Put People Over Profit

The United States represents the pinnacle of human achievement in tolerance, law, science, and charity. Americans should be proud of this country and its achievements. We deserve to hold our heads high on the world stage and proclaim, “I am an American”.

This is increasingly no longer the case for a growing number of Americans. Everyday we are confronted with further evidence that our leadership is actively undermining our long history of fairness and protections of basic human rights. (preemptive war, torture, diplomacy failures…)

Our current leadership uses fear to justify dismantling our Constitutional form of government (expanding executive powers, corrupting the Justice Dept, blurring separation of church and state…) and is auctioning off our rights and heritage. (record deficits, no-bid contracts, selling off public lands…)

The majority of this behavior is merely unethical and/or immoral. However some of it s clearly illegal (lying us into an unnecessary war, outing an undercover CIA agent, warrantless spying…) and rises to level of Impeachable Offence. War Crimes may even have been committed (authorizing torture…).

End this disaster of an Executive and Impeach Richard Cheney first.  Register your demand for hearings with Rep. Wexler of the House Judiciary Committee at www.wexlerwantshearings.com.

The damage done in the last 6+ yrs will take decades to heal. Impeachment is the CURE. The United States deserves better than a mere footnote under the heading of “Failed Experiments in Democracy”. History will judge us. The world is watching. Take action.

OK let’s take both of these positions to their extremes and see what we see up close and personal.

Position 1: The MILLIONS produce “wealth”.

Position 2: The FEW produce “wealth”.

Where “wealth” can be defined as having ownership of material goods and contribution to the overall economy.

Scenario A: All MILLIONS and zero FEW

A bunch of stuff will get made badly due to poor research and zero funding for out of the box thinking. “Wealth” suffers because nothing really works well, just sort of half ass. Occasionally someone will come up with a great thing ala a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters eventually producing Shakespeare. Very inefficient.
 

Scenario B: All FEW and zero MILLIONS

Lots of good, well thought out, well financed ideas go absolutely nowhere because there is no one around to carry them out. Ivory tower, trickle down economics drips off the mahogany desks of the FEW only to lie on the floor, dead on arrival. “Wealth” suffers because nothing happens. No movement, no manufacture, no testing, no waste removal, no maintenance. Worse than inefficient, non-existent.

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What does it mean when analysts keep putting the cost this program or that program in terms of how many days or weeks worth of the Iraq war spending it will cost?

I keep seeing this pattern. We could have health care for every child in America for cost of one week of the Iraq war. We could have colonies on the moon for what we have spent in Iraq last month. We could re-build New Orleans and ensure that it will never be flooded again for what it costs to have Halliburton wash our troop’s laundry in Iraq…

The list goes on. We are spending an INSANE amount of money on this occupation. Why? Where are our priorities? What is it we hope to accomplish? Are we so afraid of the world that we must dump our treasure and our children’s future into a pit of chaos? Does it make YOU feel safer?

When someone asks, “What are your political beliefs?”… this is what I tell them.

I believe in the goodness of the universe. That is essentially the difference between liberal and conservative. One sees the good and wants to feed it, the other sees the bad and wants to starve it. One is driven by hope and the other by fear. One is inherently positive in nature and the other is negative. I don’t buy in to the negative, so that is what makes me a liberal. Liberals have been behind all the great things that humanity has accomplished, and I’m all for more of that. Change is good.

Not that we don’t need conservatives, or course. They provide the counterbalance, the reality check, the discipline to balance the idealism on the left.  These are necessary things, but they do not lead… they critique, they challenge, they enable, they sustain. At least that’s what they are supposed to do… this current crop calling themselves “Republicans” are not really conservatives at all. They are authoritarian radicals with their own agenda and a dangerous threat to this representative republic we call The United States of America.

This was the response from a woman who is holding down the home front for her husband serving in Iraq.

See the YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEQ7×2L_lTw

She said, “My Husband is fighting in Iraq right now and loves what he does. I just wish that everyone would understand if our troops were not over in the middle east that there would be many more terrorist attacks here in America.” Read the rest of this entry »

American Veterans are celebrated today and deservedly so. We owe our deepest debt of gratitude to those who have served their country and put their own lives ahead of people they do not even know, simply because they are Americans.

That is an enormous thing to ask of anyone and for those who answered “Sir, Yes sir”, we salute you. You will never be forgotten.

Thank you.

America has spoken. The existing powers were refuted in a substantial Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress. Check and balance has been restored by the will of the people. It is a good day for America, and a brighter future for our children. Hope and optimism have returned to replace the fear and pain created on 9/11. Read the rest of this entry »

California is one of the states that has an initiative process whereby citizens or groups can put proposed legislation on the ballot directly. This allows the people to participate in a direct democracy and by-pass the representative democracy system entirely. The result is often times flawed policy … Read the rest of this entry »

Both hearings which I attended and in which I provided this statement, where required by recent judicial intervention in the rule making process at the FCC. It seems the bipartisan FCC Commission (3 Republicans, 2 Democrats) approved a rule change that would allow unprecedented consolidation of media ownership in a given metropolitan area. The court ruled that this sort of change cannot be made without public hearings and due consideration of their input. Read the rest of this entry »

This abbreviated version of the following statement was read by me at the second of two hearings held by the FCC in the Los Angeles area on Oct 3, 2006. Read the rest of this entry »