My TITLAL Weblog

Our country is no longer governed “by the people for the people”. It is governed by the powerful for the powerful. The only thing “the people” are allowed to do is vote and pay taxes. Once we vote we are no longer considered until the next election vote is needed. And hardly anything “we the people” want done in government is done once the politician has our vote. And taxes? When was the last time you saw tax money properly spent on anything you really needed or thought was really worth the cost? Wouldn’t it be something if when the politicians wanted to implement a law or spend tax money they courted “the people” like they do when they want our vote to get reelected? Instead they court the powerful & the wealthy, and negotiate with their cohorts-in-crime. And that is who benefits the most.

“The people” of this country have more power than I believe they can imagine. Almost over night we could change what our government has become with the power we have. Unfortunately, three things have happened that prevent us from doing that. First, we have handed over all of our power to the politicians. Second, as working class people, we are just too focused & busy with providing for ourselves and our families. And finally we have become too individually polarized to stand together. Thomas Jefferson is credited with a lot of famous and catchy phrase’s, many of which he actually did not coin. One of those goes something like this: “In order for democracy to work there must be a revolution about every 200 years”. Now I do not know if Thomas Jefferson actually coined this one, but if he did I feel certain he was not talking about actually taking up arms and over throwing our government. That would be cutting off our nose to spite our face. I think he would have meant for “the people” to come together and tell our elected officials in no uncertain terms that we were not going to stand by and accept their corruption.

I recently heard a “mouth-piece” of one of the so-called news outlets say “for the first time a political party had a news organization in their pocket”. Of course, he was referring to a competitive news outlet that he insisted supported the political party his own news outlet opposed, which, of course, makes this mouth-piece a two-faced hypocrite. The point is that both major political party’s have news outlets in their pockets that play a tremendous roll in keeping “the people” polarized. Politicians & their public relations machines know very well that if “the people” ever did stand together the politicians would be in deep trouble and loose all that power they cherish.

I imagine a lot of people today do not know how the term-limit law came about for the president of the United States. The eight-year term limit was enacted into law as a result of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s violation of certain constitutional laws during his 11 year term. And it was in the last 2 years of office that he managed to finally achieve his objectives that caused the most harm. He managed to get unconstitutional laws passed by appointing enough Supreme Court justice’s who would favor passing those laws. He would not have been able to do that in just eight years. And that is the root cause of the problem we have today with career politicians. They have become the epitome of why we should have term limits on them. Someone once told me when I made that statement that we already have term limits. He said it was called the “election” process. How gullible he was! Presidents are elected by the masses of the United States. Senators and representatives are elected by their respective states, yet many have been in office long enough to yield much power over the entire country, and in some cases, indirectly over the whole world. And all they have to do to get reelected is immorally (and sometime illegally) funnel enough tax money & payoffs to their state. After they have been in office long enough they have so much power that even the president has to tip-toe around them.

If you think politicians are there for “the people”, just do a little research on the laws & policies they have passed for themselves, laws they have exempt themselves from, and “goodies” they make available only to themselves. During the two world wars, many commanders would not allow themselves to have anything more than what their soldiers had on the battle field. The reason was that they wanted to know exactly what the ordinary soldier was going through and how far he could go. But of course, our politicians have elevated themselves above having to settle for what they dish out to “the people”.

A few years ago I kind of coined my own little description of the evolution of modern day politicians. “Seventy-five years ago a politician wouldn’t even consider committing a major wrong. He knew it just wasn’t right to do so. Fifty years ago he wouldn’t do it because he was afraid someone would find out. Twenty-five years ago he would inquire if he could get away with it even if someone did find out about it. Today his attitude is ‘so what, nobody can do anything about it anyway!'”. Naturally, 75 years ago there were indeed immoral and crooked politicians. It’s just that there were a few less than there are today and we didn’t have the instant news media to keep us informed. But it is my contention that the politician’s attitude has evolved to what it is today, and that is “to hell with ‘the people’…except when I need their vote to get elected”.