Start Doing What’s Right

Two words that can be used to describe me in pretty much any circumstances are ‘pragmatist’ and ’skeptic’. When I find the truth, the *real* truth, there’s little that can be said to change my mind. But until that point, until all other possibilities are exhausted, my default position is almost always, “Prove it.”

Not to say that I don’t float a theory or two from time to time…

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Back in the 80’s a Canadian singer/songwriter named Bruce Cockburn wrote a song called, “Call It Democracy.” I have reprinted a couple of lyric snippets here without permission. Bruce can sue me:

"Padded with power, here they come

International loan sharks backed by the guns

Of market-hungry military profiteers

Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared

With the blood of the poor...

"Who rob life of its quality

Who render rage a necessity

By turning countries into labor camps

Modern slavers in drag as

Champions of freedom...

"IMF, dirty MF

Takes away everything it can get

Always making certain that there's one thing left

Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt"

It’s not hard to see past the thin veil of anti-American sentiment, and for that reason (and the f-bomb that Bruce drops mid-way through the second verse) the song was banned from U.S. radio.

Mr. Cockburn has a cult following, including myself, but little else. He’s well-respected in his (my) home country, and has won numerous awards not only for his music but for his humanitarian work. His songs are often written during or after his travels to war-torn parts of the world: Nicaragua, Cambodia, and most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan. So his anti-U.S. rants have a little more fact behind them than the average angst-ridden teenage speed-metal anthems.

But my overwhelming opinion about “Call It Democracy” has been, give me a break. You’re trying to tell me that the U.S. comes into a country, enslaves the population, makes off with the natural resources, and intentionally bankrupts the government? It’s preposterous. The level of conspiracy on the part of international financial bodies, U.S. government and industry, not to mention covert agencies, would be staggering. Not to mention, these countries have governments! The leaders of these nations just open up the doors and let the U.S. come in and wreck the place?

It seems infeasible, unlikely, and on the whole, unbelievable.

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My eyes were opened by a book entitled, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” by John Perkins. This is a first-hand account of the author’s involvement in the practice of doing essentially what is laid out in “Call It Democracy.” The practice is to have corporate consulting firms (at the direction of the NSA, though that link is kept secret, for obvious reasons, but it exists nonetheless) go into third-world nations to pitch large infrastructure projects financed by massive loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The loans are conditional upon the work for these projects being jobbed out to U.S. firms like Bechtel and Haliburton. They are also structured in such a way that the countries will — no question about it — default on them.

Most often this is done for oil. Ecuador was a big one back in the 1970’s (yes, this has been going on that long, and then some). The U.S. came in to develop roads, electrical capacity, etc. so that U.S. companies could come in and extract the oil. From every $100 in sales of oil from Ecuador, about $75 went to the oil companies, and about $22 went to service the country’s debt. That left about $3 for the country to actually use. Nice, huh? Faint wonder they were defaulting on the loans.

And when that happened, the fix was in. The U.S. would “come to the rescue,” saying that they would allow the nation to float the loan, in exchange for certain concessions. Like harboring a U.S. military base; use of their ports for U.S. Navy ships; control over their vote at the United Nations; you know, little token favors like that.

This is no joke, this is no conspiracy theory, this is no pissed off singer from some rock band making stuff up. This happens. The book and its successor are written by one of the guys who actually helped to do this stuff. His stories are first-hand accounts, horse’s mouth stuff. This is our government acting on our behalf and screwing anybody and everybody either too stupid to know the difference, or too motivated by self-interest to care.

And that’s the other side of it. As I mentioned, you need a complicit partner on the other side of the arrangement. Most of the third-world leaders involved in these “transactions” are, in fact, getting some juicy kick-backs from the U.S. in order to put the deal together. Those that don’t play ball are usually overthrown, or in cases of populist leaders, assassinated. During the Carter administration the president welcomed the election of leaders in Ecuador and Panama, both non-communists, who happened to have less-than-accepting views towards the U.S. and such practices. Within 6 months of Reagan taking office, both of those leaders died in plane and helicopter explosions. Not crashes, explosions. Bombs. We killed them. Democratically elected, non-communist leaders, and we killed them.

Your tax dollars at work.

We, as Americans, don’t have a clue. For the most part we are completely ignorant of the way things are for the citizens of countries other than our own. We are also unwilling to accept or even listen to criticism of our nation. It’s going to be a hard row to hoe, but we have got to start opening our eyes and ears to this stuff. If we don’t, the dirtbags that do this stuff will just continue to do it.

We’ve had a hard time of it with the Village Idiot in the White House for the last eight years. But it would be nice to be proud to call ourselves Americans again, wouldn’t it? The only way that is going to happen is if we start educating ourselves about what we’ve done as a nation, atone for those things that we’ve done that are wrong, and start doing what’s right.

Solutions

It is hard to find a voice among today’s economists advocating anything other than market-led solutions to problems. “The market can solve problems better than government can,” they will say with a conviction as stalwart as if they were decrying racism, or proclaiming the world is round, or stating a preference for either David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar as the lead singer for Van Halen.

The issue becomes, when the market realizes profits by *not* solving a problem, and the problem needs to be solved, who does the responsibility fall to? The answer is government, and the specific problem in question is something that every human being ever to walk the earth has suffered from at one time or another.

The common cold.

Pharmaceutical companies sell billions of dollars of cold medicine and other sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever necessities per year. The common cold virus is a cash cow the likes of which mankind has never seen: unlimited and unending demand, almost no cost of production, cheap and universal distribution, and high profit margin. For the market, i.e. the businesses that profit from this, they would be stupid to even consider finding a cure.

But it is in the interest of every person and business (other than the drug companies) to find a cure. American businesses lose billions of dollars per year in worker productivity and absenteeism due to the common cold. And the public is the unwitting accomplice in a massive scheme to funnel wealth from our pockets into the bank accounts of drug companies. We have to put an end to it.

Because the pharmaceutical industry, who has the power to find a cure, profits from *not* finding a cure, they will never attempt to find one. The market has failed at solving this problem, and without intervention it will never succeed.

So why doesn’t industry band together and pool their resources to fund research? It costs them incalculable losses every year, it would seem logical that they invest in finding a means to avoid such losses. Industry will never band together because of the cheater effect. If there was a way to ensure that *every* business contributed in a manner consistent with their resources, that would be great. But greed turns people into cheaters, and many businesses will refuse to participate, figuring that others will pick up the slack, and allowing them to reap the benefits while incurring none of the costs. That, in turn, causes businesses that were originally on board to back out, not willing to make up the difference for the cheaters. In the end, nobody contributes, and the problem persists.

But there is a way to ensure that everybody contributes in a way consistent with their resources: it’s called ‘taxes’. The government collects taxes from every business in the country. It can collect a special add-on tax in the amount of (for instance) one dollar per employee. Even for the largest employers in the country this is a paltry sum. Add on a fifty-cent tax on individuals for each member of their family. Again, even for the lowest wage-earners, this is nothing. But in total the government would now have close to $250 million dollars each year to put towards funding a cure.

The question then becomes, how do you do it? How do you motivate researchers to develop a safe, effective, and low-cost cold vaccine? Offer the whole sum as a bounty. Collect the tax every year, the pot keeps growing until somebody puts a vaccine into human trials. If it turns out to get FDA approval, the whole pot goes to the winner.

This concept has been used in the private sector already, with great success. The X Prize Foundation offered the sum of $10 million to the first group to develop their own “space shuttle”. The rules were a little more detailed of course, but what is curious is the winner ended up spending almost ten times the amount of the prize on R&D. That alone should show that motivation exists to solve these types of problems regardless of the financial reward. There’s a new contest just underway as a matter of fact: put a rover on the moon, move it 500 feet, and return data, photos, and e-mail to the earth. The contest was just announced, and there are 13 teams already registered. That’s how to motivate people. Make it a race, turn it into something that the winner can boast about, and you’ll find you have many more contestants than you ever thought could exist. It’s the maverick American spirit: bigger, faster, better than the next guy.

The same thing needs to be done here. Savings to the consumer (from not buying $100 in cold medicine each year) and to the business community (in having more workers on the job more often) will run into the billions per year in perpetuity. You know as well as I do that the drug companies will scream bloody murder, but hey: they probably have the best chance of anybody of finding a vaccine. They can take a shot at winning the prize just like anybody. It’s about time we held their feet to the fire and got them moving on a solution to this problem.

One For The Good Guys

We are headed, once again, for our dose of presidential election abuse: six months under the barrage of my-party-can-beat-up-your-party media hysterics, assisted by frothy-mouthed reporters screaming “Fire!” in crowded election booths, culminating in an election that is decided by voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. It’s faint wonder why voter turnout regularly registers below 40% of registered voters.

Look at that sentence again. Voter turnout for the most important election in the country only manages to coax 40% of the people who have already gone through the trouble of registering out of the house to cast a ballot. What’s to blame? A quick glance at the red and blue state-by-state map on every channel every minute of election day will tell you: the Electoral College.

As you would expect, states where there are lots of brain power in the workplace tend to vote Democrat. States with lots of laborers, farmers, and religious zealots tend to vote Republican. The way this shakes out in the final analysis is that each party winds up with about 225 electoral college votes no matter whether they nominate Jesus or Voldemort. That leaves three or four “Swing states” that could go either way on election day, and these states’ electoral college votes determine the outcome of the election. It’s winner-take-all, state by state, and because of this votes in most states don’t mean a thing.

By the 2012 election, that will be but an unpleasant memory.

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Abolishing the electoral college at a federal level would require a Constitutional Amendment. Very costly, very time-consuming, and fraught with obstacles that would ensure its defeat. But leave it to the lawyers to find a loophole. Every state, according to the Constitution, can decide the way that its electoral college votes are allocated. So if they want to flip a coin on election day, have one of the candidates call ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ and allocate their electoral college votes accordingly, all they need to do is enact a state law stating as such.

Boy, wouldn’t that be the bees knees for the TV news losers, eh? They could sell exclusive TV rights to Rupert Murdoch for enough dough to re-pave every road in Christendom. Anyhow, I digress…

The loophole. A state can pass legislation such that their electoral college votes will be allocated to the winner of the national popular vote. The law would go into effect when states whose accumulated electoral college votes total 270 or more pass similar legislation. When that happens, those states’ pact would erase the effect of the electoral college and ensure that the winner of the national popular vote becomes the next President of the United States.

Pipe dream, right? Wrong. Done deal. It’s called NPV, and it’s going to be the biggest change to the American political landscape since the Constitution itself.

Four states — Hawaii (snore), Maryland (who cares), New Jersey (now you’re talking), and Illinois (ZOINKS!) — have enacted this legislation. As in, passed both houses, Governor has signed it, and it goes into effect when the magic number is reached. That’s 50 electoral college votes between them. But what about the rest of them? Surely this movement can’t be for real.

National Popular Vote legislation has been, or is about to be introduced in every state in the U.S. A dozen states have bills that have passed one or both houses in the state legislature. Many more are in or through committee. This is no small potatoes, people. This is going to change the face of the presidential election forever.

What does this mean? It means that all of a sudden the rancher in rural Montana, the laid-off mill worker in Maine, the oil rig worker in Alaska, the part-time surf instructor in Hawaii, the nurse in Mississippi, the stay-at-home mom in Nebraska, and every other living, breathing American citizen can *actually* influence the outcome of the presidential election. Votes in Ohio and Florida don’t mean any more than votes in North Dakota and Vermont. Subsequently, one of the biggest excuses of non-voters will be swept away. We should see a substantial increase in voter turnout.

Furthermore, you will see a dramatic switch in the way campaigns are run. In one fell swoop, the candidates will have to pay attention to the needs of every American, not just pandering to the loci of special interests in the rust belt and Northern Cuba. Err, Southern Ontario. Umm, I mean Florida.

It also makes it infinitely more difficult to influence the outcome of the election by fraudulent means. With the electoral college system, both the Democrats and Republicans were dispatching their operatives to key districts in select states, trying to make sure that a given group of people got to the polls (or couldn’t get to the polls, depending on which side you’re talking about). When NPV becomes law, that type of manipulation (I call it “treason,” which I think is a more accurate depiction of the truth) will be pointless. It won’t matter if 2000 African-Americans in Miami get stuck outside when the polls close. The possibility that the results will be close enough to have that number affect the outcome is infinitesimally small. Traitors trying to rig the election will have to do so on a national scale, greatly increasing the chances of getting caught, and reducing the likelihood that they will succeed. We should see reports of voter fraud nearly disappear.

In my home state of Illinois, for instance, we have an unusual phenomenon thanks to The Machine introduced by Mayor Daly back in the 60’s. Every county in the state, with about 6 exceptions, votes Republican. One of those 6 exceptions that votes Democrat is Cook County, where The Machine has delivered the goods for nearly a half-century. Because Cook County votes Democrat, the whole state votes Democrat, and the electoral college votes are allocated accordingly. That may change with an Illinois’ native on the ballot, but you see what I mean.

Because of this, and because both sides know that there is no way The Machine can be circumvented, nobody campaigns here. Nobody runs ads here. Nobody pays attention to the state with the third-largest city in the country during a presidential election. Go figure.

That will all be swept away when NPV kicks in. Illinois will change from foregone conclusion to one of the hot spots of political activity overnight. With The Machine taken out of the equation, there are over ten million people in this state that could play a major part in determining the outcome of the election on a national level. We will be the lynchpin in each campaign’s Midwest strategy, and we will see more political activity here than has been seen since WWII.

Other states that can expect a huge change in the weather: Texas, host to three of the top ten metro regions in the country, will no longer be a waste of time for Democrats; New York and Massachusetts; the collar states around D.C.; and basically any state with a city large enough to fly to non-stop from Dulles will see candidates darkening their doorsteps a lot more frequently.

This is what democracy is supposed to be. One vote equals one vote, all men (and women) are created equal. It’s been a long time coming, and somebody finally figured out how to make it happen. Organizers of the movement are predicting that the threshold will be reached long before the 2012 election, so this is for real, and it’s on the horizon.

You can keep track of the progress of the NPV movement at the link below, and watch as history is made. This will be a victory for the good guys, and hopefully the first of many steps towards elections that can once again be held up to the world as models of fairness and transparency.

 

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/