Destroying Credibility and Respect
Despite testimony running 95% in favor of the governor’s nominees, the senate committees have voted against recommending these nominees to the body of the whole for confirmation -- destroying whatever hopes remained of any credibility of the senate (legislature) being a place in which people can expect fairness and rational thought. Instead, there is only a knee-jerk reaction against preventing those who are fair and rational, from exercising those abilities in a government capacity.
Undoubtedly those "rejected" go on to better lives in the private sector -- where such qualities are valued and rewarded. In Hawaii state government, it is not welcomed. What happens is that all those virtues go elsewhere -- leaving those remaining to prey upon one another, in an ever-decreasing pool of compliant victims.
That’s what happened to the mainstream media -- and all the institutions that became so powerful and control so total, that they could lock out everybody else who wasn’t already inside, in the inner circle of power and control.
The problem with that kind of thinking and strategy is that the vast talent on the outside gets locked out and becomes the seed of their eventual destruction, as human genius and resourcefulness becomes their mortal enemy -- rather than their ally -- because THEY choose to make it so. That has always been the arrogance and miscalculation of power.
You can’t warn them against acting in that way; they have to as the fate they have designed for themselves. That is the lesson of the recent Easter passion play -- in which those of greatest power, are fated to their eternal doom and damnation. Yes, they become famous -- but for what?
And is that what they wish to be famous for? Many people don’t ask that question, because they become drunk with their own power and ambition -- for which they become known to the world in an unmistakable and irreversible way. It doesn’t take much -- to expose a whole lifetime of who they actually are, and stand for.
The legislative session is very stressful -- and destroys a lot of people as an unintended consequence. I think it is mainly because the mind becomes overburdened -- with all the petty details and considerations until there is no space and capacity for acting clearly. Instead of entertaining the hundreds of unrelated issues every year, what they need to do is develop one clear idea that implies all the others.
That clearly, would be raising the Hawaii standard deduction and personal exemption until it was at least as high as the federal (national) -- if it is indeed true that the cost of living in Hawaii is higher than anywhere else in the United States. Why should all those living in real poverty, have to pay for the lifestyles of government workers demanding $100,000 a year guranteed lifetime incomes -- so they can live in the luxury they feel they are entitled to? Then they might have some credibility and respect -- that no amount of demanding that they be recognized as the only powerful and important people in society will get them.
That's not what the legislature is for.
posted by Mike Hu @ 12:50 PM
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5 Comments:
It’s because of situations like these, that the new media forges itself in a way never possible before -- and why it is not just the old media made faster, easier and cheaper. It allows communication and information exchanges never possible before so that those who participate in the cosmic dialogue can pool intelligence and perceptions -- instead of hoarding them for their exclusive benefit to manipulate everybody else in the mass media model. That;s how things are different this time. Most of us who want to, have all the information, including what is said between the lines and the body language -- because we can see what’s going on, on public access television, as well as in person.
Those who have participated in the interactive discussions the new media allows, eventually come to have a new style of communications which is to share their perceptions and perspectives rather than merely using media to manipulate them -- and so the writings of the latter, are obvious to the new, higher literary that has evolved. It’s not just people’s imagination, that reading and writing, has leaped to a permanently higher level of competency -- so that the old leadership has been subsumed and surpassed -- as the natural course of evolution.
Every death is also the birth of something new. That is the lesson of Easter. That is why we had to go through the drama repeated countless times throughout history -- of those wrongly accused, wrongly tried, and wrongly executed -- to get to the greater other side.
There is a reason why things happen -- in their own mysterious ways. That is the path of resolution -- for which only the most vain, insist they must be in total control -- and only they, exclusively.
We all just do our part -- in this better understanding of the world -- confident that there is a vastly greater intelligence at work, which is this vast network of consciousness that nobody controls -- but the few will persist at until they understand that everybody, is more intelligent than a self-designated few, no matter how powerful they think they are.
I once asked Linda Lingle what the secret of her success was, and she told me, “I’m just lucky.”
While she undoubtedly does her part, and all those connected with her do theirs diligently and with integrity, you can’t foresee that the “other guys” will be so accommodating as to fully expose themselves as who they are. But they can’t help themselves -- and have to react as they have been conditioned -- to ruthlessly destroy the competition, or those they merely perceive to be competitors to their dominance, control and power.
I often wonder (as maybe we all do), just how good a politician Linda Lingle is, to be able to forge these broad across-the board-coalitions on one side (from the most libertarian to the most conservative) -- and then to have on the other side, a few senators meeting behind closed doors, claiming to know something everybody else can’t, and thereby, overruling everybody else in society -- “because they know better than everybody else what is good for us.”
That is the part of Hawaii that needs to change -- and inevitably will, no matter the how much they try to preserve those vestiges of another time and mentality. It just becomes obvious -- and a personal embarrassment to see oneself "acting" in that manner -- when the rest of society has grown up, beyond the middle-school identity crises of "proving" who they are.
If they don't know by now, they never will -- not matter how old they get to be and look. In today's world, it's not enough just to look older to be "wiser."
Bad laws and bad government IS paradise for bad lawyers.
The huge problem of enabling technology is that it solves problems at an unprecedented rate -- for which people conditioned (educated) to an unchanging or slowly changing world -- are not prepared to handle, and so their only response is denial, suppression, coercion of everybody else to continue the old realities and hierarchies before a few challengers no longer go along but are CHANGE.
Change is happening all the time -- is the way of the world; enforcing an unchanging status quo is the perversion, distortion, disruption of the "natural" flow of life and history.
That's the problem here in Hawaii as everywhere but the cultural response is not to embrace change (openness, Aloha), but to own it exclusively for one's own benefit.
For every year now, our legislators have determined that their government employee-relatives and friends, are the “neediest” members of society -- and should get everything they can, before the rest of the people.
The original purpose of (American) government is to serve all the people -- and not just the relatives and friends of the legislators. Government that serves just these self-selected few, is an “oligarchy,” no matter how loudly they proclaim themselves to be “Democratic” -- and the “Scribes” try to convince us that is so.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
This is what it's all about -- and not just to provide a haven for bottom-of-the barrel UH grads to get back at head-of-the class peers who really want to do some good -- rather than dragging everyone down to their level so they can be king of the hill.
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