Author: Greg Snyder

I want to live in a country where everyone has free, fast, and publicly-owned broadband as it was originally intended to be. This would extend to each and every American, even those Americans who live farthest away in the most isolated and rural places in the country. Our tax dollars could pay for building the internet infrastructure that could cover the entire country. Broadband should be treated as a public utility, not a for-profit company owned by a corporation that increases its fees and creates new costs and fees and “tiers” as it wants, to increase its profits to suit the needs of its corporate executives and shareholders.

Greg Snyder
April 27, 2018 ·

Do you have any interest in giving anything back, paying anything forward for your success and achievements? If you are a retired baby boomer with time on your hands, how’s this for an idea about something that you could do with your time that would be constructive and beneficial for you and your community?  For those baby boomers who are old enough to be comfortably retired and have time available to do whatever they want to do, why not network and socialize with other people in your community who are also retired and have free time? You could work together to create social change and a better community for yourselves and a brighter future for your children and their children. Just a thought I wanted to throw out there. If you like this message, please feel free to act on it and share it. Thank you.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on In your leisure time

The Evils of American Capitalism according to Greg, 1.0.

The Stock Market is paid more attention than the workers who are actually doing the work upon which the market is based.

The emphasis in the economy is on paying investors and shareholders and corporate executives and making sure that they are all flush first and foremost and often at the expense of the security and well being of the workers who are actually doing the work upon which the economy is based.

Money controls Congress. Everything that is done is done because of money. It’s what I think of as old school politics. Money buys political action, favors, and preference. Those with the most money, the rich and large corporations, have engineered lawmaking in this country for most of its history.
That engineering has created economic disparities and inequality that have never been as large as they are today. This engineering has weakened labor in its ability to be its own advocate and work for maintaining adequate and fair wages, benefits, and working conditions for the workers who actually do the work upon which the economy and market are based.

Can the United States find a way to become a more equal and just economic system than it currently is? Will it ever be possible to flip from old school politics based on money controls Congress to a government that does not cater exclusively to those with the most money?

Why can’t we have both a strong stock market and a class of investors, shareholders, and corporate executives, AND a class of workers who do the work, ALL enjoy a good standard of living?

Would it be too much to ask those who have extreme levels of wealth to agree to allow those with less to have just a little bit more?

Most ordinary people, people who work for a living, just want to be able to live and have the basics: shelter, food, warmth, healthcare.

Don’t people who work deserve to have shelter, food, warmth, healthcare, and to not have to worry to excess about whether or not they will have enough money to pay for the basics?

When all the basics are assured, there is less anxiety and people can and do live modestly and don’t expect a lot more than that IF they feel secure.

For the rich, my questions would be: How much wealth is enough? Is there ever enough wealth? What is the goal of having wealth? Is the compulsion to amass an unknown but unlimited amount of wealth your end goal?
For what purpose?

If there can be a way to reconcile an economy that is skewed toward favoring the rich at the expense of everyone else and making sure that all citizens are able to enjoy a standard of living that allows them to live their lives without it being a struggle to survive, all of society would benefit. The economy would be stronger. And overall conditions for everyone and everything would be greatly improved.

It’s not rocket science. It’s a matter of fairness and a fair distribution and wise employment of the limited wealth and resources of any economy.

What do you think?

Greg Snyder
January 23, 2018 ·
What is National Security?
Is it having nuclear weapons that can annihilate whole cities?
Is it having covert troops and advisors that Americans don’t even know about in almost every country of the world “to protect our interests”.
Is it supporting and propping up despotic regimes that will in turn be our “allies”?
Is it funneling more and more of the discretionary federal budget into “the defense sector” of the economy for defense systems that we don’t need that takes money away from doing things here at home that are desperately needed, like funding education or rebuilding our infrastructure?
Is it putting money into research and development of sonar weapons systems that are used in the oceans which disorient, deafen, and kill an untold number of marine animals probably causes mass beachings of whales and other sea life?
Is it spending money lavishly on all of the items listed above and then not adequately funding troops when they come home after serving the country and are not given adequate pay and benefits and are neglected by Congress?
Are you afraid that some force, or some country is going to come over to the United States and somehow take it over and force Americans into submission?
The reason I ask that last question is because there is a lot of paranoia and weird thinking around the issue of National Security. A lot of misinformation and paranoid ideas are disseminated and there is a lot of insecurity about safety. But, what is real, and what is faulty thinking? Americans really need to take a long hard think about this because it’s a skeleton that they just have not dealt with honestly.
National Security has been used for a long time by ALL of our politicians to basically give the defense industry a blank check to do what it will. It has nothing to do with the actual security and safety of the country.
Americans need to wake up and question this practice and think in realistic terms about what true national security is and how it can be implemented in a responsible way that does not brake the bank or cause the country to go without the things it needs at the expense of having needless weapons systems that are wasteful, that squander resources, and that invite the rampant fraud that causes the Pentagon to “lose track of” and not account for trillions of dollars that just somehow disappear.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on What is safety and security?

