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Tag(s): Congress Legislative Failures; Congress Senate Legislation; Corporation Google; Corporations Health Care; Domestic Policy Failures; Health; Health Insurance; Health Insurance Deprived; Healthcare; Lobbyists K-Street Caveats; (more...) Lobbyists Lobbying Influence; Lobbyists- K- Street; Senate Senators; US Politics-Government; Welfare (less...)
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August 29, 2007 at 09:55:18

Getting in the Game, When Representative Government No Longer Works

by Jim Freeman Page 2 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Take tax policy as an example. Tax legislation is tuned and micro-managed by business, industry, the wealthy and the investment community-not because they are evil, but because they have interests at stake and the money to make those interests heard in Congress.

We do not pay too much in taxes, we pay them to the wrong purpose.

When $10 billion in tax revenues goes to support agriculture and half that amount is allocated to public transportation across the nation, you can ponder that fact while stuck in a two-hour commute. Two-hour commuters don't have a voice. Seven times as much of your tax money went to build more highways as went to taking the load off those highways.

You were out-lobbied.

Should you find yourself without health insurance coverage, it's not because insufficient funds are allocated from the federal tax revenues, it's because the system was designed not to insure.

The 'health industry' is at least well named. An 'industry's' business is to hold down costs, limit unprofitable sales and maximize the fat part of the market. How is it a surprise that the spread of obstacles between illness and health care is designed so that only the fittest and most healthy arrive at the finish-line?

Legislation is like designing elephants in shoe-boxes; there's only enough room for each small special interest and none of them seem important until the strange-looking pachyderm lurches out of the Senate. Each special interest is well argued, certainly does not harm the elephant of and by itself and (this is key to the argument) is accompanied by money.

Money is the blood of the body politic.

Periodically, as in this extraordinary time of a two-year run-up to the national elections, politicians give voice like foxhounds to special interests. And yet (no big surprise) it is special interest money that allows the cry 'tally-ho' to echo across the country. The squishy noise you hear settling over Washington after the newly elected are seated, is a general sinking in to the proven and re-proven ways of Jack Abramoff's whoopee-cushion.

Sturdy fellows all.

Foolish as it is to rail and complain against this continuing injustice, we are more foolish (and far less well-served) not to join the game. Because we have not yet found the combination to the safe, certainly doesn't mean it's time to stop fiddling with the dial. A wealth of services and access to the halls of individual justice lies just the other side of that polished, bomb-proof steel. The door clicks open to the whisper of cash and the rustle of access. Cash and access are precious to the few but common to the many. As in church, legislators come with heads bowed to the deity, then lifted to the altar of cash.

How to put need and cash together in the right combination is a Googley kind of problem.

Google made itself worth more in a year and a half than General Motors was able to create in 90 years of industry domination. GM's product is a $25,000 set of wheels--Google identifies all 451,000 government sources in an order of relevance, in less than a second-for free. Their revenue base is advertising and you do not dictate to advertisers, you entice them.

Buy-Back-Our-Country.com might be a Googley kind of approach to individual empowerment, as might Buy-Back-America.com and, amazingly, they were both available as domain names until I bought them just minutes ago. Forgive me, it just seemed right and I will be delighted to transfer them to anyone who has a really viable solution to this problem.

Anyone listening at Google? Here's yet another opportunity to serve your country with the expertise and manpower that only Google can bring to the table. Think in the order of $1 per citizen per year-an annual lobbying war-chest for the average citizen amounting to $300 million a year.

Remember folks, your elected officials are not the enemy. But keep in mind how cheaply they can be bought and someone is going to buy them, just like someone was bound to purchase Buy-Back-Our-Country.com and Buy-Back-America.com.

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6 comments

Have been a soldier, an intelligence analyst, an engineer, a physicist, and a writer.

Right now mostly a writer.
camHave been a soldier, an intelligence analyst, an engineer, a physicist, and a writer.

Right now mostly a writer.

Virtual lobbies

If an issue has popular merit then it should be possible to create a virtual lobby about that issue. Michael Moore has achieved the seeds of an anti-pharma lobby with his movie Sicko. What about soliciting $5.00 from individuals on a site (sayFU2pharma.org, or sicko.org) to counter the pharmaceutical lobby. Every dollar of public money would be worth a lot more than corporate money, because ultimately a politician needs public support.

Given that politicians are for sale, then let's shop around and buy our own. Let's draft our own bills and vote against corporate interests when they run clear counter to our own. Let's eliminate corporate thralls at the polls. With focus we can avoid partisan issues yet still fight on ground of our choosing. No politician, Democrat or Republican, can stand in the way of universal health care if the issue is well framed and financed.

