Trade Ya for a Better Economy?

According to Dictionary.com, the first listed definition of value is, “relative worth, merit, or importance,” in other words the worthiness, merit or importance of an abstract or concrete entity in relation to another abstract or concrete entity.  I would conjecture that the list of our most valuables would indeed be a matter of character and maybe even morality. What do you most value? Generally, that’s a question one might hear in a philosophy class or maybe even resonating throughout a religious assembly from clergy standing at a pulpit. It might seem that what is valuable is, or should be, as far removed from the world of finance as the unemployed are from finding a lifestyle sustaining job in the United States.

What do I value most? What in my life is worth the ultimate sacrifice?

Well, that would be my children and my husband- my family. Abstract entities that are valuable to me? Time, love, security and space. Next on my list of valuables would be the slightly more practical necessities: food, water, shelter, warmth, clothing (especially after two cesareans, this gal doesn’t wanna do the nudist thing!)

It would be at this rung on the Ladder of What Matters where I would probably insert some kind of landing area because anything else I could add is just fluff. What is kinda neat about the top tier of this fool’s values is that all of those valuables CAN indeed be gotten without any money exchanging hands. Am I going all Ted Nugent on your ass here? Maybe, maybe not. It is true that not every one of us is in a position to build our own log cabin or hunt our own meat. Some of us don’t even have room to grow our own vegetable gardens and quite frankly, I can’t remember learning how to sheer sheep and spin it into wool to make clothing in my high school home economics class. Honestly though, doesn’t this mean we can’t? Or does it mean there are other things we would prefer to do with our time and resources.

Early on, maybe even before the emergence of homo sapiens, we realized that some of us have a certain affinity for producing a specific good or service and that maybe it made more sense to let them be brilliant at THEIR craft so that we could hone the necessary skills for brilliance within OUR craft. “You cook, I’ll do the dishes?”  That folks, is called bartering. Exchanging a good or service for another good or service. Both parties involved in the self legislated transaction, where each party walks away with a valuable commodity. There’s no speculation, there’s no regulation, there’s no taxation. There’s no unions or management. There’s no outsourcing or globalization or pensions or social security. There’s no entitlements and no lobbyists. There’s no stock holders and there are no off shore accounts. There’s no inflation or deflation and there are certainly no stimuli or bailouts. It’s pure, unadulterated commerce. What sounds like a fantastic utopia has actually been right here, hiding, under layers and layers of ideas perpetuated by people trying to “fix somethin’ that just ain’t broken.”

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt nullified the “gold standard” in the United States, which meant that the dollar bill was to be no longer backed by a portion of gold sitting in Fort Knox. Instead, the United States government would decide how much the dollar was worth. My personal assumption would be that, at the time, this decision was integral to FDR’s plan for the US’s recovery from the Great Depression; however, this action always takes my mind to the board game Monopoly. At the moment FDR enacted this policy, he pretty much equated  the dollar bill with its Monopoly counterpart. Is it really okay for the government to decide what something is worth to us (or the US, for that matter?) Because, by removing gold as a physical backing for the currency, we might as well use it buy one of those little plastic hotels for Boardwalk.

Obviously, I am oversimplifying a undoubtedly complex system, one that many have spent a whole time manipulating and mastering. Golly gee, maybe I just ain’t quite sophisticated enough to decide what is valuable to me. Maybe I need the government to determine the worth and the value for my life.

Or maybe, just maybe, we really can determine value for ourselves. According to U.S. Small Business Association’s Web site, , as of 2008 SBA.gov, there were 29.6 million businesses in the United States and , as of 2007, 21.7 million of them had no employees. So, that means that approximately 21.7 million people in the US have figured out that they want to determine their own values as well. They want to be able to determine their own worth, and the worth of the services/ products that they produce and, surprise, surprise, if they were considered businesses, it means they had customers/ clients. What if we were to take that concept one step further, and just eliminate the paper/ electronic currency from the transaction entirely? Hmmm, I wonder if that would be considered tax evasion?

What if, I produced a product and charged $5.00 for purchase of said product, but on that price tag, along with the $5.00, there was a picture of 2 chickens? What if you could have my product for the price of two chickens, that could be placed in my freezer and used to feed my family, or simply pay the five dollars? What if my store was on a country road, and if you decided to erect a windmill to produce electricity on your neighboring property and what if I gave you X amount of doohickeys that I produce, so that I could have some of the electricity that your windmill produces to power the lights in my store?

