Some Republicans like to say, it’s a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Well, both are problems. I agree with cutting spending, in the right place. Using the New York Times budget calculator, it is easy to balance the budget and even generate a surplus. Return to earlier, pre-increased-greed levels.
Wow, just read this essay by David Michael Green. It is a frightening description of the big picture in the story of who we are and how we got here. Powerful writing.
Obama announces a historic failure of the Democratic party to reach a budget deal with Republicans. Why is he smiling about it? He and Reid announce a “historic” “compromise”. A compromise is when you want something and your opponent want something, and you agree to give and take. When what you want is to NOT lose, it’s not a compromise, it’s a mugging. A mugger comes up to you and says “give me all your money!”. You reach a deal with the mugger to give him 50% of your money. You call that a compromise? You lost!
A simple physics concept, that systems tend to equilibrium. The natural state or outcome. A ball rolls down inside a bowl and oscillation back and forth while friction slows it, until it halts at the bottom, forces in balance.
Why don’t we humans reach equilibrium? We continue to grow, consuming, increasing our numbers. Can’t we choose balance? Pick our population and work only enough to sustain it? Apparently not.
A system out of balance, such as an explosion, changes rapidly during a phase before equilibrium because it is driven out by external forces. This forces act upon humanity to drive the population higher. We will reach equilibrium when the death rate matches the growth rate. This might be an equilibrium rife with poverty and misery. Probably not for all.
Right now, a quiet ologarchic coup is setting the stage for 500 Americans to enjoy pleasant lives while the middle class disappears. But, that’s another story.
60 Minutes story on the European 35-hour work week. End of the story is that they are deciding to be more like Americans, who work 60 hour weeks without extra pay. Which form of stupidity discounts the uniquely wonderful reality of life to embrace the fools who have done the most to degrade it? Don’t be fools! Enjoy life while working just enough to provide for needs. Don’t compete in the race to the bottom.
As I recall from my college political science class, politics is the legitimate exercise of the will of the people. As representative democracy in the United States has been hopelessly corrupted, we need new politics. What form shall that be? Direct democracy? Facebook polling? Pure plutocracy?
I propose that we add to interest groups which already exist, such as the Sierra Club, by formalizing further power in their hands through delegating voting from individual people to the organization. When an issue is under consideration, such as renewing the clean air act, a direct poll of people is undertaken. The collected votes are counted from people plus the delegated votes of representative organizations.
Perhaps plutocracy would continue to operate. And corruption. The test would be that the people’s will would overcome and out-vote those legitimized expressions of representative will.
I think it’s funny how The Google Executive in Egypt is credited with the revolution, and is identified as The Google Executive instead of as a citizen of a particular country. Google is a nation!
Steve Croft’s interview of Julian Assange is full of barely veiled innuendo. Crofts acts as a self-appointed judge of Assange’s actions. This is not an unbiased interview. It is a low point for the quality of news reporting at CBS News. Faced with Assange’s defense of acting in the best tradition of American values, Crofts acts like surprised or simply ignores the challenge he himself invoked by accusation.
This is a good reflection of a increasingly common American persona, a simpleton unable to think critically about its own values and their relation to the world. Are we really to suspend our faith in freedom of speech and the value of whistle-blowers and civility simply because someone is embarrasingly exposing hypocrisy in the actions of our leaders?
I applaud the cooperation between Ron Paul and Barney Frank on cutting Defense spending. This article is old news, but I still want to point it out:
Here’s my message after the State of the Union (tried to send it via whitehouse.gov, but they give me a 404 error):