The intent of this blog is to promote human equality, human progress, human peace and justice, and optimism. To accomplish this, to encourage the discussion of ideas after identifying and discovering problems, and then creating positive solutions for "we the people," in order to provide for the "general welfare" and "domestic tranquility" of America now and its "posterity" into the future. To encourage an emphasis on separation of religion and state for all, no matter if this is for those "of faith" in a Maker / Creator (Deists, God-loving people, Christians, various people of spirituality) and atheists or agnostics.

Archive for May, 2021

American Customer Service Sucks Big Time

American fat cats at the top of the big corporate conglomerates, go screw yourselves with your pockets being filled at the expense of employees and the consumers on the DEMAND SIDE OF THE MARKET.

Right now, there is a damn delay in everything I type and my keyboard sucks. Who does this and sets my Internet and computer up this way? Scam artists who suck. Lousy customer service. LOUSY in America.

Customer service sucks when you call and “due to COVID-19, we are inundated,” is the reply. I don’t believe it. I think there are a bunch of lazy liars in big corporate offices who don’t want to pay employees to do the job so they can take money from the consumer the lazy person’s way. Screw such American fat cats. SCREW them. So, what is it we do? We can wait fifteen minutes for someone to call back. Yes, and we on the consumer side have nothing else to do in our lives, do we? The lazy ones are at the top of the freaking fat cat line. We are not lazy. What are we supposed to do in these situations? Sit around twiddling our thumbs and wait for a phone call? That is BS and describes a really LOUSY American business today.

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Newspaper Delivery of the Morning Newspaper

With so many people lacking jobs and income today, why is it that we, the customer of the local MORNING newspaper, Press & Sun-Bulletin, have to tolerate the lack of delivery and/or the delivery of a morning newspaper at 3 PM? Why?

When, as a kid, I delivered the morning newspaper called the Sun-Bulletin, I had the newspaper in the hands of my customers by 5 – 6 AM each morning. It never mattered whether the skies were clear, cloudy, rain coming down, or snow falling. I had the newspaper to my customers early in the morning. I wanted to provide QUALITY service.

How do the big corporate fat cats at Gannett handle this problem? They close the local offices of the Press & Sun-Bulletin, as well as the one for the Ithaca Journal. Everything operated out of Virginia and customer services provided by people with foreign accents. Perhaps these people pick up their phones in India or elsewhere? When someone wishes to cancel the subscription, the answer is to convince them … CONVINCE THE DEMAND SIDE OF THE MARKET… to read the newspaper online. If the newspaper does not get delivered, customer service then tries to convince THE DEMAND SIDE OF A CAPITALIST MARKET to read it online. We on the DEMAND SIDE OF THE CAPITALIST MARKET don’t want waste American energy reading newspapers because the newspapers are not readable for us. Thus, the big fat cats at the top can convince everyone that “no one wants to read the print copy and it costs us too much.” Who does not want to read print copies? It’s the damn fat cats at the top of the corporation. They are like the early days of a young Anakin Skywalker (who later becomes Darth Vader, the evil dark side of the Jedi knights) who would use his powers to CONVINCE people. The big fat cats want to horde money by destroying pensions and benefits of the hard-working folks and then horde the money for the fat cats only. Just like Southern plantation owners. Since the 1970s, fat cats have found their incomes increase exponentially, over 1000%. Hard working people have not seen such an increase, while published print copies of newspapers and books are taken from them.

A claim I have heard, possibly created by lousy accountants whose lips are brown after supporting the fat cats, that circulation of the newspaper no longer helps set the price of advertising. Oh, really. I don’t really believe such BS. If I do believe such BS, I have to ask, then WHO made the change in the newspaper industry that we have arrived at such a circumstance and for what reason was the change made? So as to allow fat cats to horde more money, like an Ebeneezer Scrooge.

No one stands up to this, as I do. But I won’t tolerate the crap. What kinds of retributions should I see, as I criticize and people act like a lousy coward like Donald Trump and attack us, as if there should be no free speech or criticism. Only speech of hatred allowed, right? But absolutely no criticism for making life better for all American citizens, right? Is that where we are today? BS on that.

