Mr. Schock -- a Theory of Wealth
The American public has learned lessons of how to pursue government and economy, it is a balanced approach. Our citizens often ignore local government which is readily accessible to anyone. (At our own expense I might add City of Bell, City of Dixon) The national debate holds the glamour, the heat, and the manipulation. Our national government is not reflective of the will or desires of our citizens. A separation exists between the wisdom of the whole and the reality of DC.
Americans want the opportunity to earn their way. They want an opportunity to innovate, take personal responsibility, with an expectation of equal treatment by government. In our current system the game is rigged. The will of the majority is overturned by the power of wealth. A handful of the uber-wealthy are allowed undue influence. Majority support for policies in the legislative process is easily ignored, as power plays the game of manipulation. American Pragmatism is not in control of the government, the popular voice is kept outside the gates of the power club.
Corporations are patriots: just ignore the accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland
Politics and the economy have become more entwined in the globalization of our age. We are yet to come to terms with a global economy, we find it hard to identify an American corporation. When the majority of a corporation's business is outside the boundaries of the United States is it an American corporation? Even the largest corporations want to be American corporations when they want our military power to come to their rescue. They return to claiming foreign operations when it is time to share in the cost of the government.
American Pragmatism has yet to manifest itself as either an implemented economic theory or a political system of governance. It is a concept imperilled by the current political landscape. The individual is the focus of American Pragmaticism, but the rights of the individual are under assault in the current political system. It isn't that the individual is made inferior by the precedent that corporations stand as an individual in our courts. It is that our courts as evidenced by recent Supreme Court decisions have placed the rights of corporations in a superior position to the standing of the individual. The state has often been recognized as being sometimes superior to the inalienable rights of an individual, but recent decisions are allowing the corporation to assume priority over the individual.
Money rules the day, history shows every day has a sunset
Joseph Stiglitz on NPR's
Fesh Air The Price of Inequality
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Power: the political system can return power to the individual because it has never left. “Power resides only where men believe it resides." George RR Martin A Clash of Kings No individual could form colonies into the United States of America, no individual saved the the Union from the crisis of secession, and no individual in an unprepared nation won a war against two great military powers, still even though an individual seems powerless the power always resides in the individual. It was easy to see as the Soviet Bloc crumbled, the totalitarian state held complete control for half a century until the individual collectively no longer believed that power resided in the state.
People's feet and a belief that the state no longer would stop them opened the wall.
Our age has made available powerful tools, if we use them the individual can become the focus of the state. The age of American Pragmatism will be established as the next stage of evolution in the search to govern ourselves. Connecting and informing ourselves in dialog with our government that is the future of the United States. If everyone knew how bogus the proposed budget votes were in Congress, Congress would stop the sham theater. The system now is that most people pay little attention, what they do hear is emotive half-truth promoted by negative ads. So the calculation is to do farcical stunts, then gimmick up an emotional attack. Spread the sludge by dumping tanker loads of money into it.
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