Solutions?: The Problems

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.

Politically Speaking: Now What?

Well the midterm elections are past and the Republicans gained power in the House while the Democrats kept control of the Senate. The big question is what does that mean for us? It was quite a election season with not only the Democrats and the Republicans fighting in the ring, but the Tea Party was there also, with both the Republicans and Tea Party thinking of victory by riding each others coat tails. My feelings are that the Tea Party got owned by the Republicans, time will tell, but it already looks like there is some dissension between the ranks, and it's only been a couple of days since the election.

I tend to lean towards the Democrats, but I am frustrated and disappointed with their spinelessness. There were investigations of wrong doing by President Bush and some of his close associates that showed that he was doing things wrong and he was intentionally doing them even though he knew they were wrong. Why then is it that the subject of prosecuting Bush, and whoever else involved, such a taboo subject even from the Democrat side? To make things worse, now George Bush has a book coming out where he admits once again of his war crimes. Will the insanity never cease?

Bush basically passed his own pardon and pardoned everyone who took part in all the illegal activities before he left office, put people in key parts of the government, while he was in office, that would allow him to get away with doing things that were wrong. Don't forget that both Bush and Cheney got on national television and admitted that they gave the orders and supported water boarding and other torture techniques, had secret prisons, performed secret renditions, and crimes against the American people and the constitution by the unlimited phone and internet monitoring, arresting people in the middle of the night and not charge them of any crime for 5 years if at all, with no rights, and going against the Geneva Convention rules and international laws and agreements. This upsets me with the Democrats. When Obama stood there and said, let's not bother going back and dwelling on the past, but look towards the future in reference to prosecuting Bush I stood in shock... I think there were many others who had the same reaction. In my opinion the people's mandate for election a great majority of Democrats in 2008 was so that something could be done about the rouge, run away government that the Bush Administration turned into, that included bringing to justice the people who blatantly and openly broke the laws of our constitution and how our government is supposed to operate, both at home and abroad.

The other thing that I and I think many other people that supported Obama are disappointed about is the health bill. Not for the fact that it was passed, but how fast the best parts of the bill were negotiated out before it even came to vote, and then that it really never mattered any way because it was pretty much a straight party vote, so there never was any compromise from the other side at all. Many people would have liked to see the single payer option at least seriously considered. Health care should not be run by organizations that their main purpose is not health care, but stockholders profits, that's just wrong. We need to get rid of all the swindling, lieing, profit machines that we call health insurance companies. A lot of money could be saved if the government took care of people with that money instead of a big company not worrying about if they will break even, but make record profits. This was another thing that didn't make me too happy with the Democrats.

The thing with the Democrats in general is that it's hard to try to compete with the bullies on the playground while playing by the rules and bending over backwards trying to appease any of them. Both sides worry more about being elected, getting their side in power, or keeping their side in power, that they don't really seem to care too much about us. In all fairness I guess I have to say the Democrats tried, they came in at the worse time since the great depression and actually did some good, tried to pass some good financial reform, credit card reform, health care reform, it just was a little too slow to help them for the mid elections.

What will we see going forward? I fear not much different than we seen these last couple of years. In the mean time we, meaning us common folk, will suffer while they all have their pissing contests.

What do you think? Agree or disagree, feel free to leave a comment.

Campaign Finances

It's time we get rid of the party system, there has been too much party and not enough system governing the the country. Each candidate should be running on his or her own platform and not be constricted by their parties as to what they can or can say, can or can't do, they are supposed to be doing the will of their electorates, not their party, not the special interests that are funding their campaigns, our government is broke in it's present form. We need to change campaign financing to fix things in Washington. How can we expect our representatives to vote with the interest of the people at heart when it is special interests that pay to get them elected in the first place? We need to finance elections with money from tax payers, or a pool of some sort. Somehow we need to start with a pool of people to run for the positions in government and then a way to quickly weed out the unwanted or unsupported, then support the runner ups by providing them all with the same amount of airtime, but only by showing their records and/or platforms factually and get away from the smears, lies, and rhetoric. The American people need a way to make informed decisions on electing their representatives without having to worry about getting fleeced by the lies told by the opposition. This could also save a lot of money that is now wasted on elections that could be spent better in other places. This would remove the conflict of interests that come into play now when politicians have to vote on bills that affect the people that paid to get them into office. Because we all know money is not the way to gauge the support or popularity of a candidate when special interests and corporations can spend more than individuals, this is why we have all these bills and laws catering to special interests, companies and the wealthy.

