Posts tagged politics

In the US almost half voted for

Someone who made a fortune sending jobs overseas in the hope he would make the US economy stronger.

Someone who opposed equality for women, LGBT, and minorities in the hope he would make them freer.

Someone that talked about bombing and even invading Iran in the hope he would make the world more peaceful.

The US has bigger problems than who sits in the White House.

So I’m sitting at my desk. A co worker walks into my office

“Say did you see the debate last night?” he starts. “Boy wasn’t that…”

I cut him off

“I did not watch the debates. They are nothing more than political posturing.”

“But Romney…”

“No.” I say firmly. “The debates do for the political process what beauty pageants do for women’s rights. They are a stupid and debasing exercises. They are not actual debates. The candidates just recite talking points to previously screened questions. Then the result is “judged” by people who profit from keeping the election in question regardless of the consequences for the country. I have already made up my mind and mailed my ballot in. I will not discuss politics. I certainly will not discuss politics as if it were a football match.”

“Um, OK. Well then uh, how do you think the Canucks will do this season?”

“The NHL is on strike.”

“Oh, right.”

Unfortunately I’m too polite to do this. But it would feel GOOD.

We slave away in workshops while the rich get richer.

Government and corporations talk austerity and push through salary cuts and interest rises while the rich get richer.

Countries run unsustainable deficits and debts in a drive to make the rich richer.

The rich get elected promising to help people, but end up just helping themselves so the rich get richer.

Our children are sent off to wars to die for oil and other resources so the rich get richer.

The environment is sacrificed so the rich get richer

Medicine is made expensive and hard to get. People get sick and even die so the rich get richer.

The news slants everything, even lies to help the rich get richer

Treaties are signed to “encourage free trade” but all they do is let jobs be sent to places that pay less so the rich get richer.

The people are starving, the education system is starving, research is starving, infrastructure is starving, essential services are starving, the country is starving. Yet the rich who can afford education, food, medicine, and their own essential services get richer.

The European and US economies are in the tank. Do the rich try to help? To pay society back for some of what the western world gave them? Hell no. That would interrupt the rich getting richer.

The rich and their corporations are looking to the third world as “the new market”. Fuck the US, they just want somewhere new that will buy stuff so the rich can keep getting richer.

If you don’t think there is a class war going on, you’ve lost.

I heard the dumbest thing yesterday. In response to the Supreme Court’s refusal to throw out “Obamacare”  I read a comment from someone in the US saying “This is terrible what’s happening to my country. I guess I’ll have to move to Canada.”

Hey, mush for brains, what do you think was the model for “Obamacare”? The only difference is that what we have is, if anything, a more extensive system that isn’t crippled by the compromises that Congress forced on your plan.

Yes, it works very well.

What’s the state of the US democracy?

By current standards and compared to current politicians Richard Nixon is a tower of virtue and honesty. An Idealist with a rigid set of moral scruples. 

People keep saying that government should be run more like a business. That businesses are the most efficient way of delivering services. That everything from schools to prisons, to the parks to even parts of the military should be privatized because it would be “better”.

This ignores two big problems

First, Corporations are most clearly NOT the most efficient way to do things. Corporations make a profit by cutting costs to the bone and charging as much as they can. They raise prices until the customers scream and lower service until somebody dies to squeeze a buck.  They could be more efficient if they eliminated the profit but maximizing the profit, not efficiency, not quality of service, not happy customers, is their driving force. Even being “well run” has a totally different meaning depending on whether you are talking about a corporation or a government. Customer satisfaction, and quality work, are means to an end i.e. profit and if they can make a profit without either, corporations will. Corporate ethics is just the predatory thirst for money and greed without regulatory oversight is not a good way to deliver essential services.

Secondly who says that most efficient is the best thing for essential services. I want good teachers that turn out enlightened and inspired children, not teachers that get the minimum done for the least cost to process the most bodies. I want prisons that rehabilitate criminals and spend what is needed to make sure they do not offend again, not ones that warehouse them at the minimum cost possible, and uses the literally captive workforce to line their own pockets. I want a park service that has preservation and protection of national treasures foremost in their mind not what lurid thing they can add to extract more money from the site. I want police and fire services that protect me because it’s what they do, not ones that count pennies and have their hand out for kickbacks. I want a military motivated by love of this country not whichever country is paying the most.

Humanity fought long and hard to put aside a society where the most powerful ruled and replace it with one where the rule of law was foremost. The corporatization of government is a huge step backwards to the dark age Darwinian days of robber barons and hired thugs abusing a peasant class. Mafia dons and street gangs are not exceptional, they are just particularly ruthless corporations. It is law and government that enforces the law that keeps profit minded entities in check and gives the rest of us a chance to make civilization better. To turn government over to corporations that use business models to provide essential services would be to set civilization back centuries.

And too many good people died to get us where we are today to let that happen.