THE SHADOW WORLD GOVERNMENT

The tyrannical police actions against protesters at the Copenhagen, Denmark Climate Change Conference are the same as actions in the United States against Globalization at the World Trade Organization in Seattle several years ago and many others, as at recent political party conventions. We used to think that most developed European nations were more respectful of rights, but it looks like when major international conferences happen anywhere in the developed world the same police actions will be expected. Peaceful protesters will be surveilled, harassed, arrested on spurious charges, denied expression of speech. Who's behind this?

I think we're seeing the shape of a shadow world government connecting the developed nations and subsuming and exploiting the underdeveloped ones. This secret government consists of governments, their intelligence organizations, the United Nations, big international corporations and some other powerful elites who don't make news headlines. This government isn't democratic by a long shot. It doesn't care about justice or rights or the people, especially the poor or just the average wage earner. It is totalitarian through and through. It cares only about power, elites and the survival of that cadre of privileged people. These are very savvy people, not denialists of the dire issues facing humanity. They may realize that climate change will lead to ecotastrophe and it is making sure that when the millions die of starvation and other environmental catastrophes and social collapse that they will survive. They may even have plans to encourage this die off, fully realizing that the earth is overpopulated, although they don't like people to talk about this grave problem because that would likely cause panic.

We also see the machinations at the Climate Change Conference that undermine any real effective solutions to climate change. That would force us to change our ways of life and the world economy would suffer a drastic change. Too many people have too much to lose in the short term, but humanity will lose in the long term.

NAFTA, the proliferation of secret treaties, the increase in power and scope of the security state, preventive and possibly perpetual wars and failure to get a national public healthcare are other signs that project the outlines of this dark shadow. It's all about exploitation of the common people for the advantage of the few. We have already seen this in the so called conservative (read Republican) political programs that allow more and more corporate control over society in the name of freedom, the free market and other emotional buzzwords that hide nefarious intentions. Primarily, these intentions are driven by greed, not a rational motivation.

A world wide police state and empire, led by the United States, has been created over the past few decades. And it is growing. However, the current world-wide economic crisis may demonstrate that the empire is already in decline. That makes it even more dangerous.

This screed may sound paranoid, and I hope it is, but it is entirely too plausible. It can easily exist because governments and large corporations have the power and means to make it so. Whether it can be brought to heel by mass actions of people remains to be seen. It may be too late. Any popular action will probably result in the deaths of thousands of people in the name of national security, law and order. And the police state will at least have shown its ugly head.

Why the majority of us aren't outraged by these government and police actions that violate our rights should be disturbing. It appears that the majority of people around the world don't realize that the current world-wide government and financial policies portend the end of civilization as we know it. If we don't act this outcome is almost a certainty within the next century. If this happens there is one positive effect ameliorating the suffering: that the environment will recover. Then, we can hope that a more sane civilization might arise from these fertile ashes.

LIES, DAMN LIES! AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

So many lies are now percolating throughout our society over healthcare and other social and political debates that we are suffering from misinformation overload. And it is fueling irrational anger that creates divisions among us.

Why is it that in a democratic and free society is lying to the public allowed? We have a right to free speech, but should lying, an attempt to defraud the people, be a right? Free speech is rightfully restrained in some circumstances, such as attempting to cause a panic by shouting “Fire!” in a crowded venue when no such circumstance exists because that is a lie that threatens people's well-being. When overexercise of free speech threatens the well-being of others it must be restrained. Only under oath in the courtroom, is lying considered perjury – literally, misleading the jury. But shouldn't We, the People have a right to the truth? Certainly, opinions and speculations, whether fact based or not, should have a venue to be aired in public, but those should be stated that they are opinion or speculation and not absolute fact. Sometimes we can't know all the facts and speculation or opinion are ways toward finding those facts. This condition shouldn't affect the exercise of free speech.

Facts are immutable, they can be proved or validated by anyone using the same procedures. That's why we often call them, “Hard, cold facts.” They aren't open to interpretation except in a larger context when in concert with other facts, opinion and speculation. Willfully asserting that a concept is factual without having proof or even disproof is lying, whether one believes it or not. Belief is not fact, no matter how fervently it is believed. Facts must hold to a higher standard, else we would know nothing.

It's time that we consider lying for public consumption be considered a criminal act, punishable by public shaming and high fines, and in egregious cases, a limitation of some of the offender's rights for a designated time. It would make people think before speaking. Shooting off at the mouth is too often driven by irrational emotion that blocks rational thinking, or else it is craven political manipulation for power at the expense of others. This simple solution would make our society a much better one.

WHY HAVE AMERICANS LOST THEIR BALLS?

The current, acrimonious healthcare debate in Congress should be a clear demonstration that Americans have lost their balls. This is not a recent loss, but a slow decline in the power of the people. Many polls indicate that most of us want a public option of some kind or even a single-payer system, but only a few members of Congress support this plan. Most members of Congress didn't want a public option on the table. What arrogance! Only a significant public outcry by public interest groups and progressives forced it to be considered. Why? Our representatives are tied to big, corporate money and their lobbyists: health insurance, big pharma, the AMA. It's special interests determining this debate and many others that affect the well-being of the nation. Healthcare legislation is such a prime example of the rot at the political core of our nation. We should know this, but why do we allow it? Why are we so acquiescent to political powers that only have a narrow interest at heart and don't give a damn about the rest of us? America is supposed to be a country for all of us, but we have allowed minority powers to control us. They control Congress and the presidential administrations through lobbying, an inherently unfair and undemocratic practice. Can we find the balls to take it back? It will be a big fight because these institutions have great wealth and the ability to control and manipulate media and information. They are the filter through which we are allowed to view social policies. They want us kept in the dark, want us to be contented consumers of entertainment and pleasurable products so they can make profit. They don't believe in freedom, individual rights, fairness, equality and justice. We don't have a democracy, but a plutocracy or oligarchy in which only a few people rule for their benefit and the rest of us exist to be exploited. Social needs, the poor and the environment be damned. This is the legacy of so-called free market Capitalism.

We must stop the political power of business and other private institutions to rule our country. How can we take it back? Will it take another revolution? Each citizen must have an equal share of political power, no more or less than any other, and no other institution should have any political power. Institutions should exist only to serve us. Social privilege should be eliminated. Even our representatives should only have the political power we invest in them and they should be forced to act as we wish. They are our employees hired to do a job of governing. Representatives should only be allowed to interact with their constituents who voted for them, and no others. They should exist to carry out our collective will, not their private will. They should also be informed and skilled politicians who can advise us on issues before we make decisions and tell them how to vote.

All of us need to be more involved in government, after all, we are supposed to be the government, but we have abdicated that duty. We can't anymore allow government to be left only in the hands of elected and appointed officials. Human nature dictates that governors will govern in their own way absent supervision. A free flow of information is required among all citizens and their officials for government to be functional and just. Responsibility for just, fair government rests on all of us. Let's take our balls back. That's the healthcare we need now.

Military Misspending

We too often hear about military misspending, cost overruns, lobbying for weapons programs and a host of other malfeasances at a horrendous cost to all of us. This isn't strictly a Pentagon/Department of Defense problem, but a problem of who is in charge of military spending. That responsibility belongs to our Congress, but Congress belongs to big business that lobbies our representatives to spend for their products and services. It's the power of the private sector that is the greatest problem in overspending. The weapons manufacturers are all private, profit-making corporations. They have a vested interest in selling weapons, and the best market for selling weapons is in wars. The weapon-makers are warmongers. They're in bed with the military. Why should we allow this? Fortunately, there's a simple solution for military spending: mandate that the military manufacture all weapons of mass destruction at cost. Forbid private manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Hunting and other personal defense firearms manufacturers would be allowed to operate. If the military needs workers beyond their own personnel to manufacture weapons they can hire civilians at market rates.

