We must question government. We haven't. We trusted our governing politicians and their media mouthpieces. That got us in trouble. They drifted toward those with the most money and got input from them, investing less and less of the long term interests of our whole nation in selecting information for dissemination. They become more and more beholden to a few extremely wealthy.
We the people fell under media-supported political pressure to trust that alliance between our elected representatives and powerful interests. Under their media pressure, we have fallen to their catch phrases like "smaller government is better." Thus American government, along with much of what many patriots hold dear, has diminished, not only in our minds, but in reality.
This led to abdicating our primary citizen role, the oversight of the regulatory function of our government, to a tiny elite. Having abdicated, we defaulted to blaming. The government was no longer ours, or us. The gap between our government and its citizens opened a power vacuum. Wealthy interests moved in. Soon sensible regulation was removed, and new regulations set in place undermining our government's capacity to protect our citizenry.
The result was loss of the means to work for life and liberty regardless of class or race. This remains a problem of government both too large and too small, for which better words are "disconnected" and "bumbling."
Now our international respect has been attacked, our taxes raised, our profits sunk and access to economic success drastically curtailed for most of us. Tragically, warfare has descending upon us, warfare benefiting the elite, and human tragedy and suffering have multiplied.
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is the formal organization of the 1% elite orchestrating these destructive changes. This behind-closed-doors assembly writes almost all the legislation passed by congress, wrote Obamacare, and will write, if Obama would be defeated, the almost identical provisions of health legislation to replace Obamacare. Most members of congress have joined or are beholden to this organization.
Our founding fathers knew they had to change the European paradigm set in citizens' minds then: that concentration of wealth and power among a few citizens is simply inevitable. They struggled to write a constitution defying this paradigm. Liberty was what they wanted, and they knew this European paradigm would easily rise up and destroy American liberty again.
Now here we are, 2012. The old European paradigm is back. Once again we trust a few elite to govern. Once again, nearly all government decision making concentrates at the top. Most of all, we trust an illusory notion that smaller government is always better. So we have reduced government's functions benefiting the 99% of us, and expanded those benefiting the 1%.
Many of us now are concerned our nation's experiment with democracy is dying. We don't discuss our conflict between the European paradigm and our constitution. Our disagreements instead are those our politicians and media have inflamed among our populace, poisoning our reservoir well of American good will necessary to bring us the needed reforms. Stressed, we revert to reptile thinking: winner-take-all. We go at each other's throats, as is being choreographed in the 2012 electioneering campaigns in debates and other politicking. This sideshow element of our election year will certainly reach a record prominence in just a few months.
So these are the two root elements, essential to our American republican form of government, steadily eroding for decades: (1) Citizen oversight of (2) the regulatory function of government.
Losing these is why this congress has the lowest approval rating in American history. That's also why this 2012 election should and may well become an unprecedented tidal wave of change in congress. Either our election will tip toward a looming catastrophe, or, if a paradigm of citizen responsibility arises among the disenfranchised, disenchanted majority of our citizens, we'll move toward healing. Our two-party system, now bent toward adversarial discourse, seems unable to build that consensus.
The most hopeful trend is a small segment of patriotic American elite who, like Warren Buffet, recognize the dangers and really want to help our citizens restore the values and heritage that made us great. That's the genius of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Republic, Lost.
The following is continued from BigHornCountyNews.com:
This book rings with hope this mess can be turned around. Lessig is a long-time Republican leader, former clerk in the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia, and current philosophy, law and economics professor at Harvard. This is one of several reviews on Amazon:
October 22, 2011 This review is from: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (Hardcover) from Amazon.com copied Jan. 28, 2012
Lessig explores the concept of a government responsible to the PEOPLE, as the Constitution calls for, and how the current system of campaign finance has warped it so much toward being a government responsible to the CONTRIBUTORS that even the Supreme Court used those words (in the infamous Citizens United corporation-as-a-person decision). The picture he draws of moneyed influence is truly appalling--all the more so as the influence is almost never overt bribery, but often just hints and signals (as in "if you aren't able to vote for X, I'll have to contribute $1,000,000 to your opponent").
Can it be cured? Lessig offers several possible prescriptions, the most useful of which is a National Constitutional Convention…. There are many good ideas here, and the arguments are rich and comprehensive.
The other reviews Amazon has posted on line are well worth reading, if the book is unavailable at the library. I just lent my copy out.
Read this book if you want to understand what's really wrong with government, why nothing gets done, why the posturing and pandering grows and grows, and why life is getting steadily worse for the 99% of the population who aren't rich. And--especially--read it if you want to know what you can do to make things better.
Here's Fox News reporting on the cost to millions of Americans of deregulating the housing industry, specifically Freddie Mac. Will they point out the deregulation of the mortgage industry and loss of Glass Steagal and associated regulations from the 30's depression?
http://nation.foxnews.com/freddie-mac/2012/01/30/freddie-mac-bets-billions-against-struggling-homeowners
The Glass Steagal act figures prominently according to many economists in the collapse of 2008. Many analyses are available looking it up on line. Here's another:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/10-years-later-looking-at-repeal-of-glass-steagall/
Our republican form of democracy originally prioritized encouraging citizens to participate in and question government. Abraham Lincoln spelled it out, "…that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." Back in Jefferson's days the European paradigm needed to change. Our nation was born, and we the citizens have taken just pride.
The framers of the Constitution were fed up with state "sovereignty" and decided on a strong central government, a judgment that has served the United States well, writes Robert Parry. Check this out on
http://consortiumnews.com
Still under the radar of politicians and media talk shows, "Americans Elect" a non-political party, has almost completed registration in 50 states for their selection of two candidates, for the offices of president and vice president, which cannot be from the same political party. This organization now boasts almost 3 million members, mostly delegates poised to join in the national convention on line in June. In that convention the delegates will make their final selection of president and vice president candidates, at a micro-miniscule cost in American politics, but with amazing openness and access to the process by ordinary Americans. Check out their web link, or do a search for a variety of opinion on this movement. It could drastically alter the two party landscape of American politics.
http://www.americanselect.org/about
Our government's invulnerability to regulation oversight by citizens has led to enormously costly deception in our country. Following is a short list:
War on Drugs. We have spent over a trillion dollars and sent a million people to prison, yet illegal drugs are cheaper and more prevelant than ever. See the review of this new documentary http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/31/the_house_i_live_in_new
War hype. The most lie-infused function of government, one we as a nation have given the most unquestioning trust, is the function to make war. This function consumes a huge portion of our of tax dollars, demands loyalty to the death of our bravest and strongest, and continues to successfully demand unquestioned support of the citizenry. Very few American leaders promote rational discussion of the cost to the nation and the world, and the strong evidence this imbalance, while posturing enormous military strength, in fact has undermined our true long-term national security at home and abroad at least since the Viet Nam war.
Foreign cash financing elections. We forget so easily. Remember Richard Nixon's demise? Remember the public outrage over the discovery of suitcase loads of cash flown in from foreign sources for the financing of his re-election? His practice of foreign funding of American political campaigns surreptitiously is not over.
Tax reform to cheat the rest of us. Citizens for Tax Justice has calculated that President Obama's "Buffett Rule" would, if in effect this year, raise $50 billion in a single year and affect only the richest 0.08 percent of taxpayers. http://www.nationofchange.org/analysis-buffett-rule-will-raise-50-billion-year-affect-just-008-percent-taxpayers-1327766301
"If you take the figures given by Romney - He made $45,000,000 last year, and paid taxes at the rate of 13.7% = $6,165,000. At the minimum proposed by Obama at 30%=$13,500,000. That's an ADDITIONAL $7,335,000 Romney would have to pay. I think that's fair - when I was working, even with my itemized deductions, at $40,000/year, I was paying close to 40%. On my paltry income. THAT ain't fair! No way. No how!" ——Ronni85 on Nation of Change comment blog Jan 28, 2012.
Lets put that into perspective. If this American citizen's 40% tax rate were reduced to Romney's rate at 15%, he would be paying about $1200. If Romney's rate were raised to 30%, still well under the Reagan rates, the 13.5 million he would pay would multiply an inch (6-8 lines of BHCnews print) at 22" a page would stretch out to over 500 pages, enough to reach almost a city block. This difference is what the right wing trumpets, supporting the rich.
Now Romney is of course wealthier, and pays much more in taxes. So let's compare the wealth difference to the above tax difference, with Ronni85's wealth, $40,000 a year for an inch of BHC news page, with Romney's 45 million. See the difference? Ronni pays more than double the amount of taxes Romney pays in percentage of income. The pages would reach across more than two city blocks.
That difference is what makes the last decades of tax breaks for the wealthy obscenely unfair, and has compounded our debt crisis.
"…It's worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They "fired" the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different. Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty…." That poverty cycle has been broken by citizen oversight of the unfair policies of the rich, the policies Obama rightly labels class warfare against the poor.
http://www.nationofchange.org/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-1-percent-1327762223
Food stamps presidents. It turns out the Bush administration oversaw the greatest rise in food stamps use this country has known, while the Obama administration has overseen a slight decrease. But neither president could really shake either the economic quagmire or the emotional ranting and raving around food stamps. Remember the quip of Newt Gingerich, "Obama the Food Stamp President?" Recall the chants emanating from the crowd gathered by Gingerich in Florida this week (CNN and MSNBC) when he tried to get them to send Obama back to Chicago, they said, "Send Obama to Kenya!" Any racism there? What about sending Newt to the Moon? Maybe he asked for that one.
Study after study affirms that citizens below the poverty level who could work if given a chance would gladly get off food stamps and other welfare provisions. It's a nasty tale that this policy, however in need of reform, figures prominently as and important cause of our current economic woes.
To quote words of President Johnson, "The poor don't need a handout. They need a hand up." Virtually everyone with any sense knows this. Pushing the fable of the welfare queen at the bottom of our economy blurs our vision so see the huge subsidy for the few welfare queens at the top. Of course, it's both. So the argument is useless and derogatory.
Others of our problems attributable to lies and deception in the media, usually originating from our government. These sites are some:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/21/1057176/-Citizens-United:-How-Did-it-Happen-%28VIDEO%29?via=search
Innocents in Guatanamo. One of the cheapest watches, available around the world and worn by millions, is a casio digital watch on the CIA's secret terrorist assessing list. Many Guantanamo prisoners were caught falsely when they innocently wore one on their wrist. A prime origin of many of the 70% innocents sent to Gauntanamo.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,758913,00.html
http://www.truth-out.org/ten-years-guantanamo-what-bush-cheney-and-rumsfeld-knew/1326049233
Bush's torture policy: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061808a.html
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061808a.html
mistreatment of war prisoners in Iraq http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041609a.html
Guantanamo
guard reunited with ex-inmates http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8452937.stm
Terry Carrico, Ex-Guantánamo Prison Commander, Says Facility Should Close
Jan 6, 2012 4:45 AM EST
A decade after the prison camp opened, its first warden speaks out against U.S. detention policies in the war on terror and tells Aram Roston the facility should be closed.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/06/terry-carrico-ex-guantanamo-prison-commander-says-facility-should-close.html
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/Retired-Generals-Admirals-on-Ten-Year-Anniversary-of-GTMO.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/army-accuses-reservist-classified-information-truthout-guantanamo/1314206461
Iran. Our media has unanimously endorsed a lie supporting war hysteria against Iran. In fact, most if not all Israeli and American defense intelligence experts admit or actively state their observation that there is no evidence Iran is building, or even has an intent to build a nuclear weapon. All that's clear, with plenty of evidence to back, is that if inspectors are given free reign by Iran they will either be fired if they are truthful, like Hans Blix in Iran, or they will have to make up evidence. http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/24/usisrael-iran-not-building-nukes/
USDA and organic farming. Another government agency with long regulatory arms can be a threat to small organic farms, the greatest growth industry in farming in America gauged per capita:
http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/01/largest-corporate-dairy-biotech-firm-and-usda-accused-of-conspiring-to-corrupt-rulemaking-and-pollute-organics/
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
