The mariner spent the morning reading web sites about State legislation that is in process. The overall impression is that the States are very defensive. There’s a lot about nullifying Federal gun legislation using the second and tenth amendments as a legal bulwark. A lot of legislation is focused on making more effective punishment for felony and misdemeanor conviction. Some legislation is favoritism to a given person or business – always tacked on to a larger bill just like the Congress does.

Generally, State legislators are quite defensive and small minded, having no hopeful attitude about how to make life better for its citizens. The mariner understands that the Federal Government and the economic conditions have dealt a heavy financial blow to the budgets and economies of the States. The States, however, can find their own ways back to civility and concern for the constituency without waiting for the Federal Government.

Unfortunately, many States are bound by balanced budget laws. Visiting a bank to refinance debt (issuing State bonds) is not an option if the State is constitutionally bound to a balanced budget. In addition, states have become overly dependent on Federal handouts for activities that are wholly within the State and really only the State’s business.

A lot of State government difficulty can be attributed to attitude. To use an old metaphor, legislators have been in the foxhole too long and have lost sight of the greater constituent need for them to lead the State into the future. This has become the task that voters and activists must pursue. A State’s constituency must force the legislators to turn from defensive and paranoid behavior, to turn away from legislative favoritism, and focus again on what is best for the common citizen of their State. That attitude has existed in the past for most States. Legislators will balk at the pressure of the citizens, citing financial impossibilities. It doesn’t cost a lot to be nice and care about people – ask any nonprofit organization serving the underprivileged.

But the main point the mariner wants to make is the States are free to be independently driven, to pass laws that benefit the State’s constituency without waiting for Federal change. This is especially true in societal situations where rational human behavior need not wait, for example, unions are under siege in several States, marijuana and same sex marriage and ignoring Federal gun laws that require registration. It is also true that an enlightened State government can do a lot to fix its own economics.

You, the local State citizen, have more influence over who is elected and what they will do while in office. The mariner still advocates that governmental change will emerge from State leadership.

Finally, the gun issue is a classic example of “one popular issue” campaigning. What else does the legislator believe besides leveraging the popular gun issue? It may be scary. In the southern States, voting by every citizen is at great risk. If the Supreme Court decides the Federal oversight of voting laws in southern States is no longer necessary, what’s the gun-toting legislator have to say about the right for every citizen to vote without burdensome constraints?

The Continental Congress formed a national government to raise funds for wars, manage trade, oversee a national economy, particularly the power to print money, and to referee disputes between States. The rest was left to the States to manage on their own. The Bill of Rights was added to include citizens, not just states.

Over the centuries this Federal-State relationship has become frayed. There are legitimate reasons for the Federal Government to step in and pass national laws that protect some aspect of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Today, this “stepping in” has in many ways become a money game for lobbyists and special interests; the inherent values of a State are subject to abuse by investors and entrepreneurs. Genuinely needed support to the States is often ignored, for example, roads, transportation and utility infrastructure.

The recent effort to pass gun registration gave the mariner the thought that perhaps the individual States may be able to promote change more rapidly than the Federal Government. What changes can be made will depend on the cultural attitude of the State’s constituency, where an issue can become a common objective. Taking an intellectually simple issue, legalizing marijuana, each State has approached the issue in a way that is more responsive to the attitude of its constituency rather than following the Federal position. Change is occurring at the State level years before it would pass the Congress and the Attorney General knows better than to go after popular State legislation. Another example is legalization of same sex marriage; individually, a number of States are forcing change by making same sex marriage legal at the State level – even though it is an issue better dealt with at the Federal level (due process, equal protection, etc.).

To a significant degree, State Government is more sensitive to the mood and need of its constituency; State legislators are folks that go home every night to their neighborhoods; political capital is earned by championing very local issues. States, more or less, are modifying education policy because they are forced both by economics and at the same time have to provide an educated work force – something potential businesses ask about frequently. There are dozens of different educational experiments ongoing in States while the Congress has no interest in increasing funding to State education budgets generally and certainly has no interest in educational philosophies.

Perhaps it is easier for a citizen to modify a State legislator’s priorities than those of a Congressman. Perhaps too much attention is paid to Federal progress (or lack thereof) and not enough to State governments that are forced to adjust to the reality of their constituency more so than the Congress.

It is easier to marshal an activist citizenry at the State level than at the Federal level where immense amounts of dollars is a deterrent. What would happen if the constituencies cared more about selectively electing the local mayors, legislators, judges and Governors than they cared about the big, TV covered Federal elections? Could change occur more rapidly? After all, isn’t that what the Constitutional Congress intended?

The thorn in this approach is the diversity of each State constituency. States can collaborate in ways that some types of progress can be made but not other types. Consider the Dixie States: socially conservative, comparatively racist, and have clearly ranked classes of individuals. Consider the rust belt: languishing in the last echoes of the industrial revolution, most of which was sent overseas. A genuine American culture that made this country strong and profitable has all but disappeared. Consider the mountain states: sparse population, firmly independent, and at odds with any agency or Non Profit Organization that infringes on their right to do what they want to do. Consider New England and the Mid-Atlantic States: The site of the founding of the United States, this region has carved a culture of pragmatism rather than ideology – something that must have been necessary to survive the early years.

Each region has different priorities – both cultural and economic.

What changes can/will each region advocate? Will the changes correlate to changes promoted by other regions of the United States? If nothing else, the Congress will have to listen to change from their constituent regions if they want to be reelected. This is a State strategy to divide and conquer the attention of the Federal government. The mariner suspects it will take groups of States to make this work but it may be the fastest way to implement changes to dysfunctional congressional practices.

The Senators who voted down the gun registration bill are feeling the heat at home. With a little practice, State citizens may wield notable influence – maybe even beat the generation cycle. From their perspective, the Tea Party, a loose coalition of grass roots organizations, made significant progress.

State referendum or initiative is a way to make change. It is quick but it is completely populist. Proposition 13 in California, passed in 1978, changed the California Constitution to limit property tax increases to virtually zero; it still shackles the economy of California to the point that what was once the fifth largest economy in the world is deeply in debt because of the tax constraints in Proposition 13. To reader Marc’s point in an earlier post, the individual voter doesn’t do much homework.

Marches on Washington, for example the “Million Man” march by African Americans in 1995 to protest economic oppression of African American men, get large press, allow Congressmen to promote their positions during the event, and then the issue drops from sight. The Million Man March was backed by a number of national African American organizations and notable speakers from every quarter. Grass roots training, education and proselytizing were provided in advance.

The effect of the Million Man March was not one of legislative change or greater opportunity through government or business. Its benefit, unexpectedly, was to raise the consciousness of African American men. Sociological studies since show that family ties were strengthened, a sense of belonging to something of value emerged, even a few successful business ventures can be traced back to the march. The main effect of the march was the establishment of self worth and common cause. Still, no meaningful legislation has come to pass. Nevertheless, can this be called change? What is the next step for the African American? Should other races/classes first bond together in order to have the zeal to make change happen?

All said, the answer is grass root energy and will. Popular attitude alone almost achieved gun registration. It will take organized activism as well as attitude to make change real – especially in election campaigns.

Reader Marc makes the point that even elected officials are told what to vote for just as the electorate follows the meaninglessness of campaign rhetoric. When you think about it, part of the decision for everyone is, in fact, mindless. The electorate is trapped in their cultural bias, subsumed in a lifetime of self identification within a cultural class and a financial perspective of reality – but honestly so. The elected officials, too, are trapped in a system that feeds on power, hierarchy, huge sums of money. Unlike the electorate, the officials are not bound by the reality of their constituency but by party leadership, the anxiety to be reelected, and to find coalitions of “friends” that give the official a sense of participation. Our dilemma is that no one can make genuinely moral or rational decisions for the greater good of self, class, nation, or the Earth.

How can society change in this bound environment? Not quickly for sure. How does one see the right decision in a sea of democratic prerogatives? Every decision is fraught with huge consequences: vote to not build a new jet fighter that the military doesn’t really need, and thousands of laborers lose their jobs; vote for better education and one’s taxes rise; vote in behalf of the environment and hundreds lose their jobs in the oil and coal industry. It goes on and on and often focuses on serious moral dilemmas – which are serious to some of us and indifferent to others.

The Tea Party tried. The conservative ideology did not win the fight but it certainly skewed the Congress toward some morally unfair policies in the name of less government. The Tea Party failed to understand the real issue: we are bound in a democratic society that has no one supreme issue. The Tea Party forgot that every stick has two ends that are on opposite sides and will never meet – it’s the stick between the ends that has value.

The gun atrocities garnered enough consciousness in the electorate that those elected officials who voted against gun registration went home to hostile constituencies and may not easily be reelected. But the gun lobby won the battle. The war continues.

One could turn to history to see how change occurred in the past. The mariner doesn’t intend to give a history lesson but think about changes only in the twentieth century: women’s right to vote; child labor laws; the right to vote; the right to form labor unions; the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination. Other citizen uprisings had the citizens burning draft cards and bras, overtaking public parks in mass numbers, and more quietly, those twenty and thirty year old folks who have turned their back on Government. Two things are apparent: the initial starts of these changes sometimes take hundreds of years (slavery) and all of them take decades, at least one or two generations.

There’s that word. Generations. A fast forward example is Caruso, Rudy Vallee, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, nsync, and Justin Bieber. Don’t worry if your favorite is left out. What the list demonstrates is that every generation has a unique, almost stand-alone impact on society.

The mariner suspects that as each generation comes of age, it carries within it a few small seeds of change from earlier generations that are accepted and not an issue. Each generation has its important issues, and its unique perception of reality but each generation has moved a notch along the measure of cultural change. A good example is the attitude toward lesbians and gays. As legislation only now begins to emerge from Congress, the public, by and large, has already dealt with it.

In the current environment, where the elderly need social security – especially since businesses are bailing out of that responsibility, where profit-taking is at an outrageous high in the health industry, and the global economy is in a quagmire that no one nation can fix, and the Earth becomes a trashier and dirtier place to live, where the young are not educated, where banks and investors reap 90% of the GDP, a generation is not long enough. Not even two generations. Some may be born and die before meaningful change has taken place.

We are in a peck of trouble. But we have to move at the speed of generations. We are strapped to the generation cycle.

There was a segment on Jon Stuart’s Daily show recently. To view the segment, the mariner provides a link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-23-2013/gun-control—political-suicide

The subject presumably is about gun control but the back story is really about the character of elected officials. The segment compares the character of legislative members in Australia with the character of U.S. legislators. One is forced to think about the denigration of our American legislators. The segment, reported by John Oliver, asks the priorities of a legislator in Australia:

1. Pass legislation that benefits the citizens and improves society.

2. Hope the legislator’s decisions are liked enough to reelect the legislator (the Australian legislator voted for a gun ban bill that cost him reelection. He knew the vote would end his career because he was from the most conservative district in Australia).

John Oliver asked the same question to the chief aide to Senator Harry Reid:

1. Get reelected.

2. Pass legislation (prompted by Oliver – the aide stopped after the first one).

Elected officials in government are there because the electorate put them there. Enough of us voted for each money grubber to allow him to get into office and set up a system that makes it unlikely anyone can defeat him in future elections so he can get rich from favors and lobbyist contributions without being accountable to the wellbeing of his constituency. No intention to exclude female legislators. We did that with our votes. Each of us is accountable for the deplorable state of our government – federal, state and local.

Why do we do this? We are quick to dump a legislator who has an affair that has little if anything to do with the wellbeing of the constituency but willing to reelect legislators who have shown no diligence to what would benefit individual citizens over what a lobbyist prefers and will get because he slips cash into the legislator’s pocket.

We are quick to elect any one issue candidate because he touts one issue that is popular but does not publically represent the rest of his social philosophy – which may be disastrous. And it seems we are influenced by negative political ads. The mariner knows this much: When a candidate starts talking about his opponent, he has stopped talking about his own intentions. When the crap starts flying, this is a sign that the candidate has inadequacies and would rather point out the other candidate’s inadequacies. And we buy this stuff!?

The John Oliver segment uses gun control lobbyists as an example of undue influence but this observation from dockside is about us – not the gun lobby. We put these jerks in office.  Why? How? What made us do that? What can help the individual voter make better voting decisions that will benefit their own life and society?

The mariner doesn’t know the answer but this failure of the American citizen to assure a healthy society needs to be investigated and fixed before anyone can hope for better government. I wonder what the effect would be if a candidate could raise campaign money only within his district? Just musing – such a bill will never pass. The electorate has to clean out the legislatures first.