On Aug 11, 2011, at 7:00 PM, TENEBRAE wrote: > Wow, Bruce, first time I can say I think you completely missed the point. > -W
No I didn't. I cannot count how many times I've been forwarded this nonsense from rightwing friends and relatives. Versions of this have been circulating for years, and all have pretty much the same things in them; this one only lacked the term limit nonsense that's usually present. It's cobbled together from a bunch of untruths and all-too-truths, but the solution is not building an 'autopilot' into the Constitution, but electing representatives who are responsive to *our* needs, not just the 1%'ers. It's kind of hard now that we have a thoroughly defanged press, two classes of citizen (Corporate citizens, who are superior to ordinary human ones) , historically high levels of wealth inequality (we're surpassing some third world nations in concentration of wealth in the hands of a few) and a staggering reservoir of ignorance among the paltry portion of the population who votes. (death panels, the president is a communist muslim foreigner, the fact that stupid, easily verifiable stuff like this gets passed around as if it were fact.) Again, the fix is simple, but hard: if you want a different government, vote it in. That means doing it the hard way: get people who agree with you elected to city councils, school boards, dog catcher, state representative, etc. That means organizing around your political beliefs. It's a long hard slog, and harder since the last folks who did this (the right wing of the country) have made it harder and harder for any opposition to come up behind them (the Kochtopus, ALEC, the well-established Right Wing Noise Machine). But it's the only way. Shortcuts lead to tyranny like this nonsensical 'Super Committee' who are going to run our government instead of our elected "representatives". Paeans to our supposed founders vision of 'citizen legislators' are calls to a fantasy. Members of Congress have NEVER been 'ordinary citizens'...they were always members of the elite. US population was less than 4 million, overwhelmingly rural, and, given this was before the Industrial Revolution, decidedly non-industrial. Nearly 20% of the population were slaves. There was no standing army, no navy to speak of, and the only people eligible to vote were white male property owners. Congress was 100% wealthy white males. 200 years later, the US congress is still overwhelmingly filled with wealthy white males. Congress is 90% male, 87% white and "In 2009, the median wealth of a U.S. House member stood at $765,010, up from $645,503 in 2008. The median wealth of a U.S. senator was nearly $2.38 million, up from $2.27 million in 2008." <http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/11/congressional-members-personal-weal.html> Wealth at $765000 puts one well within the upper 1% of American households. This is the part of the population that owns 41% of all the financial wealth in the country. That 1% gets over 20% of annual income. They can afford to give millions to their candidates of choice, and since Money == Speech, it's clear that the loudest voices belong to the wealthy. <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html> So, not surprisingly, over and over we're told that the vast majority of Americans must "share in the sacrifice", to give up more of our ever-shrinking slice of the pie to the 1%'ers, because then they'll reward us with a golden shower of jobs and wealth. Or maybe just a golden shower. Yes, we have to change Congress, but the problem isn't that Congress members get better healthcare or that they become lobbyists or even that they serve for decades with no meaningful opposition (poll after poll after poll has shown that people "Hate Congress, and want to throw the bums out, but MY Congressman is OK, it's all those OTHER people's bums!") it's that the Right has steadily and determinedly changed America from a democracy to a plutocracy ruled by a toxic stew of fundamentalist Christianity and cultist economic "philosophy". -- Bruce Johnson "Wherever you go, there you are" B. Banzai, PhD -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/stratalist-ot?hl=en.
