Dec
04

Occupy Wall Street Should Streamline Message, Focus Movement

Commentary By: Laura D. Rodriguez

 

According to occupywallst.org, “Occupy Wall Street is [a] leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.”

The Occupy Wall Street movement suffers from an image problem. Though it has managed to incorporate the average American’s current misgivings about the state of the economy into its general message, most people observing the movement from the outside cannot ascertain a central focus. To its credit, the movement has been able to garner national attention from media outlets, if for nothing else than for the diversity of its protestors and their run-ins with pepper spray and expiring protest permits. People who believe in the movement for its ability to call attention to the state of this country’s economic woes desperately need those participating in the movement to elect a national spokesperson and adopt a simplified protest message. Occupiers would do much for their cause if they organized into a respectable movement that Congress could not ignore. As it is, protestors have done little to dissuade most Americans from writing them off as “lazy hippies” who “expect something for nothing.”

Occupy Wall Street has called attention to the dishonesty of the relationship between politicians and big corporations. Merely protesting big corporations will not alter this relationship because you have to cut the ties at the root of the problem: the politicians. It is the politicians who are elected on the taxpayers’ dime and are corrupted into accepting gifts and other financial incentives to do the bidding of large corporations when they should resist them. These corporations then benefit financially from the legislation passed by the politicians they have influenced. Bribery of a politician or elected official should be a prosecutable federal offense. Occupy Wall Street should aim to take corporate money out of politics and reform our election system into one that is funded by public monies. This should be their central message and one they should be promoting nationally.

Instead of protesting aimlessly in front of large corporate headquarters, Occupiers should do so in front of political offices. They should also inundate these politicians with written complaints and telephone calls. Daily. Call for campaign finance reform and take corporate money out of politics!

Currently, Occupy Wall Street is planning a mass demonstration on Washington, D.C., called Occupy Congress on January 17, 2012. Good. This should have been the aim of the movement in the first place. In the interim, organize yourselves into a cohesive intellectual consortium and pound this central message home.

 

Nov
13

13 Million Dollar Budget Passage a Disservice to Cleveland’s Struggling School Students

Commentary by Laura D. Rodriguez

The issues plaguing the Cleveland Metropolitan School District have always been too numerous to count.  Blame for these issues is easily aspersed to a multitude of extenuating factors. But despite the torrent of ascribed culpability, the schools in this district are failing as district administrators choose to rely on novelty educational gimmicks to improve its image. On October 25th members of the Cleveland School Board voted on a $13 million dollar budget plan that sacrificed transportation for high school students, funding for textbooks, and the district’s preschool and summer school programs, among other less onerous things. The vote to approve this plan by the school board was nearly unanimous, save for one detractor.  In a school district where there have never been consistencies in academic performance or financial management, the school board and its CEO cannot really afford to eliminate fundamental educational services.  The Cleveland Teachers Union agreed to make concessions so that these programs may be saved, but that offer fell on the deaf ears of the administration.

At a forum on transforming education held at Landerhaven on November 9th, Cleveland School CEO Eric Gordon called for a reform of Ohio’s school funding system as well as the eradication of bad Charter schools. Though it is true that Charter schools are responsible in part for the mass exodus of school students and subsequent reductions in federal and state funding, it cannot be blamed for the state of the public school system in Cleveland. Charter schools have given the district competition, but the administration has traded in providing a strong traditional education for its students for the reliance on the creation of specialty schools. There is a school for boys, a school for girls, schools of art, schools for science and technology, an entrepreneurship preparatory school, an environmental studies school, a school for business, a school for law and municipal careers, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) schools, academies within schools, and schools that do not have any of the aforementioned distinctions attached to them.

Emphases on science, technology, math, art and future careers should be available to every student in every school. Students should be able to go to schools in their neighborhood and receive the same education they would going to a school across town. Students shouldn’t have to compete for enrollment in specific schools with limited space to receive a competitive education. The students in Cleveland suffer, in part, from the lack of a unified district curriculum and vision. The district is attempting to address its academic issues from too many different angles while the prevailing goal should be to improve education in the district as a whole.

Making sure that your students have the tools and programs to succeed should be the prime concern for the school board and Cleveland’s school CEO. Whether it encompasses making further cuts to administrative positions or working with teachers on concessions to save fundamental programs, you do it for the students. You do it, because you cannot afford not to.

Nov
06

Campaign Finance Reform Can Save the World (of Politics)

Commentary by Laura D. Rodriguez

As politicians look to large corporations and political lobbies as the primary source of income to fund their campaigns, the average American has become more and more isolated from participation in our political system.  The election system that is currently in place ostracizes most Americans from having their wants, needs, or ideas considered a viable concern to most career politicians. The lack of a publicly funded campaign system for presidential and congressional elections, as well as term limits for the legislative branch of the United States government, subsidizes the immediate preoccupation politicians have with their re-election and mobilization to fundraise (seemingly as soon as the candidate takes office). This doesn’t leave much time to tend to the job politicians were elected to do.

Public service to your country in the form of contributing to its laws and ideals should be an honor to anyone seeking to hold office. Instead, the American political process is filled with power-mongers who take office in service of selfish objectives, as well as the objectives of their highest campaign contributors. As it stands today, unless you can afford to buy the seat in office you are running for, the average American will never have the opportunity to represent their case in our country’s national legislative body.

Aside from making the political process open to people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to run for office, reforming presidential and congressional elections and the way they are financed will change the dialogue in Washington instead of allowing large corporations and lobbies to set the discourse for us. The United States legislature should enact an Amendment to our constitution that:

  1. Levies a national tax to publicly fund presidential and congressional elections and mandate free airtime for debates on national television;
  2. Restricts the duration of presidential and congressional campaigns;
  3. Makes it a federal crime to “influence” candidates and elected officials with campaign donations; and
  4. Establishes term limits for members of Congress.

Eliminating the need to fundraise for election campaigns leaves more time for politicians to work on serving their constituency.  Giving candidates a set time they can start campaigning and restricting the duration of those campaigns levels the playing field for everyone. It should be a federal crime to influence a candidate or elected official through “generous” campaign donations. Eliminating a good portion of those types of donations will allow people to lobby on an intellectual level instead of a monetary one.

The United States established the checks and balances system and term limits for the Presidency to combat the potential of tyrannical rule.  Why not also establish term limits for members of Congress? As Congress is supposed to be representative of the people, why not require that new candidates be elected so that the laws are representative of the viewpoints of the people at that point in time. Look at Strom Thurmond if you need an example of someone whose viewpoints (racial segregation) did not change as those of the country did.

Someone I talked to recently thought, and rightly so, that politicians should be incorruptible by special interests. In a perfect world that would be true. But considering the political environment that this country has created for itself, the odds are unlikely. The United States needs to reel in and reform its election system to make it more balanced for everyone. In doing so, the quality of people who would be taking office would change as well as the national political discourse. 

In a political climate of a country where most of its population is victim to political consequences outside the realm of their control, giving them some semblance of an assurance that those that represent them are working on their behalf is the least the United States government can do for a very politics-weary populace. And who knows? Perhaps the millions of dollars corporations do not funnel into presidential and congressional campaigns can go towards some much needed job creation!

Nov
02

Declaration of Principles and Rules for Submission

The Mercury Journal was founded in 2011 by Laura D. Rodriguez and was conceived as a place to advance intellectual discussion on topical issues. The Mercury Journal publishes editorials once a week, on Sundays, and aims to include commentaries from ordinary news readers.

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Oct
31

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Oct
30

Introducing…The Mercury Journal

The Mercury Journal’s first digest will post on Sunday, November 6, 2011. Stay Tuned.

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