• Economic Equality (A Goal),  Politics,  Psychology of Life,  World Affairs

    Our Government has Tricked You and Here is Why

    The Revolution has begun.

    People see behind the lies they were taught in Government class. 

    Federal Capitol Building: Public Domain

    My immature understanding of government from my Civics class and from my reading of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage was essentially flawed.

    I learned that as a citizen, it was my duty to read about legislative candidates. I was told to understand the issues and vote on the candidate that I believed in. Based on the voting base, the successful congress member would then vote to benefit their own home base population. Always, congress was directed to work for the benefit of the people.

    Because of something called “politics” politicians are doing things that are not good for the people. While we may call it politics, it is truly all about money. The politicians are in pursuit of money, vote on all matters big and small, only as a result of being paid to do it.

    Public Domain

    Currently, in this country, there appears to be no reason to stop a public mandate for “Medicare for All”. Yet, no political platform will get on board and fight for this important public right to healthcare. In fact, we are in a country, where one person, yes, that’s right, ONE person makes life and death decisions for everyone in America. (This is definitely not what the founding fathers planned.)

    One man causes so many deaths, Mitch McConnell who has stopped all legislation as it sits on his desk. Untold numbers of new legislation proposed by the Democrats sit on this man’s desk (collecting dust). Caused deaths how, you ask…

    Your morning reminder that Mitch McConnell refused to take up any legislation to help states respond to COVID the whole month of June because he wanted to ram through as many conservative judges as possible.” @ChrisMurphyCT

    Many attempts to legislate equal rights, if passed would prevent much of the rioting in this country. Relief efforts for the Corona virus disaster all sit on his desk. An increased minimum wage sits on Mitch McConnell’s desk.

    What possible justification would there be for paying tipped workers $2.13 per hour (minimum wage)? The only justification that I know is that the legislators are lining their pockets with the blood of these same workers and taking millions in bribes to keep the status quo – status quo.

    What possible justification is there for a minimum wage that no one can survive on ($7.25)?

    In a different example, at the state level: One man has prevented so much wellness, Rick Scott who blocked the Medicaid expansion in Florida. How many deaths did Rick Scott cause by blocking the Medicaid expansion in Florida?

    “A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released last week said states that expanded Medicaid showed significant reductions in death rates for older adults who fell into the income brackets that allowed them to gain the coverage.”

    This isn’t the country that I learned about in my high school. The country I learned about included in the design a balance of power. How did we get to a point where one person can cause the death of others through legislative action or inaction?

    How many of these legislators are taking money for some very specific purposes? For example, the world financial crisis caused by the banks:

    JP Morgan is worth $2.4T, and only paid a $13B fine for their role in the ‘08 financial crisis. Our predatory capitalist system rewards greed, and punishes those who try to play by the rules. #BreakUpTheBanks #BreakTheDuoploly Quote Tweet Ryan Knight @ProudSocialist

    JPMorgan quarterly earnings?

    BREAKING: @JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, just reported its highest quarterly revenue EVER during a pandemic that’s seen 40 million Americans lose their jobs and small-businesses decimated. I cannot stress this enough: #FuckCapitalism. It is killing everyone besides the top 1%. @4apeoplesparty

    How many legislators did it take to keep JPMorgan Chase from suffering any dire consequences as a result of the 2008 financial crisis?  How many legislators does it take to keep them from paying taxes and one step further from using those taxes to provide relief to millions of Americans who are suffering from the Coronavirus crisis?

    Please help me understand why “Medicare for all” is not real, right now, today?

    Health insurance statistics are not what we are being told. Medicare and Medicaid are the largest payers of healthcare in America and have been for decades. The balance of national health care dollars are spent by for profit insurance companies on healthy cherry picked people who insurers chase after for their healthcare dollars. Why? Because insuring them is cheap – they don’t file claims.

    At this time, we are being bombarded with false information about who has lost healthcare as a result of the Covid crisis. Each research facility gives a different number or attempts to extrapolate a number of uninsured. Since the 90s, the uninsured number always stayed at around 38 million. Obama was able to reduce that number by half. Not only are we back up to 38 million, but we have surpassed it now. Trump kept peeling away at the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with nothing. Most people in America depend on their jobs to provide health care insurance, therefore coverage. So where are we now? The loss of jobs, the loss of health insurance.

    The revolution is coming.

    MLK the Revolution: Public Domain

  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Politics,  World Affairs

    Donations Don’t Help Poverty in America; they just Assuage your Guilt: Stop it With Your Donations and Do the Right Thing!

    I’ve never been an advocate for charities, because I see so few of them doing the right thing. Add that to the fact that charities are nothing more than a third party between you and the person who needs your donation.

    That’s a fact, but beside the point. The point of this essay is that so many are coming forward with large and even mega donations for the Black Lives Matter movement. I think giving away money is just a way to assuage the guilt of not being a good human. Not being a good human, is this idea that “I have mine and you get yours, and if you don’t get yours, too bad”.

    We Americans have been living like rugged individuals for hundreds of years. As Americans, we have not done the hard work that is involved in gaining equality for all. We have fallen far short of our forefathers goal: equality.

    We have taken advantage of our myth of rugged individualism and have allowed all “others” to fall to the wayside. And let’s admit, we are at the wayside. The middle class is so small now as to be irrelevant.

    What is the hard work of gaining equity for everyone and not just some? Well, let’s begin with economics. How have the large corporations and the legislature of this country been able to keep the minimum wage so low? It’s clear to everyone that the minimum wage is not a living wage.

    All of the large corporations take advantage of the minimum wage laws. They may not pay the minimum, minimum, but they are paying so little that those who do these jobs cannot subsist. Take a look at McDonald’s, look at Walmart and look at Amazon. These are among the biggest employers in the United States. Not only are they taking advantage of the small wages, but the employee benefits are minimal as well.

    The big employers play a game called “seasonal worker” or “temporary worker”. You can be a “seasonal worker” or a “temporary worker” for YEARS. Because you are a seasonal worker you can work forty hours and NOT be a full time employee. This allows the large employers to cheat you out of any benefits that you would be entitled to as a full time worker.

    Papa John’s Pizza (the owner is a renowned racist) owns and lives in a 40,000 square feet house. He pays his staff $8.00 an hour with no benefits. This is an awful statement about our country. We have designed a country wherein it is okay to live on the backs of others, without compensating them.

    Public Domain- John Schnatter’s Home

    Why haven’t we forced our legislature to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage? Why haven’t we done the work to make companies pay a living wage?

    Why are Managed Care CEOs making millions and millions in bonuses when 80 million people cannot get health care? Regular people are fighting to keep health insurance companies in the mix. Why? Insurance companies have no goal except passing profits to shareholders. It’s an incongruent goal and doesn’t match with healthcare.

    If eighty percent of the country is living paycheck to paycheck that is 264,000,000 people. How can this country be so ineffective? Where did we go wrong? We created a capitalist society whereby all the money goes to a very few, while millions suffer without support: no living wage, no health care and no access to education.

    How is it even possible to be in a democratic society, when so few are being represented by our legislature? Our legislature seems to represent those who have money to donate to campaigns and no one else. This is a limited group of people.

    This is what I mean by the work of this country. We live here, we owe it to ourselves and to our children to make this country a place of prosperity. We cannot afford to allow this country to be run by those few who have the money to pay for legislator’s campaigns. Because those with the money are not looking out for anyone else. That is why after three decades, the minimum wage has not changed very much.

    We want to go back to running the country for the people. We’ll need to overhaul everything because it’s been too long. Virtually anything that benefits human beings has been done away with: living wage, education, health care and even banking.

    America is not a country that has done well for its people. Charity and donations won’t help, we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction.