John Oliver excoriates "Trump's" budget proposal in his hilarious way. He lets us know that the proposal was assembled by his budget director based upon the President's various rants and ravings. Therefore it should be no surprise that the document makes absolutely no sense (it is nonsensical!) at all. Oliver is funny but even he finds no true joy in Trump's lunatic budget.

Bernie Sanders gives a great talk at Vermont Technical College

 

This talk is very informative and motivating. Bernie tackles all the important issues. He takes audience questions and answers them honestly, thoroughly and cordially. The first five and a half minutes are introductory but still worth listening to. I think you will like it. It is honest talk you will not hear on TV.

Distractor In Chief

The conventional (corporate) media insists on keeping us distracted with the antics of Donald Trump. The truth is Trump is irrelevant. The real power lies in corporations, their ultra rich CEOs and their hand-maidens in Congress. Consider Paul Ryan, a disciple of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was a Social Darwinist who believed wholeheartedly in the ascendancy of the capitalist class. She found other less capable people (in her view) as basically unworthy of survival. Her novel Atlas Shrugged makes this clear. As a disciple of Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan is carrying out the mission of the ultra rich. These people see themselves as vastly superior to the masses of humanity. They believe they are rich and powerful because they are better.

The novel Atlas Shrugged is a sort of bible for these folks. It also appeals to many average folks. This appeal rests on an unfortunate quality that almost all of us share. Most people believe they are above average. The overwhelming majority of people believe they are smarter, harder working, more virtuous and more deserving than most other people. This is of course ridiculous but, remains an unfortunate aspect of human nature. Ayn Rand's appeal and the popularity of her Social Darwinist philosophy is a result of so many people seeing themselves as members of a superior minority of the population (a more competent minority).

The current Congress is engaged in instituting these Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand views into social policy. These policies will not be as overtly evil as say Nazism but, they will have the same overall effect. Millions of people will be reduced to being the denizens of impoverished ghetto communities ruled over by militarized police. Healthcare will be a rare privilege instead of an inalienable right.

How will this take place without people rising up either peacefully or in armed insurrection? Well the elites including the corporate media intends to keep you busy watching our clown prince Donald Trump the Distractor In Chief of the United States.

A Call To Arms? (not just yet)

I have tired of posting political items and opinions on Facebook. Social media probably serves best as a purely sociable platform. I have determined to use my web page as my outlet for my political, sociological and philosophical thoughts. This I suppose could be taken as a cautionary statement. I intend to publish my views on those sorts of subjects. I do not believe my views are more noteworthy than those of someone else. I just feel like expressing them. Frankly I doubt that too many p
eople will be interested in them. Nevertheless here goes;

We live in what is called a "capitalist" country. There is some controversy about how strictly capitalist the country actually is. I am not here buying into what I consider to be right wing or conservative propaganda asserting that the country has been drifting into socialism. Those assertions are so blatantly counterfactual that disputing them only enhances them.

When I wrap "capitalist" in quotation marks I do so because I agree with those learned people who say that our system is one of socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor and middle class. America's so called capitalistic system treats giant corporations and financial institutions as precious resources which must be preserved no matter the cost. Meanwhile ordinary people are viewed as an inexhaustible resource which is infinitely replaceable. Ordinary individuals have no intrinsic value in this system. (They can occasionally be placed on display as a sort of living visual aid to some political diatribe.)

In this system the health of the economy is viewed as the state of the stock market. If the value of the stock market is increasing the economy is seen as healthy. Right now the market is rising. Therefore nearly all the so called experts say that the economy is going well, the outlook is rosy. This is of course absurd. Why? Because any objective accounting of peoples lives, our infrastructure, and the impending environmental collapse would show that ours is a culture in decline. The decline has been going on since at least the Reagan administration and is increasing at an exponential rate.

While the stock market and CEO salaries soar ever higher, the real wages of average Americans plummet. The lives of the ultra rich are extravagant while the lives of ordinary people are dire and truncated. The life expectancy of ordinary people is decreasing. The suicide rate is climbing for the working class. The people are becoming hopeless and the media tells them it is their own fault.

All across the country water supplies are contaminated with lead or other toxins. Bridges are in imminent danger of collapsing. Schools are falling apart. Libraries and public hospitals are underfunded, under used and closing. We are building stadiums at public expense for the private gains of billionaire sports team owners. We are building more and more prisons many of which amount to privately run slave plantations.

Meanwhile private corporations are actively destroying the planetary ecosystem. This will of course wind up costing all of us dearly. We will have to pay for it somehow but the corporations creating this disaster are not spending any money to prevent it or undo the damage they have done. Whatever fines they do incur are meaningless, negligible and totally ineffective. On the other hand the damage they are doing will cost you, your children and their children their livelihoods and maybe their lives.

The most insulting thing about all this is that the proponents of capitalism do not believe in it themselves. They choose socialism for themselves. They sell us capitalism with the utter contempt and disdain that all con-artists have for their marks. It is called "Supply Side Economics." The idea is that the ultra rich are "job creators," and by favoring them the economy will grow and we will all be better off!

How can any of us be so foolish as to fall for such an obvious fallacy? Favoring the rich over the rest of us does benefit certain sectors of the economy, Ferrari sales are booming! So are the sales of ultra luxurious real estate (a lot of which sits vacant nearly all the time!). Most Americans do not work for the Ferrari motor car company. Americans working in the industries that benefit regular people are losing their jobs. The rich drive up costs because they like owning expensive items. They make home ownership harder for working people.

Benefiting the rich only benefits the rich. They are not on our side. They really don't hate us because they do not give regular people that much consideration. Nevertheless they have been waging a class war against the workers and now against the middle class. A war which the rich are winning. They will continue to win the class war until the rest of us decide to fight back.