An Eye For An Eye…..

Courtesy South Park

Since many Republican voters have no concern or empathy over what it is like to be a minority, I am calling for all those who whether in your employment, your family, your circle of friends, your bar, your church, to become ostracized after the election in a way very similar to how Afro Americans are treated every day.

I think both our state and county officials need to mandate racial profiling on all elderly white males… Automatically pull them over and try to find something incriminating.  I think every pickup truck with American flags flying off the back, definitely needs to be shaken down.  Handcuff them and go through their trucks with K9’s for any drug paraphernalia….. Ha, ha,, maybe one just…. might…. appear.. lol. lol..  I think every NRA sticker is an automatic reason for lighting them up… Pull them over and write a ticket unless they are so conciliatory, you feel they will never disobey the law again in their lives..

I think our county and state offices need to have two wait-in-line tickets at all their offices… One for whites, and one for everyone else… after the everyone else gets done, then move to beginning at the top of the line for whites… I think that anyone who is a white male, and works with you, and is not particularly overly sentimental to the female prerogative, needs to be fired and replaced with someone either male or female who is.  I think that any male who compliments a female making her uncomfortable, needs to be fired on the spot…I think all white men should find themselves on the receiving end of a sexual harassment lawsuit, and leave it to the judge to determine if such a suit has merit or not.

I think all elderly white males still employed in the state’s workforce need to take a 25% pay cut so they are on par with women.

I think everyone who we can pin as being a Trump-supporter right now, must by law, wear a yellow star that says:  KKK …  We should be able to imprison without bail, any known Trump supporter including that now famous list of Delawarean Republicans still supporting Trump. who get caught in public not wearing the required identification.

I think we should have affirmative action towards Trump supporters and based on the percent of the popular voter that Trump supporters receive per state, we should guarantee that all businesses cap their white male employees at that low number… If only 30% of the voting public supports Trump, then no business or government employer is allowed to have any more than 30% white male Republicans on their payroll.  The remainder have to be filled by women, and non white smart intelligent human beings… After all, fair is fair.

So please, you who are NOT Republicans… if you have a neighbor, a co-worker, or a friend who you know is still a Trump supporter which now, means they must also be a closet racist.  contact the FBI office closest to you and report them as possible domestic terrorists…

We cannot be too safe… We will only be safe when every rednecked Trump supporter is rotting in jail…   Then,  life will be good.

Gosh, wouldn’t life be awesome?  We can dream…

 

 

The Passage of Times

The more with which time passes, the more one sees how some things always stay the same.

This is something unrealized by youth… I certainly couldn’t see it, though many elderly tried to project their insight into me.. I simply lacked enough background to understand.

But seeing the return of things you fought to vanquish and were once successful, as well as expanding ones knowledge-base across many cultures, times, and distances, one tends to see a larger pattern in effect that probably is conducive to our survival…

Here is how it relates to conservatives and liberals, democracy and our ultimate survival…. .

No matter who you are, when you are, or where you are, if you are comfortable in your position, you tend to lean towards conservatism… Why wouldn’t you?  It’s what enabled you to get and keep what you have… On the other hand, when you have nothing but dreams listed as your assets, you’ll insist on change, or newness, or something better than what you have.. Why shouldn’t you?  Who would want to stay in the same decrepit conditions one finds themselves when they don’t have to?

And so democracy is simply a mechanism that allows for the ebb and flow of fortunes to change policy so parity is maintained for the most part…

When a majority of people are doing better than those who are not, then keeping what is working now is best for that society as a whole.  On the other hand if it it not working, then changing ones course is better for that society.  That makes so much sense, does it not?

So being a liberal in a time of economic well being is, how should we say politely, being “very forward thinking”?… Likewise being a conservative in a time of turmoil, could be rather dangerous, being so outnumbered so… you better hope you are “well liked”….

It is rare that events outside the human experience impact us on a large scale. Most of what affects us drastically (wars, Depressions, power grabs) usually comes from mankind’s own doing:… acts where we consciously chose to go a certain route, and more or less, damned all the torpedoes that got in the way.

Today we are in a bru-ha-ha of our own making…. Most of it directly came from our choosing to go towards giving the top 1% all of our money and keeping less for ourselves… It was a conscious decision on our parts.  We elected enough Republicans to allow them to do what they told us they would do.  It was no secret. We made a bad decision.

