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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.”
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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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
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Mike DavisDiscussing life, politics, and philosophy in the language of the bar. ArchivesCategories |
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