Recently in Politics Category

When I was a child, journalism was ruthless.  Investigative reporting was in its prime, shining the light of day on corruption, indolence, criminal activity, under the table deal making and the like.  The government hated the media because they showed the American people in very real terms the horrible truth some powerful people wanted hidden:  the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the extreme police action at Kent State, to name just a few.  60 Minutes did ground-breaking work that defined the standard for journalism.

Today, Clay Shirky and other insightful thinkers state that the expensive and extraordinary work of investigative journalism was funded by the ample profit margins gleaned from media advertising, both television and print.  Now, with the advent of cable media and the internet, advertising to the masses, according to many, has reached its true value.  As a result, profit margins have radically dropped.  As a result, print news media is dying.  The LA Times, for example, is probably 80% advertising and 20% news.  And, some notable sources say the result has been the death of investigative journalism.

During the George W. Bush administration, the Republicans pushed for and got changes to FCC regulations that effectively and significantly reduced the number of news outlets even further, allowing fewer people to have greater ownership and control of media outlets.  From my vantage point, the confluence of these two things (lack of investigative journalism and reducing the number of media outlets) appears to have compromised one of democracies most vitally needed pillars, an informed citizenry.  Have you noticed that an increasing percentage of the news articles across all media outlets have the exact same titles, even the same content?  I seriously wonder who is paying for me to read and hear these "stories?"

I have lamented CNN becoming "the Crime News Network" as they focus so much attention on sensationalizing missing persons and individual murder cases.  (I'm sure this is inexpensive for them.)  And the whole of cable news seems to create an artificial sense of crisis around lack-luster "reporting" to sell their media, creating a 24 cable hour news cycle that amounts to little more than an overdramatized feeding frenzy.  As local papers have died, corruption is going undetected creating an unprecedented environment of bold fraud and theft of tax payer dollars like the Bell, California, city officials who actually thought they could get away with salaries of $8,000,000.

We need a populist movement that will hold government accountable for protecting "We the people..." by providing significant incentives to create a variety of non-partisan media outlets, rather than the current incentives to reduce their ownership to a few wealthy people.  We need to de-centralize news media.  We need to stop attempting to kill funding for public broadcasting.  News media outlets must never be the puppet of a few stunningly wealthy people or any political party.  People need to turn off and unsubscribe to media that is doing a poor job of honest, non-partisan investigative journalism.  Demand unbiased, fact-checked, relevant news!

To allow our current system to continue is to perpetuate a meaningless national conversation focused on polarity, not problem-solving and threatens the very survival of democracy.  [I also suspect that to attack Wikileaks is to attack free speech, but that's a whole different "can of worms."]

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Related articles

• The future of news? (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
• US investigative journalism merger (guardian.co.uk)
• Clay Shirky's Nuanced Position on WikiLeaks (boingboing.net)
• Investigative Journalism, RIP (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech - Dan Gillmor - Salon.com (marccooper.com)
• Required Reading: Clay Shirky on WikiLeaks (slog.thestranger.com)

Follow the money.

I personally think that our nation's government has never been so broken or dysfunctional in my lifetime. And I completely agree with Larry Lessig on the cause: Congress is beholden to corporate interests above all else because their expensive elections are funded by corporate donations. This is the root cause; therefore, fixing how elections are funded is step one--priority one.

To say I was flabbergasted and horrified by the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations to make unfettered and undisclosed contributions to our elected officials would be an understatement!

I truly am naïve enough to believe deeply in "We the people..."  We are a noisy bunch, filled with conflicted interests and ideas, but basically I think people believe in taking care of people.  Corporate interests believe in increasing profits, and all too often their focus is just on this quarter.  The future be damned.

And, regrettably, those who run the increasing number of "too big to fail" transglobal companies in this nation (another huge mistake) are raking in disproportionate levels of income.  I'm sorry, but in the world according to Tim, unless one cures cancer or AIDS or provides humankind with a clean way to live fossil fuel-free or some other noble gift to our species, no one is worth an annual income of $10 million or more--no one: not me, not you, not anyone else.

So how to address this mess in which we find ourselves:  government caring more about monied interests than the average person on the street?  I'm advocating for a populist movement:  support the Fair Elections Now Act.  You can learn more about it at Fix Congress First.  Fix Congress First has no political agenda, no party affiliation.  It's only focus is correcting how we fund our elections.

Until we return government back to "We the people..." we will continue to see our elected officials serve as the puppets of monied interests and not the people of this nation.

In the next day or two I'll publish another in this series.

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Healthcare
I saw Keith Olbermann's show (see the clip at this link) where he hosted Michael Moore, producer of Sicko, and Wendell Potter, former Vice President of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the United States' largest health insurance companies, and author of Deadly Spin. Potter apologized to Moore for his massive, industry-funded, carefully-crafted efforts to discredit him and his movie. Potter goes on to say that Sicko is indeed factually correct, and the insurance industry feared that the movie would create a populist uprising against the detestable insurance industry whose practices actually kill tens of thousands of decent, hard working Americans every year.

The fact that the insurance industry has been so successful in keeping Americans from embracing substantive, deep healthcare reform in this country astounds me beyond belief.  It's not even healthcare.  It's a gravy train for insurance investors.

This fabricated bogus label, "Obama-care," is such a farce!  Obama's successful healthcare initiative didn't go far enough!  Currently "Super Wealthy (and they're republicans as Deadly Spin reveals) Capitalist Assholes Getting Even Richer While You Die-care" is what we actually have until the healthcare reform kicks in.  The industry maximizes profits when they deny your claims.  And the loud-mouthed Tea Party wants to give these fat cats what they want?!  Another well-funded farce front group for monied interests.

What of the deficit? Fix it on the back of those making the most money.  Oh, but wait!  They will start squealing about losing jobs?!  What a hoax!  Always calling it anything but what it really is.

America needs a massive, populist movement that demands we balance the budget, not by hurting the average guy on the street, but by reeling in the defense department's out of control spending, among other "security" budgets, farm corn subsidies (which are wrecking the health of this nation!), etc..  Interestingly, this is exactly what a huge percentage of people on Twitter actually think according to this non-scientific survey by the New York Times on what Americans think we should do to balance the budget  (source:  link).  Click to enlarge.

Real people all over this country are sick of capitalism running out of control and hurting the good, common people of this country.

Update:  Michael Moore published this (in part) to his blog on Thanksgiving day.  I don't know Michael, but I think he would be a fascinating person with whom to chat.

All that money spent smearing me because they thought you would get up from your theater seat and start a revolution.

It's a great compliment to you. They fear the power you have. But that's 'cause they're good at math. They know there will always be more of us than there are of them. And unless they can repeal "one person, one vote," they know they are doomed. In the meantime they will try to maintain the power they have by buying off politicians, dumbing us down, distracting us with Dancing/Ice Skating/Drinking with the Stars and getting us so scared we'll acquiesce to having naked pictures taken of us at airports this Thanksgiving weekend. Over the river and through the body scan, to grandmother's house we go...

So let us give thanks tomorrow that the richest 1% begrudgingly know that we are still, on paper at least, in charge. It is, I believe, a glimmer of hope of what we could possibly accomplish in the coming new year.

Source:  Last Thoughts Before the Turkey Comes Calling

In the next day or two I'll publish another "We the People...".

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Related articles

• Countdown Introduces Michael Moore to the Health Care Voldemort Who Came in From the Cold (mediaite.com)
• Wendell Potter Apologizes to Michael Moore For His Part to Discredit "Sicko" (crooksandliars.com)
• Michael Moore: They Said They Would Push Me "Off a Cliff" (huffingtonpost.com)
• Wendell Potter: My Apologies to Michael Moore and the Health Insurance Industry (huffingtonpost.com)

I was just in Atlanta.  On the long flight I read Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America.  Now, before my conservative friends go off the deep end, this is not a book about left or right, about Democrat or Republican.  This is a book about the assault on the middle class from both parties.

This is a must read for conservatives, for liberals, for members of the Tea Party, for libertarians, well, for every American.  (If you're in the top 1% and are making millions of dollars, you might want to skip this one.)

I admit that at times the numerous examples in the book become a bit tedious, but they do move the story forward by illustrating her points.

Rarely do I read a book in which I think the author just hit the larger issues spot on.  Arianna hits issues spot on.  What she writes resonates with what I have mentioned several times on my blog about my own experiences with the death of the American Dream. The last chapter in her book offers some ideas about how to keep America beholden to "We the people...".

My only point of contention with her book:  She takes an amazingly optimistic view about our capacity as a nation to undo the horrific damage that has been done to the middle class.  I honestly have come to think that, if our nation can be repaired at all, it will not happen in my lifetime.  I do hope I'm wrong.

Here is your link to purchase the book at Amazon.

Related articles

• Arianna Huffington Sees A 'Third World America' (npr.org)
• Arianna Huffington Talks 'Third World America': We Have A 'Surplus Of Talent' That's Not Being Used (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)

From Bert P. Krages II's web site:

As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.

He provides a downloadable PDF entitled The Photographer's Right at this link.

1. Make the super rich wealthier.
2. Lie more to America. (Use FOX)
3. Make the super rich wealthier.
4. Spend more on war.
5. Make the super rich wealthier.
6. Privatise public education.
7. Make the super rich wealthier.
8. Destroy the environment.
9. Make the super rich wealthier.
10. Give corporations more control over government.
11. Make the super rich wealthier.
12. Take away healthy care for Americans because the country can't afford to do that and make the super rich wealthier and wage war on an invisible enemy.
13. Make the super rich wealthier.

Forbes is reporting that, despite the worst depression in our lifetimes, the top 400 wealthiest Americans' wealth grew by 8%!  These 400 people have a combined wealth of $1.37 trillion.

But, by god, they need the tax break that their man, George W. Bush, gave them to be extended!

Bill Gates, the wealthiest of them all, now seems to be using his foundation to peddle privatizing public schools.  Let me guess:  part of that process will somehow make him even wealthier!  You know, I remember Ted Turner had to publicly shame Gates into giving money for charitable purposes before he would give a dime to anyone.  Now Bill seems to understand how to wield his influence through "philanthropy."

