“We live not for today, but for the ages yet to come, and the children yet unborn.” — Mary Harris (Mother) Jones

Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Stop Helping Your Oppressors

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” — Blaise Pascal

If you’re going to “call out fascism”, you’d best get started ASAP, since the US has literally been a neo-fascist oligarchy in the model of Mussolini’s Italy since Bill Clinton handed the Democrats over via his Third Way. Is The Donald finally exposing the authoritarianism that’s underlaid our society for most of its existence? Yes. Yes, he is, and for that we should be thanking him profusely.

The ongoing effort of the US corporate media to conflate Donald Trump with Hitler, and thus maintain the false view that a country must look and operate like Nazi Germany to be fascist is nothing but propaganda, and the fact journalists I know are aware of how propaganda works choose to ignore it in favor of embracing that propaganda does the US voting public a shameful disservice.

In my observation, that’s what most of the pearl-clutching over The Donald’s proclamation he won’t remove himself from the Oval, and his “orders” to the White extremist groups he and who knows how many others have been encouraging for at least the last 40 years is about. Any student of real history, as opposed to the watered-down version we’re taught and which he wants to, apparently, dilute even further, knows this. It’s what makes the ongoing propaganda effort to make him some kind of boogeyman Icon of Evil® so appalling.

When anyone focuses a discussion of authoritarianism and fascism solely on Donald Trump, they are either woefully lacking in historical perspective or deliberately choosing to reinforce the false narrative that supporting a different party with the exact same agenda as the one he belongs to will somehow save us all. It’s a lie, and an egregious one.

Does Donald Trump need to be removed from the Executive Branch? Without question, but not for the reasons on offer. He needs to be gone because he is a clear and present danger to our survival, being a narcissist who is both bored with his current worldview and feeling challenged to defend it. This is potentially fatal combination, as any number of victims of domestic violence can attest, assuming they survived it.

Nevertheless, pretending Joe Biden (or more likely Kamala Harris) is going to make any definitive reversal of the current administration’s policies that will benefit anyone other than the oligarchs is either painfully naive or unabashedly disingenuous. Wasting our time shouting at people to repent their evil ways will not help, so if anyone thinks confronting people by telling them they’re racist or misogynist or homophobic or whatever will result in anything other than hardening their confirmation bias, they need to spend sometime studying how you really get people to change their minds and/or viewpoints. Because that ain’t it.

“Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he/she doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.” — Malcolm X

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A Piece of My Mind, politics

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Book Review: Truth Has A Power of Its Own by Ray Suarez

Historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010) qualifies as a cultural icon, and as is usually the case that means there are likely as many people who hate him as consider him a hero. His nonconformist overview of American history, A People’s History of the United States, and its sequel, A Young People’s History of the United States, is either considered desperately needed to counter the accepted narrative on the subject or distorted and misleading propaganda, depending on whom you talk to.

“In the nearly forty years since the first edition of A People’s History of the United States appeared, Zinn’s critics have tried to sandbag him,” says author Ray Suarez in his foreword. “Some complain that his iconoclasm, his tearing down of long-revered heroes, and his corrections to the record leave only a dreary slog through centuries of oppression, struggle, and suffering. Well, a historian’s job is to find out what actually happened.”

In this in-depth interview, done just prior to Mr. Zinn’s death in 2010 and scheduled for release in September 2019,  Suarez delves into how the historian believes his take on the subject has affected the trajectory of the US, and whether that influence is important.

For those not familiar with Mr. Zinn’s work, he views the events we all heard about in school from the standpoint of not the generals, politicians, and plutocrats but the common people. “[Y]es, let’s have heroes,” Mr. Zinn tells Suarez, “but let’s look for them in different places than on high in the seats of power where the heroism very often consists of exploiting other people or invading other people or taking advantage of other people.”

Now, as a tiny handful of progressive politicians are rallying the working class to confront the system that has done that for literal centuries, a book like Mr. Zinn’s, showing again and again how ordinary people have challenged powers and institutions seemingly unconquerable, and won, is vital. Again and again, the new wave of rebels is told they can’t possibly succeed, that the policies they demand are impossible, that they should be “realistic” and accept what the “more informed” people in power tell them.

Worse, they skillfully turn those who should be working together against one another.

“It’s a very common thing in history that people who are victims will turn upon one another”, Mr. Zinn says. “They can’t reach the people who are really responsible for their plight, so they turn on those who are closest to them.”

