Quote of the Day -- Historically Poignant Edition

Apply this to today.

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." ---John Adams, Federalist Papers, 1776

Big Money in Elections, Politics and Government

Americans need to know we can change this. I think we all know we should, that it's not good.

Americans need to learn how we can change this.

Righting a Wrong for Washington, DC

Good to great news today. The House of Representatives in Washington passed statehood for Washington,DC today.

Could you imagine living in Washington, DC and paying taxes, everything but YOU HAVE NO REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS? Really? Greater population than Wyoming but zero representatives in Congress. So wrong. Obscene.Let's do this. #DCStatehood #DCStatehoodNow

Kansans! This Week In Topeka!

If you haven't already seen this, Kansans, you need to. Once again, Davis Hammet's Loud Light summary of the week's events in the statehouse. It's difficult to believe what the Republicans in Topeka push and try to push.

Quote of the Day -- On This President's Legacy

"The heavy price we will pay for Trump’s presidency is not that we will feel bad as a people about his lack of virtue...but that his lies and abuse will leave the government itself, along with the political system and our civic culture, degraded."

--conservative, Republican Bill Kristol @BillKristol

Once again, thanks, Republicans.

Quote of the Day -- On Government, Religion and Capital

"'Capital' ... in the political field is analogous to 'government'. ... The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them. ... What capital does to labour, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason."

--Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on mutualism

To which I would add:  

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”   --Napoleon Bonaparte.

What We Need To Do

Herewith, a relatively short list of what we, as a nation, as a people, with our government, need, exactly, to do.

It would be for the benefit of most of the people of the nation and so, it would be for all.

Quote of the Day -- From a Founding Father

With this, it seems clear he, Founding Father Thomas Paine, could no way be a member of the present day Republican Party.

The Only Way We'll Stop Polluting the Planet

I've worked at a couple huge, national corporations and noticed a continuing, repeated thread running through them.

Corporations and all the employees that work for them throw away and waste a great deal of plastics and papers and cardboard and aluminum cans and glass.

Corporations, with all those people, create and then throw away all these materials.

And they do it daily. Weekly. Month after month. Year after year.

And they have no desire nor motivation to reduce the amount of waste and wastes and what ends up as pollution, landfill.  It's what gets us these results:

Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger 

Than Mexico Found in Pacific

'Plastic in All Sizes' Found Everywhere 

in Once Pristine European Arctic

Nasa animation shows how ‘garbage islands’ have taken over the seas in the last 35 years

Corporations are all about profit and profits, of course. Because of that, they're also about cutting costs. They're about cutting costs at all costs. Recycling requires commitment. It requires spending. Those are costs they don't want to assume or commit to.

So let's face it. The only way we, as a nation and planet, can get them to start recycling and at least reduce, if not end polluting will be for government and governments, state by state and nation by nation, to require them to do so, to start and keep recycling.

Think about the waste.

Think about how much paper and plastic alone each McDonald's restaurant throws out. Daily. Then think of the entire company.

AT&T

GE

Alcoa

Dupont

Bayer

The list goes on. Company after company. All over the nation, continent and world.

We must do this. We must require this. We have to call them out on this. They won't do it on their own.

An upside to all this, besides that we'll clean up our planet is that it will also create jobs. Those are two huge wins for humanity and the planet.

The thing is, it must come from us, from the people.

Links:

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% 

of global emissions, study

Just 90 companies caused two-thirds 

of man-made global warming

Just 90 companies are to blame for most climate change

The Toxic 100: Top Corporate Air Polluters 

in the United States

The Oceans Are Drowning In Plastic -- 

And No One's Paying Attention

And it's not just the oceans, of course.

Landfill photos from six cities that highlight 

the global waste problem

Landfills: Are we running out of room for our garbage?

You Must Read This Article

If you only read one piece this year on technology and what it is, where it's going and where it may or may not go and take us, you should read this.

Will Democracy Survive Big Data 

and Artificial Intelligence

It has far, far more in it than I could ever describe here.

It is both fascinating and alarming, at once.

Governments will no way be able to keep up with technology. Heck, they're already far, far behind. 

