It has been quite a summer, what with “tea parties,” the contrived rallies made to look like individual citizens’ concerns over health care reform and the latest demonstrations on the mall in Washington, D.C. There is nothing quite as pathetic as having to bear witness to the full display of the empty minds among us who haven’t a clue as to what is really going on or what it all means. It would all be rather comical were it not for the fact that they have the same chilling affect as the famous Nurnberg Rallies of the 1930’s. I would have to confess, despite its perverse purpose, the discipline and pageantry of the latter was certainly more impressive than the exaggerated dress and chaotic behavior of those taking to the streets nowadays. They have given a new meaning to the term “transparency.”
Our democracy, by its very nature, requires an informed citizenry in order to function for the benefit of the electorate. Unfortunately, being informed has never been so out of vogue as it appears to be today. By reacting from the viscera rather than the cerebra, we have rendered ourselves incapable of being responsible stewards of democracy. By our very ignorance, we have abdicated any first line of defense against tyranny, and have readily yielded that power to oligarchs and corporations. Since 1980, the country has been theirs for the taking. They don’t even have to ask. They simply have to shape public opinion, define public appetites, and offer us easy credit and the means to satiate every conceivable kind of materialism and hedonism imaginable. We have been willing sheep through it all. Now, when our country is in shambles, we stand bewildered as to where it all went wrong, and feel totally helpless to do anything about it.
Meanwhile, those whose rapacious nature got us into this mess are, once again, planning their next assault on what remains of the last vestigial remnants of what is left of the carcass on which to feed. Only the total bareness of the landscape they have wrought will convince them that there is an end to everything and their time has come as well.
We are a people who love to throw the term “freedom” around at will, and the more we tend to think of it in terms of its absolute meaning, the more favor it incurs. In reality, absolute freedom is the barbaric state. Anything short of that has to give credence to some form of social order at the expense of certain individual freedoms. You cannot have a civilized and orderly society without that precondition. The concept of an unfettered free market is held up before us as if it were the Holy Grail, but without ever giving a passing thought to the fact that for such a system to exist there must of necessity be a population imbued with absolute honesty and one which is completely incorruptible. I would submit that the essence of our human nature makes that virtually impossible. Hence, all of our various manifestations of social intercourse must be subject to regulation in order to protect the common good. Society has to remain vigilant, however, and ensure that such regulation comes from the people and remains accountable to the people. Otherwise, the rights of society eventually become subordinate to the state and the ambitions of a select few, to our common peril.
If we are to be a truly representative democracy, we must guard against our tendency to operate according to our own vested self-interests at the expense of the society of which we are a part.
From my perspective, we have arrived at the point where our future is clearly in peril. It is in peril because we have either been too trusting or too lazy to engage in the hard work of ensuring accountability and integrity in exchange for our votes every 2, 4 and 6 years. Our federal system of government, in all respects, has become so corrupt and so insulated from those who put them in office that it is now a self-serving and a self-perpetuating system of tyranny. Every branch of government; the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial are tainted by their own power to some extent. Objectivity among them is, without question, a relative term.
Our elected officials are up for the highest bidder. Secrecy, lying and deception are the tools with which they ply their trade. Whenever money changes hands from those seeking favors from government to the hands of those who are government, the rights of society and its control over our system of government are compromised.
Corporations, although enjoying most of the privileges and rights accorded human beings, are not and cannot be the same. The nature of the beast makes that virtually impossible. They do not have a conscience akin to that of the people. Consequently, the human element within corporations is negated in deference to the “conscience of the corporation,” however that may be defined, and becomes manifest in society. I think it is safe to conclude that rarely, if ever, do they operate with the same enduring values we hold as human beings who are subjected to their power and avarice. Vested interests outside those of the governed cannot and will not serve the interests of the people. It just isn’t going to happen.
Thanks largely to the Clinton Administration, but going all the way back to the Reagan Administration, the industrial base of this country was systematically dismantled and shipped overseas to cheaper labor markets. Our current rate of unemployment is skyrocketing and we are lead to believe there will be an interval where it will only get worse before it gets better. I would ask, going back to work where and to jobs that are no longer there? Free trade and globalization has seen to that. We are assuaged by the rhetoric that we are now an information society. An information society of whom, by whom and for whom? Surely, they don’t expect us to believe that everyone is endowed with the same talents, skills and opportunities, so that great amorphous market can absorb them all! In the meantime, their homes are being repossessed, they have no jobs to go to and their unemployment benefits are running out. Are we to believe they will continue to be passive in the face of total and complete ruin without some backlash?
The barons of Wall Street are becoming just as emboldened as they were before the bottom fell out of the financial markets. They are hatching schemes that will game the system in much the same way as bundled mortgages, hedge funds and the like. Moreover, you can bet your bippy that the same players are behind it all as they were in the Clinton Administration, the long dark days of the Bush Administration and now transplanted to the Obama Administration. I would ask you, how transparent has the industry become? What new regulations and controls have been imposed on them? Do we really buy into all the crap about “too big to fail?” As an old cowboy would have said, “If you can’t break a horse, you will never ride him.” Seems rather fundamental to me.
The entire protracted foreplay having to do with “reforming” the health care system is just another glaring example of how we, as a people, are being had without even so much as a modicum of KY Jelly! All of the players; the White House, the Congress, the lobbyists and the profit-making health care corporations, in all their various manifestations, already know what the eventual outcome will be. We are witness to a grand charade, all for our benefit. The stench of pure unadulterated bullshit hangs heavy over the marble city on the Potomac.
If we really want to reform the system so every citizen gets a better deal out of one of the most lucrative segments of our economy, it certainly is not difficult to accomplish, nor does it take a rocket scientist to make it happen. Have you heard the term “trigger?” I am reasonably certain the term, as used in Wyoming, is not quite the same as it is when used by the distinguished Senator from Maine, but it is close enough for company work.
Let us begin; as soon as Company Obama signs a bill into law, we set ourselves to the task of undertaking the modernization of the system through computerization of medical records, digitalizing technology and other improvements in our nation’s health care system. Then, at the end of the first year, the trigger mechanism comes into play.
The minimum age for eligibility for Medicare drops from 65 to 60 years of age. From that point on, the trigger will encompass all of those in population increments 5 years younger until the program covers the entire population. That will give the current crop of health care bandits a respectable period of time in which to steal as much as they can before the well runs dry, and the fat cats among them can then fly off to whatever tax haven is harbor to their fortunes. Goodbye and good riddance.
Concurrently, a well-respected, qualified and honest group of citizens should band together and form a new political party that will stand on old fashioned virtues of honesty, integrity and accountability in government at all levels. One that will cut out all of the vestigial remnants of privilege, largess and power now endemic to this rather fragile, but treasured raison d’etre for our democracy. A government truly “of the people, for the people and by the people,” without all the constant barrage of bull crap we get from the entrenched bunch of thieves and their minions in the corporate news media.
We, as a people, are simply better than what we are getting from government, and we sure as hell deserve better after all they have put us through. Call it what you will, but bovine scatology still amounts to nothing more than plain old bullshit.
Cowboy Bob
September 13, 2009
Our democracy, by its very nature, requires an informed citizenry in order to function for the benefit of the electorate. Unfortunately, being informed has never been so out of vogue as it appears to be today. By reacting from the viscera rather than the cerebra, we have rendered ourselves incapable of being responsible stewards of democracy. By our very ignorance, we have abdicated any first line of defense against tyranny, and have readily yielded that power to oligarchs and corporations. Since 1980, the country has been theirs for the taking. They don’t even have to ask. They simply have to shape public opinion, define public appetites, and offer us easy credit and the means to satiate every conceivable kind of materialism and hedonism imaginable. We have been willing sheep through it all. Now, when our country is in shambles, we stand bewildered as to where it all went wrong, and feel totally helpless to do anything about it.
Meanwhile, those whose rapacious nature got us into this mess are, once again, planning their next assault on what remains of the last vestigial remnants of what is left of the carcass on which to feed. Only the total bareness of the landscape they have wrought will convince them that there is an end to everything and their time has come as well.
We are a people who love to throw the term “freedom” around at will, and the more we tend to think of it in terms of its absolute meaning, the more favor it incurs. In reality, absolute freedom is the barbaric state. Anything short of that has to give credence to some form of social order at the expense of certain individual freedoms. You cannot have a civilized and orderly society without that precondition. The concept of an unfettered free market is held up before us as if it were the Holy Grail, but without ever giving a passing thought to the fact that for such a system to exist there must of necessity be a population imbued with absolute honesty and one which is completely incorruptible. I would submit that the essence of our human nature makes that virtually impossible. Hence, all of our various manifestations of social intercourse must be subject to regulation in order to protect the common good. Society has to remain vigilant, however, and ensure that such regulation comes from the people and remains accountable to the people. Otherwise, the rights of society eventually become subordinate to the state and the ambitions of a select few, to our common peril.
If we are to be a truly representative democracy, we must guard against our tendency to operate according to our own vested self-interests at the expense of the society of which we are a part.
From my perspective, we have arrived at the point where our future is clearly in peril. It is in peril because we have either been too trusting or too lazy to engage in the hard work of ensuring accountability and integrity in exchange for our votes every 2, 4 and 6 years. Our federal system of government, in all respects, has become so corrupt and so insulated from those who put them in office that it is now a self-serving and a self-perpetuating system of tyranny. Every branch of government; the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial are tainted by their own power to some extent. Objectivity among them is, without question, a relative term.
Our elected officials are up for the highest bidder. Secrecy, lying and deception are the tools with which they ply their trade. Whenever money changes hands from those seeking favors from government to the hands of those who are government, the rights of society and its control over our system of government are compromised.
Corporations, although enjoying most of the privileges and rights accorded human beings, are not and cannot be the same. The nature of the beast makes that virtually impossible. They do not have a conscience akin to that of the people. Consequently, the human element within corporations is negated in deference to the “conscience of the corporation,” however that may be defined, and becomes manifest in society. I think it is safe to conclude that rarely, if ever, do they operate with the same enduring values we hold as human beings who are subjected to their power and avarice. Vested interests outside those of the governed cannot and will not serve the interests of the people. It just isn’t going to happen.
Thanks largely to the Clinton Administration, but going all the way back to the Reagan Administration, the industrial base of this country was systematically dismantled and shipped overseas to cheaper labor markets. Our current rate of unemployment is skyrocketing and we are lead to believe there will be an interval where it will only get worse before it gets better. I would ask, going back to work where and to jobs that are no longer there? Free trade and globalization has seen to that. We are assuaged by the rhetoric that we are now an information society. An information society of whom, by whom and for whom? Surely, they don’t expect us to believe that everyone is endowed with the same talents, skills and opportunities, so that great amorphous market can absorb them all! In the meantime, their homes are being repossessed, they have no jobs to go to and their unemployment benefits are running out. Are we to believe they will continue to be passive in the face of total and complete ruin without some backlash?
The barons of Wall Street are becoming just as emboldened as they were before the bottom fell out of the financial markets. They are hatching schemes that will game the system in much the same way as bundled mortgages, hedge funds and the like. Moreover, you can bet your bippy that the same players are behind it all as they were in the Clinton Administration, the long dark days of the Bush Administration and now transplanted to the Obama Administration. I would ask you, how transparent has the industry become? What new regulations and controls have been imposed on them? Do we really buy into all the crap about “too big to fail?” As an old cowboy would have said, “If you can’t break a horse, you will never ride him.” Seems rather fundamental to me.
The entire protracted foreplay having to do with “reforming” the health care system is just another glaring example of how we, as a people, are being had without even so much as a modicum of KY Jelly! All of the players; the White House, the Congress, the lobbyists and the profit-making health care corporations, in all their various manifestations, already know what the eventual outcome will be. We are witness to a grand charade, all for our benefit. The stench of pure unadulterated bullshit hangs heavy over the marble city on the Potomac.
If we really want to reform the system so every citizen gets a better deal out of one of the most lucrative segments of our economy, it certainly is not difficult to accomplish, nor does it take a rocket scientist to make it happen. Have you heard the term “trigger?” I am reasonably certain the term, as used in Wyoming, is not quite the same as it is when used by the distinguished Senator from Maine, but it is close enough for company work.
Let us begin; as soon as Company Obama signs a bill into law, we set ourselves to the task of undertaking the modernization of the system through computerization of medical records, digitalizing technology and other improvements in our nation’s health care system. Then, at the end of the first year, the trigger mechanism comes into play.
The minimum age for eligibility for Medicare drops from 65 to 60 years of age. From that point on, the trigger will encompass all of those in population increments 5 years younger until the program covers the entire population. That will give the current crop of health care bandits a respectable period of time in which to steal as much as they can before the well runs dry, and the fat cats among them can then fly off to whatever tax haven is harbor to their fortunes. Goodbye and good riddance.
Concurrently, a well-respected, qualified and honest group of citizens should band together and form a new political party that will stand on old fashioned virtues of honesty, integrity and accountability in government at all levels. One that will cut out all of the vestigial remnants of privilege, largess and power now endemic to this rather fragile, but treasured raison d’etre for our democracy. A government truly “of the people, for the people and by the people,” without all the constant barrage of bull crap we get from the entrenched bunch of thieves and their minions in the corporate news media.
We, as a people, are simply better than what we are getting from government, and we sure as hell deserve better after all they have put us through. Call it what you will, but bovine scatology still amounts to nothing more than plain old bullshit.
Cowboy Bob
September 13, 2009
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