Keep Ya Head Up
By 2Pac
Metro Lyrics.com
February 11, 2014
Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,
I say the darker the flesh, then the deeper the roots.
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare,
Tupac cares, and don't nobody else care.
And uhh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot,
When you come around the block, brotha's clown a lot.
But please don't cry, dry your eyes, never let up,
Forgive but don't forget, girl, keep ya head up.
And when he tells you, you ain't nothin', don't believe him,
And if he can't learn to love you, you should leave him.
'Coz sista, you don't need him,
And I ain't tryin' to gas ya up,
I just call 'em how I see 'em.
You know it makes me unhappy,
When brotha's make babies,
And leave a young mother, to be a pappy.
And since we all came from a woman,
Got our name from a woman, and our game from a woman,
I wonder why we take from our women,
Why we rape our women, why do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women,
Time to heal our women, be real to our women.
And if we don't, we'll have a race of babies,
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies.
And since a man can't make one,
He has no right to tell a woman when, and where, to create one.
So will the real men get up,
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep ya head up.
Keep ya head up, ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get easier,
Ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get brighter.
Keep ya head up, child things are gonna get easier,
Ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get brighter.
I remember Marvin Gaye, used to sing to me,
He had me feelin' like black, was the thing to be.
And suddenly the ghetto didn't seem so tough,
And though we had it rough, we always had enough.
I huffed and puffed about my curfew and broke the rules,
Ran with the local crew, and had a smoke or two.
And I realize, momma really paid the price,
She nearly gave her life, to raise me right.
And all I had to give her was my pipe dream,
Of how I'd rock the mic and make it to the bright screen.
I'm tryin' to make a dollar out of fifteen cents,
It's hard to be legit and still pay the rent.
And in the end, it seems I'm headin' for the pen,
I try and find my friends, but they're blowin' in the wind.
Last night my buddy lost his whole family,
It's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insanity.
It seems tha rain'll never let up,
I try to keep my head up, and still keep from gettin' wet up.
You know it's funny when it rains, it pours,
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor.
Say there ain't no hope for the youth,
And the truth is, it ain't no hope for the future,
And then they wonder why we crazy,
I blame my mother for turning my brother, into a crack baby.
We ain't meant to survive 'coz it's a setup,
And even though you're fed up,
Ya got to keep ya head up.
Keep ya head up, ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get easier,
Ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get brighter.
Keep ya head up, child things are gonna get easier,
Ooo, ooo, child, things are gonna get brighter.
And uhh, to all the ladies havin' babies on their own,
I know it's kinda rough and you're feelin' all alone.
Daddy's long gone and he left you by ya lonesome,
Thank the Lord for my kids, even if nobody else want 'em.
'Coz I think we can make it, in fact, I'm sure,
And if you fall, stand tall, and comeback for more,
'Coz ain't nothin' worse than when your son,
Wants to know why his daddy don't love him no mo'.
You can't complain, you was dealt this,
Hell of a hand without a man, feelin' helpless,
Because there's too many things for you to deal with,
Dying inside, but outside, you're looking fearless.
While tears is rollin' down your cheeks,
Ya steady hopin' things don't fall down this week.
'Coz if it did, you couldn't take it and don't blame me,
I was given this world, I didn't make it you see.
And now my son's gettin' cold and older,
From havin' the world on his shoulders.
While the rich kids is drivin' Benz,
I'm still tryin' to hold on to my survivin' friends.
And it's crazy, it seems it'll never let up,
But please, you got to keep ya head up.
Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996),
also known by his stage name "2Pac" was an American rapper
and actor.
Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, making him
one of the best-selling music artists of all time and MTV ranked
him at number two on their list of "The Greatest MC's of All Time"
and Rolling Stone named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/keep-ya-head-up-lyrics-2pac.html
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Monuments of Capitalism
Monuments of Capitalism
By David Glenn Cox
The Leftist Review
February 06, 2014
Capitalism is a system where you sell your soul for a heaven —
promised by the devil.
A promise which never reaches fulfillment, claiming responsibilities
for all and glories for some, if you are competitive.
If you are competitive enough, because that is what life is supposed
to be all about, isn’t it?
Or to paraphrase Eugene Debs, you have a wheelbarrow and
Rockefeller has a railroad, so perhaps if you just work harder,
you too, can be competitive.
Capitalism claims it creates wealth, jobs and prosperity; yes,
cry that message from the rubble heaps in Detroit, Youngstown
or Toledo.
These are the monuments of capitalism, glittering office towers
with million dollar apartments.
Doormen and security systems to protect them from the real fruits
of capitalism: crime, ghettos and poverty.
This is capitalism, a belief that any child can be president, if they
don’t move the plant to Beijing or Shanghai first.
During the last Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt rescued
capitalism, believing you could bell the cat and tame the bull.
History has since taught that you cannot maintain a cancer.
You cannot wall off greed; greed is eternal and capitalism is
the system of eternal greed.
Capitalism claims all the glories, while eschewing all the blame.
It poisons our air, our water and soil and when the bull in the
china shop is finally corralled, it claims regulation as the evil.
Pick any problem in this country, scratch through the veneer
and you will find the bare metal of capitalism.
Take for example the drug dealer on any American street corner;
because of poverty there is crime, because of the crime there is
violence.
Because there is violence, there are street gangs for protection.
There are no jobs available, so the drug dealer becomes the
Capitalist, the entrepreneur, willing to risk life and limb for
enough money to raise his self-esteem.
We live in a media environment which repeatedly insists you
must have $200 shoes manufactured by slaves far, far away.
You must have a smart phone and clothes emblazoned with
corporate logos, just like the media celebrities and athletes.
Celebrities and athletes culled from one one-millionth of the
culture, held up as carrots on the stick to convince adolescents
the system really works.
The drug dealer and the street gang member in the ghetto are
no different from the CEO or the Wall Street stock trader.
One might kill you for your wallet; the other might kill an entire
city.
One is lauded the other defamed; both getting their pictures in
the media.
One receiving citizenship awards the other to be executed.
In 2006, Jeffery Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, was convicted
on multiple federal felony charges of making false statements to
auditors, insider trading, conspiracy and securities fraud.
Skilling spent 40 million dollars on his legal defense before being
convicted and sentenced to 24 years in a minimum security prison.
His legal team still hard at work, managed his appeal on to
the docket of the Supreme Court in three years.
The Court seeing the injustice nullified his fraud conviction.
Skilling’s attorneys later swung a deal to knock ten years off
his sentence and Skilling will pay a fine of $ 45 million, just a
kosh more than his legal defense budget.
Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old Bronx high school sophomore
arrested while walking home from a party, on a tip that he’d
robbed someone three weeks earlier.
Unable to post the $10,000 bond, Browder was incarcerated at
the notorious Riker’s Island jail.
A single witness, repeated court hearings, but never brought to
trial.
The teenager spent 33 months in prison and 400 days in solitary
confinement, beaten by guards and inmates alike.
He was finally released, having spent more time in hell without a
trial than it took for a convicted millionaire’s case to reach the
Supreme Court.
This is the true face of capitalism.
Fascism is merely capitalism on steroids, turbocharged;
neoliberalism is fascism with a smiling face and reassuring
smile, exchanging jack boots and goose stepping for a three-
piece suit and a Rolex.
Fascism is capitalism under the legal protection of crime, where
corporations are people and the people are assumed guilty without
charge.
“Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the
magistrate corruptible, is evil.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre
“A lot of people are saying ‘Hey, it’s about time. Why do we keep
giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead
of their families?’” — Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
“Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-
month extension of unemployment insurance — and if they pass
it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put
partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-
seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is
today.” ~ Barack Obama
America: a capitalist two-party septic system, one side willing to
let the people starve, the other saying, let them starve in ninety
days.
Can society’s problems ever be fixed by such a system, by applying
a coat of red or blue spray paint to self-inflicted wounds?
Capitalism is primitive, a winner take all belief system.
How can such a system believe that after taking all, it should give
back out of benevolence?
It can’t and it won’t, not now, not ever.
"With what moral authority can they speak of human rights, the
rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the
Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the
woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto
Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated?"
"How can they do this, the bosses of an empire where the mafia,
gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA
organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the
Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material
assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports
reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects
and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and
the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a
protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources,
and a system of hunger for the world?" ~ Fidel Castro
https://www.leftistreview.com/2014/01/14/monuments-of-capitalism/davidcox
By David Glenn Cox
The Leftist Review
February 06, 2014
Capitalism is a system where you sell your soul for a heaven —
promised by the devil.
A promise which never reaches fulfillment, claiming responsibilities
for all and glories for some, if you are competitive.
If you are competitive enough, because that is what life is supposed
to be all about, isn’t it?
Or to paraphrase Eugene Debs, you have a wheelbarrow and
Rockefeller has a railroad, so perhaps if you just work harder,
you too, can be competitive.
Capitalism claims it creates wealth, jobs and prosperity; yes,
cry that message from the rubble heaps in Detroit, Youngstown
or Toledo.
These are the monuments of capitalism, glittering office towers
with million dollar apartments.
Doormen and security systems to protect them from the real fruits
of capitalism: crime, ghettos and poverty.
This is capitalism, a belief that any child can be president, if they
don’t move the plant to Beijing or Shanghai first.
During the last Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt rescued
capitalism, believing you could bell the cat and tame the bull.
History has since taught that you cannot maintain a cancer.
You cannot wall off greed; greed is eternal and capitalism is
the system of eternal greed.
Capitalism claims all the glories, while eschewing all the blame.
It poisons our air, our water and soil and when the bull in the
china shop is finally corralled, it claims regulation as the evil.
Pick any problem in this country, scratch through the veneer
and you will find the bare metal of capitalism.
Take for example the drug dealer on any American street corner;
because of poverty there is crime, because of the crime there is
violence.
Because there is violence, there are street gangs for protection.
There are no jobs available, so the drug dealer becomes the
Capitalist, the entrepreneur, willing to risk life and limb for
enough money to raise his self-esteem.
We live in a media environment which repeatedly insists you
must have $200 shoes manufactured by slaves far, far away.
You must have a smart phone and clothes emblazoned with
corporate logos, just like the media celebrities and athletes.
Celebrities and athletes culled from one one-millionth of the
culture, held up as carrots on the stick to convince adolescents
the system really works.
The drug dealer and the street gang member in the ghetto are
no different from the CEO or the Wall Street stock trader.
One might kill you for your wallet; the other might kill an entire
city.
One is lauded the other defamed; both getting their pictures in
the media.
One receiving citizenship awards the other to be executed.
In 2006, Jeffery Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, was convicted
on multiple federal felony charges of making false statements to
auditors, insider trading, conspiracy and securities fraud.
Skilling spent 40 million dollars on his legal defense before being
convicted and sentenced to 24 years in a minimum security prison.
His legal team still hard at work, managed his appeal on to
the docket of the Supreme Court in three years.
The Court seeing the injustice nullified his fraud conviction.
Skilling’s attorneys later swung a deal to knock ten years off
his sentence and Skilling will pay a fine of $ 45 million, just a
kosh more than his legal defense budget.
Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old Bronx high school sophomore
arrested while walking home from a party, on a tip that he’d
robbed someone three weeks earlier.
Unable to post the $10,000 bond, Browder was incarcerated at
the notorious Riker’s Island jail.
A single witness, repeated court hearings, but never brought to
trial.
The teenager spent 33 months in prison and 400 days in solitary
confinement, beaten by guards and inmates alike.
He was finally released, having spent more time in hell without a
trial than it took for a convicted millionaire’s case to reach the
Supreme Court.
This is the true face of capitalism.
Fascism is merely capitalism on steroids, turbocharged;
neoliberalism is fascism with a smiling face and reassuring
smile, exchanging jack boots and goose stepping for a three-
piece suit and a Rolex.
Fascism is capitalism under the legal protection of crime, where
corporations are people and the people are assumed guilty without
charge.
“Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the
magistrate corruptible, is evil.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre
“A lot of people are saying ‘Hey, it’s about time. Why do we keep
giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead
of their families?’” — Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
“Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-
month extension of unemployment insurance — and if they pass
it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put
partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-
seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is
today.” ~ Barack Obama
America: a capitalist two-party septic system, one side willing to
let the people starve, the other saying, let them starve in ninety
days.
Can society’s problems ever be fixed by such a system, by applying
a coat of red or blue spray paint to self-inflicted wounds?
Capitalism is primitive, a winner take all belief system.
How can such a system believe that after taking all, it should give
back out of benevolence?
It can’t and it won’t, not now, not ever.
"With what moral authority can they speak of human rights, the
rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the
Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the
woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto
Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated?"
"How can they do this, the bosses of an empire where the mafia,
gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA
organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the
Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material
assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports
reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects
and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and
the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a
protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources,
and a system of hunger for the world?" ~ Fidel Castro
https://www.leftistreview.com/2014/01/14/monuments-of-capitalism/davidcox
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Ain't I A Women?
Ain't I A Women?
By Sojourner Truth
Poem Hunter.com
February 02, 2014
That man over there say,
a woman needs to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches,
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages,
or over mud puddles,
or gives me a best place...
And ain't I a woman?
Look at me!
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted,
and gathered into barns,
and no man could head me...
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much,
and eat as much as a man,
when I could get to it,
and bear the lash as well,
and ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children,
and seen most all sold into slavery,
and when I cried out a mother's grief,
none but Jesus heard me...
And ain't I a woman?
That little man in black there say,
a woman can't have as much rights as a man,
cause Christ wasn't a woman...
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made,
was strong enough to turn the world,
upside down, all alone,
together, women ought to be able to turn it,
right side up again.
Copyright © Sojourner Truth, 1852.
Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜrnər ˈtruːθ/; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883)
was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist.
Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York,
but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.
After going to court to recover her son, she became the first
black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Born Isabella Baumfree, in 1843 she gave herself the name
Sojourner Truth.
Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities,
"Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's
Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for
the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to
secure land grants from the federal government for former
slaves.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ain-t-i-a-woman
By Sojourner Truth
Poem Hunter.com
February 02, 2014
That man over there say,
a woman needs to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches,
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages,
or over mud puddles,
or gives me a best place...
And ain't I a woman?
Look at me!
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted,
and gathered into barns,
and no man could head me...
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much,
and eat as much as a man,
when I could get to it,
and bear the lash as well,
and ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children,
and seen most all sold into slavery,
and when I cried out a mother's grief,
none but Jesus heard me...
And ain't I a woman?
That little man in black there say,
a woman can't have as much rights as a man,
cause Christ wasn't a woman...
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made,
was strong enough to turn the world,
upside down, all alone,
together, women ought to be able to turn it,
right side up again.
Copyright © Sojourner Truth, 1852.
Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜrnər ˈtruːθ/; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883)
was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist.
Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York,
but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.
After going to court to recover her son, she became the first
black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Born Isabella Baumfree, in 1843 she gave herself the name
Sojourner Truth.
Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities,
"Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's
Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for
the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to
secure land grants from the federal government for former
slaves.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ain-t-i-a-woman
Friday, January 31, 2014
What Is This, Family Guy?
What Is This, Family Guy?
By David Glenn Cox
OpEd News.com
January 31, 2014
We no longer live in a reality based society and because of this, it
no longer finds itself fettered by the rocks of reality, the sky's the
limit.
Torquemada might as well swing for the fences.
"An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech start-up and did
her part to add to the more than 8 million new jobs our businesses
have created over the past four years." ~ Barack Obama
Eight million jobs when we needed sixteen, mostly part-time,
without benefits in a sea of hard to get, a sea of twelve million
officially unemployed.
Millions more struggle each day, to have a meal and keep the
heat on.
The President is saying the entrepreneur is doing something
wonderful, so don't blame me, if you're not.
But for every entrepreneur flipping a switch, there are millions
more flipping burgers, trying to stay alive.
Because they work part-time the margins are always close,
the utility cut off date is always the first thing they read.
Because they are older, they fill positions once held by teenagers,
making it harder for the young to become established into society.
But what are the youth to become?
What is the central organizing principle of our society? Capitalism?
Can a populace be motivated by wealth, if it becomes more and
more difficult to get?
Can media so fully indoctrinate the message of wasteful
commercialism in the bare face of subsistence poverty?
In his praise of the entrepreneur, the President is praising
the one in a million that lands an NFL or NBA contract.
A non reality made for TV illusion, that millions can all be
entrepreneurs, selling things to each other.
To become a successful entrepreneur you need money and
luck, but mainly money.
You need capital to live on and capital to work from, but
most of all, you need customers with money to spend.
We have a failure to communicate, a broken, defective
operating principle, which neither, motivates nor inspires.
Seniors no longer look towards retirement as golden, they
look with trepidation.
They've watched as the middle class, the home owner, the union
worker and the non-union workers, have all been systematically
thrown under the bus.
They no longer believe in much of anything, but nobody wants to
talk about, many of us having long-term unemployed friends or
relatives.
Families impaired by members unable to find a job at subsistence
wages, you can't move out because you can't afford to or you can't
move out because they can't afford for you to move out.
Or maybe there's a job for you, but you can't afford to move
period.
Because of the length of this malaise, a generation grows up
without knowledge of either prosperity or peace.
How do they set goals with a future so nebulous without any
reasonable hope of success? What are the good American jobs?
What is our plan for the future?
Just drift aimlessly, judging the quality of our lives by
the Dow Jones average?
This American reality was created by Free Trade agreements,
sold to the American people, sealed by the bipartisan promise
of jobs, which never arrived.
The entrepreneurs and big corporations are all in favor,
it will bring jobs.
You see, you can't even read that line without seeing snark.
That's my point, there is reality and then there's what the
President was talking about.
The President talks about Autoworkers, farmers, and rural
doctors, in a pure Timmy & Lassie fantasy.
"A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone
tired but dreaming big dreams for his son."
Most factories aren't on the bus line and even if they were,
the buses probably don't run third shift. A Sophic Hershey's
syrup of hog wash,
"And in tight-knit communities all across America, fathers
and mothers will tuck in their kids, put an arm around their
spouse, remember fallen comrades and give thanks for being
home from a war that after twelve long years is finally coming
to an end." ~ Barack Obama
Oh come on now, we deserve better than that.
What a rip off, I mean, at least in all the dystopic novel scenarios,
the leader is dark and ominous or at least interesting, we get this
cruel reality, Opie Taylor's state of the Mayberry Address.
My Aunt Bea sure does make good pies! What is this, Family Guy?
"It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built
this country -- the idea that if you work hard and meet your
responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come
from, no matter what you look like, or who you love." ~ Barack
Obama
This is a recurring theme from Obama, meeting your responsibilities.
You're the one under the gun; you're the one under scrutiny.
Why did you lose your house? Irresponsible.
Why did you lose your job? Irresponsible.
Why are we in the situation we're in? Don't blame us; you're the one
who's irresponsible!
But no matter where you come from (Birds sing, cue music)
no matter what you look like (Cue, ugly kid slide) no matter
where you come from (cue Obama slide) or who you love (cue
Gay couple slide) and our children and our children's children
with amber waves of grain and purple mountains, we can't
forget the purple mountains.(Cue flag) and if you don't get
ahead, there must be something wrong with you.
A blind puppet with an open contempt for the people, a low-grade,
satirical tent preacher, openly hostile towards the crowd.
This wasn't so much of a speech as a performance unsurpassed
in its delicacies, escaping nobly from any construction of goals
or priorities.
When the central organizing principle becomes corrupted and
government so clearly living in a fantasy land, there is no
chance for meaningful reform.
You could no more stop them than you could stop Fred Flintstone
from running off with Betty Rubble, you can only try to hold on
and understand we don't know who is really in charge here.
"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that
will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to
stand up under the weight." ~ Malcolm X
http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-is-this-Family-Guy-by-
David-Glenn-Cox-Family_Fantasy_Future_Money-140131-120.html
By David Glenn Cox
OpEd News.com
January 31, 2014
We no longer live in a reality based society and because of this, it
no longer finds itself fettered by the rocks of reality, the sky's the
limit.
Torquemada might as well swing for the fences.
"An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech start-up and did
her part to add to the more than 8 million new jobs our businesses
have created over the past four years." ~ Barack Obama
Eight million jobs when we needed sixteen, mostly part-time,
without benefits in a sea of hard to get, a sea of twelve million
officially unemployed.
Millions more struggle each day, to have a meal and keep the
heat on.
The President is saying the entrepreneur is doing something
wonderful, so don't blame me, if you're not.
But for every entrepreneur flipping a switch, there are millions
more flipping burgers, trying to stay alive.
Because they work part-time the margins are always close,
the utility cut off date is always the first thing they read.
Because they are older, they fill positions once held by teenagers,
making it harder for the young to become established into society.
But what are the youth to become?
What is the central organizing principle of our society? Capitalism?
Can a populace be motivated by wealth, if it becomes more and
more difficult to get?
Can media so fully indoctrinate the message of wasteful
commercialism in the bare face of subsistence poverty?
In his praise of the entrepreneur, the President is praising
the one in a million that lands an NFL or NBA contract.
A non reality made for TV illusion, that millions can all be
entrepreneurs, selling things to each other.
To become a successful entrepreneur you need money and
luck, but mainly money.
You need capital to live on and capital to work from, but
most of all, you need customers with money to spend.
We have a failure to communicate, a broken, defective
operating principle, which neither, motivates nor inspires.
Seniors no longer look towards retirement as golden, they
look with trepidation.
They've watched as the middle class, the home owner, the union
worker and the non-union workers, have all been systematically
thrown under the bus.
They no longer believe in much of anything, but nobody wants to
talk about, many of us having long-term unemployed friends or
relatives.
Families impaired by members unable to find a job at subsistence
wages, you can't move out because you can't afford to or you can't
move out because they can't afford for you to move out.
Or maybe there's a job for you, but you can't afford to move
period.
Because of the length of this malaise, a generation grows up
without knowledge of either prosperity or peace.
How do they set goals with a future so nebulous without any
reasonable hope of success? What are the good American jobs?
What is our plan for the future?
Just drift aimlessly, judging the quality of our lives by
the Dow Jones average?
This American reality was created by Free Trade agreements,
sold to the American people, sealed by the bipartisan promise
of jobs, which never arrived.
The entrepreneurs and big corporations are all in favor,
it will bring jobs.
You see, you can't even read that line without seeing snark.
That's my point, there is reality and then there's what the
President was talking about.
The President talks about Autoworkers, farmers, and rural
doctors, in a pure Timmy & Lassie fantasy.
"A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone
tired but dreaming big dreams for his son."
Most factories aren't on the bus line and even if they were,
the buses probably don't run third shift. A Sophic Hershey's
syrup of hog wash,
"And in tight-knit communities all across America, fathers
and mothers will tuck in their kids, put an arm around their
spouse, remember fallen comrades and give thanks for being
home from a war that after twelve long years is finally coming
to an end." ~ Barack Obama
Oh come on now, we deserve better than that.
What a rip off, I mean, at least in all the dystopic novel scenarios,
the leader is dark and ominous or at least interesting, we get this
cruel reality, Opie Taylor's state of the Mayberry Address.
My Aunt Bea sure does make good pies! What is this, Family Guy?
"It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built
this country -- the idea that if you work hard and meet your
responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come
from, no matter what you look like, or who you love." ~ Barack
Obama
This is a recurring theme from Obama, meeting your responsibilities.
You're the one under the gun; you're the one under scrutiny.
Why did you lose your house? Irresponsible.
Why did you lose your job? Irresponsible.
Why are we in the situation we're in? Don't blame us; you're the one
who's irresponsible!
But no matter where you come from (Birds sing, cue music)
no matter what you look like (Cue, ugly kid slide) no matter
where you come from (cue Obama slide) or who you love (cue
Gay couple slide) and our children and our children's children
with amber waves of grain and purple mountains, we can't
forget the purple mountains.(Cue flag) and if you don't get
ahead, there must be something wrong with you.
A blind puppet with an open contempt for the people, a low-grade,
satirical tent preacher, openly hostile towards the crowd.
This wasn't so much of a speech as a performance unsurpassed
in its delicacies, escaping nobly from any construction of goals
or priorities.
When the central organizing principle becomes corrupted and
government so clearly living in a fantasy land, there is no
chance for meaningful reform.
You could no more stop them than you could stop Fred Flintstone
from running off with Betty Rubble, you can only try to hold on
and understand we don't know who is really in charge here.
"Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that
will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to
stand up under the weight." ~ Malcolm X
http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-is-this-Family-Guy-by-
David-Glenn-Cox-Family_Fantasy_Future_Money-140131-120.html
Thursday, January 30, 2014
State of the Union: A Bankrupt Ruling Class Talking To Itself
State of the Union: A Bankrupt Ruling Class Talking To Itself
By Bill Van Auken
WSWS.org
January 30, 2014
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was a cynical
propaganda piece, filled with fraudulent claims and promises that
no one, least of all his audience at the US Capitol, believes in the
slightest.
The annual address has long since become an ossified ritual, a
kind of national pep rally into which social and political reality
seldom intrudes.
With Obama’s speech Tuesday night one had more than ever the
sense of the president as chief representative of the financial
aristocracy that rules America, speaking to a house filled with
millionaire congress members and bought-and-paid-for
representatives of big business.
It has more and more come to resemble a political echo chamber,
in which the ruling establishment celebrates and talks to itself in
utter indifference to the needs and concerns of the country’s
working people, the overwhelming majority of the population.
In the run-up to the speech, the media had worked to build up
expectations with wild predictions that Obama would use it to
launch war on social inequality or, as the Washington Post put
it, a “sustained assault on Republicans over a populist economic
agenda.”
The day after, the old adage, “the mountain labored and brought
forth a mouse” came to mind.
According to some accounts, Obama’s speechwriters were
instructed to tone down references to social inequality and
emphasize the concept of “opportunity” the old Horatio Alger
myth that with perseverance anyone can become a millionaire.
This was combined with a reassurance to the Wall Street criminals
that “Americans understand that some people will earn more than
others, and we don’t resent those who, by virtue of their efforts,
achieve incredible success.”
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an editorial entitled
“The Diminished State of the Union,” and the Washington Post’s
was headlined “Obama’s muted call.”
There was no denying that the days of the “audacity of hope”
are long gone.
Among the exceptions to this reaction was that of the official
trade union apparatus.
Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO tweeted at the
end of the State of the Union speech, “Best #SOTU to date for
@BarackObama. All the right points to lift up middle class but
one: collective bargaining.”
Trumka was in the gallery Tuesday night and was shown on national
television beaming with joy as Obama congratulated one of his wife
Michelle’s “guests” all of them used as political props for the
president’s phony rhetoric a pizza parlor owner who had raised the
salary of his employee from minimum wage to $10 an hour.
No doubt Trumka sees this as good for business, salivating over
the prospect of benevolent employers allowing him to collect
union dues from such workers, pushing their take home pay back
toward the old minimum.
Obama’s move to require federal contractors to pay a minimum
wage of $10.10 to employees under new or renewed contracts,
not existing ones, was promoted as the boldest of his initiatives.
Expected to affect around 250,000 workers, a tiny handful of
the nearly 50 million Americans classified as “working poor”
while still leaving them poor, the proposal is the clearest
proof that no section of the ruling establishment has any
intention of addressing the scourges of inequality, poverty,
and mass unemployment.
The reality is that, if the minimum wage had risen apace with the
compensation of America’s CEOs, the top 1 percent, the poorest
paid worker in the US would now be making more than $33 an hour.
If it just kept pace with the increase in productivity, it would be
over $22.
The speech included the obligatory reference to the state of the
union being “strong” along with an assertion that 2014 can become
“a breakthrough year for America.”
Who does he think he is kidding?
Poll after poll shows that some two-thirds of the population believe
the economy is anything but strong, with their well-being declining,
the phony indicators cited by Obama notwithstanding.
A poll conducted at the end of last month found that over half the
population is being forced to reduce their spending, and fully 36
percent are cutting back on food and medicine.
One of the few true statements Obama included in his speech was
the observation that “corporate profits and stock prices have rarely
been higher, and those at the top have never done better.”
That the president felt compelled to note in the same breath the
stagnation of wages, deepening inequality and continuing
unemployment is an expression of the growing unease within the
ruling establishment that the present conditions are unsustainable
and must give rise, sooner rather than later, to social upheavals.
The charity Oxfam issued a report just last week noting that the
world’s richest 85 individuals have amassed more wealth than the
poorest 3.5 billion.
In the United States, the most unequal of all the advanced
capitalist countries, the 20 wealthiest people possess as
much wealth as the poorest 150 million.
Under Obama’s presidency, the top 1 percent has monopolized 95
percent of the growth in income, while the bottom 90 percent of
the population has only been further impoverished.
To cast the hodgepodge of micro-initiatives and empty promises
cobbled together in Obama’s speech as an attempt to confront
these staggering levels of inequality would be ludicrous.
More substantive preparations are being made to deal with the
political consequences of unprecedented social inequality through
the buildup of a totalitarian police state apparatus, parts of which
have been exposed in Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive
domestics spying by the National Security Agency.
Preparations are being made to counter a challenge from below.
In the final analysis, Obama’s fifth State of the Union address
has exposed his presidency as a politically spent force.
He will be remembered first as a president who was able to exploit
illusions in his phony promises of change to carry out the biggest
swindle in history, the Wall Street bailout, which has seen the
transfer of trillions of dollars in social wealth from the majority of
the population to the banks and the super rich.
Secondly, his legacy will be the buildup of a police state and the
shredding of the most basic democratic and constitutional rights.
Obama’s attempt at this late date, in the run-up to the 2014
midterm elections, to cast himself and the Democratic Party
as the champions of the poor and crusaders against social
inequality will be embraced only by a thin and privileged layer
that includes the trade union officialdom and the pseudo left
elements whose personal fortunes are bound up with the fate
of the Democrats.
Today’s malignant levels of social inequality are inextricably
bound up with the capitalist profit system and the unceasing
growth of financial parasitism to which it has given rise.
The struggle against it can be mounted only by the working class.
It must mobilize its independent strength in an offensive aimed at
impounding the ill-gotten fortunes of the Wall Street and corporate
oligarchs and reorganizing society on socialist foundations to meet
the social needs of the vast majority rather than the profit interests
of the few.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/30/pers-j30.html
By Bill Van Auken
WSWS.org
January 30, 2014
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was a cynical
propaganda piece, filled with fraudulent claims and promises that
no one, least of all his audience at the US Capitol, believes in the
slightest.
The annual address has long since become an ossified ritual, a
kind of national pep rally into which social and political reality
seldom intrudes.
With Obama’s speech Tuesday night one had more than ever the
sense of the president as chief representative of the financial
aristocracy that rules America, speaking to a house filled with
millionaire congress members and bought-and-paid-for
representatives of big business.
It has more and more come to resemble a political echo chamber,
in which the ruling establishment celebrates and talks to itself in
utter indifference to the needs and concerns of the country’s
working people, the overwhelming majority of the population.
In the run-up to the speech, the media had worked to build up
expectations with wild predictions that Obama would use it to
launch war on social inequality or, as the Washington Post put
it, a “sustained assault on Republicans over a populist economic
agenda.”
The day after, the old adage, “the mountain labored and brought
forth a mouse” came to mind.
According to some accounts, Obama’s speechwriters were
instructed to tone down references to social inequality and
emphasize the concept of “opportunity” the old Horatio Alger
myth that with perseverance anyone can become a millionaire.
This was combined with a reassurance to the Wall Street criminals
that “Americans understand that some people will earn more than
others, and we don’t resent those who, by virtue of their efforts,
achieve incredible success.”
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an editorial entitled
“The Diminished State of the Union,” and the Washington Post’s
was headlined “Obama’s muted call.”
There was no denying that the days of the “audacity of hope”
are long gone.
Among the exceptions to this reaction was that of the official
trade union apparatus.
Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO tweeted at the
end of the State of the Union speech, “Best #SOTU to date for
@BarackObama. All the right points to lift up middle class but
one: collective bargaining.”
Trumka was in the gallery Tuesday night and was shown on national
television beaming with joy as Obama congratulated one of his wife
Michelle’s “guests” all of them used as political props for the
president’s phony rhetoric a pizza parlor owner who had raised the
salary of his employee from minimum wage to $10 an hour.
No doubt Trumka sees this as good for business, salivating over
the prospect of benevolent employers allowing him to collect
union dues from such workers, pushing their take home pay back
toward the old minimum.
Obama’s move to require federal contractors to pay a minimum
wage of $10.10 to employees under new or renewed contracts,
not existing ones, was promoted as the boldest of his initiatives.
Expected to affect around 250,000 workers, a tiny handful of
the nearly 50 million Americans classified as “working poor”
while still leaving them poor, the proposal is the clearest
proof that no section of the ruling establishment has any
intention of addressing the scourges of inequality, poverty,
and mass unemployment.
The reality is that, if the minimum wage had risen apace with the
compensation of America’s CEOs, the top 1 percent, the poorest
paid worker in the US would now be making more than $33 an hour.
If it just kept pace with the increase in productivity, it would be
over $22.
The speech included the obligatory reference to the state of the
union being “strong” along with an assertion that 2014 can become
“a breakthrough year for America.”
Who does he think he is kidding?
Poll after poll shows that some two-thirds of the population believe
the economy is anything but strong, with their well-being declining,
the phony indicators cited by Obama notwithstanding.
A poll conducted at the end of last month found that over half the
population is being forced to reduce their spending, and fully 36
percent are cutting back on food and medicine.
One of the few true statements Obama included in his speech was
the observation that “corporate profits and stock prices have rarely
been higher, and those at the top have never done better.”
That the president felt compelled to note in the same breath the
stagnation of wages, deepening inequality and continuing
unemployment is an expression of the growing unease within the
ruling establishment that the present conditions are unsustainable
and must give rise, sooner rather than later, to social upheavals.
The charity Oxfam issued a report just last week noting that the
world’s richest 85 individuals have amassed more wealth than the
poorest 3.5 billion.
In the United States, the most unequal of all the advanced
capitalist countries, the 20 wealthiest people possess as
much wealth as the poorest 150 million.
Under Obama’s presidency, the top 1 percent has monopolized 95
percent of the growth in income, while the bottom 90 percent of
the population has only been further impoverished.
To cast the hodgepodge of micro-initiatives and empty promises
cobbled together in Obama’s speech as an attempt to confront
these staggering levels of inequality would be ludicrous.
More substantive preparations are being made to deal with the
political consequences of unprecedented social inequality through
the buildup of a totalitarian police state apparatus, parts of which
have been exposed in Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive
domestics spying by the National Security Agency.
Preparations are being made to counter a challenge from below.
In the final analysis, Obama’s fifth State of the Union address
has exposed his presidency as a politically spent force.
He will be remembered first as a president who was able to exploit
illusions in his phony promises of change to carry out the biggest
swindle in history, the Wall Street bailout, which has seen the
transfer of trillions of dollars in social wealth from the majority of
the population to the banks and the super rich.
Secondly, his legacy will be the buildup of a police state and the
shredding of the most basic democratic and constitutional rights.
Obama’s attempt at this late date, in the run-up to the 2014
midterm elections, to cast himself and the Democratic Party
as the champions of the poor and crusaders against social
inequality will be embraced only by a thin and privileged layer
that includes the trade union officialdom and the pseudo left
elements whose personal fortunes are bound up with the fate
of the Democrats.
Today’s malignant levels of social inequality are inextricably
bound up with the capitalist profit system and the unceasing
growth of financial parasitism to which it has given rise.
The struggle against it can be mounted only by the working class.
It must mobilize its independent strength in an offensive aimed at
impounding the ill-gotten fortunes of the Wall Street and corporate
oligarchs and reorganizing society on socialist foundations to meet
the social needs of the vast majority rather than the profit interests
of the few.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/30/pers-j30.html
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Rulers' Ideas Rule
Rulers' Ideas Rule
By William J. Astore
Truth Out
January 28, 2014
I can’t remember where exactly, but I stumbled across this
apothegm of Karl Marx:
“In every era, the ideas of the rulers are the ruling ideas.”
Striving for even more brevity, I truncated it to rulers’ ideas
rule.
Contrarians of the world should unite to identify and challenge
these ruling ideas.
When they serve only the needs of the powerful, we should
be prepared to mark them as dangerous and most likely as
undemocratic.
And we should work to change them.
What are some of today’s ruling ideas?
I challenge you to come up with some, but here are ten that I
see as ruling our lives:
1. That capitalism is the only economic system that works, and
that rampant consumption is necessary to keep the economy
growing.
2. Related to (1) is the idea that GDP and similar economic
measures are the best measure of America’s strength.
3. That “success” in life is measured by money and titles and
possessions.
4. Related to (3) is the idea that education that doesn’t end
in a lucrative career is largely worthless.
5. That poor people and other disadvantaged groups are the
way they are because they refuse to work.
6. That it’s absolutely necessary to spend nearly a trillion dollars
a year on national defense, wars, homeland security, intelligence
agencies, and nuclear weapons, all of which are justified in the
name of “keeping us safe.”
7. That privatization is the way to improve everything, including
public services like education, the prison system, and health care.
8. That corporate spending in elections is the equivalent
to freedom of speech for individuals and is therefore
protected by our Constitution as our nation’s founders
intended.
9. That there’s no such thing as class warfare in the United States.
10. Related to (5), that there’s equality of opportunity for
everyone in the United States, regardless of race, ethnicity,
economic background, and so on. Thus those who “fail” do
so because of their own failings, not because the system is
rigged against them.
That’s my non-rigorous, somewhat off-the-cuff rendering of rulers’
ideas.
Contrarians of the world unite!
Professor William J. Astore, is a retired lieutenant colonel
(United States Air Force), writes regularly for Tom Dispatch.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21493-rulers-ideas-rule
By William J. Astore
Truth Out
January 28, 2014
I can’t remember where exactly, but I stumbled across this
apothegm of Karl Marx:
“In every era, the ideas of the rulers are the ruling ideas.”
Striving for even more brevity, I truncated it to rulers’ ideas
rule.
Contrarians of the world should unite to identify and challenge
these ruling ideas.
When they serve only the needs of the powerful, we should
be prepared to mark them as dangerous and most likely as
undemocratic.
And we should work to change them.
What are some of today’s ruling ideas?
I challenge you to come up with some, but here are ten that I
see as ruling our lives:
1. That capitalism is the only economic system that works, and
that rampant consumption is necessary to keep the economy
growing.
2. Related to (1) is the idea that GDP and similar economic
measures are the best measure of America’s strength.
3. That “success” in life is measured by money and titles and
possessions.
4. Related to (3) is the idea that education that doesn’t end
in a lucrative career is largely worthless.
5. That poor people and other disadvantaged groups are the
way they are because they refuse to work.
6. That it’s absolutely necessary to spend nearly a trillion dollars
a year on national defense, wars, homeland security, intelligence
agencies, and nuclear weapons, all of which are justified in the
name of “keeping us safe.”
7. That privatization is the way to improve everything, including
public services like education, the prison system, and health care.
8. That corporate spending in elections is the equivalent
to freedom of speech for individuals and is therefore
protected by our Constitution as our nation’s founders
intended.
9. That there’s no such thing as class warfare in the United States.
10. Related to (5), that there’s equality of opportunity for
everyone in the United States, regardless of race, ethnicity,
economic background, and so on. Thus those who “fail” do
so because of their own failings, not because the system is
rigged against them.
That’s my non-rigorous, somewhat off-the-cuff rendering of rulers’
ideas.
Contrarians of the world unite!
Professor William J. Astore, is a retired lieutenant colonel
(United States Air Force), writes regularly for Tom Dispatch.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21493-rulers-ideas-rule
Monday, January 27, 2014
The Umpire
The Umpire
By Michael D'Angelo
The Smirking Chimp
January 27, 2014
Who serves as "umpire" in the great American experiment in
democracy?
Is the umpire adequately protected from big money interests to
complete the great unfinished business of the nation, achieving
equality of opportunity?
Thomas Jefferson felt that the happiest society was one where
inequalities of condition were not great.
As president, he considered what was needed for the happiness
and prosperity of the people.
Jefferson talked about "a wise and frugal government, which
shall restrain men from injuring one another."
Further, that government should leave the people "otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and
shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
Are these the government and conditions we are experiencing
today?
Jefferson believed that the status of aristocracy, based as it was
not on merit but inherited privilege, made it doubtful that this
class would exercise its public obligation for human progress on
its existing foundation.
Consequently, his ideas sought to restore what he called "the
natural order of freedom to give talent and virtue, which were
scattered through all ranks of society, a chance to rise."
He described his purposes in terms of "natural philosophy."