Something to think about?

Well, you and I aren’t the only ones thinking now. As per a quick google search of “bartering movements,” I found:

Bring Back Old-time Bartering by Roland McShane 2008

The Barter Project #2 By Sharon Knight

The Barter News Web Site

Bartering in Place of Currency in Today’s Economy

Barter, Trade, and Share – Save Money and Strengthen Our Community by By Sono-Ma Holly | Published: June 2, 2010

Apparently, what I thought was an innovative, cutting edge idea, has been re-surging for quite a few years. Strength in numbers, I suppose? Maybe, just maybe, our economy is really so broken that we have to scrap it and start over. I don’t know, but, can the current system really get much worse? <shuddering>

Chinese Professor

Chinese Professor Commercial

So, in the age of digital video recording, it has, apparently, taken me over a month  to see the Chinese Professor commercial put out by a group called Citizens Against Government Waste. I was aghast when I first saw the spot, which permeated my senses during a bit of time where the television was just on for background noise. I paused said commercial, called the husband in for his take (as one might do for a good play during a football game) and then I just had to consult the other half of my two-person never ending salon,. I felt like I had to tell everyone about this Orwellian prognostication that was so bold that it  felt like fire and brimstone was certain to be raining down upon my future, 50 year old self.

My political best buddy and I have enjoyed years’ worth of political/ socioeconomic discussions and while we have rarely agreed on the causes of our nations’ abundant problems, or even the possible solutions, we have always agreed on the necessary outcomes. That’s why our conversations have always given me such hope for our nation, because while he and I often find ourselves at the opposite ends of the political spectrums, we agree that a financially solvent, socially and environmentally responsible nation should be the number one focus of our legislators.

When I first asked my friend for his thoughts on the commercial, he exclaimed that it was, “so right wing!” My head thoughtfully tipped to the side after that comment, as I hadn’t even noticed whether the commercial had a bias. The commercial, in my estimation, was basically emphasizing a very basic principle in managing a budget. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, it’s generally not responsible to spend more money or, you are gonna get yourself in trouble. Pure and simple.

So, as a nation, we have gotten ourselves in trouble, financially, well, except for the uber wealthy, that is. The whole three class infrastructure is in trouble, soon there will be only the rich and the poor and then the rich can just pick up and move somewhere, like China, and exploit more hard working people, squeeze them dry and soak every last bit of sweat out of them. Maybe a sequel to the China commercial will be in 2130, when the working class Chinese decide they want to work for sustainable wages and healthcare benefits, and safe working conditions, and maybe a retirement fund. But, just cause you are a wealthy person, or a wealthy corporation, does not mean you are necessarily exploitative. There’s nothing wrong with reaping rewards from ingenuity, hard work and sound business decisions.

We need a balance in this country. Corporations need to make money, the working class needs to make money and the poor need to make money. As we operate today, the Chinese Professor commercial is 100% inevitable. If all we do all day is point fingers at one another, saying you are wrong cause you are a democrat, or you are wrong because you are right wing, all we are going to have accomplished at the end of the day is an overworked pointer finger. NOTHING ELSE!  

It is our duty, as responsible citizens in this union of states, to hold our governmental representatives, the individuals that we HIRED to make decisions on our collective behalf, accountable for their choices in spending our money. It doesn’t mean we need to cut preschool education programs or the programs designed to aid the elderly and disabled, it just means they need to make responsible, pragmatic decisions with our money. It means the legislators do have to answer to us and they need to start earning their own astronomical paychecks with their astronomical benefits. Would we pay a cleaning person extra if they came into our homes and made a mess? Would we pay a realtor that sold our homes behind our backs or a financial advisor that took our money and just gave it away  or even a gardener that ripped up all our pretty flowers and dumped oil in the soil?

There’s nothing right wing, or left wing, or democratic or republican about remembering that our legislators work for US (pun intended there.) There’s nothing partisan about expecting accountability and responsibility from our government. We have been divided amongst ourselves for entirely too long. These problems WILL not be solved by finger pointing, they will not be solved by people forming special exclusive clubs (political parties) with multi-million dollar membership dues or any other playground stupidity. If we continue to remain divided, we will indeed be conquered, if not by the Chinese, then assuredly someone else. It is time, instead, to unite and stand up for the principles upon which this country did once achieve greatness- hard work, integrity and perseverance. We are way past the point of the  time wasting blame game. All the pennant waving and button wearing does not balance our budget or cut into our deficit and it’s certainly not in the job description of any governmental representative. So maybe all of our representatives, left and right, need come front and center , put down their toys, stop their pouting and do what their electors hired them to do, or pretty soon, the next time someone cries while reading the Declaration of Independence, it will be in Chinese history books!

If You Want to Be in OUR Club…

Political Spectrum Quiz

Be honest- ya know ya wanna take it! In a world where we are often too busy to even form a complete thought, burning five minutes on a self analyzing quiz gives us time to breathe, time to talk about ourselves and provide answers (most, albeit for entertainment purposes only) to many of life’s unanswerable questions.

This quiz, however, requires no “Facebook credits” or no “completion of this quiz” for answers and does more than predict when you are going to die or who you are going to marry. It reminds us of  a completely overlooked complexity of United States politics.

Officially, the United States in a representative (republican) democracy. The democracy part means that every citizen has equal representation and an equal voice in decisions made regarding this country. The representative part means that we acknowledge that it’s all but unfeasible to expect that every citizen in this country could efficiently vote on every issue facing our nation, and still have time for a normal life. So we democratically elect representatives to do the decision making on our behalf. Back in the old days, part of this was because information moved so slowly that decision making for every individual citizen meant doing so with limited information. NOW, there is such an information overload, that the average citizen has simply no time to analyze it all and make an educated decision. We have lives, and jobs, and families. Basically, it’s not much different than hiring a cleaning lady or a dog walker. We delegate the responsibility of making these decisions to people that we think would make the best decisions on our collective behalf.

When I first registered to vote, to be able to make an individual decision about each and every person that would represent my interests, I registered as a Democrat, because of the region in which I live. I loved being able to vote and the area was so predominantly Democrat that those who registered as Republicans hardly ever had a chance to vote in the Primary elections. Times have changed, there are now more Republican candidates in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but my registration has not for no other reason than the whole concept of political parties reminds me of the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.


Would I be a bad Democrat if I was to assert myself as pro choice? Would I be a bad Republican if I wanted to help the poor? How many dissenting opinions am I allowed to have before you kick me out of your club?  I like the idea of uniting for a specific cause- that kind of unity is what birthed our country. A bunch of people, upset about taxes and lack of representation, banding together to declare their freedom- that there’s some good stuff! But being part of a club that gives you a checklist of how you are supposed to feel on any number of otherwise unrelated issues (well, aside from the fact that everything really is interconnected) just seems wrong. If I wanted to be told how to make decisions for myself, I would go back to being five years old and asking my mommy.

Is it possible that the exclusive decision making that’s done by today’s political parties is what has disillusioned so many Americans regarding politics? Is it possible that citizens have just gotten sick and tired of being told what to do and how to feel or being made to feel like we are sitting alone at the lunch table cause our we don’t fit in with the people in the club?

My quiz results were surprising to me. As a registered Democrat, I found that I lean to the right regarding economic issues, am considered non-interventionist regarding foreign policy and am socially a libertarian. There were questions on the quiz, that I felt, deserved more than a multiple choice response from me, but alas, online quizzes rarely have an essay portion.  What I liked about this quiz was that it blatantly illustrated (with a cute little graph) that politics is so much more than black or white, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative and that these labels put us in a position where we are getting lazy, sitting back and letting others tell us how to feel and how to vote. Granted, in this economy, it’s very easy to delegate that thinking to someone else, especially when were are all running around like chickens with the heads cut off just trying to break even at the end of the day, but sadly, these are the times when our decisions matter most and when we must remember that the great decisions in our country’s history came from regular people, not hired bureaucrats. The decisions that formed out country came from the people that thought outside the box in which the establishment told them to blindly stay. They united for a cause, and that cause was freedom- freedom from oppression and freedom to choose for themselves.

Maybe, it’s time we remember that, or maybe not. You decide.

Gas...It's a Fact of Life

So, we HAD to quench the thirst of our [free for a legitimate reason] ‘96 Ford Winstar today. It was painful, it shattered my begrudging hopes that the economy would indeed rebound (at least for us working class folks.) For the first time in my life, I yelled to my husband, “Don’t fill it!” I knew full well, that we had to fill it, cause eventually, we would just be refilling it again and probably at a higher price! It was already $3.43/ gallon!

