THE APPEAL TO CITIZENS

The Bitterness of Abandonment

Flows Most Forcefully

In Memories

The Hope Endures

During the Longing Journey

Leaving No Time

But For The Present

Lost For Good

The Inner Compass Fatefully Broken

The Bond Never to Be Sealed

Cast Out

Amongst the Unforgiven Seas

Only Love

Sweet Love

Can Steereth You

Home

The President and the Democrats need to hold the Republicans and Speaker Boehner's feet to the fire.

2014 was a full year of obstructionism, rejection, and government shutdowns with Republicans fully in support of the profits over people Free Market Frankenstein Monster economy and in fact doubling down on it.

The statistics and studies all show that the vast economic inequality and disparity is real and growing and is harmful not only to our economy but to our democracy.

The very first thing on the 2015 Agenda should be fixing the gaping tax loopholes that see corporations and the elites gaming the system. We need to get organized bribery out of Congressional halls. Investing in education should trump investing in non-stop wars. Social safety nets should be improved in an era of massive income inequality, not gutted. We can then move on to extending the Veterans Education and Employment Assistance Programs. Prioritizing a comprehensive Jobs Plan to include the building up of decaying infrastructure. Students need help from the onerous student loan industry that has too many of our young citizens saddled with enormous debt and no jobs. The Immigration Status Quo needs to be changed constructively to create a level playing field. Streamlining the immigration process so employers cannot keep gaming the system by hiring illegal immigrants.

These much needed policy pivots we offer as a good starting point to begin the process of reversing the rampant inequality and bring back a measure of fairness to ordinary struggling Americans.

The Corporate takeover of public schools, as Diane Ravitch speaks of so eloquently in her new book The Reign Of Error (please read it if you are concerned with the future of our public schools), with its overt demonization of teachers and its blind reliance on testing needs to be scrapped. No Child Left Behind should be renamed Corporate Coup of Public Education.  A wholesale commitment of investing public money in our public schools and teachers needs to be initiated. Why not ask our own teachers what is needed to improve the educational system? Why is school not seen as a profitable choice for so many of our childeren?

The Reign Of Error by Diane Ravitch (The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools) - is an absolute must read for all parents with children in our Public Schools.

The Corporate influence that permeates our political process; with it's pervasive advertising and consumer culture coupled with the exalted celebrity, sports and entertainment business, needs to be confronted by a determined populist movement that returns to the democratic values of citizenship that our country was founded on. 

A movement that rejects the mental prisons of consumerism and has the constitution to maintain a dogged economic, social and political persistence pushing for better outcomes for the least of thee and the working bees.

The outsized influence that corporate lobbyists hold on our politicians and the role that money plays to the benefits of Big Rich and Big Business needs to be wholly restructured to put back in place the fundamental role of fairness in the electoral process.

Where votes are not a commodity to buy on the "electoral exchange," but their  casting being based on the will and well-being of "the people". Their families and communities.

We need to invest in the American people, not the military industrial complex and the Pentagon, which sees far too great a share of taxpayer dollars enter into its coffers annually and sees far too many returns of American coffins and American killing internationally.

We must stop the knee-jerk reaction to supporting wars and promote peace. Realizing that only corporations and arms dealers win in the bloody racket. A Nuclear pact with Iran strikes the right ground in what should be our march to international diplomacy.

"American exceptionalism,"  a misleading call to patriotism, with its implications of divine right to invade other countries the whir of drones buzzing overhead in the name of "democracy building" is a brand that should be discontinued. The commercial military-financial-industrial complex benefits are far exceeded by the human and psychologicsl costs.

Make no mistake the Free Market Frankenstein Monster needs to be slowly dismantled, piece by piece, until its vestiges are finally eviscerated. It's greedy Randian mantra of profits over people eliminated.

It can be done with an informed citizenry willing to take the fight consistently to our political and business leaders. Now joined at the hip as the political state has become corporate.

Together, in solidarity, we can build on the momentum we have achieved by way of our determination in standing together and agitating for change.

