To all my fellow Americans and those of you around the globe that still see the good in our great country, feliz compleanos! 231 years, an amazing run, and with good fortune not even close to the end line. A nation that can produce the likes of Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama and be a draw for millions of immigrants, legal or otherwise, is still a mighty fine place.
There are some folks I respect calling for an overhaul via a new Constitutional Convention. Dan Shafer wrote yesterday:
“The two-party system is broken. The bicameral legislature doesn’t work in the face of a President who doesn’t care about the law except when it suits him. We need a new system that will prevent the emergence of another imperial President from either party.”
I agree with his assessment. What troubles me as much, or maybe even more, than the Bush Crew’s cynical public statements is that they, and the Democrats in D.C., are totally ignoring our best tools for dealing with the big problems. To use a cliched metaphor, every problem looks like a nail to these people and the best hammer is always force, the threat of force or the corrupting effect of big piles of money.
What should America be doing? Using our brain power. Trotting out the Manhattan Project comparison is, sadly, also a cliche these days but a good role model (minus the secrecy). If we took the people currently toiling away in misdirected research and focused them on finding solutions for climate change, the decline in oil production, vastly inadequate distribution of subsistence goods (e.g., food, water, shelter, education, communication) and so on most of these issues would be resolved or well on the way to it within a decade.
Not to mention that if people elsewhere saw we were serious about applying ourselves, many would join in and add their talents and resources to the efforts. Such a change in America’s behavior would be very likely to produce a massive positive change in the attitudes of many of our fellow humans toward us, by which I mean this would also contribute to our national security.
There are those who would dismiss or ignore the change, certainly, given their personal investment in damaging our country and so I’m not suggesting we dismantle our armed forces or anything like that. Redirecting the billions being spent on Iraq and other wasteful programs, yes, we should be using that money for the new efforts.
Warren Buffett recently pointed out that he pays a far lower percentage of his income to the government (as taxes) than his secretary, who makes perhaps 1/10th of 1% of what he does, and this is wrong. I agree: Taxes should reflect the ability of the individual and family to pay them, and especially corporations should be paying a reasonable, real tax based on economic activity taking place in this country.
In order to make this happen, in the absence of a Constitutional Convention, Congress should pass legislation repealing the 1886 SCOTUS decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that gave corporations the same rights and standing as real people, one of the most wrongheaded decisions ever handed down by that august body. While the Justices seem to have believed this was inherent in the then-new 14th Amendment, it directly contradicts the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of ownership of one person by another (since corporations, directly or indirectly, are owned eventually by real people).
If this fictitious personhood was dismantled, the most important change would be to disallow corporations from spending any money on political matters since recent Court decisions have depended on 1st Amendment free speech guarantees, which only apply to people. Accordingly, the huge lobbying industry, which employs several times as many people as the government does, would be crippled and the powerful influence on legislation and rulemaking vastly reduced. Certainly wealthy individuals would try to retain as much influence as possible but there would be no more corporate lobbying offices nor clientele for the powerful K Street firms.
“Of the people, by the people, for the people,” right?
Proportionate taxation and reduction of misguided spending would surely provide sufficient funding for massive directed investment in longterm solutions. Unlike the Manhattan Program, not all the work need be done by government labs and employees; as with many current programs private companies should be able to bid on the contracts and undoubtedly such sizable investment will attract complimentary spending.
America has delivered more practical innovation across more areas of pursuit than any other nation over the last several hundred years, if not the breadth of recorded history. We’re still delivering more, despite the handicap of a broken political system that’s the equivalent of a foot jammed on the brake.
We can–and must–do more to ensure that this holiday, the birthday of our great nation, is still celebrated for decades and centuries to come.
BillSaysThis 