the effect of being the final nail in the coffin of democracy. Hail to the John Roberts Supreme Court for enabling those voter suppression laws through its democracy killing decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case. That completed the task of ensuring that old, rich white guys control all the money and all the power, a task started with naked hypocrisy by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

In the not-too-distant future history may be written with deference to the old, rich white guys – after all, history is always written by the victors. But the multitudes who live in subsistence because of the loss of American democracy will not stay there willingly.

The fight for freedom and liberty is never ending and we are at a tipping point in America right now.

Are you an old, rich white guy? If so, things are working quite well for you and you like the path we’re on. On the other hand, if you are not an old, rich white guy you will care deeply about this far sooner than you might imagine. When it starts to pinch, you will squeak and you will fight back. What do you suppose it will look like when 310 million Americans who are not old, rich white guys are doing that? I fear for us, because we always seem to wait too long to act and we have always been a violent society.

The American Disease

Jun 30

We have an advanced case of The Stupids.

This disease can be contracted by constant exposure to public officials saying and doing idiotic things. It results in eventual Stupids fatigue, marked by lack of reaction to outrageous behavior. Here are some common causes of this nationally debilitating disease.

Bible-thumping zealots tell us that 9/11 happened as God’s punishment for our nation’s sins. They say we deserved it.
Deeply repressed homophobes wail in their self-righteousness and tell us how we should live our lives, as they thump bibles from atop their moral superiority. Then we find out that they are homosexuals. Worse, we tolerate their hypocrisy because later they “repent.” Same for governors who hike the Appalachian Trail – in Argentina – and serial cheats who run the Christian Coalition.
Fools blabber constantly about rape, somehow inventing a concept of “legitimate rape,” with its implication that some rapes are not real rapes. We are left to guess at what that means, but it sounds like they think some rape victims were “asking for it” and don’t deserve to be seen as victims of criminal assault and battery. Other fools tell us that in the case of pregnancy due to rape, “A woman’s body can shut that down.”
Michele Bachmann can’t figure out in which state Paul Revere made his historic ride, or distinguish between John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy, yet she got re-elected.
Our elected officials have kept us in a near-constant state of war for over 30 years – some argue that the number is 60 – and we tolerate the dead kids and the dead economy.
Richard Nixon declared his resistance to exiting the war in Viet Nam saying, “I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.” (October, 1969) So, 45,000 more American men and women were killed before America inevitably lost that war. That set the stage perfectly for all politicians to make every issue about themselves and their welfare and not about the welfare of America and Americans.
John Boehner wants to lock up IRS people before an investigation is even attempted or charges filed.
Chuck Grassley still thinks that, “They’re gonna pull the plug on Granny” and nobody calls him on his lie.
Rand Paul still thinks that we should not aid hurricane victims.
Paul Ryan still tells us that privatizing Medicare is not privatizing Medicare and half the country believes him.
We now have two Governor Ultrasounds, as the Republican legislature of Wisconsin and its Governor, Scott Walker, have joined Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia and have decided that they know better about medical care than a woman’s doctor, so they require a vaginal ultrasound before any abortion. And the OB/GYN has to read a statement to the patient that forces the doctor to lie to his/her patient. Then the patient gets to pay for all that fraud.
The gun bill failed, even though 90% of Americans wanted it to pass. Perhaps a cover reason for it can be found in the bazillion amendments to the bill, most of which have nothing to do with firearms and many of which are stupid on their face. And once again Americans have tolerated their elected representatives caving in to the NRA.
Global warming deniers base their claims on complete bunk and the corporate run media, in its fair and balanced way, continues to let them air their views. Worse, we’ve done next to nothing to deal with the looming danger that global warming will bring, largely driven by our voracious appetite for burning fossil fuels and our corresponding willingness to enrich the oil companies at the expense of planet Earth and its inhabitants.
Congress actually passed a law that protects Monsanto from prosecution if its genetically modified seeds prove to harm or kill people. This is the same congress that bemoans lack of accountability in our education system.
We continue to pull money out of education, even though our future national welfare depends upon our kids being educated and prepared to compete.

We are distracted by these circuses and, clearly, this barely scratches the surface of the idiotic stuff that has been going on for so long. Here is the key:

Re-read Number 6. It is all about the self-interest of the politicians to advance their careers. In order to do that they need big money. To get big money, they have to do the bidding of people who have big money, meaning extremely wealthy individuals and corporations. When they do that bidding, they are working for the monied interests, not for the interests of America and Americans. That keeps us from dealing with our very real issues, like global warming, for example, because the oil, coal and gas industry people want to ensure the continuation of their gravy train. Same logic for guns, healthcare and the lot.

We cannot change human nature and politicians will always look out for their own best interests. So, until we deal with big money in politics, not much will get better. Not any time soon. Not until disaster strikes. Maybe not even then. Think: Sandy Hook Elementary School followed by the failed gun bill, that failure being courtesy of threats to lawmakers from the NRA.

Most of us don’t feel disaster until it is in our faces and it becomes personal. That is simple human nature at work and it is why, for example, we fail to stand up to the big money bullies who would allow an assault rifle in the hands of the fool next door.

Have you stood in a line for eight hours to vote? Hundreds of thousands of Americans have had to do that and that is disaster. Has a vaginal ultrasound been forced on you or someone close to you? That is disaster. Have you felt the bottomless depth of pain over children being gunned down? That is disaster. Does it bother you that you might be targeted by the NSA? It should, because that is a disaster.

The America you believe in is being stolen from you bit by bit, and it will be gone unless you and I disengage from the boob tube and the rest of the distractions that gobble our time, energy and attention and we at last speak up. Speak up to get big money out of politics. Everything turns on that.

The Stupids is a curable disease and you and I hold the cure.

Crunch Time For Illinois Residents

May 27

There are times that require that we stand up and say what we stand for. This is one of those times in Illinois.

I’ve written extensively about big money being the mother lode driving the dysfunction in our politics and this is a critical time for doing something about that.

We are very close to Illinois becoming the 15th State to pass a formal resolution to demand the overturn of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that is eating at the core of our democracy.

With the help of so many Illinoisans, Senate Joint Resolution 0027 (SRJ0027) passed both the Illinois State Senate and the Illinois House Judiciary Committee and is on the way to the floor of the House for a vote. We need only one more vote to pass the resolution and send a powerful message to Congress that we want our America back. With your help, we’ll be able to start solving our very large challenges, like getting Congress to pass meaningful gun legislation, as 90% of Americans want.

Please call your Illinois state representative (not your state senator) and ask him/her to VOTE YES ON SJR0027 when it comes up for a floor vote, which may happen in the next 24 hours.

If you don’t know who your state representative is:

In Cook County, go to: http://www.cookcountyclerk.com/elections/deo/Pages/default.aspx and input your address (number, street name and zip only). Then scroll down to the Illinois House of Representatives section to find contact information for your representative.

In Lake County, http://www.lakecountyil.gov/IWantTo/Find/Maps/Pages/ClosetoHome.aspx. Follow the 4-step process to find contact information for your representative.

THEN PICK UP THE PHONE AND TELL THEM YOU WANT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO VOTE YES ON SRJ0027.

Thanks for all you do!

“If someone like you doesn’t care a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss

It Ain’t Easy – And Their Mothers

May 11

Before you decide that those who see the immigration issue quite differently from the way you see it as having brains operating at sub-optimal levels, consider a few things.

First, let’s be clear that the issue is about non-citizens who are in America without the legal right to be here. Many of them are people who arrived with a valid visa and stayed beyond the expiration of their documentation. Some arrived without the legal right to do so. Likely, there are other descriptors for these folks, but all share an important characteristic: They broke the law.

It doesn’t matter if they did it with that intention before entering America or things changed once they were here and they did not want to or could not leave. All of those are simply stories of explanation and they do not change the fact that they broke the law.

There is a substantial imperative from our sense of right and wrong that wrongdoing deserves consequences. Our sense of right and wrong is offended when a wrongdoer gets away with it. Doubt that? Consider your feelings about the Goldman Sachs creeps who promoted worthless mortgage backed securities to their clients while at the same time dumping their own holdings of those securities. That’s called fraud, but not one of those guys has been prosecuted. One more time: How do you feel when wrongdoers get away with it?

Of course, our immigration issue isn’t that simple. If the estimates are correct we have somewhere in the vicinity of 12 million people here without permission. Catching, prosecuting and deporting that many people is simply not do-able – that’s a limit of logistics. Sure, we can make a show of it, but that would be substantively meaningless.

The 14^th Amendment to the Constitution says that people who are born in America are American citizens, regardless of the nationality of their parents. What will we do with the Made-In-America children of our non-citizens? We tried to take a step forward on that with The Dream Act, but the knuckle-draging, fanged droolers in Congress shot it down. Do we prosecute and deport the parents, leaving their minor children to be wards of the state? Do we deport the kids, too, even though they are American citizens?

The people who are here illegally are paying Social Security tax, Medicare fees, sales taxes, real estate taxes and they help to support our communities in many ways. They contribute to society as friends and neighbors and many of them do jobs that you won’t do, but which need to be done. That complicates things.

But what about the people who have been standing in line for a long time, following the rules to become naturalized Americans? How could it be fair to them to allow those who broke the law to have the same opportunity and to be in line with them? It seems that there are a lot of balls to juggle to arrive at a solution that is fair and reasonable to everyone.

And there is one more aspect to consider – it’s found in the mirror.

We have all been complicit in allowing people to be here illegally because we have liked and benefited from the low skill jobs that get done because there have been people here we could exploit. We haven’t prosecuted employers for knowingly employing those folks and paying them poorly. We’ve made stabs at requiring employers to verify the right to work of employee candidates but at the same time we have prevented employers from being able to access the information necessary to know whether they are complying with the law. We have consistently refused to dedicate the necessary resources to stop people from entering this country illegally. To put all the blame and consequences onto those here illegally is hypocrisy.

There is a good chance that Congress will either find a compromise that satisfies nobody and frustrates everybody or it will do its now-familiar polarization dance, with the knuckle-dragging, fanged droolers once again trying to sound like tough, patriotic Americans, but succeeding only in preventing us from solving our problem. Whatever we decide to do and whatever your point of view on this issue, just get that immigration is a lot like many other issues, in that it is more complex than we’d like it to be and a simple black-and-white analysis is willfully blind and of no value.

Okay, this is switching topics – slightly – but it may help to understand the black-and-white types in our midst.

That “no value” part of a simple black-and-white analysis is true, unless you’re up for re-election. Then doing whack-a-brain stupid stuff like casting a polarized vote that goes against the will of the American people may get you lots of special interest campaign cash. Think about that the next time some American flag pin wearing legislator googles their eyes and proudly froths out dingbat stuff. How proud their mothers must be.

The Best Thing That Could Have Happened

Apr 21

Sure, it was very simple and would have made only marginal improvement in violence reduction. Of course, we can characterize it as something that would have been nearly pointless. Still, the bill went down in defeat and it’s the best thing that could have happened.

Let’s start with what it was and what it was not. The vote was not on whether to close the so-called “gun show loophole” and require background checks for all sales of firearms. It was not a vote on whether to create a national registry of gun owners. It was not a vote on the Second Amendment. It was a vote on whether to override a Republican filibuster that was preventing even a discussion of the proposed background checks bill. The gun thumpers won and the rest of us lost.

That’s “lost,” as in putting something ahead of protecting our children. That’s “lost,” as in cowardice replacing courage. That’s “lost,” as in willfully refusing to do the job one was hired to do and even lying about it.

The lying is a big piece of what gets under our skin, because it violates our sense of right and wrong. Sometimes it’s covert, like Wayne LaPierre and his National Rifle Association forcing a watering down of the bill, then lobbying against it, saying that it’s too wimpy to accomplish anything. Slimy, sneaky stuff like that.

Sometimes the lying is overt, like saying that the bill would create a federal registry of gun owners, which they claim is the next step toward taking guns away from citizens. Ignore for the moment the good sense of knowing who has which guns. Focus on this simple fact: the proposed bill imposes a $15,000 fine on anyone attempting to create such a registry. That means that all the fools telling us that the bill would create a gun registry were either willfully ignorant or they were lying to us. How does that feel under your skin?

The 46 senators who voted against defeating the filibuster (same as blocking the bill from a vote) had their reasons. Perhaps some are true believers in the unintented-by-the-Framers meaning of the Second Amendment. Maybe they imagine that Second Amendment actually has something to do with anything other than the brand new United States of America needing an army in 1776 and not having the resources to equip it. Perhaps they get some kind of proud, testosterone rush and a swelling in their chests of patriotic fervor just by thinking about their right to own a semi-automatic Bushmaster assault rifle. Or maybe it was something else.

Maybe it was their share of the $25 million that the NRA spent on campaign contributions in 2012 and their fear that a challenger would get that money in the next election cycle. Maybe it was the direct and indirect money they benefited from due to the generosity of Colt Industries and the rest of those in the private citizen killing business. Maybe they figured that they’d get primaried by a screwball even more Neanderthal than they are, so they did what they did for “the greater good.”

All that rationalizing comes down to this: Those 46 senators decided that their careers are more important than the lives of our American children. They see their financial well-being following their senatorial days, as they shift to become highly paid lobbyists, as being more important than the 3.5 Americans who are killed by gun violence every hour of every day of every year.

And now you know. Now the 90% of Americans who want our communities to be safer know. And now we have the leverage to do something about it.

There will be a general election in just over 18 months. That is when we get to tell our legislators exactly how we feel about their cowardice, their self-centered focus and their contempt for the American people.

That is when we get to elect people who will scrap the pitiful bill that was just rejected and replace it with a bill that has a hope of beginning to reduce American gun violence. We can enact legislation that will require background checks on all transfers of firearms, even those between Grandpa and grandchild, because one of those grandchildren might be like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine infamy. We can enact legislation that denies assault weaponry to child killers in Newtown, CT. We can eliminate 33-round clips and 100-round drums of ammunition that were so deadly in a movie theatre in Aurora, CO. And we can even do something positive to help our mentally ill citizens.

Here’s how Gabby Giffords puts it:

“Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.”

That is why this cowardly filibuster override failure is the best thing that could have happened.

Steam Engines, Headnotes and 91%

Apr 01

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868 and Section 1 of that amendment begins this way:

“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.” (bold and italics mine – JA)

Those are the “due process” and the “equal protection” clauses of the Constitution. Look at the date of the amendment and consider what the amendment says and you’ll be quite clear about its intent: This was entirely about protecting and advancing the condition of former slaves. In the wake of the Civil War many southerners did whatever they could to retain their former advantage, this to the extreme disadvantage of former slaves, now free in name only, so this amendment was both clear and necessary.

Eighteen years later a lawsuit appeared on the docket of the Supreme Court. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was a tax jurisdiction case that tested the provisions of then-new California laws against those of the federal government. The case was decided in favor of the railroad and, oddly, that turned out to be the least important thing associated with this lawsuit.

The court reporter for the Supreme Court was Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis. He, like other court reporters of his day, was far more than a stenographer for the cases presented before the court. Back then the job of court reporter was a most prestigious position and Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis was actually paid more money than Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite.

Recordings of the proceedings were made with up to-the-moment technology, ink pen and paper, and Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis had the good fortune to be allowed to publish his recordings of the proceedings and collect royalties for his efforts. Along with his best efforts to record the case by hand, he was allowed to publish what were called “headnotes”. These are comments of the court reporter and were not part of the court’s opinions or rulings, nor intended by the court as legal precedent. Indeed, headnotes were not even from the court proceedings, but were solely the comments of the court reporter.

Here is what Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis wrote in his headnotes to the publication of the proceedings of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case:

“The defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States . . . “

Corporate “personhood” was not tested before the court in this case; remember that this was a simple tax jurisdiction issue. That makes what followed Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis’ writings the strangest part of this case: Davis’ headnotes, his editorial opinion, has been cited as precedent for all of the efforts to give corporations the same rights as flesh and blood human beings ever since.

That’s right: A constitutional amendment that was designed to protect former slaves was and is being used to give artificial personhood to inanimate corporations. It is what is allowing billions of corporate dollars to influence our elections and bend legislation and regulation to the desires of those same corporations. It is what drives huge cash contributions to political candidates and influences voting in Congress.

Right now 91% of Americans want universal background checks and registration for all gun sales. Legislation to accomplish that is clumsily being cobbled together in Congress but getting our corporately influenced legislators to do the will of the people is proving to be really difficult. And to reemphasize the insanity causing that, the engine driving congressional intransigence is based not on the decision of a court, but on an editorial opinion of one court reporter

That strange and damaging precedent was set one hundred forty five years ago and we are still feeling its effect, perhaps now more than ever. Likewise, the decisions we make today will be felt by our descendents one hundred forty five years from now. That is to say, just as sure as the flow of impact from Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis’ headnotes to us, there will be an impact of what we do today on our great-great-great-grandchildren when they are adults just like you.

You can be passive and do nothing; that is your right as an American. After all, you have the right to vote, but not the legal obligation. You have the right to appeal to your elected officials to act as you prefer, but that is not a requirement of citizenship, either.

On the other hand, you might want to close your eyes and envision the America you want for your children, your grandchildren and, if you can see that far, for your great-grandchildren. Likely, if you do nothing, that’s not what they’ll inherit. Indeed, unless you speak up, the vision of people who want a very different America from the one you want will be the America of tomorrow, because those people will be the only ones talking.

Perhaps you really do have something to say to your legislators. Go ahead. Tell them. Now.

Human Being 101 – No, Really

Feb 13

83% of Americans – including NRA members – want universal background checks before gun ownership changes. That means mandatory background checks before sales at retail stores, at gun shows, private sales and even when Grandpa tearfully hands his lovingly preserved hunting rifle to his grandchild. We want to ensure that the recipient of the firearm isn’t a homicidal maniac.

Over 65% of us believe that climate change is both real and that human beings are contributing to it in significant measure. Two out of three Americans believe we should be taking action to stem the tides that trash our coastal cities and the drought that is scorching our fields and limiting our agricultural yields.

99% of Americans believe public education is both right and necessary for the future welfare of our children and our nation. 67% believe we need to expand pre-school education because studies have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that early childhood education leads to greater success in life. Not surprisingly, parents in America want that for their kids, regardless of their present economic situation.

Over four out of five Americans believe in a strong national defense, while at the same time they believe that we cannot and should not engage in continuous war. Over 90% of Americans believe that we spend far too much on military hammers, toilet seats, and unnecessary hardware and want to see a substantial reduction in those expenditures and a lot of common sense applied to the Pentagon’s activities.

Just short of 100% of Americans believe that we should stop granting tax exemptions to the world’s most profitable entities, like big oil, big finance and big anything with idyllic island locations to park their billions of dollars tax-free.

The frog boil of healthcare cost escalation that has run concurrently with a worsening of medical outcomes relative to the rest of western civilization has at last caught the attention of the majority of Americans. They want the system fixed, not more scary slogans. They want reasonably priced healthcare and world-class outcomes. They want an end to the one out of two personal bankruptcies that are caused by catastrophic medical bills. In short, they want what so many other western countries provide.

Q. What do all of these situations have in common?

A. Congress refuses to act in accordance with the will and desires of the majority of Americans.

Now, why is that? The people we send to Washington to represent us are privy to the same information as the rest of us. They certainly aren’t so bereft of intelligence that they don’t get it. So, what explains the refusal of congress to do our will?

Turns out that it’s all about Human Being 101 and its first imperative, preservation of self. To see how that works, you have to step through a logic tree. Here is how it works:

Politicians very often act like people, in that they focus on self-interest, which for them is to get elected and then stay in office.
A successful campaign requires lots of television and radio advertising, which is hideously expensive, so candidates must raise a lot of money.
It is very difficult to raise anywhere near enough money for a successful campaign through small, individual contributions, so candidates must solicit big contributions.
By far the biggest contributions come from corporations and big money individuals who can contribute unlimited “soft money” to SuperPAC’s, which will air lots of television advertising for its candidate.
The money from all of those people and corporations is necessary for the next election, too, so politicians, once elected, refrain from actions and votes that might be objectionable to the big bucks contributors.
Sometimes, that puts politicians at odds with the vast majority of Americans, as they vote in favor of the interests of people who are their big contributors, and against the will and interests of those who are not.

At root, if We The People want our will to be done, like the issues listed above, we have to remove the core driver of our political dysfunction. We cannot change human nature and politicians will continue to do what is in their self-interest. What we can do is to demand change to political fund raising, the engine of our national political dysfunction. Until we do that, we’re just swatting at symptoms.

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Editorial note: The statistics presented in this essay are approximate due to time limitations for sourcing. However, they are spot-on correct in their meaning. You can look it up. JA

O’ That Darned Long Term Reality

Dec 02

Nice election, but what if the real prize isn’t won? What if we have to do something more or we’re all screwed?

Look, it’s a fairly simple thing. George Will explained it years ago in clear terms, saying that we want about $300 billion per year more in services than we’re willing to pay for. Even 70% of self-proclaimed, hair-on-fire Tea Partiers want low taxes, our budget balanced, our debt reduced, Washington made irrelevant except for national defense and, oh, by the way, they want their Social Security and Medicare, too. Sadly, most of us are similarly wired.

We’ve been doing that kind of free lunch fantasizing for decades and have the national debt to prove it. While there always have been huge spenders and creators of enormous debt in Washington, we can attempt to point the finger of blame in any direction we like and it will always be a divining rod that points to us, because we as a society voted for the people who legislated the debt.

