A few random political-ish thoughts.

Full disclosure:  I’m not a fan of our political system/climate/arena/etc.

Thankfully, the general election is coming up shortly, so I think I’ll stop receiving all the annoying phone calls after that.  My friend told me that the reason I’m receiving so many calls is because I live in a “battleground” state and am registered NPA (no party affiliation).  Clearly, registering as such may have been a mistake.

I’ve mentioned the toxic polarization that seems to be fostered by the media before, and I’ll say it again.  Not Good.

Why do we still have an electoral college? I get the idea that people living in Idaho, uh Iowa, are just as important as people living in New York or Texas, but they aren’t more important either.  In our digital age, it seems like everyone’s vote should count and the dude with the most votes wins. Continuing on with a tradition simply because it’s the way we’ve always done it is… dumb.

So, I mentioned that Florida is a battleground state.  You probably knew that already.  Did you know that nearly 2 billion dollars have been spent on just on Presidential campaign advertising so far?  What do you think rich business people or corporations are thinking when they give, uh, $10m to a campaign?  A shout out on twitter?  These rich people made their money making decisions based on ROI.  Do you not think they are looking for a return on these investments donations?

I fully understand that it takes a lot of money to inundate the public with a message.  In fact, the other day on NPR, a guy was arguing for even MORE campaign spending.  He said the general population has no idea what’s going on (can’t argue with that) so more money needs to be spent so they do. Then he went on to argue that all this money being spent is really good for the economy, so no one should be concerned about it.  I have a couple thoughts on that last part.

1.  The bulk of campaign spending is used for attack ads on television.

2.  The media companies are the ones making money off of those ads.

3.  Therefore, it is in the media’s (seemingly) best interest to keep things as polarized as possible, so the ad revenue keeps flowing.

I’m pretty sure that campaign contributions are one of the best examples of disposable income. The money would have been spent on something else if not the campaign, so the money would have flowed back into the economy anyway.

I also think that arguing for billions in campaign spending to stimulate the economy, would be a lot like arguing that the terrorists really helped our economy after 9/11 because of all the new TSA jobs created…

In other words, at what cost are we being stimulated?

Did you know that most governmental departments of whatever get a budget each year.  And if they don’t use all of their budget money, then they usually lose that amount for the next year.  To keep that from happening, many departments will spend a ton of money “redecorating” or on “office supplies” at the end of a fiscal year so that they will show that they used/need every penny of their budgets.

But our government works great.

How did we get to this place and why are we content here and why aren’t we doing anything about it?  Are we distracted, lazy, apathetic? Evidently.

Finally, and this is pretty basic but clearly needs to be restated–Debt is not Good.  For anyone.  For the individual or the country.  They say that Solomon was a bright guy…. The borrower is slave to the lender.

 

Do the Good.

where are we going? or, I just threw up in my mouth a little…

If you ask me, I’ll normally tell you that I don’t care about politics.  And the reality is that I don’t care, but at the same time, I know that I really do care.  I don’t care in the sense that most things that happen seem to be outside of my control.  So why waste brainpower and emotional capital on that which is outside the realm of my influence?  Earlier this summer, at a faux family reunion, I was having an intellectualish discussion on our current political/economic climate with my very successful Uncle Kirke.  Long story short, he got mad at me for pretending like I don’t care and insinuating that Jesus may be considered a communist.  Apparently communist is a loaded word with a negative stigma in many parts…  (We both, as well as our 6-8 debate watching audience, may have been drinking.  Him, either red or white wine, and I, an oh-so delicious Aunt B–Finlandia Grapefruit Vodka, Club Soda, Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice– which also happens to be named for his wife, the cocktail’s designer.)

The point thus far is that 1.) the Aunt B really is a lovely drink that you should try, and 2.) that I actually do think about and care deeply about everything that is going on.  I think that the reason why I have seldom wanted to have any kind of, particularly public, opinion regarding our nationstate, is that I have felt powerless about rectifying anything.  I also know that a weakness of mine is living in a world of theory, where praxis is either not desirable or for someone else, etc.  So, knowing that I can waste my life by only theorizing and accomplishing nothing tangible–since accomplishment is necessarily rooted in praxis–I have resolved to try and  thus will grace you with my thoughts on the state of things and an action plan for Election 2012!!

For my sanity and the purposes of this here post, I’m going to limit my thoughts to the federal government.

Elected Officials

It boggle my mind that the American people have allowed the same people to make long and lucrative careers out of political office.  I thought they were supposed to be representing us in a thankless job.  Not everyone is rich before they begin their political careers, instead, everybody that leaves congress is a millionaire because they buy land cheaply and then earmark road money toward the area where their land is.  Their land then becomes worth a whole lot more then they paid for it.  Anyone seen the Boardwalk Empire?  This happens.  I thought there were laws against insider trading?  Is this reported in the media?  See my thoughts on taxes and guess which bracket the media owners fall into… We elect people over and over and over who write special perks into law to benefit no one but themselves.  Special healthcare, special retirement, salary increases even if CPI decreases!  It is asinine that we put up with this.  But we do.  And we continue to elect and elect because if they have a D or an R next to their name, depending on our political bent, then they are ok by us.  I’m so tired of the political rhetoric and squabbling.  It’s embarrassing.

Fiscalness

This country has spent itself under the table.  As one with reasonable mortgage being my only debt, I don’t feel out of line talking about this one.  The Bible, along with about a million other reputable sources, say that the borrow is slave to the lender.  Have you seen our debt figures lately?  Yet, we don’t seem to have any desire to get this under control.  Romney wants to fill a $35, 000 hole with $450…   he wants to remove all funding from PBS, etc. in order to pay down the deficit. (both of the above numbers have been reduced by six 0’s…)  I was watching PBS this evening, first a nature show about Polar bears that the little B was enjoying (she started laughing out loud when they showed the seal pups!) then a Frontline piece on the Opium in Afghanistan.  After watching this, I’m pretty sure (and I mean no offense to A360) that PBS is the only network that has real journalism.  As I’ve alluded to before, most everything on the networks, particularly the cable networks, is simply entertainment.

I guess I wonder if we need to spend more money on our military then the next 100 countries put together?  Looks like a good place to start spending cuts to me.  How about no more Stealth Bomber flyovers of football games?  In the current economic climate , this seems like something we could possibly do without.  I would advocate for DoD cuts first…

Taxes

I don’t like taxes.  I want to pay as few taxes as possible.  I hire an accountant to help me do that.  I feel that without question, I manage my money better than the government.  That being said, they obviously need it, but the fact that billionaire financiers pay only 15% while I pay closer to 30% and half of the country pays 0% doesn’t seem right.  If the middle class is what the politicians are fighting over then why do we pay the most?  If you are a billionaire then you make dividends and capital gains, these are taxed lightly.  If you are the middle class you make a salary and this gets taxed much more heavily.  I’m sorry but we can’t have so many loopholes.  25-30% sales tax.  No income tax.  Sales tax doesn’t include food type items so our poorer people still don’t pay anything.  Unless they buy a flat screen and an x-box and then they can pay taxes on those goods just like the rest of us…

Action!

We need term limits on every office, if the President gets 2 terms then so do Senators and Representatives.  This will help stave off human nature, which is quite corruptible.  In order to help facilitate this, I’m advocating voting out the incumbent in every race which you are eligible to vote.  We’ll continue to do this every year until the people being elected come together with some sense and impose term limits and decide to work together hopefully using the ideas above as a starting place.

I apologize for the rant.  Good luck with all of this…