We Have the Best Congress Money Can Buy
How many times must this be said and how many of us will just roll over and accept it? I will insist that this can be changed because the Democrats own the government and because the Democrats are billed as being the party of the common man insuring that the middle class (the common people) have control of their government. I will attempt to illustrate that the Democratic party now has no excuse for allowing the current oligarchical malady to continue. Any "excuse" is a ruse and a cop out.
The call for "Campaign Finance Reform", although well intended and not unwholesome is insufficient in addressing the problems we face. I will remain a supporter of CFR but I will not let that effort detract from more substantial improvements in our current system. There is no way in this high tech world to keep people across the nation from sending money directly to candidates that are involved in the very few races that are "in play" (avoiding the "soft money" rules). No matter where the money comes from, the money greatly diminishes the chance that the Donkey and the Elephant contending for a seat in the House of Representatives will be required to address the issues most important to the "producing class". Nor will the party favorites be held accountable for the malfeasance and non-representative nature of their past voting record. In the high stakes money heavy arena of party politics, the risk of being saddled with a demon from the other party is just to high. I will say that given an 80 seat majority in the House we can afford to get rid of some of the DINO's.
My representative is Norm Dicks. Norm Dicks is a DINO and has voted with the wealthy Republicans more often than not. His excuse is that there are military bases around here and that the property in this district would lose value if he had not supported imperialism (The War on Terror). And he, like other so called representatives of the people, gets his campaign funds from the people who profit from real estate prices, war, and high priced health care. i.e. the people who HAVE MONEY and own the land. In our "party constructed", "big money", polarized world I can vote for Norm Dicks or I may get someone who will vote as a Republican all the time instead of just most of the time. And in the recent past if I could have replaced him in a primary then I might still have run the risk of losing enough land owners (mass media advertising and statewide "referendums") to usher in a satanic Republican.
If this district is ever "in play" (and it hasn't been for some time) then the "issues" will have been manufactured as polarizing and divisive. And mass media will then be used to demonize both sides on a party basis. As such, the campaign will never come close to debating anything rational such as taxation, health care, imperialism, or most importantly, fair representation or fair voting. This diary and my current series of diaries is intended to show how these blockages are created and how they can be overcome. Most importantly I intend to illuminate the means by which progressive change can be accomplished. The fact that we have Democratic rule at present (House, Senate, and Presidency all are Democrat) is seminal to that effort. We must hold these people accountable.
In a previous diary I presented a mechanism for removing the "cloture" problem in the Senate. The Republicans have already employed the cloture rules to sabotage the "recovery bill" and they will continue to hamstring the nation for the dual purpose of undermining the Democratic president and leaving lots of room for them to claim that "the stimulus failed". The politicians in the Democratic party (The Republicans dressed in a Democrat suit that are interested in party and power as opposed to justice) are perfectly happy with what is happening because they can claim that if they had been able to do the right things (without the Republican sabotage) then all would have been well. So what we have here is just another installment of party politics (putting self and party ahead of the interests of the people) being exercised by both political parties and many office holders.
The people here at Kos have very little pull with the Republicans. You nor I will cause even a ripple on the pond of Republican fascism. But the time for whining about the Republicans is over. The Democrats own the entire government now and this smoke blowing crap about bipartisanship is nothing more than an excuse for inaction. Most certainly, hiding behind the cloture rules is nothing more than a long and pronounced whiiiiiiiine just like the "non impeachment" was a whine.
In another diary about The Census and Reapportionment I spoke of the problem caused by capping the membership of the House at 435. This creates huge districts in which it is almost impossible to stand for office unless a candidate has big money and major party support. And in yesterday's diary I attempted to cover the big assist gerrymandering gives to this "stagnation". It is the combination of these two "empowering" agents that denies adequate representation to the common people in their House of Representatives. We have a Senate that is a total bastion of the rich and the powerful in that it takes $20M to compete for a seat in the larger states. The House of Representatives was not designed to operate in that fashion and if it operated more like it was designed to do then we would already have a national health insurance system and a much improved pension system. And, for instance, the "legacy costs" of the automakers would not be killing them.
We have wrested control of the census from the Republicans, and now we need to enlarge the House and insure equally populous contiguous and compact electoral districts. The "states" are not political entities in a federal system although these enclosures are somewhat protective of cultural groups (that is not a bad thing). What matters is the people within these states and the concept of one person's vote being as close to the same power as any other person's vote. At present, because of state boundaries and the very limited number of representative districts (house membership), the people of Wyoming have almost twice the political power in the House as the people of Montana. If state boundaries are to be maintained as per the Constitution, then the only way to eliminate this malapportionment is to increase the House membership thus reducing the population/size of the electoral districts. And in the less expensive smaller districts the people can take their country back from the politicians and the manipulators -- it costs much less money to run for office in a smaller district. And the more districts there are "in play" then the less money will available to each race. This is what forces candidates to deal with their particular electorate on a more direct basis -- those people they are SUPPOSED to be representing. If the candidates do not address the issues of their immediate constituencies then candidates from other parties or independents will enter the fray and do it for them. That would be called a "higher level of democracy" or a true "republican form of government".
"A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns: not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.