…And So It Begins…

I wish that I didn’t love living here in Colorado so much. It would make it easier to seriously contemplate moving abroad for the next few months to escape the circus of avarice and deception that is the American Political System.

I’ve already complained that Koch Industries has been running Ads here since the left so vehemently smeared the Koch Brothers – pointing-out that they were trying to buy the congress one legislator at a time. Koch is running feel-good ads about the “good people of Koch.” The problem isn’t the “good” people of Koch that need to be worried about, it is the people at the top of the company who through their ability to put billions into an election want to pervert the system to benefit them and them alone.

So, what do I mean by the title? We have a candidate – not a particularly good or truthful candidate, but we have an actual declared candidate and the fun now begins! What worries me is that the entire announcement for the candidacy was so transparently fraudulent that it sets the bar REALLY LOW as to how the rest of the year will go.

Mr. Cruz spoke before a captive audience; Liberty University has mandatory meetings frequently that students must attend or pay a fine and it was this platform he chose to backdrop his announcement. How fitting! The TEA Party darling speaking before a group being indoctrinated to a certain way of thinking that they can only escape if they are rich enough to pay the fines; it is such an apt metaphor for today’s Republican Party, made better that the venue is an evangelical religious institution. It would only be more perfect if 1% of the student body were immune to the requirement to attend and to the fines.

Anyone wondering if the crowd was actively there to support him need only count the number of people who had their mobile devices out and were NOT actually paying attention to the speaker. Or, and this is MY favorite part of the announcement, look at the group of people down front wearing Rand Paul Tee-Shirts.

But, perhaps the worst part was that the lecture was rife with misinformation. In what appears to be the theme of his nascent campaign, Mr. Cruz paints a bleak picture of the US. I have no idea what Lovecraftian hellscape he is waking-up in, but it does not relate to reality. In Mr. Cruz’ fevered imagination small businesses are being driven out of business in droves by the expense of the Affordable Care Act.

In his rambling “imagine a world where…” speech, he claimed that small businesses are closing their doors in record numbers. In truth, this is just not the case. The record numbers of businesses closing their doors was in 2009 at the height of the recession. While businesses fail all the time – not every business can succeed, some are ill-conceived, some are poorly managed, some do not have backing, and yes, some might be impacted adversely by the environment in which they are founded. But the truth of the matter is that over the past few years, the economy has been improving.

The average man-in-the-street may not be a part of the recovery as most of the boon has gone to the richest 1% of the population; the fact remains, the economy has been improving since the lows of the Bush (43) era.

So, let’s hope that Mr. Cruz is not a harbinger of things to come over the next year-or-so! Let’s hope that we can have an actual debate where factual information is exchanged and where the votes of “We The People…” are more important than the votes of “They The Monied…” Oh, my! Imagine a world where politicians are beholden only to the voters and not to the likes of the Koch brothers!

Wherever you are today, I hope you will watch the proceedings with a skeptical eye – look for the truth; fight against the darkness that is politics as it has become in the US!

Don Bergquist – March 26, 2015 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA