So, the candidate promises the crowd he
will faithfully represent the wishes of his constituency in the halls
of Congress. That really sounds promising since we certainly don't
want someone to go to Congress that will act in contradiction to the
best interests of his constituency. But, wait. Is that really true
in every circumstance?
One of the problems that we have with
our Congress now is that it is so difficult to reach a consensus on
any kind of legislation. For instance, it is plain to see that as a
nation we need to be moving toward an energy policy that drastically
reduces carbon emissions. For states that do not produce fossil
fuels this may be a no-brainer but for Kentucky, a state in which
coal is a large part of the economy, it is a bit more important. So,
what do our representatives do? Well, most of them go about wailing
about the War on Coal and attempt to deny climate change saying that
the eggheads are all a bunch of chicken littles. It is obvious that
we all breath the same air, more or less, and that reducing carbon is
in everyone's best interests but in the short term it is politically
expedient to rail against those efforts in order to appeal to
something that is affecting the electorate. The long term will
require something else but if you are trying to win a two year term
that is just not important.
So, what if a candidate came to you and
said that he or she had certain goals and could state them to you
clearly? What if that candidate asked for your support in achieving
those goals and said that to achieve a goal that would be good for
the nation it may be necessary to vote against the coal interests and
for an energy policy that would provide for the future health of the
economy and the environment. Would you be willing to accept that
hard decision and vote for this candidate or would your own short
term interest be the compelling factor. I'll bet most of us would
like to think that we would be reasonable and accept that the short
term discomfort would be worth the long term benefit. I hate to tell
you but your candidates don't give you that much credit. Most
candidates adhere to the old maxim that “if you can't dazzle them
with facts then you must baffle them with bull----.” To be
truthful, there is good reason for that since it seems to work. All
it takes is millions of dollars to buy airtime and the bull flows
unceasingly. It works and that is why we don't get better.
There is a long list of actions that
need to be taken to prepare us for long term favorable results but we
just can't get past the election cycle with the candidates that we
have. The candidates you have accepted. Fact is that a candidate
that is not beholden to the election cycle is a rare commodity and
that is the epitome of selfishness and narcissism.
We need to come up with long term
solutions for providing health care to our citizens. This isn't
hard. We know how to do it but we are held slave to short term
decision making that is reliant on ideology. We are enslaved to the
big money corporations that get wealthy off the public coffers. They
buy Congressmen. Our highways and bridges are falling apart and
anyone can see we need to do some serious maintenance. We can't do
it because we can't find the money. In the richest country in the
world we can't find the money. Advanced education is going to be
required for the United States to maintain its lead in innovation and
research. What are we doing about it? Well, there is a substantial
number who think we should abolish the Department of Education and
return control of education to the individual school districts. Any
reasonable solution is going to have to include more teachers and
better pay. But we just can't get there in an election cycle. What
is going to happen to our economy when the subways in New York are
flooded and there is no water for crops in California or the Great
Plains? We really need to be very active in preparing now to avert
the worst but we can't even get people to agree that there is a need.
In our state our candidates say we just can't lose those valuable
coal jobs. Look at this. Those jobs are disappearing and we have
waited so long that the loss is now being created by loss of market.
We could have and should have seen it coming and diversified our
economy but the short term addiction to the election cycle allowed
the candidates to pull the wool over our eyes and we allowed
ourselves to become blind.
The solutions to these problems that we
have been unable and unwilling to accept are available. They have
not even been hard to see. It is just that we have allowed ideology
to make us blind. But there is a simple solution that will free us
from candidates that just can't manage to be held beholden to the
election cycle. Ask yourself, “what is the one thing that would
remove the influence of special interests? What is the one thing
that would cause candidates to listen to the people rather than those
huge moneybags that finance the million and billion dollar election
cycles? What is the one thing that would allow the candidates to
make a case for policy based on logic and reason? It is no secret.
Get the money out of our elections.
“It'll never happen, you say.”
The reason it will never happen is that you, we, will not make it
happen. Why not? We are The People. We are the ones the candidates
make speeches about and refer to in our great documents so why not?
At the risk of sounding bombastic I am going to tell you that this is
the most critical issue facing our country today. If we do not do
this then the charade of open elections is a facade that will cover
up rule by moneyed special interests. When that happens you can kiss
any hope of a resurrection for the middle class goodbye.
What will you do? Will you continue to
allow our candidates to dodge the issues and vote for special
interests or will you demand something different? Will you accept
servitude to political ideology or will you let the principle of “one
man, one vote be our abiding resolve?
My Take is that there is no longer any
time for short term thinking. We have squandered it by listening to
the siren call of special interest candidates.
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