Good morning! Great to have a short thread.
While I slept, the brain had two ideas. One has to do with the March on Washington, if we have one. Instead of just showing up, I think it would be good to plan ahead and invite our elected representatives to join us, not just on the march, but in their offices for substantive discussions of their records. This would be a good opportunity to assess in person who's qualified to be reelected. Must not forget that all of the House and one third of the Senate is due for an assessment.
Second, the excellent article in "Black Commentary" on the corporate media's attack on Dean suggested that people like Ted Koppel are driven by money and polls. I'd suggest that's not quite right. Money and polls are just indicators of what they are really after--power. The lust for power, obviously, is not restricted to the RNC. The DLC seems to have caught it as well.
Actually, we all like a little power--to be in control of other people as well as ourselves. But the LUST FOR POWER is different. That's because maximum power is best expressed by making others do things they don't want to and are almost certainly going to be hurtful.
If this hypothesis is correct, then it might explain a lot of things--not just wars, but carcinogenic cigaretts and SUV's. Who knows what else is being peddled to gratify the LUST FOR POWER.
Which, by the way, is what the initiates into groups like Skull and Crossbones are prepared for--to overcome the natural reluctance they might have to inflicting harm on others. And Kerry proved he'd learned that lesson when he dispatched that Viet Cong on the edge of the water.
Posted by Monica Smith at January 31, 2004 04:58 AM
OK, I've thought for a long time that this "balanced budget" business is a tricky issue. Aside from being pleasingly alliterative, this concept is practically useless, since IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to keep the income and expenditures exactly equal over time.
Indeed, the surplus generated during the Clinton administration threw the budget out of balance and provided the Republicans with a rationale for giving the money back to the people from whom it was collected.
What Governor Dean did in Vermont makes a lot more sense. He created a rainy-day fund in which any unspent income was set aside for the eventuality that it would be needed later or perhaps to pay for some emergency.
It occurs to me that since the Republicans are so anxious to invest some of the money that isn't needed right away in the stock market, we should create a rainy day fund (instead of targeting Social Security) which could be so invested. Then we can track how much better the return is on those privately invested dollars, than those deposited in government bonds.
In other words, instead of giving the money back to be privately invested, let's invest it on behalf of the public interest.
Yes, a rainy day fund is a good idea. Who knows, if proves beneficial, we might even get to the point where the federal government budget distinguishes between daily operating accounts and long range construction (capital investment) accounts, just like every other governmental entity in the land.
Posted by Monica Smith at January 31, 2004 06:14 AM
http://home.pacbell.net/dyewrks/dean4america/decision.html