Bill Mann from The Huffington Post came up with four nifty ideas to stop the ruckus at the town hall meetings. But he may have forgotten the easiest, and perhaps the one with the best chance of success.

Rather than spending all kinds of ad money (and the white coats) to counter the effects of the astroturfers (artificial grass-roots) and the huge corporate health care machine that’s keen on bussing them from town hall meeting to town hall meeting, why not put the money where it’ll count the most? Into the hands of the “bought-and-paid-for” congressmen who seem to be the big hold outs.

It’s not like they would be insulted if we offered them a bribe to vote yes, after all. And it certainly couldn’t be considered unethical seeing how its not frowned upon when the corporations do it. So why can’t the people get in on the action? Payoffs seem to be the thing that gets results in Congress these days, so let’s put our money where it’ll do the most good.

Out bid the competition and eliminate the alligator tears from the far right all in one swoop!

Technorati Tags: astroturfer, astroturfers, Bill Mann, Congress, Health Care, healthcare, Huffington Post

With all this talk about how the current administration is taking the nation closer to socialism, I got to thinking about the Magna Carta. In it, it states that a significant purpose of government was to protect and defend the common wealth. And as our government is modeled to some extent after that Magna Carta (which is why states refer to themselves as “The Commonwealth of . . .,” it would seem reasonable that a valid government worth its weight should do everything in its power to assure the citizenry of a stable economy.

Perhaps we’re just not used to an administration that actually includes the “common people” as having a vested interest in the “common wealth” of the nation, but I can see the changes President Obama is implementing as an attempt to bring us non-corporate types back into the playing field.

After all, if a nation is prosperous, then the people should at least feel the prosperity. But for too long the “common folk” have been used by the free market corporations like maple syrup producers use a siphon to sap a tree of its riches. The difference is, the syrup producers know they should leave some sap in the tree.

“Common” means everybody, and not just those who have been afforded with enough deregulation to raise prices at will, or wager on future supply and demand until all the money is siphoned out.

There is no endgame in all of this, nor can there be winners as things stand now. When the maple trees run out of sap, they die. When the trees die, the producers go hungry. Someone needs to tell the corporates that you can’t keep a tree healthy by siphoning out all its sap on one hand, and building fancy furniture with it on the other.

We are people, not resources for the corporate machine. Prosperity shouldn’t hurt, and the commonwealth should be just that . . . common.

Technorati Tags: common wealth, commonwealth, government, Magna Carta, Obama, prosperity, socialism