Posts Tagged ‘wealth’

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The Full Court Press

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

The Full Court Press
Captain Jack

Look around you and you cannot help but notice that America is not only getting forced further and further to the right, but the further we go to the conservative side of the scale, the worse things get to the average American.

Still, a solid 30% of Americans continue to vote for those bringing down this right-wing austerity on our heads and wonder why things continue to get worse.

Why are we slipping further to the right no matter how hard we fight back?

Because…

A handful of extremely wealthy Americans and transnational entities are making more money off our misery. The  less we make, the more they make. And they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying our politicians and Supreme Court justices, and our new sites, the few we have left. Soon they will all sound like Rush and Fox and O-Liely and Sean Whatshisname.

The Full Court Press is on and it’s almost game over. We don’t have time to sit around and wonder what happened, we have to get mobilized today and get this game back on our court. We are almost out of clock.

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Yeah Nevada, Way To Go

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Yeah Nevada, Way To Go
by
David Schlecht

Congratulations Nevada, you just might have a chance of pulling yourselves out of the quagmire you find yourselves in. You voted against the Austerity presidential candidate.

Rather than dragging America down to your level, you’ve elected to put the country on a different path than yours.

Now, if you can just make those same decisions on your local elections and get the failed policies out of office.

This is not a political issue, this is an economic issue. You didn’t get were you are by following the mistaken policies of just one party.

But, it looks like Nevada is waking up.

We need to stop letting the elites, the leeches, ride free on our backs. It’s time the rich started paying their fair share. Did you know Microsoft is incorporated in Nevada rather than Washington so they don’t have to pay taxes? So who pays for the infrastructure that they use? You and I do, and the people of Washington. Does Microsoft? No.

This, Nevada, is the reason our state is in such sad shape. The rich get a free ride and the expenses fall on the backs of the true small businesses and on the rest of us tax payers.

We give tax breaks to the mines and other multinational corporations and expect the Nevada taxpayer to pick up the tab.

No more!

It’s time we started expecting the billionaires to pay for the 90% of our state’s expenses that they incur. It’s time their taxes paid for the roads their employees travel, and the roads their trucks use to deliver goods and provide them a profit. It’s time they paid for the court systems and all the other infrastructure they are using and expecting us to cover.

Yeah Nevada, it looks like you’re starting to wake up.

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Get Ready For The Ads

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

Get Ready For The Ads
by
David Schlecht

Thanks to the Supreme Court and their insane Citizens United ruling, billionaires and international corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money to drown out your first amendment right of Free Speech.This means that this is the first time in our lifetimes that anonymous donations of hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars can be spent on blatant lies.

And it’s coming.

In the next month you’ll start seeing a nauseating amount of negative ads, outright lies coming out of your TV and your radio on every billboard and in every advertising platform you can imagine.

Why is this possible? How can billionaires and international corporations defecate on our electoral process? How can they wipe themselves with our first amendment?

Because the Republicans on the Supreme Court (and yes, it was only the Republicans) think that people sick with money should run our country.

You will get sick of the negative ads. And every time you see a negative ad, and it’s brought to you by some corrupt corporation like Americans for Prosperity or Americans for a Better ______, or Concerned Citizens for a Better ___, know that their name is as deceitful as their message.

Once you’ve had enough of these crooks spewing sewage our our democracy, get mad. Donate what money you can to the Democratic candidate that they are slandering. And get mad enough to be sure to get out there and vote against the Republican machine that is trying to give our democracy to billionaires and multinational corporations.

It’s coming, so get ready, and get mad and get rid of those who have brought this crap to America.

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Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Your Circle of Empathy

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

Your Circle of Empathy
by
David Schlecht

One finds countless excuses why conservatives are so different than the rest of America, excuses that range from authoritarian followers, to misplaced morals, to compartmentalized thinking, to downright sociopathy, to just plain ignorance. Many times you will see writers trying to fit all or even most of the symptoms into one shoe box or another. You will also see writers trying to put these in a less than honest light to help buffer some of the raw ugliness of their findings.

I’m going to present another perspective. This isn’t so much separate from all the rest but is rather a unified theory that includes many of the other findings and concepts.

Your Circle of Empathy

Humans have a natural inclination to feel and exhibit empathy. Your degree of empathy and the size of your circle of empathy is primarily dependent on one thing, your feeling of safety. There are other less influential factors, such as mental illness like sociopathy but this essay does not deal with those. But, it has been found that the vast majority of ruthless business owners are clinically psychopathic, finding gratification in stealing candy from babies. This is no exaggeration.

But, alas, that is a whole blog post all in itself.

Kinds of safety affect ones circle of empathy

There are many kinds of safety. Primarily, safety can be defined as freedom from want and fear. Are you afraid for your personal safety in your home and neighborhood? Are you afraid of the Mexicans invading America to steal our jobs? Are you afraid of the mooslems coming for ya? Are you afraid you won’t have enough food to feed the family tonight? Are you afraid you’re losing your home? Are you afraid that lump in your breast or throat is cancer and you don’t have decent insurance? Are you afraid you’ll be shot by a vigilante on your way home some night? Are you afraid Omaba’s commin’ for your guns?

There are countless types of fear and uncertainty that we face every day.

How Fear Reduces Our Empathy

When you have little fear and are adept at dealing with you fear, your capacity for empathy is naturally quite high, your circle of empathy contains the entire universe. You feel for the wildlife losing their habits to human encroachment, you feel for the oceans that are being poisoned and are dying around us. You feel for Mother Earth. You would probably even feel empathy for life on other worlds if they existed.

That is the natural state of human empathy.

Why do you suppose that is? Caring for the earth has allowed our small clans and societies to coexist in the world. If the cave men hadn’t survived by coexisting with the world, you and I would not be here today. Therefore, empathy is in our genes.

Now, let’s take away some of the safety. Let’s consider two small societies, living close together. When the food becomes scarce, the loving neighbors become competitors for the scarce food. They become “the other.”

If your town is hungry, you don’t have time to worry about the health of the rain forest. It’s time to slash and burn so you can feed your family. It doesn’t matter how many plants and animals have to die.

Your circle of empathy has just gotten much smaller. Even your next door neighbors are now looked at like possible competitors. In fact, when food becomes even more scarce, the loving community becomes bitter rivals. Now, it’s each family out for themselves.

Even more scarcity, more fear of hunger, and families start to split apart. Siblings are left to fend for themselves. One parent abandons the family, some times just to go out and die of hunger, leaving the food for the remainders. Sometimes parents will even abandon children when things get bad enough. This is a point where this theory ends. Some will sacrifice for the kids and many will not. The argument is, “They’ll all just die when we’re gone anyway, and we can always have more kids when things get better.”

Still some will stay together and die together and some will not. Seldom will both parents remain. We see this all the time in hunger stricken countries in Africa.

At this gruesome extreme of the safety scale, nothing is safe. The family dog starts to look like possible nutrition to keep the children alive. The size of our circle of empathy at this point includes just ourselves, and maybe our children.  That’s a pretty small circle compared to the first circle encompassing all the universe.

“Let Him Die”

How big is the circle of empathy of a person who yells, “let him die” when asked about medical care for a sick but uninsured neighbor? In this example, it wasn’t just a single person, but the entire Republican debaters and audience. Not a single person disagreed, though many were too embarrassed to admit out loud that they agreed.

Cultivating the Culture of Fear

There is no hiding the fact that the Republican party cultivates fear and capitalizes on the irrational voting behavior of their followers. The psychopathic millionaires and billionaires running the Republican party, you know, the ones without any empathy, reduce the empathy of their followers through fear and then add to that fear by reducing the safety of the American voters by destroying the things that make us safe, like industry regulations, water and food safety, drug safety, Social Security, Medicare, sitting idly by while religious fanatics attack America, taking us off to war on illegal wars.

If you don’t control your fear, the Republican party will control you.

 

 

 

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Posted in General, Politics | 2 Comments »

The Effects of Religion on Society

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

The Effects of Religion on Society
Paul Johnson

It’s interesting to look at the effects that religion has on society. Below, you will be able to visualize the effects of different social trends, including religiosity, health, teen pregnancy, education, and income disparity. This data was compiled from multiple sources, mostly being from the census data.

Each graph shows two social issues on a state-by-state basis. Look to see how many peaks in one line match peaks in the other line. This indicates that both the social indicators are high in that state. Look for the number of valleys that line up as well. All the states are in alphabetic order so you can find your own state by counting the number of tick marks.

Let’s get started…

Religion tracks poor health in almost all states

The above graph shows that states with highly religious people contains the most unhealthy people. Do sick people become more religious or are more religious states under served in the health industry?

Let’s look at teen pregnancies in religious states:

Teen pregnancies are higher in states that are more religious.

Teen Pregnancies and Religion

The two lines don’t match up nearly as closely as the unhealthy religious graph but the number of peak and valleys that match is well above 50%. It should appear obvious to anyone reading this that the religious communities have a problem with their youth being unprepared for their sexual inclinations. Abstinence education doesn’t stop sex, it stops intelligent decisions regarding sex.

Okay, let’s look at education and religion:

You can see the obvious correlations

Religion and Lack of Education

This graph tracks almost as closely as the first one. There is an obvious correlation between how uneducated a community is and how religious they are. There are endless psychological studies proving that the typical Republican is way below the average IQ of a Democrat, but this data seems to prove that there is also this same marriage of religiosity and duh.

The real question is, which is cause and which is effect? Does being dumb make you more susceptible to religion or does religion discourage knowledge?

Let’s look at Religiousness and Income Disparity:

Religion doesn't track income disparity

Religiosity and Income Disparity

There isn’t much correlation at all between these two. In other words, income disparity isn’t any more prevalent in religious communities than anywhere else.

But, if we compare income disparity and lack of education:

Lack of income tracks income disparity

Education and Income Disparity

These two data sets track each other very closely. It is quite obvious that communities with low educations are exploited by the wealthy. It also indicates that in communities where the mega-wealthy control the community, there is little chance of the people getting out from under their thumb. Education is the best solution to income disparity.

I hope you enjoyed the graphs and the narration that explains each.

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Posted in Religion | 3 Comments »

Exposing the Republican Agenda

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Exposing the Republican Agenda
by
David Schlecht

The longer the Republican primary goes on, the more disappointed Americans become of the Republican candidates.  Do you ever wonder why?

The longer the Democratic primaries go on, the more people become polarized with one candidate or another. Why?

If you have been paying any attention at all to the Republican primary, this year, it is painfully obvious, why. The more the Republican candidates cater to their base, the more out of touch they appear to the rest of America. America gets a good, honest look at that the Republican agenda is: more taxes for the working class, more tax breaks for the rich, profitize and destroy our government starting with our Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and pensions, going all the way through every facet of our country and divvy it for the billionaires who are funding them.

Unfortunately, though, many voters are ignoring the frightening display of destruction that is the Republican primary and they’ll just believe all the millions of dollars in lie-vertisements that the Republican party will be flooding into our living rooms.

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Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

The Poison Pill Killing the Post Office

Monday, February 27th, 2012

The Poison Pill Killing the Post Office
by
David Schlecht

This story can’t be repeated often enough and it’s important enough that it should be on everyone’s mind and on everyone’s lips.

Five years ago, the Republican party put a poison pill into legislation that is killing the Post Office. The Post Office is now expected to fund medical benefits for their retires FOR THE NEXT SEVENTY FIVE YEARS, all in the next few years.

Think about that for a minute. The next seventy five years means they’re having to put money aside for people who aren’t even born yet and might work at the Post Office.

The purpose of this poison pill is obviously nothing less than an effort to kill the Post Office, the only office that is protected by the Constitution.

The Republicans want to give the Post Office off to one of their rich Super PAKs and they might as well make sure there are billions of dollars in medical saving accounts to give away while they’re at it.

If you’re a Republican, I’m sure you have some excuse about how your party is so unethical and so against everything America and it’s constitution stand for, but you can only lie to yourself for so long.

The Republican Party is not only poisoning the Post Office, they’re trying to poison the entire country and no body is talking about it. Have you heard about this on your Fox news channel? Nah, didn’t think so.

We have got to overturn this awful poison pill and kick the crooked Republicans out of power for the next few generations until they come clean and start working for the better of the country rather then the best interests of their billionaire donors.

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Posted in Politics, U. S. Constitution | 5 Comments »

To be a Christian

Monday, February 27th, 2012

To be a Christian
by
Paul J.

With all the talk from the Republican candidates about how superior their own personal religious strengths are, it should remind all of us what it really means to be a Christian.

Do you consider yourself a Christian? What are your most important Christian principles?

Considering how Jesus taught and how he lived his life, here are some Christian principles many consider important. How do you rate on these Christian principles?

  1. Works of Mercy: Do you support and vote for a political party that is for providing material needs of the weak, sick, and poor? Or do you vote for a party that is against health care for all?
  2. Does your political party seek to take away rights from others, such as gays, or illegal aliens, or Muslims? Or does your political party show mercy for all, regardless of their differences?
  3. Salt and Light: Do you shine like a lamp and show your political party that you believe in “do unto others as you would have done unto you?” Or, do you support a political party that wants tax breaks for the rich while deserting the needs of the poor?
  4. Does your political party want to cut expenses by taking away benefits and services for the poor to help the wealthy? Or does your political party want the wealthy to share in order to feed the hungry, and heal the sick?
  5. Are you sure that your political party shines with the light that you want illuminating you and your family and you community and your country?

If you are a Christian, these are some difficult questions and hopefully will make you stop and think, regardless of your political party.

Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me. [Matthew 25.40]

 

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Posted in Politics, Religion | 3 Comments »

Fixing America’s Economy

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

Fixing America’s Economy
by
Waylin

There is a fix for America’s current financial, political, education, and health industry disasters.

Any addict hoping for recovery must first admit what the problems are. America must wake up to the cause of our current problems and admit that they are problems that needs addressing.

In all the cases mentioned above, there is one primary underlying addiction that is perpetuating the disaster. For those who are willing to take the time to look at our history, it is obvious that we had a handle on these problems for the most part of the past 100 years. We had the world’s best education systems, we had the world’s best medical, we had the world’s leading economy.

But, looking back at the 1920′s and you will see that, like today, this wasn’t true. They were the unregulated “Roaring 20s” but it lead directly into the world’s worst Depression of all time. What have we been doing right since the 1920′s and what are we no longer doing right, today?

The answer is capitalism, or more accurately, unrestrained greed.

We used to have the world’s best education system. But, then we started getting stingy with our education dollars, and today we want to give a big slice of the education dollars to billionaires in the way of privatized schools and vouchers.  The most successful countries in the world today, have a tax rate almost double what we have in America and aren’t afraid to spend it on education.

Got that? Double.

Why don’t we have higher taxes? Because greed has taken control of our country. Unrestrained Capitalism has us believing that it’s in our best interest to abandon all the things that made America strong over the past 100 years: unions, education dollars, regulations, taxes.

When you hear the term “free markets” it is code words for taking away what little restraints we still have on greedy capitalists.

America used to have laws that said insurance companies must be non-profit as well as our hospitals. We’ve abandoned those regulations and look where it’s gotten us. The medical industry is working diligently to restrict the number of doctors we have in America.  Why? Well, for greed, and nothing more. Fewer doctors means higher profits for doctors.

Now, all you Fox zombies, just hold on. I’m not saying we need to do away with capitalism, I am saying we need to get back to the days when we weren’t afraid to regulate it. Regulations are our friends.

Since the days of Reagan, our politicians are afraid to break up the big monopolies. They even express interest in advancing them, if they’re a Republican, and they’re too afraid to do anything if they’re a Democrat.

Our capitalism is running amock and we have to regain control of it. But, that will be impossible until we come to admit that we have a problem. Like a typical addict, we have to admit we have a problem before we can fix it.

The 99% Movement is succeeding at bringing this to our attention, but the greedy capitalist are doing their best to discredit the movement. We have to all wake up and realize that the greedy corporate news sources are dead set on preventing us from taking back control of our country. It’s time to turn off the broadcast television and time to admit we have a problem. The problem is unrestrained capitalism and therein lies the fix.

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Posted in Finance, Politics | 4 Comments »

The Gift of the 99%

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

The Gift of the 99%
Matthew

There is no denying that Fox and the Republican party is dead set against the 99% Movement and #Occupy.  I hear many a Fox viewer repeating the talking point, “The 99% doesn’t represent me.”

I don’t expect the customers of the Conservative propaganda to spend much time thinking, but this comment shows much more than just lack of thinking, but actually shows downright brain washing. If you’re not a billionaire, you’re the 99% and, no matter how much you might hate it, you represent yourself, as do the rest of the 99% of us.

Now just think about this for a minute. Before the 99% woke up, America was discussing billionaire talking points day in and day out. All the news on all the so called Liberal Media were talking the billionaire talking points of austerity and, “Oh my gosh, I think I just wet myself again over the budget.”

Now that the 99% are finding our voice, the so called Liberal Media is now forced to talk about something more than billionaire talking points. We even accidentally hear in the so called Liberal media words like “unfair wealth distribution’, and “wealth redistribution to the top 1%”, and “welfare and tax cuts for the billionaires”.

As much as the Fox viewers might hate the thought, they are waking up from their Fox delusions and realizing that Fox and the Republican party are the mouthpiece for the billionaires. There’s no wonder they hate the 99%. No wonder they hate their viewers, who are waking up. No wonder that they hate having to talk about the unfair distribution of wealth in America.

Thank you #Occupy and the 99%. We are beginning to talk about the things that really matter to America because of you.

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Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »

The Ponzi Scheme of Commons Exploitation

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

The Ponzi Scheme of Commons Exploitation
by
David Schlecht

We’ve posted before regarding the need to protect our commons and the damage caused by allowing the greedy to exploit our commons for profit.

I’m glad to see that others are beginning to recognize the unavoidable destruction that comes from the greedy exploitation of our commons.

This is such an important issue that it has to be addressed immediately.

We are allowing some to get rich by mining our minerals, and drilling our oil. I say “our” because everything in the ground belongs to all humans, all of us. Anything and everything we take from the Earth is limited. Sooner or later everything will run out unless we make rules, right now, today, to prevent the extraction of anything that is not replaced at the expense of those benefiting from the taking.

But, stop. Think about this a minute. Aren’t you and I benefiting from having cars to drive and oil and gas to burn to keep us moving and keep our heaters and air conditioners and air filters working? I’m guessing we will all say, yes, we are all benefiting from exploiting our finite resources.

What happens to our kids and grand kids when we’ve used up all those resources? Haven’t we effectively stolen the resources from future generations?

It’s time we started realizing that this Ponzi scheme will only last so long before it will all come crashing down. What will happen to our economy when all the oil is gone? It will be the biggest economic crash we’ve ever seen and it will last the rest of time.

What happens when we’ve used the last of the rare earth minerals that make our technology run? No new computers, no new pace makers, no new technology. What do you think that will do to our economy?

Sure, there’ll be a whole new industry of little Chinese slave labor hands stripping the guts out of our old technology trying to scrounge up enough to make a new computer. What will that do to our computer industry? What will that do to our entire technology industry? It’ll be a disaster like we’ve never seen before.

Sure, we might not run out of oil today and we might have enough rare earth minerals to last a few more years, but sooner or later it will all be gone. We have to start conserving today. We need to start finding alternatives to our limited resources. We need to stop the greedy from exploiting our commons for money. When it runs out, it will be you and me that suffer. It’ll be our kids and grand kids. The greedy will already have their money.

Now, don’t expect the greedy 1% to willingly stop making money stripping away our commons. It has to be you and me to pass the laws that require that our commons be cared for. The only way to protect our commons from the greedy and from ourselves it to educate everyone of the train wreck right around the corner and to pass laws that protect our commons, right now, today.

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Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

The Commons and the Resources

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

The Commons and the Resources
by
David Schlecht

We’ve discussed the need to protect the commons in prior posts. Still, there are many people who don’t grasp the importance of protecting our commons. I’ll illustrate an important aspect of protecting the commons by looking at the crime of exploiting our resources for greed and profit.

In our example we’ll use the idea of exploiting oil even though this applies to all of our resources.

Let’s take the position that I am an oil tycoon and am spending millions of dollars each month to ensure that people continue to use my oil and continue to make billions of dollars in profit for me. Let’s say that I’m even pathological enough to discourage people from believing the catastrophic truth about the negative effects of using my products.

In 40 years I pass my empire on to my children and they pass it along to their children and on and on until it’s the year 2500 and every drop of oil is gone.

Along comes 2501 and the world is faced with a disaster that only oil can resolve.

What I have done as well as my children and grand children is steal the resources from our future children. I’ve taken something from the earth that belongs to every one of us and exploited it to make me stinkingly rich, here, now, today. I have taken the resources away from any future generation that may actually have a use for them that could help everyone.

We all need to start to expect that there should be restrictions on exploiting our non-renewable resources for greed and profit, expect that we would all find it important to protect our resources, especially the ones we can’t get back once they’re squandered.

Even renewable resources need to be protected. Our water supplies are renewable but no one should be allowed to make money by selling something that we all need to survive on this planet. This foolishness will only lead to a shortage of water while some have it all. It always comes to pass that those things that are in the most demand are owned, hoarded, exploited, and controlled by the wealthy.

Resources such as food or lumber are renewable but are also of limited quantity. There is only so much lumber we can grow and so much food.  Both of these must come from the earth which we are all responsible for. If we leave it up to the greedy to strip the land of all ability to grow food and lumber we will be allowing them to get rich while all the rest of us will have to deal with the barren, toxic wasteland the greedy will leave behind.

Sooner or later we will all begin to realize that we are all responsible for this earth we share. And the only way to be responsible for it and to protect it is to have reasonable limitations on how it can be exploited for profit.

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Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

Does America Need Manufacturing?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Does America Need Manufacturing?
by
David Schlecht

A stick of wood has little or no inherent value. Have someone carve it into an ax handle and you have created value. The person with the ax handle has value, as does the business he works for, as does the neighborhood and town he is in as well as the country. For every ax handle made, value is added to the country.

When America abandons it’s manufacturers, it is abandoning the golden goose. No more value is added to the country.

Sure, we now have a “service” driven economy, but it ads nothing of value. Do you want fies with that? Is that adding any value? I’ll mow your lawn, you fix my car. Is any value added? Of course not. In fact, if all you have is service, eventually all the value of the country will be depleted. Every time the money has to change hands, someone takes some out to live on, some of it goes to pay for the roads and street lights.

Obama is planning to put another trillion dollars into a stimulus package, but it will all go away just like it did ten years ago when we no longer make anything anymore.

We’ve lost over 40,000 factories in the past 10 years. That’s a whole lot of value that is gone. What little manufacturing we have left is not enough to offset the value lost in the “service industry”. The stimulus will all go away unless our representatives start to realize where it’s going.

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Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

Job Creators, Job Creators, Where are the Job Creators?

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Job Creators, Job Creators, Where are the Job Creators?

Dave Speck

Every time I turn around I hear another Republican politician explaining how the rich, who are sitting on three trillion dollars are the job creators and we need to give them more money.

Who are the job creators?

If it was the rich, we’d be in fat city right now because the so called job creators would have nothing but money to magically make more jobs.

If the businesses and the wealthy were the job creators, there would never have been the great Republican depression of the 20s. They had all the money and America, the real America, still starved to death.

Who Are the Job Creators

The businesses will only hire if there are customers needing something to buy. The best way to kill an economy is to stop people from buying.  If people have money to spend, businesses will hire. The customers are the job creators.

The Customers are the Job Creators

Got that? The customers.

If a business is doing well, it can stream line and increase their profits. When the streamline, they lay off people. Who is the job creator? The business is the job killer. The bigger the business, the more streamlined it is and the bigger job killers they are.

Bringing in more customers will mean they have to hire more people, even if they’ve streamlined the business. The customers are the job creators.

When a billionaire buys a company and moves it over to China to cut costs, the billionaire is the job killer. It’s not the customers, it’s not the regulations, it’s not the taxes, it’s the greedy billionaires who are the job killers.

So, who are the Job Creators?

You got it. The customer. Give the people a union and a reliable income and our economy will flourish. If we give more money to the so called Job Creators that the Republicans tell us about, we will lose more and more jobs.

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Posted in Politics | 4 Comments »

Who Owns the Deficit

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Who Owns the Deficit
Dave Speck

So we hear the republican chanting over and over how the sky is falling if we don’t balance the budget, even if it means we have to take food out of the mouths of our elderly and sick and weak and poor. The world will end. Why all the noise?

The Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling 18 times during Reagan’s administration. Got that? 18 times. During that time Reagan increased our nation’s deficit by three trillion dollars, more than all the previous presidents combined.

Where did all that money go? It went to tax breaks for the rich, mostly. That and to the military budget and his failed Star Wars program.

Then, along came Clinton and he balanced the budget and had a surplus that would have paid off the deficit in 10 years.

Where did all this money come from? Clinton ended “Welfare as we know it.” In other words, he stole it from the poor. He also raised taxes on the wealthy a couple percentage points.

Then, Bush added almost five trillion dollars to the deficit and the republican voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling.

Where did all that money go? Tax breaks for the rich and two illegal wars.

Then the economy crashed, as it always does when you lower taxes on the rich, and Bush pushed through another trillion dollars to the banker crooks.

Now, Obama wants to add a small fraction to the debt, less than 8%, and the Republicans are threatening to bring the entire country down unless we take more money from the poor.

Do you see any sort of pattern here? The republicans ran up almost all of the 10 trillion dollar debt and they don’t want to pay for it. They want the poor and the weak and the elderly and the sick to pay for their big party.

The republicans and the rich have been living large for the past 30 years at our expense and now they want you and me to pay for the bill.

What would you say about a political party that does this? What would you say about a party that is willing to crash our economy if they don’t get their way on everything? We’re in this mess because of the tax breaks to the rich and the republicans are saying they will destroy the country if we don’t give more tax breaks to the rich.

What party does big business own?

US Debt per GDP

 

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Posted in Finance, Politics | 1 Comment »

Class Warfare?

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Class Warfare?
Dave Speck

Class Warfare

America’s middle class has been doing with less and less over the past 30 years while the rich have been getting richer and richer. There has been a class war going on for 30 years folks, and it’s time we started waking up to the reality. Not only are the rich making more than they ever did before, but they already own most all the wealth in the entire country.

It’s time to wake up, America. There’s a class war going on and you’re getting killed.

Listen to Senator Bernie Sanders.

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Posted in Finance, Politics | 1 Comment »

Balanced Budget Amendment

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Balanced Budget Amendment
Dave Speck

We’ve been hearing a lot of commotion lately by the Republicans about how we need a balanced budget.

At first blush, this might sound like a great idea. After all, don’t you and I have to balance our checkbook at the end of each month?

No, actually, we don’t. We can go out and borrow any time we feel like it.  In fact, if our federal government becomes hamstrung with a limitation like this, it would be the best thing for the billionaires and the worst thing for you and me. That’s why the Tea Baggers are all over this. Their billionaire leaders (behind the scenes) are telling them how important it is that the government can’t borrow money.

But, let’s look at what would have happened if our founding fathers were as stupid as a Tea Bagger. Without being able to spend more money than they had, we would never have been able to protect ourselves from attack as a young nation. In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to protect ourselves from Hitler during the second world war if we hadn’t been able to borrow money.

Imagine what we would have done during the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s. Without being able to borrow money to get our people back to work, this great country of the USA would have gone broke. We wouldn’t have been able to start up all the jobs programs that saved us from republican stupidity.

Here we are, a century later and the Republicans are trying to destroy our country again. When will America ever learn not to listen to the Republicans?

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Religious Matters

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

Religious Matters
What Moral Matters Matter to America
by
Paul Johnson

The latest US budget designed and approved by almost every single Republican in the House of Representatives takes food right out of the mouths of the starving and gives it to the millionaires and billionaires.

This action has horrified America enough that we are beginning to realize that we are voting for the party that is as opposite our religious and moral values as possible.

How could we have voted for this immoral party? How could we have been made into such suckers that we have voted against all that we know to be right and voted for those intent on giving our country away to the greedy and the rich?

If we don’t stop and figure out how we got here, we’ll never be able to avoid it in the future.

What went so wrong that we got the party of the greedy running our government?

I can’t speak for everyone who has accidentally voted for the party of the greedy, but I can speak for those I know and I can be pretty sure that this is the same mistake made by almost all of those voting for the Republicans.

Wedge Issues

The easiest way to get people to vote against their own best interests and against the best interests of the country is to get them to vote primarily on wedge issues. A wedge issue is an issue that can be used to drive as a wedge between political parties. The Republicans can’t run on providing for the poor, because it would be a a lie, so they need to find something that will get people riled up enough to go and vote for a lousy candidate if he would just address the wedge issue.

The Republican voter is typically a single issue voter. This means that they are the most susceptible to being used as tools in wedge issues.

Effective Marketing

The Republican party has become experts at marketing destructive policies to the American people. Why else would you have a Tea Party out there chanting for more rights and lower taxes on the multinational corporations and billionaires? The Tea Party was created with money from the billionaires and is sponsored by billionaire dollars and marketed with billionaire money all for the purpose of getting Tea Party candidates elected who vote against the interests of Americans and all for the corporations.

Few people even realize that the original Tea Party was a revolution against multinational corporate power and now they’re out there chanting for more power and more money for the multinational corporations. You can’t tell me that’s not pretty darned impressive marketing.

Lies and Deceipt

The percentage of people who are foolish enough to be Tea Baggers is low enough that the Republican party needs more. Hence, the need to lie about what they are and what they plan to do for the billionaires.

This is not a problem limited to the Republican party. There are a few Democrats who run on Progressive principles and then vote straight ticket with the Republicans.

But, this isn’t really all about how bad the Republicans are. This essay is about how some unethical politicians and greedy billionaires can corrupt our political system. It’s not all about Republicans or Democrats. It happens to be the Republican party they have infected, but it could have just as well been the Democratic party. In fact, they’re spending billions of dollars right now, trying to corrupt that party as well.

Taking Back our Country

How on Earth are we ever going to fix this mess with so much money lines up against the American voters? How will we wrestle the media away from big money? How can we change the campaign finance laws when the Supreme Court is so obviously pro-billionaire?

This almost looks like a perfect storm. It may be too late for us to take back the country peacefully, but hopefully we will at least try before it’s too late.

The Real Issues

As I’ve pointed out, political parties don’t run on real moral issues, they run on wedge issues. This means that we voters are stuck without real issues upon which to vote.

What are the most important moral issue to you? Think about it before reading further. What is really important to you morally? Do these moral issue matter enough to affect your voting? In other words, do your morals affect your “real” life or are they just something to talk about at church?

For the vast majority of Americans, moral issues affect their daily lives. Most people try to keep morals in their lives.

Here is a short list of my moral issues. I have a much longer list but it’s not important what mine are, what matters is what your moral list looks like.

  1. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, curing the sick. You know, those things Jesus says need to be part of our lives.
  2. Turn the other cheek. This includes reducing the steel heel of oppressive laws in America and reducing the oppressive governments of other lands. This means no wars. Fix the system where the vast majority of those in our prisons are minorities and poor. You know, the things Jesus said we should keep in our lives.
  3. Discouraging greed. Wow! There’s no end to where this could go. It’s time to get the money changers out of our religions and out of our politics.

There are plenty more, but this is a good start for discussion. Do yourself a favor and come up with your own personal list of important moral issues.

Now ask yourself, how many of those issues on your list are things you actually vote on? How can there be such a great disconnect between what you think is moral and how you vote?

Now, here is a list of wedge issues that are important but are not anywhere near the top of my list and I bet they’re not at the top of yours either:

  1. Abortion. This is not a moral issue. Nowhere in the Bible does it say we need to vote on abortion. Abortions are horrible but if they’re at the top of your morals list, you might want to stop and take a second look at your morals.
  2. Hate the Gay. How many times does your religious book refer to defending the downtrodden compared to the number of times it says we need to disenfranchise gays? This is a big wedge issue but is also a big moral issue as well. Should we be taking rights away from gays? What would your common sense tell you?
  3. Religion in schools and in government. This wedge issue really as no place in a Christian’s political view. Christianity is opposed to the combination of politics and religion. So are our country’s founding documents. So, why would you vote based on this issue? Don’t get me wrong. There are some religions that think that politics and religions should be the same. But most Americans opposed to Muslim laws regarding this.

What are your most important wedge issues and is it wise to vote based on them while excluding the most important moral issues on your list?

Happy Easter!

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Posted in Politics, Religion | 3 Comments »

Tea Baggers for Billionaires

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

by
Matthew K.

I drove past the Nevada capitol Friday and found a handful of people gathering around a sign that said, “Americans for Prosperity”.

Two important things are illuminated by this:

  1. The billionaire Koch brothers, known for being the money behind Americans for Prosperity, could only pay a handful of people to gather, and
  2. Even though this was slated as a Tea Party rally, it was mostly just workers and volunteers for billionaires.

Why are these issues important? First off, this was a vividly open event to support billionaires against the American people. The signs said right out in the open that these are people supporting the destruction of the middle class and the poor.  There’s really no hiding the fact and no reason to try to hide it.

And, secondly, it was obvious that the vast majority of the Tea Party has realized that they are being used as fools to support legislation that is bad for them and bad for America.

Sure, the Tea Party members know something is wrong with the state of America but they’re beginning to realize that their little Tea Party is created and funded by billionaires and their agenda isn’t America’s agenda, but an agenda to cut the already low taxes of the billionaires.

These are both very big deals. Now that the veil is off the Americans for Prosperity control of the Tea Party, people are coming to their senses.

Now, don’t think this is the beginning of the end of the Tea Baggers. There are millions of Americans out there who don’t know any better than to believe the propaganda and will be signing up with the same anti-American crowd when they start seeing the marketing again.

It’s not just sad but I find it quite disgusting that one of America’s major political parties is so unethical to take advantage of the Tea Baggers. But, what would one expect from a political party that does all the rest of the things the Republican party is known for.

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How to Tell if Your News is Biased

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

How to Tell if Your News is Biased
Matthew K.

How can you tell if your news source is biased? How can you tell if you need to turn off your news TV or radio and find something more honest? I’ll give you some simple guidelines.

  1. Is your news source coming from a multi million dollar corporation? Well then you can guarantee that it wouldn’t be in their best interest to get the poor and working class all up in arms about multi million corporations, now would it? This is the first and most obvious indication that something is wrong with your news.
  2. Are your news casters paid more than $106,000 per year? If so, you can be sure it’s not in their interest to give you the truth about taxes on the wealthy now is it?
  3. Does your news source clump Social Security expenses in as part of the general federal budget? If so, turn off your lying news right now. This is an obvious lie that has been disproven so many times it’s sad, but the liars keep repeating it.
  4. Did your news have a piece on the thousands of picketers who marched in front of the Koch industries headquarters? No? Never heard of it? You know what that means. But I’ll bet you know about every single Tea Party gathering.
  5. Does your news source explain how taxes on the rich have caused the budget deficit? No? Didn’t think so. Turn them off.
  6. Does your news source explain how the rich, making more than $106,000, pay ZERO social security tax on every penny over that? No, I suppose not. I never hear any of them talking about that. Social Security would be in fat city if the rich just paid their fair share.
  7. Does your news source explain how demand drives an economy and giving money to the fat cats is what’s caused this problem?

This is just a few of countless distortions and lies that come out of the major corporate news.

So, what can a person do to get the real news? Well, let’s start by turning off the corporate news and start looking for independent news and look for better alternatives. I’m not going to tell you what to listen to, you have to decide that on your own, but here are some great places to check out.

  • The Thomm Hartmann radio/TV show. You can get it on the Web and on Dish TV. He has lots of great guests, liberals and conservatives, debating the issues.
  • Think Progress is a great think tank that is current on all the goings on in politics.
  • Daily Kos is a great website with lots of daily news.
  • Democratic Underground is another great news source.
  • The Nation has a great newspaper and online news source.
  • Check out The Guardian and the BBC, two British news sources.
  • You can even check out Al Jazeera for news not quite as biased as Fox.

You may have noticed, but I’m not giving you links. You can find these and more by doing a little googling. Get in the habit of doing some research and finding news sites that are actually good for you and good for America.

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