Do our two presidential candidates give us a real choice? If you listen to their words, they seem to; but if you examine the results of past elections, you see that in recent times the conservatives always gain ground. The bulk of all financing for the president and major seats in the congress flow from a small segment of the wealthy, upper one percent of the population. What looks like a battle between two independent parties, Democrats and Republicans, is really a battle between two parties dependent on that same segment of the one percent. What you see is a game of good-cop-bad-cop, being played out to give the illusion that there is real competition in our political system. If, at the end of a president's four-year term, you add up the legislative gains for the citizen vs. the corporate-financial-banking complex, the citizens lose ground almost every time. The only difference is that citizens lose less with the good cop than with the bad, but they lose in both cases. This process has been getting worse with every president since President Clinton's second term. I'm not a politico, so I won't present any naive solutions; my aim here is to inform.
Our country had its start as a confederation of states with the Articles of Confederation as its constitution; the federal government was extremely weak. Each state felt independent of the others: some printed their own money or put in place tariff laws against their neighbors. After freeing themselves from the British, liberty was the overriding objective of the people and politicians. It didn't take long--about ten years--for the founders to see that a system based entirely on states' rights did not work.
The founders then decided to write a new constitution giving the federal government more, but limited, powers; we became a republic. As advanced as this new constitution was in its time, it was written for the white, male, property owner; the only ones given the right to vote. Since then the constitution has been improved with the addition of many amendments: the first ten being the Bill of Rights.
There have been times in the past when various groups have tried to turn back the clock on this country's progressive movement; the civil war being the most extreme case. Now we are again facing a threat from large property owners. They are still trying to turn the clock back, metaphorically, to the time of the large plantation, where the master had absolute control over the slaves. Their weapon now is their vast supply of money: money to propagandize, money to buy people, and money to win elections. Their cry is still liberty: liberty to make a profit on every human need they can get away with.
One of the major advances made by this small segment of the wealthy, is the Supreme Court's ruling in their Citizens United case which allows the use of unlimited money in an election campaign. We also see voter-suppression laws being enacted in many states. I can go on, but I'll end by repeating that neither party represents the people, and the media doesn't have the guts to inform them of the danger. WAKE UP AMERICA! Our elections are not free and fair.
In the absence of a "none of the above" choice on the ballot, I will vote for a third party candidate to show that I'm still and active voter. I must break my habit of voting for the lesser of two evils. The question is whether it is better to throw us "frogs" in warm water or in hot water. In warm water we can sit in the pot and hope something will blow the fire out, but in hot water we will be hopping around trying to get out of the pot.
Burton Becker has just published a new book: My Dream of God, A Call to Action: Justice for All. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1478239611. We must get money out of elections and politics.
For more visit http://www.ideasfrombeyond.org/
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