Ned Pepper's Outrages

Friday, November 5, 2010

Why people don't vote

Ned reckons the reason the Republicans won so big on Tuesday was because so many erstwhile Obama supporters didn't bother to vote. And so he returned to the reddish Eastern Seaboard to an Undisclosed Location to interview a (non-statistical) cross-section of disaffected and disinterested "voters." What he found astonished and saddened him.
He heard "they are all the same", meaning politicians, and "they are just in it for the money", again meaning politicians. Ned discerned much animosity towards politicians making large salaries and awarding themselves pay raises while the bulk of working America is in fear of losing their job or their health insurance (if they have it) and hasn't had a raise in years.
Ned feels that the Democrats will have to show these voters that they are on their side and not just feathering their own nests or looking out for their rich friends. Moreover, Ned has found that there is great animosity towards the system of constantly raising money for getting re-elected. He even heard that politicians should be "volunteers" and maybe it wasn't so bad if only the rich went into public office, on the hypothesis that at least they couldn't be bought.
Unless this system changes, it will continue to play into the hands of the plutocracy, which is getting ever more obscenely rich while encouraging ever more disillusionment on the part of working middle-and working-class Americans.
Ned encourages the Democrats to propose pay freezes for all public employees until the country is once again at nearly "full" employment, for a start, and that includes geezers (like Ned) on pensions and social security. He also feels that persons who have money should start spending it, but not running up debt. He feels that there are trillions of dollars sitting in money market funds getting no interest, and some of that should be spent.
He will have more to say as his researches mature.

1 comment:

  1. We would postulate that many voters find themselves in a double bind given the candidates. It doesn't help when candidates are so financially flush that they can afford to spend millions upon millions of their own money into a campaign, even a losing campaign, more than most Americans, even most citizens of the entire world, will ever see in one working lifetime. Finally, it doesn't help when the "campaigning" comes down to either "I'm not as bad as that guy!" or "I'm better than that guy", where few candidates offer anything substantive, unless one counts "I'm different/I'm like you/Defending the American Dream" as substance.

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