The Single Most Important Article You Could Read Today

This is, as the title says, quite possibly the single most important article you could read today, if not the most important article you could read all year. Its ramifications touch several, many and huge parts of our current lives, of the future, of our government, of technology and of even our Democracy. Everyone should read about and be more familiar with the "attention economy."

For anyone and everyone who is amazed at how many of us are staring down at our phones so much of our lives and/or for anyone and everyone stunned at how we got this President--again, there are many, many possible consequences here.

Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

Whether you realize it or not, you are very likely participating in it and at least affected by it if not also deeply affected.

With thanks to friend Paul Shanks for bringing it to my attention.

Here's hoping we're wise and strong enough to be masters of the technologies we create.

America, don't let these happen

There are two purchases that have been proposed, that are pending, that absolutely, without question, should not happen and that will only end up hurting you, hurting us, hurting America. These two purchases will do nothing but make extremely large, already-powerful companies even larger and do nothing but hurt competition here in the country and hurt you and me, hurt our pocketbooks.  They are:

Time Warner Cable to Merge with Comcast Corporation

AT&T pursues $50B DirecTV deal

There is already far too little competition for internet and TV services. These purchases, if allowed to occur, will shrink it down even further.

The only winners are the large corporations and the executives at them.

Fight these America.

If you know what's good for you.

For more information, read this:

Big Telecom: Proposed Mergers Will Test Companies' Relationships in Washington

Proof the Time Warner-Comcast merger shouldn't go through

So there is a proposal that the two telecommunications giants, Time Warner and Comcast should merge and there is no better example of why these two shouldn't merge than the upstart T-Mobile and their story:

T-Mobile Turns an Industry on Its Ear

The fourth-ranking carrier blew up the rules on smartphones and wireless contracts, to the benefit of many consumers.

Little, fourth-placed T-Mobile needs to get more customers and business, so what happens?

They lower their prices and come out swinging.

And what happens?

They get more business.

And who won, because of it?

You and me. The consumers.

If the Time-Warner/Comcast merger goes through, not only do the customers of these two companies lose and they likely get higher prices, but it's better for every other big telecommunications company. You know, like the biggest one? The one on the Fortune 500 list that rhymes with Bay Dee and Dee?  Yeah, that one. They win big, too.

Fewer companies, vying for the same customers.

Us.

If it goes through, folks, it's one more way we, as consumers, are screwed.

If you're not already against this possible merger, you should be.

It could have been said yesterday

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." —Henry Wallace, (1888–1965), U.S. Vice President 1941-1945, presidential candidate for the Progressive Party 1948

FDR's "2nd Bill of Rights"

After watching Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" yesterday, I learned President Franklin Roosevelt actually proposed a "2nd Bill of Rights" in 1944, a year before his death. Would that we would have gotten these things. It was a brief speech but here's what he called for. You can either click on the link below or go watch and listen to the speech online, of course, but he basically laid out a plan calling for 8 "rights" we should all have, as Americans. They were: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. He ended by saying this: For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world." FDR was brilliant on so many issues and situations. He wasn't perfect or flawless by any means but he was correct about the Great Depression and what we needed to do in most cases and he was certainly, absolutely correct on this. And we'll apparently never have them. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights

Quote of the day

It takes nerve to be a Democrat. But it takes money to be a Republican." --Will Rogers

Will Rogers' speech from the then-Great Depression

"Now we read in the papers every day, and they get us all excited over one or a dozen different problems that's supposed to be before this country. There's not really but one problem before the whole country at this time. It's not the balancing of Mr. Mellon’s budget. That's his worry. That ain't ours. And it's not the League of Nations that we read so much about. It's not the silver question. The only problem that confronts this country today is at least 7,000,000 people are out of work. That’s our only problem. There is no other one before us at all. It's to see that every man that wants to is able to work, is allowed to find a place to go to work, and also to arrange some way of getting a more equal distribution of the wealth in country. Now it's Prohibition, we hear a lot about that. Well, that's nothing to compare to your neighbor's children that are hungry. It's food, it ain't drink that we’re worried about today. Here a few years ago we was so afraid that the poor people was liable to take a drink that now we've fixed it so they can't even get something to eat. So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of it than any other country ever had on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. The potter's fields are lined with granaries full of grain. Now if there ain't something cockeyed in an arrangement like that then this microphone here in front of me is—well, it's a cuspidor, that's all." --Will Rogers and his "Bacon, Beans and Limousines" Speech, speaking before then-President Herbert Hoover; Link: http://unsinkablecork.com/willrogers/wrspeech.htm; http://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/WILL+ROGERS+AND+AMERICAN+POLITICS

Insane imbalances

I've been convinced that some of the worst things humankind ever did involved creating the nuclear bomb--of course--the automobile and the television, not necessarily in that order.

These things have created a great deal of our problems--the nuclear blast, pollution, I can't even think of what TV has done to us but it hasn't been good.

But I recently came across what I think is one of the number one things humankind has created that has caused so many problems and unfairness and inequality over time.

Ironically, I learned of the formal name for it on my first ocean cruise, last March. While on this cruise, I read a bit of a book about Central America and what had happened to it. It was then and there I learned the term and siituation.

Mankind's "downfall", if we can call it that here, is is "the monopolization of land."

It's the monopolization of land that inflicts the huge, gross inequality between "have" and "have not" people and groups.

Think of it.

Abotiginal groups--be it in Australia or in the United States with the indigenous, native Americans (that term doesn't seem appropriate, frankly), all functioned as one people, all utilizing what they had and all of virtually equal material status.

Very natural. Very fair. Very equal.

Then, the white, "New world" people came in to whatever area they were occupying, be it Australia or some portion of America or wherever, and divided areas up into "yours" vs. "mine".

Instead of all sharing all the resources, it was divided up into people's individual interests, resulting in some with a great deal of resources and wealth and others with less, little or not much at all.

Later, then, this could and did feed into the corporation and its ability to own items and people and productivity, distorting wealth even further.

This is the way you create people with outrageous amounts of wealth (google images of the Cote d'Azur) vs. poverty, starvation and other degradations of imbalance and unfairness.

It has been happening down through humankind's time. It's happening now in Nigeria, with their new discoveries of oil, for instance.

Most people, sadly, won't understand what I'm even saying here.

The land and earth should be and should have been for all of us--not just some small, self-selected few, be they some "royalty" or oil firm or what- or whomever.

Food, clothing, healthcare and a good, basic, healthy way of living should be for all of us, not just some small few.