[Dialogue] Save the Internet

[Darrell Walker]

Charles Hahn said:
Most of us have beceome so
aware that todays  corporations simply buy what they
want from the congress and the administration.  On the
very local scene we commonly call it graft or bribery.
 It seems that nationally there seems to be nothing
the individual can do about it.

Darrell replies:
    As the winner of an 8x10 inch framed certificate this past weekend that 
declared me to be one of twenty Democratic Activists of the Year in the 
Democratic Party of the state of California, I am imminently qualified to 
speak to the subject.
    Public ignorance of 8th grade civics (as it used to be called) allows 
corporations and politicians to get away with the very things described 
above.  In California we have two Democratic candidates for governor, Steve 
Westley who made hundreds of millions of dollars as an e-Bay executive and 
Phil Angeledes who made hundreds of millions of dollars doing developments 
in the Sacramento flood plain.  Angeledes was leading until two weeks ago 
when Wesley spent $22 million of his own money on TV ads that characterize 
him as a simple, nice guy who is all heart for we common folks.  They are 
running against Governor Arnold and we know where he made his hundreds of 
millions of dollars.  Whichever one ends up in the governor's chair, I 
refuse to believe that he will not remember the source of his wealth and 
power, and personally I say a plague on all three of their houses.
    I am devoting my efforts to defeat Republican Congressman John Doolittle 
who admits that he puts fifteen percent of the millions of contibutions he 
rakes in into his personal bank account.  And he claims to be a pious 
Mormon!  The voting public elects him by a two to one margin.  Try to talk 
to the voter on the street and they go glassy-eyed.  As long as a tidbit is 
thrown their way, the big guys and corporations can do as they please.  Yes, 
the corporations are scoundrals, some of them at least.  Others are merely 
greedy.  And many politicians are their lap dogs.  But public ignorance and 
ambivilance lets it happen.
    I am sorry that the ICA's town meeting concept was a one-time affair and 
not a continuing project.  A few are still held here and there but until 
town meetings are the routine in most communities, politics as usual will 
continue.  MoveOn.org helped but politicians are becoming numb to the masses 
of e-mail protests.  We used to have precinct meetings in every precinct 
where a dozen or so interested individuals gathered in someone's home and 
evaluated candidates and policies.  That was a good exercise.  It wasn't 
perfect, graft still existed, but it was better than politics by TV ads.
    Perhaps a good, God-given economic depression would bring people to 
their senses.
    Darrell Walker --  Lincoln, California