Does this sound naive? It's really only government of, by, and for the people.

by cam (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at 4:25:06 PM

Jim Freeman's op-ed pieces and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The New York Review, The Jon Stewart Daily Show and a number of magazines.
Jim FreemanJim Freeman's op-ed pieces and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The New York Review, The Jon Stewart Daily Show and a number of magazines.

"Virtual lobbies"

No--rather than naive, it sounds like the beginning of a conversation. Virtual lobbies have only the problem of pressing the flesh of a hand that's out--they miss that opportunity. Move-On-Org has had success, but they are overly partisan. The advantage they do have is that they are up-to-the-minute.

Any plan would have to have both legs and ethics, because we all know that the current problems are not confined to one party over the other.

Jim

by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 224 diaries, 386 comments) on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at 6:24:26 PM

Retired Foreign Service Officer and past Manager of Political and Military Affairs at the US Department of State. For a brief time an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Denver and the University of Washington at Seattle. A graduate of the National War College and a Phd from the University of Southern California.
Herbert CalhounRetired Foreign Service Officer and past Manager of Political and Military Affairs at the US Department of State. For a brief time an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Denver and the University of Washington at Seattle. A graduate of the National War College and a Phd from the University of Southern California.

Adding Corruption to Corruption is the answer?

Jim,

All due respect, yours is a cockamamie idea. First, corporations and other non-human entities should not have the same rights as citizens, nor the right to undermine and corrupt what justly should be a citizens prerogatives, in any case. Second, it is illicit money that has corrupted the system. Your suggestion simply multiplies its illicit effects. We want to get illicit money out of the system, not multiply it!

The proper answer is to first repeal the law that made corporations equal to citizens; publicly finance all campaigns; and then make bribing and influencing public officials a crime (instead of an accepted luxury as it is currently) -- and then enforce this law.

Your suggestion that we play "catch-up" conceeds everything to corporate and lobbying interests, as if our job is to compete with them. Our job is to make up the rules by which they play and then to enforce them. If our politicians are not doing that (as surely they are not) then, we need to change the rules, not join an illicit game already irrepairably stacked against us.

C'mon man, wake up?

HLC

by Herbert Calhoun (7 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments) on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 6:35:23 AM

Criminalize corporations?

There is much sense in what you say, but how does one enforce it? There are so many ways to influence elected officials when one has the vast resources of a large corporation at one's disposal. Much of it could fly under the radar: privileged information, deferred rewards for immediate favors, etc.

Perhaps one solution is to make stockholders liable for social transgressions? It could be done on a prorated basis. That might raise the stakes a little beyond simply making money at everyone else's expense.

by cam (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 7:10:02 AM

"Adding Corruption to Corruption is the answer?"

Ethically, I have to agree with you. Practically, we are in a losing position and all of the marbles are in the opposition bag. Congress has not and will not enact legislation that goes against its interests and the way elections have come to be set up, money is their lifeblood.

Would that it were different, but it is not. My proposal is far from ideal--that's why it is a proposal, eliciting comment (like yours) and not a plan. My business career has taught me that to be competitive, I had to coompete. I'm merely looking for the way to do that, rather than wait for what will not come.

Jim

by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 224 diaries, 386 comments) on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 3:15:52 PM

KEVIN STODA has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades. He sees himself as a peace educator and have been a promoter of good economic and social development--making him an enemy of my homelands humongous spending and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global issues."I am from Kansas so I also use the pseudonym 'Kansas' when I write and publish. I...

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ALONEKEVIN STODA has been blessed to have either traveled in or worked in nearly 100 countries on five continents over the past two and a half decades. He sees himself as a peace educator and have been a promoter of good economic and social development--making him an enemy of my homelands humongous spending and its focus on using weapons to try and solve global issues."I am from Kansas so I also use the pseudonym 'Kansas' when I write and publish. I...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Federalize further (not centralize) the government structure

A POSSIBLE SOLUTION to the debacle Americans face in their isolation from helpful governance has to do with simple geography and access relted to that.

Whereas, the internet, faxes, videos, cell-phones and telephones have enabled Americans--the majority of whom live further than an hour away by plane from Washington D.C.--to somewhat bridge the distance between representation in Washington and the REAL WORLD THEY LIVE in, it is high time that [1] either more power be returned to each of the states or [2] regions.

In order to make regionalization of governance possible, advocate moving the Senate to Kansas and the house of representatives to Texas or California. Alternatively, the executive branch could be moved to one of those three states.

The supreme court should be move to Minnesota, Washington state, or Florida.

by ALONE (151 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 336 comments) on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 1:19:48 PM