Category: #Vote

What If Your Vote Mattered?

jamie

What if your vote mattered, and the money you paid in taxes was actually spent on things that mattered to YOU? Imagine if you got to vote on where that money got spent. What if you could check boxes on your tax return to determine what purposes your tax money could be spent on, and the government HAD to spend it on those things only? Yes, spend my taxes on education. No, don’t spend anything on military. Yes, feed the poor. No, tax breaks to ExxonMobil.

Well, it probably wouldn’t work because rich people would start paying just enough taxes to fuck over the rest of us…but the point is this: We don’t live in a democracy. It’s a plutocratic oligarchy. Your vote may count for WHO you elect, but what they do when they get there is decided by money. Legal bribery, really. They call it lobbying, but rich people pay cash to get the government to do what they want. The more money you have, the louder your voice and the more likely you are to get your way. 

Most of us have better things to spend our money on, because we know the puny amount we could spend wouldn’t buy us a second thought from our government. But wealthy people and corporations have deep pockets, and control the outcome of our votes. We don’t get to decide ‘pass gun control’ or ‘don’t pass gun control’. All we can do is vote red or blue and wait for nothing to happen.

Our voices have been silenced by big government and a rigged two party system that is designed to self perpetuate and grow, exploiting the masses more as it does. The rich get richer. Pandemic  Recession. War. None of it matters when you’re rich as fuck. Bank accounts keep growing. Lobbyists are hired. Votes are solicited. Laws are changed to spend more government money here or there. Never where it’s really needed by the majority of our citizens.

People who need help go without, while the rich get tax cuts. Billions go to subsidize fossil fuel corporate shareholders while our veterans are forgotten. Teachers use their own money to buy paper and pencils because schools are underfunded. Folks lose their houses because of medical bills, while Jeff Bezos blasts his ugly bald head and all his rich buddies into space. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. As long as money makes the decisions in DC, it doesn’t matter who you elect. Not in this system.

But a system that pretends to be democratic can’t last. Good intentions or not, this is not what the framers could have forseen. They were wise, not psychic. They built checks and balances, but there’s a way around everything if you’re willing to sacrifice your conscience, and well, most of the politicians we elect have none. 
So it keeps growing. Bigger. More corrupt. More money for the wealthy, less of everything for everyone else. Less happiness. Less free time to think about being unhappy. Less money. Less LIFE. Until it ultimately implodes, thanks to corruption and greed, or explodes in revolution, whichever comes first. 

There’s still time, for a ‘peaceful revolution’ at the ballot box, but since one party is going out of their way to erode our faith in elections, the other kind of revolution will quickly become the only game in town.

Your VOTE still matters. Choose wisely. Choose Independent. Choose Implosion. Demand better candidates. Demand term limits. Demand money OUT of politics Demand a VOICE in the future. Demand DEMOCRACY. Don’t buy the party lines. EITHER of them. They are both designed to polarize and divide. They are both designed to exploit. Designed to fail. 

United we Stand, Divided we Fail. ~jg

Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. | Jamie Gray jamiegraymusic.com

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Rationality

jamie

Rationality. If you look at American politics right now, you don’t see much of it. No, you mostly see two heavily armed camps, ready to flirt with disaster, risking all of our futures to achieve some set of higher principles that, if left to the other party, mean nothing short of destruction of everything we hold dear.

If you lean left, you’re being told that the evil Republicans are trying to stop the valiant Democrats from purging corporate control of our government and giving money, and the country, back to the people.

US Capitol – Washington DC

If you lean right, you’re worried the stupid Dems will spend us into doom, while taxing the rich until they can’t afford their summer homes and ski retreats.

If you’re on the far right, they’re trying to convince you that Socialism is the root of all evil, and that Satanic forces are killing babies in the womb, as they hand our God fearing Nation over to Hillary and Obama’s army of godless heathen Democrat pedophile pizza-politicians.

Now, I’m not saying I believe politicians from either party (especially the MAGA Republicans). Politicians are liars. It’s what they do. But some things they say make a grain of sense on their own, while others require a leap of faith to believe. I’m too old for leaps of faith. Especially when they require lapses of logic.

None of the MAGA Republicans claims hold up to rational thought. They are based in conspiracy theories, rumors, and full-on mistruths, lacking in facts or proof of any kind. There simply isn’t much in the way of a rational argument. For anything.

Share your fire. Feed the blaze.
#happiness #N0H8

When it’s all said and done, proof is best measured in actions and results. Rich people always do well. They do better when Republicans are in power. Since the 80s they’ve claimed the wealth will “trickle down”, while it gushed up to the millionaires…who became billionaires as millions died in the Pandemic. Meanwhile, America is deep in debt, and sitting on the edge of climate disaster and insurrection. Suffice to say, the trickle they’ve been promising for 40 years ain’t enough.

Poor people rarely win in America. Their voices, while numerous, are routinely ignored and rejected by all in power. At least when Democrats act, the average goes up. Poor gets less poor. Inequity decreases. Usually not by much, of course.

Jan 6 Insurrection| Capitol police defend The Capitol from Trump supporters in Washington DC – Jan 6 2021

We’re reaching a tipping point where debt threatens to collapse our economy as injustice and inequity are rising to unsustainable levels. The seeds of revolution are deeply sown, and change WILL come, one way or another.

Our choice is to usher it in gracefully, or let it take us by force, and at great cost. If the way we’ve handled climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic so far are any indication, we are in for a REALLY hard ride, folks. ~jg

Musician and Writer, Jamie Gray

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

The Filibuster Must Go

jamie

I can see why Democrats are nervous about killing the Filibuster. Why? Because it will be gone FOREVER. Permanently. No take backs. Both parties might have to actually have to start governing, instead of just blaming the other for everything. Don’t believe me? Hear me out.

The Filibuster. Time to go away for good.

I can see why Democrats are nervous about killing the Filibuster. Why? Because it will be gone FOREVER. Permanently. No take backs. Both parties might have to actually have to start governing, instead of just blaming the other for everything. Don’t believe me? Hear me out.

Let’s say the Republicans come back to hold a majority in the Senate. I prefer that this never happens, of course. At least not THIS Republican party. Anyway, let’s say they do take back the Senate.

The LAST thing they would do is reinstate the Filibuster. Because if they DID, they would suddenly need 60 votes to pass anything instead of just 50. Why would they want to give the Democrats 10 votes? They wouldn’t.

Democrats should repeal the Filibuster immediately, and start governing. Expect the Republicans to do the same when they get a majority. Everybody needs to put on their big boy pants and learn to compromise.

Both parties need to start serving the people who elected them, not just the corporations and rich bastards who exploit the rest of us for their own gain. We’re tired of dying so the rich can get richer and have more power to fuck us in the ass with.