Daily News: MAGA My Way
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Archive for the ‘Economics, Regulated Capitalism, Commerce’ Category
Milk and Ozempic? What’s on my mind?
What’s on my mind? The question asked when I sign into Facebook. Here is what is on my mind. Milk and Ozempic, a medication produced by Nova Nordisk for diabetics.
Sounds strange. Milk and Ozempic. What the hell do I mean by that? Here goes.
I have spent the past two years reducing my A1C and my weight and doing so without insulin injections. That’s because insulin injections caused me, for some 10 to 15 years, to put on weight. I have to wonder whether those injections also hurt other parts of my health. Try to find out in the American healthcare system and one is left scratching his/her head. Nevertheless, I have been successful.
This quest to lower A1C began while I was still on an employer-provided health insurance. I went on Medicare just as we were all introduced to this thing called COVID-19. On the employer-provided health insurance, for which I paid a huge chunk on the monthly premiums, I paid very little for Ozempic and insulin injections. I paid zero dollars for eye injections to fight my diabetic retinopathy.
Then, Medicare hit me at the same time that COVID-19 hit millions of people around the world. All of a sudden, I began to experience this REPUBLICAN-generated shit called the donut hole for prescriptions. As with NAFTA, lousy rotten perverted REPUBLICANS invented this and then go around blaming the Democrats who tried to work and carry things through – for the good of unity in America. That donut hole is a piece of shit and needs to be destroyed and bring universal single-payer healthcare for all, whether on Medicare or otherwise.
So. Big pharma charges about $1000 per pen which gives one month of supply for the diabetic. Under employer-provided healthcare, the prescription was only one month at a time. In order to “save money” for the patient, three pens of Ozempic for three months worth of the medication are given. Sure. It saves a tiny bit of money, but not much, as I have discovered.
My A1C, with three months worth, has not been as good as the one-month version. So that leads me to a question. Does Ozempic not last for three months? I get glazed over eyes of a lack of intelligence from doctors and pharmacists when I ask the question. “We don’t want to answer this question.” Maybe it is out of fear of lawyers? So the patient does not get an answer. Oh. If the patient is “hurt in a car, call William Mattar!” But to have a sensible question like this, well, forget it.
Most recently, according to my log, the first month of using the Ozempic injection pen, beginning in Dec. 2021 and ending in Jan. 2022, my glucose numbers improved, as did improve. I also had an improvement in my A1C the last time the numbers were taken in December.
Now I am near the end of my second month and this week beginning my third month. My glucose numbers are terrible and getting worse. Once again. I ask of doctors and pharmacists AND my Medicare Advantage plan people, the same question I have been asking for more than a year. Glazed eyes. One exception. I was finally put in touch with a “pharmacy” person at the Medicare insurance plan. Once again, I could not get the person to understand. Until I injected an analogy. What if I were to purchase enough milk for three months at the beginning of February, how good would the milk be should it be consumed in the second and third month? The point got across, as I discovered no one was using the idea promoted by Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, to do something called THINK. I had used analogies when teaching students at college because I encouraged them to think. Silly me for thinking those in the community who ALREADY HAVE COLLEGE DEGREES would THINK. Silly, silly me for being so stupid. Further, I think my father, WITHOUT A COLLEGE DEGREE, may have done something called THINK, but maybe I am wrong on that. Nevertheless, not sure if all people who don’t have college degrees would respond like my father.
During the time of trying to explain this situation, I sometimes got treated as if I am stupid. “Well… did you put the Ozempic in the refrigerator?” After all, that is what the directions do say. Of course, you GODDAMN IDIOT, I do follow the directions and put it in the refrigerator. What I should have asked was, “what happens when you put milk in the refrigerator for three months, you ass?” We all know what would happen if we leave milk out of the refrigerator for several days. My thoughts about Ozempic were based on refrigerated milk, but I was not listened to, mocked in the questions I asked, with everyone more concerned about “me, myself, and I” than about the question being asked.
One big difference between milk and Ozempic. A quarter of milk costs me a few dollars perhaps. Big pharma charges $1000 for one Ozempic pen. If the GODDAMN thing does not work, after sitting in a refrigerator for two or three months, does not one think it’s a pertinent question to ask about whether it runs out of oomph after a time, EVEN WHEN SITTING IN A REFRIGERATOR?
What the hell is this America today with stupid people who just want to mock, taunt, and push around fellow Americans, rather than thinking in terms of COMMUNITY and how to best serve our COMMUNITY of people? And when I say that GODDAMN LAWYERS like MATTAR and his CAR should be stopped because they teach Americans how to go after one another, I get slammed for that, too.
As a result, we end up with stupid Americans pitting one against another. The Republicans are finding this very useful. Just attack a Democrat. Don’t discuss matters surrounding an issue, but just attack Democrats instead, proclaiming, I don’t want to discuss politics.” Yet, Republicans proposed NAFTA. Sad to say that Democrats helped pull it through, rather than taking a look at what NAFTA would stand for and the possibility of loss of jobs in the USA. The Democrats are hurled with attacks while the ones who proposed this thing in the first place are ignored for what THEY did, except when they blame the Democrats.
Republicans think gerrymandering is ok, should it be done by Republicans, but attack it if Democrats use it. Republicans think the filibuster in the U.S. Senate is ok when used by Republicans, but not ok if used by Democrats. And then there is the one ASSHOLE Democrat in the Senate, bought and held by Republicans, who won’t go along with the elimination of the filibuster ()perverted corrupt money lover Manchin). And the wimps of Democrats who go along with things like NAFTA are really as stupid as Al Gore who refused to do something when, in the end, it was actually proven he had won Florida in 2000.
As for Ozempic and the GODDAMN DONUT HOLE, Republicans were the major force behind making it happen. I know because I spoke with a number of Medicare recipients at the time this bullshit of an idea was implemented.Now I am paying for it, financially and no one gives one damn about it, especially being employed and saying, “it does not impact me, so why should I stand up and give one damn about it?”
Beyond just donut holes and tiers, part of ADVANTAGE Medicare, there is a secret hidden agenda to hide what is available by paying a premium for Medicare supplements. Why? Because the GODDAMN MEDICARE PEOPLE HAVE INSTITUTED SOMETHING THAT OBAMACARE ELIMINATED: PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS. GODDAMN THOSE TRUMP BASTARDS WHO TALK PRIVATE HEALTHCARE AND WANT TO DESTROY OBAMACARE. I just discovered these things. It has been two years since I went on Medicare and I am just discovering this. It is a hidden secret and kept hidden.
The idea is that we pay for a supplement plan for six months, but get no health service for “pre-existing conditions.” Who the hell put this in place? How did the WIMPS of Democrats let this get through? In other words, all those things for which my employer-provided healthcare covered are considered, “pre-existing conditions” and now, I have to act as if, for six months, those “pre-existing conditions” don’t exist? For 40 years I was on employer-provided healthcare insurance. Sometimes I paid out of pocket a portion of the health insurance. I should have amounts in that healthcare system in which I could get coverage on a supplemental plan for those “pre-existing conditions,” due to CAPITALISM AND DIVIDENDS PAID WHEN CONSIDERING THE MONEY I SPENT ALL THOSE YEARS AS S A CAPITALIST INVESTMENT. GODDAMN the big mouths who claim socialism and use such reasoning to help DESTROY Obamacare and keep “pre-existing condition.”
Let me use an analogy. Erasmus Wright, the first insurance commissioner in Massachusetts during the 19th Century, challenged insurance companies because they were collecting premiums for life insurance policies but then being criminals and using the money for other things. When the person died, these CRIMINALS in the business world, with the help of lawyers and accountants, would claim they have no money to pay out to those who had INVESTED in the policies. He worked to change that.
But here we are today and we are back to the same BULLSHIT Erasmus Wright worked to eliminate in insurance. In the case of Erasmus Wright’s example, we all have a “pre-existing condition.” We are all going to die. We are human beings who will die. So, those insurance CRIMINALS saw no need to cover the “pre-existing conditions” at all. CRIMINALS today are running big insurance for homeowners in Florida and healthcare nationwide. There need not be consideration of “pre-existing conditions.” PERIOD. DAMN ASSHOLES who promote such BULLSHIT. Yes, I am angry at this, as I have to face lousy American healthcare when asking questions about a high-priced medication and how “fresh” it needs to be, even kept in a refrigerator and face the bullshit of insurance with “pre-existing conditions,” while Republican business people push for this and Democrats are nothing but a bunch of WIMPS in letting these things happen (with the exception of Obamacare (which is still being dragged through the mud by GODDAMN FUCKING LOUSY PERVERTED ANTI-HUMAN REPUBLICANS). Excuse me, but this makes me so damn angry that I DO USE THE WORD FUCK, so FUCK YOU IF YOU DON’T LIKE THIS. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT SO I DON’T HAVE TO USE SUCH A LOUSY WORD. Need I apologize for attempting to bring such issues to the forefront and nothing happens? So I then resort to vulgar language? If you think so, then FUCK YOU. The only thing for which I feel sorry is for the state of lousy perverted attitudes in the USA which is the nation to which I was born and find it disgusting with people with their immature attitudes about individual rights and no consideration of community of people, so they don’t wear the masks or get vaccinated in order to fight a war on a virus. And then to have eyes glaze over when I ask a simple question about the effectiveness of Ozempic after two to three months in a refrigerator. A lousy immature snotty American attitude which pervades this nation far too much and elects perverts like Trump, DeSantis, Rick the Prick and others, while generating an attitude of shooting holes in a Democratic governors solution, no discussion of how bail reform is bad, and an attack on a Democrat because the person is a Democrat. How do we know that bail reform might be a solution unless we examine it, rather than being a stupid idiotic Zindell of Pennsylvania with an immature snotty individualist right to maintain guns? Unbelievable sickos in this American world today who are directed by the perverted actions of lawyers like Mattar who encourage more zingers at one another than to THINK and CONSIDER the solutions before just hurling lousy crap which demonstrates their anti-Democrat stand than anything else. It is not the America in which I was born, as IMPERFECT as it was then. At least hate, snotty and immature attitudes with money-lovers with lots of money an big mouths did not pervade this nation as much. Democrats and Republicans may have sometimes been at each other’s throats, but Republicans did not dig in their GODDAMN heels as stubborn bastards and SOBs and refuse to consider solutions, THINKING and DISCUSSING those solutions so as to be more effective and not sabotage progress, as Republicans are doing today. I was a Republican in those days, and I must say I abhor the bastards and SOBs who have commandeered the party today.
This is what is on my mind today. Shall I condense it into what I wish to see happen?
1. Universal single-payer healthcare for all and with NO GODDAMN PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS to be considered. Add to this unrelated thing: replace the STAR program in NY with an ACROSS THE BOARD system like Florida: homestead exemption for the primary residence, invented by DEMOCRATS in Florida.
2. Eliminate the GODDAMN gerrymandering completley.
3. Eliminate the GODDAMN filibuster in the U.S. Senate and follow the rules from Roberts’ Rules of Order for DEMOCRACY. Simple majorities are allowed with those rules. When necessary, there rules about 2/3, 3/4 majoritiees, or unanimous decisions. Unanimous used correctly, not the bullshit in the UN with the Security Council.
4. Regulate industry for the good of the community and with teeth in such regulation which really decimates any form of payoffs and bribes. It could be done. When there were regulations, Thomas J. Watson almost ended up in jail for working to destroy capitalist competition at a company for which he worked called NCR. Maybe it was just that Americans were better people then? I have a problem in believing that to be the case. Maybe it was? I hope not. If so, then people today need to read books such as the one by Adam Smith titled, The Theory of Moral Sentiments or works by modern-day GOOD Republican (not perfect, but better than the leadership in that GODDAMN PARTY today), Joe Scarborough. Regulate industry and put MORAL teeth into the way it is regulated by a third party called government.
5. Let Puerto Rico become an independent nation so they can have wealthy people to there and purchase and run the nation. That way, we taxpayers in the 50 states don’t have to fund Puerto Rico while Puerto Rico does not pay Federal income taxes. The tiny island nation of Morroco is run by wealthy ones. It does not have ANY income tax, but only VAT and real estate property taxes. It would be interesting to note how Trump wealthy cronies, running Puerto Rico, would handle hurricanes. After all, Morroco HAS NO HURRICANES. No. We the people of the USA fund Puerto Rico when hurricanes strike, but we get no CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS in return, by way of income taxes. That shits and needs to be stopped.
6. Eliminate the Electoral College and replace with a non-gerrymandering way of making congressional jurisdictions more permeanent, as well as throw the presidential election into a runoff when a candidate does not win 50% or more of the popular vote. The runoff would be scheduled at the time when now a bunch of electors meet for the Electoral College. No Electoral College, but just a runoff, if necessary.
7. Calculate the numbers in the House of Representative based on the same model used with the First Congress in the late 1700s. What are we scard about? That we might have nearly 1000 memers of the House of Representatives?
8. Eliminate the stupidity of being so concerned with states with amaller populations having to have a bigger say. Manchin of West Virginia. How absurd of a bastard. Or senators in some of the ultra-right wing rural Rocky Mountain States. More senators within a rural state than members of the House? Or close to it? Increase the numbers in the House and stop this bullshit with filibuster and all the rest which stupidly runs the Senate.
9. Broadband communitcation for all, with fiber optics.
10. Legalize marijuana and others and stop the bullshit of prohibition. The results could be a less expensive way to rehab those who get caught up in drugs and alcohol, rather than GUNS on the streets as drug lords attempt to protect their territories in order to keep things hidden. Richard Nixon, in the days when I was a Republican and believed in things like FISCAL efficiency and FISCAL conservatism, found that such means of actions would save us all money, as compared to the lousy drug wars which help prop up drug lords. Who opposed Nixon on this? Lousy SOB white supremacists of Dixie, within the Republian Party, like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. We got FORCED into the situtaions today and then we are subjected to some jackass Zindell of Pensnsylvania attacking Democcrats when they try to find solutions to the drug problems.
Republicn Nixon had a solution and ended up pulled through Watergate as Helms and others reduced their support because Nixon did NOT fall in line with their fucking Dixie assses with white supremacy and drug lords. Like Clintion and his dumb ass with Lewinsky, Nixon did a really stupid thing with Watergate. But Nixon DID NOT do a stupid thing with his proposals to lift up black businesses in the South and use money for drug and alcohol rehab, rather than the tons of money spent on the war on drugs.
Today, IBM is gone in Endicott, NY, and there are drug wars on the street adjacent to the old IBM complex (Washington Avernue). Thanks a lot, you GODDAMN Republican folks like Zindell and the GODDAMN fundagelical white supremacists.
One has to wonder. If Helms and others did not want rehab, then follow the money and one might discover that assholes like white supremacist Helms and others were making money from the drug wars. Otherwise, they would have supported solutions which might work.
Those of the NRA and other assholes today might just be making money from drug lords, too, so they push for no legislation which regulates guns and blame Democrats for ANY solution at all.
The commander-in-chief who really loused things up in Afghanistan and I wonder if, with Trump’s love of the Arabs, whether he wants Afghan opium and opioids in the USA, so he did nothing for the purpose of justice in Afghanistan. Then, once again, Demorats who followed through on the timeline put in place by Trump get the blame. Joe Biden was not set up, unless one considers the wimpishness of Democrats in handling Trump and the Republicans, not playing hardball with bastard Republican fascists who are traitors to America.
Got it, what is on my mind? This entire “missive” explains what is on my mind, beginning with the lousy perverted ideas of an American healthcare system run by the wealthy Republican fascist business people who are nothing but lovers of money. After all, those SOBs never have to worry whether they have enough money to pay for any medications OR “pre-existing conditions.” And the bastard common folk who go along with this shit of the wealthy are disgusting people.
Curtailing Homelessness in NYC (NY Times, Sun., Feb. 6, 2022)
According to a recent New York Times Magazine article, a person in New York City who worked on reducing numbers of homelessness by some figure in the thousands. Kudos to that person, for sure.
What the article attempted to do remains disturbing for me. Once again, with the help of a society tailored to number-crunching, due to lawyers and accountants which make lots of money while we teachers in Florida made very little, the guy was questioned on “whether the numbers demonstrated whether he had succeeded enough.” WOW! Number crunching.
First of all, in my job in a college in South Florida, my colleagues and I faced a number of homeless people, battered women in homes which took care of them, and young people in various other stages of life. Should we have ticked off every one who we helped? Should we have done number crunching?
For instance, I had one young man who had grown up upstate New York along the Hudson River. He was living without a home in the park across the street from the college. There were many homeless folks who were around that college and we knew it. We attempted to go out of our way to help them out, whether that be extra tutoring so as to help such people gain confidence and get set back on their feet in life. The guy from New York had served, under George H.W. Bush, in Iraq with the U.S. Army. He had fallen on bad times, so I was asked by one of my fellow professors and colleagues whether I could tutor the guy. After all, he had been through several attempts to try to write a college research paper and that was the one thing holding him back. Since I worked with students, tutoring them and also teaching them in some classes, I worked with this guy. He learned quite a bit, but I was not able to assess him a grade (number crunching again). However, he ended up submitting a research paper in which he was able to earn an A on the paper!
Years later, this man came back to my office area at the college and began to tell everyone, students, faculty, and others, how much I had done for him in getting through a tough time in his life and he being able to get an A on his paper. Let’s get one thing clear. Never once did I speak with my colleague who was doing the grading. I only gave him time for tutoring him on what was necessary to do. In his return trip, he indicated he had graduated from the college, gone on to another college to complete his Bachelor’s degree, and was now working in another location, teaching students some of the same skills he had learned from me! it could have brought tears to my eyes, but I withheld the tears. I was just so happy that a fellow New Yorker (I taught in Florida for some 40 years) had accomplished his goals and was no longer homeless, but doing quite well!
Number crunch me and that is the only one, I guess. But knowing full well that I taught many students who were homeless, as well as many of my colleagues, one has to wonder how many we did impact? Likely, the number would not be 100% of the homeless. But how many did we help out? Once more. Should we be ticking every person?
As for the battered wife, how many others did we all impact, too? With her, too, I had spent time tutoring her in her research skills. The day she walked the stage at the college commencement and picked up her diploma, I stood up and cheered as loudly and joyously as I could, in celebration of her accomplishment. No numbers. A human being who I had witnessed gaining confidence in a disturbing life and had succeeded.
Secondly, rather than identifying how many this guy in New York City helped out of homelessness, when are we going to come to grips with the factors which, in the 1980s, brought an increase in homelessness. We did as Ayn Rand wanted, reducing public services (mental institutions) and public welfare, speaking out against healthcare for all, Medicare, Social Security. Then, when Ayn Rand contracted cancer, where did SHE go to find the resources and services? She went to the government which she was attempting to knock apart, with the help of her friend, Alan Greenspan who had Reagan’s ear. Reaganomics, deregulation, supply side economics. All those things were favorable to Ayn Rand. But when the chips were down, Rand took advantage of the very things she barked about being “socialism.” A screwy bitch called Ayn Rand, an atheist out of Communist Soviet Union which was once KGB land with an agent named Putin.
Then there was DEMOCRATIC PARTY Governor Lawton Chiles and his lawsuit against big tobacco for the purposes of PAYING FOR state government expenses for lung cancer resulting from smoking cigarettes. Chiles finished his term as governor and was hoping to run for president, but died on Dec. 12, 1998, just before Jeb Bush took power in Jan. 1999. Mysterious, for sure. As Gov. Ann Richards of Texas said about brother George: “poor George, born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Same thing could be said about Jeb Bush who was one of the many number crunching wealthy ones born with silver spoons who thought “what’s good for business is good for America,” so naturally lawsuits against a BIG BUSINESS were NOT good for America, according to the standards of AWOL man during Vietnam (at a time I knew others who DIED in Vietnam or saw very brutal fighting in Vietnam), George W. Bush. At least John Kerry, the Democrat in 2004, never went AWOL. Or the guy in Georgia who lost LIMBS during war but was chastised by Republicans because he was a Democrat, did far better than Mr. AWOL Man.
In other words, rather than trying to hold a man in New York City and his feet to the fire with number crunching, how about make changes to rid us of the shit of Reagan, atheist Ayn Rand, and other Republicans which helped cause homelessness in America, overall.
What ever I accomplished, I am very proud. I am just as proud as the healthcare workers in America should be in handling this pandemic. I am proud of the work I did to help train nurses, nurse aides, radiologists, and others at that same college. When going to a hospital, that was the one time I could hear, “oh, I remember you; you were my professor at the college.” I likely would not remember them, as I sat and waited in a room for an anesthesiologist to sedate me. Somehow, though, I must have made some kind of impression on these people. And that sure does make a professor happy!
I am happy that this guy in New York City succeeded with helping humans numbering in the thousands. Kudos to the guy and stop the bullshit with counting by using lawyers and accountants. How many TRUE accident victims (auto or workplace), not FAKES, did lawyers help? Does anyone keep numbers of those? If we want number crunching, is it not better to keep tabs on the fakes and liars than a person who needs to be measured with regard to ending homelessness. Furthermore, such lawyers and accountants and how many did THEY help in reducing numbers of homeless? Anybody know?
Once again. Kudos to those who play a role in reducing homelessness in New York, Florida, and across the USA.
Balance
Ronald Reagan, Jr., is on my mind.
Noticing that is in his commercial, is trustworthy. He mentions “freedom FROM religion,” in defense of activities to work for separation of church and state. As a Christian, I am fully in support of separation of church and state. I always have been supportive of separation of church and state.
Seems strange for Ronnie Junior to say “freedom FROM religion,” while attempting to endorse the ideas of separation of church and state. For separation of church and state is related to “freedom OF religion,” not “freedom FROM religion.”
During the 1980s, I always had a problem with Ronnie Senior and the lip service he played to ridding us of communism. I really did not believe the man with charisma. I felt he was a fake then. Now it is evident, even more, what kind of fake Ronnie Senior was.
My father served with the occupation troops in Japan in 1945 after the war ended. Before my dad passed from us in 2018, he spent time telling me about the trip he and the others serving in Japan under USA Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, from Tokyo to the northern end of Japan.
If one reads the history of the A-bomb and all else which happened in Japan, one discovers that one thing our leaders wanted to do was to block the Soviets from entering Japan from the north. Was my dad part of those troops who were sent to northern Japan? This is written in the documentation of MacArthur biographer, William Manchester. Manchester also describes the emphasis MacArthur took to decimate the communists in Japan.
A few years later, when MacArthur was put in charge of troops in Korea, what did he want to do? He wanted to send troops north and into China. He was no longer the USA (or UN) Supreme Commander in Korea, so he was not able to do that. In fact, MacArthur was fired for attempting to do it. He had led Japan but was not given the leverage to do the same in Korea. My writing this is NOT to discuss whether this firing and the facts surrounding it are right or wrong. It is a matter of making a comparison between the two commands that General MacArthur had. One immediately after the war with Japan and the other during the Korean Conflict. Today, there is a very lousy communist leader in North Korea, while South Korea has been a successful capitalist democracy.
In fact, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have all been very successful with bringing down the COVID-19 positivity rate, while the communists and other autocratic SOBs have not. Meanwhile, stupidity in America with DeSantis, Trump and others, is siding with the communists in China, while not fighting the war which needs to be fought against COVID-19.
Back to the discussion about Ronnie Junior and religion. Considering that the Soviets created a “religion” and forced people to abide by this “religion” (which many people have indicated atheism is actually a form of religion), then what makes us believe that “freedom FROM religion” is NOT an autocratic and dictatorial way to force one way upon our American population? What makes this any different from a Matt Gaetz or others who want to force one way for those of us who meditate and seek a spiritual means of life, whether in the name of Christ or any other religious belief, different from what Gaetz wants to force down the throats of Christian believers, is any better than Gaetz? As far as I am concerned, Gaetz is a lawyer / politician who is as much a traitor to the USA as Benedict Arnold, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and numerous others.
How about considering “freedom of religion” among all “religious practices” within a secular society of coexistence? What is wrong with that?
Or else damnation on all those who wish to dictate beliefs to society and upon one another. Period. Damnation to the proselytizers of beliefs about a god or gods as a means of a theocracy, as well as those who wish to dictate an atheistic autocracy upon us.
Too many who are involved in religions use the Bible as a rule book which comes from myths and other writings designed to create a god in the image of men. We have a Creator / Maker / God of love. Humans are made in the image of this God.
The problem lies in those who are hypocrites within religious organizations and turn off people to the true God. This is done in the process of working to maintain power and control over human beings and doing so in the name of a god for which they have made a graven image based on the images of men writing the myths and rule books. Human beings need guidelines for reasoning and common sense in life, not a rule book based on the power of men over other human beings. Men are big on power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Along with such situations, hypocrisy and a love of money reigns.
Matt Gaetz and other fundagelicals are part of such heathens who do this. The American Founding Fathers, if Ronnie Junior and others were intelligent enough to study them, were more than just Masons.
The American Founding Fathers were Deists who believed in a powerful Creator and balance in the universe which can be proven. Translating that to democracy, our Founding Fathers established a government with checks and balances.
Adam Smith, a contemporary to the Founding Fathers, established and wrote about ideas for which there is balance in economics, in a system called capitalism.
During the days of Adam Smith, the aristocracy were, as Trump is today, too fearful of losing their power and money, should there be the balance as proposed by Smith and his theories about capitalism. So, therefore, these powerful wealthy ones did everything possible to put their own spin on what capitalism is all about. Many today don’t realize how much they follow along with the spin put on capitalism by the aristocracy of the 19th Century.
That aristocracy fooled a stupid man like Karl Marx and others in the process, mesmerizing them with mind control, that capitalism is the problem. Capitalism is not the problem and in the 20th Century, people like Teddy Roosevelt, associated with his Progressive Bull Moose Party in later years (after being known as the “trust buster”), proved that regulation does work. The founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, and others at NCR Corporation ended up serving time for their roles in going against regulations by attempting to destroy competition. Watson eventually turned around and created a great corporation, IBM, in which he rewarded his employees with good salaries and benefits, regardless of whether they had college degrees or not.
Ronnie SENIOR worked to remove that BALANCE in economics by proposing one-sided economics, SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS, based on his attempts to project that all things in America need to be “privatized.” This led to the movement to destroy capitalist competition and many dictatorial businesses with no concern for human beings who work for the head honchos AND no concern for the DEMAND SIDE of a balanced capitalism. Since the time of Ronnie SENIOR, these guys have been attempting to make the government look bad because it is the means for regulating that balance in economics.
Democracy can provide balance. Capitalism can provide balance. Freedom OF religion with separation of church and state can provide balance. Ronnie Junior stating, “freedom FROM religion” and associating it with separation of church and state is no different from what daddy Ronnie said with regard to “government is bad so let’s push for deregulation.” Thousands of Americans were hurt financially by this shit from Ronnie Senior. I was one of them, I know a thing or two.
Ronnie Junior is attempting to destroy balance in a secular society. If Ronnie Junior were truly interested in separation of church and state, he would find allies with those of us who have beliefs in God in order to accomplish his goal. Somehow it does not sound like he wants to work by pulling all Americans together, but has a hidden agenda here.
Ronnie Junior is a “chip off the old block,” in this sense. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Just as Ronnie Senior worked to deregulate and work towards, “freedom by ridding us of government,” Ronnie Junior uses this same method regarding religious beliefs and the spirituality which is very important to so many people.
This crap is nothing but a libertarian and anarchist approach. It is being used as a means to thrust dictatorial ways down our throats. The results of such actions will be barbaric, bullying, and vicious, just as what happened within the Roman Empire with its uncivilized gladiator games and arenas with Christians thrown to the lions.
You might read this and say, “how can this be true?” Trust me. I am not the only one to give warning. Adam Smith gave warning in his writings about “The Theory of Moral Sentiment.” There are many others who have given warnings, too.
For the sake of America and its democracy, capitalist ideas, and spirituality of people, please stop this bullshit. America might not be perfect because we have human institutions and such institutions are not perfect. But let us not destroy the great parts of this system. There are other nations in the world who have worked successfully under such conditions. Stop the destructive aspects based on “individual rights” only which come from libertarians and anarchists.
RE: “Ways and means” article about taxation in America, The Economist, 2 Oct 2021
Dear Editors:
For me, political parties are necessary to sustain a democracy. A one-party state, such as what once existed in Florida under racist white Democrats with power and now exists in Florida with racist white Republicans in charge, is absurd and anti-American, particularly considering democratic values. As a Republican most of my life, I found Howard Dean’s message in 2004 to be quite a good message. Sad to see his reputation shattered by ignorant and stupid scum in America. What a disgusting bunch of people who have evolved, clinging to their stupidity, into Proud Boys, Qanon, etc., as violent thugs of insurrection. Being that your magazine is published in Britain, the same type of thugs who got away with murder of a British agent because he was illegally importing rum for the Caribbean (John Hancock) and his friend, Sam Adams, we were led by such thugs, even if John Adams was not sure it was the correct path to follow. However, it was John, not Sam, who became the second president of the USA. The long and the short of it, we in America make a pledge with “…with liberty and justice for all.” The thugs are hypocrites in reciting such a pledge because they, along with 33K healthcare workers in NY who refuse vaccinations, actually mean, “… with liberty and justice only for me, myself, and I and the rest be damned.”
Your article about “ways and means” (subtitled “America will never have a European-style welfare state without a VAT)” struck a nerve with me. I became aware of a VAT, perhaps before Europe embraced it as it does. Where did I learn this? From CONSERVATIVE and founder of the magazine, The National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr.Today, iwth its fascist attitudes imprinted in that magazine, I would not touch it with a thirty-foot pole, as well as fascist news on Fox, Newsmax, and other sources which proclaim themselves as “conservative.” I find these groups to be very offensive.
What I once liked about being a Republican was the fact that so many were “socially progressive and fiscally conservative.” Buckley was socially progressive when he described smoking pot and finding nothing wrong with it. Yes, compared to the impact of alcohol, pot is non-addictive and better. I just don’t care to do it. At the same time, Buckley was fiscally conservative. In introducing the VAT (and other sources I have read), there is absolutely no desire to have a welfare state by using a VAT.
In this instance, I believe your writer used the ideas of Dr. Howard Dean, who urged Democrats to “re-frame the issues” so as to make them palatable for more people. Your writer has “re-framed” the issue so as to make the idea of a VAT un-palatable to the wealthy crust at the top. Another form of hypocrisy in that group at the top is to downgrade the ideas of a welfare state while looking the other way at ideas for CORPORATE welfare subsidies.
This last point is well expressed in your article, as you point out the convoluted mess we call an income tax here which is being used to help those at the top “subsidize” themselves and giving a free ride to those at the bottom of the welfare state. Meanwhile, the ones who are really being hurt is the destruction of a Middle Class which is pertinent for a democratic state to operate more efficiently. To me observing what has happened since Reagan took power in 1980, is a deliberate task to destroy the federal S&Ls, public health systems, public education with its teaching of civics education so the Middle Class can have some knowledge of what makes government good, rather than convincing them only that it’s Reagan’s idea of “only government is the problem.” None of these aspects were described in our article, at all.
Yes, you did mention that VAT is similar to state and local sales taxes. One thing the Democrats of Florida did (and continued by the Republican one-party state machinery there) is to NOT have an income tax at all, but to have a sales tax, added to property taxes with primary residence homestead exemption. VAT would be better than a sales tax because of less figuring by the consumer of what the tax is on each item. The “sales” tax is added as the “value” passed along to the consumer. For small businesses (which have been destroyed in America by lawyers and big corporate “Goliath”-style (figurative) giants (given free rides by SCOTUS and the “Citizens United” Decision). Why do I say this? Because I observed the NY sales tax introduced and noted the impact on small rural businesses who had to do extra work in maintaining accurate records of sales and report them to the New York State Taxation Dept. This cut into small business overhead and eventually helped to destroy small businesses as big corporations experience less percentage of overhead (cutting into profits) than small businesses. A VAT would decrease such events and (boo hoo!) put accountants and tax lawyers with less business so they can do what they really SHOULD be doing and get out of the “tax” business. Boo hoo t them, spoken as an educator who also witnessed the travesty of privatization of education by people like Jeb Bush and others in Florida. Nobody gave one damn about the impact on teachers and professors, did they? I can be a mean SOB and not give one damn about how the VAT would impact those making tons of money off taxes. For one thing, rather than invent ambulance-chasing, educators had to resort to other means of income and pull themselves up by the bootstraps the best they could. Educators in Florida often worked three and four extra jobs, especially if one-income families or as single moms or dads. Perhaps lawyers and accountants should experience the same things?
As for this crap about a “welfare” state, Bill Clinton once said, “a safety net is not a hammock.” Translation. Safety nets are not for “infinity and beyond” but a hammock is eome place where we can place our asses and never get up – for infinity and beyond. What a shame that the name Lewinsky overrides everything which Bill Clinton was about. His penis was more important than anything else, evidently. Oh, that’s right! I should not use the word, “penis,” in America because we Americans are so puritanical in thoughts that we don’t accept “fleshy” art work, as they do in Europe. Americans apparently like the pope who ripped the penis off a statue of David. FOR SHAME to me for bluntly telling a Roman Catholic that he was trying to dictate and impose HIS ideas and his ideas alone, as he complained about nude paintings in the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. There are many Americans who appreciate works of art, whether paintings, photographs, drawings, or what not, and that man has no right to infringe on the “…liberty and justice for all” by imposing his own idea of “…liberty and justice” which fits only him, as if we all where the same size glove or shoes.
I diverge here in order to emphasize how much there is a “norm” established and dictated to us all which treads on our own liberties and justice. This includes the way income taxes are so convoluted in America that it infringes on the “liberties and justice” of the Middle Class. Democrats want a welfare state? If so, I don’t like the Democrats who push such an agenda and refuse to consider other SOLUTIONS to our PROBLEMS. On the same token, we rarely find the Republicans who were the ones who came from the foundations of that party, opposed to slavery (of all kinds) and worked with ideas of “socially progressive and fiscally conservative.” Fiscally conservative, to most of us, meant regulated capitalist supply and demand, not an aristocratic fat hedge hog idea of supply side only. it was not a measure of whether the government spent money or not. It was a matter of doing so efficiently and for “liberty and justice for all.” This article, “Ways and means,” does discuss the efficiencies which don’t exist in our American economics, but it burns me the way it goes into how the VAT helps create the welfare state, then burns the Democrats who it proclaims DO want a welfare state. For me as a Democrat, that is an insult. Perhaps when such Democrats scratch their heads at having to deal with this question, as Clinton perhaps did, they go off to find sex with someone? To relieve the pain? I don’t say this in forgiving Bill Clinton and his lack of self-control, but I do say this to try to come to grips with reasons WHY he might have done what he did, even if it is mere speculation.
Sweden is mentioned in this article. I don’t question the statistics given because I have to trust they are true and factual. I do have to question the lack of discussion regarding the homogeneity of the race and culture in Sweden, as opposed to the USA. That is more of an important considertion in all of this discussion about “welfare state” or even about “socialism.” A recent New York Times book review told us about how President Nixon tried to provide for “incubation” of new black businesses in North Carolina, but failed due to one Republican who was considered so damn powerful that he must have scared Nixon. That Republican was jackass white racist Republican from North Carolina named Jesse Helms. Like Mitch McConnell, that bastard of North Carolina held this nation hostage with his ideas about white superiority. He did what many Southern Republican leaders are attempting to do today. According to a TV Guide article from the past, Helms was also responsible for manipulating things like destroying Star Trek due to an inter-racial kiss. Helms also used his power and influence to destroy Robert Maplethorpe exhibits (and other matters regarding the arts) because of frontal nudity in the photographs. Freaking Helms with HIS own definition of “liberty and justice” … FOR HELMS … was imposed on us all. Fortunately, the Star Trek thing backfired, but consider this. It was only when another southerner (Jimmy Carter) and the Democrats took power in 1976. That was NOT a question of “welfare state,” but a question of being socially progressive and anti-racist. Same thing can be said about another Democrat from the South whose image was tarnished by several things (like involvement in Vietnam). LBJ worked to get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed, even if he fumbled the ideas for a “Great Society” in some of the unorganized urban development projects. In that case, his heart was in the right place, exemplified by the passage of civil rights legislation. As I always, say, if one expects perfection, then that person is a stupid idiot because perfection of human beings does not exist. If one has the expectation that Democrats are perfect, then think again, stupid. Even Frank Sinatra mentioned how he loved fixing our nation’s problems, even if this is an imperfect nation.
At the end of the day, one can argue that any tax can be considered regressive, as this article pointed out about the sales tax or VAT. One dictionary definition of “regressive” says, “taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes.” In order to avoid this from happening with income taxes, we give earned income tax credits to which, as the article pointed out, leaves almost nothing paid by that “lower” the proportion taken from the lower classes. The net result is a rebuke by the upper classes and the Middle Class being destroyed in the process as it becomes incumbent on that one “lower class” – the Middle Class – to absorb most of the taxes. That was NEVER discussed in this article, leaving the reader left out in the dark on this matter. Instead, the writer intones the “regressive” nature of the VAT or sales tax. The person appears to really speak as if he/she is against the VAT so uses various mechanisms to address his adversity, while appearing like the person is an advocate of the VAT. I don’t get it. Please tell me how a VAT is “regressive” when the ones purchasing their own personal yachts, planes, expensive elitist imported items (not affordable to those in the lower classes), and what not would end up paying a large chunk of taxes that many in the lower classes would not pay? By saying this, the person writing this article appears to have no sense of what “regressive” means.
The true reason as to why the upper crust does not want a VAT is because this would have the impact, if implemented correctly, of removing the loopholes which the upper crust can use to justify THEIR corporate welfare. In America, this upper crust might complain about a “higher tax rate” for them, but have the ability with a regressive income tax to use “workarounds” which might be more difficult with an opaque VAT. Truly, I say to you, get rid of the capital gains tax, the income tax, the inheritance taxes. Replace them all with a VAT and stop with the BS of counting who makes out better. Just applaud and reward people for making money and profits and we can bring back American ingenuity.
Another problem with LBJ and his “Great Society” was the farm subsidies in order to take into consideration how selling more milk would lower the price of the milk in a capitalist economy. It completely removed ingenuity to meet the demands of the consumers and finding other ways to use the product, besides just the drinking of milk. With this black hole of ingenuity, a European dairy company, utilizing the notion about “pasture-raised” cow butter took a piece of the American market. A VAT would be designed with a higher “tariff” on imported goods and give home-grown products a leg up in the market. Subsidies for farmers simply destroyed the market. We have read about upstate NY farmers who “dump their milk.” Dump the milk? What the hell is that, when considering the many aspects of milk like that of peppermint and lemon for dealing with pests. In this case, a milk product has proven effective, with copper sulfide, in fighting fungus. There are other possibilities, too, which are ignored, in favor of mass market considerations, rather than meeting the needs of smaller markets, thus helping to bolster the prices paid to farmers. It is called regulated capitalism, not subsidies and handouts. Capitalism has been given a black mark by Karl Marx who was an idiot in his assessments of economics. Adam Smith wanted to counter the prevailing ideas of his day regarding supply-side economics of manors, feudal property, etc.. Supply-side economics which created a serfdom and slavery. To the “moral sentiment” of Scottish, Adam Smith, these were wrong. Yet, he got shafted by Marx because the industrialists chose to adopt Smith’s ideas but conform the ideas to what already helped the elitists gain all their money they horded over others. Supply-side economics, not capitalism with regulation of supply and demand was blamed. Thus we ended up with Marxist ideas of central control by big corporations and monopolies while proclaiming them as being “great capitalists.” The are not. They are centrally controlled. It might not be a government or nationalized corporations, but it is centrally controlled. In turn, these people work to control the very government which SHOULD be regulating supply AND demand. By use of corrupt practices and “martini lunches” these hedg hog elitists control our lives and thus bring about anger of people /like Proud Boys who don’t know anything about what true democratic government SHOULD be and just resort to violence and guns with the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment, while being coerced into believing colored people are at fault for their situation and never taking a look at how much better off THEY are, compared to so many other nations in this world – and living by APPRECIATING what they have, in comparison. Then I cringe at reading about the VAT needed to endorse the “welfare state” when the VAT was conceived by those who did not like the welfare state. Absurd and with a hollow tone.
Book Review by Paul Krugman RE: Fight over How Extensive Free Markets Should Be
Paul Krugman was right on the mark with his book review of Nicholas Wapshott’s Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market (3 Aug. 2021).
As a historian, not an economist, I take a look at this free market idea through the lens of a historian. Paul Krugman, the economist and his ideas from the perspective of an economist agree with what I have been writing for so long.
As expected, Krugman delves into the ideas for free markets which were pushed by Friedman and opposed by Samuelson. He also identifies Reagan and Greenspan as perpetrators. I so agree with that. I would also ad the queen of “virtues of selfishness,” Ayn Rand, as well. The net result of what Reagan and his goons did in the 1980s has been monopolized business by big corporate giants who resemble Goliath in the Bible and work to destroy capitalist competition, on the notion that this is a prime example of “free markets.” In fact, destruction of competition is annoying as it destroys the ideas of regulated capitalism which is designed to help both supply AND demand. Reagan’s notions of “deregulation” have resulted, besides promoting a “trickle-down” philosophy, is “reregulation” done by the corrupt practices of privatized huge corporate conglomerates. We might think we the people have no voice, but with privatization by the supply-side big fat cats. Business in the hands of the big fat cat supply-siders, similar to plantation-style, manorial, and feudal economics of the Medieval period is more atrocious because it can more easily shut down the voice of the people than can be done with government (especially when there is more predominance of the existence of government controlled by the big fat cats, as a result of a dim-witted U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision with a propaganda-style title of “Citizens United” and its hidden agenda).
Case in point. Privatized forms of government called homeowners’ associations which are given more teeth to do injustice to people by the Republican one-party state in Florida. The HOAs of Florida have come to be known as the “condo commandos.” However, the HOAs have spread more widely than just condos, as yours truly had to pay a HOA fee when he owned a single-family home, not a condo. The HOA played the role of the local nearby government where I also owned a home. They would inspect lawns, as the local government did, and cite us if it was not cut correctly. Both village and HOA did the same thing (there was no HOA in the village). Big, big difference. The annual HOA fees were far higher than those of the village and we had no recourse to go to a village board meeting and express disdain over the regulatory practice of inspecting lawns. Compared to a local village in upstate New York, the HOA fees were three times higher than this village and its taxes. The village shed itself of a police unit, so it became more like a HOA, but at much less the cost of a HOA. Yet, people here complain about the tax of this village. Be careful for what you wish for.
My point being that privatized supply-side businesses are vicious, malicious, and bullying. They are the ruination of local business and local control. Case in point also about the privatized hospitals created by a man who sits in the U.S. Senate: Rick Scott. With an overall consideration, even hospitals still run by religious organizations are far better at dealing with the demand-side – the patients (consumers) – than privatized hospitals and nursing homes. I have plenty more personal experience examples I can share. Certainly, there are plenty of facts and statistics to validate my experiences.
The historical examples are about the “norms” established by the aristocratic wealth and royalty when Adam Smith drew up his ideas of capitalism which were meant to challenge the supply-side economics of feudal economies run by aristocrats. I am able to prove that the aristocrats were one step ahead of Adam Smith. They embraced the “new” idea of capitalism in the late 1700s and early 1800s, as if it was their own baby for which they gave birth. When Marx went to England to generate interest in the common folks of the demand side of the market, he blamed capitalism because the supply-side aristocrats were the ones coining the phrase of capitalism for themselves. America had plantations in the South and the North thought it was better with its “industrial revolution” consisting of crap like sweatshops and so forth. Those sweatshops may have paid workers earnings, it was dismally small and not a living wage, while the big fat cats became just as wealthy as the plantation owners of Dixie. They were better in not putting African slaves in chains, but were they really any better, just because they did NOT enslave people, as they used immigrants in the sweatshops?
In the 20th Century, Gov. Teddy Roosevelt of New York State began to intercede for workers. From child labor laws to many other laws, Gov. T. Roosevelt, worked with people. Gov. T. Roosevelt also became known as the “trust buster” as he busted the organized syndicates with Boss Tweed and other sources which, with their corrupt practices, controlled the supply-side economics as well as government. America became great due to the trust buster, unions, pooled finances in retirement systems which were really designed to be capitalist returns on investments. Same thing with the “health savings account” we call Medicare, where there was an intent to have a return on investment. The original intent for these resources was not to have lousy corrupt representatives propagandize false ideas that such resources were “taxes” and then steal such money for other purposes. They stole from such funds for projects “back home,” in order to keep their constituents happy and then get re-elected in the process. Using propaganda, such corrupt politicians and lawyers destroyed the ideas of long-term capitalist investments into short-term, “I want it now” instant gratification ideas. With the older ones dying off and the younger ones not worried about long-term investments, those corrupt people in a representative democracy convinced people to do the things most beneficial to the wealthy fat cats at the top. Shall I go into actual examples of what I am talking about?
Krugman expressed his ideas in terms of economics and academia. His explanation is very good. But someone needs to address this to those who do not follow the details of economics. Meanwhile stupid people like Mark Levin and others from Fox, rely on not presenting facts, but only emotions. The best seller lists contain books by such people which are false. And yes, I challenge Mr. Levin as a dumb jerk with his emotionalism being the sole means of capturing the hearts and minds of people. I don’t challenge Mr. Krugman, but wish someone could put what he says in the words more conducive to the “lay person.” It would really help cut down on the chaos and contention of pitting American against American. Let us shed the damn emotionalism and traditionalism which pervades the land and get back to rationality and common sense.
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Professor Douglas Willet Cornwell (Retired)
Newark Valley, NY
———————————“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “The problems of the world are not that some people love in a different way. The problems are that so many people don’t know how to love at all (CGA, 1970).” A Puritan is someone in fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. “Liberty and justice for all [not priorities on individual and selfish rights].” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union [and overall wealth of American society]…”
Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected.” Stacey Abrams: “Compromise about actions, but not about values.” Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Benjamin Franklin: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Whoopi Goldberg: “To handle this COVID-19 pandemic effectively, we all need to get on the same page.” Note: To be clear, I do not like being patronized. I do not express my disdain over what happens to my fellow humans just for my own sake and to pursue favors and handouts. I do it in order to gain R – E – S – P – E – C – T for me and for millions of other Americans of any race, ethnicity, religious belief, or sex and sexual identity who try to walk in integrity as they attempt to achieve, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. PERIOD. One nation under God [our Creator] with liberty and justice for all.
A Little History About the Truth Regarding Capitalist Economics Might Help
When working to complete a minor in History at the undergraduate level, I took classes from a professor who was a professor with a PhD from Binghamton University. This professor had us reading several books in her classes and included these additional books as textbooks for the class. I ate it all up. Likely it is those texts which I still own today, outside of what I kept from my major.
One book we read was The Americans: The Democratic Experience. It was authored by a University of Chicago History professor named Dr. Daniel J. Boorstin. I have retained a copy of that book and added several other Boorstin books in his “Americans” series. The Americans: The National Experience.The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Several others in that series.
When I completed my Masters of Library Science degree at Syracuse University, I worked in database management and library research instruction. It was a wonderful career. In the early years of my career, President Ronald Reagan had appointed Dr. Boorstin as Librarian of Congress. Having read Dr. Boorstin’s books, I was thrilled. I was more thrilled at Boorstin than I was about Reagan with his adversity to unions which shut down the Air Traffic Controllers organization and his favoring IBM and opposition to unions when he destroyed AT&T, the Unix operating system, and the CWA, in the name of “deregulation” and supply-side economics.” Same thing in the electric utility industry with its IBEW. Deregulation in the name of “supply-side economics” and “trickle-down theories of economics.” I was thrilled by Boorstin and still am with the knowledge I learned from him that supersedes the limited historical stuff we have all been taught in schools.
According to Boorstin, one of the first “regulated” examples of the “democratic experience,” was the establishment of insurance commissioners in America. The example given by Boorstin was that of a 19th-century Massachusetts insurance commissioner named Erastus Wright. At the point in time that Wright was regulating insurance, there were no actuarial tables for determining premiums, the long-term investments made, and the results of the benefits regarding life insurance. People were putting their money into life insurance, but the management of the companies were chaotic about it and figured the money was there for them to spend. Then, when someone with a policy died, they were told there was no money. Like imposing something for the collective freedom of all (masks and vaccines, not personal injury lawsuits), Wright came up with the table which was expected to be used when figuring premiums and benefits. It worked. All that regulation of insurance has been curtailed and, instead, we have lawyers pursuing personal injury lawsuits against big insurance, spending tax dollars beyond belief, and there is no safety net for the consumer on the demand side of the capitalist market. Sad.
Thus, we see the same thing happening to Social Security and Medicare. We put the money in and then, as exited with Erasmus Wright’s time, when the benefit is to be drawn, based on dividends earned over time, we are listening to lousy folks saying, ‘there won’t be any money in such a such a year.” As with the life insurance of the the 19th-century “democratic experience” of Erasmus Wright regarding the insurance in which people had dumped their money, we are observing our money, over time, being squandered in other ways.
This example dealt with private enterprise, but it took a government to regulate private enterprise, not the other way around when we have private enterprise controlling the government. Unless we do something, there may be no hope for the future, as our hopes and desires for future generations lies in the hands of greedy, selfish aristocratic brats who really don’t understand the ideas of capitalism and the “democratic experience.” So what do they do? They throw out BS about it all being socialism or communism. The actual communists are the fat pigs who control a government and destroy ideas for regulation by vandalizing and sabotaging regulation, whether in a PSC or elsewhere, with bribes by means of martini lunches with the “lunch crowd.” Corruption, just as with the situation Erasmus Wright identified.
Furthermore, we accept this corruption so much that we look the other way when it occurs. We look the other way when there is a corrupt government in Afghanistan and people don’t want to affiliate with such corruption, so they lay down their arms, for the sake of the Taliban. Rather than look at the details of what is happening, the ones who did nothing to work for justice and peace, push to wrongly blame President Joe Biden for a pullout which was created by those who support the money (Saudi Arabia and other sources) behind the Taliban (and the Saudi royal family member, Osama Bin Laden). They work for peace and then set a timetable for withdrawal, but never work for peace AND justice. What a shame. Just like the money from the oil contingent of the world, we sadly got involved in Vietnam, too, and then had to pull out and betray the South Vietnamese with their corrupt government, too. The difference? It was LBJ who started it all in Vietnam and there is proof that John F. Kennedy was NOT gung ho about doing it. Today, we don’t blame the Texan who got us involved in Afghanistan, but look to blame a person who took office in Jan. 2021 and had been left with a timetable for withdrawal created by Donald Trump.
Inconsistency in America. How sad.
Even worse is that Americans have short memories and don’t learn from history. If there was learning from history, more folks would be more brilliant and not listen to the BS of moneyed people who want to attack the Democrats. That, too, is sad, for sure. But it keeps me involved in writing. This gives me a sense of success, knowing I lay out principals and ideas for consideration and hope that America can coexist by learning regarding the true history of capitalism, democracy, and seeking peace and justice. We don’t want to be wimps who look the other way at corruption, whether in America or Afghanistan, and make for justice which does not simply give in for the sake of peace. Justice. Consistency. Destroy corruption. Lift up ideas for good and true regulated capitalism and democracy. And then we can achieve peace.
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Professor Douglas Willet Cornwell (Retired)
Newark Valley, NY
———————————“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “The problems of the world are not that some people love in a different way. The problems are that so many people don’t know how to love at all (CGA, 1970).” A Puritan is someone in fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. “Liberty and justice for all [not priorities on individual and selfish rights].” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union [and overall wealth of American society]…”
Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected.” Stacey Abrams: “Compromise about actions, but not about values.” Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Benjamin Franklin: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Whoopi Goldberg: “To handle this COVID-19 pandemic effectively, we all need to get on the same page.” Note: To be clear, I do not like being patronized. I do not express my disdain over what happens to my fellow humans just for my own sake and to pursue favors and handouts. I do it in order to gain R – E – S – P – E – C – T for me and for millions of other Americans of any race, ethnicity, religious belief, or sex and sexual identity who try to walk in integrity as they attempt to achieve, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. PERIOD. One nation under God [our Creator] with liberty and justice for all.
Confiscation of Property
Recently, a guest opinion article in the Gannett Press & Sun-Bulletin remarked about several issues which put America on the road to communism. The writer was incorrect when discussing matters pertaining to confiscation of property. I wrote a rebuttal to Gannett editors, but I am being censored, so I don’t know if it will be published. Sad, but it’s true, when realizing how much false information is freely available out there, but when presented with facts, we are ignored and not getting published.
Fact is that the topic of confiscation of property has its roots in history long before there was any communism. Even after Karl Marx, the Bolsheviks of Russia, the communists in Cuba and other regions of the world, there was a prevalence of confiscation of property when financial situations go sour for the wealthy ones. The confiscation of property by wealthy bankers during the time of the Great Depression is evidence of such. The more current example I provided in the rebuttal to the writer in the Press & Sun-Bulletin explained how there was a deliberate attempt by bankers in Florida to take advantage of real estate sales which went through the roof and caused prices to rise astronomically in just a few short years after the start of the new millennium with the intent to confiscate property so the wealthy, not a government, could accumulate property and force the rise of rent to those who were left out of the market. That is called corruption and corruption in government and business in Afghanistan is the reason the Taliban was able to move so quickly to overtake the government. Do we have an American Taliban where all men will be required to grow these long ugly beards or get beheaded if they don’t? Even the communists of the Soviet Union were unable to maintain any control in Afghanistan, as well as the British and others.
But this last part of my message touches on an entirely different situation. My intent is to discuss confiscation of property and how absurd the writer was to say we are on a course of communism when it was big business, not government, which has strongly been involved in confiscation of property and is likely salivating over the opportunities afforded by COVID-19 for doing more confiscation, not the government.
Fact. When the Western Hemisphere was being settled by the white man of Europe, property of indigenous folks was confiscated and sometimes very brutally and savagely confiscated. The truth hurts, but the truth can set us all free.
Fact. Hitler and his goons of Germany confiscated property when they came to power in that nation. They fought the communists, but did not take property only from any communists, but from anyone to whom they disagreed.
Fact. Going back further in time, there is evidence that when New England was first being settled, after confiscating property from the indigenous folks, many of the more wealthy puritanical ones confiscated property of their fellow white settlers who had built homes on the banks of waterways. After all, the best mode of transportation in those days was by rivers and streams into the interior. There is speculation (and I said speculation here, as I don’t have all the evidence and facts) that the person who was my 9th great-grandmother was murdered due to having property along a waterfront in Rhode Island. The method used to confiscate the property was to falsely accuse the oldest son, using apparitions in a puritanical court of law, of murdering his own mother. That person, Thomas Cornell/Cornwell, Jr., was not in my line of descent as my ancestor had departed to make his wealthy in what became Queens / Flushing. Records show that my ancestor in Flushing did not confiscate property from the indigenous folks there, but purchased the property from indigenous folks. However, my 9th great-grandmother was murdered in Rhode Island and it is likely due to what was found during the era of the Salem Witch Trials in New England.
At this piont, my discussion is about some of my own ideas, but is based on learning from history. and my own faith and beliefs. As Arthur Miller points out in his dramatic production, The Crucible, the purpose for the witch trials was confiscation of property for wealthy who wanted to locate on waterfront property. Was Miller fantasizing or are there historical facts which he based his story? As I said, there is some truth about such events happening and being done in the name of religion, after the very same people who had been persecuted by Roman Catholics and others then turned to use persecution themselves. God is God. Spirituality which is part of the true God is spirituality. Religion is more like, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” while being done, falsely, in the name of God and our Creator.
Is it safe to say that the majority of confiscation over time derives more from the wealthy aristocracy which claims it know what capitalism is, but has been entrenched, even today, in the ideas of a feudal economics from Medieval times? Even today, I can argue that monopolies are NOT capitalism, but based on individualism, greed, selfishness, corruption. I repeat. Not capitalism because capitalism is about balance in the economy between supply and demand. The ideas from Adam Smith came to us in opposition to the aristocratic economics of the Medieval era. Adam Smith was a contemporary of our American Founding Fathers who had an intent to have balance in democracy which does not exist with most monarchs and dictators. Even if such balance does exist, as in the example of IBM founder, Thomas J. Watson, once the “benevolent one” passes, there is chaos at the top and often the ruthless, greedy, selfish dictators end up in charge.
For me, I have explained, over and over again, how I ended up having my stock “confiscated” by measures of ruthless business people, not a government, who were given free reign to do as they wish, by deregulation czars and Reagan. It was due to the philosophies of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Alan Greenspan, including supply-side economics. Meanwhile, the “axe man” in that process walked away with $7M. I can say I had my job “confiscated,” too, but that is an unacceptable thing to say. But the mechanisms of the deregulation mavens confiscated my stocks, in an indirect manner. And the lawyers during all of that? They were not laid off, in spite of the fact they were paid far more than what I got paid. AND. The lawyers drew up papers to protect the big fat pig, Critchfield, at the top, by stating we would not receive a departure stipend , should we file a lawsuit against the company. We were truly “victims,” as the lawyer advertisements make claims for those hurt in accidents (they often are NOT victims, either), but who came to our rescue? We had to sign a piece of paper stating we were not to make a claim about being victims, in the form of a lawsuit. I survived this ordeal of confiscation of my resources. I could have done better, though, had I not experienced such an ordeal. I was able to pick myself up by my bootstraps and move on to a wonderful career in academics. But now those of us in public education are coming under attack, too. And who protects our “victimhood?” (Did I just coin a word?). I explain this from the past, but my intent is to impart what I have learned, so we stop the chaos and confusion resulting from people who no longer read the details provided in newspapers and just listen to what other blab about in attacks on individuals, rather than discussing ideas (idea discussion = the highest level of human intelligence). it irks me to see there are some like the recent writer to Gannett who still have not learned from the past, as I have attempted to teach about the history of confiscation of resources and property which goes well beyond just communism and government.
At the end of the day, under circumstances involving the consolidation of power by the ruthless ones, we end up with resources, including property, being taken from those who have less. Until Reagan and deregulation mavens who ended up forming monopolies in the USA, America had evolved to a better point of economics, as imperfect as this nation still may have been. But to be allowed to state, in a false manner, that, due to COVID-19 and extending a safety net to those who suffer financially, is “communism,’ is absolutely absurd and with no basis at all. Go ahead. Make my day and censor what I say. Be contentious, rather than do as Thomas J. Watson always wanted his employees to do: THINK.
—
Professor Douglas Willet Cornwell (Retired)
Newark Valley, NY
———————————“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “The problems of the world are not that some people love in a different way. The problems are that so many people don’t know how to love at all (CGA, 1970).” A Puritan is someone in fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. “Liberty and justice for all [not priorities on individual and selfish rights].” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union [and overall wealth of American society]…”
Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected.” Stacey Abrams: “Compromise about actions, but not about values.” Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Benjamin Franklin: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Whoopi Goldberg: “To handle this COVID-19 pandemic effectively, we all need to get on the same page.” Note: To be clear, I do not like being patronized. I do not express my disdain over what happens to my fellow humans just for my own sake and to pursue favors and handouts. I do it in order to gain R – E – S – P – E – C – T for me and for millions of other Americans of any race, ethnicity, religious belief, or sex and sexual identity who try to walk in integrity as they attempt to achieve, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. PERIOD. One nation under God [our Creator] with liberty and justice for all.
Tioga Herald 
Shall We Discuss Trade Deficits?
Dear Editors:
Perhaps I am just weird because I take a different perspective and look at issues by doing so with a goal to effectively promoting humanitarian visions and looking through the lenses of learning from history. I find it appalling the number of times those in the media simply invoke their own conclusions without really digging deep into the details. The trade deficit is one such issue recently identified in your newspaper.
I might also one point (as I extend my writing too much, I am sure). That I like the fact that your newspaper maintains a very complete business section. I also like the other sections which you have and have been ripped out of Gannett local newspapers, whether in Binghamton, Ithaca, Melbourne, Florida, or West Palm Beach, Florida. For instance, sections which focus on culture and not just shallow entertainment we are dished out from shallow companies like Spectrum, Dish, DirecTV, etc. I only wish your newspaper would expand up here to Binghamton and provide capitalist competition here in this area. When I delivered newspapers here in the Binghamton area, there WAS competition. I delivered the Sun-Bulletin in the morning and there was also the Gannett, Evening Press. Today both are merged into one monopoly here.
OK. Trade deficit. Yes, we are facing a large trade deficit. Do we point fingers or figure out a way to fix this? Perhaps in order to get to the root of the problem, we need to point fingers, so as to LEARN FROM THE PAST, rather than being barbaric and uncivilized and pointing fingers. For in that case, if Trump points one finger at the Democrats, there are three other fingers pointing back at that ass of a business leader who knows nothing about how to treat human beings. So one can say the same thing about me, right, should I point one finger. There are three pointing back at me. But let me be clear. I point the finger and then rely on what Kierkegaard said:
Let me begin.
When the Republicans under George H.W. Bush proposed a treaty like NAFTA, they was also, according to Lee Iaccoca (2007) in Japan throwing the American auto companies and its unions under the bus. He arranged that Toyota and other companies could come to America, but refused to open up the markets in Japan for American companies to openly sell there. No wonder, at the buffet Bush attended when “honoring” that trade agreement, he vomited. Does anyone remember that? Iaccoca describes it, but I recall hearing about it by way of the American media.
Bush with the Republicans then pushed ahead on ideas for what became NAFTA. He lost the election in 1992. The stupidity of the Democrat who won was to “appease” the Republicans and NAFTA was put in place. Yes, the Republicans have reasons today to point a finger at Clinton and the Democrats for NAFTA.
NAFTA has been great for Mexico. It has been great for American executives to steal money from pensions, Social Security, and Medicare by ridding America of higher paying jobs, as we watched them all go overseas to cheap labor. Since Reagan, CEO salaries have increased by over 1000%, with all the bonuses and thievery due to a love of money. Wages and salaries for American labor have been fairly flat during those years. In fact, for me, myself, and I, I LOST salary, due to Republican efforts to deregulate and create monopolies.
Which brings up the point about deregulation. Deregulation was meant to destroy unions and the better salaries with living wages in America. AT&T was deregulated by Reaganomics, in the name of IBM, a NON-UNION company which treated its employees with great benefits. After AT&T was destroyed, the world was an oyster for IBM, but what happened to the benefits once put in place by Thomas J. Watson when there was a reduced competitive environment? You don’t know what I am saying? Look into the wonderful Unix operating system developed by AT&T’s Bell Labs and what has happened to that? Look into the strategy AT&T wanted in those years, but Reagan and his Republican cronies in business destroyed the company. Yes, government WAS the problem, just a few years after Reagan declared government as being a problem and he had fired the air traffic controllers for creating a union. Government controlled by CEOs, monopoly, and corporate PACs and lobbyists and government DID become the problem. To the stupidity of younger people today: that does not mean we should destroy government with fake news and unproven and lying conspiracy theories.
Get a life and recognize that you bastards on Jan. 6, 2021, were irresponsible in your quest for “liberty and freedom.” You bastards don’t know what liberty and justice” for all really and truly means, so you think you were not treasonous, as you used violence and bloodshed to attempt to work out perverted insurrection. You are wrong. The Republicans who defend it are wrong. There. I had to say this, as I am talking about trade deficit. My apologies for saying this, as I see it related to the stupidity all around regarding conclusions about the trade deficit. You don’t want to fix a democracy, you want to destroy a democracy with lies about the 2020 election. TRUMP NEVER WON YOU DAMN ASSHOLES. TRUMP NEVER WON, YOU DAMN ASSHOLES. GET THAT, YET? TRUMP NEVER WON IN 2020. So let us all live with liberty and justice for all. You talk about your GODDAMN individual rights for liberty and that does NOT provide for justice for all. You try to validate what you damn asses do by saying only YOUR god rules the nation, so “one nation under [YOUR FREAKING] god, with liberty and justice for all.” There are many very good Americans who don’t believe in your GODDAMN god of EVIL and we don’t want you disturbing the peace of America. For peace and justice go hand and hand. So you want to be like the Taliban and execute those who don’t agree, doing so in the name of your FREAKING LOUSY PERVERTED god, and therefore have justice when people are gone.
Back to the trade deficit.
Let’s be blunt. The Founding Fathers, from the past, gave us ways to handle trade deficits. America was a brand new nation with a HUGE trade deficit. They established checks and balances in politics and economics. Economics based on the TRUE definition established by Adam Smith, a contemporary of our Founding Fathers. Infrastructure projects were started, beginning with the one begun by Governor Clinton of New York because of his intelligence in recognizing that the flatlands which crossed upstate New York from Albany to Buffalo, were an excellent way to increase transportation for the sake of goods being transported. Need I say more about this, or will I go into too much detail for people who don’t understand what this was about?
Later, the railroad infrastructures were established with business and government alliances for INFRASTRUCTURE made it happen. The interstate road system was an infrastructure for the purposes of expanding business and commerce. It destroyed the rail system for which American taxes and business investments had created. All in the name of “change for the sake of change.” In fact, it was CHANGE for the sake of INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS of Americans who clamored after the personal automobile.
We built a business for cars. The American auto industry was once the “Big Three” around the world. We had a fourth one, too, strongly led by a Mormon and former Republican governor(?) named George Romney. The business destroyed public transit like railroads I have been told that there has not been new train engines or train cars built in America for many years. No manufacturing in that area,as America abandoned it for individual rights of drivers and the ability for the wealthy to travel in the air. In the process, we despoiled the air, in the name of individual rights and “I love my car” by macho males and their quest for a brutal personification of the male, so as to attract the females. As a result of NAFTA and that lousy Japanese trade agreement arranged by anti-union Bush, what has happened to our American auto industry? Even when GM was able to build a more efficient car to compete with Japan, Iaccoca (2007) points out GM did NOTHING to market the product and it died. A very good American-produced car, the Saturn, destroyed.
Today, Joe Biden has mentioned the evil which exists with monopolies of technology and he wishes to reverse what Reagan began. Immediately, the fat pigs who have increased their salaries by more than 1000% jump on his case by paying off the media to tarnish all he says. Like Governor Clinton of 19th Century New York, President Biden is scoffed at. In the 19th Century, it was “Clinton’s Ditch” rather than the Erie Canal. Today ,there is junk about Joe Biden, such as “Sloppy Joe” or “Sleepy Joe.” The sloppy ones were Reagan, Bush, Trump, and their monopolistic fascist cronies in business. Reagan should have been called, “Sleepy Ronnie in the Cabinet.” Get my jist on that one? Don’t bother.
President Biden has been intelligent in describing infrastructure which is similar to what our Founding Fathers envisioned. Let us bring back technology industries here and stop the Chinese communists from making an attempt to grab such industries now located in a small population of Chinese CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY people. Like Dixie which did not know how to create companies like IBM, to avoid infrastructure projects, Dixie stole IBM and other companies in the same way the Chinese communists wish to steal from Chinese DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISTS. Dixie was made up of a bunch of white supremacist fascists, not communists. But they were too lazy to develop their own types of business. So they stole from the North. The fat pigs of business are stealing from the pensions, Social Security, Medicare, insurance CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS made by WE THE PEOPLE. Meanwhile, President Biden gets the axe in the media by lousy loudmouths who lack any knowledge or intelligence, but have plenty of support from money-lovers galore.
In case people are not aware, the Founding Fathers and generations following the Founding Fathers put forth infrastructure projects so as to reduce the trade deficits. Joe Biden is having his reputation tarnished as he attempts to do the same thing. The Republicans do not even speak with him about what they think might be better. Why? Because they are assholes who are afraid they won’t win and that is all they want – to win. They prefer to win by forcing Democrats to put in place something like NAFTA or DADT instead. Republicans are cowards today who don’t know what it is like to be human beings.
Yet, Thomas Jefferson promised to bring “industry” to Vermont, in return for having Vermont added as the 14th state, done with a provision that Vermont could choose to SECEDE from the USA, as written into their state constitution. Vermont borders on Canada and is known for an “industry” which is very prevalent in Canada: maple industry. Jefferson wanted to stop our trade deficit with the Caribbean islands by opening up the production of maple syrup and maple sugar in America. In later years, without a hot, humid temperature base in large parts of America, we did develop products such as sugar beets, etc.
Then, Thomas Jefferson worked out the Louisiana Purchase. Suddenly, this INFRASTRUCTURE addition was the sugar cane fields in the southern end of that purchase. In other words, the state of Louisiana.
We also had infrastructure addition, scoffed at with the name, “Seward’s Folly,” in the name of 49th state admitted to the union: Alaska. We had infrastructure development done by wealthy people in their contribution to government funds, rather than being JACKASS ones trying to avoid paying taxes, because “taxes are only for the little people.” The wealthy island nation of Morroco, damn it all, has taxes of the wealthy, not in income taxes, but in VAT and real estate property taxes. So the asses of wealthy fat pigs in America today need to think about what they hell they are doing by not supporting this nation and then complaining about a trade deficit.
The early leaders of the USA, BEFORE THE LOUSY INCOME TAX OF AMERICA, used tariffs to help promote the development of American business. A VAT might be a domestic form of a tariff, but it COULD replace an income tax and thus the transfer of the input of revenues MIGHT offset what the American people no longer pay in income taxes, with all its lousy and perverted convoluted deductions and credits.
The tariff on foreign goods, might not be as good. However, if tariffs were to be used to replace the income tax, is this statement true?
In both scenarios, there is a Catch-22. Should we put a tariff on imported goods and a domestic VAT (replacing sales taxes, too), during a time of inflation. Will there be a negative or positive impact on the price of goods and services during a time of inflation?
Using tariff and VAT to replace income and sales taxes could help in the profit margins of small businesses and small family farms. As a professor, educator, teacher for some 50 years, why should I care about the loss of business for tax lawyers and tax accountants? Perhaps those losses would be offset by the myriad small businesses who pay for those people to shuffle numbers and papers? I have no care about such professionals losing their jobs, as the lack of jobs for educators in upstate New York FORCED me to leave my homeland of New York and move to Florida.
You might just brush this statement off as how I found success anyway. But I lost my homeland the way Castro destroyed the homeland for many Cubans who also moved to Florida. One difference. I hated the heat, humidity, and hurricanes in Florida. Apparently, Cubans do not.
Only those who are more knowledgeable about economics and commerce than I am, could evaluate what I just said and give us an answer.
But alas. We don’t discuss such matters in this way. The commercial and economics person needs to be non-biased to such ideas and merely look at all of this with an overall perspective not from the perspective of trying to preserve the monopolistic / deregulatory / anti-union environments which brought us to this point. I am pro-union, so another reason why, with my lack of knowledge in this area, I should do such an analysis. Even if there were obstacles discovered in the approaches I mention, there are ways to overcome the obstacles, rather than just shooting holes in the solution and tossing it all aside.
One final thought about trade deficits. Donald Trump was a stupid jerk in dealing with the topic of tariffs. He had no understanding at all and felt he could communicate with the Chinese Communists in the same way the coward always did in communication in business. Being a white supremacist, he also likely did not like the “yellow” skin, either. He was an insult to America, while dealing with the Chinese Communists who have a hold on America with the debt it can hold over America and rub our noses in it. Donald Trump, like most Republicans and their GD “wedge issues,” only focus on one segment of the population. That was what Donald Trump did with his proposals for tariffs. One segment of the market, rather than taking an overall approach and doing so with ALL trade partners, for the protection of USA business and commerce. The Chinese Communists literally laughed at the bastard Trump. And he thinks he won the election in 2020? Sometimes the American people are not so stupid and can recognize a scam artist at work.
Trade deficits. If America works together for the goal of America, not political parties and white supremacist lousy people at the helm of the Republican Party; not for political ideology; not for red or blue; we CAN accomplish miracles that lead to success by overcoming obstacles. How many times have I promoted such ideas? I have lost count.
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