In those two sentences, Mr. Zinn likely explained the phenomenon of Donald Trump’s election. Even now, on social media, the tactic of turning the victims against one another occurs on a daily basis. Likewise, the corporate news media are masters at generating outrage, replacing one incident or individual—preferably both—with a new one as the emotional level declines.

This is an important book for those familiar with Mr. Zinn’s work but not the man, and Suarez has done a magnificent job of ensuring we never stray far from the latter. His questions elicit details those of us not privileged to have met Howard Zinn can use to more deeply understand him and, by extension, his work.

“The idea that people make history and can alter its course, that institutions have human origins and can be changed by humans, is truly subversive—and is a central reason [A People’s History of the United States] has drawn the ire of so many censors and would-be censors,” writes Anthony Arnove in his introduction to the 35th Anniversary edition of the book (Harper Perennial Classics, 2015). “Fundamentally, Howard had a confidence in people’s ability to work together and change their circumstances.”

Do get a copy of Truth Has A Power of Its Own when it comes out. Meantime, if you’re part of the New Revolution and haven’t read Mr. Zinn’s histories—and I confess I’m among you—get those and discover the history you didn’t hear about. As the battle for the future of both the US and the planet advances toward November 2020, the stories the books tell of success in the face of overwhelming odds will become increasingly necessary for inspiration. Or, as Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, who is one of the few individuals mentioned by Mr. Zinn, said:

“Some day we will have the courage to rise up and strike back at these great ‘giants’ of industry, and then we will see they weren’t ‘giants’ after all—they only seemed to because we were on our knees and they towered above us.”

NOTE: I obtained this book as an advance review copy from the publisher.

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politics, review, What I've Read

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Book Review: White Trash by Nancy Eisenberg

“Upward mobility”. It’s a phrase that’s as American as baseball, apple pie, and ousting the democratically elected heads of state of various foreign countries. From childhood, we’re told anyone can grow up to be President of the United States—or work their way out of poverty and join the Rich and Famous. The United States, we’re told, overcame the rigid class structures of Europe and became the first truly classless society. There’s only one problem.

It’s a lie.

In this excellently researched, if someone unnecessarily repetitive, exploration of the role of class in US society, Ms. Isenberg exposes the myth that “all men are created equal”, at least in the eyes of the moneyed and powerful who launched it 400 years ago. By dangling the carrot of upward mobility in front of the working class and the poor, the power brokers have maintained their control and exploited it to the fullest.

Although it’s no longer politically correct to say so, and for good reason, the first slaves in the northern reaches of the New World settled by British noblemen were White. They were the poor and the criminal, scooped up and shoved onto ships to be sold as indentured servants kept hard at work with the promise they would eventually work off the cost of passage they never asked for to begin with. They were replaced by the institution of African slavery, in no small part because poor White people couldn’t be as easily controlled as terrified Black people torn from their native homes and thrust into a totally alien world.

Redneck. Cracker. Hillbilly. There have been any number of similar slurs—and make no mistake, that’s what they are—applied to poor White trash in the last four centuries. Like those applied to Blacks, or on the basis of ethnic origin, the labels are meant to differentiate between those too lazy, worthless, and morally corrupt to be socially acceptable and “good people.” That the “good people” are almost always at least reasonably wealthy, college-educated, and White says all that needs to be said.

It’s also how those “good people” have made racism a systemic disease. “If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man,” said Lyndon B. Johnson, “he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.”

More to the point of Ms. Isenberg’s book, you can also prevent him from realizing he has more in common with the people he’s been taught to hate and despise than he does those doing the teaching. Over and over, she recounts how the American aristocracy has overtly and covertly manipulated class warfare into race warfare, setting two groups who have the most in common against each other.

There’s much more to this history of how the citizens of a highly stratified society were and continue to be convinced there are no strata than how the fairy tale was used to keep the lower ones in their place. However, it’s the history I found particularly interesting, because none of it was in the history books I read in school. That, by itself, is indicative of how we still have to deal with rabid racism and unconscionable levels of poverty in what those power brokers keeping most of us in our place love to call “the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth”.

White Trash is an easy-to-read journey into the depths of a myth, and one that in the current economic climate of gaping inequality should be taken by anyone who can’t understand how and why Donald Trump became President. Or why so many working-class people rejected the candidate the power brokers were certain would win. After all, she was one of the “good people”.

