Did you watch the Pro Bowl?  No?  Apparently, neither did anybody else.  I had to go searching to find any information about the game.  (Because I certainly didn’t watch it!)  Like every corporation in this once-great nation, the NFL has destroyed it’s product.  And I don’t care what the bigots think, it has nothing to do with Colin Kaepernick’s objection to cops killing people of color.  It’s saturation.  Not just the number of games.  Commercials.  OMG, the commercials.  They rolled out a new tool this season in which the game, itself, is relegated to a small corner of the screen while an ad runs in a larger window.

I know a guy who lives, now, in a foreign country.  He’s back for a visit and he was pleased he had the opportunity to catch the Championship games since it had been so long since he’d been able to watch American football.  He called it “unwatchable.”  He noted the broadcast has become three and a half hours of commercials, occasionally interrupted by a football play…

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Weasel Words.  That’s my name for those phrases that come up when a person wants to try to weasel out of some predicament during a discussion or debate.  In today’s hysteria-driven America, the most common Weasel Words are ‘Fake News…’

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Why would anybody be surprised to find out that Trump cheated on Melania?  The actual news would be if Trump had a wife he didn’t cheat on…

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Alexander Hamilton had an advantage when he designed our nation’s economic system: other economic systems.  He looked around, copied ideas that worked, and rejected ideas that didn’t.  That’s the way I think we, the people should handle things after the next, pending revolution.  Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes.  Let’s use what was good in our Constitution and fix the things that weren’t.  First up on my suggestion list?  Salaries.

Nobody should be allowed to set their own salary.  EVERYBODY thinks they’re worth top dollar, even those who aren’t worth a dime.  Consider: this country was created and established by people making eight dollars a day.  Today’s Congress is the highest paid in history and I’ve never seen a more useless group of sorry excuses.  So much for the pretense that if you want the best people you’ve got to pay higher rates.  I propose a change to the Constitution in which the salaries of members of Congress are tied directly to the fortunes of their constituents.  If they can’t screw the people without screwing themselves, they’re less likely to screw the people.  LESS likely…

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The Northern California fires are still “happening” – they just aren’t burning anymore.  The fallout continues, unabated.  Toxins are polluting the water and, as the cleanup continues, the air.  The housing situation was…untenable before the fires.  Now?  It’s virtually impossible to find affordable housing.  Anybody who wants or needs to move won’t be moving across town.  They’re fleeing across the state or across the country, forced out of the only place they’ve known as home by circumstances far beyond their control.  I guess I know how the Dreamers feel…

When advocating for high taxes on the wealthy – because high taxes on the rich causes them to actually do what they always promise lower taxes might someday encourage them to do – one often receives a predictable response: “Why should I have to give up more of the money I earned?”  I can speak to that.  First, if you aren’t currently a member of the one percent, you can relax.  Nobody’s talking about you.  (In fact, if the one percent would pay their fair share, your taxes could go down…)  If you ARE a member of the one percent, you can relax, too.  YOU…didn’t “earn” it.  You KEPT it, sure.  But you didn’t earn it.

THAT accomplishment belongs to that maligned group of people known collectively as “the workers.”  You know…those who do the actual work that produces the revenues you’ve chosen to keep.  But fortuitously finding yourself in a position where you get to choose who gets what isn’t the same as “earning.”  So, now the workers should be asking you, why should I give up the money I earned?  The answer is the same, “Because I started the business.”

Oh, because YOU started the business?  Two things: One, what if you didn’t?  What if someone else started the business and you just happened to end up running the show?  Think of the Walton clan.  Two, even if you did actually start the business, YOU didn’t produce all of that beautiful revenue alone – so why should you, alone, benefit so mightily from the results?  “Oh, because I took the chance.”

Yeah, you did.  Of course, so did the workers.  They took the chance, too.  In fact, because the workers don’t have a say in the direction of the company and because you chose to pay yourself an inordinate salary while leaving the workers to turn to the state to make ends meet, the workers face a bigger risk than you.  The stakes are higher for the employee than the employer.  At least you have something to fall back on should the whole thing come crashing down…

As it happens, there’s actually a very solid way to determine how much MORE the person who starts the business should get to keep than the workers.  It’s a question: How much could a person earn in that business with no employees?  Whatever that magic number is, THAT’S the number!  Not surprisingly, the number changes from business to business.  Here’s an example.  I referenced the Walton offspring earlier.  My understanding is that Sam Walton sired five children.  So…one to drive the truck.  One does the paperwork.  One works the register.  Two stock the shelves.  See?  They could run a store.  One store.  One small store.  So…WHY, exactly, do they get to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in profits while their employees – those who do the work the generates the revenues – have to turn to food stamps?

Of course, people could still get rich.  Warren Buffet still would have done quite well for himself.  But if HE had to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the the SEC filings and tax forms, he could not have done as well for himself as he has.  The tedious parts of his business would have slowed him down.  No matter how you slice it, it’s a group effort.

I’ll tell you this: it’s not right that workers in this country are treated as pariahs and parasites.  It’s not honest, it’s not fair, and it’s not sustainable.  I know, it’s the current paradigm but I suspect it’s not going to end well…

I was watching a “news” report on my local Fox affiliate.  (I watch it for the weather…girl.)  They were doing a story on Governor Jerry Brown’s efforts to build a high speed rail system in California.  They emphasized that the project has doubled in cost estimates and is behind schedule in construction.  The project never attracted the private investors expected and the Federal government can’t be counted on to pony up any more than they already have.  In short, after all the expenditures, planning, and preparations, the project looks, increasingly, like it may fail.

Governor Brown’s mistake was simple and honest enough: he still sees the United States of America as a forward-looking country…but we’re not.  Not anymore, anyway.  The United States used to lead the world in just about every way it was awesome to lead the world.  Many parts of the world have benefited from our example.  But not US.  We beheld the benefits we had discovered and/or developed and, in blind thrall to “special interests” (read: greed), walked away from all of it.  Jerry’s Train has become the perfect metaphor, a forward-looking project in a backward-moving environment.

In the 1930’s, the US was struggling – perhaps failing – under crushing income inequality.  FDR introduced a new, more fair, economic system.  It worked so well, it created the greatest, strongest middle class the world had ever seen.  It was SO obviously SO successful, other countries began adopting the New Deal principles that made it work.  THOSE countries developed and refined the underlying concepts and created strong, vibrant economies that benefit the vast majority of the people who live there.  But not the United States.  No, we chose to walk away from that success and exchange it for more of the same, crushing income inequality we had previously defeated.

One part of the economic solution was to invoke worker protections.  Things like unions, the forty-hour workweek, enforced overtime pay, and sick leave made the working environment functional for everybody.  Then, some self-interested party challenged those ideas with slick-sounding slogans like “Right to Work.”  Every time I hear that, I have the same thought: slaves have ALWAYS had the “right to work.”  Really, it’s the right NOT to work from time to time that creates a healthy work/life balance.  The US used to know that.  Most First World nations still do but the United States has steadily abandoned the ideas – by choice.  If you’re not all work, all the time, you’re simply “not trying” and you “deserve to fail.”  There’s not much emphasis on the idea that if you ARE all work all the time, you’re increasingly facing the reality of failure anyway, I’ve noticed.

The United States used to have one of the most developed infrastructures on the planet.  One could count on clean water, working toilets, and electricity anywhere one went.  Today, our infrastructure is literally crumbling beneath our feet.  Some people blame the greedy politicians.  Some blame the greedy people who bought the greedy politicians.  It all works out the same in the end, though.  Unsafe (or unavailable) drinking water, crumbling sewer systems, bridges one may or may not make it all the way across, and gas supply systems that blow up homes rather than keeping them warm have become “normal” because we, the people, chose to ignore the problems…

Our educational system was once the envy of the world.  We set the standard.  Other countries took up the challenge.  They saw the benefits of a well-educated society and moved to emulate the success of America.  Then, they exceeded anything America had ever implemented – simply by moving forward along the obvious path.  A better educated society is a stronger society.  Better access to education is a better educated society.  Tuition free college, anyone?  Sure, in the First World countries.  Some of those countries even provide a stipend to people attending school.  But not in the United States.  In the United States, we’re making it harder to get an education at all, let alone a college education.  If you DO get to college, you’ll spend the rest of your life paying off the student loans issued at usury rates.  We undercut our own world-class educational system – by choice.

The First World is embracing and expanding renewable energy resources at an incredible pace, a forward-looking ideology.  The United States is pushing coal, a backwards-moving technology.  First man on the moon.  Now we have to hitch rides from other, more successful countries just to get to the space station…

At every stage, in every way, the United States of America has turned her back on her own citizens and her own accomplishments.  If it was good, if it could benefit Americans, it had to go.  All of it, abandoned by choice.  Regression, deterioration, decay…by choice.  Hell, we even have a proto-human in the White House now…

I’ll tell you this: when I think of Jerry’s Train, I feel regret.  Jerry Brown is an older guy.  He still remembers America when she was THE “can-do” nation on the planet.  He didn’t think High Speed Rail should be too challenging to our forward-looking country.  Apparently, he failed to grasp that we’ve become a backwards-moving nation.  The bits of Jerry’s Train that have been built stand as a shining reminder of what the United States was once, what she could have been, what she should have been – but chose not to be…

1/15/18 10:49: edited to correct a typo…(mb)

I was chatting up a pretty, young woman the other day.  No, not like that.  She was the checker at the grocery store line I happened to be standing in on the morning of Christmas Eve day.  I noticed that particular check-stand got closed behind me and by way of making small talk, I asked if she was done for the day.  She told me she was but she was coming back for a second shift later that afternoon.  I don’t know, maybe she perceived my ambivalence over her having to work on Christmas Eve.  She volunteered that she didn’t mind because she gets paid really well to work on holidays.  Her comment struck me in a couple of different ways at the same time.

In an instant, I wondered if she knew that she gets paid really well to work on holidays because of the efforts of unions – and I wondered if she knows how conservatives have fought (and still fight) each and every worker protection and benefit that comes down the line.  And always, it’s the same ole story: “Sorry, no can do.  “Giving” the workers that (safety, fair wage, time off, whatever) will simply destroy our business…and, probably commerce altogether.”  Conservatives are always wrong on that particular point but that never stops them from floating it every chance they get…

Nearly simultaneously, though, I was struck by the reality that this person could be so excited about working on Christmas Eve – because she could make some really good money.  To my mind, a comment like that could easily be a symptom of the wage gap here in America.  I mean, if she’s making enough money to live her life on a day in and day out basis, maybe she’s less interested in working on Christmas Eve – even for really good money.

I know, maybe not.  Before you feel obligated to point it out, allow me to acknowledge my awareness that there are a thousand ways a thing might be.  I admire an idea I picked up from – of all places – the HBO show called ‘Deadwood’.  One of the characters said, “There are so many ways a thing could be there’s no sense in deciding which one it was.”  I mention it, here, to make clear that I’m not claiming to know her actual or total motivation but SHE mentioned the money, that’s why I followed it as her reasoning…

It’s just…kind of a peak into what life is becoming in the United States today – happy to work Christmas Eve because one needs the money.  Apparently, there are plenty of people out there who think it’s just awesome.  I’ll tell you this:  I’m not one of them…

Merry Christmas
and
Happy Holidays…

From the Bacon Press to you and yours…

As the GOP hurtles toward passage of their tax assault on the American people, I just want to take a minute to say how it will work out.  I want to do it now so it looks like a prediction.  It isn’t a prediction, though.  It’s more like a history lesson.

The GOP is going to pass this nasty thing.  They want a “win” and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.  (In fact, it often appears as though the GOP gets happier as more people suffer…)  My guess is that they don’t know what’s in it.  I presume, based on past behavior, much of this bill has been written by corporations and other vested interests.  Mostly, it’s a gift to the richest people and corporations according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.  Still, it’s got some short-term goodies for the masses so, initially, people won’t notice the damage.  But it won’t take long.

The goodies for the masses all expire over time.  The goodies for the one percent do not.  There will be no “trickle down.”  There will be few, if any, wage increases.  The economy will begin to falter, perhaps crash.  (Whether or not it crashes depends on how quickly they move to phase 2.)  Phase 2 is an increase in taxes and fees on the middle and lower classes, along with cuts to programs intended to help middle and lower class families.

That’s it.  That’s the entire prediction.  More money in the pockets of those whose pockets are already brimming with money, more suffering for everyone else.  Why do I think so?  Well, because that’s what has happened every time the GOP has pulled this trick on America!  Listen, anybody can be conned.  Con men are good at what they do and anybody can fall prey to the stories.  But, really…

How many times are people going to buy the same bridge from the same conman even though the judge keeps pointing out the bridge wasn’t the conman’s to sell in the first place?  At some point, it’s just embarrassing…

I take SOME comfort in the idea that I haven’t seen too many rank-and-file conservatives out there trying to support this…plan.  The posts I HAVE seen seem…halfhearted…as though even conservatives have begun to figure out that this is not a battle between left and right.  This is the one percent against everyone else.  The one percent has decided they’re simply going to take it all.  The question is, are we, the people, going to let them?

I’ll tell you this: left or right, if you aren’t actually and already in the one percent, you’d better pick up a phone, call your Congress Critter, and urge a no vote on this thing.  Sure, they’re going to do whatever they want, anyway.  But at least they’ll understand why they’re seeing all the torches and pitchforks…