The military is a public function that belongs to all of us. It should not be held in thrall to private interests; that is a violation of the public interest and common good.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S PROBLEM

President Obama does have a problem. He's a mainstream, centrist liberal, not a progressive. That means he's about 50 years out of date. I think he's an essentially a good man; he's smart, a constitutional scholar, his heart is in the right place, but his thinking isn't. He is also tied to neoliberal principles, those vestiges of cold war thinking that are not so much different from neoconservatism. That ideology makes us a dominant and interfering power in the politics of other nations and earns us their disrespect. These are major reasons why Obama is having such a hard time solving our current problems.

The old liberalism should be dead. No ideology can last in the face of unpredictable social changes. The Republicans took advantage of liberalism's decline, but with little evolution of conservative policies, only repackaged. These ideas have run aground. But liberalism didn't die; it has evolved into a progressive ideology that is a major critique of the old liberalism, yet preserves its spirit. Many Americans seem to understand this, but the Democrats in charge don't understand this. They are too tied to the status quo and the support of large corporate and other special interests.

It's hard for him and the Democrats to fight against the Republican ideologies: rampant, unregulated capitalism, a gambling economy based in the stock market, privatization of social concerns. The supposed wisdom of markets, capitalism and profit must be questioned. Corporate and other institutional political powers should be curtailed and placed under the will of the people to serve us, otherwise they are rogue institutions acting in self-interest for the benefit of a few to undermine the well-being of the nation. This may be the only way to restore the responsibility of government.

For many decades it appears that our presidents have been puppets of the controlling corporate and government institutional powers. They can't be fully independent. Obama isn't an exception. His power relies on their agendas, not the agendas of the people. A president must act only on the support of the people.

I'm not sure how to restore the independence of the presidency or whether we should allow an executive independence from the wishes of the people. Shouldn't he be dependent on the wishes of all the people and encourage us to deliberate issues and devise a better national agenda so that he might help us to achieve it? Shouldn't the president represent the will of the people and be the spokesman to implement it?

Obama wants to be be the representative of all the people, but it is impossible to achieve total agreement among Americans. We operate by majoritarian democracy. G. W. Bush tried to be a ruler and failed. But Obama needs to reach out to us as a leader and be more persuasive for the causes that would make our nation a better place for everyone. He should also be willing to offer critiques of policies that haven't worked and can't work. He must be able to promote a comprehensive ideology for major social change toward greater fairness and political equality. He still hasn't presented us with a coherent set of reasons to make broad social changes, so his opposition can too easily pick away at him. Sadly, he isn't a visionary who can inspire us.

Progressives must find better ways to influence president Obama and push him toward these more humane and equitable principles. I think he might be amenable to changing his mind when he sees the reasoning underlying what the people need, but he will need a large, committed support base. It would be easier to influence this one single man than the many representatives in Congress, with their intertwining connections to special interest powers. Then, if progressives had his pulpit it would be easier for us to influence the Congress on a state by state basis.

To Your Health

The primary reason that our healthcare system is broken is that it is a for profit system. The incentives to make money from suffering are intense, but immoral. We are captives of that system because we need it and must value it highly, however those who control the system have control over our lives. That is a grave mistake. Medicine need not be a for profit endeavor. It was originally conceived as a spiritual healing art for the benefit of everyone, for the well-being of society. The Hippocratic Oath that all doctors swear upon states, “First, do no harm.” Medical personnel have pursued often many years of expensive education and training, so they deserve to be remunerated at a rate commensurate with that time spent and skills learned. But those who invest in medicine as a business model just to make profit push the prices higher and cause other unintended consequences that further increase medical costs. Medical insurance is a gambling ripoff. Drug companies have incentives only to produce drugs that are profitable, not what are needed to solve broad social ills, and their profits are often unreasonably high; drug prices are horribly inflated. For profit healthcare is overvalued.

Most medical personnel go into their profession to be of service and expect to be remunerated at a worthwhile rate for their valuable service. Only a small number of medical personnel are in the business just to make money. A public healthcare system would weed out these people and encourage them to pursue less crucial, but more lucrative professions. I do not suggest that all medical personnel should be employed by government; they could still be independent, privately employed individuals.

Some institutions in societies should never be private nor allowed to make profit because they promote a healthy society; they are required for everyone, equally, regardless of social status, income, political beliefs and associations and all other distinctions that make us individuals. The many activities and agencies of government fit this distinction; nonprofit services needed by most of the people and paid for by taxes.

A society needs a basic healthcare system for society to be healthy. In the case of epidemics and pandemics, relying only on a private healthcare system could mean massive spread of disease and social dysfunction, economic collapse, famine, etc. Health shouldn't be a special interest issue.

That a public healthcare option is “off the table” in Congress is only because the private, for profit business institutions fear losing billions of dollars and their political power. They have inordinate power to unfairly lobby Congress against the wishes of the people. They don't care about the health of society or for poor, sick individuals. Immediate monetary gain is the bottom line, not health, although this thinking could eventually lead to their demise along with millions of other innocents dependent on these failed policies.

Only a single-payer system, one large group policy that covers all citizens from birth to the grave, could be cost-effective and humane. When profit incentives are removed many costs are naturally reduced all across the board. And when “We, the People” are encouraged to cooperate with and care for each other all our individual lives will be improved. Our well-being is dependent on everyone else, and that is a very powerful position.

Rationing is the scary buzzword that opponents of fair healthcare throw around to derail public healthcare. Any healthcare system rations available care: Triage based on the severity of injury on the battlefield or in disasters and epidemics. Ours rations it severely according to income and/or employment, which buys insurance. Certainly, very expensive interventions for an elderly or very sick patient that might not extend life or even potentially kill a fragile patient should be evaluated for rationing. We shouldn't waste medical resources. These evaluations take place all the time even in the current, broken system.

The current healthcare system is based on fixing broken bodies, not prevention and maintaining health. Costs are inflated by this out-of-control approach. In our economy, the more sick there are, the more money is made by a few people, but at a high cost to the nation. A preventive healthcare maintenance model that can identify potential problems before they happen is far more cost effective. Nor should a public healthcare system pay for vanity surgeries or unnecessary procedures just because an individual wants them. There should still be private medical services available to those who can pay for them.

Revaluing healthcare costs is what we need now. Obviously, our lives and health are priceless. What is it worth to us in monetary terms? Do we overvalue doctors and other medical personnel? In many developed countries doctors and other medical professionals are paid reasonably high salaries or wages, but not as high as in America. Doctors love these high salaries and the social status they create, but they should remember that medicine is a service and a responsibility to the community.

A Nation of Psychopaths

Are we becoming a nation of psychopaths? A psychopath has no feelings for others or understanding of others feelings, a serious emotional dysfunction. Because they are often very calculating and manipulative, they can appear to have feelings for others, but they can kill without remorse. It appears that this pathology is growing in our population. We can see how this plays out in social and political discourse.

Recently, the Republicans have begun to attack empathy; why? It's too crazy to believe that this criticism could be acceptable to anyone. Is it because they have none and are afraid of it? It seems to me that many of the most crackpot right wingnuts fear empathy because deep down beneath their almost nonexistent rational minds they realize if they had any they wouldn't be able to believe their ideology. They say that empathy is personal, emotional and irrational so it has no place in politics and social policy. Yet this belief has a strong dysfunctional emotional attachment. This thought may be one of the most irrational beliefs ever. It is how the Nazi holocaust and all other genocidal politics operates. However, emotions aren't irrational. We have them as a sensory protection, to understand others and to determine what we want. We couldn't survive without them or have functioning families and society. They are what make us human. Certainly, emotions can be driven by irrational urges and programmed by dysfunctional experiences, but that doesn't mean that emotional response is in itself is irrational, only that bad input will produce bad output. And this is what has become of Republican politics – bad input and even worse output. Ours is a very sick country.

Empathy causes us to feel what another human is feeling, a valuable sense to promote understanding among us. When empathy dies only cold psychopathology remains. Anything may be done to serve selfish ends without remorse and responsibility. Individuals become egotistic islands unto themselves, unable to act together for the common good. We see this in the so-called conservative beliefs that wish to drastically reduce the power of government and privatize all social institutions. Nothing is left of a “We, the People”, a common society to which we all belong that supports all human endeavor. It is the beginning of the “War of all against all.”, the death of society. In reality, it is the old justification of authoritarian social status, elites and tyranny of the few “superior” beings who wish to live as they wish off the exploitation and enslavement of the masses.

Republicans are facing the end of their beliefs, beliefs that never could function as a guide to a civil society. It is a fundamental and fundamentalist wrong. If they lose that they lose their identities as human beings as they have known it. This can only be interpreted as a death, not only of the individual, but of society, humanity and all concepts of the right and good. It is the apocalypse, but without salvation.

The right strongly fears their loss of power, both financial and political. They have only been capable of creating a political ideology that is bereft of empathy, therefore inhumane. The instigation of their philosophy at this time is only to exacerbate the growing environmental problems that would most likely lead to the death of human civilization. They appear to know that to save the human race they must lose, but they are unwilling to do that, being primarily concerned with short-term profitable results, black and white fundamentalist thinking or in denial of the harsh realities we face.

This condition is stark raving madness, insanity, spiritual disease. Are we sane enough to stop it? It will take a vast rethinking of the psychological elements of politics and society and realizing that societies can be sick, and if so, can also be healed.

Carl Kasell's Voice on Everyone's Answering Machine, Except Mine

If you win by answering questions on a call-in on NPRs' satiric news radio show, “Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me”, you get announcer Carl Kasell to record his voice as the outgoing message on your answering machine. By now, hundreds of answering machines probably boast Carl's voice. His must be the most popular voice in America. How long will it take before everyone in America has Carl's voice on their machine? Will manufacturers catch on and license his voice for all answering machines? Will all our voice mail announcements sound like Carl someday?

Now, I like Kasell's voice. He has that warm, friendly and paternally authoritative sound so dear to NPR listeners. But I don't want Carl's voice on my answering machine. I want my own voice. I'm not Carl Kasell. I hope he doesn't want to be me. Does he have his own voice on his answering machine or would he like my voice? I'd be glad to record it for free. Why do so many people want Carl's voice on their answering machines? Is it because they don't like their own voices? Or do they want the prestige of having a professional announcer providing their outgoing message?

How does Carl feel if he hears his voice when he makes a call? Does he want to talk to himself? I talk to myself. Does he? But I don't use an answering machine to do it. If I heard my voice on someone else's answering machine I'd wonder what covert government agency was attempting to compromise my life. Or would it be an arcane joke by a friend? I wouldn't want to record my voice on someone else's machine. Perhaps it's a plot to confuse callers. If we put others' voices on our answering machines would that thwart national security spying on us?

How Can You Lose Your Home?

If you hold a mortgage on your house and are forced into foreclosure because you can't make the payments, you lose it all, no matter how much you've paid in equity of principal and interest. There's something very wrong with this system. It's always been a ripoff of mortgagees. Shouldn't the equity you've built up be yours? After all, you've paid for it. From that aspect you would have a bargaining position with your mortgage holder. It's time to force a change in the laws against this private business control.

To solve the current problems of working out lowered payments for mortgagees with their mortgage holders, if the mortgagee has made payments nearly equal to the principal, then the remaining interest owed should be canceled by law and the loan written off by the holder.