Power of Corruption

 

This country is getting a real lesson in how power corrupts!  The urge to gain or retain power has brought hypocrisy and lack of integrity to many of our ‘leaders’ and is doing irreparable harm to the Country.  The ‘divide and conquer’ mentality of both of our parties has lead to fear, anger, and hate as the most motivating way to get us to vote. This leaves most of us thinking the country is going in the wrong direction. Here are a few things all of us can understand and do to change direction:

1.       Don’t believe anything said in ads not paid for by the candidate and about the candidate.  They may be true, but if so they are always out of context and said in the most unflattering manner.

2.       Candidates that only talk about how bad their opponents are, are using the argument “they’re worse than I am.”

3.       Listen to what the candidates say they will do in their own ads and compare that to what they have done.

4.       Sending money to a PAC or political party will fund the very negative, lying ads we hate.  Send your money to the person you can vote for.

5.       If you have not paid attention to a campaign and don’t know the candidates, don’t vote in that contest.

6.       If you don’t like either of the candidates, don’t vote for either of them.  Your conscience will be clear, and the candidates might get the message if enough of us don’t vote for either.

7.       Politicians can only influence the whole nation’s economy through tax acts which always takes years to have any effect and require more than one politician.

8.       A politician’s job is to tax and spend by compromising.  Many seem to tout that they will do none of these three requirements if elected.  They are the clowns making our current government a circus.  Don’t vote for them.

9.       Promises to ‘cut crime’ or ‘stop inflation’ are lies.  No one person can do either of these.

10.   Those who won’t tell you how they will accomplish their promises, don’t have plans and are spouting thin air.

11.   If they try to convince you that you are a ‘victim’, they are stoking hatred.  Don’t vote for them.

12.   Everyone makes mistakes.  To expect a politician to be right one hundred percent of the time is not possible.  How many people were injured because of the mistake?

13.   Politicians that are predicting the future are mostly blowing smoke.

14.   Cutting taxes results in: other governmental units increasing taxes, lowering the performance of government, or making our grand children pay.

15.   Government is not a business.  It shouldn’t be run like one.  Running a business is not required to be a good politician.  Being a good leader is.

16.   The thing that makes democracy better than the other awful types of governments is that it can separate power from money.  The rich will always lust for power.

17.   Our survival depends on people that don’t look, act or believe like us.  Be tolerant. 

Everyone’s moral compass is a little different.  Paying attention to the above will keep your integrity intact.

We've got a DOLLAR OCRACY

 

It’s easy to understand the MAGA people’s belief that the election was stolen.  I would propose that many elections have been stolen recently, but not by the Democrats.  It was the Supreme Court that stole it from the citizenry with the ruling of ‘Citizens United’. They’ve turned us into a Dollar-acracy.  Now that the lawyers have had time to parse it out, they are busy setting up PAC’s that don’t have to reveal their donors.  Who are these donors?  Who wants the US to be divided and full of hate for each other?  Russia and China both come to mind.  Russia is the one country in the world that stands to gain from global warming.  Saudi Arabia is benefiting now from global warming and will continue too as long as we continue to need their oil.  Both political parties are benefiting because it’s easier to get one big PAC donation than spending hours on the phone raising funds.  Both parties don’t see any problem with backing candidates that take money from people with single issues from any state in the union.

 The Supreme Court has made it impossible to “follow the money” which is the standard way to illuminate corruption.   In order to drain the swamp of liquidity, it will be necessary to pass a Constitutional Amendment.  I would suggest something like: “Notwithstanding the first amendment, all efforts to influence elections for office shall be limited to those able to vote in said election”.

Immigration: The problem to bring up when you have nothing else.

 

Working with salesmen all of my career, I was made aware that the sales process starts with creating a problem in the buyers mind that you can solve.  The immigration ‘crisis’ we are currently undergoing remind me of the ‘fire-sales’ our marketing geniuses used to have.  You let the buyers know that a feature is going to be taken away at a set date and then count the money as buyers rush in to get in on the deal while it lasts.  Announcements about building a wall let all potential immigrants know that they had better get here while they could and not wait.  Our politicians are using this issue to ramp up the hatred for the ‘other’ side without any intention of solving the problem.  This goes back to the Reagan immigration ‘solution’ that didn’t let undocumented people hold jobs or receive government benefits while in this country.  The GOP at that time made sure this would fail by not providing employers with the tools necessary to verify citizenship or legal status in the country.   I think we all know that the solution is hiring a ton of immigration judges to clear up and streamline the process of asylum.  Instead we turn these people, who have walked hundreds of miles to get a better life, into ‘rapists, drug dealers, and criminals'. While we talk about all the job openings that are going unfilled.  All this hatred just leads to more hatred.

Politics of Ignorace and Stupidity

 

Ever since Pat Buchanan paid to have those “hippies” spitting on our returning troops, I’ve realized the far right has had no qualms about repeating lies so often that people believe them.  I’ve always wondered if it was stupidity or ignorance that let the right accuse the left of doing the same things that they do.  My conclusion is that it is a combination of both.  Those whose mission it is to get and maintain power use ignorance to their advantage; by not reading the Mueller report, they could say anything they wanted to about it. 

Those sheep in Mr. Trumps flock are fed buzzwords and phrases that shock while relying on stupidity to believe.  Cases in point:

1.       How is anyone going to take the guns away.  Who is stupid enough to try?

2.       Abortions aren’t going to stop simply because they are illegal.

3.        Wokeness is like “political correctness”, not something you have to do but simply ways to not insult other people.

4.       Climate change deniers don’t have any science to back them up.  They are afraid of losing money because their jobs warming things up are threatened.  They are climate change profiteers.

5.       The cause of freedom doesn’t include banning books, censuring teachers, telling people what to do with their bodies, or keeping people from being who they are.

6.       Insults are used in debates only when logic will not win.    

7.       Talk about building a wall at the border was just the incentive needed for anyone thinking of coming to this country, to do it as soon as possible.

We can only keep democracy alive if enough smart people are willing to vote for people of integrity.      

What's Latin for "Sharia Law"?

 

We continue to see the corrupting influence of power in this country.  It now appears the Supreme Court believes its power is derived from the Almighty, like the Judges in the Bible, instead of the Constitution.  Telling us when life begins, how taxpayers should pay for religious instruction and who is to lead our prayers is nothing less than the establishment of religion by the State.   It’s time to begin impeachment proceedings against these people who don’t understand the first amendment they are pledged to uphold.