Racism Rears it's Ugly Head in America

November 4th made us feel good as a nation, we elected our first black American as president. This was a time that we were able to reflect on 50 years worth of improved relations between whites and other races in the "Mixing Pot" of America. Now approximately two weeks after the presidential election it seems like many people are showing their dark side and it is not pretty or something to be proud of. It also goes to show just how far we as a nation have to go yet to separate ourselves from our racist past.

Since the presidential elections in America there has been a rash of racial hate crimes across America. Black dummies hanging from trees, graffiti sprawled across communities, websites that people are betting on Obama's assassination dates, property damage for people who show their support for Obama, and other senseless destructive acts across America. What is it that drives people to racism acts of hate because another person's skin is a different color than their own? I would assume that most of these acts are carried out by people who didn't vote for Obama in the elections. It would maybe be another safe assumption that these people haven't spent much time listening to anything Obama has been saying all through the campaign process. I don't think I have only been looking at things through a biased point of view, but I really didn't hear anything from Obama either before or after the election that would indicate that Obama's agenda is going to be lopsided in favor of blacks or other minorities once he takes office.

I have to admit that I am somewhat taken back at the amount of racist acts that have been going on since the elections. I am even more taken back by the apparent lack of discontent by people directed at the last president George Bush. I mean the present administration has trampled the constitution with it's wire tapping practices and spying against American citizens, lied to the American people and congress to start a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11, trampled human rights and international laws torturing prisoners, endangered CIA operatives and ruined their careers because they expressed views that differed from the administration's, extradited people off streets not only in America, but other foreign sovereign countries without the country's knowledge, held people for undetermined amounts of time with out charges against them or due process, fired prosecutors over their political affiliations, only hired people of certain political affiliations to fill key positions in government, have blatantly flouted breaking laws to further their public and secret agendas, acted under more secretive circumstances than any other administration in American history, obstructed justice by destroying evidence needed by oversight and legal investigations, pardoned criminal buddies, and the list goes on and on. With all these things that we know are true of the past administration, some people are being much more critical of a black man that hasn't even had the chance to show, by his acts or record, of how he's going to run the country. I mean, come on, compared to the record of the past administration is it too much to ask to overlook the color of one's skin, to look at things objectively, and at least give him a chance to see how he's going to run the country?

If these people who are doing these things were really patriotic Americans they would be doing things to help our country move along into the future not dredge up and revive bigotries from the past.

Obama Wins Election

It's been three days since Barack Obama won the presidential election in the U.S.A. I think it's great that the people in United States has come so far as to elect a black man for president. For a country that has been labeled as a mixing pot it has taken a while for this to happen, I for one am not intimidated by the fact that our new president isn't a white man. I think it's about time. Our country has been built by immigrants and people of all colors it's about time that our highest office in the land reflects this. In the past I think we as a people have been pretty hypocritical as we are all immigrants in this land that was taken from the true owners, the American Indian. We have been often called the land of the free, but we have a sorted past for dealing with people who are not white. The American Indian was pushed across their land and eventually put on reservations. Many Chinese helped build the first railroads connecting the west to the east coasts, but they get a small paragraph in history for their accomplishments, the Japanese were rounded up during WWII and placed in concentration camps because powerful white men in power didn't trust them. As recent as after the 9/11 bombings Arabs have been subject to heightened scrutiny and harassment, maybe now we can, as a country, get past the color of a person's skin. To be a really great country we must provide opportunities for all people not just for people of a certain race. I think Barack Obama will be a person that can understand how to deal with these issues without trying to go overboard to correct past injustices or cater to tip the balances in favor of just blacks. Our country has many problems and issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible I hope and pray that he is up to the task, I believe he is. Congratulations Barack Obama.

