Anyone who uses Ebola to gain political power Right or Left, is unfit for office and perhaps should resign or give up their request to win the office that they are pursuing. This is a serious issue that affects millions of people who the U.S. Government and others have to deal with effectively, or millions of people could get hurt by it. And they need all the resources and people necessary to handle this problem as effectively as possible.
As far as the U.S. Senate elections. Mike Gerson might be right and maybe Senate Republicans are ahead in 8-11 elections right now. But I’m still seeing Kansas where Republican Senator Pat Roberts is in the fight for his Congressional career and is losing to Greg Orman. And I don’t think the debate this week helped Senator Roberts. And I’m seeing Georgia where Democratic Senate nominee Michelle Nunn has a small lead against David Perdue and they are competing for a Republican Senate seat.
In Kentucky, Allison Grimes has probably shot off too many of her own toes to win that election. You know a centrist or center-left Democrat not being able to admit that she voted for a Democratic President in Barack Obama, who is also center-left, shows she may not have the character and political knowledge as far as how much that could hurt her by not being able to admit the obvious, to win a U.S. Senate seat. Even against an unpopular Mitch McConnell who is also the Senate Minority Leader, Leader of the Senate Republicans.
Senate Democrats path to retaining the Senate even at 50-50 or 51-49, is not run the table and hold all the close Senate Democratic seats. They need to hold probably half of them and pick off a few Republican seats as well. Like Kansas and Georgia and they do that by holding North Carolina, where Senator Kay Hagan as a lead there. Holding South Dakota, which seemed impossible even a few months ago. Hold Colorado with Senator Mark Udall and somehow pull out Arkansas or Louisiana. And put Senate Republicans in a position where they have to run the table to even win a net of six seats, after dropping a couple of their own.
Michael Burstein’s amendments, or even new United States Constitution was not as radical or social democratic as I was expecting. I perhaps was expecting to see proposals that would move America away from its federalist tradition and system and try to move to more of a unitarian form of government. Where the states aren’t nearly as powerful with as much responsibility, because that responsibility would now be in the hands of the Federal Government. Michael Lind who also writes at Salon has proposed doing things like that.
But to get the Burstein proposals and what I would do differently.
Congressional Term Limits
I’m against them for both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate and I’ll tell you why. I don’t like the idea of government telling me or any other American who we can vote for. And this is what I would do differently. Guarantee the Right to Vote, so there’s one amendment I would like to see to the U.S. Constitution. And end gerrymandering for both Democrats and Republicans. How you do that? The states would still write their U.S. House districts under the condition that each district would have to represent the state. So you a state 55-45 one way or the other or even closer than that, say like Texas or California.
California is more like 70-30 for Democrats. The state couldn’t put all the Democrats or Republicans in one district or a few districts. They would have to spread them out. And if the state is 55-45 for one party or the other or closer than that, than that is how the districts would look. So the majority would get a majority of the districts, but it would have to be represented of their overall state majority. And the state would no longer look like that only Republicans or Democrats would live there. Because the other party would have several districts that favor their party as well.
Term Limits for the U.S. Supreme Court
I’m against that because now we are not talking about limiting voters choice in who they can vote for. But limiting the President’s choice in who they could appoint or reappoint, which is my next point. The U.S. Supreme Court is simply under represents a country of 310 million people with fifty states. Not proposing to turn the U.S. Supreme Court into a democratic institution. Just saying that nine members is simply too small, especially in a country this huge and this divided politically. I would go to fifty justices not including the Chief Justice and their deputy, as well as a Minority Leader to try to organize the minority on the court. One U.S. Justice for each state. and have each Justice serve six-year terms and then have to be reappointed to stay on the Court.
Public Financing of U.S. Elections
Another bad idea. Why? Because now you’re taking more power away from American voters. And you may argue that the current system does that. True, but this would be another way of doing that by saying that the only roles that voters have is to vote and perhaps volunteer. But not be able to endorse the candidate or incumbent of their choice. The person that may represent them in the House or Senate or as President. And what would make that worst that now all us as taxpayers would be forced to subsidize candidates and incumbents that we simply do not like and perhaps are even doing a bad job. Public financing is another way of saying taxpayer financing of public elections.
But here’s what I would do instead. Full-disclosure of all campaign contributions to call campaigns. Everyone and every group that raises money for political campaigns would have to report those contributions and contributors to the Federal Election Commission that would be publicly reported. So no more dark money or dark packs because these groups Left and Right will now be public and so would their contributors. And if they are controversial, candidates and incumbents would think twice about taking money from them if they believe those public contributions could hurt them politically. And we would probably see less negative and false advertising as a result.
Right to a Quality Education
Finally Michael Burstein and I agree on something! Now the only question is how we bring that about. The Federal Government of course in a country this size and diverse should not be running the education system. Or create one education system, because the fact is we have hundreds or more education systems in this country. Which simply comes from being this big, this diverse, this spread out and frankly this liberal with all of the decentralization of power in the country. At least at the governmental level.
But with all the poverty and impoverished areas of the country and with education being a national priority because of how it affects the economy, there has to be a real federal role for education in America. Which is mostly about funding and research and to a certain extent seeing that basic needs are met. Are all students getting an education or regardless of income, race, ethnicity, or not and that includes special needs students. We obviously can’t guarantee equal outcomes as much as Socialists may believe they can. But what we can guarantee is that every student has a quality opportunity to be successful in America regardless of where they go to school.
So what the Federal Government should do is give the underserved school districts and states the resources, financially mostly that it needs to see that all of their students have the tools that they need to do well.
Encourage financially people who are well-educated to teach in underserved areas.
Encourage things like public school choice so no student is forced to go to a low-performing school.
Lets pay teachers like lawyers and doctors and the Feds could help with the financing to pay those salaries.
Make college free for all qualified high school graduates who serve in public service for at least two years after graduating college. The Feds could finance that. And for qualified high school graduates who decide not to serve in public service after graduating college, make their college affordable with a college financing program that they, their parents, their employers and their parents employers would all pay into until the student is ready for college.
Michael Burstein proposed a lot of things I disagree with as far as what he would do. But did put some goals and ideas on the table that if were amended the way I did, or something close to that, I could go along with that would improve our liberal, not social democracy in America.
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I think the best way to describe Huey Long aka Louisiana Kingfish would be compared him with the recently deceased President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. Even though Huey was a lot more Democratic than Hugo and believed in a greater deal of freedom. But they were both basically dictators who were corrupt who meant well and wanted to do good things. But weren’t really cutout to be chief executives and people with strong Progressive-Socialist leanings.
Both Huey and Hugo spoke about share the wealth and Social Justice, but wanted as much power as possible even centralized all the power with them to do these good works for the people. Huey Long was clearly a Democrat as far as party and politically and believed in democracy except when it went against him. And Hugo Chavez was a Socialist, but certainly not a Democratic Socialist.
Hugo was not a full-blooded Communist like Fidel Castro, but probably more like Neo-Communist. Someone who allowed for political opposition and a certain level of economic and personal freedom, but someone with strong dictatorial leanings as well. Huey was probably more Democratic than Hugo, but politically they were similar.
Sonali Kolhatkar column in TruthDig just illustrates my point about the political correctness movement on the far-left in America when it comes to Islam. In their little world its acceptable to bash the Christian-Right. But when you bash lets say the Islamists who ideologically in many ways do not look much different from the Christian-Right at least on culture issues, like women’s place in society, you get put down as a racist. Why? Because Muslims tend not to be Anglo and Western-European ethnically and racially. Which is really what this is about. Protecting non-Caucasians against people they see as bigots.
Liberals aren’t putting down Muslims as a people and perhaps even Islam. Even though Islam is probably way too restrictive for the average Liberal. We are putting down and critiquing Islamists, which is different. Islamists are terrorists and people who support terrorism in the name of Islam. The same way the Christian-Right when they bash gays and other people claim to be doing that in the name of Christianity and Christ.
ISIS/ISIl in Iraq and Syria are not Muslims in the sense that they do much of a job of living up to Islāmic principles and values. They are terrorists and murderers and do those horrible deeds in the name is Islam. Which makes them Islamists and they want to control the Levantine area of the Middle East and murder as many Americans as they can to achieve that. And these are the people who Liberals and others on the Left are critiquing and putting down, because they deserve that. Even if the far-left calls us racists as we are doing so.
If you look at our current prison inmate population, you’ll see a lot of prison inmates who didn’t finish high school before they came to prison, or barely finished high school. If you look at a lot of our juvenile inmate population, kids that should be in school, but because of their bad behavior and committing felony’s while still being juveniles, or have been expelled from high school. You see a lot of juveniles that our education system hasn’t reached yet.
You see people who are headed down the road of starting criminal careers and entering our criminal justice system as adults. After they’ve committed crimes against society. If you look at our criminal gangs, organized crime families, you see a lot of people who dropped out of high school to become a criminals. And of course end up in jail or prison at some point in their careers.
So I believe the answers to solving the problems of overcrowded prisons and bringing down our prison population in the future are fairly simple. But hard to apply and it gets to public education. Quality public education, graduating more students from high school with good educations, so they can move on to college, vocational school, the military, law Enforcement, foreign service, to use as examples.
So they can go down the road of becoming productive citizens in society and not becoming criminals by simply preventing crimes in the future by preventing people from becoming criminals. And that gets to a better public education system, including educating our juvenile offenders before they become career criminals. Crime prevention really is about public education.
I would argue especially for students in low-income high crime areas. Where there may be more opportunities to get involved in organized crime. So the better we educate our students and the more students we reach, the less career criminals we’ll have in the future.
