How did we get here?

Written in June 2024 and updated today 10-31-24.

Well we’re 6 days out, or is it 5… but regardless, the noise won’t even end then.
We are in a real mess, I have struggled with how to use my as of yet, untested and now finally debuted soapbox. Talking politics (and starting off with a political post) was not my intention, at least not as Seniors Out Loud, however politics is such a part of our life these days, there’s hardly an escape possible… I suppose the following is simply my common sense alternative to term limits for Congress, plus just limiting each potential member from doing the dirty to us and our families for a legislated capped period of time…. What is that really solving? They will just run for another office and by using their connections made before they took office and during their term of office, they will continue to be accessible to the deep pocketed players who routinely purchase their influence.

A stronger solution must be found and I offer the following; and no, it won’t be easy but neither will pushing for term limits.
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How did we get here? We are at a major crossroad for our nation. Ads, news clips, sound bites, talking heads etc., are beating, repeating and regurgitating outlandish claims regularly, all to continue stacking the deck… I just searched for the source of the adage that if you repeat a lie often enough it will become perceived truth. All of the things I find attribute the statement to Joseph Goebbels.

I won’t ask if you’ve been and are still being pounded with requests and pleas for money? I’m sure you are. After all, it’s election time…

Elections have become ridiculously and obscenely expensive. Like so many “things” that are now unaffordable, things that carry a cost so great, so dear, so high that they cannot be paid without a payment plan, a mortgage, if you will. We have continued to mortgage our children and grandchildren’s future and the mortgage holders are putting their lives and future, and ours, in jeopardy by calling the mortgage due. The price is everything they say it is and more; and it will be as bad as we fear and even worse.

A major cause of the problem with what our society has evolved into is that “we” have allowed wealth to equal status and most importantly we have allowed wealth to be the microphone and loudspeaker for the voices of the corporations and their spokespeople, often the legislators that they have bankrolled into office and when they call for their favors to be returned, well, y’all remember the scene where Brando as the Don says, its an offer you can’t refuse, I think you get it.

So, what can be done? “We” have fiddle-farted with “fixing” the campaign finance regulations over the last maybe 50 years , but all we have accomplished is to change the way the dollars for the campaigns are raised and how private dollars are donated. I recall being taught about limitations on actions by candidates and their campaigns. We can add those limitations to the far too many laws and rules that have become far too flexible. Perhaps it’s time for elections to be publicly funded with strict limitations.
Seniors Out LoudTM