thoughtprivacyandliberty.com

They are back at it. Trying to destroy health care in this country. All because their bosses, the Koch brothers, have had that exact dream for decades. And now that the republican party is completely owned by the Koch brothers, the Koch brothers are putting the pressure on their servants, the republicans, to get it done. Kill Medicare. Kill Social Security. Kill the ACA. Kill taxes, for the rich, but keep taxes on everyone else and increase them if needed to balance the books or increase the defense budget. This isn’t conspiracy thinking. This is why there is such a mad, full court press to kill the ACA. How many times have the republicans tried to do this in the last 9 years, is it? They are fucking insane.

And what’s with the Koch brothers? They have hoarded more wealth than half of the world’s population has. They feel that they are treated unfairly if they have to pay any tax at all? How much wealth is enough? Is there ever enough? They do not want to pay any taxes at all. Zero. Because they believe that it is a violation of their (economic) liberty. If they really feel that way, that they are being treated unfairly, why do they still live in this country? Why do they stick around and enjoy what tax payer dollars have created that makes living in this country easier and more pleasurable in so many ways? What do they have against making their own fair contribution to this country? Is it just the sickness of hoarding? Is it stinginess and disdain for everyone else that makes them feel superior and apart and removed from everyone else and therefore they feel they should have more privilege than everyone else?

When the people of this country get their government back and kick the idolators of Koch out of office, we are going to need to get a lot done: Permanently ban all money in politics; Reform the democratic party so that it no longer works in the highest bidder, perpetual fund raising mode that is currently the way business is conducted in Washington DC; Reform the tax code so that EVERYONE pays his fair share. No more exemptions or special treatment of billionaires, corporations or corporate executives; And make the government work for the majority of Americans, not just the rich few, or the top 2%.

The more the republicans push the Koch agenda, I’m hoping the more apparent it becomes to more and more Americans just what’s happening. The media are now saying that this effort by the republicans to kill the ACA just may pass because the votes are there for it this time? Murkowski? Collins? Paul? McCain? They have all changed their previous no vote to a yes vote? From what I know about the bill under consideration, it is just as, if not more, vile and punitive and deadly to the economy and health and welfare of the country as anything else the republicans have put up thus far, including the bill they tried to push through the last time around. So, why and how could this bill be viewed any differently by those republicans who supposedly are concerned about their constituents, the regular Americans who voted for them? Does money speak louder than words? Have they finally come around because they got the right amount of it? I don’t know of any other reason they might have changed their minds if, indeed, they did change their minds, which still is not really known at this time.

The republican party is insane. And, in doing what they are doing, they are showing Americans just how much they hate them. Why else would any politician vote to take insurance and health care AWAY from millions more Americans? If they are not doing it for money, I don’t know why they are doing it. It makes no sense that people who are supposed to be intelligent would be doing this to their constituents, the American people, and to the country. It doesn’t just not make sense. It’s also anti-American.

Posted on September 20, 2017 Leave a comment on Republican Representation

The following paragraph is an excerpt from Wikipedia from a search I did for the history of the Internet:

The Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was developed by Robert E. Kahn and Vint Cerf in the 1970s and became the standard networking protocol on the ARPANET, incorporating concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In the early 1980s the NSF funded the establishment for national supercomputing centers at several universities, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, which also created network access to the supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the very late 1980s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990,^[5] and the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.

The internet was a collaborative invention of researchers at several research based universities and federally funded programs in the United States along with several researchers and agencies in Europe. The internet was devised to be an instrument to facilitate communications. I doubt that the creators of the internet truly envisioned at the time they were working on developing it what the internet would become or how it would so exponentially expanded communications. In the United States, before the internet, there was the pony express, telegraph, the mail, radio, telephone, and television. Those were the modes of communication before the internet. The internet has brought with it instant messaging, texting, live streaming, instantaneous global communication, skyping, conference calls, and mobile phones, apple and android, with all of the apps available for those platforms.

Robert Taylor, one of the early internet pioneers envisioned the internet as:

His awards include the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Draper Prize.^[3] Taylor was known for his high-level vision: “The Internet is not about technology; it’s about communication. The Internet connects people who have shared interests, ideas and needs, regardless of geography.”^[3]

Mr. Taylor also believed about the internet that:

“Will it be freely available to everyone? If not, it will be a big disappointment.”

So, at least one of the original pioneers had as part of his mission, the creation of an instrument of mass communication that should remain freely available to all. That sentiment was probably shared by other of his fellow creators of the internet.

What the internet has become is not just a mammoth tool for instant communication for all people with access to it all around the world, but it has also become a central component of social networking and business and industry. There are now practically no businesses that do not use the internet to carry out their business. The world of commerce has become absolutely dependent on it. We are now also experiencing some of the problematic things that can be done with the internet with the prime example of Russian hacking of other country’s political campaigns, that is, in France and the United States. This use of the internet is and abuse of the system. As the internet continues to evolve, the global community will have to find ways of dealing with these kinds of activities and find a way to prevent them from happening.

So, for individuals, what is the internet? We log onto our computers and email each other. We go to our favorite websites and blogs. Many of us blog ourselves. We watch videos and live streams of many events. We get news and information and gossip and pop culture. We do business over the internet. We instant message each other. We communicate using the internet. We get our internet through Internet Service Providers.

Again, coming from Wikipedia, this time the search being for Internet Service Provider:

An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services accessing and using the Internet. Internet service providers may be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.

Most Americans get their internet service through one of the few giant corporations that own and monopolize most of the telecommunications industry: Comcast/Xfinity, Verizon, ATT, Sprint, etc. Americans don’t really have many choices as to where they get their internet. Nor is it the internet that is “freely available to everyone” as was envisioned by some of its creators. It is an expense that most Americans have come to expect as an expense, another bill to pay. And for many, it is not an inexpensive bill.

The telecommunication industry giant corporations Comcast/Xfninty and Verizon have been lobbying and pushing for changes in net neutrality so that they can increase their profits by charging more for higher bandwidth speeds to those who can afford it. This is exactly the opposite of an internet that is “freely available to everyone.” The FCC is the federal agency that oversees the telecommunications industry and makes rules and regulations for it. Ajit Pai, Trump’s newly appointed director of the FCC, is a recent and long time employee of Verizon, wants to allow for these companies to charge for their service on a tiered system, which would effectively price many out of being able to afford normal (fast internet speeds) if they cannot afford the new, higher costs of this service. There isn’t any reason except for a profit motive, for these companies to not supply the normal fast internet speeds to all of their customers. Currently we have net neutrality in place which means that everyone at this time gets the same internet service and the same speed but that could change with a change in the rules at the FCC. And that is the direction that Ajit Pai wants to take for the telecommunications in the United States. If this happens, the cost of the use of the internet to consumers will increase by however much the internet service provider companies decide they want to charge. It could drive a lot of smaller businesses out of business and be cost prohibitive for many Americans who may no longer be able to afford to pay for their use of the internet. That is unless Americans object to it, reject it, and do not allow it to happen.

A good bit of news in all of this is that there is an alternative which would keep the internet fair and keep the costs down allowing for all to use it without going bankrupt in the process. The alternative is a community based internet service provider which is owned of, for and by the people of any given community. Yes, it involves the community paying for the cost of setting up its own fiberoptic system. But the advantages are that after the initial investment in setting up the infrastructure, the internet at that local level would not be subject to the profit motives of the large corporations that currently control most of the internet in the United States today. An example of how a community can have its own ISP follows. It’s Chattanooga, Tennessee. You’ll have check out this article to see what they did:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-internet/index.html

The point I want to make is that we do have options. We do not have to accept any change to net neutrality in the first place. We can prevent it from changing. And we could have a better, more local, much more cost effective ISP in our own community if that is something that we want to build for ourselves. I think it’s pretty clear how much we all need, use, and depend on the internet at this point. These options, singly or together might be worth considering doing if having an internet is really something that we want to make work better for us as individuals and as a country.

Ask me deep questions

Show that you care

Give me rules to follow

Make me work for you

Put limits on me

I am a public servant

Do your job

Make me do my job

And then tell me it’s time for me to go

Call me if I do wrong

Publicly shame me when I do wrong

Don’t accept bad behavior from me

Set some standards that restore some respect

If/When I do wrong, demote me, get rid of me

I am not worthy

Put someone in my place

who is

worthy

of your trust

for the good of the whole

to represent you and everyone else

Posted on April 7, 2018 Leave a comment on Vet Me

Who owns America?

Well, of course, it’s the liberal media. Duh.

That has been the standard claim made by all conservative media speakers for decades.

Well, if the liberal media is the origin of all evil in the world according to all conservative media speakers, who owns the platforms that broadcast conservative media speaker voices?

Rupert Murdoch is one of the major players. You know, the Australian media mogul who came to the United States via England and recently bought the Wall Street Journal (and turned it into pure trash) after being unable to buy the NY Times. Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns a gigantic swath of the American media landscape and who is a naturalized citizen of the United States. Murdoch, who came to America to buy, consolidate, aggregate and conglomerate as much of the American media world as he can, has consistently delivered a message that is pure poison to the America that he came to conquer. Why does Murdoch hate the United States so much that he gave us Fox News?

Murdoch has also been very influential in the affairs of Great Britain because of his media holdings there. But, recently, I believe, the British have had the good sense to shut down most of the Murdoch media empire in Great Britain. I guess they figured enough is enough. Good for them. But, what lasting corrosive effects have the editorial bias and policies of Rupert Murdoch had on British Society and culture? I hope it’s nothing that the culture and people of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland can’t correct so that they can truly become a United Kingdom. United against all that Rupert Murdoch stands for and promotes.

And now, Americans are becoming more familiar with Sinclair Broadcasting, the owners of about 40% of all television stations across the United States. Sinclair Broadcasting wants to expand its media ownership to include Tribune Corporation Media holdings and if that is okayed by the government and occurs, Sinclair will achieve its goal of becoming the owners of almost all television airwaves in the United States. Sinclair Broadcasting is owned and run by a single family with a single ideology and they don’t shrink away from disseminating their views and requiring the television stations they own and control to espouse their agenda and propaganda. I am using political terms because the nature of the business of Sinclair Broadcasting is also blatantly political. They serve up conservative, status quo political views and positions so as to inform the public the way they want the public to be informed. In Sinclair Broadcasting, there is no independence of truly valid independent journalism or respect for reality and/or factual reporting of news. The company started out in Maryland and has expanded across the entire country. There is nothing that Sinclair Broadcasting would like more than to own and/or control more if not ALL of the television airwaves in the entire United States. That way there would be no way for anyone anywhere to escape their propaganda and Orwellian messaging. There are lots of descriptors for what Sinclair Broadcasting does. One thing is certain. The corporation advances its own messaging and agenda and makes the stations it owns disseminate its views which are straight out of a fascist dystopia. They have developed a very intimate relationship with Trump and his administration and who knows what kind of deals Sinclair Broadcasting is cooking up with Trump. One clue is that Sinclair is working with the Trump administration to advance their acquisition of Tribune Media into their current holdings. If there’s anything in it for Trump, you know he’ll be on board with it, being the emoluments and conflict-of- interest president that he is.

One of the most fascinating and curious issues of this time that we are living through is the use by Sinclair Broadcasting of Russian national propagandists. Doesn’t anyone think it’s just really fucking weird that Sinclair uses Russian commentators like Boris Ephshteyn and Sebastian Gorka to deliver their skewed alternate reality, scare mongering, lies and distortions of the truth, or irrelevant red herrings to get people to not think about or take seriously, serious topics that all Americans should be thinking about and be concerned about? Sinclair wants to feed Americans a specific pablum that distracts, seems to have relevance or to be true, but which actually confuses a lot of people and presents them true fake news and garbage that is NOT journalism, factual, or sensible. Sinclair Broadcasting would have Americans believe and put their full faith into the bizarre distortions and propaganda they disseminate. Again, like Murdoch, why do they hate the United States so much that they force this kind of distortion of reality onto so many of the citizens of this country who have no other option for television viewing than a Sinclair Broadcasting television station?

So, when you hear anyone, whether its a paid conservative commentator or pundit and or someone on the street say something about how the liberal media being is origin and creator of all that is evil in the world, you can thank the largely conservatively owned media empires of people like Rupert Murdoch and Sinclair Broadcasting for it.

And don’t forget, the liberal media owns America, right?

Posted on April 8, 2018 Leave a comment on Titans of Media

Okay. I’m going to write my own opinion piece.

Not that it’s not perfect, but the Government gets it 100% wrong on two issues:

Guns and Abortion.

Here’s how I see it. These issues are NOT complicated. These issues are controlled by special interests in Washington DC. That puts unnecessary complexity into two issues that really are not complicated and shouldn’t be complicated.

I believe most Americans want to preserve their privacy. Americans also highly value having their own rights, responsibilities, and the liberty and freedom that they have as citizens of the United States. That’s why mainly Republican politicians have been so successful with the minds of so many Americans: They frequently cite these terms and take the position that they stand up for them, even when they don’t.

On Abortion: It’s private. It’s a personal decision. It’s for a woman to decide. It’s her body. It’s her life. It’s her baby/fetus.

If a woman wants an abortion, she should be able to have it. Period.

I know and respect the known medical definitions of viability of the fetus. However, there is no way of knowing at what time a fetus becomes sentient, or even if it does become sentient while in utero. There is no way to know this and there probably never will be a way to know this. I myself have no memories before about the age of 2 or 3 years of age. I have no recollection of my life in utero. So, for me, it’s hard to believe that any fetus would have any concept of anything until way after it’s born. Maybe I’m wrong. But I just don’t think a fetus, or even a newborn, is really capable of any full perception of the internal or external environment until it has lived a little and has begun to develop enough to be able to have this capability.

Babies are precious. They are the future. They deserve nothing but the best in terms of support, love, nurturance. They also deserve to be raised in a healthy environment, have warm clothes, shelter, food, good prenatal and postnatal care, vaccinations, sanitation, and to live in an environment that is healthy, has clean air and water, and where they can run, play, and develop with other children and hopefully have a happy childhood.

During and after childhood, babies, children, kids and young adults deserve a good education and opportunity to become the most successful, productive and happy adults that they can become. To learn how to live and work in the world. But that all takes resources. A lot of resources. Are those resources currently all fully available to all children? No.

If babies are born into a world where they have no support, love, are not being nurtured, they live in filth and squalor, have no warm clothes, no shelter, no food, no medical care and are malnourished and or diseased from a lack of these basics for living a healthy life, is is really okay to force that by not allowing an abortion of a fetus that would surely suffer after it is born? What kind of a future is that? And, how precious is that baby when it is a victim of being born into such circumstances?

If a woman wants an abortion, she should be able to get an abortion. Period. If the procedure is deemed life-threatening, it’s the doctor’s job to make sure that she knows that in order for her to decide whether or not she wants to take that risk. It’s called informed consent. Competent adults use informed consent to make any and all medical decision for themselves. It is and should only be a matter between a patient and her doctor. The government should have no right to interfere or interject or make conditions in this relationship because it’s personal and private. At least it should be private in my view. To take a most extreme example and one that would be EXTREMELY RARE: even if a woman is 8 months pregnant, if she is competent to make her own decisions, and she wants to abort the baby, she should be able to make that decision for herself. She will have to live with that decision and whatever consequences may occur as a result for the rest of her life. But it is a decision that she should be allowed to make for herself if she is competent to do so. She may have good reasons for wanting to proceed with the abortion. And, it should be her right and her decision. There should be no governmentally imposed restriction or conditions preventing her doing so. Getting an abortion should be treated as a right with responsibilities. That’s what Americans value, rights with responsibilities.

Guns. The government’s position of inaction on making responsible gun laws even in the midst of an epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence demonstrates a total disregard for public safety.

The government seems to be promoting the continued amassing of high-powered combat military grade arsenals with huge capacity for ammunitions to be hoarded by the most dangerous, mentally unstable, insecure, paranoid, and medically untreated individuals in our country.

The NRA controls Congress and is the cause of governmental inertia on the creation of gun laws for public safety. Our “elected representatives” continue to take money hand over fist from the NRA. Money in politics is another matter altogether and one that I will not address any further in this note suffice it to say that things are the way they are in Washington DC because of money in our politics.

Congress could:

Ban all assault weapons, ban semi and automatic weapons, require registration and background checks of all guns, not allow anyone with mental health problems to own or have guns, not allow huge capacity magazines for ammunition.

I am not an expert on gun control. These are just some of the things that I have heard responsible elected representatives talk about that could be made law that would promote public safety. There may be others. I would encourage Congress to at least start this discussion.

So, the government, IMO, so far gets it 100% wrong on the two issues of abortion and guns.

In my view, the government could to the right thing with abortion and stop restricting it. On guns, it could make laws that promote pubic safety. That is supposed to be one of the functions of government, isn’t it, to protect the public? So far, it has not done so.

Abortion: Government get out.

Guns: Government get in.

It’s as simple as that.

So the big anti, anti fascist rally of the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, and 3 Percenters took place in Portland on Saturday.

I drove my bus which happens to usually go across the bridge that the police closed to allow the fascists passage to the other side of the river without letting them get close to the counter protesters. My bus was rerouted pretty much all that day. I did not drive my bus near where the fascists were but did drive through huge throngs of Antifa.

What I observe about Antifa is this: they are ordinary citizens, Portlanders that I see all around me every day. Some of the younger kids wear all black clothes and masks. Why the masks, I don’t know. And I saw a picture of the Proud Boys walking across the Hawthorne bridge and they were also wearing masks. I don’t know why. What’s with the masks? It’s a mystery.

Antifa, numbers-wise was huge. A large chunk of the population of Portland showed up. I don’t believe this was reported in any media reports, at least it wasn’t reported in anything that I have seen or read. There were a couple of hundred fascists. Antifa, contrary to the menacing, threatening image presented by the media is simply ordinary citizens who came out to express their opposition to the very real threat they feel in the America that Trump is trying with all his might to blow up. I don’t think that anyone, especially the media, can claim that Antifa are all radical leftists when what they are is simply, citizens, of all stripes and persuasions. Those who make the generalization that Antifa are leftists and all radical are wrong. It’s simply not true. They do not know what they are talking about because they really know nothing about Antifa at all.

Antifa means anti-fascist. That is really all there is to it. They are not an organized group. They do not have an ideology except to stand up against what threatens them which is rabid racism, hatred, xenophobia, homophobia, religious bigotry and intolerance, and fascism. Antifa would not exist if there were no threat to bring them to the streets and away from their normal activities. Antifa only exists because this fascist threat exists.

The 3 groups of fascists who came to Portland came here from other places. They flew in or drove here from other states. They are not native to Portland. Why do they come to Portland to publicize their venomous hatred and stir up the people here? Who is financing their coming to Portland?
What are they trying to accomplish? Are they trying to start the civil war that the hard right media keeps trying to promote?

Fascists seem to think Portland is fertile ground for them to try to achieve their goals so they come here with false hopes. They are met by people who do not welcome them here, do not want them here, and oppose everything they stand for. If they want to continue to come to Portland I guess they are free to do so. But they will never be met with a warm embrace. They can continue to come here and spend their money doing so. They can go out to our food carts and our strip clubs, (I picked up one of them who was sloshed and smelled like a distillery and was a blathering idiot who didn’t know the first thing about riding the bus. He had probably gotten drunk at the nearby strip club and maybe he even had gyro at the Iraqi take out shop across the street from it. These guys do all they can do while they are away from home because they probably don’t have the opportunity to do any of it at home.) So, I guess even though they are detested here, fascists seem to think they have a real opportunity to stir things up here. They don’t. But as long as they spend their money on the local economy and then go back to their holes at home we here in Portland will take their money and wish them good riddance when they leave.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on Antifa is people!

Большинство американцев знают о русской культуре и обществе очень мало. Я бы хотел, чтобы все было иначе. Я хотел бы, чтобы русский народ мог дружить с американским народом и чтобы Россия была частью международного сообщества и внесла в него свой вклад. Я испытываю большое уважение и печаль к ужасной истории, которую русский народ пережил. Нелегко было жить с царями и революцией, с Лениным и Сталиным, с чистками, погромами, гулагами и программами перевоспитания. Затем, в более поздние времена, две мировые войны, холодная война, окончание холодной войны и очень короткое заигрывание с демократией, гласностью и перестройкой. Я читал, что более 40 миллионов россиян погибли в мировых войнах. У России очень долгая, тяжелая и кровавая история. И теперь у него пожизненное президентство Путина. Путин и его маленькая клика олигархов контролируют все огромные ресурсы и политику России. Они принимают все решения за людей. Мне интересно, чем занимается Дума? Я знаю, что это должен быть своего рода народный парламент, но работает ли он на людей? В любом случае, моя первоначальная причина желать написать это сообщение – попросить русских людей и поблагодарить их. Вопрос в том, все ли русские люди заняты и довольны ли они своим уровнем жизни? Я спрашиваю об этом, потому что я думаю, что это должно быть правдой, что все потребности русского народа удовлетворены, потому что Олег Дерипаска, олигарх, который контролирует Rusol, Алюминиевого гиганта, щедро обратил свое внимание и щедрость на бедных американцев, которые жить в беднейшем графстве штата Кентукки в Соединенных Штатах. Митч Макконнелл, республиканский лидер Сената, дал возможность отменить санкции, наложенные на Дерипаску, чтобы он мог инвестировать сотни миллионов долларов в новый алюминиевый завод, который он собирается построить в Кентукки, чтобы нанимать сотни кентуккийцев. Разве это не самый щедрый с его стороны? Я только предполагаю, что Дерипаска может сделать это щедрое предложение, потому что все потребности русского народа были удовлетворены, и что все русские люди очень довольны своим уровнем жизни. Это позволяет Дерипаске не только построить завод в Кентукки, но и спросить 8 других штатов в Соединенных Штатах, может ли он построить заводы в этих штатах. Это щедрая щедрость и добрая воля, за что русский народ заслуживает благодарности.

Very little is known about Russian culture and society by most Americans. I wish that were different. I wish the Russian people could be friends with the American people and that Russia could be part of an international community and add its own contributions to it. I have a great deal of respect but also a lot of sadness for the horrendous history that the Russian people have had to endure. It has not been easy to live with Czars and the revolution, with Lenin and Stalin, the purges, the pogroms, the gulags and programs of re- education. Then, in more recent times the 2 world wars, the cold war, the end of the cold war and a very very brief flirtation with democracy and glasnost and perestroika. I have read that more than 40 million Russians lost their lives in the world wars. Russia has had a very long, hard and bloody history. And now it has the presidency-for-life of Putin. Putin and his small clique of oligarchs control all of the vast resources and politics of Russia. They make all of the decisions for the people. I am curious what the Duma does? I know it’s supposed to be a sort of elected parliament of the people, but does it actually work for the people? Anyway, my original reason for wanting to write this message is to ask the Russian people and to thank them also. The question is: Are all of the Russian people employed and happily comfortable with their standard of living? I ask this because I think it must be true, that all of the needs of the Russian people are taken care of because Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch who controls Rusol, the Aluminum giant, has generously turned his attention and generosity to the poor Americans who live in the poorest county of the state of Kentucky in the United States. Mitch McConnell, the republican leader of the Senate made it possible to drop the sanctions that had been placed on Deripaska so that he could invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the new aluminum plant he’s going to build in Kentucky to employ hundreds of Kentuckians. Isn’t that most generous of him? I am only assuming that Deripaska is able to make this generous offer because all of the needs of the Russian people have been attended to and that all of the Russian people are very happy with their standard of living. It frees up Deripaska to not only build the plant in Kentucky, but to ask 8 other additional states in the United States if he can build factories in those states as well. That is abundant generosity and good will and for that the Russian people deserve thanks.

I think it would be useful to know what Pompeo did on his official trip to Central America shortly after Trump appointed him as Secretary of State. He went to the countries from which so many scared-for-their-lives people have since been and are still fleeing. Was his official trip to those countries, in the true Trumpian style, official but off-the-record? Did he meet with fascists and tyrants and assorted sociopaths in power while there? What was discussed? The American press really did not cover much about this trip except to mention in briefly before they got distracted by whatever Trump did that day to get attention. Or was the press even there? You know, the Trump administration doesn’t like the press much, especially in the Oval Office when Russians are visiting or on official trips abroad.

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on Did Pompeo create a crisis?

In the United States we currently have 435 people in the House of Representatives and 100 people in the Senate. Is it too much to expect that there should be standards for that group of 535 people who go to Washington DC ostensibly to work for the 320 plus millions of Americans?

The reality is that there really are no standards for this group of people who make laws for us, who are supposed to help us when it is needed, protect us, and improve our lives and standard of living. At least that is what I think they should be doing. If they are not doing these things, what are they doing in Washington DC? Why are they there? Why did they want to go there?

Instead, what we have is candidates running for public offices who are not vetted. They run for local, state and federal elected positions. Anyone can run and be elected into this small group of people that are elevated into the important position of being public servants and work for the people they represent. There are no guidelines, no restrictions, no norms or standards for these people who are entrusted to work for the people.

More often than not, we have candidates appearing out of the blue who want to run for office. They have posters printed and posted. They have television and radio ads. They get their names out there and that’s about it. We really know nothing about them because they do not share anything about themselves, why they want to be public servants, what their personal goals and aspirations are, what motivates them to seek public office. We don’t know any of this about any of them until after they take office and then we see what they actually do.

It started long before, but especially since the tea party take over of the Republican Party that happened in 2010 and which has since morphed into the party of Trump and White Supremacy Nationalism, a lot of our elected representatives at all levels of government have been groomed and trained by special interest groups with big budgets to do all this political work. The Koch brothers, with their money, have engineered the conversion of the training of lawyers in particular in some universities to produce a cadre of workers who have been steeped in the libertarian indoctrination that suits the Koch brothers and their objectives. The Koch brothers also, for years, have financed conservative/libertarian “think tanks” that crank out workers who push the libertarian/conservative agenda in all areas of life and affect all Americans. These think tanks have created such organizations as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, that conveniently is a group dedicated to writing legislation at the state level that further promotes and advances the Koch brothers agenda for what they want to do business-wise and to reduce regulation on their businesses and reduce their taxes and maximize their profits and income in the process. ALEC has made legislating easy for these elected officials they have groomed and helped put into public offices because it has supplanted them doing any legislative work for themselves. They simply take what is offered them from ALEC. Legislation, in states with a heavy Koch political presence is written by ALEC, taken by the elected officials they work with at the local level and made into law. Easy peasy.

There is no way that anyone or any other organization except for maybe Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates could compete with the Koch brothers in creating any kind of a political response to all of the organizing that the Koch brothers have been doing for all these decades and that are now really paying off for them. No one else except for just a few individuals has the vast sums of money that would be needed to finance their own branch of politics devoted exclusively to achieving their own economic and political goals as the Koch brothers have done.

On the local and state levels where there has been outreach and grooming done by Koch brother affiliates it may not be that the groomed candidate has gone through the formal Koch brother institutional “education” process that produces libertarian lawyers. I believe this activity has probably occurred in all 50 states at all levels of political activity. The Koch brothers have the unlimited financial resources to make sure that all the bases are covered. The candidates at local levels of government may simply be people chosen for grooming because they fit a certain malleable profile that would make them good workers for the libertarian agenda and are therefore selected for grooming on that basis. The education and indoctrination can occur later after establishing them in office to complete the process of establishing their loyalties and indoctination.

So, often we have candidates running for election and we know nothing about them except their names and party affiliation. They may provide a pithy statement to voters in the voters pamphlet but are usually completely unvetted by the press or the voters. As a rule, they most certainly do not usually discuss their reasons for running for office, what motivates them or why they want to work for “the people”. And there are no standards, guidelines or expectations.

That is how we end up with people being put into elected offices at all levels of government who say and do things that are appalling, revolting, and that demonstrate unfitness for holding any office. They take positions that attack and scapegoat groups of Americans: LGBTQ, Blacks, Women, Latinos, Immigrants, College Students, Democratic Voters.

Is it too much to ask that the 535 people who represent us in Congress actually represent us, the people, and do what is best for us, the people? Is it too much for us to ask and expect that the people who work for the people as our elected representatives to not bring their animosities, hatred, prejudices, to work with them and try to foist all of those damaged goods onto all of the rest of us? Is it too much to ask that our elected officials stop working for special interests?

Not only do we as Americans need to step up to the plate and accept our responsibilities of properly vetting and insisting on candidates openly and fully disclosing their reasons for running, their political goals and objectives and making themselves available to the voters until the voters themselves are satisfied that they have a fully vetted person before them before they actually vote for that person.

It is also crucially and increasingly important that people running for public office as elected officials know that their service will only be for a short period of time, that they should not expect to make a career out of it and not have the expectation that they will enjoy and profit from an indefinite tenure and nearly permanent incumbency.

We live in a country of 320 plus million people. We should have only the best and the brightest working for us and entrusted to make our lives better. The time of elected representatives going into politics as a career move or because they expect to make a lot of money in it needs to end.

We need to:

1. Vet all candidates for office and make sure they discuss and disclose their political views and goals and if they cannot or will not do that they should be rejected early in the process.

2. No longer accept political domination by groups such as the tea party that works for and are financed so heavily and indoctrinated by special interest money. The tea party and the Koch brothers being prime examples.

3. We have the human resources that would allow for us to continually refresh and replace our politically elected officials on a regular, term-limited basis with vibrant fresh new public servants who should be charged with creating law that is responsible, meets the needs of the people and continually improves or at least maintains a good quality of life for the majority of our citizens.

Is that asking too much?

Posted on August 25, 2019 Leave a comment on Should there be standards?

The people of Kentucky should ask Moscow Mitch how much money he’s going to be making on his part in setting up the Kremlin West in Kentucky. Okay, yes, I’m exercising whimsical thinking here, but, the Russians could use Moscow Mitch’s BFF Oleg Derapaska’s, the Russian oligarch that MM was generous enough to help lift sanctions on, aluminum plant in Kentucky as a base of operations to attack America and its allies right here on American soil. How much money will Moscow Mitch make in the deal? Will that be his biggest cash cow?

Posted onAugust 25, 2019Leave a commenton Moscow Mitch’s biggest cash cow!