Now that debt is causing otherwise (sometimes) sensible people to suggest crazy things. It’s time for a national “get real” conversation about priorities and perhaps that is what is starting in DC. But we have to do more than hope that’s happening, which means that we all have to participate.

America needs a tax system that is congruent with what we decide to spend. Given that historically we’ve had top rates as high as 90% and still grew as a nation, a few points over the current marginal rate aren’t going to kill the golden goose and, really, they won’t make a dent in the lifestyles of the richest 2%.

Comment for the richest 2%: Please stop trying to sell the fiction that you’re the job creators and that trickle-down economics is anything other than a fraud. And tell your legislative buddies to do the same. The rest of us are tired of your 30-year attempt to manipulate us with those fictions.

We really don’t need to spend more on national defense than the next 17 countries (some say all the rest of the world) combined. The Cold War is over and we don’t need to prevent a Soviet invasion of Europe. WW II has been over for 47 years and we don’t need to prevent a Japanese invasion of anywhere. The people in the Pentagon don’t want the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that they have refused every time they were asked, so congress can stop authorizing still more billions for it. You get the idea – we have to stop defending against threats that no longer exist and buying toys we don’t need. That’s just a starting short list for pruning our absurd national defense budget.

That “get real” conversation has to include our willingness to shift our national priorities from lots of guns to a reasonable consumption of butter. And as unrealistic as we Americans can be, we need to recognize that there are a few things we must do – these are not optional.

We absolutely have to encourage, support and advance education. Were we to follow through with the outrageous cuts that have already been made and make the other proposed cuts to our education system, we would be metaphorically eating our seed corn. We would be ensuring that we will be unable to compete in a world that is increasingly better educated than us, sentencing our young to a dismal future. And enough already with the bashing of teachers and teachers unions. It’s way past time to stop looking for a boogeyman and instead construct an education system that serves our young for generations to come.

We cannot let our infrastructure continue to deteriorate. If you have doubts about such a statement, check with Minneapolis residents about the importance of maintaining bridges for our interstate highways. All of the survivors and all the loved ones of those who died as a result of the I-35W bridge collapse a few years ago wish that we had done a better job of upkeep. You’ll wish the same if a bridge collapses near or on you, like one did on the Fourth of July this year in Northbrook, IL, killing a couple in their car beneath the bridge.

Here’s another way to look at our infrastructure: We can’t afford the 25% loss of electricity traveling through our grid. We need to build a smart, efficient way to transmit electricity. It’s a national priority if you’re going to be able to plug in your electric car, your computer, your blender, your cell phone, your lights, your dishwasher and everything else that runs on electricity and have them work at an acceptable power cost. And it’s critical to have that smart grid if we are to shift away from fossil fuels and stop hard boiling the planet.

About the global warming denial thing – the flat-Earthers need to get a handle on reality, because if we don’t do what is necessary to counter that global threat, we can kiss good-bye all of our cities along every seashore and much of our arable farm land.

Memo to those who want to curtail, cut, eviscerate, bend, fold and mutilate Social Security and Medicare: We as a society are going to pay those costs one way or another. If we kill Medicare we’ll take our seniors away from practitioners who would provide early treatment for seniors’ ailments. Instead we will send them directly to the emergency room. That way we will provide healthcare in the most expensive and least effective method on the planet. In addition, lots of those seniors will die much younger than they would have had Medicare continued to be available. Think: Pulling the plug on Granny. Social Security cuts will produce parallel results. If you want America to save money, forget about abandoning those programs.

Final question about Social Security and Medicare: Why are the richest people in America contributing $43 million to lobby against those programs? Crank your brainpower on that and get back to me with an answer that is sensible for America. Yeah, right.

All of those issues require our thinking beyond the near horizon. The upcoming sequester business is the foolishness of trimming a budget with a meat cleaver. We have to stop focusing on the short-term stuff that tweaks our current senses and instead we must do our best to imitate reasonable adult behavior and plan for our future, as this petition and this petition call on us to do.

Get real, America. Demand grown-up behavior from your legislators. Tell them to leave their tantrums behind them and start having the conversation about the future of America and do it on an adult level. Tell them you require them to make good choices for tomorrow, because it most assuredly will come. The only question is whether we’ll be ready for it.

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JaxPolitix

Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler