Category: Uncategorized

The demise of the American worker—hint, it’s no accident

What ‘they’ don’t want you to know about the American economy, and the average American’s place within it.

For over 50 years now, starting with the Reagan administration, corporate America has consciously and with cold-blooded premeditation, waged war against Americans. They doubled down in the 1990’s, by deciding the only way to respond to competition from overseas companies that profited by abusing workers and paying starvation wages, was to do the same here.


The steady erosion of the middle class is a direct result. Any time you hear a corporate CEO say something like, “It’s the only way we can stay in business,” what they really mean is, “It’s the only way we can maintain the level of profit demanded by our wealthiest investors.” The most effective way corporations have of ensuring profit levels that make people like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and their ultra wealthy investors happy, is to take an ever larger slice directly from the American worker.


Insane housing costs, and especially ridiculously out-of-reach apartment rental rates, work in exactly the same way. The next time some apartment manager or executive dares to use the phrase, “We’re just bringing rates up to market,”—or something similar—interpret that to actually mean, “We’re just taking every last possible penny out of your sorry ass in order to make our largest investors richer, and we’re doing it because we can.”


Never buy any lie about trying to benefit “all” investors, which implies they it’s for the “mom and pop” investors too. Small investors make up an infinitesimally small amount of overall investment. The stock market is about “the average American” in the same way as a war is about “the people in the fox holes.” When you read about the state of the “economy,” you are actually reading about what’s good for Wall Street, i.e. the wealthiest among us, the top 1-5%. It is as meaningless to the average American as those last few french fries you toss away are to you.


The truth about the American economy, and the well-being of its citizens lies in the earning power, things like the ability to live in a decent home, provide for their children, including sending them to college, have access to good, affordable health care, plan for retirement, etc. Every time you are told something about how many jobs were added to the economy, your response should not be “Oh, that’s good.” It should be, How much do those jobs pay? Are they full time? Are there health benefits? Can that person live comfortably with that pay and those benefits?


Simple fact: If wages had kept up with inflation and productivity since the 1970’s, the minimum wage paid American workers would be somewhere between $25 and $32 per hour (depending on which chart/source you get your information from). Why is it not?


Through the first three-fourths of the twentieth century, American workers could live in a decent house, provide for their children, including sending them to college, have access to affordable (not free) health care, take a vacation without having to indebt themselves to a credit card with a 20%+ interest rate.
That has changed, not as the result of a world-wide economy, but as the direct result of the response to a world-wide economy by the wealthiest 5% of Americans who are damned if they will make any adjustments to their own grand lifestyles. It is a response as cold-blooded as John Wick, to devalue the American worker across the spectrum.


Only we the people can decide what we intend to do about it.

Do Your Words Mean What You Think They Mean?

File under: Signs of Failed Humanity

I’m confused. So many people say they are angered and horrified when they see posts showing how animals are brutalized and tortured from day one to day last in factory farms. They see the immoral suffering inflicted on these sentient, helpless-to-resist, agonized beings and express how disgusted it makes them.
And then they go right ahead, and continue to eat the mutilated bodies and produce of these animals and smacking their lips. Today. In a supposedly enlightened era. When good substitutes this meat are ever more available.


Today., every time I hear a meat eating friend express outrage at the torture and brutal murder of animals while posting pictures of their oh-so-delicious meat dishes, I’m prompted to say, like Inigo Montoya, you keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.


One word does come to mind. Hypocrisy.


I was one of these people myself, into my seventies. But those of my generation lived in a vacuum of denial. We deluded ourselves with the idea that animals were treated well, and lived well, right up to the moment of their death. I finally LEARNED.

I wish my friends and acquaintances would learn. I wish everyone would learn.

There is, in the 21st century, no excuse for not knowing not learning, not being better. There is no excuse today. There is no longer any denying the horrors of the meat and dairy industry.

If we are decrying and condemning those horrors while using our next breath to express how delicious our ham and bacon, beef, chicken, and turkey dishes are, we should at least have the honesty to stop using words that don’t mean what they say.
It’s 2021. We can’t love eating that meat and also say we care about the suffering attached to it. Because we don’t mean it.


It’s called hypocrisy.

Is the GOP that Loony, that corrupt, or both?

There is certainly plenty of evidence to support the latter. Let’s be perfectly clear here. There is not so much as a feather, a sliver of fingernail, a hair’s breadth, a whisper of a breath that any fraud whatsoever occurred during the 2020 election. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won. Fair and square. the people have spoken. Overwhelmingly, by over 8 million votes. Every election official in every state has verified that it was an honest election. That’s not even open to question.

The only place where any fraud occurred— and this is of course not unusual— was in the mouth of Donald J Trump. Lies coming from Donald Trump are nothing unusual. As a matter of fact, they are the new normal in American politics. What verges on insane, is that Trump, serial lying, thoroughly immoral, completely corrupt, snake oil salesman extraordinaire and wannabe dictator that he is, commands the almost complete fealty of what was once upon a time (a long time ago in a parallel universe far, far away) a legitimate political party. The manner in which the entire Republican Party continues to suck up to Donald Trump’s obvious lies and clear attempt to fashion a coup, would have at one time been unthinkable. But here we are.

Let’s say this again. There is not and has never been even the slightest doubt as to the legitimacy and honesty of this election. As a matter of fact, if you’re looking for fraud, you should be looking at the various tricks pulled by the Republican Party, such as closing down vast numbers of polling places, gerrymandering in the extreme, attempting to intimidate voters not to show up through the actions of the white supremacist and Neo-Nazis that the GOP now embraces. Or perhaps always embraced, but now do so openly.

The election was above board. But Donald Trump throws out wild, baseless, lies, and as if he were the Messiah himself, the second coming, the Republican party jumps on the wagon. The Republican Party is behaving like a sad, tragic, but very dangerous overstuffed clown car careening downhill. It’s not enough for them to just keep their mouth shut and let Donald Trump rant and rave. For many of them, it becomes necessary to expose themselves as being equally corrupt and uniformly bound to the lies that Trump tells.

The latest of these, is Missouri’s Cole County Assessor, Christopher D. Estes. You know, we like to think that someone in as important a position as that of County assessor, is of sound mind. But recently, when Georgia state senator Elena Parent posted that the Georgia election, just as had all of the election officials in all of the states, had been shown to be honest, aboveboard, and with no hint of fraud, Mr. Estes could not resist shining broad doubt upon his mental acuity by accusing her of being treasonous, and part of a coup. He even implied that this heinous crime was worthy of execution. I’m assuming he did it with a straight face.

I’m not a great important man like Mr. Estes. I’m not an esteemed County assessor. I’m just a former schoolteacher who knows a thing or two about delving into the facts and the truth of a situation. And I have to wonder whether Mr. Estes is mentally infirm, or corrupt, or I don’t know, maybe under the threat of violence and possible death from Trump and his supporters. Because what he says has absolute no basis in fact. None. Zip. Zero. As Hitler preached, Mr. Estes and his fellow Republicans continue to accuse “the others” of that which they themselves commit.

But Mr. Estes is not alone. This is the point we have reached in terms of the Republican Party itself. Other than a handful of the top leaders, Mitch McConnell—the Benedict Arnold of our time—Ted Cruz, and a few others, I would like to think that the rest of the GOP still possesses at least a modicum of morality and sense of ethical conduct. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Looking for an attempt at a coup? The GOP is doing it right out in the open.

How can an entire party allow themselves to become willing, apparently even eager, accomplices to the kind of corruption and dishonesty that is the stock in trade of Donald Trump? Were they hijacked? Shanghaied? Or is Trump exactly the Al Capone of politics they have been waiting for? Can they really be that stupid, that ignorant of the genuine, repeatedly proven facts? Are they possibly in actuality that mentally unbalanced? Can it be they are so corrupt and bent on controlling the country that right and wrong have lost any meaning for them? Is there no decency left in them?

Are they being bribed? Are they genuinely in fear for their lives and the lives of their families if they dare step out of line? Is Donald Trump running some kind of new Mafia family, with Neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys and KKK as his enforcers? If these questions sound fantastic, I would have agreed not too long ago. But the obvious willingness to be a part of one of the most astonishing system of lies ever inflicted upon American democracy and government; the clear complicity in what can only be described as an all-out attempt to stage a coup against the American democratic process and fashion a dictatorship in place of it, make these questions, no matter how distasteful or fantastic they may sound, necessary.

The real facts are clear beyond refutation. The states have said so. Republican Governors and election officials have said so. The courts have said so. The Supreme Court, with three Trump-appointed justices, has said so. We are left with only one genuine, crucial question. What in the name of Hell is going on with the Republican party? Whatever it is, it ain’t good for America. You can take that to the bank.

11

12:01pm – 01/20/2021 – KEEP IT SIMPLE

Keep it simple. 12:01 pm, 1/20/2021Like everyone else, I’ve been riding a terrible roller coaster of highs—Biden wins!—and soul twisting lows—what if Trump refuses to go, what if GOP legislatures manage to void the popular vote, and various opinions on the spectre of constitutional crisis.

Then I woke up this morning and had an epiphany of clarity. Let’s, as the military says, keep it simple stupid. And let’s recall the logic of Occam’s Razor: the simplest answer is usually the right one.

In the latter case above, if GOP legislatures do indeed connive to override the popular vote with rigged electors, we have a problem. In that case, there is going to be hell to pay, and possibly a full Uncivil War. That is the worst case scenario, and one that is probably very unlikely. For that to happen, the Republicans will have to get past actual judges, as in state supreme courts. History tells us that judges, even Republican judges, are much harder to pervert than are politicians.So let’s put that possible but highly unlikely nightmare aside and deal with the more likely situation.

What if, after votes are recounted and re-audited ad infinitum and Joseph Biden is reaffirmed over and over as the President, Trump says he won’t go. I’ve been reading a plethora of hand-wringing discussions about the Constitution not providing for such a bizarre situation. I think they are all missing the point. Remember Occam’s Razor. Remember what the Sergeant says, keep it simple stupid. The answer is right in front of us.

The founding fathers weren’t so dumb after all, at least not in this case, but their ghosts are probably thinking we are.12:01 pm, eastern standard time, January 21st, 2021. Joe Biden is President and Kamala Harris is Vice-President. The entire power of the federal government is removed from Donald Trump and vested in them. All of the people who work within the government, including the Congress, (except for a few Trump toadies) know this. The FBI knows it. The Secret Service knows it. The National Security Agency knows it. The U.S. Military certainly knows it, and I can’t think of anyone more united in their dedication to the Constitution rather than an individual than them.

The entire structure of our government knows who will be President the moment Joe Biden finishes taking the oath. We should, and can, expect their heads to swivel from Trump to Biden with the smoothness and certainty of a Swiss watch movement. Donald Trump will still be defiant. He will still be loud. But he will in that instant lose every ounce of power he possesses. He will be squatting on property which is not his. Whether he leaves on his own or is politely but firmly guided out of the White House by the FBI and Secret Service, he is done and gone.

But what if he exhorts his demented followers to violence in his defense, as he may do? And what if they respond, as many of have threatened to? The answer to that is, again, simple. There is no need to make it complicated. They will be committing armed acts of sedition, and should be dealt with accordingly. With whatever force is necessary. Police? Absolutely. National Guard? Most assuredly. 101st Airborne? Marines? Navy Seals? Absolutely. Because any way you look at it, armed sedition is armed sedition. It is treason. There should be no confusion or hand-wringing about how to deal with it.

It would be sad, and it would be unpleasant as hell. But I remember Ben Franklin’s statement: “We have given you a republic. If you can keep it.” In retrospect, this is exactly the kind of situation the good doctor probably envisioned as a possibility. I don’t think he felt he should have to explain it. Americans have voted. The voice of the majority is clear and decisive, by six million votes. The peace of the nation is not now in their hands. The responsibility for that is in the hands of that segment of Trump voters who threaten violence.

They can parade, carry banners and flags, raise their voices. They can do all of this, peacefully, and that is their absolute right. Raising up arms and resorting to sedition because they are unhappy about losing at the polls, is not. It must be met with whatever level of force is necessary.12:01 pm, 1/20/2021—Keep It Simple.

When you are asked, Where were you when America’s lights went out?

If you are a Trump supporter, I fervently hope you will read this post.
I am a retired teacher, 40 years worth. I always promised my students that one thing I would never do is lie to them. and I never did. I’m telling you the same thing. I beg of you, see this creature for what and who he really is.


Every word that comes out of your hero’s mouth about election fraud, and Democrats rigging the election, IS A LIE.
This is not surprising because he lies about everything. 20,000 so far and counting since the 2016 election.

Please read this paragraph. “I spent 38 years as a Republican lawyer going into precincts looking for evidence of fraud. There are, to be sure, isolated cases, but nothing like the widespread fraud that would somehow invalidate an election or cause anyone to doubt the peaceful transfer of power,” Ben Ginsberg, who helped litigate the 2000 election on George W. Bush’s behalf, told CNN’s John King on Thursday. “So what’s different about this is a president of the United States going right at one of the pillars of the democracy without the evidence that you have got to have to make that case.”


I know you probably hate progressives, liberals. But much of your hate is based on lies that you have repeatedly been told by Trump and his allies.
Donald Trump has been lying to you, gaslighting you (look up the term if you don’t know it.), and he does it for one reason and one reason only. His own benefit. Why do you think SO MANY lifelong notable Republicans have left the party and trying to make you see this charlatan and tyrant for what he really is?


Donald Trump is laughing at you and manipulating you. He tells you what he thinks you want to hear in public, and considers you suckers and losers in private. He is depending on you being ignorant, staying uninformed, and not really thinking, just soaking up whatever lies he chooses to tell you.

There is still time for you to see him as he is, to save our republic, our environment, our children and grandchildren, from this truly evil man, this dictator in waiting. Please. Start thinking for yourself. MAKE HIM give you actual evidence. “Believe me,” is not evidence. “Trust me,” is not evidence. “Everyone knows,” is one of the most classic fact-free lies told by snake oil salesmen and dictators for thousands of years.


He is a lying, cheating, fraud in the same mold as was Hitler. and he is destroying our democracy, our economy, our very environment, while telling you one lie after another to the contrary.

He is using you. And he has but one goal, to be America’s first dictator. Please, start fact checking him (elsewhere but Fox News). You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to your country and your fellow citizens to free yourself from his lies and his cult of himself.
Please. Stop reacting to his lies just as he expects you to, and start reading, watching, and listening to the real facts.

Please, and again, please. Don’t let him mesmerize you any more. Don’t be a clone of his personality and a robotic follower of his charisma. Please be the independent critical thinker I’m sure you consider yourself to be. Ask yourself, does this vile person really reflect who you are?

For the sake of all of us, for the sake of the planet, and our children and their children, you have a responsibility to do that.

And you might want to start by reading this.

https://www.nationalsecurityleaders4biden.com/

63 Days

It IS happening here, just as it happened in Germany when a supposedly intelligent and thoughtful populace sold their souls to Adolf Hitler.We have 63 days.

 

Note: This post is a day late. I wrote it on September 1, 2020

63 Days…September 1, 1939, Hitler started WWII by invading Poland. This was six years after Hitler took power, becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

We have a Nazi in the White House:…openly promoting white supremacy and theological government, and ruthless authoritarian rule……openly urging his supporters to act as Hitler’s brown-shirts, promoting their violence……openly promoting a rigged election guaranteeing his reelection, while shamelessly lying and accusing his opposition of exactly what he is doing…… openly defying the Constitution, the Congress, and the Supreme Court……openly destroying the American economy for all but the wealthy and the favored……openly destroying the environment for the benefit of the wealthy and those who pander to him……openly turning away from our allies of generations to join the ranks of Putin and other dictators……openly killing thousands upon thousands of Americans through incompetence and plain sociopathic cruelty……openly psychotic.

If this American monster gets a second term, those who vote for him and empower him will be among the first to say, in the aftermath, in the remnants, “But I didn’t know.” These people must never be allowed that excuse. They know exactly what they are doing.

America is facing its greatest crisis since the Civil War. The hate of racism and white supremacy, the dementia of blind nationalism, the greed of the wealthiest, and the minority who embrace twisted religious cultism, have come together in an assault on the Constitution and every good and positive and progressive quality that America is supposed to stand for. Nazis parade, armed and threatening, in our streets. White nationalists create mayhem and commit murder in the midst of peaceful protests. These low-life nation destroyers have the support of the very man who is supposed to speak for all of us, but aligns himself with only the most egregious few.

The greediest and wealthiest among us support this criminality and the destruction of our environment in order to increase their wealth, while half, or more, of working Americans cannot afford a house or even a decent apartment rental. While those working Americans go bankrupt trying to pay outrageous medical and pharmaceutical bills. Millions of Americans face the destruction of the Social Security and Medicare they depend on for their very lives.

All of these users and abusers are being encouraged, and led, by a man of such small mind, such evil intent and lack of any kind of morality, that he could qualify as the anti-Christ. This demon nourishes and empowers the demonic instincts, the pettiness, selfishness, blind hatred and violent criminal impulses of the smallest minds among us. The greater America, the sane and thoughtful American majority, must stand up at the ballot box and stop this segment—yes, they are deplorable with a capital D— and the psychotic gangster who both seduces and feeds off of them. Otherwise our democracy, and every decent quality our flag stands for, including our very freedom, will be ground into dust and blood before this is over.

It IS happening here, just as it happened in Germany when a supposedly intelligent and thoughtful populace sold their souls to Adolf Hitler. We have 63 days.

 

An Open Letter to Joe Collins, Republican

Well, it happened again. l sat down with my first cup of coffee, opened my email, and there was a campaign slug from a Republican. This one is Joe Collins, and he’s running against Maxine Waters in California’s 43rd district in November. His salutation was “Friend”
My response to Joe is this open letter.

Joe,

Your campaign letter to me opened with “Friend,”

I’m not your friend, Joe. I never will be, and I do not want Maxine Waters gone. The Republican party has not been the friend of Americans since Eisenhower, the last great Republican. Today’s GOP is a sludge of greed and corruption. Don’t talk to me about tax breaks. Republican tax breaks go to the 1% and the wealthiest corporations. The $1200 given to each American in the recent stimulus bill was an insult, while the ultra-wealthy were favored, even to the point of allowing rich corporations to steal help intended for small businesses. Your Republican party today is a disgrace. It is the farthest thing from concerned about “average Americans.” It has become a sludge of corruption, racism, and the destruction of the middle class. Ike would be ashamed of what the Republican party has become, just as have the many prominent Republicans who have renounced the party of Trump and McConnell It is a party that has waged class warfare against the middle class begun by Nixon, supercharged by Reagan, and now reached the level of traitorous obscenity when working Americans have to have two incomes, two or three jobs, to survive, and then barely; a party that daily endeavors to twist and nullify the intent of the founding fathers for this to be an America where all men—and women, are equal; a country where  LGBTQ people, those who dare to not be evangelistic cultists, and the entirety of the American working class that is denied decent wages while being charged exorbitantly for both housing and health care—are considered as nothing more than servants to corporations.

 

Your party is not the party of Lincoln. It never was. It is the party that opposed Lincoln. Check your history to find out how the two parties morphed in the decades after the Civil war. Today’s GOP was the Democratic party of Lincoln’s time, only worse. No, don’t call me friend. The Republican party has become an abomination.

 

You will never have my support, only my disgust. I was long an Independent, with progressive leanings and a tether rooted in cautions conservatism. The GOP has changed that. Your foundations in a conservative philosophy that can only be described as Medieval, your fealty to wealth above the common American, your hatred of everything—and anyone—not rooted in evangelistic ignorance, your disdain for the rights of women, and anyone who isn’t “straight,” your inability, or refusal, to face the fact that civilization either grows, changes, moves forward, and evolves, or perishes in a pool of their own ignorance and obstinance, is astounding.

 

No, Joe, I’m not your friend, and you are not the party of Lincoln. You the opposite. You are not the party of Eisenhower. You do not deserve to invoke either of those names. The GOP today is the party of regression, destruction, corruption and hate. You are the party of a particularly onerous fascism. You are the party of Trump, and you are the party of Hannibal Lector. Your leadership is rooted more in 1930’s Germany than in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

 

Do not refer to me as “friend.” You don’t deserve either my friendship or my respect. We need a hundred more Maxine Waters in the House and the Senate, and a hundred fewer decayed Republicans.

 

And Trumpites Still Don’t Get it.

I’ll use this post to share a ‘breaking’ news story out of Washington.

The Trump administration’s ‘monstrous idea’: Direct payments in exchange for cuts to Social Security benefits

Of course, this is unconscionable. Ruinous. Corrupt to the tenth power. The Trump Administration—with the full complicity of the Republikkkan party— has sky-rocketed the national debt by giving trillions to big corporations, billionaires, and millionaires at the expense of ordinary working Americans. They are not only robbing the working class blind, they have been accelerating the process. Their whole philosophy is based on using working Americans as virtual slave labor. And now this?
 
What is truly incredible, is that he still has the support of the people he will damage most and perhaps destroy. They truly are so ignorant they do not understand that the Democratic party is the one fighting for their Social Security, Medicare, their very future.
 
And still, even while being vilified by these people, the Democratic party works tirelessly to help them, to maintain the very lifelines the people they support keep trying to destroy with equal furor.
 
Underneath those MAGA hats resides some of the most astounding levels of hate and stupidity you could ever hope to find. This has to be the most astounding example of biting the hand that is trying to help you I have ever witnessed. The Republikkkans and their chosen Fuhrer are trying to initiate a plan that might as well be poisonous snake in the mail boxes of all Americans receiving Social Security, and the intended victims are hoping they get theirs soon. 
It’s time to face the fact that the madman in the White House is only the tip of the iceberg of insanity.

How Moderates are Killing America

. . .and the world

First, I spent most of my life as a moderate. That said, this country can no longer afford moderates, any more than it can conservatives. The problem with moderates—and again, I was one—is that they vacillate. They are incapable of forceful, decisive action, because they are always too ready to “see the other guy’s side.” We find ourselves in a world dying first from those who hate, covet, and destroy, and second from the strength afforded them by moderates who just want to see every side without making anybody uncomfortable. Moderation is fine if we’re talking about ice cream. I like chocolate, you like strawberry, no problem. Your teams are the Braves and the Rams, mine are the Cardinals and the Chiefs, we’re cool. But when we get to things like discriminating against people, denying their basic human and civil rights because “your” religion says it’s okay, we have a problem. Moderation is unacceptable. If “your” philosophy is based on “your” supremacy because of the color of your skin, moderation is out of the question. When 1%, or 3% of the country skates along on obscene wealth created for them by 97% of the country doing the real work while being denied a living wage in return, Moderation becomes obscene. The problem with ‘moderates’ is that they want to keep everybody happy and avoid conflict, and in the process tacitly approve and accept the worst abuses of the society, including the destruction of the very air we breathe, water we drink, land that supports us, and animal life we drive to extinction, through their unwillingness to address the issues in any meaningful way. They embolden the worst humans among us, their abuses and destructiveness, by simply keeping their mouth closed. “Unity” is a myth, unless the stakeholders—as in all of the people—are served, protected, and respected. “Unity” is the cry of the abusers, far too often and too consistently heralded by moderates, who mistakenly see “peace” and “unity” as the same thing. We now find ourselves in a near apocalyptic state environmentally, socially, and economically, largely because of decades of moderates siding with the destroyers and greedy by preaching “unity,” when what they really mean is “let’s just not have any trouble, ok?” Moderates will not serve or save the environment. Moderates will not stop the rise of white supremacy neo-Nazism. Moderates will not ensure the rights of all Americans in the face of “religious” bigotry and racism. Moderates will achieve none of these things because they do not have the strength. They don’t have the stomach for the fights we absolutely must now win. They are unable to face the reality of the fight that must be made, and so they preach peace, let’s not have any trouble here. And to them, that is unity. Their unity is acquiescence to the likes of Trump, McConnell, the 1%, the KKK and neo-Nazis, the insanity of the evangelical church, the greedy polluters who count their money while the world strangles. Moderates are the Neville Chamberlains of today. They see themselves as deal makers, the crafters of reasonable compromise. Check your history. “Reasonable compromise” has always been a sliding step into retreat. We can’t afford them. I’ll vote for Joe Biden, simply because absolutely anybody would be better than Trump. Biden at least doesn’t want to be King. But Joe’s “moderateness” is in reality more angled toward the right wing. He is not a centrist. He ideologically incapable of taking sufficient steps to save us from any of the nation-destroying forces we’re facing, and in terms of an environmental apocalypse, he is a disaster.