A SERIOUS MESS - Another October Shutdown
Seriously, Who Owns This Mess? Our national political class….And what happens to US political parties when they consistently put partying ahead of problem solving?
Political extinction – it’s what American voters do. And there are quite a few more of us (340 million) than there are of them (536, plus 50 governors, 50 state attorneys general, and some other folks). Consider these moves by America's voters when political parties have lost touch with reality and the people they were supposed to be representing:
--- Which Federalist Party candidate did you last vote for? John Adams was the second President, pretty thin-skinned about everything, and didn’t like criticism at all. So, he passed some laws between 1797 and 1800 that made criticism of government a crime. We had just gotten rid of a King a few years before who thought He should be able to tell people what to think and do. The King had punished people for offending Him. American voters were independent thinkers and didn't think governments should behave like they were gods. Having just won independence, they didn't like Adams and the Federalists much for those same reasons. The very unpopular Adams left office in 1801, the last Federalist President ever, his political party dead soon thereafter….
--- Ever consider a Whig for political office? Well, when they came apart from internal bickering and dissent over tariffs and slavery in the 1850s, we elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860. As we fought the Civil War to end the rebellion, Lincoln freed slaves to liberate these Americans, put all people on a more even competitive keel, and defeat economic dominance based upon the free labor of slaves. So, no need to concern ourselves with more phony Whigs, American voters chose to make them extinct….
Yes, we Americans have arranged political extinctions for out of touch politicians and political parties before. And we got the 27th Amendment passed in the early 1990s by tossing out members of Congress in one election after another. Congress stopped jacking up its pay every session as its first and most important legislative act after every election, see WILL CONGRESS LISTEN... at https://banbrainhacks.org/congress-hapless-corrupt
It’s been a few years, but obviously we CAN do this again.
It’s possible that getting to recess and political partying could become less important to the two major political parties. They might try solving real problems facing American families. But that hasn’t worked so far. Not for about 40 years. What we have gotten instead is ever widening income inequality, dramatic increases in shelter costs driven by housing shortages in key employment centers, health care that costs twice other nations and gives us four years shorter lifespans, along with a few dozen other things Congress has neglected in favor of partying and recesses.
Meanwhile, they have run up a national debt level unequaled since we defended global freedom and democracy while we defeated fascism in Europe and Asia during World War II. Even running the global superpower Soviet Union into bankruptcy from the 1950s into the 1980s didn’t accumulate debt like Congress has squandered since that time, dispensing favors to their political partying friends.
Essential policy and structural changes needed to solve real problems have been set aside in favor of political party favors, heading to recess on time, and flinging strident rhetoric at the other political party. Their focus is on partying with unneeded mid-decade political redistricting and national party conventions, and playing around at recess instead of problem solving. Effectively, our two major political parties are focused on running competing blame-the-other five-ring political circuses filled with distractions instead of actual problem solving.
When they do work, they pass laws and funding to create illegal bioweapons used on Americans and other civilians around the world, to stomp on our religious and property rights, to aid and abet family destruction by federal police powers, to permit the terrorizing and torturing of their “fellow Americans,” to commit change in command homicides, and other such outrages against law – never prosecuted - which defy any reasonable person’s definition of the safety of the American People. For the past few decades, they have rarely even been able to pass a national budget on time, much less address our other very serious problems.
Government shutdown time indeed. Our turn to shut this nonsense down comes in about a year. And, in just three election cycles, less time than the American Revolution that gave us a country which is supposed to be free and for us all, the DC Beltway partying crowd and state government acolytes in the national political class can all be gone – House, Senate, President, the whole bunch. We don’t really need politicians partying, using their time and our money, to go to recess and create mass distractions like mid-decade redistricting and mid-term political conventions, instead of working to solve the problems facing American families. We can do the partying ourselves a little later. After we help them out - of elected office.
We definitely do need problem solvers ready to make critical structural changes needed to share prosperity broadly, to fund essential programs even as we reduce dependencies on government bailouts and subsidies, to provide effective checks on government outrages against Americans, and to finance our government responsibly and on time. Since the current bunch have proven they won’t do that, We, the People, who paid for this democracy with our lives during the Revolution, who established and ordained this government with our Constitution, and who have been the ones who actually defended our democracy and others with our lives in the field and our taxes in the treasury over more than two centuries, can get this done.
We CAN organize the political extinctions we must through our votes to protect our nation from politicians more interested in partying and recess than in the dream we share as Americans for a better future for ourselves and for our posterity - those noisy elementary school kids who actually deserve to be at recess - because they got their work done on time…..
For more, see https://banbrainhacks.org/congress-hapless-corrupt
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