Our system of government is broken. Where else can you work for someone where you get better benefits, wages, pensions and perks than the owners? Where else can you work from 2-4 years, get fired and receive pension and perks till the day you die? Where else would you get better health benefits then the bosses? I'm not talking about the people who fix the buildings, sweep the floors, or work in offices doing the many things that are needed to keep our government going. I'm also not talking about the policemen, firefighters, or the people who keep our infrastructures going. I'm talking about the politicians, the people responsible for representing us.
How can our politicians be representing us when they continually vote along party lines? Are they really representing their constituents or pushing party agendas? The way things are set up now, they hold all the cards, they vote on their own pay raises, benefits packages, pensions, they have healthcare and the whole nine yards. There are only two major parties, between the two, their contacts, their clout, they make enough money from campaigning that they can effectively shut down any outsiders. Anyone with ideas that go against the party, or ideas that are too dangerous to keeping the status quo are shunned by their party and cut from the benefit of party raised money for campaigning.
The whole idea of needing so much money to campaign is part of what corrupts our system. Most politicians spend a lot of time when they should be working for us raising money for the next election cycle. Needing such vast amounts of money gives corporations and wealthy individuals the upper hand, because even if something is right and a good cause, a politician would be committing political suicide to support it if that cause wasn't in the best interests of the people footing much of their election campaign. It is the person who has the most money to buy the most airtime, that can slander the other person the most, who has the upper hand in our elections. Politicians like that are puppets of their highest donors and will not go against their biggest donors best interests. They will not be concerned with their constituents wishes, they are a broken cog in democracy.
It is time we the people take back our government from the rich elite that runs it now. Our whole election process is a joke. There is no accountability, no consequences for cheating or not telling the truth. These people are all applying for the job of our Representatives, but they do it all on their terms, not ours. We have to step back and say whoa on a second. Do all these commercials put together to mislead, about the flaws of the other opponent or brag up the triumphs of one's self really any good to the selection of our leaders? Is it any good to have two parties that basically have a monopoly on candidates and individuals having to tow the party line? What do we do to fix this? Can this be fixed? Next time I will give my thoughts.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The War on Poor
You know figures and stats can be manipulated to show anything you want them to. You could quot figures showing that the rich pay the majority of tax collected, and I could show you figures on how the common man pays a higher percentage of his income on taxes. They say that there are a lot of people who don't even pay taxes and should thus not be deserving of any assistance, but I see people who don't fit into a society that has evolved to the point that it is so costly that some can't afford the basic necessities let alone pay taxes. They say, give more money to the rich and they will hire workers," I say put more money in the hands of the many, they will spend it creating demand and more workers will be hired. No matter how much money you put in the hands of the rich, they won't hire workers if the common man can't afford the products and services their businesses have to offer, but if there is a demand, businesses will hire more workers to handle the extra work. The same people who argue that sticking more money in the education system won't fix it, are screaming for us to continue to lower the taxes on the wealthy. Sticking more money into rich peoples hands won't create jobs, it certainly didn't all through the last 10 years we have been giving them these tax breaks. Instead, corporations have been making record profits by laying off thousands of workers. There is a war going on in America.
One would naturally think that this class war would be between the richest and the poorest, but it isn't, it should be though. This war is between the poorest and the former middle class that are hoping to hold on to some remnant of their former glory. The super rich for the most part have shed themselves from being in the target sights of the majority. The wealthy have been successfully using the former middle class people as a buffer cushion between them and the people who they are hurting the most. The well off are convincing the middle class that it's the fault of the lower class that they aren't doing better in life. The middle class is told that all the lower class is fat and lazy and living well off the fruit of the middle class. When there is talk of stopping the tax cuts or adding more taxes to the rich, it is spun into a story of how this is going to cost jobs, hurt small businesses and cost them money. The dream of many middle class people is to start up their own business even though most will never get to that point and many who do will lose their ass, so they take that spin and side with the rich who in turn will cut off their toes and make it even tougher for new businesses to start up and compete. There is a sucking sound in this country, but it's not our jobs being sent overseas, that screwing was over a while ago, this sucking sound is the sound of what's left of our wealth being sucked out of every one of the common man into the pockets of the very few elites.
It has been the goal of a few elite groups to cause total meltdown of the nation for their gain. Really, what are a few years bad returns if it leads to most all of a countries wealth ending up in your pocket? Just like you can never hardly win in a legal battle with a corporation because they have the money and resources to out last the common person, how long would it take to liquidate the common man of everything he owns if he didn't have a job? How rough would it be for the super rich to go that long not making money? People you are being liquidated. One of the reasons they want to downsize government and cut all services? They want to get the money that's tied up in government programs and projects in your pocket temporarily, so it's where they can get their hands on it.
So what's their plan for the future? Here's one billionaire's idea in an article/blog on Yahoo. In this plan:
All something to think about.
One would naturally think that this class war would be between the richest and the poorest, but it isn't, it should be though. This war is between the poorest and the former middle class that are hoping to hold on to some remnant of their former glory. The super rich for the most part have shed themselves from being in the target sights of the majority. The wealthy have been successfully using the former middle class people as a buffer cushion between them and the people who they are hurting the most. The well off are convincing the middle class that it's the fault of the lower class that they aren't doing better in life. The middle class is told that all the lower class is fat and lazy and living well off the fruit of the middle class. When there is talk of stopping the tax cuts or adding more taxes to the rich, it is spun into a story of how this is going to cost jobs, hurt small businesses and cost them money. The dream of many middle class people is to start up their own business even though most will never get to that point and many who do will lose their ass, so they take that spin and side with the rich who in turn will cut off their toes and make it even tougher for new businesses to start up and compete. There is a sucking sound in this country, but it's not our jobs being sent overseas, that screwing was over a while ago, this sucking sound is the sound of what's left of our wealth being sucked out of every one of the common man into the pockets of the very few elites.
It has been the goal of a few elite groups to cause total meltdown of the nation for their gain. Really, what are a few years bad returns if it leads to most all of a countries wealth ending up in your pocket? Just like you can never hardly win in a legal battle with a corporation because they have the money and resources to out last the common person, how long would it take to liquidate the common man of everything he owns if he didn't have a job? How rough would it be for the super rich to go that long not making money? People you are being liquidated. One of the reasons they want to downsize government and cut all services? They want to get the money that's tied up in government programs and projects in your pocket temporarily, so it's where they can get their hands on it.
So what's their plan for the future? Here's one billionaire's idea in an article/blog on Yahoo. In this plan:
Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."Kind of reminds me of something out of the science fiction movie, "Water World". Maybe they are getting ready to outlast the raising water from the melting ice caps from global warming that most of them refuse to acknowledge. Kind of makes me wonder where they are going to get people to work and live there with no laws or minimum protections. You might not want to drift too close to their "sovereign nations", you might just get Shanghaied and end up owing your soul to the company store on some off shore man made island. It's what he says later in the article that kind of sums up the attitude of the wealthy.
"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."
All something to think about.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Defense: The Double Edged Sword
While reading an Associated Press article on Yahoo titled, "Doomsday defense cuts loom large for select 12" , a few things come to mind, hardly any of them good.
Is it a coincidence that the six Republicans and six Democrats represent states that have the most to lose by the automatic cuts that would hit defense spending in their states? I guess that's pretty good incentive for them to come to some kind of agreement before the dead line. Myself, I think it's pretty sad that such a large percentage of our population is in the business of making things to kill other people. Yes, this would put a lot of people out of work if we didn't have these businesses, but we should be employing these people in different job fields.
Should it really be our responsibility to police the world? Should we spend more than most the other countries combined for defense? The really sad part is we are not only making these weapons for our wars, but we are making them for all the wars around the world, sometimes supplying arms to both sides of the conflict by one means or the other, so is it for jobs we allow people to be killed? It also goes to figure that it is more profitable for us to have wars around the world than to have peace, is this really right? How can you really be committed to peace when you need wars to keep your people employed?
If we were to put all that talent on solving our country's and the world's problems how much further along could we be as a species? Imagine putting them think tanks and talented people to work on coming up with alternative energy solutions and standards and infrastructure to make it all work? If we weren't policing the world we would use a lot less oil as fuel for all the toys of war, the ships, tanks, planes, hummers, what have you. How would that affect how long the oil we have lasts and the price at the pump? While we plan for war our infrastructure crumbles, our education fails us, we will die from within. We have to use these technologies for saving lives and making the lives we have better, not tear down what already is with bombs and missiles. We need to put these people to work to make life better for the living, not make a living off people dieing.
Is it a coincidence that the six Republicans and six Democrats represent states that have the most to lose by the automatic cuts that would hit defense spending in their states? I guess that's pretty good incentive for them to come to some kind of agreement before the dead line. Myself, I think it's pretty sad that such a large percentage of our population is in the business of making things to kill other people. Yes, this would put a lot of people out of work if we didn't have these businesses, but we should be employing these people in different job fields.
Should it really be our responsibility to police the world? Should we spend more than most the other countries combined for defense? The really sad part is we are not only making these weapons for our wars, but we are making them for all the wars around the world, sometimes supplying arms to both sides of the conflict by one means or the other, so is it for jobs we allow people to be killed? It also goes to figure that it is more profitable for us to have wars around the world than to have peace, is this really right? How can you really be committed to peace when you need wars to keep your people employed?
If we were to put all that talent on solving our country's and the world's problems how much further along could we be as a species? Imagine putting them think tanks and talented people to work on coming up with alternative energy solutions and standards and infrastructure to make it all work? If we weren't policing the world we would use a lot less oil as fuel for all the toys of war, the ships, tanks, planes, hummers, what have you. How would that affect how long the oil we have lasts and the price at the pump? While we plan for war our infrastructure crumbles, our education fails us, we will die from within. We have to use these technologies for saving lives and making the lives we have better, not tear down what already is with bombs and missiles. We need to put these people to work to make life better for the living, not make a living off people dieing.
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