Politics:

A Bad System of Governance

Imagine if you will that our founding fathers were unwilling to invest in new ideas of governing. That even if they didn't like the monarchy they still clung to the ideas of despotic rule. I shudder to think how different our country would be today. I think our founding fathers wrote an amazing document in our Constitution. I think the great experiment of mixing democracy and a republic together was an incredible stroke of genius for the time. I think creating a governing body with checks and balances had great foresight and that separation of Church and State is an essential element.

So what happened? The United States Government in recent years has not had a positive approval rating from it citizens in I cannot remember when. There is a real sense that it is completely dysfunctional and crippled by partisanship, corruption, and that our entire system is now controlled by the wealthy corporations. For instance; I cannot think of any American I know that thinks selling military arms to Saudi Arabia would be a good idea. It is common knowledge that they support terrorism, and yet our government recently sold them 60 billion dollars worth of arms. Corporate defense contractors just made a bundle, but at what cost to peace and security in the world and here at home?

When I talk about replacing our current broken government I certainly am not talking about returning to some past form like despotism or totalitarianism. I am talking about creating something new and better that keeps the best ideas of our founding fathers and adds modern ideas and tools that allows our government to work with the knowledge and speed of today's fast moving world. Lets face it. Our current system is not meeting the needs of its' citizens. The current state of politics and our economic system have become so antiquated and slow it cannot solve our current problems.

Don't get me wrong I am not calling for violent revolution of any kind. I am merely talking about creating a think tank that can come up with solutions to fix or replace our ailing economic system and revamp the current government to where it can once again function in an effective way so that it can get things done, like actually address the problem of global warming and our energy crisis.

It is a little know fact that politicians are not equipped to deal with our modern problems, They are not social engineers, They are not scientists, They are not actually governing experts of any kind and yet they are the ones elected and put in charge of fixing this mess. Lets look a this from a hypothetical example.

Senator Joe just got elected to office. Like most politicians he was a corporate lawyer with a nice desk job until this point. His whole career has been getting people to see his clients point of view regardless of right or wrong. Now he is faced with a real pollution mess from a factory pig farm in his district back home. The sewage from this swine production plant is poisoning the ground water and the local rivers and streams. The local citizens have very serious concerns about the health effects and the damage that it is doing to the environment. He personally has no training in toxicology so he seeks information on the subject that just happens to come from experts that work for the pork industry. Oh yea he is also reminded that he received a very large campaign contribution from the Pork lobby that helped to get him elected to his seat. Well being a fine politician he goes to work on this problem not by getting the pig farm to stop polluting but instead to have a bogus report put forward by experts that were provided by the pork industry to help side step the EPA. The report claims no ill effects will come from the factory farm for the residents or the environment. The few poor folk that live near the mess will suffer the health problems and the environment will be destroyed but the really important thing is that the Senator will get a very large campaign contribution from the corporation profiting from the pigs and he will promote to his constituents in the next campaign how he save those jobs at the pig farm against those pesky environmentalists. With massive amounts of corporate campaign money he will win by a land slide.

This scenario is the way things have been going for a long time. That is why we have ended up with super-fund sites, and cancer belts and dead zones in our oceans. Corporations with there money and influences have managed to manipulate the system and avoid being responsible for the harms they cause us all.

The first suggestion I would make is to get rid of the unfair lobbying practices and corporate influences on Washington.

Lets once again make the politicians beholding to the citizens and not to corporate money. This would serve to stop a lot of the corruption. It would allow us to clean up our air, land, and water, move us toward green technologies and get us off oil and coal. It would keep and create good jobs here in America. Real solutions for health care, could be realized without the influences of insurance companies trying to get rich off the suffering of our citizens.

With out a revolving door between corporate influences working in all our government agencies like the FDA and EPA, these agencies would work to protect our citizens and country instead of corporate profits.

Getting rid of the unfair lobbying system that we have now would have a tremendous positive ripple effect through out America. We also need to be sure that all government employees do not have ties to corporations and are not allowed to work for them after leaving there government positions. The current revolving door between corporations and government jobs is a blatant conflict of interest that should not be tolerated at any level.

We all know the system is bad. Hell we hear the complaints from people like you everyday. We see the polls and yet nothing has changed in my life time. Politics has only gotten worse. Corruption has only gotten worse. We still end up in wars that kill our young for the sake of greed. Corporations are still poisoning our air, water, and land. We are still addicted to oil and coal despite the fact other countries are successfully making changes to greener technologies.

It is time once again to take our government back from the wealthy corporations and fix our problems before it is too late. We need to be as brave, resourceful, and inventive as our founding fathers in facing these challenges and get things back on track in this country.