This is what happens when you house the worst of the worst together. You have all of these violent criminal inmates who see their time in prison as nothing, but survival. And making their lives as comfortable as possible. And I do not have a problem housing these people together to isolate them from inmates in other prisons who simply want to do their time and go home. Or make their life sentence or long-term prison sentence as comfortable as possible. As long as these prisons are doing whatever they can to improve the behavior of these inmates. And showing them what life can be like if they behave in prison and give them opportunities and incentives to improve their behavior so they can prepare themselves for life on the outside. Or have a productive life in prison if they are doing life sentences. But if prison is nothing more than a zoo or warehouse for the worst among us and it just becomes about survival for the staff there, you are going to continue to see violent outbursts.
As I mentioned yesterday, Muhammad was simply to big, strong, tall and quick for Jerry Quarry. Muhammad was 6’2 or 6’3, 215 pounds or so of solid muscle, speed and intelligence. Speed in his hands and feet and you combine that with his strength, his ability to both take a good punch and deliver several great punches in a few seconds, plus his accuracy, he was simply too much for Jerry Quarry. Who was 5’10 or 5’11, under 200 pounds. For Quarry to make this a good fight, he simply had to get inside of Muhammad and pound on him.
The problem being that the only short heavyweight boxer to have any success at that, was Joe Frazier who was bigger and stronger than Quarry and could take more punishment and still move in on you and pound your body. Quarry left both of the Ali fights a bloody mess, because he took so much punishment in both fights before he was able to deliver any punishment. The two Quarry fights were a tune up to fight for Ali to fight Joe Frazier for the first time in 1971 and the second time in 1973.
I’ve blogged about this before, but the People’s Temple in the most positive sense and what its legacy is, is a collection of lost souls. Who for whatever reason or reasons weren’t making it in mainstream America and were lost. And looking for a direction and a leader to lead them to lets say the promise land and end their pain and suffering. And to a certain extent and the good side of Jim Jones was that leader that could show people what meaningful life is.
The people of Jonestown thought Jim Jones was the person to show them how to create a world where there wouldn’t be anymore suffering and where all people would live a positive life. Without suffering and where people would live off of each other and live off of the land and literally take care of each other which is socialism at its best. But the problem with the People’s Temple or later Jonestown, is that it was led by Jim Jones.
Jim Jones had a dictatorial evil side to him that was about making people completely dependent on him for their survival. And wanted people to only do his will and serve him. Which is a common theme of dictators, because they are people who believe in absolute power. Which is all about what being a dictator is. Someone who wants to centralize all the power with them self. And not delegating power to their deputies and people they are supposed to serve. Which is a big reason why Jonestown ended in such tragedy.
I believe it’s the common wisdom that for people to be member of cult groups, that there’s clearly something wrong with them. They have some mental disease, that no one else has picked up on or thought it was a big enough problem that it needed to be addressed. That all cultist’s lets call them are ex-convicts or have spent time in mental institutions, that’s clearly not the case. All you have to do to know that, is to look at the Manson Family from the late 1960s.
Most if not all the members of the Manson Family, were all educated, headed for college if they wanted it. And all came from middle to upper middle class families, all with loving parents. Except for their leader Charlie Manson, who had a at least borderline nightmarish childhood, never knowing his father. A mother who didn’t want him and wasn’t prepared to raise him, who got passed around from house to house, who I believe never even attended high school, at least on the outside. Jonestown is another example of that where either their leader in Jonestown was well-educated and very intelligent.
But Jim Jones was also borderline evil and became a very dangerous man responsible for the murders of hundreds of people. Jonestown again was made up of young middle class people who were somewhat lost in life and not sure where they were going. Who hated the injustices they saw in life and were looking for an escape. They were essentially a collection of Socialists who were looking for an opportunity to build a Socialist Utopia. This was the vision of Jonestown that was to be set up in the jungles of Guyana. A communitarian lifestyle where the cultist’s would live off of each other and live off the land.
It’s not so much the mentally ill that are targets of these cult groups, but people who have talents, intelligence, abilities, but are not sure where they are going in life. These are the people who get picked up by these groups, because these cult leaders see potential in these people, that they want to exploit and take advantage of in all sorts of ways. The Manson Family and Jonestown are perfect examples of this.
People who tend to fall in these cult groups, tend to be looked down from people on the outside, who don’t understand cult groups as stupid or crazy. “Look at those nuts or morons they deserved what they got”. That sort of thing when people who fall into these groups could be the next door neighbor in a middle class or wealthy community. These groups tend to be made up of people who are somewhat lost in life and looking for a break from reality.
Its seems to me anyway that the only way American Justice could bring down the mob was to put them against each other. Find evidence against someone who they could use to put one of the members of the Italian Mafia down or put them a way for a while. And then tell those people “look you better talk or we are going to put you away for a long time”.
Tell the small fish in the crime family, who were small fish compared with what law enforcement really wanted and tell the small fish “its the people you work for that we are really looking to bring down. So if you tell us what you know about the people you work for and work with, we’ll go easier on you and reduce the time you have to do in prison or not even send you to prison at all”.
One thing that I believe that basically broke up the Italian Mafia in America, was selfishness. At least in the sense that a lot of the deputies and soldiers in these organizations were more interested in their personal freedom and staying out of prison for long-term sentences, than they were for their future in the crime family that they worked for.
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