Shills for President

For the past few months, I have been watching as the race for next year's elections turns into more and more of a madhouse. The GOP candidates alone are all part of what I can only sum up as a virtual clown car: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump and Scott Walker, just to name a few. On the Democratic side, you have Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders. Almost all, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, simply do not get what's wrong with the country as a whole.

Take a look around your community at this moment in time. How does it look? Are you in a wealthy area? Then you have no real worries, I suppose. But for the bulk of Americans, what is the new norm out there? Roads that are in bad need of repair. Bridges that are almost in danger of falling apart. Schools that have a very limited budget compared to what they had decades ago, with the major end result being that most graduates of our school system are woefully unprepared where the sciences, literacy, mathematics and even basic knowledge of civics are concerned. A healthcare system that, for better or for worse, continues to lag far behind those of much of western Europe. A job market that increasingly is becoming more and more loaded with part time, minimum wage jobs in the service sector. An environment in a rather rough shape. Entire cities filled with abandoned homes and businesses (Detroit comes to mind here). All across the board, things do not look good, and in turn we look to those running for office for answers. Sadly, almost no one gets it.

Jeb Bush's solution to our economic woes is to "work harder". Work harder...advice that is being given to millions out there who are already working three, four jobs just to earn a living as the wage stagnates and the cost of living continues to skyrocket to unfathomable levels not seen in nearly a century. Donald Trump's ideas so far have consisted of erecting a wall along the entire southern border of the United States, and attacking John McCain as not being a "hero" for getting captured in Vietnam. Ted Cruz and Scott Walker seem to be focused on cutting everything in sight: food assistance programs meant to help the working poor keep food on the table, social security benefits for the elderly and the disabled, welfare programs aimed at helping small families be able to at least keep up with some bills while they search for work (and purchasing basic necessities for the house)...both of them seem to place the blame on immigrants, socialists and everyone else they can think of. Walker, for his part, we already know hates unions: just a few years ago, he barely made it through what could be described as a very tainted recall election, having attacked teacher's unions in Wisconsin and winning. As for Ben Carson? No real ideas to contribute, other than the fact that he apparently thinks being in prison makes you gay. And Santorum? I think little else needs to be said there.

On the opposite side, none of the people aside from Sanders seem to get that the main problems with our country lie solely with Wall Street. Clinton has addressed it to a degree, but again, all but one of the individuals running on the Democratic ticket for 2016 come across as corporate shills. It's almost like a choice between the lesser of two evils: the Republicans, who make it clear that their loyalties lie with multi-billion dollar corporations on Wall Street and elsewhere, and the Democrats, who at least try to hide it. Take as an example "Obamacare", or better known as the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). The conservative right has been spitting venom for almost 6 years now on this monster of a law, blaming the President for forcing Americans to buy insurance that they feel they don't need. The political left (where I hail from) defends this law as the best thing to ever happen in our healthcare system. The reality, though, is that the PPACA doesn't exactly benefit us as taxpayers, even though millions of poor out there are actually able to get at least Medicaid because of the PPACA for quite possibly the first time, or at a minimum at least get credits that can be put towards health insurance plans. The PPACA, originally intended to be an act that would have created a single payer, universal health care system in this country, was hijacked by the health insurance industry. The same industry who in turn pressured both political parties in Congress to rewrite it so that no matter what, they would end up with even more customers in their respective systems. And more customers as we all know equals what, exactly? More money.

From there, it gets worse. Aside from a few people in Congress, almost everyone in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party voted wholesale for the 2008 bailouts of some of Wall Street's biggest banks, and all at our expense as taxpayers. We weren't even given a choice, as the justification was that if we let banks that are too big to fail go under, then the rest of the economy will crash with them. Never mind the fact that someone could have introduced a law, or at least tried to, that would have broke up these banks just for that specific purpose. Same goes for voting for the Patriot Act, likely the greatest threat to the Bill of Rights in the entire history of the United States - a majority within both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party consciously continue to renew the Patriot Act at every turn, oftentimes granting more power to the NSA to spy on US citizens without so much as probable cause. It is true that this has been going on for decades now, but not at the obscene levels we are seeing today. And as for higher education? The record number of students in extreme debt from pursuing an education is simply unsustainable, and the fact that we have not followed the leads of our so-called European partners with respect to publicly funded, tuition free colleges and universities is simply mind boggling. And only two, perhaps three members of our own Congress have even tried to put a stop to this.

On care for veterans alone, the record there is very abysmal, and it has been throughout every presidential administration dating back to Ronald Reagan. Poorly maintained and unsafe medical facilities for veterans and active duty personnel...numerous cuts made to military personnel pay to such an extreme degree where it is not all that uncommon to see members of our own military selling their own blood plasma at for-profit "donation" centers throughout the nation...extreme and hurtful cuts done to veteran's benefits, veteran's assistance programs and care programs by, more often than not, Republicans (although the Democrats do share some guilt in this matter, by and large these cuts have been made by Republicans both in Congress and in the White House over the past few decades)...the list almost never seems to end, and yet somehow the money for fruitless military projects known to not work even by the very people proposing them is not a problem. Somehow, there's always money to wage another war that accomplishes nothing aside from obtaining new ways for private corporations to make more money. It is maddening that pitifully few members of our own Congress have even spoken up about these issues.

On another front, there's the matter of prison reform. In numerous states nationwide, the majority of offenders locked up are first time non-violent drug addicts. Again, there is little real discussion towards reforms there, as the cost to us taxpayers alone continues to skyrocket from housing these offenders for longer and longer terms. While the Democratic Party at least tries to have a discussion on the matter, even if it always is trivial in nature and never accomplishes anything, increasingly it is becoming clearer with each passing year: most state correctional agencies are beginning to produce goods for sale on the general market, with the sole source of labor being these same inmates who are sentenced to decades behind bars for the imagined crime of addiction. Nothing real is being done to actually address the issues of drug use from a medical perspective, and to see that these people are being sent into a lifetime behind bars to serve an increasingly for-profit prison system is utter madness. And again, with the exception of perhaps one of the candidates for the office of President for next year, no one else is discussing this. Instead, the clown car that is the Republican Party is obsessing over the imagined evil of gay marriage, Iran (which, let's face it, is relatively toothless compared to what the United States militarily is capable of), abortion and tax breaks for the rich - as if we need more of that. And the Democratic candidates, as a rule, almost seem to be silent.

Now, in the interests of fairness and disclosure, I will readily admit that I personally am a supporter of Bernie Sanders. He, along with a few other like-minded individuals, has been saying the same thing for decades: that we are kowtowing way too much to what the private sector wants. We've already allowed them to control our elections through the ability to pour in unlimited funds into any candidate's campaign of their choosing (think Citizen's United - it turned our democracy into a joke). We allowed them to virtually dictate a war no one asked for with Iraq. We allowed them to strip away good paying American jobs in the manufacturing sector and the tech sector, the rationale being that it's cheaper (and somehow better) to relocate to nations where the pay is so low that the next step down would be slavery, while here we're left mainly with low paying jobs in retail, fast food or in call centers (which continue to be outsourced overseas as I write this). They pay as little as possible for these jobs, while they ratchet up the cost of rent, the cost of fuel, the cost of clothing, of home necessities, of pretty much everything, while saying that a higher wage will cut into their business - these arguments coming from guys who make untold billions each year by hawking cheaply made and unsafe products from third world nations where their entire work force is often forced to work 2 or 3 days at a time, and for some up to 20 hours per day on only a few cents an hour.

Whenever someone does point this out? The usual voices in our media pipe up about how this is "socialism"...about how people just need to work harder or get a better job, knowing full well that these "better jobs" are almost non-existent...the discussion then turns towards how these "libtards" as some call people of my political orientation are somehow just too lazy to work and want everything for free...words that come from equally poor individuals who, against all belief, still vote Republican.

Not that the Democrats are any better, either - token words and phrases are thrown about regarding economic inequality and the state of the American job market, and then they tend to go right back to the drawing board as they try to get us involved with similar economic "partnerships" such as NAFTA. NAFTA, which only benefits corporations seeking to get richer in exchange for cheap labor and cheaper products. The latest incarnation of this? TPP - Trans Pacific Partnership. And outside of a few lone voices in Congress, TPP almost seems destined to pass no matter what the facts are. And again, only one candidate out of all the many running for office right now is saying anything about how further damaging TPP would be to an already precarious job market.

Sadly, I don't see Bernie Sanders winning office, despite how dead-on his message is with respect to the state of the country. I don't see him lasting past the primaries early next year. Even though his campaign stops are drawing tens of thousands, Clinton may very well end up being the front runner for the Democratic Party (the irony being that Sanders is only running on the Democratic ticket simply because as an independent he would not go far). As for the Republican side? I admit that while it is too early to tell, we may very well end up with Jeb Bush running on the Republican ticket, or in a worse case scenario, Ted Cruz. With choices like these, it is hard to maintain any serious faith in our electoral system. It really is. We're increasingly left with corporate shills for candidates. That fact alone doesn't bode well for what is supposed to be a democracy, as it is becoming more and more clear that those with millions, or even billions, are the ones dictating the future of the country. Those regular voters who do seem to count? All in areas that have been gerrymandered to the point where the idea of having anyone but a Republican representing those areas is nothing more than a pipe dream. All from voters who cast their ballot based off of religious ideals (the threat of a Christian theocracy alone seems to be all too real in this country), sound-bite slogans, attractiveness or who the particular voter would most like to have a beer with. In short, we're left with a bunch of corporate shills each time. Shills for president, and nothing else.