Did You Know?Posted by Jay Littell - Jul 16, 2010This blog is divided into two sections.The first is entitled "Why Don't We? It's about visioning. It's about new ways of doing things. The second section is entitled "Factoids," or interesting tidbits of information I've come across over the years. WHY DON'T WE? >>>Change lobbysing practices in Washington? An article in Time magazine (7/12/10), headlined "The Best Laws Money Can Buy," summarized the role that lobbying plays in the nation's capital. It stated that $3.49 billion was spent to hire more than 11,000 lobbyists who work for 1900 lobbying firms in D.C. The article reports that more than 2000 lobbyists registered this year to lobby for the financial industry, more than every member of the House and Senate. It then asks: What do these firms get for their clients? Lower taxes - about $10 billion, it's estimated. How? By pushing through exemptions (or loopholes) in complicated tax bills for the people who hire them. The author of the article, Steven Brill, demonstrates that these lobbyists chipped away at key provisions of the so-called Volker rule; the paragraph beginning on page 31 of the article, "by the time the bill was finished..." makes for fascinating reading. There's too much detail to go into here, and the thrust of the article (and many others on the subject of lobbying in our nation's capital) is that the law-making system is badly broken. Hw to fix it? Brill reports that a tax on lobbying has been discussed. That tax would finance a new research arm of Congress. Its job would be to provide unbiased advice on pending legislation to balance the lobbyists' input. Another idea that's been proposed? A constitutionalamendment stripping for-profit corporations of First Amendment rights. After considering all this, does the phrase "the best government money can buy" come to mind? >>>Substitute "Fair Trade" for "Free Trade"? This country was founded on a vision of what could be. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers summarized that vision. It was one where people's "inalienable rights" included "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Why don't we adopt policies that emphasize "fair" trade? Is there anything that's "fair" about our current trade policies? And does it, by ANY stretch of the imagination, promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Dealing with any of the news outlets that you consult on an ongoing bassis will give you an emphatic answer to that question: "No." Our ancestors are the people who brought to the planet a new and better way of organizing ourselves politically. They had a vision of what they wanted their new society to look like. Does it look anything like that today? No. Not even close. So why don't we fashion a new vision for our trade policy? A lot of people would be upset if we did. They're the ones who holler the loudest, so they usually get their way. But, overall, we'd ALL be better off if we substituted fair trade for mindlessly worshiping at the altar of so-called free trade. Have you looked at the trade deficit numbers recently? Have you calculated how much interest we're paying on the national debt? Those numbers are STAGGERING, and they're getting bigger all the time. When do we stop? And when do we put our financial house in order? >>>Revert back to PAPER ballots, counted by hand? Voter machines can be hacked into. We all know that. Why do we continue to fuss around with them? Could it be because of lobbying by the computer makers??? Do they make public policy? Or do we? As in the Declaration of Independence's very first phrase, "We the people..." So the TV networks don't get to call the race as fast as they have in the past. So what? >>>Free air-time for political candidates? It's all about TV these days, so why don't we require television stations (which take advantage of publicly-funded infrastructure) to donate a certain amount of coverage during political campaigns? To individual candidates: "here's where I stand..." Why not? The stations won't like it, and it would benefit many more people than the station's owners. Why not? >>>Find Ways to Promote Happiness? "Crazy," you may be saying to yourself. Maybe, and maybe not. What about reminding people, through a publicly-funded TV station, that there are ways to create happiness: practice positive thinking, meditate regularly, do things that nourish you, and the like. Until recently, people thought all this promote-happiness stuff was woo-woo. Not anymore. It's getting some major attention these days, and not just from crackpots. Look up "power of positive thinking" and/or Professor Martin Seligman. The latter is a well-respected academic who has written extensively on the subject, and his work is not woo-woo; it's backed up by solid and well-designed research into the subject. Why couldn't the practice of these kinds of things be regularly encouraged on a TV channel? A broadcasting outlet with a mission: that of helping to create citizens that were, in the main, satisfied and happy. Why not? >>>Teach kids, EXPERIENTIALLY, about judgment? A few years back, Oprah did a program on the role of judgment in the lives of teenagers. And rather than talking about the subject (who's "in" and who's "out," what's "cool" and acceptable, and what's not) in the abstract, she found people who had put together a program designed to show high school students what judgment FELT like. In this program called "Challenge Day," students were asked to gather themselves into "in" or "out" groups: whether they, for example, were right-handed or left-handed, members of sports teams, and the like. I happened to see Oprah that day and was astounded at the ways that these students got involved in the program, and the experiential learning they received by participating in Challenge Day. What if we made this kind of program available to kids nationwide? It certainly couldn't do any harm. And probably a whole lot of good. >>>Emphasize consumer privacy? I ran across a headline in the New York Times a few years back that summarized all this. It read, "Europe Zips Lips, U.S. Sells Zips" (page 1 of Sunday's "Week in Review" section, 8/7/05). The article's subtitle read: "In Europe, privacy is a right; In America, it's an economic commodity." Why do we in this country allow people's privacy to be violated? So that corporations can buy and sell information designed to make them more money? And do we wonder why people are so cynical about their political and economic systems??? And maybe that's one of the reasons why the terrorists dislike us so much. And don't want those systems transplanted into their countries. Perhaps they think there are some things more important than the almighty dollar. If you want to read further, consult two books that I came across a few years back. The first is "The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy," by T. R.Reid (a well-respected journalist). Read his chapter 6. The second is "The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream," by Jeremy Rifkin (another well-regarded author/commentator). Read his first three chapters. >>>  PermaLink Comments (0)
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