“What are you thinking? I can’t hear you. “
The news media thrashes and dances around the major issues facing the citizens of this country in sound bites too small to comprehend while we the people are in the dark. Nowhere on the web sites of our representatives is there a clue as to how they feel about pending legislation or other issues of the day. It is as if it’s a big secret, at least from the voters.
I understand how to play poker… never let your opponent see your cards, and I suppose in politics it must be the same. How else could you become the deciding vote, or leverage that special deal for yourself or your state? But as citizens, the ones who our elected officials are to protect, how can we have a say in what they do?
It seems very strange that with all the communication methods we have today, all the social networking we have, we cannot find out what our reps are doing on current legislation. Searching for facts on our representative’s web site is like looking for who dropped the hanky.
I have long thought it is time to change the way that Congress interacts, not only with itself but with their constituents. At the time of the first Congress, the only reliable communication available was face to face. Today we have teleconferences available to put people face to face without travel. We communicate with the generals in the war zones from Washington D.C, but for some reason, our representatives need to maintain two residences and large travel expenses. It is interesting to note that any given Senator or Congressman will sit for a teleconference with an interviewer without a moment’s notice and think it is perfectly normal. Via CSPAN, we the people attend hearings on all sorts of things, and major companies have WEBINARS with two-way conversations. We have the technology and tools, but those in Washington do not have the desire to be more available to the locals. I want more interaction, a dialogue and ongoing input into the way things are done in the country. I want to have a VOICE in decisions. It is time for the American people to demand access to the process that sways the decisions of those we have sent to Washington to represent us. I call on all of you to demand reform from those we choose to be our spokespersons. They need to hear from all of us and follow our lead, not their own. Upon founding this country we had a war cry of “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.” Today we need a new slogan … “NO MORE REPRESENTATION WITHOUT LOCAL CONCENSUS.” WE THE PEOPLE need to decide our own fate.
So to all our elected officials at all levels…. “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”
Posts
O.K. Ken your have the right approach keep in the center with Independents and you'll get a swarm of believers who want to see the current government changed.
ReplyDeleteGo Go Go
Pete
Our country is in a recession, people are losing their homes and jobs, healthcare is stalled, and our congressmen are going on a month-long vacation....many junkets at tax-payers expense. Even our ex-president, Mr Bush, gave them what-for back in April 2007 and suggested they forgo some of their vacation and finish the job they were elected to do. Read the following web site for more facts about some of their adventures at our expense:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-31/where-the-hells-the-senate/full/
It is the intent of this site to speak to issues WE THE PEOPLE are concerned with. I do not care about "ANY PARTY" in government but rather the VOICE of the PEOPLE.
ReplyDeleteThis is the battle cry for open concerns. Forward information from this blog to your Senators and Representative so they "feel your pain". It it time to TAKE BACK our goverment.
Hi Ken Brown,
ReplyDeleteSince I have been concerned with what has been occurring in this country for the last few years, my wife, (you went to school with her in Lynn Hearst, Ohio) gave me your blog address.
Hope you don't mind if I join?
Carl
NOT AT ALL…. Happy to have you comment and be a part of the VOICE. We need as many Americans as possible to SOUND OFF on issues not politics. If you know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteKen
Hi,
ReplyDeleteSince the Nation's economy has been going through a transition cycle over a number of years due to our trade agreements, there needs to be a discussion on what the "good, the bad and the ugly" is doing to the US. All for the "good of our country."
Agreements between the Global corporations and the low wage labor countries, are having negative effects on our country and on other countries' economies. In my opinion if we look at the comprehensive effect of these unfair trade agreements, then we would have to include the negative effects on our workers' jobs, on our educational processes, on our Physical strength and on our financial strength. We should already realize most of the negative effects of our unfair trade policies because of the conditions they have caused. There are many people who "like" our trade policies the way they are because of the money being made by them and are unwilling to change, even if we do have record trade deficits, with all the effects being caused on our economy.
I hope this falls under the classification of non political, even if I have been trying to make our Representatives aware that the people who are losing their jobs are not happy with the global corporations.
Well said, Carl. I agree with your observations about our economy being directly affected by trade agreements. Of interest is noted in an overview of what author, Steven Dunaway, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics, argues in his book, Global Imbalances and the Financial Crisis … “one of the root causes of today’s crisis: imbalances between savings and investment in major countries. The report analyzes the nature of these imbalances, which occur when some countries, such as the United States, run large current account (essentially trade) deficits while others, such as China, maintain large surpluses.” More on this is on the Council on Foreign Relations web site: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18690/#top
ReplyDeleteHi Skip,
ReplyDeleteThank you. Was beginning to think that not anyone was reading this blog.
