We have turned the page on 2013 and stepped into 2014 with anticipation that the anxieties and uncertainties of the past half decade will magically evaporate and America will once again find stable economic footing and the politically ignited social divide will evaporate bringing back the long achieved and prevalent tolerance which until recently permeated the Nation. We have turned the page, but here we are.
There is an old adage that says, “regardless where you go, there you are.” A majority of voters across the Nation knew the nature of the Administration it had elected in 2008 when it re-elected it for a second term. Regardless what the media pretends, and regardless what this Administration itself pretends with the denials, we know it is failing the America it wants to change.
One of the prominent headscratchers dancing around Washington is the lack of “head-rolling” in the White House. No-one at the State Department has been chucked, and Clinton not only infamously barked, “what difference does it make?” at the Senate, but she now believes she is Presidential material. Self-serving lies and dishonesty have been de rigueur on Benghazi.
The IRS was very effectively used as a political machine working for the re-election of Obama, and apparently so has the NSA. Obama’s pen is apparently quite capable of stepping all over the Constitution without much reaction, suggesting a lack of familiarity among most as to the content of the Nation’s most important document. Even the Affordable Care Act disaster barely causes serious concern in the Fourth Estate. Obama’s poll slide isn’t anywhere near the reaction we should be witnessing from a Nation staring toward Washington for leadership and finding none.
Real unemployment continues to rise regardless what lies politicians and pandering media persist on repeating. With no leadership in sight, the country remains in a state of stagnation. In Washington, the Administration and Congress have not and will not make any tough decisions. The Federal Reserve is out of options, but big bankers control the game so their nests are safe. Yours? Not so much.
Half of America has lost sight of common sense as tonight, we witness another address from an anointed professional gladhander. Is there doubt he is a liar? No. So it’s only a matter of how many lies he’s telling during his State of the Union address rather than whether or not he’s lying. Sadly, although he’s a problem for the Nation, Obama is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem, and one which America has no mechanism in its system to fix — the “big money” influence which is exerted on Washington.
We have witnessed an explosion of financial authority from all corners of the financial spectrum from lobbyists to PACs and SuperPacs, guiding actions of politicians. Washington lobbying has become an industry financed with cash from bankers, industries, foreign countries, etc. The billions aren’t being spent in Washington because they they don’t result in useful influence. That money works. Those dollars end up in willing and pliable pockets owned by malleable minds and egos. The past decade has seen a mushrooming in that pressure, but too many taxpayers have shrugged — after all, if one side of the political divide spends a billion promoting an agenda, shouldn’t the other side be allowed to do the same? And so we witnessed history’s first billion dollar campaign energizing one candidate’s race to the White House.
The current Administration, cheared-on by the MSM and financed by the deepest pockets in the country, rhetorically beats the drums against the richest 1% which supposedly controls the wealth, as it pretends to care about a large percentage of the population it insultingly calls the American “middle class.” Someone should ask these 1% haters about the fact that the 1% churns constantly as “life happens” to it, but let’s not let details get in the way of a good hate-on.
One inept gladhander and his cadre of handlers directing his administration cannot ruin the great Nation that is America, however, financial influence from the deepest pockets, buying influence and corrupting the mostly corruptible throughout Washington, has moved the country in a direction that it may not be able reverse.
Billions of dollars today seem inconsequential when our lexicon has so readily and quickly appropriated the term “trillion.” The billions spent buying political influence in Washington are now only “billions” — a billion here, a billion there, we’re numbed. We don’t really grasp the meaning of the $17.3 Trillion National debt — we see it, but don’t really understand it. Surely someone knows something about it and will make sure everything’s OK for our grandchildren. No?
Washington has failed America. Washington’s politicians have allowed the siren song of greed to guide their actions and have learned to achieve re-election by burdening the taxpayers with additional debt.
So while we listen to just another bought-and-paid-for politician we call President, tonight feeding us feel-good motherhood and apple-pie prattle, we should give thought to reigning in all financing of the active political process and lobbying. Meaning, if you so much as accept a free apple from anyone while you’re on the public dime, you get life in jail — no excuses. If while in elected office, you, your buddies and relatives gain from feeding at the trough of the pork barrel, you get a life sentence on the dark side of the prison bars. No corporate financing of political campaigns. So how do you fund political campaigns? Take it out of the public purse for those who demonstrate enough support and limit it to a specified allotted amount. No outside money. None. Yah, but it’s expensive to run a campaign, particularly a Presidential campaign. Tough. Suck it up. We’ll limit your corruptibility quotient for you.
Money corrupts and Washington is now corrupted beyond repair, so only drastic measures will work. Without substantial changes and severe reversals of existing trends, politicians like Obama will be able to use the pulpit to instill fear and loathing among those who don’t have time to research or learn. The further the Nation “feels” divided, the more it will BE divided.
Bully pulpits have been used effectively throughout history by self-serving individuals who were able to warp divided and angered countries to their own wills. The current great divide that is the prevalent narrative wobbling America could gradually tip the scale, or be tipped instantly by a calamitous event. It’s 2014, and time to implement an overdue “financing” clean-up, starting at the top of the political food chain, the distorted electoral process, and the overwhelmingly corruptible lobbying.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.