Essentially, White Trash exposes the reality that the “American dream” is and always was a fiction designed to keep the working class plugging away—a lottery on a few ever actually win. No matter who you voted for, or what your political persuasion, this is an important book that reveals the root of the why a crude-talking snake-oil salesman defeated the cultured rich woman her peers thought couldn’t lose. Rather than, as have other recent books on the subject, seeking to reinforce the false message the poor and the working class, who all too often are the same thing, are evil, uneducated, racist, misogynistic, homophobic idiots. You’ll understand once you’ve read it.

 

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politics, review, What I've Read

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The Gray Lady’s Underwear Is Showing

You will hear from those enamored of the corporate media—the people whose lives are just fine, thanks, and who therefore embrace the “resistance” narrative propagated by the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN with unquestioning enthusiasm—that those sources are the last bastions of responsible journalism. They repeat every bit of the latest “news” with absolute certainty they are in possession of the facts, and anyone who dares disagree is clearly the pawn of right-wing/Russian/conspiracy theorist propaganda.

As the guy in that old TV commercial used to shout, “Bunk! Don’t you believe it!”

As proof of this, I offer the following screenshot, taken the morning of 11 June 2017 after Bernie Sanders spoke at the second annual People’s Summit in Chicago and said essentially that the Democratic Party can either listen to the people or be made redundant. I will just note as an aside that CNN couldn’t even manage to note in its article where Mr. Sanders was speaking. Indeed, it referred to the conference as “an audience of nearly 4,000 mostly dedicated “Berniecrats.” I mention it in case the Times headline doesn’t make the utter disrespect the media have for you and me sufficiently clear.

I want you to ponder that headline for just a few moments, and then, for those who haven’t already recognized just how toxically slanted and screamingly ironic it is, I will explain.

(Tick…tick…tick…)

Let us begin with the notion the Democratic Party as it now exists is split. As was clearly demonstrated last year, that thesis doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The party establishment was sufficiently of one mind to ensure their anointed candidate, who had been promised the nomination in exchange for allowing Barack Obama to be chosen in 2008, received her due. This was exposed when Wikileaks published the purloined DNC emails, followed shortly thereafter by the ones obtained after John Podesta fell for a standard phishing scheme.

They have since set in place as their party chair a man who is a loyal Clintonite partisan, shunning the one that “base” clearly preferred. A man who, while on the road touring with Bernie Sanders in the name of “unity” was utterly tongue-tied when confronted by those demanding to know what the DNC plans to do about single-payer health care, raising the minimum wage and getting all that dark and corporate money out of elections.

This brings us to the next part: “The Base Wants It All.” Notice how that wording makes “the base” sound like a bunch of greedy toddlers throwing a tantrum? It’s condescending, dismissive, and essentially suggests “the base” is incapable of understanding you can’t have all those nice things because it’s not realistic. Never mind that every other first-world country has those nice things and has had for decades.

And now that last part, which is by far the most hilarious. “The Party Wants to Win.” The implication being, of course, that standing for all those nice things will never get anybody elected because the Democrats need to win over the moderate Republicans who hate Donald Trump as much as they [pretend] to. To achieve that, they must continue their message of neoliberal center-right economics. You know—the policy that has sent half of all the revenue from the so-called “recovery” to the top 1% of the population. Yeah, that one.

They’ve been using that excuse for becoming the GOP-Lite since Clinton the First. In particular, they have used it over and over since Obama was elected. As a result, the Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the majority of state governments. Even where the occasional Democrat has managed to win a governorship, he or she usually has to contend with a Republican-controlled legislature.

Any sensible person would take note of that and say “Hmm, maybe we should try something different. What if we, you know, listened to the progressives and did a 180? What if we started supporting candidates running on platforms of helping the majority instead of the top 10 percent?” Not our good friends at the DNC. Nope. They poured $6 million into the campaign of Jon Osseff in Georgia, who is running ahead of his GOP opponent on that platform that’s lost them all those earlier elections. However, they couldn’t manage to find $20,000 for a progressive in Kansas who also had a good shot at beating the Republican; and the $60,000 they finally agreed to send to the progressive in Montana was too little too late.

Need we say it’s a given that if Mr. Osseff wins, the Democratic Party establishment will have a big mutual back-patting circle and shout for all the world to hear that see—they were right. That’s how you win.

Except when it isn’t. The dismal record of all the Osseff-like candidates who ran in 2014 on that same corporate-friendly “pragmatic” platform far outweighs one success. And he’s running in an upscale district full of more than a few of those 10-percenters and likely a slew of 25-percenters. In other words, not the kind of voters who got behind Jim Thompson in Kansas and Rob Quist in Montana.

I noted on implication in that headline. Here’s another one: the Democratic Party has become so self-satisfied and arrogant those running it seem to be under the mistaken belief that, in the end, that “base” they have no respect for will vote for whatever candidate is offered. The fact that so many members of that base stayed home last November because they were fed up with being told they have to vote for someone because that someone isn’t as bad as the other guy is lost on them.

And in that single headline, the New York Times—all unwittingly, one suspects, because its editorial board is as self-satisfied and arrogant as the Democrats—makes it clear just how little respect We the People get from our public servants and those who are supposed to represent us in choosing the ones we have to vote for. We exist, so far as they’re concerned, to do their bidding and settle for whatever crumbs we manage to glean from their table once the election is over.

I don’t know about you, but I hate crumbs. And I’m tired of being told I have to eat them while the people telling me to do so are schmoozing with bankers and billionaires at $5000-a-plate dinners. As for the Democrats, if they truly do “want to win,” I suggest they listen to General George S. Patton.

“Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.”

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A Piece of My Mind, politics, The Misinformation Media

Book Review: The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

The corporate media would have the US citizenry believe Donald Trump and his regime of destruction are an anomaly in the history of our government. Thomas Frank knows otWrecking Crewherwise—Trump is merely the perhaps inevitable culmination of decades of conservative politics. That he is also a perfect stalking horse to keep the public distracted while the neoliberals in both parties gut the republic is serendipity at its finest.

“Believing effective government to be somewhere between impossible and undesirable, conservatism takes steps to ensure its impotence,” Franks writes on page 130. In other words, conservatives want government jobs held by people whose politics are right rather than by people who are competent and committed to doing those jobs well. By that standard, Donald Trump’s lack of experience in government is a feature for his GOP colleagues, not a bug. Nor should anyone be surprised that the first three months of the current administration has resulted in the elimination of many, many experienced people from all levels of government.

“Putting federal operations under the direction of people who are hostile to those operations’ existence is the second main tactic of conservative governance…Since the parts of government that conservatism most despises are often supported by the public, this strategy avoids the tactlessness of repealing or abolishing agencies while achieving the same result.” (p.156)

Of course, when Frank wrote that, there were still checks and balances in effect; those vanished with the wholesale takeover of all three branches of government by one party. And make no mistake, they and their real constituency—the plutocrats and corporations—have done just that.

If you didn’t know better, you would think (or like to think might be more to the point) that Frank’s analysis of how conservatism and neoliberalism are turning the US federal republic into a neo-feudal plutocratic oligarchy is dystopian fiction. That you do know better, reading it is the stuff of nightmares, especially given it seems they have achieved their goal. If you want to see what our new overlords have in mind for us, be sure to read chapter 9 carefully.

The first step in understanding libertarian conservatism, as with most things, is to learn the vocabulary.

“In 1990 [libertarian pundit Doug Bandow] published an entire book on the subject [of corruption], The Politics of Plunder, in which he attacked ‘legalized larceny’ (farm programs), ‘mass transit robbery’ (public transportation), and ‘consumer fraud’ (the FTC and FDA).”

One of my personal favorite favorites is when fossil fuel corporations demand the right to poison us on the grounds they are “creating jobs and contributing to the American economy.” That’s conservative-speak for “there are millions of dollars’-worth of X in the ground, and we don’t care who we kill to get it.”

There is plenty of blame to go around for the looming apocalypse we as a nation are facing, not least that we the voters have turned blind eyes and deaf ears to decades of corruption because (a) it didn’t really affect us and (b) we were busy with other, more important stuff. We also became brainwashed by media who kept telling us to trust them while they covered up the fact we were being sold down the river by those who were supposed to be working on our behalf. Anyone wishing to change that direction can definitely benefit from reading this book, because in addition to tracking the history we were all ignoring it makes clear just how badly we have been bamboozled.

I commented on a friend’s Facebook Timeline recently, based on this book and many of the others I’ve been reading and reviewing, that the goal of those currently running the US government is to replace the US Constitution with an updated version of the old Articles of Confederation. When you add what Frank has presented to a thorough grasp of the goals of neoliberal economics, that becomes clear. What makes this particular book more useful to beginners on the road to reawakening is Frank’s ironic voice and style, which will offend those who think “small government” is utopia and appeal to those who understand the alternative is the destruction of government by, of and for all the people.

