COMMON SENSE

THE PEOPLE’S LOBBY

I’ve reported in other blogs about the practically unlimited usage of euphemisms by our government, and by the media in America. Our politicians learned a long time ago that if you couch your failures and faux pas’ in gentle terms, even if the gentler term isn’t an exact synonym for the harsher one, you can lessen the impact that negative news has on the people and critics. Especially if the normal term (not the euphemism) will get you in some kind of hot water ! The euphemism is one of the career politician’s most used self-defense mechanisms, and comes precipitately close to lying, and in most cases, is lying.

It’s Time for Common Sense in America. It’s time – well past time - for Americans to reject absolutely the present conditions that we find in Washington – regarding everything. Yes, everything. The FIRST one we need to do away with is the Conventional Wisdom that has been hammered into our heads by politicians, probably starting in 1789 – that a person or group or Corporation can buy the votes of our Congressional representatives with money, and it’s all perfectly normal, to create laws that advantage these buyers. It’s not bribery, it’s lobbying, the media calls it. And taking the money is not taking a bribe, it’s “campaign finance.”

They repeat endlessly – with a lot of help from the media - that money to representatives is just an example of Free Speech. If you fall for that, I feel sorry for your courage index. Once again, we have to marvel at the power of the euphemism to dumb down any opposition to their excesses.

Free Speech my fanny - Common Sense says it is bribery.

Campaign finance is easily the world’s #1 most successful euphemism. If Al Capone had been smarter, he would have simply got the word out to all the media of that time, that his execution of all the competing hoodlums was just his humanitarian exercise in population control and restoration of the gene pool.

NOW - with regard to your elected representative taking money from others, consider this simple scenario:

Your Congressman is on the Committee responsible for the environment. A bill is being considered that requires two manufacturing companies in your county to clean up their foul air discharge, and stop their discharge of pollutants into a holding pool, which has been shown to leak into the ground. A lobbyist for some PAC gives your Congressman $10,000 for “campaign finance” – which he takes. He (the lobbyist) gently and persuasively says to your Congressman, “I hope you will vote against the bill “because it threatens the life cycle of a lot of animals and it will cost a lot of people their jobs”… and of course he offers no concrete proof of this last statement, it is the Gold Standard of the Republic party when arguing any subject matter. The TRUTH is, his clients (the manufacturing companies) don’t want to spend the million and a half dollars to clean up.

So – summarizing:
You, and all the voters in your county who elected this person, absolutely need a YES vote on this bill. You need, and deserve clean air, and no toxic pollutants in the ground water. The lobbyist, with $10,000, wants a NO vote. You don’t have to ponder this very long to know how your representative is going to vote, do you?

OKAY. So, Common Sense tells us we need to change this. We need to either get the money out of politics, or be able to lobby our representatives on our OWN behalf and either cut out the competition, or be our own lobbyists.

AMERICANS, WE NEED TO HAVE A PEOPLES LOBBY

Passing the laws necessary to get PAC or Corporate money out of politics would be the golfing equivalent of a person shooting 18 holes-in-one, at least that’s what it appears to be at this date in history. These people are NOT going to pass a law that takes large amounts of money out of their hands, are they? Logic 101.

Ergo, since changing the existing conventional wisdom regarding lobbying money is wishful thinking, we need to employ Common Sense. We need to have a People’s Lobby. Howard Dean and Ron Paul and most notably Barack Obama have proven with no doubt that they can raise money on the Internet from people like me - $10 or $20 each - or more if we feel flush. Those small amounts, from millions of the very people who are most affected by the laws to be passed – this is Common Sense 101. (Isn’t it?) As the experiences of Messrs Dean, Paul, Obama, and Mme Clinton have shown recently, the American people will give, to finally have their needs considered, on all bills, instead of just being relegated to zero importance by the present methods.

THE NEEDS OF THE INDIVIDUAL VOTER ARE VALUED AT LESS THAN ZERO BY CAREER POLS WHO ARE TAKING MONEY FROM LOBBYISTS.

That is the essence of Common Sense, proven for well over a century now.

It will require a good advertising program, to get the word out, a program that draws a stark distinction between Lobbyists with their bribe money determining the outcome of Congressional voting, and the PEOPLE’S WISHES BEING PROMOTED BY THEIR OWN LOBBYISTS. Think of it.

The Internet is perfect for this to succeed. The People’s Lobby (plusa.com) can describe in detail the upcoming votes, what is at stake, who the key Senator or Representative is, and ask the people via e-mail for input on how to lobby that person. One citizen, one vote – none of that elitist bullshit that the more you give, the more votes you have. Do you think we’d get much input from the people as a vote on minimum wage is coming up? Or outsourcing? Or HealthCare? Or the voting on a ridiculous trumped-up WAR, for God’s sake?

The People’s lobby contact person can then answer to the mailing list (all contributors) what the majority thinking on any bill seems to be, maybe ask for last minute arguments or positions, or additional reasoning, and be ready to present the “People’s Views” to the Representative. All in a day or so.

Following that, plusa can forward its findings, such as the majority of the people on the e-mail list firmly want a NO vote on H res 3414 for example, and - given that the people in the majority wanted, and needed, a NO vote, Congressman John Bigbucks voted YES – it will then be crystal clear that, at least on this one vote – Congressman Big Bucks takes the will of the people lightly. He will make this mistake probably once. Because after the Congressman goes through that exposure, for all to see, he will damn well be more forthright on the next vote. Plusa.com will trigger one million e-mails to that donkey’s e-mail box, all raising hell, and asking for, demanding an explanation.

Oh sure, there will be some who, when exposed to this idea, will instantly have a torrent of reasons why it won’t work, why it’s “Socialism” I suppose they will say, or it’s “unpatriotic,” I suppose; or why it’s Communism, or maybe even that most evil of all thought processes to the Republic mind, liberalism. Whatever the Republic party smear turns out to be, we will ignore it, for two reasons:

1. we don’t need the other party to form PLUSA, and 2. because even their worst opposition to it has been covered for a number of years now by a pretty fair thinker:

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." (Albert Einstein)

I happen to think it will be Americanism, and Lord knows we need a lot of that in our dealing with our government. This is just one of the examples of Common Sense that is so drastically needed right now. Probably the most important one but there are a lot of others. Consider that vital government-sponsored research into the promise of life-saving stem cells is stifled because the defect in the White House didn’t want to risk losing votes from religious kooks.

The People’s Lobby also could have monitored the steady rise of the cost of Oil when two oilmen entered the White House, which was $27.39 per barrel in the year 2000 - to its present rarified altitude of $134.00 per barrel. The People’s Lobby could have raised holy hell and started a great dialogue on this threatening subject, its reasons, and how to get it arrested as quickly as possible.
www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp - 128k -

AND – same thing for retail gasoline, the lifeblood of American business. In summer 2000 the price of gasoline was at $1.41 per gallon, contrasted with its meteoric rise to its present cost (June 2008) of $4.10 per gallon, and still rising.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/special/summogas.html - 50k -


And, probably the most dangerous of all the cowboy’s thefts of our Society: The huge national surplus inherited from the decade of the 90s he very quickly turned into a staggering national debt of 7.6 trillion Dollars ! The lobbyists with their $10,000 checks to your Congressman or Senator were rabid in their promotion of all he was doing, especially the war.

Everyone will probably agree that it’s possible to analyze anything to death. So enough. It’s time for Common Sense to prevail. This is a plea for a simple return to a state of Common Sense, and the installation of a People’s Lobby so that we, the people, can finally compete on a level playing field with the big money guys from K street who are constantly whispering in the ears of our representatives. I, for one, am sick and tired of being a second rate human, a third class citizen, which is what we have become with respect to the law making in America. Isn’t it time we exerted our wills a bit, and demanded both honesty and oversight ?

I feel like a synchronized swimmer, when considering the daily attacks on our lives by the big money lobbyists. What this present Government’s conventional wisdom seems to be saying to us is: ‘ …If one synchronized swimmer drowns, the rest obviously have to drown too – they’re synchronized.”

Comments, analysis, evaluations, support definitely sought.

Enough, already.


Faithfully, in the interest of the American people
See also dailykos