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Corporations - Love Em' or Hate Em'

8/1/2019

In the insanity that is our electoral process, we are hearing one person after another (pretty much only Democrats) bashing big corporations. Right on! They are a bunch of assholes! They are screwing our brains out while getting filthy-fucking rich and the politicians won't do diddly-shit about it.

But, you know what? The fucking corporations are people. Not in the sense of that stupid-ass SCOTUS Citizens United decision permitting them to buy every fucking politician on the planet (that must be reversed somehow). But in the sense that corporations are giant buildings full of people; people just like you and me trying to pay the mortgage, get braces for their kids, the whole enchilada. The people at the top of the pile of people working inside the building are simply taking advantage of a situation that was handed to them. Oh, and they are making a shitload of money.

What is happening is that corporations are taking advantage of a system designed to allow them to make as much money as possible without regard to who is getting hosed in the process. This has been going on for almost 40 years when someone dropped a giant turd on the balance scale favoring big business.

Let's be sure to give credit where credit is do, Ronald Wilson Reagan the lead actor from the famous movie, Bedtime for Bonzo who manage to get elected president. Reagan is the one who poisoned the well of democracy and started us on the path to a fucking plutocracy. He despised collective bargaining and made infamous the economic theory called 'trickle down'.

Reagan spewed shit like this; “As government expands, liberty contracts.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.”
“Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”
“Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.”
“Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.”
“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.”

That is just a sampling of Reagan's vile attack on our democracy. With that kind of rhetoric, he took a nation that, while critical at times of their government (as we should be) and who were patriots and believed that the people they sent to D.C. were good people trying to do the right thing by their country and turned them against America. When he was finished, he had created the alt-right we see today who detest "our" government.

And, while he was vomiting his government-is-awful crap, he was fucking up the economy with something called "supply-side economics". As a story in Forbes reported, "Make no mistake—things most assuredly became harder for all but the wealthy who, as the primary beneficiaries of the across-the-board 24 percent tax cut, watched their net worth skyrocket as those less fortunate or less successful took a major hit."

Reagan went on to rail against labor unions and fired the Air Traffic Controllers rather than look for a solution to their grievances. When he was Governor of California, he fought efforts to organize grape pickers. UNCOMM blog states, "Reagan’s Presidency marked the end of a bi-partisan union movement and moved the Republican Party far closer to big business. It also established a number of anti-union precedents within federal agencies that have taken decades to fix."

I mentioned that corporations are full of people. The government is full of people, and our country is full of people. One characteristic that seems to be unique to primates among animals, and particularly refined in our branch of the hominids is we are a bunch of greedy fucks. Don't deny it. If someone creates a situation where you can cheat on taxes, or drive 100mph and not get caught, you'll do it; it's in our DNA. It's probably one of the least desirable traits in humans that have catapulted us to the top the fucking food chain.

All the corporations are doing is taking advantage of all the bullshit tax, environmental, and regulations in general that allow them to play the "Hurray for me and fuck the rest of you," game. Admittedly, they participated in this ripoff when they found greedy-ass politicians willing to bend the rules and change the laws in the favor of big business while accepting "unsolicited" donations from both corporate American and the PACs which are simply a way around the campaign contribution laws.

What's done is done, and we can't do fuck-all about it. If we can agree that the system is fucked up worse than a soup sandwich after the last 40-or-so-years (the corporations may be a little reluctant to concede that point). We can start to move toward a balanced system that allows everyone from the largest corporation (probably Amazon at this point) to the guy parking cars at a hotel to not only survive but to thrive relatively. We don't need to punish corporate American, only rein it in a little so that everyone is living the dream.

What we need is people in government who will bring the scale back into balance without fucking everything up, again. Who are these people? That's why we're having these eye-bender debates and listening to candidates drone on day after day making the same fucking speeches. We are hoping to find a nugget of wisdom in one or more of them that signals a chance to right what is wrong with America.

I'm not saying don't be bold. Fuck yes, be bold! Be bold on climate change, ripping families apart at the border, and quit dithering the fuck around on healthcare; without it we fucking die.

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Morality In Politics

7/31/2019

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I watched the last half-hour or so of the first debate the other night (July 30, 2019), but it was the candidate's closing statements followed by CNN interviews with participants that turned into an ‘aha’ moment for me, and especially that of Marianne Williamson. A quick reading of her bio on Wikipedia suggests a “spiritual” person, and that’s okay but that stuff tires me a little. We are, however, simpatico on most of the issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson

Don’t get me wrong, I guess she has a big following and has made a shit-load of money with her self-help books, speaking engagements, et al; good for her, I wish it was me. But, I think she has about as much chance of being the next president as I do.

That prediction notwithstanding, she made some great points in the debate last night and the one that worked for me in the interview was her comments about how we have lost our moral compass (those are my words, not her’s exactly) in politics and governing. No matter your favorite candidate, we do need a diversity of ideas, not the rubber-stamped crap that Trump and GOP are peddling.

A number of the other candidates, specifically Warren and Sanders spelled out some great ideas and policy proposals, ad nauseam. Williamson pointed out in a no-bullshit fashion that it takes more than a bunch of wonky-ass proposals and plans to put us back together, it takes morality, and that turned on a sports-field size flood light in my brain.

A point of clarification here, morality has nothing to do with religious beliefs. I’m an atheist, and believe me, I have more fucking morality in my little finger than that fat-ass-fake-Christian Trump has in his entire body.

Morality simply means you care. You care about people afflicted with disease, poverty, oppression, abuse, the list goes on - we are a clannish animal and that requires caring about each other to survive. You don’t have to believe in this God or that God to have moral fiber.

One last comment on the link between morality and religion (which means Christianity to most Americans). Buddhists are some of the most moral creatures on earth and they don’t worship God. Hindus, also a people full of morality may or may not believe in God - it seems to be flexible. About 22% of the worlds population subscribes to Buddhism or Hinduism - that’s about 72.6 billion people who seem to embrace morality without God. You get my point.

Back to Williamson’s statement and what I got from that. You can spout policy all day, and it can make a lot of sense, but if you are truly going to make a run at solving the problems that plague our planet you need more than that; you need people who give a shit, people who fucking care. That’s what she’s saying.

You can be the wonkiest fucking candidate in history (kind of like Warren and Sanders) but if the populace doesn’t give a shit about kids in cages on the border, or people on opioids, or refugees living in squalor around the world, or people without health insurance, all your policy speeches mean jack-shit.

So, it seems to me that morality belongs, not to the candidates but to us voters. Do we give a shit about people being slaughtered around the world, or starving, or being shot on the streets of Chicago? If we do give a shit, we can elect a policy-wonk knowing they will have the popular support they need to get the job done.

If you conclude you don't give a shit, then you can elect any lame-ass dork (like Trump) that you want because without people on the street and in government who give a shit, nothing is going to change.

So, ask yourself; do I give a shit? If the answer is yes, then decide which candidate you think is going to help you relieve some of your moral indignation at the bullshit going on in our country and around the world.

If you conclude you don’t give a shit, then pick out one of the thousand issues that really pisses you off (it will almost certainly not be resolved without someone caring) and vote for the person babbling about your one issue because in the long-run it won’t mean a fucking thing; they won't get elected and you can keep bitching.

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