Is Anyone Listening?

Josey1

Is Anyone Listening? Diane Alden March 19, 2002 From sea to shining sea the question is repeated over and over again: "Is anybody listening - does anyone hear me - does anyone care?" If you are a client of identity politics, there are all kinds of groups, government and non-government, that listen. All kinds of commissions and organizations that make use of government grants or their 501 (c) (3) status to cut out a niche for themselves and their interests, with government or corporate monies.No, campaign finance reform won't make a difference in that regard. Campaign finance reform is not called the 'incumbent protection act" for nothing. But who listens when jurists try to tell Congress that CFR will be thrown out by the Supreme Court. Congress is too busy paying off special interests to listen. They are not doing that so much through legislation but rather by paying out grants, affirmative action or quotas in order to keep these special interests off the government's back.What is fun to watch is government using these same special interests to accomplish through the courts what government actually wants done - which is to grow the scope, size and power of government.Who is listening to Joe Average or Susie in Des Moines? Certainly not Congress, which was set up to address the needs of a limited number of people in a different era. Now the average citizen can expect nothing from Congress in the way of a reply besides the perfunctory form letter or perhaps a pat on the head at some political rally. So who listens to America?The Senate? Forget it. They are too busy inventing problems, devising crisis situations and passing laws that will benefit their re-election chances, laws like campaign finance reform. They are too busy passing laws and regulations that will be carried to their most ludicrous extremes - like the Endangered Species Act or the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.Hardly anyone inside the Beltway listens to ordinary folks because they are too busy listening to each other, to the New York media, Harvard, Princeton or Yale, to multinationals, foundations and large financial institutions. All this means is that when it comes to what is on America's mind, Congress, the Beltway and the powers that be are way behind the curve.Occasionally the legislative branch might pay attention to a Rush Limbaugh or a George Will, but most of the time the concerns of one group of Americans are routinely ignoredWe call that group conservatives. They can be of the constitutional variety or social stripe. They might be single-issue conservatives on issues like abortion or taxes or the environment or limiting the size and scope of government.Routinely, conservatives hope for the best while they stand back in wonder as both parties water down conservative values, concerns or implementation of some of their hoped-for agenda.Conservatives wonder why both parties are so in love with power that they allow huge influxes of immigrants into this country - millions who do not share their goals and values or their concerns.Those conservatives live in the area made famous by the NewsMax T-shirt and map, the now-famous "red zone" of the last election. These are the people who voted for George W. Bush.While Bush and Republicans have a record-high approval rating, they aren't willing to make use of that approval to promote the conservative agenda or fight for conservative judges like Charles Pickering. They hesitate to speak about conservative concerns too loudly lest they be heard by someone at the Washington Post or ABC, NBC or CBS and condemned as mean-spirited or partisan.Rather they pander to every group EXCEPT their base, and this makes no sense in terms of national support for a Republican agenda. A recent Battleground poll showed that 60 percent of voters trust Bush more than Democrats in Congress to deal with taxes, while only 26 percent like the Democrats' views on taxes more than Bush's.The Battleground poll also found that Bush's advantage over Daschle and the Dems and his RINO allies on who is best suited to keep America prosperous was 49 percent to 29 percent favoring Republicans. The polls also indicates that Americans think Republicans are better on balancing the budget, 43 percent to 26 percent and on improving the nation's economy, 46 percent to 35 percent. While 67 percent said they liked Bush's handling of the economy, only 39 percent liked what the Democrats were doing. A lot of this is probably due to the way Bush is handling the war. The new new perception, even in urban areas, is that Republicans are not the bad guys portrayed by the Democratic left in Congress or their groupies in the mainstream media.But that does not change the fact that neither party is listening to conservatives, though occasionally the Republicans and a few Democrats will throw conservatives a meatless bone and call it a feast. Part of the problem is that Republicans make assumptions that the conservative vote will always be there for Republicans. You know what happens to people or parties who make assumptions.Conservatives are forced to watch as the leadership of both parties rush to see who can let in the next flood of immigrants, thus handing over the keys to the public treasury, more easily than the other. Immigrants pay taxes, but they also use an inordinate amount of social services and create a horrific impact on our infrastructure. Gains from taxes are outweighed by impact on services. Talk about urban sprawl - in some states there have been over 100 percent increases in immigration. The feds don't care since much of the impact creates problems for the states and cities. Meanwhile, both national parties think pandering will mean more votes for them. Shades of the Roman Empire. What is happening in our national legislature today regarding immigration is a reflection of what happened to the Roman Empire in its later days.Historically, increased immigration has meant votes for the Democrats. For Republicans, on the other hand, more votes from immigrants is a pipe dream which smacks of romantic attachment to the notion that "good is rewarded." Republicans really want to believe that if they try hard enough to give people what they want, the people will love them enough to vote for them.You and I both know that good is rewarded in the hereafter, but seldom at the ballot box. It is too bad Republicans have not accepted that fact yet. New arrivals to this country vote by a 90 percent to 10 percent margin for Democrats. Get over it, GOP!It is reality that Republicans can never promise more than the Democrats. If they did actually spend like Democrats, therefore giving the grasping class everything it wanted, that would gut principle and everything Republicans are supposed to stand for, not to mention burden the public treasury.Remember when Republicans stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Being Republican used to mean being a person with a desire for less government and less intrusive government, for separation of powers, U.S. sovereignty, states' rights, lower taxes, rights of the individual over the state, excellence in education, freedom of religion, the Second Amendment.The beliefs of conservative Republicans could be summed up in a few words. Those words were Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States.Sharp Stick in the Conservative EyeGeorge W. Bush and the leadership of the House just gave conservative America an obscene gesture. They did that in the dead of night, when they passed amnesty for illegal aliens. With a carelessness, arrogance and connivance that would do Richard Nixon proud, the Republicans just neutered the votes of the people who voted for them in flyover country.Yet the administration chokes on coffee when the Immigration and Naturalization Service is caught in a major bureaucratic screw-up. Screw-ups in bureaucracy are to be expected. But what we didn't want or expect is betrayal by our elected officials. Nothing of significance has changed regarding immigration since 9/11, and most likely nothing will. The Republican death wish won't allow it and Democratic blindness will obstruct any needed reform.Before the 2000 election, the INS found out that amnesties encourage illegal immigration.According to the INS, 275,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States every year (and the real number is likely very much higher). They don't undergo the same careful entrance exams that your grandma and grandpa from Poland or Ireland had to go through. There are no requisite health, criminal and national security screenings. No, but we have set up numerous ports of entry to spread the new immigrants out into flyover country, giving the states potential new mouths to feed and an unfunded mandate that may include expensive medical and education benefits. We understand that most of those new immigrants are going to vote for Democrats. Another indication of the Republican death wish and certainly another indication they don't give a flip about conservative goals and ideals.Oh well, business interests get cheap labor, America's manufacturing base erodes, low-tech jobs are filled by imported foreign labor from India or Pakistan, which means lower wages for Americans seeking technical jobs. I suspect there would be no dearth of native Americans to fill technical jobs, especially if they paid well. Even the jobs "no one else wants" might have takers if they paid a living wage. The trip up the ladder to the middle and upper classes is made that much more difficult for Joe Average and Susie from Des Moines, because Republicans and Democrats pander to business concerns about cheap labor.When the world made more sense, in the '30s through the '50s, America had something called the "guest worker" program and it worked very very well. But that changed when welfare and social services made it much more attractive to climb on board America's Good Ship Lollipop and run across the border for the duration. Because we keep offering services to newbies, we end up accommodating everyone, thus overwhelming our infrastructure, education and social services, highways and byways, because the guest workers don't go home.Better we should pander to business by reduced taxes and cutting regulations by half. Regulations that tell us what size chairs should be and what kind of screws we should use to bolt a bookcase together. Stupid regulations that do nothing to promote safety, air quality or much else. They do give unlimited opportunities for government paper shufflers, however, to be unaccountable and intimidating.We might accommodate immigrants and absorb them easier if our educational system wasn't in the toilet. Students are not getting the education our German, French and Italian ancestors received. There is no intrinsic "Americanization" of immigrants except as it relates to rock videos or fast foods.Statistics show education has failed and the populace, immigrant and native, are being dumbed down. The powers that be seem to like it that way. School to Work and Goals 2000, both federal programs, are being forced on the states and are creating more cogs for the big corporate machine. These "educational" proposals are certainly not about educating anyone in the classical liberal sense of an education. Training is more like it. Good for business but rotten for citizenship in a free republic.Meanwhile, rural cleansing of America continues apace as people are forced off ranches, farms and logging and mining operations and into crowded cities. The Leninists in Russia could not have done as good a job as our federal green agencies, the courts, a series of very bad laws, and elite green groups have done to run rurals off the land.A recent issue of the Moscow Times tells us: "Calling it a 'burning issue for the nation,' Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Thursday signed off on a government plan to legalize agricultural land sales for the first time since the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917."I find it truly ironic to see the former Soviet Union struggling with notions like ethics and transparency of its political and economic system. It is heartening to see the country making an attempt to privatize land and encourage small business performance.Just last week, Deputy Minister Andrey Tsyganov declared that medium and small businesses contribute to political stability in society, formation of an effective economy, creation of a middle class and a smoothing of problems of unemployment. Perhaps the U.S. Department of Commerce or the Bush administration could hire this Russian to give them advice.Meanwhile, we learn that the top tax rate for Russian taxpayers is 13 percent. What are Americans in the top bracket paying? It is now in the vicinity of 50 percent or more in total federal, state, local and Social Security taxes. Plus the uncounted fees and licenses and hidden taxes in the phone bill. But mega-billionaire Bill Gates wants all of us to pay more taxes because Americans get such a good deal on taxes. Says who, Bill? Apparently, a bunch of plutocrats and oligarchs with more money and influence than common sense. But who listens as the world, indeed, is turned upside down.This is happening while the United States continues down a road toward out-of-control, hidden and corrupted government that is disassociated from the very Americans who pay the freight. Add police state overtones and botched security arrangements and what we get are good law-abiding citizens suffering along with the guilty. Next time you go to an airport or carry large amounts of cash with you, tell me that government has not gone nuts with power. On one hand, they assume an 80-year-old with a steel hip could be packing heat or carrying a bomb, while men who look Middle Eastern are not profiled lest they have their feelings hurt.What is America becoming? Why are the powers that be creating an America that has no borders worth anything? Why do they punish conservatives and reward those who do nothing but complain? Why do these elites continue to erode the meaning and spirit of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? Why are wages kept low for America's own? Meanwhile, importing cheap labor for the sake of the plutocrats and big business and the emperors of Wall Street continues unabated. What have "free market" economics or capitalism to do with any of this? Why is it that in a better time better Democrats would have seen this NOT as "free markets" but collusion and corruption of the system. Never mind - Democrats do as well milking the system as Republicans.It is a sad fact that the emperors of paper wealth who built an Enron or a Global Crossing benefit greatly but don't care a lick about their underlings or employees. Of course neither do the elected officials in government who take money from an Enron or Global Crossing seem concerned. Meanwhile, none of them give a damn about the farmers in the Klamath, about the lost manufacturing jobs, about the destruction of private property rights, or the fact that many of the jobs multinational companies create are going to countries that use slave labor and pay phantom wages and are guilty of horrendous human rights abuses. The plutocrats say that will change once the abusers taste capitalism. Nazi Germany had corporations, and the collusion between corporations and the state was called fascism.Reform? When you find a reform that has worked for very long, let me know. Reform is not something Congress or business or the various administrations care to deal with.Government has become expert and practiced at ignoring what Americans really want, reform being one of them. It is too bad that our leaders always seem to think it is about money or power, monies that Congress and government are rotten at overseeing and allocating.What is the answer? Elect conservatives - real conservatives, not the faux kind who have "played the game" way too long. Don't elect the ones who are more familiar with how the game is played than why and for whom it is played.But I suspect my advice will go unheeded. No one is listening. Nothing changes until there is no other alternative. I suspect it will be so until somewhere in the future another generation rediscovers the ethical and moral wheel. There will come a time again when some human beings understand that freedom, individual responsibility and God-given human rights are the reasons government exists in the first place. http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2002/3/19/011105