"Vote da Bums out"

Currently in America, we know 2 things about the Federal Government in Washington D.C.

1) Politicians lie, cheat, and basically do anything at all they have to, to get elected and to stay in once they are incumbents.

2) Congress had accomplished nothing substantive in all of the last several sessions.

(Whether this is actually true or not, is actually secondary just now. Every American who pays any attention at all to politics knows it.)

This sort of thing has happened before, there are many web sites with variations of "vote the bums out" or "kick them all out", referring to both houses of Congress, dating back at least a decade, and even earlier, if you check before the internet.

I don't feel that this will necessarily solve anything. Just voting out everyone across Congress, no matter what, might just clean house, but the problem is deeper than just that.

I like Alan Moore, in V for Vendetta: "people shouldn't fear their governments, governments should fear their people."
Or at least, respect them, and help them. That's what they're supposed to be sent to Washington to do, after all.

Now, my idea is a variation of "vote the bums out". It will require a bit more effort (sorry), but the little extra will be well worth the result. If we can stick to it.

It requires that we all, every American citizen, tracks our own representatives, in both the House and the Senate, to see how they vote on laws that come up. If their votes agree with your views and needs, you can vote to keep them in. If their votes don't agree with you, or their votes will do you harm, then next election, remember and vote for the other candidate, no matter who it is. And talk to anybody who does exit polls on election day, post on social media, even write to the person you voted for (and the one you voted against) exactly why you did it.

After an election cycle or two, all members of Congress will start to see that it doesn't matter how much dark money they've acquired from their rich donors; it doesn't even matter how the campaign commercials go; what matters is their actual voting. If they don't vote on laws to help you, you don't vote to keep them in power. Simple.

Don't worry; it's not that hard to track voting. govtrack.us provides a simple voting summary. Going to this page, will allow you to set up a tracker, based on your address, that will notify you, via email or RSS feed, whenever your own senators and district representative votes on anything.

Once you see how your own representatives are voting on issues that matter to you, you can determine whether to keep them or vote them out. And if you vote against them, but they stay in, that must mean that (barring electoral fraud) most people in your district like what they're doing. But, hey, that's how democracy is supposed to work.

If we all do this, the big money types that buy and sell influence with politicians won't be able to keep a politician in office for long, unless they start caring about what we the people want and need.

One catch is, this could take years, maybe decades, to really take hold. Washington DC seems to now have an attitude of "well, they're upset right now; let's wait them out, they'll stop paying attention soon" or even worse, "let's throw a manufactured crisis at them, that'll distract them from thinking about us." We will need to keep at this for several elections, until the politicians start to really realize that we mean it; you vote against us, we'll vote against you. When that finally sinks in, we'll have taken back our country from that minotiry who want it to serve them, and have the resources to block our access to our own representatives.

The other catch is, we need EVERYBODY to get on board with this. Most people have email nowadays, so we just need folks to agree to watch their congresspeople and see how they vote. And to vote against them when they vote against you. If you have email and know someone who doesn't, you can offer to track their rep for them, and let them know. If your local public library has internet, anyone can go there and get online to check.

 If everybody, or even many, citizens follow through with this, we can make this a representative democracy again, instead of the rich folk calling all the shots, since the politicians owe them for their money donations.

We the people need to start paying attention to the votes, not the election hype. We need to hold our representative accountable for how they vote. We need to make sure that the richest few don't get outsized influence, simply because they can buy and sell political careers.

I hold out hope that we can do this. That we will do this. And that we will reshape our country to what it could be, what it once was; Abraham Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, for the people." We live in the greatest age for access to any information that could possibly be desired; let's use it.

So the Supreme Court decision on Union "fees"

I'm actually not going to address the actual decision; many others, to be honest much more eloquent than I, will be doing that for the next year and a half or so.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the now-repeated idea than somehow money equals speech.

That was a justification for the Citizens United decision (allowing certain groups to donate limitless money to a particular candidate is their speech supporting them).

And now it's justification for gutting the funds that unions use to defend the salaries and protections of all employees, not just the union members. Quite simply, the plaintiffs claim they don't agree with what the union says, and by paying a fee for services rendered (the aforementioned protections and salary defense), they are somehow responsible for everything the union does and says.

When and how did money become speech? And how long will it take until only the rich, with lots of money, get to have the free speech?

Back to the basis for Citizens United:

“A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.  This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate’s increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.”

-- from Buckley v. Baleo, 1976

 I'll restate: "virtually every means of communicating ideas [...] requires the expenditure of money."

So, removing limits on how much one group can spend will effectively allow that group to drown out any and all other competing speech. For that matter, denying a groups a source of funds to spend, will render that group effectively mute. To my mind, that isn't just unfair, it's un-American. One man with deep pockets can drown out a multitude who have no money. That's not democracy, not by any means.

And, anyway, the fees the unions require aren't speech in even that way. (Okay, I am going to address this Supreme Court decision.) It's a payment for services rendered. The union will defend and protect even non-members, just as it protects its members.

To do that, it needs money, to hire lawyers, to perform research on whatever topic is under contention, and to simply exist to defend. It seems to a casual observer, from several states away, that the plaintiffs seem to want the effort on their behalf without paying for it. Where are the rich big-wigs protesting "takers" wanting something for nothing now? Paying for veterans' health care, needed because they were wounded when the government sent them to fight, makes them "moochers" but non-union workers are perfectly right to want protections without paying a fee for services is fine?

Without members' dues, or without service fees from non-members who unions still serve and protect and support, unions will have no resources to defend anybody from anything.

Which, honestly, is likely what the so-called Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public law firm that also been involved in some major challenges to affirmative action policies and to the Voting Rights Act (whose donors rolls have been connected to the web of dark money associated with the Koch Brothers), that sponsored and arranged the suit wants.