Greg Snyder
January 16, 2018 ·

Do you remember when we never heard much about Congress passing a federal budget? It used to just happen quietly, without any fighting, or threats, or deadlock, or ultimatums, or continuing resolutions. Congress used to just do its job.

Last year I remember one of the sticking points was that Trump and the republicans wanted to increase the defense budget by $150 billion dollars originally and I think they finally settled on $80 billion. To do that, the republicans, if I remember correctly, wanted to cut funding for Meals on Wheels and take away the one hot meal that millions of poor shut-in, mostly elderly people depend on as their one hot meal of the day. Also, on the republican chopping block, if I remember correctly, were Planned Parenthood, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Veterans Affairs and budget. I can’t remember what deal the two parties arrived at last year to finally pass the budget after it had passed the deadline to do so on time. But, I do believe that Trump and the republicans did in fact get an increase of the defense budget of something like $80 billion dollars.

This year, the deadline for passing the federal budget is quickly approaching and the republicans want to increase the budget for defense yet again. Are we in an expensive war that I don’t know about? Democrats want DACA preserved. I don’t know how much money is needed to preserve DACA, it’s a promise that this country made to millions or people, dreamers and their families. I don’t know how much money it takes to preserve a promise. But, it’s part of the budget deliberations and rightfully so if that is the only way that it can be brought up for discussion in the tightly controlled republican process. Trump also still wants his insanity wall built and for American tax payers to foot that bill. So, that’s there too.

Tell me. Does this seem sane and normal to you? An increase in defense spending? Really? Why? The only thing I can come up with is that the republicans are trying to throw as many bones to their donors as they can, and the defense sector of the economy is a big sector of the economy that the republicans want to make sure and continue to cultivate so that those funds don’t dry up on them. It’s all about the money. That’s what’s important. It doesn’t matter that the product is death and destruction. Not at all.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on The high drama of the partisan budget battles

Greg Snyder
January 16, 2018 ·

I agree with you that the inspiration this country gives people, its aspiration to be home to all good citizens who want to achieve some kind of a dream, and the role model it has been in the past are what are and have made this country great in the past.

At this point in time all of those qualities and features are being degraded and morphed into something quite different by those in power. In this thread I have been thinking specifically about the people who make the decisions that the economy and to a large extent society then follow.

For example, the electric car was an experiment that showed wild promise to free us from carbon back in the 70s. The decision makers at GE, I believe, made the decision to kill the electric car before that idea took off.

The automotive industry then pushed the idea of bigger and bigger gas guzzlers, SUVs, Hummers, gigantic trucks that are really more like tanks than trucks and we have wound up with freeways and streets full of vehicles that use an obscene amount of gas.

Or, another example is in communications. This country used to have a diverse palette of independent small radio stations and back then it was much more exciting and a hell of a lot more substantial and satisfying to spend time listening to the radio.
But, the powers that make decision for all the rest of us slowly, over time, found ways to pretty much ban small, independent radio stations from the airways and what we have left are mostly these crass radio stations that blast the most recent manufactured “music” and more importantly, gobs and gobs of loud, obnoxious advertisements. And these radio stations nowadays are owned mostly by less than a dozen large media conglomerates whose only motive is profit.

The FCC, industry lobbyists, Congress are all complicit in the current state of crass, commercial, in-your-face radio in this country. They have achieved complete blandness and created something that is so boring and a waste of time that I just don’t turn the radio on anymore.

It’s these kind of decisions by the big decision makers that I have been wondering about lately. How can they make so many bad decisions? And for what reason? I just don’t get it.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on Big decisions, bad decisions

Greg Snyder

I don’t blame Trump voters at all for Trump being in office. They were a minority. Yes. there were a lot of them. And many of them have since realized that they fell for a con and threw their vote away on someone who did not deserve to ever even run for office and who is now very aggressively pursuing actions that hurt them and their families and the entire country. But I don’t think Trump voters deserve the blame and/or any further denunciation from the rest of us, the majority of us who did NOT vote for Trump because we knew he was absolutely unqualified and had too many mental health issues to ever be given the chance to run this country.

