I have spent several hours this morning trying to use Microsoft Office Excel. I purchased Office for each of the three computers I own, when I purchased the computers at Best Buy. Best Buy has a record of this. Microsoft won’t accept the records and insists I have to convert to a monthly subscription to Microsoft365. That is unethical. That is immoral. That is corrupt.
What if my dad, as a small business person selling appliances, including Maytag washers and other brand names, sold appliances some 20 to 30 years ago and those appliances are still working? Is it moral for him to go back to the owners of such appliances which are still working and insist they purchase a subscription or else they cannot use the appliance which was used for 20 to 30 years? Likely people would laugh at him. Immoral. Corrupt. Unethical.
Yet, as I speak out on Facebook about this happening with software companies, people would never back me up and speak out against it. Instead, they would say, “oh, too bad, too bad.”
Don’t use the shit about “new technology” because certainly there is no technology for the new Maytag washers. They are so different today. We purchased one in 2019. It is very different. The dryer the same. Should I have a subscription to Maytag365 now? Sure. I could purchase American Home Shield to cover ALL my appliances. We did so in Florida.
With the computers, Best Buy provides an annual fee to take care of our computers. EXCEPT when it comes to Microsoft or Google. Then they refuse to be held accountable for them. Does this make any sense?
Then we hear the stupidity of those with microphones complaining about inflation, getting mad at Joe Biden and the Democrats. Screw such people. Gas, energy, food, clothing, and other items in our lives are our needs and necessities. We have made the Internet, technology, mobile phones, and streaming television our necessities. Yet, the price of Spectrum is about 96% higher than the days when cable television cost only about $10.00 per month and we received more local broadcasts from more cities than we do now. Instead, we think we NEED 300 or 400 channels and pay 96% more today than we did about 1973.
In contrast, gasoline prices, since the 1973 oil embargo and high prices, have gone down and mesmerized the crowd into believing gasoline is better than many alternative fuels such as biomass and other green technologies, solar, wind, and hydro. Electric cars, too. We don’t preserve our oil fields for future long-term savings such to be used at times like this. I don’t have exact figures. But I do recall the oil embargo put in place by the major oil producers from the Arabs and even a good chance the Soviet Union and seeing prices fairly even with some of what we are seeing now.
So, now, Joe Biden would like to regulate the software and technology companies like Microsoft, but people yell and scream about doing that.
Meanwhile, what these people in this industry provide really sucks. It is unreliable and lacks the quality for which American business once wanted to strive to do so as to recognize both SUPPLY and DEMAND. I read about the “supply chains” which cause a problem for inflation. Hello!!!!
WE…. WE… WE… (get my drift…. it is not just ME, ME, ME) don’t need to spend so much on Microsoft365, but we DO NEED to feed ourselves, keep a roof over our heads, and use transportation, whether it be an automobile or public transit.
When Florida voters decided to put in fast speed rail from Orlando to Miami, Governor Rick the Prick Scott (now in the U.S. Senate) blocked it from happening, going against the desires of the electorate. Rick the Prick, instead, supported the expansion of I-95 by four or five lanes and instituting a toll on I-95 in Miami. The claim is that public transit is more expensive? That’s bullshit. One thing to mention, accidents on I-95 increase and lawyers make tons more money and taxpayers pay more for tying up the courts with the lawsuits. Yet, this is not counted as increases in costs. Besides the demand for more gasoline and the gas-guzzling emissions which help increase global warming. Oh, that’s right. Rick the Prick, DeSantis, Trump and others don’t want to acknowledge that, do they, because then people will figure out how much more society pays for gas emissions. Those guys are nothing but cowards who would rather bully those who criticize than to consider what we are saying.
With regard to the rail system which voters approved in Florida, those of us who saw an opportunity to get out of a neighborhood where we witnessed too damn many drive-by shootings, built new homes with Centex about 60 miles north. WE expected a rail system voters had approved. Beautiful homes, but Centex lost its shirt and today no longer exists. We had a wonderful multi-racial neighborhood there. I often went jogging with a black guy from upstate NY who moved there because he had a job in Fort Lauderdale and could work from home, rather than living in bad neighborhoods. Rick the Prick fucked us all over, the bastard SOB and he needs to pay for it. Apologies for the “f” word, but I don’t take it back until people come together and begin to take what I say more seriously.
I blame Rick the Prick Scott for going against the will of the Florida voters and the head of the Republican Party Florida Senate majority leader. Senator Alexander, our senator from Fort Pierce area, had to leave the Florida Senate due to term limits.
The Republican Party today, due to the corrupt, immoral, and unethical leadership, sucks big time. It sucks due to people like Rick the Prick, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, and even Jeb Bush who won’t stand up to the unethical ones in the party.
(NOTE: George Bush spoke about making new fuels from something called switchgrass because it fermented at a quicker rate and could speed production of the fuel. Bush said this in a State of the Union address. Tell me what we have done with switchgrass? Do you see it at all? So here we are in a panic and acting like reactionary jerks in trying to find something NOW, rather than being PREPARED (as they teach in the Boy Scouts)?
At the end of the day, we pay far more increased costs for software and streaming video than we need to spend. I know people who have dropped the freaking stuff called cable television and Internet. Rural areas also do not have a choice. Empire Access fiber is in urban Broome, but those of us in Tioga? We can go screw. George Bush also tried to promote broadband for all. With his switchgrass and such broadband proposals, they have all been relegated to the trash heap while we are, once again dealing with lovers of oil in Russia and Saudi Arabia. Bush even sent troops to Iraq so as to defend the needs and desires of the Arabs. Now here we are and no one wishes to send troops to defend freedom, democracy and the oil and energy supplies in a little nation like Ukraine, as the big bully Putin tries to take the oil in Ukraine to add to his arsenal of energy sources.
What I say about Putin and Ukraine is not just about PEACE, but about PEACE AND JUSTICE. There cannot be peace with no justice. Stop the bullshit of SCOTUS and other sources in tying justice to politics. They are two separate issues.
Not only is there a lack of justice in the regulation of worldwide energy sources, but the supply side pigs of technology, Internet service, mobile phones, and cable television have caused this nation to lose the semiconductor industry to another CAPITALIST DEMOCRATIC NATION while a communist regime is salivating at the ideas of cutting America off at the knees and taking over that CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY> And the only concern Microsoft and Spectrum have is to put people like Claudia Tenney into Congress so as to do their will, not the will of the DEMAND SIDE OF THE MARKET, typically done by REGULATING capitalism and not allowing the supply side to make its own greed, selfishness, love of money rules which override the needs of the DEMAND SIDE.
Claudia Tenney won by only a few votes in the 22nd district, defeating a man who had served in Congress and worked to work out military contracts and so forth for selling products made in upstate NY, rather than purchasing products from China instead. What a joke.
And now we read about how there is such a huge trade unbalance. Of course. When Trump and his cronies like Tenney concentrate on lies, lies, lies, cheating, cheating, cheating, and get their money from companies like Spectrum (perhaps Microsoft, too?), we on the demand side get trashed as we try to speak out against this types of actions by iliars, liars, liars, pants on fire.
After experiencing the bullshit this morning of a company tracking a customer who had purchased the software on CD. Hear me? The thing people call antiquated? As antiquated as an old Maytag washer purchased years ago and still working. Actually, the washer is MORE antiquated. If the CD was not purchasese, then Best Buy installed it on the computers. I paid quite a bit for the software, but with a subscription to Microsoft365 taken into considerations over molnths and months and months, I would probably be paing five times as much. That is an over-priced product. For a person on the DEMAND SIDE of a capitliatt market, I find that this over-pricing is corrupt, immoral, and unethical.
The fat pigs don’t find it to be this way, do they? So if someone is more wealthy, they tell me, “I don’t want to hear you speak about politics.” That is cowards and bullies saying, “I am happy because I can afford all this, so just shut up and listen to the media I have power and money over as they attack inflation in a nonsense way.”
Sad to say, there are too GODDAMN many Americans who are saying this, while the rest who are like me just remain silent and silentce like a cancer grows. Fuck those who are wealthy and say such things to me.
The example I address is one about the NEEDS OF THE DEMAND SIDE of a CAPITALLIST MARKET. It’s economics stupid, not politics. It’s human justice, stupid, not politics. Unless all of us who are criticized for saying this are executed, there will never be peace. That was what Hitler did. That was what Stalin did. That was what Castro did. That IS what Putin does. That IS what the sheiks of Saudi Arabisa are doing. Thati IS what the Taliban, Al=Quada, and ISIS are doing. That IS what the head of North Korea and others are doing. Thre will be no peace until we strive for human justice.
ππ€π€π€π§π§π§ππππππ
Trump, the Traitor to American Democracy
Dear Editors:
Wow! I cannot believe the words that I was reading in Sunday’s Opinion page (“Trump made America strong and independent”).
I am impressed. After all, it makes me happy when people are doing better in this world. Such wonderful individuals who think the whole world revolves around such an individual. How nice! Wow!
Was the world was at peace? Hallelujah! Yes, impressive about the world being at peace, especially when there was no justice. The world cannot be at peace without justice. Justice also means treating domestic citizens of all kinds like they are human beings, whether it’s the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, or if they are LGBTQ+ who are pleased that there has been progress which surpasses the shit they had to put up with in schools. Talking about being gay was out of the mouths of bullies who called us sissies because we did not always act like men. Yet, how did we hurt such people, while they hurt us?
I must admit. I could probably identify some improvements in the world, from 2017 to 2021, while Trump and the Republicans were in charge. Let me think a bit. Just wait. They will come to me. Well, there was one improvement. I suffered a near-tragedy in 2018 but survived! That was an improvement, for sure.
When Trump attempted to work out a one-nation tariff, I anticipated something good coming out of it. After all, I have always followed the conservative proposal for a Value-added Tax. A VAT is a domestic version of a tariff. When I mentioned to a friend that I hoped that maybe something good would come of the tariff proposal, my friend helped me to understand that the reactions from China were nothing but laughter. As it turned out, Trump’s track record in business by ignoring the debt he or others owe was influential in the failure of his proposal for a tariff. I tried to find something plausible.
A February 2022 analysis reported:
Yet, Biden and the Democrats are to blame, totally, for inflation? The only thing which Biden MIGHT be blamed for, in this case, is dragging his feet in ending the Trump tariffs. Wow! Was it not Trump’s timeline for ending the war in Afghanistan, never achieving justice there, in which Biden is blamed for? I see. So Trump is able to make peace and make “America strong and independent,” but … oh, well. I guess Republicans are above the law, so when they cheat and lie, they are a-ok guys, right? Republicans also won state elections in states in which they claimed fraud during the elections. Must be that Republicans cannot possibly win by using fraud, ain’t that right?
As for the “peace” achieved in the Middle East by Donald Trump, perhaps someone needs to “take a look at the world around him. Trump’s friends in Saudi Arabia were using swords to chop off the heads of its citizens. Same procedures used by ISIS, too.
The border being secure? There were interviews with people in Arizona who were happy that the towns on the border were secure. But they also identified the true methods to end the influx is to work out many of the details to be more proactive in identifying the true problems which cause immigrants to seek a better nation. The wall is treating the symptom but putting it in place never does an in-depth diagnosis of the problem.
Energy independent? Sure. So we can pollute the atmosphere and spit out of smokestacks the type of stuff which gave acid rain to upstate New York and the northeastern USA. Wonderful. That made America great, right? Acid rain dumping. Back when George Bush was president, he proposed developing an energy product which was based on switchgrass, a vegetation with a fast fermentation to enable faster production of fuels. It is a less-polluting ingredient. Where is it? Pipelines and drilling squashed the efforts, as we did not try to produce new products while considering a “savings account” in oil which could be tapped during times of need. Like now.
Speaking of Chinese. The Chinese were smart enough while American investors were dumb asses when it came to long-term investments for our future. We gave up new biomass and green technology productions of energy sources, as Chinese communist investors bought up the long-term businesses because they knew, as well as most others, that the world will possibly run out of oil from the ground. A good Boy Scout would realize that we need to be prepared. Keystone and other oil pipelines obstruct us from being prepared for the future.
Wow! Energy independent?
Middle class did better pre-Biden and the Democrats? We did? My family paid more taxes in the form of income taxes than we did in the pre-Trump years, even when Bush was president. Are you saying that I was cheated by my tax preparer? Really? There were various reasons. But my charitable contributions were given less credence than before. Perhaps it was a good thing when churches who relied on such tax breaks were part of the mainstream religions and the ultra-right wing churches which worship a god of hate don’t rely on tax deductible donations, due to tithing?
On top of this, Trump wanted to destroy healthcare for all, especially for those who were not employed and/or were retired. Heck, the Republicans had already put in place measures to curtail coverage from Medicare. So, we faced the dilemma of staying healthy in retirement or break our bank. Sorry, but we failed to see how much the middle class made out during the Trump years.
As for “reversing course” on the issue of Ukraine, this letter to the editor (“:guest columnist”) addressed this Democrat who felt we needed to call the bluff of Putin. But this Democrat also realizes that Trump, DeSantis, and Scott (and many of the other bigots within the Republican Party) all fall in line with Putin’s bigoted attitude towards people he does not like. This situation makes it look good that Trump maintained peace? Again. The word justice should be added to this equation. Putin and Trump held the same ideas about justice based on bigotry. So such bullying buddies get along quite well, do they not?
The attitude here, based on individualistic success and happiness during the years Trump occupied the office, is just like saying, as with the Gannett publications, that “no one reads print copies of newspapers anymore.” Fads based on a reality created and manipulated by those who are happy with the money they make while lining their pockets, not earning it the old-fashioned way.
These are perspectives based on stereotypes. It is just like the insurrectionists on Jan. 6 who only believe in individual rights and happiness. Yet, the media, during the election of 2020, often interviewed common folk who said things like, “I have succeeded better during the years of Trump.” No wonder there are those who think there was fraud in the election because they just could not believe it when the picture painted by the media contained so much information about people who were happy during the Trump years. At the same time, no one gave the microphone to people like me who may not have been as happy.
Point being? Talk about the facts and statistics, and stop emphasizing how this one or that one was happier than the ones being given a microphone. Same thing with Biden, as the spin is put on. The microphone being given only to common folk who are negative about Biden. Evidence, facts, statistics, please.
Category:
Commentary, human-rights
Tagged with: