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Monday, February 25, 2008
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Category: News and Politics
The fact that election day is not a national holiday, that it is held on a workday, tells you the score right away.
As does the fact that the votes are registered on easily hackable electronic machines, supplied by private companies whose owners are often partisan, and which have had numerous, documented problems, which prove that they are untrustworthy.
Oh, and, the amounts of money needed to run almost guarantee candidates having to sell their souls to the highest bidder.
Some democracy.
As another election season is upon us, i feel torn. The face of the corporate owned state will change, but will the institutional structures change, which create a user-unfriendly American system, in which people are driven to sedate themselves in a multitude of ways, because if you’re trying to live an honest life the deck is stacked against you if all you want is to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage, stacked against you because you weren’t smart enough to be born rich.
Obama inspires me with his good intentions. How much he will be able to accomplish, should he win, remains to be seen. In games theory, the rules of the game determine the outcome. For example, games of strength are won by the strong. America is a money game. The tax laws are the rules of the game, and they say if you’re rich you get subsidies, if you’re poor you get taxes. This is the bottom line, after all the loopholes have been taken advantage of. For Obama to really change America, he will have to change the tax laws and abolish corporate personhood.
Will the tax laws change, with all their elaborate loopholes and corporate welfare, which ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Why is it that businessmen can deduct "business" lunches from their taxes, but Joe Sixpack can’t deduct his sandwich? Landlords can take "depreciation allowance" off their taxes, but you can’t, if all you want to do is raise your kids in your own home. The list just goes on and on Read Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston.
Will the winner take all system of elections change, that system which guarantees that some people win and others lose, which says that if you get %50.1 of the vote, you get to make %100 of the decisions, in contrast to proportional representation, which is the parlimentary system used by virtually every other western industrialized nation, where everybody wins, because it guarantees that all voices are heard
and the biggest crime of all, corporate personhood, which literally allows people to get away with murder.
the Republiconmen have won elections by buying the voting machine companies and literally writing the results they wanted (Kerry won by millions of votes, and the theft went all along the line (don’t email me, just look on the internet at the evidence, which is conclusive, for anyone willing to admit it)(yes, there was a coup d’etat in this country), by deliberately throwing democratic voters off the voting rolls with cheating tactics, such as "caging" (google greg palast), which is a way to disenfranchise voters.
Republican secretaries of state have deliberately removed tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of democratic voters from voting lists, such as happened in Florida and Ohio, and by all sorts of other dirty tricks including deliberately lying. Don’t believe it, go to the Internet, it’s all well documented.. The elections they have actually won legitimately, rather than by fraud and theft, they have won by appealing to the ugliest parts of the human psyche. Given the amount of people who responded from stupidity, nastiness, and fear, it is difficult to feel good about "the American people". Read Conservatives Without Conscience, by a former Conservative, John W. Dean.
as for the Wimpocrats, even though i know that they are just another right wing corporatist party, i still expected better from them, better than to roll over and play dead, while the theft of the the 2000 and 2004 elections happened, while G. Bush was lying us into Iraq, while the Patriot act, the supreme court nominations, and all the rest of the raping and pillaging took place. The word Impeachment was unmentionable, even though George W. Bush came into office by stealing the elections, lied us into Iraq, shredded the constitution, in short, really has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
so please forgive me for wondering if democracy can work with the low class of citizenship that seems to be the typical american. sure, i know people are struggling just to survive. Why can’t they connect the dots and see the reasons they are struggling, which is that the rich have gotten so greedy that they’re not even leaving enough crumbs for people to get by, instead of falling for appeals to their bigotry and homophobia.
i was a history major in college, and history gives me hope. Progress is long and slow, and progress does happen. Women can vote now, blacks are no longer slaves (although many of them are fodder for the prison-industrial system), working conditions are better than they were 100 years ago, although some are worse than 50 years ago. What i see is two steps forward, one step back. Even McCain is probably the easiest going Republican of the bunch that ran, and Obama and Clinton are probably the best that can be hoped for from the Democratic, kinder and gentler status quo, party.
so yes, despite the inherent weakness of government only being as good as what the governed will tolerate, democracy is better than the alternatives.
And is america really a democracy, which means rule by the people, or is America a plutocracy, which means rule by the rich. Right now, probably a plutocracy, because at the moment we have the best government money can buy
CORPORATE PERSONHOOD IS A LICENSE FOR CRIME
There is no physical, tangible being called a corporation. "corporation" is a legal fiction created to allow people to engage in business, without risk of losing their personal wealth. It was not intended to protect criminals from legal consequences for their crimes, but that is what is going on, because when a "corporation" commits a crime, there is nobody to lock up.
Corporations, meaning the executives, can sell dangerous drugs which their own scientists have warned them about, pollute the environment, cheat people out of their retirements, hire armed thugs to suppress people in other countries, Nigeria, for example, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Enron, the list goes on and on, and there is nobody to go to jail, even though the "corporation" might get fined, which they will promptly take off their taxes. How about a law that says fines are not tax deductible, or better, that executives are personally responsible for crimes knowingly ordered by them, which includes criminal negligence. And how about a maximum wage law, that says nobody at a business can make more than 10 times the lowest wage. You can make as much as you want, just be fair and share the wealth, don’t just keep it all for yourself, which is what is happening today. Workers get fired, executives get bonuses.
Personal responsibility is the cornerstone of every system of morality known to man. The reason we so many problems with corporations, is that nobody is held responsible. Let’s change that.End Corporate personhood now.
for more go to jaydancingbear.com/writings/politics.htm
here’s an election fraud link, one of many on the internet
http://www.journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/269google search election theft 2004
4:55 AM
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