Personhood

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.

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

A Special Kind of Nuts

Apr 14

North Carolina’s recently introduced House Joint Resolution 494 tells us that, “. . . each state is sovereign and may independently determine how the state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion . . . ,” and that, “. . . the North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” It seems that the state of North Carolina may soon be free of that pesky First Amendment, right up until the time that the Supreme Court of the United States lets them know in a 9 – 0 decision that they are a special kind of nuts. That will be the end of a legal process that will have cost the state of North Carolina millions of dollars over a brainless political ploy.

Elsewhere, the good citizens of North Dakota will have the scientifically interesting prospect of voting on a new amendment to their state constitution in November, 2014. The science connection exists because their duly elected state legislators just voted to place on that ballot a referendum for a state amendment that would declare that a human egg penetrated by a sperm is a human being immediately upon their connecting and it has all the unalienable rights of citizenship. It’s called the “personhood amendment” to their state constitution.

Not to be outdone, the braniacs in the state legislature of Kansas have overwhelmingly passed a bill that declares human life to begin “at fertilization.” Further, the Kansas legislation will proscribe the information that doctors must provide to pregnant women and to those who might become pregnant, apparently believing that the politicians know more about medicine than do the physicians.

Note that Kansas is the home of the State Board of Education that a few years ago declared that evolution is just a theory. The board mandated the teaching of “intelligent design,” which is creationism in a different wrapper. I haven’t checked their genealogical charts, but I suspect that those Kansas Board of Education members are related through unhealthy intermarriage to the geniuses in North Carolina who think it’s okay for them to establish a state religion.

The most poignant part of the current “personhood” effort in Kansas was provided by State Senator Steve Fitzgerald (R – Leavenworth), who is quoted as saying, “The human is a magnificent piece of work at all stages of development . . .“ Who could argue with that?

The problem, of course, is the stage of development we’re talking about. It appears that the Republican legislatures of those states and those of about 13 others doing similar things had their development arrested around the Pleistocene era, about the time the first human beings scratched on the walls of caves.

Senator Fitzgerald, you and your fellow mental luddites in governments all around America are, indeed, a piece of work, a special kind of nuts.

After the 9/11 attack we heard demands from the Muslim extremist world for a return to the fundamentals of Islam, as they understood them. These are the same principles that punish petty theft by hacking off a hand of the perp and which make women the property of men. We decried their backward demands as an attempt to return to primitive, dark ages ways. Yet here we are in America doing the same kind of regression.

It falls to those of us who think that science and learning are good things and who accept actual, fact-based reality to figure out what is behind this national rush to primitive thinking and then to redirect America to a sane path. So, you better help others remember the current insanity when it’s time to vote in November, 2014 and 2016. If you let these primitive deniers of reality off the hook, things will get worse.

It’s The System, Stupid

Oct 13

There was a small article in the September 25, 2011 edition of the New York Times reporting on demonstrations that are continuing around Wall Street. The piece was in a corner of page 18 and was short and bland. The protest was happening in Manhattan and arguably was a major event in the home city to The New York Times, yet the newspaper barely mentioned it and this apparently self-inflicted self-blinding was happening throughout our national media, as mention of the demonstrations was rare. That is in stark contrast to how extensive the coverage might have been had this been a Tea Party demonstration, given our national obsession with the radical right, and this vacuum of attention is significant.

The Citizens United v. FEC case, decided last year by a radical Supreme Court, has effectively made American politics exponentially more beholden to corporate influence, since we are now informed that corporations are people and have the same rights as those of us made of flesh and blood, especially the right to contribute boxcars of money to political campaigns. Of course, only corporations have the means to fill those boxcars, so America is now one giant step closer to becoming a de facto corporatocracy instead of a democracy and that is ominous, indeed, for actual human beings.

W. Edwards Deming taught quality in manufacturing to the Japanese after WW II (after American titans of industry ignored him) and, to offer just one example of the result, the Toyota Camry has been the most popular sedan in America for decades. One of Deming’s most important lessons is that when there is a problem, we should look first not to the individuals involved, but to the system that drives individual behavior. That is precisely where we should look to remedy our political paralysis and the obsessive quest for dumb in Washington.

Our political campaigns are hideously expensive, so much so that our politicians and would-be politicians have to spend about half their time both during campaigns and while in office just raising money, which means that they are set up to be at the mercy of the donors of big bucks. No matter if every legislator inside the Beltway is an Eagle Scout or its equivalent, they cannot afford to stop searching for their mother lode of cash if they are to achieve office and stay there. That is simply how our system functions.

The most significant reason for our hideously expensive political campaigns is the cost of advertising on television, with cable companies and other major news and entertainment media outlets. They, of course, are corporations and serve their own interests. Should we do anything to curtail political spending with them, those media outlets would be financially harmed, so it’s not in their interests to change the system. Perhaps that’s why you’ve seen so little coverage of those Wall Street protests to do exactly that – change the system.

To state the obvious, corporations have more money than individual citizens. That results in the voices of the corporations being far louder than all the rest of us can shout. Some of the loudest voices come from Wall Street. That’s why those thousands of people are on the streets of so many cities all around this country, “occupying Wall Street.”

If we are to have a democracy in America we cannot have corporatocracy – the two are mutually exclusive. And if we don’t change the system, the future is both certain and very dark for Americans.

There are people who are going about finding ways to change the system and ensure our democracy and you can find an excellent review at this web site, and also at www.MoveToAmend.org.

You can also sign Dylan Ratigan’s petition to change campaign funding at:

Just understand that your choice is to live in a participatory democracy or to be a serf to the corporations. The good news is that you still get to choose. The bad news is that the clock is ticking.

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