Proactive or Reactive government

A government is illegitimate if it is reactive instead of proactive. A proactive government will plan ahead, while a reactive government will plunder the coffers and then make excuses.

Here is a partial example of how a proactive government works:

During good times, when unemployment is at least below five percent and most businesses are thriving; raise taxes, cut spending and save enough money so your government will have an emergency fund to stay fully operational for at least three years.

During bad times, when a recession hits, spend the emergency fund, lower taxes, increase the ranks of the social service and workforce development workers, and freeze salary increases.

Here is a partial example of how a reactive government works:

During good times, when unemployment is at least below five percent and most businesses are thriving; hire more workers because there’s more money for it, give regular salary increases, hire employees at three times the rate of the private sector, create new jobs for political patrons, and spend money on beautification projects.

During bad times, when a recession hits, layoff line-level workers, increase taxes, cut funding to social services and education, keep the high-salaried political patrons on the job. Cut firefighters, police, teachers and other line-level workers.

GOV 101

Today I’m playing the role of the bad magician who gives away the secret to probably the biggest illusion in human history, Government.

Most of us know what’s really going on but it’s a problem we can’t articulate. Conspiracy theorists and paranoids in general continue to voice hatred and fear of the government, and people are still lining up at the polls every election season. These indicators serve as a barometer that the government still appears to have teeth and influence with the public. It’s well beyond time to stop this illusion.

Year after year, president after president, governor after governor, nothing changes. Everyone is wondering why they have to scrimp and scrape their way through life along the precipice of life while a few people or entities are dolling out five and six figure salaries and pensions.

One key element is that government has become a tool of industry. Government on its own merit is merely a decoration behind which a handful of bankers and other industrial oligarchs hide and push buttons like the Wizard of Oz.

Legislation, without fail, distorts from its original intent and public promise, into a cash cow for an industry special interest group, or distorts into a tax-funded bureaucracy to be populated by political patrons and their cronies, who then take revolving doors into industries that benefit from that bureaucracy.

Another point of evidence is the disparity of priorities that local state and federal governments have regarding taxes.

Municipal, State and Federal budgets rely on taxes to stay afloat, but businesses treat employees as an expense they try to keep as low as possible or cut entirely, not realizing that by doing so, businesses are reducing the volume of tax contributors, causing governments to increase the tax rate.

In other words, there are less people able to contribute taxes, so the tax rate is increased to compensate. There are more people dependent on social programs that require tax expenditures because they are unemployed.

Municipalities that depend on sales taxes are doomed unless they do away with sales tax and shift to only an income tax.

If government was interested enough to increase the volume of tax contributions (increasing the number of people who contribute more to taxes) rather than increasing the tax rate, governments would reform education so individuals could be self-sufficient instead of learning to become dependent on an employer in the future.

This is bad for business because it would inject too many competitors into the marketplace. Education has long been dampened and controlled by dysfunctional mandates and curriculum to maintain a certain level of control in the marketplace.

So, government served its purpose as a distraction for terrorists and mentally unstable gunmen long enough. You can stop giving government credit for anything and treat it like the tool that it is. Start looking behind the curtain folks.

Sub-Woofer Woes

Sound Violations are one of many ordinances that might be considered a solution for waning revenue from sales and income taxes, despite calls by the public for cuts in government salaries.

Any Political System Evenly Divided

Any political system that is evenly divided between opposing or competing parties is an well-manipulated political system.

Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist's visit to the Illinois Policy Institute appears to have been a $100 plate anti Clinton campaign. The so-called "leave us alone coalition" against taxation and government intrusion apparently never cracked open any books by John Steinbeck or Upton Sinclair. If they somehow were prompted to remember that government regulations were created because people actually died, they would flee such an organization like rats from a sinking ship.

The State Journal Register's new owner, Gatehouse Media may be gradually adjusting the tone of the entire paper more to the right each day. I would like to believe that it's Gatehouse and not local editors that are responsible for it because this gradual shift also appears to be occurring in religious institutions.

The Pope and other competing religious interests have all suddenly become more conservative, almost pre-industrial tribalistic in their rhetoric. Just before his death this year, Dr. D. James Kennedy compared those who believe in evolution to Stalin, Hitler, and the mad scientists of Eugenics.

All the conservative institutions are showing their ire like the last surge of speed from a lawnmower before it runs out of gas.

Federal Legislators on Summer Break

Our U.S. Senators and Congressmen are on their August break. You might see them around your district. We, the people expected change after the 2006 election, and the rumors going around are that the Democrats have rolled over and have not been effective since they have become a majority.

But, we, the people rolled over. We only gave the Democrats a simple majority, not an overriding majority. For the Democrats to be effective against the onslaught of warmongering predatory capitalists, an overriding majority is needed, a better than two-thirds majority that can override a Presidential veto or some other arcane parliamentary procedure.

So we have nothing to complain about but our own inability to elect an effective majority of legislators different from those who dominated our government for the last six years.

Substantive Speaking

Or How substance will catch up to your speech and bite it really, really hard.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld both used the same speech tactic for similar situations. In Rumsfeld’s situation it was the expose of photos at AbuGraihb prison. With Gonzales it was the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys allegedly to make way for more politically loyal servants.

Essentially they both said that they were upset about the situation and were going to get to the bottom of it and find out what happened.

Some people would be glad to hear that Secretary Rumsfeld was upset about the treatment of prisoners, and that Attorney General Gonzales was upset about the U.S. Attorneys getting fired. But evidence and other statements preceding and following the event in question reflect more substance about what they said that they would appreciate.

That Rumsfeld and Gonzales were only upset about getting caught. They would have gotten away with it too, had it not been for the Internet. They forgot to include the New Media in their calculations. They were counting on the very short life span of their exposed foibles in an old machine of mass media.

Newspapers only have space to report on the basic overall position, and television has very little time to risk repeating speeches before the viewer changes the channel.

Newspapers get buried by the following day’s newspapers, and television video segments get taped over or forgotten by viewers, but he Internet collects and holds information for years, and we can go back and search for everything we need.

They, and others like them, are catching on. They are beginning to figure out how dangerous the Internet is for them, and they are quietly working behind the scenes to rein in public access to the Internet by making it more expensive and more difficult for the public to gain access.

The PBS Series Frontline recently created a miniseries called “The News Wars” nearly a decade after they created a miniseries called “Why America Hates the Press” Frontline producers analyze the state of the American news media and provide insight into changes that can impact the behavior of not only politicians, but corporate owners of mass media outlets, and the owners of the pipelines and cables that carry the Internet.

The danger to the Internet is only exasperated by old mass media shows that talk about it, like Frontline, and cable news networks that regularly produce news segments about the Internet.

Corporations are attempting to gain control of what goes on the Internet, and we must all work together to keep it free of such control and accessible to all. http://www.savetheinternet.com

Empire Dusk

A Mexican Ambassador once said that most of the companies in Mexico are American companies. It was the first and last time something like that was ever again said on television.

Spfld.net introduces a new website.

http://www.EmpireDusk.com