“A man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
– Mark Twain
Good apples in the bunch: Last time I wrote about my distaste for the bad apples spoiling the bunch. While I don’t want to overuse the apple tree metaphor, it may be worth just a little bit more space. The world of politics generally and my apple tree specifically, contain plenty of bad apples and relatively few good ones. My mom had asked me on a couple of occasions if I would pick some good ones and bring them to her house so she could make an apple pie. I did so once and found that she didn’t make the pie, despite the fact that I’d climbed to nearly the top step of the ladder, sighting what appeared to be good apples and just before I would pluck some of them I would turn them around to get a look at the other side that was hidden from me at first. Much more than half the time, the apples that appeared to be perfect turned out to be festering with less obvious natural wounds, whether by insects or elemental nature. On rare occasions a good apple from one cursory look turned out to be just as good an apple when given a more complete inspection. Two such apples, still somewhat Quixotically clinging to the tree of politics, are Ralph Nader and Lou Dobbs.
– Mark Twain
Good apples in the bunch: Last time I wrote about my distaste for the bad apples spoiling the bunch. While I don’t want to overuse the apple tree metaphor, it may be worth just a little bit more space. The world of politics generally and my apple tree specifically, contain plenty of bad apples and relatively few good ones. My mom had asked me on a couple of occasions if I would pick some good ones and bring them to her house so she could make an apple pie. I did so once and found that she didn’t make the pie, despite the fact that I’d climbed to nearly the top step of the ladder, sighting what appeared to be good apples and just before I would pluck some of them I would turn them around to get a look at the other side that was hidden from me at first. Much more than half the time, the apples that appeared to be perfect turned out to be festering with less obvious natural wounds, whether by insects or elemental nature. On rare occasions a good apple from one cursory look turned out to be just as good an apple when given a more complete inspection. Two such apples, still somewhat Quixotically clinging to the tree of politics, are Ralph Nader and Lou Dobbs.
The Zenith of Nader: Anyone with an Internet connection can research the background on Ralph Nader, so I won’t spend a paragraph writing about his biography or his portfolio as it regards consumer activism or politics. Suffice to say, he is someone who is much more qualified to write the things I’m writing. In fact, he has decades of experience doing more than writing about the ills of this country. He has written many books, and his 2004 book named “The Good Fight” is filled with many of the same things I have already written about: CEO salaries, corporate money influencing elections and legislative votes, consumer advocacy against major corporations who syphon money from all economic classes, government waste, an over-funded military, political fraud, foreign trade misgivings, unprosecuted SEC violations, health care abuses from non-profit HMOs, and extreme capitalism, etc. He describes and documents much more than I have in his 275 page book, and that is not the only book he’s written on the topic of the excessive stupidity and complicity of the federal government and its ancillary private sector allies which the government protects. Nader catalogues any number of sickening unlitigated recidivist white collar crimes. I haven’t gotten any of my justification or material from him until this entry. He has been crying out in the wilderness for political change, much like I have, but he has done so with much more of a punch.
Apex of Nader: Nader even ran twice for president in 2000 and 2004 and less formally preceding that. I voted for him in 2004 when his candidacy was considered less authentic, less permissible by the Independent voters, judging by the popular vote. I decided to order two copies of Nader’s book- “The Good Fight,” keeping one for myself and deciding to send one to a relative- to essentially show her that her blindness in favoring the republican party is contrary to reason. Nader, to me, pretty much says all that I have said, and much more, minus the embellishments made to certain species of the animal kingdom and the accompanying exaggerated physical or mental ailments I have used to prove some points. Nader’s book, the contents of which sometimes strike me as too liberal, is fairly humorless, but spot on in attributing blame to the two political parties and the big businesses the parties protect. There are facts, percentages, fractions, dollar amounts, and money trails all over the place. Clearly, the guy knows what he’s talking about. It would be socio-economically irresponsible to deny all of those facts. And towards the end of the book he advocates what disgusted people ought to do. Nader renames the duplicitous republicans and democrats- “republicrats” (signifying that they are conjoined for the purpose of fleecing the American public), for they have developed, possibly accidentally, a method of “protective imitation,” (p. 25) wherein they stand to gain by being like-minded. Never, Nader writes, has there been such a collection of “slovenly puppets masquerading as denizens of the world’s greatest deliberative body.” (p. 205) I think Obi-One Kenobi said something similar to Luke before they entered the confines of the city of Mos Eisley describing it as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Mos Eisley-Capital Hill- same, same.
Lou Dobbs: Even better is Dobbs’ book- “War on the Middle Class.” I may have sent my aunt Dobbs’ book had I encountered it first. Dobbs is a good apple who has hosted, off and on for CNN, a news or economics-based talk show for years now. Dobbs writes this on page 18 of his book:
“The middle class finds itself in the enviable position of being the largest segment of society, but unfortunately, it is also the least well served by big business and big government. While the middle class contains the largest number of citizens and voters, it has the least effective representation in Washington.”
He writes that he asked senators and congressmen to name a piece of legislation that was enacted on behalf of the middle class, their responses amounted to:
“ ‘What about the Bush tax cuts? Those helped the middle class.’ In fairness, they did help, indirectly. In reality, however, they were designed to accommodate the very wealthy. And the very wealthy derived more than three times as much benefit from them as did the middle class that, incidentally, pays the largest amount of taxes.”**
I had never seen Dobbs’ show on CNN until very recently and was only vaguely aware of him until last year when I saw his book on the shelf in Barnes and Noble. There has even been some talk that he might consider running for president as an Independent. All kinds of other politicians and political windbags would say things like former Texas congressman Martin Frost: “ ‘All he’d be doing is acting as a spoiler . . . I can’t take it seriously.’ ” (http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB119966350283971015.html) Good, that is exactly what Independents want you to think. Both Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, Independent candidates for the presidency, are blamed for Bill Clinton winning in 1992 and George W. Bush in 2000, respectively. If enough of the Independents would actually vote that way, an Independent would act as more than the spoiler. Unfortunately, having watched Dobbs just one time made me suspect that true Independents would not ultimately go for him. He seems too curmudgeonly and seems to be working too hard to come up with words to communicate his disgust with the two parties and too loose of a canon- and this is coming from a guy that gets close to getting thrown out of his family's or in-laws houses at religious holidays for being too controversial. At any rate, I read his Wikipedia entry, and all of the things he has said and done are perfectly fine by me, but age coupled with that kind of flippancy smacks of someone whose mental state is in a decline. But that is better than the traditional gang of candidates who have been mental for years. I’d still vote for him because we have to get an Independent’s poll numbers (and I hate to admit this because I think there should be national, state, and local law against polling) to 15% so that Independents can get into the debates. The 15% polling number is just one more thing I would change. Who am I kidding- here is the Wikipedia entry: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Dobbs) This guy has bigger cajones than a polar bear with testicular elephantitas, even if the bear's jewels are measured after the bear has spent a significant time out of the icy water (think shrinkage). Read Dobbs’ book, watch his show; this is the type of guy that should be running this friggin’ country. In the Wall Street Journal Online article I quote from above, Dobbs is described as “CNNs fuming voice for the disaffected” . . . and “laments the squeeze on incomes of middle-income Americans.” These are courtesy of Dobbs' wikipedia entry:
- Dobbs describes illegal immigration as an invasion;
- he labeled the current N.Y. governor an “idiot” for desiring to issue illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. (Ah, not sure why they would need a car, want a car, or want to drive a car in New York you say- ah, driver’s license = citizenship verification? = voting rights- hell no!)
- he made a $1,000 contribution to the Bush-Cheney campaign but has since described the Bush administration and the then republican controlled congress as “disgraceful”
The Independents: Both Nader’s and Dobbs’ books contain the right amount of anxiety, frustration, defiance, facts, instances of fraud, and shhhhhhhhhhhhhh- proof, unless you are a republican or democratic voting zombie. For, it is inconceivable that both of them are making up all of the particulars contained in their books. I have done so much research over the last year that a lot of the stuff I’m seeing in Nader’s and Dobbs’ books I’ve read in one or more other sources. I had a hard time trying to decide which passages to note because there is so little in Nader’s and Dobbs books that should go unquoted.
I was watching Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” program the Sunday morning prior to the New Hampshire primary and Obama was supposed to soundly defeat Clinton according to a couple of poll experts. That didn’t happen. I’m telling you- polls are dangerous to the political process, for more reasons than this, that I will address in a subsequent column.
The Independents: Both Nader’s and Dobbs’ books contain the right amount of anxiety, frustration, defiance, facts, instances of fraud, and shhhhhhhhhhhhhh- proof, unless you are a republican or democratic voting zombie. For, it is inconceivable that both of them are making up all of the particulars contained in their books. I have done so much research over the last year that a lot of the stuff I’m seeing in Nader’s and Dobbs’ books I’ve read in one or more other sources. I had a hard time trying to decide which passages to note because there is so little in Nader’s and Dobbs books that should go unquoted.
I was watching Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” program the Sunday morning prior to the New Hampshire primary and Obama was supposed to soundly defeat Clinton according to a couple of poll experts. That didn’t happen. I’m telling you- polls are dangerous to the political process, for more reasons than this, that I will address in a subsequent column.
The most interesting thing I’ve heard in the last couple months- the canvassers mentioned in one of the graphics they had prepared on "Meet the Press" was that 45% of the voters in New Hampshire are Independents. From the way the poll experts presented the information, they are taking for granted that these Independent voters will align with either the republican or democratic nominee. That isn’t an Independent voter- that is an undecided voter. An Independent voter has the balls, sans elephantitas, to vote for a type of candidate who may not have a chance to win an election for 20 years, or until a third and fourth party can be established.
I noticed that again, Ron Paul was off to the far reaches of the stage after the South Carolina debate which took place on January 10th. Arguably, Paul is the least conservative of the republican candidates and so never stands in a more prominent position; product placement is just as important for political candidates as it is for a madame deciding which whores to have prospective clients view first when they pull up to the cat-house. Yeah, a comparison of whores to candidates is meant in the best way. Paul wasn’t even invited to a Fox debate (a republican/conservative based network) because he wasn’t polling well enough. This is a man who is still in the race and had been invited to every other debate. Fox should have caught far more heat than they did. Ah, Paul isn’t a true republican and ran as a Populist in the 1988 presidential election. So, we’ll take him on our side. Paul polled at 10% in Iowa, far better than Giuliani’s 3%, yet Giuliani was included in the Fox debate. Fox News maintained that they only had enough room for so many candidates. Unless Ron Paul is the size of the dragon from the Shrek movies, include him in the debate. Paul supporters had every right to protest. Paul is caught in a media and politically devised catch-22: the media doesn't cover him because he hasn't polled very well and he hasn't polled very well because the media won't cover him. The republican nominating committee (RNC), and Rush Limbaugh types must fear the type, or overall lack, of conservatism that Paul represents or they would push to have him included in debates, or seriously consider his ideas on their Echo Narcissistic programs.
Also, I was watching something called Glenn Beck on CNNs Headline News who was ridiculing N.Y. mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former republican turned Independent, who is considering a presidential run. Beck could hardly get the words he was using to berate Bloomberg’s potential candidacy out of his mouth; I could almost see the hamster working overtime with the assistance of a recently acquired dojo master inspirationally running the wheel which allowed Beck to speak. The words were seemingly physically forming inside of his maw so that they could compete to sky-dive out of Beck’s yap. The thing that struck me most about Beck’s vehement ostracism of Bloomberg was his attack against Bloomberg’s platform. Beck felt that Bloomberg was all over the place, choosing a position from over here from the right and over there from the left as if he were ordering ala carte at a Chinese food restaurant- to paraphrase Beck. Duh! That is what an Independent is- someone who can’t stand either side, chooses the better aspects of both, more in line with the middle class voter. Why would an Independent come out- anti gun, pro illegal immigration, pro choice, pro SCHIP (child’s health care), pro Medicare, pro poor people, and pro education in government’s control? The democrats already have that sickening platform to themselves. However, if Beck is right about Bloomberg’s position on immigration, then the good mayor should save all his millions, because Independents wouldn’t vote for him anyway.
Idle Hands do the Devil's Work: I admit, thinking is more difficult, getting people to be engaged in the topic of politics, to contribute to the discussion, to become impassioned voters, to contribute one’s valuable time, to watching Bill Moyers echo the sentiments of Nader and Dobbs, to petitioning on behalf of a candidate, to shout back at those democratic and republican pundits who think they know better than any Independent, takes some fortitude, desire, intelligence and a mindset which is probably akin to making a New Year’s resolution to decide to stick to an exercise regimen at the gym or to stop the chiggers in our life from getting a habanero pepper facial. It is surreal to become emotionally involved, because too often we can get up and grab a soda from the fridge and only have to emotionally commit to opening it. “Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.” -Elizabeth Cady Stanton. To get involved in a middle class taxpayer cause is one of my goals for 2008- I don’t call them resolutions. I sent a $25 check to Common Cause for membership fees just last week- see commoncause.org. Not getting involved seemed too hypocritical of me. My hands were too idol and apathy in politics is the devil's product.
Sure, it is tougher to sell anyone confused by the diametrically opposed viewpoints of traditional republicans and democrats on a third choice, or a fourth one. See, because if you are as pig-headed as some of the Echo Narcissists (see part 16), or the even less evolved voting public (Narcissistically speaking) that swallows what the Echo Narcissists have to say, you only have to know one side of the argument- your own. The die-hard republicans and democrats I know are loathe to accept the validity of even one point on the other side- I think they think it means they could be weakening- like they are political alcoholics on the verge of falling off the wagon if they so much as sniff a drink that contains truth laced with rum.
The Devil you don't Know: Even “Independents” are afraid of the devil they don’t know- a phrase that is rapidly approaching the level of a cliche. They know that the democrats will screw them one way or the republicans another and they have been conditioned to accept it- even to joke of it and to offer the Thing One and Thing Two of politics (democrats and republicans- see part 15) a cooler handshake than a wounded baby dolphin would give to a killer shark, but still Independents help elect one side or the other because they are familiar with those types of devils. Being an Independent means that both sides of the argument must be known as well as the portion of many arguments in the middle that neither side much accounts for, because life is seldom as simple as carte blanche for or against something- there are nuances to almost everything.
If an independent receives 3% of the popular vote in 2008’s general election- so what- maybe we get to 7% four years later. The republicans and democrats have solved relatively few things since at least Andrew Jackson anyway, so I don’t see the spirit, the ideal of wanting to buck the system going away.
Electoral College: I’ll get into this more later- but the aforementioned Perot, described as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, won 19% of the popular vote and no electoral votes in 1992. He appealed to the political middle- fiscally he was a republican and socially he was a democrat- that first stance is what cost George H.W. Bush the presidency in 1992. Huh, it seems polling, redistricting as it equates to immigration and the majority vote, the political cabal of republicans and democrats, the hesitant Independents, Echo Narcissists giving unequal space and air time to the preferred candidates, and oh yeah, the politicians themselves, are all issues that will keep the middle class financially compromised well into the future if not resolved. Yes, throw the electoral college problem into the mix. Getting candidates on all our state’s ballots should not require 30k names on a petition. Standardize the requirement- see because certain types of state’s rights, in an unrequited way, should have been dispensed with during the Civil War, for the threat of a state's secession is no longer an avenue to be feared by the federal government. Yeah, that was sarcasm.
* The probably generally understood meaning of the phrase probably doesn’t require a footnote. But biblically, and believe me, I am no self-righteous biblical revisionist- the paraphrased words come from several biblical passages, the most pertinent of which, because it makes only one reference to god, comes from Mark 1:3- “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Yeah, I think there is a subtextual application in those words which can be divested of its religious meaning and adorned with a political one. But maybe that’s just me. And I’m not referring to any Independent as a savior, just an improvement, whose path could be made more straight if more Independents were to vote for him or her.
** In fairness here as well, I think Dobbs might mean, proportionally. As we know, the middle class is often subjectively defined. Some people think that a purely economic definition will suffice, and with that the middle-classers fall anywhere in between a gross income of between $30k to $90k and some think the range is more like $45k-$150k, still others think that a more broad economic definition would have middle-classers in-between $45k and $300k. If 60-80% of the people fall within that category (the percentage of taxpayers is also a matter of debate), they most likely would be paying the most in taxes. I have already commented that CEOs allowed by the government to accept pay packages that jeopardize a company’s financial well-being and tax shelter laws which assist corporations in hiding revenues is where more tax money ought to come from. Nader and Dobbs both touch on CEO salaries and corporate greed in their books.
Next time: I’ve thus far only referred to two books- Nader’s and Dobbs’ in the library of political commentary, which provided me with corroborating evidence. Next, I will jump into an even more cursory and historical look at books written in the last 16 years. Ah, if only Echo Narcissists could restrict their pathetic politically motivated contributions to the airways- they must consider themselves authors as well. I wonder what Twain would say about a person who can’t WRITE a good book.
No comments:
Post a Comment