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So, what, exactly are the pundits on Fox News? News Anchors? I don’t think so because news anchors usually follow a certain pretty well defined set of standard objective behaviors and usually mostly try to keep opinion and speculation out of what they are seemingly presenting as (factual) news. None of that really applies to Fox News pundits.

So, what are they, exactly? I read the term “network host” in an artlcle today. Or, at least that is the first time that I really paid attention to the phrase if it has been around for a while. I just didn’t really pay it much attention. But, the question as to what they are and how to define them has been on my mind for a long time.

I think “network host” works. Hosts can state opinions, even as facts when they are not. They don’t have to provide any reasons or factual back up to verify that what they are saying is fact-based. Hosts can be emotional and seek to evoke emotions in their audience. They can state their opinions and speculations and if they do so with the right amount and the right kind of emotion, usually anger or trepidation, they can elicit their desired responses from their audience.

But what are pundits? A pundit is an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public. But when that person who is acting as a pundit is expertly delivering non factual speculation and/or opinion and conspiracies or false narratives or disinformation, that is no longer an expert offering an opinion. That is a propagandist.

A billion dollars is 1,000 million dollars.

The net worth of Bill Gates: 111.8 billion dollars

The net worth of Elon Musk: 264.9 billion dollars

The net worth of the Sackler family: 14 billion dollars

The net worth of Mark Zuckerberg: 60.2 billion dollars

The net worth of the Walton family (they own Walmart)

238 billion dollars

The net worth of Robert Mercer: about a billion dollars

The net worth of Warren Buffet: 101.6 billion dollars

The net worth of Bernard Arnault: 167.8 billion dollars

The net worth of Jeff Bezos: 166.4 billion dollars

The net worth of Oprah Winfrey: 2.5 billion

This is just a sample list of 10 billionaire individuals and families.

In 2020 in the United States there were 614 billionaires.

What are these people ever going to do with that much money? How much is enough for them? Is there “enough” for them?

Some billionaires get involved with charities and giving away their money. In return they usually end up coming out richer than they went in because of the tax breaks they receive on charitable spending. Their philanthropic activities are all a matter of personal preference and pet projects. The Sackler family of Purdue Pharmaceutical fame (and the opiod epidemic) for example, spend their charity dollars on having big famous museums named after them. They believe this is good public relations and that it removes the tarnish and stain from their good name. But does it?

Billionaires involved in philanthropy do it for two reasons: tax breaks and write offs, and to scrub their names publicly. The usefulness of their philanthropy is debatable. If billionaires ever engage in philanthropy for purposes of burnishing a meaningful legacy, whether or not they will achieve that goal probably depends on their projects. In order for it to mean anything significant and to have it be a permanent, brilliant legacy, it has to be meaningful. Andrew Carnegie gave the United States a system of beautiful and grand libraries. That gift will ensure that his legacy will be eternally brilliant. But what about other billionaires? Will their legacies be as brilliant as Carnegie’s? Is that something that is important to them or that they even care about?

If they want to do something that is meaningful, billionaires could spend money on solving the many grave problems we have.

The following is a sample list of ten big problems that could, if billionaires chose to use their money to solve them, provide an excellent legacy for any billionaire who wants one.

1. Clean the world’s oceans of plastic and fund R&D into the repurposing and/or safe methods of disposal of the recovered plastics.

2. Build desalination plants for the metro regions of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

3. Help Los Angeles develop a plan of green spaces, natural habitats, parks, and to restore a more natural watershed.

4. Distribute large scale carbon capture technologies around the country.

5. Fund R&D to develop powerful jet engines that do not use carbon based fuels and that have long range flight capability.

6. Put money into a new and improved train and freight shipping system.

7. Put money into building mass transit that will move people in large numbers in all urban areas and significantly decrease the need for traveling on dangerous and congested freeways.

8. Build affordable housing to house the homeless of America.

9. Build and fund health clinics that treat mental illnesses and that could also possibly provide job training.

10. Put money into pubic education and vocational training systems.

Yes, this is a list of my very own cherry picked pet projects that I believe would be of a great and meaningful significance to the country and to the planet. These are the types of endeavors I personally would engage in if I had billions of dollars to work with. These are the types of philanthropic activities that I am sure would forever be viewed as being truly meaningful and beneficial and that legacy would last forever and remain forever significant. But, that’s just what I think. And, of course, these are just ten problems that we need to fix. There are many others that could likewise use a little bit of billionaire money thrown at them.

