{"id":26692,"date":"2014-04-03T23:46:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T05:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=26692"},"modified":"2014-04-05T13:07:10","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T19:07:10","slug":"like-a-broken-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2014\/04\/03\/like-a-broken-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Like a broken record . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/evieth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Over on my Facebook page,<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I fear that I&#8217;m sounding like a broken record about government corruption, but the thing that has become massively damaged is the fundamental basis for our way of governing, the thing we are so proud of when we wave our flag.<\/p>\n<p>The People are no longer in charge of most decisions that are being made by those that supposedly represent them. Is it obnoxious to say this 1,000 more times? Is it worth saying 1,000 more time? Same answer. My hope and my goals this that this noise will grow until no town meeting will occur, no press conference, no front page article without acknowledging this tragedy. And without further acknowledging that without fixing this fundamental problem we are incapable of discussing anything at all. The bloviating politicians keep warning us that &#8220;terrorists&#8221; will hurt us. Not THIS bad. Not even a tiny fraction as much as we have hurt ourselves by turning our government over to a select few wealthy people who steal the public treasure for their own benefit, with corporate welfare, insane approaches to taxation and &#8220;trade&#8221; policies that hurt most of us. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/kalleboo\/2221242596\/in\/photolist-bpci1k-dpzPJi-52bC93-6kgkqH-2hdAHJ-a5k9Xv-ejZ29X-4ohs39-4odnZg-9y9Rdq-9y9QDL-9y6SQi-9y6SZD-9y9Rgm-9y9Rhs-9y9QMo-aeECtp-9y9QRS-9y9Ram-9y6SMr-9y6SyH-9y6SK6-9y6SCx-9y6SWM-9y9QGy-9y6SEz-9y9Rew-9y6SqD-dsu7LS-k85TYH-9y74oM-9ya2Ro-9ya2Lf-9ya2Td-9ya2wS-9ya2Q7-9y74nk-9ya2WL-9y74E8-9y74jv-9ya2M5-9ya2Uh-9y74Fn-9y74hi-axqxZy-6TmmZR-9y9R4d-9y74uk-9ya2Fb-etEiuv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-26704\" title=\"Flickr - Creative Commons\" alt=\"broken record\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/broken-record-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/broken-record-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/broken-record.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every news story should begin: &#8220;We no longer have a country run by the governed.&#8221; After a few weeks of this stating of the obvious, we&#8217;ll see if more than a few members of Congress give a shit, and we would then run the rest of them out of office. The solution starts with a simple recognition of the scope and danger of the problem, no matter how cozy some of us are in our lucky little corners of the country. Here&#8217;s an organization that is approaching the problem correction: <a href=\"https:\/\/represent.us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Represent.US\u00a0<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I would respond to this week&#8217;s campaign financing decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, McCutcheon, et al. v. Federal Election Commission. \u00a0It&#8217;s only a matter of time until the $5,200 per candidate limit is knocked out too, because the majority of the Supreme Court thinks that rich people are more capable of governing than those who are not rich, and should be able to control the process. \u00a0If you&#8217;re thinking that you get to make a choice on election day, you are not focused correction. \u00a0You should be thinking about who has enough money to run in the primaries, and who the corporate media ordains as &#8220;serious candidates&#8221; at the outset. \u00a0Here&#8217;s a hint: \u00a0It&#8217;s always about who has lots of money. \u00a0 Piles of money and bad ideas always beat no money and great ideas.<\/p>\n<p>We need to change that with public financing. \u00a0We need to un-tilt the table. \u00a0We need to realize that we are in a state of national emergency. \u00a0It&#8217;s time to turn off the TV, quit obsession about sports teams, quit fretting about finding new cool things to buy and show off to your friends, and become active on THIS issue. \u00a0For starters, go to represent.us, read the proposed Anti-Corruption Act and then join up. \u00a0Talk with friends and family. \u00a0Whenever they complain that a societal problem is being ignored by Congress, jump in and remind them that we can&#8217;t even have a conversation in Washington D.C. because the entire process is corrupt. \u00a0That&#8217;s the starting point.<\/p>\n<p>&lt;iframe width=&#8221;560&#8243; height=&#8221;315&#8243; src=&#8221;\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BlbV8BO06-0&#8243; frameborder=&#8221;0&#8243; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;\/iframe&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over on my Facebook page,  I fear that I&#8217;m sounding like a broken record about government corruption, but the thing that has become massively damaged is the fundamental basis for our way of governing, the thing we are so proud of when we wave our flag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6222,12,9],"tags":[6152],"class_list":["post-26692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance-reform","category-corporatocracy","category-corruption","category-politics","tag-featured","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}