I hear a lot of people say that they think they can’t do anything about the way things are in places like Washington or Detroit or even their own towns. Yet, all the recent evidence says that if enough people are focused on the same kind of thing, they can achieve the kind of change they want.
As an example, in Ohio, if you don’t like what your senators are doing (particularly Voinovich this year) you can vote for someone else. Consider Jeremy Swartz, as an example. He’s independent. He’s conservative. He’s not the status quo.
But, what has to happen is that you do something. You can’t expect other people to do it for you. If you do, you will thank yourself for it later on.
DLH
DL, Of course, I totally agree with the ethics of your statements here. The facts are that if the solutions start with “YOU” are attainable through group efforts in our “would be” democracy unless you are rich and can afford an ad campaign. Then in fact one would be paying someone to do it for you.
Our country more resembles at this time, a socialist republic.
The supreme court recently made it so we can buy votes.
I think our country has been a socialist republic since the moment we continued to fund Medicare and Social Security without changes even though they are going bankrupt by raising taxes.
As for the Supreme Court decision, from what I have read in their actual decision so far, their ruling was not about corporate money so much as it was about preserving the Constitutional protection of political speech, whatever its source. Congress passed and Clinton signed a bad law. If there is a fix, Congress should revisit the issue and fix it, but I think it will be hard to do.
Of course, for me, this all goes back to something that has always bothered me about the whole corporate political speech debate: do people really decide who to vote for based on TV commercials and corporate opinions? If they do, they get what they deserve.