Donations, Influence and a Democracy that Works for the Impoverished.

Reports that Reform Uk and Nigel Farage are receiving vast donations have stirred news media and elected politicians into a fever of disapproval. Most of it is hypocritical. 

News media is owned by Wealth-as-Power and operates in its interest. Every major political party accepts donations from Wealth-as-Power and every major political party actively enables influence and lobbying by Wealth-as-Power which inherently disenfranchises ordinary voters, at scale. There is practically zero accountability and almost total impunity on this matter of donations and influence.

The donations to the Labour Party front bench from Wealth supporting the Zionist State of Israel, as the UK enables a Genocide of the Palestinians, is well documented.  The Fossil Fuel industry, the Military Weapons Industry and so many others engaged in the same behaviour is also well documented.

"A problem correctly understood is halfway towards a solution. A problem incorrectly understood is insoluble."

Solve problems rather than adhere to models. Models can impose limitations on admitting evidence, designing solutions. 

The discipline required to understand a given problem correctly, in all its dimensions, matters.

Example : Poverty - Structural Poverty has a purpose. It is not accidental.

In examine this issue, we must start with the impoverished, understand their situation, and seek out how to eradicate their poverty.

We must ask the impoverished what "was it like living in poverty?” and ask then “What do you think led to your impoverishment?" and have that exploration and learning as we go.

Once we remove blame from the equation, as one must when dealing with a vast population level dynamic of poverty, we quickly come to understand that there are influences that reside above and beyond the power of the impoverished individual or family that enable impoverishment of such large groups of people.

Eventually, as we explore that influence system, the answer emerges - poverty is a deemed a necessity to drive people into low paid work, and low paid work is the most efficient way to extract wealth from the workforce, be it Democratic Capitalism, Monarchy, or a Dictatorship.

The next most efficient method of wealth extraction is through rent workers pay, and any debts they incur.

This leads to the understanding that the problem is wealth extraction and is driven by capital investments that do not pay to avoid avoidable harms, in order to maximise extraction efficiency.  This is clearly unjust. Why should any entity take a profit whilst causing avoidable harm?

Causing harm makes sense as a wealth extraction practice if you can get away with it, and extract more wealth as a result. That is malign.

This brings us to Wealth as a political weapon deployed to ensure Wealth can continue to extract to Wealth and act with impunity. 

Clearly this too is injustice.

How do we solve these problems?

Here is an example of problem solving based on the evidence.

Money is in some hands Power. Wealth gives some people and organisations more political power than is safe for a healthy democracy.

The Power Inquiry of 2006 (UK) had a lot to say about political party funding and lobbying.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03948/ - full Pdf of The Power Inquiry report can be downloaded. It is worth reading and studying.

What they had to say was what most ordinary people outside of political party memberships thought on the matter, 20 years ago, in 2004-6.

Their concern was to eradicate avenues of corruption and malign influence on elected officials at every level of Government, local and national.

It is relevant today precisely because it was relevant then, and warned of what was to come if either matter was neglected.

1. Parties should only be funded by membership fees, and open fundraising that us subject to robust auditing.

2. Election participation should be funded by a set budget for each constituency, split amongst candidates, with a filter of each candidate presenting 1000 verified signatures supporting their candidate, below which no funding would be available. There should be no outside funding, other than what the local constituency party memberships raise internally, within set limits, and that fundraising should be available for audit.

3. Private lobbying should be eradicated. A public official is working for the public and everything they do in that role must be available for full public scrutiny at every stage. Privacy is one thing. Secrecy quite another.

4. All lobbying should be public, in full view of constituents, minuted, archived. If a corporation wants to lobby, let it do so on equal footing with the least empowered voters. There are no valid reasons why individuals or organisations possessed of wealth should hold more political power than the least of us.

5. There should be no donations for elected officials once elected. Their wage should be set to be sufficient. Providing for office expenses is a matter of public service.

6. There should be no revolving door system of moving into/from employment in sectors any elected official has been working on. A firewall must be erected to guarantee independence and probity of elected officials.

7. Making democracy work for the least empowered among us has the benefit of regulating the propensity of the most powerful to exert undue influence.

8, Making democracy work must involve robust accountability processes at every level.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Governments are temporary, States are more or less permanent.

Governments are temporary, States are more or less permanent.

That said, every current Government is the entity responsible for present day State action and behaviour.

Therefore for every past behaviour that has caused avoidable harm by not avoiding causing that harm, when the State could have avoided it,  it is the responsibility of the current Government to address and correct that shituation, including holding the State accountable, making reparations and changing behaviour in the present and into the future so that action causing harms are always avoided, prevented from being done again.

The same applies to every Institution that holds some power - News Papers, Corporations, Religions, Armies and so forth.

With this in mind...

Someone who represents or controls vast wealth should NEVER have private or semi-public lobbying meetings with Legislators, without the meeting being fully minuted, recorded and included in Legislative Records, where the electorate can read them.

Then fact that they can and do have this facility in private means that they have more influence upon elected officials than the people who elected them.

The straight up undermines very principle of Healthy Democratic Governance.

If the owners and representatives of Wealth want to advise Legislators it should be fully public, with its aims and objectives fully exposed to the electorate, with the electorate empowered to voice back on the suggestions of Wealth and to take a central role in the deliberations on policy.

It is not democracy to vote for an elected official and leave it at that. 

That's a popularity contest, and one that is all too easily exploited and manipulated.

21st Century Governance has to dismantle the 18th Century systems still operating because it is those systems that have led us directly into Genocides and Climate Disruption as Business Models. We need a re-boot, informed by evidence and the unmet needs of the people.

Genocides and Climate Disruption are Business Models. 

They are not merely bad behaviour by a few bad humans - they are an intrinsic part of the Wealth-as-Power Business Model.

Cults as a business model - Wealth-as-Power and The State.

This is true of almost every Western Democracy. This is true of almost every State. This is true of almost every current Power structure predicated on Wealth-as-Power.

The Cult of The Flag, the Cult of the Military, the Cult of the innate superiority of the Wealthy above the impoverished.

Wealth-as-Power, as a political force requires that a minority have the leverage to exploit a majority in ways that allow the minority to extract wealth from the majority and then deploy it as a weapon to maintain the systems of extraction, no matter the costs to the majority. It requires that that minority internalises a sense of entitlement to their dominating position. That is a cult belief operating system.

Wealth-as-Power is a cult. 

A belief system rooted in a Power Disparity that enables the minority to exploit the majority.

Every person who waves the flag of National Identity, be it pride or rage, has internalised an identity crafted by external Power, to bind them to the State as a Power, and by inference, to the purpose of those who wield that Power, at an emotional and irrationally secure level within their psyche.

I was attending an anti-racism rally this weekend and one speaker cried out 'Yes to Race, no to Racism!' 

Race does not exist in reality, it is a concept crafted in the British Colonies as a means to weaponise European Workers, freed and indentured, against  non-European workers, freed and indentured.

The acceptance of Race as a reality is the very root of Racism.

The acceptance of National Identity is the very root of Xenophobia.

The acceptance of Genderism is the very root of Misogyny.

We are persons, first and foremost.

We are all persons within the Human species, and the visible differences in skin tone, height, body build, sex are merely the expression of our natural variations, none of which change the fact of personhood. Those visible differences are biologically irrelevant, precisely because our brains are persons, fluid persons that adapt to local conditions, as a fundamental evolutionary attribute that allows us to live anywhere, with creativity, intelligence, solidarity and success.

That I speak English and this other person might speak Farsi, and another Chinese does not change the fact of our shared personhood one iota.

Our livers, lungs, kidneys might be suitable for a transplant, and would not hold our national identity or our language, our gender or our height, as a barrier.

Egalitarian cultures understood the nature of healthy, autonomous connected personhood as the floor of a healthy family, community or society.

Hierarchy cultures always undermine the person, and elevate the instrumentalised body as the defining characteristic. Men have men roles, women have women roles, children should be obedient, and follow suit.

Wealth-as-Power from War Lords to Kings, Emperors to Popes, Great Leaders to Presidents are pretty much all we know because Wealth-as-Power has slaughtered almost every egalitarian society as it has expanded.

Solidarity is egalitarian at its best.

If we humans are to have a long term future, that solidarity is what we will need to build, within our psyches and as our societal infrastructure.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#folkmusic
#singersongwriter
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