Today the Senate sold us out and approved a new FISA bill with immunity for the telcos. Apparently, giving the telecom industry immunity for breaking the law, at the request of the government, is more important than our rights to not be spied on. Let’s be clear here. FISA worked. The President chose to ignore the law and the like of people like ATT chose to break the law. At least some people understood not breaking the law was a smart thing, like Qwest, who told the government to go pound salt. Let’s not forget that the minute the government stopped paying its bills, ATT dropped their taps without nary a hint of hesitation.
##An Endless List
Now, we have telco immunity. Illegal wiretapping, on US citizens, not just foreign connections. Water-boarding. A new Attorneys General who refuses to even acknowledge that it’s torture. Refuses to investigate water-boarding and wiretapping. Refuse to investigate and lay down the law on just about everything. We have Gitmo. Holding anyone we call a terrorist forever, without trial. Secret trials. CIA erasing tapes. Electronic voting machines that clearly don’t work. Medial decisions being made by the insurance companies and not the doctors. The TSA/Borders copying peoples hard drives and hone lists. And that’s all just the tip of the iceberg.
##When does it end?
This is country is going to shit, and it’s apparently in a hurry from the looks of things. It’s depressing at best. And to make things worse, not matter who we vote in, nothing changes. I personally think we’re in for a future with one of three possibilities.
1. People rebel. Mass protests the likes of which we’ve never seen, to the point that entire industries shut down.
2. People revolt. The electronic way. The tech generation, the blog generation make like so difficult for old time news media that they have to put these issues on the front page day after day.
3. People vote. Early indications are that the youth vote is off the charts this year. This may end up with someone in office who is finally tired of all of the bullshit, and becomes a great leader, and a sever pain in the ass to Congress and Big Business.
##When I am King
Thus quoth Adam Carolla: When I am king:
1. Congress will no longer get free health care. Let them also feel the joys of rising premiums, denials for pre-existing conditions, and paperwork hell when the insurance company thinks it knows better than your doctor. Sure I’d prefer government guaranteed health care because, if it works for Congress, it can work for everyone, esp. children. But the spineless bastards won’t even fund children, so that will never happen.
2. Paper ballots are mandatory. I take a pen, and mark a checkbox. That system worked or centuries and still works now. No dangling chads, no crashing voting machines. Every vote needs to count.
3. Everything that a public servant does on our time and our dime, needs to be open. No secrets. If you work for the taxpayer, you need to answer to the taxpayer. No sealed records. No executive privilege. No closed door hearings.
4. No more pork and hidden bills. Every bill is separate. No tying funding for one thing to approval for another. Every person in Congress must read what the are voting on. EVERY member must attend votes, and must vote yes or no.
5. Congress shall not be allowed to receive ANY money or gifts from any person other than their direct family (like xmas, bday), nor shall they be allowed to accept or earn any income other than what we the people, pay them to do their jobs. Yes, no stock options either.
6. No person, US citizen or otherwise, shall be held indefinitely by our government, without charges, without lawyers or without trials. Water-boarding IS torture and shall not be used. Ever. No exceptions. If it was good enough to convict a Japanese officer for using it on our troops, it’s good enough for us not to be able to use it on anyone else now.
7. The US shall remove troops from foreign countries and mind our own fucking business for a change. No one is trying to bomb Norway are they? No. Because they mind their own fucking business. People want to bomb us now because we keep picking a side, sending weapons, abandoning that side, choosing another, sending weapons, then invading eventually leaving nothing but ruin while we sit back and suck down McDicks and Cokes and watch the Simpsons.. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
8. The government shall hence forth stop being the copyright police and making laws to protect [failing] industries business models. I’m looking at you RIAA and the BSA. File lawsuits if you want. Take people to court. But stop buying our Congress just so you can get special treatment and laws. The FBI has more important things to do than execute your raids on someone selling bootleg CDs or someone reported to have unlicensed software. Other industries don’t get to use the FBI as their personal police force and neither shall you. The government shall also stay the fuck out of sports investigations. It’s sports. If someone’s doping, it’s the leagues problem. Get back to work.
9. The government shall put up or shut on nuclear issues. With all the money wasted on the Iraq war and all the rhetoric on Iran, we could’ve easily went into Iran and built them a nuclear power infrastructure, negating and worries and excuses of them making weapons just because they’re researching enrichment. Be part of the solution, not the problem. If no one else should have WMDs, then neither should we. If we must have them for defense purpose, then so should everyone else. We weren’t responsible when we invented them, so let’s not inspect other fledgling countries to be that way either. IF you’re worried about them using them to attack us, see rule #7.
10. Revoke the DMCA. No longer shall any industry be able to tell people what they can and can’t do with products they’ve purchased as long as they are in their own homes.
11. Repeal all tax breaks for businesses. I can’t get a 5 year no-tax break for moving into a city and neither should they. No longer shall the individual have to pay increasing taxes to cover the tax breaks of corporations.
12. Place a cap on severance, salary and options packages that CEOs receive. No longer shall corporate fat-cats get $35 million to leave a company that they just drove into the ground after firing 10,000 employees.
13. There is no such thing as executive privilege. You do what the law says. Period. See rule #3.
14. No government contracts shall be given on a no-bid basis, nor shall they be given to any company that the President, Vice President or any member of congress owns, used to own, or is on the board. Non of said contractors overseas shall be immune from prosecution, nor shall those case be dismissed as ‘state secrets’.
That should do it for starters. :-)
##P.S.
Yes, I have ATT DSL. Like we actually have a choice. Thank you telco dereg act of 96; also worthless.