Five Most Common Political Con Jobs

Or: I don't know enough to vote for a candidate

 

1)  "I believe in God" or "I love God" or "I am a Christian" or "The United States is a Christian Country" or "I have family values"

            These statements about religious values, or family values, or moral values mean nothing in terms of whether the candidate speaking will pass laws that benefit you and other citizens who have the same social, medical and economic needs as you and your household.  Further, the candidate is of little benefit to anyone if he or she does not want to do the first job of government, which is to protect the public health and safety.  That means regulating all activities, both residential and business activities, that involve the application or release of chemicals or the production of waste gases, liquids or solids.  What is the candidate's policy or position on the duties and powers of government?  What is the candidate's policy or position on public education and health care?  Does the candidate show what issues he or she feels are most important and will get his or her attention?  What does the candidate say about economics and ecology and how we can enable all citizens to have the employment they need to support themselves?

 

            YOU CAN GET ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED READILY ONLINE BY GOING TO THE WEBSITE OF VoteSmart.org (type in Vote Smart).  The VoteSmart site appears to be the most complete and most informative about candidates and political party positions, including votes on proposed laws, papers published and public speeches, professional and work experience.  There are other sites that provide information about candidates and their political parties:  HeadCount.org, Vote411.org, VoteUSA.org, ballotpedia.org, aascu.org, AARP.org are a few examples. 

 

 

2)  "We have to spend less on government.  Taxes are too high.  Government is too big."

The truth is NEVER that the candidate wants to spend less on government, but instead wants to spend little or nothing on programs he or she does not like, and is glad to spend tons of your tax money on the policies or programs he or she does like.  THEREFORE, whenever any candidate uses these words about too much spending or high taxes, YOU, the citizen and voter need to demand that the candidate be more specific about where and how they are going to reduce government spending and how that will benefit everyone and reduce taxes.  Are there beneficial policies and programs that he or she does support that cost the taxpayers?  Demand that the candidate be specific and clear, using numbers, about what they believe is the best way to use tax funds to help the people, or the district, city, state or nation.

 

3)  "I'm conservative, and we need to reduce the national debt."  Watch out for this one.  It is common, and usually a bald-faced lie.  Why?  Because the national debt is good for rich people.  Rich citizens are the creditors for the national debt, which means they benefit when they buy U.S. Treasury Bonds or other types of government bonds that are essentially the way that the federal and state governments borrow money, and then all of those rich people who own the government bonds are paid dividends, or interest, on those investments.  Thus, when candidates who are rich say that they want to reduce the national debt, you the voter need to learn if they actually do vote to reduce borrowing by the government.  They often do the opposite.  They often vote to have the national debt, or state debt, go up, because that is a reliable way for them to get high dividends and interest rates on the money that they loan to the government.  In other words, if you are an ordinary taxpayer, the national debt makes money flow one way from you to the government.  But if you are a rich taxpayer, the national debt makes money flow two ways:  your taxes pay interest on the national debt, but part of that interest on the national debt is being paid to you.  This process is also why the rich can benefit from war:  the costs of weapons and paying an army require that the government spend money that benefits the rich industrialists and investors who sell the weapons and materials of war to the government.  But if you are an ordinary citizen, war causes you to get drafted and killed in action.  Maybe your family gets a little medal and a letter.

 

4)  "I will create jobs" or "We (the political party) will create jobs by making life easier for business corporations."  This is a big con.  Corporations NEVER create jobs.  What business corporations do is invest money in a business enterprise that promises a Return on Investment (ROI).  That means rich people who invest in corporations, such as by buying stocks, are participating in the corporate venture to exploit the labor of working people and respond to public demand for a product or service.  All commercial activity, which means all business enterprise, is driven by effective demand.  Effective demand means effective customers, and an effective customer means a person with two necessary elements:  one, the desire for a product (or service); and two, enough income to buy the product (or service).  People who want to buy things and don't have the money are not customers; people who have money but don't want to buy anything are not customers.  Therefore, in the real world and in the real science of economics, the power that runs the engine of the economy – like the electricity that runs an electric motor – is always the body of effective customers.  There has to be actual demand from effective customers in order for investors to pay for the activities of a for-profit corporation.  They, the investors and all those who own and or operate the corporation are in the business of making money.  They are not in the business of creating jobs.  In fact, the history of the industrial revolution and modern corporations is a consistent and persistent effort to reduce the need for human labor and have as much work as possible performed by machines.  Jobs are created, but they are created by public decisions to meet the needs of individuals, households and society.  Jobs are not created by corporations.  People are hired by corporations when there is money to be made by the investors.  There is no money to be made by any business corporation if there are no effective customers.  However far the investors may go in reducing their need to hire people, they will always need people to be their customers.  No customers, no sales, no business, no profit, no investment, no corporations, no economy.  The economic life of any society begins with what economists call "spendable income," which means the money that the customers – ordinary people – have to spend on their desires.

 

5)  "I will be tough on crime and will maintain a strong military," which is essentially like saying "I will protect you from bad people."  Not usually a meaningful promise, and usually just a con, because in order to discourage crime society has to encourage people to make an honest living without breaking any laws.  And the complex history of war and the costs of war make the question of a strong military very complicated.  How do we assure that our military force is able to provide the kind of defense that we will need?  In our times some credible historians have argued that the United States of America is spending enormous amounts of money on weapons that are not going to protect us from our enemies, who attack us with computers and disinformation.  High technology weapons are impressive, but do the people of other countries develop a deep hatred toward us when we use them?  Why do we call the people at our Pentagon the "Department of Defense" when it looks like we use our military to invade other countries and to protect our access to minerals we want?  Our Armed Forces are supposed to be paid for in order to protect us from acts of war, but it looks like our Armed Forces are used to protect corporate investments in foreign countries.  What are we doing?  When a weapon is used by our Armed Forces in a foreign country and it causes the deaths of civilians, we call that "collateral damage" and we talk and act as though it was someone else who caused those deaths.  That was us.  That was our weapon and our action.  We paid for it, and we permitted it.  Is it right for us to act like warfare conducted by our Armed Forces is somebody else doing something we don't know about?