I would like--heck, I want--every member of our national, US Congress to read this, let alone our state legislators and office holders.

All the things called for in the article would have to be done by government, of course. It would have to be done by far-seeing, responsible legislators.

I don't see it happening.

I'd love to be wrong.

God help us all.

Links:

Elon Musk issues a stark warning about A.I.

Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade

 to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

Elon Musk Says AI Is a Greater Threat Than North Korea

Elon Musk Warns: Regulators Must Be Proactive On AI

Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence 

could end mankind

Bill Gates is worried about artificial intelligence too

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates 

Warn About Artificial Intelligence

We Do Elections Very, Very Wrong, America

Sure, we Americans do and have done a lot of things right and well, absolutely or we wouldn't have gotten where we have, socially, sociologically and certainly economically, without question. (We've a lot--A LOT--of things wrong like maybe Korea but definitely Vietnam and that unlawful Iraq War and too many things about race, etc. but we'll save that for another time and day).

All that said, one thing we do wrong--and by wrong I mean deeply, wildly and very expensively wrong, all, is elections. Check out just a few notes on how the rest of the world does them:

The longest campaign in Canadian history was 10 weeks.

In the U.K., political parties can only spend $30 million in the year before an election.

In Germany, political parties release just one 90-second television ad.

In 2013, over two-thirds of income to Norway's political parties came from the government.

In Australia, voting is compulsory.

In Brazil, Election Day is on the weekend.

We just aren't very bright. 

We need to undo our election system and campaigns and campaign finance and all those "campaign contributions", folks.

We have got to Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government 

Links:  The Problems With Our Government--and Our Elections

National Elections: What the UK Does Right and We Americans Do So Wrong

Quote of the Day -- On This Day, 1938

True then, a lesson for us, still.

"The first truth is that the liberty of a Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

--US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: April 29, 1938

Link:   Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies

What Democratic Socialism Is -- And Isn't

For all the uninformed out there and/or the Right Wingers and/or Republicans and/or just outright fearful people---

A Brief History of Money Buying American Elections

It wasn't always this way.

How The One Percent 

Reshaped Democracy

We must Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

Links:  The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations

 The Ring of Fire

On Big Money In Our Elections and Government

Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking in Congress, about the obscene money in our political elections and government, buying that government.



Senator Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders are the only two, I believe, speaking up and out from Congress on this ugly, corrupt situation.

We have to overturn the Citizens United ruling and end campaign contributions. If we don't do these, nothing will change for the better, for the people. And the change must come from us.

Link:  Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

What We've Done to Teaching and "Education" in America

The Fellowship for Putting Stupid Theories into Schools

We’re known by many names across the spectrum left to right

Promoting fear and ostracism, ignorance and blight,

We promise health and happiness in dimly distant days

And ask your current sacrifice to give ourselves a raise.

We don’t get caught because we’ve got new education rules

As one by one we take away our children’s thinking tools

The Fellowship for Putting Stupid Theories into Schools.

It’s awkward when our kids come home with something they have learned

That would have in the good old days have got us staked and burned.

They question blind authority as if that were old hat,

They judge our bland hypocrisy – and we’ll have none of that!

They’ve even said that we should have alternative energy fuels!

But we’ll stop that: we’ll take away their critical thinking tools,

The Fellowship for Putting Stupid Theories into Schools.

Postmodernist, conservative, we’re pretty much on par

We undermine enlightenment embracing the bizarre.

Oh, nothing good will come of it if children learn to think --

They’ll realize we’ve left them at and teetering on the brink.

Our only hope’s to rot their brains and turn them into fools

By teaching tests instead of teaching critical thinking tools.

The Fellowship for Putting Stupid Theories into Schools.

Whenever you have heard a child say something really dumb,

Or seen adults enamored with what art has now become,

Or read about the legislature’s vote to buy a tank

Instead of raising teachers’ pay, it’s us you have to thank –

It isn’t just by accident our citizens are fools --

For we’re the ones who give the zealous ignorant their tools:

The Fellowship for Putting Stupid Theories into Schools.

-- Marcus Bales

On This Day, September 2

For whatever reason, I thought September 2nd to be a day of significance. With that in mind, I thought I'd put together a few highlights from the date, down through the ages. Partly fun, partly educational, partly historical significance. Hopefully enjoy.

490 BC - Pheidippides, Greek hero and inspiration for the modern marathon, dies

44 BC - Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.

- The first of Cicero's Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. He will make 14 of them over the next several months.

1649 - The Italian city of Castro is completely destroyed by the forces of Pope Innocent X, ending the Wars of Castro. (I love that. Pope Innocent)

1666 - Great Fire of London begins at 2am in Pudding Lane, 80% of London is destroyed

1732 - Pope Clement XII renews anti-Jewish laws of Rome. (Don'tcha' just love those oh-so-innocent Catholics?)

1864 - Union General William T. Sherman captures and burns Atlanta during US Civil War

1894 - Forest fires destroy Hinckley Minnesota: about 600 die (I can't even fathom that one)

1901 - VP Theodore Roosevelt advises "Speak softly & carry a big stick"

1902 - "A Trip To The Moon", the first science fiction film, by film great Georges Méliès released

1919 - Communist Party of America organizes in Chicago (It didn't really catch on. Not permanently, anyway)

1936 - 1st transatlantic round-trip air flight

1942 - German troops enter Stalingrad

1944 - During WW II, George H W Bush ejects from a burning plane

1944 - Holocaust diarist Anne Frank was sent to Auschwitz

1945 - Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnam independence from France (National Day) (Years later, Americans would learn nothing whatever from France's loss and exit from Vietnam and instead, attack the country)

1946 - Nehru forms government in India

1957 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site

1962 - Stan Musial's 3,516th hit moves over Tris Speaker into 2nd place

1962 - USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR

1963 - Alabama Gov George C Wallace prevents integration of Tuskegee HS

1963 - CBS & NBC expand network news from 15 to 30 minutes

1964 - Keanu Reeves birthday, Beirut, "actor"

1969 - Ralph Houk signs 3-year contract to manage Yankees at $65,000 a season (think things haven't changed a lot?)
        - The first automatic teller machine (ATM) in the United States is installed in Rockville Center, New York.

1971 - Chris Evert & Jimmy Connors win their 1st US Open tennis matches (Chris who? Jimmy who?)
         - Also his, Jimmy Connors', birthday, 1952

1972 - Rod Stewart's 1st #1 hit (You Wear it Well)

1973 - J. R. R. Tolkien, British author (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings)--as if you had to ask--dies of an ulcer at 81

1982 - Rolling Stone Keith Richard's house burns down

1987 - Donald Trump takes out a full page NY Times ad lambasting Japan

1997 - Howard Stern Radio Show premieres in Montreal Canada on CHOM 97.7 FM (and we still haven't gotten rid of him)

2005 - Bob Denver, American actor (Gilligan of "Gilligan's Island"), dies of complications from treatment for cancer at 70
So now, get out there, kids, and enjoy your September 2nd.

Quote of the Day -- Sunday Edition

A Phenomenal Idea--and Challenge--for We, the People, to Take Back Some Control of Our Government

Ralph Nader just created a fantastic idea for us Americans to get the attention of our Congressional representatives in Washington and hopefully get at least some of our government back for us instead of only for the already-wealthy and corporations. It is here, in its entirety:

Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress

With the long congressional recess in August through Labor Day approaching, “We the People” have the opportunity to do more than complain about the Congress and individual Senators and Representatives.

There are many issues affecting you and your communities that need to be addressed by members of Congress. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to reach the legislators in Washington, DC and when they return to their districts and states, they often only attend public events and ceremonies where they do little more than shake hands and smile.

The diminishing number of in-person town meetings by members of Congress are often stacked and controlled. The locations, attendees, and even sometimes pre-screened questions fail to provide citizens an opportunity to make their case to their legislators. Politicians crave predictability; they are control freaks.

Our five hundred and thirty-five Senators and Representatives need to be reminded that they were sent to Washington, DC by voters back home who entrusted them with the well-being of their communities and country. Many of these lawmakers then become indentured to corporate campaign cash that they must constantly beg for, often compromising with what is in the best interest of their constituents. For all this corporate campaign cash, these corporations want something in return – government contracts, giveaways, tax loopholes, weak corporate law enforcement, and other privileges and immunities, especially for giant multinational corporations that have tightened their grips of crony capitalism on Washington.

So what happened to your votes and your trust in your elected representatives? They were nullified and replaced with ungrateful politicians who have forgotten that the authority lies with the people.

It is time, during this August recess, for “We the People” to shake up the Congress and shake up the politics across the land. If anyone is skeptical of this possibility, they should recall August 2009 when the Tea Party noisily filled the seats of some town meetings called by Senators and Representatives in a Congress run by the Democrats. That is how the Tea Party movement came to public visibility, with the daily help of Fox News.

After that experience, many members of Congress were forced to reevaluate the power and influence of Town Meetings.

My proposal of a Citizens Summons can begin the process of showing your elected legislators who is truly in charge, as befits the Preamble to the Constitution – “We the People.” I am including below a draft Citizens Summons to your Senators or Representative. It covers the main derelictions of the Congress, under which you can add more examples of necessary reforms.

Your task is to start collecting signatures of citizens, members of citizen groups, labor unions, and any other associations that want a more deliberative democracy. The ultimate objective is to reduce inequalities of power.

Shifting power from the few to the many prevents the gross distortions of our Constitution and laws, our public budgets, and our commonwealth, that currently favor the burgeoning corporate state.

May you give your lawmakers a memorable August recess; they deserve to be shown the workings of what our founding fathers called “the sovereignty of the people.”

The Citizens Summons to a Member of the Congress: 

Whereas, the Congress has tolerated the expansion of an electoral process, corrupted by money, that nullifies our votes and commercializes both congressional elections and subsequent legislation, creating a Congress that is chronically for sale; 

Whereas, the Congress has repeatedly supported or opposed legislation and diverted the taxpayer dollars to favor the crassest of corporate interests to the serious detriment of the American people, their necessities, and their public facilities – such as access to safer consumer products, health care, and other basic social safety services. It has opposed raising the inflation-ravaged minimum wage and fair taxation, allowed endemic waste, fraud, and abuse by contractors, and authorized massive corporate welfare subsidies and giveaways; 

Whereas, the Congress has narrowed or blocked access to justice by millions of Americans, leaving them unprotected and defenseless in many serious ways, while giving business corporations preferential treatments and allowing them full access to influence the three branches of government; 

Whereas, the Congress has imposed trade treaty despotisms over our democratic institutions – the courts, legislatures, and executive departments and agencies – subordinating our domestic branches of government’s abilities to preserve and enhance labor, consumer, and environmental standards to the domination of global commerce’s “bottom line” and endorsed the usurpation of our judicial process by secret tribunals under the WTO, and other similar invasions of U.S. sovereignty; 

Whereas, the access to members of Congress has increased for corporate lobbyists and decreased for ordinary citizens, Therefore, the citizens of the [INSERT state (for Senators) or the congressional district (for Representatives)] hereby Summon you to a town meeting(s) during the August recess (ending September 7, 2015) at a place of known public convenience. Your constituents will establish an agenda of how Congress should shift long overdue power from the few to the many, both in substantive policy and through the strengthening of government and civic institutions; 

We deem this Summons to be taken with the utmost seriousness as we gain grassroots support throughout your congressional district (or state for Senators). We expect to hear from you expeditiously so that the necessary planning for our town meeting can take place. This Peoples’ Town Meeting reflects the Preamble to the Constitution that starts with “We the People” and the supremacy of the sovereignty of the people over elected representatives and corporate entities; 

Be advised that this Summons calls for your attendance at a Town Meeting run by, of, and for the People. Please reserve a minimum of two hours for this serious exercise of deliberative democracy. 

Sincerely yours, 

The names of citizens and citizen groups

(For any additional questions about this proposal, send an email to info@nader.org.)

______________________________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

So there it is, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's get busy.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us" (a novel).

The Legal Bribery That Is Campaign Contributions in America

Campaign contributions = legalized bribery



And we know it.

Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

It's the only way anything will ever change for the better. It's the only way we'll get the government back for the people.

And it has to come from us.