Yostivanich

Pol­i­tics the lifeblood of any coun­try whether it be com­mu­nist, dic­ta­tor­ship, or even and per­haps most espe­cially a democ­racy. Pol­i­tics is a crazy sys­tem where vot­ers are told infor­ma­tion given no real basis behind the infor­ma­tion then excepted to draw con­clu­sions from the pre-packaged infor­ma­tion that doesn’t fit with the under­ly­ing facts of the argu­ment. In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I will openly tell you what my polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions are. I am gen­er­ally lib­eral in my out­look, how­ever I desire a Lib­er­tar­ian gov­ern­ment but I also feel that it is for now an unreach­able goal for a vast major­ity of soci­ety. There are times when I tend to agree with con­ser­v­a­tives on issues, so it’s rather dif­fi­cult for me to say that I am always in agree­ment with any one party even 75% of the time. How­ever over­all I most closely asso­ci­ated with the Lib­er­tar­ian and the Demo­c­ra­tic party.

Now, onto my post for this evening or rather after­noon now, the Demo­c­ra­tic party yes­ter­day sent out one of their mass e-mails detail­ing the “hor­ri­ble atroc­i­ties” that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has com­mit­ted in the year since Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina struck New Orleans. One of their state­ments is “So far, the admin­is­tra­tion has got­ten around to spend­ing barely half of what Con­gress autho­rized.” Now the prob­lem with this state­ment is not that it is true, in fact Amer­i­cans should be happy that this state­ment is true. Before the com­ments get started, let me cut you off at the pass. I am not say­ing that the admin­is­tra­tion did every­thing that it could and that it shouldn’t do more for the vic­tims of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina and Rita. Pres­i­dent Bush him­self has admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the fed­eral response to the dis­as­ter.¹ The real prob­lem is with what the Democ­rats do not say, Con­gress has appro­pri­ated $110 bil­lion dol­lars in both imme­di­ate aid that was used on trail­ers and food stamps and repay­ing states that housed refugees from the hur­ri­cane. A good deal of this money is also to be spent clean­ing up New Orleans and also mak­ing it safer from another hur­ri­cane. The issue here is that only in the next sev­eral weeks will the Corp of Engi­neers which is respon­si­ble for the dams and levies used to pro­tect New Orleans will present their report to Con­gress on what to do to fix the whole system.

Democ­rats imply through­out their mes­sage that if Democ­rats were in charge the money would have already have been spent. This is in fact a bad thing, money should not just be shoved out the door and hope it does some good. This has been proved more times that any one per­son can list, money alone doesn’t solve a prob­lem you first need a well defined prob­lem and a rea­son­able plan to fix the prob­lem. Yes, more money will help you solve a prob­lem as you will be able to present more and pos­si­bly bet­ter plans for an option. But first you have to know what to fix. Even if Democ­rats were in power the money would still be sit­ting in bills wait­ing a final deci­sion as to where it will finally be spent. This is the same as bid­ding on con­tracts you appro­pri­ate money for a prob­lem, com­pa­nies bid to solve the prob­lem and you choose the best and cheap­est plan.

Pol­i­tics more and more often does not appear to be to present unbi­ased infor­ma­tion to the masses and allow­ing them to make an hon­est deci­sion but rather to manip­u­late facts and infor­ma­tion. Now I know that this most likely will never change, but what would hap­pen if can­di­dates actu­ally had to debate the issues. Any­body who has every watched a pres­i­den­tial debate, knows that they are at best a joke. The facts are spun like crazy, nei­ther side makes any real argu­ment, most of the time con­clu­sions are draw based on sketchy or irrel­e­vant information.

I can not imag­ine any of our mod­ern politi­cians writ­ing Com­mon Sense sim­ply because the capac­ity for basic logic seems to be lost among can­di­dates these days. Instead argu­ments are wrapped around the idea of it being a “Chris­t­ian idea” or “Pro­tect­ing the rights that we have”, ideas used by the pro-life and pro-choice groups respec­tively. Their most basic argu­ments boil back to one of these very sim­plis­tic and basic ideas that doesn’t really address the issue.

Pol­i­tics has turned into mar­ket­ing cam­paigns rather than what pol­i­tics should be. An actual debate on the orga­ni­za­tion and pur­pose of gov­ern­ment and what it can accom­plish and should accom­plish in the life of every­day cit­i­zens of the gov­ern­ment. Where is the politi­cian that under­stands the con­cept of a social con­tract and uses it to pro­mote their point of view. Now for all those out there who say that the pub­lic can’t under­stand these con­cepts, and that this infor­ma­tion needs to be spoon fed to them. Please refer to my ear­lier posts in which I dis­cuss ways that com­plex infor­ma­tion can be pre­sented with­out the gen­eral masses une­d­u­cated in com­plex philo­soph­i­cal or even polit­i­cal the­ory can under­stand and accept these con­cepts. Pluto — What is it, and what about the other stuff in the solar sys­tem? And, How to be a bet­ter chess player and, Beef Jerky Reports

Ref­er­ences:

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5295218.stm

P.S. Sorry about this post being so late in the after­noon, my com­puter decided to quit work­ing last night, but it’s up and run­ning now.