What This Pandemic and Our Situation Is and Is Not

A friend posted this yesterday on Facebook. It was apparently written by one Paul Field.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you need to know how silly you look if you post some variation of, "Welcome to Socialism..."

You are not seeing Socialism. What you are seeing is one of the wealthiest, geographically advantaged, productive capitalist societies in the world flounder and fail at its most basic test. Taking care of its people.

This crisis is not about the virus.

This crisis is about the massive failure of our, "Booming economy," to survive even modest challenges. It is about the market dissonance of shortages in stores, even as farmers/producers destroy unused crops and products. This crisis is about huge corporations needing an emergency bailout within days of the longest Bull Market in our history ending and despite the ability to borrow with zero percent interest rates.

This crisis is about corporatized healthcare systems being unable and ill equipped to provide basic healthcare, at the same time they post record profits. It is about crisis response depending on antiquated systems nobody remembers how to operate.

But most of all, this crisis is a direct result of the politicization of every aspect of our society for the benefit of a privileged few. The vilification of education, science, media, natural rights, rural lifestyles, urban lifestyles, charity, compassion, and virtually everything else for brief political gain has gutted our society.

What you are seeing is a quarter century of technological brilliance being reduced to a narcissistic popularity contest. You're seeing the folly of basing the health and welfare of an entire society on personal greed. You're seeing all the necessary tools, for us to shrug off this crisis, go unused while people argue over who should get the credit and profit. Even worse, you're seeing vital help withheld because recipients might not, "deserve it..."

You're seeing a lot of things nobody thought they'd ever see, but you're not seeing Socialism...

"Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves."-- Horace Mann

I think the man is spot on.

Big Money In Our Politics and Government--We're Being Bought--And Sold

There is a terrific article in Friday's print edition of The New York Times more voting age Americans should read.

Big Money and America's Lost Decade

A bit of the article:

The first thing you need to know about the very rich is that they are, politically, different from you and me. Don’t be fooled by the handful of prominent liberal or liberal-ish billionaires; systematic studies of the politics of the ultrawealthy show that they are very conservative, obsessed with tax cuts, opposed to environmental and financial regulation, eager to cut social programs.

The second thing you need to know is that the rich often get what they want, even when most of the public want the opposite...

Why do a small number of rich people exert so much influence in what is supposed to be a democracy? Campaign contributions are only part of the story. Equally if not more important is the network of billionaire-financed think tanks, lobbying groups and so on that shapes public discourse. And then there’s the revolving door: It’s depressingly normal for former officials from both parties to take jobs with big banks, corporations and consulting firms, and the prospect of such employment can’t help but influence policy while they’re still in office.

Last but not least, media coverage of policy issues all too often seems to reflect the views of the wealthy.
We're got to work our way out of this mess, these messes.

Join us:

Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

Bring Back the Fairness Doctrine

Outlaw Gerrymandering and End Voter ID Laws

Link:

GOP economic policy: Give more money to millionaires, forget everyone else

"My Last Employee" (Guest post)

My Last Employee

MARCUS BALES·SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 2016

That's my last employee standing there,
Protesting, wet and cold, and wondering where
His pension went. And how his former pay
Let's stop and watch him standing with his sign,
Decreased in buying-power, he cannnot say. 

Queuing in the unemployment line.
Nation it is to keep his wages low 

He cannot say because the GOP 

Has taught him how important to a free 

So I have monthly profits I can show,
I know that look -- as if you'd like to ask 

Creating rising prices for our stock 

By unemployment lines around the block. 

How I can sleep at night with such a task.
Or worker's rights! I’m planning how to slash 

I sleep just fine. And better than that guy, 

Who worries whether someone such as I 

Should care about community, not cash, 

Expenses sending more jobs overseas,
They work their unpaid overtime and bring 

Replace the rest with contractors like these 

Illegals I have found that I can cheat 

With deportation threats. They scarcely eat! 

Enormous profits -- more than anything
American workers just don't understand 

Before. And this guy and his fellows hate 

The cheaper workers coming in the gate 

Instead of Wall Street, me, my 

Board, or staff. 

You'd cry if money didn't make you laugh.
The Chairman of my Board's known munificence 

We take advantage of them with our brand: 

The right to work, and don't pay union dues, 

They medicate themselves with food and booze. 

Drive on, driver. It’s nearly time to meet 

The company directors. I repeat,
Your acquiescence to our acquisition, 

Is ample warrant that no just pretence 

Of yours to get a golden parachute -- 

You’ll see how I can play him like a flute -- 

Is likely to be disallowed; I'm sure 

You'll like the package offered to secure 

And me ascending to the top position. 

That Dale Chihuly cast in glass for me. 

Drive on! I hope you notice as we go 

The leather seats recline -- and watch the glow

Of flowers in the dome light, a rarity

That Dale Chihuly cast in glass for me.

Republican Party and Right Wing in Freefall

I keep finding, by pure chance, more and yet more indications, at least weekly, of Right Wing and Republican Party splintering. So much so that even the word "splintering" doesn't seem strong enough to describe it. They seem to be nothing but attacking one another and tearing the party apart.

I just ran across a few examples today, again, by pure chance. All came from the site Mediaite  today.Here's the first.

National Review's Lowry Responds to Critics: 'Faith in Trump Is Misplaced'

Here's the very Right Wing, very conservative, very Republican-supporting National Review attacking Donald Trump, really, and the people who support him, even though he's the frontrunner in the polls. How fantastic is that?  Well, at least for the rest of us, anyway.

