SUNDAY MORNING TV

I am not a viewer of the Sunday morning political talk shows. I find them far too polarized and therefore not very productive. For some reason, maybe it was waiting for breakfast, I turned on Face the Nation. I quickly realized what I deplore about what has happened to our country and why I don’t watch these shows.

A little background: among several others the guests included Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minster of Israel, discussing the serious military engagement between his country and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Governor Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, discussing the also very serious issue of the South American children flooding the southern borders of the United States.

In the case of Netanyahu his points were clear, concise and to the point. He answered the questions of civilians being killed or wounded in Gaza and the Israeli position on how they are attempting to minimize them while at the same time continuing to pursue their objectives, he spoke to what his long goals were, what he thought of the possibilities of a long term peace agreement and he also discussed in detail the involvement of Iran and how it should be forced to stop developing nuclear capabilities, which he is certain will be used only for atomic weapon capabilities.

Then came Rick Perry. His entire position, when asked about the problems on the borders, was about how President Obama is not a good leader. He referenced every political talking point he could cram into his few minutes on camera. Did he have a single idea on what should be done TODAY? What should we do as a nation, what Texas could do as a state, how we could afford, or not, to pay for a solution, how should we deal with the countries that are torturing, raping and killing their own citizens and forcing them to flee to our borders? NO. Not one single idea.

This is by no means a criticism of Mr. Perry, although I guess it really is, but it is a criticism of how ALL of our leaders in both parties are only interested in the politics of virtually every single problem. Forget solutions, it is Bush’s fault, the conservatives, and the liberals, Obama etc. etc. Don’t waste time or interest in pursuing solutions when it is far easier to mimic others in the party with the political rhetoric that pervades everything today.

When running for office I say bring it on. Criticize, place blame, brag about yourself, scorn your opponents etc. It is all fair game. However when elected go to DC and do the job you were elected to do. Get to work, identify the problems, seek consensus and then solve them. Fix the economy, put in place an immigration plan, reconcile rights issues, focus on education, climate, environment etc.

It is too important to this country to ignore our problems in an effort to always be right.  Our government is run by people who think their only job, repeat, ONLY JOB is to get re-elected. We are allowing “elected” representatives to drown our country in political nonsense while overlooking the serious impediments to our future.

Right now we are not prepared for the future, we will not keep up with the rest of the world and we will devolve into a second rate nation and have all the current political representatives to thank for our failure. Do we want that? I know I don’t.

CORPORATE RIGHTS

Here is something I don't get: corporations are people according to the supreme court in Citizens United and can therefore donate however much money they want, anonymously if they choose, to the political candidate of their choice. They can also dictate the terms of employment based on their own religious beliefs again according to the supreme court in the Hobby Lobby case ruled on yesterday.  Correspondingly, if one was to listen to the corporate spokespeople carefully their most important responsibility is to their shareholders by generating  the greatest profits possible.

Then why when they commit a crime, such as BNP Paribas did by doing deals with Iran and other blacklisted companies, did no one go to jail and, since they agreed to pay a whopping $8.9 billion in fines, which is a lot of money did not one executive lose their job?

The hypocrisy in corporate governance is unbelievable. Should a company be forced to pay a fine due to unlawful activities several executives should be terminated, without cause and done so without the golden parachutes they all enjoy. And, if they are found guilty they should have to admit to it and someone should be convicted of the crime and do time in jail.

Then we could view them as persons and they could operate like all other persons do. They would take responsibility for their actions and pay the consequences when their choices or decisions are against the law. I suspect if the loss of livelihood and/or jail time were on the table there would be a lot less shenanigans going on in corporate America.