TOMBSTONE BLUES

TOMBSTONE BLUES: We're screwed. And we're only going to get screweder.

With Gary Hooser's decision earlier this year to abandon a run for congress in the 2nd Hawai`i District it looks like we are going to get stuck the most revoltin' of developments- Mufi Hannemann living the Life of Riley, having a virtual "lock" on next November's election.

We didn't need to be reminded that with today's news that the Hawaii Teamsters & Allied Workers Union Local 996 has endorsed him, the carpetbagging creep moves one step closer to election. He's already the poster boy for all that's wrong with so-called American democracy's campaign finance system- one that produces winners by virtue of an overflowing war chest that scares off the good guys like Hooser from even entering the race.

Oh sure, there are some good candidates challenging the Moofster in the Democratic Primary- we'd vote for patients' rights advocate Rafael del Castillo in a hot second. Or maybe even Hilo attorney Bob Marx... although by virtue of the singular fact that Marx is not Hannemann.

But the only candidate with two shots of beating Mufi- slim and none to be specific- is Honolulu City Councilwoman Tulsi Gabbard, a bigoted piece of crap like her father who plays down her homophobia and plays up her supposed environmental credentials so as to woo unsuspecting progressives.

The fact is that Hooser came within whisker of deciding to take on Hannemann but, at the last moment, decided there was no way he could raise the kind of money it would take to beat him is a case study in all that's wrong with American elections in the 21st century.

Yeah, it will be soooo self-satisfying to vote for Castillo... just like voting for presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein who is seeking the Green Party nod. In both cases, come next November, we'll be able proudly have the distinctly unsatisfying privilege of saying "well don't blame me- I didn't for for him/her."

This is where we usually offer some kind of pie-in-the-sky solution- like supporting the "Move to Amend (MTA)" group that seeks to reverse the perverse Citizens United, US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling which invented "corporate personhood (CP)" by making money a form of speech. The problem is that not only are few aware of MTA- although they will be becoming more and more aware of it this summer as hundreds of millions of anonymous, "independent (yeah, right) expenditure" dollars flow into the presidential race- but ending CP still wouldn't take money completely out of elections. Full public financing of all elections would but, although some say it is possible under existing SCOTUS rulings (Buckley v Valeo), it might take a constitutional amendment to do it like any CP countering measure would.

But people- even progressives- seem to be more interested in half-assed movements that blame the individual senators and congresspersons rather than the corporate monolith that perverts the system that elects them. We especially like the one to cut congressional pay and benefits as if making sure that millionaires and billionaires were the only ones who could afford to be in congress would somehow reverse the trend toward making "independently wealthy" a requirement to serve in office.

Yesterday we came across a blog post by Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley entitled "The Defining Issue: Not Government’s Size, but Who It’s For."

In it he details "how the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn’t about government’s size. The cynicism comes from a growing perception that government isn’t working for average people. It’s for big business, Wall Street, and the very rich instead."

Yet even the most progressive of progressives seems to get their jollies by climbing on the tea-bagger "government: bad" bandwagon. Though, like voting for Castillo or Stein, it can be really satisfying- and for pundits all too easy- to ridicule the very nature of government based on what passes for democracy in America today, unless and until all of us focus on the obscenity of the legalize bribery that passes for a democratic electoral system, we'll be stuck with the stream of gags that substitute for a functional system of representative republican democracy.

Place the final joke here yourself... we're not in the mood today.

GET REAL

GET REAL: Email was bad enough. But now that we broke down and signed up for Facebook, we're inundated with well-meaning people forwarding idiotically simplistic solutions to complex problems which they and whomever started the chain took about three milliseconds to think through.

The latest started as a bogus email chain letter that continues to circulate regarding what was called the "Congressional Reform Act (CRA) of 2011" proposing a constitutional amendment that would cull congressional salaries and eliminate pensions and benefits, essentially making recompense almost non-existent.

Bogus or not it became exceptionally popular with those who forwarded it.

So what's wrong with the content? Well let's start with a maxim that we're sure those who distributed the above will agree with- you get what you pay for.

But moreover take a gander at a recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonpartisan organization that keeps track of money in politics.

NPR reports that according Michael Beckel, a spokesperson for the CRP "244 current members of Congress are millionaires — that's about 46 percent and that includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats."

Now these guys and gals didn't exactly get rich by stashing away their salaries or even through corruption. They started out rich when they ran for office.

So why did we elect them and not, as the CRA folks called them, "citizen legislators (who) should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work (as) the Founding Fathers envisioned?"

Maybe it's because those citizen legislators can't just stop working and gallivant off to the state or national capitol and expect to not just continue to support their families but to have their jobs to be waiting for them when they get back.

Would your boss do that? Didn't think so.

And these CRA people want to make it worse.

We have two close friends who went into politics- just plain working folks who made for extraordinary office holders. But both are out of politics now, not because they were voted out of office but because essentially they were faced with giving up a job they had either trained their whole lives for and dearly loved doing- or at least one that gave them a steady income- for a "job" they had to re-secure every couple-o'-four years.

And in order to do that they had to raise bucketsful of cash and subject themselves to insults that people ordinarily wouldn't address to their worst enemy.

The people who took their places? In one case he's a longtime hack politician just coming off a get-rich stint out of office and working for a local developer. The other is a glad-handing TV personality whose main job in office is apparently to promote his show and every hotel on the island.

Yet when we suggest making service with both our local county council and state legislature full-time jobs with decent pay that's commensurate with the duties, instead we get crap like this CRA petition which is actually a measure to assure that the other 291 members of congress become part of the same rich "1%" against whom we're out in the streets protesting.

At the same time we'd bet dollars to donuts that "99%" of those who liked the CRA have never heard of another proposed constitutional amendment from the "Move to Amend" organization that would put the kibosh on "corporate personhood," as declared by the Supreme Court, which turned on full blast the already gushing corporate campaign money spigot. At the same time many have opposed programs for partial public financing of elections or even legislation- or if needed a constitutional amendment- ending all campaign contributions in favor of full public financing.

It's the penny wise and pound foolish of the world who scream about "paying for politicians to run for office"- as if they're not paying 100 times more on the back end as corporations buy and sell the pols and write the legislation- and would pay office holders poverty wages, who are the self-same ones that are perpetuating the corrupt system that has people's opinions of elected officials at all-time lows.

So do us all a favor- think it through before you hit that send or post button. We’ve got really important issues to attend to... like the Giants-49ers game this Sunday. Go G-men.