Empty Exercises II

Empty Exercises © was originally phrased in 2005 by John Nichols, then The Nation's Washington D.C. Correspondent in an article called "An Empty Exercise in Deceit" on Friday, January 21, 2005.  The article was about President G.W. Bush's second inaugural address
It discussed the first term of GWB and he suggested that the second term wouldn't be any better.  He discussed Iraq and Bush's deliberate misreading of intelligence information that lead us into that situation, and he thought that there was no indication whatsoever that he had learned from the mistakes and misdeeds of his first term.
Mr. Nichols brought out Empty Exercises by Mr. Bush:  "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling."  Sounds great doesn't it?  But, "did anyone read that as an abandonment of the doctrine of preemptive war that served as an excuse for the unilateral invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq during the President's first term?  The article goes on to explain several areas where Americans were deceived. 
The article brings forth several areas that we citizens must watch our  politicians and our wallets.
A concept that is common of politicians everywhere:  The Hallow Law.  A politician's constituency is upset about a specific problem in his district.  Let's say, tainted water by a chemical plant that is harming the people down river.  The people organize, an interest group, they do everything correct; they bring their problem to their representative. The politician is concerned about the problem and takes their concerns under advisement and will get back to them as soon as possible.  What the interest group doesn't know is, the owners of the chemical plant gave the Congressman money for his campaign, the Congressman owes them a favor, so, the Congressman calls the owner of the factory and the owner is asked to write a bill for a  law prohibiting the chemical factory from putting chemicals in the river.  The interest group sees the bill move forward and moves smoothly through Congress and is signed by the President.  After the bill is enacted, the interest group people test the water and see that the chemical plant is still putting chemicals into the river.  They are furious--they haven't been active for a while and can't get too many people excited about something they thought they had solved.  When the interest group goes to the representative and asks why they are still putting chemicals into the river, the Representative looks over the signed bill and finds a small paragraph explaining that this bill applies to chemical plants with more than 20,000 square feet of operation, the plant up the river from the people only has 10,000 square feet, thus the bill does not apply to that plant because it falls under the 20,000 sq.ft floor.
The people did everything correct, except having a watchdog go over the bill before it was adopted, having paragraphs ready for insertion into the bill and having the watchdog make sure it was inserted, checking on the size of the plant, and making sure their representative worked for them.
The bill, now a law looked great from the outside, just as a hallow log looks, but the inside of the log was deteriorated by ants, termites small and large animals just as members of "Free Enterprise" eat away at perfectly well-intentioned "bills" so that they are protected from the "rule of the citizens".  The reason they wanted the chemicals dumped into the river was:  1.  It was easy, 2. It was cost effective, 3.  They didn't care for where ever or whomever was damaged, all they cared about was the bottom line profit. 
If you know any "Empty Exercises" that you would like to comment about, please feel free to discuss them in the comment section below.

Why emphsize being a knowledgeable good citizen?

The evolution of citizenry has overcome many difficulties along the way. When the Founding Father's saw an opportunity to make a New World with a democratic basis, they jumped at the occasion.
When they formulated our country they did not desire a country where everyone was "equal" as we have it today. They felt the free enterprise system was essential to an economic success and those people who had the most to say about that were the landowners, retail and commercial businesses, men, landed gentry. People who had a stake in the country based on their investment in the country were the people given the vote. Renters, slaves, indebted servants, and women were not allowed to vote, they usually did not have an investment or stake in the country.
The "voters" usually had time and money to read and discuss the issues, favor one over the other and had time to vote. All others were working people and did not have the time or money to get involved.
Over the years, the Constitution has been added to and stretched via Supreme Court decisions to include "all citizens".
Until the past fifty or so years, voters have been involved because they had enough free time provided by good salaries and benefits to get involved in "politics" and make good decisions. Starting around 1973, when the Lobbyist really "got it", and started to lobby congressional members heavily, hire former congressmen because they can get on the floor of their former "body" and discuss lobby goals, our country has started to move from:
Upper-upper class usually inherited wealth and CEO's
Middle-upper class-- Higher management
Lower-upper class-- Lower management --some entrepenuers
Upper-middle-class Hands on upper management Over all
Middle-middle-class Hands on middle management-some independent contractors - successful entrepreneurs
Lower-middle-class supervisors over workers retail managers
Upper-lower class Upper workers responsible for finished work
Middle-lower-class Team leaders, retail workers, independent contractors
Lower-lower-class Hourly workers

Because corporations have been moving out of the nation, with our government's assistance, jobs have been erased, especially in the middle class. People who have many degrees and a little age to them have been let go in favor of younger more technologically sound employees, also, salaries have not increased for the past 15 or more years, yet inflation and the dollar slide has made what people actually receive much less than they have been accustomed to and had made plans upon. The real estate slide has really been a key as well as the financial world's greed towards lowering the class structure in America.
Our class structure looks more like this now:
Upper-upper class old money, Greedy CEO's, investors scaming
people--financial instutitions scaming people
1% of the people have approximately 92 % wealth
those upper class people being able to take
advantage of a taxation system built for them.

Upper lower-class Old middle class college graduates that still
have their jobs.
Middle lower-class All others looking for jobs that are non-
existent, because people still think there is a
chance at "The American Dream".
Under class People who have given up looking for jobs,
People who are homeless because they lost
job, home, car, everything and are subsisting on government entities, relatives, part-time jobs and charity .
Salaries are deceiving also. A $40,000 salary looks great on paper, however it has an approximate spending value of $10,000--The American Dream is vanishing.
Once the world community figured out how to compete with our juggernaut economy their lower labor costs beat our labor costs all to pieces. If you were a board of a company and were faced with an assembly line worker making (a hard fought for) $75 per hour in wages and $75 per hour in benefits and moving your corporation to a country where the labor costs were $5-10 per DAY and no benefits, and no regulatory commission telling you what you can and cannot do at the workplace, the decision is a very easy, yet harsh. We can no longer compete. America is in the painful process of lowering wages and no benefits for its workers. Even both parents working doesn't cover the expenses. We are not going to talk about the cost of higher education in this Blog, however, it is getting to look like a two "class" society. Those with education and those without.
There was a survey on TV the other day that says our children are not learning cursive writing. They are so into "texting" and writing(or plagarizing reports from the internet) that they see no need to "write" with a writing implement and paper--as in taking notes!!
This Blog has been longer than I intended. This is just the starting to explain, why you need to be a knowledgable citizen. As with money being taken away or stagnating, "rights" are also being taken away. Later.