A morning newspaper at 3 PM. How bizarre. There are three morning newspapers within about equal distance to my home. The Press & Sun-Bulletin, the Ithaca Journal, and the Morning Times of Sayre, PA. The ONLY one to deliver newspapers here, outside of the Sunday edition of The New York Times from NEW YORK CITY, is the Press & Sun-Bulletin. No competition and choice for delivery of a LOCAL daily newspaper. The Morning Times of Sayre, PA, is published six days of the week, as was the Sun-Bulletin, when I delivered it, and Gannett did not own it. But the Morning Times does not deliver to this area and one has to subscribe to it for mail delivery. It arrives several days late. Unlike Gannett, though, the Morning Times is still run at the local level. One can actually call a local office and speak to a human being, not a damn computer with extensive useless sequence through a “menu” of options.

This is just one part of the disgust I feel about American business and the fat cats who horde the money and don’t give one damn about what happens at the local level. As long as they get their pockets lined, these fat cats run a supply side economics which is NOT capitalism which is intended to be supply AND demand, providing choices in the market which give each organization a chance to make money through profits the old fashioned way: “to earn it.”

I am being such a damn conservative when I say this, don’t you know? For the sake of progress, I believe in some conservative methods and principles which have been abandoned by the fat cats who support the Trumpicans. These fat head fat cats are NOT conservative, but a bunch of fascist neo-cons.

There is no thanks to give to fat cats, lawyers, accountants and the other dimwits who allow this all to happen because, with their pockets heavily lined, they can encourage Americans of the Middle Class and below to pit one against the other and can afford really lousy commercials to do it. Shallow commercials. They laugh and think this is all humorous. It is not humorous, including the Trump dimwitted crap about “you’re fired” on a lousy freaking reality show. Shallow crap. Or should I say I need to put on my hip boots to walk through the muck (meaning something else with a different word, but I won’t use that other word).

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Sixty Minutes: The Richie Boys

What a neat story about the Richie Boys, as told this evening (May 9, 2021) on Sixty Minutes. The guys interviewed explained how proud they were to be Americans and to serve the nation they could turn to as Hitler threatened these guys in Germany and they lost family to the Holocaust. Stupid people of the American idiocracy make false claims about the Holocaust not existing, as they claim that Trump won the 2020 election and Biden lost. They have only false information they love to spread and have loud big mouths and people who enable them to spread the lies. These Richie Guys appreciate what America did for them.

The Proud Boys and Qanon and other idiots of this sort need to take lessons about how to appreciate what they have in America. They need to stop the BS regarding the gun folks of the NRA and the violence they promulgate. These idiots in American white supremacy need to express appreciation for what they have, whether it comes from liberal or conservatives, black people or gay people or whomever. Shame on this hypocrisy and vicious attitudes of white supremacists who work to scare Americans.

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The Stupid of Big Texas

Interestingly enough, Texans defeated many Democrats (according to article in May 9, 2021, New York Times Magazine) and then turned on black voters by putting voting restrictions in place. This was done with a false sense of voter fraud and insistence that Trump won the election. If there is fraud, then why do the Republicans still control the state of Texas? Could it be due to fraud in the election as the reason for such power by the Republicans of Texas? Stupid people of idiocracy in big Texas.

Someone I knew in my younger years lives in Houston and badgered me in 2003-2004 to vote for Bush. People were also so impressed because he works for the Saudi Arabians. The Saudi Arabians, like Hitler, executes the nation’s own citizens. What vicious and stupid people in the idiocracy of big Texas.

Fraud in elections helped elect the power base of Republicans, just as in Florida.

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THREE-PENNY OP-ED: American Big Business is Supply Side Economics, not Capitalism

George W. Bush once said, “what’s good for business is good for America.” I never liked it when he said it in the past. It has gotten worse today. What he TRULY means is that what is good for supply-side economics in America is good for America. In other words, what’s good for fat cats at the top, with a love of money, taking and hoarding the money for themselves and working “trickle-down” economics otherwise, like WE THE PEOPLE are a bunch of slaves designed to get a pittance of money to live on. At least we get more than the Africans who were brought to these shores beginning in 1619.

What’s good for America is good business and capitalism with supply AND demand side considerations, with competition and regulation by government. This was actually what theologian and economist, Adam Smith, a contemporary of our Founding Fathers, said was best, due to the natural human tendency to be greedy and selfish.

For example. Local newspapers in America no longer feel compelled to compete, especially where there is a less dense population, such as the areas around Binghamton, Ithaca, and Sayre, PA. Three newspapers serve this area, but only ONE newspaper, from Binghamton, will deliver to an area situated DIRECTLY BETWEEN ITHACA AND BINGHAMTON, as the CROW flies. Communist style Moscow Pravda runs it all from Virginia and at offices of Gannett. They don’t find good delivery people, in the midst of a population which is crying out, due to the lack of money. So we constantly get screwed and feel po’d about the services and get no satisfaction. The lazy bums at the tops of the corporations simply write it off as no problem and insist we read it in digital copy. BS. Most people do not want to read it that way, but it is the way the freaking fat cats can horde more money, proclaiming that “they cannot make as much otherwise.” Sure. THEY, the FAT CATS cannot make more money, so they push a LAZY MAN’S way of delivery – electronically, which uses MORE energy to do so and they proclaim they are “saving trees.” BS. I have an answer. Publish on RECYCLED PAPER and you can save more TREES and use LESS ENERGY. You BS artists with a love of money.

Then there is Verizon Wireless in this low-density population area. We can look out of our yard and can see the Verizon tower. No hills to interrupt it. Hell. There were more high-rise buildings in Palm Beach County to block the signal there and we COULD NOT VIEW the damn tower from our home. But the service was far better and we seldom had connections in which people keep repeating, “Did you say something? Hello? Hello?” Constantly on Verizon Wireless in this little town in America. One can travel down the road and receive NO service at all. That sucks and I am here to say, “I am sick and tired of this BS and ain’t going to take it anymore.” Will anyone join me in saying this?

No one wishes to join collectively and say anything about this in loud voices. Instead we are forced to listen to the BS of QAnon or Proud Boys with their damn guns of the NRA. Instead, with regard to Verizon, which has a tower near my home, this is what people say. “Well, it gets worse when the leaves are on the trees.’ REALLY? In Florida with high rise buildings blocking signals there is one more thing. THEY HAVE LEAVES ON THE TREES 12 MONTHS OF THE YEAR, DAMN IT ALL. That is making excuses for big business and their love of money attitude which pays no attention to the DEMAND SIDE of the market and MEETING the demand. They put money in the pockets of Claudia Tenney, the bitch who won a congressional seat by only 100 votes and into the wealthy of fat cat Mitch McConnell who uses his money to sabotage efforts of Biden and the Democrats to accomplish something. While wimps among the damn Republicans GO ALONG out of fear of being attacked. Poor people. Feel sorry for such wimps.

Then there is Spectrum which also contributed heavily to BITCH Claudia Tenney who won by only about 100 votes. They are in denial about attacks online against their customers and do nothing. Their streaming service sucks big time as we get constant buffering all the time. CONSTANT. Are they interested in giving more than, “oh, we apologize,” and DO SOMETHING? Nope. The dopes of Spectrum with fat cats at the top, trying to preserve their supply side trickle-down economics, while in denial to the DEMAND SIDE of the market. At least in Florida, there was Laurie’s TV which provided us with a Community Antenna TV (CATV) option which was far better than the crap from a monopoly here. And get Haefele TV or others to COMPETE effectively with Spectrum with CATV? Forget it. We take more than just one step back in this situation, when one considers the BETTER service we received back in the 1960s and 1970s, due to LOCALLY OWNED cable television. We did not have hundreds and hundreds of channels, as what is provided by Laurie’s TV in Palm Beach County, but we on the demand side were happy. It was a capitalist competitive means, too, of selling homes in the community which had Laurie’s TV. Capitalist competition at the local level.

We’re mad as hell and ain’t going to take it anymore. Anyone with us, collectively, or do you continue to be a bunch of wimpish people afraid of confrontation and retribution and who won’t do one damn thing to maintain America’s capitalism and democratic forms of government?

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THREE-PENNY OP-ED: Being Firm and Fair

Right now, I am being screwed by the American healthcare system established by the Republicans a number of years ago (under Bush or Shrub) with Medicare. Republicans have this fixation about privatizing the crap out of things. That is what they did to Medicare. The net result is a system which is NOT firm and fair, but is based on supply side economics favoring big insurance and big pharma. research and development went out the window and put in place in ALL aspects of American business was hording of money in the fat cat pockets at the top, dumping pension plans and the money given to those fat cats in the form of increased salaries and bonuses, and America falling behind when it comes to R&D so as to move American business forward. America no longer knows how to “build a better mousetrap,” but to concentrate wealth in the top 1%. This Medicare sabotage and fraud becomes an excuse for Republicans to claim we need to “get rid of Medicare.” No. We don’t FIX it for the good of SUPPLY AND DEMAND capitalist economics. We DESTROY, right? Trumpicans should be called the DESTRUCTION PARTY of the Fat Cats.

Trump ended the ability for common folks like me to get a tax deduction due to being the nice guy and contributing to groups which need the money. Social groups like the ACLU and police benevolent groups, just to name a few. Wounded Warriors Project, too. Trump and his followers, the DESTRUCTION PARTY, wish to destroy such organizations, too, but proclaim otherwise, especially when it comes to the police groups which collect the money.

Trumpican DESTRUCTION PARTY people then proclaim law and order. This is law and order according to the whims and wishes of white superiority people with money who, if they get black people to go along, like Clarence Thomas, they are like those who say, “yes, mass’r, I will do as you say.” Same thing with gay man, Lindsay Graham, as he says, “yes, mass’r, I will do as you say.” When Mike Pence said, “no, mass’r, I won’t do as you say,” the thugs take after him and anyone else who says such. This is not being “firm and fair,” but autocratic dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Putin, and others who do not like democratic government.

Unlike some of the cops and law enforcement people I have heard speak out against George Floyd and NOT the wrongs of a police officer, I get sickened by this. The NYPD police union is a joke in their response to much of this, as I see them in interviews on the news. Yes, I do understand the dilemma today with police being in fear of the fact that there might be a gun pointed at them. I have to ask, which came first, “the chicken or the egg?” The matter becomes a vicious circle when there are too many cases like that of the police officer in Minneapolis over all of America. The matter is a vicious circle due to the DESTRUCTION PARTY of Trumpicans and their alliance with the NRA. The matter is a vicious circle when it comes to white police officers not knowing how to be humans which can be firm and fair.

Even for teachers, there was a day when it was natural to use corporal punishment. My grandfather, a teacher born at the end of the 19th Century, used corporal punishment because that was the norm of his day. The idea in education is that one cannot learn when taught unless the student is humbled. Physically abusive corporal punishment was the means to humble the student. It has been found that physical abuse is NOT the only way to humble. It has been a tough lesson for many teachers to learn. The grandson of this teacher born in the 19th Century has had to learn it, even when confronted with the old style of teaching which begins with, “those students are against you, so you need to be tough and grab them by the throat and push them against a wall to let them know who is boss.” Paranoia City, for sure. That grandson refused to use that method and wished to get out of that environment very quickly, especially when it was discovered there was a Matt Gaetz type of jackass on the faculty who had sex with under-age GIRLS (not boys). The bastard got away with it in today’s society, while there were so many on that faculty who wished to still invoke the old 19th Century methods of physically abusive corporal punishment. The 19th Century grandson wanted to scream and get out of there, which he eventually did, much to the chagrin of a spouse who thought she was an expert in everything.

I knew two retired law enforcement people who made sense and were rational, but I have to wonder if they were the exception rather than the norm or rather than the rule. One of these people I knew was a retired New York State Trooper who lived in Elmira, attended church with Ernie Davis, the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner in football (Syracuse University), and witnessed the help given to Ernie Davis by many in church, school, and community, including, as he told it to me, Rev. Leonard Peale at a Methodist church there. Peale, the brother to Mary Trump’s description of “charlatan,” Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. Mary Trump may have not spoken highly of Donald Trump, but she was mistaken about Dr. Peale, as she described the Trump family attending Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. By chance, the grandfather of the 19th Century, described earlier in this passage, was a friend of the Peales, as was a black pastor I have known.

This retired state trooper described for me how Ernie Davis was taught there in Elmira and went on to be one of the greatest football players, at a time when no Southern university would allow black men on their teams. Had Herschel Walker been around at that time, he would have gotten no where. The movie about Ernie Davis demonstrated how this young boy, growing up in a more intensive Jim Crow area in Pennsylvania, just south of the New York – Pennsylvania border, learned to run so as to get away from white bullies. This state trooper confirmed some of what was portrayed in that movie. He was a state trooper with an idea about being “firm and fair” and NOT to look at someone who is black as being someone automatically against him. But, alas, he was retired. What type of people take his place today?

Then, there was the retired NYPD police officer whom I got to know. He had decided his calling was to be a Christian pastor and he pursued this in retirement. He, too, spoke about issues in law enforcement and the importance of being “firm and fair” and for EVERYONE or ALL THE PEOPLE. He served a church with an integrated population, too.

A protege of Dr. Peale who served in a “crystal” church in California, had many televised services which discussed topics of racism. At one service, I recall a person who came to this California pastor with a doll which was a “black” Jesus. This example is probably a bizarre thing for white racist Baptists and others in the TRUMPICAN DESTRUCTION PARTY to even consider. However, the discussion that day centered on one of the early ones to be baptized who was of black skin and had been castrated so that the idiot with his harem could protect his “property,” women, “against having sex with other men.” The story is in a book of the Bible, the library of scriptural books. There are those who believe it is possible that Jesus Christ DID have a darker colored skin than what many white people could imagine. However, I subscribe to the fact that we seek wisdom, not certainty. There is no certainty about the color of Christ’s skin.

The whole attitude I describe, from 19th Century norms, is something of the past as we can look to better days and come to grips with what it means to be part of the overall human species. But those in the TRUMPICAN DESTRUCTION PARTY want us to take a step backwards and will use anyone they can get their fangs into, in order to accomplish their goal, but then spit them out when they have accomplished their goals. I object to this hypocritical autocratic dictatorial way imposed upon us with fear and intimidation, by white supremacists. I am going to speak out against it, no matter what. You can shoot holes in what I say, but this is not a matter for ME to win, but a matter of the human species to win and survive the future. Damnation against those who speak about Armageddon and a “rapture” because they are part of the idiocracy which creates hell on earth in order to justify their vicious attitudes towards others in the human race. They also wish gay people would die in suicide, too, so we can go higher than a “chimney top… where bluebirds fly.” That song is about living on a heaven on earth, not a hell on earth, but there are too many of the idiocratic autocratic dictatorial group who have too much say over us with their love of money and their power. May they be damned so we who wish to live in coexistence with others in the human race can invoke the ideas about being firm and fair.

Firm and fair. Coexist with respect for one another, not condemn and pit one against another. Living in integrity and giving dignity to each person to live life in coexistence with others.

Speaking to those who claim to be Christians. Condemn. If you are a Christian, perhaps you need to consider words from the Bible you thump so rigidly, at John 3:17: “For God sent His Son into the world, not to CONDEMN the world, but to save the world.” OK. The idiocracy believes we can only save the world if we do as a few wealthy white people DICTATE to us, not according to the guidelines given to us by God, particularly in the Gospels. “Love your neighbor as yourself” means you do not go cherry-picking words that validate your hateful opinions of others. It means RESPECT one another. We may not forget, as God does, but we sure are directed NOT to uphold “en eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” by Jesus Christ in his sermon on the Mount, but to forgive. Repeat. We may not be able to FORGET, as God does, but we can forgive. We can forgive with respect.

Repeat. Firm and fair. Firm and fair. Guidelines, not RULES from the scriptures. Guidelines and the basis for being firm and fair. When I use the “f” word to describe Trump in my writing, the true Christians are not condemnatory of me, but are firm and fair, as they work to TEACH me, as the greatest teacher who ever lived did while walking on this earth. That great teacher never had to use corporal punishment to do so. Humans have been able to take a step forward and away from physically abusive measures by being firm and fair. We don’t want to return to such measures, especially when considering the treatment by white supremacists against those with a different skin color. All lives matter.

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REVIEW: John McWhorter article, “How the N-Word Became Unsayable,” New York Times, May 2, 2021

Thanks for the very informative article this past Sunday by John McWhorter. This is a timely issue for humanitarian, not political reasons. Humanity should be more pervasive in our society than the love of money, politics, and big bonuses an salaries paid to fat cat executives, lawyers, and accountants in America today. The term, “fat cats” was coined by the newspaper industry in the late 19th Century and it is very pertinent today.

There are some comments I wish to add. First of all, where is a discussion of Paul Robeson? According to an article in The Palm Beach Post (1 Feb 2004, “Robeson brought Americans face-to-face with race,” now accessed in Newspapers.com) a number of years ago, Robeson was blackballed in America, similarly to Billy Holiday (due to her singing about the Southern lynching and attacks by latent homosexual head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover), because he performed the song by replacing the word, “N****r” with “Darkies” (later “colored folks.” (See the explanation of this Robeson change in lyrics during the 1930s at a Wikipedia website. Also see the NPR article about Robeson). Sadly, many of the resources from Rutgers (Robeson’s Alma mater) and Princeton, etc., have been removed, so the best thing to do is not use the Internet, but consult books in a library.

As a result of Robeson being blackballed, like Billy Holiday, he received worldwide reaction and performed in Europe and the former Soviet Union. He was then labeled a “communist.” All this because he took a stand against the use of a word. What is interesting about this story is that Aaron Copland, a white Jewish man who supported the establishment of the state of Israel following World War II, was called before the McCarthy asinine Senate red scare committee of the 1950s and released. There are derogatory words used against Jewish people and gay people. Yet, none of those words were considered with regard to Copland. Copland was brought before the “red scare” jackasses of the U.S. Senate, because, at one time, back in the 1920s, he was a “card-carrying communist.” He had abandoned that in his later life, but was still called before jackass McCarthy of Minnesota. In the state of Israel, they were establishing “commune-style” housing called kibbutzes. Both Robeson and Copland were on McCarthy’s list. I am not trying to put down Copland by saying what I am about to say. But why was a white man let go under similar situations, but a black man was not treated well? All that happened to Robeson was an invitation to perform in Moscow where he was very well received, while America rejected one of its own sons.

At the time of the Post article (2004) about Robeson, I spoke with a pianist who told about the wonderful experience she had in accompanying Paul Robeson when he appeared in the Rochester, NY, area. She spoke very highly of Robeson. Renee Fleming, of Churchville, NY (Rochester area) purportedly recalls her mother and black singer, Esther Satterfield who sang with Chuck Mangione when he conducted the symphony in Rochester. Esther Satterfield is also on a Chuck Mangione recording with the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada symphony, titled, “Land of Make Believe.” This song is a statement about a vision for a society which gets along and coexists.

To those shameful un-American white racists who show support for racist and anti-human Trump and lousy jackass Florida Republicans like Rick Scott (Darth Vader without the mask) and Ron DeSantis (DUH-Satan), human sex artist with underage girls, Matt Gaetz, cite that “systemic racism does not exist,” they need to get their heads out of the sand.

In honor of people like Robeson, Satterfield, Billy Holiday, and others (i.e., singer Stevie Wonder and “Love’s in Need of Love Today” and Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”), I have a bumper sticker with one word: “coexist.” Thanks also to John McWhorter and others, we can get on track for teaching and learning what it means to “coexist” as human beings, ridding this nation of hateful attitudes inspired by jackasses like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and a lousy wealthy immigrant named Rupert Murdock. Perhaps we also need to cleanse the U.S. Senate of the lousy filibuster rules which have been used in the past to push this nation one step backwards to racist attitudes, after this nation takes two steps forward. Don’t defend these damn rules which were once used in a better manner than today, when they are used to defend the racist “South will rise again” with its lousy and traitorous Confederate BATTLE flag and enabled by lousy Americans like Trump and Giuliani.

I speak in defense of humanity, democracy, justice, but not in the name of politics. Shame on you if you state, “don’t talk to me about politics.” Shameful, shameful of you. I am about the defense of democracy in order to destroy a movement towards racist autocracy. That is NOT politics. Shame on you, if you do because you can go to hell. I don’t speak to “win” for myself or because I might be in better financial shape than others or for the non-colored people of America. I speak for America to win and for the success of America into the future. If you are too stupid to recognize this about me, then also shame on you for your idiocracy. Stop taking a step backwards towards Jim Crow and denial of voting by a race of people, and move forward. If you consider me to be mean in saying this, then tough.

Thank you, New York Times. Thank you, John McWhorter.

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Three-penny Op-ed: Let’s Stop the Lack of Ability to Identify Business Opportunities for the Future by Means of Good Investments in Infrastructure

Once again, we are forced to listen to the news on a station like channel 12 as they bloviate the stupidity of Republicans who are not able to think about the future with an overall look at what it takes to improve the lives of ALL Americans in the future. They are stupid.