I appreciate your replying and providing a new source of information. What do you think about the the need for all economist being required to have a "physics degree"? Like knowing the rule, "for every action there is a reaction."
I am not either one but not a complete novice neither. Guess that makes me one of those "jack of all trades and master of none." Just try to get all the pieces to fit.
It took until September, 2008 for our leaders to realize that the conditions of the Nation was certainly worse than had been admitted, when before many people tried to say it was a "mental thing" instead admitting the country was in a real crisis. What is it going to take to keep this country from falling into a deep depression? Sometimes I wonder if the people really have lost their thought processes? Right now, preventing a deep depression and how to start getting our people back to work on short term plans and on long term work plans, should be our number one concern...
Do you think that the "Mobs" in these public hearings are being paid by the opposing money forces to act up and disrupt these meetings? If they are acting on their own, why are they only opposing the healthcare reform plan, and not complaining about the nation's other problems which are really having a negative effect on them?
What would be the difference in this possible paid type of "revolution" and the possible revolution which could/would occur if there had not been $1.5 trillion dollars to spend? Would you say that this is money well spent just to prevent having a revolution from the 95% of the people who would be left out on their own without any benefits and especially without any healthcare?
Speaking of physics…how about Newton’s FIRST law of motion: An object that is at rest will remain at rest unless a force is exerted on it. Reminds me of our government….the object at rest…now WE THE PEOPLE must be the force exerted on it. I’m not against revolutions, but unless they’re about CHANGE, what’s the point?
ReplyDeleteI hope we’re beyond a depression…according to news reports we are slowly backing away from one. Living in a small town like Sequim (in the Pacific Northwest) we don’t see the critical issues that still confront the larger cities…the housing crisis, unemployment crisis, etc. Of course there are “for sale” signs and we know people who have lost their jobs, but most people go about their daily lives “as usual.”
"Getting the pieces to fit"...isn't that the job of our elected officials? But that isn't likely to happen since they don't seem able to work together. To answer your question...Are the shouters (Mobs) who attend the town meetings being PAID to disrupt the men and women trying to hold a discussion about important issues? We daily watch MSNBC (and sometimes CNN) commentators and we haven't heard mention of payment being made to the people brought in to stifle discussion. I suppose it's a possibility. We are seeing people who live in our area accepting the conspiracy theories (which are rampant) as truth and can't understand how educated people can hear such unfounded statements and not question the validity of what they hear. Are people afraid of the truth?
Until next time……
Hi Skip,
ReplyDeleteYou have to have a boat? Living in your area must be very interesting. Lots of water. Checked you out on the map. Haven't looked on "Google Earth," it shows a good picture of the area. Have you used it?
Was in Portland OR in 1951 for a about three months.
My wife has relatives in Bellingham.
It's Tennessee for us, right above Chattannooga. The Choo Choo city which hasn't had a passenger train run through it in nearly fifty years. The lack of Mass rail passenger service ia one of my conserns that I'm trying to make more people aware of.
Don't know if we have seen the bottome of this recession yet because it is going to take more than just leveling off at the bottom without making the changes which will improve the available jobs here.
The choices of getting out of this mess isn't going to be good. I don't believe we have been here before. It appears to me that the selling out on this global economy and then the global corporations racing to invest into the lowest labor wage countries has taken us on this "new path" at a speed that we couldn't keep up with the changes taking place under any circumstances.
The US is not now a developing nation, but a nation regressing into conditions which are not desirable. Our workers' wages and benefits are on the trend of equalizing with the "third world" low wage countries. If our cost of living was not so high then making less money would be relative.
Hello to all,
ReplyDeleteFor the people who continue to have open minds and want to understand the conditions that "we" are in, will have to realize what brought us to this dance before being able to correct the problems.
I'm listening to the video now and it certainly gets right to the points and sums up everything that has gotten us into these financial crises. Very informing.
With "Control Fraud" plus our trade problems, what more could we need to destroy our financial systems?
The trouble now is, what is going to be the "end result" before we get out of these conditions?
I put this into the aol keyword below and there are plenty of sites to choose from.
"The Great American Bank Robbery"
http://aolsearcht7.search.aol.com/aol/search?query=The+Great+American+Bank+Robbery&s_it=keyword_rollover
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Hello to all,
ReplyDeleteCorporate Slavery
When the corporations invest outside the US, crossing borders, to lower wage countries, how can the American workers compete regardless of how much education they have? The American workers cannot follow the jobs to the other low wage countries.
Corporate slavery is different now than it was in early America. Now it includes all races and all countries. When Global corporations are making their profit on the backs of low cost labor, without regard to the workers' right.
Just more of the same. When the corporate world moves the manufacture of products and the research development of (new) innovation out of the US, as they are doing with other programs, such as the hydrogen fuel cell, plus many other items used in the industrial world, there has to be a huge negative affect on our workers, and the loss of our independence of being able to make the goods that are necessary for passing knowledge on to the next generation of engineers, technicians, and other workers. How can we do this if we don't manufacture our needed goods? Our nation is a weaker nation because of the loss of our manufacturing base.
Very good logic Carl. It seems to reason if WE THE PEOPLE do not speak out on these issues we will not see any change. Thank you for your insight and openness.
ReplyDeleteHi Ken,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I'm full of logic but it's hard for me to comprehend all if it. Ha
It is my opinion that if we have a better balance of trade, we could live with the conditions and adjust to it, as long as we have a high percentage of our industrial base. At this particular time we don't. Infact this trade imbalance increased exponentially in the last 10 - 15 years
When the masses of people don't have money to spend, going into debt, creating a debt based economy, then this does make a dent in the buying of the global corporations' imported goods which does improve our high trade deficit, but this is not the best situation to be in. We have to look at the causes of why the masses of people don't have money and why they are losing their jobs.
That's where my "logic" about the comprehensive effect of the global economy comes into the picture.
I'm working on putting out this logic to everyone from the President down the line, to the media, to Boone Pickens blogs & etc. Just don't get any feedback, other than from individuals like you and Skip. So, help me out with some suggestions of where I'm right or wrong. We can polish this logic up and take it to the "big media." Ha
Carl
ReplyDeleteYou wrote on August 14 "When the corporate world moves the manufacture of products and the research development of (new) innovation out of the US" ... "there has to be a huge negative affect"...and the loss of our independence ... passing knowledge on to the next generation of engineers, technicians, and other workers"
Countries like Israel, China, India are ahead of us in technological advances for various reasons: we teach them all we know; our educational system has fallen behind; our schools don't inspire our students; we have lost our vision, etc .
Where is our American mandate to be the best? I think our country has been wallowing in greed, deceit, laziness, indifference for too many years. We need to step up to the plate and declare we expect to win and are willing to sacrifice to be the best we can be. Not settle for second best or third best. Our young people need to be challenged and inspired. I was hoping our new administration would be the role model, but they are too busy fighting instead of focusing. Why is everyone afraid of change?
Hi Skip,
ReplyDeleteQuote from Skip.
"Where is our American mandate to be the best? I think our country has been wallowing in greed, deceit, laziness, indifference for too many years."
"Our young people need to be challenged and inspired. I was hoping our new administration would be the role model, but they are too busy fighting instead of focusing. Why is everyone afraid of change?"
I like what you said above and agree.
When we break down the details of what has been occurring to cause the loss of our industrial base and the loss of jobs which are associated with the manufacturing base, the number of job choices for the "masses" has decreased. This situation is certainly causing the young people problems of being motivated in having jobs available when they finish school. Also the people who are losing their jobs and the military people who decide to leave service are running into the problem of there being enough jobs to "go around."
We do need an attitude adjustment sent to our elected leaders so that they will address this issue while educating the consumers about how this "merry go round" of high profit margin, greed, getting something for low prices and fraud is causing coming back around to bite them where it hurts.
Hi to everyone,
ReplyDeleteCannot believe it has been a month without anyone posting. especially with all of the issue available to discuss.
The issues of changing from fossil energy to cleaner energy.
How many of us remember what the living conditions were like before most of our homes had indoor plumbing and centralized heating/cooling using the sources of electric and gas, The supplies of these energy sources have to be supplied by some other source of energy, such as hydro electric fossil energy, nuclear, natural gas, wind, geo-thermal, or solar.
As our population increases, the uses of all types of these energy supplies are increasing. The increases of these energies are from their uses in our factories, in our methods of transportation, by our military, in our homes, in commercial buildings, and on our farms.
The productions of our energies are not free of cost and if we continue to have our conveniences from the use of these energies, then their costs will continue to rise. We are also experiencing the need for changing the methods of producing our electric power from fossil fuels to other sources, which do not have the massive amount of material and gases leftover, going into our atmosphere. Also in conjunction with the production of cleaner energy sources, we need to change the using of fossil energy (gasoline and diesel) produced from oil to other cleaner energy sources in all of our transportation systems.
What choices of energy types and sources are the people going to have for their future energy uses?
Right now, this Nation is in a financial crisis and is in need of short-term job and long-term jobs for putting people to work, manufacturing and building new “green energy” products here in this country and repairing our old infrastructure. The reasons for our Nation getting into these financial and jobs crisis, are not entirely separate from our dependence on the oil supplies, since oil is also a global product and is imported by the global corporations. This is the complicated part of whether our Nation can ever get off our use of “global oil supplies.”