545 vs 300,000,000
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS
JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY
THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
Well he'll just have to keep on doing it until he gets it right. :-)
Only he won't because he retired around that time, keyhole vision
intact. (The article date is September 29, 2008, a month before the
election.)
This piece is a red herring. Plenty of people like to see it that
way, but it's a dead end view. Vote all of them out of office? Er,
didn't you just do that?
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and
then campaign against them..
Not so, it's a common tactic when you get Wall Street on one side of
the coin and Madison Avenue on the other. Eg, for a current example
with a bit of history to it, the posts we've had here about
industrial agriculture, bird flu, Tysons et al, swine flu,
Smithfields et al, Tamiflu, scare-mongering, vaccines, Novartis, fake
persuaders, etc etc.
Creating problems and then campaigning against them is more or less
what Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is all about, it's just business
as usual.
That gets closer to real causes than Reese does. Reese focuses on a
symptom, his politicians are just prostitutes, not the paymasters.
Global warming denier Senator James M. Inhofe, for instance, voted
in favor of big oil companies on 100% of important oil-related bills
from 2005-2007, according to Oil Change International.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_M._Inhofe#Climate_change
But would he have managed to keep his Senate seat if he'd voted any
other way?
How much progress has been made with campaign finance reform since
Granny D walked across America in 1999?
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg27750.html
As against, say, the bail-out trillions?
snip
... I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in
cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
That simple, just say no. Especially if it's the President, one might think.
From the horse's mouth:
... However, I think that overall Carter was closer to a decent
human being than any post-World War Two president. In 1978 he
invited 1960s anti-war activist and leader of Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS), Tom Hayden, to the White House. (Think
George W inviting Michael Moore.) As recounted by Hayden, in their
private conversation he said to Carter: You are the elected
President of the United States, yet I'm concerned that you have less
power than the chairmen of the boards of the large multinational
corporations -- men we don't elect or even know.
After looking pensively out the Oval Office window, President
Carter nodded and said, 'I believe that's right. I've learned that
these last 12 months'. [16]
[16] San Francisco Chronicle, March 4, 1978
-- The Anti-Empire Report, William Blum, February 3, 2007
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer42.htm
Wall Street on one side of the coin and the White House on the other.
The only surprising thing about it is that he said it.
Wrong 545 people, Charley, sorry about that. And they're not people.
Best
Keith
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems
and then campaign against them..
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans
are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against
inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on
appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does..
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine
Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300
million are directly, legally, morally, and individually
responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that
problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated
its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally
chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound
reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to
coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one
cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1
million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or
reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the
legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their