The experiment failed.  They kept all the money and none trickled down, at least here within our borders… Our wealth actually built up China, which is great for them, but that hasn’t helped us much.

When one finds out one is losing something important, one hangs onto it harder… Which means someone has to try harder to take it away, right?… This gives insight into the harshness and lack of decorum in politics today… The ugliness we see today in Conservatives, and the hard clenching tenacity we see in Liberals, we’ve seen before in this country.  We had it in the 1820’s between the old guard wealth of the Eastern Seaboard, and the wide individualistic wealth newly available across our national heartland.  We saw it in the 1850’s as slavery hit the hot button and both sides became bitterly entrenched as support for slavery evaporated into a cauldron of gunpowder.  It only took one spark.  We saw it in the 1890’s as the capitalists grabbed up more and more companies, crushed workers rights, and the workers in cities became less and less empowered. Finally Republican Progressivism broke out of the chokehold. Then WWI flipped the scales back to big business and an investment boom followed by a Great Depression again created the necessary environment for another total sweep of old for new.  That “new” lasted 60 years until it succumbed to having been so successful so that so many numbers who had previously benefited from liberal policies switched allegiances to keep their assets to themselves… And that leads to today, where our individualistic efforts to improve ourselves simply were not enough to balance ourselves comfortably against wealth and power and we are again looking at more government interaction…

So rawness and candor have always been part of politics.  Always will be. Some things never change. (Some of us love it, btw.)

So what is happening today is that the post Republican Depression economy has made mockery out of those “traditional” Republican values and the only thing they have to hold on to power right now, is their appeal to the prejudiced.  Against this direct solicitation, Progressives continue to offer a new vision of hope to millennials, or the return to the old vision of what actually worked well for 60 years to those still alive who actually lived it.

The conservatives count the votes and know their time is numbered.  Population trends have pointed this out for many years. Which readily explains why they focus on ways and methods to limit large numbers of those voting, and have vacated all plans to appeal to new members… No surprise here.

In this election conservative policy has been reduced to stem complete annihilation of their party… For whereas they have failed over the past 16 years, Progressives have succeed across that same time. By going hog-wild on bigotry, they are using the only tactic with which they know how to keep some members in their party from flipping…

Bigotry is a “thing” unfortunately… And right now…. it is the only “thing” Republicans have to garner one single vote this November…  Unless of course, it is ….. “wild hair”…

 

ATTN: Bonini, Reigle, La Mar Gunn, Lawson, Pettyjohn, Hocker, Hudson, Smyk, Lopez, Miro, Ramone, Short, Grey, Dukes, and Collins! Your Candidate Is A Racist and So Is Your Party! You Still With Them? IF SO, Don’t Expect To Stay With Us, You Racist!!!!! Get The Hell Outta’ Here !!!

 

My original plan for this article was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week I’d planned to propose new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.

Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

I’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.

Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Those are his words.

Donald Trump misses so much.

He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field…

The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders,Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race — that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it’s OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don’t.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

Military Service’s Oath of Enlistment

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

 

Trump, Rump, Dump, Bump, Stump

I did see this coming… just in a different person.  I thought it would be Gov. Scott Walker now in the lead but with the same contingent backing him, and…. coupled with some big Koch money always being bundling up behind him where ever his footsteps led.

What I didn’t foresee was that the Kochs would pull the money plug on Scott early on and flip to Cruz…  But that is exactly what happened and almost as soon as he got the Koch’s call that he was finished, Scott Walker dumped his campaign..

But he would have run it defiantly against all the establishment and he would be where Trump stands in his shoes now… Where he got out-played in the first debate was by not knowing how to steal the limelight back from someone building a gigantic wall and preposterously making Mexico pay for it… If he’d immediately countered that he, Scott Walker would build two walls, one North and one South, both to keep brown people out, and would make the United Nations pay for it…, he could have recaptured the spotlight. He didn’t, his moment passed, and the media and public went after Trump..

Without his lead role as defiance-in-chief, he had nothing else to run on…

The point being, that I accurately pinpointed way ahead of all the other commentators over at WDEL, what the Republican electorate was feeling…

I’ll explain it by quoting from Today’s exit poll data….

“More than half of GOP voters saying they feel “betrayed” by their party’s politicians supported Trump. Unsurprisingly, Trump—the only non-politician left in the race—dominated among those who want the next president to be from outside the political establishment, winning three-quarters of their votes.”

The actual total is 55%.  Get that?  Somewhere between 5 and 6 out of 10 Republicans, feel betrayed by their OWN party… The Mitch McConnells. The Paul Ryans.  The Mitt Romneys. The Ted Cruzs, The Marco Rubios….Their assorted Senators and Representatives…

They feel betrayed…

And not necessarily because candidates weren’t conservative enough… Their betrayal came about because they elected a majority of Republicans to make individual voter’s lives better, and on that contract item, they did not deliver….

From the American point of view, when any attempt arose to make American’s lives better, these new Republicans drug their feet to doom it to failure.  Which is why… the leading candidate…. was a once a democrat supporter friend of Hillary, who was against the Iraqi War and who supports strengthening Social Security and Medicare, not tearing it down…

• When they drug their feet on Obamacare… Americans got hurt.  Republicans didn’t care.
• When they shut down the government… Americans got hurt.  Republicans didn’t care.
• When they defaulted on America’s debt… Americans got hurt..Republicans didn’t care.
• When they didn’t care about up to 48 million Republicans on SNAP but gave the billionaires a $438 billion dollar tax cut, Republicans didn’t care….

All of which would have certainly helped Hillary………. but they want someone other than Hillary…

Enter Donald Trump.

The more the establishment hates Donald Trump, the more his supporters reaffirm their allegiance.  For the non-establishment candidate is exactly what these voters want… They did not get prosperity from the establishment, they got financially worse… Since the Recession, their lives got tighter and the wealthy’s lives became more loose and easy… No taxes; no regulations; no requirements; no rules.

Now here is one of that upper crust, a billionaire himself,  extending to them the exact same rules that his establishment plays by…

Donald is now a symbol;  talking about holes in his statements, his firebrand racism, his vapid plans for the future, only cements the view these people have: that they are saying this only because they think Donald Trump will change the things they’ve set in stone…. The more you attack him; the greater his support swells…

If you are a Progressive (reading this) think back on 2008! The more the conservative press piled dirt on Obama (what was that pastor’s name) the more his supporters rallied to his cause to not only defend him, but finance him, and work hard to get him elected… If you can remember such, you can begin to understand the attraction Lord Voldemort has over the Death Eaters… oops, Republicans…
Trump is simply THE ANSWER to a lot of people’s problems….. it may not be what you like, but you… are not “those people”…

As he wins, he grows.  Now that the establishment has let it out they are going to “try” to unseat him at “their” controlled convention, of course, that makes Trump even more of a hero..

And to his credit. He has morphed the Republican Party from a party of butt-licking sycophants run by email chains penned by the elite, to a boisterous, rowdy, lively, cantankerous party flailing around, seeking a direction on where it might go… Very much like America in 2016 if you ask me….

Though I don’t like racism, I do like how Trump hates Wall Street and the big banks.  I do like how he is not beholden to big money and I presume he will do what is necessary as gleefully as he throws out protesters from his forums.  I do like how in battles with monoliths versus little people, he sides with the little people.  For those with long memories, his early campaign is very much like Reagan’s.  Those who only know the “myth of Reagan” will contest my claim, but if your memory is good, you’ll remember how everyday people flocked to his appearances, and how both the Establishment Republicans and all the Democrats, all turned up the heat to blow him out of the race….

Trump is so much like Reagan, I’m almost thinking he will win….  despite the racism, despite the hatred, despite the emotions, and despite the hair… Like Reagan, just looking at him, you like him. Like Reagan, both come from acting and know how to push an audience’s buttons. Like Reagan, both approach everything as non-negotiable; their way or the highway…  For people unhappy with everything in general but have no specifics at which to gripe, this is very attractive.. Just as it was in 1980…. And like Reagan, both are really Democrats at heart, just playing a Republican for TV….

 

There is a way to beat him.. whether by John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton.  The last debate showed how… From all reports of that last debate Trump stopped using his attention-getting bombs and without them to “plow the road” ahead of him, he hit quite a few land mines set up for him to step on.

The way to beat Trump is not to yell at what he is… and that was the tact taken by the Democrats in 1980 and to their dismay, the American people didn’t care about the old ideas of what a President should or should not do. They didn’t care about procedures and traditions laid down over long periods, dictating how politics were supposed to unfold…

But considering all the huge negatives Ronald Reagan had in his campaign of 1980, if Jimmy Carter had been able to put up a plan that solved the problems then of stagflation, misery indexes, military ineptitude, and a feeling that America had drifted off from its destiny, he would have cut into Reagan’s overwhelming victory…

The sole way to beat Trump is not to attack him (though that could serve to bring out your voters in higher numbers)  but to offer a plan to America that will solve its problems faster than electing a big mouthed bigot who just yells and points fingers and says he’s going to fix it… whatever “it” is…

America only elects those representing its “dark side” when it sees no other option available.

To beat Trump, you have to get in front of him on how you will make America great again;…how you can give “faster” relief without building a wall.;…. How you can make us safer and not ban our third largest religion from whom we will again import a vast majority of  our oil; … how you can do all this without alienating that 50% of our population who just got called “fat pigs.”.

As long as no one hears that, how you will actually fix things,… if you can’t offer a solid solution, Trump will win the Republican nomination and continue to beat out Hillary in the electoral college…

Because if there is anyone representing the “establishment”  it IS, Hillary Clinton.  Americans are SO FED UP with the establishment they will support anyone and anything, who promises to bring it down….

That explains Trump’s popularity… He is the creation of the Republican Party’s grinding down our gears of government to a standstill. In a world where Republicans and Democrats worked together going with up or down votes on everything put before them for their perusal, Trump now would be on the outside, quickly typed-cast as a weirdo looney as was Michele Bachmann.

But run government efficiently…. is not what Republicans did… That is why we have Trump…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Republican Party 2016

One of the best quotes I got from Tuesday’s Primary (Super Tuesday), was that the Republican Party is finally showing some unity.

It is uniting under Donald Trump.  Not that the Republican power elite wants it too, but the reality is that in state after state, individual voters are doing what the elite of their party cannot do… unify the party behind one man….

The Republican voter is voting exactly what he wants… Face it. The average Republicans wants Mexico to build a wall,. they want all Muslims banned, and they want to be perfectly comfortable with their prejudices, even though they didn’t know that was what they wanted, until “the Donald” put it out there. But it IS out there, and THAT, is what they want…

The GOP is unifying behind it.and getting stronger party primary turnout than it’s had in years….No one is really surprised except those at the top of the Republican Party who’ve been in denial all these years over what their party really was…

Others of us have been saying that all along….

🙂

 

Prevailing Wage: And the Sell Out That Just Happened.

Usually things can be easily grasped if you avoid the details and look at a broader picture…  Of course, I’m not saying never look at details… That would be silly…  But I’m saying that if you approach all situations from the bottom up, you really don’t have a clue unless you luckily enough to reach the summit and look down…  It is like climbing a mountain… If you just walk uphill… you may get there… or you may hit a wall that cannot be climbed… But looking at a satellite photo of the mountain first, you can easily track a general path, then deal with the details discovered on the ground when you get there….

What politics all comes back to, is what I first heard while making the rounds with my dad. That old man on the porch who said between cigar puffs…. “Kid… politics is about who gets the money and who controls it…”

That held for my county then, for our counties now, for our state, and federal too… Understanding  that politics is all about money, makes one understand ahead of time what will pass legislature in any given session, and what will not…

There are many ways to divide the pie…  one can base it on color of skin which has been tried in our history.  One can base it on gender, which has been tried in our history… One can base it on land ownership which as been tried in our history…  But over the course of time, each of those distinctions have fallen.  And good riddance.

Now, thanks to mass media, there is a new distinction… Between those who can buy ads to threaten lawmakers, and those who can’t…  (For simplicity more than accuracy, we will from henceforth, call them the 1% versus the 99%…..)

If one looks at the 1%’s slice of pie, prevailing wage bites into it… They have to pay a higher wage than what they could find in cheaper labor…  I mean who could not be against prevailing wage if it meant you had to pay more money which you could, if the trend were gone, keep to yourself?    So these guys do have motive, one that is dear to each and all of our hearts. Keeping their money.

But even rich people know that an argument saying:  make these people suffer more so I can become EVEN richer does not hold water in any forum.  In fact that argument is the kiss of death… So instead they find a third party to portray as victim… which is the government…  Their argument:  our government is paying more than it has to which is a waste catches more flies especially during hard times….

There are some mis-truths here that need pointing out…

One is that doing away with prevailing wage does not cut cost for government…  It does nothing like that at all in our system of bids …. Our government asks for bids, and it chooses one…. Most often there is only one bid.  That bidder gets what they ask… And with prevailing-wage-principles now gone, the owners pocket that extra incremental which was previously blamed on Prevailing Wage…

So whereas on paper one can anticipate all the labor being used on government contracts and take several dollars off every total and call that a potential savings…. it does not show how other mysterious costs will bite into and suck out those alleged savings, funneling the money over to the 1%’s bank accounts.

In other words, there will be no savings because the 1% will steal them… WE THE PEOPLE will still pay $65 million for a construction job, but instead of 53% going to wages which get spent in our state, now only 43% goes to that place… Losing prevailing wage takes money like a giant vacuum cleaner right out of Delaware’s economy… Instead of funding projects to benefit people working, we are funding the same projects to benefit those who take the money immediately right out of the state’s economy which quickly gets locked up and we will never see it again…..

Bottom line of losing prevailing wage?… A.) No money is ever saved by our government.  B.) Our Delaware local economy suffers net loss. C.) The top 1% grows 10% richer with every project the state funds….

In very surprising language from a very Conservative Pope, (Pope Francis’s predecessor)  Pope Benedict lays it out very clearly…

Today, budgetary policies, with cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers’ associations. Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum[60], for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past…

Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. 

So, if you read the above you can plainly see  we have a head of the largest Christian denomination the Roman Catholic Church, calling for the continuance of policies like Prevailing Wage, and endorsing it…. “What God has brought together; let no man cut asunder.”

What just happened June 30th, was that the total economic pie of Delaware, the one that gets divided up between the haves and have-nots, just got a little smidgen taken from the Have-Nots and  added to the side of the Haves which already own over 50% of the pie .

• A.) No money gets saved by the Government.
• B.) Less money now filters through our grocery stores, our restaurants, our small businesses, our handyman our landscapers, our repair shops, or our mechanics….
• C.) The noose for 99% of us becomes tighter by another notch, which with a one way slit knot, can never be undone except by cutting away the noose altogether..

The good news is that some form of prevailing wage still stands for larger contracts.   The bad news is that we have less pie than we did a week ago, to feed all 1 million of us living today in what once were the three former counties of Pennsylvania….

But the effects of reducing prevailing wage can be countered by a government and local economy…. If we would just create an excessive tax on the top one percent while giving them the option to write off everything they spent on capital investment that year…. they themselves would have the incentive to pay more and government would not have to step in and support wages with a minimum floor… Pictorially, If the top 1% had to continuously give back the slices of pie they continuously stole from us, they would stop stealing, is basically the point of taxing excessively those only in the top tier.

Or, if we could again legally protect every American worker from being fired if they stopped workage as long as their work stoppage was linked to getting higher wages, then those wages would increase through bargaining under that threat, and laws supporting prevailing wages would no longer be necessary…

But since 1980 we have cut back on those two forms of balance so until they are restored, today’s current political climate which is controlled by the owners of excessive money , demands the necessity of continuing prevailing wage just to keep all wages higher, both private and public, since all wages have to compete for labor against the highest one on the market…

But it is ultimately our failure as a state to jump-start massive local investment by levying huge taxes on all monies the top one percent won’t spend on local capital improvements here within our state’s boundaries,  that causes us to have to defend the concept of prevailing wage.. We NEED prevailing wage just for the simple reason that all of its well-spent money comes straight to us… to all of us in the local economy when those receiving it in their paychecks, spend it!… Without prevailing wage,  it’s the Caymen Island bank accounts which swell with yours and my money…………  instead of our local economy.

Prevailing Wage like every thing in politics… is only about who gets to get their hands on the money….. Why shouldn’t it be you?  There is no reason.  Just that you didn’t ask for it; You didn’t defend your rights to it; you elected people paid for by the other side… Your lack of having enough money today comes down to your own damn fault….

Isn’t it time you did something about it?