You know, I wouldn't care if the super rich got even wealthier if their doing so didn't continue to crush the average guy on the street.

Related articles:

• Forbes 400: The super-rich get super-richer (money.cnn.com)

Well, this is interesting.  I've just discovered it:  The Coffee Party.

This is a non-partisan community of people who really want change and are not comfortable with the status quo. They want the political process to return to the people and not special interests.  The emphasis seems to be on collective action based on what people find in common not a politics of division.

I'll be eager to see where this goes.

The founder, Annabel Park, talks about seeing an x-ray of the political process that unfolded in the media over the healthcare reform debate.  It was so completely broken and ineffective.  She talks of how the divisions among people in the US are greatly exaggerated.  She emphasizes engaging in dialogue to problem solve for solutions upon which we can all agree.  The politics of division has broken the entire political process. She speaks of using the collaborative tools of the internet to bring together a platform upon which people find consensus. You can listen to a really interesting interview with her at this link. She is very articulate.

Democracy is not like a football game where people watch and someone wins and someone looses and it's a zero sum game situation.  Democracy presupposes a notion of community and the advancement of the common good. ... When everything is about winning and losing, that doesn't promote collaboration. ... We have to show people in Washington that this is what democracy looks like.  [She previously emphasized civility.] ... We are not being represented well by the government and by the media.  In that sense we are similar to the Tea Party. ... The harshness of their rhetoric is alienating to me.  In the end we might want similar things, but our journey might be different."

You can watch a brief video about their Coffee Party Convention by clicking the image below.  They have an interesting and diverse group of featured guests for their upcoming event which will be chaired by Lawrence Lessig, Founder of Change Congress & Professor at Harvard Law School, and Mark McKinnon, communication strategist for John McCain and George W. Bush.

And here is their Unity Pledge:

Related articles:

• Coffee Party Convention: Liberal Response To Tea Party Plans Louisville Gathering (huffingtonpost.com)
• Roger Ebert Challenges Sarah Palin To Debate With Coffee Party Founder, Annabel Park (huffingtonpost.com)

These folks don't seem to understand what's gone wrong in America. They just know something has gone really wrong. They are trying to make sense of it. I suspect that we all are.

I guess Glenn Beck offers some bizarre and simplistic way for them to vent that frustration and to have hope that things will get better if they believe in empty slogans that they repeat through out the interviews: "restore honor," "take back America," "work for freedom," "bring this country back together."

For Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and FOX to create such a divisive, ill-informed nation is just shameful and unpatriotic. All self-proclaimed news organizations have a duty to journalistic integrity that informs citizenry. FOX perpetuates an unfair and unbalanced, propagandized, limited world view that promotes ignorance, fear, angst, powerlessness, and a class-based society that preys on the less fortunate.  It's just wrong!

Related articles:

• 'America Is Better Than Glenn Beck' (newser.com)
• Judge H. Lee Sarokin: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Restoring Dishonor to America (huffingtonpost.com)

And I hate it that the front door to the house isn't private property.  Daily, people leave fliers and business cards and unsolicited junk on the door!

This week's big news story:  the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that the government can, without a warrant, sneak onto your property, your driveway, and place a GPS tracking device on your car that tracks everywhere you go.  We no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy for our driveways, which even delivery people can use.

Shockingly, this ruling is actually getting some media coverage.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Source:  Time

Some have pointed out that if you are wealthy, you probably live in a gated community or have gates around your property that would extend your zone of reasonable expectation of privacy.  So only the poor people have less privacy.  But that's OK, isn't it?  I mean, wealthy people don't commit crimes.  Wealthy people don't bilk billions, even trillions out of the unsuspecting.  Enron never happened.  No Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.  No Wall Street bail out while the captains of capitalism lived off the slaughtered fatted cow.

Besides, privacy died long ago in this country — during the George W. Bush administration, I do believe.  His cronies called it The Patriot Act.  Just the name says "Run!  Don't walk!"  During his administration and the Republican rein of terror, not only were hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras installed all over this nation, but warrantless wiretaps, "enhanced interrogations," and god knows what else were made the order of the day.

And who are we kidding?  I'd bet my last dollar that the US government routinely snags the GPS satellite data from specific cars at will.  There really is no need to place anything on the cars of serious criminals.  That's so last century.  Only puny local police departments have to actually walk onto someone's driveway to plant a GPS under their car.  The big time crooks already have GPS as part of the most fashionable bling package.

The totalitarian state is here.  Is now.  We live it.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights are just window dressing from a time gone by.

Related articles

• Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars (cnn.com)
• Warrentless GPS Tracking Of Your Car Is Legal If You're Not Wealthy Enough To Protect It (dvorak.org)
• The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves (time.com)
• The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS (time.com)
• Judge Kozinski Doesn't Track with the Ninth Circuit on GPS and the Fourth AmendmentCalls his fellow judges 'cultural elitists' when it comes to privacy. (abovethelaw.com)

I've had all of the Tea Party insanity I can stomach.  They now want a Constitutional Renaissance.  What kind of horse shit is that?!

They want to revisit the 1st amendment, the 14th amendment, and states rights.

Freedom of religion only will apply to the religions they want it to apply to.  The 14th amendment should only apply when they want it to apply.  When civil rights gets in the way of what they want, they want the states to be able to vote civil rights back into the stone age when you just grabbed you a woman by the hair of the head.  And no more income taxes!  (But what of their precious military budget?!)

These people aren't just racists.  Their "movement" isn't just a well-funded marketing stunt to hinder the elected government.  They are dangerous.  They are home grown terrorists with deep roots in religious extremism — probably not much different than the beginnings of the Taliban.  They are the ignorant puppets of the super wealthy.

The day these fools get elected and start mucking up the US constitution is the day I leave the USA.

And while I'm venting my disgust for the sell out of America, I've decided to boycott Target because of their recent large contributions to radical extremist conservatives.  And then we have Fox so-called-news that just donated $1,000,000 to GOP gubernatorial candidates.  Fair and balanced my ass!  Are they going to disclose these contributions when they cover matters related to those races?!

We will soon have the best laws money can buy.

Related articles:

• Exposing Tea Party frauds (thehill.com)
• Constitution à la carte (dailykos.com)
• Tea Party: It's Not Just Taxes, It's The Constitution (npr.org)

I have always argued that, if you are funded with the public's money, the public has a right to know what you're up to with that money.  Transparency in a democracy is essential.  It prevents such hideous excess as the city manager of Bell, CA, making over $1.5 million in publicly funded salary and bonuses, which in my mind is a criminal act.

I've become so critical of the current "system," which I personally consider completely broken, that when I read or see/hear any news coverage, I immediately wonder, "Who is paying for me to receive this message?  Who is behind trying to influence my thinking in this way?"  And now that corporations can contribute any amount of money they want to our political system, the political influence peddling even gets more convoluted.

The Sunlight Foundation is working to peel back the layers of hidden influence.  They have designed a cool tool, Poligraft, such a clever name, to assist in disclosing who is funding what in Congress.  So when you read something on line, the hidden connections are just a click away.

Check it out by watching this short video.

Related articles:

• Sunlight Foundation Launches Poligraft, Bringing New Transparency To Political Reporting (huffingtonpost.com)
• Poligraft Tracks Influence on Government (readwriteweb.com)
• Poligraft Adds Level of Campaign Finance Analysis to News Articles (news.firedoglake.com)
• Poligraft Tool for Journalists, Politicos, Voters (currentbuzz.org)

A few weeks ago I was in Saratoga, NY.  I had landed in Albany and took a cab to the wonderful inn in which I staid.  My cab driver was a young man from Afghanistan, of all places.  We had an interesting conversation about the whole Afghanistan mess.

He echoed what I had heard in the news:  that suitcases literally filled with millions of US dollars (in cash) are flown out of the Kabul airport every day.  This, he says is common knowledge.  It's business as usual.  No one asks any questions.

Juxtapose this against the lavish inequities of poverty and extreme wealth in the city.  It's insanity.  Then, add to this mix the fact that 96% of the $9.1 billion dollars designated for reconstruction in Iraq is unaccounted for.  That's &8.7 billion with a "b" dollars that has vaporized into thin air.  (Read this Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction pdf report.)

Now I realize we are talking about two different countries, but how much has been designated for Afghanistan?  How much is accounted for?

This should be a scandal of the highest order!  This should be bleeding from every headlines in this country. Why do we so rarely hear about this in our media?!  I'm a fiscal conservative.  The Republican party is wailing about the deficit.  Wail about $8.7 billion in missing government funds!!!!  Those are deficit bucks, baby!

But that's not the only interesting part of our conversation.  I expressed to the young cab driver that I didn't know why we were really in their country.  He asked me politely if I wanted to hear his ideas on the matter.  Certainly!

1.  The drug trade coming out of Afghanistan is powerful and lucrative.  He was unsure of the US roll in the drug trade but thought it indeed was involved.

2.  The country is sitting on a fortune in rare minerals the world wants, even needs.  The oil is pretty meaningless.  He thinks this is why Russia was there for a decade and now the US.  Interesting that this has been common knowledge among the people of Afghanistan but only recently has surfaced in the western media.

Our government is out of control and a direct part of the problem!

I have been fascinated for much of my adult life with what people say they believe and value versus what people actually do in their lives.  I include myself in this observation of values versus behaviors.  I have always believed we are our most powerful selves, we are authentic, when we do what we say we believe — when our beliefs and our behaviors are aligned.  Seldom does this seem to happen.

Notable, thoughtful, and widely-respected christian author, Ann Rice, recently posted on her Facebook page that she has "quite christianity."  She is publicly abandoning what christianity has come to mean today.  She is not abandoning her faith.  But the Christ of her faith practice is being so grotesquely misrepresented by the church of today, she feels compelled by her Christ to leave that church.  She has stated that she is going into the wilderness.

In other words, Ann Rice finds such a tremendous disconnect between what she believes as a person of faith in Christ and the organized church that purports to follow that Christ, she is compelled to do what she believes, which is requiring her to quit organized christianity which she believes no longer represents her God.  I find this very significant.  To live what she believes is the work of Christ, she feels she must abandon organized christianity which has so seriously lost its way.

I must say, I have new found respect and admiration for Ann Rice!  You can hear her speak of her concerns in this short video interview.

Richard T. Hughes, Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College and author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God, recently wrote this:

... 83% of the American people claim to be Christians. If those Christians lived as they are taught to live by the teacher they claim to follow, the American public square would be a very different kind of place.

If one reads the New Testament—the charter for the Christian religion—one can discover rather quickly what that tradition is all about

• Jesus tells his followers to tell the truth
• Jesus tells his followers to make peace.
• Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek.
• Jesus tells his followers to bless those who persecute them and pray for those who misuse them
• Jesus tells his followers to extend justice, especially to the poor and the dispossessed.
• Jesus tells his followers to serve as bridge-builders and agents of reconciliation
• And Jesus tells his followers to love one another, even their enemies

But based on their words and behavior, we may safely conclude that many of the Christians who dominate America’s public square routinely reject the teachings of Jesus, in spite of their claims to the contrary.

...  After all, since 83% of the American population identifies with the Christian religion, that 83% could make an enormous difference in the tone of American politics if those Christians actually practiced what they profess to believe. They could also make a positive difference in American politics if they held other Christians accountable when they engage in deception and slander in order to score political points.

America’s churches and their pastors therefore have a grave responsibility: to urge their members to serve the public square as peacemakers, as truth-tellers, as people devoted to justice, and as men and women who are actually willing to practice what Jesus taught. If America’s churches refuse to take up this task—which, after all, is a task that is central to the Christian calling—the consequences for our country could be dire, indeed.

Source:  Belief Blog

The entire article, linked above, is well worth reading.

In my lifetime I have seen the self-proclaimed follows of Christ become anything but Christ-like.  I have seen the influence this misconstrued  faith practice has had in our corrupt political system.  I have witnessed people who label themselves as believers clutch a self-serving agenda that has little to do with how Jesus actually said we should live our lives.

What 83% of Americans say they believe and what they do with their lives is stunningly out of sync.  We are living in an ill-informed, dysfunctional, disillusioned state where our hearts and our minds are no longer aligned.  We have stopped being our best selves.

Ann Rice and Richard T. Hughes have had the courage to say, "Enough, already!"  Hopefully they are among the first prophets to lead our nation back to a life of genuine, authentic faith practice.

Related articles:

• Anne Rice Quits Christianity (beliefnet.com)
• Anne Rice Abandons Christianity, But Not Christ [EvolutionBlog] (scienceblogs.com)
• Writer Anne Rice: 'Today I Quit Being A Christian' : NPR (daddyhogwash.com)
• Anne Rice and organized religion (beliefnet.com)

Periodically, the wealthy Republicans begin salivating over all of the money in the Social Security system. They want to dump it into the free market because, as everyone knows, when we privatize non-profit administered funds into a for profit model, the wealthy can get even wealthier. (I personally believe that's why the Republics are pushing the "charter school" movement too — all of that money in the education budget could be lining the pockets of wealthy entrepreneurs.)

Just imagine: Where would today's elderly Americans be if the Republican party had gotten its way during the hideous Bush/Cheney years (the later stating that "deficits don't matter") and pushed the Social Security system funds into Wall Street!? What idiots! MoveOn.org has a great response to the top 5 Social Security myths, since the Republicans are at it again. The 5 myths they address are listed below. Check out the facts about each myth at MoveOn.org's article.

1. Myth: Social Security is going broke.
2. Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
3. Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.
4. Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs
5. Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Senior citizen's, don't let the shameless Republicans lie their way into convincing you to lose your benefits. Vote Democrat in the November elections.

I have had growing concerns about the growing surveillance state in the USSA:  The United Surveillance State of America.  Apparently the Washington Post has them too.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

Source:  A Hidden World Growing Beyond Control

With the ineffectiveness of such unencumbered agency work as well as the unparalleled and unknown true cost of this growing secret "security" dark side, with no oversight, and with the unprecedented deficit, we have a huge problem.  The Republican party is always ranting about reducing the size of government while they are funding the largest top secret buildup of hidden government right in plane sight.  Let's reduce government.  And this is where we need to start.

I do not trust my government at all.

Watch the trailer to the upcoming (Fall, 2010) PBS Frontline Special, Top Secret America at this link. Keep in mind that for a healthy democracy to work, it must function in the public forum. Tyranny lives in the shadows. What is the post USA democracy going to be?

PBS wbesite for Top Secret America.
Follow the story on Twitter @PostTSA
Use the hashtag #topsecretamerica

Related articles:

• Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control (washingtonpost.com)
• WaPo Reveals "Top Secret America": How Post-9/11 System Is Not Working (mediaite.com)
• Wash Post's series on 'A hidden world, growing beyond control' (americablog.com)
• Top Secret America (slog.thestranger.com)
• WaPO Secret America, site up (warintel.blogspot.com)

I have made no secret of my disdain for the Mormon effort to influence the outcome of an election in the state of California by spending millions of dollars to mount a campaign of lies and deceit.  I have never understood why the Mormon church is so aggressively funding this campaign against civil rights, and I had no idea as to the magnitude and scope of their efforts and their financial influence in the election.

Why, exactly, are these people so insistent on forcing people who do not share their religious beliefs to live by their religious beliefs?

What is striking about the numbers is that although Mormons make up less than two percent of California's population, they made up more than 71 percent of campaign contributions, according to the film. Jeff Flint, a strategist with Protect Marriage, the group that spearheaded the Prop. 8 campaign, told the New York Times that 80 to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts were Mormons. "

[Source: '8: The Mormon Proposition' - Exclusive Clip Reveals Church Coerced Members to Raise Millions For Prop. 8 Campaign (VIDEO).]

I haven't seen this Sundance Film, but this very excerpt is shocking and disturbing, portraying their church more as a cult of strong armed coercion than a faith practice.

Related articles:

• '8: The Mormon Proposition' is a powerful expose (trueslant.com)

On one of my flights today I noticed a heavyset man in the row in front of me reading some religious magazine.  I caught the title of one of the articles and almost threw up.  I forget exactly how it was worded, but it basically was about how much more religious persecution could the church take in these last days.

My god!  The very people who persecute other people whining about their little fantasy persecution complex.  I was disgusted.  I remember this same language when I was being brought up in the extremist religious right:  how God was blessing us every time we were persecuted for our faith.

The problem was, only the most mentally unstable among us would believe that religious people in Pensacola, one of the most religious and extremely conservative cities in the nation, were being persecuted!  By who?  By what?!  But oh, the yoke of persecution was just so hard to bear.

Nutcases!

Then, to explicitly bring my point into the sharpest possible focus, the title of the next article was:  Same Sex:  Different Marriage!  I've blogged before about this perverse mingling of church and state with religion owning a civil right over which government should be a guardian and protector.  If religion wants to have it's own holy sacrament above and beyond the civil right to all of the benefits and accommodations of legal marriage, fine.  Knock yourself out.  Call it something else.  Make it your own.  You can even deny people your holy sacrament if they aren't willing members of your little religious club.  You've got that right!  But don't deny people civil rights!  That's evil.

I wanted so badly to say to this man:  Over Weight:  Different Marriage.  (Both he and his wife were exceedingly so.)  You see, even if these extremists were correct, and I personally don't believe they are, and being gay were a choice, certainly they must admit that being overweight is a choice.  And, in the church in which I was raised, it was called a "sin!"  You were defiling the temple of god — your body, because of your own selfish, hedonistic, gluttonous ways.

So, why shouldn't we vote on fat people's right to marry?  Why shouldn't fat people be denied the right to marry?  The research indicates they have children who also grow up to be fat.  See, they are recruiting, just like the wacky religious extremists insist the gays are.

Isn't it all just ridiculous and absurd?!!!!!! There is just no difference!  I don't know:  Maybe some gay people choose to be gay.  Maybe some fat people choose to be fat.  Maybe some gay people are born to be gay.  Maybe some fat people are born to be fat.  The point is people should have the legal right to marry the person they love when the other person is of age and consents because they love them back.

You probably find my calling this man and his wife "fat" offensive and disrespectful.  Good!  You should.  Just as you should find calling a person a fag just as offensive and disrespectful.  But one is condoned in this culture and the other not.  Oh, the difference a single letter makes!

My god, sometimes I think we live in the weirdest world filled with people trying with incredible meanness to impose their will on others!  Enough already!

Have you paid your War Bills yet? You have until midnight!  Maybe this will help you put things in better perspective:

Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.

That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $708 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding, called "overseas contingency funding" in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in "black box" intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DoD military spending, $100 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military.

The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing.

Military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53.3 percent of total US federal spending.

Related articles

• Bill Maher To Tea Baggers: Take On Defense Spending And I'll Believe You (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• A War Society: US Spends Over 40% of World's Military Spending (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)

If you ask me, and because you've visited my blog–you have, Sarah Palin is nothing more than a cheesy opportunist. She quits public service because she can make money, lots of it. Well, the people of Alaska are probably better off. Now Sarah plays the role of the court jester on the national stage, and she's getting rich doing it. I don't begrudge her the money. I do disdain her hypocrisy and outright lying.

(CNN) -- First-class commercial air travel for two or a private jet -- "must be a Lear 60 or larger" -- from Alaska to California and back. A deluxe hotel suite "registered under an alias." And two unopened bottles of still water with "bendable straws."

That's what former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wanted from a California state college foundation as part of her speaking agreement, according to a draft of a confidential contract allegedly lifted from a Dumpster by two students.

Source: CNN

Yesterday she was babbling on about the Obama deficits. Idiot. George W. Bush created these! George W. Bush spent the $1 trillion dollars on the completely unjustified wars based on his lies and deciet. George W. Bush turned a budget surplus into a global financial crisis.

I was just in Canada. They marvel at our financial mess. They are stupified about what we wasted the money on that put us into this financial mess—war! They just don't understand why we supposedly think their national healthcare plan is such a mess. Admitting it isn't perfect, they are proud of the fact that they spend their tax dollars helping people and not killing them.

Sarah needs to shut up and go away. She's like the nation's roach—always showing up when you never want to see her again.

Justice John Paul Stevens' service to this nation has been substantive. I am fearful of what the court will become as he retires.

Justice John Paul Stevens’s departure from the Supreme Court represents the end of an era. Just not the one you are probably thinking of. Stevens’s unblinking devotion to human rights, civil rights, and the rights of the little guy have led him to be widely seen as the Last Great Liberal Justice, the end of a lineage that included William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas. But Stevens is something else entirely. He is actually the last of the Moderate Republican Justices.

Source: Dan Froomkin

Frankly, I'm with those who believe that Justice John Paul Stevens didn't become more and more liberal. Rather, the court became radicalized in its extreme conservatism. Justice Stevens never changed.

Related articles

• John Paul Stevens Retiring: We Need A Liberal Justice (oliverwillis.com)
• Memories of Justice John Paul Stevens From His Former Clerks (nytimes.com)
• Justice Stevens to Retire After 34 Years (nytimes.com)

Cost and value. Value and cost. The "deal" is some magical balance between cost and value.

Let me see. The Iraq war cost us $712,616,300,000 as I typed this sentence and has already gone above that—way above that in normal people budgets. The Afghanistan war cost us $260,099,900,000 as I typed this sentence and has already gone above that—again, way above that. So the total cost of these two wars is nearly one trillion dollars, which looks like this: $1,000,000,000,000.00.

So, was it a good value? Did we get our money's worth?

Well, I don't know what we really bought for all of that insane amount of money except a HUGE national debt.

What would we buy for the reported $940,000,000,000.00 health care plan in congress right now? Well, millions more Americans, not all, sad to say, would get some health coverage. The insurance industry will probably make a killing. Maybe thousands of Americans lives will be saved or they will live in better health or less pain.

So is it a good value? Well, at least I have some sense that we are buying something that will help people and not kill them. At least I have some sense that this money will aid people in living healthier lives and not maim people for the rest of their lives. At least I have some sense that I am purchasing something for my tax dollars that I believe has a moral value.

Spending a trillion dollars to learn that Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction was a complete waste of money. Spending about the same amount to give our own citizens a higher quality of life isn't.

Why did we ever destroy the national trust on these two meaningless wars? Why is killing people more important to our government that helping our own citizens?

The extreme, religious right-wing conservatives have won yet another significant victory in their efforts to force their world view down the throats of unsuspecting Americans. I personally don't care what they choose to believe. But I take HUGE issue with their feverish evangelical approach to forcing everyone else in the nation live by their narrow belief system. In fact, I resent the hell out of anyone, right or left, forcing their beliefs on me, let alone forcing them on unsuspecting children to whom they didn't give birth!

Knowing they could never pull this off in California, the conservative movement targeted Texas, the state that gave the nation George W. Bush. In a 10 - 5 vote along party lines, the Texas Board of Education voted to approve the following conservative tenets being taught in their state's Social Studies curriculum and supported by the state-adopted textbooks:

• stress the superiority of American capitalism
• question the founding fathers commitment to a purely secular government
• present Republican political ideologies in a more positive light

Make no mistake, this is a carefully planned, well executed strategy by the ultra conservative think tanks. They have turned their initial claims of their own personal religious persecution into the wholesale religious persecution of the entire nation.  The end result will be religious tyranny, a return to the middle ages.

This decision in Texas has enormous ramifications for the entire nation—hence why it was targeted. The school textbook industry sells more textbooks in California, but too many people here have diverse thinking. But Texas is ripe for the picking. The good people of Texas think conservatively—very, ultra conservatively. Texas has the second largest textbook purchasing power in the nation. This is significant.

Now, the textbook industry will rewrite the Social Studies textbooks so they can sell them in Texas. This means the remainder of the nation will be forced to buy the drivel with which the ultra conservatives want their children in Texas indoctrinated. Mark my words:  This is a political victory of the highest order with long term ramifications of the most serious kind.

The extreme right-wing conservative think tanks have taken the minds of many unsuspecting Americans with their ownership of FOX so-called "news."  They have taken ownership of the conservative Republican party of which I was once a part. They have manipulated to control the highest court in the land. Now they are seeking the minds of the nation's children.  This is serious!  My country is actually under assault!

These extremists have quietly and patiently executed their strategy well under the banner of traditional values, heritage, and the homeland for decades.  The only way I think Americans can fight this momentous trend to force the nation to live by a narrowly-defined, prescriptive set of religious values that divest diversity, deep thinking, critical analysis, social justice, economic opportunity for all, open mindedness, tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of faith practice, et. al., is to support countervailing strategies that are just as well planned and executed.  As I've said, people who have divergent opinions and thoughts are the carefully selected target.