Here's the second internal attack within the Party I saw today:

Fox's Watters: National Review Writers 'Putting Pure Conservatism Over the Country'

Get that. Nearly unbelievable. Right Wing, ultra-conservative, Republican supporting Fox, attacking the, again, very Right Wing and Conservative and Republican Party supporting National Review, of all things, for being too conservative and, as it says, "putting pure Conservatism over..." the interests "...of the country."

And the third:

Pat Buchanan: National Review 'Gave Up Pretense of Objectivity' Attacking Trump

Again, a staunch Right Winger, Pat Buchanan, attacking a long time, staunch Right Wing media source for daring to criticize Donald Trump, one of the two, if not the most popular candidates for the presidency this year, in polling.

Here's the fallout of the National Review issue:

National Review Publisher: RNC Disinvited Us From February Debate

Finally, check out what some of the heads of the party took up:

GOP Civil War: Leading Conservatives Pen Massive Anti-Trump Manifesto

More on this diatribe by Conservatives on the horrors of the Donald:

Conservative Writers Explain Anti-Trump Manifesto: 'Terrible Face of America to the World'

And of course they're correct. I can't even imagine Donald Trump as president. Who knows what horrors and gaffs would come from the man?

This is phenomenal, really. The Democratic Party and anyone not supporting the Republicans couldn't write or ask for anything better for this group. It's clear they are, for all practical purposes, self-destructing.

Darn the luck, huh?

Pass the popcorn.

How To Read Your Powerball Ticket

From--where else?--FB

America: We're number....what?

Kevy Cat

Entertainment Overnight -- All I want is equality

Lord, have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here, I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me, I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying, "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble, do it slow
Washing the windows, do it slow
Picking the cotton, do it slow
You're just plain rotten, do it slow

You're too damn lazy, do it slow
The thinking's crazy, do it slow
Where am I going? What am I doing?
I don't know, I don't know

A Challenge -- to any and every American

Lots of bad news lately for America

It seems, of late, there is a great deal of reporting on the wealthy, even the very wealthy, ini our country.

And it's about time.

With their ability and proclivity to buy our representatives and their legislation and so, our laws and government, I think it important to know things like what they're doing, how our system got this way and, perhaps most importantly, how we can and do get out of this god-awful, so-corrupt way of not really running the country for the people and as we should.

Here's the first:

Matt Taibbi's New Book Is a Striking Study of How the Rich Are Never Punished for Their Crimes

'The Divide' is a riveting account of how the 1% get away with pretty much whatever they want

Matt Taibbi has been doing a fantastic job of reporting on Wall Street and the brokers and hedge fund managers and the like, who brought the nation's and world's economies to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. He continues that work, fortunately for us, here.

A second article, this from Bill Moyers:

What the 1% Don't Want You to Know

A brief description:

The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America’s publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That’s a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay studyfor The New York Times.

These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that’s the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America’s increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country’s highest earners.

This week, Bill talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, about Piketty’s “magnificent” new book.

“What Piketty’s really done now is he said, ‘Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on.’ He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth.”

Krugman adds: “We’re seeing inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagined we’re nothing like.

As always, good and important reporting from Mr. Moyers.

Third, this article, which tells us of the results of all this power grab, corruption, bribes and "campaign contributions" in America:

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest

Some sad, likely surprising, if not frightening information:

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.

Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it. Median income in Canada pulled into a tie with median United States income in 2010 and has most likely surpassed it since then. Median incomes in Western European countries still trail those in the United States, but the gap in several — including Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden — is much smaller than it was a decade ago.

It goes on:

The findings are striking because the most commonly cited economic statistics — such as per capita gross domestic product — continue to show that the United States has maintained its lead as the world’s richest large country. But those numbers are averages, which do not capture the distribution of income. With a big share of recent income gains in this country flowing to a relatively small slice of high-earning households, most Americans are not keeping pace with their counterparts around the world.

“The idea that the median American has so much more income than the middle class in all other parts of the world is not true these days,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist who is not associated with LIS. “In 1960, we were massively richer than anyone else. In 1980, we were richer. In the 1990s, we were still richer.”

Finally, this last article, at least today, is this one, further describing America's current status:

Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy

A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.

Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.

I think it's important we know who we are, what we are, how we spend our money, collectively, as a nation, as in our Defense Department, what form of government we have, who rules us and where the wealth of the nation is going.

It's going, largely, to the top "1%."  

To the already-wealthy.

Republicans, voting again, to keep tax cuts for already-wealthy corporations

Quote of the day--on money in government

Republican women?

Why?

It's one or the other, folks

Which will it be?

It just makes sense.

It's also the decent thing to do.

And human.

And humane.

And "Christian."

If you don't pay much attention to the US Supreme Court...

...you should probably be paying attention to this sessions' decisions, at least on this one, if nothing else:

In one of the most closely watched cases of the term, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the court will consider the constitutionality of overall limits on how much an individual donor may give directly to federal candidates, party committees and PACs in a two-year election cycle. 
      

McCutcheon is the first major campaign finance case to reach the court since its controversial 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down a ban on independent spending in campaigns by corporations and labor unions. In a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo, the court upheld limits on direct political contributions to prevent corruption. That precedent is being tested again in the McCutcheon case; the justices should reaffirm it.

And if that's not enough, look how it seems to be trending from this largely Conservative, pro-business, pro-Republican, pro-big money court:

In Major Campaign Spending Case, Supreme Court Gives Oral Argument Time To Republican Senator

As if it weren’t already clear enough that the U.S. Supreme Court’s next money in politics decision is about money in Republican politics, the plaintiffs are spelling it out for you, giving Sen. Mitch McConnell argument time before the justices.

________________________________________________________

 

We need this to go for the people and against the big money and corporations.

 

It surely doesn't look like it will go that way.