It's Time to Take Our Country Back--and Here's How
by Rick Weiland and Drey Samuelson
Here is what everyone knows: Our government simply isn't working, it's like a car with a dead battery--when the American people turn the key, all we hear is a faint clicking noise, and then... nothing. Unsurprisingly, people are starting to leave the car in disgust, frustrated and sick of going nowhere.
What happened?
There are two main problems: One, "Big Money" calls most of the shots and it's understandably quite satisfied with the status quo, especially since 400 people in this country have a combined wealth that is more than the total combined wealth of the bottom 150 million of us! And then consider this: an astonishingly small .26% of the population contributes a whopping 68% of all political donations. Coincidence? We don't think so. Unhealthy? Without a doubt.
Two: Congress, in many ways, merely reflects the growing and dangerous partisan divide in our country. According to a recent Pew study on political polarization, "Fully 66% of consistently conservative Republicans think the Democrats’ policies threaten the nation’s well-being. By comparison, half (50%) of consistently liberal Democrats say Republican policies jeopardize the nation’s well-being." As the cartoonist Walt Kelly once wrote, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
So, what can be done?
We have to first accept the reality that Congress isn't going to be reformed anytime soon, much as we'd prefer otherwise--it's problems are simply too deep, too intractable. As we see it, that leaves only one real alternative: to organize folks in individual states, which is why the two of us have just formed an independent organization, TakeItBack.Org, that will develop and pass state ballot initiatives designed to promote both anti-corruption/campaign reform, as well as nonpartisan process reforms which we believe will reduce partisan anger.
Not familiar with the ballot initiatives? Well, 24 states allow them—and, as Daily Kos’ David Jarman recently wrote: "Ballot measures aren't subject to congressional or legislative gridlock, they can't be gerrymandered, they're hard to link to unpopular individual politicians, and all the opposition can do is try to bury them under a heap of ads."
And, thankfully, that often doesn't work, because it's much easier to beat a candidate than it is to beat an idea.
The truth is that Congress is no longer where the political action is--it's now in the states. It's the states that are forcing the issues of marriage equality, minimum wage increases, marijuana decriminalization, anti-gerrymandering and campaign-finance reform, universal background checks for guns, and criminal justice and energy and environment reforms, not Congress.
So that’s where TakeItBack.Org plans to come in--proving our concept in South Dakota first, and then moving on to other states. We're going to demonstrate that citizens don't need to rely on politicians to effect reforms, we can use ballot initiatives to do it ourselves, Democrats, Republicans and Independents working together, and hope that Congress takes note. It's time that we quit bickering, raise the car hood, replace the battery, and get moving again!
Rick Weiland is a former South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate and small business owner. Drey Samuelson is the longtime former Chief of Staff for retired South Dakota U.S. Senator Tim Johnson.