Bad Tanzania & My politics

Author

Jacob Templer
November 18, 2024

Bad decision, Tanzania

Recently while in Kenya I had one of the greatest travel experiences of my life.

Amboseli National Park.

At the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro across the border in Tanzania, lies one of the most famous parks in the world for African elephants. Massive female led herds and the largest males in the world. These elephants are the most researched of anywhere on the planet for the last fifty years.

Big Boys - Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Elephants’ that’s tusks combined weigh over one-hundred pounds are called “tuskers.” After centuries of poaching for ivory, there remains only two dozen tuskers left on the continent of Africa. All of them live between Kenya and Tanzania.

Earlier this year, five tuskers crossed the border from Kenya into Tanzania. Those five elephants were gunned down by trophy hunters. There is no effective conservation initiative in the senseless killings of these modern mammoths, only a money grab for despicable Tanzanian officials.

Kenya has prohibited hunting of any kind for over forty years.

The decision of where to safari in East Africa has become crystal clear.

My politics

Amidst the seismic activity that was the recent US Presidential election, I was reminded of a lesson my mom taught me around the time I turned eighteen.

Simply - the American political system is bought, and until that changes, no lasting and effective progress will ever happen.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m being hyperbolic?

Here are the three instances that set the foundation for the bought system we have today:

1) The Lewis Powell Memorandum

Just before his appointment to the Supreme Court, Powell penned a secret memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce that would live on in infamy. Entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," it called for corporate America to take a direct initiative in the political landscape - specifically, in the branch of government that ratifies whether laws are constitutional:

“American business and the enterprise system have been affected as much by the courts as by the executive and legislative branches of government. Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”

And when Powell got onto the court, he got his chance to put his plan into action.

2) Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)

Buckley v. Valeo was a case where a state law restricted campaign expenditures. Plaintiffs sued under the idea that the restrictions were unconstitutional. The most important thing to take away from this case is that the Supreme Court decided that money = speech, and therefore extended the First Amendment to protect expenditures for campaigns.

“The First Amendment requires the invalidation of the Act's independent expenditure ceiling, its limitation on a candidate's expenditures from his own personal funds, and its ceilings on over-all campaign expenditures, since those provisions place substantial and direct restrictions on the ability of candidates, citizens, and associations to engage in protected political expression, restrictions that the First Amendment cannot tolerate.”

One left to go for the KO of democracy.

3) First Nat'l Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978)

The Supreme Court found that the rights and privileges of the Constitution extend beyond ordinary citizens, to include corporations:

“There is no support in the First or Fourteenth Amendment, or in this Court's decisions, for the proposition that such speech loses the protection otherwise afforded it by the First Amendment simply because its source is a corporation.”

And better, the Court was insane enough to explicitly state that there was no threat of corruption in expenditures by corporations on political campaigns:

“corporate advertising may influence the outcome of the vote; this would be its purpose. But the fact that advocacy may persuade the electorate is hardly a reason to suppress it.”

…

Until a Constitutional Amendment is passed that prohibits corporate & affiliated individual expenditures on political campaigns, we’re not solving anything.

I’m optimistic.

Sincerely,

Jacob

P.S. I took the day to have a hard rest, but did spend some time with a bunch of donkeys on my way back from lunch. Such lovely creatures.