OWS Another view

February 19, 2012

Another view of OWS

I have written a couple of articles recently concerning the OWS protests. I applauded these folks for courageously standing up and beginning the fight to regain control of our country by and for we the people. My main criticism of OWS has been the slogan of “99 vs. 1” that they have chosen to adopt. I do believe that our nation's many problems have mainly been caused by wealthy and powerful organizations of every kind with their increasing ability to influence laws and regulations in their favor. However, to blame all of the wealthy diverts attention from our elected lawmakers in Washington who are supposed to protect us from the normal and expected greed of the powerful special interests of every kind.

Today I include an excerpt from a guest editorial written by the brother of one of our local residents for his own local newspaper. My thanks to Bob Gray for sharing this document that was written by his brother Joe Gray. Thanks also to Joe for allowing me to share this in my column.

From: Joe Gray

You might have noticed us on the street corner in downtown Martinsburg with signs that say things such as "Social and Economic Justice" or "Take Back Our Government from Corporate Control."

We call ourselves "Occupy Martinsburg," and we share common values and concerns with Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement.

There are many reasons why we "occupy." Many of us are concerned with what we see as a loss of social and economic justice in this country.

The most obvious examples include:the bailing out of Wall Street, with financiers making excessive profits; evicting homeowners while their homes are bulldozed and the people go homeless; and exporting of our jobs while huge stores that sell almost nothing made in the USA pay poverty-level wages.

The gap between rich and poor has widened greatly in recent years and now rivals only that of the period just prior to the Great Depression.

We feel powerless to correct these problems because we feel that our government is no longer responsive to us.

We "occupy" because we believe we have arrived at a place in this country where our government responds more to wealthy corporate interests than to the people. We believe strongly that the government must be controlled only by the people.

I recently reread the Declaration of Independence, and this is the part that stood out for me:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ... "

I repeat, "Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

A Supreme Court decision issued nearly two years ago, known as Citizens United, concluded that corporations are people and therefore entitled to free speech. They also concluded that money is a form of speech and that corporations cannot be restricted in the amounts they may spend to support a political candidate.

As a result, the people's influence over the election of their Congress and president is drowned out by the deluge of corporate money. Corporations can spend billions more than the majority of the people and are willing to spend to influence elections because it garners them even greater rewards. It is no longer apparent that our government is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

We don't think our founding fathers were referring to corporations as the ones from which government should derive its power or receive its consent. They were referring to people like you and me. The government should serve by consent of we, the people, and no one else.

We are trying to figure out how to get our government back and how to make life better for the people who live here in this community.

Joe Gray

Joe points out that the Constitution specifically states that those who govern us derive their power from the consent of the governed. He's right, but then, who elects these folks in Washington for term after term to represent us? Last I looked...it is all of us who bother to vote. We elect them and thus they do derive their power to govern from we the governed. If we aren't happy with their actions, and we're clearly not, why don't we just fire them for failing to govern in our best interests? We just don't seem to have the courage to do so. Instead we just keep re-electing the same bozos even when we see them consistently not representing our best interests. How smart are we?

I agree with most of what Mr. Gray has to say, and admire him and folks like him for their willingness to personally try to change the course of our nation. Our leaders won't change unless we speak out loudly and visibly. I admire these folks for at least trying to do something to make a difference. Meanwhile the majority of us sit by our warm fires and complain about what's going on to no avail.

What do you think?

Mike Tower

Hendersonville, NC

Please visit: 


Citizens Against Politics As Usual


Lee's Political Opinion

Technology has eliminated many jobs

February 12, 2012
Technology...some unintended consequences.
Technology, globalization, and failed leadership in Washington are the key culprits that have tossed our world and lives upside down. We can't reverse the first two...but we the people must find the personal courage to address the latter.

I was working on an article that would have outlined the amazing technology that has been developed over my lifetime when it suddenly dawned on me that the creation of these many, many labor savings devices has actually caused some negative unintended consequences. There can be no doubt that these devices have caused our lives to be much easier. What I hadn't really thought much about was how this new technology has also caused much of the unemployment that we are experiencing. We are ending up with more and more technology to help make our lives much easier, enjoyable, and productive, but at the cost of many traditional jobs that will never be replaced. Almost any job role depending on human labor that can be replaced with any sort of automation simply will. Thus these jobs are gone forever, and many of the millions of long term unemployed will remain so because their skill packages are obsolete.

Many millions of jobs have been sent offshore to allow companies to reduce labor costs. I would be willing to bet $1 that many times more have been lost to technology. For example, imagine how many workers were required to assemble an automobile even a few decades ago vs. today. I had the opportunity to tour the BMW plant in Spartanburg where they manufacture every X5 SUV for the entire world. I was amazed at the amount of automation and the relatively few workers on the assembly lines. I would guess that today's auto assembly requires perhaps one tenth the number of workers compared to the “old” days. Now apply that to every other formerly labor intensive manufacturing business. I remember when almost every management level person had a secretary who provided administrative assistance. Today the word “secretary” is almost completely missing from our vocabulary. Technology has replaced this role almost completely. Remember when you either looked up phone numbers in a paper phone book...or if you were a bit lazy you dialed 411 for operator assistance. Paper phone books are on the way out and telephone operator jobs have been massively reduced and will eventually disappear completely as robotic speech recognition technology just keeps improving. When was the last time that you called any large business and had a human answer the phone? Those jobs are gone forever.
Consider also what the Internet has done to contribute to the shrinkage or total elimination of jobs or even entire industries in the past couple of decades. We often hear critics point out that the Post Office is a great example of why government management of enterprises just won't work. In reality the Internet more than any other factor has been the real culprit that is literally forcing the Post Office out of business and will eventually cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Look at how our buying habits have changed due to the Internet. Today when you can shop on the Internet from the comfort of home and compare prices and product ratings, why would you make a trip to a bricks and mortar business? When you do make the trip to one of the big box stores have you noticed how few employees are around to help with purchases? They cannot compete on price with the Internet based retailers if they have to maintain the number of employees they once had. As the technology and our personal experience improves, Internet shopping will increasingly dominate our buying and selling of goods and services. How many jobs will be lost can only be speculated at...but the numbers will be huge.
This leads to the question about jobs for our future citizens. Specifically where will they come from? We clearly will have fewer of the types of the labor intensive jobs that we had in the past. It seems impossible to consider otherwise. Our broken primary and secondary educational systems could not have happened at a worse time. As we watch our elected leaders struggle with effective job creation ideas...maybe the truth will begin to dawn...they have simply been unwilling to openly acknowledge what they have known for a long, long time. Our world as we knew it no longer exists. Solutions from past paradigms won't work in our dramatically changed future. Consider the complexities of a truly global and high tech economy and you end up with some very difficult choices that must be made by our leaders and our citizens. I shared this article with one of my older and wiser friends over the phone, and then asked him what he thought. He said quite simply; “I think the article should be titled “we are in deep s___!” I agree with him because all of the short-term quick fixes have been used up. My main concern is that we the people will simply point the finger of blame at each other instead of those who were elected from both parties to prevent these very serious problems in the first place.

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower
Hendersonville, NC


Please visit:
  
Lee's Political Opinion

Citizens Against Politics As Usual

Super PACS: Guess who controls election outcomes

Super PAC's: the real enemies of our republic just keep gaining strength

I am sure that you are seeing the incredible impact of spending by the so-called super Pac's in the Republican primaries. Did you know that this term “super-PAC” didn't even exist until during the 2010 federal election campaign? Let me begin with a short primer that explains how they were created in the first place. These types of political committees are officially known as “independent-expenditure only” committees. They are allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups. These super PAC's were made possible by two judicial decisions. The first was by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission which held that government may not prohibit unions and corporations from making independent expenditures about politics. Soon after, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals held that contributions to groups that only made independent expenditures could not be limited. Super PAC's are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties. However, that technicality has easily been overcome, as you will see later in this article. Can you even imagine the power that has been handed to these powerful special interest groups in influencing who actually gets elected to any federal office? How do we the people stand any chance of actually expecting those we elect to serve our best interests? They haven't been for several decades and they clearly will have even less incentive to do so in the future. Of course, why would they? We tell them that we are deeply dissatisfied with their performance with approval ratings under 10%, but then re-elect incumbents at a better than 90% clip. If you were one of our elected, would you pay any attention to our toothless threat? As I watch the Republican primaries unfold I was a little surprised at the mostly negative advertising unfolding against every candidate. Have you listened as these candidate were asked if they supported these negative ads? Every time they would answer that they hadn't known about them in advance. Of course they hadn't! To have done so and then admit it would have placed them in jeopardy of violating campaign laws. They also don't mention that the majority of these super PAC's are being led by former staffers for the candidate who would most benefit from the negative ads. No connection there huh? Are you as bothered by this as I am? We the people are already suffering through the aftermath of decades of leadership failures by our elected from both parties in Washington. We clearly see the evidence that our federally elected are increasingly working for the benefit of the powerful special interests of every sort. Now the third branch of our government has finished cooking of our goose. They have turned over the election process to the same powerful forces that will, by their very nature, always place their own selfish interests ahead of our country's very survival. What's even worse, as we sit today in desperate need of unified leadership to find ways to truly address our many critical problems...we find this terribly divisive negative campaigning process widening the gulf even further between the two parties. We cannot afford even one more day of publicly pandering partisan politics, when both party's elected actually owe their main allegiance to the same powerful interests who fund all of their elections. They are playing us for the fools that we are! They prime the pump of partisan politics by pretending to actually believe in their party's values in order to keep voters divided by party loyalty that we cannot seem to abandon because we so believe in our chosen party's values. What we completely miss is that the folks we elect to represent us from both parties long ago transferred their loyalty to the puppet-masters who pay to keep them in power. The choices for our country are becoming steadily fewer and more critically time-sensitive. We can choose to do what we have traditionally done...and that is to just keep on re-electing the same folks who have led us to the very edge of failure, or we can find the courage to say...enough is enough! Frankly I'm not too hopeful for the latter.

After the Republican primaries are over and if Romney wins, as is likely, the negative battle between him and Obama will begin in earnest. It won't seem like a battle between good and evil. Both sides will bash each other so badly that, to a neutral bystander, it will seem like a battle between two evils. One will win, but it won't matter which one, because the real winners, the collective special interests, who actually run our nation, have already assured themselves of victory. The losers have also been determined...we the people! I only wish I knew what it would take to get we the people to unite as Americans for America instead of the masses whose useless finger-pointing at each other only pushes our nation closer and closer to such incredible harm.

As usual, these are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

Hendersonville, NC

Please visit:Citizens Against Politics As Usual

Please visit: Lee's Political Opinion