Speaking Up and Joining In

06/04/2006

Paul Munnis

America is spearheading the invention of a new form of government for the new millennium. Quietly discussions are being held about our future as a nation. The social contract between citizens, employers, our government, education, and even our Churches are being quietly evaluated and discussed all across our land.

In areas that are known as the Commons, those things that we all have a stake in are being evaluated as we look at transportation, energy, education, clean water, sewage, employment, wages, pensions, healthcare, and other facets of modern life. Some ideas are being rejected, others embraced, and citizens are struggling to keep control of the reins of power that accompany the shifts that must take place.

For example: we introduced an Internet and we watched the FCC trying to co-op it and take power over it for themselves as regulators and to cede to the special interest telecom companies monopoly control. We are not happy with such behavior and we resist the model that is being offered by the Bush Administration. Many are right now writing to their legislators to preserve the neutrality of the Internet.

This has happened to us with Social Security, Medicare, welfare, clean water, transportation, energy, ANWR oil drilling, and in every facet of the Commons we have been assaulted over the past five years. Indeed as we come more and more to understand the GOP plan we are gagging on it. It is a plan characterized as “The Owner Society,” a vision that all is privitized; all run on a pure capitalist model; all are spoils to be grabbed and controlled by the GOP and its cronies.

This is the opposite of the Democratic belief that sees the Commons as shared resources, owned by the citizens, administered by a mix of private and public means but with ownership remaining with the citizens of our nation.

Much of what has gone on in government since 2000 has been largely not stated clearly or has been represented as sham programs that are floated and then suddenly followed by legislative attempts to jam the GOP agenda down the throats of all Americans. We are on our guard now and the result is that the GOP has been largely slowed while we have proper discussion and debate about or future.

The control of the entire government by the GOP has made it difficult to accomplish a proper venue for lawmaking and social discourse for orderly change and evolution. We are hoping this will be fixed in 2006 as the fall elections bring change of personalities in government. But just as important must is determination to hold the needed dialog with America.

These are the challenges that we face in a large number of areas and we look forward to the new America that will emerge as a result of an orderly approach to modernization and government by the people, of the people, and for the people. We invite all who have a constructive contribution to make to the dialog to speak up and to be heard. Ideas are important and they are the herald of change.