Why Extremists in Goverment Don't Work

Look no further than the Tea Party. The New York Times said two years ago that if Tea Party candidates were elected there would be gridlock in government like we have never seen. Well we have seen it and basically we have an engine that is firing on one cylinder. The other cylinder doesn't fire at all and worse it seizes up and freezes all motion. Zealots want only one thing and one thing only: their way. That is fine for television and cable news but it does not work in a Democracy.

Uneducated people want simple solutions. To them the world is either black or white. The shades of gray do not exist and now we see those shades of gray have vanished entirely in the US House of Representatives. Forget that we now have a renegade band of right wing Tea Party conservatives who have decided they know best for the country and that if we just take our medicine all will be right with the world, the real problem is that these people have taken control and are extorting the American people to get their agenda implemented.

Remember the debt ceiling crisis where the President had to give in? Remember how they crowed that they were doing the peoples business. My question is, who died and left these guys boss? They have appointed themselves as keepers of the castle and the Executive branch has become subservient to a nameless group of Representatives who dig in and do not do the peoples business, they do Grover Norquists business and the shadowy right wing groups behind them.

So how do you get rid of these people? You vote them out. But until then there are renegades inside the United States Government who mean to do us harm and I mean the middle class. These people are not populists, they are zealots who like the mean old schoolmaster believe if you spare the rod you spoil the child. It's time for the child to bite down...hard.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Do We Really Need Congress Anymore?

Alright. You have a bunch of guys and gals who make very good money and get great health insurance and pensions and perks are able to publish books and go on television and parlay connections into making even more money and then we ask them to vote and put the people first and not their own jobs. Right. That's going to happen. Not in this I got mine economy. Those people do not want to fall back into the great unwashed of the sweaty middle class. They got there and they want to stay there and they will vote for what is politically expedient every time. So to hope that the fat cats in Washington are going to pull a Jimmy Stewart and suddenly become Mr. Smith is a fantasy.

So where does that leave us. Well, here is my proposal. Get rid of congress and let the people decide for themselves. In the beginning we needed a representative body because people could not vote on every issue of government. Not so anymore. We have the Internet. We are wired. Why can't the people decide for themselves? Think about it. The American Jobs Bill comes up. Ok the deadline is thirty days from now. The nation votes. You go to the site and click YES or NO. Think about it. A democracy deciding for themselves beyond the reach of Special Interests!

We can do this now. At the end of the thirty days the votes are counted and the people decide. Should the Bush Tax Cuts be discontinued for the wealthy? You have thirty days to decide. Bam. Just like that. If the people want the wealthy to be taxed then they will be taxed. This would be true Democracy because there are too many people to be bought off. Congressman get bought off routinely. Sad but true. But the people would decide what is their best interests and majority rules.

The age has changed. Congress has worked well for over two hundred years but we now have the technology to take representative democracy to the next step. We have to break the Washington Wall street Corporate stranglehold. So why not give the power to the people? It would be the triumph of the people over the oligarchy. So...why not? Just give Congress their walking papers and we become congress.

A Congress of the People. It has a ring to it.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man

The New Guy is going to have to Punch Back

When I moved from Baltimore to Chicago I was the new guy. I had a weird accent and I dressed weird and I had bad hair. And I had no friends. We had moved to a suburb of low tolerance for weird. We had moved into a town of Midwestern guys who wore checkered shirts and blue jeans and boots. I dressed like a refugee from the seventies and grew my hair to Afro length. A clash of cultures. My parents were Kennedy liberals and we had moved into a red enclave of button down Yankees. But I was a kid, what did I care?

So I walked into the lunchroom past a group of football players when one of them calls out. "Now there goes a real faggot." I stopped, dropped my lunch, and saw the blond haired blue eyed Captain of the football team. I didn't know he was the Captain, but I also knew from Baltimore days that you had one chance to set your line. So I threw my lunch on the ground and walked up and pinned "Randy" against the wall, not knowing I had just grabbed the most popular guy in the senior class. "Who are you calling a faggot?" I screamed.

Randy turned red and struggled against my grip. Hey...Hey! He finally got free with his face burning and told me to get my lunch, but his homeboys were in shock. Somebody had pinned the Captain against the wall. This is what the President has to do now when he gets back.  He has to pin anybody who tries to bully, extort, or blackmail him again against the wall. He has to set a line for these guys. A funny thing is once you take down the leader, then all the other guys slink away. But he has to do it now.

A week later I saw Randy in an empty hallway. I had not seen him since the lunchroom. We walked past each other and then he nodded to me. I nodded back.

Rocket Man Has Been Released

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Kindle Download of Rocket Man

The funniest serious novel since Richard Russo’s Straight Man, rich with the epic levity of John Irving and salted with the perversion of Updike." - Chicago Sun Time

"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." - James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

The Extremists Have Us By The Throat

Like the weather the extremists have us by the throat. The current heatwave will kill many because we are not equipped to handle our globally warmed planet. People in cities will die first because the grids will fail under the demand. And like our killer heatwave the Tea Party extremists in government will kill off people too. They will do it by paralyzing our democracy. They are doing it right now. A New York columnist wrote over a year ago that if the Tea Party people got into our government we would have gridlock and government would cease to function. We have gridlock and our government is not functioning.

We are not prepared for extremes in weather or political parties. We base all our forecasts on the middle ground. People do best in the center of the spectrum and tend to die off with weather gets too cold or hot. Same with politics. Extreme left or right is not good for the country and people die because of it. In our current extreme right dysfuntionality the Tea Party has a loaded gun to the Presidents head. Give in and slash entitlements or default on your debt. That is their play.

We no longer have a democracy. We have a plutocracy. A group of wealthy people making sure their interests are served under the cover of a populist insurgency. It is the Art of the Deal gone bad. The Dick Army surrogates are marching under the cover of populist good, but the middle class is dying. Four hundred families have more wealth than 150 million people. Think about those numbers. Yet the Tea Party has made it their sworn duty to not raise taxes on the rich. Smell a rat? Why would a populist movement care about millionaires unless they are a Trojan horse?

Because Potter is not selling he is buying. He is buying control of the government with  extremists in the House of Representatives. They will not bend. They will not play. The Tea Party extremists  will have their way and the President is already caving. And the middle class will lose their Medicaid, Medicare and have their Social Security whittled away. While the rich get richer and the Tea Party suns itself on the beaches of our decline.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July