If it was up to me, I would never drive again! I would be perfectly happy walking kids to school, walking to the grocery store and the pharmacy- it would be GOLDEN! But, alas, we have our own Indy 500 just a block away, which is NOT conducive to a 2 week grocery order and 2 preschoolers in tow. I hate winter, especially, with all of it’s snow and ice and such. I hate driving.  There are rude people on the road- old and young

But, the kids are 3 and 5, and they have little legs. Could they walk two miles to school? Sure. Could they function the rest of the day? Probably not. Really? Is this what the “Greatest Generation” bequest to us? It’s not totally their fault though. Not really their fault at all. They didn’t  make the choices their legislators made.

We are in a bad place. We are dependant on oil from a place that is NOT here. It COULD be from here, but it is not.  Why do we need the oil? Being dependant on someone else for our livelihood isn’t American, but it IS Global.

So, the total  cost at the gas station was about sixty dollars. It doesn’t sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, especially with the prices of everything else escalating, but sixty dollars DOES matter to me and I can probably think of about sixty reasons WHY we shouldn’t be paying $3.43 for one gallon of gasoline. I am not going to delve into them all here, but I will touch on a few:

Alternative energy vehicles-  There’s an inventor in the Philippines who has come up with an electric car that has solar charging capabilities: Solar Car and there have been a number of other people that have retrofitted their vehicles to run on water and used vegetable oil and such. Also check out List of Alternative Fuels that lists almost 20 different options for fuel that would work in most vehicles currently on the roads today.

More local shops!- There’s a glorious time of yore when there was a market, local beer garden and church literally down the block from every home in the United State. Back then, there was little unemployment, children and adults alike COULD safely walk where they needed to go, so the occurrence of obesity was far lower, there was no hole in the Ozone Layer, because people only really “needed” to drive for special occasions like Sunday drives or  vacations to the shore during the summer. Local shops COULD easily repopulate and create a sustainable living for the owners by tapping into modern technology for some help. Grocers can create little eating areas, like counter top seating and a couple of café tables and invest in wi-fi for their establishments to encourage patrons. They easily create a Web site that would allow for access to an international customer base and send shop specific specialties far and wide.

Think trains not trucks! Much of the country is still covered in at least remnants of the glory that was rail travel and, of course, a number of trains STILL function quite well as a form of transport that’s less dependant on oil and exceptionally cost efficient. Jobs could be created in order to bring the lost tracks back to fruition. Truckers could be retrained to work trains (yes, I am proud of that alliteration there!) We COULD be as bold as to go back to steam engines, but our technology  just isn’t quite there yet with an alternative energy source for vehicle as large and fierce as a train. It’s still a possibility though..

Embrace the cyber world! If we really think about it, a ridiculously absurd amount of office jobs, really anything not specifically requiring manual labor, can be done from the home of anyone with HSD, a computer and access to Skype. For the cost of a computer, a wecam/ speakers/ microphone, internet service and Skype (or any Voice Over IP service like Vonage) we could avoid the costs of commuting, as well as work fashion, as well the need for a brick and mortar office building, aside from, at MOST a customer accessible little hub of a building. Secure networks allow for a virtual office for the handling of any level of sensitive information. Online chatting allows for contact with coworkers and superiors when there’s a need for escalation of an issue and/ or customer interaction. Even old fashioned phone customer service can be done from home with a quiet room and the other aforementioned prerequisites. Imagine a world with no more traffic jams, no road rage, no need for fast food (when ya got your own kitchen a couple of yards away.) I could go on and on about the benefits. And then, guess what? We won’t need petroleum products to keep ourselves functional, well, not to anywhere near the degree of necessity that we currently have.

According to Wikipedia, the first car was produced in 1902. Human beings have lived, survived and prospered for approximately 500,000 years prior to 1902, according to NASA. Something tells me that a world without petroleum products just might still be feasible.

So, maybe we need to respond like the innovative, frugal and resourceful Americans of the past, and change our own corner of the world. Your bank account will surely thank you.

Actually, It DOES Affect Us

A couple of action-packed weeks ago, I sat, enthralled, following every power-to-the- people moment of the protesting that eventually led to the stepping down of now former Egyptian President Mubarak. I would toggle between political commentaries, personal accounts, uninformative White House press releases and Al Jazeera’s live feed and comment aloud to my husband, or whoever else was in the mood for one of my soapbox rants.

I had never really devoted any thought to international politics, really, ever in my life. I just supposed I was a small working class gal living in a small working class town with my small, cozy working class family. Surely, I had my own life about which to worry. Plus, it seemed rather burdensome to keep straight in my head all the names of all the countries and all their respective leaders and geographical locations in the midst of formulating my own grocery lists other such critical factoids that kept my family fed and healthy and happy. Then, the economy tanked and it was like I woke up and discovered that neither my own little world, or the great big global society was ever or will ever be flat. It’s round and we are connected!

For the longest time, I lived in a happy, little isolationist world where as long as I focused on my little problems and ignored the big problems of elsewhere, they could not possibly affect me. Why worry about there when we have so many problems here? And then, like a flash of lighting, the protests in Egypt happened by way of an impressive use of the modern technology of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The protests were organized and unceasing, massive and determined. For what were they fighting?

I had grown rather accustomed to religious battles in the Middle East and surrounding regions, which was actually probably the source of my apathy, but this unrest was different. It was the middle class, the middle class that had actually become poor because of the government and their lack of empathy for the plight of the proletariat- for their own constituents. This fight, however, was against an elected “President” that had been in office for thirty odd years. It was against a government that had, for thirty years, made little progress in anything economically, but making the poor poorer and the small percentage of the wealthy, wealthier.

Of course we, in the United States, elect our President every four years.  It’s done through a democratic republic process where we cast a confidential ballot in order to choose the person best qualified for the job. At least, that’s how it is on paper. Can someone working in a blue collar job, making $30K/ year and supporting a family of four run for President? Absolutely. Anyone, barring felonies and the like, can run for office (well, the President has to be at least 35 years old.) The Kevin Kline movie, Dave is categorized as a comedy about a Presidential doppelganger  who finds himself in the most powerful seat in the most powerful office in the United States. He normally runs a temp agency, in other words, he actually finds sustainable employment for those that don’t have jobs. In, arguably, the best part of the movie, he gets together with his regular Joe best friend, a run of the mill accountant, and trims the budget to find a way to save a children’s homeless shelter.  The movie reminds us that regular people built this government and there’s nothing wrong with a regular person running it. We don’t need to belong to a special club with special rules (like the Democrats or Republicans or Tea Partiers.) Those clubs, with their players, have not helped anyone other than themselves.

Has any candidate in the last 30 years balanced the budget? Has any candidate in the last 30 years fixed our environmental woes, increased the effectiveness of our educational system or our healthcare system or product/ drug safety? Has anyone of our “honorable” representatives, the representatives that are supposed to work for us, really done anything aside from pushing papers, dressing in fancy suits and crying while reading the Constitution?  Has anything gotten better?

I am really starting to think that the last United States President that actually cared about the working/ middle class was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that, folks, puts us WAY past the thirty year mark with which Egypt is dealing. Maybe he only cared to get re-elected, maybe not, but he did CARE and he took actions to acknowledge that fact.

From the time FDR left office, we have been inching towards the very lack of representation in government that caused a revolution for the colonists in the 1700’s. Take a walk down the street. Ask passersby. Or simply reflect on your own. When is the last time you actually felt represented by someone who actually understood your plight in the middle class? When’s the last time we elected someone to represent us that really was from the middle class. When’s the last time we had someone in office that knew what it meant to put off buying  a new pair of jeans so that a utilities bill could be paid?

So then, the real question is,  how do we, the common folk, take back our government? Is there a way to do it without violence? The Egyptians have been tying for peaceful change for 30 years. They have been working hard, trying to make the best of what choices their President had made for them. And where are they now?

A Government for the (Middle Class) People

As I write this, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has finally decided, after thirty years in office, he no longer “wants” to president. This declaration was made after more than a week of protests, riots and all around civil unrest. He is not stepping down just yet, however, because he thinks that, if he does, Eqypt will erupt into chaos.  Dictionary.com’s number one definition of chaos is: a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order. One would imagine that twelve days, and counting, of thousands of protesters, amassing in the streets, eluding both police and military forces, fighting, starting fires, with an economy at a standstill, would qualify as chaos.

When the founding fathers of the United States’ Constitution established what was basically a list of rules defining this experiment in a democratic republic and the people governing themselves, they did their best to establish a system by which a regular, middle class person had as much representation in government as the richest person in the country and also the poorest person in the country. 

So, Farmer Joe gets elected to represent his district in Congress. While he is gone on his trip to Washington D.C., the rest of his farmer neighbors pitch in to take care of his farm. Farmer (Representative) Joe’s travel expenses are paid for by the people he represents. When he is done with all the meetings and the voting, he comes back home and resumes making his living as a farmer. What’s interesting, is that he doesn’t draw a salary from being a representative and he doesn’t have a healthcare plan. He doesn’t have a special vehicle that is used only for government work, he doesn’t have a second home that’s paid for by the people that voted for him. His constituents- the grocer, the apothecary, the baker, the blacksmith- they would never vote for someone who would cost them a salary plus a home plus a car plus a pension plus a healthcare plan because they know that they, first of all, can’t afford those luxuries for themselves, and secondly, cannot afford to buy them for anyone else. How can anyone adequately empathize with their constituents if they haven’t fought the same fight and overcome similar struggles?

How do our representatives today empathize with our plights when , according to MyBudget360.com, the average median household income in the United States is $46, 326 and the median salary for a United States Congressional representative is $174, 000, according to Payscale.com? In 2008, the amount of Americans without healthcare rose to 47 million, while everyone in Congress that has been chosen to represent these Americans has top notch coverage.

A Congressional representative can expect to be in session roughly 130 days per year (Yahoo) or maybe about three days per week, while the average American who can still afford to live on paychecks from only one job, works five days per week and, according to recent studies, and an average of 50 hours per week.

Congressional representatives must be in office 5 years to receive a pension, yet, in order for the average worker to receive a pension, if there is even one available, means that they must work for 25 years, which is pretty difficult when, in this economy, the average worker is expected to change, not just jobs, but full fledged industries an average of eight times in the course of their lives.

Now, as per the Constitution, with minimal restrictions, any citizen can run for political office. In reality however, since a typical successful bid for a seat in Congress CAN cost as much as $2million dollars, the odds clearly favor an incumbent who has been making at least $174,000 and not the average worker making twenty six percent of that amount. So, if YOU make $174k every year, you will most certainly have adequate representation in Congress that’s gung ho on protecting your interests. If not? Certainly since they promised to make the best choices for you, you should just sit back and believe them.

OR- What IF we leveled the playing field a bit? What if the representation of the people STOPPED being about second vehicles and posh DC apartments nestled in gate communities into which homeless beggars fear to tread and started being about serving the people?

Well, there’s always campaign finance reform. Yes, lets give Congress something else over which to fight. In fact, if we are lucky, maybe they can discuss it so whole-heartedly that they wriggle some over-time pay out of it. Is anyone that’s already spent $2 million (Washington Post) on a campaign to GET their seat going to make it possible for someone else to usurp their power for less than that price tag? Not likely, but they’re sure to put on a good show about it.

A feasible alternative? Term limits and limit the amount of terms to, drum roll….ONE! I am actually “borrowing” this idea from a friend who ran against a long time incumbent in the Congressional Primaries in North Eastern PA. Mr. Brian W. Kelly ran on working class principles and told voters that, IF he was elected, he would remain in office for one, and only one, term. He would work to the best of his ability, for the length of that term and then retire from office.

Had Mr. Kelly actually been elected to represent the people of North Eastern Pennsylvania for one term in the House of Representatives, he most likely would not have caused any HARM to the people, but, as good as his intentions may have been, he would certainly not do much good either. He would have been a “freshman” representative, with little clout and he would have had to play with the big boys and girls or, for all intents and purposes, stand by and watch the action. That does not mean it’s not a good idea.

What if EVERY politician was magically changed into a PUBLIC SERVANT? What if each person that ran for office had ONE term to get their agendas accomplished before returning to the private sector?  As far as private sector jobs go, we could treat it similar to a military deployment in that employers could not replace the newly elected representative while they were in office, so as to not eliminate a legitimate way of earning money. How could we possibly transition from a society of career politicians to a society with a bunch of government newbies? Well, the current ones in office could always agree to it (pausing here for a moment of uproarious laughter, allowing you, the reader, to reclaim the seat off of which you fell,) OR we could unite as a country, ignore all the hype of the political advertisements, and simply vote anti-incumbent enough so that all the incumbents are removed from office. This transition would take slightly less than six years to complete, but in reality, when’s the last time any initiative that is good for the common person has taken LESS than six years to actually enact?

What good can COME from a whole Congress full of freshmen (and woman?) What good has come of the current Congress, honestly? A Congress full of representatives that are quite aware that they only have a limited time with which to exact change is a Congress that is going to be more motivated to actually WORK at resolving conflicts. Do we want representatives in office that only care about their own paycheck, healthcare and managing to achieve that 5 year mark for a government pension? Or, do we want to know that the people that take the Oath of Office do so because they actually WANT a better tomorrow for the people the represent?

Ensuring that every representative in Congress only gets one term would mean that no one would be getting a government pension. Imagine trying to quantify THOSE savings: http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/corrupt/Congressional%20Retirement%20Benefits.htm. Robert Walker’s $4.2 million could feed over 450 families of four, moderately, for a full year (771.10 multiplied by 12=9,253.30, THEN 4.2 million divided by 9253.30= 453.89) (USDA 2008 Data) to put it all into perspective.

Not only THAT, but certainly, people running for a single term in office are not going to want to spend so much money on getting a temp job like serving the public. Police officers serve the public, you don’t see them advertising their abilities for the position. And since they don’t want to go all hog wild on elaborate campaign schemes, they probably aren’t really going to care about any bribes from big business or power plays by lobbyists.

So in essence, aside from retrieving  a salary that should be commensurate with the median salary of their constituents, these representatives would be representing out of obligation to and pride for their fellow countrymen (and women.)

Wow! What a concept! Sure wish someone came up with THAT idea a loooong time ago!

Egypt- Can We Afford NOT to Pay Attention?

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."--John F. Kennedy

This is a theme that we have seen throughout history- with the French Revolution, Tiananmen Square in China, and of course the United States was born from an arguably violent revolution.

Simply put, the Egyptians are protesting because they are tired of being poor and they are tired of someone else making bad decisions for them. This certainly isn’t something new or surprising, yet leaders of nations continue to oppress their own people into the point of revolution. The people revolt, a new regime takes control and then the new regime starts to oppress, then the people revolt and so on and so on….

Is this pattern actually breakable? Well, of course it is, the United States did it, in theory anyway. And now, the US can feel superior and righteous while shaking their finger at a leader, Mubarak, for allowing so many of his country’s citizens to work for substandard wages and go to bed hungry. The United States can chastise the Egyptian regime for not allowing citizens to take an active role in the decisions made by the government. The United States can criticize them for not allowing for a fluid economy where someone born into poverty can aspire to one day make millions.

Or can they? While circumstances in the United States are seemingly as far from Egypt as the miles between them, it might just be worth examining just HOW different we really are.

According to an article at TruthOut’s Web site,, “…nearly half of all Egyptians live below the poverty level.” In the United States, that amount is 14.3%, but coupled with an unemployment that has teetered around 9% for month after month after month, are these numbers as comforting as they seem? Come on! The only reason the percentage of people on unemployment doesn’t go higher, is because that’s the percentage of Americans RECEIVING unemployment benefits, not the ones who have exhausted those benefits while searching for a job that hasn’t gone to another country. Try and find any figures on that amount? And how close THEY are to not having money for groceries or heat or housing?

Update 2.04.2011- Huffington Post just published a great article documenting the almost 5 million Americans who are so far out of the work force that they are no longer counted as "unemployed." According to the HuffPost calculations, even only acknowledging HALF of the jobless that have simply given up, a 10.7% "lost jobless" plus the current official unemployment rate of 9.4%, we are looking at a whopping 20.1% (or one fifth of the working aged population in the United States.) Check out the full details at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/missing-workers-44-millio_n_818314.html?fbwall.

And what is the easiest way to ensure that United States citizens never get the idea to rise up and demand a change? Divide and conquer. Make sure that the citizens are blaming the illegal immigrants instead of the companies that sent the jobs overseas. Make sure that citizens are more concerned about the infighting occurring between the Democrats and the Republicans and the Tea Partiers than about the issues affecting them. Make everyone worry about the world ending mass animal casualties. And if all else fails, take some time, on the taxpayer’s dime, to read the Constitution of the United States.

Well, either that, or maybe just fix the problems and get back to a society that actually is for the people.