Bitch and complain may be one way of putting it, but Investigate and
Explain might be another way.
But first, yes, I do believe that politics is nothing but the wealthy
fighting among themselves for all they can grab away from one another.
If I ever said it was corrupt, I take it back. It's what our Ruling
class does, and what Ruling Classes as far back as I can read, do to
jockey for power positions.
We, on the outside, see what we think is corruption, and sometimes the
combatants accuse their adversaries of corruption. But it's all part
of the Game they are indulging in. While we go forward believing that
some people in high places are liars, cheaters, and corrupt, when the
smoke settles, they hug one another and dine in fine style, and yes,
even sleep together.
But it goes even further than our not understanding their Game Rules.
We have never had a Game Plan. We have allowed ourselves to be led by
our noses, misdirected into supporting the ever changing whims of the
Ruling Class. Presently we are being goaded into believing our
government is at fault because it is too big and poorly managed. It
needs to be smaller, we are told. At the same time we learn that we
need more military power. This means bigger military. And what
exactly is our military? Well, it truly is big government on
steroids. Except for the VA. We are told we need to cut the fat and
sloppiness out of the VA. The solution for everything except our
military, is to cut out the fat and make it leaner and more
productive. And many of us fall into line and nod our vacant heads up
and down.
We need to shut down our TV's and put aside our Shot Jocks, and begin
thinking for ourselves.
If I, an average person, can do it, then millions of folks can do the same.
We have three children with spouses, three adult grandsons(two with
wives) and five younger grand children all living in a climate of
questioning. We have taught them to never take anything they read or
hear at face value. Question and investigate until you are satisfied
that you know what is being put before you, and until you have
satisfied yourself as to the position you hold.
Sure, it's an uphill struggle, but it's what must be done if we are
going to change the direction we are now being taken. It is as if we
are under some sort of a magic spell. And until we can kiss the ugly
frog and see it turn into a beautiful Fairy Godmother who will grant
us all of our wishes, we have only two choices. We can go along and
hope enough spills from our Master's plate, to keep us from ruin, or
we can take in a few notches in our belts and go forward educating our
children, teaching them to be proud of who they are and to rely on
their own brains to reason the events around them. Frankly, I don't
think of myself as sitting back, simply because I am no longer able to
march in a picket line, or demonstrate in front of the Quilcene City
Hall...which does not exist. Instead, I question the folks around me.
We just spent time with a nephew and his family in Merced, California.
He told me he votes Republican mostly, but could not bring himself to
vote for Trump. Instead, he voted for Johnson, the Libertarian. We
had some very direct discussions, but never became upset when one or
the other of us did not agree with the other. That was because we
were discussing why the government was behaving the way it is, and how
we might impact some of the actions that will effect our families. A
Radical and a Moderate Republican, agreeing on far more than we
disagreed upon.
It's not a glamorous way of going about making changes, but remember
the old adage, Slow but Steady Wins the Race. And if we are truly
steady, we have the numbers, too.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/23/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I don't understand your post.
Just how do you think politics works? What is the mechanism that we, the
people, would use, to elect one of us? When has that ever happened in a
western country? And, in case you haven't noticed, when you read about
'activists" or "organizers", you're reading about would-be leaders who
"educate" and "lead" which implies that the mass of people don't do anything
on their own. And once you've got leaders, you need to have a culture of
democracy and equality in your society, or else you'll be back to what we
have now or Stalinism.
And when you say that we don't have a dog in this fight, that it's between
the various factions of the ruling class, then you're doing precisely what
the majority of people do. You're saying that politics is dirty and is all
about money so all we can do is sit back and watch the powers that be, fight
it out. Well yes, you and I are old and blind and we're not going to do a
thing except bitch and complain. But all those middle aged and young people,
it's this attitude that they're too busy living their lives and there's
nothing they can do about anything, which has gotten us here!
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, April 23, 2017 4:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The White House Seems Excited to Shut Down
the Government
While I have no crystal ball to tell me how this budget fight will be
resolved, one thing is for certain. We, the Working Class Americans, have
no dog in that fight. No, I don't mean that the outcome won't be
devastating for us, but the fight is between the various Ruling Class
Factions. The Working Class is both the donor and the victim of the
results, no matter how it plays out. Well, we've now tried just about every
crazy idea that's out there. We've voted in crooks, generals, peanut
planters and now, a shady billionaire(self proclaimed). How about trying a
member of the Working Class? I hear there's a bunch of them out of work,
and most are more tuned into what's going on. Why don't we hold our own
people to be intelligent? Have we really bought into the slop being fed us
by the Billionaires?
Carl Jarvis
On 4/23/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Under terms set forth by Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's budget
chief, the ruination of Obamacare is once again tied up with keeping
the government running. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) The White
House Seems Excited to Shut Down the Government
By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker
23 April 17
Next Saturday, April 29th, is President Trump’s hundredth day in
office, a historical marker used by the press to assess a new
President’s progress since the first term of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. F.D.R. was grappling with the Great Depression, and he had
a pliant Congress that would have passed almost anything he proposed.
Presidents since then have often struggled to meet the expectations of
the hundred-day report card but generally can point to a list of major
legislative accomplishments. Trump does not have such a list. At the
same time, the Trump White House is facing a much more consequential
deadline, one that will help define his first months in office and
perhaps his first term: absent a spending deal with Democrats and
Republicans in Congress, next Saturday the government will shut down.
While the potential for a government shutdown has been overshadowed by
other events—Syria, North Korea, the attempted repeal of Obamacare—the
Trump White House is suddenly seized with the issue. “Next week is
going to have quite high drama,” a top White House official, who
sounded excited by the coming clash, told me. “It’s going to be
action-packed. This one is not getting as much attention, but, trust
me, it’s going to be the battle of the titans.
And the great irony here is that the call for the government shutdown
will come on—guess what?—the hundredth day. If you pitched this in a
studio, they would say, ‘Get out of here, it’s too ridiculous.’ This
is going to be a big one.”
The last government shutdown was in October, 2013, and was widely
blamed on conservative Republicans in the House, with a major assist
from Senator Ted Cruz, who demanded that Obamacare had to be defunded,
a ludicrous strategy given that Barack Obama was President. Congress
failed to pass the necessary legislation, and the government closed
for two weeks before Republicans came back to the table. At the time,
many predicted that the tactic would have dire political consequences
for the G.O.P., but the following year the Party expanded its majority
in the House and took over the Senate. Republican leaders have
prevented their right wing from forcing shutdowns in the years since,
but one lesson from 2013 is that the threat of a government shutdown
is a powerful way to press for concessions without paying too high a
political price.
In recent weeks, the prospect of a government shutdown seemed low. In
the House and Senate, Democratic and Republican appropriators, who,
despite ideological differences, are often united in their desire to
spend money, were making steady progress. But there was an elephant in
the room. In mid-March, the Trump Administration released a detailed
spending request that included a large increase for the military and
for immigration enforcement and massive cuts to domestic discretionary
spending. While the budget was released with fanfare, the White House
seemed to retreat from the talks, leaving congressional Democrats and
Republicans to continue their work without much guidance from Trump.
Yesterday, that changed. Mick Mulvaney, a Republican and former
congressman who was one of the House members who agitated for the 2013
shutdown and is now Trump’s budget director, announced that “elections
have consequences.”
The consequence, it would seem, was a divisive proposal. Mulvaney
suggested that if Trump didn’t get his defense spending and border
wall—which, it should be noted, he promised would be paid for by
Mexico—then the federal payments, known as cost-sharing reduction
subsidies, or C.S.R., that pay for health insurance for millions of
Americans under Obamacare had to be cut from the spending bill. The
ruination of Obamacare is once again tied up with keeping the
government running.
The funding legislation likely can’t pass in the House without some
Democratic votes, and it certainly can’t pass without Democratic votes
in the Senate, where Republicans need eight Democrats to reach the
sixty-vote threshold to prevent a filibuster. The two sides aren’t even
close.
“There’s a big spread between the bid and the ask here,” the White
House official said, noting that Trump wanted thirty billion dollars
for defense, several billion for more ICE agents and the border wall,
as well as eighteen billion dollars in cuts to domestic spending and
the ability to withhold federal money from cities that don’t coöperate
with immigration officials.
The big priorities for Democrats are the money for those people who
need Obamacare subsidies, the protection of domestic spending, and
increases for programs for opioid addiction and health care for coal
miners, the last two being issues that Trump ostensibly campaigned on.
These shouldn’t be a big deal, Democrats say, and they have accused
the White House of throwing a grenade into negotiations in order to
wrest some sort of political victory in the first hundred days. “For
weeks, the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working
well together,” a Democratic aide said.
“Then,
all of a sudden, the White House is looking at next week and they have
nothing to show for the first one hundred days, and they either want a
health-care bill to pass next week, which seems like a heavy lift, or
to get more on immigration from this process. Even Republicans don’t
want this fight, and they don’t want a shutdown on Day One Hundred of
the Trump Administration.”
The White House, which is trying to force another vote on an Obamacare
repeal, seems desperate to either win some of Trump’s priorities in a
deal next week, or force a government shutdown that it can blame on
Democrats.
That might energize Trump’s supporters, who don’t have much to
celebrate yet.
But it’s not just the Democrats who oppose several Trump priorities.
Congressional Republicans, who are generally united in support for the
increase in defense spending, are divided on the border wall, which is
not popular among border-state Republicans, and the deep
domestic-spending cuts.
So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be
high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a
shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t
know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and
my ICE agents.”
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