| - Intension An old rant I quit writing and lost, only to be found today:
Here's what America needs. You can debate on how liberal it is, or how I hate America because I'm not a Bible-thumping, FOX News-watching, Rush Limbaugh-listening, zombie. This country is okay. It's not the greatest, but it has potential. What we need are the following:
- Completely new structure of voting. Instead of one day a year, we get a week. Voter registration forms will be available at all government agencies and news reports will serve their purpose on public domain and inform people of deadlines and the numbers they have to call for help with voting. For a true democratic republic to work, every voice must be heard. No electric voting machines without a paper trail. No behind-closed-doors activities after the polls close. No Secretary of State being in charge of an election (especially like Ohio, with the Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell ALSO being the head of Bush/Cheney 04 campaign for the state of Ohio). No Diebold or ES&S voting machines, as each company has executives with strong political leanings. There should be available voting machines to suit voting needs and by no means should voters be forced to wait upwards of 12 hours to cast a vote! And, most importantly, no provisional (throwaway) ballots.
- Clean the House. And the Senate. There are a few individuals with the interest of the public in mind, but most members of Congress aren't working for us, they're simply working us. Kucinich is probably the most qualified. But here's how we weed out the rotten apples. Members of Congress who not only get paid congressional salaries (which are generous for any city's cost of living. most of us get by on much less) but also have interests in big corporations or who receive these ridiculous amounts of campaign money have to go. We need people with nothing else but their government job to get them by. If your food on the table comes from you doing your job and representing your constituents, then you're going to do what you must in order to please the people. That's the problem with this current crop--they aren't normal folks and are obviously too busy playing partisan mindgames than fulfilling their duty in this particular system of government.
- Supreme Court justices should be removed at the will of the public. We don't want Alito getting by because the regressives want him. We didn't want Roberts. Even most of congress didn't want Roberts, so Bush sneaks him in during a congressional recess? And that's what these people pass as democracy?? Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor...all should be tried for war crimes. They put Bush in office in the first place, despite the fact that no Supreme Court in the history of this nation has ever decided election results. When the history books are written about the atrocities of the Bush administration, remember who put the demon in power.
- Leave abortion alone. Make funding for operations available and that's it. If you have a problem with abortions, then don't have one. You want to save a child's life? Don't have kids of your own--go adopt one of the million orphans this country has. Give someone who is already alive (and out of the womb) a chance to live a life and stop giving a fuck about a pre-developed stage of human. You're pro-life? Fix the blacklisting against possible cures for cancer. Expose the truth about AIDS. Preach safe sex over abstinance because it's a no-brainer that, duh, people are going to fuck. Make the morning-after pill available widely. Have birth control provided free to whomever should need it. That would help cut down those horrible abortion numbers about which you go ape shit.
- Fix the fucking medical establishment. Insurance companies are ruining everything. Especially the medical field. Nobody can afford insurance and so they try to get government help (which makes sense considering we pay for such social programs--til Bush cuts funding) only to find that they aren't exactly poor enough to qualify. It should be free optical, dental, health insurance for all registered citizens. If we had a quarter of the defense budget, it could be done. Well, if we fixed the pharmaceutical companies. They're fleecing Americans. $7-24 for a pill that costs $0.07 to make? Sounds like Exxon with oil profits. It's bad enough that herbal and natural remedies are blacklisted, but the pills we're being prescribed are usually 1. making things worse, or 2. giving us cancer. Let's hold these fucks accountable for their foul ups. Eli Lilly and thimerosol, for example. Such a tragic act of neglegence should lead to a monstrous class action lawsuit. If we had a good government, they could take control of these scandalous medicine corporations instead of protecting them, and then use the acquisition to keep our citizens healthy. But no. We get provisions put into homeland security bills that prevent Big Pharma companies from lawsuits. Really helping us out, aren't they?
- While we're at it, why not fix the tax situation? Big companies with several billion dollars in revenue per year should not get tax exempt status on their land/property. The richer you are, the less tax cuts you should get--not vice versa. To each, according to his/her needs, from each, according to his/her income. Tax cuts should come for environmentally friendly actions. Recycling, driving fuel-efficient, low-emission, and hybrid-cars, things of that nature; each should come with a slight tax cut. Motivate people to help out the environment the only way you can--saving money. Property taxes should benefit local social services, as should 1/2 of sales tax. The other half goes to the state level. Therefore, people can locally have what they need and the state cuts costs by cutting down on administration and do more actual WORKING. Something far too many state employees find difficult to accomplish. And how high can the alcohol/tobacco taxes get? The average blue collar worker, trying to relax after a hard day of making money for the man, has to pay 17% tax on his alcohol and .45 cents per pack of cigarettes (though, Gov. Taft had the idea of making it 30% tax on alcohol and $1 per pack of cigarettes). Some folks who smoke/drink can't afford the current price, but what can they do if they're addicted? So you increase taxes on the only legal releases a person has and you've just committed class warfare.
- Which brings me to the issue of vices. Soft drugs such as mushrooms, marijuana, and opium should be legalized, if not at least decriminalized. There are worse criminals to be caught, too many inefficient (and corrupt) law enforcement officers, and no harm in the those drugs. It's as American as apple pie to get trashed (especially upon the first night of legal drinking age) and get hungover. Well, that's poison you're putting into your body. How is smoking a joint any worse? Or eating an eighth of mushrooms? If it's a drug you don't want to do, don't do it. But don't think you should have any right telling someone other than your children that they can't explore their own consciousness, or smoke something a bit healthier/less addictive than a ciggarette. Land of the free? Let's see it.
- Once we begin excercising common sense, maybe we'll get this "War On Drugs" nonsense to stop, as well. If the CIA can manufacture and distribute narcotics as part of a self-funding operation, then I don't think any of the millions of inmates serving time for drug-related offenses can be labeled "criminals." The truth of the matter is that if you outlaw a substance, you create a black market. If you control the black market (using the DEA to police your competition), then you're going to have a lock on the market, therefore increasing profits. So, I guess those advertisements were correct---buying drugs DOES support terrorism...covert U.S. state-sponsored terrorism! So let's put an end to that, eh?
- Black projects, covert operations, classified information, warrantless wiretaps, surveillance satellites, simulated urban warfare, armed guards watching the borders, closed-circuit television cameras...all necessary for "democracy?" I don't think so. Who's the bigger threat here, the average American citizen, or the Kansas senator wanting to replace the government with a system in which Big Business and The Church control all aspects of our lives (including making sex a married heterosexual activity)? Freedom, justice, democracy, all are just rhetorical terms used to mindfuck us out of the rights into which we as conscious individuals were born.
- The federal government itself is too powerful. Because of its power, the buddy system between executive, judicial, and legislative branches has subverted accountability and nothing gets better. With less power on the federal level, we get stronger state governments. State governments are occassionally corrupt. BUT, with the feds off our backs and thereby off our minds, we can focus upon the much easier task of cleaning house on a state level. In a true democracy, the majority rules. In this, the Police State of America, a majority disapproves of our President and he remains in charge. Yet, we're being told how all the time how we live in a democracy. And even more, we're spreading (by the American language of force) freedom and democracy around the world!!
Ahem...practice what you preach. Until then, shut your fucking mouth and follow your job description: serving society. |