Throughout his life, Jefferson never ceased to believe that men
(white men, that is) by right were free in their minds and persons
and that human society should guide its steps by the light of reason.
Today's news media heaps praise upon America as a land
of opportunity. This praise is earned on merit.
The constitution requires all citizens to be considered equal under
the law, that they should be afforded "equal protection of the
laws."
But did the founding fathers designate anyone in particular to
discharge the responsibility for fair dealing on a level playing
field?
In other words, can we identify the umpire?
Jefferson, for one, argued that it was the legislature, working
in unison with the executive, which was best suited to play the
unassuming, under-appreciated role of umpire.
On the important condition that proper policy was in place by the
combined efforts of this pair, working together, then thereafter,
The path we have to pursue is so quiet that we have nothing
scarcely to propose to our Legislature.
A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others,
unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in
happiness.
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of
the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they
must become happy.
To this noiseless course approach.
It must be added, however, that unless the President's mind in
a view of everything which is urged for and against (a particular
bill) is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution;
if the pro and the con hang so even as to balance his judgment,
a just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally
decide the balance in favor of their opinion.
It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly misled by error,
ambition or interest, that the Constitution has placed a check
on the negative (i.e.: veto) of the President.
So, it is the legislative branch which serves the role of umpire,
calling balls and strikes, fair or foul, letting the citizens "play"
and using its authority to maintain a level playing field.
But the ordinary citizen must be mindful that the "science of
human nature" will be silently at work in the democratic process.
This involves an expectation of reasonable men acting reasonably
in their own best interest.
That is to say, lawmakers face natural corruption by self-interest.
The primary, big money, self-interest components of American
democracy include the financial interests of capitalism, the
resulting onset of political parties, large corporations, labor
unions, lobby groups, political action committees, etc.
Each has evolved only after the constitution was enacted in 1789.
Together they tend to undermine the transparency necessary to
understand how and why laws are made, or not made.
The ordinary citizen may draw certain conclusions when wealth
and income disparity are presently at an all time high, and
those conclusions are not all positive.
For one, the situation is morally indefensible.
And for another, the legislative branch is inadequately protected
from big money interests.
This confounds the quest to complete the great unfinished
business of the nation, achieving equality of opportunity.
How can the rules of the game be revisited to assist lawmakers
with their inherently difficult role of impartial umpire in a level
playing field society?
The good news is that sound, practical measures appear to
be readily available.
Does the ordinary citizen possess the courage to meet the
challenge of our time?
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/lifeamongtheordinary
/53587/the-umpire
By Michael D'Angelo
The Smirking Chimp
January 27, 2014
Who serves as "umpire" in the great American experiment in
democracy?
Is the umpire adequately protected from big money interests to
complete the great unfinished business of the nation, achieving
equality of opportunity?
Thomas Jefferson felt that the happiest society was one where
inequalities of condition were not great.
As president, he considered what was needed for the happiness
and prosperity of the people.
Jefferson talked about "a wise and frugal government, which
shall restrain men from injuring one another."
Further, that government should leave the people "otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and
shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
Are these the government and conditions we are experiencing
today?
Jefferson believed that the status of aristocracy, based as it was
not on merit but inherited privilege, made it doubtful that this
class would exercise its public obligation for human progress on
its existing foundation.
Consequently, his ideas sought to restore what he called "the
natural order of freedom to give talent and virtue, which were
scattered through all ranks of society, a chance to rise."
He described his purposes in terms of "natural philosophy."
Throughout his life, Jefferson never ceased to believe that men
(white men, that is) by right were free in their minds and persons
and that human society should guide its steps by the light of reason.
Today's news media heaps praise upon America as a land
of opportunity. This praise is earned on merit.
The constitution requires all citizens to be considered equal under
the law, that they should be afforded "equal protection of the
laws."
But did the founding fathers designate anyone in particular to
discharge the responsibility for fair dealing on a level playing
field?
In other words, can we identify the umpire?
Jefferson, for one, argued that it was the legislature, working
in unison with the executive, which was best suited to play the
unassuming, under-appreciated role of umpire.
On the important condition that proper policy was in place by the
combined efforts of this pair, working together, then thereafter,
The path we have to pursue is so quiet that we have nothing
scarcely to propose to our Legislature.
A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others,
unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in
happiness.
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of
the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they
must become happy.
To this noiseless course approach.
It must be added, however, that unless the President's mind in
a view of everything which is urged for and against (a particular
bill) is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution;
if the pro and the con hang so even as to balance his judgment,
a just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally
decide the balance in favor of their opinion.
It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly misled by error,
ambition or interest, that the Constitution has placed a check
on the negative (i.e.: veto) of the President.
So, it is the legislative branch which serves the role of umpire,
calling balls and strikes, fair or foul, letting the citizens "play"
and using its authority to maintain a level playing field.
But the ordinary citizen must be mindful that the "science of
human nature" will be silently at work in the democratic process.
This involves an expectation of reasonable men acting reasonably
in their own best interest.
That is to say, lawmakers face natural corruption by self-interest.
The primary, big money, self-interest components of American
democracy include the financial interests of capitalism, the
resulting onset of political parties, large corporations, labor
unions, lobby groups, political action committees, etc.
Each has evolved only after the constitution was enacted in 1789.
Together they tend to undermine the transparency necessary to
understand how and why laws are made, or not made.
The ordinary citizen may draw certain conclusions when wealth
and income disparity are presently at an all time high, and
those conclusions are not all positive.
For one, the situation is morally indefensible.
And for another, the legislative branch is inadequately protected
from big money interests.
This confounds the quest to complete the great unfinished
business of the nation, achieving equality of opportunity.
How can the rules of the game be revisited to assist lawmakers
with their inherently difficult role of impartial umpire in a level
playing field society?
The good news is that sound, practical measures appear to
be readily available.
Does the ordinary citizen possess the courage to meet the
challenge of our time?
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/lifeamongtheordinary
/53587/the-umpire
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