I was at a training workshop today at the Union office. I really do appreciate such sessions, and come out of them with a little more confidence, and a clearer sense of how help others, and how I'd like to see myself become better organized in general, but the amount of information to process does become very overwhelming to me. I really don't like immersing my mind too deeply into politics (especially American politics), or writing about them to any great extent, but with the finale of this long drawn out, hyped up, election of our neighbours down south that has just passed, it becomes unavoidable.
My opinion of the result of it is that I'm relieved that a more right wing party isn't in power in America. However, I don't think that another four-year term of a Democrat government down there is long enough to correct problems that were caused by the aftermath of the Bush years. I'm just happy that all this hype is over with. I'm sick of their political smear ads permeating into our media.
I heard that the dollar amount for running campaigns for this election (on both sides), ran into the billions*. . . how utterly obscene, outrageous, and shameful! What a disgraceful and inefficient use of resources! Much of those billions of dollars were collective flat-out contributions made by very wealthy people, essentially gambling really, to see one man (figurehead) or the other, get into power of their nation; yet if those same rich people were asked to contribute that same money (or any) in tax dollars to directly fund the improvement of some other public amenities for the common good of everyone, regardless of political leanings, those same bastards would probably use every slick trick in the book to keep that money under wraps and sheltered from their IRS. So long as this kind of big money is involved in their elections, to finance their excessively long meme-war to push influence one way or another, America then is still very much an oligarchy, or a competitive corporate aristocracy; not a true democracy. I'm sure that it's a safe bet, and a sickening actuality, that the funding for whatever promoting/support, or attack/smear campaign ads by the American politicians for this election far exceeds the annual budget for the education and health care expenditures combined of several other nations*.
If the underlying issue is voter apathy, and it's that big of a problem there (especially if starts costing billions of dollars to prime people up to coax them to vote) perhaps then they should consider doing what the Australians did: by legislating it such that it would be illegal not to vote; making non-participation an offense punishable by a monetary fine. Hell, their government would probably even start making billions if that was enacted. It might do us well here in Canada also to do the same thing, and make us take a more serious interest as to how we choose to be governed. One way in which I think that Canada is correctly going, in terms of the right direction for disallowing more big money to influence/corrupt political campaigns, is with using the recent Federal Accountability Act, by restricting individual contributions to political parties a maximum of $1000 (down from $5000). I'm thankful at least that when a federal election happens here, the political campaigning only carries on for a fraction of the time as it seems to happen down there.
I'm not spiteful towards Americans so much as to be wishing anything worse for them. As I look more at the dynamics of their political system, I realize that they have their own special ways of being victims of it, just as others from any other nation do with their respective governments. I listened to CBC 2 radio on the drive back home this afternoon, which announced the results of a survey was that was taken in other nations outside the United States as to who the people would vote for if they could. Right now, I'm listening to what the rest of the world would be comfortable with so as to, at the very least, keep the peace globally. Of the many nations that were sampled for the survey, the results were overwhelmingly pro-Obama. We, as a global community, seem to think more that Obama is the answer for the USA, and the for the rest of the world. No exception here. The Canadian responses of those sampled were in concordance with the remaining global results. I just hope that whatever resulted yesterday, and whatever transpires during the next four years down there, won't effect us too negatively over here.
* - I found a news report (Vancouver Sun) that an estimated whopping combined total of six billion dollars was used by Obama and Ronmey for campaigning: the most money ever used in fighting away for the US presidency. Twice the amount that was used to put on the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, 3.4 times (in today's US$) the cost of the Apollo 11 mission. Apparently today, it costs almost three and half times more for the Americans to put a man in the White House than it did to put one on the moon in 1969. Go figure that out. The only satisfaction I get in reviewing this factoid is that somewhere out there in the USA, there are a few tax-avoiding, greedy, rich pricks, and crazy right-wing special interest lobbyists who became a little poorer, some losing millions, by betting on the wrong horse in this race. The Democrat rich pricks and that other bands of idiot lobbyists who supported Obama, still have yet to see if they'll be getting their money's worth.
**- With this kind of stupidity and greed and lust for power, it's probably one reason/factor as to why there is no system of universal health care in the United States, and why there is no one educated enough to figure out how to make it happen. It would be even more disturbing, or else quite laughable, to discover any other nation's government, working within that kind of budget restriction ($6 B), that still is able to provide a quality free education and health care to their citizens of their respective country (I wish I had more time research this)
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