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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 1 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Every special interest is in the game. Boeing and Microsoft, Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, everything from agriculture to zen has its lobby in the halls of the Congress of the United States. On a moment's notice, the gun lobby or casino of your choice can marshal a quorum of lawmakers to get stuff done.

Your and my access to those who hold the keys to our life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is limited--confined to a single Representative and a couple of Senators. They are busy with matters other than our personal needs. They have needs of their own and raising the dough to get re-elected is at the top of the list.

It seems that Google has noticed and gotten into the lobbying game on its own behalf. But then, Google is big and we are small. Google has focused needs and ours are varied.

Google can answer our search for 'government' with 451 million related sites, but it has yet to find us a solution to Aunt Margaret's impending deportation or a way to get a meaningful hearing from anyone even remotely connected to our fear of growing old without resources.

It's not their job.

But there's an idea for you. Google Resource (probably already under trademark); a finding and putting-together site for actual citizens who share searchable needs, perhaps (but not even remotely limited to);

· Immigration questions and problems

· Educational alternatives for your inner-city resident daughter

· Help for a son suffering in prison

· Matching a job with an employer

· Starting a bootstrap business

There are all kinds of lists and addresses and obscure sources among those 451 million sites, but no way to find someone to talk to who shares your ethnicity, your economic circumstance or education. And yet government thinks it's doing a decent job. Your government, where you are represented by elected officials who reside in the top 8% of the economic scale, have devised a course of obstacles standing between your need and the relief of your need.

And they did it with the best of intention, but the worst of attention.

Washington does the best it knows how to do. But the best it knows how to do is affected by interests that may be opposed to the welfare of the under-represented-you and me.

When I say welfare, I mean it in the sense of a contented state of being happy, healthy and prosperous rather than the ubiquitous definition of Government providing economic assistance to persons in need.

Yeah, that's important too, but the broader need is for pathways to prosperity.

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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, 54 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, 51 quicklinks, 222 diaries, 384 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 (5 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, 54 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, 51 quicklinks, 222 diaries, 384 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 (130 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 286 comments) on Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 1:19:48 PM