Amendment Needed

POLITICS is the term we apply to our system of selecting our governmental representatives and to their actions once in office. We also use it to refer to the maneuvering for power and control in non-governmental organizations and institutions. Except in cases where a decision is unanimous, it always involves a power struggle.
The subject of politics comes up in our day to day conversation with family, friends and acquaintances because everybody has their own pre-conditioned viewpoint about social, legal and governmental issues.
Politics has been called “the art of compromise”, which, at its best, it is. At its worst, it involves injustice,
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God Bless America?

Jan. 30, 2011

President Obama closed his speach last week with the words, “May God bless America”. I wish he had not done that. Here are my concerns.

1. I think that when politicians use the expression “God bless America” or “so help me God”, they do so mostly because they believe it to be (to use an over-used cliche) “politically correct”, i.e. they think that it will get more votes than it loses.

2. The expression sounds exclusive, audacious and arrogant.
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The Separation of Church and State

Thoughts On The Separation Of Church And State

Consider this:

1) Has there ever been any religious person who, if he could have it his way, would not have liked to see governments run by people whose theology was the same as his own?

2) Since the existence of a deity can not be proved, i.e. substantiated by scientific evidence, can there ever be any consensus as to what is theological truth?

3) If there can be no consensus, doesn’t it make sense to have a secular government in order to insure that no one theocracy dominates the rest?
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More On Term Limits

More On Term Limits

Term Limits alone may not eliminate all the conflicts of interest, but they are a necessary first step.

A most obvious example of the corruption caused by a conflict of interest is deficit spending. Our legislators seem so addicted to power that they can not bring themselves to explain to the people the calamity that lies ahead if we continue to spend more than we take in (see Germany in the 1920s and Brazil and Argentina more recently). Talk about a PONZI scheme! And the people don't want to hear it because they are living their lives in just such a scheme--borrowing and spending until the lenders stop lending. Then comes the collapse with tragic losses. While the Ponzi scheme is working, everything seems rosy. Nobody wants to hear about the bad news ahead. They may not "kill the messenger", as people used to do, but they just don't re-elect him/her---which is worse than death for the power-addicted careerist.]
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Campaign financing

Re: Campaign financing March 21, 2008
Much has been said about the need for reform in how political campaigns are financed. The legislation which requires a candidate to choose between using public funding and private funding was an attempt to deal with the problem, but, in my opinion, has accomplished nothing useful. Most political candidates can raise lots more money from contributions from the big money interests than would be allocated to them if they accept public (taxpayer) funding under the present system. Thus, the advantage goes to the monied interests, i.e. wealthy candidates and big corporations. The less wealthy, particularly challengers, have less money for campaigning than do the more wealthy and the incumbents. Few careerist politicians want to change this system, because they like the advantage it gives them.
What if the rules were changed to allow only public money to be used for campaigning---no personal or
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