Think About This

One’s religion, ideology, scientific, or any other view aside, it seems to me that one absolute and undeniable fact in life is that man exists on this earth. He exists; he’s here, and he is in charge of managing it and everything on it (or supposed to be). Therefore, it would seem to follow that all else would be for the benefit and support of him—mankind. Business came after man. It was created by man as a tool for his use and service in the conduct of his life. Whatever else you may believe, this is an absolute fact. Man is in charge of this earth.

Now, I’m going to get from fact to my opinion. Now, you have to choose. Man should govern business instead of, as it has very rapidly evolved, business governing man. Either the purpose of a business is to serve man or it is to make a profit for a few at the expense of all else, i.e. people, resources, and the degradation of the environment. What is your opinion? What is your choice? Should man control the tools, i.e. business, computers, and the robots; or, should the tools control the man.

When we allow an oligarchy of the Corporatocracy and Power Elite of the world (think Globalization) to govern us, we will have literally abandoned our Constitutional Rights as a citizen of the United States of America. We will have allowed our government to evolve from a democratic republic to that of an oligarchy. We will no longer be in charge. We will return, again, to a monarchy; but, this time, it will be different. The king will be a New King, and you won’t like it. On the surface, the discussion may seem academic. Below the surface, it is horrific. There is nothing academic about it. Just look outside and watch what is going on. For those with “eyes to see and ears to hear”, the answer is obvious if one is only willing to look.

Election Day is just four months away. I urge you. Vote! Everyone vote! Vote for freedom; vote for the interests of the people, the ninety-nine percent of us. Be careful of the candidates, who when the political pressure is on, will swing toward the money. Vote for those who care about what is best for our country. The issues aren't just taxes. In the long run, "Taxes buy civilization". Nothing is really free. The real issue is voting. Who is going to govern our nation—we the people or the Corporatocracy and Power Elite?

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

Opinions or Facts—How We Think

In his book, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, Dr. Daniel Kahneman tells us that we, people, have two modes of thinking. The first and most often used mode is “thinking fast”. It is a fight or flight mode. It serves to protect us from our enemies. It is reflexive in its nature. When we think; when we are confronted with thought, a question, an issue, or involved in a discussion, we go to this mode almost automatically. Our mind immediately consults our mental database, our internal store of knowledge, experience, impressions, opinions and prejudices accumulated over the span of our lives.

The second and least used mode is “thinking slow” This is the mode wherein we reason; we study; we contemplate; we calculate; and, here too, we build our store of knowledge. This mode is least used because we have an inborn tendency to resist using it, resorting first to our “defensive mode” of “thinking fast”. Both of these modes lead to inputs to our mental database. In conjunction with what I have said, I have a saying, “Everybody, with very few exceptions, is mentally lazy. Some are just more so than others”. Only one example among many others is that of those who don’t want to read. There are very many of us who refuse to read books at all, and many who do read will read only fiction, and then, only the kind where they don’t have to think—not good for themselves and not good for the nation.

With the foregoing in mind, let us add some “givens” to the equation. An important fact we must keep in mind is that our learning is greatest at birth. I have read but long since forgotten the statistics; but, if I remember correctly, learning goes downhill from there—it slows as we mature. Also, reason, our ability to calculate the cause and effect of our actions, doesn't mature until around the age of twenty-four—more or less (possibly one of the reasons we are so successful in gaining recruits into our military services). This is a real problem for young people because, in all honesty, this is the time in their lives when they form opinions and prejudices—they think they know it all. And yet, they are called upon to make career and lifetime decisions, many of which can never be corrected, based on not much more than fantasy, and, at the very best, pure wishful thinking.

In light of what I have said, I want to discuss the subject of “opinion(s)” in conjunction with that of “prejudices”. Everybody has opinions, but few have the facts (Implied from the discussion above). As one person has said, “One is entitled to their opinions but they are not entitled to their facts”. What is an opinion? Wikipedia tells us that, “In general, an opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement about matters commonly considered to be subjective, i.e. based on that which is less than absolutely certain, and is the result of emotion or interpretation of the facts. What distinguishes fact from opinion is that facts are verifiable, i.e. can be objectively proven to have occurred”.

Where am I going with this? I’ll tell you. If you didn’t see something with your own eyes (and you can’t always believe even them), or you haven’t actually verified it through reliable unimpeachable witnesses, and/or sources, if that something isn’t recorded or documented, you don’t know it for a fact. And, also, if you don’t know it for a fact or know the relevant facts, those related to, affected by, or contributing to them, you can’t entertain an informed opinion regarding the matter, i.e. the trading of the four prisoners from Guantanamo as just one example. At that point, it is only your opinion. And, opinions are: I think so, I would like to think so, or, maybe, I hope so—all of which may very well be and probably are influenced by your prejudices (mine too—I’m no different).

And what are prejudices? Again, Wikipedia tells us. “Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, political opinion, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality or other personal characteristics. In this case, it refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership. Prejudice can also refer to unfounded beliefs and may include “any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence”. Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a “feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience”.

All of these, opinions and prejudices, are built into your individual and personal data base, from which you draw daily in order to make good and bad decisions. I go into all of this because it seems to me, in “my opinion”, in these perilous times; and they are perilous, internationally and domestically, socially, economically, and politically. I have added socially to the list because, additionally, I think we are experiencing in our society a breakdown in values, in the home, in the family, and in the marketplace. Our God has been replaced by Narcissism and our New King, The Corporatocracy and the Power Elite. But don’t tell our youth. They have it all figured out (just as I once did). We know/knew everything. We’re still operating in the First Mode, taking advantage of the Second Mode only when we must.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

It’s Coming Slow, But People Are Catching On

It's coming slow, but people are catching on. Some of them caught on long ago, but they are blaming the wrong party for the problem. The problem is that we have been taken over by a New King, the Corporatocracy and Power Elite. Corporations have become people,   money has become King, and our people have become poverty stricken while we continue to pursue the false religion of Free Enterprise, that slow growing cancer of dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, and let the devil take the hindmost—a cancer metastasizing throughout our economy, while our people burn at the stake, and the fiddler fiddles. Think of Nero, that idiot leader of the Roman Empire, centuries past.

Both parties are under the power of this New King, but which party do you see as the primary supporter of big money, corporations, oil, and banks, etc? Who do you see dumbing down our schools and cutting budgets for education? Who do you see polluting our environment, and exploiting our resources. Who have you watched daily trying to take away our Social Security, Healthcare, and Unemployment Compensation? Whose taxes have been cut the most—those of the rich or those of the poor? Who has the money? Where’s the wealth? Is it flowing to you or is it flowing to the rich?

 Who really run up our debt in the first place? Who put us in this financial condition? When Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, our National Debt was less than a Trillion Dollars? When Clinton left office, our budget was balanced and they were talking (worrying) about paying off the debt. When George Bush left office, our debt had increased 1,004%, Nine Trillion Dollars, since Jimmy Carter left office. Sure, we have, of course, run huge deficits since, under the Democrats. Our national debt now exceeds $17 Trillion; but, wouldn't you expect that to happen with a collapsed world financial market and the planet in a depression caused by thirty years of deregulation and gross mismanagement of our government. Who really brought this whole damned world down around all of our necks?

I'm an old man. My generation, since World War II, has arguably lived the highest level prosperity of any generation of people in the history of civilization. Our poor were well-off when compared to the poor of many other nations. Now our prosperity is gone. It’s all over. Now we are going downhill. We are going down and we are not going to come back up for years to come, if ever. Our problem will be passed on to our children and our grandchildren. I am scared to death we may even be heading into another civil war if the tenor of things, this polarization of our people, don't change and change soon.

Yet some of you just can't seem to get it through your heads as to who or what is causing this. I'll tell you this, it isn't President Obama. I sure don't agree with him on a number of issues(My wife doesn't agree with me on everything either); but, after all, he is a human being, deserving a fair shake just like the rest of us—and he isn't getting it. As the winner of two elections in a row, we the people, at least, owe him that. If anyone or anything brought on our problem, it wasn’t Barack Obama. It’s in his hands and he has to deal with it, but he didn’t cause it. Let us work with him. We don’t have to always agree with him, but let’s give him a break. There is an election coming up. It’s only four months away. Let’s take back our government from the New King, the Corporatocracy and Power Elite. Let every one of us, lock, stock, and barrel, get out and vote. Let’s return to the democracy we abandoned to the money people.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

To Begin With

          I am compelled to share this with you as I feel so very impressed with it as well as with its author, Mr. Gerry Spence. It is the introduction to his book, From Freedom to Slavery, copyrighted in 1993 and published by St. Martin’s Press and which I highly recommend to you. I hope you will enjoy it as well as I do. His introduction begins as follows:

“Writing a book about a lofty subject such as freedom is like trying to jump from rock to rock across the creek without getting your feet wet. No matter how you plan your course, you are likely to slip off into the water somewhere. The choice, of course, is whether one wishes to stay on the bank with dry feet. Or take the risk of wet feet to get to the other side.

Doctors called upon to attend the sick cannot prescribe a cure unless they are first able to diagnose the illness. Even before that, they must detect that the patient is ill. In the case of our freedoms, I can confidently say the patient is in grave danger. Having said so, and should you agree in whole or in part, we have, together, taken the first step toward the cure.

As for the solutions, there are only two kinds—those from outside the self and those from within. The first suggests that we destroy our enemies, that we manipulate or neutralize them, that we discover detours around them, that we suffer their impositions against us, or, at last, that we even love them. In any event, the solution acknowledges the existence of outside forces that deter our progress and impede our happiness. On the other hand, there persists the idea—one with which I am in agreement—that solutions are mainly matters of the self, that power vested in others is often irrelevant to our freedom, that the only change essential for the betterment of the human condition is to change within, that we are the fountainhead of power, and that, therefore, we need not free the world—we need only free ourselves. Yet I have never been an exclusionist. It makes no more sense to argue that all solutions should fall into one category or the other than to argue that a mustard plaster is the proper remedy for every ailment.

The problem, however, is not so much in finding solutions as in making the solutions work. Any splinter can cause a fatal infection. This being so, one also knows one can never detect all the splinters that make up the smoothest stick. Marx, for example, hated the exploitation of the masses, but his solutions, however corrupted in their application, resulted in the enslavement of whole nations. Christ also had a good idea—that we love one another. But his followers, attempting to realize his simple, perhaps perfect remedy, disagreed on what they thought were crucial points—whether they should hold their meetings on Saturday or Sunday—whether members of the flock at baptism should be nearly drowned to wash away their sins, or whether a few drops of water on the head would suffice. In the end, his followers proved to be strong on organization, unsurpassed on dogma, supreme on sophistry, but not much on love. They fought endless wars in his name, murdered hordes of the innocent, burned countless women at the stake as witches, bashed in the heads of “heathen” Indian children, and left the world riddled with guilt and fear.

Freedom in America, as bountiful and precious as it is, has always been a strange conglomerate of the divine and the fanciful. Understanding freedom in America is like listening to a one-armed piano player. His one arm performs not only its assigned task, but has painfully attempted to undertake the function of the missing limb. He plays the melody with the magnificent frills and rolls of the virtuoso. He represents all of the higher virtues of the species: He is resourceful, creative, vigorous, and he is very brave. In listening, our minds provide for us what our ears do not—the music of the other hand. But after we assess his performance, as admirable as it has been, we know that something is, indeed, missing.

Freedom in America works best for those who can afford it. As the fellow said in The Grapes of Wrath, “You’re just as free as you’ve got Jack to pay for it.” It is not as much an idea as it is a commodity. It is not as much a liberated state of being as it is an item on the shelf that, along with the purchaser, may be purchased. It is not as much a right as a component of commerce.

The danger, of course, is that we have become the purchasers of the fable of freedom. When we vigorously argue to our neighbors that Americans are free, our neighbors will likely assert that they “buy” that. Having bought the fable, it belongs to us, and we fight to keep it like howling apes protecting their trinkets and their tinfoil.

On the other hand, some of us enjoy a state of freedom that never enters even the dreams of those in many other cultures. I sit warm and comfortably at my desk recording those thoughts. My stomach is full—too full. I do not fear intrusions from brown-shirted agents of the government. If I make minimal efforts at compliance with the rules that preserve the power structure, I will likely be left alone, even if I criticize the power structure, I am essentially free to rant and rave and to emit all manner of noxious noise. It is this dichotomy that serves as both our pride and our poison.

Today there are, as indeed, there have always been, insidious, enslaving forces at work in America. Today’s emerging tyranny emanates from a New King, from a nonliving power center composed at its core of monolithic corporate entities encased and protected by endless layers of governmental bureaucracies. The primary state of the New King is to convert all rights, all human energy , all goals and, at least, all humans into fungible commodities, for the New King exists solely for commerce and its life’s blood, its green blood, its money—and it singular mission is profit. The New King’s principal means of control is the media that sells us the myths of freedom, that, when we doubt, reassures us we are free, and that programs us and our children to accept the notion that all human function, all human desires, indeed, even immortality itself can, at last be satisfied at the marketplace.

I am not against religion—nor am I against commerce. I am, however, reluctant to offer solutions. If the Church has anything to do with it, those who offer solutions outside the scriptures will be condemned to eternal hell. If government has anything to do with them any sound idea will be consumed in the bureaucracy, and if the idea should somehow escape the grinding teeth of its machinery, the author will be labeled an enemy of the state and disemboweled in one fashion or another. If corporate America has anything to do with it, any ideas that threaten its power will be branded as leftist, or commie, or un-American, and the author of such reform banished as a heretic against the most sacred of all religions in America, Free Enterprise.

At last, I have tired of the issue as well as these arguments. If this collection of free-floating thoughts about freedom is to have any efficacy, it will come from freely saying what is on my mind, saying it as well as I can, saying it in such a way that satisfies me, or even amuses me; and if a solution seems to appear, well why not give it recognition It does no one any good bounding around in the mind’s soupy fog where, in all probability, it will eventually be cast into the trash pile of the magnificent and the forgotten. And if no solutions seem at hand, well, I was never born to solve all of the world’s problems, and those who tried were either fools or martyrs.

Sometimes it is easier for a poor man to tolerate his corns than to go barefoot and discard the shoes that cause them. Despite the existence of sharp rocks and cockleburs, there is something magical about a boy’s barefoot freedom. If only we could convince the world’s leaders not to walk in each other’s shoes but, instead, to meet and to talk to each other in their bare feet’ likely, the people, as well as the earth, would benefit immensely. I think, therefore, I shall walk bare-footed herein. I think I shall walk wherever my feet will take me. I hope you’ll come too."

                                                                                     Gerry Spence

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

                                                                                July 4, 1993

Gerry Spence’s book is available on Amazon.com.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

Management In Government

          We constantly hear, especially from the right, that government never does anything right. Leave it to government to screw something up (My mind goes back to a speech made by President Reagan in the early years of his administration). Is this really true? Do you really believe such an absurd statement? I certainly don’t. Just think about it. They, in effect, are saying I can perform better and more effectively, i.e. I can do a better job, in the private sector than I can, doing that same job, working in government.

This is absolute rubbish! Given qualified people, an efficient system, and competent management, just as good a job can be done in one place as in another. Government can and should perform and produce just as well and efficiently as any company in the private sector. Everyone should understand that; and, when government programs do fail, they fail either because of employee incompetence, flaws in the system, or lack of resources from inadequate funding or neglect–all just as solvable as they are in the private sector. When program failures are allowed to continue without correction on a timely basis, the problem is one of mismanagement. Whether a program is operated in the private sector or collectively through the government should be determined only based upon which approach is more efficient and cost effective, in the long run, for the good of the people. Single Payer Universal Access to Healthcare is a prime example.

It should be obvious to all of us that many of our government systems are in trouble. That isn’t because government is wrong. It is because of management incompetence in government. That condition doesn’t have to exist anymore in government than it has to exist in the private sector. Ultimately, these problems lie at the feet of those whom we periodically elect to office for the purpose of managing the affairs of our nation. What is needed is for them to do their job. That they are very well paid notwithstanding, too many of them continually fail to do so. They have sold out to the Corporatocracy and Power Elite.

Not only do they fail to do their jobs, but they never will unless it is in their interest; and it will not be in their interest until you, the responsible citizens in this democratic republic insist upon it. How can you do this? The answer is, take an active part in government. Read, study, keep abreast of what is going on in government, and by all means, vote. Also, stay in contact with your Congressional Representatives and Senators through telephone calls and letters. It’s your responsibility. Freedom demands responsibility. If you don’t you will continue to get more of what you are getting and conditions will continue to deteriorate and so will your freedom. Extensive changes in government must be made.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

Have You Been Looking?

          I don’t know how old you are or your station in life. Neither do I know your intellectual level nor how you think. Well, maybe that’s not quite right. In general, overall, I do have a pretty good idea of how people think, i.e. make decisions, reason, judge, arrive at conclusions, etc.; but, specifically, we all vary in our application of such (You might want to refer to my posting to this blog on August 09, 2013 titled, Who Am I? [Just scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on “older posts”.]). Just speaking in general, however, don’t you think that, for the most part, most all people think and act in terms of just their own world, that which concerns only them? Think of death and dying. Isn’t it true that the closer your relationship is with the deceased the greater is the grief you suffer and, the further away, the less? Stay with me now–I’m going to get to my point. I’m going all the way around the “rosy” to say, we all live in our own little world. The further away something–anything–is from us, the less attention we direct to it. So it is with the world in which we live. And, yet, that world with which we have little or no concern may be about to blow up in our face. Don’t laugh. This has happened frequently throughout history. This thought, though simple, is important. The more comfortable we are with our current status, the more apt we are to be surprised and or shocked when something unexpectedly happens.

          For just a moment, let us back off from our own little world and, from our experience, study, reading, etc., try to picture in our mind what life has been for people, as a whole, on this planet for the past couple hundred years or so. You don’t have to work at it. Just draw upon your knowledge of history as brief as it might be (Nobody is exempt from that affliction unless they are a historian or something like that.) and what you know or have experienced. I submit to you that, our present problems notwithstanding, that, during the past seventy years or so, the people of the United States of America, as a whole, have lived and experienced a quality of life and prosperity rarely seen throughout history. For a multitude of reasons, including an explosion of technology, we have lived as if there is no tomorrow–so to speak. We have lived “high on the hog”. Our nation has been, and still is, the leader of the free world–the richest, most prosperous, most powerful civilization in the history of mankind (I’ll look forward to arguments on that from historians). Think about that. As has been said many times, we have five per cent of the world’s population and consume twenty-five percent of the world’s resources (to the exclusion of many across the planet who are completely destitute and starving). Our poor live better than the poor in many of the other countries.

Living in our own little world(s), most of us have failed to recognize and give thanks for how blessed we really are. Not giving it a moment’s thought, we take for granted what we have and, generally speaking, have come to believe we are entitled. In all honesty, as a nation, since the great depression of the thirties, we have become fat, lazy, and spoiled, i.e. narcissistic. Why, therefore, do we wonder why many in the world don’t like us? Perhaps it is because we have been the spoiled rich kids on the block, too often living at the expense of others. Does this sound like our leaders, the Corporatocracy and Power Elite, the very rich and powerful–the one percent, five percent, or whatever? Doesn’t it, also, sound like those at the bottom of our society who think the world owes them a living, are entitled, and collect benefits when they could be working instead–those who refuse to go to school, run in gangs, will not work, and are completely unproductive to society. Understand! I’m not talking about those who really can’t find jobs because there are none. I’m talking about those who won’t work even when they are able and jobs are available.The point here is that there is enough blame to go all around. Some of our poor have some of the same afflictions as some of our rich who, also, lie, cheat, steal, and exploit others (Again, let’s set aside our own little world for a moment and look at the big picture).

I don’t know how much longer this is all going to go on, but I think the jig is about up. The party is about to come to an end unless we the people, the responsible people get our priorities in order and take back our government. For the past seventy or so years, we have been living in a false economy–a false prosperity based on war, greed, borrowed money, excess, and narcissism–not very unlike the final days of the Roman Empire. The rich have sucked our middleclass and poor dry and their house of cards is coming to an end, leaving our children and grand children with the bill.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net

The War Against The Rich

          In a recent issue of the New York Times, it was said that the venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Kenneth Langone, one of the founders of Home Depot, said that the super rich in America were being vilified the way Jews in Nazi Germany had been. On this subject, I can speak for no one but myself, and I say this is not true. I’m not against the rich. I’m not against anyone who succeeds, and neither do I believe are most people. In fact, I look up to, respect, and admire them. Although I didn’t succeed, I have spent most all my life trying to be rich. I didn’t make it, but I sure as the dickens tried. There is no rich man anywhere who has worked any harder than I have–bar none, unless he has done hard labor in the fields, the coal mines, steel mills, or something on that order–most of whom have not become rich either.

          Allow me to tell you what I abhor about the rich and wealthy.

First of all, I object to those who are overpaid for the work they do. Speaking in general, it is my understanding (I have read from respectable sources) that, adjusting for inflation, wages of the average middleclass working person in this country haven’t increased since the seventies. I understand that the wages of the average CEO have increased from 112% of that of the average worker in their organization to 350% to 400% (I’m sure these percentages will be immediately challenged, but forget it. They are approximate and will vary from organization to organization, but they are certainly representative). What makes this condition even more reprehensible than it first appears is that, while productivity of the average worker has increased substantially over the period covered, productivity of the CEO hasn't increased accordingly. Also! In many instances, the CEOs involved laid off an equivalent number of workers, money-wise (or shifted the work offshore), in order to cover the loss to their bottom line from their pay increases.

          Second, this is just a part of the total picture. The foregoing notwithstanding, the Corporatocracy and very wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes according to their ability to pay, effectively riding on the backs of the middleclass. Let’s forget this fair share bit as, by itself, it’s just talk. The question is, what does fair mean? It was decided long ago that, relative to taxes, fair means “according to one’s ability to pay” (Take note–they are constantly trying to change it. It seems all you hear anymore is the word “fair”. The word ability is ignored in the equation). In the seventies, the top personal income tax rate was 89%, or thereabouts. The top corporate rate was 51%.  In spite of the massive increases in profits, today, the top tax rates have decreased, I believe, to 28% and 35% respectively; and many, through “corporate welfare” (legal loopholes) and other means, avoid paying even that ( I understand that the average effective corporate tax rate is currently 18%. This does not include the taxes that are evaded, i.e. those that are illegal. I heard on C-span just yesterday that there are approximately $356 Billion in taxes that go unpaid each year in addition (as I understand it) to taxes on income illegally not reported. My what a hole that would make in the national debt over ten years.

          Third and probably most important of all, we have a Constitution that establishes our nation as a democratic republic, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people (Abraham Lincoln stated this very beautifully in his Gettysburg Address). By God, corporations are not people and neither did he create this world just for the rich and powerful, the elite. In the New Testament you will read that Jesus had much to say about this.

          Our Constitution established a representative form of government. It established a legislative body, our Congress, which is elected by the people and is supposed to represent the people who elected them; but “They Do Not”. Most, if not all, of them are bought and paid for (I say bribed), by the Corporatocracy through campaign contributions and influence enhanced by an open and/or revolving door policy in hiring representatives after they leave office. Some of these corporations go so far as to even write the very laws for which our representatives vote, sometimes sitting down in the representatives’ offices to do so. The only influence our people have over the government of our country today is their vote which is almost wholly influenced by the media and paid propaganda financed by the Corporatocracy through their campaign contributions. Needless to say, for the most part these corporation could care less for the environment, our country (Just look at globalization), or our people. They care only for their profits, themselves, and the rich.

          There is no war against the rich. The real war is only against us, the middleclass, those who are the real producers in this economy–those on the backs of whom the super rich tread, and we are losing. It’s not right, and you know it. Only those who are making all the money disagree. In the meantime, we still have twenty million or more people unemployed or under employed, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, homeless, sleeping on the streets, under bridges, or in their cars, forty seven million on food stamps, homes still being repossessed, and on and on–six years after the crash and no-one is doing anything about it. That’s the way it seems to me; and, yet, our problems can be easily resolved, if our “Representatives” only will–if they will look after the best interests of the nation and the people rather than themselves and reelection.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net 

What Do We Do Now?

          I still cannot get out of my mind a past Sunday’s (May 11, 2014) broadcast of CBS’s Sixty Minutes. It was a re-run of a previous report some time back on which I commented then, too; but, this time, their report has had an even greater impact on my mind–perhaps because of more recent events. I am talking about Congressional abuse of campaign contributions, one use of which is for personal gain and pleasure through the use of loopholes in order to circumvent the law declaring such use illegal. The report of Sixty Minutes states that our Congress is, in effect, comfortable with the status quo. They don’t want to change. I’ll bet they don’t. It was said that one Congressman spent $500,000 on golf outings in Scotland in one year. This is just one example, so absurd, it is frightening; and there are many others. If I did this kind of thing, I would hide my head in shame. Shame! Shame! Shame! I couldn't look others in the face. I might, also, go to jail; but, like Elizabeth Warren said, “The only people in America today who go to jail are regular folks”.

          I believe the people, the people of this country, want reform–complete reform. I certainly do. They want campaign finance reform. They want tax reform; and, just as I believe this, I also believe the people want universal single payer healthcare (Which, I predict, they will get when their belly is full of the presently exorbitantly expensive, highly contentious, inefficient, confusing, and unaffordable so-called  Affordable Care Act), Social Security adjusted to current costs and living conditions, jobs (in this country) with livable wages, and a patriotic Congress that will work for the interests of the people and our country whom they were elected to represent rather  than constantly “feathering  their own nests” and political agendas as they are doing now, serving the Corporatocracy and Power Elite . We also need to get our financial house in order–all of us, the government as well as the people. We need to begin living within our means.

          How do we pay for this? We begin by everyone paying their fair share of taxes according to their ability to pay. We, our nation, can afford to pay for our needs–all of them, if we will only do it, if everyone will only do their part.

          This posting is titled ”What Do We Do Now?”. What do we do in our democratic republic (a government of the people, by the people, and for the people) when the government refuses to serve those whom it is sworn to represent? What do we the people do when our government turns its back on the needs and will of its people? I’ll make a suggestion. It is past time for us to become active. It’s time for us to take back our government. It’s time for us to become involved. If we all join together in a unified voice to our representatives through our letters, telephone  calls, opinion polls, and votes at election  time (Think November), we can do this. Our continued pacifism will only serve to get us more of what we have. We must remove those who do not represent our interests from office–those who represent the Corporatocracy and Power Elite, an oligarchy of which is anathema to a government of the people and to us. Rid us of Corporate Governance. Do it now! If they ignore you, don’t vote for them. They are not representing you.

         

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net