It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached "a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies." It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.
Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?
Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions - nearly 8000 each day - higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.
At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.
Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.
At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time.
Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.
There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.
The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.
At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.
The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world's police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?
In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world - much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined.
The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.
The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.
The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses.
Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.
Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. "We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing oriented" society to a "person oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
It is time.
Photos/Video From Pomona Workers Unionization Rally
http://www.claremontportside.com/?p=2345
However, what we will desperately need from the unions are their superior organizational skills, experience and fighting American spirit. For what I fear will very likely happen down the road we are being forced to travel, we will need all we can get.
And even if we did, we'd simply exchange one political whore for another - which is pretty much what happens now anyway.
America has been poisoned, her blood toxic with money. Our entire system - from end to end - is corrupt. Toxic politicians cannot and will not reform themselves. 'Reform' is a shell game they play and always win. Nothing ever changes - Wall Street still gambles, lobbyists still bribe, politicians continue to sell their souls to the highest bidder and corporations still f**k us over with impunity worse than ever. Like arsenic poisoning, our democratic republic is dying a slow, painful, miserable death. If we don't remove the poison, the result is guaranteed to be lethal.
How do we get rid of the poison? It's so severe and entrenched, I'm not sure we can - at least not by standard methods. We cannot "work within the system" for change, if that system is rotted from within. It's like trying to stop a speeding Toyota with a defective accelerator by stepping on the defective brake.
When you've got a gunshot wound and are spewing blood, a band aid ain't gonna cut it. You're gonna die.
When you've been poisoned, when you're sweating, delirious and puking your guts out, taking two Tylenol ain't gonna cut it. You're gonna die.
We're bleeding out, people, our systems are shutting down. Do we want to die? If not, crisis demands we take
If not, crisis demands we take drastic, unorthodox measures.
US citizens need to realize that we are already at war with our government and many of our nations institutions. Health insurance monopolies are just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine a system where you had to pay CASH at the counter after your treatment like you pay for your products AFTER you shop at the grocery store. How much do you think medical procedures would cost then? The entire medical industry would implode. Hospitals would go broke almost immediately. Doctors, Dentists, et al would go bankrupt in short order. The whole fake house of cards propped up with toothpicks - Gone. People would die. They always do in war. Some of them innocent. We have to look no further than the two needless wars we're currently involved in to witness this fact first hand. Until this nation is willing to once again die for their freedom, we will be relegated to scrambling for scraps & crumbs from the lavishly set tables of the government and the wealthy.
This entire country is a house of cards propped up on vapor-tender.
Start preparing.
TODAY!
I grow weary of the term 'Dysfunctional' to describe the current situation in D.C. as well. This isn't some family where the kids don't talk to their parents. This is a government so choked by corruption that it is simply no longer able to function. It has happened to every other human empire in history. Does anyone remember the next part of the story?
It goes something like: 'And so the most powerful empire on earth fell due to the total corruption of its government, and the expense of efforts to quash resultant widespread uprisings ...'
The Power Elite have had smoke and mirrors down to a fine art and science.
However, the mirrors are starting to seriously crack and the smoke is starting to clear.
You're so right, we have everything we need - we always did.
We've been systematically SOLD OUT, pissed on like a fire hydrant and sold a worthless bill of goods. ENOUGH!
We must STOP playing into the game - most especially immoral, illegal wars, which are the worst perversions of everything true and right. They are the biggest, most destructive, most expensive cons of all.
What if they threw another such war and NO ONE showed up?? Vietnam ended because we finally got smart and refused to fight.
It took 12 long years,working within the system of British oppression, trying to correct flagrant injustices and inequities, before the Founders finally got a belly full, got PISSED OFF and said SCREW YOU.
Like King George III, the Power Elite will ignore us as so many annoying gnats.
...right up until 1776 v.2.0
Fanned.
How do you figure?
It seems that a declaration of defeat should only follow an attempt at victory, which we have never made.
We've had no organized widespread civil disobedience at any point in the past 10 years.
We've voted, we've circulated petitions, and we've marched around a bit.
In other words, we have done absolutely nothing to seriously threaten those in power.
I wouldn't count us out so soon.
Not even taxes. Those of us who pay taxes should withhold them this year.
I LOVE this line! It is exactly what we need.
You're absolutely right. A fierce, honest, for-the-people third party is the only answer. People like Alan Grayson come to mind.
The current Party of Money (does anyone really think we have two distinct parties anymore?) has had a stranglehold on America. Only a third party can break it. Nader and Perot (who especially had strong support...remember his "giant sucking sound" warning about NAFTA and outsourced jobs?...yeah), among others, tried hard but were shut out by the deliberately exclusive "two-party" system. Our "democracy" is not really democratic and inclusive - it's designed to keep YOU out.
Many other countries have multiple parties, like Italy and France, running the gamut of extremes and still manage to have elections, select a leader - all without killing each other. There's NO reason we can't, too. We MUST.
Fanned.
They absolutely believed that if the people's govt. ever grew unresponsive, revolution was acceptable and necessary to return the govt. to the people. They even believed in violent revolution if necessary. What people fail to realize is that we have the best form of revolution available, the vote. We simply misunderstand how to use it. Or we simply refuse to use it properly by continuing to vote for the same old D or R party line.
Most conservatives would vote to increase defense spending. This knee jerk reaction reflects an inability to think through the process of competing priorities in a world of scarcity, human suffering and stagnation. They would, like my conservative half-brother, give a dollar to defense not a dime to democracy, not understanding what they lose in the bargain.
Their visceral response, to say, the fact that DoD consumes 80% or more of all budget outlays has no impact on what they construe to be national needs in face of record unemployment, homelessness and hunger. I use 80% because if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated. http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
Source: Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, http://old.armscontrolcenter.org/archives/002279.php;
They believe it has to be. They make little effort to find out if indeed what they believe is what they ought to know. So they vote their beliefs rather than rely on multi-level discernment of national priorities supported by verifiable facts and experiential reference.
We are so f-----
That depends on what you mean by "defense".
One of our biggest problems is the very word "defense". While legitimate in part - every sovereign nation and people reserve the right to defend themselves - the majority of the meaning is pure Orwell.
How many here know that the Department of Defense was originally the "Department of WAR" (1789-1949)?
After WWII, all military and related departments were consolidated into the DOD at the Pentagon.
Changing the name from war to "defense" after 160 years was a strategic move in more ways than one. The US was top dog after WWII - a superpower. After the horror and atrocities of WWII, war really became a dirty word. With the US's new world status and the singular means to police and dominate the world, "defense" logically became much more palatable than "war".
An even greater benefit from the switch to "defense" was the Department's change in image - from one of military aggression to one of peaceful, noble "defense"...at least on the outside.
Inside, nothing changed. If anything, the new Department of "Defense" ushered in a new era of new wars-by-other-names. It would become much easier to deceive the populace into new aggressions under the guise of "defense", rather than "war".
And so it's been ever since. Simple, Orwellian logic at its very best.