The funny thing is, our government, in toto, is actually very much uninterested in what Americans want. It is as if politicians have allowed politics to actually be a job, a job unfortunately, one has to lobby to keep either every two years, every four years or every six years. So, the job of a politician is to lobby, and from the first day after they are elected, they lobby their entire term to stay where they are. This, sadly, has become quite known to many Americans (although that 24% of the stupid people don't even have a clue about this).
It has become maddeningly magnified by how waste, bad governing, and inattention to the constituency is just part of the daily job. And since lobbying is the job, in and of itself, any duty that, say, our congressional leaders owe to perform on the platform they ran, or govern in the manner in which they told those that elected them they would, once on the job, all that goes out the window as the politician has begun his actual job, lobbying.
Waste is an interesting topic. One of the reasons the government can never trim the waste is because those that cause the waste pay the politicians the most money to be able to continue to waste. So when The Washington Post does a three piece spread (here) concerning the "secret government" that virtually controls American lives (by "spying" illegally and legally), no politician jumped on it. The point of the piece was that this vast "secret government" which started out to be of national security importance, has turned into an unmanageable and poor functioning apparatus of the government such that hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted.
Now, in this time of recession bordering on depression, and the mantra of the entire Republican party centering on "balance" with regards to budgetary ideology, you would think that someone would address this form of waste. Unfortunately, for Americans, our politicians figure that "waste" is helping those out of work, those unfortunate "teachers" who educate the majority of American children (because none of the politicians whose job is lobbying actually have children in public schools, so they don't care that teachers just don't make enough to live on), or in any jobs bill, or further stimulus package, or proper health care (remember, many of our elected lobbyists are actively lobbying funds to repeal the help to average Americans for affordable health care).
No, and that is because the people affected by those choices are American people, not the corporate people, a class we now have thanks to the Citizen's United decision. Even though actual American people are the only ones that can line up outside a voting booth, and put a mark down for a candidate, the corporate people have control over which politician will be elected, and what that politician's agenda will be. And so, as for the Washington Post expose, the very people involved in the "secret government," like AT&T and other surveillance giants, pay far too much money in kickbacks and in seeing that the lobby job of our politicians is carried out, such that the elected lobbyist would not actually try to cut this source off, regardless of how much American tax payer money is used to funnel the money to them. Nary a peep from our representatives in Washington except how irresponsible the Post was for actually doing the piece. No waste here. Move along. Nothing to see.
The sad part of this is that it is not exclusive of the Republican party. Democrats, Independents, and yes, some Progressives, once they get the "job," they realize that it is not to do the bidding of the real people that elected them, but to do the work of the corporate people who will see that they are still in their job and who will fund them quite handsomely to stay there.
The corporate people running the war that is destroying the lives of the real people in America will never give up their free line at the soup kitchen of the American government's tax monies. No sireee. And, thanks to all the tax breaks many of these corporates get from that same soup kitchen, the relationship is so symbiotic that neither side really is able to cut the other side off, for risk of dying.
It has come to that. We had that one moment of light that "a change is gonna come" feeling, in 2008,
when led by a grassroots coalition made up mainly of American people networked through the Internet, elected the first African American president, and overwhelmingly placed the Democratic party in charge. But after 18 months, and an upcoming "two year" job election by our elected lobbyists on the horizon, the focus from day one of Obama and the rest of the Democrats, Independents and Progressives the real people put in charge, things have not only not changed, some of stayed the same, and many have become worse. There are a small cadre of real people and corporate people that have something on the line in trying to highlight what the 2008 elected lobbyist actually did for the real people, but most of us already know what was done to us, because our collective asses really hurt.
And many of us with sore asses just won't get up come this November to stand in a line and punch a hole, when we already know we are screwed. Hell, the gas money alone to get to the polling place could probably feed a family of four at McDonalds.
At some point, this recession will turn into the depression, as the haves continue to hoard, and the have nots continue to be mislead, mistreated, maligned and ignored.
Hope doesn't seem to live in America anymore. But, anger, certainly is on the rise.
Addendum: Funny, after I put up this piece, AMERICAblog links to this article by Judy Woodruff, who addresses the same sentiments in my post, but takes the "change" part and gives it more "umph" as well as links and actual "changes" that have not come about, or just barely made a dent.
When "it" is in the air, "it" is in the air everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment