Food For Thought: Resistance

Showing posts with label Resistance. Show all posts

2024-09-04

The real scam & the scammers - Rev. J.T. Smith

Recently, I've come across two opinion pieces included in the daily AlterNet Top Stories newsletter in my email that I'm subscribed to. The author of the pieces, John Stoehr, is of the opinion that third party Presidential candidates are all scammers because all third parties are a scam.

He didn't drink the Kool-aid. Clearly, he guzzled and gargled with it. He also assumes the only people who are attracted to third party candidates are those who solely vote during Presidential elections and take no other particular part in politics. He claims those third parties are full of false promises, are in a sense demagogic, and are anti-democratic as a result.

Strange. Every year, I see a smattering of third party candidates for positions up and down the ballot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Bernie Sanders is not only currently a United States Senator representing Vermont, but he is also an Independent. Strange. (Obviously Sanders switched to the Democratic party from 2015 - 2016 and 2019 - 2020 in his run to be President, but the fact remains that he is now, once again, an Independent. See my previous entries about his running as a Democrat.)

As a matter of fact, there are currently four Independent Senators: Bernie Sanders (VT) (2007 - present); Angus S. King Jr (ME) (2013 - present); Kyrsten Sienna (AZ) (2013 - present); and Joe Manchin III (WV) (2013 - present). And they are not the only Senators in American history that belonged to "Third or Minor Parties." While there are no members of the House Of Representatives belonging to third or minor parties as of the writing of entry, there have still been many examples throughout American history. To be fair, not all of those third and minority party members were originally elected as a third or minor party member. Some changed parties and were still reelected, and some like Bernie Sanders were elected as a member of a third or minor party member. And those examples are strictly referring to the federal government. There are still more throughout state and local governments as well.

So while third party candidates are rare enough masse in American politics, they can and do still win. And in winning they adjust the course of politics.

As I have noted previously, the corporate duopoly of American politics is the problem. Alright, technically it is a problem. The two bigger problems which combine with the corporate duopoly are the real overall problem. What are the two bigger problems?

First is the Electoral College. I've already spoken about that travesty in previous entries. The other relates to Duverger's law in political science. America is a political system with single member districts, which means each district is represented by a single officeholder. In contrast, systems with proportional representation usually have more representatives of minor parties in government.

Considering that America started with zero political parties, which George Washington would refer to factions and in fact Washington was strongly against because he felt that unity rather than division was necessary for a democratic republic to survive.

Ultimately the only reason third parties have yet to break through that wall is because enough people buy the lie that the only viable parties are the corporate duopoly, and fools like John Stoehr who think that we must do everything to make changes while maintaining that duopoly.

My father was a member of the Libertarian party. His father wanted to name him Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but didn't know how to spell Delano. My father, for reasons I neither understood nor really discussed with him, hated Roosevelt. That was my personal introduction to politics aside from what was loosely taught in school. Frankly I had no interest as it all stank of bovine defacation and held less than no interest in it for me. Especially considering the President is not elected by the majority of Americans due to the Electoral College.

In November 2000, I wasn't registered to vote. My personal take was that my vote doesn't count, and I pointed to the Presidential election as the prime reason for concluding that. For clarification, in 2000 I was residing in Pennsylvania, a state that Al Gore, whom I would have voted for had I been registered to vote, won handily even without my vote. Not only did Gore win Pennsylvania, he also won the Popular Vote. We all know how that played out.

My first actual real involvement of any political kind was to add my voice to the chorus who stood against AT&T's intended buyout of T-Mobile as I was and am a T-Mobile customer and I don't want to be ripped off any more than I have to be. And AT&T wants to charge me more for the same services I currently pay less for with T-Mobile. I made calls and wrote letters to my local/federal government and signed every petition I could find to end that "merger". When I learned the part those calls, letters, and petitions ultimately played , I started signing petitions and writing letters to elected officials involving the environment, ending the death penalty, government issues, and far more. Feel free to check out my Pinterest page for a better understanding of where I stand.

I didn't get properly involved in "local politics" (which is how I see all human politics regardless of nationality) until 2012 when I registered to vote for the first time and I voted for Barack Obama because I saw the Mitt Romney's vision regarding women as a direct threat to all of my female friends, and who make up the majority of my friends.

While I have no interest nor intention of running for political office myself, my political activities haven't slowed. Frankly, I loathe politics in general. Unfortunately, I have to get involved to try to make change.

As of January this year, the number of registered independent voters surpassed the number of registered Democrats and Republican voters. Frankly, take that as a good sign.

On a personal note, while I am registered as an independent, and with the exception of the times I briefly changed to Democrat simply to vote for Bernie Sanders in both the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and while I lean Democrat, I more closely align with the Green Party and the Working Families Party. And for over a year now the Green Party is an official party that you can register to vote as in the state that I currently live in.