Billionaires, because of their hoarding, are a principle cause of wealth inequality. They make the world a worse place for the rest of us.

Billionaires use their money creatively. They use their money to influence and control politics, to manipulate and mould culture and society in ways that are useful to them, and to further diminish the tax that they (mostly don’t) pay. They engage in these activities mostly anonymously via tax exempt, dark money organizations that use 501c3 non profits to remain anonymous. Their ability to do that was a gift to them from the United

States Supreme Court in Citizens United.

When billionaires want to scrub their reputations, they do so publicly by spending small allotments of their money openly and publicly for “charitable” purposes.

Billionaires pick and choose from their own pet projects for philanthropic investments. Are the pet projects of billionaires what everyone wants and needs? Not necessarily. But they are a great vehicle for making something that’s also not necessarily done altruistically or for the purpose of doing good, seem like it’s something good. There is also the issue that philanthropic endeavors may end up not being beneficial at all for many people. Yes, no, maybe so. That’s generally not the point. Billionaires spend money to make money or to get other things for themselves. They use philanthropy to do this.

So, is it good for ordinary people to accept the gift of philanthropy from billionaires? Is it a good thing for people to think they depend on the goodness of billionaire philanthropists to get good things in life? Doesn’t the philanthropy of billionaires establish a sort of obligation because of the gifts they give? After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, is there?

Question:

Would it perhaps be better to simply tax billionaires sufficiently enough so that instead of passively receiving billionaire pet project gifts that they think we need and want, we can have what we want and need and do those things that would be of the most benefit for the most people, without billionaires having to make those decisions for us?

Why not adequately tax the rich so that we can dispense with their philanthropy and get what we truly need and want, not what they want for us?

It’s great that In Kansas voters stood up for their rights and defeated a referendum to overturn the abortion rights contained in their state constitution.

But in Indiana the republican governor and republican state legislature just made a law that criminalizes abortion any time after 10 weeks after conception and got rid of abortion clinics in the state.

How can a state that makes laws that violate human rights be compelled to rescind such violations? Especially as long as the Supreme Court condones, encourages, and empowers such laws? The Supreme Court may not think of them as human rights, but we do.

One state preserving access to abortion is good but it doesn’t preserve reproductive rights in other states that want to follow the lead of the Supreme Court and take rights away from women.

This country would be so much better off if personal rights and responsibilities and individual freedom and liberty were not put on the chopping block by fascist zealots in the name of church or any other ideology or doctrine or dogma that is not universal and is used to subjugate people.

This country would actually be closer to having justice if the government no longer trampled on the privacy of individual citizens making their own decisions about their own lives when doing so harms no one, is not illegal, is not a danger or a threat to other people, and it is not the business of the government to intrude in this fundamental right of self-determination by individual citizens, in this case, women making their own reproductive decisions.

How did this country veer so far off course that it now has a Supreme Court, supposedly the highest court in the land, that so blatantly acts on and imposes specific church doctrine and has foregone all sense of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state?

The five conservative members of the Supreme Court when they eviscerated Roe v Wade, condemned American women to a status of subservience to the state when it comes to reproduction. How is that justice? How can the people of the United States allow that decision to stand and to go unchallenged and unopposed?

The Supreme Court opened a can of worms when it rescinded the right to abortion services in Roe v Wade. This action on the part of the Supreme Court emphasizes that the process of securing human reproductive rights remains undone and continues to be a controversial hot button issue.

Is this the end of this issue? Is the Supreme Court’s deletion of a right the end of the line for such a right? Will the country be able to resolve this debate once and for all? What will be the end result? Will American women eventually have the right to make their own reproductive decisions without interference by the government and courts?

It is bizarre that getting an abortion continues to be a controversial political issue and fight in the United States. It is bizarre that politicians and some judges would take rights away and interfere in matters of personal privacy and decision making.

The conservative members of the Supreme Court may believe that they have accomplished a victory in this desision. But have they? Is their ruling going to be the final say on the matter? I don’t think so. But how will this issue play out? There will undoubtedly be many more court battles and actions and the struggle for and against the rights that women do or do not have will continue to rage until the matter is resolved. Will the people eventually have a secure right to make their own health care decisions free of government persecution and vilification? We shall see.

How can Americans have a say in what their representative government does ostensibly on their behalf?

The obvious answers is: vote, run for office, work on grassroots campaigns, work to elect responsible, progressive officials who will work for their constituents.

But when that is not enough. What then? Protest? Political activism? Yes. And yes.

We all need to be more politically active. That is our civic duty. After all, it is supposed to be a participatory government.

But even after doing all we can, when we have a government that does nothing and ignores what most people want? What then?

The simplest truth in the system that we have is that if it hurts financially or becomes a problem of economics, it can change the world.

One attention getter is a general strike. A general strike that is organized, well planned, and committed to remain in place until the desire goal has been achieved is an option. No. It’s never easy and yes, it does require some sacrifice. But there is no doubt that it is a very effective tool.

George W Bush likened the massive protests against the war in Iraq that took place in NYC which had hundreds of thousands of participants, and those in hundreds of cities around the world to “focus group activity”.

George W Bush simply blew off these protests as insignificant because he wanted the war in Iraq and he wasn’t going to let protests prevent him from getting the war he wanted.

On the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, hundreds of thousands of people crowded into the U.S. capital for the Women’s March on Washington. What was Trump’s reaction? Zilch.

These protests involved 100s of thousands of participants. But they are being treated as if they mean nothing.

It has become routine for our elected officials to blow off protest when they go against what they want.

How can a plurality or majority of Americans be a part of the decisions and policies that the government makes without their input being totally dismissed by their elected officials?

How can Americans excercise any kind of agency in their government when the government does not acknowledge or accept the American people taking part in their own government?

The American government has never really encouraged the American people to take part in the decisions and policies that it makes and taken what the people want into consideration. The American government has never devised a way to do this. The American government does not have a way, outside of polling, to know what Americans think and want.

As Americans, how much do we use the mechanism of referendum to determine public policy and governmental decision making? We don’t. At least not on a regular basis. The government does not have a mechanism that the people can use to communicate with it in a reliable and easy way.

A recent article in the NYT asked some of their opinion writers to write an article about something they got wrong. One of them, Zeynep Tufekci, commented that she had thought these large scale protests had had the potential to change policy but realized that even these very large protests, by themselves, needed more to create change. She stated that in the large protests and movements for social change in the past, like the civil rights movement, had been successful because they were organized, followed a plan, and had a commitment to the project through its completion. Not for it to just be a single, one off event. And that is why it was eventually successful.

So, how can Americans have more of a say? It cannot just be a single event, a single protest, no matter how massive. To get anything done, Americans will have to organize. They will have to have a plan. They will have to be committed. And they will have to stick with the plan until they achieve parity with a government that has thus far excluded them and gain actual assess to the decision and policy making of government, even if it is only on an occasional basis.

On important matters it might make all the difference in the world.

It was never my intention to disparage anyone, evangelicals included. If you think that is what I have done that is your opinion. But it’s an incorrect opinion. But, fair enough. What follows is what I believe based on my own observations and experiences with evangelicals. These are my own opinions and observations. Whether anyone else thinks similarly or disagrees with my assessment doesn’t really matter to me. This is not an invitation. I am not going to engage in any argument or further discussion on this topic because I’m really just not interested.

You asked me to provide what I think the term evangelical means. So, even though I am certainly not obligated to do so, I’m obliging. I hope that you will appreciate that I did so because I didn’t have to do it.

Evangelicals identify themselves by their evangelism. They claim to accept Jesus Christ as their savior and invoke his name all the time. It is their mission to get as many people as they can to accept their beliefs and practices. I do not think of them as being honestly religious people because they don’t practice what they preach. They don’t follow the teachings of Christ even though they are always stating publicly that everything they do, they do for him. In fact, they often violate the four principles listed above: Love your neighbor. Feed the poor. Heal the sick. Welcome the stranger. That contradicts and goes against the teachings of Jesus and, in fact, is hypocrisy. Instead of doing what they claim to do and follow Jesus, they follow their church leaders and their evangelism is often commingled with politics. That’s not religion. It’s politics.