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politics, What I've Read

Those not with us are against us

In the February 5, 2016, debate, Hillary Clinton rebutted the accusation she was influenced by the huge sums of money donated by corporate and Wall Street financiers. Proudly, she shouted down Sen. Sanders with the affirmation that she represented “my constituents,” with the implication “despite all the money I received from Wall Street.” It wouldn’t occur to most people to pause and consider that, as the Senator from New York, Wall Street financiers were her constituents.

Now, more than a year and one catastrophic defeat later, it appears avid Clintonites are still incapable of seeing through obfuscation. As a result, the quickest way to be accused of being a “Trump supporter” is to suggest:

  1. There are more important issues than obsessing over every ridiculous thing our new president says on Twitter.
  2. The President of the United States can neither make or eliminate laws, and any executive orders he issues have to be backed by established law; in other words, he can only choose how those laws will be implemented, not change them arbitrarily.
  3. No one is required to say who they voted for last November, and demanding they do so or be accused of the above is a violation of their right to cast a secret ballot. To assume by their refusal they voted Republican violates the rules of logic, in that correlation still doesn’t prove causation.
  4. Declaring people had no right to vote for a third-party candidate or to choose not to vote at all if there are no candidates for whom they can do so in good conscience is a violation of the Constitution. Worse, it’s dictatorial and condescending.
  5. People who did vote Republican may have had good reason, in their estimation, for why they chose to do so, which is precisely what the Constitution intended.

In addition, mentioning any of the above in conjunction with invoking item #3 will automatically label one a “Hillary hater” if, at the same time, one suggests that (a) there were very real reasons why she was a toxic candidate and (b) insisting people should have voted for her anyway because Trump is as totalitarian as what the GOP has in store for the country.

And then there are the ones who attack any woman who dares to say she sees no purpose in marching through the streets wearing a pink hat when there is so much that needs to be done. And just for the record, I find it painfully ironic that those who purport to be protesting women’s inequality choose to do so wearing the color the culture has dictated belongs to girls. I would think equality of the genders would have been better served by purple.

I suspect I shouldn’t be surprised that it appears most of those who engage in the above behaviors are rarely among those actively engaged in fighting the current regime in whatever manner possible. One never finds them on social media groups for activist organizations. One never sees them talk about what they’ve done or plan to do about changing the status quo. When, after having gone into defense mode at the drop of anything that contradicts their cognitive bias, they are presented with sources to support the contradictions, their invariable response is to ignore the information in favor of repeating their assumption one is a “Trump supporter.”

Thousands of little Neros, fiddling the corporate media’s tune while the GOP and the New Democrats burn the Constitution and raze the republic to the ground.

I do understand. The economic disaster that caused so many voters to flip from Democrat to Republican last November doesn’t impinge on their comfortable existence. Yet. They either never knew or have conveniently forgotten what it’s like to be so poor you have no idea whether you’ll have a place to live or food for your kids next month, or whether the water will be shut off because the car broke down and you needed to get it fixed so you could get to work. Sadly, not even calling them out for their classism does any good; the only “-isms” they acknowledge are racism and sexism.

The stubborn unwillingness of too many people to break away from the media manipulation that’s a constant stream 24/7/365 and understand the dire consequences of keeping on with what has gone before is a danger to everyone. We can no longer afford willful ignorance, and it becomes increasingly clear there is plenty of that on both sides of the discussion. The committed Trump people are convinced the disastrous measures he and his keepers in Congress are undertaking will fix what they think is wrong with the world. The other side is committed to believing the Russians ruined their anointed’s chance to continue the policies of the Obama administration, which the aforementioned media have convinced them were a rousing success. One individual I respect highly posted a graphic of Obama in a cape a la Batman to her Facebook timeline, along with a worshipful comment worthy of any fan.

Again, for this kind of cultist, telling them people who actually understand what happened over the last eight years know the Obama administration was, by and large, a disaster for anyone but the plutocrats, mitigated only slightly by a hugely popular health care law, is pointless. And that delusion will allow the New Democrats, who over the last eight years have all but made it possible for the states controlled by the same Republicans who want to resurrect the Articles of Confederation to call for a Constitutional Convention by pushing corporate shills for candidates, to continue doing so.

Fortunately, there are an increasing number of people who have seen the corporate media propaganda for what it is, and who either ignore it or actively resist the narrative. They do so with the full understanding they could be in danger as the oligarchy our country has become moves closer and closer to fascism. They don’t have time to waste checking to see what the Tweeter-in-Chief posted this morning, and they understand even one shared issue is enough to embrace people who otherwise may be our philosophical and political opposites.

Benjamin Franklin is said to have remarked after the Declaration of Independence was signed that “If we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately.” The men who wrote that document differed widely in ideals and goals, but they understood they had no choice but to set their differences aside to achieve freedom from what was, ironically, corporate tyranny. Those who continue to condemn anyone who chose to vote against Hillary Clinton, or who chose not to vote at all, or who they simply decide voted against her because they don’t adhere faithfully to the establishment narrative, are like the colonial loyalists who were certain revolution was unpatriotic and economically unsound. At best, they are something to work around. At worst, they are likely to undermine the efforts of those who understand the republic is crumbling, and only We the People can fix it.

As I mentioned last fall, I established a Facebook group to which I post articles, blogs, and other information either overlooked or under-reported by the corporate media. The content is public, so one needn’t join the group to read it. I won’t pretend I don’t have progressive bias, but I do endeavor to stick to facts, and when I can’t I identify opinion for what it is.

It’s one way I can try to keep the sleeping giant Bernie Sanders stirred up from falling back under the hypnotic sway of the mainstream narrative.

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A Piece of My Mind, politics

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What a Trump Presidency Means, or, Why I Voted for the Other Fascist

You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV or even log into Facebook these days without having Donald Trump rubbed in your face. Not that what’s reported is really anything of substance. It’s mostly “Ohmigod, can you believe what he just said”?-type stuff. It’s a very effective way of keeping his opponent, whose family foundation has been the recipient of big donations from the media/communications industry, from having to publicly address the issues of relevance to the majority of voters, but that’s a rant for another time.
     However, it happens there are more than a few people, most of them those who voted for Bernie Sanders, who find Trump’s opponent so unpalatable they will go so far as to say they can live with his being elected. What this position mostly reveals is just how ignorant too many voters are of the reality of our republic, mostly because they’re painfully new to the subject and have been poorly educated in the fields of history and civics. I don’t say that to be snarky. I find the situation appalling, the clear result of forty years of federal meddling with public education; but that, too, is a rant for another time.
     So, in the interest of making clear just what a disaster a Trump victory would be, let’s ignore the rhetoric and look at the facts.
     If the GOP is given full control of all three branches of government, which is exactly what will happen if Trump is elected, how much damage can they do in the two years we would have to wait to try to take back Congress?
     Well, for starters, they’ll kill Social Security, because that’s what they’ve wanted to do from the moment it was established. They’ve hated it since FDR signed it into law. So, the trust fund will be handed over to Wall Street for “investment,” because that worked so well for all the people who lost their 401(k)s and IRAs in the Crash of ’08, or whose pensions have been cut to the bone, ditto. Instead of Medicare, those old enough will receive “vouchers” to pay for their medical care, and if the voucher runs out—well, tough, that. Paul Ryan’s had the plan on his desk for ages, so it’s a given it will be on the floor of the House the day after Trump’s in the Oval Office. Indeed, they’ve already started chewing on the edges.
     They will proceed as well with selling the USPS to FedEx and UPS and any other shipping company with the right price in mind. Since they’ve already made it impossible for the service to break even, they’ll have a “reasonable” excuse for doing that. If you pay your bills by check, keep that in mind, because there’s no telling how much FedEx will have to charge to keep those profits up.
     Oh, and if you’re thinking the USPS isn’t working, that’s another Republican lie. Indeed, it was showing a profit before Congress decided to make it pre-pay 75% of its pension funds not just for actual employees but for any future ones. Which no other company or entity does or has ever been required to do. So, if your local branch of the post office closed, or you no longer get your mail on Saturday, and your Congress critter is Republican or one of the corporate-sponsored Democrats, you be sure to send them a thank-you note.
     They’ll probably have time to also eliminate free public education by revising the most recent monstrosity of an education plan to allow vouchers, which means public funds will be made available for people to send their kids to private schools, religious-based schools, and charter schools. The schools will likely also then find it necessary to start charging some fees, since they’re mainly set up to make a profit for somebody and with states and the feds cutting education budgets to the bone there likely won’t be enough tax money to go around.
     Of course, the free public schools most kids go to won’t be able to stay open because there’s not enough money, what with what little funding remains is going to be spread out over all the redundant “educational facilities.” Granted, that will mainly effect poor kids and special ed kids and any other group that might need a little more attention, so maybe not a real problem.
     If you think I’m making that up, you’d be wrong. I didn’t realize just how bad things have gotten in the last 3-4 decades until I began re-educating myself. Plus, I live in Texas, where we’ve had a Trump-like government for the last two decades, and where our legislature is planning to establish just the kind of education system I described. They already have it in a couple of other states (cf. New Orleans post-Katrina).
     The GOP also wants to had over public lands now protected by the federal government to the states. If that sounds harmless, just ask the people of Colorado who are fighting for their right to clean air and water as their governor and legislature give the fracking industry carte blanche. There are already 300,000 fracking wells polluting our air and water with little to no oversight because that came to an end in ’05 under the last GOP regime. As a side note, it’s likely they’ll at least try to get rid of the EPA.
     Of course, you aren’t going to learn any of that from our “unbiased” media, because it’s not in the best interests of the plutocrats who currently own Congress for us to know about it. Fortunately, we live in an information age where there are still people brave enough to dig out the truth. It’s getting it in front of the people who need to know it that’s hard. And, given just how blatant the sellout is, convincing people we aren’t just making this stuff up.
     If it helps, for the last forty years, I was like the majority. I had a life to live and work to do and kids to raise and whatnot, and I grew up when the New Deal was young, and everyone mostly thought it was a great idea. I did see some cracks forming, but they didn’t really have a big impact on me personally (at least, I didn’t think so). Fortunately, I was kicked awake in time.
     I’ve reviewed several books here that are a good place to start if you want to join me in helping take back our country. Because we’re going to have to do that if we want to have not just a country but a planet left for our children and grandchildren and those who are born after them. It’s that bad, and if we behave like a bunch of sore losers and let the foxes into the henhouse, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when we’re starving.

Category:

politics

THE PROPAGANDA WAR ON BERNIE SANDERS

So, now that Bernie Sanders has shown he not only can obtain the Democratic nomination but has a very good chance of doing so, the mainstream media that learned much too late that ignoring him wouldn’t keep his message from spreading has turned to undermining his integrity.
 
A headline in this morning’s Boston Globe reads: “A dark turn for the Sanders campaign.” Based on that, and the first few paragraphs, the implication is that Sen. Sanders has reneged on his promise not to engage in a negative campaign but to focus on the issues. Given that 40% of readers never go beyond the first three paragraphs of a story, it’s easy to see how those who fall into that category are going to be misled.
 
However, further down in this piece of Clinton campaign propaganda we read this:
 
“Sanders is increasingly embracing the tactics he once decried. Rather than trying to unify the Democratic Party behind its almost certain nominee, Hillary Clinton, he is ramping up the attacks against her. While once Sanders refused even to mention Clinton’s name, now he doesn’t go a day without hitting her.
 
“And the focus of his attacks is always the same — that she is too close to Wall Street, that she has flip-flopped on trade, and that she was wrong on the Iraq War.”
 
In other words, the first complaint is that instead of acting as though he’s given up and telling everyone they really should vote for Ms. Clinton because she’s going to win anyway. This is followed by a complaint that Sen. Sanders is…accusing her of doing what she did. And is doing. Because everything in that “oh, heavens, how rude” list is just that.
 
Sen. Sanders is running first and foremost on his honesty and integrity. It’s therefore a given the mainstream media, who have made clear from the beginning of the primary campaigns they will support Ms. Clinton in any way they can, are going to find ways to attack him on that basis. It’s likely safe to assume his campaign people—and he—know that and are prepared for it. Nevertheless, that the Globe chose to run this misleading piece of glaring propaganda as Ms. Clinton’s lead in the polls in the upcoming primary states is dropping like a boulder is the real “dark turn,” and smacks of the kind of unethical excuse for journalism we’ve come to expect from the mainstream.
 
Let’s be clear. It is not “negative campaigning” to attack one’s opponent’s record. It is not “negative campaigning” to point out where one’s opponent is obtaining the funds he or she is using to finance their campaign. Anyone who believes otherwise wants to believe it, because they’re so convinced they know the truth anything that contradicts it is a lie. There’s a word for that: religion. And religion has no place in politics.

Category:

politics

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