Politics Out of Control
Bernie Sanders, an older interesting politician wrote this:
“Poll after poll shows that the American people are united in their anger and frustration with the status quo. They sense, correctly, that the deck is stacked against them. While millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, almost all new income is going to the top 1 percent. While people in the middle class pay their fair share of taxes, multi-national corporations avoid their tax responsibility by running abroad or taking advantage of loop-holes. While young people study hard to get a college education, many of them leave school with crippling debts that severely impact their futures.
Over and over again the “pundits” and the media tell us how politically divided the American people are, and how we are drifting further and further apart into red and blue states. Frankly, I don’t believe it. Yes. There are significant divisions on a number of issues, but on many of the most important challenges facing the middle class, progressives, moderates and conservatives are surprisingly united. We should build on that unity, and not allow powerful special interests to divide us.
Despite the media’s insistence that the country is irreparably divided, let me give you just a few examples of where the American people are largely united, not divided.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that our democracy is being undermined when billionaires can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, people across the political spectrum understand that buying elections is not "freedom of speech," and that there should be strong limits on campaign spending.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the middle class of this country is disappearing and that real unemployment is much too high. They very much want the federal government to play a strong role in creating decent paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail, water systems, waste water plants, airports, etc.) and by making higher education much more affordable.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the growing wealth and income inequality we are seeing poses a serious threat to the future of our country. They are deeply concerned that 95 percent of all new income generated in recent years has gone to the top 1 percent, and that the United States has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country. They very much support tax reform which asks the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, and which eliminates huge tax loopholes enabling one out of four corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the social safety net that has been established in this country over the last 80 years is vital to the well-being of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. At a time when more Americans are living in poverty than ever before, they strongly oppose proposed cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits and federal aid to education. In fact, they support expanding Social Security benefits.
A strong majority of Americans believe that global warming is real and poses a serious threat to our country and planet. They want the federal government to limit carbon emissions and to move forward aggressively in such areas as energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
Let’s be clear. Elections have real consequences in terms of whether we create decent paying jobs, have pay equity for women, provide health care for all and address the planetary crisis of global warming – among many other issues.
The billionaire class fully understands the importance of politics and governmental decisions. That’s why a handful of them are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the current elections. Their goal is simple: they want policies which make the rich even richer at the expense of everyone else.
We can’t let them get away with that. Let’s stand together. Let’s create a government which works for ALL Americans, and not just the wealthy few.”
My comments:
The above seems logical enough. But puzzling. I always use the term 1-5%ers instead of 1%ers since it is hard to imagine that 95% of all income generated in recent years goes to 1% of our population. Whatever the real figure, it is quite remarkable that the Republicans can control any branch of Congress. Republicans are the primary ones who create the laws which make this possible, and then create the laws which protect this vast wealth from taxation. Why would so many people vote against their own economic interests? I assume it must be the relatively minor hot-button issues which drives their votes.
On all the issues above I think the majority of people, asked about these individual issues, would respond as Bernie Sanders says they would. Of course a high percentage of citizens don’t even vote. Bernie Sanders did a good job about the issues he brings up, BUT——there are other questions and issues which he omits that are important issues. For examples:
Do most people really believe the earth’s human population can safely double again like it has in my lifetime? I assume most everyone would say, “No, that would be bad”. There is, after all, no logic to assume our species is not subject to the same consequences any other species suffers if it overpopulates it’s environment. Yet what politician ever campaigns to pass responsible reproduction laws? When is this problem ever mentioned in Presidential Debates? Is this, in the last analysis, our Achilles heel?
For the last 50 years, with the most advanced and astounding weapons of mass destruction, we have yet to win any war outside of Grenada and the Balkans. We kill millions in those countries we invade, while they kill a few thousand of us, but we eventually tire of it all, declare some kind of ‘victory’ and withdraw—leaving behind an infrastructure of rubble, and a country controlled by ‘thugs’ and terrorists to their own people. All we ever get is lost wars paid for by going into debt, and crazed terrorists dedicated to killing Americans anywhere they can, in revenge for all the people we killed or made homeless. And yet the Republicans and some Democrats claim a top priority is to build more weapons of mass destruction as our defense. These undeveloped countries are no longer so helpless——they can, through shear numbers and perseverance, terrorize us with increasing success. So why do we support those politicians who never miss a chance to invade some country and side with certain factions in a civil war? Now many politicians claim if Obama had armed certain factions in Syria, there would be no terrorists in Iraq today? Really, when have we ever stopped terrorism by invading a country the last 50 years? We just make more survivors filled with revenge to make us pay for the millions of deaths and refugees.
We forget that wars stimulate our economy, not so much that of the average worker, but for the Dick Chenyes’ of our country. These 1%ers can not fill their lust for endless money by taking it from the poor, the poor don’t have any more money to give. And taking more from the middle class just pushes more of them into poverty. So they make their money off of wars fought by borrowing the money. Guess who the money borrowed ends up going to? And who is really paying for all this? Yep, the next generation.
If we were to ask people whether a person working at entry level positions, like the food service industry, should have the same buying power as those same workers in the fifties, no doubt most would say, “sure inflation should be taken into account”. If we were to ask the same people whether senior citizens should get a cost of living increase when applicable, they would say, “yes these people need to be able to buy food, etc”. But before we ask them these two questions, if we ask them whether the minimum wage should be raised to $10, most will say no. If you ask them why, they begin the endless ordeal of watching them turn themselves into a pretzel: If we pay them more employers will not hire them, or be forced to go out of business, and that these were not meant to be well paying jobs, and the cost of hamburgers would go up and hurt everyone, and these are just temporary jobs, and so on it goes. Well, if the buying power of these workers was to match the buying power of workers back in the 50’s, the minimum wage would be $22.00. No one back then thought they were overpaid. All of us are surprised at this answer. Why do older people need to retain buying power and the youngest workers not? Part of our current recession is because so many people have so little buying power that they don’t buy much of anything. And this hurts everyone. Those states with the highest minimum wages are the richest states in terms of personal income, quality of education, infrastructure care, least crime, and so on. So while the electorate understands the issues if worded properly, many vote to continue the policies which have caused all these problems.
Why do so many people not vote, and if they do, vote to make matters worse than they are now? It is not just an ‘honest difference of opinion’ at all. Isolating the issues, they give the logically correct answer. Perhaps it is a combination of things: they feel helpless so why bother, they can only see the individual trees, not the forest; they vote with their emotions, not their brains. They often do care emotionally very much about abortion, gay marriage, less taxes, patriotic pride in any foreign adventures, ‘freedom’, too many immigrants, property taxes, drug users, police over criminals, gun rights, prayers in schools, crime, and so on. These are the issues, upon which, the 1%er’s can control so many votes. Social issues make ripe propaganda issues and can be used to blind voters on all the other issues listed prior to this paragraph.
There are serious priorities and frivolous priorities. We are all awash in a virtual environment of gadgets. We spend so much time involved with our gadgets that their is little time for anything serious, and if we were to make time, there is so little we can individually do about these serious matters. We are so busy being amused around the clock by gadgets, that there is little time for original thought. Our conversations are at best banal and shallow-witted. In an age of overwhelming scientific advancement we function mostly via faith based notions on serious matters. Our ethics has been twisted into some sort of warped ‘family values’ that has no support from any of the prophets of major religions. So in this sense we have become like pioneers in a gadgetary environment, circling the wagons around ‘family’, vaguely realizing that we have so little salvation from so many problems of huge proportions, bearing down on us from every direction. We are so many now on the planet, but individually so helpless, so technically bright and ethically bankrupt, so busy, busy, busy, and yet so terribly alone and isolated from social humanity, so rich in comforts and yet so unfulfilled emotionally, so living life on the fast track and yet heading nowhere. Whoa, stop the world we need to get off here.
