The Press, Wall Street, Politicans, the DNC, Banks: ALL MIA
Posted: November 16, 2008 Filed under: Human Rights, New Orleans, president teleprompter jesus, U.S. Economy | Tags: Accountablity 5 CommentsRiverdaughter assigned all PUMAs and Confluencians a project: figure out where to go from here so we can continue forward as a movement with relevancy. Being a scientist, I always look for the roots of the problem. I check for the problem and the catalysts. You can get frustrated by the symptoms but you never solve the actual problem without checking out the primal event. So when you saw MIA did you think Missing in Action? When You think PUMA do you think People United Means Action? Let’s just switch out the word action for a moment so that it reads ACCOUNTABILITY because there seems to be a lot of that missing recently.
I give my bank my money. I expect them not to lose my deposits and make bad loans. I expect them to answer the phone and attend to my needs. I expect after years of giving them money and seeing them happily deposit my checks that they should have no problem knowing that will continue so I deserve a loan. I give the government my taxes. I expect the roads to be fixed. When I dial 911 and I’m in true need, I expect the police to show up. I expect the levees they built with my tax dollars to provide the level of protection as promised. When politicians swears to uphold the constitution, I expect just that. When the electric company says it will use part of my bill to ensure the system is upgraded, I expect them to do as promised to me and to their regulator.
I’m not quite sure when it started, but none of these things happen any more and no one takes responsibility, apologises and fixes it. Worse than that, I have very few ways to make them accountable any more. The Army Corps of Engineers still refuses to be held accountable for the levee failure here in New Orleans. GM management does not want to be held responsible for making bad decisions and worse cars. The Press still hasn’t dealt with its drumbeat to the Iraq war, it’s skewering of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, and its biased coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. When President Elect Obama falls flat on his face on challenges that will be well above his experience and education level, they will undoubtedly go “who US?”
I try to call my bank and my electric company. If I’m lucky I can get pass the computer to hear some one try to help me that barely speaks my language and can’t solve any problems even if they had a phd. in it. If it’s not something in the manual of the top ten stupid questions, they are lost. I have been promised all kinds of things by service reps, only to find no one has a record of it, and I have no recourse.
There has to be a way to hold all these monsters accountable. Everything now is so big, so impersonal, and so screwed up that they can turn you off or send you off to jail if you don’t just send the monthly payment, but you can’t get from them ANYTHING they’ve promised. So, every windy or rainy day now, my electricity shuts off for hours, even though I pay nearly $300 a month now for electricity. I can’t make any bad decisions because the student loan is still due, the mortgage is still out there, and the IRS is brutal. You can’t leave or enter the country now with just your birth certificate. You have to have a passport and any government agency with an axe to grind with you can stop you from getting it. Oh, and thanks to President Elect Obama, those agencies can listen in on your phone conversations, read your mail, and search your computer activity. Can you hold them similarly responsible when they screw up counting your votes? I didn’t think so.
I always try to be thoughtful in my blog threads. I think long and hard and try to gather data and information and other ideas before I present them to you. Today, I’m just going to share my rant. When was the last time you felt you could hold any of these bad boys accountable for the way they behave?
So, Riverdaughter and my PUMA friends… I’d like the DNC to be held accountable for taking votes from Michigan and Florida when they really mattered, for stacking primaries and caucuses with a weighting system that was easily gamed by a Chicago mobster, and all that misogyny and sexism and race-baiting. How about it? Why don’t we figure out some strategies in the future to hold them all to accountable?
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I”m with you in your rant…and besides, you said it so much more eloquently than I ever could. Accountable is the perfect word for us.
Accountability as an overarching focus for Pumas does offer a unifying approach, whatever organizational form the movement ultimately takes or whichever specific challenges it chooses to address.
Pumas will have to battle many hazards to become and remain viable over the long term. The last time we had a semblance of accountability power on behalf of individuals, as I recall, was in the 1970s, when consumer power seemed at the highest. Then, corporations, professions (except for some trial lawyers), and small businesses unified and pushed back on the issue of skyrocketing costs of liability and heavy regulation. They succeeded and since then we have seen a failure of accountability. (In all fairness, there had been abuse of power in regard to lawsuits and some government misdeeds in the regulatory process.)
With a goal of seeking and assuring accountability and integrity, however, Pumas could still address multiple challenges, some of which should be pursued while there is a window of opportunity and while fervor for action is strong. Those areas include, at least, greater gender equality and representation; media accountability, and accountability in the democratic processes.
Otherwise, we may see yet another splintering of the factions that once had some alignment with the Democratic Party. (Already, blog comments are revealing disagreements on which track should have priority — e.g., women’s equality vs. democratic reforms.) I don’t think we have to give up one for the other.
Further, we have an opportunity to unify individuals who have been aligned with other parties or who have not been aligned at all. The needs are great and people still are passionate, but it won’t take long before resignation and apathy set in without a viable and cohesive movement — and a clear and unifying purpose.
I should add that greater gender equality and representation; media accountability, and accountability in the democratic processes all overlap and are intertwined. In this most recent electoral campaign, for instance, misogyny was used as a tactic by the Obama campaign and by the media, concurrent with other abuses such as r@ce baiting and denigration of various other demographic sectors.
I think part of the problem is deciding if we want to be a bloc and stay democrats or become unaligned with a party …it’s hard to achieve any kind of meaningful primary reform outside of the party structure… however, i think we should try to look state by state at what is possible …
Yes, I agree.
In a tangential thought, I continue to wonder at the divisive tactics used by the Obama campaign and the DNC. On the one hand, some were used to obscure Obama’s weaknesses, to acquire a preferred voting bloc, and to win at any cost. On the other, how many of these tactics were/are red herrings to hide specific allegiances to big funders? (I don’t see any evidence that their allegiances have anything to do with the voters.)
I also can’t help but feel there is another boom to be lowered on us beyond the economic one. We definitely are being played like a fiddle.
Oh, well, too many metaphors and maybe we just have to put such worries behind us and move ahead with proactive plans — long-term as surely they will, and must, be.