Dear Mr. President

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Regarding the talk you gave on your New Global Warming policies:

I read the talk and was most encouraged about a number of its aspects. I thought it was a rational approach to the realities of the issues. It lays out an adult path, one that recognizes the value of a time graduated well thought out path of reconstruction and solid movement into the future as opposed to the typical adolescent demands of some of our brothers on the "left" for overnight changes to issues decades, if not centuries, in the making, and our brothers on the right who see any change as the end of the world.

It was reasonable. It made "common" sense. It was not obscured with a bunch of technical data.

I thought, well, anyone who can read will be able to see what is being said here. Then over the next couple of days I read the commentaries of individuals who have their commentaries published in various media outlets. For the most part I could not believe that they had read and were writing about the same speech I read.

One can dismiss a lot of the obvious sophistry the intent of which is destroy   reasonableness while generating fear and chaos. But whether supporting or attacking the ideas you presented most of the observations seemed to simply not get it.

Paul Krugman was the only one I read that even came close to getting it  when he observed that your comment to “Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” ....was simple good sense: We really can invest in new energy sources, divest from old sources, and actually make the economy stronger. So let’s do it."

However, even this remark fails to see the key concept that you presented while addressing the Keystone pipeline in what was an aside. "But I do want to be clear: Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interest. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward. It’s relevant."

Fully realizing that "climate" is a global thing, a condition of nature that knows nothing about our separative national boundaries or nations, this comment outlines and raises to a very significant position that "our national interest" is not a separate exclusive thing but that it involves a global consideration and that the passing or not of this project would be judged on that indisputable fact.  I thought that since you had so obviously bookmarked this concept, it would be easily seen. But apparently not.

This is the clearest statement I have seen that you have made regarding service to the Common Good and General Welfare as being the principles and key determiners for the creation and passage not just for a pipe line but for any legislation. It may be that this position is so unheard of in our present world governments that it was simply not seen.

I am hoping to see many more such statements coming from your administration. This would indeed be change we could not just believe in but celebrate and work for.

lots of love

-tom

The Ancient and Well Honed Art of Betrayal

The young man's name is Edward Snowden. Mr. Snowden caused classified documents about the United States of America's government surveillance program to be  brought into the light of the Common Good. Mr. Snowden has been labeled as a traitor by John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney and a large number of not so well known individuals who have access to our public media. Basically, a traitor is a person who violates his or her allegiance to and betrays their country or who, in a breach of trust, delivers his or her country to an enemy.

The issues that are being conveniently over looked by the above mentioned individuals in this bit of sophistic labeling are what allegiances to, betrayal of one's country, and delivering one's country to the enemies actually mean. The program that Mr. Snowden revealed is illegal. It is a huge violation of several of the Principles of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Mr. Snowden's loyalty and allegiance to his country impelled him to serve it, to protect it from its enemies.

He discovered that a group of individuals acting completely outside of the bounds of our Constitution had decided that their views on our national and international security outweighed any restrictions that our Constitution placed on what they saw as necessary to protect us. Acting completely outside of well known Constitutional guarantees against exactly what they did, they unlawfully created a gigantic system that used billions of tax payers' dollars to literally spy on us. In the name of protecting us from the kinds of subterfuge, criminality, terror, and lies that those who would undo democracy and liberty for everyone in the world have always employed, they knowingly violated one of our most sacred liberties.

A quick look at Humanity's history over the past few thousand years will reveal that this kind of sophistry has always been employed by those who would enslave us. The people who employ this kind of sophistry, if they consider it at all, may actually believe that they know what is best for us. They cannot trust the people to understand and take appropriate action. They believe that their superior vision of what is best for us justifies their violation of a sacred trust. They remain ignorant of the fact that the rejection of this attitude by the people was one of the primary drivers of the creation of this country and a huge step in the freeing of humanity from the grip of the elite few.

It is exactly this kind of blinding arrogance that drives traitors.  It is simple hubris that impels individuals to place themselves above others and in so doing to separate themselves from others, and to consider themselves to be above the Law. They do not see that their actions betray their allegiance to the basic tenants of our constitution which they claim to be protecting.

So, if we want to go on a traitor hunt, it would more be more effective to look for the nest that is spawning these insidious programs, than to try to crucify yet another person who had the courage to see a wrong and try to make it right.

Incidentally, by far, ancient nations and powers, just like human beings, crumble, not from some outside  power or force, but from an inner kind of insidious corruption.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Dear Mr. President.

As I was about to post this to you, I received your response to an earlier letter. Your response outlines all of the legislative actions that your administration is doing and has done. These are all great and good actions. They all deal with serious effects, and are quite necessary in the short term. What I am addressing in the following letter is a different kind of issue. I think we need to recognize and start to deal with the causes of these drastic effects. Until we do, we will be engaged in trying to patch up a ship that is surely sinking around us.

This morning I received a note from Campaign for America's Future which informed me that the Congress has cut funding for Meals on Wheels, another leak in that boat. This program is a wonderful example of how to use our money, that is the tax payer's money, to support the Common Good and the General Welfare. I am pretty sure that both you and the First Lady are well aware of this program, as am I. My experience came from the fact that it kept my mother fed for a couple of years.

Besides feeding our hungry elders with food that is actually good for them, there are a few other values of this program that are not apparent. It uses our money to employ people in a program that actually serves the Common Good and the General Welfare. It gives some elders, for example, those employed as drivers or delivery people in the program who are quite able bodied, something to do that serves the country.

Having met several of these folks, I was impressed by their sense of commitment, and their own personal appreciation to be able to do something that was worthwhile for others. The other thing that Meals on Wheels delivers that is of great value and costs nothing is the human interface. The persons who delivered the food to my mother were always able, happy even, to spend 5 minutes or so chatting with her.  I am pretty sure that most of our elders who are in these situations suffer far more from a lack of human inter change than they do from hunger.

But my reason for writing to you this morning is a bit larger than this one, wonderful human sustainable program. The elimination of this simple, effective and economically smart (Keeping people fed, usually keeps them out of emergency rooms and so forth.) program is a glaring example of how our money, that is taxpayers money, is disbursed in a way that actually guarantees the failure of our country as a self sustaining democracy where government of the people for the people and by the people, that is for the Common Good and the General welfare, is known to be the only way that such a country can exist.

It would easy to list the programs which support the Common Good and our future as a nation of enlightened people and those that support the hysterical paranoia which infects the minds of those small groups of individuals who control the wealth of the planet and who are terrified that some other group of billionaires is going to try to take it away from them. This dichotomy is so stark, so apparent... Billions for the paranoid delusions of a few. Billions so that more billions can be amassed and put in "off shore" accounts. How many personal homes, planes, ships, islands are enough?

And of course, we can afford nothing for even minimal food for our elders. We can be sure that the elders of the few are very well fed.

In reality, while awful, the damage to the fabric of our society, of our people, that the defunding of Meals on Wheels will cause is small in comparison to others. Realize the  harm, the long term devastation, wreaked on the systems by transferring hundreds of billions from programs that actually guarantee our future as a nation such as the education of all of our children. These funds, our funds, are being sent to other programs whose primary purpose, while cloaked in all kinds of fear generated and hate oriented sheep's clothing, is to, simply and plainly, transfer our common energy, our tax dollars into those off shore accounts.

So, I cannot imagine that you are not well aware of all of this, and I realize that you are the President rather than the king, and that you are well acquainted with the razor's edge. I have been pondering on what we, us and you, can do to right this glaring wrong which, we both know, is a not just a local U.S. issue but a planet wide problem for Humanity. What I get in my pondering as to the way forward is Light.

The exposure in clear simple facts, which are abundant, from you and your administration revealing the long hidden selfish agendas of the power elite will enlighten, and help to wake up those who are still sleeping in the canyons of comfort. When the facts or truth of the situation is put out there the people will get it. Light brings revelation and generates real change. It is magnetic, and it will draw out the kind of support and power from  the hundreds of millions of us who are aware of this situation. It will help people to speak up where ever they are and to act on whatever level they can.  After all, the Big Document says "We the People", not you the president.

One concrete thing that only both of you (I mean the First Lady) could do,  and that you are both masters at doing, is to come to us much more often and everywhere through our communications systems, just you two, not all of these people who nobody knows, but you who we do know, who we voted for, twice,  talking plain and clean about who we are, encourage us to stand up and demand what we want which is simply justice and freedom for ALL.

lots of love

-tom

Dear Mr. President

Sunday, June 02, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I won't be able to attend your next press conference; however, I do have a rather serious question for you.

As you know, on May 21st, the Senate voted to block an  amendment to reinstate $4.1 billion for food stamps. I found this bit of data to be amazing. When I then saw  that 28 Democratic United States Senators, including individuals like Senators Feinstein, Franken, Hagan, Harkin, Klobuchar, McCaskill, and others, voted with the Republicans, I was stunned!

The question is simple. If feeding children, who are far and away the primary beneficiaries of the Food Stamp Program, is not a democratic boiler plate issue, what is? And if it is, why do you suppose these democrats voted against this amendment? What makes these individuals Democrats?

Votes like these are nothing but politics as usual. There can be no special interests when it comes to Democracy. The issues are morally clear as glass. The Common good and the General Welfare are the bed rock of government of for and by the people. No program that benefits one section of the people at the cost of another is sustainable. If a program does not serve the Common Good, it simply is not good for anyone. Good can come only from good. What's so hard about that?

I really think it is time to clean up the party, to expect democrats to be democrats. I am quite familiar with all the "complexity" of what one has to do to stay in office. The lessons of our long history are very clear on this issue. It is clear that when staying in office or, as President's Lincoln and Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin L. King, and countless other heroes down the annals of time remind us, even staying alive is more important than supporting the Common Good and the General Welfare, Humanity is going to lose, and lose again.

I do not see you as individually or personally responsible for this situation, and I do see you as making incredible efforts to improve the system. I think that there are enough conscious people in our country now that changing the conversation from the details of various programs to a discussion of the principles of democratic government would be a very powerful thing to do, and would help a lot to generate the kind of support you need. It would shift the focus of the discussion from effects to causes. It would put light on the motivation behind the programs of division and greed that are so destructive. And, as you know, light and revelation are cause and effect.

Now that we have world around, practically instant, communication with each other, sophistry is not as effective as it was. In fact sophistry, or spinning as we  say, is becoming painfully obvious. There is nothing that makes it so obvious as a clear plain message about the meaning and significance of the basic values upon which our government stands. The new generations get this. They are ready for it.

I'm just saying.

lots of love

-tom