This is similar to not re-building a bridge to an area which is flatland and could help in the development of new housing and improve an economy, while the hilly side of a creek is not good for constructing houses on the hill because of the flooding which comes down the side of the hill. Progress does not happen because the development on the side of the hill is halted, due to the flooding, and no one can expand construction on the other side of a waterway, on flat land, because Republicans oppose building a bridge, saying, “there are not enough people on the other side of the waterway.” Stupidity with no concern for, it’s the future possibilities, stupid. Just as Clinton’s advisors, during the Bush-Clinton campaign of 1992, said, “it’s the economy, stupid.” And by the end of Clinton’s second term, working with the Republican side, gave enough money back to the Middle Class that the economy improved AND the Federal budget was balanced.

Today, we hear of the stupidity, once again, from Republicans about “spending too much for infrastructure.” Once again, we can say, “it’s the economy, stupid,” not the accountants shallowness with a ledger book. Accountants opposed to giving money to the Middle Class in the late 1990s were stupid, too, but it paid off, both economically and with the Federal budget.

Do these Americans who challenge President Biden have any brains about what it takes to make a good future for America? You spend the money in the economy and the money can head back into the government coffers and help balance that budget. What the hell is the problem, here?

Economist Paul Krugman says that, when President Obama first took office, he did not spend enough and the money was pitched at the big banks, not at the people who were having difficulty paying off mortgages or being foreclosed. These problems with mortgages were due to banks giving freely to developers who, along with the flipping of houses and extensive increases in prices at a much higher rate during the early Bush years (125% increase in prices over short term or just a few years, not a long-term investment as it always has been). Then, mortgages were given to so many people who really did not have enough income to pay for the mortgages, the consumer got hung, the developers walked away with their money, and the banks could then confiscate property in the same manner as Rubio’s enemy in Cuba (Castro) did to people there (including Rubio’s family). Paul Krugman’s comments in the early years of the Obama administration and the evidence that money was being given to big business, while there was proof that the SAME money could have been given to homeowners who were stuck in situations which I described when they were given mortgages they should NOT have received. Things worked out with the results of all that and the implementation of the HARP program, but could they not have been better had those large amounts been given to the consumers who were suffering with houses “under water” due to values going below the amount being mortgaged and, ultimately, foreclosures with a Castro-style confiscation of property? One could say these big bands were not communists, but were the centrally planned big fat cats no different than communists trying to form communes? I don’t think so.

Although I applaud President Biden for working to improve the infrastructure of this nation, the cost is rather high. But on the other hand, we should have been improving this infrastructure during the years Republicans were in charge and we did not. Working in the 1980s and 1990s for an electric utility, we knew at that time that there were infrastructure problems identified by the North American Electric Reliability Council in their Generating Availability Data System, we were heading for problems in the future. That infrastructure was not fixed and the results were disaster this past winter when snow and sleet hit Texas and other areas of this nation. I recall working, at the time, with friends of Laura Welch Bush at Texas Utilities in Dallas, TX, on gathering statistics and so forth in the industry.

R&D was murdered in the 1990s and after. Why? Because of the greed and selfishness of individualism, deregulation, and the formation of larger monopolistic business ventures which can be comparable to centrally planned economics of the Soviet Union. All of the important matters were passed over in favor of a few people gaining all kinds of wealth at the expense of employees and the small amounts of stock the employees owned. Today, CEO fat cats make an increase of 1000% or more compared to those of the 1970s, but the employees doing the work have come no where near that accumulation and hording of money by a few egotistical and lazy people in the boardrooms of America. Yet, number crunchers destroy ideas for making things better in America and apparently have so dang much power that we all suffer as a result. Many of us lost our jobs, due to the reduction of R&D. Yet, in capitalist Taiwan, we learn that they spent tons of money on R&D and have developed a corporation so good that Communist China plans to invade Taiwan to take control of it. Sort of like the South never being able to develop industry so it stole the established industry begun in the North of the USA. That is another whole story to tell.

Then, China is working to strategize for the future, while American Trumpicans complain about it and do nothing substantial to challenge it. According to a Sixty Minutes report many years ago, America was investing in the development of alternative energy sources with renewable energy. When America saw it was going to cost too much for long-term investment before there would be a payoff, American investors threw it all away, while the Chinese picked up the pieces by purchasing the businesses started up with initial “incubation” investments. Why did America want to begin developing alternative energy sources? Because we know that the oil and gas stuff from the ground will be depleted one day, so we work to prepare for the day when our next generations of people have to deal with the eventuality of the end of oil from the ground. Republicans get out their damn accounting ledger books and don’t even consider this. What happens? Such businesses came into the hands of the Chinese, in a free “global” economic system. And Trump thought tariffs would tell those Chinese off. Meanwhile, Taiwan is threatened by China which, like Dixie, wishes to steal the successful technology business developed by those on Taiwan. Dixie and others stole IBM from the North and the Binghamton area, too. The stupidity of Americans who follow the fat cats BLINDLY along, like lemmings being led off a cliff.

President Biden has also identified the need for more funds at the local level and to get back (that sounds CONSERVATIVE to me, not liberal) to the days when there was more control over infrastructure at the local level. Today, big corporations have put in place these lousy computers the customer speaks with and no longer allow the consumer to speak with someone at a local level. Cable television was created in upstate New York, as a “better mousetrap” to deal with the hills of this area in attempting to bring television into the home. It was not regulated by the FCC as much as regulated by the local communities. It was once the same thing with telephone and telecommunications, too. With EMT and fire service, too. Even with the production of electricity, there was often local control. These methods are all superseded today by big corporate conglomerate and monopolies. The electric utility where I once worked with the engineers and many energy R&D efforts, is no longer located in a city in Florida. instead, the control now comes from a big corporate conglomerate based out of state. Same in this area of New York. Rather than control from a corporate headquarters in Binghamton, it is now controlled from out of state and one has difficulty speaking with someone local. I can go on and on, even into the “local” newspapers in Binghamton and Ithaca, which have pulled the plug on local offices and one can never get in touch with a local person. This centrally planned economy, run by big fat cats of industry is supposed to be better? Hell. The USA Today Network is comparable to Moscow Pravda. Why do we do this? Selfish individualistic egotism and love of materialism and love of money, that is why.

At one point in my life, I spoke with a young Cuban man who had come to America with his family in the 1980s. He spoke about he disliked both Castro and what was told about Battista. He said he missed the urbanized America where he could no longer go sit by a waterway, as he did in Cuba, and have no big developments around. He disliked the materialism which permeates America so strongly. However, he was grateful for being in this nation and feeling like he was more free to do things without a dictatorship always watching him.

I agree with this young man’s assessment. Materialism and ledger books, with no plans for the future are what too many Republicans wrap themselves in these days. A Republican objects to spending more money than what we spent in World War II. Stupid jerk. First of all, does he think what the cost of purchasing a car was in the 1940s, compared to today? Did he think what it cost to purchase a home in those days, compared to what it costs today? No. Did he compare the living wages of those days to what it cost to purchase many items, particularly food? No.

Take this stupid jerk a step further. How many Americans died in the 1940s, due to war? How many Americans have died in this war with a virus? What are the overall facts and statistics, rather than just blowing away with ledger line accounting only? It is disgusting to many of us who see a bright future for America, if we only have the investments needed to improve the infrastructure of this nation. We need to work together collectively, but Republicans, as they did with FDR who wanted to meet the problem of war head-on while Hitler was bombing Britain. The Republicans of that day BLOCKED FDR from spending the money so as to help Churchill and the Brits. Then the Republicans later make stupid claims that “it was not the New Deal, but war, which got us out of the Great Depression.” BS to that. There is evidence that the New Deal HELPED, but the war was made worse due to the negligence of the Republicans of that era. To make Republicans of those days look good, what is done? Now make the claim that it was war which got us through it financially. But wait a minute? The Republicans did not want us to spend money and gear up, as what Trump COULD have done by fighting a war on a virus by using the Defense Protection Act. According to an owner of a consumer products manufacturing company in the 1940s, such businesses were awaiting the chance to gear up to build munitions for the British and see the economy begin to boom again with such measures and perhaps win the war and put it behind us. The Republicans of that era blocked such efforts and we spent a longer period of time at war with the Nazis, fascists, and Tojo-loving people than what could have been avoided.

Thus, we can conclude that Republicans are pulling these stunts so as to support autocratic and dictatorial government on the level of a Hitler. It takes money to make money. That does not apply solely to the individualistic materialistic fat cats of America, but for the “wealth of a nation” overall and based on “moral sentiment” for humans, as well as justice for all humans in America. This is the land I love and have hopes for achieving such measures in the future. (See Adam Smith and his writing in The Wealth of Nations and Theories of Moral Sentiment; Smith is the brains behind the development of capitalism).

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