It seems to me that in christianity there are two kinds of worship. There is the worship of Jesus, his life, what he taught, and a commitment to living as Jesus attempted to teach people how to live and take care of each other. The other form of worship in christianity is a worship of the Bible as gospel and a reverence not for Jesus but for church leaders. This form of worship is distinct from the worship of Jesus and his teachings. In this form of worship, the emphasis is adherence to the Bible’s most vindictive, retributive, vengeful and apocalyptic passages, not on the teachings of Jesus. This is the form of worship that is embraced by evangelicals.

Capitalism is not all bad. It has the potential to be the best economic system for the human species.

Capitalism is only as bad as all of its various defects and abuses: a “free” market (and the government that supports and condones it) that rewards monopolies and greed and hoarding, that bestows the shareholder and corporate execute minority class of the population with greater privileges and opportunities than everybody else, that dispenses with utilitarianism and makes rules to assure the profit and bottom line of businesses at the expense of doing what is best for the largest number of people are all examples of some of the abuses of capitalism.

Examples of abusive capitalism also include the exploitation of low wage workers, and the unfairly imposed withholding of any opportunity to grow and participate by the middle class in the wealth (the economy) it produces, and the injustice of the business lobby using the government to impose laws that unfairly and disproportionately disadvantage workers and stifle the organization and representation of labor.

Modern American capitalism is also fixated on the notion that bigger is better and the biggest is the best which means that monopolistic policy in macro economics is triumphant and it stamps out the smaller and medium-sized businesses and the mom and pop types of homegrown economy that made the United States a great economy in the first place.

The other non-economic problem with capitalism is the tendency it has to make laws and rules that disregard the integrity of the health and well being of the environment and the planet. This type of disregard of nature is the kamikaze aspect of capitalism that makes it such a dangerous threat to our continued existence as a species on Earth.

These are just a few examples of what makes capitalism look so bad. These conditions do not have to exist and they could all be reformed to create a more just and fair market where all people are lifted out of poverty or stagnation and every person is able to enjoy more opportunities to grow and share in the wealth that all workers contribute to the economy.

“It’s 2022 and 157 Republicans just voted against marriage equality. That’s where they come down on this issue. In 2022.”

United States Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigeig

This mindset is stuck at some point in the past when social, public and legal repression was ever present in the way people lived and behaved and before people lived lives that are true and full. But we as people have evolved and ARE living lives that are true and full. Nothing that is done by the Supreme Court or by government will ever reverse that fact. The Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality when it wasn’t under the control of a socially regressive conservative majority that apparently is now reviewing the possible human rights that it granted in its own rulings that it can take back from the people. This conservative Supreme Court will overturn every human right that it ruled on that it can. Eventually the government will have to codify equality into law. Equality of women and men, or all races, of all religions and atheism, of humanity. Human rights are not violations of the Constitution. Eventually equality and human rights will be enshrined in immutable law in the United States if it is ever going to become that true shining beacon it claims to be. And the Supreme Court will not be able to overturn, reverse, or take it back. Especially if it is “settled law.” 

Requiem for Radio Free America.

I lament and grieve the extinction of independent, creative, community-based, diverse radio programming and ownership.

I lament the fact that the United States used to but no longer has a media landscape that was smaller, more local, fun to listen to, played music that was actually enjoyable to listen to, and had interesting content before it was all bought by fewer than ten large conservative media corporations that prefer to transmit crass commercial ads and output, garbage noise, and boring manufactured music, and that do not allow or promote anything independent, fresh, new, fun, or community-based.

Yes, there are a few independently owned and operated radio stations that have managed to stay on the air mostly because of listener support. But they are the exceptions in the vast expanse of radio that is hate-filled, stokes insecurities and fear in listeners, and is crassly commercial.

I feel very sorry for all of the areas in the country where there is nothing to listen to on the radio except for hate speech and ranting, christian music stations that are just as bad because their message is so exclusionary and judgmental and hypocritical.

There is hope, however. Instead of listening to any of this noise people can choose to turn off their radios and listen to tapes and CDs, podcasts that match their preferences, audio books, and in the few places where they are available, support those small, independent radio stations that are independent, listener supported, community based and that have creative programming and good music.