In our system of government, the President only has the power of persuasion on domestic issues, while the Senate has the power to decide whether to go where the people want to go via the House political leanings or not. The wealthy class had determined what goes into our Constitution. It kept the wealth at the top by fooling Americans into thinking that a trickle down theory works. James Madison, one of the architects of the Constitution, soon condemned its structure.
The Senate was structured to keep the wealthy in charge. That is the purpose of all the Senate rules which subverts democracy. Benjamin Franklin walked out of the Constitution Convention because by having a Senate, two for each state regardless of population, he knew that real democracy for the people would not be realized. It just became another form of British way of governing with the Senate is like the House of Lords type of government which has kept the rich, rich generation after generation for centuries. It is the most unequal society in Europe.
In the past we were able to hear many points of view on television, but Reagan got rid of the requirement that all important points of view should be given equal time within reason for free. The elites like this because they can control who gets to talk about what is really going on in this country. You can get this information if you have the time to watch C-SPAN continuously because they do not have schedules and are required by corporations who are required to contribute to C-Span for the use of the airways.
Since, with a few exceptions on MSNBC which is not on basic cable, most Americans are clueless about what is really happening to them and many just vote on cultural issues such as race, ethnicity, and church beliefs and get screwed royally. Go to http://maddowblog.msnbc.com for the best on Television in telling us what is really happening to us and why important issues are not usually discussed on the news. Most news programs talk about personalities and who is up or down.
One long time pollster at Gallup told us in his book The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Poll by David W. Moore (Google him) that prior to elections, polls are used to shape our beliefs. Most of us don't like to be in the minority so those who are the most ignorant voter, the Independents, with what they think is the majority. If Democrats voted in higher numbers, we would have a much different House and Senate. Conservative seniors vote in high numbers of 25-30 percent of all votes. Do we want to be controlled by Old people?
Conservative Think Tanks established by billionaires have taken full advantage of this and dominate C-Span, the only neutral media, to inculcate us with a corporate point of view. The other views are mixed and often not well organized due to a lack of money. So we get mostly more liberal right-center points of view and rarely a more liberal point of view. Practically no Thinks Tanks are really liberal, even those with the name Peace on it.
The powerful corporate media controls what most Americans think either by ads or content of the programs. It is not accident that Crime and stupid comedies dominate our channels. Amuse and mislead. When Comcast merges with NBC and puts Netflix out of business, we who value the really good films and documentaries will no longer have a source.
Newsweek does not have the flash of Time, but it is great for different points of view well said. The same with Bloomberg Business Week www.businessweek.com . Free news soon disappears into the ether. Buy the magazines if you want to keep reading good stuff including the New York Times with all its faults. The e-version of the Times is just like the newspaper format. I complained to them that with the newspaper, it is easier to find stories that might interest me. I also told them that the Headlines are deceptive and non-informational about what is really important. It looks like they have improved here too.
As we read in George Orwell’s 1984, the role of the elites was to change history to reflect what the boss wants. The second part of monitoring our behavior is also now well in place. The third part of continuous wars of fear also seem to be in place whether fake or not. Our recent election also shows the ignorance and induced fear which allows us to think we are making the decision in our brain, but it is being made elsewhere.
Americans have the weakness of believing what people say when they say it well such as Obama’s campaign messages. The only way to determine who they really are is to examine what they have done. He did very little, but he gave great speeches.
Obama was a Constitutional Professor at the very economically conservative University of Chicago for 12 years and he got along well with staunch conservatives at Harvard Law School. Who is kidding who. There must be meeting of minds and acceptance of some conservative thought to really develop a friendship. Sure most men do not have real friends, just acquaintances. Most thinking Americans know he is not a liberal, the conclusion of Meacham, former Newsweek editor and a moderator at the great show on PBS, Need to Know on Fridays. Nevertheless, he can be much better than the alternative as we discovered.
Jim Kawakami, Dec 18, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
Corporate America’s Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class: While the Safety net is being withered by attrition, record corporate profits are deemed off-limits for discussion about closing the budget gap. http://alternet.org Arun Gupta, Dec 18, 2010,
The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.
The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. …
Similarly, the current attack is a two-pronged effort to reorganize state social services, either by eliminating or privatizing them, and decimate public-sector unions whose workers provide those services. …
Simply put, the elderly are superfluous to capitalism. With high rates of joblessness the “new norm,” more and more people are being made disposable. This leads to an efficient if brutal logic: cutting old-age income and health care will make it easier to scrap old, useless workers. In fact, this reality is already coming to pass. One study published in 2008 found that over a 16-year period life expectancy had declined for many poor American women — precisely those who are disproportionately represented among the elderly heavily dependent on Social Security and Medicare. … (The number of those over 55 unemployed in this Financial crash recession is twice as great than in the past. The law to prevent age discrimination is inactive and dead. Jim)
The main beneficiaries have been the super-wealthy who gain both from tax cuts as the social sector is chopped up and higher corporate profits as wages and benefits are slashed more deeply. …
With American families drowning in debt, getting smacked with rising healthcare costs, having lost $15.8 trillion in wealth and fearing joining the armies of unemployed, they are incapable of pulling the economy out of its funk with increased consumption. Increased trade is one possibility, which would require a weaker dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive. But, as Paul Krugman points out, this is opposed by Republicans who believe continued economic decline will enhance their electoral chances in 2012. … http://www.alternet.org/story/149226/corporate_america%27s_plan_to_loot_our_pensions_is_the_latest_battle_in_decades-long_assault_on_the_middle_class_?page=entire
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