Rick Burns for Maine State Senate District 2

The Real Problem

Posted on 05-29-10 by rick

I would like to make an important point that will take longer than a sound bite. It’s time for the age of sound bites to come to an end. Sound bites obscure issues and trivialize important matters. Now is the time for the kind of full debate and discourse that this nation was founded upon to resume its place of respect among the citizens of our society. In fact, I believe that you have always had respect for the full debate and the fault for delivering less than that falls to the media – all of it – from the boob tube, to the radio and the papers. They’ve compromised the collective intellect of our state and nation for ratings and profits and the real problems go unexposed.

“Who do you trust more, government or big business” was the question asked by Fareed Zakaria of CNN at the end of one of his Sunday news shows recently.  I must confess I didn’t struggle much with the question. Instead, I found myself asking, “What’s the difference between government and big business?”

The recent federal bailouts of banks and insurance companies – basically a bailout of Wall Street – make clear that there is little difference between the two. I’m not sure, after four years in the Maine State Legislature, that there is much difference between the Chamber of Commerce and the Maine State Government.

Commerce is important but so too is Democracy. China is engaged in vibrant global commerce but I’m certain that their form of republic is incongruent with ours. Ours is a republic best described by either the Maine State Constitution:

All power is inherent in the people; all free governments are founded in their authority and instituted for their benefit; they have therefore an unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government, and to alter, reform, or totally change the same, when their safety and happiness require it:

Or the online dictionary:

“A state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.”

I don’t reject that corporations have a place in our society. In fact, I’m quite conservative on this matter. I agree with history and Republican President Theodore Roosevelt on the issue.

“Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism… we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely… are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown,” in a speech at New York in 1902.

I will grant that corporations are different today than they were in Teddy Roosevelt’s day. Today, they are every bit as big and powerful as he feared they would be if “We, the people,” failed to keep them in check. Today they are multinational in scope. Today, they are also as small as they are big and this makes things a bit confusing. For this reason I want to make clear that when I speak of corporations, I’m speaking of the multinational sort and not the neighborly sort like the local restaurant, construction company, or lumber yard.

I also find myself in agreement with Republican Presindent Abraham Lincoln, who said in a letter to one of his officers on the Civil War battlefield, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

It seems to me that we Americans have submitted to the power of a corporate-controlled government at the state and federal level for too long. We have become subservient to them rather than the way Teddy Roosevelt envisioned them, as constructs of the law, being subservient to society.

We’ve permitted ourselves to be divided by labels – Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, Red states and Blue states, the left and the right. Today even the word “progressive” is being turned on its head as though the progress we are so proud of is now something bad. Our only salvation is to realize that we are Americans first and these other thing later. If we fail to recognize this we’re doomed to become the conquest of those that benefit from dividing us.

If a “republic” is a state in which the supreme power resides in the people than a “Republican” is a citizen that subscribes to the idea that “We, the people,” have the power to “alter, reform, or totally change the same, when their safety and happiness require it.”

 

A “Democrat,” on the other hand, is a citizen who believes he or she is “entitled to vote…” and elect “representatives” to ensure that government reflects their will and not merely that of special interests.

In essence, there is little difference between a Republican and a Democrat at the grassroots level. As “citizens” both are rooted soundly in the principle upon which the Declaration of Independence is founded, as well as our own Maine State Constitution. Please keep in mind that I’m not denying that we “believe” that there are great differences between us, Republicans and Democrats, when we permit ourselves to be divided. However, when you look around at your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and colleagues, you see we are more united than divided in the challenges we face. We are more alike than different. When we go to church, we go as one congregation, not as two divided by an isle. As a state, we are many municipalities united as one. As a nation, we are fifty states united as one. It is in this sense of oneness, of unity, that we find the safety, security and prosperity that this state and nation are founded on.

Having said this, it is important to look at, and talk about, the things that ail us. Family values are important to all Mainers, as well as all Americans, regardless of race, religion, gender or political affiliation. The force that tears at the fabric of our families today is the loss of opportunity that once was the trademark of the American Dream. From one generation to the next, life for our children necessarily needs to get better. Upward mobility and the chance to become all you can be is key to the American dream.

Ross Perot, 1992 presidential candidate, warned us that global trade agreements would lead to the loss of American jobs and a decline in our standard of living. Perot was correct! Our standard of living has declined. It continues to decline. What is left of Maine’s paper industry is forced to contend with paper imported by China and available in our “free markets” at forty percent less than what it costs us to produce paper. I use the word ‘contend” rather than “compete” because competition implies that there is a contest between equals. I have nothing but admiration to the hard work and history of the Chinese people. However, what we have here is not equal, and not competitive.

American workers are contending with shamefully paid low-wage workers, producing goods in hazardous and environmentally unfriendly conditions. We have goods in our markets produced by prison labor in China. As Americans, we took a stand against this sort of immoral commerce during the Lincoln Administration when we abolished the long-standing and business friendly institution of slavery. It’s time to take such a stand again.

The Book of Matthew warns us to “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” I’m no authority on scripture and rarely cite Bible passages to make a point. This isn’t because I don’t value what the Good Book has to offer but because others have dedicated their lives to knowing the Book and its meaning. In this case, however, I can’t help but agree with Matthew that “You will recognize them by their fruits… every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.”

Looking at the fruit born by today’s multi-nationals, the global economic crisis, the increasingly unhealthy environment, the rising rate of cancers, broken families with dreams deferred, one cannot help but submit to the idea that “change” must be more than a sound-bite. It must be something that perks up from the people, forcing the vehicle of government, at all levels, to move in a direction that fulfills the promise of opportunity to make the dream come true.

We, the people, have been pleading, from the outside, for government to hear our voices. This tactic has not been effective. However, filling the seats of government with people who live and work like you do is a plan that can’t fail. Please vote for me, Rick Burns, on November 2nd and ensure that “change” is more than a word and much like an action – an action to make government work for you. Let’s expose the real problem, corporate control of government, and put forth solutions that make us part of a “land of opportunity,” rather than the land of desperation into which unfair global trade has misled us.

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