Kucinich on Wealth Redistribution,

Here we have a man, Dennis Kucinich, who is a contender for being the farthest left of center in our government, speaking out against the legitimacy of that government, its monetary policies, and the two party system. What surer sign can we have that the system is broken?

I’ve spoken of Dennis Kucinich before. I don’t always agree with him, but he has my support for one simple reason.  He’s one of the few honest politicians we have left who are willing to speak out against their own party, their own president, even be the only dissenting vote in the house, to set things right. Look at recent legislation, if you are in Congress and you haven’t voted against your party lately, then you have no ethics and no credibility with me.

When Will the Deal Happen?

It seems that these days, Congress takes a few breaks each year from legislating on important topics like who can marry who and baseball to bicker over some massive piece of legislation. This legislation is always claimed to be crucial to the continuation of society as we know it (sometimes it really is!), and has a deadline for doom avoidance. For months we see news anchors biting their nails over which side is going to win and whether it will pass in time to avert disaster.

The answer is always the same: It will pass. It will pass because if it doesn’t, the legislators will lose money like the rest of us, their constituents will abandon them, and the populace will make what remains of their now final term really unpleasant.  Sure, some will vote the other way, but all they need is a majority.

Why do they wait? Why not just make a deal early on and be done with it? Because somebody has to lose, in fact, most of us have to lose.

Our problems are too big to solve in a way that makes everyone happy.  Take the budget for example. Taxing the rich isn’t nearly enough (and it makes them not rich), reducing the military is slow and more expensive in the short term than leaving it alone, and the problem needs to be solved now. Raising taxes on the middle class just shifts the overwhelming burden to another group who can’t bear it, without fixing the core problem of a lack of national wealth, and the middle class are the majority of the voters. Stimulus is not much more than smoke and mirrors, and costs money we don’t have. Spending cuts cause outrage among those who are being cut and their sympathizers.

So what’s a politician to do? It’s pretty simple really. Put on a good show. Bang your fist on the podium, cry, point the finger at the other guys, all the while drilling home the point that the deadline of doom is approaching. The most important part is that you don’t make a deal until the clock has nearly run out. If you wait until the very end, you can vote something in that appears to address the problem and helps out your biggest donors (you know, the insurance companies, the unions, and the military industrial complex). Then you go to the American people and you tell them that the other guys put the bad stuff in there, but you had to pass it to avert catastrophe because the deadline was up. If you make the deal early, they will claim you should have kept fighting, and that you sold out.

How do we fix the system?

• Take on problems in smaller bites. Deadlines should be staggered rather than overwhelming. Bills should be mandated to be short and legible.
• Transparency. These people are public servants and we should be allowed to hear what they say on our behalf. All discussions should be on public record.
• Our taxes are a percentage of our earnings, so funding should be percentage based as well. That way, when revenue goes down, spending automatically matches it without the need for an emergency vote.
• Stop taxing the trade of Dollars for gold and silver. It’s Constitutional and allows people to shield themselves from the toxic inflationary effects of Congressional irresponsibility.
• If you want the money out of politics, take away the power from politicians to choose winners and losers. Take away the mandated insurance, the mandated union memberships, the private military contractors, and the corporate bailouts, and the money will take itself out of politics.

“Son, if you can’t take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women, and then vote against ‘em, you don’t deserve to be here.” – Sam Rayburn, longst serving Speaker of the House

California Affiliate Tax

California’s latest budget deal continues their now-familiar trend of chasing small business out of the state. In a desperate and unconstitutional powergrab, they are saying that any business that is even affiliated with anyone in California has to pay sales tax on everything sent to customers in the state.

I’m most often complaining about Congress overstepping their bounds in controlling the states, but this is a rare case (Like Arizona’s recent immigration laws) where the opposite is true. Interstate commerce is squarely under the jurisdiction of Congress. Let’s say that a product is manufactured in Texas, sent to Colorado to an Amazon distributor, and then shipped to a customer in California; what’s to stop Texas from saying they can charge sales tax on the item because they made it? Or Colorado to charge it because they are where the sale was shipped from, or every state in between because it passed on through? The Federal government is there primarily for two purposes, foreign policy, and making sure states don’t enact anti-competitive laws that interfere with the commerce between the states, thus, states were only allowed to regulate transactions from those companies which they have jurisdiction over because of a physical presence in the state.

California is now claiming that I, along with ten thousand others are ‘sister companies’ of Amazon, because we are paid to advertise for them. I’m nobody’s ‘sister company’. I have no Obligations to Amazon, they don’t tell me what to do, we don’t have any claim over each other’s assets, I just post a link to Amazon on my page, and Amazon reimburses me for doing so when paying customers arrive there through my sites. I’m no more connected with Amazon than television networks who advertise for them, UPS who carries their products, or Visa, who handles their transactions.

Living in an extremely liberal town, I hear a lot of people cheering this bill as somehow sticking it to the evil corporations and finally making them pay their fair share, but that isn’t what is going to happen out of this. Amazon has already announced that they will end their business dealings with everyone in California, which means not only are ten thousand more Californians now very suddenly out of work, but California won’t see a cent of it, since the companies won’t actually be taxed after cutting ties, and California will be out the revenue from those people and quite possibly paying to add them to its welfare rolls. Also, it isn’t legally Amazon’s responsibility to pay sales tax on your purchases, it’s yours, so if you aren’t paying taxes on your online purchases, then point the finger at yourself first.

I wish I’d seen that this ship was sinking before I bought a home here. If it were any easier to leave, I would.

Our Two Choices

Today I noticed a poll question on the front page of CNN.com: “Is it time to break out of the two-party system?”
Much to my surprise, the results:

• 84% – yes
• 16% – no

Why, why, why do they torment me like this? Rarely a week goes by without me discussing the two party system with someone. The story is always the same. They feel betrayed by their public officials. They’re tired of the partisan bickering, they’re tired of the big money in politics, they’ve lost faith in their party’s ability to effect positive change, yet, when it comes time to go into the booth, there is only ever one thought on their mind: I’ve got to keep the opposition party from getting that crazy so and so into office.

The two party system has become nothing more than a con man with two puppets, each trying to scare you into voting for the other.
In the end, most of the big donors are contributing to both campaigns.
In the end, you are voting-in the same special interests either way.

The party leadership is making the real decisions. They hold the keys to reelection. Their decisions can be the difference between getting big donors and not, an endorsement from a former president, or that endorsement going to a competitor in the primary. If a politician wants to stay in the game, they have to play by the party rules. This is most clearly visible in the GOP votes in Congress. They aren’t all voting together out of ideology, they’re following their marching orders.

The Tea Party thus far hasn’t impressed me, with their candidates who would have trouble debating fifth graders, but they present an unusual opportunity. They have managed to collect a significant portion of random individuals of various ideologies. This seems at first like a weakness, since they will clearly fall apart the moment they try to put together a unified platform, but this is perhaps their greatest strength. The American people are hungry for a change from our current election system, but won’t anything that replaces it fall victim to the same puppetry?

What we need is a party without a centralized leadership. The American people want to elect an individual, not a party. The poll numbers above reflect this loud and clear. All the people need is the confidence to realize that the majority is with them, and they won’t be alone. Whatever your party of choice, spread the word.
CNN has gotten the ball rolling for us.

Leadership Vs. The Separation of Powers

The CNN headline today reads “Obama gets an ‘A’ for effort from Schwarzenegger“. I had a good laugh at this one.

When Swarzenegger was running for Governator, I was of the opinion that he had a good environmental and fiscal platform and that he had a large multi-partisan base. I found myself at odds with others on the right who were voting for him because of his ‘character’, and because he was going to go in there and clean house, squeeze some pencil-neck bureaucrats, etc. Clearly, this wasn’t the case.

Swarzenegger found out in short order that the legislature was dug in and had no obligation to do what he wished. He has turned out to be a slightly better than average governor on the sense that he has done little harm; done little of anything in fact. It’s not for lack of trying, but the way our government is set up.

One branch of government can do very little without the cooperation of at least one other branch. I had higher hopes for Obama. He went into  this with an extremely strong mandate and a knack for finding common ground between opposing groups. Thus far, his failings have been the opposite of those of the Governator; he has been too trusting and willing to compromise. He has passed some of the most massive legislations in history, but only after all that is good in them has been sucked out and replaced with corporate welfare, and done so by his own supposed allies.

I found the above headline funny because I get the feeling both of them are looking at each other and saying, “wow, this isn’t as easy as it looks”.

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