Outsiders control our elections!

I’m hoping that now that all the media companies have booked their campaign revenues, that they might do some honest reporting about why both Trump and Sanders did so well.  We as citizens are tired of the Parties and Media telling us what to think.  We are aware that the politicians are representing the special interests as presented by their parties to the detriment of the United States.  These interests that hold power in this country think they can hold on to it only by spreading hate, lies, and division.  The special interests are picking our candidates by contributions, not giving the ordinary citizen a voice due to a lack of money.  They then come in from out of town and tell us how terrible all our choices are.   We are outraged when Russia tampers with our election, but accept as ordinary when California and Washington DC tampers with our Minnesota elections. It’s been a long held American value to mind our own business and stay away from our neighbors business, we need to renew this American Value.  We need to regain control of our corrupt political process and talk about campaign finance reform.  A Constitutional Amendment reading:  Notwithstanding the first amendment, all efforts to influence elections are limited to those able to vote in said election.  This may return our parties to shepherding legislation and our lobbyists to advising about issues.  Let’s get both these groups out of our local campaigns.

Change you can't believe in.

The idea that any one President can change our corrupt system should have been put to bed with President Obama’s “change you can believe in” election.  We all seem to agree that there is rot in our government, but until we are willing to accept the blame for the corruption we will see no change.  This campaign of lies that we have been subjected to is the best proof of the corruption. If you can’t differentiate yourself from your competition on the issues, or justify your position based on facts, you are forced with making your opponent into a horrible person.  Both parties have shown their true faces with the ads they are running with out of context quotes, decades old actions, blame for everything gone wrong in the last 10 years, and downright lies.  It is the folks running these ads that are benefitting from the corruption and because they hold the levers of power, the corruption will continue.  The real corruption is in Congress.  We can only fight this in two ways: refusing to fund any political entity that we can’t directly vote for and asking our Congresspersons to back a constitutional amendment prohibiting funding from those not able to vote in the election.  Change will only come when we eliminate the power of the special interests to influence elections.  We have no right to influence elections in other states, and others don’t have a right to influence our elections.  Let’s keep things local.

Ignorant or Stupid?

The good news about our presidential situation is that rest of the country knows how we got Jessie Ventura as Governor.  The bad news is that we’ve forgotten the difference between ignorance and stupidity.  We are all ignorant about some things and the more complicated our society becomes the more acceptable it is to be ignorant.  In my youth most males could tune up a car and change a tube on a radio and you weren’t considered very smart if you couldn’t.  We are now blissfully ignorant of how either cars or electronics work, and carry no shame for our ignorance.  Ignorance can be defined as the lack of knowledge about a subject.  Stupidity, on the other hand, is the inability to realize that you are ignorant about something.  All stupid people are ignorant, but not all ignorant people are stupid. (logic is foreign to the stupid).  Even though the vast majority of illegal aliens have entered the country legally and overstayed their visa, and even though we have a net outflow of illegal’s currently, the stupid think a wall will somehow solve the immigration problem.  Both China and East Germany have had experiences with walls that didn’t work well, and Israel is currently finding out that walls can’t solve problems.  Because our media and celebrities say a wall will do our country good, people aren’t willing to overcome their ignorance and we continue with our stupid ways. 

John Stuart Mills said that “Not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are conservatives.”  We are now suffering the results of the smart conservatives leaning on the stupid ones to carry them through.  We should have learned that electing a President as a change agent isn’t going to work.  It hasn’t worked well the last 8 years and it certainly isn’t going to work in the next four.  The divide and conquer tactics of our political parties has poisoned our country into a mass of people that automatically reject or accept all ideas as either unpatriotic or a magic solution that will fix everything. Many of us have come to believe that because many politicians are liars, the best politician should be the best liar.

The majority of the current campaign issues may be highly emotional, but affect relatively few people.  Of all the issues of concern to us only two will affect our grandchildren: Global Warming and Campaign Finance Reform.     

Should we really want change in this country, we have to get Congress to represent those in their districts, rather than myriad special interest groups.  As long as campaign money can come from sources other than voters in the campaign, we will have the elites on the campaign finance gravy train keeping everything just as it is.  If this country isn’t great anymore it is because of the hateful ways the elites are keeping in power.  We must change the way we believe and act towards those that disagree with us if we are to unite and prosper.                     

In Spite of our Faces

As I continue to watch a large number of people in the world cut off their noses in spite of their face, I wonder why?  At first I believed it was just the 50% of the population that is below average intelligence being catered to by the press and political parties. Then I transitioned into thinking it was a belief that all politicians are liars and that it follows that the best liar would make the best politician.  I am getting more inclined to think that it is an attempt by both the politicians and media to divert attention from the real issues facing us in order to remain holding the strings of power.  The banks have convinced us that everyone has to be in debt in order for the economy to run.  The insurance companies have convinced us they are necessary to pay for our health care.  The lawyers have convinced us that it is necessary to sue in order to get justice.  The gun industry has convinced us that someone could possibly take our guns away.  The Chamber of Commerce has convinced us that minimum wage would hurt the economy and higher personal taxes would cause less hiring. 

These beliefs have turned into “truths” in order to create fear and anger so that the status quo can be maintained by the current gridlock.  Because we are resistant to change, many fear it and try their best to stop changes which may be inevitable.  Name calling is the way to media access, not position papers.  Fear and anger are necessary to block logic from minds.  I don’t see any solution until we can all accept the blame for giving our political power to the special interest groups, political parties included, and return it to our locally elected representatives. 

Change isn't going to Happen

With our candidates chosen, it has become clear that the conservatives have taken over this country.  By conservative, I mean those resistant to change, not that strange creature created by the media, (“screw you, I’ve got mine”).  We are given one candidate who brags about buying politicians and another who has accepted millions from special interests and explains that it has no effect on her!  I believe the media is largely responsible for this state of affairs.  With revenues going down, the mainstream media has accepted the internet’s click bait tactics  for hateful headlines leading to non-existent news.  The Media is so worried about losing the ten billion dollars plus of campaign revenue that they totally ignore campaign finance reform; the reason both Trump and Sanders have attracted millions of followers.  As a country we will be subject to another four years of the GOP investigating Hillary for crimes that only exist in their minds.  We will also see a continuation of the GOP stopping every proposal to solve the country’s problems,(while proposing virtually nothing), and then blaming the Democrats for a country that doesn’t work.   What is obvious, is that big money is the only thing that counts in politics. Intelligence certainly doesn't.

The Constitution is clear about this.

There are many parts of our Constitution that can be interpreted in more than one way.  One part that isn’t argued is that the people we elect represent those in the geographic area they live in.  Two Senators per state, one House Representative for every so many citizens living in a defined geographic district.  The political establishment, which I define as those involved in the business of campaign finance, (giving, receiving, raising, spending) are doing everything in their power to ignore this basic tenant of our form of government.  It is to the establishments benefit to be able to receive and spend money in manners that transcend these borders and as we all know, the more they can raise the more they can spend. 

We citizens have powered this process along with our realization that our special interest groups can get better action on our political concerns than our congressperson can.  The special interests can get to the committee members and target specific politicians that control their interests.  Our representative, if he is not on the committee, has very limited ability to address concerns.  This has led our representatives to represent our special interest groups rather than ourselves.  Obviously those groups with the most money will get the best representation.  This leads to the corruption that is represented by such actions as America’s Health Insurance Plans both writing and fighting Obamacare, the bankers eliminating Glass-Steagall leading to the 07 recession and their bailout, and I am sure you can think of many others.

The addiction of the establishment to this campaign gravy train is such that they are seemingly conspiring with each other to maintain the status quo.  The horror that both parties show to their “independent” candidates just goes to show the draw of all that money.  They hide behind the First Amendment, fear, lies , personal attacks, stupidity and ignorance to provoke a divide and conquer atmosphere. This effectively hides the real issues by keeping everyone on a war footing that makes change too fearful to examine.

The interventions that both Bernie and Donald offer do little more than point out the problem.  No one person can get rid of this corrupt government that we are suffering.  It will take the efforts of all of us.  I would offer the idea of a Constitutional Amendment reading:  “Notwithstanding the first amendment, efforts to influence elections for office shall be limited to those able to vote in said election.”  If we only support politicians that will support such an amendment we might be able to clean things up.

The Campaign Gravy Train

I have yet to see one media speculation behind the real reason so many are backing Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders.  According to the Campaign Finance Institute spending in 2012 for House, Senate and Presidential campaigns exceeded 2.9 Billion Dollars.  This doesn’t include the “dark money” (money of unknown origin) that is spent thanks to the Citizen’s United Decision.  The public that is supporting both these candidates is fed up with the campaign gravy train that the media is the beneficiary of.  The billions of dollars that go through the politicians and their best friend’s hands coming from both your contributions and those of the special interest lobbies, eventually end up with the media on ad buys after paying for high salaried lobbyists and party bigwigs.  Instead of pointing out the ideas of government funded campaigns, term limits, laws that limit contributions to voters, or other campaign spending ideas, the media is only engaged in spreading campaign dirt, lies, and alarmist warnings about the horrible things the other side is doing.  Return on investment is the media’s concern--not presenting the news in ways that problems can be solved.

 Realistic campaign finance reform threatens the leaders of both parties, all the special interest groups, and the politicians that rely more on special interest groups than their constituents.   In fact, all those with power wish to maintain the status quo of their power.  They can only do this by diverting our attention away from reforming campaign finance and pointing it to “bogus” issues.  They don’t report the issues as news because they can be paid for reporting the candidates’ views of the issues.  By reporting on the mud throwing, they can increase readership/viewers because we seem to like hearing about other’s mishaps and trouble.  We’re mad that the politicians are representing the special interest groups instead of us. There are more important things than money.  It should be up to the media to help us change this.