The movement to eliminate the Electoral College is growing. Fighting the corporate stranglehold on American politics is ongoing. If history teaches us anything, it is it can be done. Hopefully without a relative replay of the French Revolution. Eliminating those will definitely help to allow third parties to be able to end the duopoly. As will getting people to wake up to the fact that people should vote their conscience even when it's a third party candidate that most aligns with your conscience.

Voting for third parties is not a scam. The scam is believing the only viable options are sticking with the corporate duopoly.

- Rev. J.T. Smith

2017-06-05

Perhaps A Reason Why The Right Is So Willing To Push For Eliminating Contraception & Abortion Coverage? - Rev. J.T. Smith

I think I've figured out a large, though not consciously acknowledged reason why the Right is so willing to push for eliminating contraception and abortion coverage that has nothing to do with religious teachings even though those teachings provide a handy cover. We must remember that the mindset of slavers of old still exists, albeit in a new guise: Corporations. The wealthy few have found a new way to create a slave class in America, and the only way to make sure the money, which is invariably equated with power, keeps pouring in is to continually grow the worker base, which simultaneously grows the consumer base. And if the slaves, who also don't realize they're slaves, are allowed to have easily accessible and safe contraception and abortion, well that threatens the growth of that worker/consumer class. And allowing bigotry and misogyny at all levels has the added bonus of acting as a handy diversion from the reality that unless they're one of the wealthy few then they're also slaves. Amazingly, while they have more power than the peons, even the millionaires are slaves to the ultra-rich.

by Rev. J.T. Smith

2017-04-17

Dreaded Taxes [UPDATED] - by Rev. J.T. Smith

It's that season again: Tax season. No one likes having to pay them. And whenever we hear politicians promise to somehow cut or lower them, we instinctively love the idea.

Then again, we don't like having to pay for things like phone bills, car repairs, rent/mortgage, or any of the other bills that keep our needs met either. Unfortunately, if you don't pay the phone bill, then no phone service for you. Don't spend the money on the car repairs and maintenance? Then you're out a working car. (This becomes an even bigger issue if you live in a rural area with no available public transportation.) Don't pay rent/mortgage? Then you're either rich, living with very understanding friends/relatives, or you're homeless.

The problem is that the same concept also applies to taxes as they are in fact what pays for all of the services that are all too often taken for granted: Police/fire/emergency services, roads and their accouterments and maintenance, public schools, et al. And the taxes are meant to ensure that all of us chip in, thus lowering the cost per individual. As usual, we have politicians who are looking to privatize all those services in order to “lower taxes.” The fact is that the wealthy want to lower their own taxes, at the expense of everyone else. It's similar to the concept of “trickle-down economics.” While it might sound good on the surface, the reality is quite different as history has demonstrated that those latter ideas simply don't work. By privatizing what would otherwise be public services, we’re effectively paying more money for what amounts to less services as that is what allows the corporations to make more money, and the bottom line of profits will always matter far more to corporate America than people’s lives. And the politicians who push for privatization are really in the pockets of those corporations and the exceptionally wealthy through the lobbyists who are metaphorically whispering in their ear.

This can be changed, it can be fixed. Sadly, it won’t happen overnight; but, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. We need people in every level of government who want and are willing to push for tax reforms that forces those who can afford it (e.g. earn/receive $300,000 per year or more) to pay more in taxes in that they have more available to pay, as opposed to always sticking the working poor with the bill as is done now. Not only those wealthy people, but corporations also need to pay their share. “Each and every year, we lose $100 billion in revenue because large corporations and the wealthy are stashing their profits in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other offshore tax havens. That has got to stop.” [Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt)] What's more, as Senator Sanders has also noted: “At a time when we now spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defense, we can make judicious cuts in our armed forces without compromising our military capability.”

Really, cutting America's military spending in half, which would still result in greater spending than the next top three countries combined, along with forcing corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share of taxes including on all of the money they have tucked away in other countries, would easily cover the social safety net, the desperately needed infrastructure repairs, the salaries for emergency services, fully fund top notch public education as well as college tuition, and still have money available to lift everyone in this country out of poverty.

A very strong message that we must send to every level of government, especially to those politicians who constantly cry about government spending, is that the Government is not a for profit business but is rather a non-profit organization that is meant to serve ALL citizens regardless of age, biological gender, gender expression, transgender, skin colour, ethnic background, physical ability or disability, sexual orientation, or any other grouping of citizens we might think of that I've missed.

We can begin to bring about the changes needed by first making certain our voter registrations are up to date. When election time comes around again (Presidential, Congressional, Gubernatorial, Mayoral, etc., et. al.), we vote in those who would push for and through the above mentioned changes in taxation practices. In the interim between voting cycles, we can still band together and push for change. Join local activist groups or start your own. Write letters to the editor, write and sign petitions. And follow the advice of Hillary Clinton when she said at National Partnership's 2012 Annual Luncheon on June 26, 2012, “Get organized, get involved, and don't let anyone tell you it can't be done.”