In 2004, the at-the-time Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, started issuing marriage licenses to interested parties in the gay community.  One can imagine the elation of those affected.  It was a bold move that was instantly lauded, applauded, and embraced by every segment of society…

Ha, ha…I’m kidding of course.  A certain segment of our society lost their collective minds.  Protests were staged, names were called, fights were had.  Then…laws were made.  What started off as a high-flying moment for the LGBT community seemed to have come to a crashing end.  But passing laws was an overstep by the “H8ers,” as they had come to be known.  Laws moved the issue from opinion, stereotype, and conjecture to a matter of, well, law.  It’s still true in this once-great nation that laws can’t discriminate.  In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not bar gays from getting married.  These days, gays are allowed to marry and divorce right along with everyone else.  The world hasn’t ended.

In a larger way, the entire country finds itself in a similar situation.  In 2008, the country “elected” a black man as President.  One can remember the elation of most of those affected.  It was a bold move that was instantly lauded, applauded, and embraced by every segment of our society.

Okay, no.  A certain segment lost their collective minds.  Protests were staged, names were called, fights were had and then…Trump.  I mean, talk about some brutal push-back.  The “Tea-baggers”, as they’ve come to be known, complained that Obama had too little experience to be President.  So they “pushed back” by supporting an individual with zero experience.  Aside from enriching himself through his office, nothing seems quite so important to our current POTUS as undoing everything “Obama”, becoming the “Anti-Obama”, if you will…

As President, Obama was thoughtful and articulate.  Trump appears to know somewhere between two- and three-hundred words.  Obama was attacked as the “teleprompter President.”  Trump squints at the thing, “reads” like it’s an I-Can-Read book, and STILL mispronounces several words per speech, perhaps to re-assure his “base” that he really is NOT part of the “intellectual elite” (code talk for “smart people.”)  The Obama administration made rules protecting the environment.  Trump allows coal companies to push mining waste into rivers and streams.

Trump supports off-shore drilling and just about every other 19th century power source – again, the exact opposite of Obama, who was trying to move the U.S. into 21st century power sources.  Obama was young, athletic, and dignified.  Trump?  Well, let’s just go with “the opposite.”  What started off as a high-flying moment for America seems to have come to a crashing end…

But I’ll tell you this: the “H8ers” exposed the very worst of humanity when it came to tolerance and equality.  Once the majority of the nation got a good view of what that looked like, we rejected their backwards, wrongheaded position.  The gays won.  In the same way, the Tea-baggers have shown us the ugliest portrayal, the darkest corners of ourselves and in every meaningful way, Donald J. Trump epitomizes the very worst of us.  We, the people, are getting a very good view of what that looks like.  I’m hopeful that the majority will reject the Tea-bagger’s backward, wrongheaded viewpoint, just like we did with the “H8ers.”  Perhaps, America can still win…

I saw this item in the Guardian.  It’s an article about a study done to determine who shares the most “Fake News.”  It was done by Oxford University.  (I know…experts…pffft…)  You’ll never guess who, among us, consumes and redistributes the most “Fake News.”  I don’t want to steal the article’s thunder so…

 

“Low-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the US was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by rightwing social network users, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.

The study, from the university’s “computational propaganda project”, looked at the most significant sources of “junk news” shared in the three months leading up to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address this January, and tried to find out who was sharing them and why.

“On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share,” the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, “extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together.”

The research involved monitoring a core group of around 13,500 politically-active US Twitter users, and a separate group of 48,000 public Facebook pages, to find the external websites that they were sharing.”

I know, no surprises…at least not to anybody who’s been involved in the political discussion over, say, the last forty years or so.  (Subversive disinformation has been called ‘propaganda’ FAR longer than it’s been called ‘Fake News.’)

I’ll tell you this: the affected group, those who SHOULD review, reflect, and reconsider their sources, will simply declare the study ‘Fake News’ and move on to the next story about the AWESOME accomplishments of Trump…

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)