Some folks will tell you that it makes no difference to complain.

Nothing will change.

Yet they need only look backwards. To the past.  At our American history.

Throughout history all of the great achievments have been enacted because of social movements.

The slave would never have been freed if countless "others", such as Frederick Douglass and John Brown, did not agitate for his freedom. 

The woman would never have been granted the right to vote if some like Susan B. Anthony and Mother Jones and countless "others" did not inform that this was not a preposterous idea.

Workers would have never gained basic rights such as obliterating child labor, the 8 hour workday, overtime, unemployment compensation, and many, many others if not for the bloody labor struggles. Spurred on by courageious men such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Eugene Debs and countless "others."

The Civil Rights amendment would have never happened if not for its brave leaders and citizens. Many who were beaten, shot and killed. Led by Dr. King, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and countless "others."

The Civil Rights Marches and the great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordianting Committee, and many concerned citizens seeking out justice by marching on the streets during the turbulent times of the 60s provides us our most recent showcase of the powers of organizing and agitating for the public good.

We will revisit all of these and many more brave citizens who in the face of great danger and personal sacrifice put their stamp on the struggles for democracy, equality and fairness in the American diaspora this year on our "viewspaper" The Appeal.

To employ critical thinking, the act of questioning authority in the Socratic method, is not to complain nor to be negative, rather it is the very essence of what a true democracy is about.

For without concerned citizens keeping an eye on the checks and balances of democracy's scales and 

speaking up when it is tipped too far in one direction; as it is now tipped to Big Business and Big Rich, 

we can find ourselves easily manipulated into an entertainment culture filled with the lurid and the spectacle. The commercial and the consumer. 

A military-industrial complex that only speaks the language of war. 

An assault on the natural world that has precipitated a dangerous advancing climate change that portends dire consequences.  

A political process hijacked by corporate and business interests; through the buying up of politicians, judges, and regulators, and maintained by corporate lobbyists which ensure that even the most basic citizens needs are not being met. 

As the social contract withers under a constant assault by Free Market Frankenstein Monster economic social scientists. 

Student loans and education swept up in the privateers pockets; creating enormous student debt, and the focus to be on the dollars coming in to private schools, and not the instruction going out to our students. 

A nationwide financialization that has seen Wall Street speculation and the rise of casino like predatory financial instruments; backed by deregulation and Too Big Too Fail declarations that reward hedge fund, bankster, and corporate criminal malfeasance, with bailouts, and leaves mainstream workers with pails out. Looking for help and being told we have no more money for handouts. 

To  finally a culture that is consumed with the individual that abandons and heaps scorn on those who are economically disadvantaged or poor and speaks in platitudes of "takers" and "givers." Instead of havng empathy for those suffering and the sinners.

All coming in the backdrop of the American Public Political Theatre, better known as Congress, parading its advancement to perennial obstructionism and negligence proudly like peacocks at an exclusive mating club. 

Idly standing by while it's resounding rejections of any Jobs plans: it's cutting of the SNAP Program: it's neglecting to advance Veterans Assistance Programs: it's attempts to stymie all health care initiatives: it's rejection of student loan assistance: it's willful ignorance to affordable housing shortages: it's overseeing of the crumbling infrastructure: it's tacit approval of the Race to the Bottom Wages and Benefits trajectory we are on which mimics in its treachery the Corporations deserting of the American worker: and their wholesale repudiation of their responsibility to American workers well-being: the failure to act on the extension of Unemployment Benefits: its jingoistic appeals to never-ending wars and many, many other denunciations and refusals to respond to programs designed to help poor and struggling Americans.

The abandonment of a concerned citizenry has cost us mightily and that is why we must continue fighting to make The Appeal. 

We must climb this mountain together, in solidarity. 

Knowing that if we keep pushing on agitating with peristence and dogged determination, the ascension will certainly happen. 

Together we can look down from the top of the mountain with our heads held high in moral certainty and realize that we have forged a better path for our children and for all of humanity.

Help us. Make. 

The Appeal.