And as I've said before, I've become increasingly disgusted with what my nation is rapidly becoming, where the will of the few is increasingly being inflicted on the many in wealth aggregation, religious practice, legal policy, and now school curriculum. The extremist conservatives are well funded and organized at the grassroots level. It's time to stand up to them in an equally well funded grass roots effort.  The problem:  unlike the radical conservative thinkers of their movement who can manipulate their masses with a highly defined, carefully crafted agenda of fear, open minded people who think critically lack a central focus around which to organize.

We have lacked a motivating rallying cry around which to centralize our efforts.  Let this be it:  preserving our true American heritage from those extremist conservatives who are rapidly redefining it and marginalizing everyone who thinks differently from them!

Where are all of the libertarians that want the freedom to live their lives as they personally define the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness?!

Tim is so not happy!

Related articles

• Texas Textbook MASSACRE: 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum (huffingtonpost.com)
• Texas Approves Conservative Curriculum (politics.slashdot.org)
• Texas conservatives rewrite history | Richard Adams (guardian.co.uk)
• Texas Becomes Laughingstock Once Again: State Board of Ed Determines History Is a Liberal Conspiracy (schoolsmatter.info)
• Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards (nytimes.com)
• Texas ed board adopts social studies standards (sfgate.com)

Bloomberg reports today that, astoundingly, Iraq is now opening its doors to BP, Exxon Mobile, and Shell for the first time since 1972, when the country, under the leadership of the now executed Saddam Hussein, nationalized all of its oil fields. Astoundingly, this will open the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world directly to western countries.

And, um... why are we complaining about the bank bailouts? How much money did the citizens of this country spend on (and will continue to spend on) making this happen for the oil corporations? (Not to mention the number of people that were killed!)  If there is a hell, unfettered capitalist greed needs to rot in it.

Obama is just so smart! Even numerous conservatives admit he didn't just take the Republicans to task, he decimated them!

Image via Wikipedia

Allow me to introduce Senator Jones (R) from AIG and Senator Smith (D) from United Healthcare and Representative Tung from China... This is so bad. So very, very bad.

The Campaign to Legalize Democracy is circulating a petition in response to yesterday's ruling that legalized unlimited political bribery by corporations in the USA. Signatories include Bill Moyer, Howard Zinn, Jim Hightower, Bill McKibben, and Tom Hayden.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.

* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments."

[Source: Constitutional amendment petition: run government for people, not monied interests.]

... as Republican Justice John Paul Stevens put it:  

"Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections ..."

[Source: Our Charming Corporatist State.]

Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Today the Supreme Court (5-4) just handed the Republicans (and a lot of Democrats too) a huge bonus: unfettered access to corporate funding, effectively making a broken political system completely unaccountable the to will of the people.

The legacy of George W. Bush lives on to feast on the soul of democracy for profit.

At least Larry Lessig has a more reasoned view. Me, I'm just disgusted.

I've actually been thinking more and more about leaving the US. I mean: for good. I find myself so disillusioned with what is happening in my native land.

My country forces education reform that is destroying creativity, problem solving, deep thinking, and analysis of knowledge to inform carefully considered long term solution-making for the immediacy of factionalized curriculum memorization. My country will not move beyond prejudice and discrimination. My country is squandering our national (as well as international) resources. My country is flinging privacy and personal freedom as fast as it escalates fear. My country cares more about greed, money, and possessing things than it does about people and their basic wellbeing. My country is removing the separation of church and state and forcing people to live by tenets of religion in which they may not personally believe. My country allows business, built on greed and outsourcing, to become so large they can not fail and must receive tax payer's money to keep the executes rolling in fat bonuses with shameless abandon. My nation's government is bought and sold by transglobal corporations and makes divisiveness its core ethic.

I can do little of nothing to stop or change any of this.

I wonder if this is a natural part of getting older--seeing the world through more jaded eyes. But I see other nations, not without their faults to be sure, at least maintaining some more moderate and productive sense of balance. I just think the US government is fundamentally broken and inept.

I shared last night at dinner that I actually don't think the US will be able to move to a better place within my lifetime. This saddens me greatly.

I've supported Lawrence Lessig's work for some time. I've had his "Change Congress" link on my site for some time. In this video he sums up things, and, unlike my dismal state of disillusion, offers a ray of hope. He doesn't frame the problem as conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat. He is insightful and brilliant.

Ah, The Heritage Foundation... They share their wise and timely advice on what President Obama should do in response to the suffering in Haiti: call on a senior Republican to lead the Haitian response efforts. And what senior Republican official do they suggest? Yes, the only one with a proven track record in such matters: George W. Bush!

I'm serious. That's who they suggested.

No, really...

That frames the quality of thinking from the Heritage Foundation rather adequately now, doesn't it! Did they forget already, or are they just stupid?!

We all know Sarah is now an employee of Rupert Murdoch. What we didn't know, until the book and the recent 60 Minutes episode, was the astounding level of her lack of qualification for being being a heartbeat away from the presidency. But that didn't matter to her at all, because "It was God's will" for her to be the Vice President, she said.

This interview is as enlightening as it is frightening. It's worth the attention of the nation.

Well, hopefully she will continue to show how lackluster she is as she stars on FOX not-News. Maybe she will go rogue. But probably, she will just quit--you know, like she did as governor of Alaska.