One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices… 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country
545 vs. 300,000,000 People
-By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
Press Release Contact: Amy Bennett or Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org, 202-332-6736
July 26, 2010 – Organizations that support openness and accountability were shocked and saddened to learn that House Republican leadership plans to wipe out bipartisan progress on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation in the interest of pushing its budget package.
“If House leadership wishes to make good on their pledge to improve transparency and accountability, they should not kill this good government bill with strong bipartisan support as a political maneuver,” said Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). “Instead, they should walk their talk by making the Faster FOIA Act law.”
This afternoon, at the direction of House leadership, the House Rules Committee is poised to approve a rule that allows Speaker Boehner to strip all language out of S. 627, the Faster FOIA Act, and replace it with his budget proposal.
“Democracy thrives on civil debate, Michael Sandel says — but we're shamefully out of practice. He leads a fun refresher, with TEDsters sparring over a recent Supreme Court case (PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin) whose outcome reveals the critical ingredient in justice.”
It is now clear that the present global economic crisis is also a political and moral crisis raising fundamental questions about the nature of market capitalism in the West, in particular in the United States and England. Old arguments from the Right and the Left about more government involvement in society or less are often deemed irrelevant as the system is perceived as being corrupt and manipulated by economic and political elites. A recent Pew Research Poll found that over 92 percent of Americans viewed the economy as bad, over 70 percent say they have suffered job related or financial hardship as a result of the great recession, 25 percent say they have difficulty paying their mortgage and 24 percent in paying their medical bills. Meanwhile 65 percent see government in a negative light and large banks and large corporations as corrupt, ( 67 and 64 percent respectively ). Or as David Korten states in Agenda for a New Economy, (Berrett Koehler) “conservatives and liberals share a sense that the dominant culture and institutions of the contemporary world are morally and spiritually bankrupt, unresponsive to human needs and values , and destructive of the strong families and communities we crave and our children desperately need.(1)
Korten's book is an excellent beginning in rethinking how our economy should be organized and should function. He makes a strong case for a 12 point agenda in achieving independence from Wall Street and and in creating a more local and sustainable economic future. The 12 point Agenda includes:
Clearly, crowdsourcing is not new, only the word is. After all, crowdsourcing is a methodology, not a technology nor an industry. Perhaps one of my favorite examples of crowdsourcing during the Renaissance surrounds the invention of the marine chronometer, which completely revolutionized long distance sea travel. Thousands of lives were being lost in shipwrecks because longitude coordinates were virtually impossible to determine in the open seas. Finding a solution this problem became critical as the Age of Sail dawned on many European empires.
So the Spanish King, Dutch Merchants and others turned to crowdsourcing by offering major prize money for a solution. The British government even launched the “Longitude Prize” which was established through an Act of Parliament in 1714 and administered by the “Board of Longitude.” This board brought together the greatest scientific minds of the time to work on the problem, including Sir Isaac Newton. Galileo was also said to have taken up the challenge.
. . . . . . .
Interestingly, the person who provided the most breakthroughs—and thus received the most prize money—was the son of a carpenter, the self-educated British clockmaker John Harrison. And so, as noted by Peter LaMotte, “by allowing anyone to participate in solving the problem, a solution was found for a puzzle that had baffled some of the brightest minds in history (even Galileo!). In the end, it was found by someone who would never have been tapped to solve it to begin with.”
There is a massive complicity in America today between the corporations that fund elections and the officeholders they elect. Actions like Tim's are aimed at disrupting that complicity. For our children, for our country and for the world, we should honor his courage and self-sacrifice and pledge to follow in his footsteps, each in our own way.
Op-Ed
Tim DeChristopher's courageous bid to save our world
In disrupting a federal auction of oil and gas leases, Tim DeChristopher became a hero, but he now faces as many as 10 years in prison.
By Peter YarrowLos Angeles Times, July 26, 2011
In March, Tim DeChristopher was convicted of two felony counts for a nonviolent act of civil disobedience. Acting out of his deepest convictions and his abiding concern for the survival of humankind, Tim bid on oil and gas leases on federal land that he didn't have the means to pay for. On Tuesday, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison for his actions.
By IAN MacDOUGALL, Associated Press – 34 minutes ago
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Anders Behring Breivik said he was a boy when his life's path began to turn. It was during the first Gulf War, when a Muslim friend cheered at reports of missile attacks against American forces.
“I was completely ignorant at the time and apolitical but his total lack of respect for my culture (and Western culture in general) actually sparked by interest and passion for it,” the suspect in Norway's bombing and mass shooting wrote in his 1,500-page manifesto.
The 32-year-old Norwegian said it was the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 that “tipped the scales” for him because he sympathized with Serbia's crackdown on ethnic Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. A year later he said he realized that what he called the “Islamization of Europe” couldn't be stopped by peaceful means.
Phi Beta Iota: There has been ample warning of the growing anger of European and North American populations over the Muslimization of their countries. The Muslims are more devout/radical than the Catholics, who have lost a great deal of faith in the Church's stance against birth control–the failure of all Western governments is complex–on the one hand, they have failed to be intelligent or retain their integrity about domestic population policies; and on the other, they have perpetuated virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism (Libya being the latest example), and predatory capitalism (Goldman Sachs being the most outrageous, hurting its own as well as all others). The gap between the “elites” and the general public is catastrophically wide. The corruption of the West is its own demise.
