Follow the leader

[Slade3200]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

 

[Fenton Lum]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

 

[Slade3200]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

 

[Fenton Lum]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

I stated where I think we're at. Noncooperation, nonparticipation, nonviolent civil disobedience. All it would take is enough of us to just stop pretending the illusion is real.

 

[Slade3200]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

I stated where I think we're at. Noncooperation, nonparticipation, nonviolent civil disobedience. All it would take is enough of us to just stop pretending the illusion is real.

Much easier said than done. I guess you could have the Occupy Wall Street people and see if they can do an Occupy DC movement. Realistically, I don't see it making any kind of a difference.

The support that Trump and Bernie are seeing reflects many people that share your sentiments. If we can keep that voice loud and hopefully elect candidates that support the "anti-establishment" attitude then we can hopefully get more transparency and some much needed reform in our campaign finance system, which I think is a big part of the problem. I still think we need more cooperation and integrity in our political system because this trend of partisan obstruction is strangling us.

 

[Fenton Lum]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

I stated where I think we're at. Noncooperation, nonparticipation, nonviolent civil disobedience. All it would take is enough of us to just stop pretending the illusion is real.

Much easier said than done. I guess you could have the Occupy Wall Street people and see if they can do an Occupy DC movement. Realistically, I don't see it making any kind of a difference.

The support that Trump and Bernie are seeing reflects many people that share your sentiments. If we can keep that voice loud and hopefully elect candidates that support the "anti-establishment" attitude then we can hopefully get more transparency and some much needed reform in our campaign finance system, which I think is a big part of the problem. I still think we need more cooperation and integrity in our political system because this trend of partisan obstruction is strangling us.

I agree with that, would be nice, I just feel like it's a longer term project than this or any election. And it looks to me like corporate power and concentrated wealth has sodomized the political system, the economic system, and rendered the vote mute. Unless we can disrupt the societal wealth extraction that both parties are complicite in, the average working american has no voice, no leverage with which to put pressure to bear on the system to really alter the trajectory. We're becoming sharecroppers.

 

[Slade3200]

As expected we are now seeing the NeverTrump and AntiTrump Republicans come around and start to support their frontrunner. A few are dragging their heels but they will come around. The justification is "Trump is our elected leader, he got the most votes from Republicans around this country, we need to respect the will of the people and support our nominee" I just heard McConnell make that statement.

I can only hope that they remember this message after the November election. The obstruction that they have shown in Congress has been embarrassing and detrimental to the progress of our country. If Clinton or Trump is elected our Congress needs to be able to work together to pass productive law and move our country forward and they should follow the direction of our elected leader. I'm speaking to both Dems and Reps.

Voice opposition, engage in debate, bring new ideas to the table, but then learn how to collaborate and cooperate to get stuff done... Can we stop denying everything from the "opposition" and get out of this disgusting partisan divide and perpetual state of campaigning. We need to progress. Our elected leader needs to be able to lead. We are a team not enemies.

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

I stated where I think we're at. Noncooperation, nonparticipation, nonviolent civil disobedience. All it would take is enough of us to just stop pretending the illusion is real.

Much easier said than done. I guess you could have the Occupy Wall Street people and see if they can do an Occupy DC movement. Realistically, I don't see it making any kind of a difference.

The support that Trump and Bernie are seeing reflects many people that share your sentiments. If we can keep that voice loud and hopefully elect candidates that support the "anti-establishment" attitude then we can hopefully get more transparency and some much needed reform in our campaign finance system, which I think is a big part of the problem. I still think we need more cooperation and integrity in our political system because this trend of partisan obstruction is strangling us.

I agree with that, would be nice, I just feel like it's a longer term project than this or any election. And it looks to me like corporate power and concentrated wealth has sodomized the political system, the economic system, and rendered the vote mute. Unless we can disrupt the societal wealth extraction that both parties are complicite in, the average working american has no voice, no leverage with which to put pressure to bear on the system to really alter the trajectory. We're becoming sharecroppers.

Agreed, and although he is t going to be Prez, Bernie is doing a pretty good job bringing all that stuff to light. Hopefully we will see some follow through on it next term

 

[Fenton Lum]

One would think that the "greatest nation" to ever rise up on planet earth with all our "exceptionalism" could come up with something better than the lesser of two evils, but it remains fairly constant, we get the two candidates Wall Street allows us. Trump is kinda messing that up at the moment, but not in a good way.


We, the public, became lazy and turned over the reins to corporate power. We elect and then return to the couch. As a host of voices; Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others (at least as far back as Crazy Horse and Fredrick Douglas in the US) have tried to remind us that all progress in this society has always come from mass movements pushing back on the power structure. The founding vision was never about liberty and equality for all, but for land holding affluent white males only. No women, no middle class or poor folk, none of that. And that’s before we drill down into the fiction of “race”.


Zinn, Chomsky, Wolin, and Hedges especially have written that the purpose of the liberal political class is to ameliorate the ravages of capitalism when it breaks down to restore the masses to quiescence, and that is all. All real progress in America has always come though the gathering of mass movements that push the power structure in directions it would never have gone via the political process. We will get the president Wall Street allows us until some critical mass of the population straightens its back. We will continue to borrow to maintain a level of empire and consumption this society can no longer afford, wages will continue to fall, poverty will continue to spread, permanent war of empire will continue unabated, privatized prison system mass incarceration will continue and spread in our post industrial society, human beings will continue to be commoditized regardless of “which” political party wins the presidency and other elections, and the public will continue to get 90% of what they see and hear from a half dozen corporations spewing a false perceptual reality (thanks to Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC), while judicial fiat continues to be leveraged to strip citizens of basic constitutional rights. The system will do to us whatever we allow and all we would have to do is stop participating and cooperating.


But the more the unsubstantial people get squeezed, the more they have to focus on getting by the daily grind. The republican party went batshit crazy (Eisenhower and Goldwater would be painted as “liberals” now) over my lifetime and the democratic party morphed into the republican party I grew up with, and a lot of that happened in my opinion during the previous Clinton's administration. All the democratic party has to do is act if they're a bit "left" of the republican party, which brings us back to the lesser of the two evils, and that's for the most part on social issues. It's all pretty bipartisan when it comes to corporate societal wealth extraction, society is being cannibalized by “both” parties.


Let’s take healthcare for example. If you look at the rest of the developed industrial countries on the planet, the vast majority of them are where Sanders attempts to talk about regarding healthcare and education. All this talk of being globally competitive requires a healthy educated population. Expanding public education for the masses to include a college education keeps us competitive - it's an investment in society. Instead we've turned it into a for profit industry and turn kids whose parents can't pay for college into debt peons.


And how exactly does leaving worker healthcare on the backs of American employers (for however much longer that lasts, they're wiggling more and more out of that every year) make those employers competitive with employers in nations with single payer healthcare programs that have better healthcare outcomes at less cost?


For the most expensive healthcare system on the planet, also the system in which costs are climbing most aggressively on the planet, we enjoy these WHO ratings; 39th in infant mortality, 43rd in adult female mortality, 42nd in adult male mortality, 46th in life expectancy. But we cling to it like religious fanatics. Pretty much a decent definition of compulsive addictive behavior bordering on insanity. Other nations have figured out how to make it work, yet we will only hear about the places it hasn’t over our 6 multinational corporation controlled airways.

The “conservatives” versus “liberals” bullshit is a diversionary tactic. On Bill Clinton' watch; the FCC was deregulated, mass incarceration shot way up and Hilary made some snide reference to black kids caught up in the system as super predators, various global trade agreements, and the welfare reform biz at a time when 70% of the recipients were children.


Yet we can manage to spend over half of all discretionary spending on the military and we continue to be the biggest military arms dealers on the planet. Often they get turned back on us, but hey, it's good for business. We can't even really figure out exactly what we spend on empire, a lot of it gets hidden. Twenty two US vet suicides per day. I'm sure it'll come up in some election debate.


Tough to resolve real problems when everyone in the fight has an interest in maintaining the status quo and is jockeying for a bigger share of the way things are while blaming who we’ve been programmed to blame for predatory behavior from above.


For me, it ain't left, right, that's all bullshit and distraction. It's the system. The entire thing is a lie, all of it.

That would be because america floats on a predatory societal wealth extraction paradigm. Now, who orchestrated this and how was it done? Poor folk with no voice? Black folk? "Liberals"? “Conservatives”? Affluent folk who've done well playing by the rules? Or lobbyists with corporate power and funding money that both parties really represent instead of the unsubstantial working class people and impoverished?

Privatized gains versus socialized losses for the Wall Street Bankster class
Internalized profit versus externalized risk and expense for the “job creator” class
Socialism for the aristocracy versus laissez-faire capitalism for the masses

That’s how it really is here.

It's the system and it bears down on all of us. They need us, the masses, quibbling amongst ourselves over anything to keep the angst, anxiety and emotional level high so we react emotionally instead of coherently. There indeed HAS been a vast wealth redistribution scam afoot over the past 4-5 decades or so, just not in the direction the puppeteers are always blathering on about. Fox News and MSNBC are selling the same perceptual reality; just tickling different neural reward centers in their respective constituencies. It’s really all the same schtick. We’re all getting fucked, but we can’t put the picture together and pull together because we’re all screeching at each other over “race”, abortion, guns, gays, who can be in what bathroom, etc., ect., By design.

And I at this point do not see us altering our behavior to challenge the system. Whatever the case, real change will not come from working within the system; we’ve let that moment pass.

Capital is colonial in nature and it sees its future elsewhere. All we really have left are noncooperation, nonparticipation, and civil disobedience. The system knows it has lost all legitimacy, that’s why police departments have been militarized. We all are the new “Indians”.

So do you believe it is time for public revolt against the institution of government?

I stated where I think we're at. Noncooperation, nonparticipation, nonviolent civil disobedience. All it would take is enough of us to just stop pretending the illusion is real.

Much easier said than done. I guess you could have the Occupy Wall Street people and see if they can do an Occupy DC movement. Realistically, I don't see it making any kind of a difference.

The support that Trump and Bernie are seeing reflects many people that share your sentiments. If we can keep that voice loud and hopefully elect candidates that support the "anti-establishment" attitude then we can hopefully get more transparency and some much needed reform in our campaign finance system, which I think is a big part of the problem. I still think we need more cooperation and integrity in our political system because this trend of partisan obstruction is strangling us.

I agree with that, would be nice, I just feel like it's a longer term project than this or any election. And it looks to me like corporate power and concentrated wealth has sodomized the political system, the economic system, and rendered the vote mute. Unless we can disrupt the societal wealth extraction that both parties are complicite in, the average working american has no voice, no leverage with which to put pressure to bear on the system to really alter the trajectory. We're becoming sharecroppers.

Agreed, and although he is t going to be Prez, Bernie is doing a pretty good job bringing all that stuff to light. Hopefully we will see some follow through on it next term

He's a bright guy, my guess is he knew it was a very long shot, and that his role might very well be shoving the issues out into the public sphere such that the system would at least have to deflect and/or attempt to justify itself. After that, it's on the people to mobilized and put pressure on the politicians. None of this will come to pass top down. Never does.