TRUST GOVERNMENT ??

Only 22% Americans trust our Government.

I was shocked when I first heard this. Who did the polling? There is always a little suspicion in my mind about polls. It was Pew.

As my mind began to wander, I thought, how many of the people in government do I trust? Well most of them I don't know from Adam, and none of them personally, but of those I know well enough to have an opinion, not many would have my complete confidence.

Why do we mistrust? 1. Big money in campaigns 2. Broken promises 3. Extreme polarization, etc. – I think also our expectations were unrealistically high after the election of Barak Obama.

Why do you not trust our Government 100% ?

FIRE WORKS

July 4th 2009

Port Angeles, Washington

THE BEST GOVERNMENT MONEY CAN BUY

1.How did they make the purchase ?

2.Who are they ??


The purchase was made through our failed campaign finance system.

They are the extremely wealthy, the largest corporations, the biggest banks and insurance companies, and agribusiness etc.


Our campaign financing system is so corrupted by money from huge corporations, financial institutions, and insurance companies, that the real citizens, are last in line.

These huge contributers support both major parties, and make every effort to keep them in rough balance so that any legislation they do not want will be extremely difficult to pass. It is also very helpful to their goals to, encourage extreme polarization. With these two goals met, they only have to twist an occasional arm to get their way.

We have been told for decades that our two party system is better than any other political system. I think we were lied to.

Now our Supreme Court tells us that these corporations have unlimited rights of persons to buy elections. Supposedly the 14th amendment confirmed the claim that a corporation has rights of a natural person. This is an absolute absurdity. The very first phrase of the 14th amendment {All persons born or naturalized in the United States}. This obviously refers to natural living breathing persons, not corporations.

Our Supreme Court Justices need to stop depending on mistaken case precedences, and use a bit of logic if they know what that is.

AMENDMENT XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The two major partys are severely corrupted and today, they are more polarized than any time in my lifetime. I don't think I could name a dozen members of congress that I could trust to always vote with the best interest of our citizens.

We will not have a Congress that does right for our citizens until we manage to do away with the massive dependence on big money for campaign finances.

There is hope. --- A bill before congress called Fair Elections Now Act in the House side with 141 cosponsors H.R. 1826 and in the Senate S.752 with 10 cosponsors; with this act candidates can run for office on a mix of limited Fair Elections funds and a 4-to-1 match of donations of $100 or less .

This all looks very good, but more is needed. We need to get a change in the voting system along with the Fair Elections Now Act. Commonly called Instant Runoff Voting or IRV, but I rather think “Ranked Choice Voting” a better way to define the system.

It is a very simple system that allows the voter to rank his preferred candidate as #1 and second, third #2 & #3 ---, any number of candidates for one position. If your first choice cannot win, then your second or third choice will count.

You no longer have to worry that voting for an Independent or third party candidate will allow the worst of two evils to be elected. Ranked choice can end the two party monopoly in our Congress.

I had heard this following phrase so many times, that I was convinced that it must be in the Constitution or the Deceleration of Independence.
government of the people, by the people, for the people
I was wrong..
From the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address
-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

We may have had that government when Abe Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address but we do not have it today.
It is time that we the people demand a return to government of the people, by the people, for the people.


Grassroots, get out, protest, write your representative, write your senators, demand they represent we the people, -- not they, the corporations.


William McPherson
aka Greybeard

TOLERANCE

How do we become such intolerant people?

I grew up in a time of wide racial divide. Before I entered public school I played with black children with no thoughts that they were different. When I was five I remember two black men who lived on a large farm in eastern North Carolina where my father was the manager. Charley lived alone in a cabin near the barn; Poke lived with his wife and several children out among the fields. They were all my friends.

The next year, as I entered first grade there were no blacks at my school, none at my church. I do not think I noticed their absence those early years. Most of my friends and I thought little about discrimination in those days. I do remember the separate water fountains and rest rooms at Sears Roebuck where my father worked until he bought his own farm when I was 8 years old. --- Brown v Board of Education, 9-0 decision in May 1954 brought the bias out into the open. No one in the white community seemed willing to accept integrated schools.

I don't think we are born with prejudice, but we learn it from our parents and teachers and at our religious institutions. Most do not intentionally teach it, but it just sort of rubs off. Children are sensitive to body language more than adults. They read it before they understand words.

The worst in my humble opinion is developed in the churches synagogues and mosques. Where we should be learning to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can not seem to accept that others have different beliefs from our own.

I believe that all world religions believe in loving their neighbors. Christians, Jews and Muslims all recognize the 10 commandments.

So, why do we have so much hate?

William McPherson