Here Are the Some Questions For the Candidates

It is very annoying to get one of those phony political surveys in an official looking package that claims to be interested in gaining your opinion on a list of self serving questions.  Then, as you reach the point where you are ready to submit your opinion you find that they want a political donation for $50 to $500. Off course it is the donation, not your opinion,  that they really want. It is easy to visualize them ripping the check off your opinion submission and throwing the opinion part into the trash.

We know the characteristics we wish to find in our elected representatives but they never seem to be there in our two party offerings. This year I intend to return the following note to each of the “surveys” I receive:

Thank you for your interest in my views on items which our critical to our county.  I have taken the liberty to provide a listing of a few of my specific issues along with a few explanatory comments.  If you or your office would respond that you plan actions that are in essential agreement with these items I would be very likely to support you with my vote and contribution.

I am looking for a candidate who would:

Push the government to take aggressive actions to revive the economy.

When there are trillions of dollars worth of necessary investment grade infrastructure works to be done and millions of people looking for the work there is no excuse for the government not to arrange the financing.  That the work remains undone is a tremendous failure on the part of the two party system, Congress, and the Administration.  This past failure may preclude my voting for an incumbent.

Not be a believer in some ill thought-out austerity program rather than economic growth.

Knee jerk cost cutting based upon political rather than economic goals is the only kind of deficit reduction this Congress knows.  Having accomplished outrageous damage to our present economic environment Congress is now preparing to destroy the future.  This must not happen.

Maintaining a carefully managed defense that cannot be directly challenged by any totalitarian government but not unwisely used.

We must continue to apply the very hard lesson from our WWII experience where lack of preparedness allowed unthinkable tragedies to occur while the allies were building up the arms required to stop a psychopath dictator.  During the early period of unchallenged German success 15 European countries were occupied and over 50 million people killed as a result of Nazi actions.  In addition millions of the conquered populations were placed in concentration camps and slavery to the German war machine.   “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William L. Shirir is recommended reading that documents the horror of showing any weakness in dealing with an aggressive psychopathic dictator. 

We performed the same preventive service in the defeat of Japan, and the Soviet Union.  We were the only democracy powerful enough to have stopped these identified aggressive and expansionist fascist regimes. However, if the opposition would be fighting on its native soil against an “invader” US the chance for lone term success is small. We must learn to avoid the responsibility of wars of this latter type no matter how noble our intentions.

 Strong on reforming the financial sector

We are letting the financial sector buy into aggressive activities that do not support useful growth.  This is placing hardships on the citizens and wasting our resources.  It must be stopped and the financial sector returned to its appropriate supportive role.

Do nothing that will reduce existing rights of citizens 

Our country is defined most strongly by its respect for personal rights. They must be continually defended as our greatest treasure.  Our 2nd amendment stands out as a strong example of a unique right of the US that is under continual attack. There is no reason to give up any personal rights to our current government.  My expectations are to keep 2^nd amendment rights free of any United Nations interference and a strict policy of protection of all other constitutional citizen rights

 Minimum government involvement in Gay marriage

There is nothing in the Constitution or discussions among the founders that would support having the government define marriage.  If secular, marriage between gays should be treated like a normal contract between adults.  If religious, the church should decide on its’ specific religious components.

Revision of the special privileged practices of Congress

You cannot find a citizen that is not outraged at the special privileges and ego boosting management privileges that Congress has voted itself.  The candidate should strongly support proposed any amendment that precludes special privileges for congress.

Runs a truthful campaign with a career record of honesty

Without truth we can never make wise decisions.  Candidates who falsely direct our actions using untruthful information must not be elected.

As a special note I am sure you realize how our non-performing Congress has become a serious problem to our democracy. I don’t believe that our Founders anticipated that Congress would ever be run by an entrenched two-political party system whose primary interest was in itself rather than the country.  This has been true for over 100 years but the situation has come to the point that is doing severe damage to our democracy. We have elections as the way to correct the situation, but need candidates which are independent thinkers.  I hope you will be one.

Simple Missions That Morphed Into Monsters

An income greedy financial sector, corrupt political parties, and bean counter corporations are all having lethal effects on the countries welfare.

All three areas once had a specific limited service to contribute to the country. Over the years, however, they have been allowed to expand their activities and boundaries to the point where they have become self serving and are now harmful to the economy, our democracy and our welfare  They have done this by abandoning service to the country and its citizens and focusing instead on creating in-house benefits. This has been accomplished with the full complicity of our elected government. All of these activities have been gained through expansion of their activities outside of constitutional requirements.

The Constitution granted Congress responsibility for the fiscal activities of the country. The Congress utilized private sources to assist it to perform specific functions and to assist in ensuring that funding was available to companies and citizens for productive use. Because they are managing national funds their focus should not be maximizing their own profits. This situation has reversed itself and these functions are now managed by central banks that are corporations focused on creating revenue for themselves, not for the productive sectors of our economy. Combine this with lax overview by the Government and we have hugh misallocation of funds misdirection of national goals, and financial disasters.

The Constitution does not mention political parties. Their potential for doing harm was warned by several founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, Geoge Washington, and John Adams. This was done on the fear that it would create primary loyalties to the party instead of the general welfare. This has proven to be true. There is a natural tendency of citizens to start groups that would organize to jointly advocate their position for pending legislation. Now, however we have only two parties that have been jointly untouchable in power for over 150 years. They have become a major anti-democracy factor by their tight control of the selection process that determines the candidates that are finally presented to the citizens. Their control of the elected government has allowed them to define an election process that greatly favors the current system. The result is that our election process is governed by two private organizations that have their primary loyalty to themselves rather than the nation

Reflecting the feelings that English corporations had been exploiting the colonies in the days before independence corporations in early America were rare, They were treated as unique organizations formed for a special business activity, such as building a canal. They are not mentioned in the Constitution and were initially solely a state responsibility. They were forbidden to become involved in politics. Over 200 years of mainly Supreme Court decisions have reversed this to give them all rights of a natural person and the right to use their profits `to exert enormous power over our legislative and electoral processes. To restore our democracy all three institutions must be put back into their proper position in relation to national governance.

The financial sector must be put back in the position of a service to the productive elements of the economy and not focused on non productive attempts to increase its own revenues.

Political parties must be reduced to equality as one of many organizations promoting candites and have no special advantages over unaffiliated candidates.

Corporations likewise must be focused on producing useful services and products, not on government and electoral process manipulation for special privileges.

These corrections will be difficult and take time. All three institutions will fight strongly to preserve their positions. It will only happen with an overwhelming demand from the citizens. It will require a drastic reduction of the funds that can be applied to influencing the government and elections.

Super PACS- Another Tool for the Governing Elite

Here is the situation. We have a worthless Congress choking on its self made problems. It has an all time low 12% positive rating by the citizens. We are saddled with an ineffective executive branch which is baffled and outmaneuvered by the worthless Congress. The entire mess is managed by two self serving, and corrupt political parties whose primary interest is to stay in power with the status quo. The national ruling elite have no answers to this status and little inclination to try to find any. They are awash with tired ideologies that have been proven not to work 20 years ago. Our great country is being wasted and unable to serve its citizens. It is so serious that the citizens are beginning to occupy the streets in serious protest.


We need productive change to our governance. We will only get it when we elect effective governments. For that we need truthful and useful information on the candidates.

Working against truth and balanced discussion is a 2010 decision by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations to make unlimited contributions to Political Action Committees (PACS) directly from their treasuries. They cannot make these contributions directly to a candidate so they make them through “super PACs” that are formed especially to create large political expenditures for political purposes. This allows corporations to provide then with unlimited funds. With these resources they can instantly create floods of negative media against reform candidates.

For an example of the role super PACS can play consider the Republican Party primary elections. Of the six potential candidates there are two that are proposing several anti statist solutions for consideration. In view of the shortage of productive ideas with which the part y has been plagued you would hope that the party would welcome an informed discussion of these ideas. No so. When polling showed that the citizens were swinging strongly toward both of the candidates it caused a panic throughout the Republican establishment. Gingrich took a commanding lead over the statist Romney, while Paul also climbed rapidly in the polls.

The statists immediately released a barrage of super PAC funded negative media directed at the two unflavored candidate. Those shown in Iowa are loaded with ignorance, misquotes and half truths related to events going back over 20 years.

They were effective. Gingrich admitted the difficulty of countering the cash rich super PACS media supporting Romney. NPR reports that the attempt to counter with positive ads is not working. Within a week the Gingrich large leads in the polls have disappeared.

We have just put another powerful tool in the hands of the governing elite. They are apparently anxious to use it to further muddy up our already weakened election process. Regardless of your candidate this is bad for democracy.

OWS-The Citizens Finally Run Out of Patience

The greed of the financial sector, the ignorance of the ideologues, and the unimaginable incompetence of the 111th and 112th Congress has been causing excruciating pain to American citizens for almost three years. We could not be expected to quietly accept this situation indefinitely. A common sense Congress could have defused the situation by correcting obvious errors and sincerely addressing the underlying problems. Unfortunately the guilty parties have refused to offer serious solutions.


The nearest opportunity for citizens to replace many of the current non performing members of Congress through elections is over 12 months away. Continuance of the current ineffectiveness by Congress is longer than the citizens could wait. Thus a far reaching global protest movement has become activated. The movement is serious, and growing at an explosive rate around the world. It has been joined by numerous additional organizations. Initiated by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest movement it has as its battle cry the taking away financial and political power from the self serving portion of 1% of the population and returning democratic control to the 99%. Polls show that this concept is strongly supported by the majority of middle class citizens.

No one knows where these protests will lead. At this time they are wisely adamant about remaining independent of political parties. The organization has not been in place long enough to present a code of demands but one is being prepared. I saw a listing of eight demands that were being suggested for inclusion by one protester. All were legitimate, practical, and addressed needed actions. Some were addressed to laws already passed that were nullified through congress cutting funds to the intended enforcing agency. One demand dictated that all laws passed by Congress would apply equally to them as to the citizens. Reducing the influence of unlimited money and special interests on the democratic process was an important theme.

The protests are definitely legitimate and aimed at correcting the overreach practices by the established institutions that is damaging our country and our democracy. They should have been corrected long ago by Congress. It is extremely important that real progress on the major issues happens while the protests are controlled by citizens strongly motivated by patriotism and democracy. This will require the elimination of many practices of the financial and political systems.

I suggest you follow the protests closely. Read and understand the demands when they are presented. Offer advice and criticism. Be prepared to resist the forthcoming propaganda assault by those who brought us down to the current state.