Hope and Broken Promises

It's less than a 10 days until the final presidential elections in the U.S. At this point it looks like Obama is favored to win, but as was the case in 2000 and 2004, we know that it's not over until the fat lady sings. It will be interesting to see if the Republicans will continue to steal the election like they had in 2000 and 2004 they are surely going to try, after being successful the last two elections it is hard to believe that it will be a clean election this year, but we can hope.

America deserves better than what it has been getting for leadership the last eight years. The last eight years have been filled with scandals and illegalities of and from the Bush administration. First the Republicans steal the elections and put and keep in office a puppet that has been one of the worse in history for America, and then he has continued to commit crimes against the American people and the world community, so far with impunity of being held accountable. History will record this time as one of the darkest times in American politics for Americans and the view held of Americans around the world. We have lost our reputation we have had in the world as champions of what's right and fair and the defender of the down trodden. In a way I'm glad that I haven't been fortunate enough to travel the world, because I'm embarrassed of what it has become to be an American. We have a nasty reputation with the rest of the world and frankly we deserve it. No matter who wins the bid for the White House it is our duty to demand from them actions that will improve our image in the world and address the failures of the past.

For people who know me, it is no surprise that I don't hold any hope that a Republican will be one to fix what's wrong with America, what might surprise them is I also don't hold much hope that a Democrat will either. It's fine and dandy to claim that it's the American people who are accountable for the failure of the government to be fair and honest and address the problems of our country and our image in the world, but it would be a false claim. These last few years I think the American public has called for the right things to be done in government but short of starting a revolution their pleads have been falling on deaf ears of the occupants of both major parties. Two years ago the public voted mostly for Democrats who promised to end the war in Iraq and hold the administration accountable for it's crimes, it didn't happen.

I don't share the belief of Republicans that we can blame all the problems that have came to a head these last couple of years on the Democratic majority in Congress. For one thing, the biggest, the Democrats have held the majority, but they didn't hold a 2/3rds majority that it would have taken to push bills to address the burning issues through the House and Senate to overturn the president's veto. I do believe, as I think many other people do, that the Democrats caved in too easily to the demands of the president and his Republican party. Democrats for the most part are afraid to hold there ground over fears that they will lose the support of the American people and they will get voted out of office. I'm not sure what could be more a sign of support as they got from the last election where Americans voted almost entirely to put Democratic leaders in any open spot they could to represent them. The Democrats promised to hold the administration accountable for it's illegal activities and get us out of an expensive illegal war in Iraq that was approved for under false pretenses. Once in office though the Democrats developed the jitters to do anything decisive fearing their re-elections. Time and time again they would make a stand only to cave in later to the demands of the administration and Republicans, the Democrats had no balls.

Although I may be disheartened by the Democrats, I totally disagree with the Republican's agenda and views on how the government should be run. How many times in history do we have to have proven to us that trickle down economics does not work? Those who don't learn from the mistakes in history are destined to repeat them same mistakes, again, and again, and again. I think that trickle down economics was ever really intended to work for the common people, it's more of an instrument for the greed of the rich to get richer. Lets face it, our country has always been lead by a small handful of the super rich and famous, and they don't make a point of giving away power or money. Sure, if you know anyone who has a lot of money, I mean a really lot of money, they will say that they give to charity, and/or that they support various groups to help the unfortunate, but would they pay their workers a fair wage so that they are not the unfortunate ones? No. When they defend their wages and profits it's supporting their families, but when a common person uses the same argument for needing more money, the well to do claim it's not their problem that their workers have large families to support. To the elite, the common man is still looked down upon as breeding stock to replenish their workforce, a commodity to be managed to keep us high enough in numbers to ensure a cheap workforce without being too high in numbers so as to risk an revolt and a risk of the toppling of their empires.

This election we have two of the major parties claiming to represent change, will either one of the follow through on it? I really doubt it, not the way or intensity they hope or we need anyway.

A New Process for Selecting Our Representatives

What America needs is a new process for picking it's representatives. The way we chose our leaders has basically grown more and more flawed as the years gone by, morphing elections and thus changing politics into something totally different than our founders had ever in visioned. When this country was founded, there were only 13 colonies. It was a pretty easy task for everyone to know if one person held better leadership qualities than another person by their past actions. How we chose our leaders was much different than it is today. Through time, as our population spread out across the North American Continent, it became necessary for politicians to boast more and advertise their accomplishments to win over votes from people that they have never met or who have never heard of them before. Through the years the process of selecting our leaders has become broken. I'm not saying I have a completely worked out grand new plan to fix all our problems, but today I'm going to write about some of the reasons why I think our elections fail to bring before us good candidates for presidential selection who care as much for the interests of the common person on the street as they do for the interests of big business.

I've always heard that we are never going to get a person in office that is any more ethical or morally responsible then the people that put them in office. I somewhat agree with that statement. If the voters are not very ethical or moral, they won't hold the politicians they have elected accountable to being ethical or moral either. I do think that the way we select our politicians makes a big difference in the kind of leaders we have though.

One of the biggest failings in our process of selecting a government representative is the amount of money needed for anyone to run for office. This fails our government from the start in so many ways. One of the biggest ways this has a negative effect on our politicians is that they need to spend a pretty good share of time raising money for their re-elections, because they need lots of money to get re-elected. Usually, without some extenuating circumstances, or other form of fame and publicity, the person that spends the most money wins the election. It takes large amounts of money to travel around the district, state, or our country promoting one's self putting out television, internet, and radio ads. Ads must introduce the candidate, list where they stand on issues, tell of unscrupulous acts by the opposition, and defend one's self from smears made by the opposition. As our population grew and spread across the continent the cost of campaigning has grew.

Politicians are only human and it is human nature to do nice things for people who do nice things for us. Lets face it, people give large amounts of money or favors to candidates for basically one reason, and that is with the hope that their donations will help elect the candidate of their choice, and once in office that candidate will remember the donor's issues that they wanted help with. Other than that, whether it's a large amount of money from a large corporations or small amounts of money from individual donors, there is no other reason for anyone to give money to a candidate. It's a validation for the candidate. It's a way of saying you think like I do on the issues that matter to me, so here's some money to help you get elected so you can support those issues. Politicians are not supposed to think of who gave them how much money or let it influence their decisions when they vote on issues that may affect the donor, there are laws against it. But when money is so important to getting re-elected, who in their right mind would vote for something that would adversely affect someone who gives big money towards getting them elected?

Somehow we have to take the costs of campaigning out of the equation, that is about the only way to take the advantage away from big business and special interest groups. The government actually owns control of TV and Radio frequencies, there should be a certain amount of airtime given to the process of electing our representatives that they don't have to pay for. Candidates should have to present themselves within a structured format so that people can see where each candidate stands compared to their rivals. There should be no public advertisements by special interests groups smearing rival candidates. In fact anything that is said by a candidate or endorsed by a candidate should be factual. If it is found that any candidate lied about past voting records, past positions on issues, smears against rival candidates, they should be prosecuted for lieing or slander. It should not be up to the voting public to have to check up on every statement made by politicians and try to figure out whether it is a lie or not. We should demand that when politicians speak to us that they are telling the truth, they work for us after all.

The System is Down

I really don't understand what's wrong with everyone. These last couple of terms that Bush has been in office have been just unbelievable as far as constitutional rights the American people have lost. Our current administration has pretty much done what ever they wanted, even as the shady deals they were doing were being reported on the television, the radio, newspapers, and the Internet. After the last presidential elections we find out that through trickery and deceit the republicans stolen the elections both by getting people (democrats) taken off lists of of eligible voters, and intimidating other whole groups of people who would have probably tended to vote for democrats. The American people got confusing ballots, voting machines that didn't work properly and didn't have paper records to give an accounting of votes made on them, people intercepting voters on the way to the polls to discourage certain demographic groups of people from voting, voting laws changed to favor one party over another, absentee votes not counted or taken into account. During the last election in places where the president campaigned for reelection, anyone known to be against his objectives and policies, people with signs, posters, or t-shirts, that did not agree with the president's views, or anyone that seemed like they would speak up against the president's policies were barred or removed from the area, arrested if necessary to keep them out of earshot, eyesight and keep their messages from being shown on cameras at his conventions. This was done to try to give the illusion of how well the president was doing, by showing that there was hardly anyone in opposition to the president. Once in power republicans banded together to pretty much rubber stamp any thing the president wanted. Information out now suggests that the administration has in the past encouraged torture, or at least turned a blind eye to it. People in the USA and in other countries were whisked off the streets and taken to third world countries secret prisons, where they do believe in torture and they have been locked up without any charges being brought against them or any contact with their families to even as much to let them know if they are dead or alive for years. We as a country are being forced to ride along with the Bush administration as it runs the good name of America down in the eyes of the other countries in the world. I think it's in Germany that US CIA agents are charged with picking up people on their streets and sending them away to secret prisons. As word gets out that the US used water boarding, a form of torture, our president Bush appears on our TVs and tells us, the United States doesn't torture prisoners. If I could ask Mr. Bush a question, it would be, just what do you classify torture as, when prisoners die? Even that wouldn't be truthful as there has been many prisoners that have died as a result of being captured by us and our "aggressive interrogations". There probably is and will be many more prisoners though that will be marred mentally forever from their ordeals of being a captured prisoner of the US. Many of these prisoners are innocent. How many movies and books have told the story of innocent people persecuted who go back for revenge against the people who wronged them? That's us, US that has wronged them. Could it be that we are breeding the next generation of terrorists? Speaking of terrorists, the Webster's Pocket Dictionary defines terrorism as n. violence committed to achieve a political end. It defines Terrorize vt. to terrify, especially by acts of violence; to intimidate through terrorism. Now didn't Bush with an arsenal of mostly lies and bent truths lead our country into war, without an act of congress and without the support of the United Nations, invade Iraq with their "Shock and Awe" attack, with the intentions of securing our oil interests, er I mean to save the Iraqi people and advance the ideology of democracy to the middle east? Couldn't that be an act of terrorism? What about the way that we are trying to advance democracy by bombing the hell out of places of resistance members that don't agree with our plans on how to run their country? Are we trying to Terrorize them into submission? At this point in time who are the terrorists? But wait, that's not all, there are missing emails from the White House that just seem to coincide with dates of the CIA agent's name being leaked and deliberations about going to war in Iraq, they just conveniently got taped over because they were reused. Or the video tapes that the CIA had, on the interrogations of prisoners thought to be conspirators of 9/11, that just happened not to get mentioned through multiple committee investigations and now we know about them, but it is after they have been destroyed. Children's health care, economy stimulus payments, the lists just go on and on. Why didn't the democrats start impeachment and criminal proceedings when they took over being the majority in office? Why do we let such a lying crook get away with all this? Like we started impeachment proceedings on Bill Clinton pretty much cause he couldn't keep his pecker in his pants, but someone who lies, obstructs the constitution, starts illegal wars, creates secret prisons, and whisks people out of their sovereign countries and the speaker of the house and our newly elected members of congress says impeachment is off the table. I think it is owed to the American people to put impeachment back on the table. Who in the government will stand up for our constitutional rights?