Political Ideas

By Sam Kearney, Jr.

After decades of studying politics, I decided to write political commentary and submit my ideas to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post.

They, of course, ignored me.

This book is a collection of those ideas. I wanted to share my thoughts with my fellow citizens.

America faces many challenges and problems that our leaders are failing to grasp, solve, or manage. Nations rise and fall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sam Kearney, Jr.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201038021

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my parents, Pat and Sam, for raising kids instilled with the core values of reason, character and service.

I want to thank my boss and principal, Vana Baker, who hired me to teach Social Studies when I had been longing for a career like this for decades.

I want to thank my colleague, Durvis Hulen, who read many of my monologue diatribes and suggested helpful comments.

I want to thank the American middle class for being good people, but I wish you would dedicate more study and interest to politics. Our leaders control our lives. I wish we could elect leaders to be as good as we are. Unfortunately, it won’t happen.

Introduction

Political Ideas – Cathartic Ruminations

I am a political scientist. My bachelor’s degree is in political science. I have a teaching certificate in secondary education and taught Social Studies. My master’s degree is in East Asian studies. In my youth, I worked in several political campaigns and also as a Congressional intern in Washington DC. Almost every morning I look at web sites for local, national and international news. Almost every evening I look at local, national and international news on TV.  I go to the public library and borrow books on politics, history, foreign affairs, economics and the military. I have traveled in Europe, Latin America and lived in East Asia. I have studied power, wealth and conflict resolution for many decades. I have dedicated my intellectual life to the study of the individual in society.

The pages you are about to read were composed in a cathartic fury for years. I felt compelled to release these ideas, expel them from my consciousness, and put them on paper. They had to be purged from my mind. Sometimes an informed person with social awareness can no longer endure silently, can only take so much, reaches their limit, and has to say, Enough. I decided to share these ideas with my fellow citizens. Most of them were mailed to the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. I was hoping for acknowledgement, recognition and praise for my astute, precise, analytical, original, incisive, rational, and enlightened mind. I wanted to share my ideas with my fellow citizens. These wealthy and powerful media giants, of course, never responded and ignored me. They are, of course, much wiser than I. Their rejection mattered not, I released, I tried, and I felt better.

I covered many topics and basically said what I had to say. I stopped writing for several years, but then had to write more. Often awake at 3:00 AM ruminating on all these important issues can be troubling. My intense, pent-up, outrage, frustration, disgust, humorous contempt, and the outright folly of it all dissolved into blissful contentment. I tried to enlighten my fellow citizens, I failed, but I tried.

I then decided to try self-publishing to share my ideas.

My conscience is clear, I have spoken.

Several years ago, at the 80th birthday party of one of my father’s friends (I was in my 50s), I was sitting with two men in their 80s and we were talking on a wide range of politics.  After a while, one of the men asked me, Are you a conservative or a liberal?

I responded, Sometimes I’m on the left and sometimes I’m on the right, but I’m always correct. They chuckled.

I looked them in the eyes and confidently smirked.

The Washington D.C./Wall St. Axis of Evil

March 2012

Thomas Jefferson praised the noble farmer/citizen for his attributes of thrift, honesty, hard work and perseverance.  James Madison, in the 10th Federalist, advocated extending the sphere of politics so select faction could not garner undue influence.  The protestant work ethic of labor, diligence, morals, ethics and community guided our nation through the industrial revolution. In the 1950s C. Wright Mill warned of the power elite and its ability to control and manipulate public policy.

In the technological, material, secular, humanist nation into which we have today evolved, it seems that we, the people, are perceived as nothing more than jelly-minded, docile wallets and purses. Shut up and pay is our only role. Occasionally there are, of course, brief outbursts from Tea Partiers or Occupiers, but they are quickly absorbed into the mass culture society and doused with leaden wet blankets.

The powerful in Washington D.C. and the wealthy on Wall St. control our lives, along with others on the planet. And we are tired of being misled.

The Washington politicians have abandoned and betrayed the people. The electorate is so completely self-absorbed in financial worries and considerations that it has no time or energy to devote to serious intellectual political discourse.  The lobbyists and special interest groups of the beltway dictate policy and hold representatives and senators hostage with the sweet golden carrots of campaign contributions. The revolving door of the elected and appointed promotes the status quo and stifles and possibility of reform and real change. The hostile aura of the town is palatable and nothing gets done.

The Wall St. barons run legal gambling rackets. They hedge bets, manipulate information, lie and steal all in the name of profit and bonuses. The barons create complex schemes to confuse and befuddle investors and government overseers. Read the books of the recent collapse: Thirteen Bankers, Too Big to Fail, Crisis Economics, Capital Offense and many more.  Companies like Countrywide made home loans to people using falsified information and then took those mortgages and bundled, packaged and sold them to duped investors. This is pure fraud and corruption. And how many of these thieves have gone to jail? None...why? Because they are in bed with the Washington elected elite.

During the recent economic collapse, the chairman of the Senate banking committee was Chris Dodd.  He, his fellow senators, their staffs, and the permanent government bureaucrats, like the SEC, were hired by the American citizens to watch the banking and financial services industry on our behalf.  The middle class taxpayers paid their salaries to regulate the industry, provide oversight, examine records, analyze reports and protect the American people.

What was Dodd doing during this time period...campaigning for president. He was out of Washington asking for donations from the exact people he was supposed to regulate. Call it what you will: collusion, unethical, immoral, negligence of duty, institutionalized corruption, or the fox guarding the hen house, but this is an obvious and glaring example of evil against our national well-being, against the middle class, against our political and financial future survival.

The middle class across America sits in anxious bewilderment. We feel alienated from our government. We drift between frustration and rage. We try to live productive, upright, contributive lives, but are neglected and abused by institutions that should help and support us. We are not hopeful. We are disgusted, dejected and some are filled with despair. We see our nation in decline. We do not see a leader to make the difficult sacrificial decisions we know must be made regarding cutting our debt, reforming social security, reducing health care costs, making all contribute to a fair tax code, and restoring a sense of hope and opportunity to our political, economic, and social lives.

The middle class is living in the trenches and we are exhausted. The Washington politicians lie to us and the Wall St. mangers steal from us. To gloss over these realities is naïve. Both form an axis of evil.

Where are leaders in government and business to spell out achievable objectives to correct our path? Are truth, justice, and temperance quaint terms of a lost era? Our leaders have no wisdom, vision, and courage. They want to be loved, not lead. They, and hence we, are all part of the mass media culture, and we must break out of this mentality with boldness and direction.

Madison was brilliant, but the factions of today are much different. We are leaderless and it will doom us. We will succumb to the select, powerful, wealthy, elite factions seeking their own special interests, instead of the nation joining together seeking the national interest.

GSA and DDM

April 2012

America needs a new category of law. It will be called Detrimental Decision-Making (DDM). This new designation is necessary because so many people are making bad decisions that impact others. No jail time will be involved. The person will have to pay a monetary fine and do community service for their punishment. The fine will be based on the total assets of the individual: homes, cars, boats, savings, investments, Swiss accounts, offshore accounts, art, rare coins, jewelry, minks and whatever else. The fine will range from 10 to 90 percent.  If a person is worth $100,000 then the fine will be $10,000. The person can, of course, survive on the remaining $90,000. If a person is worth $100 million, then the fine will be $90 million. The person can, of course, survive on the remaining $10 million.

Federal and state government officials need to understand they work for the people. They are accountable to the citizens. The recent scandal at the General Services Administration is just the latest in a long string of government abuse of the citizens. The Securities and Exchange Commission failed to protect the investors during the recent economic collapse. The government bureaucrats made bad decisions.  The Pentagon failed to properly care for the remains of war dead. The families of those dead heroes have been disgusted to learn of these errors. The government bureaucrats made bad decisions. Those in power, with the responsibility to impact, must be held accountable. People in power, whether elected or appointed, need to live lives under the microscope. Their solo decisions can affect the lives of many. 

Jeff Neely, the General Services Administrator, should be charged with DDM. He and others in the federal and state government bureaucracies need to learn a lesson and get the message. They stole from the middle class. They will be punished. They will pay. They need to have a financial responsibility connection linked to their decisions.

Any government employee who would think that an $800,000 Las Vegas conference is a proper use of government funds is not a logical, reasonable, careful thinker. Tax money provided by the middle class was supposed to pay for roads, schools and defense, not parties.

Jeff Neely, and the others at the top, are guilty of DDM. They need to be fired and lose their pensions and all benefits. A message needs to be sent to the other bureaucrats across our land. He will then have to pay restitution. His total assets will be investigated and an appropriate fine levied. Future income earned will be garnished. The funds can then be spent or allocated in a variety of ways. In this case, the money will be taken and deposited into The Middle-Class Party Fund.  Each month deserving families across America will be chosen to go out to dinner for a free meal. Jeff Neely will pay for them to enjoy the benefits of being an honest middle class working family. It will be his money used for fun and celebration. It will be his money for steaks and seafood. He needs to see how it feels to work hard for your money and have it spent by others for fun. For Jeff Neely’s community service, he will help out at soup kitchens, unemployment offices and homeless shelters.

Our country is $15 trillion in debt, millions are unemployed and government employees are using our tax dollars to party in Las Vegas. Are you kidding me? Where is the outrage? Why isn’t Congress stopping this abuse? When will heads roll?

A message needs to be sent. Decisions matter. Correct government decisions lead to correct policies, efficiency and results. The middle-class taxpayers need to be cherished and respected. The middle class has to think/believe that their government is looking out for their interests or the entire trust in government will collapse. That trust has been in deteriorating for years.  There are limits to what citizens will tolerate and endure.

The Oprahfication of the American Mind

May 2012

Oprah is no longer on TV, but the impact she had on our culture is profound.  Her shows on social/personal issues: race relations, sexual deviants, bullying, infidelity, and the like helped social communication. She was filled with empathy for many and disgust for just as many. Oprah provided a good compass for our mass media culture.

In 1987 Allan Bloom wrote, The Closing of the American Mind. He argued that our universities and culture were not broadening the mind, but rather constricting it with irrationalism. He loved Plato and the Greeks. The classical Greeks addressed the dichotomy of reason verses passion. In America today, reason seems to have been abandoned, while passion dominates. Reason is our minds and passion is our hearts. Many often make decisions based on what they feel, not what they think.

Oprah would often not ask her guests, What do you think about that? Rather the question would be, How does that make you feel? The guests were not led to think about their choices that resulted in the drug use, beating their children, raping their wife, then going to prison, and now are obese. They were, rather, to feel their way through their choices that led to their actions and the dire consequences. Feelings mattered most.

Logic, intelligence, cognitive skills, empirical observation, cause and effect, analytical process, and deductive reasoning all seem to be ignored. We are not to analyze the situation, but are to feel our way to the happiest solution. Many people make decisions that are nonsensical, that is, they have no sense. With all of the broken families in our nation, we are producing broken hearts and minds. Kids are not nurtured, they merely become older kids with less emotional and intellectual development. They need honed decision-making skills. The decline of public education is producing citizens who are incapable of logical reasoning.