The Most Useless Thing in the US? Political Parties

Time to update slightly my original post about the evils of political parties.  In the first sixteen+ years of this century they have certainly not become any more useful than when John Adams said:

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.  (could be a headline anywhere, 2016)

or George Washington said (excerpted version appeared in my earlier post):

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. 

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Most of the Founding Fathers, and the first four presidents of the United States all agree - political parties are highly undesirable and will be the downfall of this "great experiment" that is the United States.

In my opinion, there are two things that cause me to disregard a statement completely and out of hand that is made in the public forum: 1) an obvious logical fallacy or grievous error in reasoning (see any news site comments online or any letters-to-the-editor page for a plethora of examples); 2) any statement by a political party member or backer.

Membership or partisanship in any political party of any kind by anyone immediately reduces my respect or estimation of the individual's intellect or usefulness to zero.   Joining a political party means surrendering forever that one thing that makes humans special -- the ability to think, reason, and react to our world and adjust our understanding and expectations to meet a constantly evolving and changing reality.  It is an admission that "I am a non-thinking, barely functional idiot who only responds to money, and I will follow my chosen party's platform no matter how immoral, un-American, against the country's best interests, or un-constitutional it may be". 

Political parties actively discourage any such exercise of intelligence, and thus have driven the US into an impotent, second-world status and toppled it from a position of true leadership and dominance that it enjoyed immediately after World War II.  Whether that status was truly earned through intellect, noble deeds, and desire to see all humankind progress or was just a more genteel version of self-centered econo-terrorism abetted by eco-terrorism is a topic for interesting discussion at another time.

The current high point is that political parties are rapidly losing influence in the US and they don't realize it.  They still have a tight, monopolistic grip on the so-called election process, but in a positive sign the ranks of independents are constantly growing in recent years, making up a greater percentage of the electorate.

The political parties create a two-year charade of choosing the presidential candidates, but in reality they are eliminating the majority of intelligent, thoughtful voters through their limiting participation to the "factions" (see Washington above). Other first world countries easily accommodate elections that change governments in a few months time.  The only purpose for extending our election cycle is to improve the ability of "big money" to flood the airwaves with false advertising.

If you want to (or need to) be coddled by an always-rigid, nothing ever changes cocoon of ignorance - join a religion...they are hurting for members/followers/sycophants/mind slaves too.

If you really want to participate as a human being in the greatest experiment in human governance ever conceived -- then register to vote, and actually vote!  But as a thinking, reasoning Independent - not as a brain-dead sycophant of others!

Come On Thinkers!

I have always thought that political party members were among the least qualified or suited to make important decisions for the country, and one of the few bits of good news as we enter into another intelligence-insulting, criminally-supported campaign season is that more and more people are agreeing.

Pew Research reports that since the end of the Bush Administration, more Americans have begun calling themselves Independents than either of the two idiot parties (err...I mean political parties) - the highest percentage in 75 years of polling. Furthermore, the trend is continuing upward while the parties continue their downward spiral in acolytes.

Full Report Details

Time to Call BS on Congress...Again

I long ago gave up on anything said by anyone who is a member of a political party, much less a member of Congress.  But it turns out that Congress in particular has been lying to us with greater vigor than normal about taxes (and so have several "anti-tax" groups).  

There is collective rotten-egg-on-the-face today of every member of Congress who has ever (falsely) wailed about the "tax burden" on the poor US.   It just isn't so folks...the only place we have to go is to join a couple of sterling, role model countries...Chile and Mexico. 

Besides, everyone knows, the rich corporations that support your campaigns don't pay taxes anyway !

Pay Attention to What the ACA is Really About!

There has been so much smoke and bile over the front-end application process for the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) that a lot of things have gotten completely lost:

This act really only affects people who did not have healthcare coverage before, or whose employers have recently dropped it.  Unfortunately the latter group has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last decade (pre-ACA) as the death panels (excuse me...health insurance companies) entrenched their abilities to buy new yachts and vacation homes every year through premium and deductible increases, while providing no real cost control to the market.

It got so bad that the US was the worst (the worst, bar none) of any 'first-world' or 'civilized' country in providing very basic healthcare to its citizens.  You could have moved to almost any one of 80 or so other countries (including some 'second world' countries and done better).

The other thing that has gotten lost aside from just availability is the advantages the ACA brings to the healthcare consumer.  Unfortunately it does not get rid of the death panel's influence and greed, only requiring that everyone be allowed to be gored by the political money-grabbing lobbyist and health care profit machine equally hard.   The right thing, of course would be a single-payer system like the rest of the civilized world enjoys, but that would put one of the largest money sources for Congressional reelection campaigns out of business (boo-hoo).

Still, it means that there is likely to be a much smaller percentage of completely uninsured citizens in the US, which should serve to drive down costs once hospitals start to realize that the majority of people walking into their emergency rooms are no longer largely made up those that cannot/are not going to pay.

This column from the Center For Public Integrity outlines just how much real information you may have missed by just watching cable news:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/12/23/14051/obamacare-yes-theres-plenty-it-you

Land of Oppportunity? Not so Fast

If you are open-minded enough, here is a presentation that tells the economic story of America today in concrete, factual terms.  I checked the data behind this, and it is pretty accurate.  For links to the references behind the presentation, go to the YouTube page and open the 'References' section:

A Tale of Two Institutions

If you have read some of my other posts, you might be able to infer that I have very little tolerance/respect for some of our "institutions".  Political parties would have to be first and foremost -- I cannot for the life of me think why any self-respecting, thinking, rational human being would get within a country mile of one.

Another is "organized religion" -- or any religion with a name on it.  Again many of my reasons are the same as political parties, it is a very humanity-denying and somewhat abasing thing to commit to  a religion...particularly if you were not even given a choice in the matter but were "born" into it.  However, with religions I am a bit more tolerant in terms of respect.  I understand and appreciate that they can serve a useful purpose (thousands of different ones it seems), and are a key part of many people's lives.

I saw something today though that made me think of this again.  The pope has announced that he is willing to discuss moving some of the Catholic church's powers away from the Vatican, and to redefine some of the powers of the papacy.

What struck me is that this is the second major institution to get things completely "ass-backwards".  Churches (particularly the Catholics, but others as well) have this tradition of semi-divine central authority commanding a worldwide religion.  Yet I think that of all the endeavors, religion is best practiced "close to home" (locally) within perhaps some broad guidance.

Now, the second institution is so messed up it takes two levels of government to do it -- the US Government and the state's governments...or more particularly the "states rights" folks.  The Constitution basically says "anything the Feds do not or will not do, is the responsibility of the states".  Unfortunately, our states have massively f***d up their part of the bargain in at least two important areas: education and health care.  They have given us the worst health care "system" in the first world with untold riches for CEOs of the death panel/insurance companies, but costs four to six times other countries and medical results that are in the bottom half of the pack.  

And the (until recently) completely state-run US education system is an unmitigated, long running disaster.  We rank at the bottom of most first-world countries, and yet people howl when they can't use their local school boards to teach "creationism" or to rewrite history so that slavery never occurred. 

      

The Folly of the Filibuster

I disagree with David Brooks on this one - I don't think the presence of the filibuster helps in any way the reputation, "comity", or certainly the effectiveness of the Senate.   The filibuster is not mentioned in any fashion in the Constitution, instead it is a pure invention of evil political parties to try and subvert the process to their own ends.

Indeed, I think the filibuster is an abject admission of failure:

"My ideas or standing are so poorly reasoned out or just plain indefensible that I cannot persuade anyone to move to my side, or even compromise.  Therefore I will basically throw a second-grader's schoolyard fit until my face turns blue (or I keel over), then you will be sorry!!!".  

Pentagon Waste - Carrying on a Proud Tradition

I have written elsewhere in this blog about the proudly un-auditable Pentagon waste machine that shreds (or just plain loses) taxpayer dollars each and every day and seems very unconcerned about it.  (Of course, all they have to do is ask the Repubs for more I guess). 

Reuters is now taking its own look at it, putting a very human face on some of the very real victims -- US service men and women.  Then in the second part they outline how the Pentagon literally cannot keep track of anything...not just money.

OK, We Blew It (Please Do Better)

There are a lot of reasons for me to be disappointed in "our" generation - in general called the "boomers".  Just in sheer numbers we should have been a driving force for carrying forward the principles and sacrifices of "the Greatest Generation" that was our fathers and mothers. 

But, as boomers came into power and started to run things it quickly turned into the "me" generation, and largely abandoned the principles of responsible and dependable government, raiding the Social Security Trust fund and playing increasingly creative and equally invalid accounting games to make things look like they balanced out and it was OK to "don't worry....be happy". 

To mollify the worriers, Congress came up with a born-dead option called the 401K which is nothing more than an another income source for Wall Street but does nothing to assure retirement. As a result, an unprecedented percentage of retirees are planning to work even further into what should be their retirement years, depriving today's incoming young work force of jobs and opportunities.

Unfortunately, coupled with a generation of "greatest-generation-wannabes" politicians who were all too willing to stick our military into untenable and un-winnable situations (a patriot after all is defined as someone who is willing to sacrifice your children for their "ideals") we ramped up spending on the military to unsustainable heights...all the time ignoring the incontrovertible fact that the largest generational bubble yet was going to hit the Social Security and Medicare systems -- the very ones Congress had been raiding to feed the military-industrial maw.

Tom Friedman had a column on the subject recently, and I hope the young people of today take the challenge seriously (I have a daughter in this group....and I am sorry honey, but the people we put in office were not terribly bright and definitely not long-term thinkers). 

I sincerely hope the new generation can come up with a formula (as a few countries of the world have done) that assures a certain minimum standard of living including fair and reasonable health care for all the people who live in ostensibly the richest country in the world.  

The generation after "the Greatest Generation" has certainly failed.....

Thank You Senator McCain

I have been a little harsh on Senator McCain in the past on this blog, but I believe in acknowledging positive steps as well.  Thank you Senator for pointing out the folly of this whole mess that has paralyzed Washington DC even more than normal.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Congress That Couldn't, Wouldn't, Didn't

The rudderless, aimless Congress that hasn't done anything for the last four years seems to be circling the drain...unfortunately they are creating a whirlpool that threatens to take the world economy down with it.  I really wish we had the ability in this country to have a 'vote of no confidence' capability.  The citizenry at large is beginning to think the same way I see....

• 60 Percent Say Fire Every Member of Congress
• Shutdown Debate Damages GOP

By the way, Independents are now a larger group than either political party, so the news is even worse there -- the pool that Congress has to draw from if they ever hope to attract more non-thinkers back to their ranks:

21-Point Swing Against Congressional GOP Among Independents

Tired of the "Shutdown" BS yet?

The idiocy of the morons in Congress (yes, all 535 of them) has gotten the country nowhere...and it really is a debate about nothing going on in Washington right now (see video below).  Given that all of the parties involved are political party members, which brings their intelligence into question anyway, there is not a lot of hope.     

Enjoy an intelligent, informed discussion of the issues, not available anywhere else on public media except for PBS News. 

If You Want a Concrete Reason for the Shenanigans in DC

I know....what ISN'T shenanigans in Washington DC these days? 

I am talking specifically about the Repubs and their particular form of insanity.  (Insanity of course being defined as doing the same crazy or self-destructive thing over and over again and expecting a different result).  Their prolonged childish hissy-fit over the AHCA does have a dark side to it...one that I suspect has a great deal of truth in it, possibly even the primary reason for their insanity.  Keep in mind this analysis is written by a former executive at one of the nation's largest health insurers who finally decided he had seen enough:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/09/30/13474/beginning-end-major-health-insurers

The Tea Party Hates the US

The Tea Party heralds itself as some kind of a heroic 'back to the roots' of America type organization, but I and a number of other thinkers I respect believe it is just the opposite.  They are in fact holding us back from the things that need done to undo the damage that has been wreaked on the country by the government and most particularly the "me generation" since the end of the Cold War. 

A Soviet expert on the United States (Georgi Arbatov) was prescient at the time when he said "We are going to do a terrible thing to you.  We are going to deprive you of an enemy."  Oscar Wilde said "In this world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

Since the late 80s, the US has turned inward...while the rest of the world took the innovations largely fostered in the US and used them to open up the rest of the world.  In many ways we are now the cloistered, festering, ignorant country that China was before they were 'opened' to the rest of the world. The sad thing is, the Tea Party in particular but all of Washington DC in particular seems to want to keep it that way and nail the doors shut permanently.

The above link is to Tom Friedman's column, and I have just started reading his book (co-authored with Michael Mandelbaum)  "That Used To Be Us".  This linked column is essentially the theme of the book in a nutshell.  Watch this space for a review when I finish it -- it is sobering, yet hopeful reading about the future of the US and what we can yet leave our children if only we can keep the Neanderthals like the Tea Party out of the way.   

Italy Is At It Again

Italy's "form of government" is actually to have no discernible form at all.  Italy in short couldn't govern its way out of a wet paper bag.  Supposedly elected Italian governments are to serve 5-year terms but that has only happened once since 1945.  And now things just blew up again, when the EU is still grappling with the fact that there is only one really strong government and economy in their midst...Germany, who can't be expected to carry all of Europe on its back forever.

As  much as I detest political parties in the US, it is even worse in some other countries!

The Syria Intervention Decision

This seems to be dominating the news (although as usual the rest of the world keeps moving on and there are other things happening). 

I am kind of lukewarm on either option, but leaning toward not doing anything at this point.  Before I explain that, I want to say that I do feel sorry for President Obama in one particular way though. 

This in a way is yet another direct legacy of the most miserable administration in my lifetime...that of George Bush II that have bedeviled this current administration from the get-go.  Once again he is left with a repercussion of George II declaring war on Iraq, a very sacred and revered (and tenuously balanced) country to those of the Muslim faith.

The number of outright constant lies and fabrications that spewed out of that White House from that administration has cascaded into a massive distrust of anything concerning America going to war or even just dropping a few bombs on people who probably really deserve it.  Of course there are also a number of people who either want to see the first black president fail, or just like going to war and/or shooting off guns in general.

I am leaning against it because I am going back to the founding fathers, who wisely counseled not only against political parties but also 'foreign entanglements', and I would like to see us get out of the role of "world policeman". 

The strategy/dodge of "hiding behind the UN" is laughable and pathetic - the UN is as completely impotent as it has ever been, and the UN Security Council (containing both Russia and China) is the worst joke of all.

If the rest of the world is really outraged about the goings-on in Syria...then let them step up and take the wheel...and the historical rap for it.

Cutting to the Chase

One of the best Shields and Brooks segments from the Friday PBS NewsHour particularly concerning the train wreck that we laughingly call our Congress.  I am not going to pretend that I can add anything to their intelligent conversation, except to point out yet again that the mere existence of political parties is at the heart of the problem.  

Watch Shields, Brooks on the Fluster Over Filibusters, N.Y. Bids on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Americans Need To Make Up Their Minds!

Come on folks...this whole business about the 'spying on Americans' thing in the media frankly reminds me more of how far the American media has fallen in credibility than anything else. 

The media were fine with George II and his cronies passing all kinds of intrusive abuses of the Constitution partly because they called it "The Patriot Act" which made for good headline material, and partly because we were in the "War on Terror" (which has never made any sense to me or anyone with more than a junior-high education, but again it makes for good headline material).

Now, however, the media's collective knickers are in a twist over a program that has largely been reported and documented in books and other "non-media" venues.  It is a well known fact that the government has had an ability to monitor at least the metadata of all phone traffic since soon after 9/11.  Through court order (the "secret court") they can intercept actual content.

The creation and authorization of this "secret FISA court" was part and parcel of the original George II shenanigans concerning the Patriot Act.  Remember George directing his AG to write a 'finding' that the Constitution basically "did not apply" in these cases?  

Where was all the media concern and righteousness then? 

What President would dare say "this is un-American and we must return to our principles" and shut down the operation?  Obama tried it with that stinking, repugnant, un-American mess called Guantanamo, and what did it get him?

President Obama had it exactly right the other day when he said (but perhaps not forcefully enough) that the following are completely incompatible with each other:

• 100% security from terrorist attacks
• 100% privacy
• 0% personal inconvenience

[Update] Thomas Friedman has an annoying habit of writing his interesting columns faster than I can get around to reading them!  As usual, he came up with a very concise and I think correct approach on this subject last week.

Make the choices folks - think! - and figure out the balance and make sure you elect to Congress people who are bright enough to 1) understand what you are saying; and 2) do something about it.  (This probably eliminates the current Congress entirely unfortunately).

Congress vs. The American People

Lest you think that the US Congress is in any way "on your side" or working for the "common good".

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-usa-tax-checkthebox-insight-idUSBRE94T17K20130531 

Note that being a "war hero" does not guarantee that the person is particularly trustworthy or honorable (yes, I mean you John McCain).

Repubs are Bleeding From Within as Well

Any readers of this blog will well know my utter contempt for the un-American and un-democratic concept of political parties. But if we are to be stuck with this asinine system, it does take a minimum of two viable political parties to make it work in even an extremely crippled manner.

Not only is the Republican Party continuing to commit public suicide, watching its approval ratings and sycophant rates drop, but they lost another high-visibility individual who was hired specifically to help repair the damage that was so obvious in the 2012 election returns.   

(I don't think you will be seeing this on Fox News...and not just because it is factual which Fox always has a problem with....).