politicians should dress more like nascar drivers

Here's an idea.

The biggest lie in elections is that we somehow think we are actually voting people into office out of a free choice. We are given a freedom to choose who we want to represent our individual and civic interests as law makers, enforcers, judges, and executors.

Sure.

That belief is like saying that when we walk into a mall we have a total freedom behind not only what we want to buy, but what we actually do buy. The environment serves one thing: impulse. The consumer environment coaxes our desires by tapping into fears and insecurities. It creates images of conformity, power structures, levels of authority, and the environment that shapes our behaviors whether we are conscious of it or not. Try to find a healthy choice of food in a food court. You have to navigate through a lot of cheap, processed, but oh so tasty food to get to the stuff your body actually needs to be healthy! Hell, why go for the bland steamed veggies when general tso is screaming at you from a vat of sweet and spicy sauce loaded with sugar and fat. Mmmmm.

Political campaigns are the same way. You think all of those caucuses are for the public to vet and choose candidates? You really think the Values Voters Summit is about Joe and Jane public? Wake up. That entire health care bill was never about the public. What we see now is its logical form in relation to the dollars that have flowed into the ledgers of the politicians that wrote and amended it over and over again.

The entire political environment is about corporate dollars funding those politicians who will fight for policies that affect the flow of commerce in favorable ways. This is about corporate interest, not public, civic interest. From health care, to abortion, cap and trade, to Wal Mart, to how your feces moves through the pipelines, you just have to follow the money.

The so-called free market is really about how well corporate dollars can influence the environment to get an upper hand and better their bottom line by extracting value from the labor that most people do to receive a paycheck. When you are paid for something in government notes, that value is something that corporations and businesses want. This is physics. Value only moves from place to place in the form of debits and credits on the balance sheets that truly rule the world and your freedom.

The problem is that when you think you are exercising your freedom to vote for a candidate, you have no idea who you are also voting for when you vote for them. You think those policies are for your benefit? Not really. All of those nasty and smarmy campaign messages are designed to condition your view of the world and how it affects you in order to extract value from you in order to transfer it to someone else. You are not voting for someone who represents you first. You are voting for someone who represents a set of corporate interests that have paid that person a massive amount of money that dwarfs the government paycheck. Just follow the money and that is where a politician's core values reside – not with your family values or health.

So here is something that I think would make your voting decision more  transparent since most people are not going to bother with pesky facts and figures. Require all politicians to physically brand themselves with the lobbyists and industries that have paid them. This is just free-market capitalism. Let corporate sponsors brand the politicians like sponsors for a NASCAR driver's uniform and car. The more money a sponsor (lobbyist, industry, pac's, etc.) gives, the bigger space they get on the suit, golf club bag, speech mention, etc. At least then you will be reminded that you are not voting for just, say Chris Dodd, but Phizer among others.

NASCAR drivers are embedded in the life of their sponsors doing commercial spots and thanking them profusely in pre- and post-race interviews. They perform well to keep those important sponsor dollars flowing in and their winning give the sponsors a lot of advertising and product movement. It's probably one of the greatest feats of modern, or late, capitalism to which we are witness.

The same relationships happen with our beloved politicians. We just don't get to see it. So make them advertise for the corporate interests they are really fighting for. Then we will have information on tap so we know which companies we want our government to serve, since none of them really give a crap about public interest at all.

Jimmie Johnson for President in 2012?

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2. simple single-payer health care solution
3. "going green" is part of the problem
4. stop giving money for the afflicted
5. it's not indoctrination but the magic is sucking you dry