Wondering About Compromise

As we have learned Donald J. Trump has been being investigated for his possibly being compromised by the Russians.  It was after he fired James Comey that the investigation began.  So the answer that DJT demanded from Comey about whether or not he was under investigation turns out to have been, "Not yet."

From his erratic behavior in the many months since then a pattern has arisen that says clearly that DJT was and is compromised by the Russians although the report has yet to be released on the definitive answers to all those questions.  Along the way we have also seen the nature of his appointments to offices and his attempts to compromise others.  The one that is the most baffling at the moment is all about Mitch McConnell.  I mean, Mitchy's wife was appointed as Secretary of Transportation.  This accomplished bringing Ol' Mitch into the fold.  Later a relative of Mitchy was appointed to a position within the Department of Labor.  Mitch  now acts to stop any legislation that would put DJT in a difficult position.  The Trumpster shuts down government and Mitchy won't allow the Senate to vote on funding the government because it will not have the funding for the wall that DJT wants.  The normal way this would work is that the bill would pass, as it has already, and be sent to Trump's desk for signature.  Then the President would veto, either by directly vetoing or by a pocket veto and the Senate would have the opportunity to override the veto by voting again.  Mitch shows he is compromised by not allowing the Constitutionally authorized method of handling the problem to work its way out.  He has short stopped democracy.

 Something to ponder is what steps the Senators will take to restore democracy.  It seems likely that given the recent history of the Senate they (the Republican majority) are not going to do anything.  If that is the case what steps can the rest of the country take to remedy this problem.  "The Wall" is just a symptom of Trump's corruption and the shut down is now the Trump/McConnell Shut Down.

The Wreckage Expands

When Ronald Reagan began saying that the most feared words to hear were,"I'm from the government, how can I help?" he ushered in an era of hate for what the power of good government can be.  It has been a conservative tenant ever since that government doing anything will screw up the results.

Never mind that an incredible variety of wonderful and positive things have happened because we did them together through government.  It was government that put together our interstate highway system.  It is government that maintains that system when starved for the requisite cash by politicians under the guise of "fiscal responsibility".  For many years it was government that created an efficient and inexpensive educational system.  It is government that sees to our national security and defense.  Likewise, it is government that creates commerce by creating the rules for commerce.  The list of things that have been and should be the job of government is very, very long.  And yet, it is the naysayers who have given us the idea that government should be put in shackles and that all the jobs that it does for us should be privatized and monetized.  This is the rich telling us they are not rich enough and that we should be obliged to them for all that they can do on our behalf.  It is also bullshit.

We need the Constitutionally mandated Postal Service to be separate from government and not privatized.  It works as an example of the best mail service on the planet.  While it is overseen by politicians it is still separate from government.  The conservative politicians that have tried to ruin the U.S.P.S. by making it set aside enough money to fund the retirement system for that entity into the future 75 years are, in essence, trying to privatize it.  They want someone to profit from delivering the mail.  They want less competition for FedEx and UPS.  We have a service that works works really well when we allow it to.  This semi-governmental example is instructive because it something that is fostered by government and says to us loudly and clearly that people are capable of creating systems that work near perfectly and efficiently without making the rich richer.

The problem occurs when a politician becomes the property of the rich and promotes the desires of his/her owners.  It would be like making all roads toll roads.  Tolls when run by government are simply a method for capitalizing the work needed to make the road happen in the first place and expire when the road is paid for.  Tolls when run in a for profit way never end.  The profit of the few is reason that they exist.

Nancy Pelosi

We have had a forceful plague of those saying they don't want to see Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House.  They vilify her.  They attack her.  Based on no information and certainly no theories of clarity we are told that Pelosi is not an effective leader.

To this I have to say, "Nonsense". 

The Republicans seem to think that no one can see that they fear her effectiveness.  They are determined to undermine her before she retakes the seat.  Yes, it's that simple.  They have patterned this attack after the longer one they waged against Hilary Clinton.  Giving us vague innuendo to feel bad about Pelosi.

You may have forgotten that Pelosi led a filibuster to protect Dreamers.  You may have forgotten her leadership in the fight for the ACA (Obamacare).  You may have a bunch of angst built up over what we need to accomplish in the coming period before the 2020 election.  The battle for the Speakership is opposed by five less than progressive folks in the Democratic party.  The Progressive Caucus has already approached Pelosi to see if we can put powerful progressives in Committee head positions and she is amenable to this direction... more so than her opposition (the Corporate Dem's).  While Pelosi is not a super progressive herself she IS aiming at what the country seems to support now (finally). 

Before we throw her under the bus we should be thankful that by taking on another term as Speaker she can mentor future leaders to do the job that will need to be done.  There is a lot to learn from her.

Decrying Socialism

There is a constant attack by the right wing talkers on socialism.  They say that we should all take personal responsibility for everything.  They go on and on about how the lefties just want free everything.  They work to obscure that we are the ones who will pay for all that "free" stuff AND that we will pay less than their system of privatization and profit.  It is a tenant of their faith that socialists are bad. 

Let's look at that for a bit.  The recent example of the tax scam comes to mind.  It was an example of the richest right wingers fully believing in a socialist agenda... as long as it only benefits them.  It was a transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest.  It was socialism for the rich.  

There have been plenty of other examples of course.  Like the way we import oil and other goods into the country under the watchful eyes of our military.  The rich and the companies they own cannot afford to protect these things long enough to bring them to market but if we spread the cost over all of the tax payers, well then, the rich don't have to pay their fair share.  They say that it is because the rest of us benefit from these goods so we should pay this cost instead of them.  We would have to pay them anyway to get these things into the country if the military were privately financed by them.  This is especially true in the extractive (mining) industries but applies to the manufactured goods as well.  In any case, this is the cry they put up when they want us to pay for their profit and keep their profit at the highest level possible.  In the meantime they make sure that there is a loud batch of proponents for the way they have rigged the system to support their socialist agenda to benefit themselves.  

This is an especially old story.  It applies to feudal societies as much to a modern, complex "free market" capitalist society.  Rile up the little guy so that they do not clearly perceive that their pockets are being picked.  There is considerably more to that story line but for now just come see this point with clarity.  The rich run the world and they only let their system of one way socialism to prevail.  They do not allow us to actually rule ourselves and they will strongly block any real democracy.

Considering

Something to ponder came up recently.  

Let's imagine that Robert Mueller has some patience.  Let's further imagine that he can capture both Donald Trump and Mike Pence in his report of the sweeping corruption that is the Trump administration.  Enough corruption and collusion to be able to eliminate them both from government at the same time.  If it could be done after the new House of Representatives is in session it creates an opportunity to fix several things at once.  We will come back to that in a moment.

Currently DJT has appointed a person to head the Justice Department who is technically unqualified (Matt Whitaker) so that Mueller's problem is that he has to keep the investigation alive and viable long enough for his patience to be useful.  Imagine that Matt Whitaker enter his office after having had a good talking to by the departments ethics folks.  He has a choice to make and while we might think it an easy choice not doubt he will be conflicted.  He clearly should recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation but likely he will not do that.  DJT claims he does not know Whitaker but that too is clearly not the case.  Whitaker is known to have briefed DJT several time over that last several months so he does, indeed, know Whitaker very well.  Imagine further again, that Whitaker is foolish enough to command that Mueller turn over all investigative material and Whitaker starts to cut funding to the investigation.  On Mueller's part I think there is reason for him to say to Whitaker, "I'm sorry but I cannot recognize your authority to do any budget cutting or demanding of records."  At which point we could see a protracted battle over authority and the now Democratic House of Representatives would bring their spine to full stiffness and enter the fray.  There would need to be a block of some sort to keep this mess out of the Supreme Court.  Congressional hearings and such could delay Mueller's need to present his facts if he isn't quite ready or to proceed if he is.  As an aside this is where I should mention that full disclosure, so despised by the DJT lot, is one reason we cannot fully see how often Whitaker and DJT met in the preceding months.  DJT's administration does NOT disclose to the public the White House log of visitors as previous administrations have done.  It likely should be a side thread that at some near point the Congress, as a point of law, makes it necessary for all future White Houses to make public that information.

So, the stage is set for what you might not see coming our way in this scenario.  

Mueller springs into action divulging the finding of his investigation.  Congress sets in motion hearings and proceedings that lead to the expulsion of BOTH Trump and Pence from serving out their terms AND because Nanacy Pelosi is again the Speaker of the House succession of the office of the President makes her the new President!  Let us further say that she is not inclined to pardon either DJT or Pence we could see the resultant jailing of a former President.  

What can be learned from this exercise, I ask you?

Voter Fraud?? No such thing.

The Republican right wingers have been pounding this over and over again saying we need protection against voter fraud.  THERE IS NO VOTER FRAUD.  There are maybe a couple of times in the last 50 years that there was anyone convicted of voter fraud.  It is not because someone is getting away with voter fraud it is because there is nobody committing the offense... period.  

On the other hand the Republicans are massively committing ELECTION FRAUD for all the elections since Richard Nixon was President.  It has been proven that Nixon committed treason and election fraud in his win.  He had conversations with the South Viet Namese officials asking them not to accept the peace terms offered by Lyndon Johnson at the time.  He was recorded doing it and was never charged with it.  Johnson pointed it out to Everett Dirkson who agreed with Johnson but nothing happened.  Since that time Ronald Reagan and every Republican candidate for President has done something similar.

Currently we see voter suppression efforts by Republicans like Chris Kobach of Kansas and Brian Kemp of Georgia having a deep effect.  This has yet to be called out but it needs to put these folks in jail not rewarded.

Blending In

As for who is the President of the United Sates one has to wonder if we are governed by Donald J Trump (DJT) or Donald Duck?  I mean, the President cannot be as ignorant as he seems (or claims) to be. The item from about a week ago was DJT saying that he always tried to tell the truth... when he could.  This stuck with me for obvious reasons.  DJT's problem is that he does not seem capable of telling what truth is and therefore he is unable to tell the truth because he does not know what the truth might be.

Beyond that there are a number of items that are distressing right now.  On the horizon is the possibility of a Constitutional Convention.  This is where the 1% has been driving us for quite some time.  The rich are attempting to rewrite our constitution in a way that will favor them even more than they already are.  They require Republican Governors in 38 states to bring this about.  They need adherence to their ruthless "free market" economic policies.  Let me say right now, there is no such thing as a free market.  It cannot exist.  All markets exist because there have rules created to make them happen.  Within those rules are the ways in which it is allowed or not allowed to make money, exchange goods and services or be taxed.  Taxes are also one of the ways in which we control how this works.  It is taxes that shape the market.  It is taxes and the spending of them that determine our humanity or lack of humanity.  A Constitutional Convention run by the 1% is the greatest threat to a democracy continuing to exist in the USA.

 

Involvement

Writing your Congress Person is a valid activity for all citizens

An Open Letter to the Honorable Jaime Hererra Buetler;

The outcome of your recent Town Hall meeting should be, but may not be, fully apparent to you.  When asked what your replacement for the ACA (ObamaCare) was you stumbled and gave platitudes.  When the attending citizens pressed you about the actual ideas that you would include in the replacement act you stammered and stumbled some more and appeared angered that they were not listening to you.  My grandmother, many years ago, explained to me that is difficult to listen when you are doing all the talking.

Here is the thing about this that you seemingly missed.  For several years now you and almost all of the Republicans have been saying that you will repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with something that you like better.  You have said you have a plan and that it is better.  You act as if this will be done in two steps.  Repeal and then at some undisclosed point replace.  The replacement will be with better provisions you are still saying.  Yet you are unable to define that better plan.  What you did not want to hear was that it is not two separate actions. 

Language is sometimes a funny thing.  Repeal and replace can and should be done, if you really have a better idea, in one single action.  The same bill that repeals the ACA should and could be the act that does the replacing.  It is not difficult.  The first paragraph of the replacing act says, simply, the former bill known as the ACA is retracted and all the paragraphs after that would be the replacement language.  Then as it would be debated and explored working its way through the process you (and all of us) could decide if you really had a better plan.  If you push along a bill that does not meet that simple test you would know that your job is on the line.  You would know, in your heart, if you were looking out for the best interests of those you represent.  If you insist on telling us the continued untruths that you have to date we would all know that you did not listen and traditional Republicans combined with better informed Democrats would likely replace you.  The far Right Republicans would lose their traction if you forgot to listen to all of your constituents but that is what Town Halls and democracy looks like. 

Sincerely;

Vancouver, WA

Trump's Carrier Nonsense

Ha!  It probably had to happen this way but DJT has just stepped on himself... Big Time!  

Carrier, a United Technologies owned company, has 2100 employees at a plant in Indiana.  It had decided to send those jobs to Mexico.  Trump had said he would prevent that by installing a tariff on the goods coming back into the country from Mexico.  When he went to make a "deal" with Carrier to stop the loss of jobs in the U.S. what did he do?

Most logical people would say he only got 40% of the jobs saved.  That is, that he failed.  Not Mr. Trump.  He says he won because his "deal" kept 800 jobs in the U.S.  By what stretch of the imagination is that a win?  How did he pull off this miracle "deal"?  

Since Mike Pence, his running mate and Vice President elect, is still the Governor of Indiana he offered to fleece the citizens of Indiana for $7 million.  DJT needed Pence to still be Governor to pull this off.  In exchange he got no guarantee of a time frame for how long this "deal" is good for.  He "saved" 800 jobs at the expense of the people of Indiana AND at the expense of the remaining 800 employees.  This travesty is just what we have come to expect from DJT lying repeatedly and telling his minions that he is great.  It might be he wants to say, He is great.  Dictator much?  He, DJT, still lost 1300 jobs in the net AND we have no idea how long the "deal" is good for.

Now imagine board rooms all over the country, especially in states with Republican Governors, saying, "Look, I know how to get more value out of our Company...  we'll threaten to move the company to Mexico (actually insert the country of choice)."  It will be a gold rush like you have not seen in your lifetime to rape the citizenry.

Meanwhile, south of the border here is the feeling about the King with no clothes.

Less politely, if that's possible, is this one:

Yeah, that's the thing, DJT is touting his awesomeness while the rest of the world laughs its collective butt off.

Swamp or Not

Clearly the DJT continuation of infesting the swamp has gone on unabated for the entire time after the election.  Even though DJT lost the popular vote (again in most place it is simply called the "vote") he insists that he has a mandate.  He has no such thing but that does not deter him.

He makes poor choice after poor choice on his Cabinet members.  Each one of those chosen are antithetical to good governance.  Putting the fox in charge of the hen house does not begin to describe what is happening.  DJT is coming at us from every direction.  In the Congress there is discussion of cratering Social Security, Medicare and the ACA (ObamaCare).  From the picks for the Cabinet there is discussion to voucherize (privatize) the educational system.  The economy will be overseen by those who exacerbated the recent economic melt down.  Commerce and Transportation will be overseen by those with clear conflicts of interest.  On and on it goes.  In Ronald Reagan's time his administration was rife with people who during and after his term in office were convicted of all manner of felonious conduct.  It has been put on steroids under DJT tutelage.  

A bumpy ride is turning into a hurricane of consequence at this point.

Perhaps a Ponder

We find ourselves in an increasingly disintegrating government due, in large measure, to the seeming absence of the Fourth Estate.  That, in turn, is due to the media now being in the effectively complete control of corporate interests.  If you have not noticed that ABC news, for example, cannot go a full broadcast without referencing a Disney product then you just are not paying attention.  If you think the spin put on nearly ever story by Fox News comes days or even weeks after an events airing by other networks then you are not paying attention.  It takes them awhile to think up creative lies that can be disseminated by the misrepresentations they promote.  If you have not noticed that many events have no coverage at all then you are not paying attention.  It can be cited that minimal attention was paid to the TPP, Keystone XL pipeline, DAPL protests or, unless it suited an anti-protest line due to this bias.  You may never have heard the phrase, “Net Neutrality” for the same set of reasons.

The press is slowly being denied access to the stories by Trump’s minions even before he takes office.  There is twitter storm every time Trump does not LIKE something.  It is a counter offensive that knocks the press out of reporting actual news.  We are dependent upon having a real and concerned press.  Trump has said that he wants to collar the press.  His minions (Steve Bannon comes to mind) are all for a dark out of the media.  They have already moved to silence the press and protest.  Freedom of speech encompasses both ideas in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  The press is essential to a democracy.  There is no easy way to turn back from the criminal direction the Trump election is pushing us.  Let us be truly clear here.  Trump himself is just part of the symptom.  He is not even the head of the snake.  He has only a monetary worth of 10% or less of the Koch brothers (if he has any worth at all).  Ponder that for a moment.  Trump said after Mitt Romney was defeated that Romney (purported net worth of around $200 million) just did not have the juice to win… in part because he did not have the net worth of Trump.  Trump then started to dig in for a run at the Presidency.  The real damage has been created by the octopus that is the Koch network of creative lying but even THAT is not the head of the snake.  We have a corporate domination that wants all the rules to disappear. 

Ponder some more and you will eventually come to see that real freedom is in as much danger as it has ever been.

What've You Been Smokin'?

Gads, this past week has been an intense rumble through political insanity.  On all sides people are urging “everyone” to chillax and give Trump an open mind.  Yet every single he moves to see that we all lose rights.  Every day his team does one more outrageous thing.  The folks that voted for him are saying we “all” need to give him a chance. 

He has been telling us what he will do.  Deport 3 to 4 million people by creating a deportation squad.  He is green lighting climate deniers to gut environmental safety net.  He is nodding when Paul Ryan says he will gut Medicare.  They will steal Social Security.  They will repeal (and perhaps some day replace) the Affordable Care Act knocking 20 million citizens off of medical coverage.  Yes, the list continues ad infinitum. 

Jobs?  That’s sidelined.  The TPP?  That’s a go ahead even though the campaign said it was a no go.  Net Neutrality?  Not a chance.  Barrow and run up the national debt to create infrastructure.  If a Dem is ever elected again the GOP will scream bloody murder that the debt is too large but will remain absolutely silent while they create it.  Jobs will continue to flee overseas.  Minimum wage increase… again it will disappear. 

What have we gained from this election?

Nothing but the whirlwind is gained.  If you think otherwise send me a sample of what you’ve been smoking.

We Are Sooo Screwed

So, post election we find ourselves in a very different world.  We find ourselves with a President Elect who resembles in almost every way the AntiChrist.  There were mass protests in major cities the day after with, apparently, some were wounded near a protest site in Seattle.  All of the deplorable behavior Trump displayed during an election season unlike anything I have ever seen is now seemingly normalized.

The ride will get very from here.  Unions will be under attack.  Protest will be ignored and further suppressed.  The Supreme Court is now going to be a battle ground.  The ACA is going to disappear.  The wall will go up between the U.S. and Mexico.  The list is nearly endless.  Every Progressive right now is concerned for everything won against the fascist’s agenda that is to come.  Trump with nuclear codes is a nightmare I cannot even begin to fathom.  There is likely nowhere to hide.

Slacking a Bit

In watching developments the past few weeks there have been memes galore!  Ohmy, but they just keep getting better.

That sort of sums it up for today.  Yet there is so much more going on.  The Bundy's, the death of A. Scalia, the local issues, the gun violence and so forth.  It's a great time to be getting ready to vote or caucus in the primaries.

Debates and Winning

The Democratic Debates are a very different sort of civilized clash of ideas rather the mud wrestling match the Republicans put on.  There is no gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair or screaming that the opponent(s) is/are wack jobs.  The general idea is to present real differences in a calm and less confrontational way.

Along the way to the debates there is a bit of wrangling over the fact that there are only six debates scheduled and, taking a page from the Republicans, only Democratic Party sponsored debates will be allowed.  With that I have put forth the #ResignDebbie idea to rid us of a poor performance by Debbie Wasserman Schultz in not having a 50 State Strategy AND for restricting the number of possible debates so the Hillary Rodham Clinton is favored to the exclusion of the other candidates.

In any case, as the debates, one of which was actually a Forum, have been a breath of fresh air as I have said before and we are moving forward.  Now the memes are building.  It is early, there is a looong way to go before the Convention selects the Party's candidate.  The leaning of the rules favors HRC to be certain.  The reality of massive rallies favor Bernie Sanders.  Martin O'Malley is struggling to be heard at all.  Despite the handicapping of the candidates in several ways by the external sources of political distraction they have all moved forward with better campaigns than I recall in a long time.   There is some friction between the Sanders and HRC camps, to be sure, but overall the process has remained fairly civil.

The polls don't tell us much, the media is blind to anything but what they want us to see (and MAKE us see) so we rely on social media and chatting with friends and opponents.

Sharing information as well helping others maintain some perspective in this process is part of what the memes are doing right now.  The thing that Bernie Sanders has done is to calm the waters by not attacking the people he is running against in the primaries.  Not everyone is taking that direction so there is lots of bolstering that has to be done to keep as many as possible calm.  American politics has not been prone to calm.

 

There is a lot more that I could post here on this but time does not really allow that today.

An Efficient Bite of Government

One of the arguments that occurs regularly revolves around how Big the government should be.  It's not a smart discussion but you see it happen often enough that it is worth noting.  There are Big Government defenders and then there are those who want an ever Smaller Government.  Some have even stated that they want to shrink Government to the point that you could drown it in a bath tub... and, yes, that is a near quote of that position.  What is this really all about?

Imagine you got rich because you found a way to circumvent the rules that the "Marketplace" has in place such that the rules no longer applied to the way you got rich.  That is, asked another way, what if, without rules the marketplace was whatever you wanted it to be and your income and wealth was dependent on it continuing in that direction?  Would you overturn a system that was rigged in your favor?  

When I hear the comments about how Freedom is dependent on fewer rules I think about what that actually means.  I see no case for that being a factual idea.  Society can be free of rules... just look at Somalia.  There are pirates and everyone possible owns (and uses) a gun to enforce their own particular version of the rules.  When I see memes where someone essentially wraps themselves in a flag and tells the rest of us that their patriotic stance is the more correct (freer) version of what we should all aspire to I shudder.  Being patriotic has virtually nothing to do with a lack of rules.  A lack of rules just means the sins of one are projected on others.  It is the rule of, by and for the bully.  There is no way to make this fair for the majority of us.  We really do need the rules to  work FOR us.

                          

 One way this seems to be projected is when someone says they want a more efficient government.  What they mean by this seems to be that they want a smaller less capable government.  What is needed, they say, is fewer rules so that we don't need such a large government.  It costs money, you know... they say.  We need to cut government to the bone to force it to be more efficient.  Here is the problem with what they are truly saying: shrinking government eliminates the ability of government to enforce the rules that make it safer for most of us.  It eliminates the safety net.  It devastates the weakest among us by letting the predators take over.  It allows the worst of us to dominate.  Society shrinks when you shrink government in the name of efficiency.  Wages shrink when you lower the minimum wage... the floor becomes the ceiling.  You can shrink wages by inflation taking away the buying power you had or you can simply raise prices on essential things to take away the power that money once had.  When the banks do increasingly risky things we are talking about a lack of rules to keep them from taking additional risk... with your money.  With these additional risks I noticed that the benefit of the increased income they received did not trickle down to you in the form of increased interest paid to you, by the way.  But I digress.

When you take enforcement out of the equation you are breaking the value of the rules in the marketplace.  When you decrease the funding to the FDA/USDA and so forth you are allowing the industry to self police and if they do a poor job of it there is no penalty big enough to fix the problem.

We have had 40 years of the regressive diminishing of government.  Forty years of less and less enforcement.  Forty years of breaking government's role in protecting the citizenry.  Forty years of stupid economic policy.  Efficiency in government is not about continuing to decrease the budgets of the agencies that are supposed to defend us against this onslaught.  When you hear this argument you should be thinking about what billionaires are behind the scenes telling you that your money needs to be in their pockets because that is what "Efficient" government means to them.

   

Because a private prison can work its inmates as slaves.

FedEx & UPS want to take over the Post Office... just imagine what it would cost to mail a post card if the did!

A Great Week in Memes

 There are so many issues to taking on the 1% that it is hard to sort out where to start much of the time.  This week sort of spread the juice around a bit.

Yeah, I know, it's a bit of a dog-from-every-town kind of week. Sometimes that's just how it rolls.  There are plenty of days left to get to the vote part of the problem solving and THEN we have to stay on it to get things accomplished.  We tend to go back to our lives and step out of the battle... the 1% are counting on that.

In the long haul we just need to stay focused on the ideas we are contrasting.  It's about time we understand just how thoroughly the 1% has corrupted the entire system.  Don't lay down and continue to be run over.  Vote.

Robert Reich's take away.

I just HAD to re-post this because I do NOT get how people do not understand what the Republican agenda is since it is right in front of us almost daily.  It is insanity rehashed but somehow we do not see it when melded into the fabric of our news as a non-event.

Robert Reich

Now that Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, keep a wary eye out for Ryan’s 7 favorite ideas (they’re also cropping up among Republican presidential candidates):

1. Reduce the top income-tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent (a huge windfall to the rich at a time when the rich take home a larger share of total income that at any time since the 1920s).

2. Cut corporate taxes to 25 percent from 35 percent (a giant sop to corporations, the largest of which are already socking away $1.2 trillion in foreign tax shelters).

3. Make these cuts without adding the budget deficit by slashing spending on domestic programs like food stamps and education for poor districts (now, 18% of the nation's children are in poverty, and these cuts would only make things worse).

4. Also by turning Medicaid and other federal programs for the poor into block grants to the states, and let the states decide how to allocate them (in other words, give Republican state legislatures and governors slush funds to do with as they wish).

5. And turning Medicare into vouchers that don’t keep up with increases in healthcare costs (which would in effect cut Medicare for the elderly).

6. Deal with rising Social Security costs by raising the retirement age for Social Security (making Social Security even more regressive, since the poor don't live nearly as long as the rich).

7. Finally, don’t raise the minimum wage but let it continue to decline as inflation makes it irrelevant; instead, provide poor workers with a larger Earned Income Tax Credit (enlarging the EITC is a good idea, but we need a higher minimum as well). 

Bottom line: Beware Paul Ryan.

What do you think?

This consistent theme of stealing from us through the legislative process is a Republican thing.  Repeatedly breaking every program in sight and taking the good of the common good to the ground is, as often as not, a theme backed by the Big Money of the 1%.

Substance v. A Ghost

Many issues today revolve around a form of fairness and whether or not we are actually seeing fairness in our politically driven marketplace.  In reading Robert Reich's book Saving Capitalism (for the many not the few) it becomes clear that without rule makers having a sense of what is and is not fair in setting policy we lose the purpose for which rule making should be doing its job FOR society.  We are buried in Lobbyists and Lawyers making Legislators and the departments that make the rules for the marketplace unfair.  The Lobbyists and Lawyers, pretty much by definition, want rules that keep their constituents free of regulation.  They cry that regulation is a bad thing even though it is what keeps us safe.  They imply that it is no longer a "Free" market if you regulate it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They propose over and over again ways to free the market so that it is more efficient.  Right now they are winning and we are losing. Markets NEED regulation... without regulation we can be given shoddy products, forced into predatory arrangements and generally cheated out of our money.  Without regulation there is no market. 

If we look under most of the problems we face today there is a theme that says the Unregulators have stolen from us the ability to have a fair marketplace.  Subjects like Net Neutrality or Foreign Trade Agreements may not be on the top of the reading list for most people so it is easy to see how the Unregulators have rigged the game quietly while no one was looking.  In the case of what sorts of cars can be sold (safe or unsafe) or what industries are subsidized we do not have access to the agents of change even if we see what has to be done as individuals.  For things like bankruptcy laws or the insurance industry the grip of the industry itself is so tight that we cannot even get a thumb nail under the cure.  The entire interlocking set of regulations is too detailed for the average person to follow and fix.  This leads to frustration with the system.  We become easy prey for the politicians that say,"I have the solution," even though all they have is more ways to mess with the already broken system.

 For the most part it is Republicans who have corrupted the system with the help of a few Democrats.  That way you get to hear phrases like, "Bi-Partisan Support," when, in reality, it happens that something is passed with very thin margins that works against the normal/average person.  We have elected people through the deception of money buying our allegiance through advertising distorting the facts/truth.  It's the Blue Ribbon Committee that lies to us about the intent or the reason for making a certain decision.  It is the money under the vote that has preordained a decision against the good of the People.

So, there you have it, right now we are fighting against the money that has corrupted the system.  We are fighting for our financial existence.  We are fighting against the lies that pervade the media we used to rely on.  We are fighting for a livable community for the many not the few.  We are fighting against the 1% who own almost everything in sight and have worked tirelessly to own the rest.  We are fighting for our next generation and their right to live in a sustainable way, in harmony, on the planet.