A re-post of one of my essays from last year.
James Pilant
via Pilant’s Business Ethics Blog
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Constitutional Convention?
We here in America should start practicing democracy instead of pretending. The government no longer works for human beings only for lobbyists and their employers.
When the American Government under the Articles of Confederation began to break down, the great men of the nation acted to save the country from dissolving into a dozen or so petty states.
We’re in the same situation now. We just don’t have any great men. Our current crop of politicians are contemptible. Would let a anyone involved in that disgrace of a “budget ceiling” negotiation work for you?
What should a constitutional convention do? Get rid of the Senate. The idea that the two Senators from North Dakota should have the same weight in national deliberations as the two Senators from California is bizarre and ridiculous. What’s more it allows a small minority to have veto power over the rest of the nation. That’s why we have farm supports that make no sense here financially while causing havoc overseas. You can’t make intelligent policy when a minority can derail intelligent action. Let’s have a single house legislature with the seats distributed by population. That’s democracy. Pretending that the states are actually independent countries is an idea the Civil War should have finished off for good.
The second thing we should do is get rid of the electoral college. Elect the President directly by the voters. Electing Presidents by states electoral votes is a formula for disaster. You get Presidents without actual majorities.
The third thing is to put the right to vote into the Bill of Rights. Every kind of shenanigans is now being employed and has been used throughout American history to keep people from voting. Let’s make sure everyone is on the same set of rules. It’s wrong to stop people from voting. Period.
The Constitution created a government divided in purpose to make oppression less likely. It wasn’t a bad idea but now it is no longer viable. The government and the those influencing it are more the enemies of the people than ever before, and because the government only sort of responds to the voters, that response is muted and ineffective. We need a government strong enough to resist large pressure from large economic organizations but weak enough to leave people individual rights.
To keep our rights, it is time to change the form of our government. Now.
James Pilant
https://southwerk.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/constitutional-convention/
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The Bastille; the desacralization of corporate power (via Carol Hardick)
This post compares the storming of the Bastille and the eventual end of corporate hegemony. It’s an interesting comparison, and very imaginative. Please give it a read.
James Pilant
Best paragraph –
Corporations and their top tiers, including the stock market which serves them, have grown so huge and so powerful they don’t see the loss of one job as a tragedy, they don’t see the loss of millions of jobs as a tragedy, all they see is statistics. The planet is going to exist in perpetuated chaos until the corporations recognize that there are people behind the numbers. One day as the world is crashing around those on whose backs the corporations created their wealth, executives will look to the horizon and see that their Bastille is going to be stormed. They will be dethroned. -Not because capitalism doesn’t work, it does- but because the people are starving, and they’re starving at the expense of corporate greed. Does this sound similar to the era leading up to the French Revolution? Just like the kings and queens who faced the axe because of their greed and overreach, corporations and the politicians who supported them, will be in the same position and need to seek a peace treaty while they have the chance.
via Carol Hardick
The Biggest Middle Class Tax Increase In History Will Come In Five Months (via 1 Nation Blog)
Best comment from the post –
Is our government functioning properly?
Absolutely not! We may have just made the same (similar) mistakes that were made in 1937. I think all of Washington has folded on their responsibilities.
The attached essay explains better than I could the nature of the tax increase about to hit almost all of us in a few months.
James Pilant
via 1 Nation Blog
Central, Hong Kong Pretty Girls – courtesy of HK newspaper Apple B.B. Daily (a lesson about freedom of press) (via Kempton – ideas Revolutionary)
Is it ethical to take pictures of pretty women (or anyone) without their permission to put in a newspaper?
I don’t think so but this is Hong Kong. What are the rules there? Read the attached article and enjoy.
James Pilant
Citizen-Led Movement in California Proposes to Outlaw Foreclosures (via Ketron Property Management, Inc.)
If you think this is a little crazy, you’re right. But in the light of how home owners have been treated over the last few years, it is totally understandable.
You can do a lot to people when they’ve been trained to take it. Currently they believe that the system is fair and that the terrible things that have happened to hundreds of thousands of Americans will be remedied once the right people figure out what’s going on.
Many of the right people knew from the beginning what was going on in the housing market and when the massive number of foreclosures began, those same right people closed their eyes.
A lot of Americans are waking up each day a little more sure that no one cares about them, their property or their rights. When justice is denied, people are going to start looking at other remedies.
This may look crazy now but if simple justice is denied large parts of the population, it’s going to get a lot crazier than this.
And it should.
James Pilant
CBO … Federal Loan Guarantees for the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants (via Point/CounterPoint)
You weren’t aware that loans to build nuclear power plants were guaranteed by the federal government?
They had to, you see. No one would loan them money to build a plant because of the risk.
So, you might ask, “If the federal government did not guarantee the loans, would there be any nuclear power plants built in the United States from now on?”
No.
You may resent the fact that if you decide to borrow some money to build a factory, a restaurant, a day-care center, etc., the government isn’t going to guarantee a dime of it.
That’s very small minded of you. Isn’t obvious that the nuclear industry though its exemplary safety record, environmental activism and continuing careful and cost free disposal of nuclear waste, has earned these enormous government subsidies? (Whoops, they don’t do any of that, do they? – Oh, well, it’s still obvious that they are deserving and you aren’t.)
Maybe you should get mad?
James Pilant
God Wants You To Blow Stuff Up (With Nukes!)
For the last twenty years officers in the Air Force who run the launch platforms for nuclear weapons have had an “unusual” training manual. It explains the necessity of nuclear war based on fundamentalist Christian principles.
Strangely enough, I spent years in a fundamentalist Christian Church and we never discussed the morality of vaporizing our enemies. Of course in those teachings, Jesus Christ was militant and not afraid to kill his enemies, so I guess you can extrapolate from that.
From CNN –
The Air Force halted the class last week after 31 missile launch officers reported the religious nature of the briefing to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group which tries to ensure religious freedom among the troops.
“There were several things that they found disgusting,” Mikey Weinstein founder of the foundation said. “The first was the fact that there is actually a slide that makes it clear that they’re trying to teach that, under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing.”
From The Atlantic Monthly –
A curious mix of vigilant atheists and devout Christians are celebrating the Air Force’s decision to suspend a Christian-themed course taught to nuclear missile launch officers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. For almost 20 years, military chaplains presented these officers with slides filled with biblical references such as “Revelation 19:11 Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior” and Christian literature, such as St. Augustine’s Just War Theory, in an attempt to dismantle the moral and ethical qualms of annihilating human beings with nuclear weapons. Surprise! Not everyone liked it. Last week, the Air Force suspended the course after 32 missile launch officers reported the religious bent of the briefings to the watchdog group Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Cue a Bill O’Reilly Culture Warrior™ moment? Not so fast. It seems both believers and non-believers are pleasantly amenable to the policy change.
From Military.com – Today in the Military
AETC halted the ethics training last week after an article on the training was posted at Truthout.org. Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti — described as a missile officer who took the training in 2006 — said he and others referred to the religious section of the ethics training as the “Jesus loves nukes speech.”
The Air Force says it was unaware of the training despite its twenty year run.
James Pilant
Dogs Becoming Latest Casualty Of S. Fla. Foreclosures (via CBS Miami)
Isn’t this pitiful. We live in a country where the recession has gotten so severe that families are unable to keep their pets.
James Pilant
via CBS Miami
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