Let’s face it. There is a fatal lack of education in America. Trump voters are low-information voters. Or, they are a lot like Trump and have similar mental health issues so they are not able to see how unsuitable, inappropriate, and unacceptable he is and that he never should have even gotten the nomination in the first place. Sure, entertain the televisions watchers during the primaries to get some laughs along the campaign trail, but then exclude him from the final running as someone who may be an “entertainer” but is someone who definitely has no right to get near the WH except as maybe a guest. Sure, any billionaire loudmouth con man thief and bankruptcy king Russian bitch and money launderer can run for the office of president of the United States because, hey, we have a democracy, don’t we?

Posted onAugust 25, 2019 Leave a comment on Democracy at what cost? Or, any boy can run for president in the United States.

Greg Snyder
January 13, 2018 ·
Thanks to: the news media, to Russian hacking and interference, to the electoral college that ripped off the majority of voters (and thus the whole country) who did NOT vote for Trump, to the republican gerrymandering and restrictions on voting and gutting the voting rights act.
But it’s really ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and conservative talk radio and conservative commercial radio that gave Trump full constant exposure starting before the primaries and continuing to this day, for their absolute obsession with Trump.
Trump claimed that he would not take or need or use any money to campaign other than his own. He said he would use his own money to finance his campaign. That, of course was, and still is a lie. And, he said he wasn’t going to take anyone else’s money to campaign, yet one of activities as president has been to continue his fund-raising activities since he took office. So, that was yet again another lie from Trump.
Trump didn’t have to spend any of his own money campaigning and he still is not having to spend a single cent of his own money for full blown, non-stop exposure and coverage by the obsequious mainstream news outlets and conservative Murdoch and other conservative owned media radio and television empire.
Who are the owners of the giant media corporations that chose Trump to be president and then helped make him become president. We know about Murdoch. But we also have the owners of all the other big media conglomerates to thank for the Trump presidency. The chose him. And they helped make it happen. So, if you are wondering how we got to this point, you can look at and very much point the finger of blame at the news media, television and radio. Specifically the owners.
Thanks a lot guys!
Fucking assholes.

Greg Snyder
November 18, 2017 ·
If we had a government that worked for us, the people, to start with, we would have: universal health care, a free, publicly-owned internet, as it was originally envisioned and intended, for every American citizen, even the most isolated and rural Americans, shelter for all, food for all, free, top-notch pre K through to grad school public education and teachers who are compensated well for the important work they do, a restored and fully functional infrastructure, and a clean, sustainable smart energy grid. Cars and planes and ships that do not pollute and green sustainable non-carbon-based energy systems, a transportation system that includes an efficient national high-speed rail network, mass transit systems for our cities, and a modern efficient infrastructure that does not poison our water and keeps our rivers and estuaries and oceans clean and free of toxic wastes. Our government would not concern itself with our personal lives or the decisions we make as long as they don’t hurt other people or animals. Our government would get out of the business of making war and hurting and killing people and disrupting legitimate governments and sovereignties all around the world. Our government would divest from the defense sector of the economy and war profiteering and redirect that money into the other programs and ideas stated here in this article. The government would stop its use of mercenaries otherwise known as private security contractors and employ only the American military forces to protect the country. The use of militia and/or hate groups and the promotion of nationalistic fascist groups that has become the operating principle of the Trump campaign has to end. This is not a fascist despotic state no matter how much Trump wants it to be so. The government WOULD create laws to protect all of us from gun violence. Our government would protect us, keep us safe, protect the environment, and act responsibly with regulating business to not allow crippling, disease-causing pollution. This is not impossible pie in the sky thinking. We pay taxes. Those taxes could be used to pay for those things. And corporations and the rich can begin to put in their fair share of taxes. Nothing is impossible.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on If we had a government that worked for us.

Greg Snyder
October 6, 2017 ·
What is a hedge fund and why do hedge fund managers get to make billions of dollars and are given special reduced tax rates and little to no rules or regulations on their income? In your life, do hedge funds or hedge fund managers have an important and/or crucial role? I would just like to know what it is that they do.. Do the work? If so, what is it? Are they important contributers in terms of productive work? I kinda don’t think so.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment